I'll just leave this here

I haven't updated in awhile so I'll just empty my head out here.

Rock Band 2 was purchased by a close associate with a lot of disposable income. I was quickly depressed that I was only proficient at the parts of the game that required little real-life talent. I can do a lot of the guitar songs on hard with little practice, but I can't find pitch or sing for shit, and for some goddamn annoying reason this bugged the hell out of me.

Snow is a motherfucking BITCH when you're not 5-16 years old. I wanted nothing more than to go out and run around and have fun but it was goddamn cold out and every time I tried to make a snowman the dogs destroyed it because they thought I was making a snowball for them to catch. Also, one of our dogs enjoys hiding in snow banks for long periods of time.

Long underwear is absolutely fantastic.

Two friends but not one friend has come up here from Portland for the holy days. I've been enjoying time with one of them but I have yet to contact the other and I should really get on that because I don't see or talk to her nearly enough. We will likely go to Seattle and eat noodles or something.

Baldur's Gate is a good game to play when you do not want to spend money on video games or movies or whatever for a few months. Especially since there's enough modular content floating around out there to fill three more installments. Eldrich Dayfucker the Archer/Cleric is ravaging the countryside of Amn with his indifference and clout.

I got a pair of chattering teeth for Christmas but they are neither poisonous or sharpened so what's the point?

My new watch is a Timex which I understand is fairly low class but it fits my wrist better than any other watch I've owned and it also tells me what time it is which I enjoy very much.

I bought another copy of Final Fantasy X when Season and I realized that we couldn't find our old copy and also we remembered that it was fucked somewhere around Besaid Island. I got it in a bundle deal from some guy on the internet along with Metal Slug Anthology, because she wanted to play it again. She claimed that we were going to take turns, but she has yet to take hers and I've just acquired the airship.

The commercial for that PediPaws thing is a pile of bullshit(duh). The only dog in the house that isn't skiddish about having his nails trimmed is the one that's terrified of out-of-place furnature. I got it to trim MY dog's nails, since they're getting very long and one of them broke. He won't let me do anything to them, so I'm probably going to have to take him to the vet to get sedated while a vet tech clips them. Hopefully this will give me enough time to get him used to it.

Club Nintendo is interesting, but now that I've registered everything I only got halfway to the Game 'N' Watch collection I wanted.

My cat pisses slightly off the side of his catbox, and also I caught him eating his food, moving slightly to the left, throwing up, and then moving back and continuing eating.

I want to write just like John Hodgman, except I want to write about different things than John Hodgman because if I did not adhere to that second condition I would be stealing from John Hodgman and I do not wish to do that.

Old Super Mario cartoons are horrible.

FFFFFFFFFF

damn man

Okay, so, I may or may not be in trouble at work. I'll start from about a week ago because I just can't seem to update anything with any frequency whatsoever HERE WE GO

Since the population of Port Orchard just loves not paying any taxes at all the school district's levy fails with an alarming frequency. I believe it's been losing for the past five years or so. Anyway, cuts are constantly being made, and recently there were some cuts made to the custodial department. No jobs were taken from anyone who had them, but they fiddled with some of the part-timers' shifts and just didn't fill some slots that retired within the school year. That's fine, it's damage control, although three or four part-time shifts are rovers and they're doing mostly useless shit all year.

Anyway, the only way that I'm going to be able to slide in anywhere is if someone quits from a position that is necessary. Well, that happened last week! The gentleman at an elementary school left for a job at the Coast Guard, and one of the swing shift guys at a middle school took his place. So, theoretically, his shift should be opening soon. However, the sub office has given the shift to a new sub. Now, I don't want to harp on anyone's work or anything, but I've been working at the district for three years, and I'd like to think that if there was a position opening up, and for whatever reason they weren't putting it up on the site like every other goddamn time a job has ever been available, that it would go to someone with some seniority, and not just a random new person.

I really, really don't want to be "that guy" that pitches a bitch fit about union rules whenever something happens that involved him not getting something, but dammit I've been trying to get hired on permanently for two years of the three years that I've been impressing everyone I've come in contact with.

Or so I thought...

While lamenting this situation to another custodian, I was informed that at some previous time in my experience working for the school district, I was denied a job that I had applied for because I was "lazy". More specifically, that I started out strong, but petered out as time went on. I don't really remember a specific time when I felt that this was the case, usually if I feel like I'm crapping out I try to bring myself back up specifically so that this doesn't happen to me. But, apparently somewhere early on I got labelled as a poo-poo worker. Now, hopefully this was a long time ago, and has since been dispelled by the sheer volume of character references I have on my resume, but it really could have happened any time. Now, there is at least a slight chance that this person is just an insane gossipeer, but I don't really think she's the kind of person to do that.

So I don't know what's going to happen. I just want regular work, I'm sick of not knowing how big my paycheck is going to be every month. I really want to be able to plan properly for this and that.

I'd also like to have health insurance.

And a hoverboard.

My house is a MOOD HOUSE

Because everyone's in a mood haw haw haw

Okay, from what I can piece together, Season got in a tiff with my mom about her working conditions. She was unhappy that her hours were being drastically cut and my mom and sister's hours were staying pretty solid. I wasn't present during the argument, so I am not sure exactly how angry everyone got, but the subsequent conversation I had with the two of them separately leads me to believe that tensions are high.

On one hand, my mom has a very delicate financial situation. She does need the work she has (although some luxuries could probably be cut but that's neither here nor there), and her boss is putting decent effort to keep her working. She at least feels that she needs to do this, and she's being given the opportunity to.

On the other hand, Season is losing her job. She's being gradually phased out of the schedule at a job she's been working at for nearly four years. A job that she believe doesn't treat her very well. She has bills to pay just like (nearly) everyone else, and the loss of even more hours is enough to make someone worried for their financial future.

So there's really no clean way out of this. The part where everything gets particularly messy, is that it seems like mom is taking this personally. I might be wrong on this, but I can't comprehend why someone wouldn't understand a co-worker's frustration at losing their job. It doesn't seem like mom to take it so personally. I do not understand this situation, but I know that it feels pretty tense in this house right now.

I don't know why I'm writing this, I mean, there aren't really a whole lot of people who read this thing, and everyone who does either already knows or already read Season's post. I guess I just wanted to make sure I recorded my thoughts on this, and I suppose I wouldn't be too terribly upset if someone involved found it by accident.

In other news, Fallout 3 is pretty fun, and the Bloody Mess perk caused a destitute wasteland raider's head to fly vertically at a such a speed that it did not reenter this world for the four minutes I waited for it.

Edit: Everything is fine I guess!

Post-Post Modern Man

Okay I had a smoothie the other day from one of those coffee stands and I'm hooked. It sort of had the texture of a creamy slushie, except it didn't taste like Mountain Dew or burning cherries. I didn't know that coffee stands did smoothies, much less that I would enjoy one so much. It was like eating a shitton of candy except you don't feel like a slug two hours later. I suppose fruit is sort of the candy that we were intended to eat or something.

The best one I've had so far is the accidental one in whatever tiny village is in between Poulsbo and Port Townshend, they used ten frozen strawberries and a fresh banana, some yogurt, and crushed ice, and a 16 oz. cup cost $3.50. I drank it all, got two brain freezes, and felt pretty damn good for the rest of the day. It's almost like the sushi effect that I get, where about a half hour after eating a bunch of fish I just feel damn great. Except cheaper and with more sugar.

I went to a stand in-town, and so far the better one is in Whereverthefuck. The one near the bowling alley here (I'll get the name of it later) was good, but they didn't have any bananas, so they used flavoring. It still tasted good, it was just obvious that it wasn't a real banana.

I care about food a lot more than I used to. Just a few years ago I was absolutely fine with eating a pre-packaged microwavable cheeseburger-in-a-box, and now I'm eating sushi for chrissakes. Not that there's anything wrong with sushi, it's just one of those things that is frequently talked about by people who wear trenchcoats to school and talk about Sailor Moon in ways that make general society profoundly uncomfortable. I would like to take the opportunity to say that the only time I've worn a trenchcoat was because a friend of mine got one (He's allowed, he's native american and enormous(not fat)) and I wanted to wear it in a grocery store while looking menacing.

I only wish I cooked things more. When I do it's really hit or miss, either I completely fuck something up and we end up with "Alex Chips" which are overdone quesadillas that segment apart like they wished they were the Soviet Union, or I make a garlic alfredo that actually inspires visions of the lord. Practice makes perfect I guess, I just need to actually bother to do it.

Barberism

Is monday some sort of barber holiday or something? I tried to get a haircut today but literally every single barber shop and/or hair salon is closed in this town. Other than a Supercuts but the last time I went to a place like that was in the 8th grade when the lady went apeshit with some clippers and made me look like a five year old for a few months.

Come to think of it, that's when I stopped getting my hair cut for awhile. I had forgotten how big of a hair misfortune I was back in the day, until I found an old copy of alt.gen that had my picture in it.

Okay, first the haircut thing. After I was berated (honestly, it was apt, I probably would have mocked me too) for looking like my daddy lifts weights for a living, I decided that I wasn't going to deal with that shit anymore. I don't know if it was a consious decision or not, but I didn't get a haircut for a good three years after that. It's not that I have bad hair, I understand that a homosexual gentleman who cuts hair in a mall would kill his own father to bottle my color. Although I get the impression that he would have killed his dad for a milkshake or possibly an encouraging college rock song. It's just that once it got to a certain point it stopped being "messy artist" hair and spilled over into the "unkempt D&D nerd" hair territory. It also didn't help that I had a bit of a slouch and a beard that can only be described as "Celtic".

The facewarmer was pretty ridiculous, I don't recall how many times I tried to shave before I just chucked that notion in the shitterl. See, most of the general, day-to-day habits I have came from emulating television. Not out of intent, mind you, mostly out of necessity. If I took after my dad I would barely be able to understand how our economy is driven, or why there are so few native americans left, or spell. Although I'd probably be able to make a damn fine Grand Slam poached hard with extra bacon. I got off track; I had no idea how or why to shave, so I didn't. Normally this wouldn't matter. I'd just be a particularly hairy high schooler. Unfortunately, my beard wasn't really a beard, all the way. It left a couple centimeter wide gap of pristine, untouched, baby-soft skin directly under my chin. It looked like I had some obsessively powerful mutton chops. To sum up, I was not dirty, just sloppy.

Enter alt.gen. I still want to be a writer, but it bubbled forth around 10th or 11th grade, I don't remember exactly. alt.gen was a project I would love to refer to as ambitious, but unfortunately to be successful you have to take displaced high school and give them guidance, not full control over a magazine. Long story short, a cluster of ten or so nerds who I personally thought were individually talented were given a magazine to write for. Unfortunately we were also supposed to get subscriptions, market the magazine, blah blah blah. My point is that we took staff photos and I looked like a dork. I get regular haircuts now and seeing that picture made me want to get one today.

Goddamn I'm scattered. I need to get my shit together.

Relocitron

I need to move. So badly do I need to move. I have to have a place that is my own, I am very very sick of having to worry about bothering family with shenanigans, about when it is and is not acceptable to be naked, and buy some food that isn't a goddamn Special K energy granola whatever. Unfortunately! Poverty is on the upswing of fashion, and regardless of the sheer number of homes not being sold or rented, people are still huge bitches about dogs.

My sidekick is a corgi/lab/pit bull? mix who is just happy as hell to be around a person, and seems to have a good grasp on not being depressed that he's a normal-sized dog with legs that are less than a foot long. He's a good dog, he's well-mannered, housebroken to the point of embarrassment, and cleans up better than any dog I've ever known. Yet, no one seems to care. I guess everyone thinks their dog is a good dog, and renters hear that all the time regardless, but it's frustrating.

We found a place that's not only okay about pets, but that actually encourages them. Unfortunately, the place is a little smaller than I'd like, and it came up at a very inopportune time; both my fiancee and I are worried about money and future and the like at this point, so we're not sure if we're going to take it. It's admittedly a great deal, but that doesn't matter much if you're not sure about how much money you're going to have next month.

She wants to get another job, but she's got so much on her plate as is, I'd like if she had some time off. Hopefully I'll be getting some more work here pretty soon and she won't have to worry about it. Not a very eventful week, no serious crimes against humanity or anything to report about.

I lost most of the rant I had in my head a week ago about the thing where the guy yelled at kids. Oh well.

Oliver Twisted

I think that pun is good.

Today children were yelled at by someone who was exceptional at it. For the past few weeks I've had a shift at a particular elementary school where I have to start my shift at 10:00 AM, meaning I start my day smack dab in the middle of lunchtime. This isn't really a problem, most of the kids are nice enough, and while loud, it's not so loud that it blocks anyone's thoughts or makes it hard to hear someone talking directly in front of you. However, the other attendants seem to think that it's that loud, and will take every opportunity to get a foot away from your face to yell something that belongs on a coffee mug you'd see on the desk of a person you hate.

Most of the time, it's just one elderly dutch woman with a slight Jersey accent telling kids to be quiet and if they don't shut up before the recess bell sounds she'll force them to stay in until they turn to dust. Usually this either works or is completely ignored and the kids are released anyway because apparently they're so unbearably, vulgarly loud that she cannot even stand to hear them talking at a normal speaking voice over there in the corner. It's irritating, since I've actually developed a decent rapport with some of the kids, and they always calm down when I ask them nicely.

Today, however, they brought in one of their resident experts at treating children as if they were unruly barbarians. This gentleman, wearing khaki slacks, a white dress shirt, and a black Halloween tie bearing the image of a zombie emerging from the ground in front of a grave which is labeled merely "Bad to the Bone", starts tearing a path of psychological destruction the likes of which I have not seen since my experience in elementary school. If a child, in his or her infinite uneasiness, fidgets in line, he or she is called by label, not name, and is then commanded to sit at the table of lost souls. If a child, in his unnatural tendancy for revolution, tries to talk to his or her friends in line or at a table, he or she is bellowed upon, and sent to the previously mentioned prison table. The other lunchroom matrons were enthralled by his draconic spirit and soon began murmuring amongst themselves about how damn great this asshole was, and how he can come back anytime he wants to. I voice my distaste for this turn of events multiple times. In a turn of events that honestly shocked me, I am totally ignored. Not just "Oh don't worry about it" style ignored, but full-on didn't fucking hear me ignored. I decided to hold a personal strike and refused to clean anything during that excruciating fifteen minutes.

To take a sidebar; the lunch period at this, and every other elementary school I've worked at, is fifteen minutes. That seems insane to me, if I could eat something in fifteen minutes I certainly wouldn't want to go outside and run around like an idiot for twenty after that. That brings up another amusing problem, the recess afterwards is longer than the lunch period. I don't get it, for the most part all this does is promote gastro-intestinal problems and waste. Whatever.

Why do these harsh, "tough love" style methods of child control permeate time? How many generations of hate-filled, revenge driven misanthropes do we have to create until people figure the fuck out that the reason you're so pissed off is because the adults in your life treated you the way that you're treating the kids you're in charge of? For God's sake, 90% of the willpower expended in my childhood was to undo the damage that people like that did. All that I could think about when someone treated me like an animal that couldn't be tolerated was how I can get back at these opressors. Granted, I was in elementary school, and in the grand scheme of things, the stuff that I lost wasn't that big a deal, a recess there, an infraction for calling a kid a bastard (the son of a bitch body checked me out of a jump shot he should BURN IN HELL), but what it taught me was that these people in charge of me do not care to help, all they will pay attention to is how they can bring me down to a level that they have deemed managable.

I know there's more to this in my head, but I can't seem to go any further so this might end up being a two parter! TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR MORE OF ME BITCHING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATED BEING A KID.

White people walk like thiiiiiiiis

I guess I shouldn't be so surprised by it all the time, but damn if my co-workers lean towards racism more often than not. Janitors aren't known for their reading, like that's a surprise or something. Anyway, last Wednesday a mammoth of a woman who dresses like she wishes she was a picnic table remarked in relation to a swimmer's cap, "Hey, don't the blacks wear something like that on their heads?"

I don't know if that's a benign remark or not, but given the source I doubt it is. Something about an enormous white grandmother who lives in the outskirts of a suburb referring to black people as if they were a rival sports team makes me a little uncomfortable. I stayed quiet, though. I mean, I don't care quite hard enough to make a thing out of it, since I'm sure the argument would devolve into it being her opinion and how she's not hurting anyone. Which is technically true, it's just words and words can be deflected much easier than a torch or a truck. It's just not exactly a good habit to start. So whatever. I won't have to deal with this person forever, so who cares.

Then, this Wednesday of all days, another custodian related Jon Benet Ramsey's parents being proven innocent to evolution. You see, sometimes evidence can be misleading, you know, evolution is a pretty good example of that. I promptly asked that he stop right there, but he went on to inform me that the reason that evolution arguments consistently lose to Creationists is that evolution has no real evidence. He has listened to top scientists, and they can't argue evolution over creation effectively.

Ten minutes after that, I was informed that, in regards to the Reverend Jesse Jackson's comment about balls, if a white person had said it... That's pretty much all I know since I left the room before she was able to finish the sentence.

I certainly can't say that I'm very well informed about other ethnic groups, I live in a particularly white neighborhood, and there's really only so much that owning Chapelle's Show on DVD can do for a white guy. However, I don't see why it's so difficult to just not be a dick about it. It's not particularly difficult to not use terms and phrases that are generally considered to be offensive or ignorant. It's not really too uncommon to see some white dude on the news saying something about Barack Obama's headwear or whatever the fuck. I don't watch enough Fox News. I guess I should, it's probably pretty funny.

I lost my point. Too many racists in Washington. A lot of them clean schools.

I'd damn well better keep up with this

I wish I was a writer. So hard do I wish I was a writer. The only problem is I keep starting project after project and after 10% or so is finished I just procrastinate it into oblivion. I think I'm relatively talented, I usually like the flow of phrase that I manage to squeeze out, but I get distracted away from everything too easily. I think possibly it's because I haven't read a decent, for realzies book in at least three years. Fuck you Spiderman for being so interesting.

Fortunately, recent events put a small exploritory booklet about Karl Marx into my lap. Recent events like Christmas. Well, I got around to reading it, and it was apparently the precise amount of jet fuel needed to propel me headlong back into literacy. Within the last five weeks I've read almost 800 pages, which might not sound like much, but for the most part the only time I have to read is an hour or so during breaks at work, and if I'm cognant enough to read before falling asleep.

Another helpful factor would be my work itself. I'm a custodian for a school district in a particularly sub-suburban town, and a large portion of my co-workers are unfortunate graduates of the same town who had the dire misfortune of listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and figuring out which kind of liquid metal goes best with their pot. This, stirred in with an amount of time in the armed services, brewed a group of working-class citizens who don't trust a man with the middle name "Hussein" and think that time spent in college is a waste. Today, I actually had to defend my position on higher education being important. I had to bother to argue with someone who was against college. Another gentleman who works at a different school than the one I am at now had brushed off our thirty minute conversation about religious politics with, "All that college ruined you." I don't personally remember being a paragon of thoughtlessness before, especially since I had started college before having that job.

All loony old people aside, I'm hoping that I can keep a somewhat regular schedule with this blog, all I really want out of it is someplace where I can fart out an occasional substandard essay about current events, or governments of the world, or whatever the hell else it is I happened to be reading about that week. Barring any regular schedule, I hope that I actually write something here when I come up with it. I'd better save any idea I get in my head, because lord knows that I'm going to be famous for something someday.



Also, I have absolutely nothing against Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services. I don't necessarily agree all the time with Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services, and there are occasions where I will be frustrated with Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services, but I certainly do not hate them.