Cars.
Why do cars always have to have strange names? I was on my way home today during fourth hour to pick up some forgotten homework, and I was behind a Kia Sephia with a lawnmower hanging out of its trunk. On the way to work I saw two men standing in the middle of the intersection of James and US31, car doors wide open and definitely shouting profanities. Neither car seemed to be damaged though, seeing as how both were enormous SUVs. On the way home from work, I was behind another SUV type car truck thing, but the license plate said "JELLY." Nothing more. Nothing less. Just jelly. Why? I don't know. This car turned somewhere before Butternut, and I was left alone for a few moments. Of course I sped up to catch the cars I could see in the distance through the darkness. They were hard to catch - I had to reach speeds in excess of 80mph before even gaining slightly. This is hard to do right, since there are stop lights every three feet. But I got the timing down, yo.
When I finally did catch the car in front of me, I saw the reflective strip across the back all too late. It said `Sheriff Patrol' in big black letters. I could just make out the siren light things on the roof. But the d00d was going just as fast as I was, and I wasn't gonna slow down unless he did. So I sped home behind a cop, going 15 over the speed limit, and he never even noticed. Or at least he didn't care. That made my day.
i'm starting to feel again. and i'm scared.
i'm scared because i remember. i remember why i stopped caring. i remember my life becoming a steady grey blur of empty lethargy. i remember when it was a struggle to do things of the utmost simplicity and routine. like eat. i remember, being already skinny, and losing 50 pounds in 2 months. i still haven't gotten them back. i remember how, for several months, i couldn't go one day without thinking of her and becoming so distraught i would actually vomit. i remember, back when still being friends meant actually trying to hang out together, she asked me to be her valentine and a week later, drinking heavily to stand being around her but not being with her, i say something i shouldn't, and she says "if we can't be friends just tell me" and that's the last contact i have with her for 4 months. i remember the first time i saw her kiss her new boyfriend. but most of all, i remember new years eve. 4am, my key snaps off in the deadbolt. i walk to her house, lights are still on, i knock, i ask for spot on her couch for the night. i'm turned away. i walk back home. i break out a window. i cut my hand badly on some glass. the sun is coming up by now. i'm surprised at how red the blood is. and how little it hurt. i remember how i looked at my wrists. i remember what it is to feel, and i'm scared.
rainer maria is still playing.
More arrangements for move. I think I scheduled the cable TV changeover to miss the one show we had actually really wanted to see next week. Maybe my parents can tape it for us.
Slapped apache on a computer for the project at school; finally doing something for it.
A little packing, a little slacking... That's me for you. Mostly slacking.
first day on the job at the hospital. it's been 5 months and two resignations (refused) since i last saw their damn faces. and still i'm charged as only a loaded barrel could be. those damned faces. i'm meek as a mouse for 9 months and i don't get paid; now that i'm giving em the heat i get my salary? damn those faces. trouble-maker they want, trouble-maker they'll get. those damned faces. i was telling a brit friend about it and seeing the reaction on his face was enough to nudge me out of my complacency. 100 hour weeks i put in and thought i was doing it for the love of god, maybe expecting some appreciation, but no!. those damned faces. if there was one thing that it all boils down to ever since i graduated from that cursed college it would be this: exploitation. and they tell me to be patient, be patient, those damned faces. who gets all the heat? who stays up the whole night? who wants to at least keep a semblance of a conscience intact? is not sufficient how cheap we've come to value life? it all starts this way: you tolerate their abuse of your fundamental rights and the next minute you'll be abusing those who look to you to safeguard their own. those damned, damned, faces. i sell myself short and now i foot the balance. i'll be late today, i'll glare at their faces, i'll pore over every fault, i'll poke into every embarrassment, i'll rattle every screw-up, i will make them wish they had accepted my resignation and i'll throw it in their damned faces and be done with them forever. Some Time in the Evening A crossection of Egyptian bureaucracy: All I want is a simple piece of paper stating that I was present at work today. Three hours later and it's not done yet: no-one wants to shoulder the responsibility so they send me on a trip around all the major offices in the building. I could have guessed it would be akin to getting a signed confession from the boss that he's a pedophile or something. So I miss the appointment with my lawyer a second time, I get no work done, and the prospect that this will be repeated tomorrow drives me nuts. I have my masters exams next week. I have no idea how I'll cope with that plus 24 hour shifts plus the bloody lawsuit. I tell you, every hour of every day I am more determined to leave this country and erase the memories of the 10 years i've spent here. what a waste. Update: 25 Feb 2002. Still trying to resign! Court hearing scheduled for 6 April. Little worried they may revoke my licence to practice (for skipping work!). Akh! They are in deep shit. Told my lawyer I want to sue the boss as soon as this trial is over, for not accepting my 10-odd resignation requests and wasting my bloody time!.
Some Time in the Evening A crossection of Egyptian bureaucracy: All I want is a simple piece of paper stating that I was present at work today. Three hours later and it's not done yet: no-one wants to shoulder the responsibility so they send me on a trip around all the major offices in the building. I could have guessed it would be akin to getting a signed confession from the boss that he's a pedophile or something. So I miss the appointment with my lawyer a second time, I get no work done, and the prospect that this will be repeated tomorrow drives me nuts. I have my masters exams next week. I have no idea how I'll cope with that plus 24 hour shifts plus the bloody lawsuit. I tell you, every hour of every day I am more determined to leave this country and erase the memories of the 10 years i've spent here. what a waste.
Update: 25 Feb 2002. Still trying to resign! Court hearing scheduled for 6 April. Little worried they may revoke my licence to practice (for skipping work!). Akh! They are in deep shit. Told my lawyer I want to sue the boss as soon as this trial is over, for not accepting my 10-odd resignation requests and wasting my bloody time!.
Initial Non-NDA-breaking commments:
HOLY CRAP! This game is exactly what I expected it to be, incredible. Even though this is only a Beta (we're already in the first patch), it's a sleek, sexy gaming experience. The online multiplayer component is giving me grief (fodder for reports), but otherwise, the parts of the game I have been given seem complete to me. Now, granted, I have not played all the maps with all the characters with all the gods yet, but, of course, I will. :)
Wee.....wait...wasn't I supposed to read something for class today?
Although I doubt the addictive nature of Everything really has anything to do with it, it does help to pass the time as I stay up late at night. It doesn't matter that I have to be at work by 8 in the morning. I still end up wide awake until at least 2 or 3 in the morning. My roommates probably think that I'm on speed.
I met an interesting character this past weekend while I was out with my two favorite fag hags, Kristina and Sammie. We had made our usual Friday night journey to Popstarz, a way cool club that plays eighties songs all night. While tripping the light fantastic together on the dance floor, I noticed an adorable boi dancing with friends near us. I of course got Kris and Sammie's attention and bit my fist in his direction, to which they both nodded their heads in agreement. I watched him for awhile, admiring the fact that he seemed to be having so much fun more than anything else. I didn't have the nerve to actually approach him though, I'm much to shy to do that. I wish I knew why.
Luckily for me, I didn't have to worry about it for very long, because one of his friends grabbed me and asked if I was single. When I said "yeah," he pulled me right up to said boy and said, "then dance with him!"
I can't say that has EVER happened to me before.
So we dance for a bit, and then he wanders off. I'm thinking to myself, "oh, go me." My ego bruised, I slink back over to my gal pals and continue to dance, but now, his friends are all right next to us, and they keep looking at me like I'm supposed to join them or something. So I do. The boy dances with me some more, and so do a few of his guy friends, and suddenly, I realize I've abandoned Sammie and Kris, but that's okay, right? Yeah, of course it is.
Boy heads over to the bar, and I finally decide to grow balls and walk over there too. I stand next to him, ask the bartender for some water, and feel very awkward for a good 15 seconds before finally telling him he's a good dancer. We actually start talking, and I find out he's from Philadelphia, and he's leaving Los Angeles in 2 months because he hates it. Since I have my own love-hate relationship with the city, I probe a little deeper and find what bothers him the most is the people, and how they're all so fake.
We ended up talking for almost an hour. We danced some more, then the club closed, and then we all went outside and we introduced our respective friends. We kept talking. He was cute, he actually had smart things to say, and I liked him. I guess he liked me too, because I left with a couple of kisses from him and his phone number. Ah, life was good.
Now, it would be kind of nice if he'd fucking call me back, I'd be happy. Are even the transplants to LA as hypocritical and false as the rest of the locals here? I really hope not. Christ, all I wanted to do was go out for coffee. I've given up on boys, remember? I just thought he'd make a nice friend. Oh well. His loss.
I'm tired right now. Still, I don't feel exhausted. I'm still reading Infinite Jest, Memoirs of a Beatnik, and writing a lot myself.
The question with the girlfriend is should I try and fix the relationship that we've had for nearly 6 years? She's, basically, my first girlfriend, but in my dealings with her, I find myself continually simply refering to her as friend.
Another woman told me I was a wonderful man today. She said, "I love you." I make her feel wonderful, I make her feel alive. My girlfriend says the same thing.
I hope I can come up with rent money.
No matter what happens, I just want to be sure I have some friends left after this.
My girl called today. I called her back after I got the new number for her cellphone. Her ex-girlfriend had the long distance cut off today, and is, as we speak, moving her shit out of the apartment. Why is this happening?
Because I woke up one day a girlfriend stealer.
No, this isn't the reason. Her girlfriend had cheated on her, eight times to be exact, (my angel walked in on two of those times, the others were admitted) before she came back here to visit. She seduced me. Let me just tell you how gorgeous and intelligent she is.
My angel wants to be with me.
I'm freaked out. I like her, I was even crushing pretty hard there for a bit. She's older than me. She only likes other girls, so she has little patience with me. Because I like boys 75% of the time. And she knows I'm still in love with my geek.
I don't know if this is a step I want to take. I have dated girls before, but I know it'll be all or nothing with her, and I will not make a promise I can't keep. Again. I will not be dishonost.
My angel is 25. A capricorn. Studying to become a vet. Is rambunctious. Petite. Large hazel eyes. A vegan. (so I won't take her out for reubens, no biggie). An old school skatechick. A dj. No kidding, I have two of her tapes already. A cute upturned nose. Freckles. Egyptian tattoos. Red and blonde streaked hair. Pierced nose, tongue....and nipples. Feminine. An artist as well. And she makes me feel comfortable in my own skin half the time, and very weirded out the other half. But she refuses to touch a 'puter except for papers and to message me. This is a drawback. She talks more than I do. (is this possible?).
But I like her, and no matter what, we decided we would at least be friends. I just wish she'd stop pressuring me. Hmmmmm......I'll figure it out given some time.
This morning's emails make me happy. I finally have the go ahead to order 4 more racks full of Compaq servers, my 2MB pipe is ordered and should be in by the end of October and I have the go ahead to revamp the business servers, so I get to spend a lot of time with our HR yummie, trying to find out her business requirements.
Life is good and I have chocolate ...
Until a mail arrives saying "Can we send out 10000 emails at once?". Alaram bells go off. I reply with "Where did you get 10000 email addresses from?" "Well we're going to buy them" "Are you sure these people want email?" "Well the list person says they do" "Uh-huh. Do you want me to come hit you now, or after the spam complaints come in?" "You won't let me do it?" "No" "I'll tell my boss you're obstructive" "I'll tell your boss you're an idiot. I will win".
I won.
My girlfriend is here too, and I see that she looks at me with worry. She clearly sees that I may take a sudden and important decision. Living in Mexico is OK, there is no complaint. But maybe I would like to be somewhere (and with someone) that is more than OK, in fact I would like to live in a way that is fucking great, not just OK. On the other hand, the country has been good to me (it even force me to write on becoming a boss). Nonetheless, it is not my country, and despite all the adaptation effort I do, I strongly suspect that it will never be.
So, what happens is that I define myself by my otherness, which is certainly a peculiar way of life, and an occasionally tiring one.
I feel suspended. In this I am helped by the weather, which is the typical Padania weather for late summer: warm, humid and very hazy. The sky is more white than blue, there is no wind, birds chirp. How different from the definite Mexico City weather, where it is either hot and dry and sunny, or pouring rain.
Anyway, my parents want the phone line back. Loggin out for today, will write more later. And I have written a postcard for ideath :-)
At work, it was pretty hectic. Some user complained that it took 30 minutes to startup the program he uses all day (which normally takes 5), and he was getting pretty sick of it. I'm still looking for the answer to why it takes so long. The damn machine of his has 512mb of RAM and a 700mhz processor, which usually makes even Windows boot fast. But in this case it's about a scheduling program, and it uses its memory pretty inefficient. I've been looking for an answer all day. I tried some changes in the coding of the program, but that didn't really make a difference. I tried running it on a different machine, but that also didn't matter. But now I might have found an answer, because there were about 210.000 records in the database, while there should be 35.000. So I deleted the redundant ones, and it starts a bit faster. It's still slow, so maybe they should consider better software.
I'll be going home at 5PM, get home at 6, do some shopping in the early evening, and then get back home again, probably at around 8, to waste the rest of my evening on irc. Hopefully, some interesting people are online.
Yesterday, we had a Crisis. A stressed friend of mine needed support.
Been logged here, tweaked some writeups a bit. Can't remember what.
Today's stuff: I've written a HTML tutorial for newbies (in Finnish) - still working on that, got aquaintated with HTML Tidy (does wonders to Jade-generated HTML what comes to readability), and read past three month's worth of User Friendly (also got an user account there).
Well, um, that's it. So far. I guess I need to finish that HTML tutorial someday. And I've got to make the digital media excercise too. Hmm hmm...
Took great pains to describe IMG tags. Hmm, well...
Another not-that-kewl evening. ::sigh:: Well, at least I noded about two Chick tracts, even when I thought I was completely tired of noding for some time. More energy to come!
Other day logs o' mine...
Noded today by y.t.: Jade The Last Generation Fat Cats Updated: Jack T. Chick Tracts
I wake up this morning, hoping that the confusion and anger of the pervious evening would not carry over, but it already has. After three years of dating her, I finally thought to myself, "Maybe I am just lucky. Most people go through life and never find love, and here I am with someone I could love for the rest of my life." The illusion is shattered several weeks after my anniversary, when I learn from my brother that she has betrayed me, not once but twice, has no regrets and that she plans to leave me after college is over.
I live with her, and I am trapped there, because without my apartment I can't attend college, since dorming is too expensive. I am forced to live a lie; to hide all my anger and disgust and fear, and just put on a smile. Last night we had sex, which is usually an agonizing experince already, but what made it worse for me was that she was actually passionate. Inside of my head, all sorts of conflicting ideas battled out. I felt the joy, the comfort, the security that one feels when they are in love, and I felt the desperation, the anger, and the loss that comes with falling out of love.
This morning I awoke from the aftermath of this internal conflict and I don't know what to do. I am so afraid, so skeptical of love, and so unsure of where I am going to go. One thing is for certain: I must escape this or there is no chance for me to renew my life again.
...Today was a day of learning. This is quite an achievement considering I was in school all day, but never the less it happened. Politics classes were their own usual ramble of Margeret Thatcher, the 'new right' and market economies. Their is perhaps nothing I like debating more than whether people should be aloowed to pay privately for health care, hence jumping the queue on the NHS. History was history, as history always is but today it was of the Russain pesuasion. Did you know that in 1905 Leon Trotsky took over a trade union organisation for completely image purposes? Did you also know that azure83 is a Leon Trotsky look-a-like?...
...This evening I get the dubious honor of a nice meal to celebrate my grandmother's 73rd birthday...more news on that later
previous
In the afternoon, crowded classes. A very nice Computer Networks 1, opened by the teacher's 'this is Computer Networks 1, where we will bash Telefonica (Spain's monopolistic telco); Microsoft bashing is on Computer Networks 2', followed by an awful Computer Architectures 1, which I wasn't willing to like, and it met my expectations. It happens that there are some great departments in UAB, but the Computer Architecture and Operating Systems (CAOS), isn't one of them -I do not like their subjects, nor their methods, nor most of the teachers.
That would have pretty much been my day, but I have just received a call from a friend (Panda), who missed me on the trips to class (we used to take the same train); tomorrow we'll meet, but he also told me that, well, he came back home in the same train that a friend of mine... to get an idea about what does that mean for me, take a look at my secret unrequited love node.
But well, I must be feeling better, because this hasn't nearly affected me (besides getting into this daylog).
Anyway, my day's ending now, I think I'll watch La Cosa Nostra, a local late night show, with a real good showman (he practices quite a lot of stand-up comedy, which is kinda uncommon around here). By the way, a local newspaper once mistook the show for a show on organized crime...
Good night, all of you, wherever you are...
I am beginning to get tired of this. I wake up early so I can get out of the apartment as soon as possible. Hanging out there would even make the little yellow smiley man depressed. I get to work, dive into E2...Unfortunately, I use up my votes first thing in the morning. So I open some work-related screens.
After of getting virtually no work done all day, and verbal sparring with the client rep who's on my back, I can't leave soon enough. I should work, eh? I panic, I freak out, I freeze. I can't deal with my program not doing what I expect. I'm not sure what I even need to see when it's done. I'm in way over my head and noone seems to notice.
I usuall leave the second the clock shows 5:00. I'm out the door. Only, today, I'm still here. It's 6:00 and I can't leave. I have a shiteload of work, as usual. I am out of excuses. I can't do anything more tonight, anyway, but regardless, I sit and mope.
I could probably go home.I should, I mean. It's getting dark outside. But no, I sit here because there's nothing to do in my apartment either. I know I will just eat everything in sight, then read/sing/cry myself to sleep.
Just another day. Don't mind me. I'm Invisible.
