I was walking behind two women, late 20s or early 30s.  I kind of knew one of them, barely, who spoke these words “God.  I want to have sex right now.”  That is, I suppose, good news for her boyfriend in short order — or maybe bad news? — but I had half a mind to make an utterance along the lines of “All right.  Let’s go.”  But I of course didn’t, because I only barely knew her and wouldn’t have gotten away with that surprised joke.

I was at a grocery store, and departed from the store clerk when he gave me, “Have a good day, Justin.”  I was surprised, and looked over.  I didn’t know him — I assume he knew me from sometime or other in some point in the past (or present).  In this particular case, it would’ve been a good idea to say that a few second earlier to give me a probing chance of scratching my itch of curiosity.

So on April 15 the Tea Party was holding forth a rally at Pioneer Square.  I imagine any number of the participants there could jump on over to see the Atlas Shrugged Movie.  And so it goes.

“In light of the recent violence experienced by Tea Partiers at events across the nation carried out by union supporters, we’re asking all Oregon Tea Partiers to take Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Pledge of Nonviolence,” said Jeff Reynolds, Multnomah County Republican Party chairman. “Any anti-Tea Party violence will be met by an even keel of truth and justice.”

Yep, they’ve developed an alternate storyline of things.  The age of the Internet will have them on high alert to extrapolate from any random incident.  Groups of marauding Unions are en throll.

I listened to about five minutes of someone.  I had a flashback.  “And don’t forget the Military — which is responsible for allowing us this freedom here.”  Said in a threatening ambiance, as a “Don’t you dare cut from the Pentagon’s wish list.”  To their credit, a couple of Senators and Congress-men attached to said “Tea Party” are willing to go there, to a place which anyone serious about the deficit has to go.  They’re not in this group.

The flashback I had was to the “Support the Troop” rallies, better thought of as anti-war protests (as opposed to war protests they were counter-programming.)  What’s missing is the country band.

The event features Brian Futch and the local Patriotic group, We the Band.

Hm.  “We the Band”.  Is that like “Up With People”?  I’d like to say the issues are being tossed in to and fro, but I guess it’s how we’ve gotten the matters divided.

I saw a hand scribbled note, off a heavily trafficked Max stop.  Here’s how it read “Hey Meeker, I found Snitzer!  Please email me quick” — and I made those two names up, but the email address given was something to the effect of “redMao@” whatever email dot come.  I know not much about the person who put this note up, or why s/he couldn’t have some other lines of communication (not beyond email), but I do have a guess about redMao’s politics.  Though if my first guess is that s/he wasn’t at the Tea Party rally or Atlas Shrugged movie, I do note when I have looked over the anarchist book store and library (look up the name yourownself), it does have Ayn Rand in the library — so who knows how redMao mixes her/his politics.

Woman removing a bunch of stuff, pinkish clearly items belonging to her daughter — or girl she was care taking in some capacity.  She yells to a woman out on the sidewalk to greet her, “I packed all of Magelline’s stuff and forgot to bring Magelline!”
“Oh My gosh!  Did you leave her at the MALL?”, asked more urgently.
“No.  Back at the house.”
It occurs to me that if she had left her at the mall, she would have shouted with more urgency than at the house.  I think for a moment, overthinking, that maybe this shouldn’t be the case — that maybe the multitudes of people at the mall would ensue Magelline safe passage to a “Lost and Found” as against the house where  Magelline is on her own — but then realize, no the possibility of abduction and all that…

A woman is walking along with her young son on a bicycle and her young daughter on a tricycle.  She sometimes has to push the tricycle ahead.
The boy says to his mom, “Mom, I don’t think I need this helmet.  Everytime I fall, I never land on my head.”
The mom says, “Oh, but you’ve never fallen really badly.  You need the helmet.”
This strikes me as good parenting.  It’s unlikely she will ever leave these kids back at the house, or at the mall.

At a Starbucks I go to once a week or so at the same time and see this same group when I do — an obese woman is riding around down a brief aisle on a motor-cart with her friend’s baby going “wee”.  A surly twenty-something grunts, to his friends but seemingly at this group of women, “If I ever get that fat, kill me.”  Rather mean, sure, one of the women darts a dirty look, but shakes it off.
A couple of minutes later, he is asking everyone if they have a cigarette.  This includes the group he just insulted.  My thought runs along the lines of — you’re on okay ground with the insult, you’re on okay group bumming a cigarette, you are not on okay ground trying to bum a cigarette from a group you just insulted.

Somebody sets up a sign and throws a shin-dig every Sunday at 1:30 in the middle of the Park Blocks.  It’s a typical Christian gambit.  The sign says Communion is taking place.  I walked along, wondering thy there were several (decently dressed) men standing there, spied and read the sign — which prompted the head of this religious clique to wave in as a means to beckon the obvious curiosity-seeker that I was.  I shook my head and walked along.  I had a couple problems with them to work out — first to move in a different definition of Communion, instead of my Catholic assumption on hearing the word as Eurcharist — and secondly — I couldn’t square the conversation I overheard from them.  They were talking about the dire need for a Balanced Budget, — indeed I thought I had stumbled upon a group of evangelical Republicans or evangelical Libertarians (evangelical in the lower case adjective sense).

Moving downtown, I saw that some activists had plastered some chalk writing on the sidewalk in front of some banks– and in some cases taped crap on the building itself.  They were protesting environmentally unsound banking practices in terms of who they invest with and lend to — what interested me about this was to see that the chalk writing stopped at bank’s edge, such that it was clear the activists had no beef with — for instance — Rite Aid — where the messy chalk writing stopped at store’s edge, and all was clear in front of Rite Aid.

“Remember when I met a hooker and didn’t realize she was a hooker?  … No, no, no.  That was a stripper! … I’m talking about at the Waterfront. … Yeah!  That was it!  Really tall.”

There’s one more day, or maybe just a handful of more hours, to see the Willamette Week mock – New York Post cover, parody “Sum of Sam” regarding Mayor Sam Adams — in the boxes around the city.

I point this out not so much because of the article / interview, but because looking around, it appears someone has penned in a funny blocked tooth for Sam Adams.  This itself wouldn’t be interesting, except that there are multiple examples of blocked Sam Adams tooths — it appears to be every one within the blocks I walked around yesterday.

Suggesting someone did it multiple times.  One makes sense.  Every one …
… That seems to be too much Effort for too little reward.  Unless, I guess, there’s a type of person, and enough of them, that it adds up quickly.

…………………

Update:  My mistake.  It’s just an unflattering photograph the ww put up.

I walk in, bladder full.  Normal enough looking fellow standing in front of the toilet stall, says gruffly, “I’m next” as I turn to the urinal and say “Works well for me.”

As I take a leak, a woman startles me by opening and peering in.  A brief four line argument ensues which seems to resolve around grocery spending or something — instantly forgetable, but a little uncomfortable.

As I wash my hand, the guy grunts.  I did not see this comment coming.

“God I hate Heroin.”

I float my hand over the electronic air dryer, but walk out with wet hands.  I do not know what to ascribe the Heroin comment to.  Himself, the man in the stall, the girlfriend, or society in general?

I find it fascinating to know that my “Leander Revival” item of years back continues to reverberate a bit.  Maybe this shouldn’t be all that surprising.  It is a reference point for new generations of peoples who have to deal with the self-imagined Messiah Prophet Revivalist — a revival that tends to extend to hearing distance from wherever he happens to be yapping his mouth.

The Leander Revival is a chronology of messages left on the Internet from 1998 and 1999 which describe the impact of a take-over of a Pentacostal Church in the small town of Leander, Texas by a controlling and divisive Hellfire preacher by the name of Ken Jones.  Jones came in to purify and cleanse the congregation and expose the members of its sins.  His doctrine was, more or less, that Ken Jones was without sin and thus if you follow him you will find new joys in the biblical story of Jesus’s “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” entreaty.

The church has, from what I gather, long moved on past this blip in its history.  I have received emails expressing a desire to explain what “really happened” in Leander and with Jones, or to clarify something, but I have never received any follow-ups.  I guess my standing offer is in place — if there’s some statement or other someone wants to add to the page, and I would not know what to ask, I do desire to de-personalize its effect from its final product in its formative effects on the self-imagined Messiah Prophet Revivalist.  It appears that Ken Jones grabbed ahold of his high school drama student protege by stressing over his sense of guilt in being purified of sin, and then back-sliding into the sin of onanism, which strikes me as a good mechanism of control if you’re tapping a teenager.

He made himself a permanent presence at one university in the northwest, and later a less permanent presence at, I believe, UCLA — jarring the typical pattern of the itenerant campus preacher.  Meantime, he has gone from church organization and sect to sect and church organization, looking for a home stressing biblical prophecy, lining himself up behind various charismatic figures of religious esoterica in order to — in short order in his mind — outgun them all.  He sooner or later wears out his welcome, as he casts everyone out to Hell.  It is clear that in his mind, he is attempting to replicate (or continue) the “Leander Revival”, and on his website is a list of key prophetic moments of the past few centuries in route to glorious Armegeddon which appear to have a bunch from standard texts of the true believer Apocalypse seeker — but then includes the more obscure and personalized one started by Ken Jones in Leander in 1998.

It was curious to note that he was an enthusiastic and active supporter of Ron Paul’s presidential bid, the subtext and occasional text of his many youtube videos coming back to “The Government took my kids away from me — and gave them to my Jezebel ex-wife.”  And, too, put him in prison.  I see now renewed attention from more current people who have dealt with him — a blog is following the sordid details of his current happenings — and on youtube now there is a cell phone diatribe from him where he plots to kidnap his kids and take them — free them, he believes — to some magical spot in the Hills where they cannot be touched by the Law.  So he has some warrants for his arrest, and you see his one way ticket back to prison, whenever he can poke his face out.

The curious thing about this, the one thing I wonder, is that I simply do not know who else where else he touched anyone’s life.

Me.  Other guy.  Standing there.
Guy walks by.  “Are you two hyped about 2011?”
We don’t say a word.
“I said… Are you hyped about 2011?
Other guy: “Oh, yeah.  Totally psyched.”
Me: “Weeee.”
He walks by.  Other guy: “Sheesh.”

I’m stitting, and am joined adjacently by  a mother with her — 2 year old is my generic description — in a stroller.  The baby immediately points at me, says something in gibberish which sounds like it could be translated in full, and laughs.  Mom shoos kid away from pointing at me, and redirects the kid’s attention anywhere else.  The kid drifts back to my direction, and starts laughing again.  I shurg, and divert my gaze awkwardly for the remainder.
Someone walks in at the next stop.  He sees the baby, and in that sort of instinctive manner with such cases, starts making goo-goo faces at the kid.  He doesn’t get anywhere with the child — who looks ahead stone-faced.

Overheard conversations:
She passes off a dream.  Its meaning is evident, and I chomp at the bit to interject to explain the facets of dream-land, but am undercut by not only the other two she’s conversing with rolling down a few things, but a more important statement: “the dream’s not important”; “your subconscious is just sorting things on the table.”  It appeared the woman was in the trap of thinking her dreams all have something of divine import — a trap some people fall into which I imagine would be a tad overwhelming.  (From the couple of times I have talked with her, I figure as much.)

The political discussion goes — “Now I’m further to the left than both of you, if that’s possible.  I call my daughter all the time, she responds to any suggestion of government tapping into her various activities with a ‘Yeah F — Them!”

The dramer tells of her quick and frantic political awakening over the past year.  She speaks of needing to get the word out, and lists people she’s been watching on the Internet.

“Alex Jones?  I’ve never heard of him.”
“No.  You’ve seen him.  You had to have.  He’s [Title of some such production].”
“Hm.  Maybe.  I don’t know.  But…. calm down.  It’s like, yep!  They’re making water a commodity for sale in Nigeria, but it’s no use stomping your foot on it.”
[The classic “I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do” line.]
“Also, be discerning with your sources.”