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When I was a kid I had this terrible, painfully strong crush on my step-sister's best friend. Even as a dumb wild-haired kid she had that quality that tells you that someday this person is going to be awesome. Whenever she was around I would actually feel it as my brain disappeared in a puff of smoke and was replaced by a solitary dandelion seed, floating around in the suddenly empty space inside my head. I don't know why it was a dandelion seed, but I a ten year-old living on an island overrun with dandelions so I guess that's the floating analogy that made the most sense at the time.
My stepmom noticed the way I'd go all quiet whenever this girl was around. How I was suddenly polite and would try to go out of my way to be nice to my nemesis stepsister even as she and her friend concocted new forms of mischief to unleash in my general direction. One day my stepmom found me hiding from my stepsister and her friend. I wasn't doing much, just sitting quietly under the old wooden pulpit that had been converted into a staircase for our family room and sorting through a box of old pictures or something, but she could tell that I was hiding because I could usually be found doing the same thing when I was about to get in trouble.
She sat down next to me, put a motherly arm around my shoulders, and asked me what was the matter. I sighed deeply and unburdened myself of the terrible secret that it turns out was not actually much of a secret. I told my mom all about my deep and abiding crush on my stepsisters friend and asked her what I should do. My stepmom, so knowledgeable about girls and full of the kind of wisdom that one can really only get by living in a large family full of divorcing Catholics and their feral Irish children, looked right in the eye and said;
"You probably shouldn't bother, honey. She's the kind of girl who's only going to be interested in quality men, not failures like you."
Yesterday I learned that this girl is some sort of hotshot costume designer in Hollywood, and she's going to be coming to my family's Christmas dinner as my stepsister's guest. The moment my dad told me the news, two things happened.
I remembered that long-forgotten conversation with incredible clarity.
I realized that everything my stepmom said to me that day under the stairs is essentially true today.
Current Mood: Digging my own grave Current Music: Flogging Molly - "Black Friday Rule" |
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Today at "soul-crushing-paperwork-generating-job-that-inserts-the-theme-from-"Brazil"-in-my-head-once-per-day" I had an odd 20 minutes in which I had to fight to keep from screaming while seated at my desk. Just... sitting there... staring at my monitor with my mouth hanging open and this raspy, inhuman sound tearing out of my throat until I ran out of breath, and then doing it again and again and again.
The urge felt quite serious, like when you've had too much to drink on an empty stomach and you're arguing with your innards about whether or not you're going to vomit even though you know in the back of your head that it's inevitable.
...
Then I went looking for some new t-shirts.
Current Music: Spoon - "Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine" |
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It's scientific fact: when people get access to a restroom that they don't have to clean up, they turn into dirty fuckers. I was terrorized into politeness as a child, to the point where even though I am old and wise to the ways of the world now the site of somebody being gross just for the sake of it still completely astounds me. I am not a janitor, and I don't need to pick up the paper towels that people casually toss on the floor after using them to open the restroom door in some pathetically misguided effort to magically shield themselves from germ transfer with a thin layer of cheap paper. Even so the sight of that paper trash scattered on the floor causes me to wish H1N1 and random face punching on the culprits.
Similarly, I cannot stand people who somehow manage to cover the entire counter around the sink with water. I will never understand how this is accomplished. I've washed my hands probably millions of times, and I can't recall a time that I ever left a massive puddle of standing water on the counter. I can however, recall several instances in which I've had to furiously dry the crotch of my pants because the edge of somebody else's counter puddle happens to be at the perfect height to give strangers the impression that I closed my pants long before I was done peeing.
The restroom on the floor where I work is shared by two other offices, and both of the above scenarios are quite common. A few weeks back I walked in and greeted the flooded counters with a outburst of creative muttering and filth that ended with the phrase "splashing around like gibbons." It wasn't until the monkeys that I realized somebody from one of the other offices was in one of the stalls, perched tautly on the toilet and trying to hold in the poop so the crazy man they were peering at through the crack in the door didn't register their presence.
Which reminded me of a story.
This is a toilet on the wing of a bomber. This is your only warning of where this story is going.
Back when I temped at Amazon the entirety of my paycheck went to paying the rent on the shared 1-bedroom apartment I was living in. There was generally a bit left over for food, but the food that we bought really only covered dinners for the week. Dinner foods, and a bag of coffee. So I drank lots of coffee back then instead of eating breakfast. And then some more, because the break room at work featured a massive pot of rank, black, incredibly strong coffee that was replenished throughout the day and FREE.
So there was pooping. Not just me, everybody who worked on that floor. Drinking free coffee and then skittering off to the bathroom for a brief interlude of colonic violence. Once I even walked in to find that somebody had managed to somehow miss the toilet entirely while apparently spinning around to sit on it, but that's not the story. The point I'm trying to make here is that already being something of a private person I really didn't like sharing the restroom with people who were having violent and sometimes disastrous ass-explodey, and I often went out of my way to ensure that I had the place to myself. Even if it meant holding it uncomfortably and loitering out in the hallway until the person making all the sounds on the other side of the door finally left.
It would be hypocritical of me to judge people for having to poop, but I don't crave an audience the way some do.
One morning was pleasantly surprised to find the restroom completely empty. Recognizing this as a rare opportunity to do my bidness in relative privacy, I happily sat down on the toilet. My guts, which were mostly full of coffee, gave a preparatory rumble. And then my boss walked in. "No big deal" I thought, "he's only peeing. I can hold it for that." But then he whipped out a small toiletry kit and began an abbreviated morning routine. The teeth brushing I could understand, but I started to lose my patience when he grunted and wiped his floss spray off of the mirror for the 4th time. Finally, he started to pack it up and my innards, sensing an end to the torment of holding it in, stopped yelling at me.
But then my boss began to pick his nose.
Not just pick, but really dig in. Scoop around in the all the crevices, stretch out his nostrils as he really scraped around and around. I watched him, silently, with a mixture of rage at his prolonged presence and horror and my own looming gastric calliope. He was clearly empty, but he just kept going. I began to get the impression that the point wasn't exorcising his boogers, he just really liked having his finger up there. The countdown in my guts was running down. I could feel myself moments away from ambushing my boss with all manner of unpleasantness, and the idiot was just gazing slack-jawed at his own reflection as his sausagey index finger poked around trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage to his brain.
"JESUS CHRIST, THERE'S NO GOLD UP THERE!" I mortified myself by shouting from my seat on the toilet. And then, ass-explodey.
...
The really sick part though, is that once he got over his initial shock my boss decided that we had the sort of repartee that allowed us to converse in the restroom. Most notably when he was having his morning ass-explodey.
Current Music: Does It Offend You, Yeah? - "Lets Make Out" |
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Sometimes I forget that there are other people who laugh at the same terrible things that I do. Then I am reminded that they all live in Japan.
Terrifying Sniper Prank on Japanese TV - Watch more Funny Videos
...
Yeah, I'm pretty much renewing my yearly vow to hate everyone.
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For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with the notion of Planned Obsolescence. The consumer-culture design principle that things should not be built to last, because if they last then there’s no need to replace them. It’s the sort of phrase that randomly pops up and lodges into my brain for the remainder of the day like that tiny pebble in your shoe that you can’t seem to shake out no matter how many times you remove your shoe and vigorously throttle it. I also obsess over the phrase Neuraoblastoma, because while it is in actuality a form of cancer, my juvenile brain insists that it could also be the name of a rilly, rilly cool spacegun wot causes your brain to violently enlarge. Planned Obsolescence though, has taken on special meaning for me lately, as I appear to be living it.
Voop, voop, voop.
That's the sound a Neuroblastoma Pistol makes.
…
This morning I dreamt that I was being all punk rock and conveying myself to the grocery store by riding a beat up old office chair down the hill near here with an open beer in my hand. I took this as a sign that I need to acquire or construct one of the tricycles featured in this video, but then I realized that the conveyance in question has four wheels and for a moment I didn't know how to phrase my desire.
I need me a Quadracycle. Or possibly even a Quintracycle.
And also a Regency-style tailcoat, for riding purposes.
Current Music: Guns n' Roses - "November Rain" |
| » Made of Paper |
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As mentioned previously, I have a new job and it’s killing my soul. Not in the normal “why do I have to work when somebody should just pay me for doing things I enjoy” way, no. This job is just a ridiculously underpaid temp contract that started out with a 2 day long introductory power point presentation about the company and the profitable, government mandated, reasons for its existence. Then, on the third day, we were given work. Actual work. As in ridiculously complicated quality control procedures and report filing.
“Yes but when do we get trained on how to do this?” a marginally sane person might ask. And I did.
Amusingly enough, doing the work and consistently failing to do it correctly is the training. We’re assigned a number of packets per day, usually 4 or 5, each consisting of about 200 pages that we must exhaustively proof read and compare to the information contained in the company’s clunky, arcane, and totally illogical database that was designed without the input of anybody who knew anything about graphics and only works inside Internet Explorer 6.
We’re actually budgeted an entire month of failure-as-training before we’re expected to increase our workloads to numbers that I can’t even begin to fathom. This is week 3.5 (we started on a Wednesday). The other day somebody, although I can’t for the life of me who because I spend 8 hours a day in a place that causes my brain regular fits of self-lobotomization, asked me what the new job was like.
It’s all the frustration, disappointment, and slipping self-respect that I experienced during long-term unemployment, only now I get to spend 8 hours a day having somebody tell me that I suck at it.
Yesterday was the third day in a row that I’ve spent the entire 30 minute walk home actually wondering if I was about to cry.
I job hunt exhaustively on my lunch breaks. It’s not helping.
Oct. 8th, 2009 @ 01:59 pm
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| » She ain't heavy, she's my building |
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Last night I woke up just long enough to realize that the reason that I routinely go to sleep laying on my back and wake up laying on my side with my face, chest, and arms mashed up against the wall is because some forgotten part of my lizard brain is desperately trying to spoon. It was the feeling sad as I rolled away from the wall while waking up that tipped me off. It was a very specific kind of sad. The kind you get when you have to get up to go to the bathroom but a little voice in the back of your head is insisting that you could totally hold it until morning and just stay here with this person, warm and cozy and holding somebody that didn't laugh when they saw you naked.
Of course, then I finished waking up and realized that I was sad because I was losing contact with the wall, and that sadness was quickly replaced by a withering chuckle. The kind one learns from the adult relative who thinks that the best way to teach children to swim is to throw them headfirst into the water and step on their fingers when they try to climb out.
As I was walking home from work last night I passed this struggling little nothing gallery near 4th and Bell. I was surprised to see the door standing open, and hear the sound of a paint can busy rattle-hissing away inside. When I got to the windows I saw a skinny white dude with baggy pants and a backwards Saints cap working his way through a really pedestrian attempt at graffiti. The kind of guy that automatically triggers that "punch-in-face" response in mammals whenever he talks. Working hard at the sort of embarrassingly bad graffiti that you see in the backgrounds of movies and know, just know was probably done by a disinterested white guy on the crew who's last brush with hiphop culture began and ended with "Who Let the Dogs Out".
Sitting in the corner of the window was a girl in a black faux-Edwardian style jacket, her dark hair falling out of the clips it had been gathered in to frame her pale, high-boned cheeks just right. At least as much of them as could be seen above the respirator he had loaned her. She wore a rose in her hair, yellow with touches of red at the edges of the petals that made it look antiqued, and her eyes sparkled with a genuine mixture of admiration and lust so strong that it was probably visible from space.
Since it always takes me about a minute to process social data, I was ten feet past the gallery when I spun around on my heel and threw my hands out in a pleading gesture while shouting "you have to be fucking kidding me!"
Mismatched couples are the current bane of my existence. Most likely because I'm not in one.
...
I have a new job that is possibly the most miserable and tedious job that I've ever had, but the upshot of it is that I get to ride the monorail to work.
Yes, through that.
Oct. 6th, 2009 @ 11:20 am
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| » He pretends too hard. |
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Just put the hammer down already.
Oct. 4th, 2009 @ 02:20 am
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| » Wolverines!!! |
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Until today I honestly never considered the effect that Patric Swayze had on my early childhood development.
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No, not that way.
Sep. 15th, 2009 @ 01:24 am
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| » I am the Cheese |
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Ow. Ow. Ow.
Thus begins my annual required post. I am bleeding, and my second favorite shirt is torn in a way that requires Frankenstitching.
Wait, let me start closer to the beginnning. So it's my birthday. My phone rings a few times, but I stayed up until 5am reading useless technology news and staring at hipster porn in the most culturally acceptable passive way. Somewhere around 4:30 I realize that the spectacle of tits has literally put me to sleep, so I wrap it up. Inexplicably it still takes me 30 minutes to get to bed. Tits are the basis of all voodoo, I mutter petulantly as I wriggle under the blankets and pass out.
I wake up around 10, a luxury afforded to me by the previously previously (I forget how many times I've already mentioned it) previously mentioned unemployment. Every now and then I reflect on the many stories I've read in mainstream media that glibly refer to "funemployment", and I end up wondering what's so fucking fun about having no money other than your severance fueled savings and spending day after day in your beautifully appointed studio apartment.
I began the day by deliberately not answering the phone and somewhere around 4:00pm I realize that my day would not get any worse if I start drinking.
I go downtown and buy a magazine about guns. As the acceptably bland young man behind the counter is ringing me up I consider excusing my purchase by explaining that I've recently been tapped to be the armorer for a low budget locally produced film. Instead I ask for a bag by explaining that in this town this sort of magazine goes over about as well as porn. He laughs nervously and crams my gun magazine into an opaque green bag.
On my way past my previously favorite clown themed bar I decide "fuck all you bullshit hipster polygamist motherfuckers who expressly don't like me, I deserve scotch." I am carded, which is flattering since the ugly tattooed bartender is easily 10 years younger than me. And also a girl.
I haven't eaten today, so I get drunk after two drinks. Being drunk leads to the executive decision to have sushi for my birthday. More or less friendless in this town, I discover that sushi alone is really boring. Fortunately I have had the foresight to order a really expensive sake. My drunk continues.
On my way home I stop at a widely known douchebag bar. They are out of my favorite scotch, but when I announce that it's my birthday and I intend to drink the good stuff a blatantly gay man down the bar buys my shot. I pull a girl move by chatting him up just long enough to finish my drink, and then I leave. I only feel whorish for 2 blocks. I imagine that if it weren't for the cramps being a girl would be awesome.
I'm at home, washing my face and considering the notion of premature birthday napping when my very good friend from many years ago (tm) calls me. For the record, she is not to be confused by my very oldest friend who was only willing to drink with me on my birthday if I gave him gas money. My buying all our drinks on my birthday was implied, naturally, and fuck that shit.
I go down the street to what I have learned will soon be the super-awesomest bar in my neighborhood because somebody I approve of just bought it. We drink, and I regale my friend and her girlfriend with humiliating tales of me.
This year I learned that birthdays are a shockingly depressing way of being reminded what forums you signed up for and then promptly forgot, because forums automatically send you birthday emails where friends and family predictably forget. Of course, the really amusing /SLASH/ depressing part is that my birthday turns out to be the perfect opportunity for a website called "BRIDES IN BIKINIS" to randomly begin emailing me with promises of super awesome marriage to bikini clad 24-year-olds from Russia who apparently have no standards.
Holy fuck, I think to myself for the 3rd time in 10 years, I could be married to a bikini clad physicist with really low expectations right now.
My friend and her lovely girlfriend leave, so it takes me exactly 10 minutes to begin playing a really sad game of pool. Shortly thereafter a bearded man with what I assume to be an Eastern European accent shows up and challenges me to a game. I accept with the caveat "I am drunk, and am only hanging around in this shitty bar to make you look like you know how to play pool." He laughingly accepts.
One and a half games in we start talking about guns. I blame myself. Even when I'm sober I have trouble shutting up about these things that I have only recently taught myself how to build. Maybe 20 minutes into our hypothetical conversation he starts talking about his need for a sniper rifle "weeth silence". Apparently he needs to kill "a fokker." Eventually I learn that there is an ex-wife involved. I feign surprise and quietly wish that more girls would ask me to build fancy custom rifles for them. Girls can usually be trusted to reserve gunfire for people who actually deserve it.
I spend at least 20 minutes explaining general firearm law to this guy, who sounds like a Czech but insists on being from Brazil. After 10 minutes of suspiciously leading questions I jokingly announce that I am not willing to be quoted on any investigative reports airing on "60 Minutes." He looks startled and proclaims his need to "peesh". I laugh like nothing is wrong, but my brain is screaming "vice cop". As soon as the men's room door is closed behind him I'm backing toward the exit.
I hit the intersection down the block at a dead run. Recent experiences with people I thought were worthwhile has led me to be suspicious of... well... everyone really. The light is just changing as I sprint across the road. I hit the far curb with the ball of my left foot, and belatedly register horror as I watch my ankle collapse at a weird angle. By the time I realize that I'm midway through a useless disagreement with gravity my body has twisted around so that my right shoulder is skidding raggedly across the the sidewalk. I fling my left arm out and use the momentum to roll over onto my back. My brain snidely suggests that I learned this move from Trinity in the beginning of the Matrix, and I tell my mind to go fuck itself as I spend several seconds uselessly brandishing my phone at the street behind me and muttering "Get up, idiot. Get up!"
Oddly enough I remember that I also spent this moment of paranoia finishing a text message to a friend from California.
I roll onto my knees and take off around the corner. I might be drunk, but everything about the questions that guy was asking screamed "set up." It's not until I'm half a block away from home that I realize that the fall off the curb has scraped up my shoulder, knee, and... thumb..? My shoulder is freshly ground burger. My knee is reminding me why I stopped playing kickball after 5th grade. I'm bleeding like a fucker, and somehow I feel lucky to be doing it as a free man.
...
I always took it for granted that I would find the person to complete me by now. Also, my shoulder looks like the sort of thing I'd see at an ethnically themed barbecue. This type of injury is why I swore off illegal weapons trade after California. I'm afraid I'll never stop being colorful.
...
BIRTHDAY! FUCK YEAH!
Aug. 19th, 2009 @ 12:57 am
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| » The Jawbone of an Ass |
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I am sick to fucking death of having atheists browbeat me about my willingness to believe in the possibility that there's more to it than this. When did it become fashionable to make people equate atheists with immovable, elitist, faux-intellectual assholes? I remember when I was a kid and the people we all tried hardest to avoid were fire-breathing Christians with their constant badgering about how their way was the best way and we were all stupid for thinking anything else. These days I get to listen to militant atheists bitch about militant Christians while simultaneously emulating their haranguing conversational style.
I mean seriously, if you want me to at least consider changing my position to be more in line with your beliefs (or non-beliefs), possibly the worst thing you could ever do is back me into a corner at a coffee shop and alternate between implying that I'm stupid and cherry-picking examples of why religion (particularly Jesus-themed religion) is baaaaaaaad. I'm open to a philosophical debate, but every time I hear an atheist really crank up their debatin' skills I end up tuning them out while I vacillate between a metaphor involving either a fired up Southern Baptist who fancies themselves a scholar or a teenager on the verge of screaming "I hate you!" before slamming their bedroom door and cranking up Cradle of Filth.
...
A stranger. In a coffee shop. Because I said "bless you" when the coffee girl sneezed. I swear to god I'm going to start wearing a bike helmet everywhere just so I don't get a dent in my forehead from all of the conversation ending head-butting that clearly needs to be done.
Jul. 31st, 2009 @ 12:48 pm
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| » All Sorts of Classy |
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We've just returned from watching the big fireworks display from the top of a nearby parking structure and I'm perched on a stool listening to my friend expound upon one of the many conspiracies he has exhaustively researched and cataloged in his brain. I sip my Dutch beer and try to listen, but honestly I've reached that point in the evening where amiable consideration has given way to cramped face muscles from all the dubious eyebrow raising. We're beyond cruise missiles hitting the Pentagon and the Builderburg group now. He's talking about the secret military base on the dark side of the moon, but all I can think about is the movie about moon Nazis that I saw the teaser for many months ago.
My half-hearted attempts to veer off the topic of Howdy-Doody's image being secretly carved into the model they used to fake the original moon landings fall away in the face of the conspiracy onslaught. I've brought along a younger friend who was until tonight mercifully ignorant of global shadow governments and Waco cover-ups. A pitcher of Stella arrives right as the conversation jumps the tracks and into the underground sex rings run by Child Protective Services. "My mom works for Child Protective Services..." he warbles by way of protest. "It's all compartmentalized!" comes the triumphant rejoinder. "See, your mom doesn't know... probably... because she-"
I decide to forgo the lecture to follow, and step outside to answer buzzing in my pocket that is my phone's pithy way of reminding me that I have messages.
It takes three tries before I manage to mash the right series of buttons for my security code. I'm raising the phone to my ear when the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Down the block to my left, a solitary figure in a wheelchair is dragging herself toward me with her one visible leg. I don't know why I know it's a woman. The block between us is dark and the only light on her is a dirty wash of yellow coming from the streetlight behind her. She's perfectly backlit without a single visible detail as she shuffles toward me. I register an ominously repetitive creak coming from one of the wheels and I think to myself that this is the part in the old horror movies when the choir begins chanting and the sound guy mixes in some barely audible sounds of farm animals being slaughtered.
I turn back toward the street and will her to just pass me by. My face is hidden by my phone. I figure that this makes me moderately safe from requests for spare change or what have you. I still haven't seen her but that part of my brain that takes life lessons away from horror movies has informed me in no uncertain terms that whatever is hobbling around behind me is bad, bad news. I am on the phone. They can't see me if I'm not looking at them.
"Do you have a car?"
Fuck.
I turn around, still clutching the phone to my face. This isn't the question I was expecting, and I take my hand out of the pocket I was preparing to jingle expressively to prove my lack of spare change. What's slouching behind me isn't the street-ravaged DHS dependent crone that my brain was telling me to expect, but a girl roughly my age wearing a short skirt and a hot pink cast on one leg that somebody has signed by drawing the logo of the band Slayer. "Um, what..." I'm not asking what she said. I heard her just fine.
"Do you have a car," she repeats "because I'm not from here and my boyfriend just ditched me here, and if I don't find someplace to sleep I'm going to end up spending the night on the sidewalk."
"Oh... nooooo..." I drawl. I'm pretty sure my eyes are flicking around in an obvious sign that I'm trying to come up with a believable story "I rode out here with my friends..." (think of somewhere just beyond reasonably far) "...from Kirkland."
"Oh, that's okay, I'll go to Kirkland with you."
"You what..." I manage aloud, while my brain is screaming something about STD's and robbery.
"I don't mind going to Kirkland, if you'll give me a place to sleep." Fucking beers are fucking up my casual lie ability. I don't know why I feel the need to lie, but I've somehow developed the distinct impression that this is the kind of girl who screams rape when people piss her off.
"Oh," I finally manage to laugh a little "my girlfriend really wouldn't take that too well. She's at home, where the guns are." Part of that is true at least. The guns are at home. An element of truth, I remember my stepmother telling me, is the key to effective lying. I catch myself wondering why, if I had a girlfriend waiting for me, I be here at a skanky bar getting propositioned by a rolling train wreck in a miniskirt and hot pink cast.
She makes a sound that I think must be words of some sort, and I watch her drag herself over to a man walking back from the 4th of July fireworks with his 8 year old boy in hand. I can't hear the exchange but I gather from his body language that the proposition is the same. I can't help but wonder if she included something about being able to keep quiet if the boy happened to be sleeping nearby and I choke out a quiet laugh.
She catches the amusement on my face as I watch her toddle back to make her way into the bar, and blathers some half-assed lie about working there. It occurs to me that the reason that she doesn't sound drunk to me is because I am also drunk. I put the phone away and go back to my friends who are discussing Ebay's complicity in the New World Order agenda.
Jul. 7th, 2009 @ 03:39 pm
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| » The Battle of Zoysia Lawn |
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Later, when I'm old and have my own yard (and know how to weld), I am going to un-apologetically steal this idea for my front yard. Only mine will be twice as tall, more menacing looking, and feature prominent damage from the cannon fire that finally brought it down. Also, there will be a bronze plaque memorializing the many, many civilians and military personnel who bravely gave their lives during my first attempt at world domination.
I hope to god I manage to marry a woman with a sense of humor.
...
The other night I went around my neighborhood and put little notes on people's windshields that said "You park like an asshole." I'm spending a lot of time hiding from the world these days. I can't really tell if it has started affecting my judgment.
Jun. 30th, 2009 @ 01:46 pm
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| » The Brain is Not for Drawing On |
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Last night I really, really, really couldn't sleep. And then, when I finally thought that I might just be able to, my upstairs neighbor began one of his daily marathon fucking sessions with his new girlfriend. At least, based on the amount of sex I assume she's new. I don't remember... do people do it more than once a year?
So after resigning myself to no more than the hour and a half I had already gotten, I started thinking of decorating schemes for the ridiculous guns that I'm planning on building. Yes, real ones. Real ones that will seem totally appropriate when the food riots start and I'm running around in the chaos having still only gotten an hour and a half's worth of sleep. I'll also be the one wearing some sort of wildly inappropriate hat.
Technically I designed this one with my cousin in mind, since his side of the family is way more Irish than mine, but when I showed him my pretty pretty picture he implied that I have the space madness. It's a good thing that I didn't let on about how the one I do for myself will probably be in a really egregious Tartan.
I'm not totally attached to "Pogue Mahone", I just couldn't think of anything else that was theme-appropriately fuck you enough. The really sad thing here is that for as much time as I spent drawing this in Illustrator, I can see all sorts of details on the gun that are technically wrong but not wrong enough for me to fix. When I was young I told my mom that I thought I might be something of a perfectionist, and she derisively laughed that I was the laziest person she had ever met and why was I talking to her when I could be cleaning my room. I don't really know what that has to do with Gaelic insults except that my mom is from one of those massive Irish families where the weaker children get eaten.
...
I'm still not totally recovered from this morning's conversation about the necessity of Krumping while shopping for socks that was the direct result in my being too tired to register the word "Crumpet".
May. 19th, 2009 @ 01:15 pm
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| » William Shatner? William Shatner. WILLIAM SHATNER! |
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Yesterday I realized that I've been spending a lot of time on what (as of yesterday) I've been referring to as "failure fantasies." I realize in reading it that it sounds like I'm fantasizing about failing, but really I'm just spending far too much time indoors, staring blankly at the sunny street outside, hashing and re-hashing the circumstances of every girl that I never got but really felt like I should've, and then re-writing these scenarios in my head so that I do. I'm ashamed to admit that sometimes the girl in question's disregard for me was so total (the word "friend" being either used or implied) that I often resort to mind control. It's the ultimate sad nerd plot device.
Hmm... reading that is a bit discomfiting, so I think I'll point out now that I don't fantasize about turning girls into sex-crazed automatons that I then take advantage of. Usually. No, what I do when I'm standing here accidentally being the creepy guy who stares out the window for no reason that the people across the way can discern is- I imagine a scenario in which I have the ability to know what to say and how to say it. That's pretty much it. I don't know why I don't just imagine myself as being smoother and generally more likable instead of, you know, a slightly handsomer super villain.
I suppose it's partially because I know that eventually these girls who (no longer) got away will want a higher standard of living (yes, my sadly involved fantasy scenarios are long term). For some reason my having a fantastic job that allows me to whisk them off to Europe or buy houses or whatever is far less plausible than my having the ability to make people give me their money with my special mind powers.
I can imagine what a turn on something like this must be for the ladies. Last time I went out I didn't talk to anyone because I suck at it, particularly when confronted by those lame standardized questions. But no longer!
"What do you do?"
"Oh well, when I'm not desperately looking for a new job, I spend a lot of time staring off into space wondering what it would be like if I could control girls with my mind."
Lame standardized questions are apparently one of the many the banes of my existence. Both in conversations with girls and job interviews, the moment somebody lets a standard question fall out of their mouth my brain slows down and my face goes kind of slack. I'm sure to the person I'm talking to it looks as though I'm having some sort of conversation induced mini-stroke, but really I'm just sagging against the wall of my head thinking "did you really just ask me that?" Followed by "WHY WAS MY ANSWER A LIE?" Then the conversation dies and I'm free to go home to wait for the phone call that never comes. HA! I'm such a liar. I never even get to the point of number exchanging, and it doesn't really count if they throw your resume away as soon as you leave.
I wonder if taking classes on how to interview well would improve my chances with the ladies. Wear a nice suit, but not too nice. Sit up straight, make eye contact, don't cross arms, think of a way to conversationally mention your reasonable skill with spreadsheets and customer service. Firm handshake. Don't linger.
Awww yeah... I totally forgot what I was talking about. I once wore a blue Versace tie to an interview at Kinkos.
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This is real:
"It's the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner."
May. 1st, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
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| » Bratatat tat |
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I have no words to adequately describe just how awesome this actually is, but I'm gonna try anyway: Cute bunny sniper team.
Based on a Manga comic by the same title (which I was unaware of until now). Apparently it's coming to America as "Apocalypse Meow", which leads me to hope that the helicopter briefly seen strafing the hooch (or whatever they call them in camel country) is part of a kitty airborne helicopter assault.
Because fuck yeah, that's why.
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After 4 weeks of carpet bombing the Seattle area with my resume I have had ONE [1] interview. I attribute the timely arrival of the cute bunny sniper team to the universe trying to distract me from just how shit this whole process has actually gotten.
Mar. 27th, 2009 @ 09:16 am
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| » Elucidate This Mess |
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Pack pack pack. If I could get a job that involved the accumulation of crap, particularly crap that would in time prove to be nothing more than a novel way to occupy space, I'd never be poor again. Some of these things I own have an actual purpose, though the appearance of that purpose is rare and thrilling, like happening upon a pod of whales. I have a large drill with a "rock hammer" function. Mere drywall waits in silent terror of the day I decide that I want to hang something.
I really need to be working in the next week or so, but hovering just above the state minimum wage isn't going to cut it in this city and I'm not exactly rife with "the hookups". I gave up on probing employed people that I know for references when I realized that they were using my shitty situation as a conversational segue to bitch about their jobs.
Really people? Really? If I had magical powers a good number of people would be surprised to find themselves choking on invisible disembodied cocks whenever they opened their mouths to speak. Porn-sized cocks. That's a mental image that I really wish I hadn't just inflicted on myself.
I'm going to hate getting rid of that little 50's medical table. I never did get a chance to remove the top and replace it with a creepy florescent light. Just as well I suppose, since if I had put that much effort into it I would've insisted on taking it with me to a place that's already too small for the furniture I have, and guests would be forced to wonder why I had a small medical table hanging from the ceiling.
Hmmm.
No, I suppose not.
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HA! Invisible cocks.
Mar. 6th, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
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| » For Those of You Who Are Interested in Trepanning; |
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It is surprisingly difficult to go through the front of a skull with a 14 volt cordless drill. Furthermore, I equate the smell to that of a soaking wet stray dog that is breathing fire through the open door of a Supercuts.
No, I don't know why the Supercuts would leave its door open. Maybe the air conditioner is broken. It's an analogy, people. Try to stay with me.
( EXPLAIN YOURSELF POST-HASTE, BLAGGARD! )
Feb. 18th, 2009 @ 02:44 pm
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| » This is That Post |
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Loud crazy people get the dot. People who offend me in basically any way whatsoever get the dot. I have become one of those obnoxious people that illustrates their displeasure at the world around them through judicious use of a red laser pointer which may or may not be affixed to something menacing. The church across the street from me seems to attract crazy people and very, very low level drug dealers and both types of person react with pleasing enthusiasm when I light them up just long enough to notice but not long enough to see where the dot is coming from.
The other night I caught a guy pissing against the bright red door of the magnificent old church, and I used a scope to ensure that the red laser dot shot right between his legs to brilliantly illuminate his pee just below its point of egress. He pulled his pants up so fast that I'm fairly convinced he wet them a little bit.
This is what I do with my time now. This, and mercilessly throw away things that I previously treasured in preparation for the move to a new apartment that I wisely committed myself to right before the bastard hospital bastard laid me off last week. Bastards.
For some reason I foolishly assumed that because my relatively new position involved something that is literally vital to the functioning of the entire medical organization, and furthermore because I was the only person doing it, that I would be safe from the massive round of layoffs that began 2 weeks ago. Harrr harrr harrr. This, it turns out, is where the my company's willingness to play fast and loose with the rules of employment really fucked me. In the butt. A lot.
It played out like this: My department, while vital, was not considered "important" simply because it was not a revenue generating part of the organization. Therefore we were a very low priority when it came to expenditures. Somewhere along the line we became responsible for the pagers, emergency cellphones, and wireless paging network used by roughly 2/3rds of the medical personnel in all 4 locations. When my boss requested funds for a dedicated tech person to deal with these things and maintain an active database to track all of the devices we were handing out, the money people basically laughed him out of the room. To be fair, they didn't literally laugh, they just told him "if you have a technology related issue, you should have it dealt with by the people in the tech office that is located on the other side of town and staffed almost entirely by temps who don't give a shit."
Clearly, this was not a realistic solution. So my boss approached the money people again, hat in hand, and asked them what new position he was allowed to create with our pathetic budget. "Oh" they replied glancing up from their delicious meals of unwanted babies "you're allowed to have an Administrative Assistant." They then laughed maniacally and disappeared in a geyser of black smoke, and my position was born. I was given limited Admin duties (most of the basics, but without having to manage anybody's calendar thank god), but expected to do the whole pager/phone/database tech type thing, and all for about $10 an hour less than somebody in this position would actually be making anywhere else. That rubbed me the wrong way just a bit, but there was so much down time in the job that I basically considered it to be a really stupid trade-off.
Then the layoffs were announced, and the baby-eating money people in their arcane and terrifying wisdom consulted the list of "disposable positions." Somewhere, down at the bottom (as I had only been "promoted" into this job 3 months ago), their crusty talon-like cocaine scooping fingernails scraped to a stop beside my name and the parenthesis bracketed designation: "Administrative Assistant." Oh how they laughed.
My boss, who had been with the company for 20 years was also let go. As far as I can tell we were among the last 5 people in the entire company to be cut loose. When I went back to the office to collect my stuff (my boss, understandably, just left) and told the office manager what had happened, I swear I thought he was going to burst into tears. At first I thought it was because the layoffs were hitting so close to home, but then I realized with a bitter chuckle that it was because he was now going to be expected to do his job, my bosses job, AND my job simultaneously. I seriously doubt that I will ever work for a hospital ever again. Particularly a non-profit hospital that has 4 or 5 vice presidents who's salaries all hover in the upper 300k range while their lowest paid employees work without benefits as "per diem temps" for years at a time. Not that I know anything about that last part. Fuckers.
The cats have no idea how to react to my suddenly being home all the time. At first they addressed this change in my schedule by pointedly sleeping in the living room. Today they tried a new direction, which was yelling at me for food every five minutes and taking enormous steaming dumps on the carpet in front of the litterbox. Enormous. Like "I have a portal to another dimension in my colon, and it is a dimension filled with POO. Also, I have very bad aim." I guess I interrupted something by losing my job. Or cats are just fuckers.
...
This is a 1938 Phantom Corsair. It was invented by the man responsible for Heinz Ketchup. I demand that you start a pool and buy it for me to use as my super-villain car.
There is only one in the entire world, so it may take you a while.
Feb. 17th, 2009 @ 06:05 pm
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