This week I've been waking up fairly early every morning. People always said "oh, its so nice to wake up early because then its all peaceful and you can get your day started right." But I never believed them, because night was so peaceful for me. Now I see it though. There was this coffee shop in Reno that was right across the street from where I was living that I always wanted to go to but never did because it was swarmed with annoying teenagers and youngish adult like people whenever I went there. Then I found out that if I went there before noon it wasn't swarmed at all. It was quiet and relaxing and even the coffee tasted better in the morning. I sat there for three hours last week writing an entire short story without being bothered except by an couple of older woman who forced me to take a photo of them (yes, forced me, as I was just sitting there and all of a sudden one of them grabbed me by the wrist and told me to get up and "do something productive before noon". I would have been offended but older woman get like +10 to persuasion as they always remind one of their own mother).
I've taken over the old studio behind my moms house. It was once a studio, at least, then the roots from a tree we'd had since we moved in came up under the foundation. Now the concrete is so cracked it makes me wonder if a very tiny earthquake didn't strike this exact spot. It was turned into a storage room in the meantime and now it is an office/TV room. Yesterday was spent watching Die Hard and filling out applications in here with the dogs wandering in and out and occasionally napping. It isn't the same as living alone, but its as close as I can get without having to pay rent. I can leech just enough internet out here to read blogs and post blogs and send email without it taking too long. Aside from watching TV shows on my computer that is all I ever use the internet for anyway.
I found a slightly defective Chewbacca mask in a halloween store a couple years ago that was about 80% off its original price. My life size Spider-man replica that Paul gave me wears the mask now and it stares at me from just behind where I type this. The eye holes in Chewies face are filled with the blank whiteness of Spidey's masks eyes. No one should ever have to face Spider-Wookie in battle, but I would love to see that shit go down.
Yes, I am just musing right now. Partly out of a desire to post a new blog and partially because I am procrastinating doing my homework.
I'm seriously considering joining AmeriCorps. I'm still working through it though. I'll add more of a detailed accounting of this in a few days.
On a final note, I am now moderating comments to this blog due to some random annoynomus posting I've gotten. I'll still allow any comment to go public so long as the writer of said comment reveals his/her name. The only other way to force people to add their name is by only allowing people with google accounts to post, which would be more of a pain in the ass for people I imagine. I'm not trying to stifle free speech or anything, but this is a more or less private blog (though technically open to the public) that I reckon only a handful of people know about and those annoynomus posts are pissing me off and freaking other people out. Anyway, this is how I'm choosing to deal with it, so if you post a comment don't expect it to show up right away.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Harrowing Boredom
Editors Note: The following is a long, rambling discussion on criminal and civil liabilities facing various corporations. As I wrote it and I am not a lawyer, it isn't going to be accurate at many points. It will also probably be fairly dull if you don't really give a shit about who can get sued and why and what my take on all of it is. If this doesn't sound entertaining at all to you, let me suggest This Article as a much better alternative to reading this post.
Last night I was stuck at an orientation for four hours. Two hours of that time was listening to someone that was wholly unqualified to discuss alcohol and the dangers of serving too much to patrons at the ballpark. They do this because if someone drinks too much at a game and then gets in their car and drives away and crashes into someone, the stadium is a likely candidate to get sued. It's an odd thing, that.
Bars, on a nightly basis, serve people until they are far too drunk to drive and some of those people still get in their cars and speed off. Of those people, some are destined to get into an accident, to kill someone when their car rams another head on. It's a tragedy whenever it happens, I agree with that sentiment. What I don't agree with is that it is the bars fault. They have a service that specializes in vice, they sold their wares, laws exist on the books that say that you can't just stop someone from getting into their car and driving away. Private citizens don't have the right to just stop other people from getting into their own cars and committing a crime. They have every right to call the cops and say they think someone is about to drive drunk. But that isn't necessarily their responsibility. This is something that has been bugging me since that orientation. I know that legally the bars can get sued, but at the same time no one sues them because usually they don't have enough money to make it worth going after them. The big venues, stadiums, ballparks, etc. have the money so people go after them. It doesn't matter if the person had just a couple beers at the game and it was drinking at a tailgate party or somewhere near the game that got them wasted. They were at the game, its the owner of the stadiums fault. This is the same mentality that made it so that only plastic bottles were served in stadiums. Some morons threw bottles at an ump and instead of getting pissed at them they get pissed at the conglomerate that allowed them to have glass bottles. It's such a strange world we live in. I'm not really promoting that the idea that we should change the laws at all, but it does make one wonder. How far can this idea go? When we hold someone personally responsible for their actions (i.e. driving drunk) but then hold a corporation liable in civil court, aren't we in effect saying that everyone that had any part of serving alcohol to someone that did something incredibly stupid whilst under the influence of that alcohol is responsible? The low-wage worker that handed them the beer, the truck drivers that delivered the beer to the stadium, the brewery that made the beer? Where's the line?
If I ate at McDonalds everyday and as a result lived my life with increasingly clogged arteries and massive amounts of fat, is it McDonalds fault when I have a heart attack? Is it the owner of the individual franchise that knew me as a regular customer but served me every time I came in? Is it the bigger corporation who, in order to increase profits, allows for cheaper and cheaper, and thus less healthy, ingredients? Or is it the farmers that sell the meat to them at lower prices because it isn't up to the standard of beef other restaurants demand? Then where can you go with it, how far back? The cows have to eat, have to drink, have to have land in a state somewhere. That farmer, did he go to a bank to get a loan when he lost half his herd one year? Is the bank culpable? Is some overseas investor in that bank liable because he has a large stake in that bank? I know this sounds ridiculous, but I wonder about these things sometimes. There is a big difference, I know, to selling someone alcohol at a stadium and then not noticing that he got in his car and drove off than playing Six Degrees of Separation to liability.
I guess what my problem is is that I want to be held responsible for my own actions and no one elses. If I fuck up, get myself in a heap of trouble, I can see why I might have the impulse to want to pass the buck. People have laughed at the so-called "Twinkie Defense" claiming the Twinkies diminished his brain capacity and lead to mood swings. But the fact that most people are aware of the phrase "Twinkie defense" if not the actual arguments in the case means that we have had this idea of blaming the big, bad faceless corporations for our own shortcomings and crimes.
Often I want to rally against corporations. There are many reasons to hate them. They do whatever they can to make more money for themselves and they don't really care who they hurt in the process. But I want to take them on for what they have done. If they are dumping illegally, if they are paying workers less than what they earn, if they build a two story off shore and throw the words "World Wide Headquarters" across the face of the building so they don't have to pay taxes in the US even though they do all their business in the US, they should be held accountable for that. And its not like I don't think they should be held accountable for selling things that really are dangerous. I can get behind suing tobacco companies, for example, even though I smoke, for a variety of reasons. They produce a dangerous product and when they market it to children or try to alter studies to make it seem less dangerous, they should be sued. I think what I'm having a problem with is these acute situations. If it came out that tobacco companies could reduce the risk of cancer from smoking their products but just didn't because it would make the cost of a pack go up a few extra cents, they should be held accountable. If, however, someone fell asleep in a luxury hotel with a cigarette burning in their hand and burned the place down, that is that persons mistake. The cigarette, though it may have been the real thing that started the fire, was not put into that persons hand, into that room, and the person wasn't lulled to sleep by the cigarette, so this would be an acute event. A one time thing that is solely the person who fell asleep fault. I realize that my examples aren't great, but they are meant to illustrate my point.
It could be said that in a society we are all our brothers keeper. That we have to look out for one another to make sure that one person isn't going to do something to upset the status quo. When a company has a longer reach, they have more responsibility to watch out even more. Yet we often do forget about them, letting them get away with things that a smaller business would never be able to get away with. But we also have no problem pointing our fingers at them whenever someone does something stupid. But we only point the finger when we think there is something in it for us. That we can get some money out of them. That's why we don't find them criminally liable. They are just being sued because they have deeper pockets. And its incredibly hypocritical. It's the same reason why doctors have to pay so much in malpractice insurance. They are going to make mistakes, but people don't have to have a reason to sue someone. They say they were mistreated and they can sue. Even if they don't have a real case it gets to a point where it is cheaper to settle than to fight it in court. The perception is that doctors and hospitals can afford to get sued, so people go after them. Now, this brings in a different set of arguments about the courts and the practice of medicine that I don't really want to get into. But the point is that if doctors were all making minimum wage and hospitals run on donations alone, we wouldn't hear about doctors getting sued. For our society to really work, for people to really have a reason to look out for others and make sure that we are all doing our own small part to keep societies wheels in motion, we have to all be equally culpable. The mega-corporations should be just as likely to be sued as the small businesses. If I am walking down the street in downtown Reno and see someone who is clearly intoxicated get behind the wheel of a car I should be just as responsible for calling the police as the bartenders of the bar he just left. If there is to be any justice in the world, then we all have to take equal responsibility.
Last night I was stuck at an orientation for four hours. Two hours of that time was listening to someone that was wholly unqualified to discuss alcohol and the dangers of serving too much to patrons at the ballpark. They do this because if someone drinks too much at a game and then gets in their car and drives away and crashes into someone, the stadium is a likely candidate to get sued. It's an odd thing, that.
Bars, on a nightly basis, serve people until they are far too drunk to drive and some of those people still get in their cars and speed off. Of those people, some are destined to get into an accident, to kill someone when their car rams another head on. It's a tragedy whenever it happens, I agree with that sentiment. What I don't agree with is that it is the bars fault. They have a service that specializes in vice, they sold their wares, laws exist on the books that say that you can't just stop someone from getting into their car and driving away. Private citizens don't have the right to just stop other people from getting into their own cars and committing a crime. They have every right to call the cops and say they think someone is about to drive drunk. But that isn't necessarily their responsibility. This is something that has been bugging me since that orientation. I know that legally the bars can get sued, but at the same time no one sues them because usually they don't have enough money to make it worth going after them. The big venues, stadiums, ballparks, etc. have the money so people go after them. It doesn't matter if the person had just a couple beers at the game and it was drinking at a tailgate party or somewhere near the game that got them wasted. They were at the game, its the owner of the stadiums fault. This is the same mentality that made it so that only plastic bottles were served in stadiums. Some morons threw bottles at an ump and instead of getting pissed at them they get pissed at the conglomerate that allowed them to have glass bottles. It's such a strange world we live in. I'm not really promoting that the idea that we should change the laws at all, but it does make one wonder. How far can this idea go? When we hold someone personally responsible for their actions (i.e. driving drunk) but then hold a corporation liable in civil court, aren't we in effect saying that everyone that had any part of serving alcohol to someone that did something incredibly stupid whilst under the influence of that alcohol is responsible? The low-wage worker that handed them the beer, the truck drivers that delivered the beer to the stadium, the brewery that made the beer? Where's the line?
If I ate at McDonalds everyday and as a result lived my life with increasingly clogged arteries and massive amounts of fat, is it McDonalds fault when I have a heart attack? Is it the owner of the individual franchise that knew me as a regular customer but served me every time I came in? Is it the bigger corporation who, in order to increase profits, allows for cheaper and cheaper, and thus less healthy, ingredients? Or is it the farmers that sell the meat to them at lower prices because it isn't up to the standard of beef other restaurants demand? Then where can you go with it, how far back? The cows have to eat, have to drink, have to have land in a state somewhere. That farmer, did he go to a bank to get a loan when he lost half his herd one year? Is the bank culpable? Is some overseas investor in that bank liable because he has a large stake in that bank? I know this sounds ridiculous, but I wonder about these things sometimes. There is a big difference, I know, to selling someone alcohol at a stadium and then not noticing that he got in his car and drove off than playing Six Degrees of Separation to liability.
I guess what my problem is is that I want to be held responsible for my own actions and no one elses. If I fuck up, get myself in a heap of trouble, I can see why I might have the impulse to want to pass the buck. People have laughed at the so-called "Twinkie Defense" claiming the Twinkies diminished his brain capacity and lead to mood swings. But the fact that most people are aware of the phrase "Twinkie defense" if not the actual arguments in the case means that we have had this idea of blaming the big, bad faceless corporations for our own shortcomings and crimes.
Often I want to rally against corporations. There are many reasons to hate them. They do whatever they can to make more money for themselves and they don't really care who they hurt in the process. But I want to take them on for what they have done. If they are dumping illegally, if they are paying workers less than what they earn, if they build a two story off shore and throw the words "World Wide Headquarters" across the face of the building so they don't have to pay taxes in the US even though they do all their business in the US, they should be held accountable for that. And its not like I don't think they should be held accountable for selling things that really are dangerous. I can get behind suing tobacco companies, for example, even though I smoke, for a variety of reasons. They produce a dangerous product and when they market it to children or try to alter studies to make it seem less dangerous, they should be sued. I think what I'm having a problem with is these acute situations. If it came out that tobacco companies could reduce the risk of cancer from smoking their products but just didn't because it would make the cost of a pack go up a few extra cents, they should be held accountable. If, however, someone fell asleep in a luxury hotel with a cigarette burning in their hand and burned the place down, that is that persons mistake. The cigarette, though it may have been the real thing that started the fire, was not put into that persons hand, into that room, and the person wasn't lulled to sleep by the cigarette, so this would be an acute event. A one time thing that is solely the person who fell asleep fault. I realize that my examples aren't great, but they are meant to illustrate my point.
It could be said that in a society we are all our brothers keeper. That we have to look out for one another to make sure that one person isn't going to do something to upset the status quo. When a company has a longer reach, they have more responsibility to watch out even more. Yet we often do forget about them, letting them get away with things that a smaller business would never be able to get away with. But we also have no problem pointing our fingers at them whenever someone does something stupid. But we only point the finger when we think there is something in it for us. That we can get some money out of them. That's why we don't find them criminally liable. They are just being sued because they have deeper pockets. And its incredibly hypocritical. It's the same reason why doctors have to pay so much in malpractice insurance. They are going to make mistakes, but people don't have to have a reason to sue someone. They say they were mistreated and they can sue. Even if they don't have a real case it gets to a point where it is cheaper to settle than to fight it in court. The perception is that doctors and hospitals can afford to get sued, so people go after them. Now, this brings in a different set of arguments about the courts and the practice of medicine that I don't really want to get into. But the point is that if doctors were all making minimum wage and hospitals run on donations alone, we wouldn't hear about doctors getting sued. For our society to really work, for people to really have a reason to look out for others and make sure that we are all doing our own small part to keep societies wheels in motion, we have to all be equally culpable. The mega-corporations should be just as likely to be sued as the small businesses. If I am walking down the street in downtown Reno and see someone who is clearly intoxicated get behind the wheel of a car I should be just as responsible for calling the police as the bartenders of the bar he just left. If there is to be any justice in the world, then we all have to take equal responsibility.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Official News
So yesterday I was sitting around watching some TV and decided to have a few beers before bed. But then I got a call at 7pm from this place I'd been talking too about me getting a job. They wanted to hire me, and they wanted to do it before 8, which was weird but they were all like "we just had to fire three people and we need people by tomorrow threw me in the back of one of the squad cars and left made sure we sat there long enough for me to see them tow my car away from the scene. That sucked. Fortunately when they breathalyzed me I was under the limit, but that didn't seem to bug them after what they had found. I was taken over to Parr and processed and then I got to meet with this public defender, who was this smoking hottie. Blond with big ta-tas and wearing this red blouse buttoned real low. Oh, man, she was fine. And I think that sex was pretty much the only level that she could practice law at, because she was flirting with me for a bit when she first introduced herself, but then she was flirting with the cops when they came in to talk to me. And before long she was saying like "I don't know if that was a fair traffic stop, you maybe didn't have the right to search his car, so whatever you found, you know, it was like the fruit of the poisonous tree or something." And they just fucking dropped the charges like an hour later. It was fucking awesome.
But then I realized I didn't have any money or anyway to get home and I asked the hot attorney to give me a ride home. She gave me this little smile that and was all like "oh, so you're inviting me back to your place?" And I said sure, even though I thought she was just being cutesy and didn't really want to go home with me, mostly because I had noticed she had a really, really expensive engagement ring on, but I've never been one to say no to somewhat slutty professional womens. Though, to be fair, their profession is usually hooker. Anyway, she is driving me home and I'm not really sure if she actually is going to come in and I'm thinking about how messy my place is and the fact that my bed is a single when this really bright, bright light is shining on her car. We both are straining, trying to look up, see what it is. We can't though, because its so fucking bright. I tried to open the car door, but then it was like it was locked from the outside or something. I won't lie, I was freaking out a little bit and even tried to break the window by punching it. But even though Arnold can break windows with a light punch, that fucking hurts when you try to do it in real life.
All of a sudden we are floating, and I can see that we are about a mile off the road and then it felt like I had all the wind knocked out of me. Like some prize fighter had just punched me as hard as they could. I seriously thought I was going to die and I just passed out. I don't know how long I was out for, but when I came too me and the attorney are sitting on this really plush couches and there are all these weird little dudes around us. At first I thought we had been rescued by either a traveling circus or perhaps the lollipop guild. Then I noticed the little dudes were all bald and naked and gray. Then one of them started talking, it was this crazy language I'd never heard before, but then all of a sudden, like there was some translator in my head, I could understand. He was saying "Matt, we need your help. The Omega Section 1123 has been overrun by the warlord Megamothinican II!" And I said "what can I do to help!" And then the little dude, who told me his name was Franzlithian, said "you will know." And I looked over and say the attorney was now wearing this skin tight leotard that had this strange simple on the chest right below where it had been low cut to show off her amazing breasts. And then I looked down and realized that I was wearing a similar leotard, only it covered me up a lot better. And also, it had somehow made me into an action star, I was totally buff as long as I wore it. So they handed us some laser guns and told us to take one of their smaller ships out to the Omega 1123 section.
But as we got into the ship to fly I was overwhelmed by a need to say a poignant one liner, but I couldn't think of one, and while I was pondering what to say, I crashed into the Google Earth satellite and we fell back to earth, landing in the middle of the pacific, were we were eventually saved by a mermaid and a talking dolphin after they convinced us to help free the enslaved people of Atlantis. But that is a story for another April Fools day.
But then I realized I didn't have any money or anyway to get home and I asked the hot attorney to give me a ride home. She gave me this little smile that and was all like "oh, so you're inviting me back to your place?" And I said sure, even though I thought she was just being cutesy and didn't really want to go home with me, mostly because I had noticed she had a really, really expensive engagement ring on, but I've never been one to say no to somewhat slutty professional womens. Though, to be fair, their profession is usually hooker. Anyway, she is driving me home and I'm not really sure if she actually is going to come in and I'm thinking about how messy my place is and the fact that my bed is a single when this really bright, bright light is shining on her car. We both are straining, trying to look up, see what it is. We can't though, because its so fucking bright. I tried to open the car door, but then it was like it was locked from the outside or something. I won't lie, I was freaking out a little bit and even tried to break the window by punching it. But even though Arnold can break windows with a light punch, that fucking hurts when you try to do it in real life.
All of a sudden we are floating, and I can see that we are about a mile off the road and then it felt like I had all the wind knocked out of me. Like some prize fighter had just punched me as hard as they could. I seriously thought I was going to die and I just passed out. I don't know how long I was out for, but when I came too me and the attorney are sitting on this really plush couches and there are all these weird little dudes around us. At first I thought we had been rescued by either a traveling circus or perhaps the lollipop guild. Then I noticed the little dudes were all bald and naked and gray. Then one of them started talking, it was this crazy language I'd never heard before, but then all of a sudden, like there was some translator in my head, I could understand. He was saying "Matt, we need your help. The Omega Section 1123 has been overrun by the warlord Megamothinican II!" And I said "what can I do to help!" And then the little dude, who told me his name was Franzlithian, said "you will know." And I looked over and say the attorney was now wearing this skin tight leotard that had this strange simple on the chest right below where it had been low cut to show off her amazing breasts. And then I looked down and realized that I was wearing a similar leotard, only it covered me up a lot better. And also, it had somehow made me into an action star, I was totally buff as long as I wore it. So they handed us some laser guns and told us to take one of their smaller ships out to the Omega 1123 section.
But as we got into the ship to fly I was overwhelmed by a need to say a poignant one liner, but I couldn't think of one, and while I was pondering what to say, I crashed into the Google Earth satellite and we fell back to earth, landing in the middle of the pacific, were we were eventually saved by a mermaid and a talking dolphin after they convinced us to help free the enslaved people of Atlantis. But that is a story for another April Fools day.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
This Suit Burns Better
So I officially can't go out in the sun anymore. I was outside for about three hours, half of the time in the shade, and I am burnt quite robustly. Thankfully its only my arms and my face and I shall be able to sleep fairly soundly so long as I don't roll onto my face, which sometimes happens, though I mostly wake up when the pillows begin to suffocate me. Mostly.
It has been a little while since I've posted on this blog. Though not for lack of trying. Okay, thats a lie, but I've thought about it. And thinking is trying, right? No? Probably not. I am still jobless and fairly hopeless in my life. Not hopeless in the "what does it all mean!?" sense, rather the "crams at least eight hours of television into the day,between podcasts, comic books, and video games" sense of the word. I think about all these people out there, all these people that get up everyday and go out and do something and spend a lot of time focused on a goal and I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I ask myself, why can't I be that industrious? Then I realize I just don't have anything better to do with my time. Fry from Futurama (alliteration!) was at the orpenarium asking the head of the place about Leela, and Fry asks if there is anything more the man can tell him about Leela, to which the man responds "nothing that wouldn't be a waste of your time" to which Fry responds "That's impossible, because my time is worthless!" I have become a Fry, who was happy to get a vacation, saying he hadn't had time off since he was "twenty through twenty-three". I like to think I enjoy all the time I have, and I do, but there is something about living in a basement level apartment, with no job, with nothing reason to bother to wake up before the noon bells toll, alone brooding in silence for hours on end that does tend to make me a little bit off. It isn't as noticable to myself, perhaps it is to others, but most of the time I feel just the same as I did the day before and the day before that. Everyonce in a while, though, I'll find myself in a situation that I should know how to handle and its as though I've forgotten. I recall a few odd sensations when I started going back to UNR. Talking to people in my classes I just cocked my head and stared, not knowing why they where speaking to me. Something about how my day was going, perhaps, I wasn't sure. I managed to make some level of small talk but walked away in a daze, as though such an occurance was a complete annomoly. Shortly after I realized it was just a normal way of going through life. A benal conversation about something reletively meaningless, still, it left me with a sense of myself as something outside. A stranger.
More than that, though, I've been living in downtown reno for a while now and so going to UNR was altogether a bizarre experience. I live a mile, maybe a mile and a half, from the campus. But they are two different worlds. Sometimes I see some of those UNR type people come into this world, usually on weekend nights, usually drunk, and I ignore them. But to see them, in the day light, walking around and chatting on cell phones and with friends, I noticed how far gone from them I really am. I never felt completely integrated at that school but, still, I was one of them then. Just another student. Maybe not as outgoing as some, but they were a group and I was in that group on some level. But being there just a couple nights a week, seeing them from the vantage point of just a year and a half, I notice how completely different I am from most of them. They seem so well adjusted to their surroudings, so at ease with the whole scene of that college student lifestyle. Meanwhile, I walk hunched with a hat pulled down nearly over my eyes smoking a cigarrette without taking it out of my mouth, a messanger bag strapped over my shoulder and an apparent aura as no one seems to walk within a few feet of me. I realized then, though, that I still have the part to play on that campus. That although I walk most of my days in a world that is littered with drunks and homeless, of the old and forgotten, of the young and mentally insane, that I come to that campus now not as a simple student. But I am a stereotype. In my messanger bag I carry notebooks scribbled with stories, poems, and non-sequiters. I am the proverbial outsider. The ones that exist on the fringes of the others happy worlds, reminding them that this campus is a diverse campus, a campus where philosphers and artist come to try to make sense of the world in there own way. My importance to the group is to remind them that though they may be pursuing a safe major, that they may be having the typical college experience, that they are still surrounded by a world outside the campus, one that exists only to remind them that at least someone is doing it, and thank god they don't have to be that lonely morose mother fucker over there. Perhaps I have not said what I meant to say correctly. I do not want to make it seem as though I am looking at myself through titnted glass, to make myself look like some sort of marter. I do not see myself that way. I am just how I am, at one point in my life had I been given the choice I would have choosen this life. In other ways it has been somewhat thrust upon me. Christians might say that the good lord saw fit to curse me with personality quirks that make it almost impossible for me to connect to new people in order for me to find a higher calling, one that would leave me little time for too many people in my life. Another view of this may be that I choose to keep people at a distance because I don't like to be acknowledged. What I say before about appearing as some sort of characture of the stereotypical moody artist (pronounced "are-teest") isn't self grandulizing, rather it is a mere observation of myself from an outside perspective. Again, I didn't mean to represent myself as something I'm not, or may not be, just as a composit of what I suspect some have viewed me as. To attempt to look through anothers eyes at your own actions has helped me in recent years to understand things about myself. If something has happened that seems so big to me that I can't get a grip on it, that is what I do. Just trying to see myself from someone elses point of view. Someone with their own problems and worries. When I view it through that lens I see that what I do doesn't matter all that much. I am a background character in their lives and although I may have done things I regret, things I wish I could go back in time to fix, when I look at it through the eyes of someone else I see that it really doesn't matter to almost anyone but me. Somehow that makes it all better.
When it comes down to it, I suppose the reason I feel so off at UNR is because I feel like I've somehow given up. Had to go back and try again because I failed. I know I didn't fail, but by not being able to achieve anything new for myself afterwards I feel as though I've not been able to grow since leaving. And I hate having to go back. Wherever I am I try not to make too much of an impression on anyone. To stay relatively annoynomus so as I can move on without regret. Going back to do anything over again feels like a waste. Even if it helps me to get better, I want to try something new. Even with my writing I hate to revise. I know its neccessary, I know it needs to be done, but once I've written a story and felt comfortable enough with it to call it a first draft I feel I'm more or less done with it. Maybe I do need to slow down and retrace my steps from time to time, maybe I do need to become more emotionally invested in what I am doing at any given time, but I never have before. It would be a new thing for me, and perhaps something I could carry on with me. It is something I should try, but perhaps I am just not ready for it. I always want to experience life through a different sort of life. I always want to move on but I am a creature of extreme habit and find it hard to really move forward. Still, I try new things, I see how they work, and then I know. If nothing else it helps me to understand life through other people's eyes, and maybe thats really the only way anyone can understand life.
It has been a little while since I've posted on this blog. Though not for lack of trying. Okay, thats a lie, but I've thought about it. And thinking is trying, right? No? Probably not. I am still jobless and fairly hopeless in my life. Not hopeless in the "what does it all mean!?" sense, rather the "crams at least eight hours of television into the day,between podcasts, comic books, and video games" sense of the word. I think about all these people out there, all these people that get up everyday and go out and do something and spend a lot of time focused on a goal and I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I ask myself, why can't I be that industrious? Then I realize I just don't have anything better to do with my time. Fry from Futurama (alliteration!) was at the orpenarium asking the head of the place about Leela, and Fry asks if there is anything more the man can tell him about Leela, to which the man responds "nothing that wouldn't be a waste of your time" to which Fry responds "That's impossible, because my time is worthless!" I have become a Fry, who was happy to get a vacation, saying he hadn't had time off since he was "twenty through twenty-three". I like to think I enjoy all the time I have, and I do, but there is something about living in a basement level apartment, with no job, with nothing reason to bother to wake up before the noon bells toll, alone brooding in silence for hours on end that does tend to make me a little bit off. It isn't as noticable to myself, perhaps it is to others, but most of the time I feel just the same as I did the day before and the day before that. Everyonce in a while, though, I'll find myself in a situation that I should know how to handle and its as though I've forgotten. I recall a few odd sensations when I started going back to UNR. Talking to people in my classes I just cocked my head and stared, not knowing why they where speaking to me. Something about how my day was going, perhaps, I wasn't sure. I managed to make some level of small talk but walked away in a daze, as though such an occurance was a complete annomoly. Shortly after I realized it was just a normal way of going through life. A benal conversation about something reletively meaningless, still, it left me with a sense of myself as something outside. A stranger.
More than that, though, I've been living in downtown reno for a while now and so going to UNR was altogether a bizarre experience. I live a mile, maybe a mile and a half, from the campus. But they are two different worlds. Sometimes I see some of those UNR type people come into this world, usually on weekend nights, usually drunk, and I ignore them. But to see them, in the day light, walking around and chatting on cell phones and with friends, I noticed how far gone from them I really am. I never felt completely integrated at that school but, still, I was one of them then. Just another student. Maybe not as outgoing as some, but they were a group and I was in that group on some level. But being there just a couple nights a week, seeing them from the vantage point of just a year and a half, I notice how completely different I am from most of them. They seem so well adjusted to their surroudings, so at ease with the whole scene of that college student lifestyle. Meanwhile, I walk hunched with a hat pulled down nearly over my eyes smoking a cigarrette without taking it out of my mouth, a messanger bag strapped over my shoulder and an apparent aura as no one seems to walk within a few feet of me. I realized then, though, that I still have the part to play on that campus. That although I walk most of my days in a world that is littered with drunks and homeless, of the old and forgotten, of the young and mentally insane, that I come to that campus now not as a simple student. But I am a stereotype. In my messanger bag I carry notebooks scribbled with stories, poems, and non-sequiters. I am the proverbial outsider. The ones that exist on the fringes of the others happy worlds, reminding them that this campus is a diverse campus, a campus where philosphers and artist come to try to make sense of the world in there own way. My importance to the group is to remind them that though they may be pursuing a safe major, that they may be having the typical college experience, that they are still surrounded by a world outside the campus, one that exists only to remind them that at least someone is doing it, and thank god they don't have to be that lonely morose mother fucker over there. Perhaps I have not said what I meant to say correctly. I do not want to make it seem as though I am looking at myself through titnted glass, to make myself look like some sort of marter. I do not see myself that way. I am just how I am, at one point in my life had I been given the choice I would have choosen this life. In other ways it has been somewhat thrust upon me. Christians might say that the good lord saw fit to curse me with personality quirks that make it almost impossible for me to connect to new people in order for me to find a higher calling, one that would leave me little time for too many people in my life. Another view of this may be that I choose to keep people at a distance because I don't like to be acknowledged. What I say before about appearing as some sort of characture of the stereotypical moody artist (pronounced "are-teest") isn't self grandulizing, rather it is a mere observation of myself from an outside perspective. Again, I didn't mean to represent myself as something I'm not, or may not be, just as a composit of what I suspect some have viewed me as. To attempt to look through anothers eyes at your own actions has helped me in recent years to understand things about myself. If something has happened that seems so big to me that I can't get a grip on it, that is what I do. Just trying to see myself from someone elses point of view. Someone with their own problems and worries. When I view it through that lens I see that what I do doesn't matter all that much. I am a background character in their lives and although I may have done things I regret, things I wish I could go back in time to fix, when I look at it through the eyes of someone else I see that it really doesn't matter to almost anyone but me. Somehow that makes it all better.
When it comes down to it, I suppose the reason I feel so off at UNR is because I feel like I've somehow given up. Had to go back and try again because I failed. I know I didn't fail, but by not being able to achieve anything new for myself afterwards I feel as though I've not been able to grow since leaving. And I hate having to go back. Wherever I am I try not to make too much of an impression on anyone. To stay relatively annoynomus so as I can move on without regret. Going back to do anything over again feels like a waste. Even if it helps me to get better, I want to try something new. Even with my writing I hate to revise. I know its neccessary, I know it needs to be done, but once I've written a story and felt comfortable enough with it to call it a first draft I feel I'm more or less done with it. Maybe I do need to slow down and retrace my steps from time to time, maybe I do need to become more emotionally invested in what I am doing at any given time, but I never have before. It would be a new thing for me, and perhaps something I could carry on with me. It is something I should try, but perhaps I am just not ready for it. I always want to experience life through a different sort of life. I always want to move on but I am a creature of extreme habit and find it hard to really move forward. Still, I try new things, I see how they work, and then I know. If nothing else it helps me to understand life through other people's eyes, and maybe thats really the only way anyone can understand life.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
All Too Easy
Last night I was reading a book, Will Self's "How The Dead Live", I had special ordered about three months ago and sort of never got around to reading more than a few pages of until, well, last night. I came across a line in it, "After all, anyone can be a success, but it takes real guts to be a failure."
I must of re-read that line... four times. Maybe its because I've been feeling like a failure lately. Maybe its because it seems like I've spent most of my life trying to succeed and failing spectacularly at it. Or maybe because I just didn't understand it, but I couldn't get that line out of me head. I don't know if I believe it. I don't know if I want to believe it. I guess I do. There is something magical about failing in life. Maybe I haven't really failed spectacularly as I said, but I haven't been able to get anything right in my life. Girls, jobs, school, its all my life really seems to have in its past and most of that is tainted with failure. I drink too much, I smoke too much, I eat too much crap and never exercise. Some people seem like they are good at everything they do, unfortunately there has to be a balance in this universe. Some of us have to suck at everything we try. Somewhere out there is someone cruising through life while I soak up all of life's crap for the both of us. Stupid mother-fucker. If I ever decode the universe and find out whose been living a life of success built on the back of my failures in life I'll totally kick their ass. Actually, they would probably kick my ass, as, you know, they would be succeeding where I was failing. Fantastic. Stupid universe, always making me look like an idiot.
I would like to be able to succeed in life, but there are a few things about such an event that I'm not too sure about. I mean, do I really want a job? No, I don't. I mean, if I can get away with it and still have money for important things, like diet coke and cigarettes. I'll grant that I am ridiculously lucky when it comes to money. I always seem to have enough. So am I really failing when it comes to getting a job? Sure, it'd be nice to be making money, but it doesn't always seem worth it to sit around and suck it up at a shitty job unless you really need to, unless the job leads to something you really do want to do. And since I really want to be a writer and there aren't a ton of jobs that promote you up to that position, maybe I am doing what I ought to be doing. And yeah, girls, I fucking love women. The feeling, unfortunately, is not mutual. But it just isn't in my personality to cruise women, to find someone who can make me happy for a night and then forget about them. So I take my time and try to work up to something that may have a little more longevity to it. But is that what I really want right now? I know married people around my age that are perfectly happy with that life. But I am no where near ready to get married, and frankly I'm not sure I could really handle a relationship right now. I'm unemployeed and all I'm doing is taking one class and I'll be struggling for the rest of the semester just to keep up with that one class. I don't even seem to see my friends all that often these last few weeks. Hell, if I can't find time for just a couple of things going on in my life, how the fuck could I start spending any time with someone else? Sure, I know I could find the time, maybe drop a couple of hours off of my television/movie watching schedual. Still, I'm a solitary creature. I was driving to breakfast this morning (where I sat alone reading the paper) and realized I'm probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. Right now that mother fucker thats living the successful version of my life is probably fucking three swedish bikini models. Hopefully I've had enough good luck in my life to at least make one of them a dude. That'll show that bastard.
The last couple of weeks I've been living this sort of fantasy life. In it the girl I have a crush on and I are living happily together about two years in the future. I've managed to get money together to open the bakery that she wants to open and I stand happily at the counter during the day while she bakes in the back and then in the afternoon I sit down and go over the books before we take off to go home together. It's a comfortable fantasy, it fits easily into my brain. But its purely fictional. I don't think any part of me really believes anything like that will happen, could happen. Could I really be happy just running a small business because its something she wants to do? A part of me must think it sounds nice. Maybe like slipping into a coma sometimes sounds nice. A mundane Americano day dream. We can drive our Ford back to our white-picket fenched home in the suburbs. Could I really live a life like that? I thought I could until a restless nights sleep in which lucidity took hold and I realized I'm probably more likely to get lost on some soul-searching trek in Indo-China than have something like that happen in my life. Though perhaps I am being to hard on myself. Maybe I could be a simple man with simple desires in life. Sometimes when I think of me and this girl getting together I can't help but imagine her stabbing me in the chest while I sleep. Not that I think she wants to kill me, but rather this is my brains way of saying "you don't deserve this, not even in fantasy, KNIFE!" A product of low self esteem. Many of my thoughts end like that. Some people say the way to get ahead in life is to imagine everything working out. I imagine everything working out and then immediately getting in a head-on collision with a semi. I imagine getting a job working for $100k a year and getting impaled on unusually large scissors. I don't intend to do this. But it happens. I remember sitting in a Denny's in Las Vegas with the Chitwood brothers and we were chatting about how we imagined ourselves dying (which was a fairly peppy conversation for such a morbid topic, as I recall) and I said "I'll probably fall in love with a crazy woman and then she'll stab me to death." The waitress walked up to refill our drinks at that moment, this little peurto rican woman, and she says "Oh! You talking about girls?" and she giggles, and I turn to her and say "Yeah, I'm gonna get stabbed by my girlfriend."
Maybe all those people are right. Maybe I can't get anything going in this life because I can't imagine getting anything right in this life. Or maybe Will Self is right. Maybe its easy to go for success and to go for these things in life because that is what everyone else is doing. That is a well worn path that is easy to follow. To follow the advice of those that get to sit in corner offices and say yes to everything until you get to the top. To sacrafice that part of your soul that says "maybe I should become a punk rocker" to go and sit in a cubicle for forty years. You let things fall into place and just do what you think is expected of you and, yeah, maybe you are going to be successful. But if you have any guts at all you just sort of wander off, maybe fall into a river and emerge on the other side covered in leeches only to find that you are now faced with a mountain lion. And a monkey with a bad-ass attitude who is riding the mountain lion. It may not make for a better life, but fuck all if it isn't more interesting.
I must of re-read that line... four times. Maybe its because I've been feeling like a failure lately. Maybe its because it seems like I've spent most of my life trying to succeed and failing spectacularly at it. Or maybe because I just didn't understand it, but I couldn't get that line out of me head. I don't know if I believe it. I don't know if I want to believe it. I guess I do. There is something magical about failing in life. Maybe I haven't really failed spectacularly as I said, but I haven't been able to get anything right in my life. Girls, jobs, school, its all my life really seems to have in its past and most of that is tainted with failure. I drink too much, I smoke too much, I eat too much crap and never exercise. Some people seem like they are good at everything they do, unfortunately there has to be a balance in this universe. Some of us have to suck at everything we try. Somewhere out there is someone cruising through life while I soak up all of life's crap for the both of us. Stupid mother-fucker. If I ever decode the universe and find out whose been living a life of success built on the back of my failures in life I'll totally kick their ass. Actually, they would probably kick my ass, as, you know, they would be succeeding where I was failing. Fantastic. Stupid universe, always making me look like an idiot.
I would like to be able to succeed in life, but there are a few things about such an event that I'm not too sure about. I mean, do I really want a job? No, I don't. I mean, if I can get away with it and still have money for important things, like diet coke and cigarettes. I'll grant that I am ridiculously lucky when it comes to money. I always seem to have enough. So am I really failing when it comes to getting a job? Sure, it'd be nice to be making money, but it doesn't always seem worth it to sit around and suck it up at a shitty job unless you really need to, unless the job leads to something you really do want to do. And since I really want to be a writer and there aren't a ton of jobs that promote you up to that position, maybe I am doing what I ought to be doing. And yeah, girls, I fucking love women. The feeling, unfortunately, is not mutual. But it just isn't in my personality to cruise women, to find someone who can make me happy for a night and then forget about them. So I take my time and try to work up to something that may have a little more longevity to it. But is that what I really want right now? I know married people around my age that are perfectly happy with that life. But I am no where near ready to get married, and frankly I'm not sure I could really handle a relationship right now. I'm unemployeed and all I'm doing is taking one class and I'll be struggling for the rest of the semester just to keep up with that one class. I don't even seem to see my friends all that often these last few weeks. Hell, if I can't find time for just a couple of things going on in my life, how the fuck could I start spending any time with someone else? Sure, I know I could find the time, maybe drop a couple of hours off of my television/movie watching schedual. Still, I'm a solitary creature. I was driving to breakfast this morning (where I sat alone reading the paper) and realized I'm probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. Right now that mother fucker thats living the successful version of my life is probably fucking three swedish bikini models. Hopefully I've had enough good luck in my life to at least make one of them a dude. That'll show that bastard.
The last couple of weeks I've been living this sort of fantasy life. In it the girl I have a crush on and I are living happily together about two years in the future. I've managed to get money together to open the bakery that she wants to open and I stand happily at the counter during the day while she bakes in the back and then in the afternoon I sit down and go over the books before we take off to go home together. It's a comfortable fantasy, it fits easily into my brain. But its purely fictional. I don't think any part of me really believes anything like that will happen, could happen. Could I really be happy just running a small business because its something she wants to do? A part of me must think it sounds nice. Maybe like slipping into a coma sometimes sounds nice. A mundane Americano day dream. We can drive our Ford back to our white-picket fenched home in the suburbs. Could I really live a life like that? I thought I could until a restless nights sleep in which lucidity took hold and I realized I'm probably more likely to get lost on some soul-searching trek in Indo-China than have something like that happen in my life. Though perhaps I am being to hard on myself. Maybe I could be a simple man with simple desires in life. Sometimes when I think of me and this girl getting together I can't help but imagine her stabbing me in the chest while I sleep. Not that I think she wants to kill me, but rather this is my brains way of saying "you don't deserve this, not even in fantasy, KNIFE!" A product of low self esteem. Many of my thoughts end like that. Some people say the way to get ahead in life is to imagine everything working out. I imagine everything working out and then immediately getting in a head-on collision with a semi. I imagine getting a job working for $100k a year and getting impaled on unusually large scissors. I don't intend to do this. But it happens. I remember sitting in a Denny's in Las Vegas with the Chitwood brothers and we were chatting about how we imagined ourselves dying (which was a fairly peppy conversation for such a morbid topic, as I recall) and I said "I'll probably fall in love with a crazy woman and then she'll stab me to death." The waitress walked up to refill our drinks at that moment, this little peurto rican woman, and she says "Oh! You talking about girls?" and she giggles, and I turn to her and say "Yeah, I'm gonna get stabbed by my girlfriend."
Maybe all those people are right. Maybe I can't get anything going in this life because I can't imagine getting anything right in this life. Or maybe Will Self is right. Maybe its easy to go for success and to go for these things in life because that is what everyone else is doing. That is a well worn path that is easy to follow. To follow the advice of those that get to sit in corner offices and say yes to everything until you get to the top. To sacrafice that part of your soul that says "maybe I should become a punk rocker" to go and sit in a cubicle for forty years. You let things fall into place and just do what you think is expected of you and, yeah, maybe you are going to be successful. But if you have any guts at all you just sort of wander off, maybe fall into a river and emerge on the other side covered in leeches only to find that you are now faced with a mountain lion. And a monkey with a bad-ass attitude who is riding the mountain lion. It may not make for a better life, but fuck all if it isn't more interesting.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Resolutions: Week 3
This is going to be fairly short. I've destroyed my laptop with a blunderous spill of orange soda and therefore am forced to use public computers until I go to Fallon and get my bulky PC. I'm not looking forward to trying to use it as the wireless card installed in it is next-to-worthless and will probably not even be able to pick up the signal that I've been using in my apartment, which means I'll have to start actually paying for internet again. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to do that.
As far as my New years resolutions, I've really done nothing in the last week with them. Not even bothered to think about them until today. I'm going to try to get back on track. I think that part of my diet/exercising/detoxing/whatever the hell else I said I'd do will now be involving a lot more milk. I drank about a quart of milk straight from the carton last night. This was the first time I'd had milk apart from with cereal in months. I'd forgotten its rich, creamy deliciousness. I must have more of it, you hear me, I must! I don't know how I'm going to work it in. Maybe as a reward for actually accomplishing some small task I've set out to do during the day. That might work.
I'm taking classes again, one at UNR and I'm signed up for a couple at TMCC. My first class was last night and although I was somewhat nervous about going back, soon it felt as though I were a fish in water and I remembered how easy it is to take classes.
Sorry this post hasn't been as wacky as some of my recent posts. There really is no excuse for that. I'll make sure to up the crazy in the next post though.
As far as my New years resolutions, I've really done nothing in the last week with them. Not even bothered to think about them until today. I'm going to try to get back on track. I think that part of my diet/exercising/detoxing/whatever the hell else I said I'd do will now be involving a lot more milk. I drank about a quart of milk straight from the carton last night. This was the first time I'd had milk apart from with cereal in months. I'd forgotten its rich, creamy deliciousness. I must have more of it, you hear me, I must! I don't know how I'm going to work it in. Maybe as a reward for actually accomplishing some small task I've set out to do during the day. That might work.
I'm taking classes again, one at UNR and I'm signed up for a couple at TMCC. My first class was last night and although I was somewhat nervous about going back, soon it felt as though I were a fish in water and I remembered how easy it is to take classes.
Sorry this post hasn't been as wacky as some of my recent posts. There really is no excuse for that. I'll make sure to up the crazy in the next post though.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Resolution Week 2: Electric Boogaloo
The "Jesus, that went well" Edition
So in less than a week since my last posting I've already failed at keeping any of my resolutions. Except for the non-resolution of keeping up a posting on it for more than one week (boo-yah!). For next year I'm thinking I should make a resolution to get new auto insurance, which would be way easier to keep and also I could hear hilarious snide comments from the Progressive girl.
No, really, she's actually quite charming
So what have I been up to, then, in my failing methods of resolutioning. Resolutioned. Resolutionizing. What indeed? I can't really answer that question. I was planning on being on the second week of a diet and fully employed by this point, so mostly I've just been sitting around being bored out of my mind. The other day I went to the thesaurus to see if I could find a synonim for how bored I was. And while I did find out that "a board is a committee having supervisory powers, a plank, or food served to lodgers" (and what sort of supervisory powers include a plank and food service? ....GASP! Pirates!) I could find now word to describe my listlessness. I did, however, come up with a buddy cop screenplay that included the previously mentioned Progressive girl and Paige Davis from the RC Wiley commercials.
That's some fine police work.
I will grant that it is possible I am going a little nuts being cooped up and not really accomplishing anything. Although I'm still managing to have stress dreams that cause me to wake with a fear that I've got a big presentation at work today I'm not ready for. Then reality sinks in and I pop open a can of diet coke and apply a liberal serving of cartoons. It turns out that changing ones self is harder than they make it look on TV. Apparently one moment of good will does not in fact turn you into a better person for the rest of your life.
The surprising part is how little I really care about things. I've always had a "something will come up" attitude towards life, and lately that attitude has started to manifest itself more and more, to a point where I figure I'm just as likely to come up with something while sleeping late into the afternoon and plotting how I can better incorporate the eating of cocktail wieners into my daily life. I suppose this week has just been a week of apathy. I realize that I have little control over things in my life. I wish I could make things happen that I want to have happen, but at the end of the day I can either look back and see a lot of time wasted chasing after some abstract notion of success or I can look back and see a day devoted to proving the hypothesis that Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious.
So in less than a week since my last posting I've already failed at keeping any of my resolutions. Except for the non-resolution of keeping up a posting on it for more than one week (boo-yah!). For next year I'm thinking I should make a resolution to get new auto insurance, which would be way easier to keep and also I could hear hilarious snide comments from the Progressive girl.
So what have I been up to, then, in my failing methods of resolutioning. Resolutioned. Resolutionizing. What indeed? I can't really answer that question. I was planning on being on the second week of a diet and fully employed by this point, so mostly I've just been sitting around being bored out of my mind. The other day I went to the thesaurus to see if I could find a synonim for how bored I was. And while I did find out that "a board is a committee having supervisory powers, a plank, or food served to lodgers" (and what sort of supervisory powers include a plank and food service? ....GASP! Pirates!) I could find now word to describe my listlessness. I did, however, come up with a buddy cop screenplay that included the previously mentioned Progressive girl and Paige Davis from the RC Wiley commercials.
I will grant that it is possible I am going a little nuts being cooped up and not really accomplishing anything. Although I'm still managing to have stress dreams that cause me to wake with a fear that I've got a big presentation at work today I'm not ready for. Then reality sinks in and I pop open a can of diet coke and apply a liberal serving of cartoons. It turns out that changing ones self is harder than they make it look on TV. Apparently one moment of good will does not in fact turn you into a better person for the rest of your life.
The surprising part is how little I really care about things. I've always had a "something will come up" attitude towards life, and lately that attitude has started to manifest itself more and more, to a point where I figure I'm just as likely to come up with something while sleeping late into the afternoon and plotting how I can better incorporate the eating of cocktail wieners into my daily life. I suppose this week has just been a week of apathy. I realize that I have little control over things in my life. I wish I could make things happen that I want to have happen, but at the end of the day I can either look back and see a lot of time wasted chasing after some abstract notion of success or I can look back and see a day devoted to proving the hypothesis that Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Resolutions: Week 1
New Years Resolutions Week One
The "Ow, My Balls" edition
Like many Americans I have set some goals for myself for the new year. Though, honestly, the main goal would have to be to not give up on other goals after one day of feeling like crap about something or another. Every year at this time millions sign up for gym memberships and every year by February everyone stops going to the gym. As it turns out, most people have the same trouble I have with the "stick-to-ittaness". Habits are hard to break. Lifestyles are fucking hard to change. If your new years resolution is to stop being such a dick to people, your still calling the old lady (at the grocery store, in front of you) writing a check and using coupons she clipped out of the penny saver a "time-wasting, pain in the ass of a useless old hag" by February. By then you've forgotten your grand declaration after your heart-warming Christmas that ended with you singing Christmas carols to a group of young orphans in front of the big town Christmas tree on New Years Eve. Sure, they proved to you that Santa was real and alive in everyone of us. But frankly thirty years of telling homeless people to get a job while kicking over their shopping carts full of cans is a bigger challenge to overcome than a single night of hope and joy can ever hope to over come.
So it seems silly to think that I will overcome whatever it was that I wanted to overcome in the new year. But at the same time its worth a try. Although not worth a try according to the so-called Nanny State wherein they say that New Years resolutions are bad because they may "may trigger feelings of failure and inadequacy" if you fail to achieve your goals. So that's what it was! I thought I was depressed because my life wasn't moving in the direction I wanted it to be, but no! It turns out I'm just sad because sometimes when I try something I don't automatically succeed! It's so obvious! I shouldn't be aiming for anything, I shouldn't give a thought to what I'm doing because, right or wrong, if I try something different I may not be good at it. And that makes me sad. To be fair to the UK, though, I have heard this advice before, from a very bright (yellow) man "I don't know. Trying is the first step towards failure" (yes, that man was Homer. Not the brilliant dead poet behind The Odyssey and The Iliad, but the brilliant Nuclear Safety Inspector behind the plot to steal a giant metal donut from a statue).
My first week in this Brave New Year has yet to yield many results. I started a detox to better my health before Christmas, gave it up, and started again on the first. I was better about what I was eating before, but overall I'm glad I had a little warm-up run of it before. After a few bad nights at the end of December I remembered an encounter I had with someone I hadn't seen in a long time I happened to run into in a Target the last time I was trying to make my life feel less like a depressing movie on the Lifetime channel. Not much of a conversation, but that day just had a good feeling to it. And I said something along the lines of "I've become unemployed and now I am happy". And for the first time in a long time felt genuinely happy with myself. Kind of a weird memory to base a series of goals for myself off of, but that was after a mere week of my regiment and all my anxieties were becoming just bad memories. Had I changed? Not that much, but my mind was clearing itself out. In the attic of my brain, I apparently had a lot of boxes piled up in front of the window. With a little effort light was starting to shine in again.
The downside to this year so far has been the constant pain I've had since it started. My body feels like its punching itself from the inside every time I fall asleep. I've got a cold, my head is stuffed up, my brain lacks any ability to focus on anything other than a singular line of thought. I keep thinking of a girl that I get the pessimistic feeling that on any given day I have a better chance of getting a restraining order from than a good-night kiss. I've been doing some reading on Zen/Dharma and an idea I've gotten from that, that I am paraphrasing the hell out of, is that desire is the root cause of suffering. I desire to be with this girl. I am not. I suffer emotional turmoil every time I think of her because of this. This problem has a solution, and it isn't the solution I'd like, I'd like it to be to win her over and be able to be with her. But the real answer seems to be somewhere around not having the desire to be with her anymore. If I remove the desire, I remove the discomfort I feel when I find myself lacking what I want. While I can logically see the reasoning behind that, I find it nearly impossible to remove that want.
While trying to find some sort of peace inside myself I instead find more and more conflict. It hurts. It hurts like a bitch. Emotionally I'm drained and physically I'm just exhausted.
In the end, I guess this is why so many resolutions fail. No one is going to knowingly put themselves into a situation that will cause a deal of suffering in their daily life for a while if they don't feel there is a reward for it at the end of the road. I honestly don't know that there is any sort of reward at the end of this road. I have to assume that everything I think I know about what I am doing is wrong. I have to remember that even if I think I know something will or won't work out I really don't know. That's really what trying is about. What happens in the future can't be seen. All I can do is keep trying and deal with those triggered feelings of inadequacy if they come up. I don't have any real insights.
Thankfully I don't have to have any insights, as I have watched a lot of movies, and remember a line from "Little Miss Sunshine" whenever I am feeling like this:
"{On Marcel Proust} French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he, uh, he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."
The "Ow, My Balls" edition
Like many Americans I have set some goals for myself for the new year. Though, honestly, the main goal would have to be to not give up on other goals after one day of feeling like crap about something or another. Every year at this time millions sign up for gym memberships and every year by February everyone stops going to the gym. As it turns out, most people have the same trouble I have with the "stick-to-ittaness". Habits are hard to break. Lifestyles are fucking hard to change. If your new years resolution is to stop being such a dick to people, your still calling the old lady (at the grocery store, in front of you) writing a check and using coupons she clipped out of the penny saver a "time-wasting, pain in the ass of a useless old hag" by February. By then you've forgotten your grand declaration after your heart-warming Christmas that ended with you singing Christmas carols to a group of young orphans in front of the big town Christmas tree on New Years Eve. Sure, they proved to you that Santa was real and alive in everyone of us. But frankly thirty years of telling homeless people to get a job while kicking over their shopping carts full of cans is a bigger challenge to overcome than a single night of hope and joy can ever hope to over come.
So it seems silly to think that I will overcome whatever it was that I wanted to overcome in the new year. But at the same time its worth a try. Although not worth a try according to the so-called Nanny State wherein they say that New Years resolutions are bad because they may "may trigger feelings of failure and inadequacy" if you fail to achieve your goals. So that's what it was! I thought I was depressed because my life wasn't moving in the direction I wanted it to be, but no! It turns out I'm just sad because sometimes when I try something I don't automatically succeed! It's so obvious! I shouldn't be aiming for anything, I shouldn't give a thought to what I'm doing because, right or wrong, if I try something different I may not be good at it. And that makes me sad. To be fair to the UK, though, I have heard this advice before, from a very bright (yellow) man "I don't know. Trying is the first step towards failure" (yes, that man was Homer. Not the brilliant dead poet behind The Odyssey and The Iliad, but the brilliant Nuclear Safety Inspector behind the plot to steal a giant metal donut from a statue).
My first week in this Brave New Year has yet to yield many results. I started a detox to better my health before Christmas, gave it up, and started again on the first. I was better about what I was eating before, but overall I'm glad I had a little warm-up run of it before. After a few bad nights at the end of December I remembered an encounter I had with someone I hadn't seen in a long time I happened to run into in a Target the last time I was trying to make my life feel less like a depressing movie on the Lifetime channel. Not much of a conversation, but that day just had a good feeling to it. And I said something along the lines of "I've become unemployed and now I am happy". And for the first time in a long time felt genuinely happy with myself. Kind of a weird memory to base a series of goals for myself off of, but that was after a mere week of my regiment and all my anxieties were becoming just bad memories. Had I changed? Not that much, but my mind was clearing itself out. In the attic of my brain, I apparently had a lot of boxes piled up in front of the window. With a little effort light was starting to shine in again.
The downside to this year so far has been the constant pain I've had since it started. My body feels like its punching itself from the inside every time I fall asleep. I've got a cold, my head is stuffed up, my brain lacks any ability to focus on anything other than a singular line of thought. I keep thinking of a girl that I get the pessimistic feeling that on any given day I have a better chance of getting a restraining order from than a good-night kiss. I've been doing some reading on Zen/Dharma and an idea I've gotten from that, that I am paraphrasing the hell out of, is that desire is the root cause of suffering. I desire to be with this girl. I am not. I suffer emotional turmoil every time I think of her because of this. This problem has a solution, and it isn't the solution I'd like, I'd like it to be to win her over and be able to be with her. But the real answer seems to be somewhere around not having the desire to be with her anymore. If I remove the desire, I remove the discomfort I feel when I find myself lacking what I want. While I can logically see the reasoning behind that, I find it nearly impossible to remove that want.
While trying to find some sort of peace inside myself I instead find more and more conflict. It hurts. It hurts like a bitch. Emotionally I'm drained and physically I'm just exhausted.
In the end, I guess this is why so many resolutions fail. No one is going to knowingly put themselves into a situation that will cause a deal of suffering in their daily life for a while if they don't feel there is a reward for it at the end of the road. I honestly don't know that there is any sort of reward at the end of this road. I have to assume that everything I think I know about what I am doing is wrong. I have to remember that even if I think I know something will or won't work out I really don't know. That's really what trying is about. What happens in the future can't be seen. All I can do is keep trying and deal with those triggered feelings of inadequacy if they come up. I don't have any real insights.
Thankfully I don't have to have any insights, as I have watched a lot of movies, and remember a line from "Little Miss Sunshine" whenever I am feeling like this:
"{On Marcel Proust} French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he, uh, he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."
Monday, January 05, 2009
Horror! Excitement! Fright! Queuing!
I've just thought of a brilliant horror/comedy film. I call it "Deadline!" Only, the movie poster would write it out like:
DEADline!
And maybe "Dead" would have blood dripping down from it or something. Of course, this could get confused with other movies since a quick IMdB search revealed 32 matches for "Deadline". Still, I'll make up a plot for mine anyway since its unlikely I will ever have to worry about it actually getting made.
An office drone named Sam strolls into work one day and is almost immediately beckoned into the bosses office. "The Integrated BBRC report is now due tomorrow! I need you to head this up Sam, this is our most desperate hour. You are our only hope." Says the boss. "But that wasn't supposed to be due till September!" Sam proclaims, as the camera casually notes that it a calendar on the desk proclaiming it to be June. "Well corporate says they need it now! And its a matter of life and death!" Says the boss, though instead of "life and death" he may say something like "of grave importance" or "imperative necessity" or something. You know, for effect. So the boss gives Sam the go ahead to recruit a rag-tag team from the office to get it done and they go into a room thats lit with that sort of soft-light graininess that you see in the Bourne movies and the new Bond movies, you know, so it looks realistic but also stylistic, which is totally awesome.
So his team is made up of a hot chick that has a bad-ass attitude. She's probably a temp or something and doesn't give a s#!t 'bout nothin' or no one but herself. At least on the outside, but you can tell she's really just a hard-ass with a heart of gold. And a mouth like a drunken sailor. He also recruits the old guy whose just always been with the company and he's always sitting quietly in the corner stroking his beard and he clearly knows that there is more to this BBRC protocol than anyone else knows and he's always saying things like "man must be cautious what doors he opens" and other stuff that sounds vaguely profound but is really just poorly written foreshadowing. He also gets an ex-marine that seems to have a bit of PTS from the war that he just got back from a little over a year ago. And that guy is goofy and acts like a frat boy but when it is time to get serious he gets really, really serious. Also there is some guy whose ridiculously good at computers and when we first see him he is just sitting there on a MacBook(TM) and drinking a Coke(TM) (hey, this is low-budget, we need all the product placement we can get) and then when Sam says "Hey, what do you think (nerdy computer guy)?" The dude is just like "one second, I just cracked the federal air traffic control board and I'm diverting all the flights from Pennsylvania to Canada. Guess I don't have to see my mother in law this weekend after all!" And thats how we know that this dude is, like, the best computer guy ever. Because he can break into any system, yo.
So now he's got his rag-tag team and they get to work. They sit around drinking Starbucks(TM) and saying computer words that everyone knows by now but that make it sound like they know what they are talking about. "We need to integrate the program into a Java script from an HTML format if we are going to upload it to a secure server by 2200!" Says one of them, with all seriousness. But as they are nearing the end Sam's iPhone(TM) rings and he is all like "Hello? This is Sam." And there is this raspy voice on the other end that is all like "is the program ready?" And Sam is looks at his rag-tag team and is all like "oh shit, its corporate!" and then he speaks into the phone "Almost, we are having a little problem with getting the proxy server to sync up to our registry." And the raspy voice is all like "you must complete the program by tonight!" all angry sounding and then he hangs up and Sam is all flustered and they all get even more serious then they were about getting it done. But the old man is all like "Do not trust men with such strict time tables" or something and everyone stops and thinks about that for a moment until Sam says "Thats just the way of the world these days, old-timer." But he says old-timer in a friendly way so it doesn't seem like he is ageist, even though he probably is. And the hard-core bitch curses about something or another.
The clock in the room they are working in closes in on ten P.M. and you can tell they are still struggling to get it all done. But then the nerdy computer guy sits back in his chair all smug and takes a big bite out of his Whopper(TM) and, with a mouth full of processed meat, says "Yeah, I just finished the patch. We can upload it as soon as you slackers finish up whatever the hell you were working on." And Sam looks pissed because they've all just mostly been waiting for the nerdy guy to finish because they were done for hours and he's all like "About time!" And the nerdy guy realizes he wasn't the first to finish at all, but rather the last, and you can tell that he is really worried about his rep as the best computer guy ever, even though he still totally is.
So they upload the program and then the lights flicker and the old guy has a worried, yet somber, look on his face. And he says "I believe that perhaps we should not go home tonight." But then the hard-core bitch is all like "F^%$ that, you old motherf&*&%%%^%^, I'm getting the hell to my goddamn bed and you sure as #%*(#%* #%*(^#%(*# #(*%^#(*%&# @)(#@)(# $^*@^$@ gonna stop me. " So she leaves, but the old man stays, and the rest of the team, the Frat boy vet, the nerd, and Sam, decide to head down the street to grab a beer because the Frat/Vet said "Hell, I don't know bout you boys, but I need a brewskie!" So they follow him because they think its cool that the cool guy in the office is finally willing to hang out with them.
On the way to the bar they notice that there is a weird light in the sky. And all the street lights are flickering. And a woman screams in the distance. Also, maybe there is a little bit of rain and lightning. The nerdy guy looks really scared, but Sam is acting tough since he's with the tough guy, and the tough guy doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary. When they are about to walk through the door to the bar, this homeless looking guy comes up to them and demands they give him some money, but Sam ignores him, but the tough guy gets in his face, and then they get into a fight, and the tough guy rips the homeless guys arm off in a fit of rage. But the guy keeps going like nothings wrong, so after a little more of a scuffle, they run away back to the office where the old man is sitting there with, like, a million guns.
The nerdy guy is all like "we just ran into a zombie!" or something and the old guy is like "I was afraid this would happen." And the tough guy is covered in blood and trying to wash it off and Sam is looking out the window when he sees a car crash through the fence around the parking lot then a bunch of people run in through the hole. And then hard-core bitch gets out and smashes a few of the people on the head and runs back into the office building.
"What the &^% @)(@ &&^& is going on out there!" She says, but she already knows!
So the team sits around for a little while then the old man relates some story about this time when he was younger and rasher and something like this happened in this little town that didn't appear on any map. And then thats how they know that this was their fault, because the program they uploaded was the final missing ingrediate to a zombie armageddon that corporate was trying to unleash on the world. And Sam is all like "Why would they want a zombie armageddon!" and the tough guy is all like, oh and he has his shirt off trying to rinse out the blood and impress hard-core bitch, he's all like "I don't know and I don't care. But we started this and I'm sure as hell not resting till we finish it!" And hard-core bitch is all like "your an idiot, I ain't going back out there, you dumb &^%!!" But you can tell she is totally impressed by him cause she's not taking her eyes off of tough guy and she's biting her lip all sexy like.
So the old guy tells them that the only way to stop it is to upload the counter-program directly into Corporates main server. And Sam is all like "thats fifty miles away!" but they decide they have to go anyway and they ask the nerdy guy to make the program, but he's all like "shit, I did that already. I never design anything I can't destroy. Hell, I can probably destroy it from here!" And he gets back on his MacBook(TM) and starts doing something, but the old man is all like "NO!" But its too late because this weird light starts coming out of the computer and then there is some more power surging and everything goes kind of purperly red for a few moments then all the lights go out. Then they come back up and everyone is standing there in the same spot but the nerdy kid is gone, or is he? They look around then out of a dark corner the nerdy kid jumps on the back of the tough guy and bites him in the neck!! But hard-core bitch goes all crazy and beats nerdy dude off. And now tough guy is bite and old man says he is going to turn, and hard-core bitch is like "no, no!!" but old man says he has a few hours before he turns so they run outside and get in the car and take off for corporate. Also, the old man says "The deadline to stop this is eight am. After that, all hope will be lost!"
They have a fight scene with all the zombies outside the office but they make it to the car and get in and hard-core bitch is being all sweet to the tough guy and taking care of him and trying to stop the bleeding and murmering about how its going to be alright and they will stop this before he turns. But as soon as they get on the freeway, they see a bunch of zombies walking around and then they go "oh, shit, we can't get through." But tough guy says "Just gun it till we stop, then I'll make sure you guys get out." So they do that and eventually the car crashes into a median after crashing through, like, a million zombies. So when they stop tough guy gives hard-core bitch this overly sloppy smooch and then he gets out and punches through zombies like nobodies business and they hold off the ones that come around the car with some of old man's guns and after a while when they are afraid tough guy isn't coming back, this big Hummer(TM) crashes through some more zombies and pulls right up to it and you see tough guy at the wheel, much more covered in blood then the last time we saw him. And he gets out and says "You go ahead! I'll stay here and keep them off your ass!" And so they don't argue but hard-core bitch cries and runs to kiss him, but she gets bit while they are, um, distracted.
But bitch, old man and Sam get in the Hummer(TM) and take off and they sit in silence as they drive. After a few flash forwards of the driving, they pass a sign that says "Corporate, 3 Miles." Only maybe it says the name of the town or something else, because why would one business have a sign on the highway?! Or maybe it was a billboard. Lets go with that. But then the Hummer(TM) runs out of gas!
So they take their guns and the now pale hard-core bitch and old man take point and Sam slides the counter-program (Oh, he put it on a memory stick before they left, by the way) into his shirt pocket and they take off on foot because none of them know how to hot wire any of the abandoned cars on the side of the road. They fight some zombies. And they have to fight some, like, zombie birds and squirls and maybe a dog or two. But they make it over this ridge and they can see Corporate and its all glowing that same purperly red and then Sam's iPhone rings.
Sam is about to answer it, but old man stops him, takes the phone, smashes it, and explains that that is how they are passing on the disease! Through cell phones! The horror! Also, they use computers. Which might raise the question as to why the first person they saw that was a zombie was a homeless guy, so maybe we could show him coming out of an internet cafe or something.
Anyway, the get up next to the building all sneaky like and Hard-core almost zombie bitch is like "Let me handle this" because there are a bunch of guys in suits with really big guns sitting there looking all professional and ready to kill. And Sam is all like "no! You can't, we can get around them some other way!" But she knows they can't and that she is already dead and then she reveals her dark secret!
She and tough guy were dating! Secretly! And she really cared about him because he saved her from an abusive husband and he was actually really sweet just a little screwed up! Just like her! She has a cat named fluffy! And donates most of her paycheck to an orphanage! But then she lets out a string of profanity laced gibberish about how she can take on the whole f*&^%ng Corporation after what they did and she totally goes all Rambo on the asses of the guards and creates a big enough distraction for Sam and Old man to sneak through a side entrance. So they get in and shot a couple of guards here and there and finally make it up to the Office of the CEO where the main server is. But its guarded by, like, fifty people! So old man says "Sam, you wait here! I don't know how to upload the program into the server, I was taking a class at the learning annex...." but Sam understands that old man is sacrificing himself for the greater good and Sam knows what he has to do. Before he leaves, old man hands Sam his cell phone and tells Sam to turn it on. Sam does so, not understanding. Old man, with a combination of walking out and talking to the guards, a lot of bullets, and a ridiculous amount of explosives he happened to have on him, pulls the guards off the door and Sam runs in with tears in his eyes for the sacrifice of old man.
But when Sam opens the door, its the CEO! Maybe we know this because we saw the CEO on a commercial or something earlier in the movie! And he is all like "Sam. I didn't think you would make it this far. I'm impressed." And Sam is all like "you know who I am?" And the CEO is all like "Of course, I've been watching you for a long, long time. You are like me Sam. Someone who never really belonged in this world." And we know he's telling the truth because in the beginning of the movie there was probably a scene were you can see that no one emails Sam or calls him or anything. "But you are also a very bright young lad" continues the CEO "and I knew that of all the employees in all my satalite offices, you were the one that could get the BBRC online in time for the equinox." And then Sam realizes just how much he's been used, but he also knows he isn't going to be used anymore!
"How can you stop me in time, now?" Asks the CEO, as we see a clock that says it is just minutes till eight a.m. But Sam charges the CEO, but, oh no!, the CEO knows Kung Fu! And he is totally kicking Sam's ass. But then all of a sudden Sam hears some cheesy ring tone and the phone falls out of his pocket and he understands what the Old man was doing in giving him the phone! So Sam opens the phone up (its a flip phone) and is all like "It's for you!" And jams the phone up against CEO's ear! And then CEO goes all purply red and Sam uploads the counter-program with seconds to go! Then there is a lot of weird light and sound and so Sam fucking bolts out the building and just as he clears the front doors the whole building becomes a totally awesome ball of purply red light and explodes in a totally awesome fashion!
And there were all these people around who were zombies when he ran out the door, but now they all fall down and then get up and brush themselves off and look at Sam, and he just nods and looks all somber and walks off into the raising sun.
Fin
And that, my friends, is my Freakin awesome zombie armageddon movie. Sponsored by McDonalds(TM)
DEADline!
And maybe "Dead" would have blood dripping down from it or something. Of course, this could get confused with other movies since a quick IMdB search revealed 32 matches for "Deadline". Still, I'll make up a plot for mine anyway since its unlikely I will ever have to worry about it actually getting made.
An office drone named Sam strolls into work one day and is almost immediately beckoned into the bosses office. "The Integrated BBRC report is now due tomorrow! I need you to head this up Sam, this is our most desperate hour. You are our only hope." Says the boss. "But that wasn't supposed to be due till September!" Sam proclaims, as the camera casually notes that it a calendar on the desk proclaiming it to be June. "Well corporate says they need it now! And its a matter of life and death!" Says the boss, though instead of "life and death" he may say something like "of grave importance" or "imperative necessity" or something. You know, for effect. So the boss gives Sam the go ahead to recruit a rag-tag team from the office to get it done and they go into a room thats lit with that sort of soft-light graininess that you see in the Bourne movies and the new Bond movies, you know, so it looks realistic but also stylistic, which is totally awesome.
So his team is made up of a hot chick that has a bad-ass attitude. She's probably a temp or something and doesn't give a s#!t 'bout nothin' or no one but herself. At least on the outside, but you can tell she's really just a hard-ass with a heart of gold. And a mouth like a drunken sailor. He also recruits the old guy whose just always been with the company and he's always sitting quietly in the corner stroking his beard and he clearly knows that there is more to this BBRC protocol than anyone else knows and he's always saying things like "man must be cautious what doors he opens" and other stuff that sounds vaguely profound but is really just poorly written foreshadowing. He also gets an ex-marine that seems to have a bit of PTS from the war that he just got back from a little over a year ago. And that guy is goofy and acts like a frat boy but when it is time to get serious he gets really, really serious. Also there is some guy whose ridiculously good at computers and when we first see him he is just sitting there on a MacBook(TM) and drinking a Coke(TM) (hey, this is low-budget, we need all the product placement we can get) and then when Sam says "Hey, what do you think (nerdy computer guy)?" The dude is just like "one second, I just cracked the federal air traffic control board and I'm diverting all the flights from Pennsylvania to Canada. Guess I don't have to see my mother in law this weekend after all!" And thats how we know that this dude is, like, the best computer guy ever. Because he can break into any system, yo.
So now he's got his rag-tag team and they get to work. They sit around drinking Starbucks(TM) and saying computer words that everyone knows by now but that make it sound like they know what they are talking about. "We need to integrate the program into a Java script from an HTML format if we are going to upload it to a secure server by 2200!" Says one of them, with all seriousness. But as they are nearing the end Sam's iPhone(TM) rings and he is all like "Hello? This is Sam." And there is this raspy voice on the other end that is all like "is the program ready?" And Sam is looks at his rag-tag team and is all like "oh shit, its corporate!" and then he speaks into the phone "Almost, we are having a little problem with getting the proxy server to sync up to our registry." And the raspy voice is all like "you must complete the program by tonight!" all angry sounding and then he hangs up and Sam is all flustered and they all get even more serious then they were about getting it done. But the old man is all like "Do not trust men with such strict time tables" or something and everyone stops and thinks about that for a moment until Sam says "Thats just the way of the world these days, old-timer." But he says old-timer in a friendly way so it doesn't seem like he is ageist, even though he probably is. And the hard-core bitch curses about something or another.
The clock in the room they are working in closes in on ten P.M. and you can tell they are still struggling to get it all done. But then the nerdy computer guy sits back in his chair all smug and takes a big bite out of his Whopper(TM) and, with a mouth full of processed meat, says "Yeah, I just finished the patch. We can upload it as soon as you slackers finish up whatever the hell you were working on." And Sam looks pissed because they've all just mostly been waiting for the nerdy guy to finish because they were done for hours and he's all like "About time!" And the nerdy guy realizes he wasn't the first to finish at all, but rather the last, and you can tell that he is really worried about his rep as the best computer guy ever, even though he still totally is.
So they upload the program and then the lights flicker and the old guy has a worried, yet somber, look on his face. And he says "I believe that perhaps we should not go home tonight." But then the hard-core bitch is all like "F^%$ that, you old motherf&*&%%%^%^, I'm getting the hell to my goddamn bed and you sure as #%*(#%* #%*(^#%(*# #(*%^#(*%&# @)(#@)(# $^*@^$@ gonna stop me. " So she leaves, but the old man stays, and the rest of the team, the Frat boy vet, the nerd, and Sam, decide to head down the street to grab a beer because the Frat/Vet said "Hell, I don't know bout you boys, but I need a brewskie!" So they follow him because they think its cool that the cool guy in the office is finally willing to hang out with them.
On the way to the bar they notice that there is a weird light in the sky. And all the street lights are flickering. And a woman screams in the distance. Also, maybe there is a little bit of rain and lightning. The nerdy guy looks really scared, but Sam is acting tough since he's with the tough guy, and the tough guy doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary. When they are about to walk through the door to the bar, this homeless looking guy comes up to them and demands they give him some money, but Sam ignores him, but the tough guy gets in his face, and then they get into a fight, and the tough guy rips the homeless guys arm off in a fit of rage. But the guy keeps going like nothings wrong, so after a little more of a scuffle, they run away back to the office where the old man is sitting there with, like, a million guns.
The nerdy guy is all like "we just ran into a zombie!" or something and the old guy is like "I was afraid this would happen." And the tough guy is covered in blood and trying to wash it off and Sam is looking out the window when he sees a car crash through the fence around the parking lot then a bunch of people run in through the hole. And then hard-core bitch gets out and smashes a few of the people on the head and runs back into the office building.
"What the &^% @)(@ &&^& is going on out there!" She says, but she already knows!
So the team sits around for a little while then the old man relates some story about this time when he was younger and rasher and something like this happened in this little town that didn't appear on any map. And then thats how they know that this was their fault, because the program they uploaded was the final missing ingrediate to a zombie armageddon that corporate was trying to unleash on the world. And Sam is all like "Why would they want a zombie armageddon!" and the tough guy is all like, oh and he has his shirt off trying to rinse out the blood and impress hard-core bitch, he's all like "I don't know and I don't care. But we started this and I'm sure as hell not resting till we finish it!" And hard-core bitch is all like "your an idiot, I ain't going back out there, you dumb &^%!!" But you can tell she is totally impressed by him cause she's not taking her eyes off of tough guy and she's biting her lip all sexy like.
So the old guy tells them that the only way to stop it is to upload the counter-program directly into Corporates main server. And Sam is all like "thats fifty miles away!" but they decide they have to go anyway and they ask the nerdy guy to make the program, but he's all like "shit, I did that already. I never design anything I can't destroy. Hell, I can probably destroy it from here!" And he gets back on his MacBook(TM) and starts doing something, but the old man is all like "NO!" But its too late because this weird light starts coming out of the computer and then there is some more power surging and everything goes kind of purperly red for a few moments then all the lights go out. Then they come back up and everyone is standing there in the same spot but the nerdy kid is gone, or is he? They look around then out of a dark corner the nerdy kid jumps on the back of the tough guy and bites him in the neck!! But hard-core bitch goes all crazy and beats nerdy dude off. And now tough guy is bite and old man says he is going to turn, and hard-core bitch is like "no, no!!" but old man says he has a few hours before he turns so they run outside and get in the car and take off for corporate. Also, the old man says "The deadline to stop this is eight am. After that, all hope will be lost!"
They have a fight scene with all the zombies outside the office but they make it to the car and get in and hard-core bitch is being all sweet to the tough guy and taking care of him and trying to stop the bleeding and murmering about how its going to be alright and they will stop this before he turns. But as soon as they get on the freeway, they see a bunch of zombies walking around and then they go "oh, shit, we can't get through." But tough guy says "Just gun it till we stop, then I'll make sure you guys get out." So they do that and eventually the car crashes into a median after crashing through, like, a million zombies. So when they stop tough guy gives hard-core bitch this overly sloppy smooch and then he gets out and punches through zombies like nobodies business and they hold off the ones that come around the car with some of old man's guns and after a while when they are afraid tough guy isn't coming back, this big Hummer(TM) crashes through some more zombies and pulls right up to it and you see tough guy at the wheel, much more covered in blood then the last time we saw him. And he gets out and says "You go ahead! I'll stay here and keep them off your ass!" And so they don't argue but hard-core bitch cries and runs to kiss him, but she gets bit while they are, um, distracted.
But bitch, old man and Sam get in the Hummer(TM) and take off and they sit in silence as they drive. After a few flash forwards of the driving, they pass a sign that says "Corporate, 3 Miles." Only maybe it says the name of the town or something else, because why would one business have a sign on the highway?! Or maybe it was a billboard. Lets go with that. But then the Hummer(TM) runs out of gas!
So they take their guns and the now pale hard-core bitch and old man take point and Sam slides the counter-program (Oh, he put it on a memory stick before they left, by the way) into his shirt pocket and they take off on foot because none of them know how to hot wire any of the abandoned cars on the side of the road. They fight some zombies. And they have to fight some, like, zombie birds and squirls and maybe a dog or two. But they make it over this ridge and they can see Corporate and its all glowing that same purperly red and then Sam's iPhone rings.
Sam is about to answer it, but old man stops him, takes the phone, smashes it, and explains that that is how they are passing on the disease! Through cell phones! The horror! Also, they use computers. Which might raise the question as to why the first person they saw that was a zombie was a homeless guy, so maybe we could show him coming out of an internet cafe or something.
Anyway, the get up next to the building all sneaky like and Hard-core almost zombie bitch is like "Let me handle this" because there are a bunch of guys in suits with really big guns sitting there looking all professional and ready to kill. And Sam is all like "no! You can't, we can get around them some other way!" But she knows they can't and that she is already dead and then she reveals her dark secret!
She and tough guy were dating! Secretly! And she really cared about him because he saved her from an abusive husband and he was actually really sweet just a little screwed up! Just like her! She has a cat named fluffy! And donates most of her paycheck to an orphanage! But then she lets out a string of profanity laced gibberish about how she can take on the whole f*&^%ng Corporation after what they did and she totally goes all Rambo on the asses of the guards and creates a big enough distraction for Sam and Old man to sneak through a side entrance. So they get in and shot a couple of guards here and there and finally make it up to the Office of the CEO where the main server is. But its guarded by, like, fifty people! So old man says "Sam, you wait here! I don't know how to upload the program into the server, I was taking a class at the learning annex...." but Sam understands that old man is sacrificing himself for the greater good and Sam knows what he has to do. Before he leaves, old man hands Sam his cell phone and tells Sam to turn it on. Sam does so, not understanding. Old man, with a combination of walking out and talking to the guards, a lot of bullets, and a ridiculous amount of explosives he happened to have on him, pulls the guards off the door and Sam runs in with tears in his eyes for the sacrifice of old man.
But when Sam opens the door, its the CEO! Maybe we know this because we saw the CEO on a commercial or something earlier in the movie! And he is all like "Sam. I didn't think you would make it this far. I'm impressed." And Sam is all like "you know who I am?" And the CEO is all like "Of course, I've been watching you for a long, long time. You are like me Sam. Someone who never really belonged in this world." And we know he's telling the truth because in the beginning of the movie there was probably a scene were you can see that no one emails Sam or calls him or anything. "But you are also a very bright young lad" continues the CEO "and I knew that of all the employees in all my satalite offices, you were the one that could get the BBRC online in time for the equinox." And then Sam realizes just how much he's been used, but he also knows he isn't going to be used anymore!
"How can you stop me in time, now?" Asks the CEO, as we see a clock that says it is just minutes till eight a.m. But Sam charges the CEO, but, oh no!, the CEO knows Kung Fu! And he is totally kicking Sam's ass. But then all of a sudden Sam hears some cheesy ring tone and the phone falls out of his pocket and he understands what the Old man was doing in giving him the phone! So Sam opens the phone up (its a flip phone) and is all like "It's for you!" And jams the phone up against CEO's ear! And then CEO goes all purply red and Sam uploads the counter-program with seconds to go! Then there is a lot of weird light and sound and so Sam fucking bolts out the building and just as he clears the front doors the whole building becomes a totally awesome ball of purply red light and explodes in a totally awesome fashion!
And there were all these people around who were zombies when he ran out the door, but now they all fall down and then get up and brush themselves off and look at Sam, and he just nods and looks all somber and walks off into the raising sun.
Fin
And that, my friends, is my Freakin awesome zombie armageddon movie. Sponsored by McDonalds(TM)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Distracted Holidays
I've been back in reno for a few nights now from my trip on the mighty cruise ship the Ooesterdam. Since being back I have had to do some serious thinking about my life. Which isn't anything new, as that seems like all I do. Mostly I'm just disappointed in a lot of things in my life. When you are on a cruise ship and the room you get, on a freaking boat, is larger than the room you live in, it sort of starts to put life into perspective a little.
Something that became clear while I was on vacation was that the less I cared about what other people thought of me, the better I felt about life. I may come across as a crass jackass sometimes, or perhaps just as a silent, possibly annoyed, figure on the periphery of your perception. Maybe I come across as a clown, or a cynic, or an optimist, or a kind gentle person, or as the type of person that would throw you throw a plate glass window if it suited my needs. I'm not saying I see myself as any of those types. But I have come to realize that I can't control how other people see me. Not at all. All I can do is get annoyed at myself as coming across glib/unremarkable/annoying/insane/boring/insane again. So in a weird way a vacation was apparently what I needed to understand that it just doesn't matter. I can't do anything about it. Be myself and let the chips fall. It sounds like the theme of an afternoon special. It takes a little more than cartoons to make a notion such as that really sink in, though.
Not to say it's completely sunk in. I still think of myself sometimes in terms of how others see me. Honestly, I don't know if anyone ever really gets over that part of their self. Maybe you want to be seen as someone more successful than you are. Maybe you want to appear more religious than you really feel. Maybe you want to make sure that no one that serves you, in a restaurant or store or what have you, think of you as someone who thinks of their self as being better than them. These are all things I've done. There is this strange urge sometimes to try to make other people see you in a certain light. It can't always be done. The smallest slip and the whole charade is up. But we keep it up because if we can get some people to see us in the way we want them to see us it can make our lives a lot better. But is it worth it?
Today, for the first time ever, I lied on a resume. I took off a few jobs that didn't seem to be helping me and added in a job to fill in the blanks. Complete bullshit, that other job was. But believable and somewhat hard to prove that I never actually held it. I've heard so many people say that they only got a job here or a job there because they made something up on their resume. And if everyone is doing it, it can't be that bad, right? But why is it that we are punished for telling the truth? Yes, I've worked many jobs. Some for very short periods of time. I have an odd resume. But I'm intelligent, I'm capable of learning how to do many new things, I work hard and almost every employer I've ever had has asked me to stay on and keep working for them when I told them I was quitting. But when I put that into a resume it gets nothing. I'm interested to see if the ones I've lied on get more people to bite on them. I'm also interested to see if I decide not to get hired under false pretense. I talked to someone this week and said "I've always felt that I was above lying on a resume." And he said "so did I, until I couldn't get a job, and then I lied and got a job." Do I want to be that guy? Only principled until I feel it would suit my purposes better to not be? I don't think I can do it. I mean, in a way I've already done it, since I made up the job today. What seperates me from taking that job when I've given someone the impression I'm someone I'm not from someone that lies straight to your face in order to con you out of money? (Also, sorry for so many uses of the word "someone" in that last sentence.) I've broken my share of laws in my day but I don't know that I've ever really flat out lied to someone to get what I want. Maybe thats why I still have no job. Maybe thats why I have no girlfriend. Maybe thats why I might always be living in a place smaller than a room on a boat. A big part of me would much rather have nothing than have everything at the cost of the one shred of dignity and integrity I have left in this world.
Maybe this is why I'm so drawn to writing fiction. Its the one time I can write bald-faced lies and its okay. People know its a lie. People want it to be a lie. They want it to be fake and they want that shred of truth to come out of the lie. Its a dance, writing fiction, telling just enough of the truth in the face of one big, long lie. How can I honestly write fiction if my own life is a fiction? My life may not be great. But I have what I need. Friends, family, enough money to get by day to day, a dream, a few goals, and nothing stopping me from trying to live a life that still has some truth to it.
Okay, I'll grant you, I am not perfect. I have told lies. I have made things up to get out of situations. But aside from lying to my parents about where I was the night before when I was in high school I can't think of any time I have told a lie to get ahead. And granted I've never really gotten ahead. But I spend enough time with myself not particularly liking myself to add more reasons to dislike myself to the list. I may end up being some loser that could never get his life together, but I'd much rather be an honest loser than a dishonest man with a fortune at his feet.
Something that became clear while I was on vacation was that the less I cared about what other people thought of me, the better I felt about life. I may come across as a crass jackass sometimes, or perhaps just as a silent, possibly annoyed, figure on the periphery of your perception. Maybe I come across as a clown, or a cynic, or an optimist, or a kind gentle person, or as the type of person that would throw you throw a plate glass window if it suited my needs. I'm not saying I see myself as any of those types. But I have come to realize that I can't control how other people see me. Not at all. All I can do is get annoyed at myself as coming across glib/unremarkable/annoying/insane/boring/insane again. So in a weird way a vacation was apparently what I needed to understand that it just doesn't matter. I can't do anything about it. Be myself and let the chips fall. It sounds like the theme of an afternoon special. It takes a little more than cartoons to make a notion such as that really sink in, though.
Not to say it's completely sunk in. I still think of myself sometimes in terms of how others see me. Honestly, I don't know if anyone ever really gets over that part of their self. Maybe you want to be seen as someone more successful than you are. Maybe you want to appear more religious than you really feel. Maybe you want to make sure that no one that serves you, in a restaurant or store or what have you, think of you as someone who thinks of their self as being better than them. These are all things I've done. There is this strange urge sometimes to try to make other people see you in a certain light. It can't always be done. The smallest slip and the whole charade is up. But we keep it up because if we can get some people to see us in the way we want them to see us it can make our lives a lot better. But is it worth it?
Today, for the first time ever, I lied on a resume. I took off a few jobs that didn't seem to be helping me and added in a job to fill in the blanks. Complete bullshit, that other job was. But believable and somewhat hard to prove that I never actually held it. I've heard so many people say that they only got a job here or a job there because they made something up on their resume. And if everyone is doing it, it can't be that bad, right? But why is it that we are punished for telling the truth? Yes, I've worked many jobs. Some for very short periods of time. I have an odd resume. But I'm intelligent, I'm capable of learning how to do many new things, I work hard and almost every employer I've ever had has asked me to stay on and keep working for them when I told them I was quitting. But when I put that into a resume it gets nothing. I'm interested to see if the ones I've lied on get more people to bite on them. I'm also interested to see if I decide not to get hired under false pretense. I talked to someone this week and said "I've always felt that I was above lying on a resume." And he said "so did I, until I couldn't get a job, and then I lied and got a job." Do I want to be that guy? Only principled until I feel it would suit my purposes better to not be? I don't think I can do it. I mean, in a way I've already done it, since I made up the job today. What seperates me from taking that job when I've given someone the impression I'm someone I'm not from someone that lies straight to your face in order to con you out of money? (Also, sorry for so many uses of the word "someone" in that last sentence.) I've broken my share of laws in my day but I don't know that I've ever really flat out lied to someone to get what I want. Maybe thats why I still have no job. Maybe thats why I have no girlfriend. Maybe thats why I might always be living in a place smaller than a room on a boat. A big part of me would much rather have nothing than have everything at the cost of the one shred of dignity and integrity I have left in this world.
Maybe this is why I'm so drawn to writing fiction. Its the one time I can write bald-faced lies and its okay. People know its a lie. People want it to be a lie. They want it to be fake and they want that shred of truth to come out of the lie. Its a dance, writing fiction, telling just enough of the truth in the face of one big, long lie. How can I honestly write fiction if my own life is a fiction? My life may not be great. But I have what I need. Friends, family, enough money to get by day to day, a dream, a few goals, and nothing stopping me from trying to live a life that still has some truth to it.
Okay, I'll grant you, I am not perfect. I have told lies. I have made things up to get out of situations. But aside from lying to my parents about where I was the night before when I was in high school I can't think of any time I have told a lie to get ahead. And granted I've never really gotten ahead. But I spend enough time with myself not particularly liking myself to add more reasons to dislike myself to the list. I may end up being some loser that could never get his life together, but I'd much rather be an honest loser than a dishonest man with a fortune at his feet.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Sunday, December 07, 2008
I Don't know what I'm Thinking
I could seriously listen to Mephistopheles' Return by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for hours on end, day after day. I have no idea why I love it so much. Somedays I'll turn on my itunes and just listen to it over and over and type out the lyrics to the song as it plays. Mostly I do this when I am trying to write and have a bit o' the writers block.
The winter months, for most, seem to be a time to just settle into a rut and sort of run out the clock till spring. Perhaps because I am opposed to outdoor activities most of the year I have found that the winter is the best time for me. I read more, I get more done, I focus my attention on a goal more actively. Last winter I tried to learn the piano. And I would have too, had it not been for that meddling sun starting to again and my mood shifted towards self-preservation and not self-improvement. A lot of people get depressed in the winter. Is it so crazy that some of us would get depressed during the rest of the year? There has got to be more people out there, other than just me, or see the winter as a time of renewal and the spring as the end of that season. Honestly I have no idea why it is that I feel so much better in the winter. But I fucking love it. Nothing invigorates me more than a nice chill when I jump out of bed in the morning.
Yesterday I spoke to an old professor of mine for a little while. We were going over stories for my writing sample for grad school. We did this in truly nerd fashion, with both of us sitting in a coffee shop reading the stories off of macbooks. Yes, I said I'd bring the hardcopies of the stories and didn't get them printed out. Still, I had to laugh at the image of us. "Who needs paper? We have fucking macbooks, man." Perhaps it is the way of the future. Perhaps we were just being green and not wasting precious tree resources on useless copies. Or perhaps we are just nerds.
The winter months, for most, seem to be a time to just settle into a rut and sort of run out the clock till spring. Perhaps because I am opposed to outdoor activities most of the year I have found that the winter is the best time for me. I read more, I get more done, I focus my attention on a goal more actively. Last winter I tried to learn the piano. And I would have too, had it not been for that meddling sun starting to again and my mood shifted towards self-preservation and not self-improvement. A lot of people get depressed in the winter. Is it so crazy that some of us would get depressed during the rest of the year? There has got to be more people out there, other than just me, or see the winter as a time of renewal and the spring as the end of that season. Honestly I have no idea why it is that I feel so much better in the winter. But I fucking love it. Nothing invigorates me more than a nice chill when I jump out of bed in the morning.
Yesterday I spoke to an old professor of mine for a little while. We were going over stories for my writing sample for grad school. We did this in truly nerd fashion, with both of us sitting in a coffee shop reading the stories off of macbooks. Yes, I said I'd bring the hardcopies of the stories and didn't get them printed out. Still, I had to laugh at the image of us. "Who needs paper? We have fucking macbooks, man." Perhaps it is the way of the future. Perhaps we were just being green and not wasting precious tree resources on useless copies. Or perhaps we are just nerds.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Platinum and Diamond Encrusted Golden Parachutes
Normally I steer away from political observation on this blog. But these bailouts are really starting to bug the crap out of me. Yesterday the CEO's of this huge car companies show up asking for a $25 billion bailout for their industry. And they get their by taking three separate private jets at a cost of $20 thousand per trip per plane. In fact, I'll just post a clip I was watching yesterday to better illustrate my point:
I'm starting to think that the "let the record show, no hands went up." Is going to be one of those lines that defines 2008 in history. Maybe "showing up at the soup kitchen in a top hat and tuxedo" will be used as well. I'm glad that these old white congressmen are being such hardasses on these CEO's, honestly it reminds me of asking my dad for money. And I think that this is what they are doing. Asking mommy and daddy to help them out of a bad financial situation. Except it isn't just them that need some money, its a multi-national corporation. And it isn't their mommy's and daddy's, its the goddamn country of the USA (and not to offend anyone, I don't mean the USA is goddamned, I use the phrase as an adverb to describe my frustration, not in the Jeremia Wright sense of it).
In what way is this not socialism? Oh, wait, I know in what ways it isn't. If it were socialism the taxpayers, upon having their money used in these companies, would own a piece of the companies. Would be getting part of any profits made from their money being used to finance a private company. Also, it wouldn't really be a private company any more. Granted, my knowledge of socialism is pretty rudimentary, but my understanding would be that the idea behind both socialism and communism is that the workers own the means of production. Not the country pays for other people to continue to own the means of production.
Bush said something the other day to the effect of "we've failed the free market system, but it is still the best market system in the world." My understanding of how the free market system works, according to people who think like Bush, is that it can't be failed by a government. That it is a very Darwinian process that enables the companies most adaptable and the others die off. The only way to fail it in that model is to get involved in it. This sort of confuses me, as by this logic I am agreeing with republican ideals. But there is a reason why I insist on registering independent.
The breakdown of any government bailout is, as far as I can tell, a risk assessment exercise. Is it worse to let this company fail and have a chink of our economy fail along with it, or is it worse to soak up more debt as a country that could ultimately lead to an even larger financial failure of the country if we mismanage said debt? I honestly don't know the answers to those questions. But these companies are failing for a reason. And yes, it has to do with the fact there is simply less money to go around and therefore they are doing less business. But these companies are based on pure greed. A corporation, in American law, is considered a "person". As a person the corporation has certain rights and privliges under the law that other real people have. It also means that the corporation, the entity, is somehow in charge of running itself. Its sort of an odd notion at first, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense (or the more insane you go and the more it seems to start making sense, I'm not one hundred percent sure which). The corporation, as an individual entitiy, has certain needs and desires, like any person. Although its needs and desires aren't for food, water and shelter. Rather it is for money. Every decision made by a board of directors and CEO has to be the decision the makes the most money for the company. I've often thought of it as though starting a corporation is the same as unleashing a hungry newborn demon child. The child is pure unbridled Id. So what if they have to lay off half the workers? So what if they have to dump waste illegally? So what if they have to brie congress to get certain restrictions lifted? As long as it is making the demon's money for it then the corporation will keep doing what it is doing. And by bailing out the companies we are simply enabling the Id to keep going. So what if we got $25 billion from the government? It's not where the money came from, only that money was still coming in.
Now, the problem with that metaphor is that clearly a corporation isn't alive. Not in any real way. And it is run by people. People who have (theroretically) some sort of human emotion. Some sort of desire to not destroy the world only to make more money must exist within them. But all they can really do is just walk away from the company if they don't like what its doing, not actually change its business practices. Their hands are tied by the very nature of the beast they have created.
And if this Id driving demon child is going to the government to ask for money, and the government gives them said money, then what does that make the government? The government can't compete with the market, it isn't the governments place and has been wholly against the law since the beginnings of this country. What they can do is loan out money. But like all who loan money, they will expect a return. So should we start looking for signs that the government is breaking the kneecaps of corporations when they haven't gotten their money back? It would seem that we should, because much like the need of the corporations to make more money, the government is run by its need to get as much money back as it possibly can, through whatever means necessary.
Again, granted, I don't really know much about this stuff. I'm just frustrated with it and trying to figure it all out. I think everyone is, though. You can flip to eight different news channels and watch eight different experts give eight different expert opinions on what should be done. The real problem comes down to figuring out what is going to happen in the future. I'm sure that there is something we can do now that would be the right choice for later. But we don't know that right choice. Does that mean we should do something? If we honestly don't know then I think the best thing to do is nothing and wait for more evidence of what we should do. I think the real way to solve these problems isn't by blindly giving or not giving, but by doing a series of tests to see what the problem is. Take a hypothesis and test it. And see if that gives you the answer you need. Find a control group. Find a few variables. Find out something so that we at least have an idea of what we are doing and we aren't just throwing money into a bottomless pit of debt.
Of course, this whole thing could be solved if we just really took these CEO's to task and made them appear on the Suze Orman show.
I'm starting to think that the "let the record show, no hands went up." Is going to be one of those lines that defines 2008 in history. Maybe "showing up at the soup kitchen in a top hat and tuxedo" will be used as well. I'm glad that these old white congressmen are being such hardasses on these CEO's, honestly it reminds me of asking my dad for money. And I think that this is what they are doing. Asking mommy and daddy to help them out of a bad financial situation. Except it isn't just them that need some money, its a multi-national corporation. And it isn't their mommy's and daddy's, its the goddamn country of the USA (and not to offend anyone, I don't mean the USA is goddamned, I use the phrase as an adverb to describe my frustration, not in the Jeremia Wright sense of it).
In what way is this not socialism? Oh, wait, I know in what ways it isn't. If it were socialism the taxpayers, upon having their money used in these companies, would own a piece of the companies. Would be getting part of any profits made from their money being used to finance a private company. Also, it wouldn't really be a private company any more. Granted, my knowledge of socialism is pretty rudimentary, but my understanding would be that the idea behind both socialism and communism is that the workers own the means of production. Not the country pays for other people to continue to own the means of production.
Bush said something the other day to the effect of "we've failed the free market system, but it is still the best market system in the world." My understanding of how the free market system works, according to people who think like Bush, is that it can't be failed by a government. That it is a very Darwinian process that enables the companies most adaptable and the others die off. The only way to fail it in that model is to get involved in it. This sort of confuses me, as by this logic I am agreeing with republican ideals. But there is a reason why I insist on registering independent.
The breakdown of any government bailout is, as far as I can tell, a risk assessment exercise. Is it worse to let this company fail and have a chink of our economy fail along with it, or is it worse to soak up more debt as a country that could ultimately lead to an even larger financial failure of the country if we mismanage said debt? I honestly don't know the answers to those questions. But these companies are failing for a reason. And yes, it has to do with the fact there is simply less money to go around and therefore they are doing less business. But these companies are based on pure greed. A corporation, in American law, is considered a "person". As a person the corporation has certain rights and privliges under the law that other real people have. It also means that the corporation, the entity, is somehow in charge of running itself. Its sort of an odd notion at first, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense (or the more insane you go and the more it seems to start making sense, I'm not one hundred percent sure which). The corporation, as an individual entitiy, has certain needs and desires, like any person. Although its needs and desires aren't for food, water and shelter. Rather it is for money. Every decision made by a board of directors and CEO has to be the decision the makes the most money for the company. I've often thought of it as though starting a corporation is the same as unleashing a hungry newborn demon child. The child is pure unbridled Id. So what if they have to lay off half the workers? So what if they have to dump waste illegally? So what if they have to brie congress to get certain restrictions lifted? As long as it is making the demon's money for it then the corporation will keep doing what it is doing. And by bailing out the companies we are simply enabling the Id to keep going. So what if we got $25 billion from the government? It's not where the money came from, only that money was still coming in.
Now, the problem with that metaphor is that clearly a corporation isn't alive. Not in any real way. And it is run by people. People who have (theroretically) some sort of human emotion. Some sort of desire to not destroy the world only to make more money must exist within them. But all they can really do is just walk away from the company if they don't like what its doing, not actually change its business practices. Their hands are tied by the very nature of the beast they have created.
And if this Id driving demon child is going to the government to ask for money, and the government gives them said money, then what does that make the government? The government can't compete with the market, it isn't the governments place and has been wholly against the law since the beginnings of this country. What they can do is loan out money. But like all who loan money, they will expect a return. So should we start looking for signs that the government is breaking the kneecaps of corporations when they haven't gotten their money back? It would seem that we should, because much like the need of the corporations to make more money, the government is run by its need to get as much money back as it possibly can, through whatever means necessary.
Again, granted, I don't really know much about this stuff. I'm just frustrated with it and trying to figure it all out. I think everyone is, though. You can flip to eight different news channels and watch eight different experts give eight different expert opinions on what should be done. The real problem comes down to figuring out what is going to happen in the future. I'm sure that there is something we can do now that would be the right choice for later. But we don't know that right choice. Does that mean we should do something? If we honestly don't know then I think the best thing to do is nothing and wait for more evidence of what we should do. I think the real way to solve these problems isn't by blindly giving or not giving, but by doing a series of tests to see what the problem is. Take a hypothesis and test it. And see if that gives you the answer you need. Find a control group. Find a few variables. Find out something so that we at least have an idea of what we are doing and we aren't just throwing money into a bottomless pit of debt.
Of course, this whole thing could be solved if we just really took these CEO's to task and made them appear on the Suze Orman show.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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