I feel somewhat that the last chapter has been cheated, having not quite lived up to it's "title". 

So, here: This past summer I spent a few days down south of LA. I never would have ended up down there had it not been for a particularly twisted circumstance, which would take much too long to describe here. Let me just cut to the chase (ah, I love that particular idiom). I was driving ride shares. I love to drive. I haven't spoken of that aspect just yet. Anyway, cars, cars, cars... wheels, transportation. Get out and just go. Yay. I love it. So, when I am feeling trapped, I just run. "Fun, fun, fun, till her Daddy takes the G-Ter awaaaaayyyy-ayyyy." 

I was happy to drive people, but I became aware quickly that it was pretty unfair. I once drove a couple 30 minutes across LA over a major freeway and the pay was 15 dollars. I was stunned. I thought, wait a minute. Because that was before paying for gas, insurance or car payment or TAXES. So, it didn't make any sense. It was a pittance. 

Like I said, I picked up five people in a hispanic neighborhood. They were all dressed in black and they made a very somber impression upon me. No one spoke a word, not even one word. I thought, it must be a funeral. I am taking them to a funeral, someone must have died. But no, where did we end up? Anaheim, Disneyland. It was the first time I had been back there in over fifty years. I did not recognize the place at all. That night I decided to park up and the next day I just drove food deliveries. I drove food all over Anaheim and soaked in  the sunshine and warm weather. 

When I'm in the car I spend a fair amount of time in and out of supermarkets. That's the only place you can go sometimes. I mean to the bathroom. Because of cooties. The cooties-19 thing. Restaurants have shut down. You end up driving through the drive-thru more often then not. Gas stations won't let you. They all put up signs saying "out of order". So, I stop at grocery stores. They can't really shut down their restrooms. They can lock them, but you just ask someone and they have to tell you the code. So, walking through the grocery store and I see these magazines. Groceries are so perverse I find. There are about two or three items in the whole store that I can eat. And I am not really exaggerating a lot. I eat some fruit; I buy milk, sourdough bread if it's non-GMO; and I used to buy a lot of hummus. But it's hard to find the right crackers because I found that any GMO product, and it's all GMO if it doesn't say it's not, any GMO food gives me a stomach ache right away. 

I had to expand a bit and start buying cheese. I don't actually like cheese but I got used to eating it again. I had to. There just isn't anything else in the whole damned (and I do mean "damned" in the literal sense, not the four-letter word sense) market. The whole infernal grocery store is full to the brim and overflowing with trash, food that will just make you sick. If it will make me sick, I am sure that it will make anyone sick. I feel it right away, perhaps because I have kept my body more or less pure as long as I can remember. I don't eat any junk. I was raised that way. My mother NEVER bought chips or dips or any kind of junk. And that is what she called it. She said it's Junk. Recently it just kind of occurred to me that here is a grocery store that is supposed to sell food, but a goodly portion of this real estate is taken over by drugs and pharmaceuticals, then there are banks inside the supermarket, too. And then there is a whole section of just gossip mags. What is there to eat there? For me, nothing. Then there will be a Starbucks. Then the key kiosk machine things, and the automat where you can turn in your coins and so on and, you can rent movies. The grocery store tries to be everything and doesn't sell all that many groceries in the end, or only as an afterthought.  So, I don't know what to do in there. 

So, right after the night of the smooth DJ voice telling me all about how Hollywood has taken over producing your reality for you I spot a magazine on Disney. I pick it up and flip it open and right there I see that moustachioed "gentle"man. And he is behind a desk with these little models of spaceships. Tiny space ships. Tiny models. Like he built Neuschwanstein in a model size, reduced size and they changed the perspective of the build so that it gives this impression that it is much taller than it actually is. They literally used perspectivistic strategies to make a visual illusion with a three-D model in the same way they would have done with a 2-D picture. Hard to describe in words. But if you watch the docu's you will get it. 

I guess that guy was nuts about space. But in view of what I found out that night and thinking about all the things you hear about space travel, and the moon landings, etc. to see him standing there all puffed up and proud-looking next to the little tiny models of SPACESHIPS... well... what can I say? And I caught one of the austronauts who landed on the moon in one interview where the host was saying, so you landed on the moon on such and such a day and the "astronaut" said, "We never went to the moon." I guess he was about to die soon. The host corrected him and pretended it was a joke and they carried on. 

This just a bonus posting in between the main story installments, because I actually REALLY don’t want to tell what I HAVE to tell next.