My Backyard

I left my bed today for the first time in many months. Bruno helped me downstairs and out into the backyard.

The sun was high. The day was warm. I sat in a garden recliner.

The yard slopes down a mile through light woods to the river. A ship with all sails set passed heading south as I settled.

So much air. So much space outside. Breeze in my hair.

A band of Roma camp in the woods. The police and then the army asked me if I wished their removal. Let them stay. I see the smoke rising from their fires.

The dogs stay close at first, then begin to roam, then to course across the hillside. They flush a few rabbits but these dogs are not the old borzoi. They can chase but they cannot catch.

To die outside of that damned room, this is an end worthwhile.

The Homeless Blogger 1/28/18

Out on the street again. That place I had was too good to be true. The renter laws in this town totally favor the landlord. Run a little late, bounce a check or two, and you come home to find all your possessions – in my case, stashed in three grocery bags – out on the sidewalk.

The good news is that I never actually paid the old woman anything. She comes from a time long ago when a man’s word was his bond. My bonds are all of the bail variety.

So I’m sitting in the Bush Street library, the ritziest in town. Except, just one computer. The head librarian does not want his patrons online. He’s another old one.

Now I’m at the Garden Branch library over by the university. Some kid is giving out free weed in front. I came here because the long line for the computer at Bush was getting pushy. Rich folks, don’t want the hoi polloi putting dirty fingers on their keyboard.

That grass is going right to my head. Now that it’s legal, who knows what street scenes will befall us.

The grass wasn’t exactly free, but I didn’t have to pay anything for it.

Now I’m down at the East First Street Branch. The university students at Garden Branch are a lot more fastidious than I remember college students being. Nobody is going to complain about that sort of thing down here. The busiest room in the place is the bathroom,  where the homeless clean up.

Now I’m off to look for the old Dale Carnegie book I used to read while waiting for the soup kitchen to open.

Anniversary: Battle of the Giants

Today’s the day, back in 2002, when the internet’s two largest like/follow spammers tangled.

It happened by accident and at its peak, the Web ground to a halt.

BeEnlightenedNowSir and GetRichLikeMe are now little remembered, but back in 2002, 80% of all blog posts were liked by one or both of them, and more than 90% of all blog sites were followed by one or both of them.

How the two got into an automated like/follow loop may never be known, but all like/follow stats were blown away before they were done that day.

BeEnlightenedNowSir was living at the time in a cold-water walkup on the south side of Brommist-on-Earm. GetRichLikeMe resided in a yurt on the hill with that water tank, overlooking Possum, Montana.

Banned from the Web, the two met in St. Moritz and blew through their wealth in epic fashion (they both made a billion online, from bloggers paying them to get lost). The couple died in each other’s arms from what the post mortems described as “extreme insults to the body.”