Max’s Journal 6/25/2013

By Max R. Weller

I’m starting my third week of coming to CU’s Norlin Library every weekday morning, since returning to work on my blog after taking a month off (more or less). I’ve yet to see any of the bums who used to hang out here, stinking up the place, grunting or making other weird noises that distracted other patrons, eating and drinking at the public access computer stations, passing out drunk facedown on the keyboard, etc. No more Filthy Phil (who seems to have taken up residence on a bench at the University Hill bus stop), Grunting Man, or Drunk Virgil. Thanks to Norlin Library staff and the CU Police for making it so! It would be great if the powers-that-be at Boulder Public Library would follow this example, and stop pussyfooting around with the hordes of bums mucking up our Main Branch Library at 1001 Arapahoe next to Central Park . . .

I verbally chastised both Shouting Joe from St. Louis and his partner Mississippi Billy yesterday afternoon when they showed up at my spot in the shade in my north Boulder neighborhood. They don’t seem to comprehend their own responsibility for causing problems that attract the attention of law enforcement — and rightly so. Hell, if I owned a cell phone I’d be calling the law on their sorry butts myself. Frequently. It’s always somebody else’s fault, according to them. Joe even admitted to me he’d been ticketed in downtown Boulder yesterday morning; my guess would be for an Open Container of Alcohol violation. You have to be dumber than a box of rocks to think that you can guzzle cheap beer or rotgut vodka in an area frequented by Boulder PD officers. Joe was quite upset, and said that he might leave town in a couple of days. I hope that he’ll take his partner Billy with him — all of the hugging these guys do with each other makes me wonder whether they really are a couple in a romantic sense. Perhaps they’ll be united in a civil union per the new Colorado law, and it would make a perfect fluff piece in the Daily Camera. “Gay transient couple pledge to be drunk together forever” would be too long a headline, but the editor can figure something out.

I took along some real bacon, scrambled eggs, and fried potatoes in my GladWare container from a surprise hot breakfast at Boulder Shelter for the Homeless this morning. Thanks to the crew of volunteers for making it happen! My breakfast is always a mug of instant coffee, but I’ll grab some to-go chow for lunch whenever it looks good.

I’d never thought that I could give up following the news so easily. I started reading newspapers and watching Walter Cronkite on TV at an age when my peers had no interest in current events at all. Now, however, I find it a great relief not to give a damn. It makes for shorter blog entries, too, which aren’t straying too far from the subject of homelessness.

I believe I’ll just stay in the shade all day, and not even bother to step onto the corner of N. Broadway & U.S. 36 as humble beggar, nor clean up after the pickled idjits who tend to trash it on a daily basis. Thanks to generous passersby, I made $34 between 4 and 6PM last evening, so money is not an issue at the moment. I’ll just pick up a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale and maybe some Oreos from King Soopers and be set.