Farting in the Desert

Man it is hot as a bastard round these parts. I start a month's worth of summer classes today. Judging from the current academic rigor of the FREAKING UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THE NATION'S NUCLEAR WEAPONRY, this should be even more of a joke than the regular term. I felt like I had enrolled at Auburn during the Spring quarter. How much lower can you get? Maybe if I just call in to each class from bed they'll give me an A for demonstrating my ability to both remember what day it is and accurately use a phone. Jeez. I had an interview this morning at a high school of 4,200 students - holy crap. Bit different from personal experience of a high school of about 350 students.

Not much else is going on - working a lot and staying inside during daytime. Freaking desert. I miss the East Coast. God, people here are such gigantic douchebags! Every single day I am confronted with some new way to be a douchebag that simply astounds me. Here's something awesome that happened yesterday: Tiffany was sitting on the porch watching a bunch of kids jumping into the pool. There were a few parents, including the star of this story: a 300-pound hambeast in an orange one-piece. She looked like an English lad and his talking insect friends were going to bust out of her any minute. Well someone must have been drunker than the entire Irish nation a few years back because she had a four-year-old kid. Like most Californians, the kid cannot swim, so he is bouncing around the shallow end with floaties on his arms. Because he isn't old enough to have absorbed fully the douchebag culture, the child wishes to play with his mother-creature, flapping his little arms and trying to grab ahold of mommy. Mommy/giant inflatable gorilla responds thusly: "WHY DO YOU KEEP HITTING ME?!?!" and then shoves her fat palm into the kids face, giving her four-year-old son a bloody nose. The dad/zookeeper takes the kid to the shower and washes him and off staunches his nose until the bleeding stops. And what does the mother/fairy-tale pumpkin coach do? Stays in the pool and stares at Tiffany, as if daring my girlfriend to call her out for bludgeoning her own child. I came out at this point, and the woman/overstuffed sofa is giving us the evil eye as hard as she can, but it came out like a potato winking at us.

That's the sort of mindset every single worthless sack of shit around here carries. Each person, no matter who they are, what they do, and how they look, believe themself to be the end-all be-all of human achievement. I'm sorry, that's not how that works. Life here is a fashion statement, and there is so little substance involved it makes me sick. It shows in every facet, from co-workers complaining because they have to work more than a five hour shift, to the complete lack of effort put forth by the university, to the total lack of pride in one's own work found in business owners (including the apartment management, which hasn't fixed out hot water in six months!). Here, actually doing something doesn't win you any respect. It's how well you act like you did something that gets you by. When I meet people from the East who have moved to California, I ask them how they like it. When they respond that they do like living here, I think to myself: Great! One less asshole to deal with when I move back. Where did this sense of privilege come from? Dear Californians: Fuck off.

On a positive note, check out Jim's awesome band Le Loup. They were just signed to a record label, Hardly Art, and are working out an East Coast tour. Congratulations Jim!