Blind |6:22 PM|
I helped a blind guy today. Woo hoo, I should get a medal. Anyhow, I was over at the bank, when I noticed a dude with a seeing eye dog trying to find his way through a set of glass doors. He of course, could not read the signs that said "These doors are locked! Please go around the corner!". 2 out of the 3 entrances to the store in question were locked, and the dude would have had to feel his away around the entire mall before he found the open one. I called out, offering help, and I could almost hear the mental calculations of "Is this dude actually going to help me, or is it 'Play a prank on the blind guy day'? How much of my personal pride in my self-reliance do I give up to accept help from this eye-using punk?" It was only the briefest, half-second delay, but then he accepted my offer. After a few minutes of guiding him around the mall, we got to the street, and the intersection he needed. I bring this up not for compliments, but I was thinking to myself, yesterday I was incredibly frustrated at a computer test that was calling me an idiot, and getting angry at the program, the people who wrote it, random dust motes, etc. But this poor guy, the whole world was calling him stupid, and the glass doors must have been intensely frustrating. You re-learn something new everyday. Perhaps I take too much for granted.
These comments work. Probably. ->
(0) comments
Wonderlust stole a brownie. |3:24 PM|
So I went back and paid for it.
Wallace |3:18 PM|
Mr. Wallace is dead. More importantly, Mr. Bill Wallace was alive. He was named after the Scottish hero, and he must have been at least 7 feet tall, spiritually speaking. I will always remember him as taller than I was, even if strictly speaking he was about 5' 9". He quit smoking, several times, but I'd bet cash those little white tubes were what killed him. I know he was in Dallas, and I know he was still sailing, I'd like to hope to that he went down with a boat, fighting a sudden squall, clutching the rudder and rigging, cursing to all creation in ways I could only hope to emulate. I just don't know for sure. I knew he was dying, I lost contact with him but didn't go looking for him, because I didn't want to hear he was dead. Someone, instead, hunted me down to tell me the news. No details, just the inevitable. He was my math teacher, and student advisor, back in high school. He taught me three of the most important things to a happy existence were fresh baked cookies, smiling women, and afternoon naps. I chuckle whenever I remember waking him up from one of those naps for some advice or so he could teach pre-calc. He kept flags on the walls, and odd items around his neck (like a giant whale's tooth) to spark conversations, especially during class when things got to be too much of a drag. The school had allowed him to build a workshop in the basement, where he built, piece by piece, a sailboat. He was an admiral in the Texas navy, a salty sea dog, with wild tales photo's of rolling boats and wind powered trips to far off places. I went on his boat once, driving it for a time, as we traveled around Lake Michigan. That boat was later lost, by a friend of Wallace's, who missed an alarm clock's bell and slept through the craft's fateful contact with a coral reef. The friend lived, the boat did not. It's odd to think that a location, an object, that I have stood on and driven is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean, off the coast of Australia. Wallace continued his work on the little brother of that boat, deep in the basement of the school. My friends and I traveled down to the workshop on more than one occasion, and it was like walking into the mind of a man made physical. He had the largest ash tray I'd ever seen, filled edge to edge with snuffed cigs. Blueprints and tools were placed just so on every surface, in easy grabbing range. The skeleton of that future ship against a wall, magazines and books strewn across the floor. I still have the book he gave me, a copy of "The Brendan Voyage", the book for which I was named. I wonder where that boat will go. The captain has gone down, will the ship follow him home?
These comments work. Probably. ->
(1) comments
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Technical Certification in FUCKING UP |6:07 PM|
I have never, ever ever failed a technical certification test. Especially some goddamn motherfucking open book BULLSHIT like the test I was taking today, which was for a Lexmark printer. This buggy as a horse-drawn cart, poorly thought out shit festival kept claiming that answers I selected were incorrect, despite being ver-fucking-batim from the test. I will admit, one of the questions was merely poorly written, and was using a slash as an "or", and the documentation used it as an "and", and if I had read it a couple more times I might have gotten that one correct. But, there was shit like this:
If you can tell me why the first instance of the correct fucking answer was different from the second instance of the correct fucking answer, (according to my witty coworker, "The letter in front of it, of course.") by all means, let me know. And don't suggest that they might BOTH be incorrect because after seeing two answers like that I scoured that fucking documentation to determine that the ONLY correct answer was the one I selected.
The cockslicers at Lexmark may be able to write excellent web management tools, but it's like they write every other piece of software with one hand while masturbating on the floor.
The capper was that the email address within the test to "submit feedback" bounces back with an error that there is no account by that name at lexmark.com. That's great.
These comments work. Probably. ->
(0) comments
Monday, March 06, 2006
Another 'nother bullshit night in suck city |4:21 AM|
I can never read the book with the title "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City", as it could never live up to the name. Just like "The Dead Hate the Living" blew its load with the title.
When you last saw him pictured, Wonderlust was undergoing a mud dwelling savage related moment. The picture of him urinating in public, head lolling back as if it was missing a couple of important bones, right by a major road did not come out very well, sadly.
This shit is being mentally written in a coffee bar that Lust and I have stopped into so he can write some emails. I'm sitting here with dick all to do, which is fair, as I trapped him at a film related situation when he could have been purchasing whores or jerking off into cups or who knows what else. Right now I'm chewing off a hangnail and wishing there was more to watch on the street. Inside, at least, there are women who look like trouble. Dames, broads, skirts, they pass by. It has been agreed that this chick is a skirt.
Due to peer pressure, I wrote a marriage proposal myself to an old friend. Thing is, this woman hated marriage so goddamn much that I'm pretty sure I won't hear from her for at least 6 months now. The girl in question hated commitment like a fruit fly, she dumped me at least 5, perhaps 7 times. So, when you read this, darling girlfriend, don't worry.
I want comment that during this whole weekend, my gal, my main squeeze has been the nicest XX chromosome owner a guy could ask for. With all the talk of marriage, 'lust was pressuring me to lock her down, because I'm really not going to find a better girl. While he has some good, very good points on the matter, I'm sticking with the plan she and I agreed upon.
He did it again, just a few hours ago. Wonderlust, he proposed to a woman, a good friend of his. My relathionship to this woman is a corpse buried in the past, but from what I know of her I think they'd make a nice couple. Especially when they hit the sunset era, the rocking chair on a porch, viewing the daisies with lemonade years. He told me his pitch, his line, the string of words that might have expressed ideas. It's a good speech, a fine collection of convincing ideas.
The answer was a foregone conclusion, a tortured negative by his account, but Lust still seeks to bring down his personal house of Usher. He'd knock the retaining clip from a steamshovel bucket of rocks if it said "Marry SG? Pull rope." I admire his resolve. He did deliver a message or two for me. Whether or not he remembered to apologize on my behalf for the sins against America's Dairyland is really moot.
After email time was over, we hit the road, and listed off old flames. A few. 'lust compared one of mine to a monkey with cymbals, that could just make attention gathering noise. I defended myself by pointing out I wasn't hung up on her, all these years later, that I had just been dazzled a bit at the time. He has earlier commented on that friendship being a good and stabilizing force for that past tense girl. It's not like we were being huge dicks or anything. He did say my head was full of silt and gravel when I biffed the gate code a couple times, though, and it's been ages since I have been so insulted. My word, the nerve.
That brings us to now. I did want to write it down, before I forgot, that I told 'lust about a time in which I nearly chewed open the veins in my arms as to unleash them, to gather my life's blood into my belly so that I could project forth both bile and my needed humors into the eyes of a man, but stayed from this course of action because of a dame. The same dame he was trying to marry.
