Navel: a neutered umbilical chord.
2003-06-25 - 2:39 p.m.
Related Sidenote: the title of today�s posting was originally meant to be novel, but i couldn�t think of anything novel to say about novels, besides it�s a long story, and i�m not currently writing one.
June25. going to work today (wednesday) until midnightish, and then get paid tomorrow (thursday) work working this week. my first paycheck of my new life/location.
June24. Mitch and i talked at one point, about being roommates next year, provided i survive the summer in New York. but for being best friends, we really have a lot of issues, and they�ve been coming up over the last week or so. i think he exaggerates the seriousness of situations, and he thinks i don�t take things seriously at all. (this problem permeated a game we were trying to make, in which we started with the same basic idea, and ended up bifurcating into two completely different games, his a tabletop freeform RPG system in an element-based semi-futuristic setting, and mine a very simplistic yet sequence-challenged game that had it�s own system and was based on an extensive dot.hack setting, combined with massive integration with the elements). but by farr, our biggest problem in getting along is that he is a supportive and compassionate friend, whereas i am not. on his side of the spoon (specifically, the convex side), it seems as if he gives me confidence boosters and tells me i�m good at things i�ve really only scratched the surface of, and at the end of the day i still haven�t pointed out how cool he is, to be where he is with his research, or knowledge, or whatever. on my side of the spoon (concave), i just seem to be using complements sparingly (if at all), and Mitch�s happy-helperness isn�t really [motivating] because it doesn�t tie in with PartB* what i came to New York to do. he seems (my side of the spoon talking again) to think hat i can�t wake up in the morning without him knocking on my door at 7am, can�t get an apartment by myself, certainly can�t get a job by myself�not that this older-brother-ness is a new thing. last winter when Mitch schedualed a talk with Brom for me, he insisted on coming along, and asked questions for me [for my own good, of course, and i did appreciate it...but...]. PartB of the plan, just for the record, was to grow up. to gain freedoms and responsibilities that until now i had only heard about through other people�s stories. PlanB has nothing at all, however, to do with re-making myself in an image of Mitch.
Revelation: if purgatory were a huge convenience store, hell would be in the back freezer where the �damned ones� have to restock many different kinds of cool-refreshing water on a hot summer�s day (only they�re never allowed to drink the water, and their fingers freeze off periodically). i could be considered to work in hell, if only for short periods of time. and really, it�s not all that bad as the religies make it out to be.
June23. Mitch is pist at me because i got back from work an hour-plus later than i was supposed to, instead of coming straight home so we could go to a concert (the band members being Tim�s [rommate Tim] friends, who stayed tonight at our apartment, in person). sorry, i forgot. and i thought i was doing so good too�remembered, at one point, twelve one-half gallon ice cream boxes that needed to be restocked per trip to the freezer. could visualize them, list off the names in my head. but i forgot about the concert, and this may have something to do with not Really wanting to go (i get paid to stand up for eight to nine hours a day, so paying someone for the ability to stand in a certain place for a while just doesn�t sound as appealing as it should [and of course, i didn�t have enough money for the cover charge, so i would have had to borrow some, but regardless, i�d go
June23, later. all this talk about d20 systems on the net, people don�t get it�they get too tied up in the rules and not the inherent system of the game. yes, i�ve played a d2 system. and yes, it sucked, but the process was the same, the result was the same, and almost certainly the same amount of fun was experienced. Mitch and i are trying to develop a game now, starting as a board game, and ending as a computer game, but always with a very complicated system of magic (ie we want to get away from characters walking into the nearest mages guild and instantaneously learning spells, because they could afford it�we want a learning process, and we�re learning to get what we want).
June22. today i met and worked with Nick, a self-proclaimed �sick individual� who quite obviously fakes a British accent. lots of bobbing heads on my part, while he went into depth about the gross things he�s seen as an EMT, and the �uncouth locations� of his piercings interspersed with comments of ooh-she�s-a-real-hottie-don�t-you-think? and so-i�m-bangin�-this-one-girl-man-and-she-got-the-lovely-dark-olive-complexion-and-she�s-in-her-forties-but-looks-like-she�s-eighteen-so-i-don�t-give-a-wigg usually followed by a friendly gesture of *would you like to see my piercing?* it was odd in the way that things are when they are vastly out of place, but seeing as it was ever-so-slightly misplaced in it�s out-of-palceness (being very new to my job i�m not sure of the protocol of how to inform him of his many moronisms) and so the whole thing just blew over and resulted in a sort of silent-chuckling-in-the-dark odd. when i got back from work, a cop car pulled in behind me, lights flashing. evidently, i had been speeding, and hadn�t seen the cop though i had checked my review periodically. 50+ in a thirty, but he might have been fussy because he couldn�t keep up around the corners. got away with a warning (but didn�t give me a paper to show for it), my third one so far, in which i could have been arrested for criminal activity, as a legal alternative. what this means, in general, is that i�ve become comfortable driving my car. this is bad for everyone involved. and the range of people�s involvement with my driving�habits�is predicted to increase over time. so if you�re reading this, and plan to drive a car, it�s advised that you stay out of the Albany area for the next couple years�that is, unless you consider yourself obsessively lucky�or maybe i�ll just stop driving like a maniac, solely because it could kill *you*.
June21. finished eating another eight-pound chunk of ham, this one basted in brown sugar and coke. they says �hey, that�s not college food, you can�t afford that!�, but really, it�s a little less than a dollar for a pound of meat, and it�s not like i eat anything else with is to balance out my diet�so i still consider it unhealthy = oh, the college life. hero quest was played, maybe for the last time in a very long time, because after all these years Mitch and i still cannot agree on all the rules. poisoning ran.
June20 Mitch created a song on his guitar today, about me (from what I hear, he�s made a number of songs about me, even tried to put some of *these* entries to music, and I applaud him for attempting the conceivably-impossible). The song in question starts out with �Oh shitty days�� and it�s got a very catchy tune, with a very versatile (constantly changing) progression of verses. Another song was may about my driving and how I never stop at red lights or seem to notice cars coming at all�and it goes something like this �dadaadaddumuaumdum..ohmygawdwatchoutforthattree!andthatoldlady! redight-car! redlight!-AHHH! �dadaadaddumuaumdum..�
June20, earlier. Nearly lost my job several times today. The first because I walked away from the counter while a customer was trying to buy something (really I thought someone else had taken over the register for a second), and then there was this guy who was rather obviously stoned, and somehow missed his gas tank while he poured gasoline all over the road, and proceeded to light a cigarette�which I responded to by volunteering to restock the freezer. I had this bad feeling that when I went back out of the freezer the rest of the store would be all crispy�but instead, nothing blew up, and I was stuck sweeping up the kitty-littler that was the fire department�s solution to cleaning up the gasoline.
;employee is a
;unit which can perform functions.
second day on the job and already I have learned many important processes. many more were learned yesterday, but today i learned several which are particularly interesting to the alien scholars that study our culture. the first was check_temp, which allowed me to know if a drink had been in the display-freezer before the shipment came, or if it was part of the shipment. as a side-product of using this function is that i learned that the display freezer is considerably warmer moments after the shipment arrives in the display-freezer. floor_mop allows me to mop the floor, stock_floor allows me to look at the shelves and find out what we need to pass �true� to check_full. break_potty was found to be particularly useful today, though i didn�t use it yesterday. i even developed my own function poke_hole function, so i could hang things on the hanging devices even without a functional punched hole from the manufacturer. tomorrow, i hope to learn the register_* functions and wear_gloves, because it�s awfully cold in the freezer after the first half-hour.
June19. MSSM hadn�t sent out my transcripts until today. and here i was, worrying about Mt. Ida being punctually challenged.
June18, later. Mike�s brother �Rickie� has arrived, and we (Me, Mitch, Rickie, Mike, Ran, Tim) all played Mindtrap. problem is, they�re all scientist-minded, and there was much �this question is complete bullshit because of (insert a law-o�-physics/chemistry here)��extremely tired afterward, but visions of Karl Marx dancing with shadow animals (from Lindsay) were still muchly appreciated.
June18. too excited/nervous to sleep last night, too much in my head. started work several hours after posting the prior entry. i believe i have found an alternative source of energy, one that is inherent in human beings. energy through application. as we do similar tasks, for longer periods of time, we reach a certain point at which we can perform the action in a much quicker and energy-efficient manner. my job [at the gas station] is cool. i get to destroy things in the back room (specifically, cardboard boxes), drink coke (in the back room) at 50% off, get to smell the ordour of unsmoked cigarettes (which is much the same as the smell of an unopened book, but anti-freeze-bad sweeter), and am instructed to stack things up unconquerably high, until they are just about to fall, and they stay in that state of oh-gawd-any-moment-now-i�m-gonna-topple-! perpetually, of course. the only thing i could think of as a better job would be playing with computers (and only if they gave me freestuff), or if i was somehow employed in the profession of death, or owning a bookstore (because the smell of old well-used books is just as good as the smell of unused ones, though there�s a period between in which they don�t smell at all. just like how humans only smell like piss when they�re very young/old) but then, the bookstore would have to have a spare room for kids to play RPGs (CCGs would be banned) and I�d have to sell myself coke at 50% off.
*here* I would like to take an asside to mantion a little about the employees I commonly work with.
Beth: boss. Softspaoken with the potential to ripp your head off.
Tim (not to be confused with roommate Tim, or Tim:�Monkey�): subtly intelligent and funny, laughed with me when I nearly cut my finger off with the boxcutter. Describes himself as being �stuck� with the job, though he really doesn�t much mind, it�s just a job, a source of working to get money.
Jan: real name is Janis, i think. very seriously likes training employees, but doesn�t love the store the way Beth does.
Carol: your basic odd old woman, has made a life out of making pastries and sandwiches.
*PartA of the plan to move to New York was to get a chance to spend a couple of yours with my one and only real friend, preferably before his eyes had out and blindness occurred.
