I’m glad Wallace is here because there is somebody to talk advanced subjects with who knows the material. You don’t realize how much you miss such conversations until you move out here where everybody’s personal philosophies were borrowed, usually from television. Wallace subscribes to the old British “social ladder” theory which says if you work hard, you will progress socially until you become a landed estate owner in your own lifetime. I say avoid hard work for it makes no difference, most people die in the same social class they were born into. This makes for hour-long lively discussions.Wallace has found the catch with his new cell phone, for there is always a catch. I’m not much help because I chose Metro PCS and stuck with it. I don’t know how the other plans and phone cards work. His current phone charges him for air minutes for both incoming and outgoing calls, and if he makes a long distance call he also pays for those minutes. He said it is working out to 70 cents per minute to talk to Canada. I wish I could help on this one but I’ve accepted a high monthly phone bill ($52) to avoid any worries with rates and minutes.
Another interesting discussion we have is the topic of getting ahead. Wallace equates it to money and jobs, where I see those two items as simply the ones the middle class has chosen to keep score of their own game. (Most jobs are middle class operations.) To Wallace, a person who finishes college and lands a good job with a big corporation is successful. To me, that route represents nothing more than the natural progression of events, so ordinary that an ordinary person could pull it off. Mind you, I’ve always had an aversion to working-class heroes so Wallace will never convince me I was wrong to quit working for a living. I work, but not for a living.
A television program last evening shows this treatment where you put your feet into a tank of callous-eating fish for twenty minutes. They eat away all and any dead flesh present on your feet. Imported from China, they look like sardines as opposed to the familiar remora fish that accompany sharks. Users report a tickling sensation. Only dead flesh, huh? If I ever meet Lionel Edwards again, I’ll stuff his head in the bucket. For $50 a half-hour, even he’ll agree it’s a bargain.
The shop was a marathon today, even if I ran short of spare parts and had to bring equipment home in the trunk of Wallace’s Malibu. We met up afterward for a brew at Jimbo’s and ran into California Johnny. I believe I told you to wait for the first-hand version. Here’s more info (and remember this coverage is often the most detailed records kept of such situations). The dude that comes in with the dog on occasion is the brother of Johnny’s current girlfriend. Walking out of Walsh’s, he gave Johnny a shove, observed by the police. The cops told Johnny to go back inside and took the matter up with his buddy, who is the one who got the disorderly citation, not Johnny.
We wound up talking music until Wallace kind of left on his own. What do you expect when musicians get together? It turns out Johnny is a vet who the army doctors fed a lot of morphine and the 90 days he recently disappeared for were in rehab. I have his permission to document all this just in case you actually thought Forrest Gump was original material. Johnny works in a hospital in Miami and makes good bucks.
Will was in to spread cheer and good words. He bought a bottle of expensive cologne downtown, and be damned, the women noticed! This is the type of tactic I never use myself but you should have seen him cuddled up with two blondes at the bar. I’ll see if I can get the brand name. If it works twice in a row, I’m investing in the stock. The cheer part is a joke, Will is one of the most cantankerous yahoos in town and he’ll tell you that himself.
