Thursday, April 19, 2007
Corrections to the record |7:25 PM|
Just as a side note, I had ranted to blow off steam about Tuesday. And, after spending some time with a couple pals I had it down to just a ridiculous story. Don't read anything besides absurdity into my previous entry.
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A bothersome tuesday |12:59 AM|
My day started last week when I became fed up with motion tablets.
"Oh please"
I prayed to only myself
"Let something horrible go wrong with someone, any one's computer at this company, lest I work on another motion tablet. For if I work on another one of these tablets, I will be forced to kill the next man upon whom I lay my eyes, forthwith. "
About 15 minutes later, the second-in-command of the whole damn company calls down, asks for me specifically. His computer has died, horribly. It took me an hour just to find the right goddamn partition from which to recover his data. His machine would boot loop whenever that hard drive was just plugged into the unit.
Awesome.
If I actually believed in fate or God I'd call that pretty good service. So no one had to die that day. The next day, they'd relocated our servers all of a sudden, and the entire company is totally, fucking, hosed. Nothing works. In fact, shit they didn't even expect whatsoever has broken, like the fax machine. And like, the potted plants.
This is okay. We deal with it. Almost 0 computers are repaired.
Monday rolls around and I feel like a bag of hammered shit, or possibly smashed assholes. I call in sick because the last thing I want to face is another big goddamn pile of motion tablets. I call in sick, despite my lack of any remaining sick hours.
The evening has its pleasant distractions.
Tuesday shows up, big tall and angry. I deal with motions all day, and the life has just gone out of me. I'd comforted my folks yesterday about the shootings, promised to be careful. The meaning had drained out of fixing these fucking things again, and again. It is frustrating to see the same computer come in several times with outrageous damage inflicted upon it by the ignorant and lazy. I could not pour myself into my work as I would have wanted.
The end of the day comes, finally. I start making calls, because all I want to do is distract myself from this shit day, this work, this week which has just begun.
No one can fucking come out.
Cass is sick, Chris is at band. Will and Rissa are moving. Josh is making dinner with his girlfriend. It occurred to me at this point that the vast majority of my friends were attached and happily spending time with one another. My insipid jealousy was no longer under my control. I believe my exact words to Wonderlust were I MUST DESTROY ALL HAPPINESS
Gussy'd up and not a fucking place to go or a place to fuck, I wandered around town doing chores, like replacing my windshield wiper and trying to sell shirts. Life be my wild fucking mistress that's out of town and left her phone behind and doesn't even send a fucking postcard
I grab a pile of the goddamn pictoz.com t-shirts, because I need money. I neeeed it. I don't earn enough at my job to really get ahead, just enough to live, buy good rum sometimes, do favors for friends, pull some stupid shit.
Not enough. And I've got like $2000 worth of fucking stock in these shirts.
I take them to Buffalo Exchange, maybe 20-30 items in this basket, I don't know how many I can sell.
One.
They buy one. Fucking. shirt. A small. They're going to sell it for $10, so they give me 30%
Wow. $3. That almost paid for the gas to get here. Oh, why is my tank empty? I had spent all night driving around really angrily with Ryan, downshifting around turns, flying down hills, to the point of making deliberate wrong turns:
Ryan: "Hey, you turned left, we needed to turn right."
Me: "REALLY? GUESS WE HAVE TO BUST....A...UUUUUUTUUURRRRRN"
Cue the powerslide through the next intersection, tires screeching then smoking, me screaming like Slim Pickens as I pulled through the turn and avoided the ditch/wall/whatever shit I was dodging, repeatedly thinking "OH FUCK WE'RE DEAD". To his credit Ryan took it all in stride.
Still, why have I blown through $20 worth of gas in two days, and why is my engine light on?
Oh, I see, the gas caps gone loose. My car had farted out maybe $15 worth of gas all over the place, and triggered the engine warning light. Fabulous.
While at buffalo exchange, being paid the paltry sum of $3, I needed to show I.D.
In my wallet is a great fucking picture of
Mariko*The clerk sees it, she pulls the wallet close, spreads the plastic bits aside, and starts going on "Wow she's really pretty!"
Me: "Yes, I miss her desperately."
Her: "Gosh what a great photo, wow. "
Me: "Uh huh."
Her: "That's a hell of a skirt, she's gorgeous"
Me: "Yes."
Unknown to the clerk, a very small package of nerves had grown fire axes and were tearing apart several large centers of self control in my brain
Thank you clerk, for letting me know that no one, not a single person in this town was going to buy these shirts in more than a piecemeal fashion. (The local big consignment shop wanted high class stuff, and a fucking TAX ID WHA TTHE FUVCH) and beyond that, driving home the empty spot in my life that is usually easy to ignore, but some days, like this, makes me want to retch and possibly cry at the same time.
Luckily I held it together and did not howl like a wounded animal until I got to the car.
Depressed, enraged, despairing over my own loneliness, lack of cash and happiness I started to head back home. This sort of self-centeredness would usually lead to guilt and dismissal of the emotional state, because, christ, this self pity was just foolish.
When I got home I spoke to a nice woman out of San Antonio, who when I told her I was feeling comically angry; just stupidly, cartoonishly angry, she told me to use that anger. "Run around with a crowbar in just your boxer shorts or something"
So I did.
I'm running around a field half naked with a
crowbar,
smashing a
DVD-drivethat has brought me sadness and anger recently.
This is the woman who may come to town to see a Blonde-Redhead show with me, and in that case, I may get a chance to vomit on her stalker.
While I'm out there, yelling and awkwardly hitting this small target I get a call from Thomas. Hoooray! Perhaps if I had gotten this call earlier, socializing might have occurred earlier and perhaps I wouldn't be this rage-filled balloon of stupidity. Thomas invites me out for drinks, I tell him that I need to find pants.
The MP3 of me smashing the drive makes me sound very unhappy, just crazily unhinged. This is accurate. That odd ripping noise you hear is me yanking off my sandals, because if you're going to run around wearing very little smashing shit, you might as well wear as little as possible. I was in a hurry because the lamp and the night shot were active, and the battery was showing the warning lights. You do not hear the earlier "NIGHT SHOT MY ASS!" and assorted other bitching.
I get this call from Thomas and so I need to find pants.
I get back inside and this is when Mariko calls. I love speaking to Mariko. But we upset each other.
And she's talking about how I shouldn't feel guilty about dating other people, that she really cares about this guy, and I shouldn't feel bad. This is of course makes me feel TERRRRIBLE, HORRID
I say how happy I am for her (I am) and how I'm doing my best to find someone out here (I kind of am) and every time I start to get upset or choked up I think of how she's doing what she loves and how wonderful it is..
New subject, still concerning Tuesday.
A couple weeks, fuck, weeks? More like a month or two ago I started looking for this stuff, this Substance D.
Guys to whom I was explaining all of this at a bar tonight: "What's substance D?"
Me: "Don't worry, it's not important. For the purpose of this tale it's a McGuffin!" Yeah. Thanks Hitchcock.
Dude named Austin: "Fuckin' A my man knows the McGuffin!"
*knucks of respect*
Substance D was actually any number of different substances I was trying to acquire for a friend by hook or by crook. I went to guys who dealt with nastier elements, my closest thing to criminal contacts. These are the men who feared yellow lighters, religiously.
Them: "Man it just seems every time someone got busted they were carrying a yellow lighter."
I went to drug dealers with nicknames who associated with crooked doctors and dirty 'script writers.
I quizzed pre-med students, I went to friends in Canada.
I went to pharmacies out of Canada only to have the shit mis-shipped. Of course. It's probably sitting in the dead letter office right now, which I found out is in Atlanta.
I called in chips, favors, when I hit my doctor's office the other day I polled them about this stuff too.
Of the last two options, one was a scummy, probably scam, pharmacy. (Their motto, not a typo because it's in the page header graphics is "We are care about your health" which could have several, somewhat tortured, meanings.)
Last week I had transferred money into my paypal account to use the Paypal one-shot credit card number service.
I had previously been in touch with Wonderlust who kept asking me questions I wasn't allowed to answer and kept accusing me of wanting to get high.
At some point Wonderlust found that he did, in fact, know someone with this shit.
Wonderlust: I swear you are using this shit for some kind of high
Me: I am not.
Me: How much?
Me: And I do need that shit in the mail post-haste.
Me: Yes. I am snorting them.
Wonderlust: alright, alright.
Me: The high is like being in love and orgasming
Wonderlust: You're right, it's your business man.
Wonderlust: I'm bloggin this shit though
Wonderlust: I'm makin a new blog
Wonderlust: "hilarious shit that came out of brendan's mouth today"
Me: It is a total and complete satisfaction that can only come from being happy, working hard, doing what you love, and coming home to the embrace of a caring and wonderful partner.
Me: Like making the world a better place
Negotiations broke down over price however, as Wonderlust acted as proxy
Wonderlust: She seems unimpressed with your monetary offers
Me: Last chance.
Wonderlust: No deal!
Me: Tell that bitch I hope she burns in fucking hell.
Wonderlust: Do not pass go proceed directly to scam pharm
Me: SCAM PHARMACY IT IS
...later, upon the failure of the scam pharmacy
Me: BURN IN HELL YOU FUCKING GREEDY SHIT SUCK NUN FUCKING SKUNK RAPING WHORE
Something tells me that diplomatic relations will not be re-opened.
The scam pharmacy had also failed, not wanting to accept my one-shot number. Fuck you then.
At this point I hit the bar, and the evening became a lot more tolerable. So ended my Tuesday.
I want to somehow put in the part where Thomas is talking to me at the bar
Thomas: "So the sex was good?"
Me: "Fuck man, my sex life was measured in Parsecs and Kelvin"
In any case, once I related the shit-storm at work, the fucking up with my family, the bizarre history of my relationship to Mariko, my total collapse of a proper social circle that evening, my quest for this stuff ending in fiery, angry ruin, my failure in the shirt business all at once, the adventure of smashing shit in a field, and the gaping maw of my loneliness, we were almost crying from laughter.
Man, I feel so much better. Tomorrow is another story, I'm sure.
Labels: Pictures
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