December 2014, The 3 Stiff-Necks of Christmas

     He seemed to be saying that he had to "make" himself believe that dire consequences would ensue if his team missed its deadline.  "It just gets so scary I can't even talk about it.  I may have to...work on that thing myself twelve hours a day.  ...purely me faces me.  I better be up here, just cracker jack, every morning...  Every morning I gotta wake up and think, 'Oh, Christ, can I do it?'"  Most engineers...consider...the...right environment...one, in which only right and wrong answers exist.  ...the computer might be its paradigm.  The prospect is alluring.  ...If you're ugly or even half crazy, if you produce the right results i this world, your colleagues must accept you.  It's an exciting environment to contemplate; you can change they way people think if you can provide the right reason, and you can predict the way in which others may change you.  - Kidder
     ...I try to get into the office as much as I can.  I love talking with the vendors, and...it is a continual perspective check.  We have another vendor who always brings food to some of the younger kids who congregate on the mall.  He knows that these kids are doing drugs and not eating much.  They are there to...just be a community for each other.
     The Northside became the Highlands...Five Points and Globeville became RiNo...  In recent years residents have started noticing their neighborhood being referred to...a labelling  coined by real estate agencies to try to drive up the neighborhood's value...  ...people...now find the streets full of luxury vehicles and pop up houses.   ..."a section of town that has denied revitalization for ages."  ...refugee populations...are the next big leaders in the community.  ...if we truly ant change, we have to create it within the communities that live here.  At almost the exact center of this neighborhood...sits what used to be...an all-nude strip club...  ...after the construction of I-70 the location eventually devolved...  "It has to be this building...if I can get this building, I am crazy I have so much passion.  I choose my future...  When I get this place - people will recycle their lives.  The recycling company for human life."  They do not want...Chipotle, or...T.G.I.Fridays.  "There are certain restaurants...that absolutely need to continue to be part of the fabric of our neighborhood."  ...changes that can benefit local residents, not real estate companies...  - Denver Voice, 12/2014
     What's happening throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is this. Old societies are changing their ways in order to create and maintain a national personality on the world scene...to...benefit...their people...  The process is truly revolutionary.  The introduction of modern technology brings about...a new style of family life...   The beginnings of national politics...  The power of the landlord is reduced...  Power moves toward those who command...modern weapons.  ...scavengers of the modernization process...believe that the techniques of political centralization under dictatorial control...will persuade...men...of surrendering human liberty.  - Raskin and Fall

     Wednesday.  I am working at a store in an office park.  I am here until further notice.  The company is under new ownership and my old job description is up in the air, along with everything else.  I notice that I did get my first raise in seven years.  This neighborhood is far from my own.  At 5:30 AM, the deathburger here has a small handful of quiet, middle-aged Caucasian men.  There are countless flat-screen TVs everywhere, but it is almost silent in here.  I order in Spanish, and then I observe that were are speaking Spanish here in this office park.  The lady behind the counter gives me a sonrisa.  Thursday.  At the bus stop across the street from where I live is a small woman in a red coat.  She is having a smoke.  When the bus comes, she gets on and puts her money in, telling the driver that she is "short fifteen cents."  This does not appear to cause any trouble.  Friday.  I'm on a train downtown to my bank.  A guy gets on, a little guy with grey in his hair.  He's having trouble keeping his balance on the moving train.  He announces out loud his query, "Does this train go to Federal (Boulevard)?"  That's where I am going.  I assume he does not mean Federal Center, which is at the end of one bus line.  On this train, three different buses from two different train stops, or at another stop a free shuttle to the train he wants will take him to Federal.  Yet I suspect that, in this guy's brain, the server is down.  A young woman stares at him.  He stumbles over to her and says, "Hey dude, does this train go to Federal?"  She gives him simple instructions' one particular stop, one particular bus, and he will be standing on the very boulevard itself.  His response is, "How do I get to Federal."  (Due to high call volume, please try again later.)  A tall young man, with his sunglasses on the back of his head, comes forward to show him a map above the exit of the train line and its stops.  Saturday.  5 AM.  Inside my old deathburger is a guy who I saw here once before.  Last month, he was using the wi-fi.  This morning, he has with him a fire engine red Fender Stratocaster, without any case.  He puts it against a table in the seat and goes to the counter.  When I get home from work, it's the early afternoon.  I head up to a bus stop at a busy intersection, to grab a bus to meet the mom and sister for dinner.  There is a drunk who appears to be friends with a burnout.  The burnout tells her about campaigning for legal marijuana.  The drunk is yelling at a family of kids playing on a bench, "DON'T JUMP OFF THERE YOU'LL BREAK your bones.  That's what happened to me; concussions!" I watch as a pickup drag races a new issue Mustang Mach 1, another couple of pickups drag race each other.
     Sunday.  Late afternoon.  I am waiting for a pizza in a place behind where I live.  The small place appears to have a crowded lobby with the smattering of customers.  In comes an odd-looking guy, in a stocking cap hiding his head and a loose-fitting jacket surrounding him.  When he sees me, he asks me about a particular Bible verse before asking me if I have a Bible.  He leans on the counter and calls back to the kitchen, "Hey O. G..  Hey Old School," before someone hands him a couple of pizzas.  He exits and disappears down the sidewalk, into the dark.  Glory be.  On Monday I'm at the train station at 5 AM.  A little guy with grey stubble exclaims in a weathered voice, "That fuckin' bitch..."  His voice sounds as if it's coming out of a bad speaker.  The next morning, here on the same platform, Mr. Tina Turner Hair has returned.  I watch as he approaches a waiting passenger.  He says the same thing he always does, "I'm a spiritual man..."  If he recognizes me, this may explain why he hasn't told me this since the first time I saw him.  His frightwig of black hair is concealed underneath his hoodie.

     ...he...seems to embody assertion...has the appearance of one to whom all things come easily.  ...he couldn't look messy if he tried.  You'd never see a vinyl penholder in his breast pocket, and you wouldn't find him hanging around the basement after work to play Adventure...  He doesn't spend any time thinking about what people do with computers.  - Kidder
     ...$300 to spend on food for the parish's 32 families in need.  She founded the food back three years ago and has operated it on a shoestring ever since.  To keep the project going, she has to find bargains - and the best are nearly five miles away.  When she shops for herself, she buys ingredients for boiled dinners...  The stacked cans and boxes soon tower over her head.  A cop once fined her $90 because she had a pine deodorizer hanging from her rearview mirror...  Father Felix never joins her on these drives.  "I wish he would," she says.  "That would give him a better idea of the needs of the food bank and how much we do for the church."  ...she wants more money for these trips.  The church does not reimburse her for gas...  She met a man from the Denver Department of Community Planning walking through...photographing properties block by block.  ...he said the city was planning to revitalize the neighborhood.  ...expanding the interstate...fifty homes...will have to come down to accommodate the plan; she doesn't believe the government will pay them enough for their losses and is skeptical that they will be relocated within the neighborhood...  The North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative, a project of the Denver Mayor's office, has dubbed her neighborhood part of the Corridor of Opportunity...  - Westword, 12/11-17/2014
     Why dollars and not cans of food in 2014?  Because each one dollar raised has a multiplicative effect that we cannot achieve through a food drive.  You will see our information in your building common areas...  - Denver News, 12/10/2014 - 1/10/2015
     If you understand...a narco state, then the fact that opium production production has...increased while counterterrorism efforts and troop numbers surged...  A completely failed state...really thrive in the drug trade.  Traffickers have no reason to pay off a toothless government or a nonexistent police force.  ...a libertarian paradise...  It's not...a...conspiracy at the center of government, but rather, in the absence of the rule of law, officials start to orient themselves around a...political economy.  Big drug barons...take over trade.  ...an empty stretch of desert...was developed into farmland...and drew support from  USAID, as a part of the Cold War...  ...its fields became fertile with...opium poppies. - Rolling Stone, 12/18/2014 - 1/1/2015
     I spent my adolescence rebelling against my state and dreaming of far off, "more interesting" places.  ...only recently...I began discovering all of the great things this state has to offer.  ...Denver has a really intricate system of neighborhoods...   ...Denver is in a constant state of transition...  ...as my city continues to figure itself out, I think 2015 is the year to celebrate what's great about it right now.  - Westword New Year's Eve Guide 2014
     "Priority number one is to win today's fight..."  ...space will no longer be an uncontested environment, but a place needing constant protection.  ...satellites we are operating today are threatened...  "...folks...don't think very much about these threats today..."  - Buckley Guardian, 12/18 - 12/24/2014

     I am working the first full week of twelve-hour shifts in my working life, and the first time I've taken a cab home five nights in a row.  On Wednesday, I am picked up by a Caucasian driver in his sixties.  He has a Bluetooth, and both a phone and a GPS mounted on his windshield.  Friday.  Train platform.  Mr. Tina Turner Hair is back.  He has a routine he sticks to; walk down the platform, cross the avenue, turnaround, come back.  He appears as if he is younger than I am, retracing his steps out here before the December dawn.  You can't keep a good man from his routine.  At work, a customer comes in and begins talking about the decision to move here.  She refers to the state's beauty, "God's country."  I have yet to hear this description from either the state's governor or the capitol's mayor.
     It's the week before Christmas.  I am working a couple more 12-hour days.  On Tuesday I am on an evening bus home.  There is a young woman sitting up front with snow boots which reach up to her knees.  She appears to be silently talking to herself.  At one point, she acts as if she is choking some imaginary foe, before wagging her finger.  From there, I take a train to another bus, on which a woman is talking non stop to a guy about the miracles resulting from the Bible verses which she has been reciting to individuals she meets.  She talks to a guy about his blood clots until his nephew gets on.  His nephew lives on the streets, he tells the lady.  She tells him that she had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia as well as bipolar condition.  "But I'm not," she proclaims.  "No one is."  The Lord showed her that she has been "stiff-necked, stubborn, self-reliant..."  Just your everyday mental competence versus dependence.  I'm reminded of something which Al Franken once said to Dr. James Dobson.  "You know, it must be nice to know the absolute truth."  The next morning at 4:30 AM, I am on a bus up the street with a shaggy, grey-haired guy.  He goes from sitting still to quickly extending his arms and fingers and throwing a left jab.  It's always the grey-haired guys.  I feel as though I have been visited by the three stiff-necks of Christmas.  I get to the train station where Mr. Tina Turner Hair, the spiritual man himself, is just back from his morning power-walk.
     Saturday, I'm on a train downtown after work.  A college-aged woman sits down with a guy who appears to have dentures.  They act like lovers.  He is wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses, and has a thin ponytail held together with elastic bands.  He smells like beer but does not appear intoxicated.  He has a water bottle with ice floating in a beverage.  It has "Denver Urban Debate League" printed on it.  The girl sounds as if she is immature for her years.  She has with her a plastic case, with a picture of Super Mario.  The next day, I am out to breakfast with my sister, who tells me that a couple of teenaged girls were involved in drag racing down my boulevard.  They both lost their lives in an accident, just about the time that I used to catch the bus.
     Monday morning.  It snowed overnight.  The mountains are getting blasted.  I catch a train downtown before work.  Where the train connects to the electrical wires, it's sparking green from excess moisture.  I grab breakfast at a bagel place.  Along with some folks who strike me as morning regulars, there is a homeless guy is sitting at a table.  A tall guy comes in.  He's grey-haired, balding, and has granny sunglasses on.  The homeless guy gets up and goes to the men's room.  The other guy mentions something about checking the men's room for used syringes.  On my way back to the train, I pass a couple of young guys, one of whom is making a confession that he has "never screwed my friends or family.  Well, okay, once I pawned my mom's fuckin' lawnmower..."  After work, I am on a train home.  It's around 8 or 8:30 PM.  In a seat are a middle-aged couple examining a pipe full of marijuana.  As they are excitedly fawning over this pipe, two transit security officers come down the train.  They stop and ask the guy what he's doing.  The guy responds with surprise.  When the officer mentions the transit systems no tolerance policy for alcohol or marijuana on its property,  the guy then responds with "Yes sir," and, "No, sir." When the officers go on their way, the pair begin what sounds like a scripted dialogue about how the transit system actually belongs to the people. 
     It's Christmas Eve, across the street from where I live.  It's 18 degrees F but feels much colder.  I'm still cold in some of my warmest gear.  At the payphone is a guy who puts a single coin in, before he begins banging on the side.  He's wearing an open leather jacket and a football jersey.  He takes the coin from the return slot and puts it in again, before he returns to banging on the side.  The pay phone takes at least two quarters.  When the bus shows up, he comes running from the gas station.  He gets on and asks the driver if he can give him "a ride up the street, bro?"  After work, it's much warmer.  Sitting on a dry patch of sidewalk at a bus stop, I watch as a pair of lazy hawks turning circles in a grey sky on a quiet Christmas Eve afternoon.  After a couple of closing shifts in a row, I am falling asleep on the train downtown to meet my sister for an early dinner.  I am goddamned tired.  We head over to a lounge.  At a table is a couple with their adult daughter.  The mom says, "She thinks ISIS is coming."  They all share a laugh.

     Denver Union Station...its first New Years Eve event since the...building's $54 million renovation.  The New Year's Eve Bootlegger Ball...   three floors of entertainment with two different access levels.  "We're going to change they way Denver does New Year's Eve."  Also, tucked away behind the red door on...Larimer Square, The Crimson Room is an elevated underground lounge serving Denver's elite.  Designer for discerning clientele seeking a lounge/nightclub experience amongst their peers...  Solving the dilemma of what to do after dining downtown...  ...the most sophisticated nightclub in Colorado...superior sound and visuals inspired by the unbridled lust we have for freedom.  - Denver News, 12/10/2014 - 1/10/2015
     ...plans for a..."Crisis Solutions Center" set to open July 2015 in...an older neighborhood in southwest Denver.  The center will provide short-term behavioral and mental health, chemical dependency, housing and other services...connect individuals to longer-term resources and treatment programs.  ...the city would find a local non-profit to facilitate and run the center under a three-year agreement.  - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 12/2014
     People who are unconventional in some way fit comfortably in a diverse urban area...  ...homeless people...are predominant in a public space that is mot used and therefore not meaningful to everyone else.  I believe that's typical of a..public place such as a government center...stimulated by the...banishing of those...people from many residential and commercial areas.  - Life on Capitol Hill, 12/2014
     ...without a temple, there is no community, and without a community, there is no future and no identity...  ..to narrate the past, beautify the present, and inspire the future.  - Asian Avenue, 12/2014

     'Tis the Saturday after Christmas.  'Tis 5 AM.  'Tis ten degrees F.  There is a little guy, bundled up, inside the gas station across the street from where I live.  He has a coffee in his right hand as he stares out at the cold and dark.  He appears to be inside to get warm, as if he has no other place to be.  His expression is one of complete disengagement from the closest surroundings.   From everything and anything.  It's as if he is watching the world turn without the slightest ability to understand even the smallest or the least significant part of it.  On Sunday, I return home to see a Vietnamese and her kids having made a small snowman, complete with twigs for arms.  When they are finished, the all destroy it before going inside.  There must be some Vietnamese tradition of which I am unaware, concerning the building of a snowman.  Monday.  Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.  I am on a bus to work a late shift.  Around 9:30 AM, we pull up to the last stop out of a train station.  It gets going after someone gets on.  Just as it does, a little guy comes shuffling up to the door.  All the way, he is holding his transfer above his head. 

OMNI, July 1980

painting by Ute Osterwald

toward the top: a profile of future independent spaceship designer Burt Rutan, and an excerpt of "new" Stephan King story Firestarter with art by Gottfried Helnwein

SCI ANXIETY  It's sweeping the country!  The more aware you are, the more severe the symptoms.  You sense it among your friends, your family, the people you work with.  Imagine...  One source you could depend on to make science and technology come alive for you.  That source would have to be intimately involved with science...  One That Dares to Do it All  ...SCIENCE 80.

Books/The Arts  by Robert Silverberg
One of the least likely success stories in science-fiction publishing is a small company that puts out its books in editions of a few hundred copies, doesn't bother distributing them to bookstores, and prefers to issue...novels long available in paperback.  As science fiction becomes more appealingly collectable...  Greg Press...belongs to...International Telegraph and Telephone Corporation...  "For an author to see his work transmuted  from temporary little paperback editions into...durable editions," says novelist Philip K. Dick, "is the dream of a lifetime.  ..gives me the impression that what I have done amounts to more than a temporary bubble that one day will pop into oblivion."  ...most books printed in the twentieth century are not going to survive very far into the twenty-first.  Gregg tickles authors, librarians, and book buyers with elegant buckram bindings of uniform design...

Film/The Arts  by Jonathon Rosenbaum
Speculating on what movies of the future will be like...some notion of the changing needs of audiences.  ...most of the films we'll see with be wither in homes or at shopping malls.  ...the movie houses that traditionally cropped up near the centers of towns...are quickly becoming nostalgic emblems of another era.  Shopping malls, meanwhile, are sprouting virtually everywhere - mainly, it seems...away from these old centers.  Their overall rate of failure over the past 25 years is said to be less than 1 percent.  Almost half of the retail business  in the United States currently takes place in them.  "By weather out and keeping itself always in the present - if not in the future - a mall aspires to create timeless space,"...mall expert, William Severini...Kowinski argues.  "Removed from everything else and existing in a world of its own, a mall is also a placeless place."  If we stay at home and tape ourselves instead, then play our images back on giant screens, the overall ambiance might not be that different.  Both movies and malls today are all-inclusive entities that tend to impose a certain uniformity everywhere.  Before we know it, Big Mac may turn out to be Big Brother...

Children of Poseidon, by Kenneth Jon Rose
...an even brighter future when sophisticated computer tracking and sampling systems will  transform the oceans into vast aquatic supermarkets, ready to be fished in the most efficient and environmentally sound way.

Interview/Arthur Kantrowitz
Omni:  Maybe...Marx was still able to see science as revolutionary, while many...associate it with governments, industry, and weapons.  Take the laser...  Most of the R and D on lasers now seems to have military overtones.

Medicaid Funhouse

     I had Friday off here in the middle of November.  I was under the impression, based on information which I had been given over the phone, that I could sign up with my state's health care website before the next open enrolment period.  Which began the following Monday.  This was the beginning of a three and a half telephone adventure.  Last March, as a result of applying to my state's health care website, I was instructed to apply for Medicaid to find out if i qualified for a tax credit toward the purchase of healthcare insurance.  The reply from Medicaid was to send me my very first Medicaid card.  So this meant that I was enrolled in Medicaid, right?  See, I don't know anything about Medicaid.  Some time during the summer, they sent me a letter which told me that my Medicaid may be discontinued after July 31st if I didn't supply them with some information missing from my application.  This was the last response I got from them for a few months.
     Armed with Medicaid, I went shopping for a doctor.  I signed up on one health care provider's website and scrolled their list of both Family Medicine and Internal Medicine doctors.  I picked one and called to see if she would accept me as a new patient.  I was told that she was on maternity leave.  I waited until October to check back with them, and was told that, out of this list of fifteen or twenty doctors, only four were accepting new patients, and she was not one of them.  And by the way, their information told them that I no longer had Medicaid.  I called Medicaid and they told me that it had been suspended until I checked a box on a letter they sent me and returned it to them with my own postage.  Doing so would have verified information reported to them by the state.  I needed to re apply, I was told.  I did.  I got a letter in the mail which informed me that I was not eligible for Medicaid.  I make too much money.
     However, being denied Medicaid does qualify me for a tax credit.  Looks like I jumped the gun on the doctor search.  So long Doctor Walcher.  We won't be meeting and discussing your work in a South American orphanage or your scrap booking.  So, like I said, I thought I could reapply for Medicaid and get signed up with my state's health care website, all before the start of the next open enrolment.  This is the story of how I eventually found this out.  I first called the state site's number, an employee of which told me that I needed an "authorization number" from Medicare.  Great.  I called Medicaid.  They told me that they did not have my authorization number, but that the state site should be able to access it.  I had crossed the event horizon and was headed toward the black hole.  Then Medicaid told me that my case number was my authorization number.  Then they gave me a different number.  I called the state site back.  Their system was not going to accept the case number as the authorization number.  I called Medicaid back.  I wanted to talk to a supervisor.  All supervisors were in a meeting.  I was transferred to a voice mail.  I called Medicaid back.  I wanted to speak to a supervisor.  'Why did I want to speak to a supervisor?'  I laid out what I had been told.  "I'm not responsible for what anyone else has told you," I was told.  "No," I explained, "that's what a supervisor is for, but you tell me that they are all in a meeting."  I was transferred to a message which incorrectly told me that I had been on hold for more than an hour and that I "should try to call back at a time which was more convenient.  Goodbye."
     My final call to Medicaid, my final execution of the process of keying in my zip code, and then my social security number, I was transferred out of the Medicaid "Customer Service" department.  I had come out the other side of the black hole into some other building.  I was now speaking to someone who told me everything which no one else had.  If I get denied Medicaid before open enrolment begins, the state won't recognize the denial for the new period, so I must wait until Monday to reapply for Medicaid.  I wouldn't have been issued an authorization number before this week, because the number is a part of a new system which Medicaid is switching over to.  Beginning this week.  Even her system didn't show that I had originally applied for Medicaid last March.  She didn't believe me until I told her that they sent me a card and gave her the number on the card.  She gave me the number for her office to call on Monday.
     The next day, I went to work as I do every Saturday.  I was told that the owner sold the company.  But that's a much longer story...
     Monday, it turned out, I had off.  I called the lady's direct office line which she gave me.  All I got was a message about prenatal Medicare.  No one picked up the phone.  Just before that, I called the regular Medicaid Customer Service number.   They told me that, according to rules which they were unable to explain (which includes anything), I could not reapply for Medicaid over the phone.  They told me that they would send me a written form to fill out.  By Friday, this form had not shown up in my mailbox.  As I did not have to be at work until 1 PM this day, I thought that I would drop by the Robert T. Castro Family Services Center, or the Robert C. Castro Family Emergency Center, or whatever it's called.  It's just up the street, and I thought that I would drop by in the morning to fill out what i was told over the phone was a required reapplication to Medicaid, to get denied, by which I would be given an authorization number, which is, I was told over the phone, absolutely necessary to get health care through the state website.  I went to a desk and was given an application (which I also noticed were available from boxes on the wall) and told to wait to be called to a window, which I was in jig time.  At the window, I was told to wait in a waiting area for an interview.  Someone came out in a few minutes to tell me that I was ready to meet with someone from the state health care website.  When I mentioned the words authorization number, she looked as if she hadn't heard those words before, and again that having been denied once already for Medicaid I was ready now, number or no number or anything else, to meet with someone from the state site to walk out of there today signed up for health care.  She did not appear to know anything at all about any Medicaid office anywhere else except for the place where we were standing.  As someone without an appointment, I would have to wait an unknown period of time to speak with someone from the state site, and she revealed that I was in fact able to make an appointment, and she told me that someone would call me with their phone number to call them back to set up an appointment to meet back here.  I did in fact have a message on my voice mail after I got home from work.  Rather than offering to set up an appointment, the message was from someone who was informed by "someone from our call center that you had questions about Medicaid."  She did leave a number.
     I had heard on the radio that the deadline for open enrolment was the 7th of this month.  Then I heard on the radio that it was the 15th of this month.  I went back to the Robert T. Castro Family Emergency Fun Center after work.  The guy at the desk directed me to the window, with someone who I told I am ready to speak with a representative from the state healthcare website.  This person insisted that I needed to apply for Medicaid once again, as I came in here to do before and was stopped and told that I was ready to speak with a representative from the state healthcare website.  On my own, I wandered over to a window, which I discovered had the same of the state healthcare website in its window.  A guy behind the window gave me a card for the person who left me the phone message.  The next day, my dishwasher overflowed.  The day after, when I got home from work, I went to the Medicaid website to reapply.  After attempting to login with a password and eventually being locked out of the system, I was able to complete an application by entering the site as a "guest" applicant.  Even though the online application gave me no option to put down that I live with someone receiving Social Security.  And the system wanted me to leave the online application process to go to my email, to get a verification code, with which to return to the application to verify my email address.  Which I did not figure out how to do.  The day before, while I was at work, I had called the person from the Robert T. Castration Dept. who had left me a message.  She told me that I did indeed need to reapply for Medicaid in order, once rejected, to get my authorization number with which I shall be ready to purchase health insurance through the state, but then armed with a discount.
     At the end of the week, I was downtown at my bank.  I stopped into a burger place, and when I came out, the storefront next door it turns out is a walk-in center for the state healthcare website.  I did indeed walk in, and was told that as long as I begin the Medicaid reapplication process before the deadline, which is in fact the 15th of this month, that I qualify for having applied before the deadline.  Whenever I do hear from Medicaid, they will be there until February, and they will be open Sunday through Saturday, all week.  I will not have to return to the Robert T. Castro Flagellant Family Center.
     So I get my notice from Medicaid in the mail.  Great!  I open the letter.  It's addressed to me.  There at the top is my authorization number.  Great!  The letter, addressed to me, informs me that...the person I live with is qualified for a tax credit to purchase health insurance.  WTF?  So...I have to wait until next Sunday, the day before the deadline to apply before the end of pen enrolment, to apply to Medicaid once again.  Remember the company I work for being sold to new owners?  Without going into that story, the week between the two Sundays is the first in my professional career in which I work 74 hours.  In a single week.  Sunday the 14th is the first day I have time to do something other than go to bed. I wake up Sunday, some time after 3 AM.  I put in a load of laundry, and I reapply online.  Shortly thereafter, I get a letter addressed with my last name as my last name, and my first name as my last name.  This one tells me that I am qualified for Medicaid.  The day after Christmas, I am once again on my way to the Robert T. Castro building to inquire about what to do next.
     ...and it is with this visit that I discover the machine behind the face.  'Twas Arthur who asked Zed what he discovered in the library.  "Twas a book titled the Wizard of Oz...Zardoz.  "It was a book about a man with a loud voice who told lies!"  I took a number, the lady at the window gave me another number, and some minutes later my number was called by another lady who took me past the door with the key card lock and through a big room full of mostly empty cubicles.   She sat me down and told me first that my application in March of this year had the wrong birth date.  That was the "case" for which Medicaid was approved, and then denied in October.  This explains why the lady...on the phone...in the secret Medicaid bunker, could not find "my" case in her computer.  When I reapplied at the end of this year, this generated an entirely new "case" for "me."  That is, the me which still had the wrong birth date, and now the wrong name.  When I re-reapplied on the day before the deadline for Medicaid applications, the Medicaid computer system gave we a different incorrect name.  This is what I was told by the lady back in the large room of mostly empty cubicles on the day after Christmas.  But the best was yet to come.  According to her, the Medicaid computer system has been granting Medicaid to applicants who make too much to qualify for it, and it has been denying Medicaid to applicants who do qualify for it.  ...and she says that this problem will not be fixed until the software engineers do their thing.  "Zardoz!"
     She did not know if the computer would allow her to put my correct information into the system, and thereby generate a denial which would allow me to purchase healthcare with a tax credit.  She tried, the computer flipped a coin, and I now have my denial letter with its no longer useless authorization number.  She offered to alert a representative from the state healthcare website that I was now ready to meet to purchase healthcare.  She told me that she was putting a "task" into the computer, thereby alerting said representative.
     This particular adventure came to an end during the second week of January, 2015.  I think that it was a Thursday.  I snuck out of another newly fashionable 12-hour week at work to make it to a downtown storefront which is between businesses for the moment.  I entered at last, not the Robert T. Castro Family Feud Center, but a location for the state healthcare website.  I told the young man in a suit and tie, with moussed hair, that I had my authorization number.  After a brief couple of forms to fill out, I was directed to a table which was eventually approached by a woman with a laptop.  A health insurance broker.  We spoke of kings and butterfly wings before she suggested a couple of plans and told me to think it over, before shooing me back out onto the street.  I called her a couple of days later, and with a swipe of my credit card number, I have my very first health insurance.  I have to call her back to find out where I send my premium payment by mail.

November 2014: sensual small male pockets and sweatshirts on loan from Augie...

     Saturday.  Halloween ended just a short few hours ago.  I am across the street from where I live, at the bus stop at a quarter to five AM.  On the bench are a couple of guys who I've never seen before.  One of them has one ear bud in.  He asks me in a voice too loud when does the bus come.  I hear a voice from the opposite side of the boulevard.  It's a local drunk.  I recognize him by the way he hobbles.  He comes from around a popular corner of a building, across its parking lot, and through the middle of the street and over its yellow lines.  He tells us that he has mistaken us for his "partners."  I have seen those of whom he speaks, sitting here on many an afternoon, never intending to get on a single one of a parade of buses which come rolling to a stop in front of them.  They look and remain motionless.  He offers us some of whatever is at the bottom of his lidless plastic cup before hobbling off to the gas station next door.
     When the bus does come, I get on and sit down across from a middle-aged guy sitting on a walker.  He's wearing a black knit jacket with "Harley Davidson" on the breast.  Up the street, I step off and head over to my old deathburger.  In one booth is a guy asleep.  At another is a guy wearing sunglasses at 5 AM.  On the way back to my old bus stop, I hear voices across the street and see an SUV pulling to a stop in a parking lot.  Three figures, each wearing a blanket, come out from behind a building and get in the back of the SUV before it disappears.  At my old stop, a guy in the shelter wants to know what time the bus comes.  When it does show up, he grabs his cloth bag and walks away.  Almost twelve hours after I caught the bus this morning, from the stop across the street from where I live, I step off the bus at the same stop.  There is the same drunk.
     Monday.  Across the street from where I live are a couple of guys walking their big dog to the gas station, shortly after 4 AM.  It has begun to rain.   I hop on the bus, and we are almost to the train station where three passengers come up to the front.  They tell the driver that they want to catch a crosstown bus parked at the next stop ahead.  One of the three sits down.  From the voice, I can't tell if either he or she is speaking.  His or her head, in his or her hands, is concealed in a hoodie.  He or she is wearing dress pants and Crocs.  He or she tells the driver, "Look, it's there waiting for us (the other bus).  You're late every day.  It's there waiting..."   Well, we don't make that one.  The next one comes in no time.  At this hour, the bus on this particular crosstown route comes three times right on top of each other.  When the next one comes, the driver pulls up and stops.  He gets out for a thirty-second smoke before getting back on.  We head out and I get off at the deathburger.  At five AM, the doors remain locked.  Inside is a skinny employee running back and forth.  Outside, the rain is getting worse.  A collection of derelict patrons have amassed at the door, along with another employee waiting to get inside and go to work.  The guy who, upon a previous occasion before 5 AM, called the assistant manager a "fuckin' ass bitch" has returned.  He is hurrying back and forth between both entrances to find one which will let him inside, before he gives up again and goes over to the gas station next door.  Outside the other door is an angry middle-aged guy with a sock on his hand, talking to himself.  At last, the doors are unlocked.  A line forms at the counter.  It includes the sock man at the front, followed by a guy combing his long white beard, the guy who's face is usually hidden, and a woman who appears as if she could be a teacher or a grandmother or may have no life at all.  Wandering the lobby is a young guy who is pretending to be a street person.  He has the cigarette behind the ear, the sideways cap, and a small tattoo on his neck.  But he just doesn't look bewildered or disheveled whatsoever.  And he is keeping his distance from everyone else.
     At the drive through window is a driver arguing with the assistant manager.  She tells the manager that she did not get what she asked for, that she should have written it down, and that this establishment needs a new manager.  The skinny guy in now relaying communication from the assistant manager, who is in the kitchen making what the drive through customer wants, to said customer.  The customer asks the skinny guy how fast it will be ready.  "How fast?" he confirms.  "How fast?" he asks his boss.  "Like, now," he tells the customer.  The customer honks at the skinny guy.  I have never seen anyone at a drive through window honk at anyone until this rainy predawn morning.
     Ten hours later, I am out of work early and at a bus stop down the street from where I live.  Among the crowd waiting for the bus is a woman in a surgical mask.  In a car in the parking lot are her daughter, son-in-law, and her granddaughter.  She yells at one of them, presumably the granddaughter, "Get your ass back in the car!"  The daughter, who has long bright pink hair, comes over to her mom.  The son-in-law, who only speaks Spanish, is changing the granddaughter's shoes as she sits on the ground crying.  Her shoes are on the wrong feet.  The masked woman gets on the bus when it comes and sits next to a guy in what appear to be new jeans cut off at the knees.  He has a fleece camouflaged scarf and a veteran's cap.  He is telling the masked woman that his "oldest boy hanged himself.  I cut the rope."  A woman in another seat pats his leg reassuringly.

     Instill the notion that helping others is important to your family.  Let kids pick the causes and events...  Start talking to kids about being part of a community when they are young.  Make sure kids get the opportunity to see the gratitude of those they are helping...
     How do you select the right family photos to include with holiday cards.  "Show people your true personality, any trips you may have taken, activities or hobbies that you joined, etc."  ...a...holiday letter...that makes readers roll their eyes?  "...tell a funny or memorable moment to bring the story to life."  - Colorado Parent, 11/2014
     ...steep increase in homelessness from 1990 to 2003 - an increase of...nearly 500 percent...  The '90s were not a good time for the homeless...  No one cared, and that kept people on the street.  ...Denver's Road Home was...designed to...focus specifically on ending chronic homelessness - a condition that accounts for just part of the overall homeless population, but the most challenging part.  ...someone living in an emergency shelter or on the street who has a disabling condition: who has been homeless for a year or more...  According to HUD, the key to ending chronic homelessness is...housing that doesn't require them to be sober or have an income...  ...the Denver Street Outreach Collaboration..."was momentous, because for the first time, we knew who was out on the streets - who they were and what their issues were."  "The things I had forgotten...taking a bath every day, wearing clean clothes...  You loose all that in your homeless plight.  ...this homeless stigma...it kind of dresses you..."  Denver, like most cities, uses what's know as  a Point-in Time survey to quantify its homeless population.  The numbers...reaching a high of 12,605 in 2012...  "...as a service provider, you know people by face and by name and by story who are on the streets tonight.  And it's really hard to say, 'Let's do permanent housing and not do shelter' when you're watching people go out on the streets at night."  In 2010...The Homeless Commission was meeting less and less...frustrated about changes in funding priorities.  "...the initial Homeless Commission...brought the weight of the mayor's office to focus on the issue of homelessness in a way that had never been done before.  One thing Hickenlooper did was...  Instead of 'This is people out trying to do harm or crime,' he showed that they were lost, without the means of taking care of themselves."  - Westword, 11/6-12/2014
     When I started working in labor pools I found myself coming up.  God was on my side and sent me away before the Devil could do his deed.  I was so green about being homeless that I didn't know I could have gotten a room and had time to myself to heal the heartache of being on the streets.  I didn't even know that I could've gotten food stamps.  There are laws in place that stop people from having their own place or getting jobs.  Some people have problems like a bad record, getting convicted, or having bad credit.  I have a friend...who goes to the labor pool every morning and has his own bank account...  It is very expensive being homeless and I am talking about...getting kicked out of shelters, and going to motels.  ...the people who run this country put up laws against people who pay their debts to society.  - Denver Voice, 11/2014

     Wednesday.  The day after Election Day.  I'm in the gas station across the street.  On a chilly morning, there is a guy inside in his thirties in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and flip flops.  Hr has a ponytail and one of those goatees several inches in length.  He put something in the microwave which both store employees told him not to put into the microwave.  He replies that he believes that it is in fact microwavable.  "If it makes a mess, I'm not going to give it to you," one clerk says.  This patron is like some kind of Buddhist-wannabe.  It's twenty after 4 AM.  What is he doing, and why is he doing it here?  He shuffles over to the cold case with a slight stoop.  He is, I believe, looking for 7-Up in one of the recently reissued glass bottles from the 1970s.  Only he is calling it "topical."  "You don't have any of the topical 7-Up?  They're awesome," he waxes.  I leave this sitcom and catch my bus.  The driver is asking me something, but he speaks so softly that I can't hear him.  I think he wants to know if I "slept well."  His accent sounds European.  I wonder how long he has been in the United States.
     Thursday.  I am on the bus heading up the street at 4:30 AM.  I am sitting across from a woman in a wheelchair.  She is berating who I believe is one of her two young adult children.  Something about a blouse.  "Yes I did, " she tells one of them.  "I told you several times."  Friday.  4:30 AM.  I am on the bus up the street with a couple of construction workers.  I listen as one tells the other, "On my fuckin' birthday.  On fuckin' Lafayete Street.  Was fuckin' me up."  He hands his phone to the other.  "This guy works with convicts.  This is a good guy," he says.  He has a backpack with a book in a pocket.  The title begins "7 Steps..."  I can't see the rest of the title.  On his head is an orange knit cap with the embroidered name of a local TV station.  I get off across from the train station, where a train takes me down the line.  At another station, I open an elevator door to find a balding guy standing inside.  He's reading a hardcover book in a train station elevator at 5 AM.  When I exit, he remains inside.
     Saturday.  I'm out at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  5 AM.  I'm working a 10-hour day today.  Pacing back and forth between the bus shelter and the liquor store next door is a guy with dreadlocks, what appears to be a motorcycle jacket, and cowboy boots with a missing heel on the left foot.  Whatever kind of jacket it is, it's torn open in the back.  When the bus shows up, he paces on up the street.  On Saturdays mornings at 5 AM, I visit my old deathburger.  This morning, Mr. Footlong Goatee is there.  He has many coins organized on a table.  I get a look at his face.  He acts just fine, same old folksy energy.  But his face doesn't look good.  It appears worn out, and his skin hangs from his head.  His expression tells me that he isn't sure why I am looking at him.  It's as if his jaw has come unhinged as his mouth hangs open.  Am I friend or foe?  Does he not remember speaking to me at the soda fountain?  Laying over his coat on a seat his a sport coat with leather patches.
     Monday.  4:30 AM.  I'm on a crosstown bus for the short ride to the train station.  I get on with a couple of guys who appear to know each other.  One has salt and pepper hair.  He's animated, gesturing with his hands, and his eyes and face are expressive.  The other is wearing a bandana under his cap.  They are discussing which bus to catch, being from the east side.  One tells the other that he is going to see his family.  The other asks him, "So (when you go to see them,) you don't smoke then probably?"  He answers, "Ohhh, yeahhh, I smoke...well, not like they do."  The bus takes me to the deathburger.  Outside the entrance, next to a parked SAAB with a driver there to use the wi-fi, is a girl in a Steelers jersey on this chilly morning.  She approaches me to ask if I have any change. Instead of calling me "bro," she calls me "sir."  I want to help her, but I have no change.  She disappears into the cold and dark.  From around the corner of the deathburger comes someone who looks like a greying Jeff Goldblum.  He is wearing sunglasses a full two hours before the sun will show up.  He is pulling a small luggage dolly, with a Bed, Bath, and Beyond bag on top of something else.  He quietly tries the front door, which is locked for a few more seconds.  He slowly walks back around the other side of the deathburger.  He doesn't notice the employee come and unlock the door.  He slowly comes back around and stands at the window, where he was before, waiting for the now open door to be unlocked before he tries it again.  Inside, he picks a seat and lays out some reading material on a table.  It looks like a section of the city paper, a film magazine, and a novel.

     "Being in a neighborhood...I feel you should look beyond just where your little life is and make sure you understand what is going on around you.  ...people who move here do need to be aware that this is a high-density, urban environment.  I think most neighborhoods like the diversity...people living in apartments, larger, more affluent places, and a lot of new, first-time home buyers and young families."  - Washington Park Profile, 11/2014
     It is the history of a group...including a Cardinal, an ex-Austrian Socialist leader and a C.I.A. agent - who maneuvered the Eisenhower Administration and the American press...  ...its thesis came to be accepted by a broad consensus of liberals and intellectuals in America...  The thesis is based on an overriding belief in the beauty of the American way of life - and in the nefarious nature of communism.  To the school...where anti-communism is the "sine qua non," the idea of a "Democratic One Man Rule" is not an anomaly.  ...willing to believe the best about anything or anyone anti-communist.  - Raskin & Fall
     ...the usual posturing of so-called...religious leaders, rewarded with recognition in exchange for their quieting of the dissatisfied masses...  ...through the context of an increasingly globalized market economy...obsolete ideas and faint-hearted agendas advocated by another generation of timid...leaders and organizations compromised by grants and philanthropic contributions.  Ironically having hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal, but failing to apply the unity necessary to exploit these dollars, go-along-to-get-along leaders, particularly of the religious ilk...  ...it should also be obvious...any moral appeal for...economic empowerment...will fall upon deaf ears.  With no incentive for the White elite to countenance a...strong...community, buying off weak and malleable...leadership, and discouraging the concept of collective wealth and infrastructure creation, appears to serve a policy and agenda of White supremacy on a global level.  - The Final Call, 11/18/2014

     Wednesday.  4:15 AM.  At the gas station across the street from where I live.  It's 1 degree F.  A little guy with his coat unzipped comes inside to ask the clerk if he can  and snowing.  I'm here to grab a sandwich in case the deathburger up the boulevard doesn't open due to weather.   A little guy with his coat unzipped comes in.  He asks the clerk if he can "warm up brother?"  From these cozy confines, I head out into this Jack London story, and arrive at the train station.  On the platform is a girl in...a shawl.  Are you kidding me?  I smell marijuana but I see her smoking nothing.  The next morning, I am headed toward the other side of the street yet again.  I see crossing the street a trio of drunks who I recognize by the way they walk.  I am glad to see all have winter coats, yet one of them has his coat unzipped and open.  This morning, it's minus 8 degrees F.  Overnight was a new low record of minus 14.  A guy at the bus stop is only wearing a hoodie.  A woman has the hood of her coat off.  The bus takes us up the street to a stop where a gaggle of riders wait for the crosstown bus.  One of them turns on The Beatles' Revolution, with someone else's voice dubbed over what sounds like the original track.  The singer mispronounces "constitution."  Another guy is talking to himself there in the cold and dark.  "This guy's playing his music.  Why not just call the bus company (to find out what is taking our blessed bus so long to get here)?"  "All I can tell you is brother you have to wait..  'Cause you know it's gonna be...allright..."  The bus arrives just minutes later, which whisks me off th the deathburger.  It does open.  For a third morning, Greying Goldblum is there with his luggage dolly.  Yesterday, he was here with what appeared to be wool socks pulled over his pant cuffs.

     A sort of Catholic mandarin, he was by family background, personal inclination and training, a member of his nation's feudal aristocracy.  ...was a firm believer in the ways of God dictating the acts of men.  He would wait for some Hegelian force to sweep him back onto the center-stage of his country's history.  On the Michigan State campus...a team of some twenty professors did everything from draft his budgets to training his secret police.  - Raskin & Fall
     ...had worked for other companies, where defacto dress codes were in force.   He liked the "casual" look...  "The jeans and so on."  Several talked about their "flexible hours."  ...had come from Missouri.  He wore a small red beard.  He was perhaps the most easygoing...  He had a wider experience of the world than most, having taken a year off from school to play in a travelling rock band.  - Kidder

     I had Monday off.  I heard on the local news that a woman parked in her car some sixty blocks north up my street was killed.  A drag racing kid hit her head on.  She was a physical therapy student.  Up near where I catch a crosstown bus most mornings, a driver hit someone and then robbed him.  Tuesday.  I'm working a late shift today.  This morning I an at my old deathburger around 8:30 AM.  One of the regulars here is a grey-haired guy who speaks with a loud voice.  He speaks slowly, as if he has had a stroke.  His face is looks like that of the late Fred Gwinn.  He sits a at a table while a younger guy is in front of me at the counter.  The younger guy is speaking Spanish to the woman behind the counter, when he turns around and motions to the loud guy.  He tells him, "Come here."  When he gets to the counter, the younger guy puts his arm around his shoulder and speaks directly into his right ear.  "You need to be nice to her.  (The lady behind the counter.)  "If you don't have enough money for something, you can't get it."  I see and hear the loud guy here on a regular basis, but this is the first time I've seen him with any kind of life coach.  I've never seen anyone put their arm around somebody and speak into their ear like this.  But 'it's all good' in this place.  While this is going on, in comes a local drunk who introduced himself to me some time ago as Richard Spotted Bird.  Introduced himself as he came down the sidewalk in the dark, up to the bus stop one morning at 5 AM.  I hadn't seen him for a long time.  I used to see him, usually smelling like beer.  He does not appear drunk at all today.  He has a brass keychain on his belt with a slogan from an old cigarette ad aimed at women.  It reads, "You've come a long way baby."  The vernacular of the 1970s haunt these streets.  Mr. Bird orders and sits down.
     Next, I see a third regular, Mr. Footlong Goatee.  I watch as he approaches the deathburger entrance with a couple of other guys in big winter coats.  The other two guys vanish as Footlong comes inside.  He takes off a winter coat, a sport coat, and a U. S. Army camouflaged fatigue coat, just like the kind we clean at work.  He heads toward the Men's room, leaving his coats over a chair.  Meanwhile, the loud guy is back at the counter.  His friend is watching him.  He orders but doesn't have enough money.  His friend tells him.  "You don't have enough money.  What do you do?"  His friend calls him Tom.  Tom asks the woman behind the counter, "You want it back?"  As the two sit down together, Footlong comes out of the Men's room.  He takes forever putting his three jackets back on.  I hear Tom's friend tell him, "We have to go to the doctor."  I decide to go back to the counter.  When I am on the other side of Footlong, he suddenly smells like urine.  It must be the airflow.  There is another guy who comes in.  He is carrying himself as if he doesn't want to be seen.  His long hair is dried in a kind of wave around his thin face, and he is wearing some kind of all-weather pants.  He plugs a laptop into a ceiling outlet and sits down at a table in the corner.  Mr. Bird, having vanished after getting coffee, is back for a refill.  He has a hat on with an American flag on the front, and underneath it "2012."  He is by the trash can putting sugar and cream into his coffee, before running out the door with it.
     The next morning, I'm back on a bus headed up the street at 4:30 AM.  We pull up to the last stop before the one where it's a toss up whether we do or don't make the crosstown bus in time.  A woman gets on and tells the driver, "All I got is this transfer from last night..."  I get it, the short version is that you don't have $2.25.  And your transfer is several hours old.  For some twenty blocks, it has been a quiet ride.  Now, as this woman petitions the driver with her deceased transfer, shouts appear from the back:  "We're gonna miss our bus!"  "There it goes."  "Fuck!"  The connecting bus waits for no man.  After I disembark, a beeping crosswalk alarm accents the dark line a cuckoo clock.  At the deathburger, someone by the entrance approaches me as I am walking away.  He says, "Hey boss, hey bro."  He wears a knit hat with the state flag on it.  He has a friend who behaves oddly; appearing to be taking off his belt, walking over to a car as if he will get inside and then walking away as if it isn't his.  He looks like Billy Idol from thirty years ago, and has mannerisms which remind me of Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys.  At the train station across the street, Mr. Tina Turner hair drops by.  Gone are his falling apart sweat pants.  He's in clean jeans and a winter coat.  His mountain of hair is hidden beneath a hood.  I watch as he pulls his "I'm a spiritual man" routine on someone sitting on the bench.
     The morning after, I am back at the deathburger.  Waiting at the entrance for the place to open is yet another pair.  One is younger and stylish.  The other has grey in his stubble and wearing loosely fitting clothes.  He walks with a stooped shuffle.  He asks me for a light.  He get one from a guy in a minivan.  When we get inside, it's the shuffling guy who buys breakfast for both of them, digging change out of multiple pants pockets.  The following morning is Saturday, the day I go to my old deathburger.  I am headed there when, at my old bus stop, a middle-aged guy with sunglasses on at 5 AM wants to know if I have a cigarette.  His weekend can't be off to a good start.  In the afternoon, I am out of work and on my way home.  "If you're ever in this area, there's a church down here.  They'll give you clothes, shoes, bus tokens."  So that's were the tokens come from, which I have been offered for sale.  "They'll feed ya'.  It's not easy out there.  Especially when you're 58."  I'm on a bus with a guy who is talking to someone next to him.  The guy is in a black coat, black scarf and black knit cap.  He looks like a character from a 1970s TV police drama.  At the train station I step off.  A white-haired woman on her phone approaches a bench.  "And Tony's bein' an asshole.  He's in jail...he's in jail.  Tony's with him..."  I catch a bus to a stop back in my own neighborhood.  I'm at the end of one bench.  At the other end is a kid with a skateboard.  In the middle is a girl with an iPad.  The skateboard guy answers his phone.  "I don't have your knife!  No I don't nigga no I don't nigga!  I don't know.  It wasn't in my pocket when I woke up."  The girl is opening and closing apps on her pad; her Facebook page, with the post "Shout out to everyone who believes in me," a photo of someone in their underwear who appears to just woken up, her face as a cover photo of her pad.
     Monday.  4:30 AM.  A guy with blond hair which appears white under the lights is walking quickly around the outside of the deathburger.  I am there to see him make one circumference before he heads straight for the gas station next door.  He is walking quickly non-stop.  He goes inside the gas station, heads straight to a case of bottled beverages, and comes right back outside with it immediately and without paying for it.  I hear him yell "Oh!"  Several minutes later, he yells, "Oh!  Open!"  He disappears before reappearing toward the back of the deathburger.  He picks something up off the ground before making a third of forth trip around the building.  When I get inside, I can see him out in the dark through the windows.  On his forth or fifth pass, he stops and turns around to retrace his steps.  He has a distressed look on his face.  As I leave, I hear outside behind me a scratchy voice ask, "Hey have you got a cigarette I can buy?  Excuse me?  Sir?"  After work, I'm on a bus home.  For the first time that I can remember, someone get on to go up and down the aisle asking everyone for change.  "Two quarters.  Can I have two quarters?  How about a dollar?  I have no teeth.  Nobody believes my story."  At the next stop, he gets off the bus without two quarters, without a dollar, and without any teeth.
     Tuesday.  I am waiting for the deathburger to open at five.  After  yesterday's marathon walking performance, there is no one here.  A Siamese cat has dropped by.  I spot someone headed down the dark sidewalk, in a hoodie with a print by Mondrian.  He asks, "Do you know what time it is, brother?"  When the doors open, we are followed inside a minute or two later by the fast walking guy.  From there to the train, to another station.  There are a couple of guys discussing which bus gate they are going to wait at.  One is carrying a cane.  One waits at my stop for a bit, holding a sock, before he moves along.  After work, I am on a bus going up my street.  At one stop, a guy gets on and tells the driver that he only has a ten.  Someone on the bus is laughing at him.  Perhaps the guy with the ten asked someone for change, I didn't see.  The one laughing at him tells the guy to "Get the fuck off.  This is a fuckin' bus ride bus ride not a taxi."
     The next morning is the day before Thanksgiving.  Across the street at from where I live, at 4:30 AM, are a couple of guys holding something up in the dark and looking at it.  Individual flurries are floating through the air.  By the time I get to my bus stop, one of them is slowly wandering across the street and through a parking lot.  The other guy has lit up a smoke and he almost gets left behind when the bus shows up.

     The River North...district of downtown Denver is quite literally hoping.  On a recent dark, wintery day...taproom lights were shining warmly onto the streets outside.  ...through an enjoyable outdoor patio...an...interior  with...lightly-hip-meets-modern-industrial.  An excellent brew that's lightly sweet, yet with a pleasantly dry finish...  Good beer doesn't happen by accident...  - North Denver Tribune, 11/20 - 12/3/2014
     "Denver is a lifestyle-driven city; it's not necessarily good for fashion."  ...raw denim, small brands in limited size runs, and skin care lines for the contemporary urban warrior.   "Guys in Denver will wear a suit and throw a ski jacket or boots on with it."  ...the man who shops here is design-focused and quality-driven.  Dreams are made when Scandinavian aesthetics join with a casual coastal attitude.  ...freshly-pulled espresso at the in-store cafe...  ...the most important thing is rising above the pretension to enhance, not change, the authenticity of Denver and its charismatic men.  The only thing every Mile High man needs is a good pair of blue jeans, and I don't mean BKE.  It's time to embrace the raw, deep indigo of Shockoe Denim.  ...American brand with deep Japanese roots.  ...office or party, single or mingle.  Pair them with a blazer for comfortable sophistication, or with your favorite band tee-shirt for a quiet night in.  ...exude manly sensuality with higher pockets...  - Out Front, 11/19/2014

     On Friday, the morning after Thanksgiving, I discover that all the deathburgers along my path to work are closed.  I discover this silently and without notice.  I am aided by the dark in this discovery, as I can see that all the lobbies are dark.  Black indeed.  It surely is a kind of slumber, this unannounced behavior I discover on my own.  On Saturday, at 5 AM, I am up the street from where I live, on the corner of my old bus stop.  A block-sized length of the street has been cordoned off with yellow police ta[e.  The space inside appears empty as far as I can see, except for a couple of police cars, perhaps an ambulance.  At my old bus stop, an officer gets out of his car to take down the tape at one end of the space.  A couple of tow trucks pull out.  One of them is hauling what's left of a small silver car.  The back half appears to have been chewed off by a dinosaur.  I can't get over how quiet and empty the entire scene is.  Some kind of funeral procession illuminated only by the lights of a single police car.
     "They told me, 'We think you're tryin' to scam us.  You're not gettin' any medication.  Get the hell out.'  So, it was dark outside.  I didn't realize there was a bus stop right here.  I walked for three and a half hours to find a bus stop.  Oh, I was mad."  A couple of guys are on my bus home, swapping what on one level are stories of a dumb life.  The guy whose voice I can hear mentions getting on the wrong train.  I've done this myself.  He claims that he got off at a station from which he must have crossed a pedestrian bridge to the bus gates, and then claims to have crossed back again.  This is how someone old enough to have grey hair spends his day, wandering around like a lost pet?  He says that from there he went down an embankment.  In order to do what exactly, rake some leaves?  He says that he has a friend, with an "ex" who was thrown into "the pokey" for having ten parking tickets.  He mentioned staying with her in section 8 housing.  He answered the door recently to "cops who told me there are supposed to be two elderly people living here" instead of he and his friend.  He says that she doesn't work.  "I never met a woman who doesn't work."  He says that he's "runnin' around in sweatshirts.  Augie loaned me a couple."  He and the guy he is talking to are headed for some place with a clothing selection.  We pass a place which the first guy says has good tacos, but the second guy says that the beer there is expensive.
     The next morning, I get up and, while waiting for my sister to drop by for breakfast, I turn on the local news.  The car I saw early yesterday morning, with what I thought was the back end chewed off, must have been the front end.  It came to what surely was an abrupt stop at the corner, after a chase of some twenty blocks.  The report claims that a man assaulted a police officer working security for a restaurant up the boulevard before fleeing.
    

OMNI June 1980

 from top, Gregory Manchess, DiMaccio, the following others by
 John Harris in Orders of Magnitude / pictoral with text by Robert Sheckley





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Music/The Arts, by Michael Shore
     ...young pop musicians are making music with electronic equipment...  Future shock has arrived, finally.  Why the change of mood today?  Because, for one thing...these post-Harrisburg, pre-Apocalypse times, ruled by high tech...  ...how did the erudite instruments of scientists filter down...to be accepted as the sound of pop music?  ...celebrating the idea of man-machine fusion.  ...Peter Gabriel (whose brand of music is no doubt despised by the current crop of electro-punks).  Punk rock happened in England.  ...Americans had no comparable audience of disenfranchised working-class youth, there was disco...a...minority protest music.  Disco began as the...escape music of blacks, was adopted by homosexuals...  Punk approaches electronics overtly, embracing a nonhuman feature.

The French Connection/UFO Update, by Charles Berlitz
     The most fascinating part of the UFO mystery is not so much what UFOs are or where they came from, but how they manage to travel at...32,000 kilometers per hour in our atmosphere  and suddenly turn at 90 degrees or fly in the opposite direction.

Telepresence, by Marvin Minsky
     ...we might solve critical problems of energy, health, productivity...  ...scientists often use the words teleoperators or telefactors.  I prefer to call them telepresences, a name suggested by my futurist friend...  We could have a remote-controlled economy by the twenty-first century...

Interview/Harrison Schmitt
      Omni:  Is the administration pursuing solar technology strongly enough?
     Schmitt:  I don't think so.  There's a good deal of money going into it, but there's no perspective on the relative status and time frames for development of the many different forms of solar energy.  ...solar cells and the power-tower concepts...they're further off than...combining solar with gas- and oil-fired or even coal-fired power plants...  I would like to see..."mutually assured protection."  I think a combination of lasers...and other technologies...can give us some new policy options for strategic defense...  ...it's not clear that...particle-beam technologies...can be made operational for offensive purposes.