Blogging From Work, About Work

Man, that was stupid of me. I signed up to work on Memorial Day because I thought, "Hey! Should be a really chill day, and I'll get bonus holiday pay! Sweet!" Little did I realize that my dreams of sitting around the table in the treatment room would go largely unfufilled and be replaced with running my ass off and tons of critical animals coming in with not nearly enough people to take care of them all.

Bonus, though, being the only person who was really at all familar with taking radiographs, I got to be in charge of x-rays! Woohoo. Not at all difficult really, you take the measurements, set up the machine, align the patient. I was extra happy to find out I got a dosimeter, when I didn't expect Cynthia to get me on for many more months. It means something, mainly that Cynthia has faith that I will be here for a while, or that she likes me, and being liked by the person who's been at the hospital longer than anyone else, and commands more respect than anyone else, is definitely a very good thing. She lent me this awful book I have to review, too!

Oh well. I'm out of here in two and a half hours so I can't completely complain. I think there's still two o'clock treatments to do. We're really behind. Oh well! Not my problem, bwhaha, it'll be someone else's problem.

I Finally Did It!

I got semi-inspired and churned this out when I got home from work much earlier tonight. It's not much, but it's home. It also makes good use of Blogger's new conditional tags, which allows me to show the archives on the front page and on archives pages, but show the "Previously" box on specific post pages, and to only show the Jukebox on the main page. Good stuff, Blogger.

An Introduction to Gomez

I'm writing this for people who read the site and might not have listened to what is probably my favorite band: Gomez. The release of their new album Split the Difference as firmly implanted them in my head as one of the best artists to come into existence since The Beatles, and I mean that as much as I possibly can. If you haven't listened to Gomez recently, you're missing out. If you've never listened before, listen to the albums all in order or you might not get it.

This will just be mini-reviews of all their albums, with a list of songs from each album. If you download all the songs and compile them in the same order listed, they'll result in a good introduction to Gomez that can be burned to CD, equaling 1 hour 19 minutes and 52 seconds, just enough to fit onto an 80 minute CDR if you burn it with Foobar2000. (View Guide Here). Try it on for size.

Bring It On (1998): Their debut album is consistently great, and almost completely devoid of the electronic influences of their later work. It's an impressive and cohesive work, especially considering that on their debut effort, they managed to craft a sound that was unique and entirely their own. The song writing isn't the strongest, perhaps better than most other artists still, but that can be looked past.

Stand-out Songs: Whippin' Piccadilly (3:12), 78 Stone Wobble (4:22), Make No Sound (3:26), Get Myself Arrested (4:03)

Liquid Skin (1999): Probably their weakest effort, starting to experiment a tiny bit with deeper electronic influences, but not much. A definite follow up to Bring It On, but it didn't push the bar as much and, thus, didn't feel as fresh as Bring It On. The album feels a little dull now-a-days.

Stand-out Songs: Bring It On (4:10), We Haven't Turned Around (6:29), Fill My Cup (4:39), Rhythm & Blues Alibi (5:03)

Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline (2000): This is b-sides and rarities collection that rivals the similar efforts put out by any other band. It works completely as an album on it's own, which is why I'm including it here. There are reworkings of some tracks from Bring It On and Liquid Skin, and some extra experimental tracks that are most excellent. Definitely worth checking out.

Stand-out Songs: Bring Your Lovin' Back Here (3:36), Flavors (3:12)

Machismo (EP) (2000): Packaged as a bonus disk with ASTH, I'm including it here since it contains more experimental and heavy electronic influenced music than even ASTH, so it's an interesting five track listen for the Gomez completest. Good stuff, if a little out of left field.

Stand-out Songs: Machismo (3:36)

In Our Gun (2002): Gomez takes off here with the electronic influences to amazing success. The most amazing thing about them is that they manage to take what could be an utter failure and craft it into something that is totally and completely their own. The loops and additional processing doesn't sound like added fluffy to their folksy acoustic rock, it fits completely.

Stand-out Songs: In Our Gun (5:14), Ruff Stuff (2:28), Miles End (4:22), Ballad Of Nice & Easy (2:51)

Split the Difference (2004): This is the best stuff Gomez has released yet. This album sheds itself of the more obviously and extreme electronic influences that In Our Gun clothed itself in, and replaces it with some of the most powerful playing they've recorded yet. Just about every minute of this album is sheer power, the drumming is heavy, the guitars are being punished, and the bass is hammered. It's damn good stuff. I think this album contains more catchy hooks than any of their previous, and there isn't a single song on this album that feels out of place or not up to par with the rest. If you don't bother with any of the other albums, at least get this one, it's simply utterly brilliant. Sweet Virginia is probably the best song they've ever recorded. (Definitely the most Beatlesque, in my opinion).

Stand-out Songs: Silence (2:55), Me, You And Everybody (4:24), Sweet Virginia (6:06), Nothing Is Wrong (5:35)

Disgusting Moral Flexibility

It's disgusting and shocking to me that someone could actually justify file sharing to themselves. I hang out on a fairly large Audiophile sharing hub called UberNet in which mass amounts of albums are share by all. I, myself, share about sixty albums that I own, and have downloaded about four hundred. But, I don't lie to myself about the moral implications of what I do on this hub. Regardless of all the anti-RIAA speak and how proud I am of how much music I could download in a day if I try, I know that I am stealing.

I stupidly got into an argument with it on the hub, with a woman no less. (Which quickly turned everyone else against me once she revealed that she was indeed a woman, on a hub filled with men, this sucked). Her side of the argument was that since she is not physically removing any property, she is not stealing. It is not a theft unless physical property is removed. I thought she was joking at first, but she was dead serious. We argued nearly endlessly until she broke it down into childishness by saying that I was insulting her by calling her argument ridiculous.

My counter was, "So, if I developed a replication gun that would produce an exact copy of any item, and I walked into a store like Wal-Mart, and replicated exact duplicates of everything I wanted in the store, and left, then it wouldn't be stealing?" I figured the reality of it would hit her then, but no, she said that would not be stealing.

I don't understand. I understand perfectly the concept of getting something for free that you would ordinarily have to pay for as wrong. Especially in mass quantities such as this. Recording a CD onto a cassette or making a mix tape for someone is an isolated incident, but sending someone the full discography of an artist like, say, Aerosmith, who's albums number about 20, is a much greater effort, and with MP3 or FLAC, you have a nearly or completely identical replication of the music on your hands. How can you lie to yourself and tell yourself that this is not, in some form, wrong?

How can you lie to yourself to the point where you believe that you are not stealing when you download an album? I know I am stealing when I download music. I wont lie about it or make up fake excuses like, "I'm not taking anything away when I download a copy of an album from someone, so I'm not stealing anything," or even, "I wouldn't pay for it anyway, so what does it matter?"

It's just a frightening level of moral flexibility. I'm not really shocked that I found such a steep and self-assure level of it in some woman, not to make a broad generalizing dig toward women... or, OK, to make a broad generalizing dig toward women. If you can convince yourself that downloading music, movies, software, and games for free online is not stealing, what else could you possibly convince yourself of? It seems to me that these people who believe none of this is stealing are probably former, or current, kleptomaniacs who shoplift nearly continually from supermarkets and department stores because, "Hey, they're a large corporation, it's not like they need the money."

Smoking More Hazardous than Thought

This is an extensive article detailing exactly how smoking is more hazardous to your health than previously thought. It says:

Surgeon General Richard Carmona says smoking cigarettes affects every cell in the body.

And, doctors now have plenty of evidence to show that it can cause disease, not just cancer, throughout the body.

Holy shit! I will quit smoking right now. This well written, well thought out and exhaustively researched article about the fact that cigarette smoking is more dangerous than previously thought has convinced me that smoking is clearly more dangerous than previously thought. I wonder if they're implying that smoking cigarettes will send you to hell, or at least result in some nasty STD that causes your reproductive organs to hemmorage green blood for days until you die. The world may never know, with fantastic journalism like this circulating the internet!

Alien Swarm

Alien Swarm is an overhead view tactical squad-based shooter for UT2K4. Set in the the distant future, the players take the role of a Commander in the Interstellar Armed Forces. They must guide their squad of marines through Swarm infested colonies, overrun bases and outposts, to achieve a variety of objectives. Featuring Assault Rifles, Heat Tracking Guns, Sentry Guns, Flamethrowers and more. Supports co-operative multiplayer.

And how! This is yet another example of the magnificence that seems to be spewing forth from the mod community. A singleplayer game that is short and sweet, and all of it is playable online with up to eight people! Does it get any better? Nah, don't think so.

Update: Just spent a few hours playing this online. This mod is incredibly fun! Lots of screaming and yelling eachother on behalf of how easy it is to kill eachother (a flame thrower acts much like it would in real life, instantly burning your teammates to death if they walk into the path of your fire, and a machine gun is much the same) and how difficult it is to coordinate your movements... but after nearly an hour of retrying the first level over and over again, we succeeded! It's all about learning your own strong points, what you're good at and what you're not. Also, learning how to stay out of a flamer's path is dramatically important. Damn good fun, best time I've had in co-op since Halo on Xbox.

One day - I'm gonna get my ass kicked.

Hmm, this sounds familar. Course, so does this. Oh, and this. This, too, sorta kinda. This makes me sad. This is super familar. This is funny, but scary. This is stupid. Hot! This is so true it hurts. This person should kill themselves. Bah, who doesn't? Oh, the romance the future holds for me. Spread the good word, friend.

Neverwinter Nights Mod Reviews

I just played probably two of the best user created games ever made. These two rival most commercial projects you could buy. If you own Neverwinter Nights and at least the first expansion (Shadows of the Undrentide), you should check these out. And if you don't, buy Neverwinter Nights Gold and download them!

The first was Elegia Eternum. This module is very short, I believe it took me about an hour or two to get through it, which is perfect for what it accomplished. You start off knowing your mission, seeking a magical staff called the Infernis Eternum, either to sell it or to destroy it to rid the earth of more evil. You arrive on a lovely wooded path, a body lays before you but you cannot make out who or what it was due to the thick fog around you, or due to maybe something else. Up the path is an equally lovely Inn, run by a woman and her two children, with a fellow adventurer lodging there who was also searching for the staff as well, but is not sure whether he has found it or not. He suggests that you search the caves toward the north and... well, things quickly get very weird.

This is a magnificent sample of the storytelling to come in the sequel. In comparison to the sequel, it is very short and sparse, but by no means is it lacking in any regard. You'll find yourself intrigued, horrified, and mystified. It's amazing how quickly you can become attached to the characters, which is beneficial to the sequel. A great two hours of storytelling.

The sequel, Excrucio Eternum, had me tied up for several hours. I don't think I've ever been quite so riveted to a game before. (Well, maybe Knights of the Old Republic). I just couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried to pull myself away.

In Excrucio Eternum, it picks up pretty much where you left off in the game, except several inconsequential years later of petty adventuring. You appear on another idealistic forest path and meet a bizarre stranger who takes interest in the staff you are still carrying with you from Elegia Eternum. He lets you go, but before you can get several feet away from him, a spell is cast and you are frozen and the screen fades out. Then you watch, in some great dramatic in-game camera work, many events unfold in brief partial dramatic cuts, most are potential murders committed by someone you probably think is you. You awaken in a bedroom and set out to explore... Apparently the stranger has been controlling you for ten years, having you commit his evil deeds... Obviously, this must be stopped, but how? Some old friends from the past appear and help you on your way later on, but I don't want to give away too much...

The brilliance of these two modules is that they effectively explore the darker and more sinister aspects of the human condition... what will make us wallow in self-torment, guilt, or how we lock away the things that we wish we could never remember so we can continue on in life pretending everything is OK. You alone must save about thirteen tortured individuals from their own different forms of self-hate across these two modules.

It's an amazing, simply amazing, display of creativity. Elegia Eternum features almost complete original voice acting which is fairly good, if recorded poorly. Both modules contain original music and artwork that is very haunting and memorable. (The music during Lenore's section in Excrucio will stay with me forever). It's all exceptionally well written, better written than anything else in any game I've ever played. Excrucio also displays some incredible camera work, most notably a section in which the camera pans directly over your characters head and the effect of the snow falling turns into a partial optical illusion in which the camera seems to be moving downward, but isn't.

Anyway, go check them out if you own Neverwinter Nights! You can't be disappointed.

Nothing quite like the smell of burning rubber. A bad picture, I only wanted to take one and then be on my way. Burning car dealership down the street on Broadway. Lots of people standing around rubbernecking. 

Skinny Puppy - The Greater Wrong of the Right

OMG!!! NEW SKINNY PUPPY!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

Update: I ordered it. I have no spine. ;(

Last.FM - Your Personal Music Network

Last.FM is an exciting personal radio website, that is nearly completely free (a donation of anything above $1 gets you a premium membership). If you have an Audioscrobbler account, then you already have a Last.FM account set up with a fairly sizable song database in your profile. (Donations toward Audioscrobbler also count for Last.FM). It works much like any of the commercial music radio sites, you listen to music and either mark it "Love" or "Ban" or even "Skip" if you just want to skip the song. I've played with it for an hour or so now and I still can't manage to get a good song mix, and I had to stop since my headphones were starting to give me a headache. It's very promising though and I recommend checking it out.

Red Orchestra 2.0 for UT2004

I've been playing Red Orchestra, a realistic World War II mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. It's pretty bad ass, which is saying a lot since I don't particularly like World War II games all that much. The coolest feature that does the most for game play is the fact that you aim with your gun's iron sights. If you have a machine gun, you have to deploy it on a surface that can support it and then you aim it as you would in real life, same with the basic rifles. Gameplay is a little slow, being that a lot of the time you are crawling on your belly, trying not to get shot, and trying to peg off what you think is an enemy that is pretty far away. Fairly difficult at times, and I often find myself wishing it gave me some sort of idea who picked me off and from where, but that's OK. Check it out if you have UT2004. If you don't have UT2004, you might be tempted to pick it up just for Red Orchestra.

Jumpin' Joe Gastineau

I'm really tired, but I wanted to write something. Not that I know what. I'm afraid to speak. I'll say this though...

Socks are probably the most important piece of clothing you can ever wear. I think, if you have a nice comfortable pair of socks on your feet, you could take on anything in your day. The best pair of shoes in the world wont mean shit if you haven't got some nice soft socks on. People who wear sandals and no socks are stupid. Socks rule. Without socks, I would not get out of bed in the morning. Without socks, I would have no reason to live.

My eyes hurt.

I walked up to Bill and Laurel at work today, and in serious stone face I said, "I just jumped online, and google news says that there are nukes heading for southern california right now and that people should find bomb shelters... do you know if the hospital has a bomb shelter or not?" They just looked at me, not sure if I was serious or not, which is when I realized how horribly cut off from the outside world we are when we're in The Pit, which is what I will now affectionately call the treatment room. They asked, "Are you serious?" and I said "Yes," and they looked like they may have crapped their pants. I told Tina about it later and I did my impression of my telling of it so well that she almost freaked out as well.

I worry about that now. I'm reading a book by Heinlein right now called Farnham's Freehold that I was lent by a co-worker, very hard to get into and I almost gave up on it, but it's about a family that goes into their shelter when the bombs start dropping. I decided that if I ever get enough money to where I could build my own house, I am definitely building in a fallout shelter of some kind. I don't trust the overwhelming stupidity of humanity to not nuke me some time in this lifetime.

I also find it a satisfying way to torture myself, since I am claustrophobic and I don't know what good a fallout shelter would do if the ground above me was completely glassed, but you know, whatever? I'd sit in the shelter until I starved to death or kill myself. I wouldn't be able to kill myself though since I'd be sure that the moment I did, the rescue crews would find my shelter and pull me out to safety and the radioactive world. I would sit in that shelter until the day I die, crying, I'm sure.

I wonder what it will be like when the bombs finally drop.

I guess I'd rather not think about it.

Will it be like the books?

Or worse, the movies?

Guess I'll go to sleep, now.

What Is Summer-Blend Gas?

According to a survey of 8,000 service stations released yesterday, American motorists are paying an average of $1.80 for a gallon of gas. While several factors—including record demand and the unusually high cost of crude oil—account for the increases, news reports also place some blame on shortages caused by the annual switch to smog-reducing "summer blend" gasoline. What is summer-blend gas? And if it's so clean, why don't we use it year-round?

From MSN Slate: What Is Summer-Blend Gas?

New Music. And Socks!

This new Gomez album, Split the Difference, is so ridiculously good that I could puke everywhere just from the overwhelming goodness oozing out of every pore of the album. I think I might shit my pants and paint my face black and run screaming through the streets of Chula Vista naked with feces smeared all over me. It's that good. I swear.

And I'm just on track three.

I'm not going to write about socks. I lied.

Sims 2

This looks really bad ass. (Download the Trailer/Screenshot zip). Every time I picked up and played the Sims, I'd get bored really easily, and I know it would be/will be the same with the sequel, but that's really sweet looking. Comes with a fact sheet too, apparently now your Sims will age, and your Sims have "DNA" and will pass on physical and mental characteristics onto their offspring so you can raise multiple generations onward from your original Sim family. Hmmm! Good stuff, I think. Also, I'm sure just to stir controversy or hype, there's a screenshot of two female characters kissing.

And I Don't Know Why

I'm really tired. Don't know why. My head is asleep.

The Secret History Of Blogger's Servers

Rich, very rich. From our ol' pal, Ben Brown.

The Woes of Leet Speak

I got a humorous email from some guy about my Guide to Simple Leet Speak that was written so long ago I can't remember when it was written, now. I think he wrote to me since it's the first result on Google when you search for Leet Speak.

im just e-mailing you to tell you that ereet speaking did not originate on counter strike or any other online game it originated in the late 80' on usenet groups and when people e-mailed each other constantly. it slowly filtered into the gaming community through IRC. it makes no diffrence how you use leet speak as it can really spell something and even that usually doesnt matter. so you need to get your facts straight before starting a page.

I wrote him back, "History has been written by me, now, so it is as I say it is. That page has existed for years now without anyone having any conflict with it, so tough shit, I guess." Which is true. I don't know why anyone would give a shit about the originations of Leet speak, much less my badly written page, but I guess retards of every breed exist out there on the intarweb.

P.S. If Gmail can have such a nice spellchecker, why can't Blogger?

Tried to Redesign

But I gave up. Switched templates instead. Then, cried.

Something About Gmail

I started using Gmail. I can't stop, either. The best thing about it so far is that it's being made like you're meant to use it forever, the 1GB of archive space, etc. Just good stuff, damn good stuff. My other email address automaticly forwards to Gmail now so it wont be a big change over hassle or anything. Check it out, Blogger users, it's damn nice. (And, oh my god, I'm actually Blogging via Gmail... I am crazy). (Crazy, crazy, cool).

Edit: Well so much for Blogging via email since line breaks are the devil.

I wanted to show everyone where I live. I couldn't get a good angle in the room so I decided to take a picture from the outside which is a little more interesting. Yes, my closet is above my bed. That's my milkcrate-o-books next to my bed. Not visible: Laundry basket, black bowl chair, computer monitor/desk, God. 

Bad picture of a tiny spiderweb on my porch. I couldn't resist. Also, didn't have any other pictures to post. 

Troy (Or, How I Learned That My Name Will Live On Forever).

Went and saw Troy last night with Greg. Didn't really want to since I wasn't at all interested. Didn't like Gladiator at all, but I've never watched a Ridley Scott movie I liked. Anyway, to make a long story short, the first two hours of Troy are almost comical in how badly edited and performed and written it all is. It's almost like it was trying way too hard to be epic, as one review somewhere said. Every now and then for no reason you'd get a tiny bit of slow motion right before a cut on a character, and I couldn't help but throw my hands up in confusion.

Also, the Matrix Trilogy curse of repeating certain "key phrases" (or in the case of the Matrix Reloaded, "nothing at all") over and over again ad infintium is so over abundant in Troy, I started laughing every time Achilles mentioned, for the hundred time, how his name, or your name, or everyone's name, will live on forever in history, blah blah blah.

I've never seen so many people gradually walk out of a movie in my life, either. I'll probably never walk out of a movie, and though I wanted to leave Troy on occasion, I did want to see how it all ended being that I know nothing of history. Anyway...

I almost erupted in an uncontrolable fit of laughter when the Greek army arrives and the camera slowly lingers on the shocked look of individual Trojans. It was just so gratuititous and corny that I couldn't help but laugh at the wide-eyed horror of the Trojan king's almost starry-eyed fear.

The first two hours: shit, but the last forty-five minutes are pure gold. Awesome climax. Just good stuff all around. There wasn't any of the awful editing or pacing or anything from the first two hours, it was almost like an entirely different movie. Good movie, it's just trying too hard. I'd give it a 6.5, or a 7 if I'm feeling generous. Brad Pitt is too much Brad Pitt and not enough Achilles, in my humble opinion. It's hard to look at Brad and not see Tyler Durden, especially with Achilles' attitude and all.

Hurray For Broadband! Down with Sickness!

I got net access again! I'm so happy that I don't have any idea what to do with it! Yay! Hurray! Whoopee! Or something. Also, not too sick now, still a little "not here" but you know, what can you do?

Well, So Much For Broadband

Activated it this morning, four hours later it still wasn't working. So, I called customer service and he said she had put my MAC address in wrong, so we repeated it back and forth a few times until we got it exactly right and he said it should be about 15 minutes til it works. Two hours later, it still wasn't working. So, I called customer service back and they said they'll have to send a technician out that might incur a $50 fee if they feel that it was my dumbass problem, which I don't believe it is, since I've tried all sorts of different cables everywhere. I think the line coming down from the pole is fucked. Technician wont be out here until Tuesday some time between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. Ugh. Whatever. I'm pissed. I called in sick on account of my fatigue and my tonsils, don't want to get anyone else sick like this, and my head hurts like hell... and I can't even have a little cable modem lovin? This world is messed up, my friends.

Always Lessons To Learn

That nap was a mistake. My tonsils, and I only know they're my tonsils because Lessette told me so, are swollen to the size of small watermellons, or perhaps softballs. I look down my throat with a flash light and they're sitting there, blinking, pointing and laughing at me and my inability to swallow without excruciating pain. Oh, god, make it stop. On top of that, the nap zapped all potential energy I had, so going to the store was more like an endurance trial seeing which person who's muscles have atrophied away completely could run five miles with eight gallons of water strapped to their back. This kind of physical pain surpasses, "Ha ha omg I feel like I am dying," and goes straight into "Omg, I feel like I am dying." This sucks. I'm gonna have a word with God tomorrow.

I'm So Tired

I signed up for Cox Cable Internet today at Best Buy. Course, since I signed up thru Best Buy it might be a day or so before I get to use it. Why can't anything ever be easy? I'm so tired. I'm going to go take a nap curled up next to my unused cable modem.

The Calamitous Tale of Multiplying Parasites

I decided that I should go see a movie, notably Man on Fire since even though the critical reviews were rotten, word of mouth was good from all of the four people I heard about it from. I walked down to the Washington Mutual on the corner to see if I had any money, and I had seventeen dollars or so, which was shocking to me. So I walked back home and took a shower on account that I hadn't showered since Tuesday. I felt pretty nasty and just in case, though it would never happen, I meet some new people while I'm at the mall/theater, I wanted to be clean. Also, I needed to shave for tomorrow, anyway.

I walked back past the bank to the mall where the theater was. I'm not sure why I chose to walk as opposed to being a lazy ass and driving, but it seemed like a more eco-friendly thing to do and I realized the only way to meet people is by actually being around them, not driving through them and running over a few.

I got up to the theater and there was a note saying their debit mainframe was down, but there was an ATM inside. Well, that did me no good since by whatever evil design, ATMs only spit out $20 bills and with only $17 in a bank that would leave my account -$4 and some-odd cents. Knowing Washington Mutual they would charge me $22 before I had a chance to deposit my paycheck tomorrow so I didn't want to risk it.

I walked over to a comic store I spotted and asked them if they had the Fray graphic novel since I was interested in it. They didn't, but asked if I wanted them to call this other store down the street to see if they had it. I said it was OK and left.

I walked back down to the lower level and hung around Electronics Boutique for a long time looking for a game or something I might want to buy. I narrowed it down to the Myst DVD collection for $19.99 or Armed and Dangerous or whatever that game is for $29.99. I knew I didn't have enough money for either, and some weird hope entertained me into thinking that if I got them to run it through as credit it might not make me overdraw, but I didn't want to risk it. I also knew that if I bought either of those games, and the Myst set was the one I really wanted, I'd probably play them for a while and throw them aside, never figuring out the puzzles in Exile or beating Armed and Dangerous faster than I thought $30 should buy. Also, I still have Neverwinter Nights Gold to play through and Morrowind, which has been shelved, so I figured buying a game was stupid, and left.

Then I thought, "Aw fuck it," and went back in and picked up the Myst to buy it, but not before I put it back and looked at Armed and Dangerous, and then put that back too, and left again feeling like I had been horribly defeated by my own common sense. I hate that.

Walking back past the bank I realized the bank was still open and I could have pulled out my $17 and gone and seen the movie. If I could have punched myself in the face at that moment, I would have, but I couldn't, so I didn't. I did go in and pull out $15 while entertaining the thought that I could get myself Rubios, and Starbucks; or Subway, and Starbucks. But I wasn't hungry just yet so I walked home.

Now what happened after this is for you to decide.

1.) On the way back home I ran into this group of pseudo-goths who looked like their median age was probably 17, and this pale chick with black hair asked me for a cigarette. I gave her one and lit it for her, and much to my shock they didn't keep walking. I introduced myself and lit up a cigarette myself, asked them what they were up to, etc. They said they pretty much just got out of school and were heading to the mall. Long story short, me and the goth chick fell in love, got married, and had babies. We got into fights a lot and eventually she stabbed me in the face with a dull blade, thus ending the marriage. Now I'm paying child support for three babies. This sucks.

2.) Some strange guy jumped out of the bushes lining my porch and stuck a knife in my back. I lay there bleeding as he hastily pulls my wallet out of my pants and says something like, "Fifteen fucking dollars?" then he takes my keys and goes inside, finding absolutely nothing of any worth he calls 911 on my behalf and leaves. I'm typing this from the hospital room, the nice man sitting next to me with his leg all hanging in the air in a cast somehow has a laptop with wireless internet on it. These Scripps medical centers have hospital wide WiFi access, he says. Kind of cool, I think. My back fucking hurts. How am I going to go to work tomorrow like this? I still have laundry to do. Goddamnit. People suck.

3.) As I walked home I decided against driving somewhere for food later and I think I will order a pizza. I like pizza.

4.) Crossing the street to my house, some fuckhead in a lowered honda civic with chrome spinning rims sped through the intersection and killed me. I'm in heaven now, writing this on God's own personal laptop. He's a pretty cool guy, and I have to say he does look like he would be Jesus' father. He says Jesus came back to earth a little over thirty years ago but everyone mistook him for a hippie and wouldn't take him seriously, so he stopped trying to be all Jesus-y. Eventually he ended up fighting in vietnam where he was killed by some gook who snuck up on him and a bunch of his buddies while they were fucked up on government LSD. God said he had to send Jesus to hell because he was such a, and I quote, "dumbass." To quote Vonnegut, "So it goes." I like God, he said all the people who hate me because I was mean to them are stupid and will die painful deaths. I think he might just be trying to make me feel better and I can't say it isn't working. Being dead so far is pretty cool, I will admit.

5.) When I got home and opened the door to the house, the door fell off the frame and floated way into some space inside the house filled with a purple haze. I walked cautiously through the haze until I felt the floor under me give way, causing my hand to shoot out and grab a rail that I swear wasn't there a second before. I decended the staircase, passing through layers of richly colored and textured packed dirt. I passed a dinosaur skeleton, it was pretty cool. Eventually the purple haze turned into a deep crimson and there were pits of fire all around me, the staircase nowhere to be found. This really sexy devil woman with blue eyes greeted me, she said, "Hi Brad, my name is Ruth, nice to meet you," and I screamed like I had never screamed before, since her exposed nipples turned into eyeballs with bright green irises that blinked independently from their eyelids. I turned and tried to ran, but hundreds of Ruths all appeared with eyeball nipples, introducing themselves and trying to lick all the wax out of my eye canals. I finally collapsed on the floor in a sobbing heap of flesh, until they tore all the flesh off me and then I was just a quivering pile of blood and muscle and intestines. They sucked suggestively on my bones and for whatever reason I was still alive and I could see them doing this. I felt like crying but it wasn't the same since all my tear ducts did was squirt blood into the air like a mist. I tried to will myself to die but it didn't work, so I willed myself to stand and I shouted, "Ruths! I am now your ruler and you will do as I ask! I want my flesh back, and I want your nipples to stop being eyeballs!" They were shocked by my commands and said, "But master, the way of the flesh is the way to sin! We only want you to be happy and free!" and I said, "DO AS I SAY, RUTHS!" and now I live here, surrounded by hot devil women named Ruth, with regular nipples without eyeballs. They can construct things out of eachother, and I admit it is strange typing on a keyboard made of crimson red flesh, but the enter key made out of a row of permanately erect nipples is definitely comically enjoyable to press on. Will update you later on the unique flexability their kind display...

Unrelenting Abscess Parade

Had a horrible dream a few nights ago in which I discovered I had a huge bloody open abscess on the top of my head with what looked like bits of tumor sticking out. My time at the hospital has added a grotesque realistic feel and look to everything of this sort in my dreams, so it was genuinely horrifying. I showed it to people and everyone nodded in agreement with me, "Yup, that's got to be some sort of brain cancer." I realized that not having health insurance, I would surely never be able to afford to get it treated without owing some doctor money for the rest of my life, so I burst into tears knowing that I would simply have to die whatever slow painful death the tumor would bring me. Then I woke up.

Had some other dream last night that resulted in a bit of confusion on behalf of my waking self. I can't remember what it was about, but in some strange way I woke up from it expecting someone to pound on me door, and I swear I heard someone pound on my door, so I tried to convince myself it happened in my dream at the exact moment of waking up, but I wasn't so sure. This was made more worrisome by the fact that I had woke up two times prior to what sounded like someone banging on my window and my door. I got up and turned on the light and talked out loud to myself for a few sentences that I cannot recall. Convinced I was going insane, I turned off the light and went to sleep. Wish I could remember what that was all about.

I'm going to go have a cigarette.

I remember playing Super Soakers when I was a kid. We'd have massive water fights, it was always so much fun. I wish I could be young again. It's amazing how things don't seem quite so dangerous when you're younger. You'd wouldn't catch me dead rummaging through bushes previously unexplored now, too afraid of spiders and other insects.

I'll never understand how my dad was able to crawl under the house into the crawl space to do things, no matter how manly I wanted to portray myself, I'd never be able to do that. The claustrophobia would kill me, not to mention the fear of coming face to face with a black widow or something like that. I'd need a flamethrower or something of the like to incinerate any sort of big bads that could be lurking under there in wait for some poor soul to come crawling through.

Fiddling Around

In my thirst to creatively fiddle, which goes entirely to waste here since I can't use my own computer and am handicapped beyond belief in MacOS9, I chose one of the new Blogger templates and enabled the new commenting features. Please, no one hang me. I'm not sure if this will work out fine, but I suppose it's worth a shot. Enjoy. I don't have a picture in my Blogger Profile (gag, puke) yet so I'm sure the menu looks broken, but I will try to remedy that quickly... a picture of me... on the front page of EB... I'll be surprised if I don't cop-out.

Party at Brad's House:

Day off, nothing to do. Brand new pack of cigarettes in which Brad will share five with any individual who shows up. Check GeoURL for house location. Someone, anyone? Please? Bring alcohol.

Book List:

I took back a good six books today and checked out another stack. I never read Hocus Pocus or No Way To Treat a First Lady since too much by one author can kill, and I'm sure I'll get back to the Christopher Buckley, but maybe not Hocus Pocus. I got a few pages into One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and didn't like it at all, mostly because it's written through the eyes of the big indian and that bothered me for some reason. I will probably never read it, and it's probably because I watched the movie first, but that's OK.

The new stack is composed of books I think I will all read; Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (Aldous Huxley), Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut), Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation (Joao Magueijo), and Mystic River (Dennis Lehane). I could not find Stranger in a Strange Land and I have yet to venture to another branch to find a book, but I might have to for that one. Came highly recommended by a fellow co-worker who all but dwarfs me in seniority.

Here's a list of stuff I've read, in the last month, with some short reviews for people who are interested. If you're not interested, at least scroll down to the last review, of Life of Pi and check that book out. You shouldn't be disappointed.

Henry of Atlantic City (Friedrick Ruess): Good book, involves a six or so year old boy deeply in love with the Gnostic gospels and a section out of his life dealing with his fathers abandonment and what it's like to grow up in a casino, and all sorts of other stuff. A very quick read that is worth checking out. Probably not a classic but good none the less.

Thank You for Smoking (Christopher Buckley): Probably the funniest book I've ever read, but it's a been a while since I read any Douglas Adams. Involves a spokesperson for The Academy of Tabacco Studies, IE: Big Tabacco, who goes from nearly fired to sudden stardom and doesn't make a lot of new friends because of it. An excellent book that everyone should read, since Buckley has made me laugh out loud more times than I can imagine. Highly recommended, and it has a happy ending too!

The Gnostic Gospels (Elaine Pagels): Doesn't really belong in this list since it's nonfiction. A good read for any interested into how Christianity developed back when the orthodox Christians still had other Christians to do battle with. An interesting look into what might have been different today (a lot) had Christianity gone the way of the Gnostics and not the Catholics.

Lord of the Flies (William Golding): Awesome read. Forcing Highschool students to read this (and/or Catcher in the Rye) should be a crime punishable by death since I, and a prolific reader I was, would never had understood or even appreciated this book if I was made to read it my freshman year. A good book for people growing up and getting used to the world, I think, since it teaches one very important message: Be very afraid.

Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger): I hated this book. Pointless and trite, the story of a sixteen year old wise ass kid. This book's main purpose seems to just egg on psychopaths who need reaffirment, and encourage asshole teenagers who think they know everything. I feel dirty after reading this book, as if I have tainted myself having reading such crap. Anything held by John Lennon's killer should be burned the world over. Harsh words, yes, but the book blows.

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury): Awesome, awesome book. Bradbury's prose makes for a strange read, at least for me, since he feels disconnected from his characters but all at once uniquely a part of them. As you read it feels like a dream, when it feels so real but you're semi-conscience that it's a dream. This book is awesome if only for that reason, but on top of that it's a great story of censorship in the future. Required reading for life, this one is. Frightening, too, since it accurately predicts the rise of children to murderers and the fall back of adults in fear. Very sad, indeed, our future is.

Slaughter-house Five (Kurt Vonnegut): I'm not sure how to rank this book. It could be one of the best books ever written, or it could not be. It's certainly not my number one favorite, but I feel I would be doing a disservice to it to displace it to number two, or three. This is a great book dealing with time travel, love, fear, and the fire bombing in Dresden (Or Dredsen, not sure how it's spelled). Simply magical. A very quick read, I believe I got through it in a few hours. Check it out if you can. Probably the best Vonnegut book there is. Wont ever understand why it's filed under Young Adult in the library.

Life of Pi (Yann Martel): I checked out this book because the inner sleave said the book will make you believe in God, and then a person the author spoke to said it as well of the story told within. I can't say the book did, or didn't, since whether it will or not is one of the amazing tricks this book has up it's sleave. Life of Pi is the true story of a teenage boy from India's fateful sea journey and fight for survival on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. I shit you not. The first half of the book deals mostly with zookeeping and his discovery of three different religions all at once that he fell in love with. The second half of the book is his survival at sea, which is so meticulously described with such wonder and love you can't help but keep reading, and the third half is an interview with authorities that they conducted with the boy when he finally arrived in Mexico seven months after the ship sank. Seven months, at sea, with a bengal tiger. Needless to say, you should try your damndest to check out this book or buy it outright. I wouldn't put it with my favorite books, but I will say it is definately one of the best books I've ever read. Do not take this statement with a grain of salt! Check it out yourself and find out.

Rrgh, Argh:

The right side of my neck is visibly swollen in a sort of sausage shaped pattern right from my jawline down to the half way point of my neck, right along where my the juglar lies, but I can still feel my pulse under the swelling so I don't think it's my juglar self-destructing. Very weird. Hurts when I swallow like all hell, a bit like how the OTHER side of my neck felt after some unmentionable family member tried to choke the life from me, recently. Hopefully it'll just go away and not get worse, dumb woman at work hasn't been able to set up my health insurance yet so if it's something drastic I might just have to die. Oh well!

I woke up early to return my formerly-possessed and now not-working microwave for another. Pity that the key to to part of the garage the box is in has suddenly gone missing from my vision. I want one of my TV dinners, maybe I'll call Best Buy and see if they wont charge me for returning in a busted product without a box.

God Almighty:

Some of you might remember a prior post in which I mentioned a girl who I had spoke to at work about the Gnostics opinion of God, mainly my words, "Our creator is a retarded juvenille bastard," having horribly offended her. Anyway, at the time she mentioned she had a good book about pretty much every religion in the world called "Mankind's Search for God" that she could lend me that she liked a lot. That was about two weeks ago.

She brought it up today, I said I meant to ask her about it, and she said she got me my own copy. I was surprised, "Wow, you bought me a book? That's cool, I'll have to get you a book or something," and she said it was no big deal, but if you're at all like me, or have a brain, you'll understand that I think buying someone a book, or anything, is a big deal. Something akin to having to wonder if that person has some weird feelings for you that never occured to you before. I'm not really at all interested in her but I thought it was perticular.

We went out to her car to get it. She opened her trunk and I mentioned how tidy it was, thought it was a nice thing to remark on, maybe, since she bought me a book and all. She handed me a small but surprisingly thick paperback book that was in near mint condition, as if it came right off the press.

I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with another co-worker about this one. This girl, handing me this book, was a Jehovah's Witness, and having told this other co-worker this, she exclaimed, "Oh you're not one of those annoying ones who goes door to door are you?" and this girl replied, "Yes, I am." Much embarassment ensued. Regardless, this information came back to me very quickly.

I flipped the book over in my hands... no UPC code. Hmm. I flipped through it a bit, a section on this religion, a section on another... Hmm, it is as she said. Knowing how propaganda usually goes, I quickly flipped to the last chapter entitled "The True God and Your Future" and I knew I had been duped.

If I was prone to rudeness and spontanety (I have no spell checker so deal with my bad spelling please) I probably would have thrown the book in her face and shouted profanities in line with, "Who the fuck do you think you are?" and etcetera. I was honestly filled with a form of rage unlike any other. I felt used, or at least completely stepped on by this girl, who I had thought of as a friend.

I mean, shit, I thought she was an equal with me, we had spoke of search for religion in various forms and she had suggested the book like it was a well researched indepth look into many religions without any answers, compiled by a unbiased theological research. What made her think she could peddle her shit to me? How could she even do that with a clear conscience? How can a religion so brainwash someone as to think that's appropriate? I feel like she deliberately lied to me in order to push her Watchtower bullshit on me. Man I'm still pissed, all of an hour later.

It's one thing to go door to door, which is offensive right there, but to actually take it to a personal level and peddle it to someone you work with and talk to regularly. How many people do they convert this way? Much less door to door? Does it ever end in success instead of anger and hurt? Doesn't make any sense to me. If I wasn't a decent person I probably would have ripped her throat out the second I realized what this shit in my hands was.

Man, I'm angry. I should take it out back and burn it.

All this does is make me realize even more how evil religion in general is. I commented to Bill, after telling him of this duping, that the more I discuss differing religions with people, and the more I research it and think about it, the more I realize how ridiculous it is. The more I think about it, the more I realize it's all bullshit. Talking about it now feels like I'm talking about the pros and cons of novels, totally fictious stories dreamed up by man that all amount to nothing. The more I try to believe, the closer I come to total Atheism. What's the point of God if all it brings in masses is pain, immorality, and total and complete loss of common sense and decency? What's the point? On a global scale, all religion brings is trouble. On a personal scale, maybe hope, but generally just guilt and pain.

Hurray for New Blogger!

Pretty cool. Could use a spellcheck again, new look, no new features, oh well! They coulda gave us the option to make categories but I don't want to ask for too much. Just wanted to make a post and say that. Nothing else much has happened, gonna spend the night trying to write in my room. Take it easy, peeps.

Fiction:

I'm boarding a train in Oceanside, making a run for it to San Francisco, or maybe just Salinas, since I've heard it's pretty nice around there. I'm running from her, to meet her again. Sarah. Her name, to me, is like the pyre in which I turn to ash and rise again. The nature of my journey at this point confirms this fact, but I can't make you understand that, I can only tell you how it is.

We met at the job I am not at right now, and not returning to tomorrow. I didn't think anything of her at first, she seemed a hard worker who kept to herself and asked for help when it was only dire. She spoke with a gentle lisp and said what far too many times for me liking, but her hearing aid and my soft spoken nature never really got along in the first place. I always knew her smile could melt glaciers, that much was apparent to me from the start, but I didn't think it could disarm me. After a failed attempt to get together with one woman from work, I begun to wonder if Sarah was the one I should have been eyeing all along, usually that's the way things happen, isn't it? I was just about declare the truth in all the statements of stupidity about getting involved with someone at work when Sarah and I began to talk more frequently.

We wound up eating lunch together one afternoon, sitting across the hallway from each other, our backs holding up opposite walls. There was no weight involved in my speech and I was surprised at the level of comfort involved. She was obviously tearing holes in her brain, but I tried to calm her. We talked about this and that, but no conversations of any importance come to mind. I ended up asking if she'd want to do something after work, what exactly I hadn't figured out.

I drove us to the beach and we sat in the sand and watched the sunset. It was cliche and trite and all of those things but it was beautiful, the orange glow of the sun smoldering in ocean, setting the water all a boil, lighting her face in the most delicate of ways. Her hair pulled back partly, a few wisps pulled behind her ears. Her lips curling back over her teeth, the one corner of her mouth back further than the other, she was smiling at me and I thought I was dying.

We kept it up, seeing each other here and there. Her taste in music, the opposite of mine, and her schedule to busy to keep up on any books, so our conversations were limited to the stresses of work, bills, money, and sometimes God. We'd have heated arguments over the nature of God, two Atheists arguing their case of the existence of the nonexistent. Looking back it's still fairly humorous, but sad at the same time, two people staring at hope but still completely without it. Searching for what we'd already found, we moved in together, sharing a one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Escondido.

We had a microwave that I had bought for the last place I lived, sometimes it would argue with you, you pressing buttons and it not responding in the desired manner. Sometimes it would talk to you when least expected, beeping from across the room and displaying numbers it really shouldn't have been. We always thought it was funny and laughed about it openly to friends and family, but sometimes I worried that something more was at work than glitchy electronics. Nothing became of it though and as far as I know from my seat on this train, she still has it at the apartment, but it won’t be there for very long.

Sarah and I had our share of fights, admittedly. Something about the television one day, argument about my microwave the next. Every now and then we'd get into it so bad that I'd have to go and stay with a friend for a night or two. Work the next day was fearsome at best, but we were both reasonable people who kept our outside life problems out of the working situation, something you can't say for most people. She was always concerned that I was getting too crazy with my religious research or my readings in general. She said all that nonsense was going nowhere, and though I admit that she was right, it was still cruel at the time.

I started going to a psychiatrist, hoping he could give me something that would wrap my head in a towel. Always heard that phrase before, "wrap my head in a towel," when speaking about anti-depressants or anti-crazy pills, or what have you, and I wondered if it was really like that. It is. He put me on some something-or-another and I have to say, it was like sleeping through life. If you turn your brain up to a eleven for an extended period of time, and get used to it, when you crank it back down to six or seven, it feels like you're not even alive. I started smoking a pack a day, a fact that Sarah was not too happy about.

I finally took myself off the medication yesterday, and now here I am on this train. I can't really explain what got me here, but I know it's what I have to do. This is what's going to happen, and I swear I'm telling you the truth.

I'm going to get off this train in Salinas and walk down the street to a Starbucks, I'm going to order a large iced coffee of some sort, and sit outside and smoke cigarettes for a long time. I'll have a notepad and I will write all of this down, but not as it is written now, differently. When the sun finally sets I will walk further until I find a hotel, it will be a Motel 6 and I will buy a room there for $43.99 a night.

The next day I will find myself a job, repairing televisions in a little hole in the wall shop owned by a 67 year old man who still calls black people coons. This will offend me but I won’t say anything about it because he agrees to loan me enough money to get myself into apartment two blocks away. I have about four thousand dollars in the bank, so I don't really need a loan, but I've always thought it was better to have money than to spend it, and I'm sure the old man could use the interest I will have to pay him back.

After work I will spend my night unpacking what few clothes I brought with me in the closet in the apartment. I will write a letter to Sarah and tell her where I am and where I'm living. I will lick the seal of the envelope and seal it with my thumb, with a piece of tape as added security. When I awake in the morning, I will send the letter and continue on working until she arrives.

I will be sitting at the small card table I bought as a placeholder for the oak one I'd like to pick out with her. Sure, collecting nice furniture in an apartment seems a little gratuitous, but shopping for furniture feels like being alive. Someone will knock on the door and I'll know it's her. She'll have managed to find her way in through the front gate without buzzing my apartment just to surprise me. I will open the door and she'll look at me, tilt her head to the left a little, and smile that smile of hers. She will step forward and slide her arms around my sides and hug me tightly in a way that feels like she will never let go, but she finally does. I will grab her suitcase and bring it inside. The possessed microwave will be down in front of the building in her car, our car. I'll laugh as I carry it up the stairs, entertaining the thought of dropping it off the balcony, our balcony, next time it acts up.

We'll head out to that same Starbucks I visited when I arrived here, I'll say to her, "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

So, she'll ask, "What are you thankful for?"

I'll reply, "Two things... here, and now."

And Now For Something:

I couldn't just stop where I was. Don't know what it is but I'm bursting at the stitches between my limbs with pointless things to say. I cut my own hair on Tuesday! I was getting wings from the hair on the sides of my head growing out so I shaved around my head a bit. One person at work noticed, said it looked good, didn't expect her to say something, of all people, but it was shocking and appreciated. I ran to Wal-Mart yesterday and bought a cheapo long drawer roller cart thing since my cramped room was getting a little cramped with clutter and some boxes I had brought back of my stuff. Gave me a place to store my underwear and socks so my laundry basket could become... my laundry basket. I'm ravenously hungry and am cooking a TV dinner. I'm out of cigarettes and don't want to pull money out of the bank to buy another pack so I'm in a bit of a decision making pickle. To smoke, or not to smoke, that is the question. I feel like I'd be a phony if I quit just because it's bad for you. So's red meat, I say! So's driving cars! So's living in general! But still... What does it all matter? Endless persuit of happiness, probably wont be found at the end of a burning carcinogen generator. I keep sneezing all over my pants. Don't know what I'm gonna do with the rest of today. Totally burned out, working two mornings in a row. Still have the whole week a head of me. I could have used yesterday off but whatever the shit. Shoulda stayed my full time today and got more overtime. Need the money, always need the money. Fuck it, oh well.

Of Phonies and Dandelions:

Holy crap I'm dehydrated. I drank a Red Bull to stay awake at work for all of the six hours I was going to hang around, and then I drank half a Monster just two hours later. I felt all spun, but the come down, not the fun part. Didn't last too long though, thankfully. Anyway...

I wrote a few paragraphs about phonies here but I decided it's pointless, but you can read it if you view the source. Adults are generally not phonies unless they carry over certain traits from Highschool into their adult life. Mainly phonies are guilty of one tragic flaw: Caring too much aout what other people think. Sometimes this is to the point where it carries over into the way they think which is severely disturbing. A relative of mine is like this, she knows she feels a certain way but she declares, "But I have to [feel this way]," and I desperately want to say, "Have to because why?" but that's all over now. Phonies are people who feel like they need to care about what everyone else's opinion is, but not the important stuff. Shit like what music to listen to, how to dress, what to watch, what to read, what to talk about. These people are not individuals as much as they are mindless consumers following pathetic trends, not understanding that the other people around them know that they are entirely fictitious. Mostly, these people are teenagers. So absorbed with looking this way, having people think of them that way, (usually wanting people NOT to think they're absolutely phony when they actually are), or feeling this way. Not being phony is being able to defiantly exclaim, "Fuck everyone else!" and throw away friends if they decide that the real version of you isn't something they like. But if you sit there constantly fretting about whether a large majority of people like you, then you are undoubtably completely phony.

Or at least that's what I think.

Dandelions are cool, too.

Fiction:

I haven't always been like this, he thought. Then, it hadn't always been like this. Something was uniquely wrong with the pattern of his thoughts, but he didn't give much mind to it most of the time since it didn't interfere with the way he worked. Mondays thru Fridays, slinging other people's waste into his truck. After the planet wide budgeting of fossil fuels, garbage men had to actually start working again, collecting trash by hand into smaller, more eco-friendly trucks. The wasted gasoline to power the former lift mechanisms had become too much a commodity to discard based on laziness. He didn't mind it so much, he wasn't a garbage collector before the global oil shortage in 2054, so he wasn't offended by the declaration of laziness made so clear by the national government. He did hope that they'd find some way to bring back the lifts, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen any time soon.

Guy dusted his hands off on his pants and climbed back into the doorless compartment of his truck. The radio was playing the same song it usually is every fifteen minutes, the current pop spectacle of the moment, easily replaced every day. He drummed his fingers across the steering wheel accordingly, it was impossible to avoid. He continued on to the next set of containers, stopping the truck and hopping back out.

(Author's Note: Burned out. Wasn't working. Don't know what I was going for, but I didn't get there. I've written countless things like this, probably better, but I can never find that groove where the characters take control of my fingers. Oh well. This sounds too much like Philip K. Dick any way).

So So Simply:

I'm feeling good today. Don't know why. Woke up at 5:30 AM to head to work, which sucked, but I actually woke up on my own and very comfortably despite the pillow headaches I'm getting accustomed to. I got my ass verbally handed to me by two overnight co-workers, but they suck ass and it wasn't a big deal. It was about a major fuck up of my own accidental doing, so I can't say I didn't deserve it, but they're prissy overnight lazy assholes anyway. Hard to be offended by someone you have absolutely zero respect for, right?

I checked out a new batch of books yesterday. I'm working through Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) which is spellbinding so far. Bradbury's seemingly disconnected and surreal prose is both disconnecting and alluring. Draws you in while pushes you out. Good stuff. I started on Life of Pi (Yann Martel) which I'm already having trouble getting through. It declares on the sleave and in the author's introduction that the book will make you believe in God, so I might suffer through it just to see if it works. I'm not going to bet money on success though. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey) I'm leery about, since the movie made me so violently angry at the world that I wanted to break things, namely Nurse Ratchet's imaginary face. Also, the book is bound in a tiny paperback with tiny writing and it's always uncomfortable for me to read books bound this way. Hardcover nowhere in sight at the library. Two Kurt Vonnegut novels, Slaughterhouse-Five which I haven't even cracked to find out what it's about, and Hocus Pocus which is alluring just due to the Editor's Note about how Vonnegut wrote it on hundreds of scraps of paper. Very interesting.

I'm blasting my ears out with Ride's Nowhere which is an awesome album everyone should check out at least ten times. I'm feeling good. Got laundry to do. More reading. I worked through a good portion of Neverwinter Nights last night. Bought a guide so I don't get confused, because I'm stupid like that. I love the fact that it has so much in common with the play mechanics of Knights of the Old Republic, so it's easy for morons like me to play without worrying about where to distribute skill points and all that shit. Fear my Paladin and his Greatsword +1.

Companion Piece:

I could kill someone right now, just out of boredom. Sitting on this computer with it moving so slowly is like dying. Nothing else to do. I miss the pathetic excuse for social interaction that regular internet access brings. The pointless talking to pointless people you know only by the words they say, people with stories that you haven't heard, with friends you don't know. There's no prejudice because it's not possible when you know nothing about the people you're talking about. You can't ridicule based on age, or race, social standing, monetary value, or even gender. The internet is a beautiful, and ugly, place. I miss it. I wish life could be like that. Just walk up to some random person and start up a conversation... two people without all the bullshit holding you apart. You don't need to worry about your hair or your flesh tone, if the shirt you're wearing is too gay or too arrogant, your pants too baggy, your ears too large. None of it would matter, and every one would be free. Sucks to your ass-mar.

Hate Tantrum (And Dog Sympathy):

I'm just so overwhelmed with emotion right now. Work was busy as all hell and everyone was tied up and everything sucked, me and Laurel were running our asses off trying to get the eights done and we were kind of fighting all day which wasn't cool. She hates working and I hate the fact that she hates working. I'm worried she's going to quit. Just everything is so fucked up there some times it's incredible, and she can't keep her head about it, or at least she acts like she can't keep her head about it. I'm not so sure most of time.

Why does it have to be that the people who really matter are shat on? The people who don't do shit, who spend their time brown nosing with co-workers and not doing shit are praised to high heaven, but the people who are working their asses off as if they actually care about the hospital are just pissed on? And I don't mean people purposefully going their way out to piss on others, just general accidental pissing on. It's like God is sitting up there in heaven going, "Hey, that person is having a terrible day, let's have this other person go over and shit all over them, just to fuck with 'em." What's up with that, G-funk? Is it funny for you? Do you get your rocks off on torturing people? Not to mention when you're fucking up someone elses day by fucking up someone elses day by using someone else. If you understand that, that is.

I just wanted to make a big long list of things that are shitty but I don't think I'd have enough room, but as I write that I know that the list would be shorter than it feels in my brain, so I don't even want to try for fear of making my problems seem more insignificant than they already are. That's a long sentence!

It's just so stupid and shitty, this life we all lead. It's pathetic and sad and there isn't anything we can do for it. All you people with your Jesus and your heaven and your kingdom's coming, I understand you, since we all need a little something to look forward to... but how do you deal with those singular moments of clarity when you realize it's all bullshit? Those of us without benefit of magical hope get it too, where you realize that nothing will ever get better and this shit will endure until the day you die. It's like drowning, or worse, being a fish out of water, your little gills are spasming and you're flopping around and all you can think is "oh shit oh shit oh shit" and you're sure your little white lie to yourself has finally disolved... but then, some how, you're slipped back into the bowl and you start swimming around like nothing has happened. You don't even go, "Whew," you're just back in there, puttering around, the moment of clarity behind you, countless days of delusion ahead of you, until the next time you manage to leap your little fishy ass out of the water. I hate these moments. The loss of faith and hope. The loss of the will to live. Gotta just crawl into bed and cry for everyone else in the world experiencing the same thing as you are, wondering if you can feel them and if they can feel you.

-=-

I have such an understanding and love for dogs now. If work has done one thing for me, it's made me so much more sympathetic toward dogs. Cats are still evil stuck up bitches, but that's their nature and I can't fault them for being stupid. Cats are just moronic animals, that's all there is to it... But dogs, dogs are awesome. Most cats fall into the same state when they're at the hospital. This state is called, "Pissed the fuck off and wanting to kill everyone," and it's just because they're so hardwired to the houses they grew up in that they can't cope. They appear in some new place and they go into ultra offensive defensive mode where everything becomes an enemy that needs to be torn to shreads. I'm not sure if this is due to cats all being raised the same way, since sometimes we'll get a cat or two in who are absolutely chill, they're practically dogs in cat bodies they're so cool. All cats hate thermometers up the ass, though.

Dogs, on the other hand, have several distinct personality traits that vary even simply by breed. Huski