On Detroit (1 of 3): Seediness.

Downtown Detroit's a bit seedy.

For one, cab drivers try to cheat you, and have broken fare monitors on their dashboards.

When I was leaving one bar after last call, too, there was just this (older middle-aged) (pretty thin) (black) guy in a t-shirt sitting out on a bench with a shopping bag on each side as I turned the corner to go back to my hostel, and he was like, "Hey, my man, I got a bottle of tequila here for thirty dollars that I'm trying to get rid of."

Near one tourist site out in the neighborhoods, too, there was a woman selling water and Gatorade off her front porch.

Much of it is lack of work, but that cabdriver stuff and even a bit of that tequila selling stuff starts moving towards seediness.  Something seems just a little bit dark and weird and vaguely trashy about it, like you don't know who the people are and why they need the money, and they seem to be characters full of quirks and tics.

A stray thought on labor reform.

I find it really, really inspiring that Irish politicians are taking on precarity by seeking to provide legal oversight of "worker on demand" jobs.

For like the past six-to-eight months, I've been saying that we need better laws, and then Ireland is right out there doing it.

It's also a nice talking point for labor campaigns, like, "An EU country is trying to ban working conditions like your employer is trying to defend at all costs."

The only thing is, though, is that I can't remember the prime minister's name.  I always call him something like "that gay Indian prime minister guy in Ireland," or I fuck up his last name and am like, "Leo Eckankar."

Memories of the Friday night of Halloween weekend:

After a concert, my one (Spanish) professor friend texts me, that he's out at a Halloween party in my neighborhood, so after I stop through home, I walk over there, only to find that the doors had *just* closed.

So, since he's not responding to texts and whatnot, I decide just to wait around outside, to see if he's in there, and after a bit I notice I can look in through one storefront window, so I do and I think I see him, so I wait, and then finally he comes out with his girlfriend and this other (Spanish) couple that I know, and he has a green tail and this green thing on his head, as does his (Spanish) (male) friend who I've met.

"Are we dinosaurs, or dragons?!", he asks me a bit bombastically and a bit confrontationally like right a way, also a bit drunkenly, too.

"Dragons," I was like.

"See, see!", he was like, tapping his friend's chest.  "This man knows what he's talking about!".

Then, I suggest a nightcap, only they want tacos, so we all started to head over to the local taqueria.

My friend and his friend were a bit ahead of me, and were joking.

"Dragons don't buy tacos!", they were like. "We go and eat them, ROOAAAARRRR...".

Then, they were like, "We make tacos, we roast the meat for them, AASHHSAHASHASAHA," they were like, making a hissing sound like spitting fire.

At that point, I was alongside of them and by the door to the taqueria, so I pulled it open for them.

"Dragons first," I was like, "Then ladies," and then they walked in, and then their girlfriends straggled in behind them, laughing at my joke.

"Dragons first!", one was like, laughing.

Over the meal, we talked about how fucked up the situation was with Catalonia.

Puerto Rico devastation, in retrospect.

Right before the senators released a statement demanding more aid to Puerto Rico, I was getting really, really disturbed and pissed off by the inattention to the island, and was thinking of calling the White House to demand that something be done.

Then, I saw the story of that senatorial statement, and didn't.

In retrospect, I should have called, since it was the only thing that was in my power to do, so I should have done it.

I did do it like a week later, but by then the response was bungled up, and it was too late.

A pre-Halloween sight...

...at my local bank:

A cheap print-out taped to the door, reminding people not to wear masks inside, and, "Happy Halloween!".

Comment of 2 people outside a taqueria in my neighborhood at like 2am on a Tuesday.

The (middle-aged) (black) woman of the (black) couple, as they're walking to their car:

"Smells like rain."

A sight biking in to work the other day at lunchtime...

...as I was going down my typical boulevard:

Like 6-8 police cars in the parking spaces and the righthand lane, and a cop standing out in the lefthand lane, and groups of people here and there on the sidewalk before and after the cops, and some red tape with black lettering, stretching across many trees by the sidewalk, saying "CRIME SCENE."

. . .

I couldn't see anything as I slowly biked by, and I wasn't sure what was up.