a day as any other day.

so i've been a bit lax in blogmatter these days but you know i was hoping for a less annoying event to blog about- i was just short of blogging about 3 of my cats and how they fight for the territorial rights of my room. but you were spared these sorts of musings for a lamer kind- we, all of us, at one time in our life are victims of an inane system and peoples stupidity, ill-judgement or some hapless fate of circumstance. i found myself in such a place today- already late on my trip to newport beach, an hour south of los angeles- the usual preparations: gas, clean windows, check air in tires, breakfast. go.go.go. and annoyed i had not a friend to bring with me. this all found me in the wastelands of the inland empire around 11:30. the environs are bleak and treeless, decked in a mishmash of sporadic buildings and run down brown things. the freeway to emphasize such gasping depletion narrows from 4/5 lanes to 3... there is always traffic in such harrowing spaces and while on the phone with my betterhalf penelope i saw a CHP officer pull into a median and knew i had to get over as the lane i was in was exiting right. the big white dashes soon to be solid white, i signaled and entered the stream of the freeway. the cop had enough time to exit his vehicle and flag me over, so slow moving was traffic. my first instinct was to pretend i didn't see him and even then i gave him a curious look and he motioned again a couple times more so i relented, curiousity unfortunately having gotten the better of me. i said something brilliant to the effect of, "what?" he said, "you failed to obey a sign". i parrotted, "what? what sign?" confused, and being martialed like an idiot to my fate, i gave him my id, proof of insurance, couldn't remember where the registration was and turned to my handsfree and began swearing in confusion to penelope at my idiotic trip off a very expensive cliff. he flagged someone else over in the meantime and then walked past my car where i had enough time to continue a play by play to pen and answer another call and swap back for the CHP to walk back to my car after what had to have been another 5 minutes. he had me sign the ticket and i again said, "are you really giving me a ticket for this? like, really?!" and he said, as if in some remote corner of the earth called la-la land where up was down and right was wrong, "yes. you failed to obey a sign. and be careful entering back into traffic." thefuckyousay! so i drove away possibly saying something to the effect of "for fucksake and god-damn-it , i can't motherfuckingbelievewhatthefuckwasthat, i got a god-damned ticket for what the fuck from that asshole?! LAME!!" so yes... it looked like 2 infractions- no proof of registration, and "right lane must exit." right. LAME. pen bore the brunt of all this bravely and like a true friend. it was good to have her there. i continued rather consternated the rest of my way, befuddled and mystified at my quota-ed ass but could still muster nothing more than a WTF just happened? which made me feel lamer even for all the ill preparedness of my wit. but sometimes being confused is all you have.

i made it to newport and after some mindless circling for parking and some more confused musings i spent 3 more hours still confused about where to go in the world via gap adventures, what was happening in the novel i was reading, why my phone kept dropping calls, why the world wants me to lose faith in god, why the boys playing cricket had to play cricket right in front of me, why the girl excluded the younger sister, why i didn't get my kite to fly it, why i felt slightly dizzy and all of this collapsing under the weight of clouds, sun, ocean and sand.

i trudged up and out and tried a restaurant i'd never been to and ordered something i'd never had before-a greencurry with coconutmilk and then i went and spent $254 (-$100 rebate) on a new phone... got an icecream and was deafened briefly by a mall in search of a bathroom and sadly to return the boots... all pondering the colors and noises and the cars and the road and my unquenchable thirst- i shuffled home.