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| I haven't written on here in months, so long that I forgot my password. After a few tries I remembered. I've also forgotten how to write, but I'm hoping that after a few tries, that too, I will remember. I'm still living in Austin, and on this Memorial Day it's pouring outside; an ugly cap to a holiday weekend. Rainy days in Austin are beautiful as the trees and bushes become lush and green like 1990s Irish Springs commercial, but today's rain is making it seem more grey outside. I've been feeling generally grey for the last month or two. Work is greying. I work for a company that among other things sells headsets, which with I have over the last eight months become soberingly familiar. Insurance men from places like Fresno, California and dental hygienists from say Portland, Maine or maybe Butte, Montana call my little phone by the minute in my little cubicle that is stranded among cubicles in a windowless vault of a room to harass me about the many ways their wireless headset does not meet their satisfaction. Sometimes it echoes. Other times they hear static. For others it hurts their ears. Sometimes it's too expensive. Sometimes its too heavy. Sometimes its too light. Sometimes I want to drive a nail through my temple and slip blissfully into the next life like a kid who drank too much cough syrup. I would think I have it the worst if it were not for the row of zombies that sit behind me. There job is to be screamed at by hysterical real estate agents from across the land. The nazis of the real estate world will swear at them more often than not, calling them liars and shouting demands that are company policy does not allow. At the peak of the day, a dull roar of "No," "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, sir," "There's no need to use that kind of language, mam," and "It is not our company's policy to cancel a valid contract," trembles across the artificially lit, shoe-box room filled with the smell of charred coffee left on to boil itself away. About then I'll look at the clock on my computer and it will read 2:48PM, and I'll wonder if the clock is wrong and that if it's actually 2:48AM, since sunlight was banned in by the buildings sadistic architect. For that moment, I wonder if I've been here all day long. I wonder, have I ever left? Will I ever leave?
In my two dozen years, I have kept this job the longest: an unimpressive eight months. I've almost made nine, and would like to push it to double digits before I take another job, but maybe I've pushed it far enough, as I've been pushed closer to the brink than I'd like to admit. No more headsets. | | |
| Why are old men allowed to be barbers? The government should set an age limit of 55. My antique of a barber slashed my neck this morning when I was getting my hair trimmed off of Guadalupe Street. His hands wobbled like he had early onset Parkinson's disease while he stared at Good Morning America glowing on the TV, jabbing me with scissors and a razor, bleeding me like a cursed sheep in some Caribbean voodoo ritual. The geezer spread a sickly warm spew from the shop's hot lather machine over my sideburns and neck, and then muttered, with a twisted hick giggle, "Kinda hot and gloppy, ain't she?" I wanted to shutter, but I thought he'd pick up on it, so I just frowned like I bit into a tart lemon, yielding to the slicing and dicing. The jugular vein is the one jetting up the neck, right? He slit that one. God knows how I'm still alive.
Making matter worse, this barber shop's specialty is a mechanical massage after the haircut. Here, the barber fastens a black apparatus to the back of his hand and then strokes your head, neck and shoulders, pummeling everything into a trembling paralysis. Think of those vibrating beds at the motels hookers use, lumped into a fist-sized torture device. When I wasn't wincing from its pain or feeling suffocated, I noted when the machine pounded on the point of my head where my spinal cord meets my brain, how the vibration made everything in my vision vibrate, especially the picture on the television, which somehow shook outside the bounds of the television frame. I assumed this had something to do with receptor cells in my brain popping out of place from the pulsation, causing permanent brain damage, but I'm no Ph.D.
After I escaped, I could tell the UT students I passed on the streets saw the blood on my shirt and thought I was homeless, coming off a recent defeat in a bum fight. Maybe I earned some street cred because of it. All I know is I have a gash in my neck that looks like a miniature version of Vermont and a ruined t-shirt. I considered calling the barber shop to complain, but would it do any good? They'd probably tell me that the old guy in question was the demented father of the barber shop's owner, and that when they lose sight of him for a moment, he sneaks out with the customers and tries to cut hair. Or maybe they could tell I wasn't a local Texan, and just let him cut me up to teach me a lesson.
I think the bleeding may have started up again, so I'm going to stop writing and apply pressure to the wound. If by ill-fate this is my last post, please avenge my death.
Godspeed,
Adam | | |
| I don't like hunting and I'm no sportsman or anything, but today after work, I drove to Cabela's (pronounced Cccc.uhhhhh.bell.uhhhhs followed with a spit on the floor), which if you don't know is a mega outdoorsperson store. Basically, it's a giant warehouse full of animal carcasses, stuffed or mounted on walls, and guns with the occasional knife here and there. They also have fishing poles. I haven't fished since I was in third grade, but watching "A River Runs Through It" last night, broke the levee in my heart that's been keeping me from going out and trying fly-fishing. I'm signing up for a fly-fishing class in October, and I'm hoping with a little instruction that I'll find a good outdoorsy pastime to partake in wherever I go. And I promise I'll be nice to the fish too, won't even eat them and will only take them out of the water long enough to pull the hook out. And, yeah, I'm sure that smarts a little for them, but hey, so does life, bitches! 
Tonight while I was downtown seeing a Rentals and Ozma show, a homeless man almost duped me into paying him three bucks to park my car in the lot that he was "guarding." Obviously, I have "mark" tattooed in the middle of my abnormally large forehead. The homeless are wily in Austin, I just wish they wouldn't try to swindle my making-slightly-over-minimum-wage ass. I'm working on fixing that too, but that's a work in progress.
I'm moving, again! Only like two and half miles down the road this time though. I got a new place, better then the old and with a community pool! I've decided on my days off to just lie in pool on a floaty thing, sip margaritas and let the days wash over me. Ah, how I'm looking forward to it all. Another cool thing, Jason, a buddy from Michigan, who was California-bound is moving out here after his L.A. plans fell through, which F'ing rocks!
I don't know what else to say. What's a good recipe?
A-D-A-M-T-R-A-C-Y-L-O-R-D | | |
| On Tuesday I had my first day as opening manager at the video store. When I walked in and unlocked the safe, I intended on counting the money in each of the cash drawers for the registers, but instead, I chose to drop all four of them and let all the coins and bills spill all over the floor, especially underneath cabinets and other unreachable locations. It was nice to get off on the right foot. I've been working there about a month, and on Wednesday, I'm venturing to a job fair hoping to find some other, probably horrible, job to replace it. This is what makes me a wonderful employee.
Where are your pants?
Hakuna Matata,
Adam | | |
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Lifetime
