Friday, August 16, 2013

Lunch and Violence

Well, to-day's been a series of unexpected delays and little obstacles, beginning with the fact this was the third day in a row the internet has been inexplicably sluggish here. After about half an hour attempting to watch something on YouTube, I decided to go out to lunch and then maybe to a nearby Starbucks to use the WiFi there that would inevitably be better than my fucking cable modem at this point.

It was a hot day so I decided to treat myself to some gasoline and drove my car for once, going downtown to gaze at the Convention Centre wistfully and pretend it was still Comic Con--and maybe avail myself of some of that great WiFi at the Lion Coffee place.

I went to Pokez for lunch and got one of their weirdly cheap, massive vegan burritos. The place was deserted besides myself and the staff, and I sat by a window near the entrance. From here I was two feet away from the fight that broke out on the corner outside. I kept eating my burrito, only leaning reflexively a couple times as the two young men scuffling in that weird perpetual hug most fights seem to disintegrate into got close to the thin wall between me and them.

One of the waitresses went outside with napkins to administer to one of the fighters, who had a bloody nose. It turned out later, when the cops had shown up, that one of the guys, a skinny little Mexican guy, was the proprietor of the restaurant--"That your shop?" the cop nodded towards Pokez while talking to the guy--the other man had left before the cops had appeared.

"Yeah," he said and went on explaining, "Me and him, we're really old friends, I got in a few good hits, he got in a few good hits . . . We're old friends, we were just fighting like old friends."

"What's his name?" asked one of the cops.

"Uh, Omar, I think."

Another guy, a big white man in shorts, flip flops, and a red shirt with a nurse fetish pinup girl on, was angrily telling the cops how he had come downstairs from his nearby apartment when he heard the noise and he certainly wasn't involved in the fight because he had a broken ankle, he kept saying. He was walking with a cane but I noticed neither of his bare ankles appeared to have a cast or bandage of any kind. Before the cops had shown up, after the fight had ended, I had seen the guy in the nurse shirt yelling to "Omar" has he drove away, "Fuck you!"

The nurse shirt guy complained to the police "Omar" had been yelling at him. "Did he hurt your feelings?" joked one of the cops.

"He said he was going to fucking shoot me!" said nurse shirt, angrily. I think we all inwardly rolled our eyes.

I hung around at the request of the cops, since I was a witness, but they sent me away before questioning me, apparently deciding the whole affair was too trivial to warrant further questioning.

After that, I took a long drive through surface streets to get to Tim's Radio Shack to get his advice on what modem I ought to buy from Best Buy. I wasn't sure how to get there from downtown, but I like exploring. I didn't anticipate getting caught behind a garbage truck on one of the skinny old San Diego streets, a garbage truck that was driving backwards for two blocks because it had evidently taken a wrong turn at some point.

But now I'm back. I hope this modem works. The guy from Cox (the local internet provider) was rather vague on the phone as to whether or not the modem was the problem but, I figured, it's a more then ten year old modem, it's probably about time it was replaced in any case.

Twitter Sonnet #537

Long blue cardboard bends the chalky discus.
Three paper bars cracked the coffee signal.
Disposable leaks fill the hot ruckus.
Cotton candy throttled the Grand Guignol.
Chalkboard galaxies press eternity.
Choking tanks urged forth the blistered traffic.
Chessboard asphalt glittered with enmity.
Cereal suns ask diets less drastic.
Rabbit cathedrals bleed pea soup at dusk.
The bright ourang-ootang took to murder.
Poe is no pea when it comes to the busk.
No e-train travels without a girder.
The old Omar is not his name to Punch.
Nosebleed love will threaten a larger lunch.

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