10/21/02
11:11pm
SOME PEOPLE HAVE SO MANY ISSUES THEY HAVE A YEAR'S WORTH OF SUBSCRIPTIONS
Today was a bad day. I can say this in retrospect. In general it's been a pretty bad week, even. And I'm not just saying that as the resident Gawth. It really was a pretty crappy time had by all.
The scoop du jour (in a nutshell): this dumbass cokehead that works at Dante's place of work is messing shit up for everyone else. Most people would blame the cokehead, but I blame both the cokehead and ESPECIALLY management. The Management has successfully shunned every employee in that place due to favoritism for the cokehead.
Said cokehead has been through one month of rehab, and went out to the same scene that got him into it to begin with. One word: duh. The guy is either a complete idiot, or an idiot savant. Jury's still out on that one. Here's a Darwinism Candidate in the making though. He's got four kids by three different women, AND he's a cokehead just smart enough to stick thugs on innocent people to get the money he should have paid them. So the guy said no to birth control and yes to drugs??? Back asswards, that's what he is. My main issue with him is that not only is he an asshole worthy of divine annihilation, but he's making life miserable for people I actually like.
In Dante's case, Dante has been nothing but nice to the guy and given him the benefit of the doubt, despite my advice to shun him like a social leper. This guy has stood Dante up when Dante was doing him the favor by taking off work so he could drive this cokehead's sorry ass to a class. Not only does the guy not call to say, "Hey, I'm hungover from last night's coke binge, not going to the class, sorry." but he doesn't even answer the door when Dante knocks. Classy. Really. Fucking. Classy. Where can I get a guy like that to father some illegitimate children for me?
So the latest in the noose of events is this guy went out on a cokebinge to end all binges and doesn't even have the courtesy of showing up to work the next day. Management says, "He is sooo fired." Apparently the guy has habit-- other than coke-- of just not showing up, or showing up late. Doesn't call or anything, just figures everyone else will cover for him. So this past time, a call comes in the middle of the end of the day from a "hospital" claiming they have an amnesia patient claiming to have been assaulted and doesn't remember anything except the name of the place he works at?? (ahem--bullshit!) They describe the guy to the receptionist and she asks if his name is the cokehead's name. Sure enough, wouldn't ya know it? His memory came flooding back! It was truly a miracle.
The next day Dante was in high spirits because this mental midget is finally out of his hair, right? Wrong. He gets to work, and there's cokehead waiting to talk to the manager. Instead of punishing this asshole for just BEING an asshole, this woman calls her action "humane" and not only takes him back, but takes away the customers Dante was supposed to be dealing with that day! Not only THAT, but gives him back his old wages, and takes away the commision Dante made on one of cokehead's customers. So now, the receptionists look like idiots because they had had to call all of cokehead's customers to either cancel or reschedule his appointments, and then they had to call the customers back again and say, Nope, sorry, we were wrong, he's here.
So now what we're looking at is a VERY ugly situation of a manager sacrificing the needs of the many for the needs of the one (Sorry to sound so Star Trekkian, but Spock has some good philosophies on occasion, especially when you apply his logic to a corporation). The manager has now successfully lost all of her employees' respect because she just let this scumbag walk all over her for apparently no good reason, AND she just alienated herself from her employees by showing them that she doesn't care about how THEY feel because she's too busy making life easier for an employee who doesn't appreciate her help, nor does he want it. Not only that, she sent a bad message, basically that the employees don't matter as much as this worthless excuse of a team member who contributes NOTHING to his workplace.
Kind of makes you wonder why any of those employees bother to keep showing up in the first place.
Monday, October 21, 2002
10/21/02
11:46am
AWAKE AND DREAMING
I feel like I'm still asleep today, like I never woke up.
I am still smarting from the nice rejection letter I got from the publishing company I sent my novel to. It wasn't a "This book sucks" letter, more of a "We're not accepting manuscripts at this time" letter. So at least I know for the moment that my book DOESN'T suck.
This morning finds me vaguely miffed about the situation in the world today. What kind of a country is it when a homeless guy can get kudos for being overweight (apparently grossly overweight) and homeless... and seemingly lazy, yet folks like myself who actually are trying to find jobs and trying to make something of themselves, and who ask for nothing but respect get the poopie end of the stick. I ask again... what kind of country is it? I feel for the supposed homeless guy, as I feel for anyone who ends up on the street. Hell, I've even hung out there back in my college days. Seemed to be the only crowd who accepted me at the time. And here comes this guy who claims he's a size 2X men's (which, by the way, is HUGE), and who attributes it to sitting around on the computer. I have yet to see a homeless person who is THAT big, honestly. And folks, New York homeless folks should be getting the coats right about now, not a guy in Tennessee (temps haven't been NEARLY as low as they are already in NYC, not to mention this guy's got some natural insulation going on).
So my point is: this guy knows HTML, or at least can learn, since he's doing this journal thing. He's got a checking account, since he has a PayPal donations button on his site, and he seems to be able to string a sentence together fairly well. He's also been getting some spotlight, apparently a lot of it, and interviews pay, so why is he still on the street? Call it my doubting New York nature, but I question this "homeless" man's validity. And I'm sorry, but attributing his woes to Social Anxiety Disorder is bullshit. I have it, too, along with a side-serving of manic depression. I swallow a huge overwhelming ball of fear everytime I go out of the house. People TERRIFY me. And get this, yesterday, to face my fears a little bit more (aggorophobia, here we come) I went to the MILLENIA MALL OPENING WEEKEND. The horror.... the horror. I faced fears undreamt of. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I didn't buy a damned thing, just walked through the ENTIRE mall, hoping I wouldn't have a panic attack. THAT is social anxiety, not the fear of a job or fear of being more than you currently are. EVERYONE faces that once in awhile. Some days it's hard as hell to even get out of bed. People write to me at the website and bitch that I haven't updated it. First of all, I'm the only one working on the site, it's up to me to edit all the content, as well as put it all up there. There's a LOT of pages up there to edit. Pile on top of that my depression at not getting a job, and you have a very upset woman who can barely make it out of bed in the morning.
I'm dealing with my chemical imbalances. It's hard. Some days are harder than others. Today I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience, as if I'm ready to drop at any given moment. It's almost like my feet aren't quite touching the ground. I don't sleep well. Thoughts never stop going through my head. I should probably be taking my medication, but I don't want to have to depend on a pill to make everything better. Just me being stubborn and paranoid I guess. Not to mention the stupid pills take away everything that I am. My creativity goes away, my personality goes away, everything that makes me ME goes away. The question is a big one for me: Take the pill and be "normal" and numb to everything around me, sacrificing myself for artificial happiness, or don't take it and struggle with the high's and low's of my condition? I deal with it because what society considers normal in me is a thoughtless zombie who performs tasks with no idea from day to day of why they exist.
I'm going to start re-writing my second novel today. My insomnia will most likely come back with a vengeance, and I will be a slave to coffee to keep me going through the days. I know my moodswings will most likely be worse as well. Life is filled with sacrifices, I guess. I would rather sacrifice myself for creativity than for normalcy any day. I just hope my art outlasts a politically correct gimmick.
I guess what pisses me off more is the irony of life. Struggling artists, be they writers or what-have-you, toil away and do what it takes to keep creating, sometimes starving and living in their studios. Very few get lucky, and the true artists seem to be passed over for some of the craziest crap to ever be called "art" (cough-cough PISSCHRIST cough-cough). Where's the charity then? People turn up their noses at the art because they don't like it, even if it's cheap, yet these are the same people who will reach into their pockets and shell out a 20 to give to someone on the street. At least the artists did something to earn the money. I suppose it's the same irony that lets a 100-year-old person or a wealthy person win the lottery while someone just put in their last dollar in desperation and hopes of winning.
THIS IS DEDICATED TO ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE PAIN OF SACRIFICE TO GET WHAT THEY WANT, AND WHO WAS CAST ASIDE FOR A FLAVOR OF THE WEAK.
11:46am
AWAKE AND DREAMING
I feel like I'm still asleep today, like I never woke up.
I am still smarting from the nice rejection letter I got from the publishing company I sent my novel to. It wasn't a "This book sucks" letter, more of a "We're not accepting manuscripts at this time" letter. So at least I know for the moment that my book DOESN'T suck.
This morning finds me vaguely miffed about the situation in the world today. What kind of a country is it when a homeless guy can get kudos for being overweight (apparently grossly overweight) and homeless... and seemingly lazy, yet folks like myself who actually are trying to find jobs and trying to make something of themselves, and who ask for nothing but respect get the poopie end of the stick. I ask again... what kind of country is it? I feel for the supposed homeless guy, as I feel for anyone who ends up on the street. Hell, I've even hung out there back in my college days. Seemed to be the only crowd who accepted me at the time. And here comes this guy who claims he's a size 2X men's (which, by the way, is HUGE), and who attributes it to sitting around on the computer. I have yet to see a homeless person who is THAT big, honestly. And folks, New York homeless folks should be getting the coats right about now, not a guy in Tennessee (temps haven't been NEARLY as low as they are already in NYC, not to mention this guy's got some natural insulation going on).
So my point is: this guy knows HTML, or at least can learn, since he's doing this journal thing. He's got a checking account, since he has a PayPal donations button on his site, and he seems to be able to string a sentence together fairly well. He's also been getting some spotlight, apparently a lot of it, and interviews pay, so why is he still on the street? Call it my doubting New York nature, but I question this "homeless" man's validity. And I'm sorry, but attributing his woes to Social Anxiety Disorder is bullshit. I have it, too, along with a side-serving of manic depression. I swallow a huge overwhelming ball of fear everytime I go out of the house. People TERRIFY me. And get this, yesterday, to face my fears a little bit more (aggorophobia, here we come) I went to the MILLENIA MALL OPENING WEEKEND. The horror.... the horror. I faced fears undreamt of. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I didn't buy a damned thing, just walked through the ENTIRE mall, hoping I wouldn't have a panic attack. THAT is social anxiety, not the fear of a job or fear of being more than you currently are. EVERYONE faces that once in awhile. Some days it's hard as hell to even get out of bed. People write to me at the website and bitch that I haven't updated it. First of all, I'm the only one working on the site, it's up to me to edit all the content, as well as put it all up there. There's a LOT of pages up there to edit. Pile on top of that my depression at not getting a job, and you have a very upset woman who can barely make it out of bed in the morning.
I'm dealing with my chemical imbalances. It's hard. Some days are harder than others. Today I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience, as if I'm ready to drop at any given moment. It's almost like my feet aren't quite touching the ground. I don't sleep well. Thoughts never stop going through my head. I should probably be taking my medication, but I don't want to have to depend on a pill to make everything better. Just me being stubborn and paranoid I guess. Not to mention the stupid pills take away everything that I am. My creativity goes away, my personality goes away, everything that makes me ME goes away. The question is a big one for me: Take the pill and be "normal" and numb to everything around me, sacrificing myself for artificial happiness, or don't take it and struggle with the high's and low's of my condition? I deal with it because what society considers normal in me is a thoughtless zombie who performs tasks with no idea from day to day of why they exist.
I'm going to start re-writing my second novel today. My insomnia will most likely come back with a vengeance, and I will be a slave to coffee to keep me going through the days. I know my moodswings will most likely be worse as well. Life is filled with sacrifices, I guess. I would rather sacrifice myself for creativity than for normalcy any day. I just hope my art outlasts a politically correct gimmick.
I guess what pisses me off more is the irony of life. Struggling artists, be they writers or what-have-you, toil away and do what it takes to keep creating, sometimes starving and living in their studios. Very few get lucky, and the true artists seem to be passed over for some of the craziest crap to ever be called "art" (cough-cough PISSCHRIST cough-cough). Where's the charity then? People turn up their noses at the art because they don't like it, even if it's cheap, yet these are the same people who will reach into their pockets and shell out a 20 to give to someone on the street. At least the artists did something to earn the money. I suppose it's the same irony that lets a 100-year-old person or a wealthy person win the lottery while someone just put in their last dollar in desperation and hopes of winning.
THIS IS DEDICATED TO ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE PAIN OF SACRIFICE TO GET WHAT THEY WANT, AND WHO WAS CAST ASIDE FOR A FLAVOR OF THE WEAK.
10/20/02
10/20/02
10:52pm
BEFORE YOU DIE....
I saw The Ring.
CREEPY. I haven't seen a movie that kept me this on the edge of my seat in a long time.
The imagery was amazingly eerie, the story was a good one, and wow... what a twist to the end. Didn't see that one coming.
I'll be honest, there was a point toward the end where I thought it was going to go the route of a cheese fest and be the Feel-good-hit-of-the-season, but it yanked it back from the teetering edge and slapped another scream out of my mouth. I wasn't the only one screaming though, I heard a few gasps and screeches from the theater seats above and behind me, thankfully.
So, if you like creepy, go. If you're one of those people that has nightmares from looking at a bad hairday, stay home. This PG-13 isn't for you.
Other than that.... I'd like to give a shout out to my lil bro, who was kind enough to send me email. And TJ, sometimes I FEEL like a pretend person, too. ;)
I live in a virtual world and people wonder why I'm virtually insane.....
10/20/02
10:52pm
BEFORE YOU DIE....
I saw The Ring.
CREEPY. I haven't seen a movie that kept me this on the edge of my seat in a long time.
The imagery was amazingly eerie, the story was a good one, and wow... what a twist to the end. Didn't see that one coming.
I'll be honest, there was a point toward the end where I thought it was going to go the route of a cheese fest and be the Feel-good-hit-of-the-season, but it yanked it back from the teetering edge and slapped another scream out of my mouth. I wasn't the only one screaming though, I heard a few gasps and screeches from the theater seats above and behind me, thankfully.
So, if you like creepy, go. If you're one of those people that has nightmares from looking at a bad hairday, stay home. This PG-13 isn't for you.
Other than that.... I'd like to give a shout out to my lil bro, who was kind enough to send me email. And TJ, sometimes I FEEL like a pretend person, too. ;)
I live in a virtual world and people wonder why I'm virtually insane.....
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