Saturday, August 18, 2007

scars

im at work, its 1/4 to 10pm, and im bored. i started thinking about scars. ive got lots of them so i decided to list them in no particular order. i know this isnt the kind of thing that anybody gives a shit about but you know what? i dont give a shit about that. so without further ado...

MY SCARS.

1- location: right ankle

shape: crescent

size: .5''x.8"

color: white

orgin: a ceramic soapdish snapped off the wall of katelyn's old shower when i put my foot on it to wash my toes. the goddamned thing fell on my ankle and sliced it open so deep that i could clearly see my ankle bone. i didnt have insurance, so i put a bandaid on it and hoped for the best.



2-location: right shin

shape: just like Sardinia

size: 2"x1"

color: purplish

orgin: in 8th grade i tried to jump onto a lab table without using my hands. i left a wad of skin on the table edge and freaked out all the girls in the class. then i bled all over my new sox.



3- location: all over pelvic region, front and back

shape: slug shaped

size: varies, average 8"x1.5"

color: white

orgin: tried to fuck a badger. no, really. actually these are from a radical treatment for kidney disease in 99-01. you decide.

4- location: inside left bicep

shape: torpedo shaped with stitch marks visible lateraly

size: 2"x5"

color: dark purple

orgin: climbed a baseball backstop at cub scout camp (literaly the minute i got there). tried to reach over the top to grab a birds nest, and my feet slipped. the top of the chain link went into my arm and actually suspended me for a few seconds before i fell. when i got up i looked at my arm and there was fat pouring out of it, which is just disgusting if youve ever seen it. i then proceded to bleed all over the back of the scoutmasters car as he rushed me to the er, where a visible drunk orderly sewed me up. he did such a horrible job you can still see the stitch marks 20 years later. capital.

5- location: both armpits

shape: same as 4

size: same as 4

color: varies dramatically for some reason

orgin: i was in florida in 1991 and an aligator tried to eat a small puppy right in front of me. i was able to get the puppy away from the gator, but not without a fight. unfortunately, the puppy and the aligator both died, and i nearly bled to death and had to live off of rotten vegetation for a week as i dragged myself out of the swamp using only my chin. or, same as 4.


6- location left middle finger, tip

size: tiny

shape: like a tiny smile

color: barely visible.

orgin: i was building a dormer on a house in '01 and i got careless (i.e. stoned) with the nailgun and wound up with a 5" framing spike through my finger. i couldnt pull it out, so i cut the skin around it with my utility knife and it fell out. luckily, it was a brand new, galvanized nail. i didnt have insurance so i put duct tape on it and then went home, washed it out, and bandaided it. it healed suprisingly well and the scar is now so faint that i sometimes forget which hand its on.

well, thats it. i thought i had more than that. maybe i do and ive forgotten some. maybe not. the truth is i dont care, im bored. im going home in 15 minutes to drink a beer and then fall asleep so i can wake up and come back to work. god bless the republic. god damn the state.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Exhaustion, physical and mental

im nearing the end of an entire week of double shifts. 10 to 10 in front of this monitor setting up vacations for other people. the mind and spirit reel. i hallucinated today that their was a cat under my desk. felt it rub against my leg. ive been eating cold pizza thats been sitting in the breakroom since wednessday and drinking "colombian supremo" that comes in single serving pods.

katelyn has been doing the brunt of the moving in my absence and i feel horrible about it. i tell myself that when my next paycheck comes this will all be worth it. it had goddamned better be. despite my whinning, i fully intend to do this again next week. and the next. if im home alone i will lose all semblance of sanity and/or responsibility. i must push on, brave reader. i must bring home the bread.

im looking forward to monday- my cable gets installed! and internet! and i have the day off! pile of joy! unfortunately on sunday, instead of spending the day relaxing with katelyn, i spend the day moving furniture. IF i can find a truck to use for free. anybody got a truck i can use on sunday? you can use my jeep. just dont take it on the highway or it will scare the bejesus out of you...

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

New Digs: cat pee and motion detecting lights

last night was our first night in the new Watertown base. ben helped me move the bed over durring the day, and then later last night katelyn and i brought the cats. aparently one of them (i suspect doolin) had a bit of an accident in the cat carrier, and when we got to the apartment they both ran out covered in piss. as if the move wasnt traumatic enough for them, they got peed on. and then i gave them a bath in the kitchen sink, which basically consisted of me trying to hold an enraged explosion of claws and teeth under the tap while getting laccerated repeatedly about the arms and legs.

then bomba ran and hid under the bed, while doolin went exploring. he quickly found his favourite perch on top of the cupboard. bomba came out eventually and everything went pretty well from there.

aparently though katelyn got no sleep. i was snorring (allegedly), and aparently there is some goddmned motion-sensing light that kept going off all night, shining direcly into our bedroom window. so im outside in my boxers at 3am trying to figure out a way to disable the thing, and i nearly got up on the ladder, but then i realized that such a course of action would likely result in my arrest.

also, the shower is weak. i mean it feels like someone is pouring a flowerpot on you. i need to figure out a fix for both of these things soon.

everything else is great, and hopefully soon we will be having a housewarming party. ill get some pics up soon.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

i done fucked up

so a few weeks ago at the office, they are assigning schedules. I knew i was gonna get a shitty one, as the new guy. It came down to either sunday-thursday 2nd shift, or tuesday- saturday, 2nd shift. I needed that sunday off. That one sunday. Just the one. So what did i do? I erased all of my friday and saturday nights for the forseable future. Didnt even realize it until last weekend. This should teach me to not make important decisions when im sober, but it wont.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

I: In Defense of Anarchy, Mr. Conklin Presents the Articles of Frustration

This is my blog. I am not exactly sure what I'm trying to do here, with these pixels of information that don't really exist physically, but if you bear with me perhaps it will make itself obvious at some point. There is going to be some serious extrospection, some acidic political raving, some benevolent religious theory, some horrible spelling and some very, very immature humor.

Time, while in reality a completely and utterly arbitrary pretension indigenous to human hubris, is measured in this part of the word by the amount of it that has passed since the birth of a man named Christ, who said allot of extremely sensible and intelligent things, made people feel allot better about themselves and their circumstances (an interesting word that literally means "the way one stands around"), and also did some things that were downright awesome and would generally get a person locked up and/or killed by the Wolves that Run Things, which is pretty much what happened to him, and we all know that story. Right now, the record of time reads that since his birth, it has been two thousand and seven years, seven months, twenty two days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. A second is about as long as it takes to say "mississippi". A minute is sixty of those, an hour is sixty of those, a day is twenty four of those, a month is either twenty eight, thirty, or thirty on e of those, and a year is twelve of those. You can see that this is all completely ridiculous. None of this is important in any way whatsoever.

Also, in this part of the world, we live in a state of constant frustration caused by three things, which i will now document in no particular order. The first is a desperate attempt by all parties to adhere to the regulation of Time, which of course does not exist outside of our own minds and silly constructs. We must be always "on" Time. The amount of Time that has passed since the birth of Christ is constantly announced to us; on radios, on our monitors, on our communication devices, even on watches, which some people wear about their wrists in an attempt to constantly quantify how long ago they woke up, how much Time is going to pass before they are obligated to be at a certain coordinate, and so on.

This obligation is an important part of the second Article of Frustration; Money. Money is another artificial construct that among all the sentience of the earth is observed only in humans. Money is exchanged for goods or services, and the more of it you have, the finer goods and more immoral services you will be able to procure. The basic idea is that you are completely and even criminally worthless unless you have Money. For example, if you are discovered wandering around without enough Money to exchange for permission to sleep in a bed, you will be arrested and forcibly taken to a bed made of metal in a room made of concrete (which is a mixture of silica and water that hardens quickly and can be used to construct very ugly things) and forced to sleep there under pain of death (I'm not making this up). This is much less comfortable than sleeping, say, in a field or beneath a shelter of branches and leaves, as every other occupant of this planet is entitled and free to do. We humans, because of our occupation with Money, Time, and the third Article which will be discussed shortly, are unable to enjoy such comfort. Also, once you submit and agree to sell what remaining Time you have on the Earth (the amount of which is unknown of course) in exchange for Money, you aren't even allowed to keep it. You are expected to go around exchanging it like crazy, for shelter (which you can get for yourself without too much effort), food (which you can also get for yourself, theoretically, but these days you will need money even to do that without being locked up), and various other things that only have the power of necessity once you begin to have Money. Then, because in order to "make" money one must constantly be "on" time, you have to exchange a huge amount of it for a mode of transportation, which in turn requires a constant stream of money for its fuel and maintenance. In addition to that, the Wolves that Run Things have decided that you have to give them a percentage of your money, or else they will (guess what) lock you up. Back to the old metal bed in a concrete room, but this time because you have money and aren't giving it to them. This practice is also used by organized crime syndicates, and in a startlingly similar way, as i will now illustrate.

The Third Article of Frustration is Fear, and let me tell you, brothers and sisters, it is all lies. The organised crime syndicates i just mention operate thus: they go around hurting and scaring people. Then they approach these same people and offer protection from the hurting and scaring in exchange for money. Which of course is even more harmful and terrifying, since now you have to sell even more of your Time on earth at an even higher price (and the market can bear only so much!) in order to purchase protection from what you have been led to Fear.

Does this sound familiar?

What few realize and none act upon (at least here in Estados Perdidos) is that what you Fear is merely a construct of those that want your Money. They have cleverly built up this haze of things to Fear: terrorists ( a clever name for either a freedom fighter who happens to be a Muslim or a sociopathic mass murdered with a messianic complex who also happens to be a Muslin), bird flu (did you know that ALL flu comes from birds?), "predators" (which used to mean lions and shit but now means pathetic and confused people that are supposedly everywhere, under every bush, looking to rape your children and because of this we have forced our children not to walk to school or do anything independent of their parents and now look, they are all fat and unable to figure things out for themselves), and , worst of all, running out of Money. And what do they offer as a solution to these fears? Basically, give them your Money, which you have exchanged for your Time, and they will keep your Fears at bay.

Except they cant. Because the things that we SHOULD be in Fear of, things that happen regularly and naturally like Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and the like, are completely ignored by these Wolves while they use your Money to get themselves as much free Time as possible to spend doing pointless, self promoting, even horribly immoral things, all the while assuring you that thanks to your hard work (the amount of your life that you sold at absolutely no personal gain), they are winning the War on Terror, they are keeping the things that you Fear away from you. The "terrorists" are killing someone else, far away. The bird Flu is still only in Asia (but it could mutate at any time if we don't have enough money to stop it), and the predators are living at addresses that are available on your computer, so you can have your kids avoid them, except wait, they are supposedly everywhere, keep the kids inside!

Meanwhile one day you are going to be killed because you have a bunch of confused cells in your pancreas that suddenly attacked each other, or because it rained so hard that your house filled with water and you were stuck inside, or because you startled a bear, or stepped on a venomous snake, or because you didn't see that bus coming, or because you spent so much Time making Money to alleviate your Fear that you had none left, and it was your turn to leave. Or maybe you will be struck by lightning, or maybe, just maybe, a terrorist will decide to blow up your train because he is upset that his family was slaughtered when they stopped giving their Money to the Wolves, and now hes been living in Fear for so much Time that he has become very confused about who is fucking him and who is just like him, living in Fear of running out of Money and not having enough Time to get some more.