The world is on fire.

It was Sunday, when I was heading home after a few quick errands, that I first noticed the grey haze descending on Mira Mesa. I’ve been Southern California long enough to recognize it for what it was – fire. City officials had been warning people for a few weeks of the extreme fire hazard, but nobody pays attention. Cigarettes are thrown out of windows and camp-fires are lit with no planning, so the fire was no surprise. It wasn’t until I started checking the news feeds that the scale of the flames struck me.

Another goddamn firestorm.

One day later and I’m in North Park, where the air is clean, living out of a bag. There hasn’t been an evacuation of Mira Mesa, but the comunity is right on the edge of areas that have been cleared. I’ve no real worry about the house itself – if the fire manages to get to it, northern San Diego is lost.

The official county feeds are useless. They’re either overwhelmed or behind the news, with the occasional crashes being restored using day-old data. KPBS has been pretty good, but their main transmitter was slagged sometime this morning. 94.9 let KPBS use their frequency, though, so it’s still possible to keep tabs on everything.

It was mid-morning when we finally turned the key and pulled out of the driveway. The jeep was fully loaded, blocking rearward visibility with bags and bundles and a mini refrigerator, but we were able to make do with three sets of eyes. We were off! The plan was to make for Utah, cutting through the wastelands of California and Nevada as we drove onward to our first target, Cedar City. The Jeep, though old and crotchety, had been checked out and certified a few day before. The AC was recharged, leaks were sealed, and fluids were filled.

Two hours later we were forced to pull off of the 15 and into a Wendy’s parking lot. The engine had been trying to overheat, slowly creeping past 210, 220, inching ever closer to the 300s. We could have kept going, sure — with the windows down and the heater on to pull the excess from the engine, we probably could have made it into Nevada and Utah and Colorado. We weren’t looking forward to it, though. Having the seats drenched in sweat and the outside air more refreshing than the interior wasn’t attractive. Nobody was expecting the trip to be the height of comfort, but the heater on? In the summer? Through the high desert?

Hell no.

We ended up in Clairemont, Dan’s hometown. He never thought he’d be in there again, but circumstances had us driving by his old house, heading for a mechanic that had worked on the jeep before. After a bit of finagling and a few phone calls back and forth and back again, they took a look at the engine. Nothing was wrong, of course. The engine was just old, and had a tendency to work up a bit of a mechanical sweat when pushed. We were offered a new radiator, as large as could be fit inside, in the hope that it would be sufficient to draw away the large amounts of heat generated. So it was that we found ourselves, after having been picked up by one of Steve’s parents, at a nice two or three level home in Sierra Madre. The jeep was going to have the new radiator installed the next morning, after which we could be on our way only a day delayed. Not too bad, especially considering the muggy and uncomfortable alternative.

Then I received a phone call.

It was from a random customer at the store I work part-time at, asking whether or not their envelope to Bolivia was on its way. Being 150 miles away, I of course have no goddamn clue, and try to explain this to the crazy lady on the other end of the line. It turns out that somebody at the store thought it a good idea to just give out my private cell number and let me deal with it, as if I was on call or something. I’m still trying to find out who gave out my number, and my next time sheet is probably going to include some independently billed time.

I’m in Canada at the moment. Potent beer, quite a few occurences of “eh”, and a disturbing (for one born and raised in the desert of southern California) amount of greenery. Plants! Without having to steal water from other states. Imagine that.

As the amount of time spent listening to KROQ in Los Angeles approaches and exceeds n, where n represents any length of time in excess of 5 minutes, the probability of a crappy Linkin Park song being played approaches 1.

KROQ, all Linkin Park, all the time. Christ.

I have a second job now, which means I’m now working 6 days a week and still don’t have health insurance. I should be able to afford an independent plan, though – the second job is at a legal firm that specializes in immigration, and while I’m mostly taking care of file management and general office duties I’m still getting paid about 50% more than I am at the Shitty Retail Job. For all of the (mostly deserved) flack that office jobs get, it’s still nice to be working at one again. Not having to deal with the mouth-breathing public is nice, but knowing that I’m actually contributing to a greater whole is, thus far, the greater benefit. It’s amazing how much of a difference that one bit of knowledge can make when it comes to the day to day grind.

Of course, working office and retail jobs at the same time should provide a rather unique perspective on the two, although I’m fairly certain that the contrast is just going to make the Shitty Retail Job that much shittier.

We shall see.

Do you remember the random fact generators, particularly the Chuck Norris generator? The database was quickly overrun, the clever entries diluted into harmlessness by hundreds of “lol roundhouse” jokes, with the aftermath leaving Chuck Norris a regular commentator on World Net Daily. A few days ago e posted a tongue-in-cheek list of campaign promises if he were to be elected president.

This is how I discovered Norris to be a fascist.

That may be a bit harsh but the list of his “campaign promises” has, alongside the expected jokes about “the real WMDs – his fists and feet,” a promise to “deport all liberals (then force them to listen to Bill O’ Reilly every day for five years, at which point they may return).” Patriotic, isn’t it? There’s nothing more American than deporting all political opponents, forcing them to listen to your own point of view exclusively for years on end before they can return home.

I’m probably overreacting but the unthinkingly loyal and blind patriotism of Norris’ writing leaves me more than a little uncomfortable, memetic darling though he may be. At least he doesn’t have any real political aspirations. The way celebrity worship is in this country, he’d get elected with terrifyingly little difficulty.

There’s a greeting card kiosk across from the counter at work that I’ve had to see a lot of, and there’s one card in particular that’s beginning to bother me. (Well, two actually, but I don’t really want to write about a card that prominently features a crudely drawn asshole at the moment.) This card features a grinning picture of President George W. Bush saying something about not wanting to forget your Birthday. Then one opens the card, and discovers that, to the aforementioned end, the President is going to monitor all phone calls and emails. Ha!

Wait.

I have no qualms about making fun of terrible people and situations both. Dark comedy and satire is a good way to deflate those who would try to assert undue privileges, but there’s a saturation point wherein it becomes counterproductive, and maybe even a little dangerous. I’m not talking about satire, which itself I believe to be necessary for a healthy society and government. Satire reflects and criticizes the world in a way which, while amusing, is also deadly serious. What I’m unnerved by is that joking about the current administration has become de rigeur, a thing done by reflex because it’s what must be done to fit in.

If the erosion of civil liberties and privacy is fit for a carelessly produced and bought greeting card, then it follows that society must be comfortable enough with the said issue to not care. Greeting cards are traditionally the blandest of the bland, reflecting the zeitgeist of a boringly bleak suburbia. Satire and comedy are still valuable tools for making sense of the world, for criticizing and understanding and changing it, all. When that comedic criticism has been boiled down to a pithy reference alongside a Garfield card and a belated birthday card with a turtle on it – that is when meaning has been lost, when the outrages legion are just accepted as part of the background cultural static and written off as just the way things are.

We’re inoculating ourselves. People are joking about the President in the same way they would about a mother-in-law, laughing about the situation and shrugging shoulders because hey, what can you do, you know?

I found an interesting piece on a blog maintained by the Christian Science Monitor, dealing with the order of adjectives and adverbs, the unspoken ordering rules that dictate that one says “the broken red toy wagon” rather than “the toy red broken wagon.” It’s not an academic piece by any means, but it’s definitely an interesting look at some of the constructions we native speakers take for granted.

Don’t even get me started on the Christian Science Monitor itself, though. Trust me.

It wasn’t until Pichette himself had developed the thick and raspy cough that the team realized the Tower’s influence. The core researchers had been gathered around the conference table, rooting about in splayed paper stacks of environmental and seismic data, when Pichette made the connection – he and Amara, indeed all of the workers with the rheumatic cough, had spent more time than the others in the Tower’s shade, collecting data on that pebble of an island jutting out of the arctic sea. 5 or 6 hours seemed to be the tipping point, after which the cough developed.

“There’s nothing there.” Edwin Salazar, the resident biologist, tossed the manila folder of printouts he had been thumbing through back onto the center of the table. He pushed back against the table with both hands, using the pressure to pop his spine against the top of his chair’s backrest. “Even the birds are uncomfortable with that thing.”

Amara, speaking without so much as a glance away from the legal pad she was flipping through, had only a word. “Sterile?”

“Almost. I had to run a PCR to get anything useful, and even then whatever’s there is the same as what we have here.” Salazar took a long drink from his mug, swirling the lukewarm coffee in his mouth before swallowing. “Tabula rasa.”

I have more hours at work now and, while the extra money is nice, it’s a mixed blessing. The only reason for my expanded hours is that there’s no manager on-site, and only two part-time employees working. (Well, three actually, but the third only comes in about once a week so I don’t really count her.) The owner had initially stated that either he or one of his workers from the other store would be in every few days to make sure everything is going smoothly. Restock on supplies, take care of bills and customer queries, that sort of thing.

This, of course, never happens.

Equipment and infrastructure is breaking down, and the owner hasn’t done anything about it. Bills tend to pile up for a few weeks. Customer complaints regarding how account billing is handled are increasing, as are concerns about now-faulty security measures. We’re out of stamps, which is a bit problematic when one of the store’s main draws is that we sell shipping services and stamps.

If the owner is content to allow the store to function at a bare minimum, though, then there’s little that I can or care to do. I am, after all, just part-time.