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Ghetto Tracker App Steers Me Clear of Hollywood, Into Skarsgard Obsessed Psychic

Ghetto Tracker App Steers Me Clear of Hollywood, Into Skarsgard Obsessed Psychic
September 10
05:15 2013

My Ghetto Tracker app kept steering me around the outskirts of Hollywood. I was looking for an adept psychic. I needed counsel. But goddammit! I said to my smartphone, I’ve been to Hollywood ten dozen times and have only almost been mugged once. Those are good odds, and I’ll take them, so don’t tell me to avoid this neighborhood.

The new, controversial smartphone app comes in handy for any Los Angeles adventurer. We’ve all taken that wrong turn downtown and had to accelerate at a dangerous speed to clear out of Skid Row before anything bad happened. Well, what if you could have the help of a smartphone application to avoid that mistake?

I wouldn’t want to leave home without my Ghetto Tracker. The app allows users to rate neighborhoods’ safety. It has since had its name changed to Good Part of Town, since everybody in America is suddenly sensitive to wealth disparity and poverty, but who wants to choke on that mouthful when talking about the app? We might as well rename the app again to, Avoid Neighborhoods Where People are So Damned Poor They Are Desperate Enough to Do Something Criminal & That’s the Truth.

But we’re already living in an Idiocracy world anyway, so why not keep it Ghetto Tracker, and keep the name on par with the current linguistic talents of the average American citizen?

After circling Hollywood for what must have been an hour, I decided to listen to the Good Part of Town app. I drove myself elsewhere. Los Angeles is filled with psychics, but there are only a handful of good ones who would give me the honest type of feedback I was looking for.

Reviews for the Hollywood clairvoyant boasted her third nipple and dozens of satisfied, returning customers. But I wouldn’t be venturing into that neighborhood that evening, especially not against the wishes of Ghetto Tracker.

I found a cheap psychic near my home. She had two positive reviews online. One read, “Good fortune it come true yesterday and tomorrow.”

The small shop was situated between two other tiny box stores, one which sold Virgin Mary memorabilia, and the other was boarded up. I peered through the storefront’s windows. Inside, a short Korean lady sat behind a white desk. The walls were white also. Two white plastic chairs sat empty before her desk. The psychic frowned. She stared straight ahead. Her bangs were cut perfectly straight across her forehead.

Was she depressed? Should I go back to Hollywood and brave the dangerous neighborhood that my Ghetto Tracker had pleaded with me to avoid? Was there an app called Psychic Tracker to warn of criminal clairvoyants who would rip out the bowels of your soul and leave you emptier than when you arrived?

The door squeaked when I opened it. She glanced up, smiled, pointed to a chair. I smelled cinnamon. I coughed and sat.

“Let’s get started,” she said. She motioned for my hand. I gave it to her.

I’d like to focus on my future as a…. I started, but she cut me off.

Alexander_Skarsgard“You know Skarsgard?” she asked.

No, I said, but anyway I wanted to get a reading about my….

“You look like guy named Skarsgard from one episode of TV show when he have long hair,” she said, smiling. She worked her thumbs into my palm, which relaxed me. The cinnamon smell kept raising my energy, but her dry thumb pads calmed me down.

I’ve never heard of that bastard, I said, but I’m not here for….

“He died but next season he comes back as ghost,” the psychic said. “But don’t tell no one. It’s secret so far.” She then told me that I knew all too well who Skarsgard was, and that if I ever lied to her again, one of my kidneys would shrivel up like a prune and I’d have trouble processing dirty drinks like coffee and essential seasoning for food, like salt.

My life, essentially, would be ruined.

All right, I said, calm down, I just don’t want to get on a tangent about a TV show. I’ve poked fun at the prospect that I slightly resemble a long-haired Eric Northman. Plenty of people have shouted at me, in public, about it. It’s a shitty thing. And then a bunch of other people chime in to say how much I don’t resemble Northman with long hair. Yet, I don’t ask for any of it.

“Take pride,” she said, “in your Viking heritage. You have mucho memories of lives passed when you were Viking riding in giant wooden ship. One past life you had sexy wife. Two other Viking past lives you had wifes not so sexy,” the psychic said.

That would explain my fascination with the Rus people, I said, and why I insist on keeping my hair long and tangled. But I’m a miserable excuse for a Viking, I told the clairvoyant. My ancestors surely were not afraid of burning down bad neighborhoods or villages. Although they might have opted for a smartphone app like Ghetto Tracker to steer them into only bourgeoisie neighborhoods, where the booty is higher, but in this life those places are where I can’t even afford to mingle with the people.

“Compared to past lifetimes of yours,” she said, and opened her mouth to laugh, “you are pussy now!” She laughed again. Her crooked teeth did not match the smooth skin of her face and hands.

That was the end of our session, the psychic informed me. “I must use bathroom now,” she said, “but first hand me your ten dollars.”

I drove the long way home to avoid a particularly gnarly area near Vermont and Olympic, according to Ghetto Tracker, and then another undesirable area by Normandie and Olympic. If the app is to be believed, my neighborhood is also not a fantastic place to hang out. I suppose, if it keeps out the sickeningly wealthy people with their Jaguars and Maseratis, who buy up all the apartment complexes and real estate in the hoods, that would truly be a service.

[Skarsgard photo by © Nick Stepowyj]

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3 Comments

  1. Stephvelander
    Stephvelander September 27, 17:38

    “since everybody in America is suddenly sensitive to wealth disparity and poverty”

    “If the app is to be believed, my neighborhood is also not a fantastic place to hang out. I suppose, if it keeps out the sickeningly wealthy people with their Jaguars and Maseratis, who buy up all the apartment complexes and real estate in the hoods, that would truly be a service”

    Fucking love it.

    Reply to this comment

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