Category: Uncategorized

First Days

Originally written on Wednesday 06.20.2001

I’m sitting in the lobby of the computer company where I am to be employed. I was supposed to meet my manager in the lobby of this building about 30 minutes ago. Despite the assurances by the orientation facilitator that my manager would be informed of our initial meeting, as has been the case far too frequently, I am the victim of continuing logistic confusion. This is just great. Another frustration after days filled w/ frustration. Yesterday and the day before I suffered through punishingly dull corporate orientation. Save for the corporate overview, which I found to be challenging and interesting, the orientation reeked more of junior high than a class appropriate for college students and those w/ master’s degrees. It is surely a test of will to survive a day in a windowless room bathed in throbbing fluorescent light while being bombarded by PowerPoint slide after PowerPoint slide. I have heard that some companies are banning PowerPoint in their meetings. Now I see why. It seems that PowerPoint encourages presenters to be as verbose and flashy as possible rather than distill the information down to its most essential concepts.

The other aspect of this whole endeavor that is terribly frustrating is the fact that my long time friend, colleague and traveling partner, Josh, takes to the corporate environment like a fish to water. He’s very good at what he does, not just on the technical side but also in terms of fitting into the corporate culture. I find myself being drawn into a competition with him, partially through his goading, but mostly because of my personality. I hope that some day I learn to bow out of competitions that don’t really matter to me. But dammit, I want to be the best at everything. As I get older and realize how often I’m going to have to settle at being pretty good, or decent I become more and more frightened. I feel as though I should have found my niche, my calling by now. Well, I’m pretty sure that my niche is not working for an enormous, multinational computer corporation.

There are things that make me forget about the less pleasant things in life, however. I went to a show last night at this little club downtown called Emo’s. The show featured River City High, Benjamin, and The Julianna Theory. Besides having a really solid lineup, it was an early show which is always good if one has to work the following morning. Benjamin played first and they were very good, but not astoundingly memorable. So, I’m going to talk about the other two bands instead. Richmond, VA rockers River City High played next. Despite the fact that they play through central PA with some frequency, I had not seen the band until last summer in Austin. They were quite good, but this time they were even better. The crowd was larger, and despite the heat more energized. This worked well because River City High is a band that exudes energy. They seem to have a great deal of fun playing their music and they play a style of post-punk rock and roll that is jubulant and without pretense. It has the energy of punk rock along with tight pop melodies. They also manage to throw in some irresistable guitar hooks and a certain degree of 70s and 80s guitar rockness that makes them a joy to see when they play out. Their full length out this fall will be eagerly awaited. It was strange going to this show and standing near the front because I was surrounded by kids who seemed much younger than me. Sheesh, I’m only 20 and already I feel like a grandfather. It was encouraging seeing young people, their peers no doubt belly up amongst ‘nsync and crazy town, listening to some music with some real soul. Its cool to see girls going to the shows, not reluctantly on the arm of their boyfriends but because they like it. The Julianna Theory played next. I had seen them before as well when they played a truncated set on a fall evening in Columbus. Though they were good, at the time they seemed tired. This show took their set to a different level. The Austin kids who go to shows seem so much more excited to see bands than the Columbus kids and I think that makes the difference in terms of performance quality. The J. Theory worked through a tight set, mostly songs off their latest release, Emotion is Dead that kept building and building to increasing heights of intensity. I was excited that they seemed excited to be playing. So, I had a really good time at the show. I guess even if work gets boring and things with Josh grow tired, the shows will make this summer worthwhile.

One week

Originally written Saturday 06.23.2001

I’ve been in Austin, TX for exactly one week. After rolling around town with Dana and Josh
it seems like I’ve done everything already. We saw the largest colony of mexican free
tailed bats last night and today we hit the crazy antique and vintage clothing stores on
south congress street. I’ve been to Emo’s to a show already and I’ve been to the giant
movie theatre that charges too much for tickets. I’ve gotten ice cream at the fun little
joint where we always went last summer. The bad part about being itinerant, living
somewhere, but, at the same time, not really living somewhere, is that one appreciates a
given local in and of itself and not really as a backdrop for life. Austin is a great town,
I like it very much. The music, the crazy, pretty eclectic culture, the laid back warmth,
its all great, but I still feel like a tourist. The only locals I ever come in contact with
are the ones who are taking my money from across a counter.

Work seems like it will be pretty cool. I think its better suited for me than last summer,
as its more software based. Still, I find that there is a great deal of information that I
don’t know. In school, we worked primarily with the SPARC architecture rather than intel
architecture, and though the assembly languages have similarities, there is a wealth of
information that I don’t entirely grasp. So, I’ve spent my first 3 days of real work
reading spec after spec and stepping through source file after source file. SMBIOS,
PCIBIOS, Intel System Programmer’s guide. These massive tomes would be impossible to read
in a summer, but I try to process as much relevent information as I can from them. The
problem is, I’m not entirely sure what is relevant. The hardest part about being a co-op is
the ambgiuties from my employers. When my job isn’t really strictly defined, I find it far
too easy to become overwhelmed by all the information that could be potentially pertainant.

I feel as if I should try to bring myself up to the same level as the veterans in a few
weeks. I need to get past my anxiety and talk to my manager and figure out exactly what I
should be learning right now rather than pawing about aimlessly.

One problem with the company where I work is that it seems relatively old, at least with
respect to the tech sector. I work around older people, in their 30s and 40s or foreign
nationals, neither of which shares much in common with me in terms of interests. I know,
someome somewhere is preparing a lesson in diversity for me, but sometimes what one realy
needs is just some common, comfortable, familiar ground when it comes to people. The
environment is just so different from the raucus, juvenile quality of the ISP where I spent
my freshman summer, or even the startup in Boston where I interviewed. We passed the Excite
building when we were hopping about the antique stores today. Its chic location, even if
contrived, seemed to still have worlds more soul than the sterile campus of my employer.
“It’s about the knowledge and the experience stupid”, I keep telling myself.

One week has made me realize how much of a liar I was in my last relationship. Well, not a
liar really I guess because I didn’t have anything to guage it against, but now I find
myself willing, no, not willing, but overwhelmingly eager to do all the things that I
dismissed before. No longer am I “crunched for time” or “without anything intersting to
write about”. Now I find myself scrawling letter after letter to my new girlfriend
realizing that there is nothing I would rather be doing than penning words that would
probably have made my old self nauseous with their dripping sentiment. Dripping sentiment.
That’s the hardest part. I like this girl a lot. More than any other girl I’ve ever known,
but I find that I am increasingly fearful that my words are inadequate in expressing how I
feel towards her. I certainly hope that my feelings are completely reciprocated, which I
think they are, and indeed that equality is what makes the relationship seem so comfortable.

But at the same time it is incredibly frightening. I know that words are so often just the
facade of those who do not truly live life or feel an emotion, but I always find myself
trying to communicate the way I feel about dating this girl with words. And, I never feel
as though I’ve said enough. I feel as if I’m being cliched. Or, I feel as though I come
off as too detached, too icy, too unconcerned. So, I find myself constantly reaching for
the right words and instead finding the sappiest most cliched sentiment that my person can
muster. It pains me to utter it. Its all true, every sappy word I say, but I’ve heard
those words uttered so much, buzzing about my like radio static. I’ve heard them uttered
with such insincerity that the very semblance of my words seems to cheapen them. What lies
below those words though, is a knowledge whose expression words fail. Some day I hope that
I can just be comfortable in that knowledge and not feel as though everything that is
beautiful to me must be continually fought for.

She doesn’t make it easy though. She sent me a package that I received midweek that had the
absolute coolest contents ever. First there was a nice letter, adorned in crazy stickers
that was so sweet, so innocent, that if you had been the recipient you also would have been
very glad that whoever wrote it was alive in this world. I received, also a pen adorned
with a sound clip spouting C3PO head. That would have been cool by itself, but the best was
still to come. We have this little semi-private joke. Its this two beaked bird that she
drew for me one time when we were studying together before we were dating. Well, she
constructed, by hand no less, a stuffed version of the bird. It was overwhelmingly clever
and adds a touch of her excitement and originality to the sterility of my room. It was
easily one of the coolest things that anyone has every given me. This summer should be full
of surprise gifts, but it presents an interesting challenge for me to be eqaully clever and
creative. I shall be the better for it, I’m sure.

It has also been one week since I last saw my friend D. who is also working in Texas at a
computer company. She’s quite interesting in that she possesses a unique flexibility to
slide effortlessly between different people or groups of people. She’s oddly tolerent and
diplomatic in a way that seems completely foreign to me. She’s quite intelligent and to my
chagrin posesses far more natural aptitude and talent for all things computer science than
I. She also listens to some of the same music that I enjoy, but talks of the bands she
likes with no arrogance. The thing that I find odd about her is her overwhelming sexuality.
It seems to come up incessently in conversation and it seems for her a frequent torment.
It is a world that I surely don’t understand, but with her it seems more idiosyncratic than
base. There are times when I can converse with her as I do to those people whose
conversations I most enjoy, but there are other times when I feel like an outsider to her
wildness. She reminds me, in some respects of a girl I knew in high school who was also
displayed the same wild brilliance. Also, they seem to both share some festering scars,
just below the surface, that I will never be able to comprehend. Nevertheless, D. seems to
be the least tormented of many that I know. She is content with her talents and bright
future and resolute in the path she will take. In some ways I am quite jealous of the fact
that she is so very good at her chosen field that her career decisiosn are made trivial. In
the end though, I was happy to see her as her company offers a distinct counterpoint to that
of my perpetual companion, J. (as I’m sure it does to him as well). Perhaps semi-frequent
visits will quell the rage of familiarity, lonliness, and boredom that so troubled me last
summer.

Its been one week since I hit Austin, and it seems that not all that much has happened. More
disturbing still though, is the increasing proximity to July 4th on the calendar. Ever
since childhood, dispite the frivolity of the fireworks and picnics, July 4th has always
been a harbinger of the coming autumn, a reminder of the tenuous nature of summer freedom.
So, in the weeks to come I plan to continue with my summer projects of reading, writing,
coding and guitarplaying with a new found urgency so that I will have more to report when
two weeks have passed.

The Second Day of Driving To TX

This was originally written on Friday 05.15.2001

I think that my girlfriend’s two black cats did me in. While visiting her the past two days, the seemingly innocent creatures crossed my path dozens of times. Now I am paying the price. Either that or my response of “Are there pirates in hell?” to this morning’s CB evangelist’s hellfire and brimstone rhetoric was offensive enough to incur the wrath of some higher power.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good despite the utter craziness of yesterday. It was around 6 o’clock, the sun beginning its evening descent towards the horizon as the river of steel began to overflow its concrete banks. We had cut south down the highway; starting in Columbus, then running through Louisville and Nashville before turning west towards the great Mississippi and the city of Memphis. We were perhaps fifteen miles from our final destination of West Memphis Arkansas when our smooth 80 mph cruise changed to the abrupt start and stop of city traffic. As the traffic picked up again, I realized that my vehicle was not joining them. I made a quick check to make sure that I had not knocked the car into neutral but the flashing lights on the dashboard told a different woeful tale. I managed to guide my crippled ride to the edge of the overpass and send a helpless squawk to Josh over the CB. I turned off the engine and was not surprised when the car would not start again.

I stepped from my car into the hot late afternoon sun. I laughed a bit. I guess I am not entirely my father’s son. He would have been livid by now. What was I to do? Nothing. Nothing, but wait for some help to arrive and hope for the best. Eventually a cop rolled up and uttered something almost unintelligible about roadside assistance. Over the course of the next two hours I spent stranded on the roadside I saw at least half a dozen police cards drive by. None of them even slowed. I’m not sure if it was because my break down was already reported or just general apathy, but it tended to get frustrating.

Eventually a big yellow truck filled with two smiling men pulled up behind me. They stumbled slowly towards the car, their continuing smiles making them look dopey and stupid (or perhaps I was more irritated than I initially thought). They popped open the trunk, fiddled around with a few things and even added some gas to the tank. It was an exercise in futility but I wasn’t going to object given gas prices, however. Eventually accepting failure, the dynamic duo let me use their cell phone to call AAA for a tow truck. By then Josh had managed to swing back around the crowded highway, so we sat on the concrete divider, ate the last of my road fuel pretzels and made snide comments about passersby. No one is as adept at making snide comments as Josh. We waited and waited for more than an hour for the tow truck to arrive. I finally called AAA once again to check on the status of the driver when, surprise surprise, the tow truck pulled in front of me. A large man drove it, rolls of fat spilling forth from his sweat drenched muscle shirt. On his arm were tattooed the words “dirty deeds done dirt cheap”. Whooboy. He pulled my car onto the bed of the tow truck and I climbed into the passenger seat. The driver then proceeded to get out of the cab, lift the hood of the tow truck and begin tinkering around. When the tow truck driver needs to look under the hood, that is generally not a good sign. Luckily, he eventually returned to the cab, satisfied that all things mechanical were in order, and we began a drive to the nearest garage. During the drive, the tow truck man talked incessantly on his cell phone and I was surprised that he was able to deliver my car and my person safely to the garage.

He dumped my crippled Escort wagon in a vacant spot in the Firestone service center’s parking lot. The garage had just closed and one of the mechanics ambled towards us. In a dripping southern accent that was nearly unintelligible to my Yankee ears he asked what the problem was. I tried to explain the incident as best I could, but I fear my knowledge of the automobile is laughable. He instructed me to open the hood and try to start the car. He gleefully proclaimed that the problem was surely the timing belt and told me to tell that to the manager when the shop opened the next day so as to avoid extra costs. He even said that he would inform the other mechanics at my shop of the predicament. I was a bit taken aback by his honesty given the general shadiness of many garages, but his help was much appreciated.

As I mentioned before, Josh and I were only a few miles from the night’s planned destination. As dusk fell, we rolled across the Mississippi and into the trucker’s heaven that is West Memphis Arkansas. During all of my previous trips down to the lone star state, I had always complained about the fact that all the journeys lacked that true road trip quality. The drives were monotonous, the hotel rooms sterile, the restaurants the kind that could be had anywhere in any given metropolis across this country. Well, that night would be a bit of a departure from that norm. We pulled into the parking lot of the hotel room and instantly noticed not only a preponderance of motorcycles, but also an automobile that appeared to be 30% metal and 70% duct tape and rope. The inside of the hotel had a similarly trashy quality. The room had an odd odor. Looking into the bathroom I noticed a mildewed floor and what appeared to be the stains of fecal matter on the wall. A lone fly buzzed about to complete the effect. We were too tired to be fazed by all of this and decided to seek nourishment. Despite what one would thing, West Memphis is hardly an epicurean Mecca. We had our choice of the truck stop next door, MacDonald’s, and Toxic Hell. We opted for the truck stop.

Now, if one is looking for a slice of real America; the grittiness of the road, a unique culture apart from mainstream society, one will surely find it at a truck stop. As we entered the smoky establishment, glittering gift shop to our right and restaurant to our left, we were struck by the sight of enormous truckers piling mountain loads of food into their mouths from the all you can eat buffet. We sat in a deserted corner of the restaurant at a table with a telephone next to it (all good truck stops have phones at the table) so that I could call my mom and tell her of my predicament. The waitress came and took our orders. If you want good service go to a truck stop. The waitresses (and they are always waitresses) may be old and haggard and call you ‘hon, but they are generally pleasant and always efficient as hell. I tried to eat most of my home fries and pancakes, but truck stop fare is heavy and the stress of the day, which at first had made me ravenous, now left me a bit nauseated. We paid our bill and laughed with the cashier as she commented on her incompetence at swiping our credit cards. We then returned to the hotel, made a few phone calls and went to sleep praying that we wouldn’t contract some horrible sexually transmitted disease just from sleeping in the hotel beds.

Today was a better day. We woke up early and went to the garage where I informed the garage management of my need for service. They said they would get the car in as soon as possible and estimated a bill of about $300. Not great, but better than the worse case scenario, a destroyed engine. We grabbed a lengthy breakfast at the IHOP and waited until 1 PM until they finally finished with the car. We gassed up and drove like hell to the west. A day of 80 mph driving meant that even with the morning’s setback we were able to reach our planned destination of Dallas just as the cars around us began to turn on their headlights.

Haiku for a june morning while studying linguistics in a coffee shop in columbus, ohio

light paints concrete gold
metal giants grunt loudly
a city awakes

I wrote this as a diversion from studying for finals the first week in june

Sorority Girl Poetry

Ode To My Pores

whose pores are these? why yes they’re mine!
for I’ve been blessed, with skin devine
to best employ my girlish guiles
of handjobs, sex, and sacharine smiles
a blessing yes, but too a curse
for beauty products fill my purse
and 3 hour regimine complete
i barely have the time to eat
which serves as little compromise
for food will only grow my thighs
like ugly girls that I abhor
those delta kappa fucking whores
but I’m the girl that boys love more
just me, myself, and my cute pores

Tooth Enamel, Oh Tooth Enamel

My tooth enamel went away, I shant see it tomorrow.
Like stomach lining gone before, it fills my heart with sorrow.
For what, you ask, do I so bear this pain and fetid breath?
For having meat upon my bones, tis fate, far worse, than death.

I Must Buy Something Now

What sentiment did interrupt, my meal when last I tried to sup?
Like hot coals through my pockets burning, alas, twas my consumer yearning.
My friendships I must disavow, I fear I must buy something now.

Again it strikes whilst I’m in class, the urge to spend some cold hard cash.
Disrupting things I might have known, like buzzing toll of mobile phone.
Enough of books, and furrowed brow, for I must go buy something now.

For joy! It looms in front of me, the mall, celestial city.
Shimmering with glorious splender: stores and boys, and food court vendors.
But to distraction, I won’t bow, no I will go buy something now.

Cheerful signs they call to me, Gap, Express, Aber-crom-bie.
My lust for commerce finally sated, my hunger has, at last abated.
For I have followed my own tao, and have gone to buy something now.

The Three Best Things

about going home last weekend are

1) Getting to be there for my Mom’s birthday and mother’s day. Buying her baloons and party decorations to make the house fun. Baking her a cake and making her breakfast. Knowing that she’s really happy just to have me around.

2) Learning to play Saves the Day songs on the guitar and singing them with my brother.

3) Driving with Tim to get frosting for the cake. Seeing that a new cigarette outlet has opened up business. Going to the dollar tree store to buy tape. Making crude signs that read Smoking Kills, Death $2.50 per pack, Butt Out, and Smoking Killed My Grandpa. Posting said signs on the front of said cigarette outlet.

More Public Education Horror Stories

Tutor: She has the division flash cards down, she’s also got the metric measurement fine. She’s still having trouble with English measurement, but she understands it better.
Teacher: I don’t know why she doesn’t understand it. She’s my brightest student. I was thinking of mainstreaming her next year. Sometimes I want to hit her.

I Believe The Children Are Our Future …

Teacher:You can go help the kid down the hall. He’s the heavyset one.
Student: You called him fat.
Teacher: I did not. I didn’t say fat.
Student: You said heavy…
Teacher: You know what… Just shut up.

(this was an actual conversation overheard when I was tutoring at a Columbus, OH middle school)

McDonald’s Confirms Its French Fries Are Made With Beef
Extract

Just a warning to any vegetarians, my roommate J passed this information on to me: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0504-02.htm

Joey Ramone Is Dead

Ok, so as I’m sure pretty much everyone is aware, Joey Ramone is dead as of Sunday I think. So I don’t really know how to feel. The Ramones have never been my favorite band. They always seemed disconnected from the youthful energy, anger, and politics that made punk rock important to me. Still, I’ve always enjoyed their music, and everyone must aknowledge the incredible contributions that the band made to music. Though one can argue on and on about the origins of punk, the Ramones, more than any other band brought punk to the forefront and spawned the genre that is so prominent today. But despite the significance of the Ramones, I find myself almost ambivalent to the passing of their frontman and if anything, more alarmed at my ambivalence then the actual death. Is it that we punks have become so acustomed to the fleetingness of punk rock icons via bands breaking up after a brief, raging spot upon the worlds stage? Unfortunately, it seems, the same thing that makes punk different, the fact that its purveyors aren’t rock stars, but average joes (or joeys) means that in the end