I'm back. I haven't felt like writing in this thing for a few days. Why? Because this just sucks. That's the way I'm feeling. Lately I've been feeling inadequate about quite a few things. This online thing happens to be one of them.

My second job is becoming more and more of a burden and less of a financial help to me. I'm sick and tired of being the scapegoat. I'm tired of being considered the one with "all the computer secrets." Wake up. If the people at work can't figure out elementary (extremely elementary) things about certain programs that they have been using almost daily for 8 years or more (yes, eight fucking years), then it's not my problem. But for some reason, it is. I am the scapegoat. I am the sacrificial lamb. I don't know why. It's time that I seriously consider leaving. I've been there too long and I have to move on.

In the meantime, I'm on a Detroit kick. A huge one. I bought a butt-load of old Detroit postcards from way back in 1910's and 20's. I bought old books about Detroit and a scrapbook that a young girl owned. She was an opera fan and had clippings of Enrico Caruso and ballet dancers and movie stars.

Saturday evening, we went out with an old friend of Jason's. Jason's friend is this arrogant fool that tries to make up for his lack of experience with big words and a condescending tone. Anyway, he is an urban planning major in some community college in E. Lansing. And of course we got to talking about Detroit and what needed to be done with the Michigan Central Depot . America's tallest trainstation, which now stands abandoned on Michigan Avenue.

He told me that his class is working with the city government and developers (so he says) to figure out what to do with the station. Now hold on a second. If what he says is true, consider the population of a community college in E. Lansing and Michigan State University. WASP, middle-class kids, that know nothing of Detroit, it's citizens, it's history and the racial conflict which is the main reason for Detroit's demise (that and greed). These children are going to figure out what to do with this station? A station that is located in a very poor, almost abandoned area? An area whose financial survival was dependent on Tiger Stadium? An area whose citizens are working class, whose income is under or at the poverty level, older, and integrated with white, Hispanic and African-American?

And what do they know about the economics of that area? The hardships of it's citizens and neighborhoods? How much do they realize that the economic stability and/or prosperity relies on their decisions about the MCD, now that Mike Ilitch has moved the Tiger Stadium downtown?

How incredibly insulting for those people who have invested their lives in that area, that their community's fate is handed over to a bunch of white, rich kids, who don't know shit.

So what do you think one of this guy's ideas was for the train station. A museum. That's right a fucking museum. A museum will surely improve the quality of life for the people that live there. Don't you think? The people who's businesses are in grave danger of closing down and their neighborhoods abandoned because of the Tiger Stadium move. What they need to rejuvinate the economy is a museum.

Then we talk about the reason for the demise of Detroit. Why Detroit is having such a hard time in making a comeback. He says, nonchalantly, well, "it's because of a lot of things. Most rustbelt cities have gone through what Detroit is going through. It's infrastructure, race, movement to the suburbs. But Cleveland made a comeback and so did Pittsburgh. My teacher wrote a book on it. She's incredible, have you read it. I know a lot from that book."

Sorry baby, no book on earth will teach you what you need to know unless you've lived down there, known the people, and shared the hardships. You don't know shit.

You know what I said to him. "It's race." That's the biggest reason why Detroit has not made a comeback. It's race relations, and years of bitterness. Then he says that no, it's the infrastructure. Hello you fucking moron. THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS RACIST. Just the mere fact that the government and developers have given the MCD as a "class project" for a bunch of white kids screams this fact.

Detroit was considered the first domino to fall of all the major urban areas. The Detroit area is notorious for urban sprawl. The phenomenon of white flight is still present. As soon as a neighborhood is integrated, the white folks move on north. The city government and the contracters encourage the sprawl. Money money money. He says, that the people in the suburbs will sooner or later have no choice but to re-inhabit the city. That's what happened in Cleveland and Chicago. Race relations and availability of land are not the same in Cleveland and Chicago. Sprawl and white flight are not supported by the infrastructure quite like it is here.

The southeastern Detroit area is an area of a lot of hate. It is divided by eight mile. The whites do everything to stay away from this eight mile stretch, even going so far as to build the I-696 freeway that goes around Detroit, so that they would never ever have to drive through Detroit to get across town anymore. People will go out of their way 30 miles or more to do this.

Most white suburbanites have 1 -- never been in Detroit, 2 -- haven't been back in decades and are extrememly bitter about losing their homes in "their city to a bunch of blacks." All of them are afraid. And they pass this along to their children.

Many Blacks in Detroit and many of the white people also living in Detroit want nothing to do with anything north of 8 mile but are forced to. Detroit residents have to drive into the suburbs to do grocery shopping, go to the mall, to go to their dentists and doctors, etc. Because all the ammenities are in the suburbs and not in the city. In the city, the cost of groceries (from the few grocery stores that are actually there) and gasoline and household items are more expensive. The taxes are higher, insurance is higher, all in all the cost of living is higher. And the average income is much lower.

The residents pay more taxes (city tax and utility tax which means 10% more comes out of their paychecks) for less services, garbage doesn't get picked up, snow doesn't get plowed, streets don't get salted, entire sections of the city are without streetlights. Senior citizens are trapped in their homes without help in a snowstorm. They are unable to shovel. There are no stores near buy to purchase food or toilet paper.

Do these E. Lansing children understand this? Do they know, the pain and the hurt? the sadness and the fury that belongs to Detroit and the surrounding areas?

I'm not only angry at the whole thing, my heart aches. I cry sometimes thinking of my apartment on Second Street. The smiles of the people walking on the street and the fierce community spirit that is shared among the residents. Then I think of those kids, how they might possibly have all that power, and how I have to live up to my claims of being a Detroit by soul, and organize concerned citizens to take that power away and put it back where it belongs. To them.

By the way, PUNK ASS designation, is still in full force. Until the people around me prove otherwise.