somehow, i managed to get hired last month.

it's fast food (again, sigh) but i was at least able to get the hours i wanted and it's not too far from my house. it's about a 15-20 minute drive, which isn't bad but i'd prefer a job i could walk to for Obvious Reasons.. unfortunately the places right outside my neighborhood don't seem to be interested. like every other fast food job i've had, the pay is bad but i'm saving money as best i can. the biggest purchase i need to make is a bike to increase exercise and reduce gas usage. biking to work would take approximately twice as long, but i'd be saving $2ish in gas each work day by doing so..

i'm also using this job as an opportunity to help radicalize my coworkers. i'm not as well read as i should be when it comes to theory or history (and i wouldn't want to talk about that right out the gate to the uninitiated and uninterested), but i do know that, for example, the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in 13 years. and that if it had, it would be well into the $20s/hr range, the specific dollar amount depending on how and when the math was done. i've also been debating, now that i have an income, joining the IWW or the Communist Party USA. the dues for both are reasonable, so why not both? i have no dollars at the moment though so i'll have to wait for my next paycheck before applying.

another "job" i've started is cleaning up trash by the side of the road with a coworker of mine once a week (now once a month, since it's currently just me and my coworker). the trash is primarily soda cups, cigarette boxes, miscellaneous plastic, but two interesting things i've found so far are a decent-looking adjustable wrench that needs to be derusted and an almost new lower-end smartphone. looking foreward to more useful trash in the future!

outside of job-related happenings, my vegetables have all died.

i thought my potatoes were ready a couple weeks ago, but when i dug around in the soil looking for them, there were no potatoes.. what the fuck!! i'll be starting another batch soon. maybe i'll actually get some food this time around.

as for non-edible plants, i've decided to kill the grass in my front yard so i can plant some clover and wildflowers in it's place next year. i was originally just going to stop mowing it and let whatever wanted to grow grow, and i did do that for about a month. my neighbors fucking hated it, but i loved seeing plants i hadn't seen before popping up and hearing the crickets that were taking up residence in it. but it turns out my city will fine you if you if you don't keep your lawn short! what the fuck (again)!! i don't know if someone in my neighborhood reported me or if they just have city employees wasting gas driving around neighborhoods every day looking for code violations, but it's fucking stupid either way.

the cheapest, most eco-friendly, and ugliest way i've come up with to kill the grass is to spread out black plastic sheets over the entire lawn and leave it that way until 2023. being an eyesore for several months is arguably the most important aspect of this plan because i am a creature fueled 50% by spite (the other 50% is adderall in good times, or caffeine in bad times).

now i shall transition into a semi-related rant: i absolutely hate this and every other neighborhood i've lived in over the course of my life. the ones that have home owner's associations are bad, but the ones that don't aren't much better. if anything about the outside appearance of your house veers off the beaten path of the American Dream™ even a little bit, all your neighbors lose their fucking minds. you're expected to waste either the time or money on maintaining an ecological deadzone just because everyone around you has brainlessly decided that it's good to do.

the more conscious would likely argue that if a house looks like shit it reduces the property values of the houses around it. people don't want to live next to someone if their house is fucked up looking, so a homeowner will have to sell their house for less money than they'd like in order to get someone to buy it. this shouldn't be a hot take but i think this is objectively a good thing because while it may be an inconvenience to the homeowner, it means that lower income people are more likely to be able to afford it. if changing the appearance of my house to my preferences really does have that kind of effect on surrounding properties, i just consider that an extra incentive to do it.

this isn't even getting into just how fucking ugly a lot of houses are and how much psychic damage i take from even knowing that they're within walking distance of me. the neighborhood i'm currently in is a mixture of really old (some well over 50 years old) and really new (built within the last few years) houses. i don't like single family detached housing for the usual reasons, but the older houses are at least easy on the eyes. the newer houses look like they were generated by an AI but with none of the charm or novelty that would normally come with that. they're big and hideous versions of the houses in those weirdcore playlist videos and the worst thing about them is that people fucking buy them anyway. if you have a big family and need a big house surely you can do better?

anyway... i decided on clover because it stays short so i don't have to mow it, plus it's good food source for wild bees and other animals. and the wildflowers will just be to increase the variety of food available to any creatures that stop by. sure, they're pretty, but my primary concern is maintaining a yard that insects will like, not one that fits the poor aesthetic taste of my neighbors.

---

Meal of the Day

today's Meal of the Day has, thus far, been nothing. that doesn't mean that i haven't eaten (the singular-sounding nature of my Meal of the Day segments should not be mistaken for me only eating once a day), it's just that what i've eaten hasn't been worth recording. sometimes a meal is less of an experience and more like refilling your gas tank.