A Dreary End To A Tumultuous Year

Jimbaux has been driven under.

Hi.  I spoke erroneously when I claimed that my chase of the Abbeville Branch train on Friday was the end of my holiday travel.

 

Unexpectedly, I got a few more photos today “back home” before I have to return to the Big Uneasy and continue throwing my life, time, and talent away by harming society by doing things that don’t need to be done to people who deserve to be treated better, just so that I can survive.

To hell with this stupid wage slaving society; it absolutely does not have to be this way people!

The pursuit of survival does not provide purpose. Purpose is a higher order need. No one who is starving is worrying about what their purpose in life is. At that moment, their only purpose is finding food.

Is that humanity's purpose? To find food? To do nothing but survive? pic.twitter.com/nJYV7q7zqd

— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) December 29, 2018

How are you doing on this New Year’s Eve Eve anyway?

Familial obligations had me briefly in Schriever today, where I also was 10 years ago today, and the atmospheric conditions matched the condition of my life, with these empty chairs designed for Amtrak passengers (or people picking them up or dropping them off) with the LDRR 1712 in the background.

Everything is dreary.  There is little hope.  My hopes and dreams are shattered because this slave society prevents people from succeeding.

Radio chatter indicated that a train was about to tie down here, and a crew van was waiting.  So, I went to N. Main Project Road where the crew van was, and I watched the eastbound BNSF Railway loaded crude oil train pull into the siding and elected to not attempt to photograph it.

Since there was nothing to see as the crew set about to tie down the train (and since I didn’t want to be conspicuous), while all of this was happening, I decided to head to the nearby Go-Bears convenience store to top the truck off with gasoline, even though I had about a third of a tank of fuel.  This fueling station was, due to its proximity to the depot, the main place for me to get gasoline in my early adulthood, but something that happened there – and that is happening at plenty of fueling stations – made me not want to go there anymore.

There are not many better examples of why we absolutely need unconditional basic income and land-value taxation than the existence and preponderance of televisions at fueling pumps.  Pumping gasoline into my truck was once a chance to get a few minutes of silence, but, now, I have to suffer from the obnoxious noise from the sound of the television at the pump, trying to sell me stuff.

People do not have unconditional access to food and shelter, but people do not need to be told or prompted to buy food or shelter.  Meanwhile, an entire army of employed persons are working in the creation of ways to use televisions at fueling stations to get us to buy ever more crap, wasting resources in the process.

That material in those fueling station televisions is material that could be used to expand internet access to those who do not yet have it, and the people who labor to create this fueling station television are not in any way contributing to society via this labor; furthermore, they are actively harming society – albeit not necessarily by choice – by participating in the wasting of precious resources in order to create this unnecessary advertising.

So, anyway, after fueling my truck with fuel made partially from crude oil, I headed to the depot to view this tied down crude oil train.

Compare the below image to the one above.

As I was about to depart (or read a book), a confused-looking amigo pacing around in front of the depot with a smartphone approached me and asked, “is this place abandoned?”

Say what?  This dude got dropped off to wait for the eastbound Sunset Limited, which wouldn’t be here for at least six-and-a-half hours!  He had apparently been under the assumption that there was a waiting room in the depot.  No, man, I am sorry, this is not Hammond or Slidell, and this train runs only thrice-weekly; such is the pathetic state of passenger railroad service on this corridor.

And I guess that I am a weirdo for hanging around such places, but maybe the rest of society is messed up?

Being the parent of an autistic child doesn’t mean you get to talk to all autistic adults like we’re your children. We’re not. We’re equals. Act accordingly.

— Sara Luterman (@slooterman) December 30, 2018

Stop killing us, stop treating us like children, and stop treating us like pets, farm animals, or circus animals.

Anyway, feeling sorry for that guy who was going to have to sit out there, perhaps in the rain (I told him that there was a convenience store a short walk away), for hours until the train came, I decided to depart the scene and go and fulfill some other needs and obligations, but, as I was leaving, I spied another headlight to the west; hey, that’s interesting, another eastbound right on the tail of the first one?  What could this be?

So, I set up for the North Main Project Road shot, probably the first time that I do this shot since 2013.

What is this?  It looks like a track geometry train, but what’s with the hopper car?

Google search results indicate that this car is relatively new to BNSF’s track geometry operation, and all pictures shown elsewhere show not only a hopper car coupled to the passenger car but also a hopper car that looks like this one.

This train would probably turn on the wye in Westwego just like the one that I photographed 10 years and almost three months ago.

So, that is all for the pictures for today (a far cry from the pictures that I made 12 years ago today on a memorable visit to KCSdeMéxico’s yard in Monterrey and adjacent Alstom facility), and probably all for the pictures for 2018.  It has been an interesting year for Jimbaux’s Journal, seeing the site return in July after nearly a year of being down and out.

It’s also the year that, albeit due to necessity, I have sort of ‘come out’ about my supposed or apparent autism; I do not have an official diagnosis, but I have been unofficially diagnosed by a couple of women who have sons with official diagnoses, and, while I resisted this for a long time, I had to relent at some point, and it seems to be finally a great explanation of my lifelong problem, how I have always felt different, and the struggles that I face due to the barriers that society puts in the way of each person’s survival and success.

I never mastered masking in the work place. In 'day-to-day' activities I do fine, but Ive lost a few jobs trying desperately to effectively mask & drowning in anxiety, tripping over words, smiling at the wrong times, or relaxing.. I look for positions that dont put me w public

— Ericka Like aMerica (@ErickaRenae) December 28, 2018

To that end, you can help me do my best work by becoming, for as little as $1 per month, a patron of this publication.

It has also been another year that this white supremacist, misogynistic, authoritarian stupidity that so many of you have shamefully enabled is causing further problems.

NEW: Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he wouldn't join the Trump administration.@MarthaRaddatz: "Do you think he's a liar?"

McChrystal: "I don't think he tells the truth."

Raddatz: "Is Trump immoral in your view?"

McChrystal: "I think he is." https://t.co/x96Qc6cru2 pic.twitter.com/mNeSEA6031

— ABC News (@ABC) December 30, 2018

I am horrified that so many people I know think that this horror is desirable.

I Alone Can Fix It, But If There Are Any Problems It's Everyone Else's Fault pic.twitter.com/Avyo9trWS3

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 29, 2018

Why do some of you think that this is okay?

4) Why does Trump lie *all the time* about *everything,* even the most trivial, easily disprovable matters?

The frequency and the audacity of Trump’s disinformation is the *whole point* of it — to wear you down. More and more of the lies slip past, undetected and uncorrected.

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 30, 2018

This is not okay.  This is really not okay.  We are not okay.

16. In sum: the fact that Trump is diminishing & degrading America does not mean he is secretly brilliant & diabolical. It means America is secretly weak, afraid, and hollowed out — not nearly so powerful as it imagines. Er … Happy New Year! </fin>

— David Roberts (@drvox) December 30, 2018

It doesn’t have to be this way.

It also doesn’t have to be this way.

My first post-college job was teaching 8th grade literature

It required 80 hour work weeks to do it well

A good teacher must be a psychologist, a performer, a politician who can make inroads with parents, a master of their subject matter, and a genius planner

I was paid $25k. https://t.co/rOlB6O8tZ1

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) December 30, 2018

I am really sorry that I don’t have anything better to say as I close out 2018.

I really am sorry.

I am doing the best that I can.

Please help me take my mind off of my own troubles by telling me how you are doing; that comments section down below is a good place to do it!

Merci.

Jim