There is no excuse for this sort of behavior, but I’ve been there. It’s another argument for the home theater experience, but I refuse to cower in one entirely. I’ll still try to catch films I want to see in mostly empty and cheaper matinees.

So after a rough week, I went to a brewery near where I’m staying to use this free pass for the tour. Essentially, all the beer you can pound in two hours. Chatted with some interesting folks, including a Laotion IT guy with a serious southern accent, and a hobby brewer in town while his son recovers from a spinal injury. I was walking home, well plowed when an empty MARTA slowed beside me and the driver asked “Sir, didn’t you want this bus?”. So I got on, pretending my pass card still had a ride on it, and the driver, a middle aged bearded black guy, pretended I did too. More than anything I think he wanted someone to talk to during the layover. Which is what we did, mostly about the history of Atlanta since the 60’s and how the city has changed. I learned about this film with Billy Dee Williams and John Cassavettes shot here in the early 80’s. I knew Lando Calrissian had done Colt 45 commericals, but not that he’d worked with Cassavettes. The driver had an idea for personalized editions of Monopoly based on whatever neighborhood you grew up in. I hope it works out for him, he was a nice guy.

Letting this end is so foolish! If it is no longer profitable for your company, why not sell off the formula and let someone else hang on to it for the diehards? Supposedly the company is open to doing this after 2009, but I won’t be comfortable until the deal is made. Vinyl wasn’t allowed to fully die in the 90’s (thank you turntablists), horses can still go places cars can’t. Gung ho technology and all that, but never eliminate the hard copy. Anyone who has ever wound up a Victrola by candlelight during a power outage knows how cool a feeling that is. Also see Polanoid.

And a song from Athens, GA based Madeline Adams Betty Page from her album “Kissing and Dancing”.

I need work, and have put a temporarily fix on the situation by becoming a seasonal driver’s helper for UPS. And the irony factor for my life being what it is, I’m cruising the old haunts of Chamblee, GA a town I am drawn to in one way or another again and again. While the money isn’t stellar, I can do anything for a short time, and can make the most of flying in and out of the jumpseat (definitely using seatbelt each time, as the sidedoor is mostly open and pace is beyond brisk), and seeing anew the community I’ve known, and it’s various changes, my entire life. The wall of the stadium I used to foolishly walk along, 3-4 stories up, when I was 13. There’s the guy I painted houses with for a time back in ‘04, but I won’t bother saying hi – he wouldn’t recognize me shaven anyway. Now a package going to the weightlifting, art collecting father of a good friend, where I did some work when I was with the art installer two years ago – do they give me factotum props or think I’m a grasping loser? Hopefully we won’t be stopping at the home of the long ago x-girlfriend down the street, whose parents would assuredly try to kill me, if they knew or recognized, which surely would not be the case.

You gain new respect for these guys, these delivery drivers. Drop off is only half the game. After the overnight, then “ground” speed-rate deliveries, come dozens of pick ups, including plenty of heavy objects from various factories around the area. My favorite part is getting a glimpse of what goes on in dozens of would-be anonymous small warehouses in the area: Chinese people loading produce and seafood into vans, who knew there was a small coffee distributor tucked away back here? Or this Vespa mechanic?

It also becomes obvious how much a driver knows about the area and lives on his route, not really from being nosey, but a part of doing the job well. “There is no 3567 on that street”, for example, “it’s a bad address”. People with home businesses get lots of deliveries and the smart ones are friendly and give a Christmas tip. Neighbors talk about one another. “These are like 9 Inch Nails people, they don’t come out in the daylight…Columbine shit.” And it quickly becomes obvious who has dogs and roughly what size they are. “There’s where the lady yelled at me that time for ringing the doorbell when her baby had just fallen asleep. But I was just doing the job. Without a note how was I supposed to know that?”

Overall, it’s interesting to see the dehumanizing effect that goes on. You are Delivery Driver, not a person with any scope beyond that. Everyone thinks there’s is the most important business, there’s the most important package. “We aren’t quite ready, could you come back for the pick up in half an hour?” The answer is obviously no, and if you stopped to think, you’d become aware of the exponential nature of afternoon holiday traffic on the main boulevard. Everyone has a story about a botched delivery, or sour interaction, but these are far in the statistical minority. You aren’t thinking about the mistakes that might have gone on with the truck loading, number-crunchers at the top still bitter about the strike of ‘97, the way other drivers seem to think delivery trucks are as slow as MARTA buses (when in fact the opposite is true) and don’t want to let them into traffic. You forget there are people attempting to assume the roles of magical robots for your convenience.

I’ve recently become interested in this figure narco gangsters pray to in the ongoing northern Mexican drug wars, Los Zetas and others. The Santa Muerte cult in some ways seems similar to Indian Thugee cults who worshiped Kali. More research is needed. See also Maximon.

My first hint of such things I encountered seeing “death porn” magazines in LA during my first trip out there in ‘94. There was a general pre-millenial crazy with killers and satanism in the 90’s, a throwback to the big 70’s craze, which included all sort of paranormal interest, from biorhythms to Est. There was a claim that many of the corpses shown mutilated in these magazines were victims of satanic cults in Mexico. It sounds like the usual nonsense hysteria when presented like that, but when you dig a little deeper, there are actual beliefs going on that help sustain, along with the chemicals, weapons and money, the malicious cycles of violence.