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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | | 8:23 am |
| | Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | | 6:38 am |
u all suk -- an email forwarded to me
watched today a 110-min czech flick (dialogue in czech and polish and some english) called 'karamazovi,' about a bunch of czech actors staging 'brothers karamazov' inside a steel mill in nowa huta. i thought it was going to be an absolute dog, complete avant-garde incomprehensibility, but it was actually forceful and moving. though i read BK 20 years ago and with little discernment, all those decades of being around russiana still made an impact while i was watching. the character names, some of the events in the play/novel, even some of the lines rang bells deep within my un- and subconscious. as usual, my hobby during the flick was to try to understand the dialogue. the film pointed up in some instances that polish and czech are not THAT close, as when a czech was remonstrating a polish janitor and used the czech word for theater, the not particularly transparent 'divadlo.' as in national theater, narodni divadlo. | | Saturday, February 28th, 2009 | | 10:16 am |
| | Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | | 12:13 am |
u all suck
betrayed by rain, dc's idea of motorists, and the bus again. caught the bus from bethesda after running errands there. as usual with my luck on the wretched, ever-full J2 -- a bus that serves a route that needs a rail line, which rich golfers keep killing -- it was hideously packed. i was standing with a shoulder bag and 2 grocery bags. maryland's all-democrap politicians like their golf and sleazy donations as much as anybody else, hence no cross-county rail. i noticed with dread on the E-W highway, as a light drizzle fell, that the opposite direction was flowing quite smoothly while we were inching along. oh yeah, i knew long before the bus, police car, and two damaged cars came into sight that some southern-fried numb nuts had been so unhinged by the tinkling drizzle that he had forgotten how to brake and had crashed his car. into a bus. then, to cap this afternoon of i-hate-this-place, our bus broke down. apparently making a scheduled stop on an upgrade was enough to ruin its transmission. the driver couldn't move it out of park or neutral. now we were TWO buses, a police car, and two damaged cars clogging one lane of the E-W highway. after several minutes of me and my fellow miguels dying like sailors trapped in a depth-charged submarine, he let us out to trudge through the goddamn drizzle -- in a semi-fortunate break, a mere several hundred yards uphill to my waiting bike. why the F---- am i here? solely b/c of a paycheck. it rains too goddamn much. when it does, the country-fried banjo strummers all crash their cars. and it's not like we're ever going to have desert wildflowers or kelly-green oak grasslands after a rain, the way a certain state where i lived once does. | | Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | | 12:58 pm |
u all suck still
the other day i abjured the car altogether and after work found a credit union branch near my office. bicycled to it and shortly afterward caught an express bus on the freeway back to my lonely abode. the transit exists if only americans would stop being GODDAMN SHEEP and ride it. but they have 2 b literate first 2 read schedules. | | 12:06 pm |
a long post that makes no sense
after what felt like a pointless dinner down in crystal city, i headed on the long northward metro ride home. somebody seeing me rooting in trash cans generously donated his done-with day pass, which i have done before myself. having a day pass and nothing thrilling planned and a couple reasons for minor despair, i figured to go to the magic fare card machine in greenbelt and see how many units from my stash of busted fare cards would work in it. i had probably 20 or so hoarded cards, but only 3 of them worked. so the trip to greenbelt, while costing me zero in terms of lost fare, netted rather little from the hoarded cards. a disappointment. a hispanic woman was stuck, having lost her own card during her trip. she was not being clever about it -- a friend who had NOT lost her own ticket handed her a card across the barrier, but of course you have to dance with the card that brung you. not very smart of them. i told the station manager, who sprung the card-less one in about 2 seconds. my good deed for the year. abdul quietly got very drunk at a rare party for him this night. once he recognized that he would never make more than an HS graduate's salary, never own a house, never have a wife, he stopped caring about a lot of things. he drank his fill, which was before he would start acting out, said goodbye to the hosts, and rode a train and bus back. unlike his sober self, he was completely unangered by barely missing a bus connection, thus adding 30 min. to his return time. he sat and waited, not caring about much and unlike the sober one having no compulsion to read. being very slow-moving and indifferent to 'just-missed connections,' he was extremely thorough at plundering garbage cans for farecards and found more than he would have otherwise. sat. night and friday night are good haul nights -- lots of weekenders toss their cards. he added them all to his smart card, found his buses in good if slow order, and made it back safely to his apt, not before peeing into a bush that a sober version would have considered too visible. but nobody saw him. he also ate a bunch of andy capps cheez fries that somebody had discarded inside a bus shelter. they were lying on the sidewalk. he didn't eat them all though. he has his standards. well there was much to be scavenged and destroyed today. i am dreadfully bored and looking for nasty things to do. it is like a personal september 10. found 2 farecards that amounted to $12 in value! slammed them onto my smartcard asap. after another FREE film noir, i found a bag containing fries and a pristine big mac in the subway garbage can. there was no smell of rot from them, so i happily ate the patties and fries at home. i think somebody, prob a spoiled little brat, topped out at consuming a drink and a few fries, and threw out the rest of the bag. people are ridiculous. bring on more bust, and they will stop acting like this and more like ME. another circling-the-drain realwhore had stuck 2 signs in grassy spots. since i always regard such signs as physical spam, a couple hours later on my way off the FREE bus (code red air = FREE buses), i yanked those signs out and tossed them. let the (#&$(#&$ drowning realwhore's spin down the drain accelerate that much faster. i called the 800 number from the sign to hear whatever stupidities he had to say. there was no canned real estate msg in the evening, but he did identify his voice mail as belonging to Luis Munoz. another goddamn (*#&$(*#$ aspiring to make undeserved thousands in RE commissions. well, i did my little bit to sabotage senor munoz. do something useful for society, like landscaping rather than defacing public spaces. or riding a garbage truck. or driving a mass-transit train. | | Friday, August 15th, 2008 | | 6:08 am |
try this one u losers
 where the hell is azia kim? we never hear about her anymore. hers was a great story. she deserves fame and praise | | 6:07 am |
| | Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | | 7:02 am |
| | Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | | 11:12 am |
much to my disgust, i received a letter from dollar rent-a-car the other day, billing me $25 for processing of a toll violation last year in chicago. the rental car firm included a separate bill from the tollway for $20 for alleged nonpayment. as well as $40 in fines for violations AFTER my rental ended. only 1 of you may remember that in september 2007, i was unable to reach the single cash-only lane at a tollway exit in time and had to blow thru a transponder lane. i researched the tollway's procedure for paying accidental violations and sent in 30 cents (cash) – the site listed cash as a medium of payment – with a letter explaining date, time, place, and license plate #. after a year of silence, the tollway reported those 3 dates as violations to dollar, which at least had the intelligence to realize that only one of them occurred during my rental. would a bureaucrat be venal enough to steal 30 cents and throw away my letter? i guess it really happened. now, as usual, i feel my usual crazy infuriation at being punished after following instructions. i doubt either party will listen to me and will complain for what little good it will do. the thought of demanding a hearing, as if i were a chicagoan, and FLYING IN for a day to argue has occurred to me. | | Friday, August 1st, 2008 | | 1:49 pm |
farewell to a colleague
lunch for the departing unfortunately involved parking for money, not for free, in downtown armonk. my wooly veteran coworker, he who has been at IBM and its predecessor for 5 or 7 years or something, hadn't planned or thought anything and was startled to remember it was goodbye-lunch day. i drove, figuring i should be gracious and take this brief drive to ARM since he lives too goddamn far away and is practically a 'supercommuter.' we parked in the wrong garage, i not knowing that the restaurant validated parking at another lot. we sat there waiting a very long time for our meals, since there were more than 20 of us, and a cloud of black smoke formed over my head as i thought to spring my car from the invalid garage. i excused myself, paid the minimum $3 charge (GRRRR!), and swiftly moved the car to the valid lot. ate lunch in a more relaxed mood, and when it was over, he asked me in a panic, ' you think you can validate the parking?!' i told him that i had already taken care of that contingency, the heedless (#$&(#*$, and he thanked me. i let him off the hook with only a $1 contribution to the $3. it was another minor lesson in always think, esp. about MUNNY, b/c nobody else will think 4 u or look out 4 u. a world of idiots. | | Thursday, June 12th, 2008 | | 11:22 pm |
8027308234
was stuck in a big city on business, had the weekend though to stay there to save money on airfare, and watched 3 art movies in a row. on friday watched 'kill', an old flick starring jean seberg and james mason, about an anti-drug campaign. a real golden turkey directed by romain gary. the next day i watched a silent called 'underworld' starring george bancroft as a gangster whose girlfriend (evelyn brent) falls for an alcoholic lawyer he rehabilitates (clive brook). showing was accompanied by a band. on sunday i capped the lonely weekend in a city where i know nobody by watching 'shaolin soccer,' a smash hit hong kong comedy from 2001 about a bunch of bums united by childhood shaolin martial arts training who decide to form a soccer team and challenge Team Evil. | | Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | | 7:57 pm |
scrounging free food
wanna smash something. but what can i hit without prosecution? sat thru 2 entertaining flix at the nga today, both soviet, was walking past the overpriced cafeteria to scope some paintings on the way out. i have always been tempted by the unfinished food on the tables but held back by the embarrassment factor. not the ick factor. as long as it's something that someone else hasn't put his mouth on -- like a drink or a bitten sandwich -- i don't mind eating it. today i crossed yet another barrier toward total homeless behavior when i saw a promising plate of french fries. I WANTED THOSE FRIES. the surrounding tables were sparsely populated, and whoever noticed didn't care as i , with blistering speed, snatched the fry plate and moved to another empty table, where i devoured the fries without any beverage or ketchup. THOSE FRIES WERE MINE. now that i have crossed this barrier, i look forward to more food looting at the nga. besides riding in and out for free, as i have ever since i began my own metrorail benefits plan by raiding fare cards out of garbage cans, i will be eating for free! p.s. got into a hilarious argument (one-sided) with a vendor when he thought i was trying to cheat him out of a quarter. it was my honest arithmetic mistake, so i didn't blow up. but my fellow chintzy asian and i clearly both regard a quarter as priceless. | | Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | | 10:28 am |
a maddening stupid encounter
after that maddening encounter with that n*g so lacking in initiative he waited for me to answer 100 questions for him, yesterday i was riding the train for FREE FREE FREE to meet the family whom i know -- but the train could not close its doors b/c another DUMB ASS N*G (is there any other kind?) was trying to drag 3 clearly superheavy bags through the last door of the last car. the driver was yelling at him on the PA from the opposite end of the train, and the n*g was clearly struggling. i moved down to his door and tried to pull on 1 of the bags. he swatted my arm away and glared at me! yeah he eventually hauled his bags inside the train and we left, as the driver continued to yell at him unheeded on the PA. don't know what the (#*$&(#&$ is going on, but my every encounter with a n*g these days is hideously unpleasant. either you have someone who is so lacking in intell. confidence that he has me answer a 100-question personality survey for him or you have someone probably crazed (he didn't look homeless) who violently rejects help he needed. | | Monday, June 2nd, 2008 | | 9:37 am |
something i found out late
wondered for years what happened to the first US teacher i really remember, my 2nd-grade teacher. she would have been 100 or so this year, so i figured she was gone. indeed she was; i finally learned today she died in 1994. she was the last of the generation of spinster schoolmarms and was serving her last year -- 1972-73. she began teaching in 1929 at the same school. though she was only 64 that academic year, she seemed impossibly elderly to me. then again, 65-year-olds in 1972 were a lot older than today's. she realized that i had certain abilities and lent me aged books, such as a hardcover edition of 'hiawatha' by longfellow, so even now a million years later i remember the line 'by the shores of gitche-gumee...', as if i had gone to school in 1895 or something. | | 6:31 am |
get sick of my putrid life
or rather, deeply impoverished life in a metro area i hate where i can never afford to buy a house. a single very average income will not cut it here. the only luxury i can permit myself is a bowl of soup now and then from chinese takeout. takeout soup is still under $2. i do not waste money on takeout full meals, since i know how to cook. but why bother to save? i am not able to buy a house. | | Friday, May 9th, 2008 | | 11:14 pm |
return to the office of my nightmares
part i will follow. yesterday i made the bittersweet, aching return of the disgraced firee to XYZ, more than 2 years later. that will be described in part i. the upshot is that marco the founder and grad school colleague, after all these years, i----d me to come by and look around at XYZ's 'new' HQ. new to me the disgraced exile, though XYZ's been there for months. part ii is to note that 1 of the 2 remaining LA hangers-on in the office finally told me what became of those who slew me on that horrible day that i still think about. and told me who they were. it had been a mystery. i was right on 1 of them. he said there were 3. the instigator was the (openly gay) male receptionist, who -- to my surprise yesterday -- had taken a dislike to me, according to my informant. i thought we merely had no rapport, which is not uncommon in my autism, but it was apparently active unexplained animus. when the 2 arabists were calmly discussing my email between themselves, he gleefully forwarded it to new york, lying that those two were 'highly offended.' the next link in the chain that killed me was the hot blonde biologist whom i lusted after all those months. after she obtained a translation of the arabic from new york, since she had been (foolishly) made the managerial liaison in NYC, she used her limited authority to complain she was "highly offended" too. she was the one whom i suspected, since she liked my work but was the type to get all huffy and upset. the third and final link, again a bit surprising, was marco's then-gf, the fearsome COO. she apparently was pining for something managerial to do, having very little to occupy her in LA, it being an office that largely ran itself. firing me, admittedly after i had demonstrated in past months my eccentric attitude toward computer propriety, was something resonant for her to do. their corporate fates afterward were all dreadful. makes me wonder, if i had not been lined up and shot on 1/27/06, would something else have happened to me? the receptionist was canned for repeatedly downloading porn -- an explanatory email from the fearsome COO to the office cited(!) his offenses, including 682 visits to his myspace site. the hot blonde biologist resigned but apparently one step ahead of her own firing ("cassie imploded," marco said matter of factly to me, although obviously he was not the one who told me all this). the fearsome COO broke up with marco and left the firm. a fourth person whom i suspected had no bearing on it. the numbskull cia career guy. he was actually decent and kept his mouth shut. so i guess if i see him on the street, i can talk to him. and yes, my informant said that the LA office was in a state of shock for 'months' and that when the receptionist himself had his much worse disgrace and tried to email him and the other remaining LA survivor whom i saw yesterday, they never answered. so, it was gratifying to hear that they missed and supported me. or at least my editing. for 2 years, even though my XYZ career had ended in the most horrible way, the founder and i had never broken off contact. he’d left the door open in his first post-firing email, which ended with, “...i’d prefer to stay in touch.” contact hung by a thread, but every once in a while i would send along a brief email update of what i was up to, and he would respond. a few weeks ago, following up my latest update, he identified a week that he would be in LA and i showed up at the end of a workday. my heart bursting with grotesque and self-pitying memories, i rode the bus to the new HQ that i had never seen. i told the receptionist, ‘i’m here to see marco b---. he’s expecting me.’ she went over to some alcove to verify and came back saying, ‘he’s waiting for you.’ i retraced her steps, and there he was. we sat on a couch and caught up on the last 2 years since my DISGRACE AND EXPULSION, full of little grace notes of our longtime familiarity, like when he mentioned the company’s new ping pong table and i casually remarked that he, being lefthanded, undoubtedly threw his opponents off. the sort of stuff that you recall about someone when you’ve known him for 18 years. he related some news that reminded me how he had skyrocketed into multimillionaire status while i continue to work for wages. he bought a house in LA so that he could easily work in both cities rather than stay in hotels. and he’s taking a whole month off, now that he has enough management drones to run the company w/o him. and i updated him on my train capers, which interest him the way they always interest outsiders. eventually he offered to give me a tour of the office. after a mere 2.5 years, in that firing-happy company there are only 3 LA-based workers who remember me and my bloody end. probably a dozen have disappeared in that short time, many of them fired too. i had seen those 3 very, very seldom. 1 of them i had met for beers maybe 4 times in 2 years, whenever our gorgeous mutual acquaintance (another former XQer) returned to LA on business. the other 2 old-timers i simply had not laid eyes on since february 2006 or so. marco and i made a circuit of the splashy new HQ, and when the 3 old-timers separately saw me, they threw whiplash-inducing double takes. not only was the figure from the huge trauma of jan. 2006 back, he was yakking it up with marco. it was the return of the dead. their effusive gladness at seeing me in soviet-style ‘rehabilitation’ and their comments reassured me that i HAD been missed and my execution had been considered a hideous staff-traumatizing overreaction. this was a one-off. i doubt i’ll even be back in the office, but although i couldn’t keep my cyber-nose clean and paid a price that every pre-merger employee thought was too high, i can take meager comfort in being surely the only of XYZ’s many firees who was told by the founder, ‘drop by the office; i’d like to catch up with you.’ thought that part i should wait, being the most painful part to write up (re-engaging with co. founder after 2 years only of sporadic email). my source inside the firm and i were talking about a couple of employees who had outlasted me and had NOT betrayed me. we were inside a soundproofed conference room by accident, which gave him opportunity to spill stuff he was glad to tell me 2 years later. i asked first about a young balkanist who always struck me as confident and dapper. the latter mattered at XYZ, where i COULD do the work but was never dapper. ain't in my DNA. he told me, 'oh, xxxxx screwed up. he submitted a report to the NIC [natl. intell. council] that read like a history paper. NIC was paying for forward-looking stuff, but he wrote about things that happened 2 years ago! NIC sent a nasty email, and [the new yorkers] were ready to fire him, but he got a job offer THAT VERY DAY.' -- as you have figured out by now, being fired is never far from the surface in that place. i then inquired about a hispanic chick who had frozen me out after misinterpreting an attempted joke of mine. a point that still annoys me. he complained about her that THEIR work relationship had cooled too after she misinterpreted his attempt to help her stay at XYZ as something imperiling her job. eventually she too was fired (which i already knew from outside months ago, other sources) and has yet months later to find work, b/c, as he said acidly, 'she's 30 and acts 12. i think it shows in interviews.' marco, in our separate conversation when i first popped up, said of her, 'we liked her, but she didn't have the skill set.' so there were 2 themes i drew from their histories: 1) XYZ fires employees the way stalin handled underperforming subordinates. still. seems to prefer it as a corporate model somehow. 2) burned me up retrospectively -- unlike those 2, i never had my work questioned. could edit, research, write, talk. but again unlike those 2, i couldn't keep my cyber-nose clean. fired for turpitude while they were fired for incompetence. | | Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | | 6:07 am |
| | Friday, February 1st, 2008 | | 10:58 am |
a demeaning drug test
in theory i was supposed to be free of such indignities after obtaining a ph.d., but i have signally failed to become anything more than an anxious office drone fearful for job security. today i had to journey to the Qwest or Quest lab in dupont to demonstrate the purity of my piss, a requirement that i think dates back to the reagan admin, just like the foolish I-9 citizenship proof that has never stopped an illegal from working in the US. to my shame, i had to follow the attendant's demeaning orders. first, wash your hands only with water. no soap. in front of the attendant. be sure to deliver enough piss to exceed the white stripe on the jar -- i had to 'prime the pump' before boarding the subway by quaffing a bottle of apple juice. close the door when delivering said content (thank goodness for THAT) but DO NOT FLUSH AND DO NOT RUN THE WATER. only after i deliver the piss, which had better be body temperature, can i soap up and wash my hands and leave, degraded and humiliated by a ridiculous test that will find apple juice and tea. i should have inhaled several beers before coming in, so that my midday sample would be redolent of alcohol. why obtain all that schooling? i could be subject to humiliating drug tests if i were a high school grad. | | Sunday, December 16th, 2007 | | 2:53 pm |
a maddening afternoon
was enjoying a mid-afternoon show at the theater. i was lonely and broken, as I always am, but at least was immersed in the film. much to my disgust, as often happens, a bum came in for the comfort. though there were plenty of empty seats in my haunt -- left front -- he stretched out on the carpeted steps beside the left row and fell snoringly asleep. this after verbotenly eating something from a rustling plastic bag. i was a few seats in, not on the end, where one could easily walk over and say something cross to the bum. a couple guys at different times left their seats, but none of them said anything or kicked the sleeping asshole, to my disappointment. but then, much to my joy, three ushers materialized. failing to make the guy arise -- he was pretending a deep sleep -- they finally hauled him bodily away! hoorah. someone among those departing viewers narcked, and i think in the future i may do that EVERY TIME a bum stretches out. it was a thought that had not occurred to me. as usual i was filled with Khmer Rouge-like thoughts about those who are born in the US -- amounting to being born on 3rd base -- and then do nothing with it. it would be nice to have a killing field behind the theater. p.s. never quite sure what causes snoring. i know fat people snore, but many thin ones do. |
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