Thursday, December 23, 2004

Work and more work

Well I knew the streak couldn't last. This will be the first five day work week that I've had since I came to the valley. Since I've been here I've been blessed with the opportunity to have four ten hour days and three days off in a row. This week, due to the fact that we lost three porters in two weeks and have a fourth on light duty to an unrelated injury, I will be pulling a fifty hour five day week, through the last two bracebridge performances and Christmas day. NO FUN. But it will mean a sixty hour paycheck at the end of it, which will be good, but I'm not sure that it will be worth all the work I'm going to be doing. I can only hope that I get the cook position I want before Chef's holiday comes around in January. Chef's Holiday is an enormous event that takes up the entire hotel for about three weeks. That means a disgusting amount of work for me, your friendly and hapless night porter. Also, it was inevitable, though I had hoped to stave it off for a longer period of time, I will be moving into a WOB this week. W.O.B is an acronym for "with out bathroom," basically a little shed like building they call a cabin that has windows and is more like a house, but is MUCH smaller than the tent I've grown used to. The only real benefit to living in a WOB is that you can be a little noisier without irritating neighbors, but our WOB shares a wall with another one. Our neighbor happens to be someone we know and are friends with but she works mornings and we work nights...so we're still going to have to be quiet, maybe even more quiet actually. So the only real benefit to living in a WOB as I see it is negated by that fact, and it is not going to be worth it to move, but i don't want to have to get a different roommate. *(grumble)* I don't know why mark is dead set for getting an f'ing cabin, but he seems to feel it's a necessary change. Well, we'll see, if I don't like it enough, I'm sure I can always move back into a tent and find another roommate. But I haven't lived in a cabin yet and am willing to give it a try at least before saying nay. Bleh. I'll admit that I'm slightly disappointed in this, we'll have to pay for an internet connection because the wireless network will not go that far through solid walls. And I was hoping to avoid ANY kind of monthly expense that I feel is unnecessary, since the single largest reason for me to be here is to be able to save money and pay off debt. Again, bleh.
Bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan. PISS.

*(sigh)*

Not much else to say, work, and more work.

hope you are all having a good holiday and all that, I wish you all tranquil, and beautiful days full of laughter, joy, and love. And between working and sleeping, I have to find time to move, do laundry, eat once or twice this week, and keep up with email for as long as I have this IC to do so.

Later

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Interrogative

Via cadillacs and suburus we travel to the known beyond, yet, with minds like traps and souls of ash, we draw the line of no return between today and tomorrow. Still are the thoughts of the interrogative, for they spin our their tales for no one into the vacuum of independant media, and it is absorbed by the great double-think machine of Washington, and Hollywood, and Disney. And that is the way that we know what there is not to know, what there is left to know, because what we see everyday is that which we have been told to know, and that which has BEEN known by others to be wrong. So hail the interrogative and hail the thoughts of all as one, for this is the age of information, and catalogues and happy endings, of savings cards, and interest rates, and online memberships. And only you can prevent forest fires, and global warming, and water pollution, and air pollution, and Donald Rumsfeld. But to hope and dream of a cleaner, brighter, perfumed tomorrow, is poison to what may come; if an hour from now is the future, than the work needs to come now, and the hope be left for the yesterday. Because if yesterday were an hour ago, than the workers must have called in, for today is stinkier than the day before, and ten years from now will be gagging.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Never till the end

And in this our world we spy the words and images that make us who we are. While gorging our minds with media and news we don't notice reality pass us by on golden wings calling to us from afar. So for this day this hour this minute we have a truth to tell the world that might listen, may care, could see, what would be if our imagery could reflect the scope of our thoughts. The clouds tell more than the sun as it burns our days to dust and ruin, etching its radiation into our souls and coming out of us in each exhalation of air to be eaten by plants and regurgitated into more fuel for the fires. Into the self we must dive and hold our collective breaths so not to drown in the murk and grime we hold so dear. But for today, again, we feel what we touch, believe what we see, taste what we chew and swallow our pride to wake up and smell the caffienated future on the horizon that wanders ever farther for all that we strive to catch it. As in this and all things we can grasp the meaning we have a sixth sense for, call it faith or intuition or meaningless gabble, we know that the future isn't ours at all, but someone elses past. The acid that drops upon our eyes as we stare in wonder at the irony and sarcasm of age, bleeds away the imagination and openness of youth to lie in an ugly stain on the rug we blame on our pets who are our only friends. For as we ride in this rudderless canoe down the river lethe in hopes of one day forgetting that we can't remember who we are, we stop being our own friends and start being our own parents, trying to keep ourselves "out of trouble" and on the "right track." And so never till the end do we know the lies we tell ourselves and each other, to live by, to cry by, to love by...

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Where we run

So this at last is where we run to, where we seek the peices that we've missed. There's no where else that we know of, this is all we have left. No where now but still running, fleeing the past and fearing the future. The strip malls, department stores, and downtown centers please us with distractions and feed us cheap chintzy hope for a capitalistic holiday and an easy off oven cleaner. The candies and gems that the salesmen show us are rotten or cracked but taste or shine the same if we look the other way. With car washes, psychiatrists, and plastic surgeons praying to the gods of commerce and showing us the way to a $.50 scrub and wax, a cookie cutter personality, and a face only Michael Jackson could love, who needs love, who needs friends, who needs...sincerity. Climb on the train, fall off the wagon, bend your knees to progress, let's all join hands and have an ankle grabbin' good time welcoming the new age, or a time when even plastic itself is fake, and we've lost all the molds for truth and the truth is green and can be used for antibiotics to grow better, stronger lies. Let's open ourselves to mediocrity and banish those that would have us excel, nothing but nothing comes of nothing, and we need nothing to see what something is. The 1920's were brilliant with their spangles and laced dresses and suits and drinks and noses, only in a time of prosperity can cocaine be legal and more people die at parties than in violence. We love this our true blue, new, America, the shining, gleaming, buttressed champion of child labor and soft drinks. We can't but kiss the flag while licking it with flames, and watch our cities burn with crime and politics. And all that our parents told us, is nothing more than the annoying background whine of an AM station over the bad country music that our lives seem to sound like when told to others.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

I AM NEO

So yeah I feel like I've been dodging bullets like Keanu Reeves in a trenchcoat. I tried that dating thing that people talk about all the time. Not an experience that I'd subjected myself to before so thought that I'd give it a try. Like so many other bad ideas that are fostered in this skull of mine this culminated in a good amount of lost venture capital and an equivalent amount of discomfort.

Not unlike someone diving from a plane and deciding that "who needs to check the chute" is a sound philosophy, I barreled my way into the dating world head first with an untested crash helmet and plowed down a few walls before realizing that the walls are there to prevent one from dropping into a pit lined with serrated pitch-forks.

Actually, it wasn't at all bad. It was interesting and educational, not unlike having a limb amputated for science. OK, I'm joking. Really. The subject of said dating experiment is a VERY nice person, beautiful inside and out, and intelligent to boot. We simply have about as much in common as a swan and a falcon; in the same family, but that's where similarities end. I like her actually, but we would both have to change a LOT, for us to cohabitate in a bloodless manner. And as I've stated before, quite often the level of change that's necessary will sever what meager ties may pre-exist.

But about the bullet dodging, I feel that we could both be considered for oscars in our roles as black leather clad revolutionaries, for we managed a bloodless and completely amiable volley of non-lethal probes into each other's psyches, and both came away without any damage, and with egos intact.

We'll even, I believe, manage to remain friends to whatever degree two people as different as we are could be.

So I'd say that it was a successful experiment, albeit risky as all hell, in as much as we work in the same building, and no-one EVER knows what kind of weapons another will bring to bare.

Well, that's it for this exercise in blathering my life story to the cyber-world.

Until next time, keep your mac-10's loaded, and your cartwheels tight, cause you never know when an agent's gonna reach to rip your heart out.

Monday, December 13, 2004

Sad Sappy Sucker

Yes I know that my title for this post is a rip off of a Modest Mouse album. But it's appropriate given my mood. My mood is one of a person that is trying to contemplate where they are and how far they've come. Which is, naturally, bound to generate a subjective answer, in as much as everyone is going to see respective conditions differently.

A lot of people would definitely see where I am now as an infinitely better position in a lot of ways from anywhere I've ever been. And of course there will be those that will say, "Wow, look how far HE fell." I'm some where in the middle. While I've certainly managed to lose a good percentage of everything I've worked for since I moved out on my own, and all I've really maintained from the last eight years is experience, I think that where I am now in general isn't really better or worse, just...very different.

I think that the lifestyle that this place foments is easily sustainable, but not very uplifting so you don't really have much in the way of prospects for a bright future here. I think that the ease of living may well ruin me for the city life I once thrived on, but I know that I will always miss quite a bit about the area and the standard of living that I've grown used to.

So I'm glad that I've come to experience this in my allotted years, but I guess that only time will tell if it will end up being worth what I lost to get here. And that is based on entirely too many factors to even begin describing so I won't bother.

Of course in the end it doesn't really matter if I've dropped or climbed a rung in the grand scheme of things, because I'm still around, I'm still hanging on, and I can still keep trying. Whether or not it will amount to anything? Who cares. It's the race itself that's fun, who gives a rats ass about the finish line.

Here's to hoping none of us see the finish line anytime soon.

Cheers

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Around again

And again and again. Of late I've diagnosed a behavioral symptom of depression in my lack of ability to stay motivated about an active healthy lifestyle. Or is that just laziness...*(shrug)* I've started going to the gym here on not exactly a regular basis, about once every two-three days. And while I can cast blame upon the type of work I do, in as much as quite often moving furniture all day is more draining and strenuous than the gym could ever be, I still feel like a pansy when I roll out of bed and stare at the clock completely incapable of making myself get dressed and walk out the damned door.

Oddly enough, I never have a problem motivating myself for work. Only when the activity I need to get up for is voluntary in nature do I have difficulty do anything other than grumbling to myself while crawling back into bed.

These things seem to go into cycles as well, I'll be hyper motivated for about two weeks, I'll get up and go like it's nothing, be out all day being a hyper monkey super-ball, doing as much as I can to try to cause myself to wake up in pain the next day. THEN all of the sudden, this HUGE wave of apathy washes over me, and I ask myself, "Why do I hate myself so much that I wish to make myself work on my days off? BRING ON THE CHIPS AND BEER! And I'll sit and contemplate the infinite emptiness that is my soul! YEAH!" ahem.

And then I do that for a while. Sit, drink, eat, spout sophomoric self-aggrandizing philosophy to myself that sounds good at the time. And mostly just make of myself as much of a couch potato as one can possibly be given that they don't own a television.

But thankfully I can only usually keep that up for about 2-3 days before I smell myself and decide to take a shower, and am forced to look at myself in a mirror while using the restrooms here. And with that brief, though inspiring, glimpse of myself as a wastrel, I regain my motivation to shape my ass into a configuration quite different from that of my desk chair, and to slough off the oppressive laziness that I periodically inflict upon myself.

Well, speaking of which, it's time to take a shower again. *(sigh)* I wonder what I look like now..;)


Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Things we see

Through the passage of time we all see events that have an effect on our lives. Whether global events or simple personal events that shape how we view our world and our place in it. The truest struggle is looking back on our lives and attempting to determine the meaning of them, or how they have combined to shape us as individuals.

Everyone is effected to a greater or lesser degree regardless of what the event or circumstance might be. We are all more susceptible to different types of external or internal stimuli. External stimuli being anything that happens in the world or directly around us that we have to react to, either physically or mentally. Internal stimuli as an example is when we sit and contemplate something from a distance and perhaps formulate a new opinion or set of ideals to realign our position between who we view ourselves to be and what we view the world to be.

For every person there are multiple faces, who society at large judges that person to be, how the person sees themselves, how the person WANTS to be seen, and who the person REALLY is. No one knows their own depths, no one knows everything about themselves or anyone else.

How people want to be seen often is either opposite or at least very different from the internal person that they believe themselves to be. Someone that may be very weak, weak minded, weak spirited, may very well portray themselves as very strong. And vice\versa, someone that is very strong, may not feel the need to display their strength, and may often defer to others in order to conserve or disguise their strength, in order to save it for something that matters enough to them to stand up.

How society will see someone is usually based on the superficial aspects of who we are. How they dress, where they work, sex, race, religion. And while this outward evidence of who someone is may provide some basic insight into them, it is by no means an accurate way of outlining their psyche.

We all walk through life only able to catch glimpses of the types of people we are, based on how we internally react to external events. We can sit and contemplate and theorize based on what we have outlined as our moralistic stance, but until we're faced with specific circumstances that challenge those morals\ideals, we'll never really know.

What people often fear most, is that someone else might know who they REALLY are, because that would mean that they know us better than we know ourselves. I believe that most people deep down want to be understood, but it's also somewhat frightening to allow someone that power of knowledge, that ultimate understanding.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Ode to Futility

I find it quite fascinating that in my life I've never spent any appreciable amount of time contemplating the complexity of making a square piece of fabric look GOOD on a ROUND piece of furniture. These are the things that I find myself thinking about while at work, and oddly enough, I actually find it compelling in a way. The simplicity is not unlike a tea ceremony. A flick of the wrist, a slight tensioning of the finger tips, each breath, each unconscious tick, is reflected in how the linen lies. Just as each ripple in the tea pot, each dropped leaf, or drop of spilled tea, whether it be by a pocket of air, or crease, or a folded corner, each imperfection in the fall of the cloth is but a reflection of your inability to control your mind and body. Then there are the few moments where you feel it all come together, you feel at peace, you feel as though you're moving outside of time, you don't need to breathe, you're perfectly relaxed and yet you can feel each thread of each muscle expand and contract as you need them. And everything falls perfectly. Not a crease or fold mar the face of the table. The hang is perfectly balanced on each side. Nothing is lacking, and you can feel the balance extends into yourself.
I have always striven to recognize opportunities in any given activity to improve my understanding of the world around me and my place in it. Even in this so mundane a task, one can find some enlightenment, even if only on a personal level.