Why I Don't Like The U.S. Any More

Yeah, well, why would I?

Things are ugly there. People hate each other and themselves. You can't get anywhere without driving, even if you only want to cross the street.

I know. I was born there, grew up there, tried one thing and another, and finally left.

I didn't want to leave so much as to re-locate what I'd lost. Peace. Quiet. Safety. Community. Adventure. The ability to walk anywhere that I needed to go. Freedom from gunfire.

I saw the following today too: 15-minute cities are making a comeback Defined as "a 'complete neighborhood' that centers around the idea that residents can meet most of their daily needs by walking or bicycling a short distance — i.e., 15 to 20 minutes — from their homes."

This is a concept I've followed my whole life. Except for brief periods I was always able to walk to work. It saves a lot of time, and preserves sanity, besides giving your feet something to do twice a day.

And besides that, there is Steve Bannon was just charged with fraud and money laundering in a border wall scheme.

Right. Who needs that? Invent a pure movement, build it up, become righteous, then fuck your followers and suck them dry.

And that is only one item from one day of this week. Those items have been flying by in whole nasty flocks for close to four years now, with no inkling of an ending. And it was nearly as bad before that. It's only worse lately, not different.

Don't expect the next presidential election to put the flames out. Expect instead to see real flames, and rival gangs doing some shooting, along with state security police, even if they won't be called that, yet. I expect that the first crisis following the next presidential election to last at least two to three months. Then there will be severe turmoil for another year or two, assuming that there will be an end to all of it somewhere. But there may be no end, only an eventual tapering off as people and their systems gradually turn their attention to other things.

Things won't go back to normal soon. In fact, Things won't go back to normal ever. It will be one novel experience following the last, for time without end. What with current worldwide political and economic crises, global pollution and overheating, overpopulation, and the inevitable nuclear wars coming Real Soon Now, we will be living in Interesting Times™. Yep.

Good thing for me that I'm already old, so I won't have to see the worst of it, probably. I'm thinking now that the ideal time to have been born in the U.S. was between 1929 and 1939, assuming that one could have avoided the worst of the Great Depression. Assuming that, and a couple of other lucky breaks, I'd be dead by now, having benefited from the development of industrialism, a hydrocarbon economy, antibiotics, telephony, radio, television, and the beginnings of the computed society, but would definitely have avoided the current and soon-to-arrive global catastrophes.

If nothing else, the earth has too many humans. That alone would take us down. With a carrying capacity of about a billion humans at the best of times but an actual human population of 7.8 billion, we now have almost eight times as many humans in the neighborhood as it will support.

We're out on a limb, population-wise, and it's going to break off, no matter what. Boom.

The other stuff (global pollution, global heating, nuclear war, successive plagues and so on) are all gravy. Overpopulation will come charging at us first and is enough to do us in all by itself.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here 2.54° south of the equator, in a mostly peaceful country, where I can afford to live a decent life, and watching the U.S. hit the wall. It's way over-extended, especially with its philosophy of pedal-to-the-metal hyper-individuality, and get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way, mother-fucker, or I'll shoot you.

Go ahead, good old boys. Boys. Yep. Boys and girls. Up there. Not here.

People are grown up here. No one has crossed the street to tell me how to live, or threatened to kill me. Last time I was in the U.S., someone threatened to shoot me, twice, within a couple of minutes, because he thought his dogs had a right to attack me in a public place and because he thought I didn't have a right to take exception.

Which is why i don't like the U.S. any more. Nuff said.

 

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Me? Wondering why that monkey has been following me around all week.

Why Am I Here?

My problem is that I'm alive. Being dead is easy compared to this — you just lie there and rot. Anyone can do that. Even I, I think.

Probably. I may try it some day, but not quite yet.

Which leaves me wondering. Wondering "Why am I here?". Which is what I began thinking at the Cuenca, Ecuador airport (Mariscal Lamar), waiting for dark, and then waiting for my plane on Tuesday, October 1 of this year. Why. Why?

In other words, what am I doing, if anything? And why?

Still don't know, and now it's October 16 and I've been back in the U.S. for a whole two weeks. Two weeks and I still know not.

I have been busy though. That's a change. I might not know why I'm here or what I'm supposedly doing, I've been pretty busy doing it. Because doing it is better than doing nothing, which is not an option at this point. Not now, and definitely not here.

I spent the first few days fretting about missing my tidy and simple life in Ecuador, wherein I arose at about daylight and had coffee and read the news and sent a peevish reply to the local idiot gringa food blogger, a Mediterranean Diet™ proponent. (And also a low-process proponent, and a strident no-added-sugar campaigner. Who loved to sing the benefits of chocolate candy as a healthy food. And also wine, though it contains alcohol, a proven human carcinogen. And so on.)

Anyway, a quiet life, full of fine coffee (one cup a day), and going out for lunch, and walking five big ones a day, and not being responsible for anything else, all while saving up gobs of money because I didn't need to spend it on anything. Quiet, boring, safe, well-defined, predictable. Yeah.

Not much to do, and no schedule, and every day a day of fine weather.

Not the same weather every day, but fine. Agreeable. Mildly interesting, and then home by dark, because I had nothing to do after dark and a single (sane) person would not be found alone on the streets after dark. Or more likely would be found, but only by someone best never met. So I was always locked in by dark.

Well, that was my life and is not my life now, and I am still wondering "Why am I here?", but a little less than last week.

I've been busy.

First with buying a car, and then with buying lots of outdoor things that I need to re-buy because I dumped everything I had a year and a half back and have to replace all of it, and then with searching all the stores for things I need to customize and cozy-up the car, and things to wear and so on. Busy.

Been busy but not with importances. Busy with many little things requiring lots of thought and much careful shopping. They kill time.

What I'm really waiting for is my car's license, registration, and title. Should be here by November 18 at the latest, the last day I can legally operate with the temporary documents. Meanwhile the rain is closing in.

The last two weeks were good. Lots of sun after a little rain. Monday afternoon was even uncomfortably warm, given the layers of insulation I've been wearing. Rained last night. More this morning. Eighty percent chance for tomorrow, and so on for another week, after which it might let up for a day or two, but winter, you know. The Big Inevitable.

Lovely weather in its own way, this wet stuff, but I am living in a car. Living in a car means that your space is always over-populated. There are fights. Swearing. Spills. Lost goods. All kinds of things. And you are always in public. Always, even while parked out in the woods. Because you never know. Really. You never do. People come out of nowhere, at all hours, doing every variety of odd thing. Though usually, in the woods, it's quiet, if a long drive from town, and I don't have my car fixed up so I can sleep in it unobtrusively while in town. Not yet.

I am working on it. It's a thing. One of many things. One of the many things that are keeping be busy and not wondering "Why am I here?", which I still do anyway, in every odd moment.

Well, it will either get better or it will get worse, or it will stay the same. Pretty much like the price of real estate, so there's no real progress on that front, is there?

Maybe I'll know more later.

 

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Currently making the transition from old creepy guy to creepy old guy.
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Life On Wheels

I'm not sure yet, but it's got to have wheels, engine not optional. I need a vehicle because it's going to be my home.

I've been living somewhere nice, outside the U.S., but I'm close to the end of my life and I'm bored here. It would be a good place to die, but so far as I can tell, that won't be today, or tomorrow, or even next week, so I might as well get up on my hind legs and move around.

I have places to see, and I can walk. The other version of that is that I can walk and have places I sill want to see, and they aren't here, mostly.

At "home", in the U.S., I know where things are and how to get to them, which means having a vehicle. That's going to be it. I don't own a house and I guess though I could buy something going by that name, it would be pointless to have, because houses — normal houses — don't move. "Mobile homes" don't count. They aren't. Mobile. Or homes, mostly.

The same applies to apartments. They're even more expensive than houses in most ways, but still fixed, and then you always need to keep one eye open for the landlord, not that you're doing anything wrong, but you always have to be ready to present a presentable presence.

In other words, you need to constantly, in effect, wear your best clothes and be on your best behavior.

Screw that.

Anyway, I can't afford to rent anything. Going by the one-third of your income to rent rule, I can't afford anything I'd consider living in, unless it, like any house I'd hypothetically buy, was somewhere I would not want to live. Because that's where the cheap is.

So vehicles, but which?

Going by the Lust Rule, I need a Toyota Yaris iA, s rebadged Mazda 2, available with a manual transmission. Tight, crisp, tiny, responsive, cheap-ish, and frugal all around. But for living in? Eh. About two-thirds the floorspace size of my current bathroom, which is just barely large enough so I don't bump into myself every time I turn around quickly. Take that and figure in about six inches of headroom, and you have a decent coffin for two, but not a great space to call home during a rainy week.

Going by the Rule of Practicalities, I need a van, a cargo van, but they're screamingly expensive, large, skeletal, sloppy, loose, wide, wallowing, unresponsive, and profligate on fuel use. I don't want a 350 cubic inch (6 liter) V8 engine dragging around an empty steel box that retails for $35K at the bottom end. (Or used, 10-15 years old with 150K to 250K miles on it.)

Then there is everything in between.

Like the Kia Soul, a hatchback SUV-wannabe built on the Kia Rio chassis, which has little ground clearance, not much interior room, and lousy fuel economy for such a small vehicle.

Or a step up, a Kia Sportage, Hyundai Tucson, or Nissan Rogue: compact SUVs, which are really smallish to medium-sized family cars with an aggressive look and lots of cupholders. Cupholders are a big thing these days. They appear in car reviews and their numbers and placement affect the final score. And the "infotainment" systems. Fuck infotainment, you ask me. Of my first two cars, which I drove for a total of almost 30 years, neither even had a radio. A radio is enough for me, so fuck infotainment systems.

All of these look decent, and I'm focusing on them because they're readily available through Hertz Car Sales, which is where I'm focused for now. Want used? Check there. Good selection, good deals, but not for every vehicle made.

Other than that — not a bunch. Kia Forte looks great. I had a Hyundai Accent during the summer of 2016 and it was fine, aside from a suspension system consisting of several springs stolen from ballpoint pens and a few marshmallows for dampening. Even drive near a part of town where there's a bump or a dip and you bottom out, then top out, then bounce for half a mile until things settle down. Not much ground clearance either.

Kia Rio looks good, but small, as is the Accent.

Larger Kias and Hyundais are larger, but not much bigger inside, and still low-riding.

Toyota Yaris: no. Not with four-speed automatics. And very small. Toyota Corolla: OK, but a more-expensive version of various Kia, Hyundai, and Nissan models.

If I go cheap, I'll likely pick a Nissan Versa Note, a redesigned version of the Nissan Versa sedan,d and a hatchback with a relatively giant back end. Relatively. You can get one for under $10K, but they're still small inside, have little ground clearance, and relatively small wheels. You get what you pay for, which is, on the good side, high fuel economy and a pretty decent vehicle for the price. Backup: Kia Soul or Hyundai Accent Hatchback.

Most likely to succeed: a Nissan Rogue, a relatively fuel-efficient SUV-styled vehicle with better interior space and decent ground clearance in the 7-inch range. And 17-inch wheels. And the fuel economy is better than the competitors, the Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson, which would be the backups. All in the $15K to $17K range, depending on mileage.

So geez — no idea yet. Buy cheap and be cramped but OK or spend 50% more and still be cramped, not get the mileage, but have better wheels and ground clearance for those times when driving on sketchy unpaved roads is the only way to get places.

In a way, no bad choices here, but nothing really stand out, except that it's impossible to find any vehicle which meets all my needs: small on the outside, huge on the inside, cheap but well-built, powerful but economical to drive, built low and sleek for minimum wind drag, but still riding high to handle rough roads.

At least I have both some halfway-decent vehicles to choose from, and, practically speaking all the money I need to get it.

So I guess I'm just whining and ringing my hands again.