DickConfetti

So, after… too long… It looks like I’m finally goddamn moving. Hooray!

Sometime in the last week of July or first week of August I’ll be driving to New England with one of my ex-roomies. Probably one ‘Day of Rest’ (Driver’s Shabbat), then I’ll be taking Taur to an airport (Logan? Maybe one in Connecticut… I don’t know D: ) and driving out to Worcester for happy fun time.

Should be fun >_> I have to start taking trips to Manteca again now to get everything ready. Do not want. I’ve been having such a lovely time in San Jose away from… all that.

In other news, I finally got my old domain back from He Who Shall Remain Chubby Unnamed, and am not sure what to do with it now that I have this domain. The old one is ShiftyEyed.net, which just points here for now. Should I buy hosting? Le sigh.

I’m going to attempt to write a post of substance. Be gentle, I’m on pseudoephedrine laden cough-syrup. =P
Tweakers and my family have very little to do with one another, really. No one in my family (that I know of) is a tweaker… Though I know my dad was getting involved with some less than kosher substances when my folks split up in like 02 or 03, or whenever that was.
It’s mostly that because I now have to live with my family, I get to deal with tweakers since we’re living in Tweaker Valley.
I don’t understand what the draw to this place is, really.

The city of Manteca is beset by agricultural land and unincorporated towns. Our nearest big cities are Tracy, Modesto and Stockton.
All of which, including Manteca, have been in the news since I was in highschool at least once each due to hate-crimes against white people and the LGBT community.
There have also been a number of KKK/White Supremest related murders and assaults in Modesto, both targeted at non-whites, and whites of alternative lifestyles. (What do you mean I can’t wear a cute kerchief around my neck or face being shot? Fuck that.)

Manteca and Tracy are the kinds of cities where you don’t really DO anything.
They have expansive footprints and very low density overall, meaning it takes forever to get anywhere or do anything.
Not that there’s a whole hell of a lot to do unless you’re the typical American who loves nothing more than playing baseball and drinking beers.
The main congregation spots in Manteca, that I’ve found, are all centered around mock-up Baseball stadiums.
Manteca is now home to the 9th Big League Dreams Sports Park. This is a complex made up of several small baseball fields all designed to look like a larger, more famous stadium from around the nation.

Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

The one good thing this city had going for it, the Manteca Water Slides, was demolished a few years ago (2004) and is currently sinking under a lake. Land developers are proposing doing a new housing tract given it’s proximity to the freeways to encourage more Bay Area commuters to move here and wonder “Well, we’re here. Now what?”

Back to tweakers.
Given the high poverty rate in the Central Valley and the large amount of unchecked land, it’s become home to a lot of California’s methlabs and, understandably, meth users. With very little to do otherwise, a lot of people, lacking any form of sunshine in their lives, have turned to creating their own sunshine with a crystalline substance and small glass pipe.
Drive down any main street (Main, Louise, Airport, Yosemite) and you’ll understand precisely what I mean. The closer you get to the freeways, the more of it you’ll see.
Even the “nice” areas of Manteca aren’t safe from the stigma and apparent problems this city has.
Last time I lived here with my family, we lived in one of the newer areas. There were nice parks, a brand new Kaiser Permenante facility, and a shopping center that had been given a new paint job and some structural face lifts shortly before we moved in.
On a 5 minute walk from my apartment to the grocery store, I would, on a good day, be asked twice if I wanted to buy crystal. Seriously? We were three blocks from the police station. Admittedly, there were times when I wondered if it was the cops themselves trying to nab people and get them to buy, but there were times when you could see the damage the drug had done to the people, and you knew it wasn’t a sting… Unless the cops are hiring really good make-up artists to help their undercover busts… but I somehow doubt that.

I’m just hoping I won’t be here for much longer. I can’t stand looking at this city. I can’t stand the boredom.
I haven’t left the house much because it’s just so depressing to see what this city is. It was once a really nice agricultural area, but it’s just fallen to shambles. The whole area has what with the drugs and gangs.
I had sort of hoped that maybe with the market crash and the influx of investors buying homes here and selling them at well above market value, that it would in a way improve the face of the city. More wealthy investors and homeowners would make one think the city would in turn be forced to give the city a facelift, or improve safety to keep the well-to-do pleased… In reality all it did was force more people out of their homes and on to the streets.

I don’t know if there was a point to this. I just felt like ranting.
I loathe the central valley. I loathe the long drive I have to endure to see my friends. I loathe the lack of any jobs here. (It’s mostly residential and retail, so there’s very little in the way of IT and I refuse to drive buses here. Did I mention I don’t like tweakers?) I know my family likes it here, and that’s great for them… but I can’t bring myself to be okay with the state of things here, and I’m not about to run for office to fix it. Just because Campbell got a (hot) 25 year old gay Asian for a mayor doesn’t give me much hope for the Central Valley.
The area I’m in, specifically, and the area my sister is in, aren’t horrible. Mine is patrolled regularly by the Manteca PD due to vandalism and “hooligans” in the park down the street congregating in the evenings to enjoy their Mary-Joo-Wanna and Crystal. (Police blotters are pretty descriptive sometimes.) My sister’s area I don’t know much about. On the surface it looks a lot nicer, and aside from one or two Sheriffs rolling around on holidays, I haven’t seen or heard of much police activity or increased patrol there.
Sometimes I forget what it’s like here, and when I talk to my friends who are from the area and either got the hell out of dodge and moved to the Bay, or are trying to, their stories seem to be somewhat exaggerated… And then you get here.
The strip of Louise I have to take to get from my parents house to my sisters house changes faces at least twice in the couple of miles you’re on it… Then from my sisters to I-5 about another 3 times and it’s disgusting.
Yes, the cost-of-living is monetarily lower, but it comes at a much higher emotional tax for some than anywhere else in the state. It balances out to being “not really any better” in my book… But then, most people don’t comprehend what I mean when I say “emotional tax.” That’s fine. It’s my bag, not yours.
When am I going to Massachusetts, again? ._. fffffu–

When it comes right down to it, I guess, I don’t have to pay attention to any of this. And if I don’t, then the only way any of this really affects me is that I can’t buy my decongestive NyQuil as readily as I might need since the pseudoephedrine is used in Methlabs and they control it’s sale.

::sneezes:: Did I mention I have a really bad cold/flu thing and need more Pseudoephedrine cold/flu medicine?
- K