The most terrifying thing about disease is that you know the best you can do is stay where you are and maybe pretend to be more than you are upstairs sometimes. Some things remain intact. Some things continue to degrade regardless of what you do. It's not fair at all.
It's difficult. It's difficult watching everyone else continue to accelerate and knowing you can be as good as you want to be at some things, but other things ... nope. The best you can do is hold ground.
I want to just say "fuck that." I can't. I have to at least try.
Yes it is easy to fit in. It's easy to stand out for the wrong reasons too. There is no blame with respect to bad wiring to be laid. There's some, but it flows both ways. I acknowledge that.
It is undeniably heart breaking though sometimes trying to externalize what they're saying to me. So we drunk to dull the blunt force of conversation. It's an airbag and a stand in for pills that lets me socialize more than I like to, but not less than I need to so I'm not swinging from my neck outside my front window.
It's a trade off. To tear off the mask is not appropriate at all and will land me..
... I don't know how to describe it. Rape me once, shame on you. Rape me twice, I was probably asking for it.
I will say there's nothing to fear because I learned a few several things.
There are many red zones.There is not one me.-000000000000000000000000000888888888qq0--------------211qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
///Sage Francis - (The Buzzkill) ...by analyzing the past, Sage can project into the future..,
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label if and only if. Show all posts
Showing posts with label if and only if. Show all posts
1/19/14
1/10/14
The Year End Look
I am tempted to attack some things there is not time enough yet to tackle. I am okay with and respect and receive the temptation because the day is nearing and we stand on the cusp of something truly deafening with nothing between us beyond time itself. Time's only enemy is patience. The armory is stocked. Let's knock down time first.
The 2013 year end look is a strange one. Strange to me. I crashed a car again. For the second time in my life totaled an automobile. The injury was an injury I never knew before and thought I would never return from. It was probably something near or spot on to a partially herniated disc. I am used to pain. Used to adjusting for pain because a voice inside says it'll end eventually if you simply don't do it again. This pain brought me literally to my knees every time I got out of bed for work or to meet someone or otherwise do anything that did not require lying down. It was unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. It made me tear at myself and my bed sheets and scream in the afternoon and throw fits. Everything worked fine except standing and walking. In 2013 I became very aware of my age.
A friend of mine put it best: ten years ago, you hurt your back, you shotgun a beer and a whiskey short, have a smoke, and get on with life. Now? You hurt your back and you can drink 'til you cannot feel a damn thing, but that shit comes back as soon as your spine comes back on line. You can't go through life partially shut down.
It's true. Another year older, just one year removed from invincibility, or something damn near it, I am aware, acutely aware of physical limitations. Invincibility has been thoroughly dispelled in 2013. Respect for the injured and more feeble than I has been reinforced to incredible degrees. Of course it didn't help falling down multiple flights of stairs after the car accident. That one is on me. I should have known where I was standing on the fire escape and not allowed someone to high five me hard enough to push me backward into the night air. I guess I'm kind of a good fall guy. I should have broken my neck or an arm or at least a finger on my way down, getting something stuck in the stairs and landing made of iron grating, but all I remember, three days after the car accident, was waking up looking at the top of the fire escape and their back door and the little light and thinking "wait a minute? wasn't I just there? Why am I here?"
I went to a casino for the first time (with no money) and someone gave me a $100 chip. I can count the number of times I've held $100 bills in my hands with intent to spend instead of pay on one hand. Two of the five times were to pay for cars. I didn't get to use it for fun. I did get some long standing necessities taken care of though and a bill paid. One step closer to actual freedom.
I taught myself to drive stick for real in 2013. On a rear wheel drive truck. I also learned how to use torque and how to use horsepower. Yes, they're linked, but now I understand when to use which. When to use a little work fast and a lot of work slowly. Of course there's always the golden peak when you can use both at the same time, but high end cars are out of the cards for at least another half decade. I'm salivating thinking about it. My dream garage is still the same. Still stocked up with late 80s Japanese machines and American muscle. Some day, sweetheart.
2013 also taught me who my friends are and who my friends are not. For much of the year I tried to be a friend to the world. A friend to everyone who would have my ear and have my words, however fleeting, but I soon recognized (by soon, I mean it took the entire year) that what I was counting as friendship was not being counted or similarly given weight by the people I was ascribing it too. It was heart breaking. Truly heart breaking. I remember crying on and off for several days as each episode unwound. The penultimate was a multiple day thanksgiving celebration that was supposed to be fun. It was, to an extant. I was too much a different stripe to blend in and it was hurtful to me to be expected to do so, but maybe they didn't really expect me to blend that well. Maybe they expected me to realize sooner than later that I should've left. As it stands I only over stayed by a day or two before I recognized where I was and where I could do myself better. Coming home was beautiful on that day.
The ultimate was when I was left stranded by people I thought I could count as friends. My truck died and a true friend bailed me out. I've grown intimate with my truck of late. Gotten to know her inside and out. 2013 reminded me of the bullshit premise my birth father put to me about a car that was supposed to be my reward for graduating Carnegie Mellon (which did not happen) that was his vision for us rebuilding a beater BMW (which flew in the face of everything automotive I actually do espouse and believe in) and it's been tremendous and heart stoppingly gorgeous keeping that truck on the road and at the same time by turns puzzling that anyone, let alone the sack of nuts that raised you for 18 years, could miss your values that hard.
It does make me laugh though, because there have been more than a few times I could've used an extra set of hands to get the job done and I thought about the gents and lassies that could call up their dads or moms and schedule a weekend under the hood or chassis without getting violently ill or stomach ulcers. I appreciate that about people. Sometimes I ask them about their parents because it's practically porn to me.
In 2013 I learned to slow down scarification. In tandem with realizing that time is getting on I also realized if I ever do have children or adopt children there will be questions for me to answer too. Questions I am prepared to answer and questions that will have to be answered as my nose and ears get bigger and nothing else does and my eyes continue to sink and my brow continues to crease. The reminders still remain necessary and beautiful obelisks and world wonders to human history and I thank us for them always. I need them. Some mistakes you can make multiple times. Some mistakes you cannot afford to retread because lives are in the balance and the house does not always win, but you can never go back. You will die. You will be consumed, make no mistake. Every time I look in the mirror I am reminded and I need to be. Inside of your skull you are your friend more often than not. Outside of your skull is a flipped story.
The same problem does abound, though. My development, my passion for writing, remains far too grounded for my tastes. There is patience though. There is gestation. There is still the thirst for whimsy and dreamland. There is where I lie and I know it. I can feel it. The attack is coming. The all hail that tells me "forward now!" I can taste it. 2013 was about defining starting points. Defining relationships. Defining the scope of the maintenance necessary for progress. Did it have to take a year? Yes. 2013 was about defining severance. Defining which and what kinds of quests were worth pursuing. 2013 was a very long think.
The funniest part about 2013, it came around the tail end, was realizing that just because you can identify the group of people that you are attracted to does not automatically make them accessible or easily located. You meet just as many air heads and space cases exploring your same sex as your opposite sex. The worst, the most lip curling, the most eye squinting, experiences are had when you meet a carbon copy of someone you'd cultivate a relationship with straight, gay. In my mind I'm thinking ten minutes in to the conversation: "god damn it, not this again. Really? You exist here too? Who dropped you on your head? Why do you have fifteen pairs of shoes and a $200 dollar love seat in an apartment you're paying $900 a month for? Why are we going out to a bar downtown when there's one at the corner while you have a fridge full of wine and candy imports? Three pairs of sunglasses? Sunglasses??"
I don't know what 2014 is going to bring. I think my year to year expectations have grown foggier and foggier so I will add some definition. I think this year (no resolutions) I will try to fuck a woman for some variety. The whole "no concussions" thing failed miserably. I had four in 2013 so I think it's fair to rule that out. Broke my nose twice too, so that's out. I want to do more art in 2014 too. Life's demands put way too much on my plate to really put anything outside of my skull to look at and enjoy, and I'm not saying for you to enjoy, I'm saying for me and we/us to enjoy.
Now that things have been better defined through thirteen, in fourteen I would like to explore that framework and see what and where it builds to. New territories and frontiers. I want a new scar for 2014. A scar for the turn. A scar for the "maybe" identified because in twelve the maybe had no identity. 2014 will be a quest for the whimsical. A seeking out of the imaginary and a protecting of the physical. We achieved many grown up tasks and came into adulthood through 2013 from its humble beginning in 2012's confusion. It's time to explore the limits of what that adultness and understanding and thinking and domestication can ring when our bell is rung hard enough. What music will it make? Will it make music or fall apart with the strikes?
For the first time, in 2013, I had to shave down my knuckles with a pumice stone. The scar tissue accumulated so thickly that I couldn't open and splay my fingers easily without fighting against it. Too much contact. I cannot fall into the trap of abusing myself in lieu of taking abuse just to feel normal and normalcy. That's not okay. It is not okay to do that. 2013, a lot of 2013 was about learning what it is not okay to do. Platonic spooning was okay. Talking about platonic spooning to their friends indirectly and accidentally by way of mentioning conversations they were not a part of, but must have happened after they left, later on when we and they met again is not okay. It should be though. Don't break my heart that way. Break it any other way, but that is pure... muffed intent. I do not have time for that in 2014.
I have accumulated old man hands at the ripe age of 28. I am a destroyer parked in a lagoon and rusting. You fucking cowards. 2013 was also about rebuilding my space craft. I had to tear it apart and rebuild it. It was gathering too many parts and pieces superfluous and useful once and never again. When one part failed I hooked and slaved another component to keep it running. Fourteen is streamlining. Keep the violence down at all costs. The love too. Control. 2014 is focusing on control and dynamics. It's easy to glass a city. It's hard to embrace one and construct. Consider the "what will and what can we build here?"
It does make me laugh though, to consider that I may be at a new base line measurement. It is enticing. So many things happened. So much time spent alone and too much time spent in contact. It does not add up to my satisfaction. I will boost literary output in 2014. It does not matter if you want to do it, it has to be done for your own sake.
2014 is action. Redesigns are on the table. Stand up act 9 is on the table. Before both will come the year end playlist. Let's go! No sneak peeks this time. So much left out too, but we'll get it in later.
///Shiny Toy Guns - "Major Tom" ...near Earth orbit
5/20/13
We Were Looking for Highspeed
spent some time in the foundry. It was important to do. Part of the importance was simply getting the shakes out. Along the path of life I managed to convince myself that it was too hard to use my drawing pad to make drawings instead of doing them on paper but what I realized, after weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of procrastination, was that I was putting it off to do paper because I knew I would never really try to pick up paper the same way I can pick up the convenience of a drawing pad. Partly because I don't have the pens or pencils I like in my house and at arms reach when I want them, and partly because I don't have scrolls of paper big enough to do what I want to do when I want to do it, and partly because both of those things allow me the saving grace to not have to burden myself with the torture of stepping outside my own skull, and that last one is the big one.
I love living by dreamlight still. It's a wonderful thing. Not without it's own limitations, but when you live in there you never have to worry about showing someone else what it was that you saw while you were there. You never have to do the work. On top of that you never have to slug your way through misinterpretation when you do try to translate dream code into real code and the circuits short out half way and you get flustered and start sweating because you know they know it didn't really happen but it did I swear if I can just show you how it all went down. You're never burdened with that. But it's the same principle as the principle of the fact of the matter and on and on being that you can't get in trouble if you're not conscious. Which is true.
How you got to being unconscious is the tricky part, but once you get there you are literally unable to fuck anything up. There's something to be said for that. The being comatose. The being asleep. Part of why I prize it like I do. The best way to do no wrong is to be unable to do no wrong. So I spent some time though and made a picture that I like and also do not enjoy looking at because it did not turn out the way I wanted to or the way I saw it in my head and more over it is now subject to other opinions that I can or may not listen to, but it's not like I'm making a career so I care and then I don't off and on and more importantly if I simply went to bed instead of drawing the entire issue would be moot. That's me. Butters.
I'm glad I went back inside it though. I had to. I couldn't not do it. Things were gestating for months and needed out. It was time not spent unwell, and there's something to be said for that and I'm saying it now. Or at least trying to. I care because you do. You care because I do. We care because the infinite point of no one does not care? Trying to balance out the word game. It's funny. She's funny. But if you're going to be a recluse, at least try not to be reckless is all I'm saying. If you're house is going to burn down, at least take good pictures.
Twas' fun though.
I don't know what it all means with regard to the original mission. I don't know if I'm gaining or losing ground or if it matters. I'm still trying to lay down the blueprint, not so much to prevent me from recurring farther along down the line of history, and not so much to cut off what created me, and not so much to bring about some sort of internal change, but just to lay down track so someone like me can at least know what may or may not be ahead of them (but more than likely is). That's really part of what I do live for. Delusional or not. I enjoy going to sleep and laying my head on a pillow knowing that maybe, on down the line, I helped someone not completely self destruct. Or at least postpone it a day or two.
If what I do and have done tells one boy that it's not necessarily over when it should have been, but it's also written once it's written and the best you can do is operate within that frame and engage and rejoin society to the best you can do and the rest is garbage time and uncontrollable and largely unpleasant, but unavoidable, then I did something right. Sometimes you get bad gear from the get and that will be how it is. A perpetual game of catch up if you let yourself be consumed by it. Personally, I'm still hoping for the off chance of a nuclear apocalypse. And that's a long, long, long, bet these days. I also thought, though, with my luck, I'd be the first one to die in an Earth purging event. The first person shot in the face by some ultimate virus cleansing crew because I happened to develop a bad cough the day before shit hit the fan. Ha! that would be my luck though.
Just know, you're not alone. I tell and believe the same within myself.. We'll meet again some day, sweetheart, and when we do we will tear this planet down to it's foundations by any means available. And it will be classy as hell.
///Amon Tobin + "Rosies" so where do you wanna go?
1/26/12
That Instant
You realize you haven't been keeping up with friends because you have been racing ahead like a dog with no leash.
9/15/11
No Country, No Courtship. The Noble State.
I don't understand this country. At all. It's not my country. It's goals aren't my goals. It's means aren't my means. It's ends aren't my ends. I suppose "ends" are also covered by "goals", but bear with.
I had a bad day. Everyone has those. Tuning my bicycle has been first and foremost, most recently, because it is the gateway drug to planes of existence I cannot reach and enjoy without it. Tuning the bicycle has been very important. At first tuning it was important because, as hobbies and fascinations go, playing with and exploring the machines performance is a risk/reward, work in/pleasure out, formula that is so often reserved for lesser and greater intellectual pursuits. What you put in is what you get out. What you risk is proportional to how far and away from the initial investment you will potentially succeed. The nice thing about the tuning is being able to feel and play in that sand box with your hands instead of just your head.
Well the bad day ended, or maybe continues to roll beneath the surface like wave functions through deep water, when I realized the tuning was important for other reasons. A machine powered by, and linked so tightly to, your body has to be properly tuned or one or the other will suffer damage at the interface. Well I damaged myself and didn't realize it until taking a shower and swiping at my nether regions to find I was raw as hell, but didn't realize it thanks to how hard I ride and all the adrenaline soaked hours I put in. Seat post is about half an inch too high. High enough to max out my strokes and stride, but too high and high pressured for my nuts. And the gear shifts for the drive sprockets are about a quarter inch to tensed, hence several agonized seconds spent trying to lock in high drive and pull away from a bus that ended with me having to bail and pull the bike up on the sidewalk after stripping the skin of my knuckle trying to engage the shifter. After that I didn't try to do anything else above the call of duty. The requirements of the moment. So maybe the bad beat is over. Maybe the adjustments will work. Maybe I'm just not making any sudden moves so I can't really know if things are tacking the right way or not.
The whole day was a lot like getting ripped out of hyper space with the boards lit up red and having no reason to believe anything should be that wrong. What the hell happened. Why are we stationary? Why now? We haven't gotten to the next destination. Not even close. And all the why trying to remember the lines and lines and lines of information in the manuals that tell you what all the little lights mean and how to fix them and they're related, but it's all over whelming when it strikes thirty at a time. So we troubleshoot and wait, dead in space.
The concept of the noble state struck me today. We are all familiar with solid state being, as I am absolutely obsessed with it. The phase of existence that is pure beingness. Zero wetware. Pure production. Pure interaction. Zero latency. Zero sleep. Zero diversion. This bad day has brought to my table another state. A state with much in common with the noble gases. A state of zero sleep, latency, diversion, and interaction whose mode is one hundred percent wet with zero production. A mode of existence predicated on pure focus to the maintenance requirements of the wetware to keep it functioning and spinning in place and whose pured focus requires the abandonment of all production, whose main symptom is not the decision to interact or not, but the incapability to do so. In the same way noble gases cannot react. A natural cross terminal reaction to the remediation of solid state existence. The "one step too far."
I have been gripped by the noble state recently and I'm trying to break out of it to that happy middle ground of balance. Which brings me back, in circuit, to the titular object. This is a place I cannot understand. Here's why (or at least the most recent example):
My work ethic got my friend promoted. I was happy to be part of it, but I didn't realize until now how large a part I played. My ability to do my job is par infinity. The intensity and strength and focus I brought to my work place is without equal. Literally. There is not a single person in the building who can do what I do, as well as I do it, as often as I do it, to be found anywhere. The manager who is getting deposed, failed to take advantage of what I do. The coworker who is being appointed successfully ascribed his name to what I do and is getting appointed to a higher position that pays double and more. I am, easily, more capable than both of them combined. However, the organization that staffs my place of work prizes seniority, and so my coworker who is half as capable as me but more senior by six months will reap all of the benefits of my toil. Which I was okay with, until the true degree of the leap frogging came to light.
I applied to the program to train managers; an opportunity to enter a phase of employment that would evaluate my ability to manage through an 8 week process. I was denied what amounts to an opportunity to participate in an opportunity to possibly enjoy greater success and use my skills to better the organization as a whole. Because, and as a direct result of my work, my coworker, six months my senior and half as capable, has been called in to fill out paperwork that will assign him to managerial status at another store. So what's wrong with that?
One: he did as little work as the current, temporarily deposed, interim manager. Two: he was the keyholder for the store when the falling temporary manager was not available and I still fulfilled all of the duties with greater fidelity than he did. Three: it was my ridiculous work ethic that got shit done in the face of call offs and short staffing and heavy (1000+ case orders) that made the store immaculate each day. Four: I had to actively manage his incompetence on a regular basis to make sure things ran relatively smoothly (the guy didn't even know how to turn on his two way radio). Five: when the shit hit the fan and there were four people available to put up one thousand cases, more than ten thousand individual items, to shelves, I was the one governing and delegating and executing the processing of the order so that when the peons came to work everything would be laid out correctly for them to do their jobs.
It is just massively aggravating that, in the face of everything that transpired he is instantly appointed, through a few moments of paperwork to a position HE DID NOT EVEN APPLY FOR. I did the paperwork, I went through the three stage interview process. It was something I wanted. I was denied for having "interpersonal issues" that "once resolved and signed off on" would allow me to reapply and be re-evaluated on. He gets to skip all that. Despite constant video surveillance and consistent day to day review of the tapes by the head honcho he still gets credit for "motivating" me? Despite the fact that even with incompetence of the interim manager and the steady output, the steady, ridiculous high numbers I put out, with no direct supervision ever, he gets credit for somehow working magic when it was that morons incompetence that failed to complete the days order after I left?
I don't understand the courtship dance that I'm not doing. I don't know where the "i"s are that I'm not dotting and the "t"s I'm not crossing. Just tired of getting passed up. I would be less jaded if the person skipping all the bullshit I had to go through to get the door close on my foot wasn't white. I would be less jaded if he wasn't ten years older than me. Less jaded if he wasn't six months longer in the bullshit of a union we're forced to join by accepting employment. Less jaded if I didn't do both of their jobs better than them. Less jaded if the only knock on me was having "interpersonal issues". Less jaded if we hadn't been written up the exact same number of times. Less jaded if the videotape, supposedly reviewed daily, didn't show I did twice the amount of work of them both combined. So, I am jaded and disappointed, despite myself.
It was a bad day. Capped off by a lack of harmony between myself and my machine. I don't understand what it is that I have to do to court America. What it is that I have to do to make it a more perfect union. As far as I can tell it is a thing imperfected and continuing on specifically because it is such. Because if the right people are selected to the right posts all the time, capitalism fails because everyone succeeds and in order for it to succeed very talented people have to be made to fail, not because of their talent or their offerings, but because someone can capitalize on their talent and their offerings at cut rates and generate a psuedo free market, a market free of close evaluation for its emulation of its own ideals warped just here and so to generate enough complacency that the end result is the best possible outcome at minimal costs and subterfuge.
I don't know where that last part came from, but it sounds like the start of a fine and provable thesis. Continuity, profit, and production ahead of ability, common sense, and equitable consideration. In the grand scheme, the scheme of things larger than myself I would probably accept that with huzzahs and go get 'ems and fuck yeah Americas. On the scheme of things in which I exist, however, I the words stick in my mouth in favor of "there has to be a better way." So I settle back into a noble state. And preserve myself. Tooth and nail.
///Muse - "Falling Away With You" I think our lives have just begun. You can feel the guitar climb and claw with the vocals and a scissor dogfight for superiority and it is beautiful. Beautiful in the way the fight for conscious can sometimes be.
I had a bad day. Everyone has those. Tuning my bicycle has been first and foremost, most recently, because it is the gateway drug to planes of existence I cannot reach and enjoy without it. Tuning the bicycle has been very important. At first tuning it was important because, as hobbies and fascinations go, playing with and exploring the machines performance is a risk/reward, work in/pleasure out, formula that is so often reserved for lesser and greater intellectual pursuits. What you put in is what you get out. What you risk is proportional to how far and away from the initial investment you will potentially succeed. The nice thing about the tuning is being able to feel and play in that sand box with your hands instead of just your head.
Well the bad day ended, or maybe continues to roll beneath the surface like wave functions through deep water, when I realized the tuning was important for other reasons. A machine powered by, and linked so tightly to, your body has to be properly tuned or one or the other will suffer damage at the interface. Well I damaged myself and didn't realize it until taking a shower and swiping at my nether regions to find I was raw as hell, but didn't realize it thanks to how hard I ride and all the adrenaline soaked hours I put in. Seat post is about half an inch too high. High enough to max out my strokes and stride, but too high and high pressured for my nuts. And the gear shifts for the drive sprockets are about a quarter inch to tensed, hence several agonized seconds spent trying to lock in high drive and pull away from a bus that ended with me having to bail and pull the bike up on the sidewalk after stripping the skin of my knuckle trying to engage the shifter. After that I didn't try to do anything else above the call of duty. The requirements of the moment. So maybe the bad beat is over. Maybe the adjustments will work. Maybe I'm just not making any sudden moves so I can't really know if things are tacking the right way or not.
The whole day was a lot like getting ripped out of hyper space with the boards lit up red and having no reason to believe anything should be that wrong. What the hell happened. Why are we stationary? Why now? We haven't gotten to the next destination. Not even close. And all the why trying to remember the lines and lines and lines of information in the manuals that tell you what all the little lights mean and how to fix them and they're related, but it's all over whelming when it strikes thirty at a time. So we troubleshoot and wait, dead in space.
The concept of the noble state struck me today. We are all familiar with solid state being, as I am absolutely obsessed with it. The phase of existence that is pure beingness. Zero wetware. Pure production. Pure interaction. Zero latency. Zero sleep. Zero diversion. This bad day has brought to my table another state. A state with much in common with the noble gases. A state of zero sleep, latency, diversion, and interaction whose mode is one hundred percent wet with zero production. A mode of existence predicated on pure focus to the maintenance requirements of the wetware to keep it functioning and spinning in place and whose pured focus requires the abandonment of all production, whose main symptom is not the decision to interact or not, but the incapability to do so. In the same way noble gases cannot react. A natural cross terminal reaction to the remediation of solid state existence. The "one step too far."
I have been gripped by the noble state recently and I'm trying to break out of it to that happy middle ground of balance. Which brings me back, in circuit, to the titular object. This is a place I cannot understand. Here's why (or at least the most recent example):
My work ethic got my friend promoted. I was happy to be part of it, but I didn't realize until now how large a part I played. My ability to do my job is par infinity. The intensity and strength and focus I brought to my work place is without equal. Literally. There is not a single person in the building who can do what I do, as well as I do it, as often as I do it, to be found anywhere. The manager who is getting deposed, failed to take advantage of what I do. The coworker who is being appointed successfully ascribed his name to what I do and is getting appointed to a higher position that pays double and more. I am, easily, more capable than both of them combined. However, the organization that staffs my place of work prizes seniority, and so my coworker who is half as capable as me but more senior by six months will reap all of the benefits of my toil. Which I was okay with, until the true degree of the leap frogging came to light.
I applied to the program to train managers; an opportunity to enter a phase of employment that would evaluate my ability to manage through an 8 week process. I was denied what amounts to an opportunity to participate in an opportunity to possibly enjoy greater success and use my skills to better the organization as a whole. Because, and as a direct result of my work, my coworker, six months my senior and half as capable, has been called in to fill out paperwork that will assign him to managerial status at another store. So what's wrong with that?
One: he did as little work as the current, temporarily deposed, interim manager. Two: he was the keyholder for the store when the falling temporary manager was not available and I still fulfilled all of the duties with greater fidelity than he did. Three: it was my ridiculous work ethic that got shit done in the face of call offs and short staffing and heavy (1000+ case orders) that made the store immaculate each day. Four: I had to actively manage his incompetence on a regular basis to make sure things ran relatively smoothly (the guy didn't even know how to turn on his two way radio). Five: when the shit hit the fan and there were four people available to put up one thousand cases, more than ten thousand individual items, to shelves, I was the one governing and delegating and executing the processing of the order so that when the peons came to work everything would be laid out correctly for them to do their jobs.
It is just massively aggravating that, in the face of everything that transpired he is instantly appointed, through a few moments of paperwork to a position HE DID NOT EVEN APPLY FOR. I did the paperwork, I went through the three stage interview process. It was something I wanted. I was denied for having "interpersonal issues" that "once resolved and signed off on" would allow me to reapply and be re-evaluated on. He gets to skip all that. Despite constant video surveillance and consistent day to day review of the tapes by the head honcho he still gets credit for "motivating" me? Despite the fact that even with incompetence of the interim manager and the steady output, the steady, ridiculous high numbers I put out, with no direct supervision ever, he gets credit for somehow working magic when it was that morons incompetence that failed to complete the days order after I left?
I don't understand the courtship dance that I'm not doing. I don't know where the "i"s are that I'm not dotting and the "t"s I'm not crossing. Just tired of getting passed up. I would be less jaded if the person skipping all the bullshit I had to go through to get the door close on my foot wasn't white. I would be less jaded if he wasn't ten years older than me. Less jaded if he wasn't six months longer in the bullshit of a union we're forced to join by accepting employment. Less jaded if I didn't do both of their jobs better than them. Less jaded if the only knock on me was having "interpersonal issues". Less jaded if we hadn't been written up the exact same number of times. Less jaded if the videotape, supposedly reviewed daily, didn't show I did twice the amount of work of them both combined. So, I am jaded and disappointed, despite myself.
It was a bad day. Capped off by a lack of harmony between myself and my machine. I don't understand what it is that I have to do to court America. What it is that I have to do to make it a more perfect union. As far as I can tell it is a thing imperfected and continuing on specifically because it is such. Because if the right people are selected to the right posts all the time, capitalism fails because everyone succeeds and in order for it to succeed very talented people have to be made to fail, not because of their talent or their offerings, but because someone can capitalize on their talent and their offerings at cut rates and generate a psuedo free market, a market free of close evaluation for its emulation of its own ideals warped just here and so to generate enough complacency that the end result is the best possible outcome at minimal costs and subterfuge.
I don't know where that last part came from, but it sounds like the start of a fine and provable thesis. Continuity, profit, and production ahead of ability, common sense, and equitable consideration. In the grand scheme, the scheme of things larger than myself I would probably accept that with huzzahs and go get 'ems and fuck yeah Americas. On the scheme of things in which I exist, however, I the words stick in my mouth in favor of "there has to be a better way." So I settle back into a noble state. And preserve myself. Tooth and nail.
///Muse - "Falling Away With You" I think our lives have just begun. You can feel the guitar climb and claw with the vocals and a scissor dogfight for superiority and it is beautiful. Beautiful in the way the fight for conscious can sometimes be.
8/28/11
Touch and Go, Financial Crisis, Re-Approach the Life Comedic, and Less Important Things
Things have been touch and go. Tough and go. Many opportunities to back down and call it a day long before the newness of the day was fully realized. In many respects that's the only difference between me and the twenty three year old child coworker with two kids by two different women being served an arrest warrant on the job. The ability to say "no, this is not all I was meant for. There is more, and I am going to find it even if the effort breaks me today." Other than that, we probably have a lot in common in terms of measurable attributes. Perhaps not even the thought of the action is what sets me on paths differing as much as the knowledge that what I am about to pursue is going to be painful and is going to stretch my physical endurance and patience and is going to leave some unpleasant marks for days to come and the desire to do it anyway. I was the same way in college. My grades did not show it, because of all the classes (sixty percent) I had no stake in, but within my major I had a three nine.
Life outside of college is vastly different. Everything you do in life, you have a stake in. So I suppose that kind of makes me bad at college, but good at life? I do not know exactly, so I will keep on track instead of figuring that out. Things have been tough. Difficult to do. Difficult to plan for. Even more difficult to execute, but I've been doing it. Taking the hard road. Exercising so much more than the path of least resistance for more than the sake of doing things the hard way and for more reason than the hard way often being the only way forward available.
I don't know, invasion of apostrophe, when I'm going to go back on medication. I don't know when it will ever be feasible again. When the trust will develop, because the desperation never is enough on it's own. For stretches it is. For stretches the frustration with verbal communication, and non, is. The hallucinations are. The trust is gone. Eaten away, I suppose. I offer. Tough it out in space.
I've been listening to myself breath. As a hobby. A pastime? It has been uniquely entertaining. A foil to the difficulty and nuisance of hearing my blood go through my veins. I am very much looking forward to winter and the pressure suit and the space boots. Hopefully I'll have a runabout by then. A little automotive goodness so I don't have to traverse miles of hostile, ankle jarring, shin splinting, terrain on a daily basis for a second year in a row, but if I do, it'll be okay because I've already done it. I'm already doing my snow dance.
I don't get the financial crisis. Is there one or is there not? This doesn't feel like a depression. Not that my textbooks explained to me in grade school. Several people I know comment about it on a regular basis. They cite the comedy of television anchors trying to explain a complex system and failing miserably to do anything besides say which way the stock market arrow happens to be pointing. They remind me of meteorologists who simply read off the wind direction and temperature. "Thank you for the timely news CNN and Fox, but if I'd glanced at a stock ticker I could have cut out the middle man on that one", is the vibe I get.
Maybe it's because I fully intend to never have children that I don't worry about the financial future of the United States. Maybe it's because the hole is so, impossible to fully imagine, deep. Maybe it's because my most pressing issues are making enough tokens to pay rent and eat and I don't have the budget to invest in anything much greater and wide reaching than the ground I stand on and the, bothersome, blood in my veins. I don't think that makes me selfish. Having to focus so tightly on square ones doesn't make me inherently more real or down to Earth than anyone else either. Probably narrows my horizons some, but what is my impact beyond those horizons if not negligible, so what does it really, honest to god and every other being in the universe, really really matter if I have no idea what's happening in Tripoli or the songs being danced to by the dollar in it's face off with the peso and the euro?
Not the I do not care at all. All I'm saying is this: if the Dow goes up to a million points I still have to pay my rent. If the Standard and Poors index falls to zero, my rent is still three hundred and fifty dollars a month more than what's in my bank account now. Putting gas in my car is never going to become significantly, permanently, cheaper. Buying food is never going to do likewise. I have no idea what this financial crisis is at this point. I have no interest in it's nuance and no money in it's markets beyond taxes that are not all of my pay (that I can still afford to have a roof over my head with so who the hell cares) and the occasional goods I buy beyond food, so do pardon me if I mentally check out entirely when conversation turns to Wall Street and labor and the economy in general.
Nothing personal, but the day to day scrap pretty much eclipses the back and forth of news media, spin doctors, hustlers, book keepers, pushers, banks, and policy makers. I should probably have a stake in it, but the stake is driven into the ground so far away from me and has nothing to do with keeping my tent up I'll only make the time to check on it a very once in a while and make the time to understand it even less often. Even so, doesn't it strike anyone as slightly odd, the gap between meaningful swings in the market and meaningful world events. Maybe it's a thing not readily apparent to a layman, such as myself, like, such as, south Africa, and education, but it seems the slightest flicker of anything sends people shoving all their money in or ripping all of their money out with the twitchiness of a light switch, and doesn't that undermine the stability of the real life things, the solid objects, and the lives operating on and employed by those real life things? No clue.
Either way, what I do know is that I would have the same issues and problems around and inside of me now with the economy in the toilet, or not in the toilet, or half in the toilet and the other half holding it's hair back, as I would have if the economy were the opposite of whatever the news said it was. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe I do simply not give a fuck.
I've thought about re-entering the stand up with a sixth entry. I think I am calmed down enough to not goad myself into acts of violence by the words coming out of my own mouth. Calmed down enough to take the pill of neurosis and malaise and turn it into something a little light hearted for other's consumption. I think I can do that again. I'm almost ready. Slightly excited to give it another try. I would hope you are too. Oh wait, I am. So that makes three of us. So the three of us will laugh it up later and look on the bright side of trife.
And last but not least, the less important thing. I forgot what it was. Maybe it was that I am still tasking away at projects. Tasking away at promises. At distance. At finding voice. Away and away and away until it's all done and I am officially retired. I haven't written a story in a long time. I've wanted to, but at the same time I have been nerve racked with questions of time and effort and end products and reception. Must get those ducks in a row so I can restart that branch of the factory. The dust is getting alarmingly thick over there and beginning to take on lives of it's own.
///Boards of Canada - "The Color of the Fire slow Sunday sundown music. It is, after all-
Life outside of college is vastly different. Everything you do in life, you have a stake in. So I suppose that kind of makes me bad at college, but good at life? I do not know exactly, so I will keep on track instead of figuring that out. Things have been tough. Difficult to do. Difficult to plan for. Even more difficult to execute, but I've been doing it. Taking the hard road. Exercising so much more than the path of least resistance for more than the sake of doing things the hard way and for more reason than the hard way often being the only way forward available.
I don't know, invasion of apostrophe, when I'm going to go back on medication. I don't know when it will ever be feasible again. When the trust will develop, because the desperation never is enough on it's own. For stretches it is. For stretches the frustration with verbal communication, and non, is. The hallucinations are. The trust is gone. Eaten away, I suppose. I offer. Tough it out in space.
I've been listening to myself breath. As a hobby. A pastime? It has been uniquely entertaining. A foil to the difficulty and nuisance of hearing my blood go through my veins. I am very much looking forward to winter and the pressure suit and the space boots. Hopefully I'll have a runabout by then. A little automotive goodness so I don't have to traverse miles of hostile, ankle jarring, shin splinting, terrain on a daily basis for a second year in a row, but if I do, it'll be okay because I've already done it. I'm already doing my snow dance.
I don't get the financial crisis. Is there one or is there not? This doesn't feel like a depression. Not that my textbooks explained to me in grade school. Several people I know comment about it on a regular basis. They cite the comedy of television anchors trying to explain a complex system and failing miserably to do anything besides say which way the stock market arrow happens to be pointing. They remind me of meteorologists who simply read off the wind direction and temperature. "Thank you for the timely news CNN and Fox, but if I'd glanced at a stock ticker I could have cut out the middle man on that one", is the vibe I get.
Maybe it's because I fully intend to never have children that I don't worry about the financial future of the United States. Maybe it's because the hole is so, impossible to fully imagine, deep. Maybe it's because my most pressing issues are making enough tokens to pay rent and eat and I don't have the budget to invest in anything much greater and wide reaching than the ground I stand on and the, bothersome, blood in my veins. I don't think that makes me selfish. Having to focus so tightly on square ones doesn't make me inherently more real or down to Earth than anyone else either. Probably narrows my horizons some, but what is my impact beyond those horizons if not negligible, so what does it really, honest to god and every other being in the universe, really really matter if I have no idea what's happening in Tripoli or the songs being danced to by the dollar in it's face off with the peso and the euro?
Not the I do not care at all. All I'm saying is this: if the Dow goes up to a million points I still have to pay my rent. If the Standard and Poors index falls to zero, my rent is still three hundred and fifty dollars a month more than what's in my bank account now. Putting gas in my car is never going to become significantly, permanently, cheaper. Buying food is never going to do likewise. I have no idea what this financial crisis is at this point. I have no interest in it's nuance and no money in it's markets beyond taxes that are not all of my pay (that I can still afford to have a roof over my head with so who the hell cares) and the occasional goods I buy beyond food, so do pardon me if I mentally check out entirely when conversation turns to Wall Street and labor and the economy in general.
Nothing personal, but the day to day scrap pretty much eclipses the back and forth of news media, spin doctors, hustlers, book keepers, pushers, banks, and policy makers. I should probably have a stake in it, but the stake is driven into the ground so far away from me and has nothing to do with keeping my tent up I'll only make the time to check on it a very once in a while and make the time to understand it even less often. Even so, doesn't it strike anyone as slightly odd, the gap between meaningful swings in the market and meaningful world events. Maybe it's a thing not readily apparent to a layman, such as myself, like, such as, south Africa, and education, but it seems the slightest flicker of anything sends people shoving all their money in or ripping all of their money out with the twitchiness of a light switch, and doesn't that undermine the stability of the real life things, the solid objects, and the lives operating on and employed by those real life things? No clue.
Either way, what I do know is that I would have the same issues and problems around and inside of me now with the economy in the toilet, or not in the toilet, or half in the toilet and the other half holding it's hair back, as I would have if the economy were the opposite of whatever the news said it was. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe I do simply not give a fuck.
I've thought about re-entering the stand up with a sixth entry. I think I am calmed down enough to not goad myself into acts of violence by the words coming out of my own mouth. Calmed down enough to take the pill of neurosis and malaise and turn it into something a little light hearted for other's consumption. I think I can do that again. I'm almost ready. Slightly excited to give it another try. I would hope you are too. Oh wait, I am. So that makes three of us. So the three of us will laugh it up later and look on the bright side of trife.
And last but not least, the less important thing. I forgot what it was. Maybe it was that I am still tasking away at projects. Tasking away at promises. At distance. At finding voice. Away and away and away until it's all done and I am officially retired. I haven't written a story in a long time. I've wanted to, but at the same time I have been nerve racked with questions of time and effort and end products and reception. Must get those ducks in a row so I can restart that branch of the factory. The dust is getting alarmingly thick over there and beginning to take on lives of it's own.
///Boards of Canada - "The Color of the Fire slow Sunday sundown music. It is, after all-
3/30/10
fucking god damn fucking fuck
okay, micro rant. not a good way to start anything besides a drunken conversation with someone who may or may not be homeless and or addicted to amphetamines and or a person old enough to have fought in a war but whose only motivation for claiming to have done so is to to get free drinks exemplified by the fact that your knowledge of the claimants supposed theater of conflict and parties involved far exceeds said imaginary veterans own (okay i was in a shouting match with a guy in chicago not long ago and finally we got to citizenship and war and voting rights and the guy says "i was in fucking Nam, man" so i asked him what year and he said "the 70s" so i asked him where he was stationed and he said "Nam, man" so i asked him which years in the 70s aaaand it basically went vaguely on and on... what ever fuck it... i dont even know why im still mad about that. hmmm. what was i mad about.... i dont fucking ohhhh yeah.... god damn it... fucking family.
so these fucking ass wipes sit around not doing shit for each other. the food goes bad. rots in the fridge. everyone waiting for someone else to do something. FUCK THEM. fuck them. fuck them. the dirt just piles up and piles up until its unbearable to walk around barefoot in their own fucking house. the bathrooms become unusable. the kitchen sink fills up with dirty shit until you cant even pour yourself a glass of water. all the plates get used until there is nothing to eat off of. what the fuck is wrong with these MORONS. they treat their home like they dont even fucking live there. GOD DAMN IT. i cant kill them. i cant reform them. meanwhile they fucking freak out about the shit they cant control and they fucking stab their god damn noses into every inch of my fucking life and what the hell i wish i could force them to look at the two inches in front of their god damn noses. i mean... what the hell ass damn hell bitch fuck fuck fuck fuck.
theyre like three people clinging to each other and using each other to stay afloat and so are all going to drown eventually. the little sister needs both parents for absolutely everything and gives nothing back. the dad needs the mom for food, and clean clothing,and gives nothing back. the mom needs the dad for shelter and money and gives nothing back. everyone is taking. seeing people fucking behave like this makes me want to shoot myself in the fucking head. its like watching cannibals eat each other every day and somehow the following day the torn away flesh returns to be eaten again. fuck. its disgusting. none of them realizes their parasitic nature. living here is like pouring my heart and brain and time and energy into a fucking black hole.
so these fucking ass wipes sit around not doing shit for each other. the food goes bad. rots in the fridge. everyone waiting for someone else to do something. FUCK THEM. fuck them. fuck them. the dirt just piles up and piles up until its unbearable to walk around barefoot in their own fucking house. the bathrooms become unusable. the kitchen sink fills up with dirty shit until you cant even pour yourself a glass of water. all the plates get used until there is nothing to eat off of. what the fuck is wrong with these MORONS. they treat their home like they dont even fucking live there. GOD DAMN IT. i cant kill them. i cant reform them. meanwhile they fucking freak out about the shit they cant control and they fucking stab their god damn noses into every inch of my fucking life and what the hell i wish i could force them to look at the two inches in front of their god damn noses. i mean... what the hell ass damn hell bitch fuck fuck fuck fuck.
theyre like three people clinging to each other and using each other to stay afloat and so are all going to drown eventually. the little sister needs both parents for absolutely everything and gives nothing back. the dad needs the mom for food, and clean clothing,and gives nothing back. the mom needs the dad for shelter and money and gives nothing back. everyone is taking. seeing people fucking behave like this makes me want to shoot myself in the fucking head. its like watching cannibals eat each other every day and somehow the following day the torn away flesh returns to be eaten again. fuck. its disgusting. none of them realizes their parasitic nature. living here is like pouring my heart and brain and time and energy into a fucking black hole.
7/25/09
fuck the news
Subject : fuck the news
Posted Date: : Jul 25, 2009 2:42 PM
the news sucks. ihate watching it. i hate all the networks. i hate all the spins. i hate that i rarely ever get to hear about anything even remotely important. and i hate that its now more or less a source of entertainment, product placement, and spectacle more than it is a source of information, reliable or not. its something to tell you how to think and feel. and it does it with arguments and commentary that wouldnt stand up in a highschool logic and proofs class if people even went that far in high school, let alone college.
watching the news is like a recieving a daily reminder about just how fucking dumb the majority of americans are. which kind of reminds me of something i thought about near the end of a drug policy class. the conclusion was that the war on drugs was an unsustainable war that is not even close to fighting the real source of the drug problem, if you can even call it that. america is a country of wars. we need wars to dominate everyone else and to flex our will on them, but the only sustainable war, in a country that has thrived on war decade after decade, the only war worth fighting that will take care of so many problems that lead to desert storm part 2 in the first place, the only war to potentially end all wars is a war fought against ignorance.
if people werent so god damn stupid and complacent and fucking misguided there wouldnt be unions, we wouldnt need them, classism would fucking die out because it had to, legislation would be reasonable, people would care about public policy, american cars wouldnt suck dicks and would be worth more than the CHILTON manuals printed about them, fossil fuels wouldnt be a crisis, renewalable energy would be a lot more than a pipe dream, the banks wouldnt have gotten so far gone, gore would have been elected, bush wouldnt have been elected twice, a bill wouldnt have passed making it okay to bring guns into bars, all university would be free, homes wouldnt be built ten feet away from hurricane swells, infrastructure would be stable and able to grow, wal mart would be gone, america wouldnt be an exclusionist state, global warming would be under control, 1 percent of the people wouldnt have 50 percent of the wealth, healthcare would be available for everyone, cigarettes would go away, stupid drug laws would never happen, you'd have to be older than 16 to drive, and younger than 21 to drink, politics wouldnt be nebulous, school would teach you how to learn and grow, prison would reform instead of being a self serving industry, campaigning wouldnt mean pandering, the best man would usually win, the f22 would be out of production years ago, we wouldnt be in a consumer/debt driven society, outsourcing would be non-existant, religion wouldnt be law, the free market would be a myth, job security would be real, a life of excess would be considered abhorrent instead of the ultimate goal to work toward, celebrity would shrivel up and die like the wretched pox on humanity it is, tv would be worth watching, homelessness would be a choice, joining the military wouldnt be the only way out of a dead end life, people would be upwardly mobile, stories of courage would be exclusive of any tv or film personality or lifestyle choice, rags to riches stories would never be told, athletes would not command more money than the president, and corn wouldnt be fucking subsidized.
but the news reminds us every day that america is a pretty fucking ignorant place populated and run by sheep with expense accounts and a desire to someday own an escalade and a helicopter and a house so big the electric bill alone would swallow a low class persons monthly paycheck whole with a pool big enough to provide enough water for a small town to drink and a lawn as green as the sky is blue all located in the middle of the fucking driest climate possible with a gate hardy enough and security force reckless enough to keep out the god damn huns and lurking have nots. cuz what is stupidity and excess without that wonderfully american "they said it couldnt be done so i did it" spirit.
fuck the news. i dont need to be reminded.
///lily allen - ldn: because sometimes things get so rediculously sour that all you can really do is smile about it. the scale of disdain only extends so far. and sometimes things are so black they can only be described in shades of white.
Posted Date: : Jul 25, 2009 2:42 PM
the news sucks. ihate watching it. i hate all the networks. i hate all the spins. i hate that i rarely ever get to hear about anything even remotely important. and i hate that its now more or less a source of entertainment, product placement, and spectacle more than it is a source of information, reliable or not. its something to tell you how to think and feel. and it does it with arguments and commentary that wouldnt stand up in a highschool logic and proofs class if people even went that far in high school, let alone college.
watching the news is like a recieving a daily reminder about just how fucking dumb the majority of americans are. which kind of reminds me of something i thought about near the end of a drug policy class. the conclusion was that the war on drugs was an unsustainable war that is not even close to fighting the real source of the drug problem, if you can even call it that. america is a country of wars. we need wars to dominate everyone else and to flex our will on them, but the only sustainable war, in a country that has thrived on war decade after decade, the only war worth fighting that will take care of so many problems that lead to desert storm part 2 in the first place, the only war to potentially end all wars is a war fought against ignorance.
if people werent so god damn stupid and complacent and fucking misguided there wouldnt be unions, we wouldnt need them, classism would fucking die out because it had to, legislation would be reasonable, people would care about public policy, american cars wouldnt suck dicks and would be worth more than the CHILTON manuals printed about them, fossil fuels wouldnt be a crisis, renewalable energy would be a lot more than a pipe dream, the banks wouldnt have gotten so far gone, gore would have been elected, bush wouldnt have been elected twice, a bill wouldnt have passed making it okay to bring guns into bars, all university would be free, homes wouldnt be built ten feet away from hurricane swells, infrastructure would be stable and able to grow, wal mart would be gone, america wouldnt be an exclusionist state, global warming would be under control, 1 percent of the people wouldnt have 50 percent of the wealth, healthcare would be available for everyone, cigarettes would go away, stupid drug laws would never happen, you'd have to be older than 16 to drive, and younger than 21 to drink, politics wouldnt be nebulous, school would teach you how to learn and grow, prison would reform instead of being a self serving industry, campaigning wouldnt mean pandering, the best man would usually win, the f22 would be out of production years ago, we wouldnt be in a consumer/debt driven society, outsourcing would be non-existant, religion wouldnt be law, the free market would be a myth, job security would be real, a life of excess would be considered abhorrent instead of the ultimate goal to work toward, celebrity would shrivel up and die like the wretched pox on humanity it is, tv would be worth watching, homelessness would be a choice, joining the military wouldnt be the only way out of a dead end life, people would be upwardly mobile, stories of courage would be exclusive of any tv or film personality or lifestyle choice, rags to riches stories would never be told, athletes would not command more money than the president, and corn wouldnt be fucking subsidized.
but the news reminds us every day that america is a pretty fucking ignorant place populated and run by sheep with expense accounts and a desire to someday own an escalade and a helicopter and a house so big the electric bill alone would swallow a low class persons monthly paycheck whole with a pool big enough to provide enough water for a small town to drink and a lawn as green as the sky is blue all located in the middle of the fucking driest climate possible with a gate hardy enough and security force reckless enough to keep out the god damn huns and lurking have nots. cuz what is stupidity and excess without that wonderfully american "they said it couldnt be done so i did it" spirit.
fuck the news. i dont need to be reminded.
///lily allen - ldn: because sometimes things get so rediculously sour that all you can really do is smile about it. the scale of disdain only extends so far. and sometimes things are so black they can only be described in shades of white.
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