Indiscriminate Correlation

Today I awoke in a fairly good mood. It was a bright and early 11:30 in the morning and I had just slept for the last ten hours. Feeling like a winner, I jumped out of bed to write a quick, and frankly ill conceived, post for Aprils Fools day. Granted I have never been big on Aprils Fools day. Not that I don't appreciate the many subtleties of the day. But I am never going to be at Hawkeye levels of practical joking. Nor am I even going to scratch the surface of Jim, from The Office, levels of practical joking. I just don't have the creativity for it in me. Either that or the malice. Most practical jokes rely on the perpetrator to have some sort of disdain for the perptratee. Since I hate intangible things, organized religion, unorganized religion, big business, small business, republicans, Democrats, the green party, organized sports, competitive eating competitions, the National Association of Faith Healers, Jesus, monkeys with cybernetics attached to their brain stems, really smart fish, hybrid cars that get lower gas mileage than Hummers, Hummers, and hard work I find it challenging to find a proper target for my jokes. If only I had some sort of completely clueless buffoon in my life that I could make fun of with practical jokes, but alas Stephen King doesn't live anywhere near me.

Most people find April Fools day as a day for quietly subverting the status quo. For me, it was a day of great significance. Well, not that great. Maybe. Or was it? No, probably not. But I did get a job. And I know, I know, you're all thinking "Executive Vice President of Marketing and Research" but surprisingly no. I will be selling hot dogs, beer, and possibly cotton candy at Reno's very own Triple A baseball team. Out of over a thousand applicants I was hand chosen to walk up and down stairs all day yelling "HOT DOG! HOT DOG! SODA! HOT DOG!" in the blazing heat of a Nevada summer. Jealous? You're jealous.

Seriously, though, there were a shitton of applicants. I stood in line for forty minutes, watching people with ties that cost more than a month rent soberly hand over applications and explain why they would be more than qualified to sell tickets to a minor league baseball game. It was awful, and I didn't think I had any real chance which was why I didn't take much consideration in filling out the application. I mean, I didn't lie on it, but I did mix up the order in which my banal, dead end jobs had occurred in. A problem I was concerned about when the first thing the interviewer asked me was to describe, in great detail, my job history. Fortunately he had the application in front of him and I was able to use it as a cheat sheet to see what I had said on it. Then he asked me like two more questions and offered me a job. Bamo.

It's almost sad. I watch those people on American Idol stand in line for days just to get a chance to be on the show. I watch as the contestants for "Americas Next Top Model" get into a damn riot all because someone yelled either "FIRE!" or "HE'S GOT A BOMB!" (depending on which news sites you read) and I think morons, I'd never stand in line that long for some obscure chance to be on TV. Yet I stood in line for a long while just to get a job selling hot dogs. Really its sent my whole world view into question. Yet I have to assume in this case they were looking for the bottom of the barrel. The people that really had no discernible skill or talent. The people that had been working the lowest jobs on the pay scale all their lives, long before the recession. In fact, it might just have been the greatest April Fools Joke of all time. "Congratulations! You've Got a job! Unfortunately, you'll be working for peanuts" they say. "Really? Whats the job?" I ask, my seat edge bearing my entire weight, "selling peanuts."

I'm not complaining though. Honestly if I was a success at this point in my life I'd feel like a fraud. I've always wanted to be a writer, and I want to create shit that is fucking amazing. I can't yet, but I think I'm getting closer. A little dirty secret of mine is that I think suffering, depression, and an inability to do well at most things one puts their mind too are the milestones of any one that will ever do well as any sort of artist. There was a point in my life wherein I actually pursued misery. Now it just knows where to find me. I'm just a couple more bar fights, a few evictions, and some painful firings away from being able to actually get the real taste of misery in my mouth.

You see, I don't want real misery, who does? what I want is the sense of it. I want to know what it feels like without having to lose everything that is precious to me. There are people out there going through real suffering and I know, I know, I am not one of those people. And I pray to the great big imaginary being that, although it has created all of everything, still finds times to mettle in the affairs of an underachiever, that I never have to find out what real suffering is. But I can't write it convincingly if I don't have some sort of idea of what it might feel like. It's a thin line, and I've erred on the cautious side of it. I'm never going to be the type to throw myself completely into it. No Ken Kesley or Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolff am I. But to get a slight feel for it I have to let myself make humongous mistakes with my life. And hopefully it will pay off. Currently I am planning a huge undertaking that I want to succeed but have a strong feeling that I will horribly fuck up. I don't want it to fuck up, but if it does, then that is something that I can add to my lists of things I've ruined. In a weird way my life is a constant upside. No matter how bad I fuck up I feel that it is making me a more rounded person. A stronger person, with more to say about the world. Today the writing professor I am taking a class from told me that he has always sensed a large amount of anger in my stories. I'd never thought of it in exactly those terms, but he has a point. I express most of my anger through writing. It is powerful, and it gives me that "fuck you!" attitude that I need in order to want people to actually read what I write. Perhaps this is why I often write such long, rambling posts. Not that I want to say fuck you to the people who actually come here and read what I have to say, but rather because I feel like if they are going to come here and listen to me rant they are going to listen to me rant, damnit! Anger has always driven my writing. Yet another thing I've learned on this invaluable Aprils Fools day. I feel like I should sacrifice a goat or something. You know, to let the gods of April Fools day know I appreciate what they are doing.