ZacParker.com

In the Mexico City International Airport (I don’t think it’s actually called that) at 1:31am. I have 3.5 hours until the gates open and I can check-in. Lucky for me, there is plenty of coffee, and I have enough pesos left after changing 52$ to buy a couple more. Also I’ve got some oranges and bananas in case I get hungry. Sitting next to me, is a security guard. Actually hes sleeping. I hope hes getting paid. There seems to actually be several tables full of security guards. All sleeping. Looks like a killer job to me! Anyhow, I’m writing because I’m bored, and I can. I need to keep myself occupied to pass the time. If I sleep, I’m sure to miss my flight. Sure of it! This is how my luck works. However, I’m looking forward to sleeping away my time in LA. If it’s possible. Maybe I’ll opt for S(p)eedy Tim’s Plastic Surgery (financed, of course), to pass the time. Get that true Californian experience. Or perhaps I should release the bad feelings I have for Californians in general. It’s just that they come to Oregon… and live here. Tom McCall may have been a republican, but I can say he is one of the first republicans I’ve ever liked. He of course is dead, like all the good ones are. Not to say that the only good republican is a dead one, though I’ve probably said something to that effect in the past. He has said some things which I thoroughly enjoy. Let the quotations begin.

“Heroes are people who say: This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better.”

” But there is a shameless threat to our environment and to the whole quality of life — unfettered despoiling of the land. Sagebrush subdivisions, coastal “condo mania,” Oregon’s status as the environmental model for the Nation.”

“We want you to visit our State of Excitement often. Come again and again. But for heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live. Or if you do have to move in to live, don’t tell any of your neighbors where you are going.”

and finally

“You all know I have terminal cancer-and I have a lot of it. But what you may not know is that stress induces its spread and induces its activity. Stress may even bring it on. Yet stress is the fuel of the activist. This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life. I know I can’t have both very long. The trade-offs are all right with me. But if the legacy we helped give Oregon and which made it twinkle from afar-if it goes, then I guess I wouldn’t want to live in Oregon anyhow.”

I relate to especially to that last one, and relate to this man because of our apparent shared love and shared pride, for our state. Shared desire to not only exist as the state we are, but to improve upon what few things could use improving upon. The last thing I want to see happen to Oregon, is for it to become the next California. The next “Place-to-be” for rich fuck-wits that move here because their favorite magazine tells them how wonderful, how untouched, how unique it is. As soon as these people arrive, it will cease to be the place I have spent my life loving so very much. Where else would I go? Where else is like Oregon? Anywhere else just wouldn’t be the same.