That Loser Feeling: Writing: Evil: A Letter to Steve

Esteemed Esteban,

This is amazing. I wrote the above two words, and then set to daydreaming. I've been sitting here for five minutes, staring out the window, grinning.

It has finally happened. Dan got a job up north. We're moving.

We are no longer part of the Monterey County slave caste!

What was making me grin just now? Yes, what was I daydreaming about? Well I'll tell you.

Carmel in flames. That's what. Rioters running through Pebble Beach at night, igniting homes. Salinas residents renting two-seater planes, and dumping incendiary devices all over the Carmel Highlands.

Any fucking thing to bring down the property values around here. I want this county to burn. I want this county, along with all its barn-plank shopping centers with cute gardening accessory stores and crystal/herbal inner-healing shops, and its bronze sculptures of children in butterfly costumes, and its galleries that pander to the Thomas "Painter of Light" Kinkade crowd, and Elderly-Only walking trails along the best parts of the coastline, and its fucked up, Post-Hippie/Boomer faux-artisan attitude, to look like the black, stinking, filthy hole that it morally already is. I want to scare away all the tourists, and all the investors, and all the other fuckheads who drive up the housing market so ludicrously that property values double every fucking thirty-six months. I want those German investment banker fucks to think twice before they buy a $3.4M, two-bedroom home on Seventeen Mile Drive, just so it can stand empty 11 months out of the year.

In Monterey County, you're either a fourth generation heir to the fortune of one of those Swiss Calvinists who bought up this area back in the 1800s, or you're an investor who doesn't even fucking live in the homes you bought here, or you own a hotel or a chain of restaurants. If you're none of these things, you're part of the slave caste, and you work in the service industry. And you don't live in Monterey, or Carmel, or Pebble Beach, or any other town whose residents you serve.

I am so sick of this geriatric town. I'm tired of the 15 mph speed limit down Lighthouse Avenue, which is only there because the fuckhead elderly can't make it from the accelerator to the brake fast enough to prevent flattening some other fuckhead elderly's prize Pekingese, which should have been on a leash in the first place. I'm sick of all the stores being owned by retirees who run everything on a whim, and close everything down at three in the afternoon because they want to get home for cocktails and conversation about the day's cute antics of Bill Murray at the AT&T Pro-Am Golf Tournament. I'm sick of the difficulty I have finding good music in the local shops, when entire displays are devoted to local artisans' CDs, which always turn out to be bad home recordings of zithers laid over whale ululation, with titles like Ballads of the Sea-Singers slapped on the package. I'm tired of the Monarch butterfly migration, a fascinating, natural event, being turned into yet another annual tourist draw, when sun-dazed eight year olds are forced into black and orange striped sweaters and black deely-bobbers, so elderly shop owners can close everything down and applaud them when the kids are marched down Lighthouse in the Monarch Parade. I'm sick of the police blotter in the Carmel Pine Cone, the local newsletter. Oh I'm SO fucking sick of that police blotter. People calling 911— 911!— because a raccoon is on their roof. Or because they can't find their car keys. Or because the frogs in their backyard pond are croaking too loud, for fuck's sake. Maybe it's my failing, but when the police in Seaside are afraid to respond to complaints in certain neighborhoods, and when a resident is shot every weekend in Salinas, I get a little irked when 911 PSAP resources are taken up by chowderheaded Carmel residents who crap their navy-blue stretch slacks because the painted divider on Ocean Avenue is looking a little faded.

These are people who came out to California in their twilight years, hoping that the sun and warmth would compensate for their weak hearts, bad circulation, and their complete absence of soul.

These are people who let mayor and property investor Clint Eastwood buy local news station KSBW because they saw no conflict of interest there at all.

These are people who are so out of touch, whose priorities are so wildly out of order, that they think Bubba Gump Shrimp Company was a great restaurant idea.

This is unforgivable.

I can deal with Clint, and the traffic, and the stupidity, but the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company is unforgivable.

Fire is Monterey's friend. These people need to be scared spitless. It's a false economy anyway. Something needs to burn. The owners don't even live here but for a couple of months out of the year; they won't be misplaced when Carmel and Pebble Beach go up in flames. I just hope the rioters wait for me to get my stuff packed and moved.

Last updated 24 March 2003