Namaste, Ya'll:

It seems strange to liken Los Angeles to the canary in the coal mine, and to present myself as a case study for the New Savagery, but here I am!

Just recently I observed the year anniversary of my eviction on March 19, 2024. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fighting for my life. I'd skated up to the brink of kidney failure, had lost 40 pounds. Those who hadn't seen me in awhile were shocked.

I'm finally able, neurologically speaking, to write about it. I was evicted after a long and very debilitating illness.

Agent Orange has tried its best to convince the world that Los Angeles is an asylum for the criminally deranged, that the streets have been abandoned to mayhem, and most hilariously, that our city officials are actually on the side of the poor.

They are not.

Stanley Mosk Superior Court is a brothel of special interests, and I could smell duck fat on the judge who fed me to the streets. 'Landlords like money,' he bloviated. 'Maybe you should talk to your landlord about money!' That was after I missed the court date. I had fallen through every crack. I was 64, incapacitated, trying to make ends meet on a retirement check of less than $1000.

Welcome to the new savagery.

Fed to the court without representation, too sick and poor to make the court date, left in the dark about the time frame within I was expected to move.... I arrived to my former home on that blistering afternoon from the courthouse to find myself locked out of the building I lived in for 24 years.

I had no phone (a tale of corporate overlordship and malicious negligence by Spectrum), no money, no transportation. The Covid protections had expired, and even though a charitable agency was ready to write a check for my entire arrears, the slumlord's attorney refused to accept payment. The building had stood half empty for years, a grand old mid century place in Los Feliz where I'd lived 24 years.

Los Angeles is owned -- lock stock and barrel -- by the California Association of Realtors, who pulled a real coup d' etat over the working poor.

What a journey. There's a lot to say. Right now I need stuff at the Fruit of the Loom level, if you know what I mean.

I announced recently that I was at last relocated, but the unit is not practically inhabitable and I am getting aggressively legal about this, in the unlikely event that the law protects anyone but the rich.

in a very odd situation and unable to make ends meet, let alone get set up properly. I am going to tell more very shortly about my near-future plans. But I am back on two feet as of only a week ago after some unholy scourge that may or may not have been Covid. It was a little slice of hell, lemme tell ya... I was in a proper malarial delirium, or similitude thereof, it seems.

I am in want of some basics, including clothing, dishes and some fixtures to make this juicy little windfall for the real estate biz inhabitable. We're all getting squeezed. It's an awful time to for a 'rent party,' so to speak. We're all looking in the rearview, wondering if Agent Orange is trying to pass us on the right. Don't let him.

Hang tight, everyone. It's going to be bumpy.

Blessings,

Ragged Bo