Stray Mailer 5Nov04 part 3 of 3 - We're all going to die.

Let me preface this mailer by just saying aaaahhh christ.
Not that I wanted Kerry to win. Bush either, of
course. I somehow wanted everyone to lose.

I should’ve been more careful.
But I’ll repeat myself, I love George W Bush. The man
is the greatest catalyst for change since Hitler,
maybe greater. I was really worried that if Kerry won
(though he never had a chance) everyone would just
breath a sigh of relief and be like, o well, thank god
that bastard’s gone, now all’s well with the world and
everything in it.
Kerry is the same, just more subtle.

Anyway, it was rigged.
I was really looking forward to this election, though
I’m a little disappointed it’s only most of the way to
the fiasco I was expecting. I’m eager to see what
happens next.
Let’s riot.
Who’s with me?

Yesterday, the day after the election, me and three
flatmates jumped in an SUV and gunned it down to
Seattle to take part in what we hoped would be a whole
bunch of mischief.
According to indymedia.us there was a protest planned
at the federal building at 3pm, but when we trawled
past at 4.30 there didn’t seem to be anything going
on. I popped into a nearby Starbucks to ask if
anything had happened, dude said he’d heard it was
maybe moved a bit closer to downtown and starting at
5, so we headed off on foot.
Came upon maybe fifty people with the occasional
placard and a makeshift stage with an mc spitting
rhymes on the fall of Babylon, then no more than half
a dozen of us marched off, realised that with so few
and no signs no one could actually tell we were
marching, headed back and rounded up another dozen or
so troops, and took the streets.
It takes a bit of effort to face down traffic with
only a handful of bods to back you up, and I had some
difficulty making that mental step from sidewalk to
busy street, but then just thought fuck it. Fuck em if
they can’t take a joke. I don’t even live here.

I was in more an observer capacity. It was an
interesting thing to watch, people’s reactions were
strange.
Madrid, upwards of two million LOUD Spanish of every
kind. There wasn’t a face not screaming their head off
over the Iraqi invasion.
Edinburgh, usually between three hundred and eight
thousand on any given weekend. Scots looking on were
either shouting support or looking sceptical, but
seemed emotionally involved on some level.
America, its difficult to define the vibe I got. It
was exactly the same as when I hitched down there and
I can’t quite figure it out, but it was very
distinctive.
People just looked a little amused, or maybe bemused,
not really reacting. Like usually when I’m hitching I
either get ignored or waved at or occasionally glared
at, in the States they just watched me. Like they were
waiting to be entertained.
It was like that as we moved through the streets of
Seattle, little bemused smiles on their faces like we
were about to turn our signs over and reveal ads for
beer and cereal and highlights from next weeks exiting
political action, providing them a chance to slip off
to the toilet and make a cup of coffee.
Or maybe they were smiling because they thought it was
great, and come Saturday they’ll all be out
themselves, screaming their heads off that they just
got fucked bad.
What you gonna do America? Maybe it wasn’t rigged,
maybe the majority of you really do like things as
they are, because why shouldn’t you have all the oil,
and maybe George is the divine agent he believes
himself to be, and people shouldn’t marry unless one’s
a man and the other a woman. Maybe this, like in
Australia, is a government for the people and one that
represents their wishes.
God help you.

America cannot change. They can’t even move on from
the empirical system of weights and measures. America
cannot remain the same, it just isn’t sustainable and
she’s losing all her friends.
Unable to evolve from within there are two options;
armed revolution (which won’t happen) or complete
financial collapse. Its happening already.

We all had colds, and after an hour of slogging up
Seattle’s damn steep streets were pretty much
knackered. That means tired. We peeled off just as
more cop cars than there were marchers pulled up and
made their presence felt.

Ten people can completely shut down traffic. Ten
people can disappear. If only stopping traffic had
much of a positive effect. Let’s people know, I guess.

So we went to a restaurant, had a really good meal,
and drove home.

Back to where I left off.

I’m in the RV, coming up to the Oregon Washington
border, wanting to talk to this old couple about
current events but not wanting to bring it up myself.
So I just talk to the other hippy hitcher and let the
couple chime in when they have something to say.
Ma thought captured Muslim soldiers should be doused
in pig fat so they couldn’t go to Muslim heaven, but
she thought stripping them naked in front of each
other was going too far.
Pa got pissy at Ma when she mentioned the chemical
dump for which Pa now drives trucks is one of the most
polluted on earth. Don’t tell me that. Because you’d
be partly responsible? Yes.

When we pulled into the town where they were stopping,
just south of the border, it was pissing rain harder
than I’ve seen it piss rain for a long time.
Pa hands us each a ten dollar bill and drives us back
down the coast a bit to a hostel. Other hitcher
reckoned it’d cost five bucks. Woman behind the
counter informs us it’s $16.50 for a bunk, plus $3
membership, plus $1.50 for linens, plus tax.
We’re all like, oh, ok, sweet. Bye.
We’re making to leave and tent it when she caves. The
ten each plus a chore or two.
It was a nice little hostel too, warmth and books and
chess and people to chat to.

Next morning it’s no longer raining as we set off. We
hitched separately; I had to wait for a little while.
I don’t know what happened to the other guy.

Picked up by a roofer in a pickup truck, we chat about
how every roofer falls off roofs and the evils of
drywalling. He drops me at the near end of a very very
long bridge which I’m forced to walk across to the
little town at the start of another very very very
long bridge to Washington state which turns out to be
the worst hitching spot I’ve ever come across.
The way it’s set up, it’s actually physically
impossible to hitch on to (I tried every permutation)
so I had to walk half a kay back through the town,
make a sign with a big WA on it and hope for the best.
I’m kind of in a hurry, my flatmate Mara is leaving
for Hawaii the next day and I want to say see ya later
before she splits.
I think it was about two hours before a guy wandered
over and asked if I was going to Washington, said he’d
give me a lift over the bridge. He wasn’t even going
that way, just took pity on me.

Small town kid who wanted to maybe travel and I did my
best to talk into it, nother longish wait.

The next guy (pickup truck) was an interesting case.
Never been out of his home county. Most of his teeth
had fallen out from an extensive crack habit and his
face was half paralysed from a brain condition that
was getting better but made him very hard to
understand. He was off the crack, investing thirty of
his hundred thousand dollar inheritance in new false
teeth (he showed my the titanium studs they’d sunk
into his jaw) gave me a feather and let me read some
of his poetry. It was very humanistic.

He dropped me on a highway onramp, there was no
traffic at all. I figure I’m going to have to hitch
the highway itself, a very bad idea, and am halfway
along the onramp when I get picked up by a guy who did
so because he didn’t want me getting arrested
(hitchhiking in the state is completely illegal, I’d
thought it was just on highways) and because every
single mass murderer America has ever produced has
apparently come from Washington.
He then goes on to say how bad it is that native
Americans get all this preferential treatment (he was
of Hungarian decent, parents caught trying to flee the
communist regime) and if you’re Indian these days its
like being born a prince in a five star hotel.
Unquote.
I tried to tell him that though I’m not completely up
on things south of the border, from what I’ve seen in
Canada being Native aint something to be jealous of,
but he wasn’t really listening.
Other hitcher guy had told me that from the town of
Olympia you could get a bus ticket for six bucks that
would take you all the way to the Canadian border. The
guy tells me he’ll take me to the Greyhound bus
station first, just to check out busses all the way to
Vancouver. It turns out to be thirty dollars and I go
back to the car to tell him I’d rather take the
original cheaper option, but then he just suddenly
starts pushing fistfuls of bills at me, saying that he
really wants me to get home that night. I dutifully
make all the right noises about how, no, I couldn’t,
really, but I’m pretty happy with that.
Slip onto the bus just as its leaving, few hours to
Seattle and wait for the bus changeover, talk to a few
homeless guys and their plans to get out of there,
nother bus across the border and I again have no
problems but we get held up as they for some reason
give a Japanese girl on the bus a good talking to.

She’d been living in Ohio, of all places, for a year
learning English. She really didn’t speak English that
well. I help her fill out her forms.
When we pull into Vancouver (home at last!) I grab my
pack and make to leg it, say goodbye to her as she
stands with two bigarse trundler suitcases, sports bag
and bunch of shopping bags looking completely lost.
I’m thinking if she’s left to her own devices she’ll
be dead within the hour.
Well no, she’d ask someone at the bus station the way
to her hostel, they’d take one look at her and phone a
taxi.
But it was on my way anyway, sort of, and I’d just
been done a big favour, so I got her on a skytrain, up
stairs, through downtown and to her backpackers.

I arrive home to the steady decline into winter.
Garden dying back (we’ve taken zucchini the size of
watermelons out of that thing), grey skies,
hibernation. My first through third thanksgiving
dinners, the one at Nancy’s the best with turkey,
stuffing, pumpkin pie and bok choi (her family is
Chinese), video games and professional poker on the
telly.
But the potluck at our flat a week later is very good
as well.

We kept the Halloween party going for two days, I did
my usual costume thing and went through everyone’s
wardrobes until I had something to put together. Skirt
from Sarah, Derek’s toggled top, Vietnamese hat left
over from burnigman, half Pat’s false beard platted
and tied to the back of my head plus a curtain rod =
wandering shaolin monk.
The second night we ended up on a roof bouncing on a
trampoline three meters from a four storey drop,
holding fireworks shooting them at the street below.
It was possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever
seen.

I think that might actually be it. There’ve been a few
little missions here and there, but not really worth
mentioning. I’ve been dong a few days day-labouring
and thoroughly hate it, a few days fixing computers in
a little store two hours commute from here, that’s
pretty sweet except for the commute.
Did a day on the Fantastic Four feature film and can
safely not recommend you go see it when it comes out.
Did sort of meet that chick from Dark Angle tho, and
more importantly got paid. Hundred and sixty for a
fifteen hour day starting at four thirty am.

We’ve had two kiwi girls staying with us for a few
days. They’re part of a group travelling round the
world filming a documentary on all sorts of political
stuff

http://www.kotahiao.org/

and will be heading north tomorrow to film an
interview, looks like I’ll be going with them.
It should take about five days, after that I think I’ll
head out to the Queen Charlotte’s and Vancouver
Island, have a look around. I’d really wanted to get
up to the far north, but it’s just way too cold now.
It can wait.

December 20th I leave here, fly into London, head up
to Edinburgh for Christmas and New Years
-Who of you will be there?-
then back to Australia by mid January when my round
the world ticket expires.
Next year I think I’m going to try the film thing
again in Melbourne,
-or there?-
if that doesn’t work out or if I get too sick of
being sedentary I’m going to travel again.
The city is sucking my brain.

Daniel.