Sabes que te quiero pero te mataré si me dejas

They don't call it a romance language for nothing. =) I was stuck in a room by myself all day today. Well not really by myself, "Maddie", the Anthropomorphic cartoon representation of the average shopper at your local Macy's location was there to guide me through my training. I spent 7 hours today trapped inside the mall and hated most every minute of it. The ladies who work in HR are actually extremely nice so shout out to them for helping me blindly fumble my way through a job I had to keep reminding myself high school kids can do. See this job would have been a lot more appealing if I wasn't moments from a Bachelors degree, but I just spent over $100,000 and 5 years working so I'd never have to do shit like this but here I am with a summer job all lined up. I was actually warned during the portion of our training that outlines the code of conduct that anything I do or say on my own time "may" be used as grounds for dismissal but to be honest 1) You'd almost be doing me a favor, 2) I dare you.

I'm kidding, I love Macy's and actually found their history to be quite intriguing. The average shopper there is a middle aged woman, in the work force, perhaps with a kid, perhaps not. So I imagine my time in the Men's Wear department will be mostly tranquil. The funniest part about today was that the computer system I was on crashed and I actually had fun setting it all back up so I could continue to drone on with my mock transactions. I'm just a teachers kid is all.

The bigger issue is so close I won't be able to write about it until after it's happened I fear. I may find a moment to really bust out this end of school post I've been equally dreading and loving but the P-units will be here in force by next Sunday so I may actually just commit suicide instead and save myself the pain and suffering that is sure to come. I haven't really even done a true recap of my trip home I don't think (there are LOTS of drafts sitting on my desktop right now) and that means no one, except those who were there, knows about the job offers I got. But what about Grad school? My ex dumped me because I selfishly wanted to chase my dreams to go to law school on the east coast and she was sick of waiting (can you blame her though?). It'd be a shame to lose both her and the dream but CA is just so damn sunny how can I resist? Until I can collect my thoughts I'm just going to say I have a choice much the same as the chick in the Notebook. My two great loves are pulling me in opposite directions and I cannot pick where I want to end up. I know I've got some good ideas started elsewhere so I'm going to stop babbling now and go work on them so I can get something done. Until then..the job I'm glad not to have.

As all guilty men do, You will rewrite your History

I've got to assume that since literally 99% of you watch me work and never interact that you aren't looking to be heard, but are here to see what I have to offer. In that sense I feel better because I always felt bad for not including your vision here, but at the same time am sad because I have to admit I'm not entirely sure I can hold the audience. No matter I'm going to keep doing what I've always done. So here goes.

I went to lunch with a classmate of mine last week. Something I honestly wish I could have done more of in the past but that wasn't my journey so I don't stress it. The days post tense have left me thinking only one thing...I think I was a bit too comfortable in my own skin around her? I hear the way to handle these things is to just be yourself but when you're me that can be both a good and bad thing. It's a bit whimsical because there are obviously many interactions and so for me to assume that it was my openness that caused any glitch in the Matrix is a tad presumptuous but not completely unfounded. Lets hope this weekend brings improved results. I love my girl Ariana by the way, who once I informed her a cock block had appeared in our class out of nowhere, told me I was going to give up rather than increase my effort. From her, and only from her is that more a statement of fact than a putdown. I don't know how she got to know me so well but no of course I have to prove her wrong because as right as she may be I'm still competitive.

My idea for the sleeve tat' is basically at a standstill. I know I want it and I know where I want it. But the final two choices are much harder. Where to get them and whether to get them are pretty much road blocking the process. I have plans to meet up with a friend back in Long Beach in a few weeks and hopefully she can help shed light on all this and Melissa should be back from her honeymoon by then so I'm sure I can get an earful of sense from her too. Though...now that I think of it, she's had some "work done" so maybe she won't be as down on this idea as I expect. I have this weird urge to implode sometimes and I think it might manifest itself in a post soon. I mean True Hollywood Story type, tell all post about myself that may needlessly put things into the public forum that don't need to be there. I dunno why it is those things intrigue me in the least but..if I were like everyone else then I suppose I wouldn't be writing this would I?

P.S. - SEE YOU THERE!!!!!!

Take me away

Travel is what I want to do with my life. I want to go places and see things. Tourism isn’t what I mean either. Just seeing the same things other people can see or will see so that I can impress them when I know about it too, doesn’t seem like fun to me. I want to mention places that no one else has heard of. I love Anthony Bourdain’s show as well as Andrew Zimmern’s, though his not as much. It also may explain my love of space and space travel. The downside to seeing the world is that unless you are quite well off, it is incredibly costly, rather uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous. A good friend of mine wants to climb Everest which is a great example of all three rolled into one. My unique health concerns also preclude me from being nearly as daring as perhaps I once was, but I don’t think it will keep me out of all travel. I mean no more so than any other limiting factor would. One new factoid I just read about however just might make me think twice before I whip out my Passport…Baggage. I have learned to travel light and it seems that the further from civilization you get, the less you actually need to bring. (Material possessions are for westerners.)

I know for a fact that people are stupid. It is intrinsic in us. We have no instinct, we have no skills. Everything humans accomplish is a learned ability. It is why we had to learn to write while other species don’t. Imagine your surgeon trying to do a Liver transplant without ever reading a book, but only “shadowing” another surgeon for a period of time? Actually the more I think about it, the more feasible that seems, but I tell you what..I don’t want to be there first patient. So when I see that there were 25 million pieces of luggage lost for good last year it doesn’t really surprise me. But that breaks down to a total number of 3000 pieces per hour! I have no way of knowing just how many people fly each day but with each state averaging lets say, 3 major airports operating each day, then that means 20 bags/airport get lost each hour. That number small as it may be is still fairly large and you could say that maybe half are due to human ineptitude. So that leaves 1500 bags per hour getting truly lost, stolen, or misdirected by the airlines. This leads me to just one conclusion.

Never check anything of value. Ask DJ’s, they know. DJ A-Trak blogs about his travels often and he makes sure that when he gets on a plane he always carries his most essential items. I also love how the list above does not include employee theft or Plane crashes. If I had to do a break down it would look like this:

- Human Idiocy: 42%

-Airline Mistake: 51%

-Theft after check in (by security): 15%

-Pirates: 13%

The maximum value insurance will cover for a lost bag is $5,000 USD so make sure if you’re carrying around your gold brick collection that you spread it around. Though with gold coming in at right around $1,100/oz and most bars weighing in at 400oz…you may want to find some other way of transporting those things.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

I just applied for a job as a writer. It was the most excruciating thing ever. I cannot stand when people ask me to show them, "what I've got". I don't got anything but a coke and a smile but I'd like if you'd give me a damn job. It's funny to me in retrospect because in school I used to hate writing to prompts or answering dumb test questions. Yet now, without a prompt I ain't writing didly squat. It just doesn't work like that. I mean I have random half assed ideas all the time for movies that I'll never finish, and a Fiction novel idea I'd love to actually do one day, but this whole affair was about as much fun as an algebra test.

The main reason I'm doing this though is so I can gain some semblance of self sufficiency. See to me, true success comes when I don't have to beg, borrow, or steal my way to life's simple pleasures. If I knew as a kid how much financial freedom would mean to me today, I'd have forgone all those trips to the comic book store and instead asked people to start a trust in my name. I'm sure all my readers can sympathize with the notion that getting control of your own life is hard work. I know a lot of people who have jobs and they all miss school but i don't intend to be in school forever so the quicker I can be in control the closer I am to freedom. The question I have is this...What do you think would happen if someone granted you complete freedom right this minute? Lets say the most you will ever make in your life, just in this world, not in some dream world, would start being given to you right this second. For arguments sake you follow the exact same career path, and you don't change your dating or living habits in ay significant way. So for instance if you were to be a doctor one day, you'd make whatever it is that pays these days, but you still gotta go to med school, you still have to live with the people and interact with the people you'd normally do so with and in the end, be right where you were always meant to be.

This is a rough hypothetical I know. Economics tells us that people always spend based on their means so when you go from eating off the dollar menu to making a million bucks you don't just start buying millions of Double cheeseburgers, you buy what you'd buy if you could afford anything. But the point is this, in my head I constantly think about what my next dollar is for. At some point I get to a spot where all my bills are paid, and even then where all my wants are had. But this being a daydream I of course still have money. I got this idea in part from a story I heard about Antoine Walker. For those that don't know, Antoine played in the NBA and during his time earned over $110 million dollars. This may seem like a lot or a little, but to him it wasn't enough because he is now broke. Not only has he spent more than the $110 million but he is also in debt a few million as well. I'd like to think that if you gave me even 1% of that I could make it through 1 whole year, before it was all gone. But something tells me there is a great chance that it could also be gone in 6 months. And I don't even have an entourage!

So if this writing gig pays off and I start raking it in hand over fist. Just go ahead and remind me I wrote this. I'll bet you a Million bux that I can keep the promise to myself that the money will last 12 months, but if I doesn't last is there a better mistake you could make?

Teacher's Pet

Full disclosure. I am the son of 2 teachers. This in no way biases my opinion that students in American classrooms are mostly mental midgets but that’s more the schools fault than theirs.

I found video recently of one such student, one who engaged in a physical altercation with a teacher. Now this incident sounds like a classic example of an adult losing control of a situation and harming a child. But lets be honest the 10^th grade student was 2 years from being a legal adult. Fit to fight for her country, pay taxes, and watch R-rated films. Shouldn’t she be a tad closer to avoiding full on scraps with her teacher? The incident took place in May of 2008, in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The bible belt is notoriously weak when it comes to education but this story is dumb on all sides. The teacher claims to have been having trouble from the student all-day long and words had been exchanged prior to the incident. In fact witnesses claim that the tussle was initiated by a kick in the leg from the teacher to the student on her way out of the room. Now what makes this especially mindless on both parts isn’t that it happened or why it happened but when it happened.

These two fools fought each other over what amounts to nothing…on the last day of school. A day in which the schools population is somewhere around that of a theatre during a movies 15^th week of release, on a Tuesday at 11 Am. Oh, and I forgot to mention it was a substitute. For all intents and purposes these two fine young women may not have ever even met.

So what, you ask is my point? Well like any fight, there is only one question, who won? The video evidence is there, as well as the post match aftermath, but unlike sanctioned boxing matches this event had more to it. The substitute may never teach again, and the student is facing starting her junior year on suspension. So who has it worse you ask? The teacher does, and it’s not close.

Getting beat up is always a bad look, but getting beat up, at work, by a teenager is just plain shameful. Not to mention the fact that you will NEVER be getting a job subbing in that state if anywhere ever again. When you woke up that day you surely never expected it to end that way. The sad part is it was up to her to stop it. Though the first blow appears to be thrown in self-defense it was still the first blow. She also later was manhandled and beaten by the student continuously while students stood by and laughed. I simply cannot accept that this would have happened in ay classroom I was ever in. If I were superintendent of that district please believe the student would be placed in some sort of remedial life skills class named, “Things never to do under any circumstances” in her case lets hope having kids is one of the subjects, and the teacher would be fired for acute incompetence but not before I was able to just give her the Ed Lover face for about 15 minutes. I would then follow her laughing as she was escorted off district property most likely onto her new occupation as a fry cook.

This country some call the greatest in the world sure is full of boneheads. Apparently though, one of our eastern friends has a few themselves. Back in February of 2008 a Swedish teacher was found guilty of flashing her 47 year old breasts at a student. What I love is her clear ineptitude of motive structures for teen boys because I can assure you a flash of the tits in response to any action of mine would surely have only resulted in me repeating said action as early and often as my 16 year old self could muster. The teacher said the boy had been writing filth and curse words on the board in class and her attempt to get him to stop was that? This makes no sense at all. I can’t imagine what she thought he’d do but I’m certain it wasn’t get her fired, though that is indeed what did happen. If there is any injustice here at all it is that she was also ordered to pay to the boy roughly $700 (5,000 Swedish Kronor) The court said the boy suffered undue “trauma” as a result of her flash. I admit 47 isn’t the age of most models in the world but he saw tits and didn’t have to pay for it, he WAS paid for it. That’s a travesty.

You may disagree that a teacher fighting a student is her fault just because she was attacked, or that a boob flash doesn’t result in trauma for young boys but that’s ok, because I am not talking to you.

Story on Ga. Teacher Fight

Video of Fight

Teacher Flashes Tits