HOMELESS IN JANUARY

You get a good thing started and then they fuck you

THIS IS AMERICA (WOOOO)

Welcome to the End of the American Nightmare.

Thoughts for a minor Eschaton.

I’m tired of retyping this, so a fair amount of it is copypasta from Meta. I’m just feeling sort of half dead.

Hi guys. I take it some of you may remember me from things like Casual Nihilism. Cult of the Rainbow Rat. The Casuals and having been responsible for them. Grateful Dead Land. Tour. California, Oregon, whererer. Or hey, maybe any of the other thousand shenanigans that I've gotten up to over the years.

Since this is Substack I’ll assume you know me mostly as the chronically online Editor Dude who never shuts up and can maybe write a word or two of his own.

Just when you get a good thing started

They fuck you. Or something fucks you.

It’s January, the stakes are low, go for doing something interesting. I’d been playing around with offering free editorial passes (Now Invitation to the Autopsy) for a while. In a fit of hypomania last week I went for it, bam. Then I had to follow up and do it. Got it out in a blind panic hoping I didn’t get pilloried.

It popped the fuck off. Well, it popped off for me anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Thank you to everyone for that! Big deal for the author with a panic disorder and chronic imposter syndrome.

THE COCK IN MY ASS

We have a small multigenerational household family unit. In 2023 my best friend killed herself. I have not recovered. My fiancee came as soon as my best friend of 21 years was dead to save my life. She did so at great cost to her own psychological wellbeing. A run of horrible jobs in the service industry in the Midwest and now a cervical spinal injury, accompanied by the fact that moms (but you call her the Oracle) is 73, and my otherwise healthy but asthmatic ass has come down with a nasty respiratory sinus infection, multiplied by missed work from a vacation, a scarcity of freelance work currently (prices soon GREATLY reduced) multiplied by the worst winter storm STL has seen in probably 15 years, means I was woke up yesterday morning by moms yelling about how the apocalypse was happening.

The snow and ice fallen over two days straight prior was melting from the ambient heat of the house and the sun, and the melt was raining down into our kitchen. The roof of this building is severely compromised. We rent. Because the last few years have been hard for everyone, we live on the razor's edge of existing in modern America. As debt laden or above as your average citizen, with less savings to match, and seeing gallons of water pouring out of the ceiling made it immediately apparent it was imperative to abscond to my room, have my meds, have even more meds, until my mouth was dry, chemical tongued, a pharmaceutical lab on my tongue, and compose myself before going out to mop. And much mopping was needed.

I did the math. On the low end 16,000 lbs of snow and ice are on top of this flat roofed box Victorian two story 100 plus year old brick house. On the high end it could be as much as 48,000 lbs. When I did the figuring for downforce per square foot, I went with a reasonable monkey in the middle figure of 24,000 pounds of snow and ice on the roof because with multiple layers of quarter inch sheet ice, wet snow, and dry snow, it was impossible to really get anything but a vague heuristic and a prayer. Over the square footage of the roof this equals out to around 10 pounds per square foot of downward pressure across every inch of the roof. (I couldn't account for variables. This is a crude measure, for I am a crude man.) The roof is compromised structurally somewhere. Under perfect conditions, the roof can sustain this weight. Knowing the roof and its undergirding is 100 years old, the surface may only be able to sustain five to eight pounds per square foot of downforce. There may be places where the downforce is uneven (estimated to be between 10-16lbs psf of downforce, we just can, not, know) We don't know if the subroofing is stable, we don't know if there is a hole, we just know these roofs cant back slightly for drainage and so the melt is draining somehow down into our kitchen. Attached pictures (in my previous post, fun videos available via email on demand) show the drywall of the kitchen ceiling is severely compromised. I've found what I suspect will be the failure points where it colllapses tomorrow: the north side of the drywall around the light fixture, and one very dangerously mushy seam above what I assume will soon be the remnants of our kitchen table.

According to my best estimates if conditions were perfect for melt and I used a steady temperature of 28 (the high today) with full sun exposure all day (there was not) we would have lost one inch of snowpack on the roof. This is the equivalent of just 3,000 lbs, leaving somewhere between 21,000 lbs and 45,000 lbs of snow on the roof of this fucking house. Superficial wall cracks have started to form in other rooms. The living room is double beamed and most likely the safest room in the house, but I'm guessing the failure point is going to be exactly where I think it is, the kitchen.

St. Louis is closed. Yesterday we alerted our landlord to the situation and let them know if this was let to run its course, the building could be a net loss in total. We've come to terms with the fact that we have to move. We have to move very soon.

Tomorrow the high is 35 degrees. When the sun and those temps hit, melting will accelerate. We have turned the heat so low I'm frigid, closed the vents in the kitchen, and cut the power at the breaker. It's still raining on the table, the stove, the Bunn coffee maker now covered in plastic and brown sludge water. A slow leaky faucet, but nonetheless.

Sometime tomorrow the ceiling is going to cave in.

We will have to evacuate.

We do not have the cash reserves and I don't know if we have the support to absorb this disaster. I cannot emphasize enough how bad this situation is. We will immediately be contacting as many disaster relief resources as we can, but we will at least be temporarily displaced from our home and most of our belongings. And there isn't a roofer coming to look at the top of the building until fucking Monday.

Anything would help with the finances of catastrophy, those which we are running out of very quickly. We can keep our bills paid and food in our bellies but it is going to be a fanatical expense to find a new apartment, hire a moving company because we are all too old to move this shit, and meet all of our other societal commitments.

I anticipate by the end of this the cost will run well into the low tens of thousands. Somewhere in the neighborhood of between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars base. We have renters insurance, so that's covered at least. But all other excess expenses, like most Americans, we are barely equipped to cover, and I do not know if we have the support network or ability to gather what will be needed for the effort. Especially at this time of year. We just paid to get the cars dug out today. So moms and my fiance can at least go to work and get around.

I will be slashing my editorial rates and I have fifty other options for either direct donations or if you want to hire me for something, I'm working in all of my fields at a steep discount.

If you are interested in developmental or line editing from someone the platform seems to be coming to a consensus is someone you can trust to do right by you, inquire at Emilottoman@gmail.com

I have been putting off writing this post all evening.

It is painful and in the United States shameful to admit that you need help of this kind. The greater portion of the population sees it as bad planning or a moral failure thanks to our rugged individualism and fucking Puritanical work ethic. I’ll have an essay about this, and it will be long, as soon as I stop choking.

I'm not attempting to reach beyond my potential audience because in the scheme of things, if nothing else, we will survive no matter what. It is a curse. We may survive very poorly, but we will survive.

But let me say once more, our family unit cannot absorb this catastrophic financial blow.

DM or email for details or inquiries.

If you want to help here’s the potential list aside from hiring me at the most cut rate prices you’ll get for the quality they’re calling “the Editor of Substack” will give you. Probably ever. Taking on multiple projects. Short, long, novella. Whatever. Hit me up.

buymeacoffee.com/Emil_Ottoman

Venmo is @Emil-Ottoman

My Cashapp is $EmilxOttoman

Paypal is emilottoman@gmail.com (because I can never find the paypal.me link.)

And there is always the option of buying a shirt from cultoftherainbowrat (low return) or commissioning a shirt (higher return for me, but also more labor.)

It pains me beyond words that even though it's not the best apartment in the world, I'm about to be forced to abandon the last place I will ever remember seeing my best friend and sister in my house and in my room. The Saint Hangs Silent, but will the Saint know to follow me and my voodoo shrine to her to a new apartment, one where she never had her own room?

If you've made it through this post, please, share it. Or contact me. If you have my number, feel free to text, I most likely will not be able to answer the phone, but I will get back to you.

And if you hate me, I guess now you can take your victory lap.

Good luck and Godspeed,

Fade

-Emil

FNAL NOTE

I didn’t mention. I have brought something into the world that I am ACTUALLY proud of.

I will continue doing a weekly Autopsy. This week’s will drop tomorrow. Everyone who emailed me will get a response, even if it’s late.

I will not paywall the one thing that I care about and consider to be a net good for the entire platform.

ESPECIALLY considering the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I want to help people, and people say this is helping. I’m not going to hide it from anyone just because I’ve hit hard times. It would be like pulling the rug out from under everyone who supported the first autopsy.

You have to stand for something, a man’s gotta have a code, and this is part of mine.

AND I WILL NOT BE PARTICIPATING IN THE EXPLOITATIVE MISERY OLYMPICS OF WRITING A SEVENTH GOFUNDME CAMPAIGN.

Other people have greater needs. If I can’t handle this in house, with family and community, Fuck it, the ship sinks.

Good luck and Godspeed

Fade

-Emil