About half an hour later, the stove is hot, but the pot is still cold. I can't see what the fire is doing with the top of the stove being closed, but I imagine the fire is only smoldering, since the flame can't escape through the top. This is easily fixed. When the fire goes out, I'll cut the bottom of the can completely out and turn it upside down, with the top open and the bottom closed.
I made the necessary modifications, and Shane started another fire.
And wandered off.
The fire burned a lot better. Faster too. In fact, it burned up all the fuel and went out. When Shane returned, there was nothing but ash in the stove.
That Dinty Moore has been sitting in the pot in the midday sun for close to two hours now. I don't know if I want to eat it, should it ever finally be heated.
We kept the stove stuffed with fuel and finally got the stew hot enough to eat. The object of this exercise was to have a way to boil water, so heating stew was a pretty decent test run. Mastering hobo technology in a concrete parking lot. Lol
This morning, while I was walking down to pee between the storage containers a block from the day shelter, I came across a pallet in the median. I went back and got Shane, and we demolished the pallet and harvested chunks of the slats for firewood.
This wood burned cleanly with no smoke while the top of the stove was open, but dense clouds of noxious smoke were produced when the pot was placed on top of it.
While I was fucking around with this, a man told me the last person who started a fire there went straight to jail. They didn't just make him put the fire out, as I imagined they would.
Also at about the same time, a church group had set up a meal line, and they were serving coffee. I got a cup of coffee from them, put out the fire, and left in disgust.
The thing I'm most disgusted with right now, even more than having to depend on handouts rather than doing for myself, is this brand of "we" socialism that I first encountered among the Rainbow Family kids in Asheville years ago, and which I'm seeing now.
"We" socialists are those who talk about what "we" accomplished, or what "we" are gonna accomplish, but never contribute anything towards the cost and labor of getting it done. I'm talking about costs other than food, which I obviously don't need any help with.
Scott, the biggest critic of the "me" mentality among the homeless, is a "we" socialist. He wants to sit in the day shelter parking lot all day on Saturday when the day shelter is closed and wait for trucks to bring handouts. If we were at the night shelter, I could be selling pops to make money for charcoal so we can do this hobo stove thing right. We'd get there faster if he bought 50 cent pops from me instead of dollar pops from Jeff, but he's waiting for me to pull a miracle single-handedly from my ass.
I'd really love to be cooking hot meals instead of waiting around for someone to hand me yet another cold, flavorless hotdog or potato burrito. Alas, it's going to be awhile before I can pull it all together by myself. You can bet your ass there'll be a crowd of buzzards circling to reap the rewards when I do.
The other major recent development is this creepy stalker shit Mark has been doing. He seems convinced that I'm destined to be his next narcissistic supply.
In addition to constantly watching me, scoping out the contents of my vehicle, leaning on my vehicle, pushing in the body panels, and scraping his fake handicap cane against my car as if he owned it, there have been a couple of really creepy incidents in the past few days.
The other day, he stood there watching me to see what I was about to do, which is usually go take a piss at that time of day. As soon as I started towards the pissing gallery, he started out ahead of me and got there first, so that I'd have to wait to take a piss. Fortunately, I didn't have to pee that badly, so I went back to what I was doing until the pissing gallery became available. That was obviously some kind of control game.
This morning, I backed into the night shelter parking lot, leaving enough space behind my car for a little camp area. I started the fire in the stove and sat down in my car while I waited for it to get rolling. Meanwhile, Mark had picked up all his bags and carried them over and plopped his ass down on the curb behind my car where he could sit and watch me the livelong day.
Oh. Hell. No.
Not today.
I started the car and drove off.
Since I have celery and half an onion that will go to waste long before I ever get a chance to cook with them, I'm gonna make another bowl of salmon salad and eat it with the mixed salad greens and tortillas left from the other day.
Scott doesn't eat seafood, so I guess he'd better hope the handout trucks bring something good. Shane will eat the sandwiches I make, and I'll gladly feed him since he's put money and a lot of work into the hobo stove project.
A man named John who lives near the park gave me a bean bag sofa just now. It's like floating around in a rubber raft on dry land.
I'm avoiding other homeless people altogether today, and possibly into the foreseeable future. Everyone is pissy as hell these days. I took Chocolate out to Joe's this morning, and had planned to stay there awhile, but a busload of assholes arrived just before they opened and dispelled that notion. I went and got a couple of sushi rolls and came to the park.
I got ahold of an old friend of mine, Squeaky, yesterday. We'll probably be hanging out soon.
I don't know what the deal is with Squeaky. After a couple of no-call no-shows, I've concluded that he's not really interested in meeting up.
I spoke with another old friend on the phone yesterday. This is the woman in another state with whom I was roommates briefly a few years ago. It turns out that what she had been going through prior to her mother's death was narcissistic abuse. I recall that one of her sisters overstimulated her kids with incessant teasing and trolling. There was always this uneasy air of tension and distrust at family gatherings. In hindsight, her mother was the same old bored, impatient, dissatisfied Boomer as dear old Auntie.
That explains why my friend was wary of taking a roommate into her tiny home, besides the obvious fact that there simply wasn't enough room for two loners. She's been through hell and needs her space. She's made a remarkable recovery since I met her all those years ago.
A tiny home for more than one person should have partitions and pathways that grant access to common spaces without passing through private spaces. The space organization must be custom designed, something you're not likely to get in a pre-built structure.
Also, forget about shipping container homes. The structural integrity of the box is compromised as soon as you go cutting into it. Additional reinforcement will be needed to make it safe for human dwelling.
I would actually cut the shipping container into separate panels and weld them to square steel poles sunk into a concrete slab. You could use the panels from multiple containers to build a larger structure. Then put a tin roof over the whole shebang.
The legalization of medical marijuana has vastly improved the quality and price of weed available here.
Yesterday, Scott bragged about getting two ounces of Indica for $40. Naturally, he didn't ask anyone else if they wanted in on the deal while he was going to get some. Not only is he stingy, he doesn't want me to have my own weed. Flagged as a potential covert narcissist.
Also yesterday, I acquired 1/8 ounce of a hybrid called Fruity Peebles [sic] for $10. It's a hell of a lot better than straight Indica, and will easily last a few days with the pencil-sized blunts I roll. I don't try to roll fat ass blunts and joints. It's a waste of weed. You don't really need to draw more smoke in one hit than you'd draw from a tobacco cigarette. When sharing a blunt, it spends more time burning up in some Bogart's hand than it does being toked on.
Discarding the tobacco when stripping a cigar is a habit I need to break. This could be saved and rolled in cigarette paper when times are hard(er).
I totally forgot to tell you goys about the Vietnamese guy.
Last week, this fellow with a Vietnamese passport and US green card showed up at the night shelter. He spoke no English, but had an address in a neighboring county plastered all over himself and his luggage. I negotiated a fare with him and dropped him off there.
Fast forward several days, and the same guy is dropped off at the night shelter again. Shane, ever the theorist and experimentalist, devised a plan.
I again took the guy's money and drove to a Vietnamese restaurant on the south side so he could get help from someone who speaks Vietnamese. The chap at the restaurant talked to the lost man for a bit, then told me to take him to the Vietnamese Catholic church, also on the south side. I took him there and dropped him off.
(10-25-2022, 09:33 AM)user328 Wrote: [ -> ]Flagged as a potential covert narcissist.
Mmmm... yeah. A few minutes ago, he asked me where his milk was. I told him it was in the cooler. In a demanding and rather sarcastic voice, he said, "Well, can you go get it for me?" Sounded just like the way Auntie used to talk to me. Not to mention him being closer to the cooler than I am and expecting me to jump up and fetch shit for him.
As an aside, I could snap his scrawny old neck like a twig if he ever stepped to me. That's one thing all the Boomers keep forgetting. They're not bigger than me anymore.
Sunrise wake 'n' bake with a Monster coffee at the park. Overcast.
Crows are loitering nowadays. I thought I heard a grackle among the lot yesterday.
Sometimes a crow will light upon your windshield wiper and just sit there having a gander.
I shan't be too sorely vexed when the grackles set in.
A most shocking development arose yesterday. Scott and Mark were sequestered in Scott's truck with the windows rolled up for quite some time, as if making plans together.
Occasionally, I'd hear Mark loudly proclaim that his boat had come in and he's "out of here."
All of this makes me wonder if the two of them are about to throw in on an apartment or what have you.
By the way, I'm totally trolling a friend who's reading this and complimented me on my literary talent.
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