Saturday, December 30, 2006

blogging killed the radio star


01/01/07.

"flowers in the attic" by jason nelson © 2007. see more + buy jason's prints here. check out threadless for the tee, plus a shit-ton of other cool shirts by really cool people. and yes, it took my obsessive-compulsive butt all day to get the text in this graphic just right. shut up.

Friday, December 29, 2006

heart mind boxing

peter and the wolf - my grey overcoat [peter and the wolf's myspace]

tinkered around with the blog and spymac last night after work, until i fell asleep. woke up around ten with a sweet tooth, walked to the gas station across the street and bought mexican muffins and cigarettes, even though i keep telling myself to quit. came back to the apartment, this messy room of an apartment, and spent some time musing with jeff over which of the four nations we'd ideally hail from; argued with lauren over nothing, as usual; then lied down to fall asleep again, to perfume, but ended up watching the whole movie...

and decided a few things:

1. i'm okay with my messy room of an apartment. i have no intentions of being romantically involved with anyone (though, do we ever?) in the near future, so my lack of furniture or apparent well-being is my concern only. for now, this is my cocoon, from the sanctitude and squalor of which i will emerge when i'm ready.

2. "it's your calling, really." jeff's response to my first "official" music post. i told him, next, the broadcast. the lo-fi radio show i've been scripting in my head is finally on its way to being. attatched to the daydream is failsafe success, and a rapid ride out of the corporate, manufacturing world i've derailed into. i miss art, and even acting. lately i've been wondering if i had it right the first time. what if the only way to take the shapes i want, to do all the things i want, is to wear roles like robes, clothing and skin i can apply or shed at will? there are so many things i want to know and learn, and be good at, but i get bored easily. of course, i forget, acting was initially a plan b -- coming out of high school, i wanted to be a journalist, and everything i'd done to that point agreed, that's what i'd be. nyu was too expensive, and i missed the deadline for general studies at uiuc. but their theatre program was still accepting applications. i've been in the passenger seat of life for years now. makes me wonder who the fuck is driving. it'll all have a certain romance to it in the end, i'm sure.

3. as much as i need your love and support, being alone-but-not-really is hard. i crave complete isolation. i want to sleep beneath trees and know how to travel by the stars.

4. i am neither air, water, earth nor fire nation. i am all of them at once.

i am the avatar.

--

p&tw - the highway

(i can't listen to one without the other. i've actually bought this album twice, once at a show of his in chicago; the other, here.)

Thursday, December 28, 2006

EDIT: shut up i am dreaming

sunset rubdown - us ones in between [edit: i totally linked to the wrong song, but in the process set up my own hosting at spymac (this is the start of something wonderful, friends). so this song is now courtesy of ME (well, and sunset rubdown), but here's a big, fat shoutout to skatterbrain anyway!]

something is about to happen. something... i don't know what. something. something we've been waiting for. i feel it in my bones, the way farmers' wives know rain is coming by their knuckles' ache. and the hairs on my arms stand straight, like they say hairs on your arms do, when you're about to receive an electric SHOCK. every lightning rod has gotta watch the storm cloud come -- spence and sunset have been looping this crooked-note call to arms in my brain, all day.

dad says '07 is going to be a good year for us. i know he's just being dad, but he says he feels it, too...

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

scratch

i had a wonderful post writing itself in my head, and was actually on my way to a coffee shop to get it down on paper first. but then i got a phone call inviting me to dinner... so like most things these days, i've simply decided to keep today to myself, as special as it turned out to be.

instead, i'm going to muse over how google gets away with this, then decide to not care how or why, but unconditionally love them and spread it around regardless. this is for everyone, but especially for jeff. only you can love this as much as i do.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

track santa!

NORAD santa tracker.

i'll be departing myself in approximately 12 hours. can't wait!

have a safe and happy holidays, guys.

Friday, December 22, 2006

things more interesting than i have to say

dear yahoo, who coined the phrase "the american dream"? and was he high?

also, i sent this to jeff last night. the fight is on, brother: "robots could one day demand the same citizen's rights as humans, according to a study by the British government."

in lighter news, today's word of the day? flibbertigibbet.

sigh.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

sometimes

i just don't feel

i belong in

this world.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

well i heard there was a secret chord

hey, buddy. got your birthday present in the mail today, thank you so much. i'm just sitting here, can't sleep, thought i'd give you a call. i actually fell asleep earlier, right after work. our regional manager was in town tonight, she was supposed to take us all out to dinner, $25 limit on what we could buy. i was going to get a big steak, it was going to be the best meal i've had in weeks. and i fucked it up, i fell asleep. so now i can't sleep, and i'm sitting here drinking decaf coffee. i don't remember the last time i drank decaf coffee. but i wanted coffee and didn't want to fuck up work tomorrow, so i went and bought some decaf coffee...

just sitting here, listening to sad songs, nothing has changed in four goddamn years and i don't know how that's possible.

ahh.... you know.

you know.

welcome to america

i've had to start turning away workers who show up late at dell. five minutes is understandable, especially if we're under our needed headcount for ideal production. but ten, fifteen minutes, if we've already hit the brim of our staffing needs? i shut the parking lot door, which stays locked until business hours, accessible only by an access card -- which i dole out at the start of shift.

we (staff management) moved into this existing operation, which had been installing motherboards for dell months before sydcor opted out of their contract and forced dell's hand into buying the whole damn thing themselves; brought in a small crew of our own, expanded production, roped in sydcor's existing workers to our agency, and have now decided we only need so many of them to get the most bang for dell's buck. thus, five minutes late or more means you don't really want to work and, in the eyes of big money, you're wasting our time and here's the (locked) door.

one woman, yanelys guerrero, asked me the other day if it would be all right for her to come at 6:00 instead of 4:30, as she's needed at home with her children in the morning. i know we're only on this overtime schedule because of holiday demand, and that in a few short weeks we'll return to a normal, 8-hour day. so i said yeah, that'd be fine, for now. we'll run one head short for a couple hours until she can show up, not a big deal. but then dell decided to cut down on the total number of workers needed to run each line; whereas sydcor's been staffing eight per line, dell says we can produce just as much and only have to pay for seven. so now, someone like yanelys, who needs more than that five-minute grace so early in the morning, is, frankly, shit out of luck. when she showed up smiling, just shy of 6:00 yesterday, i displaced my shame and, in very broken spanish, tried explaining to her that i couldn't let her work. i asked, was it at all possible that she stick out our 4:30 start time, at least for a couple more weeks. i said, earnestly, that i'd help with sweet-talking the big bosses into letting it slide if she couldn't, but that at least for today, my hands were tied. she kept smiling through all of this, and said that, yes, she could. but even i knew.

i let her borrow my phone to call her husband to come pick her up. i couldn't understand fully what was said, but i could see she was explaining why he had to turn around, why the job she'd had for so long and done so well at was all of a sudden pitted against them. "recepcion a america..."

i wanted to tell her so many things, like how beautiful she was in her anger. but i just stood there, lips pursed, and let my eyes glaze with a thin layer of salt. "te amo mucho," he said over the phone speaker. "si," she replied, not meeting my gaze. "yo tambien."

click.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

steering the great salt lake

the guy at the gas station across the street remembers what cigarettes i smoke, and keeps an eye out for buy-one-get-one deals for me. not as cool as the coffee house girl remembering your favorite drink, but it makes for the same, appreciated feeling. i half-bragged about being the lucky son i am, to have my mom send me a gift card to local grocery store central market, and how i was on my way to stock up. i forgot how he told me he hasn't spoken to his family in years. i took solace in his company on thanksgiving day afternoon, since neither of us were home for the holiday, albeit for very different reasons. i wanted to retract what i said about the grocery gift card as soon as i'd said it, but he jumped at the chance to remind me he's even lonelier than i. he says he doesn't care, but i can't help accusing him of secretly being sad.

work is... work. i've been bumped from the weekend shift (i.e. four days off) to my own morning shift, monday thru friday, 6a-2:30p. which sounded great at the time, i'd have my afternoons and weekends free. i even celebrated my schedule's first few days with quick trips to the nearby park to play soccer after work. of course, holiday demand for production bumped this cozy schedule to a 4:30a start time, and stretched the work week through sunday. i try to get there about an hour before my workers do, and usually end up staying late, to make sure everyone's out of the building and on their way, and to finish up any paperwork i've left for the end of shift, so it's more like an eleven, twelve-hour day. and yeah, that's seven days a week... i've complained about it as much as i'm going to, to friends and family, so i won't waste space doing it here. but it's hard. i'm having money problems, none of which are really my fault; my company is being kind of unreliable on payday, and has conveniently misplaced my check for three weeks in a row. in short, it's made for a long month.

i never thought i'd say it, but i miss champaign. i realize i was unhappy, but i've almost acknowledged the choice to relocate here as another classic, impulsive move on my part. i regret taking for granted the few amazing people i had within arm's reach, or at most, only an hour's drive away. the first time jeff visited home since i moved, i caught myself thinking, "shit, jeff's home?? if i'm free this weekend, i should totally drive over..." only to remember quickly, it's no longer the mix cd's worth of car time just to see him, or anyone else, anymore.

two people have told me to blog in the past two days, but i feel like all i ever talk about lately is myself. most (all) of my free time is with thoughts and music, so this all feels pretty uninspired. stale. said before.

i promised colleen that i would come home, no matter what, to see her play sharice in 'stone cold dead serious' at the station theatre. it breaks my heart that i can't. it closes this weekend, and i hear that it's amazing. will you go for me?