Fear and Self Loathing in Las Vegas

So I rolled into the rest stop yesterday afternoon. Rest stops are often a bit of a gambit, as they are often manned by maintenance crew, and, if you roll in overnight, they kind of expect you to sleep. They get sort of suspicious if you hang around for awhile with no reasonable explanation. And as far as I know, being a high tech hobo is NOT considered a reasonable explanation.

So I'm sitting around for a couple of hours, strumming my guitar and generally getting along peaceably. After a couple of hours, getting the stinkeye from the maintenance guy, so I decided to roll into Las Vegas and WalMart camp yet again. All the while I'm thinking hard about societal definitions of success, and how much "easier" it would be to knuckle under. A lot of browbeating and self loathing, which goes on a fair amount these days. I've never fit into a regular workweek, though, and I've spent a lot of years trying. But the alternative requires endless levels of enthusiasm and optimism that can be impossibly difficult to muster.

All the while, I'm getting FB updates from people who continue to villainize the recent Mexican immigrants in a way that is eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and I'm wondering, maybe the time HAS come to move out of Tea Partystan, but to where? Feeling very much like a fellow without a home right now, and wondering if maybe that's the point. I know what I must do, I know where I must stand, but I also realize that stand leaves me very, very much alone in the place I call home. And it's hard to express just how depressing that can be.

So, as I bedded down for the night, I began mulling the title for the blog post this morning, and decided that paraphrasing Gonzo always works. The only problem is, I had the self loathing, gonna have to claim artistic license on the fear, right?

Ahhh, but karma as always comes through for me. I'm walking into the WalMart, and a motorcycle gang decides to whoop it up on the sidewalk in front of the WalMart. As if that wasn't enough, when I finally bedded down, a police officer pulled a fellow over not twenty feet from my van. I have to admit, I was a bit concerned that he was going to come poking around the van, as there was not the usual large assemblage of WalMart campers. He didn't, though, and I was able to get a peaceful night's sleep, then get up in the morning and have stuffys (sopapillas stuffed with eggs and meat, in this case chorizo, and smothered with green chile) at one of my favorite restaurants on the planet. It's the one indulgence I allowed myself on this road trip.

The Hobbs side trip tomorrow is a no go, so I may get a few hours to poke around Roswell. The first person to joke about me going home gets cyber dunked!!!!