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[30 Aug 2009|04:14am] |
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mood |
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 crushed |
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music |
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ishq - Blue Haze |
] |
Social anxiety never hit me so hard as it did tonight. My friends had explained the feeling to me before: body a-tremble, utter silence, hot flashes, sweat drips swiftly from your pores. Only isolation combats the symptoms. For three hours of agony, I felt like an overheating furnace. The loud, commingling voices of my friend's family became a unified susurrus. Friends tried and failed to include me in their conversations. Jokes about dicks and balls and asses and cheese (and so on) found laughing participants, while I loomed silently and (probably) creepily over these people with nothing to add, shivering out my next self-conscious quip. The silence became a part of me. To say anything at all would be absurd.
For instance, Paul tells stories about his employment at a mental asylum, only to hear me follow up with a completely unrelated, secondhand account about a woman who unexpectedly died in a hospital, where her visiting husband and two grandkids tragically found nurses huddled around the fresh corpse. Paul's reaction is a confusing mix of cold acceptance and silent but salient disgust. I couldn't blame him. It must have seemed like my only interesting story. Where his stories found humor in tragedy, mine extinguished even the faintest ray of light. I soon discovered that none of my stories suited the occasion. Having been divided from most of these people for over four years, I realized then that their circle of friends didn't include me. Their stories had endless potential; mine seemed out of place. It's moments like these that expose my fraudulence.
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| I Fail With Women |
[22 Jul 2009|06:50pm] |
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mood |
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sad |
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music |
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Bvdub - Gone Are the Days |
] |
Nothing happens in my banal life that would necessitate a lengthy journal entry. It's all about throwing my thoughts out willy-nilly, I guess, but thoughts are scarce these days. To ridicule "world events" would just be redundant. An entry about my visit to Lipstick last night--where I tried my damnedest to throw away that high-schooler mentality that colors me charmless around women--would be like watching mountains erode. I haven't the guts nor the patience to explain myself in detail: job prospects, to put it concisely, are nil (throwing resumes at people doesn't help); employers react to my persistence with sighs and groans and almost, it seems, expletives; and I'm worth about twenty-two dollars (give or take). Netflix, gym visits, and friends keep me going. This funk I'm in, this boring, droll, concentrated annoyance, should encourage reflection... some sort of life philosophy, I imagined, might have developed slowly in my imagination during these days and days and days of free time. Nothing emerges but a bunch of anger and pain. I'm more impatient, I'm vile, and days pass during which I feel nothing for myself but disgust. I've become that which I criticize the most...
Those who do nothing... I'm one of them, I guess.
A few weeks ago I went dancing at Old Ironsides with my friends Michael and Micah. A girl tugged on my shirt, pulled me over to her and her friend, and whispered in my ear.
"Don't worry," she said, "we're not lesbians."
"I see," I said lamely, then danced flailingly.
"Do you know this band?"
"No," I said truthfully.
"They're called The Faint. They're good."
"So I hear." My responses were so pathetic and so impeded by shyness that I couldn't muster the courage to begin an actual conversation. I tried anyway. "You ever heard of Passion Pit?" I said awkwardly, a little Jamesly, very pre-pubescently.
"No, I guess I'm not cool enough."
"No, you're not." A sensible person could easily have made this response sound like a joke. Instead, I sounded abrasive and serious, like a verbally abusive boyfriend, a disrespectful little twat. She patted me on the shoulder and said that she and her friend were going. I didn't follow. I stayed behind and danced embarrassingly with two men. With them I had no ulterior motives.
My night ended in utter disappointment. This is apparently what happens when a girl tries to hit on me: I'm mean, I guess, and I become socially inept. I'm too used to the friends I already know.
The end.
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| The Enduring Shit Smell of my Coming Days |
[06 Mar 2009|03:05am] |
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mood |
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 angry |
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music |
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Yagya - Rigning Tiu |
] |
Months ago I cryptically insulted the excuse "life isn't fair." This abstraction--life--cannot accept responsibility for anything: that is the sad fact of its place in the English language. The excuse arrives fallaciously on the tongues of those who wish to eschew actual conversation--it is an effective conversation stopper for some. But what the statement assumes is essentially this: one should never argue against anything that's unfair, because it's unfair. I doubt many would agree with this. It's circular and therefore logically empty. Read on. I would appreciate thoughts.
About a year and a half ago, thieves went on their many random car-stealing excursions around the Barnes and Noble parking lot. My co-worker and good friend, Amanda, was among the lucky few whose car fled the lot, glass broken, for a far away field located somewhere in Elk Grove, where the cops later discovered it, stripped of all the essential parts. Metal innards replaced the comforting seats, the stereo took a trip along the black market, car and auto parts (among them the car's engine) fed shady dealers undeserved monies from likely unsuspecting (or else vulturous) buyers. The Target store employees endured similar pains. Meanwhile, the rest of us who call Barnes and Noble our unwanted and unwelcoming occasional home lived in fear of our work days ("what would happen to me should my car get stolen?" and so on).
My natural inclination was to park closer to the store. Being the guy who is always tucked away in the cold and dusty asshole of the barren bookstore, this reaction seems all the more reasonable. Apparently, though, I had been disobeying a repeatedly stated mandate that says all employees must park an arbitrary nine spaces from the front of the lot, behind the first over-sized plant-box, toward Panera, beyond the reach of the human eye, and obscured by a spring-ripened seedling. Disobeying these rules grants one a yelling match with Napoleon-complex afflicted managers...
...One person is exempt from this rule, however. I only recently discovered that Amanda may park wherever she pleases. This seems reasonable for obvious reasons. By the same token, if this privilege arises from her irrepressible fears, every employee should be granted the same privilege. My car did not get stolen, of course, but the potential is there, and I'm far more than a common customer. I am there throughout the week, eight hours a shift, pulling my weight in the thought-leeching music department. I ask for fairness, for equality.
But Mini-Hitler (known as Greg in more socially unacceptable circles) has taken frequent note of my disobedience. "You need to park behind the first big plant-box," he would say. I would nod my head in false approval, only to disobey him passive-aggressively. Again he would repeat the mandate with increasing impatience.
Almost a year has passed since our first uneventful confrontation. The other day, however, it somehow exploded into a yelling match amid co-workers.
"Shane," he began patiently, "I need to talk to you."
"What's up?" I said.
"Once again, you parked too close. I've told you time and time again to stop, and yet you continue to disobey me. Why won't you listen?"
"Because I disagree with you."
"I don't care. You either listen to me or you don't. The next time this happens, it's going to be written. Do you understand?" (I didn't) "I've been talking to you about this for over a year and I can't believe we're still going over this. End of discussion."
"Greg, I disagree with you and we can discuss this."
"We can't discuss this. You listen to me or you don't." He had hoped this commonly employed tautology of his would end the conversation. Greg is a smart man, but his impatience during arguments gets his face looking like tomato ketchup.
"Are those really the only choices? You will let Amanda park closer, but nobody else."
"She got her car stolen."
"So by your logic, I have to sacrifice a really expensive piece of machinery to purchase a better parking spot?"
"Yes. You do."
"Do you see how unfair that is?"
"Yes."
"And you're willing to stick to this? Despite everything, you're going to hold firmly to your conviction?"
"Yes. Life's unfair, Shane. You listen to me or you don't. If you do this again, I'll write you up. Getting a closer parking spot doesn't guarantee that your car isn't going to get stolen. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here."
"I guess I'm a good builder, then. By granting Amanda this privilege, Greg, you admitted it makes a difference. Even if you're doing it just to appease her, the unfairness factor far outweighs any other considerations."
"I can take the privilege away from her just as easily. Do you want that on your conscience?"
"Yes, Greg, that's really what I want," I said sarcastically, "that's what we're arguing here. You want to attack me right where it hurts, cut straight for the jugular? Go ahead, exercise your yearning for power, hold it over me like a nice big steak. You're wrong and you know it and you're holding firmly to this out of pride and it's goddamned annoying."
"Listen to me or else you'll suffer the consequences. End of discussion." He walked away, red-faced, red-eyed, probably with the desire to pummel my face with brass knuckles. I could see it in his face--the anger, the sadness over his diminishing power. From his pain I derived a profound sense of pleasure. Vengeful though it was, how supple were the fruits of my laborious logic, how plodding and dull were his reasons for holding so firmly to a ridiculously unethical position; still, a sense of guilt arose from the ashes. I felt, after all, like I really had created something out of nothing. But I was right and I knew it.
I later confided in two managers, one of whom (Mary) had this to say--some of it correctly--in a nutshell: "All that's going to happen is Amanda's going to get her privilege taken away. Just stop. You're being a baby. Life's unfair. If you want to live in a Utopian society, go and create your own and populate it with people who will give you what you want. Did you just want people to say that you're right? Well, you're right, Shane, does that make you feel better? I don't know what you want from me." Having eliminated Mary from the pool of possible sympathizers, I selected Neil, who responded more favorably: "You can actually sue us if Greg writes you up. This parking rule he talks about isn't written in the books. I know because I've been with this company for eighteen years. The fact is that Opus, our landlord, owns and operates the parking lot, not Barnes and Noble. If there's a rule that Opus created, you have to obey them, but Greg has nothing on you. In fact, I should probably address this issue in one of the meetings because it's really unfair." I would not allow Neil to get Greg in trouble. As compelling as the thought seemed, I knew it would be wrong. If I'm to solve this problem, it'll be on my passive-aggressive terms.
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| Lost Cat, Find Your Way You Blind Cunt |
[13 Feb 2009|11:51pm] |
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mood |
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Aggravated and Bored and Sad |
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music |
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Eluvium - New Animals From the Air |
] |
Every day is another emotional obstacle. This has been a difficult time for me. But in the interest of showing my respect for others, I realize that my missing blind cat and my increasingly rocky relationship is relatively feeble compared with some of my friends' problems. This is very true, and I'm sorry if I seem selfish in petitioning others for advice where there is, perhaps, little available. But there's a virtue to selfishness that's both disconcerting and comforting. In one sense, people don't really care to hear me blabbing on about this or that. Thankfully, I'm still allowed to bitch over webspace. Let's be honest, after all, our problems are exclusively our own: people don't usually care about you quite as much as you care about yourself.
*
Now to the point: my blind and always lethargic cat, Cosmo, went missing a few days ago. Having three shit-and-piss ready indoor dogs necessitates the makeshift doggy door that my father astutely attached to our sliding-glass door. Locking the doggy door would, of course, eventually result in differently colored carpets, a wealth of spattery poo stains, and a few more hairballs. No doubt you understand where I'm going with this: Our cats easily gain access to the outside through the doggy door, blind or no. The irony of letting a blind cat feel his way through grass and blacktop while cars approach and zoom away has never escaped my notice, but I had no control over Cosmo's blind ineptitude.
When my father came inside to announce Cosmo's strange absence, I thought nothing of it. "He's been gone longer before," I said, "he'll be back." I was sincerely convinced and unperturbed. That night, however, he had remained outside. The following day was the same. I have since walked through town, trespassed in my geriatric neighbor's backyard (only to discover that a strategically-placed sprinkler had been watering a muddy lawn under the night sky), and even waited in suspense at Sac State as my father perused the animal shelters about town (to no avail).
Kiko only recently died on me; the thought of losing Cosmo to these constant deluges of rain, or to cruel delinquents who hate cats, or to kind people who saw a creature in need of food and shelter, only exacerbates things.
I've lately suffered for sinking into complacency with Joyce. Losing Cosmo has been poisonous; it has made me vile and distant. My identity has become little more than what plagues me at the present moment. That's never a good thing.
If you've all read this far, I thank you. If not, I thank you anyway.
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| A Reasonable Problem With Retail |
[02 Feb 2009|11:20pm] |
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mood |
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bored |
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music |
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Pan-American - Is a Problem to Occupy Generations |
] |
Keep in mind while reading the following account: after two and a half years at this job, this was the first time I had seriously attempted to sit complacently still without voicing blunt complaints.
Nearly six months ago, two managers at Barnes and Noble brought me into the back office for my review. To my chagrin, a packet of papers--four copies (one for their records, two for them, one for me)--displayed the common reductionist arguments against me.
"You don't work well with others," they began, "you foster an 'us vs. them' attitude." To this I remained silent, observing Carol's (my general manager's) barren expression. As Carol sat resolutely with her right palm propping up her face, Mary (the music manager) expounded upon my lesser attributes. Evidently no positive ones stood out. "Not at standards," Mary repeated, going down the list of points. Having read off all the sad bits, Mary topped the confection with this general consensus:
"You're subordinate. You argue with managers when they tell you to do a job, you're sarcastic, you write inappropriate notes in the binder--" she broke off, pulled out one of my subversive writings, and read it aloud. "And I quote: '...bastard customers and shit.' This caught on throughout the store and your co-workers started following your example. When you saw that Abby had gotten fired for this, it looks like you went into the notebook and edited out some of your entries." Again she pulled out a sample: "Thankfully some of the originals stuck in my head. You wrote a disclaimer for your vulgarity that told people you meant no offense, which seems considerate at first, but where you had written 'profanity' you had crossed it out and replaced it with 'flowery words,' I guess because you wanted no evidence against you. You did this throughout the whole thing. Then you turned 'fucking customers' into 'peach daiquiris.'"
"It made sense at the time," I said. "If my job was in danger, that was the remedy."
"Yes, I understand, but the point is that you shouldn't have written pointless and inappropriate entries in there in the first place. The communication binder is for communicating only necessary things and nothing else." I found this condescending for its obviousness. She had assumed that I had no knowledge of its utilitarian function. I kept quiet despite my reservations. "This is a business, Shane," she went on, "and you're basically insulting your management." How could I possibly refute the truth? My intention was to insult my management kindly, humorously, because, I said, "it keeps me sane. Humor distances me from reality." Also, in retrospect, sarcasm serves the very same function for management.
"If you don't like it here, then you shouldn't be here. If you want--"
"Shane, either you love retail, or it's going to drive you nuts and you'll hate it," Carol interrupted opportunely. To this statement I wanted to point out all the times she had unreasonably lost her temper with her employees, her particularly infuriating brand of micromanagement, and her frustrations with life that likely stem from consistently burning away her magnesium time with seventeen hour work days. But that would have been fallacious of me. That she has problems--that she is a hypocrite--does not exactly refute their arguments against me.
"Do you have anything you want to add?" Mary asked me.
"Well, yes, I hate my job, that's for sure. Possibly that's why I'm ill-tempered, sarcastic and humorous to combat all the moments where I feel imprisoned. 'Imprisoned' is a strong word, I think, but as grandiose as that sounds, it's the truth, at least."
"Then why are you here?"
"I don't have much of a choice, do I? The job market isn't booming like it used to, and student positions are almost extinct. What could I possibly do?"
"If that's what you're afraid of, you have two choices: either change your ways, or get out of here." Either/or propositions rarely work for the simple fact that they're false dichotomies. Other choices might include acceptance, leniency, getting a professional deep tissue massage, etc. and so forth.
"Shane," Carol interjected once more, ascending her soapbox with an air of majesty, her palm suddenly leaving her cheek for the arm of her office chair, her back straightening despite all the thoracic and lumbar creaks (she resembled Caesar, bleak and unhealthy), "there's something so amazing about these customers. I mean, have you ever observed their faces? They light up when you put a book or CD or DVD in their hand: a sad day becomes a happy one for these people, and I tell ya, it gives me satisfaction every day of my life. That's why I'm here... that's why you should want to be here. Don't you get a sense of joy when you put an item in a customer's hand? And that's what counts, right? Customers. There's nothing better than that." I silently resented her sentimentality; I shifted in my lesser swivel chair and propped my chin up with a thinking fist. Carol's selling-point was lost in a sea of murky rhetoric, a lousy string of questions that lacked the conviction of a seasoned orator. My vocal chords almost involuntarily shivered out a few ballsy words, but with a strength of will I never knew I had, I choked on my saliva instead. Those words floated through my mind over and over, and everything that Carol had said to me over the following months meant nothing... not ever again.
After her speech, she seemed on the verge tears: maybe this was because she had wasted her life on a job that had finally failed to live up to her mid-life expectations. A husband never awaits her arrival at home--he expects her absence, while Carol herself toils away at building book promo tables that are aesthetically acceptable by company standards. Or maybe her problem is something relatively simple. She could have meant every word, after all. My conjectures can sometimes be hasty and erroneous.
Eventually Carol left the room. Mary rolled her chair next to me. "Shane," she said, "I hate my job, too. I know how you feel. I used to react just like you do."
"Should you be telling me that?"
"It doesn't matter; we're behind closed doors."
"Why not complain, too?"
"Because it doesn't matter. They choose never to listen because it saves money. Employees serve a very small function. They're not really good for business a lot of the time. What's practical counts to these people. You begin to think of your job as a sort of game--that's what I do. Generating sales becomes a game." She sounded genuine, at the very least. She shouldn't have sounded genuine. "I've got a kid and a husband, and Carol determines whether or not I get my raise based on your performance." This surprised me. If, this entire time, Mary's pay relied entirely on my performance, then it seemed I had been abusing my privileges all along. It seemed that I had reached an impasse. I have since regretted thinking this: my past behavior could not have accounted for all of the emotional turmoil. She probably had exaggerated this.
"I had no idea. I'm sorry, really."
"Just keep that in mind. I know this place sucks, but think of it as temporary. It doesn't have to last forever. Just work well and get a job somewhere else when you're more equipped to do so."
I signed a few papers, went rigorously through my "improvement plan," and essentially--under threat of being fired--rolled up my sleeves, prepared to fight, and got knocked down by the bigger fist. At least I had gotten paid for the hour and a half it took for them to lower me to the status of a jell-o mold. And here you have me, six months hence, a washed up, obsequious servant, spouting music department advertisements over an intercom, writing 'appropriate notes' in the binder only when necessary, and setting aside my sarcasm in favor of something more 'work friendly.' Mary has since taken me aside, patted me on the shoulder, and said "I'm really proud of the way you've improved." Apparently I was a broken worker. Has my mind finally been sucked out?
*
When I said, a few entries back, that my mind resembles a dried up well, I think this situation explains it. This job is vexing, to say the least. It should be better than this.
I really can't stop at a degree. I've got to go all the way.
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| Here's a Strange One |
[31 Jan 2009|10:21pm] |
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mood |
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guilty |
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music |
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Animal Collective - In the Flowers |
] |
Last week I met a somewhat racist person. I did not know this until today, however.
My primate observation class at ARC is not especially daunting because it happens at the zoo and it's relatively simple. But simple things often become complicated by other factors.
Last week, while weaving toward the zoo exit along with a dense group of students led by my foul-mouthed professor, a girl bumped into me from behind. The action itself was clearly an act, for she had made a strange comment under her breath, somewhat inaudibly, almost decipherable, and then introduced herself after laughing awkwardly at her nervousness.
"Okay," I said, averting my shoulder from her proximity.
"I'm sorry, am I being weird?"
"No," I said truthfully.
"." she said.
"I'm Shane." I shook her hand and told her that I would see her the following week, expecting nothing.
*
But earlier today, walking toward the chimpanzee enclosure in exuberant expectation of observing whether my greater ape subjects would be either on the ground or off the ground, I heard her voice from behind: "Shawn."
"Shane."
"Whoa, sorry, you gave me an evil eye there."
"No, not exactly, you just surprised me. I forgot your name, actually, so it's fair." She reminded me, seemingly offended. Then we awkwardly entered into a conversation that would stop at intervals, continue at smaller intervals, and finally peter out, proving us both ultimately ineffectual. This went on for two hours until, having exited the zoo, she said "there's something about me you don't know."
"I'm sure there are a lot of things about you I don't know. I don't know you."
"Well, I would like to tell you, except that you're a sweet guy and I'd like to keep talking to you and I don't want to ruin that."
"It's against the rules of conversation to announce a secret just so you can keep it." She mulled this over for a moment, saw my disappointed face, and then went on despite herself. "Well," she continued, "my roommate has rubbed off on me over the years. He's thirty. Now," she stopped herself for a moment, "I have to let you know that I'm a humanist, that's important... and I'm not racist by any means. But I do prefer certain races over others because of personal issues." These "personal issues" seemed contrary to her roommate's influence, but perhaps both factors contributed.
"So in essence, you don't like black people."
"No, I guess not."
I responded to this statement as diplomatically as possible, and also--apparently somewhat insultingly--told her why racism is bad. I felt both justified and terrible for this. I had good intentions with my pedantry, but I think she interpreted the move as my dismissing her, because right then, her eyes looked to the ground for guidance. "It's fine," I said, trying to quash the awkward silence, "it's... okay. I suppose personal issues are at work here."
"Really, there are things you don't know... there are lots of things that would take years for me to reveal." She had tried to maintain the mystery, all the while keeping a collected, calm tone. But somehow the mystery had lost its luster, obscured by a thick mist. I had waited a moment before deciding not to endure the silence any longer.
"I actually should get going," I said, studying my watch, "there's somewhere I have to be in a half hour. See you next week."
"Okay. Bye."
I sincerely hope I don't give this girl the wrong idea. Perhaps I described her unfairly. In written dialogue, the conversation might translate unreliably. Tone is difficult to convey. I seem only capable of conveying sarcasm. She was nice and well-intentioned, but I'm ill-equipped for these random social events.
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| One Unfortunate, One Depressing |
[22 Jan 2009|12:14am] |
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mood |
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bored |
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music |
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Surprisingly New-Agey Shit |
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Having loafed around for a half-hour during my lunch break, accomplishing nothing, and feeling generally displeased with myself while being locked securely away in my deep imagination, imagining hilariously ideal scenarios, I returned to the music department a decrepit shell dreading the rest of a useless afternoon at work. My co-worker had been helping a curly-headed harridan locate a few DVD's. In order that I might relieve my co-worker of her burden, I offered the woman my assistance after I heard her ask "do you have The Secret Life of Bees?"
"Yes," I said, "I think so. I'll search that."
"No, I'm already being helped," she said curtly. Then she ignored me.
Two minutes following this short exchange, the woman approached the register wielding a pile of stuff. When I began grabbing at it and subjecting bar-codes to the scrutiny of lasers, the woman looked to my co-worker in supplication and asked "you don't work back here?"
"I do on occasion," she said, "but he's the guy who knows this department."
"You're not ringing me up, then?"
"No, Shane will help you with that."
"Ohh," the woman moaned, "I'm so disappointed it's not you."
"Shane is fine," she said, retreating by inches, "I have to get back to the floor, though. I was only here for his break."
"Dang it!" She grabbed at air and shook a fist under her saggy melons (here I lose patience and roll my eyes stealthily). "Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your help."
"Of course." She left.
Meanwhile, I stood two feet away, conspicuously awaiting her validation. "By the way," I said, halfway into the transaction, "I conducted that search for you anyway." I had hoped that the emphasis on "anyway" might elicit a look of faint regret, but in its stead I received a cold, blank stare that seemed to peer right through me.
"Yeah? Do you have it?"
"I'm afraid not. It should be here on the third."
"Of February?" she asked impatiently.
"Yes, of February." She sighed and walked brazenly away.
I stood flabbergasted, taken aback by such profoundly unwarranted rudeness. I began making personal calls on work time, just so that I could transfer the memory to somebody else.
*
Rifling curiously through the months since I joined this site nearly six years ago, I find that the entries have dwindled in frequency. Two years ago I was a passionate youth whose conviction, while imbued with considerably less patience, was beautiful. What I lacked--and still do lack--in skill and structure, I made up for in quantity because I had serious thoughts. Now, for whatever reason, a cloud has descended over me (and now I've ventured into cliche territory). My mind, once brimful of ambition and profusely opinionated, resembles a bone-dry cavern of worn-out, tried-and-ridiculous philosophies. There is little left to be said. My metaphorical soul has been sucked free, and I've settled so uncomfortably into a routine. School, work, eat, work out, internet, sleep... repeat. I used to feel more interesting. I used to believe so confidently that I had interesting things to say. Where the passions exist, they now lie dormant; they escape occasionally in conversation, more patiently now, fewer times, far between.
In my room there is a Harry Potter box in which memory fragments, ideas, and opinions that I wrote during particularly dull work days sit complacently still, filling the box from end to end. These folded up fragments represent moments of bliss that end where the pen stops--a mind-graveyard. But anything that ends up in there, it seems, becomes a piece of forgotten rubble. If I allow nobody to read these, then they may as well not exist.
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[20 Jan 2009|12:39am] |
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mood |
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 confused |
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music |
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Dark-Sounding Ambient Shit |
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Sentimentality is the enemy of patience. Keep me from confronting it.
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| Bush |
[19 Dec 2008|12:33am] |
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mood |
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bored |
] |
Bush didn't deserve to have shoes hurled at him. That's all.
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| An Entry to End the Semester |
[18 Dec 2008|12:08am] |
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mood |
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 amused |
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music |
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The Tumbled Sea - The People You Never Knew About |
] |
The last four years of my life were laced with self-revisions. One moment, I lazily pursued journalism. Then I liked literary criticism. Apparently now I want to be a paleontologist or a primatologist. While I'm still influenced by all the fiction authors who spend their precious time extolling virtues, I have never seriously questioned the sorts of literary interpretations that get thrown around fiction classes like biblical know-it-all speak, always changing, simultaneously wrong and right. Metaphors lose their conviction, mired under the muck of wishy-washy perspectives: the author's intentions disappear. We wonder finally if the author ever had any intentions at all (or if the author exists). We're all psycho-analysts probing the minds of the writer behind the words. It's our obligation--our duty, we might say--to notice the unintended.
And we're correct: it is our duty. All of this is very important. We have emotional reactions while reading literature and watching films and listening to music. We should always examine those feelings. Simple explanations can usually penetrate the main thematic thrust of any work. Probing its depths requires more contemplation. But one should always use clear and concise language to voice their interpretations. That's reasonable, wouldn't you say?
For some people, however, carefully worded explanations aren't enough. For example, there was a man in my modern British literature course whose name I forgot. From this point on, I shall refer to him as Strange Guy (SG). He would raise his hand every chance he got, speak in the most stuttery, nervous, unsure sort of voice, and babble on about things that might have made sense were his points not lost in a labyrinth of silly language.
We had just read a Nick Hornby short story about how becoming a subject of the media for fifteen minutes of fame is really the only way one exists. After all, if large groups of people don't know about you, then you may as well not exist. It was simple enough to write those last two sentences, and simpler still to utter them aloud. Yet this guy--a sort of cerebral, pesudo-intellectual--explained it cryptically:
(The following transcription comes from memory only. As such, this soliloquy is only a carbon copy. The ellipses, of course, indicate his strangely timed pauses. It's a shame that no language can accurately communicate the pretentiousness.)
Professor Buchanan - Are there any other comments before we move on?
Strange guy (Raises his hand up high and thumbs his nose. Buchanan calls on him) - Yeah... Now would you say... the subjects... with the agreement... of... the objects... that is to say the people in front of the field... only make the subject exist... because the subject... only based on the aggregate... of a group of objects... agreeing that... the subject... existing... in a world of objects... becomes an object himself... if... the other objects... take away his subject status?... Because it seems... that... it overturns the... object-subject idea in literature when... the subject... becomes the object.
(People next to this guy looked like they had just chewed bitter-melon. They suppressed their snickers. Some palmed their mouths. Others studied their desks and smiled. At the start of every class session, we organized our desks in a wide circle, and I had the best vantage point from the front of the classroom. I could see everybody's face.)
PB - I'm not sure I follow what you're saying. (Here he squinted his eyes, prepared a few uncertain words, seemed to shift his expression slightly, and then silence)
SG (Attempting once more) - The man on the roof...
Another, More Sensible Guy (Without raising his hand, interjects abruptly. A polite gesture, all things considered. He saved SG from the mounting embarrassment) - So the guy on the roof doesn't exist unless a bunch of people say that he does?
SG - Yeah.
AMSG - Just to corroborate what you're saying.
SG - Yes.
PB - Well, I would agree. Hornby does seem to be saying that.
(We moved on.)
Here the nonsense ended. Everybody's face had become the butts of lemons, save for the strange guy who sat comfortably at his desk, blinking a hard blink that stretched the skin of his forehead, and seeming very pleased with what he had said, whatever it was. His interpretation was valid, just needlessly convoluted.
*
We should interpret the arts. But a well-worded interpretation is never confusing. Between the lines, the person's moral reaction counts. But that reaction counts for nothing unless you explain it using clear, concise, and plain language.
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| Tonight's Debate and the Naive Responses to It |
[16 Oct 2008|01:21am] |
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Uzi & Ari - Wolf Eggs |
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McCain criticized Obama for negative TV spots, then expended valuable debating time on Obama's messy affiliations. That's downright dishonest and hypocritical. Yet so many people will come away from this throbbing sentimentally for grandpa McCain. McCain knows he's hurting in the polls, and he grasped at every tenuous thread he could. He didn't deal with issues; he kept Obama on the defensive. That's not a good thing. It's too damned easy and it's a tactic that inexplicably fools the public. McCain's stiff smile, his sporadic bouts of uncomfortable laughter, and his constant referrals to some generic plumber named Joe (an underhanded appeal to sentimentality, by the way), exposed his impatient debating style. On top of that, when Bob Schieffer asked that biased question about the vice presidential candidates, Obama complimented Sarah Palin (he was being generous). Then McCain unceremoniously insulted Biden.
McCain has subscribed to the philosophy that criticizing his opponent's stance is more valuable than glorifying his own. That's not a debate, folks; it's just more insubstantial ad hominem attacks. He also preached the virtues of listening to words, and then repeatedly spewed frothy manipulations like "terrorist," "destroy," "plumber Joe," "Sarah Palin knows autism," "preconditions," "hero(es)" etc. and so forth.
(I should point out the irony now before people observe it: I'm criticizing McCain without justifying Obama's position. Obama has left behind far less detritus for me to clean up than McCain has. Keep in mind that my philosophical disagreements with Obama include his belief in "traditional" marriage [fuck prop 8, everybody], his "we must find Osama Bin Laden and kill him" credo, and his lackluster health care reform [McCain's is just evil]. What I do like about Obama is his belief in discussion, equal responsibility, and his [apparent] aversion to corporate greed. Now that I've cleared the waters, let's continue.)
Then--submerging himself now in hardening cement--McCain proposed that military personnel shouldn't require testing to land teaching positions, while people stateside (like myself) work diligently under this almost dictatorial school system, hoping against hope to land a job where no jobs are available. A good friend of mine is a military man; he's also mentally unstable because of the war (for those of you who think you know who I'm talking about, it's not Fred. Fred is good.) The last thing I want is for him to teach me during an English Literature lecture the language of blowing a man to smithereens on the battlefronts of desolate Iraq. Our country, mind you, produces hoards of PTSD-inflicted troops who, for the first time in their lives, witnessed something as visceral as a running human bomb so passionately intent on blowing up a few unsuspecting people in a hummer that they were willing (as the anonymous friend testified) to let their bodies become bags of blood and organs, while their faces severed cleanly from their skulls, the upward blast propelling them in-tact to the hot earth. Unsurprisingly, I think McCain's education plan is probably the worst thing I've ever heard.
Barack Obama consistently repeats, like a broken record (for the better), that people from the bottom up must take responsibility for their actions. That's only fair. While I don't subscribe wholeheartedly to the Obama philosophy, this coincides neatly with mine. Shouldn't the same apply to military personnel? After I acquire my degrees in English and Anthropology and work towards a PhD. in one of the two, I expect to be given a secure job based upon my intellectual merits; it should not devolve into a semantic debate over my "heroic" status.
Obama is not the answer; McCain is an even worse answer. But at least Obama represents a step in the right direction.
Vote Obama '08 everybody.
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| A Possibly Failed Attempt to be Reasonable Under the Circumstances |
[07 Oct 2008|02:17am] |
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Bohren & der Club of Gore - Destroying Angels |
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Imagine my surprise when, while scanning ironically through the Christianity books at work because my job tells me to do things I don't want to do, a lanky, loud woman chastised me for "not representing the christian community" when she asked for two gospel albums and found that we carried neither. I was confused and taken aback by the accusation. Then I realized that she had seen me as a personification--rather than an obligatory cog--of an entire corporate empire whose goal she misinterpreted as trying to ruin her religion. I understood.
Here's how it went:
"Where's all the gospel music?" she asked abrasively, as if to accuse me before I could adequately answer.
"It doesn't move off the shelves," I began patiently, "and our vendor asks for the non-sellers to be sent back. I can order one of them for you." My response was necessarily lame because of my boss's explicit demand that I censor all religious apprehensions on the job.
"Two columns," she laughed as I showed her the section, "two columns and three for Religious music" (the latter apparently, to her, disposing of all non-Christian doctrines. To this woman the word "religious" signified one lifestyle and no other: the big, obnoxious, break-window singing amid the stained glass windows bearing representations of supposedly ancient figures, kind of lifestyle.)"Get me the corporate number. This needs fixing." Concluding this, she promptly forgot the conclusion and walked out of the store, my manager chasing her and apologizing mysteriously for my incompetence in only uncertain terms.
My religious criticisms aside, this type of closed-mindedness--where the possibilities that maybe I'm not a part of Barnes & Noble's metaphorical brain-matter, that I don't represent its religious biases, that perhaps I don't believe what she believes, or that the scarcity of her music stemming from a relatively feeble fan-base and consequently low sales--is absurdly anti-intellectual. Well, I'm a non-believer and that's fine, a worker for an occasionally disagreeable corporation, and I never got into gospel music and apparently lots of other people didn't, either.
Here's what I really wanted to say when she asked "why don't you guys represent the Christian community?" (the following is, I think, a fair argument, and I challenge--and welcome--other points of view):
"The bookfloor and its twelve bays of Christianity versus two bays of Eastern religions and three bays of Philosophy; the tiny, two bay science section versus all the big self-help books that preach mental well being through a belief in the Christian god... ah... the one row of linguistics... the little tiny math section... I think the store represents the Christian community just fine. But, of course, it's no problem. I can get you the corporate number, of course. I'll call Carol over here and she'll get it for you." I would pause for a moment, as if to ponder her complaint seriously. "Yeah, you know, you may have a point after all," I would muse, propping my chin up facetiously with a thinking fist. "We could maybe designate two more bays of Christian Inspiration and just bump out some of the Eastern religions to make room." I would say this considerately, if that's possible.
Over the past year, as much as Christianity or some bastardized version of it has been holding back our government and infringing on egalitarian and ethical principles such as accepting gay marriage and pushing for biological stem-cell research and allowing for reproductive justice, I at least have come to understand that Christians believe what they believe either from mental abuse during childhood (the bad one), or because they have rationally deduced god's existence (this being the better of the two). Having accepted that the universe is a patternless and natural mess, I have rationally deduced otherwise. But I get along fine with religious people so long as they meet two prerequisites: Don't degrade me for my disbelief and allow me to criticize religion openly and calmly (and criticize me, too). This thinking is a precursor to rational discourse and friendship.
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| Cabo San Stupid |
[10 Sep 2008|12:36am] |
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Escapist cruises all have their weak points. Setting aside the seasickness resulting from a constantly rocking ship, and the questionable buffet food, and the crowds of sometimes aggravating, selfish gluttons, and the temporary, seven-day alcoholism that every morning tries to teach your head and your stomach a thing or two, it's when the ship docks that you wonder whether or not the land you're about to set foot on will just sit still and keep your head in order for the few hours you get to call it home.
Day 3 (days 1 and 2 have been encapsulated in the first half of the second sentence): Cabo San Lucas
Today was a disaster. Our ship reached the port of call--that is to say, it set anchor about two football fields from the shoreline in shallow waters, afraid of the ground--at around 10AM. Because the Royal Caribbean lay so far from the shoreline, each passenger grabbed numbered tickets that a drab voice, roboticized via a fuzzy intercom, called at intervals. Then, in spurts and clusters, we were huddled like cattle into lifeboats from the first deck, seated on warm, rubber-clad benches, given the routine safety lecture by an archaic tape recorded message, and sent finally ashore, enveloped all the while in misty humidity and breathing the sweat and odor of an hundred passengers who silently longed for reestablished comfort zones. Contrasted with what might hypothetically have been a disorganized mess, this was luxurious.
When we reached the shore and debarked from the lifeboat, citizens looking for a quick buck almost immediately shoved their homemade trinkets and gewgaws in our faces. As Joyce scrunched her face in annoyance at all the persistence, I impatiently refused all merchandise. Then came propositions from other angles: "Lover's beach taxi! Very cheap!" I pulled Joyce's arm in the direction I wanted to go.
"We're not going?" She said.
"I hadn't thought," I said, "we can't trust these people." That was terribly ethnocentric of me.
"Who told you that?"
"Sensible people who give good advice," I said, only half-jokingly. "Our waiter said to avoid Lover's Beach. We'll go to Cabo Wabo."
"We only just ate." She held back her anger. "Now where are we to go, if not there?"
"We'll walk."
"We need a water taxi, idiot. On foot, we'd need to climb the big dangerous rock wall."
"Okay," I conceded, leaving for the persistent men wielding the signs. I called over a mustachioed and overweight Mexican--such an abundance of mass signified in this impoverished nation a well-fed richness unattainable by the overpopulated masses; the streets harbored most of them like water harbors a sinking ship.
"You want a taxi, amigo?"
"How much there and back?"
He held up a plastic folder containing documents, and photos printed on magazine paper showing the beach from various angles. "Ten dollars," he continued, "one dollar to get through the gate." He walked us over to a steel-bar enclosure, behind which stood a bedraggled man wielding a fan of cash that he waved back and forth to combat the foul mist and flying dirt that pervaded Cabo's abused air. "One dollar," the man said. Joyce handed him my twenty dollar bill. "You want change for this?" He smiled wryly at his charm before shortening his bill-fan into my hand. He grabbed a five and then, in that moment--newly illuminated by a startling notion--transformed it into five ones, indicating that he wanted a tip. Even the most minute amount of labor--in this case, standing behind a gate and receiving cash from strangers--warranted to them some small gratuity. I left him sadly under-the-weather.
The gatekeeper led us over a rickety wooden dock. Small boats lay docked smugly next to one another, each chip of paint on their bodies attributed to the up and down scraping motions that the disturbed water forced upon them. At the end of the dock an old, dark-skinned man in front of a small green ferry with a triangular, blue fore, beckoned to us. On the side of the boat, in bold white letters, it exclaimed "Glass-bottomed boat!" Indeed, this exclamation rang true, for on the floor, in an open rectangular enclosure, dirty Plexi-glass replaced the bland wood, giving view to a lifeless, green and mossy sea.
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| A Very Painful Experience |
[23 Jun 2008|02:37am] |
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In Pain |
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Shearwater - My Only Boy |
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Friday afternoon I went with my brother and twenty-five of his friends on a two day rafting and camping excursion to Cache Creek. The sun boiled the parts of my skin exposed between the fibers of my life vest, and the shape of the resulting sunburn is rather unique. Meanwhile, my feet, covered solely by two tattered flip-flops, got the worst punishment. They now resemble coagulated lumps of tomato ketchup.
These burns do not distract my body from the terrible blow three rocks dealt my lower back and right hip while I attempted, along with a few fellows, to idle along the creek prone on my back, my feet held above the water's surface. After the Big Mama rapid--the aptly named climax of the rafting trip--we stopped off at a nearby slope to dump the collected water out of our rafts. This done, everybody walked back towards the rapids along the shoreline over a steep, rocky decline, gripping the slippery ground with the soles of their fastened sandals. I fell in line and followed everybody to satisfy my curiosity. When I hit this slope, my wet flip flops had collected some of the moss from the creek, making them useless. I pulled the things off and carried them in hand, all the while spouting obscenities as blade-like rocks punctured my feet. Ten minutes elapsed before I reached the crew (it took everybody else only two minutes). I saw that they were dunking their bodies in the creek between two boulders at the tail-end of Big Mama. Water poured between the two rocks, forming a strong current that resisted everybody as they attempted, one by one, to float from that point back to the rafts. When it came my turn, I was, of course, the last person to set off. I placed my body between the two rocks and pushed my way forward as the intense water pressure for some time precluded my advance. I gained my bearings eventually and, still holding my flip-flops tightly, I dug my bare heels into the rocks and sand on the creek bed and pushed forward. The water had submerged me chest-deep. I sidled around the boulder, hugging it tightly. When I finally reached the other side, I kicked off where the current, pushing now towards the open creek, abruptly changed its trajectory.
My body spun three times rapidly, snagged a submerged craggy boulder, and got dragged beneath the water. Then, my back now facing everybody safely docked in the distance, my right hip slammed into another rock, which spun my body underwater so fiercely that when another rock hit the same hip, I cried out in lurid pain. I thought at that moment that I might drown, though the incident lasted but a few seconds. Horrifying pain can drag even a few seconds into an illusory few minutes.
I reached the surface and quickly lifted my feet above the water and let the life vest keep me buoyant as the river dragged me tumultuously along. En route to the shoreline, I had a panic attack. I heaved heavily and coughed out the disgusting water that I had breathed into my lungs. I arrived back to the rafts and got a few concerned commentaries along with a wealth of unsympathetic laughter at my expense.
This laughter, under different circumstances, might have angered me. But this weekend meant escaping, at least for the moment, some semblance of civilization. We're happy to embark on excursions like these because the bulk of our sorrow and stress exists in the doldrums of regular life. We escape and establish small communities--tents and barbecues and alcohol and pastimes--at campsites because we're not content with our own lives. Why, then, should I be angry? For the first time in a long while, I loosened up, forgot all of my recent health problems, forgot the terrifying dullness of work, forgot learning and reading and criticizing, forgot my father, forgot my dogs, my cats, my anger, my occasional depression. In short, I forgot everything for a short time. Then, after the weekend had ended Sunday morning, I wanted to remember everything but my anger and my depression. Without those last two, I would be a far better human being.
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| A Message I Wrote When I Had All the Time In the World and Nothing to Do |
[20 Jun 2008|05:30am] |
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Faunts - Memories of Places We've Never Been |
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To Yeng, a former co-worker with whom I’ve lost a connection until this strange message collision, via Myspace:
This message is in response to a video posted on myspace, in which lines of simple text tell a story (with that atrocious All-American Rejects song as the background music) of a philosophy professor who, by the end of every semester, convinced all of his students that God didn’t exist. He would say “stand up if you still believe in God.” Nobody would stand up. He would then say “that’s because anybody who believes in God is a fool!” Then, like a maniac wielding a small blade in hand, he would hold up a shimmering, brand new piece of chalk. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he would ask, staring at the cylindrical writing instrument. “If God exists, he will stop this chalk from hitting the floor.” A non-sequitur, by all rights, considering the risk of striking some unfortunate coincidence, whereby physics, not feeling especially pleased with said professor’s irritable attitude upon an embarrassing day, would stab him unconsciously in the back, trip him up, and make the chalk fall upon his jacket pocket, hit his sleeve cuff, roll down his pant leg, and swiftly, without a scratch registered, fall to the ground and roll against the opposite wall, making his and every student’s body shiver suddenly in amazement and fear. “Oh,” they might think, “the holy spirit is in that chalk. Let us repent somehow!” No, no, your god is unforgiving on these matters. Deny the holy spirit and you’re fucked. Irredeemably fucked! Anyway, this is exactly the coincidence that took place. Shame on the philosophy professor for committing a terrible fallacy.
One day, upon hearing of this professor’s untarnished reputation, a religious proselytizer registered in the class for the sole purpose of “keeping his faith.” He prayed every night, pulling all-nighters, asking the omniscient-omnipresent-omnipotent being for a few favors: namely, to prove his existence… somehow. Well, the final day rolled around. The philosophy professor asked his question and watched the Christian student rise from his seat. He held aloft a brand new piece of chalk, looking at this student as he said his usual line. He dropped the chalk, and watched as it fell softly to the ground, rushing through all those obstacles I described above… not a blemish, not a scratch, not a single, solitary chip in its surface. Whereas before it had broken into a million pieces, even the dust now held firm, and the professor’s fingers were the same color as if they had been scrubbed clean. The professor, perhaps in a fit of rage, or brilliant sarcasm, or weak sentiment, broke from his post and fled the classroom, leaving the podium for the Christian to proselytize the word of Christ, whose “death meant our retribution.” The Christian, in lieu of an unthinking but apparently logical philosopher, takes his stance, and, poised perfectly in a position of attack, seduces each and every one of his fellow students as easily as an adult would convince an impressionable child that he is, indeed, a wobbly penishead.
But here’s my short, somewhat ridiculous, response to Yeng. Her bulletin was entitled “What Would You Do?”:
I would stay seated and insist that the Jesus guy is a fool. In fact, I would follow up with a lecture of my own. In it, I would tell the class that they have two choices: 1.) think that there are only two choices possible or 2.) realize that there are multiple choices. We are in a philosophy class, after all, and we don’t need false dichotomies and other such harmful fallacies ruining our logical minds. I would also say that the philosophy professor, being the type of man who would jettison himself out of the classroom, around the corner, and into the teacher's lounge for a nice cup of tea after so many years of getting his students to think, is either a brilliant humorist, or an ironically thoughtless philosophy professor. I would conclude with this thought: "the chalk didn't break into a thousand fragments. The sun, in some distant country, seemed to dance in the sky years ago. The shroud of Turin apparently had Jesus' face and body outline embedded into the fibers, uncannily representing that enigmatic man-on-the cross--at least as far as artists' renderings have given him some semblance of form and structure up to that point. These are all apparently inexplicable miracles. Here are answers: science has eliminated the shroud, dating it to the time of Leonardo, not Jesus. This dancing sun preyed on thousands of ardent believers who were so utterly convinced that a sun had, in fact, moved in the daytime sky. These are people hypnotized by their beliefs. And, well, the chalk: after so many years, the chalk fell. Well, think of your god. Think of Thor and Zeus and Apollo. Think of the sun god and goddess Ra and Amaterasu. Think of the thousands of gods and goddesses that have existed since the dawn of our species. Those with religion are atheists with respect to those gods in which they do not believe. Just go one god further. The universe simply makes more sense without god."
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| Sycophantic Horny Authority Figures |
[13 Jun 2008|04:52am] |
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Vivaldi - Concerto in F Major |
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Two days ago an act of utter dishonesty propelled me into such a fit of agony and frustration that I could hardly continue my day as a fully functional drone bot at work. This post is not, refreshingly, about work. This is a story that I will relate, no doubt, haphazardly, for the details reached me via Joyce's mouth; she was not even at the scene of the crime herself. In short, here's a copy of a copy of a true story, rekindled and then abruptly mangled for your dismay.
One's parking spot is one's own. To usurp another's parking spot without the express permission of the owner is, to me, utterly disreputable, as I'm sure many sensible people would agree. We might also agree, then, that Mr. William Lee (Joyce's jovial father) had every reason to knock kindly on the neighbor's door and ask that their friend, who they presumably had over for a nice cup of tea, remove their car from in front of William's house. He did not do this. Instead, as any nice fellow might do who speaks an insufficient amount of English and who is non-confrontational on such matters, he inched his car ever-closer to the rear of the obstruction carefully, meticulously. Not a bump of the fender, nor a single, solitary scratch did he issue to the back of the other car. His bumper may nearly have protruded beyond his line of grass into another neighbor's yard, but this neighbor was nice enough, and said nothing. William expected to spend a peaceful day lounging around on his couch, watching the ol' tube box as his head vibrated to the beat of his rumbly-massager.
Two hours thereafter, somebody knocked on the door. William answered and then found himself staring--dumbfounded--at the apparently angry but pretty face of a tanned Latina with big eyes and a curvaceous figure.
"Is that your van parked behind my car?" She asked impatiently.
William, still confused, said innocently: "yes."
"You hit my car."
"No," he said, "I... uh... parked there. You took my spot. I not hit."
"We need to exchange insurance information."
At this time, Karen Lee, the wife (Joyce's mother), came to the door to see what was happening. William explained, in Cantonese, the apparent problem. Karen asked William if it was true, and he said that it wasn't.
"He says he didn't hit your car," Karen said, her English more refined than William's.
"My friend witnessed the whole thing." She went and pulled her friend, another neighbor, from his hiding spot. "Tell them what you saw," she demanded.
"He pulled up," he began, "and kept getting closer. Then he backed up again, came forward for a second, and then backed up again before coming forward again and hitting your car. Then he backed up quickly when he saw what he did." Having served his function, the witness moved away and became, appropriately, a spectator once more.
"See?" she said, still more angrily and very unreasonably. At this point, as you might have noticed, William was at something of a disadvantage. While Karen might have acted as a nice liaison, her better English could not position her, no matter how persuasively, in the advantageous position of a witness. She must, for now, sit comfortably in the background, digging up moments, here and there, to say something, to interrupt this unreasonable discourse. But it will not help. "We need to exchange insurance information right now," the woman prodded persistently. Still paralyzed from this surprising outcome, William could not speak. His silence transcended the language boundary. As far as both parties were concerned, he had offered his parking spot willingly to the friend of his neighbor. He had maneuvered his car such that the inconvenience caused to him, in direct opposition to the luxury offered graciously to the victim, sufficed as a textbook example of a selfless deed. And yet, in a world of such terrible dishonesty, here we have the inconsiderate, thankless team of insurance leeching, money hungry beggars who acted as the temporary ambivalent neighbors, but really they were just biding their time for that perfect moment when their plan would work to perfection. And it did.
Seeing that her anger had gotten her nowhere, she decided to phone the cops. In a few minutes, an authority figure would surely settle the matter, would surely grant his objective view to the dispute for the common good of both parties, in order not that justice, necessarily, could be served, but that they might reach a peaceful consensus. Doesn't this hypothetical outcome, after all, constitute some manner of justice? Isn't this the ideal way to solve a problem?
The spiffy-looking cop moved authoritatively from his car, donning his black habits and toting a gun at his hip on a belt that allegedly works all too well for coercing the ladies.
"What seems to be the problem?" (I imagine him asking this, if only because the speech cliche would have it so. In most situations of fiction and non-fiction alike, the cop is evidently never certain that there is a problem at all, and so sneaks in "seems" for good measure, in case he is there on a false errand, as if the powers of some schizophrenic urge compelled him to that spot at the precise moment.) The Latina related her tall tale about giants issuing forth from underground in a nearby sylvan forest where faeries flutter about and a dark witch ravages the beauteous environs while knights from the kingdom of Yslbach, in order to continue procuring the rich vegetation and to subject the faeries and other such creatures to indentured servitude "for the good of their kingdom", tried to overthrow the dark witch. The heavens, upon hearing of the knights' victory, thought to land this large van, at this very moment, and at this precise position, upon the conclusion of a certain after-party celebration in the kingdom, on this unsuspecting and innocent car. Oh, the horror!
Regardless, none of what she said would have mattered, for at that moment, as the cop unhinged his eyes from said Latina's big juggy jugs, he looked almost drunkenly at William, trying in his way to subdue some onslaught of over-indulgent-boob-gazing nausea, and yelled thus: "You will give this woman your insurance information right now, or I'll have you taken in. I expect your cooperation."
William, cooperative but guiltless, nice but angry, complied as the cop moved over to the woman's car and asked her nicely if she would bend over and take pictures of the spot as he examined the dent closely, bending down along with her. "Don't worry," the cop said, "this'll be over shortly." He patted her back a few times with increasing heaviness and watched her Jello molds jiggle. Then, having defended the woman, and almost breaching her pants with his unrelenting charm, the cop moved back over to William and yelled some more, scolding the poor man whose speech disadvantage kept him at bay. Karen, meanwhile (because I seem to have forgotten about her), could say nothing. She merely implored, with what word power she had, for the cop to be fair. The cop, taking this accusation rather heavily, continued to yell at William... then at Karen... then at William again.
Just then, the neighbor to the left of William's house came out to see what was with all this ruckus. Abruptly the cop, upon seeing this neighbor (but perhaps he saw her too late), lowered his tone to that of a whisper in comparison. Perhaps there is hope yet: William has found a witness for his side. "Just be sure," he said, "to make the claim. I'll be off now." But he wasn't off... he wanted another gander at the big bubbly booby burgs of the pretty, angry, unreasonable Latina... the Latina, it seems, who won by virtue of having inverted genitals and excessively large mammary glands.
Here we have two issues: sexism and the abuse of authority. Surely it doesn't require an observant eye to discern that none of this makes any logical sense. So simply, we can sneak money lawlessly and dishonestly out of the pockets of our peers. Try it one day; if you're a hot woman with really big breasts and you happen to get a young horny white male cop examining the problem, you might emerge with a pretty neat settlement.
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| I've Just Peed My Pants |
[02 Jun 2008|05:16pm] |
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Bersarin Quartett - Oktober |
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When I entered the break room before work, I saw a collection of faces whose parted lips and bared teeth described almost complete, wordless insincerity. Straightened backs, heads held aloft like helium-filled balloons, arms like stone pillars and fingers like miniature obelisks... dollar signs lit up their eyes... black, dilated voids at their centers. Then, joyful banter, patterned speeches filled with unfounded optimism (because of our brilliant customer service skills), all the while asking the quiet ones (me and only a couple others) to add something to the stale discussion. And those who resist conversation are the sincere ones. They slouch their backs, fold their arms to create little pillows on which to rest their heads that are grounded, despite all odds, in reality. In short, they tell the truth.
Neil the manager: affable as a yellow lab, fake as a waxwork sandwich. The following are the posters on the far walls of Barnes and Noble that I see whenever I stand at my post, where I'm tucked away at the back of the store without company: Gone With the Wind (A carriage amid a colorless backdrop), The Great Gatsby (A melancholy, almost featureless half-face above the illuminated streets of jazz-age somewhere), and my personal favorite, The Grapes of Wrath (Old Tommy Joad and friends watch the packed caravan as it departs for a deceptively beautiful California). These are the things that Neil--and everybody else--forgets about. This is our culture. Barnes and Noble, a place that ironically holds the pantheon of knowledge, greatly distrusts its own merchandise and reduces important novels down to their pictoral representations; they become things to sell, things depersonalized, not important works whose themes have somehow shaped our reality.
I cannot get over this. I cannot not work here as long as the freeze on jobs persists. If I leave, I'll inevitably end up with another, possibly worse job position. At least here I can write my thoughts, secluded away from everybody and everything. For the time being, anyway.
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| Short |
[05 Apr 2008|05:19am] |
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mood |
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Ambivalent |
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music |
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Roedelius & Tim Story - Ripple and Fade |
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Sometimes I study the habits of my managers and I think, perhaps bigly, that I shouldn't blame them for falling in line. With time I might become these people. In an impossible world, I could burn up my illogical rage and watch all the strange and beautiful colors emerge, leaving me finally tranquil.
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| The Big Pink Man |
[02 Apr 2008|01:54am] |
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mood |
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sad |
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music |
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Jakob - Safety In Numbers |
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Night drives often dig up buried memories. When the dim lights of the freeway seem to illuminate only small patches of road, so as to seem almost pointless in their existence, to concentrate on them is to lull the body into a deep and prosperous trance. I usually remember nothing interesting enough for this journal during these drives. Tonight is the exception.
Years ago during my final spring break from high school I participated in a long waste of time that turned out in retrospect to be time well spent. A few friends and acquaintances--five of us, I think--were to select a single video game console and bring it to David Mikula's--or Cartman's (as we knew him)--considerably cold garage. Then we were to play video games to the point of cultivating a very unhealthy, hallucinatory sort of insomnia. Eventually the colors on whatever television screen lay in front of me became three dimensional, jumped out simply and fluidly, and hit my face so precisely, as to make the moving pictures seem almost real. Then the images would flicker and fade and become black suddenly: without realizing it, my eyes would close for seconds at a time and then I would open them suddenly, and a wave of exhaustion would pass like a weak virus that invades the body. Thirty seven hours went by, three participants had fallen victim to fatigue, and David and I were all that remained. We worked tirelessly until we both conceded to a mutual victory. I'm still waiting for a third of my prize money.
It took weeks before any of us would admit that the arduous contest was any fun. We remembered it and talked about it for a long time before the nostalgic conversations about the event stopped.
But this post is really about David. After the contest had replayed in my memory, the left over scar tissue was the image of David resolutely sitting in front of his television screen as the lights flickered over his round pink face and his squinting eyes. Why is this important?
Today David and I have nothing in common--a truth he apparently felt inclined to confirm upon a time at Denny's, when he appeared in the restaurant randomly and hastily left the building without so much as a nod of the head. He had deliberately done this.
Perhaps a past so seriously trivial and yet so significant to me has become for David a series of fleeting and childish moments that, while they should be important, are incompatible with his current lifestyle. Many of us make friends on the brink of adulthood, and the bonds can either survive the tumultuous reality of growing up, or they can slowly disappear until there is nothing remaining but faint memories that may as well die and sink somewhere below the surface of our thoughts.
David has established some measure of personal success and I hold an hourly position as an unfortunate bookseller at an unfortunate bookstore with an unfortunate pay rate. This mismatch seems to have hit him across the face like an iron glove.
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| Good News For Those Who Don't Feel These Physical Pangs |
[14 Mar 2008|04:16am] |
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mood |
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Back Compacted |
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music |
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Death Cab for Cutie - Tiny Vessels |
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When I reach forward, like now, my back crunches and stretches and pain radiates from an injured thoracic vertebral disc between my shoulder blades and afflicts the muscles surrounding it. Then everything feels injured elsewhere when nowhere else is injured. My sciatic nerve seems to be carrying the weight of my entire body; the back no longer fulfills its cushioning function. The muscles in my legs have weakened and they require day-long massages. Where the ball-and-socket joint meets the sciatic notch it feels like somebody or something is grinding my bones to a fine powder. That says nothing about the tingling sensation that covers my body: it begins at the tips of the two leftmost fingers on my left hand, ventures to my shoulders, turns downward and journeys through the lats to the lower back, benumbs my ass cheeks, and ends at the tips of the toes on my left foot. Finally, my ribs don't so much protect my heart from knife attacks as they are attacking knives. Now if anybody ever asks me to prove evolution, I'll cite the faulty human body as my primary source. In the meantime, the pins and needles will do their work and I'll endure the pain.
This is all happening as I type these words because after four months of panic and anguish over the joint pain in my neck--after the many nights of stifled cries and futile sleep attempts--my doctor, after four visits to her office, has finally admitted that "this could be a herniated disc." She administered x-rays, referred me to a physical therapist, ordered blood tests, snatched my urine through a small window in the bathroom, and of course, offered drugs to help numb the body to the actual pain until this can all be straightened out. This should have happened months ago when the pain began.
I'm pretty upset, but hey, at least I'm not paralyzed. Now my back tells ten pounds--at most--that it's too heavy. I can't carry a backpack through campus without feeling the urge to fall on all fours like a wild beast.
Icy Hot pads and solutions, clay-based therapy (both hot and cold), massage therapy, lumbar rolls to straighten the back, memory foam pillows, an egg-crate mattress, improved posture. . . some of these are very temporary solutions and the rest exacerbate the pain.
There's the bed. Now I can try to sleep through the pain and suppress the shrill cries.
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