Dear Dirty America

One man in Koreatown, Los Angeles, says he’s been a good liberal his entire life, but lately it’s awfully difficult to believe in global warming. “It’s not the cold weather nationwide that makes me question climate change,” he tells me. His head is balding on top, but the ring of hair he still  has above his ears is grown long enough to be pulled back into a greasy rat’s tail.

We’re standing in the sickening glow of a streetlamp outside of the grocery store near Western and Wilshire. “It’s that the sun’s emissions are far fewer in the last few years. The sun is cooling, bro,” he says urgently, “and I can’t get a fucking tan anymore.”

No matter how charming he is, no matter how many one-liners he memorizes in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Mongolian to suit the heritage of his favorite female prospects walking down the street, he doesn’t believe he can score the hot ones if he has pasty white skin. “Besides,” he tells me, and puts a hand on my shoulder, “white skin makes my tooth look browner than it really is.”

Before all the global warming enthusiasts go wild, they ought to take a minute to listen to this Koreatown man. His name is Marlin. Nobody knows his age, but he looks to be about 45-50. He’s thin. He’s vibrant. But the wrinkles in his face show he’s lived awhile. His last name is anybody’s guess. He lives without a social security number. He’s a champion dumpster diver, and he’s shown me the best place to pick up the highest quality food for free.

“The LA Weekly don’t know as much about good eating as I do,” Marlin tells me. “All they want to write about these days is the so-called foodies. Yet, nobody talks to me about it.”

Don’t underestimate the impact that the Weekly has on this city, I say. I know half a dozen homeless guys up in Hollywood who wouldn’t have anything to wipe their asses with if it weren’t for that paper.

“I’ve known the freshest deals in town since the early 90s,” Marlin says, ignoring my comment. “They should do a feature on me as the King of Western.”

He’s got a point. With over 57,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county, you’d think the city’s premiere free magazine would give a shoutout to the unseen foodies who drool over the treasures to be found in the local Sizzler dumpster. “Whole pies, melons, fruits, and vegetables, bro,” Marlin says.

When Marlin gets passionate about a subject, his mouth opens wide, and I see stuck in his lower gums that brown-tinged tooth that he speaks of. It is long and worn like a weathered nail yanked out of a bear claw. The tooth has been through a lot, and, remarkably, it has held in there for at least four decades.

It reminds me of a man in the small North Dakota town I grew up in who was the only one in his platoon to come back from Vietnam. I think of that lone tooth in Marlin’s mouth, and the big job it has every time he slides a carrot stick, pilfered from Sizzler, between his lips. All its friends rotted away. Oh Lord, why me? it seems to ask every time I get a glimmer of it in the light from the streetlamp overhead. Why am I the only one left standing all these years later?

Marlin is a staple figure of the Western / Wilshire district of Koreatown. He knows nearly everybody working in the area by face or name, even if most people would rather not speak to him. Marlin is too loud for most people. His high-pitched yapping offends genteel personalities. And his insatiable lust for women the world over startles even the most active sexual freak.

But charm is not enough, Marlin admits, when it comes to women two decades younger than him. “You need a killer tan in Southern California,” he says. He’s been married many times, so he claims he knows females well. “I was married to a Filipino for six years,” he says, almost like he’s rapping to a beat in his head. “All we did was eat macaroni and cheese. Every meal. That’s all she wanted. I couldn’t handle it, bro. We split up. But my, she was fine.” His eyes go misty for a minute. He admits he couldn’t get such a beautiful woman without his usual deep tan.

What Marlin has noticed is that his fair skin is not turning golden brown like it used to. “I’m out in the sun hours every day, but I stay very pale.”

Even two years ago he doesn’t think he had such a difficult time. Marlin could get a suntan in a few hours. If he was really white, he’d come away with a sunburn in no time.

“The sun just ain’t what it used to be,” he says. “It still gets warm and all, but the light isn’t potent like it used to be.” And he may have a point. We may not have to worry about the earth heating up after all, but rather prepare for a sudden cooling down.

There is very little room for global warming / climate change denial, and Marlin doesn’t want to go there, but he points me to a few solid article he’s read at the local Koreatown library. Such as:

“The sun has been very unusual for almost 15 years now,” Jens Pedersen, senior scientist at the Denmark’s Technical University, said.

Pedersen said the sun recently reached solar maximum and that there should be a lot of sunspot activity, but there isn’t.

“We have to go back 100 years to find a solar maximum that was as weak as the one we are in right now,” he told CBN News. “And the recent solar minimum…one has to go back 200 years to find one that was as weak.”

The last time the sun was this quiet, North America and Europe suffered through a weather event from the 1600s to the 1800s known as “Little Ice Age,” when the Thames River in London regularly froze solid, and North America saw terrible winters. Crops failed and people starved. (source)

Pederson, who is an expert reviewer on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says climate scientists know the earth has stopped warming about 15 years ago, and that the panel has suppressed those reports.

“Devastating consequences for planet earth,” Marlin says, shaking his head. A cool breeze blows down Western. The chill doesn’t seem to affect him, but I zip my jacket up to my neck. “If the sun is really slumping into a minimal emissions state, the result will be catastrophic for food production and suntans. Think of the crops in the Midwest, bro, and around the world. And think how cool the beach will be.”

Heating or cooling, big lifestyle changes may be coming soon.

[suntanning nudist photo by wobde; ‘global warming’ graphic credited to Mike Edwards, and strategically placed by author]