Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Me By Myself

It's a quarter after 9 and I'm still at work.

I'm tired. I don't want to be here. But it's what you do to get the job done. It's what good employees do, right? It's what productive members of society do, right? Right?

It doesn't feel right. True, right now there's no one waiting for me at home (the missus and the girl are in the homeland). No hugs and kisses or how was your day's waiting for me when I walk through the door. Just the tired anticipation of a beer and the easiest dinner I can think of. The other night it was a PBR and three slices of cheese before I went to go finish a project for an amiga. Other nights it's been left overs- and good stuff too so don't feel sorry for me.

Looking at what I'm doing now and considering the way I am when I'm alone I've decided it's a good thing I'm not single. Instead of being here I might be in some city (really, any city) I hate working at a job I think I love (I'll make myself love it, dammit) putting in way too many hours because that's what my old man did and my grandfathers did and their fathers and grandfathers did. Only they did it in the woods and fields and the mills and not under the unnatural light in some building sitting on their ass helping a major corporation sell tons of stuff for the holiday season. In their breakneck existence there was some sort of honor that I don't feel in my job. They busted their asses for their family. I'm busting my ass too, but I don't have the callouses or the tired body at the end of the day to let me know I've earned the cold beer and the hot supper.

There would be nobody at home for me. Or to go see later. Instead I'd be pining for some girl out of state (or at the very least out of county) that I once knew and have idealized to the point that if and when I ever did meet her my expectations would be so incredibly high that I'd set myself up for disappointment. There would be no point to all the hours and overtime because there'd be nobody to share it with. Just an empty bed with a only a comforter and a sheet because I like to make the bed without really making it.

So this would be me all by myself. Goddamm I'm glad this is only temporary.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

5 Movies I Hate Most

5. Wolf. Yeah, sure, it has Jack Nicholson in it and crap, but honestly, between the animatronic wolves and the crappy writing, it sucked. It took a long time before I saw another movie that pissed me off and made me want my money and the time it sucked away from me back.

4. Mission to Mars. How can a movie with such a promising premise suck so horribly? This pile of shit not only featured Tim Robbins imitating a dead baby floating through space, but had such horribly geeky humor that even geeks were embarrassed by it. Then you get all the references of them being in the future and making fun of things that would have been from our present- yeah, we fucking get it. You're from the future. Your cars don't use gasoline like Gary Sinese's (sp?) Mustang does. Whoopee-fucking-doo. And then the only reason you sit through all the bullshit is to find out what happened at Mars- which doesn't come until the very end. And it turned out to be a total cop-out. What a turd.

Now, the top three get a little tricky. Who gets the worst film can change from day to day. In my opinion, they're all equally shitty and a total fucking waste of my time.

3. Crash. What do you get when you combine a lecture about modern race relations in the United States with horrible dialogue, directing so bad the actors seem to be over-acting and events so improbable that it warps the mind to try and figure out how all of this could have happened in only a couple of day's time? This piece of shit. Yeah, I get it. White people are horrible, judgemental assholes. Black people can be a little racist. Hispanics and Mid-Easterners though, they're alright. So why the fucking lecture? This script felt like it was written by some college student with majors in Sociololgy and the various Ethnic Studies majors offered at the local university. Anyway, I hated it. I've never felt like I sat through a three hour lecture instead of a movie until I watched this turd. And dear script writer, you might want to learn a little about believability and statistics!

2. Rosemary's Baby. With a movie that's referenced so much in pop culture how could it be so bad? Until Crash and Mulholland Drive, it was the single worst movie I had ever seen. It wasn't scary. It wasn't interesting. It was't erotic (was it supposed to be?). It was boring. It was horrible. And the only nudity was from Mia Farrow. Perhaps that's where the horror comes in. This movie is so bad that I sometimes forget that I've seen it. Sometimes someone will be describing it and I'll say, "That sounds interesting, what movie is that?" and then they'll tell me and I'll vomit because I know the movie is not that good. If you haven't seen it, I'll save you the time. The old people and her husband are trying to get her to have Satan's baby and she does. Save your time and money. Rosemary's Baby is a two plus hours pile shit you need not step in.

1. Mulholland Drive. Yeah, you already know I hate it. I referenced it already. I went into this movie high hopes. Maybe too high. Everyone kept saying it was sexy and cool and one of the best movies ever made. Maybe I got another David Lynch film with the same cast because it was boring, predictable and pretentious. We kept watching it thinking it would get better. What felt like 10 hours later we were disappointed. There were no surprises or plot twists. Hell, Raleigh, our dog even knew that it was all in this gal's head or whatever. Perhaps that's why he went in the other room, took a nap and licked where he once had balls- he thought it would be a better use of his time. The whole Hollywood navel-gazing thing to me is boring. I get how corrupt the place is and the sacrifices you all-knowing, super-sensitive Hollywood-director-types make. Boo-fucking-hoo. But sometimes your work is still crap. The shock value Lynch was trying for felt less shocking than it did manufactured. You could almost hear him thinking, "Hmm, you know what will shock people? Two girls fucking. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, man, that's cutting edge." Maybe Lynch should have used that cutting edge to hack some time off this piece of shit. Sir, if you were going to make a movie that would screw with people's sense of time and place and still be edgy, you should of had Tarantino make the movie for you. This film felt just like that- a wanna-be Tarantino movie trying to show the seedier side of Hollywood with a dash of lesbianism for the sake of having two hot girls make out on film. As a matter of fact, I hate this movie so much if I ever see that cocksucker Lynch I'm going to demand $103.5o from him for wasting the missus' and my time plus the $3.50 I plunked down to watch this fucking wank-fest or I'll beat him within an inch of his life.

Monday, December 05, 2005

One Winter Night

I don't miss living where it snows. I realize to the tart that might be sacrilige, but I don't care. It was always slick, cold and after the novelty of the first snow wore off and all you were left with was dry, crusty sheets of snow followed by feet of mud, there is nothing about it to love.

But one winter night I almost changed my mind. I must have been 15 years old, because I wasn't driving at the time. The sky unloaded a foot or so of snow while I was at basketball practice and my ride home, Danny, only had a little S-10 pickup. It did alright in the rest of the snow on the flatness of the road but our driveway imposed another problem. It was roughly half a mile long and as you turned off the road and to the ranch's access you had to climb a small hill with a fairly steep grade. Danny apologized as he dropped me off at the foot of the driveway, but we both knew there was no way in hell that little pickup would climb the 100 yards or so up the hill. I wasn't surprised; this was life when it snowed big. This was one of the reasons I hated snow.

The slick soles of my cowboy boots made it damn near impossible to climb that bit of hill. I would have probably been better off in my basketball shoes but I left them at the gym. My letterman's jacket felt thin compared to the thick winter blackness. If I could make it to one of the junipers that sat near the irrigation ditch I would be fine. From there I could walk through the brush where the snow wasn't packed down by my father's pickup and the tractor then turned into ice.

I fought way up the hill, trying not fall on my ass, drop my bookbag or slide to the bottom of the driveway. I realize it's not quite an epic battle, but at the time that hill was that was between me and a half mile walk to a wood stove and a warm dinner. I cursed the hill and the snow and winter and the coach for not cancelling practice. I remembered all the reasons I hated winter and snow and why I was moving to Arizona once I graduated from high school.

After I made it to the top of the hill I stopped to catch my breath. The coat that felt too thin now weighed on my shoulders like an old dog. I looked around. Through the thin clouds I could make out a silvery thumbnail sliver of the moon on its way to becoming bigger and brighter. Though just a sliver, it was just enough to light up the white around me. All of the white. The snow sat in heavy pillows on the juniper branches and brush to create a cloudlike wonderland in the dark. Nothing was as I remembered it. Every tree, rock and bush was buried while the fence posts struggled to stand taller than the white drifts. The silence was heavier than the snow and shushed the chained tires beating their way on the snow-packed road and muffling the cry of a mother cow calling for her calf. Everything felt heavy- the silence, the snow, my frozen toes in the toes of my boots- everything. In that moment I loved where I was at. It was just me and the snow and the silence and I was okay with that. I didn't want to walk home. I wanted to stay mounds of snow and live my life in the lumpy white dreamscape. It was okay to die at that moment. I couldn't imagine the snow being more perfect than that.

Friday, December 02, 2005

I'm Tired of this Shit

Oy. I cannot wait for this month to be over with.

I'm sitting here, the last one left in the building, working away on some shit that should have been handled a whole helluva' lot earlier. But as fate would have it, wires got crossed, balls got dropped and here I am, putting in the OT. It'd be different if it were my fault, but I actually think I'm blameless this time.

And I guess it'd be different if I could think differently about what I'm doing. I'm not doing anything worthwhile or notable or I guess even honorable. It's just what I do for money. I like everyone I work with, yet this doesn't fulfill me. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I were making good money and enough to provide for the missus and the girl on my own. But I'm not. So, again I wonder where the hell all this is headed. I can see the fucking ceiling and I'm not happy about it.

I'm tired. I'm horny. I have more fucking blood work coming up on Tuesday and I already know what the doctor will tell me on Friday. And that nagging worry about what I was told about my palm and shit is bugging me again.

Donde' es el Oso Negro ginebra?