| (no subject) |
[Nov. 10th, 2008|09:57 pm] |
Reading Livejournal entries from years and years ago is not a good way to get your nostalgia. In fact, it generally just leaves one feeling exceptionally old and unaccomplished.
But then the TUSSIN kicks in and you feel the cold mass of chest congestion kick in its sleep, half-knowing that it's doom is already in motion, and things are pretty okay again. |
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| Hotel Memoirs #1 |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|08:21 pm] |
Customers will always complain about the bread factory. It squats next door to the hotel, one wide, square level which never sleeps and attracts droning swarms of eighteen-wheelers throughout the night. It emits a dull roar at all hours; when production is at full tilt the place is abuzz with the sounds of engines and fans and encircled in an invisible fallout cloud of slightly burned toast scent. I imagine if I was trying to sleep next to it, I'd be cranky about it too, but I don't. I stand outside and smoke cigarettes while staring at it just so I have something to stare at and while it's certainly no beauty it soothes me time and again.
I've got no problem with the hum of industry. I like the sound of a highway and sleep perfectly happily with the sound of garbage trucks banging manhole covers. All it says to me is that I'm tucked safely under the blanket of civilization, that I am among the great Us of machine-using humans and that, should I be stalked by wolves, I could probably get some backup and a safe place to hide in without too much trouble.
If civilization were to topple I could absolutely flip my shit without the sounds of humanity revving all around me. Yes, hearing the birds and the wind is nice. I enjoy them too on occasion, but the fact of the matter is birds couldn't give less of a crap about my getting eaten by wolves.
So, to sum up: Bread factories give me the illusion of being protected from roving bands of predators whose existence in the suburbs is entirely impossible, so I like them. |
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| HO HO HO |
[Sep. 12th, 2008|06:48 am] |
I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT YOU, LIVE JOURNAL.
I was looking for you. Now I found you again.
SUCH FUN WE'LL HAVE. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 29th, 2007|05:27 pm] |
Working with Mark is fun.
Things Mark and I talk about:
The maximum population of an orbital city the size of the moon.
The benefits of becoming the Lich King of St. Paul.
Best ways to eviscerate kobolds while playing a barbarian.
Best ways to eviscerate barbarians while playing kobolds.
Our mutual failure to really "get" relativity.
The various advantages and liabilities of different faster-than-light drives.
Godzilla's weekend plans.
The insidious plans of the Buddhists.
Things to do after/during various apocolypses.
Things Mark and I do not talk about:
Pennywise. |
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| Jengle Bills |
[Dec. 25th, 2007|06:55 pm] |
For Christmas, my sister bought their house a Wii, which has taken a place besides the bent cards and yellowing boards of Trivial Pursuit in the Hall of Supported Family Pastimes. I spent a good part of last night being utterly savaged by a five year old while bowling, or while doling a much-needed uppercut to my sick mother. I can't move my right arm above my shoulder because of my fruitless flailing during the tennis section.
It was righteous.
Presently I'm spending another Christmas working the front desk, not that I might getting paid time and a half to sit here and read the entirety of the internet. Since my arrival at 3pm, I have seen:
A) Sarah the morning gal
B) Tou and The Crew, housekeepers
C) A polite elderly couple with santa hats on
D) One very bored-looking 20-something woman who told me a story about sledding into a tree wearing only a pair of snowpants.
That's it. To fill the hours, I called up a couple nearby hotels and tried to convince them to party-line call IHG Corporate and carol them; success was limited. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 25th, 2006|03:44 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | night shifts are fucking weird | ] |
The only regret I have of my youngest days is this: I never got into choir. For a few years I thought that I wanted to learn clarinet, but I never could get a handle on mucking with the reeds. Then I thought of playing bass guitar for a while, but it turned out that this was simple rock-and-roll envy brought on by my indie-rock-infused surroundings. And then for a few years I thought that hell, I'm just not musical, I just won't care about the whole mess.
I was wrong. I wish now, more intensely than I wish most things, that I'd been in a choir.
Because while the clarinet might be classy and the bass might be funky and nihilism might be easy, something about a choir is holy in a sense I have trouble defining.
Maybe there's still time. I read all the time about prisoners forming choirs and WWII soldiers performing robust, lust Italian operas while taking their morning constitutionals and there's no way they all happened to be musically inclined as tots.
Now to figure out if I can sing or not! |
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| Detroiters |
[Oct. 21st, 2006|02:51 am] |
My hotel is owned by Michiganfolk, specifically by a strange creature named Dia. Dia is, in my mind's eye, a sprawling wormlike monster, a Hutt sitting upon a pile of invoices dispensing half-mad orders in the middle of the night and speaking broken english. I've worked indirectly for the guy for almost three years (eee) of my life, and have never met him. And yet, when the phone rings at 3am and I hear a rough voice say "heeyyrwhazzaoccupantsy" I know Dia wants to know how many people are in the hotel. He's some kind of ethereal ghetto-mafioso and he sends to send His Guys to work on the renovations.
His Guys are consistantly drugged-out weirdos who do halfassed jobs and attempt to flirt with the mostly unappreciative female front desk staff. Which is something they all get used to; if you work at a hotel and you have a nominally functional vagina you will be hit on with such regularity one could set one's watch by it. Lonely travellers and whatnot. His Guys keep strange hours and ask me where to find weed, they smoke weird discount cigarettes and sing strange songs in a language I am given to understand is older than Christ.
Today, I managed to make one feel so bad for his ungentlemanly behavoir that he bought myself and my coworker chinese for lunch.
Take heed, creepy weirdos from other Great Lake states! Inviting my just-18 coworker to your hot tub five times in a day will cost you a Stern Talking To and $13.74 in food bills.
I have learned the lesson most important to peoples occupied by foreign invaders; you may be stuck with them, but that doesn't mean you can't exploit them. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 16th, 2006|12:05 am] |
Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to deliver unto you shocking news about the state of your Judeo-Christian afterlife, news which I fear has direct consequences for millions of us. While none of us were paying attention the whole management system of your Eternal Damnation has been fired and a new agency put into its place. This new agency makes the old management seem like a collection of old pensioners, harmless ancient duffers who were more interested their comfort than your punishment.
Then something happened, a shift in the cosmos we have not seen since antediluvian ages. Somewhere in the etheral kindom of heaven an alarm went off, chimes rang and the more violent of the angelic host nearly shat themselves with excitement.
Johnny Cash died.
And the Host realizes that while your faith may have waned and your belief in the wrath of God may have slipped, you still believe in Johnny Cash. And you know he's right. And he will run you down like a dog if you are bad. Johnny will pursue you through the endless Wild West that has replaced hell, eyes full of righteousness and grim determination, and he will make you regret the immortality of the soul.
Do not be bad, do not speak evil, because beyond the Veil Mr. Cash waits to string you up on the branches of the Tree in what was Eden and fold you into a guilt-sack with the force of his gaze.
Be warned!
I need more things to do at work. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 9th, 2006|02:27 pm] |
WAHHH INTERNET I MISS YOU
BABY COME BACK |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 21st, 2006|04:53 am] |
I am a member of the Food Club. When I can buy groceries to provide for myself over two weeks for $25, when I can feel liberated from the price of food and allow the essential flavors of the items themselves to blend into a robust cocktail of sumptuous delights... well, that is a fine day. Allow me to share with you an example:
1 - Ridiculous Bag Egg Noodles (.99)
1 - Package Hot Dogs (2.99)
1 - Bigass Bag of Frozen Veggies (3.40)
1 - El Grande Del Guapo Pasta Sauce (4.00 -- I like the good stuff)
You have just bought enough stuff to make Bachelor Chow for nearly a week, at $11.38.
In other news, I am not so much growing a moustache as slowly being converted into moustache from the lip down. I can't stop it. I've hewn it to stubble day after day for half a decade, standing firm against the rolling tide of tiny, spearing invaders.
I can't stop it any longer.
I can't stop it.
The moustache is come and I am powerless to stop it. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 6th, 2006|03:34 am] |
Recently at work I've been reading All Quiet on the Western Front while I listen to phones ring and harras housewives about their PBS memberships. I've read this book a few times, as I've always dug the vicarious military experience and the particular mix of brutal ugliness and polite class you found around 1915. It's like training the twich muscles of the brain; going from shattered limbs and rapidly evaporated viscera to "Hello please and thank you Ms. Morganson" in the Professional Voice in the matter of a moment takes a certain type of dual-processing I'm not sure I was capable of before.
And don't think I'm not tempted to start reading some of the bloodier passages to Nasty Granny #15.
Before I go too far, I think I should do the right thing and suggest a few tips regarding charities, phone calls and the like.
1) If and when you give to charity, give them a fake phone number. Seriously. They will call you forever and they are not limited by the National Do-Not Call Registry. We regularly call people for alumni associations who graduated in 1950.
2) Do not try to put charity callers off with "I'm just stepping out the door" or "This isn't a good time..". This means we will call you back the next day. And the next day. And the next day. Until you damn well talk to us, and of course you're snippy so the whole thing ends in tears.
3) Don't hang up before a teleservices person identifies themselves. Yes, you can tell when a Professional Caller calls, as they use Professional Phone Tone. However, if you just hang up, you get called back that day. If you hang up after they identify themselves, you get at least a few weeks' peace.
4) Seriously just butt in and say "Thank you but I don't like to do business by phone, please take me off your phone and mailing list" and then hang up.
If you ask to be taken off their list and then recieve anything, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to storm their office and run them through like a Roman noble in the slave quarters. Not only will you not be arrested, but nobody will even say anything. Go to town.
In any case, recently I've been finding World War 1 to be a great source of hope. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there was much of anything redeeming in the wholesale slaughter of people or bombing of historical landmarks. But in all honesty, when I imagine hell, it's a lot like the description Mr. Remarque provides of trench warfare, only with slightly more fire. Trench warfare represents the utmost limit of my ability to comprehend shittiness. And there in Europe where you had the entire countryside converted into a garden of innards and shrapnel and poison gas, where whole generations of men marched directly into death for all sorts of poor reasons, things are More or Less Okay.
Any race who can transform their country into Mordor twice in a century and then back and still get on with the business of living (mostly) with civility is some kind of badass. It makes me think of humanity as the fuckup teenager with the heart of gold, basically impervious and incorrigable and charming. |
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| Essentially a letter to my Pops |
[Apr. 20th, 2006|06:28 am] |
Spending eight hours asking people for money and never personally recieving the profits of your hustle can be pretty wearing on a guy. Especially when said guy is bearing down on his 25th birthday in seven days. As I come awake from my calling fugue, I took a second to survey what surrounded me and account for the base facts of my life. I've been broke for four months running, my landlord is starting to make terrifying growling noises whenever I chance to speak to her, I haven't written anything I'm much satisfied with for over a year, I've moved away from most of the people who made up my social life, one more meal of pasta and I may risk scurvy and it's been a long time since I enjoyed wine, women OR song.
So I wander home, feeling gray and worn. I apologize for the whinging (god I love the word whinging, it sets my anglophile nature roaring), it won't go on much longer.
In any case, I come home and stumble upon Kevin Smith'slog of dealing with Jason Mewes' drug addiction. I sat down, lit a cigarette and ate the whole thing in a sitting.
Drug addiction has a special place in my heart, as crippling afflictions go. See, my dad was an alcoholic. And actually, as the Boy With Drunk Dad experience goes, it was far from the worst I've heard of. He never hit me or yelled at me or locked me in a closet or anything. And it turned out as well as alcoholism possibly can in the end. Today my father is one of the bases for my optimism, one of my rays of hope for humanity. When the time came for him to make a choice, he made the right one and is now healthy, sober, happy and content. I love my dad, while he may not have been around during my developing years, he's had a profound impact on the recent ones.
I could be a drunk in a heartbeat. I have the genes for it, from both sides of the family. God knows I have the addictive personality; I've smoked two cigarettes since starting this. Without the occasional example of proper choosing, there's a real good chance I never would have made it out of Dinkytown or Mankato without a bus pass to Cirrhosistown. It's entirely too likely I'd have ended up smoking or snorting or drinking my way into a far stupider place.
But I haven't.
And I haven't put myself in jail, or made my mother cry much, or broken anyone's heart with cheating, or crashed a car while drunk, put my head through a door in a rage, or any of all sorts of horrible things.
Smith's log helped me remember that. And it helped me remember to do something I've meant to do for a long time -- write down clearly, for once, how I feel about my father.
I love you, Dad. Thank you for showing me that escape isn't the only option. Thank you for coming back after your self-imposed exile. Thank you for showing me that happy endings do come out of dark circumstances.
Thank you, and I love you. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2006|02:28 am] |
So here I am, living in St. Cloud and part of me loves it. It's the part of me that enjoyed being unemployed, that revels when I light a cigarette, that delights in peering out at bright, beautiful days as I huddle in the dark indoors. Basically St. Cloud is fostering the growth of my worst aspects, my antisocial shiftless self. I've been up here four months and some change and I can't honestly say I've made any new local friends. I haven't been to a proper movie since I've been here, not played frisbee, I've hardly cooked. I honestly have only explored the city casually, and then only because I was hoofing it around looking for a job. I like my roomates, I like them very much, but honestly speaking they don't add much to my experience. We're too similar and we do such similar things that we're evolving a closed ecosystem. A nerd biodome supported by Warcraft subscriptions and a pile of books on the toilet three feet tall.
In short, I've taken an opportunity and squandered it. So far. This is one of my defining Things. I seem to have some inborn desire to fail before I begin.
In reading my former LJ entries, strolling down the seemingly rain-glutted avenues of Memory Town, I keep seeing more and more places wherein I laid the landmines before my own armored column.
Well then.
I've played this game before, which should mean that I know exactly how to NOT play it.
Tommorow I do something simple and new and joyful, because repetative experiences and regret together are poisons! Like the Joker Fish poison that kills you if you mix it with perfume. OH SO DELISH.
Now, if only I can decide. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 10th, 2006|06:02 pm] |
I suppose I should state, at some point, that I got a job fundraising over the phone for a company called Auria Communications. It's schlocko telemarketer work, but I never have to call people to sell things and we only call people who've donated before, so I don't have any crushing soul burden to bear. In fact, most people are downright nice. Especially those from San Diego. It turns out that dwelling in paradise makes one A) Pleasant and B) Willing. I must've helped PBS pay for a lot of replacement Big Bird suits by now.
Also, I only call after 4pm, which is a godsend. Mostly because I'm noctournal, but also because it allows me to avoid the morning folks, the Pitney Bows group. There is something in the artifacts they leave around the office, the gradeschool coloring contests and the bingo cards that speaks for desperate minds grasping at thinning straws. These are "case of the mondays" people. Theirs must be a delicate ecosystem indeed, in which any slight change could bring about a Jurrasic Park-style dervish of blood and carnage.
In the evening, meanwhile, most of the employees are high as kites and hard to rile.
I chose wisely. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 4th, 2006|08:21 pm] |
I hope I cannot get fired for raising funds for WNYC, New York Public radio in a fake, gruff Texan accent.
I hope none of the supervisors was listening to those few calls.
But goddamn was it a ton of fun. |
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| Days |
[Mar. 15th, 2006|11:43 pm] |
Everybody has good days.
This should be a useless statement, but I am communicating via livejournal, so bear with me.
For instance, I once had a day wherein I was low-down, busted and without prospects. As I climbed out of my car into the howling MN winter's night, grimacing at a wind that seemed determined to force itself into my nostrils and strip me bare of my BTUs, I had a thought. It was a common thought, one I'd had often before. "Good lord I wish I had five dollars", I thought. And lo, through a coincedance of proportions so far-fetched as to be worthy of ridicule, I actually stepped on a five dollar bill half frozen into a puddle on my way to the door.
That was a good day. But comparing that day to today is something on the order of comparing $1 in pulltab winnings to the arrival of elves at Helm's Deep. Juxtaposing the passing of the flu with the eleventh-hour cancer remission. Comparing a picture of a storm with being struck by lightning.
Well, okay. So I have a thing for hyperbole. And I abuse Dan Simmons' lightning analogy like a shaken baby.
But nevertheless, it's nice to go to bed with prospects and a bellyfull of good. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 11th, 2006|04:44 pm] |
Two teeth lighter and temporarily saved from the writhing doom of dental corruption, I find myself back in St. Cloud taking stock of my options, my finances and my foodstuffs. One thing is becoming rapidly apparent; I need to find a tipping job, and I need to do it with the swift, sure strike of a thunderbolt. Also, I'm desperately short on foodstuffs, particularly foodstuffs I can cram into my 1-inch food slot. Or monies to buy said foodstuffs. My dental infection left me afflicted with trismus.
Trismus is commonly known as lockjaw, though this isn't the really horrible sort of lockjaw wherein I can't open my mouth -- I just can't open it very far. The muscles in my jaw went on four-alert lockdown, and now I get to retrain them (with the aid of ibuprofin) to open. Now, we westerners positively delight in forcing all kinds of silly dietary restrictions on ourselves, like someone who grows bored with a game they find too easy and so decides to enforce arbitrary rules to increase the difficulty. Generally, we base these on occult terms whose meanings we don't understand, not being nutritional scientists. I can't count the number of people I've heard rattle off the term "trans fat". I am happy to assume that none of them have the molecular skillz to tell me what a trans fat is, how it works or why it's bad. People have been diving out of the way of runaway carb trucks for years, but who here can tell me what defines a carbohydrate?
Now I get to play a silly game of my own, but it's a lot more concrete and absolute.
YOU!
FOOD!
ARE YOU LESS THAN ONE INCH WIDE ON YOUR THINNEST FACING?
OH SWEET GET IN HERE
Every day, I hold ice in awkward positions with my tongue, I perform slow, steady streches of the jaw and I dream of that most holy of days to come, the day when I will order a burger and feel that particular sensation of tooth penetration. My incisors and three remaining bicuspids, my canines plunging through the giving flesh of another animal! Meat juice... spraying everywhere.
BITING AND TEARING
oh wow I need to have a lie-down now.
I think while I walk to the store today, I will stop at the window of the local Subway, gently press a sullen hand against the glass and stare mournfully at those privileged few as they casually live out my dreams.
And then, I dunno, sell matchsticks. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 24th, 2006|11:45 pm] |
Toothaches are a bad deal. I don't know how many of you folks have ever had one, but I give them ZERO stars. It typically starts off with a nice, strong wave of pain that washes back and forth. Never steady enough to ignore, because that would be too easy, oh yes. Then, after a few days of that, your body gives up on The Brain and takes matters into it's own hands.
You see, a toothache is generally caused by damage to a tooth followed by the celebrations of various bacteria as they move into their new home. As a result, I presently have a giant cesspool of bacteria flotsam, I'm imagining keg juice and slop buckets, residing in a substantial resevior the size of a walnut on my jaw. This is a bum deal for a lot of reasons, mostly because it A) Hurts a lot and B) Removes my ability to open my mouth more than an inch or so.
So when I go to my dentist finally, do the right thing and whatnot, he's going to bitch at me to "open wide" and I will howl with impotent rage at my inability to obey. Or moan anyways. But hey, on the bright side, maybe he'll pull it off and I'll get a mouth full of pus.
I'm sorry for ignoring you, tooth. It'll never happen again, I swear it. Because by the end of this coming week, one of us is going to die. Either you, laid flat on a cold steel pan or me quivering with a brain full of Bug Party Trash.
Let's dance! |
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| ?!?! |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|10:19 pm] |
That has to be like the 74th time I've misspelled "hotmail.com" as "homotail.com"
do you want butts, brain?
IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT |
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| Dankstag |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|06:01 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | traffic control chatter | ] |
Thanksgiving 2536
I will miss this so, when I am munching a protein cube on my asteroid miner. Telling my partial clones tales about how once there was a race of men and women who, while assailed by all self-destructiveness of their poisonous culture and the inherent problems of an incumbent empire, were still polite enough to set a day of perfectly good profitable time aside to say "Thanks".
And when the clonelings ask me what they were so thankful for, I'll rattle off a list of subjects which will have little-to-no meaning for them, such as the lush garden of a planet they lounged upon, healthy sexual reproduction, pumpkin pie with apple butter and football teams.
The clonelings will laugh, and when I eject them into the cold void of space to die gasping and gurgling, I will make a concession that I'm thankful I control the airlocks as I decant the next batch of Timlets. |
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