When Starbucks Is Not Only for Coffee

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As I have mentioned before, one advantage of my extreme poverty is that it allows me to see other parts of my community that I would not otherwise see.

So recently when I did my little 9 day experiment without electric power, and therefore without an internet connection except through my smartphone, I researched where it was I could charge my various batteries and get high speed internet. To my surprise the local library is really well set up to accomodate people who need to charge their devices and provides free WIFI, although admittedly its bandwidth seemed limited on occassion, that was probably because so many people were trying to use it at once. Very quickly you start to recognize the people who are in a similar situation to yourself, people who are so poor that they need to charge their electric appliances somewhere and maybe use the Internet.

But the library closes by 6 PM most evenings and is not open on Sunday, so that is when the famous Starbucks option comes into play. Starbucks is open from about 4 AM to 10 PM or later every day of the week.

I went there three times, bought about $5.00 worth of stuff (ice tea and a great cheesecake thing) and charged three devices and used their WIFI. It was a great experience each time.

There were two other groups that I noticed as well. First, at least in my community, Starbucks has become the go to place for High School students to go study with their friends. They buy coffee or tea and work on their homework together.

The other group was represented by two individuals, myself and a black man of roughly my age. He was also there to charge his smartphone and I noticed him on two different occasions. On one of those occasions he also fell asleep in his seat and one of the staff woke him up, explaining that he could not sleep there. Which seems reasonable to me.

If I end up going truly homeless but have enough money to buy some tea or coffee, then no doubt you will see me at Starbucks as well.

  

Working From My Smartphone Part 5

This is a continuation of a series of posts on the latest economic disaster. You can read part 4 of this series here.

The good news is that the power is on, the water stayed on, the Internet is on.

However, this situation is not sustainable. The problem is, this situation was never sustainable. In fact, the biggest mistake was, in hindsight, to believe that learning new skills, talking to people, doing little projects, and so forth would result in a solution. It hasnt, and it wont.

People's advice is interesting, although not very helpful. Their advice reveals that either they do not know much about my background or, even worse, that they hold me in contempt. I also find it fascinating that people must think that I am stupid, that somehow they can think about this situation for 5 minutes and recommend fabulous financial or career ideas that somehow I have not already thought of.  I have been in this hell for 10 years, friends, whether you noticed or not.

How you can help is not to advise me on things I already know, but on things you know better than anyone. People or startups you think I should work with (and who you introduce me to).  How to get into the right graduate program.  The best way, based on your own personal experience, to start a business in money laundering, international arms sales, or other criminal activity supported by our government policies.  Always based on your own experience, your knowledge, your wisdom, who you know.

I am cleaning the place up, and trying to find a way out. As part of that I am talking to more friends, even though it clearly just exposes me to more criticism, more contempt, and more derision. Probably a few people do actually care, but there is not much that they can do.  Trust me when I say that mere money is not what I am looking for (unless of course you want to give me a lot of money, that might be ok.)

Special thanks to a few friends for their generosity. Extra special thanks to one former employer, who will not be named here, who happens to have had some experience with the system of public assistance in California. He is a wealth of information, none of which you can learn from the Internet.

One advantage of not having power or the internet at home was that it got me out of the house and out into the city, such as it is. I can not tell you how much I hate being isolated here.

Implications of the 270 Riverside Drive Experience

As readers of this blog know well, no event is random, and no situation should be assumed to be without consequence but all of them should be analyzed and re-analyzed for their deeper meaning and for clues to our mysterious future and probable doom.

In this search for meaning in our pointless lives, sometimes the use of the Esoteric Knowledge is necessary but sometimes it is not. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is required to see our stark choices. The future is only too clear.

First review my little post about my former living conditions at 270 Riverside Drive to understand the situation. Now lets ask some questions about what living there might have meant.

At the time I was living there, I was vaguely aware of how lucky I was and that this was a situation that would be hard to recreate were it to ever go away, which inevitably it must. In part that was mixed in with my conclusion that living there also allowed me to live in Manhattan which was itself quite a blessing. But beyond that, what did it mean?

What was really going on, I conclude in retrospect, is that through an artifact of the ancient rent control laws of Manhattan, themselves left over from a more Socialist period when, briefly, the living conditions of the poor and disenfranchised were a concern, however modest, of our political elite. Through a series of lucky breaks, I had been permitted to live in a situation that I could otherwise never afford. But even more important, this was a living situation that I also did not deserve.

This is where the lower animals deserve to live

You see, in America, it is only the rich who are permitted to live in a way that their life is enhanced and ennobled. The rest of the population, by the very definition of being not-rich, are a lower animal form who are unworthy of any of this. They should live in dreary poverty, stupid stucco dingbats, or endlessly similar suburban housing, where they can pay inflated rents and mortgages, buy from chain supermarkets, and live out what is left of their so-called lives as servants of the rich.

The kind of lifestyle I had when at 270 RSD was thus completely anomalous and should not be allowed to occur and in general it does not. My choices now are to live in poverty and despair or in some way prove myself by making in excess of many tens of millions of dollars, no doubt through entrepreneurial activity or, to judge from the history of great fortunes in America, through various types of theft, crime or amoral and sociopathic behavior.

This does not seem like such a hard lesson to learn, but somehow it is.

Proof of An Unspeakable and Conscious Evil

I believe that there is an implacable evil in the universe, a conscious evil that exists between life and death and which constructs for each of us a personalized living hell with which it torments each and every one of us.

For some people, this living hell may be an eternity on Facebook. For others it may be an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or both who has reappeared and wants to renew the relationship. For some it will be that email out of the blue from an old colleague explaining how much he has always hated you and all the things that he or she has done behind your back to damage your career. Each one of us is different, each one of us will be made to suffer.  We will all have to face his or her own Room 101 and rot in our own individualized hell. ⁽¹⁾ 

This conscious evil will wait, it will bide its time, it will prepare, and then when you let your guard down it will strike. I know this because I have gone before, I have faced this evil. It happened like this.

Apparently, and without meaning to, by going into "computer animation" I had become a "starving artist" and so decided to see if I qualified for state assistance.  This was with great reluctance because I still had a residual self image of being self-supporting in spite of our modern globalized economy.  I have not been very good at bureaucracies in the past, nevertheless I persevered and became qualified for what we used to call “food stamps” but now goes by other names.

It is a good program, by the way, and we should support it. In fact, were I actually an artist who cared about the poor in our society, it would certainly be a good thing to discover just how these sorts of programs work and who is eligible. In this case it is only for those who are truly poor, without income and without savings. But if you are in that category, it will allow you to eat. It wont pay your rent, or keep the power on, but you will eat.

I had not been careful with my paperwork, and I had to go get my Social Security papers and return to the social welfare office and present it. It took a day to get the paperwork, and then I knew it would be most of the day to present the Social Security card and deal with that requirement.

And as I sat, alone, in that dreary office, and waited, penniless, for four hours, this pitiless evil of which I have spoken struck without warning. For there, on the LCD monitors was a “cartoon” to engage the children who waited with me, and there over and over again was a Pixar movie about some cars in the desert.

The Devil's tool ?

Oh cruel fate! Oh despicable evil. To wait until I was down and then force me to watch this movie over and over again while I, a pioneer of computer animation, had been unable to make a living at his craft. To gloat at my (economic) failure, to laugh at my defeat.

Recall that in America, success and failure is judged exclusively by the size of one's bank account.

See, it seemed to be saying, see how worthless you are.

Immediately after this incident, a project started and I no longer qualified for this program.  But even so, I know now that this evil is out there, waiting. I believe it waits for you as well. It waits for all of us. 

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Notes:

1. "Room 101" is a reference to George Orwell's 1984.