What I want to write about is my beloved hometown, Portland, Oregon and its claim to weirdness. The bumper stickers say, "Keep Portland Weird," but it's really not that strange. We're a very progressive community, as evidenced by the small startup business known as "Snack Shack."

When I first noticed the portable toilets around town, I thought that someone with a very sick sense of humor had played a somewhat sick joke on us. The Snack Shack logo with the smiling mouth and what (ambiguously) looks like a cigar in the teeth kind of disgusted me. But there was something else that caught my attention: the upper third of the portable potties is clear. It wasn't until I spoke with someone familiar with the company that I began to understand the full genius of the idea.

You see, Portland folk like to take care of the environment and be as self-sufficient as possible. Snack Shacks are placed all over town, including backyards, during the fall and winter months. Once filled with nutrient rich ingredients, soil additives and bacteria are added to the septic receptacle and the mix is left to compost for a bit before starts are placed in the Snack Shack to grow into the greenhouse atmosphere above the receptacle. Snack Shack is good, and good for the person who has enjoyed any of the delicious farm products produced.

That's just one example of the municipal idiosyncrasy that is Portland. It's one example of the things that make Portland somewhat unique among cities - but just one. Consider Portland's favorite urban sport, "sex tag." You've probably seen those digital laser thermometers available at many hardware supply stores. The thermometer is shaped a bit like a gun and fires an invisible laser to a point in the distance where you can see a red dot that indicates where the temperature reading is being taken. Almost everyone in Portland carries one, firing the laser at the genitals of anyone they find sexually attractive. If the "target" reciprocates, it's a go.

While it makes me kind of sad, I can understand why it took so long for someone to target me. I'm not too handsome, my breath often smells like medicated garlic, I frequently emit methane past my posterior sphincter, and I drool quite a bit. So, when I saw the red dot hit my groin I was very happy that anyone might be firing at me. Sadly, I'm getting too old; so, rather than reading hot, my groin reading is the same as surrounding environmental temperatures. That particular day it was seventeen degrees in Portland. The disgusting, repugnant, filthy, dirty, smelly person who fired at me waved me off when I fired back. Telle est ma vie.

Anyway, I was so bummed out after that, it wasn't long before I was firing away in hopes of finding someone who would fire back. The problems came when I went to Seattle where no one plays sex tag, or has even heard of it. When I arrived in town I targeted a middle-age woman's genital region with my thermometer. She didn't notice at first, but when she saw the red dot she screamed, apparently thinking it was the laser sight of a gun. While she screamed, "he's going to kill me," I ran up to her, trying to explain before a couple of security folk tackled me.

One of the young guys who took me down held me there as he asked, "What the fuck are you doing you filthy old coot?"

I explained to the young man that I was checking the woman's temperature to see if she was hot. The young man punched me a couple of times saying, "You sick, deranged pervert! We don't go for that kind of crap in Seattle!" He punched me a couple more times, then shoved my face into a pile of dog excrement that a irresponsible pet owner had left behind. I was pretty depressed for the rest of the day but had a few doses of the medical strain known as Purple Panacea in my pocket. So I used it up treating my acute existential dysphoria as best I could.

Yeah, Portland is a pretty cool town. You know, MedBud Mama lives here. I've met her before. She's really, really beautiful at 6'9"and 390 pounds. People who haven't met her always hear about the radiant waist-length golden tresses falling to her hips like sunlight on a morning meadow in the spring. You hear about skin as soft and fine as baby chinchillas' fur groomed by Vidal. You hear about the fine hemp fabric moo moos sporting the brilliant hemp leaf, or 'shroom designs. Maybe you hear about breath as sweet as basil brewed ambrosia in heaven.

The landed Dutch immigrant transvestite who is a medical marijuana advocate by day and medical phone sex provider by night is a giant in many ways. Her presence quelled the violent anarchy after the MedTree of Life was felled by greedy profiteers in Portland's West Hills. She saved Portland's mayor when she stopped him from burying himself alive at a Pioneer cemetery in SE that was being looted by MethHead Mac and his Maniacal Motorcycle gang. In short, while Ms. MedBud Mama is no Gandhi, King, or Caldicott, she's a remarkable, beloved woman in this community. Her biographer tells much of her story in "MedBud Mama and the Medical Miracle." But that's another story.

Yes, Portland is pretty progressive, but it's no liberal utopia. My retired friend recently reevaluated his future retirement income and decided to find a part-time job to supplement it. He went in to apply for a job as a bud clipper at the local dispensary supply where a young guy interviewed him. The young guy was your typical cultivator/patient: long stringy green hair, torso piercings, head pierced, body tattoo, box of Twinkies under one arm, Chong medical device in one hand... At the end of the interview the young guy told my friend he could work - with one condition. My aged friend, Jed, looked at the cultivator with questioning old tired eyes before the younger man explained:

"You'll have to work for senior wage."

Jed was confused and asked, "What do you mean Son?"

"You're old, tired, slow and probably kind of senile. Senior wage is half the minimum. It's all you seniors are worth, but you get 32 milligrams of good medicine each month as a bonus if we meet our goals."

"What's the goal?"

The cultivator went on, "If you clip at least a metric ton each week you get your bonus. Otherwise we dock your check. You see that old guy over there?"

Jed looked at an old fellow hunched over a huge bag filled with medicine. The man wore tattered old work clothing and shook violently as he coughed in the cloud of pollen in the air. For a moment the guy's eyes met my friends before he looked back toward his task with the desperate resignation of the eternally damned.

The interviewee looked back at the young guy, saying. "Ok Son."

But that was just the beginning of my friend's ordeal. In contemporary America we have what some folk call MILF's. That's an acronym for Mothers I'd Like to F___. Portland also has what people here call GILF's, which refers to grandmother/fathers... My retired friend is subjected to many indignities at his work place, but the worst is the young patients who... well, you know...

Anyway, maybe we'll talk about Portland a little later. Right now I have to take my cat down to Mortician Morgan's funeral parlor where he's going to cremate it. Jed came over to visit last night with his 32 milligram bonus. I guess it had been grown in volcanic soil because Fluffy got into it thinking it was catnip and died from an overdose of mercury. Telle est la vie d' un chat.