On Christmas Eve Morning I stacked a floor display of butter in front of the case. The floor temp was 42 due to the low efficiency cases and having a clerk restock the butter from a cart every ½ hour would expose the butter to just as much temperature shock, so I broke regulations. I sold 7 cases in 2 hours and picked up the bottom case—still cold as my X—and shelved half of it while handing out butter to the ladies and gents—problem solved.

That’s front loading.

In the Quaker Plantation of Pennsylvania Nero the Pict finds himself locked out of the State Store where you have to buy booze, because it’s the law. Back there your beer must be bought at a beer distributor or the ridiculous six-pack shop.

Out here in Portland every 7-11, plaid pantry, supermarket and more have a vast wine and beer array. Safeway has three isles of booze! The liquor stores do not have wine crowding out what a pale negro needs on this darkest eve! No siree me!

One will find, with regulated distribution, whether regulated by government or corporate control, that there is always a failure to front load, because front loading takes immediate and intimate knowledge of the location. In Oregon, as liberal as this place is, the accretion of puritanic laws has not permitted the limitation of the store of caloric and tranquilizing value that is alcohol. On the way home from the bar yesterday I bought 18 local brewed beers and 2 bottles of wine for $22, after dark, at a corner store.

In the way home from the bank this morning, with an “Irishman jus’ got paid” jaunt to my hobbled step, I stopped at the liquor stop and got a bottle of 96 proof spiced rum for $12. I could have got Rican rum for $7, but shoot, I still have some old booze in the yurt. I walked by a cop with that bottle of rum, since bags are frowned upon by retailers here, and he did not stop me and kick my ass like a PIG back leased would have done.

My point is, that Portland seems to have as much beer and booze on hand as the entire state of Pennsylvania, which is closing state stores.

I am hearing that California is locking down, so maybe it will come here too. The bars and eateries are almost empty as it is. So they might close anyhow, as millions of college students jet across the nation to spread disease and harry the reign of the Orange Man. It does seem that people back leased have an instinct for how accreted with evil that elder version of system control is and are duly panicking. Indeed, people didn’t panic out here until the news carried news of panic in the leased, in the rancid womb of the Mother of the Beast.

The entire bar staff is on hand here today, bringing in their own supplies of food, since Sysco seems to be tapped out.

People get by.

I have heard whispers from some military men that something national is coming down on Wednesday and the Bay Area is locking down tomorrow. As this bar owner readies himself against dearth like a tavern owner of old who fed the wayfarer and the working man before the fragile network of sissy distribution existed—taking his own truck to buy groceries at a wholesaler warehouse—this cipher wonders only what the system will do to us. If left alone, we’d be fine but that will not happen as so many of our kind bleat in their delusion pens for the petting hand of their master.

I have 8 trains I’m supposed to take getting back leased over 14 days. That seems a little optimistic and easily frayed. So, tomorrow I go to the train station and try and streamline a schedule that will be more disaster proof—three trains, maybe 4, that will get bumped along as a delay more effectively than the schedule I have.

If there is a “shelter in place” order given by the panic stricken mob bosses, I’ll be without wifi and won’t be able to post. Otherwise I’ll venture forth into the sissy snark, for as Nero the Pict told me yesterday, “Good thing we aren’t enjoying this shit back in Baltimore!”

I seems I got out of Retail Food and Baltimore just in time!

If I can post, I will try and make it on a subject other than this perpetual downshift.

I am hoping, before I take train out of Portland, to finish the novels:

-Beyond the Pale [fantasy]

-The Filthy Few [adventure]

-Wonderfall [science-fiction]

Write the first 3 chapters of the Plantation America novel Bound

And write the novelettes:

-Juan Stabone: Tao of the Last Good Cop

-Drinking with a Gay Giraffe

But who knows—I might not have enough booze!

If I may, at this point in this dull gleam of thought, try and sharpen it to a point; the problem is us. We are too organized towards optimal comfort and profit, which weakens most and strengths the few—and but rigidly, and maybe they will teeter and fall, shatter and crawl.

Hope might be bullshit—but an asphalt ape can still dream!

Enjoy the times ahead—they are already gaping hungrily at your feet.