2 Bedroom W/ A View

The adventures of living in Long Beach never seem to end.

Sunday, a day typically designated for sleeping until the early afternoon, eating, and watching tv was jump started with the sound of metal tubes getting tossed onto the ground? How do I describe the sound? Imagine fifty aluminum baseball bats getting tossed out of the back of a truck and into the street. That’s pretty much what it sounded like.

So I get up to investigate, throw open the blinds and discover my once beautiful ocean view [slightly exaggerated, it is still Long Beach] obscured by…WTF!?

There’s something crazy going on behind there and I wanna know what it is!!!

Ok, so now is where the rant begins:

1. Would any normal person be upset with the fact that someone decided to put half a dozen portable shitters directly in front of the place you live, inches from your front window? I mean, I overreact to a lot of things, and maybe this is one of those situations…but really? Someone put some thought into this, papers were signed, orders were given – they just don’t pull up with twenty toilettes and say ‘yeah, put em wherever’. And besides the clinical downturns [you know, hepatitis, pink eye, roundworm?] that you get with having a bunch of human waste parked directly in front of the place where eat, sleep, and live…I’m missing a goddam parade!!!

2. A few guys were attempting to sell popsicles right outside my window, which ultimately ends up being right next to half a dozen rented blue shitters. He isn’t having any luck, as the weather was unusually temperate and ‘blustery’? [if I can borrow from Eeyore] and hadn’t really set the ‘popsicle’ atmosphere. So not only is this guy trying to peddle popsicles on the street next to some shitters with absolutely no chance of selling any, a few friendly members of the environmental protection agency pay him a visit and begin writing him tickets [later I found out they were only warnings] for unsanitary food services and operating without a permit. Ok listen, if you are going to buy a popsicle from some guy on the sidewalk right next to six giant port-o-johns, you know what you’re getting into. We don’t need ‘permits’ or ‘authority’ to step in and tell us, we get it, don’t eat poopsicles..gotcha.

So me, being half in the bag off gin [it’s sometime around noon at this point], begin modest requests for maybe the EPAgents should start writing up some citations to whoever designated the area occupying my prime parade viewing perch ‘shit alley’, I would have been glad to sign some of that official paperwork..with my real name even!

My cries for the EPA to protect my living environment fell on deaf ears as each one shucked the responsibility to some unknown entity who was ‘already dealing with it’. Eff that! Whales and sea turtles can fend for themselves! Someone put a bunch of poo dumpsters in my living room!!! I even offered to fill out the paperwork for them!

They left. Nothing was done. I had an obscured view of what would be one of the most disappointing parades I’ve ever sort of seen…but realized a great scam for next time: trading bathroom time to lesbians for beer. Because then at least I have beer and women…and is anything else really that necessary?

P.s. The metal pipes I heard getting tossed on the ground were tubular steel barricades…you know…in case parading gets out of control.