Author: Orin Zebest

My chosen name is Orin Robertjohn Zebest. My née name was "Robert John La Londe-Berg" but is no longer my legal name. Use that if you want to. My good friends "the homeslices," otherwise known as The Homepie, call me Billy.

There's a story behind that --- and you can ask them if you want to. They live in Palm Springs, where we all grew up. Well... where we were all bored and self-amusing teenagers. They live there in a big house and I live here in San Francisco, in a much-apportioned-but-not-so-big apartment. I'm the one that has all the internet skills, and I'm the one that has the discipline to blog (sort of).

Incidentally, this is not a blog; it is a Glot. Glot is what it is. Read more if you must. I don't write often, although sometimes I do. I write about a great number of things: some personal, some reflective, some reactive, some rantive, some radioactive, some are really just sort of silly. My topics are of my own choosing. My choice is to discover some topics. In other, more conceptual terms: this site exists as no more than an edification to the intrinsic value of highly individual perceptions, and that individual happens to be myself, Orin. If that sentence makes sense, congratulations, you've won the chance to write me an email.

Categories
Dream Journal

LA Cinderalla Phone Sale, Returning a Message

A gambit pays off, and after I leave a comment or invite for Plarvolia she finally responds. I think she messages about being open to meeting. I spend the rest of the dream vaguely excited and anxious how this will turn out

In the Los Angeles area I witness the rich meddle with reshaping hilly land near the coast. I decide to interview for a job available in the oil extraction industry. In the dream I’m in persona as an older black guy, wearing tall black leather boots and a blackleotard outfit. There’s some logic that this minimizes the problems of getting the black-colored oil on one’s skin when you’re a worker, so is kind of part of the job.

Through Criagslist, I visit a decaying neighborhood to but an older candybar-style phone. I look around and recognize many “Cinderella” style details on the underkept houses, fairytale roof awnings and such. The whole neighborhood was once an overly-decorated marketers dream in (perhaps) the 1950s or 60s, though it probably looked overly cookie-cutter back then. It’s obvious there was never any plan to upkeep them, and the natural tides of money and time left buildings that were difficult to distinguish between abandoned and simply poor.

I spend time going up and down neighborhood catwalks trying to conclude the sale. It’s a mess. In the course of negotiations I realize that since this is LA I don’t have an easy way to get back to where I’m staying unless the person who broght me here on the prospect of buying the phone also drives me back. I settle for a much-inflated price of $100, hoping to get back sooner than later at least.

The dream ends with me realizing I’m now the one who has taken a long time to respond to Plarvolia, much different than before. I am worrying that the phone won’t even work and I won’t be able to get back to her in time. I find I can’t get back to sleep and message…

Categories
Dream Journal

Beast Outside Cafe, Beauty of Diner

I’ve been dispatched to check out Beauty and the Beast cafe, in a double decker bus. There’s more story before this but I can’t get myself to recall more. I pass through the entire layout and ponder what I’ve seen in a smaller area behind it, above road level. I’m people-watching, happening to see a small fancy-looking yorkie dog plodding purposefully around the corner, no owner in sight. Hm… I’m not familar enough with this region to understand whether I should be concerned and do something about it. My companion introduces me as Neil, which in this story is my deadname that I didn’t even know they knew.

I go up the hill outside, exploring further into this land I’m visiting (Alaska, I think). It’s a glorious climb. I take my first step onto late-season snow with a satisfying crunch. There’s a geometric dome structure that’s prismatic and pretty, a puzzle of some kind. Summiting the hill I come into view of a famous diner, fully as picturesque as any tourist brochure could hope for, with massive snow capped peaks in the background. It’s a ideal image of classic rugged Americana, with classic cars and station wagons nearby. Turning around, I discover something of interest to me personally, an abandoned building with a plaque outside, reading simply “Train Ruins”. Some relic of railroad infrastructure that, in it’s way, is as beautiful as the postcard-worthy diner and mountains uphill from it.

Unusually, I only got half this dream down after I woke in the morning. I had (as is frequent) intended to write it down completely, having put in the effort to remember it while lying in bed during my typical hypnogogic time. I was still able to recall *enough*of it to be satisfied.

Categories
Dream Journal

Waking Barefoot in My Neighborhood

Walking around streets of my neighborhood barefoot. I’ve gotten further from home than I had originally planned, and I’m being thoughtful about it, but it’s very present in my mind as I slowly walk along.

I recalled this dream upon discovering that last night, I had accidentally cracked the handmade cork sole of my shoe. I realize, too that I ran outside in them late at night around the neighborhood to check on a honking car.

I see a pair of Madras pants like I like on top of a barrel. On closer inspection, it looks like a dress that would fit my wife. There are a couple of pairs of shoes as well, a bit of a free pile it would seem. Their outside of a sewing store that’s open late nights. Unusual that I’ve never noticed it before in my neighborhood, despite living here for so long — I wouldn’t have discovered it if I hadn’t been walking slow.

Categories
Dream Journal

Mostly Alone, and Muddled Maps

Rubbing the house of Peter Thiel — twice. It’s a long building laid out like a lodge and I find it easy to come and go. The location feels like it could be the old Pacific Supermarket in SF, but if it is, the neighborhood is barren and empty now. I don’t remember even taking anything. I just fuck around with his rich people stuff in between his infrequent visits. I’m never caught despite noticing overhead cameras pointed right at eye level. I end up hiding near the elevators around back which are used by workers. This transitions to an outdoor sequence.

The curved patio-like area outside the large house is on a vast plain. I think of it as Burning Man, despite that the vastness itself is a color. I’m awake during the day at the unlikely hour of 10:00 am, when no one else is up either — this is one reason I’ve been able to sneak around so well. My sleep schedule is difficult to alter, so for the moment I know I’m stuck with the strange feeling of being awake when no one is around.

I seem to wake up a bit, a hypnogogic interstitial, and imagine a soundproof and insulated large tent at Burning Man which is kept cold. It appears exactly like a snowy landscape, offering camping as well. The tents at the tree line give it an immersive look and it really does feel like being somewhere it snows. It’s still empty in here too.

I overhear my fourth grade teacher Mr. Suggett out a window talking about a sponsorship for his class. I repeat something he says at the right moment to humorous effect, “you’re going to be playing volleyball for weeks!”, which gets a good laugh.

Problem with several world maps. I examine at least two, both lacking detail in countries, with blurry boundaries or poor print quality. It’s as if the borders weren’t finalized in the maps themselves. My fourth grade teacher was very important for my understanding of maps.

Problem with GPS directions, causing me to take a god-awful long time to turn across an intersection on my motorcycle. Finally I get to a destination marked as Busch Gardens (I’ve never been to the actual Busch Gardens, I don’t think this location had anything to do with it). It’s a ramshackle toilet paper stall at the end of a dead end street. There’s a sign at the empty end, “no obtuse cancers here”, which I guess is intended as funny. I take a picture, or try to, unable to confirm if my phone actually took it.

I negotiate with the stall attendant and understand I have to pick out which toilet paper I will choose. Arbitrarily, I feel a roll with teapots on, which is very soft. Yet I don’t understand whether I have to buy it in bulk (by length) or if she sells rolls of it. Peeking around the corner of her stall assembled of wooden sticks, I see that it’s a bustling flea market day. I try to ask her if it would be better for me to go around to shop on the other side, accessing her stall walking through the flea market. She answers me in a broken Russian accent and I can’t understand her, and don’t know how to get around to the other street.

Categories
Dream Journal

Pulque Heist Scammer Man

Dream revolving around a central character, a young man with a mustache whose name I don’t think I ever learned. I’m working at an adult school when I’m first introduced to him. A slightly older female coworker asks me if I can work the projector for some event he’s putting together. I assume it must be someone she knows, but actually he asked her to ask around — essentially just for free labor.

He puts together a heist based on the connections he made from the successful event. I think of it as a pulque heist (I’m in Guadalajara and have been enjoying the stuff a lot) but I don’t remember much, to be honest. I do know that after we pull it off, he stiffs the rest of us on divvying the spoils.

I incidentally find out that he’s a Swift truck driver, of course — drivers for the road shipping company Swift are known for being the cockiest, and worst.

I run into him again some time after he doesn’t pay. When I go to confront him, he needs help again for an even bigger job where I’m even more necessary. I could exploit my position to ask for my original share plus even more, but the other people we did the heist with aren’t here and I can’t effectively bargain for them. I’m drawn between what to do as there aren’t any good options, and I really don’t like the arrogant guy anyways.

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Dream Journal

Spanish as Music or Buildings

Spanish words collected like a discography, arranged into albums and made into playlists. Specifically to me this is a series of midcentury British light jazz called “Test Card Music” (a series which sounds like a genre itself). The cover colors are colorful and abstract. There’s even more series that fit the same easy listening purpose, but I think it was only this series.

There are earlier dreams, when I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, where Spanish words appeared on the landings and interiors of buildings. I moved around freely like a drone or a free-floating camera.

Categories
Dream Journal

Throwing Knives at Me

Chicken John needs my help to pull a trick in some deal he’s trying to pull off. He’s allowed me back into his circle of trust for this purpose. It’s the friend group I had a decade ago. He doesn’t realize that I don’t care about the social pressure anymore, and that when I’m asked what I think of the deal I’ll just tell the truth. He gets publicly furious at me and starts throwing knives towards me — he’s somehow allowed to do that, since no one will stop him. The knives land point-on, pinging into wood and vibrating with their impact. One lands above my head, another clatters off a low wall. I grab one, not sure what I mean to do (perhaps use it as evidence) but it feels more dangerous to run with it than have something to defend myself with.

This dream wakes me up early and I have to get myself back to sleep. The next few dreams share a similar setting, without any of the plot elements.

Chicken is living at a remote rural compound which is a former hardware store. It’s large and feels like it’s open air, though not having a roof doesn’t seem to matter. It’s down a straight hilled slope and a concrete drive, as if the land was cleared long ago. It’s big enough that various aisles feel abandoned even with the scattered projects and improvements people have done. I sense that there are frequent visitors but few besides Chicken that will commit to living there. It seems like he’s still operating like it’s ten years ago and the transformative power of the art will just carry through on whatever big project he wants to do.

The same area becomes a Mormon church — no Chicken, no rural art colony. I’m part of a team which conspires to steal a ritually important object from the church. This is actually a set-up conspired with the church leadership to boost congregation morale and brief that the object (a book, a breastplate?) actually is mystical. We’re a bunch of urban occult-y weirdoes so we seem perfect for the task. My school friend Robby T. is one of the churchgoers, which makes sense because he was Mormon. The heist does work, but we end up hiding the object within the big church, in one of the windows, facing the non-usual direction. This feels almost like a prank, since the churchgoers don’t recognize it that way.

Categories
Dream Journal

Endless Sentences

A recurring game where you have to write a sentence. The sentence becomes your reality, your fate. There’s an unavoidable karma to this, no matter what you choose (and you have to write *something*) there will be some negative consequence, some necessary lesson. This feels like limbo or purgatory in retrospect, but in the dream it’s presented as hell.

Categories
Letters

Old Hosting Service’s Cancellation Form Doesn’t Work (so now I post it publicly)

New pricing structure fails to reflect the actual costs of service. While I lack insider knowledge, I have noticed suspicious declines in quality. Combined with these unjustified price hikes this suggests the true reason is something more troublesome: recent acquisition by predatory investors. These practices disgrace modern commerce and our society at large; I am eager to avoid them whenever possible. That was why I came to this host in the first place. Another lamentable example of the much-discussed “enshittification”, I suppose.

Ostensibly this concerns web hosting — and yes, it may be futile to say anything more — but this situation exemplifies a pervasive and perverse economic condition: wealthy decision-makers *pathologically* incapable of satisfaction. So-called “Affluenza” currently lacks clinical treatment, yet as a mental impairment it is profoundly harmful. When we consumers tolerate exploitative pricing and degraded products, we not only support compulsive greed, we contribute to its further harms. The ill-gotten wealth inevitably leads to abandonment of mundane standards like fairness, good faith, temperance, and accountability. It empowers those so afflicted to use our money for ever worsening misconduct. This is common. This is tragic. This is morally indefensible. And it does not matter if it’s web hosting today — another day it may be housing, government, infrastructure, or human lives. The only standards they will respect are those we force upon them. Here then is my frail line in the sand: this time, the rich jerks won’t get my piddling money.

Collective actions are necessary… however small. We fight enshittification whenever we can. No support for WHG, EIG, or any entity prioritizing their own gains at the expense of literally everything else. We fix this when we stop indulging broken people with more money than sense. One day maybe they’ll wake up and see what they’ve been doing.

Categories
Dream Journal

Butt Pinch from Gabrielle

I’m volunteering at a fair along with some friends. The booths are indoors but the public walkways outside, a bit like a public market. I’ve been wandering for a bit and come back to our booth, where I think we’re raising money for a charity. My two female friends have been holding themselves up with their feet raised on a dais and their hands on the ground, like the wheel pose in yoga. This has the effect of having their butts flexed tight and held in the air. I offer to take a turn the remainder of a the day to replace them, despite the obvious expectation that my male butt won’t be as eye-catching as both of theirs. Nevertheless, they’re thankful to take me up on the offer and I feel pretty good about being able to provide some equal-opportunity butt presentation.

While I’m zoning out in my pose, visitors to the booth mill around. I don’t pay much attention to them, as my role for now is just to keep the pose during my shift. One of them startles me by pinching my butt, which — while not exactly disallowed — isn’t particularly encouraged. I collapse in surprise, and when I look up to see who did it, I see a familiar face: Gabrielle from the TV show Xena (as played by Renee O’Connor). There’s no obvious connection for why she would’ve pinched me, nor have I thought of her recently. It’s a good laught though, and I’m kind of happy it happened to me. It’s a fun story to retell to the girls, and I doubt the reverse situation would be the case. I mention that hope we got the event on video.

There’s a Mom shopping at the fair who drops her two-year-old with us at the booth. I’m talking to it while, having realized that the kid can understand a lot more that she can answer. It’s fun to have a full conversation though, without regard for what she probably expects from adults. I remember a specific occasion where I made a very long, sophisticated, multi-step question, where I knew she understood the whole thing — but all she can reasonably manage as a response is a flustered “well I don’t know!” It’s a bit of mischief we both seem to enjoy.

We review the time we’ver had when Mom shows up again. Shortly afterwards, I get to tell the girls about Gabby pinching me, which the do find as entertaining as hoped.