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This is really a very easy way to blog. I don't think I'll do it anymore after this week. For one thing, those big blocks of pre-formatted text expand the size of the table in which the blog-text is displayed, and I can't have a permanently fat blog. However, one week is permissible. I am supposed to have dinner with james, shoko, mrs. White and mrs. White's other son, eddie, but they don't appear to be home. I will try again in a few minutes -- the invitation was for 7:00pm, and it's 6"45pm now.
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The day before yesterday's blog was maybe the most awkwardly written entry I've ever produced, and there was a reason for this. I discussed my first night as a bouncer at length in the SDF chatroom (com) last night, and rather than blog fresh about it I simply cannibalized my conversation for web publication. First, I dumped the chat session to my email. Then, I saved the email as a file in my home directory. Next, I grepped (searched the file and returned only those lines containing a given term) the file for my username, 'barnacle,' and outputted this grep to a new file in my web directory. Then, I accessed the file with my browser, and copied the contents to a new textfile on my desktop. I deleted the characters [barnacle] from the file, which served to indicate that user 'barnacle' (that's me) was 'speaking.' finally, I consolidated all of the statements into one paragraph, and tried to put them together in a reasonably cohesive way.
As you might imagine, I had already put in a lot more work than I would have in simply writing a blog from scratch. Furthermore, the quality of the writing was exactly what I strive to avoid: it sounded overworked and pieced-together; unnatural, unflowing. I'd prefer to be typing sentences, thinking through my fingers, to approach writing like a great gushing of words and poetry and creativity, as opposed to assembling prose bit by bit like a robot frankenstein. But for some reason, I felt that I had already expended all of this energy in describing the experience to other SDFers in com, and so didn't want to repeat my efforts.
Come to think of it, I feel like my writing chops have gone out of shape lately. Maybe it's time, yet again, to take a break from blogging. I know, I know that I keep saying this, but I think maybe it's finally time. I don't feel that I can write as well as I could two weeks ago. The last really good entry I wrote was maybe my recounting of my new york trip, or possibly my entry on comparative religion. I'm not 100% convinced I'm a good writer. People have told me that they like my writing, which is I guess what matters. But lately it has felt awkward, contrived, rusty and forced.
James is here, and he brought along his fiancee, shoko. They are going to be in Maryland for a few days, planning their wedding. I spent all today with them. I picked them up at shady grove metro station at noon. We ate lunch at the fu shing cafe, where a mexican server handed shoko a special secret chinese menu and told her 'nihao.' this was amusing because shoko is, of course, japanese, not to mention the fact that the server who made the assumption with his chinese greeting was himself hispanic. After lunch we went to alpesh's house to hang around in his backyard and talk for a while, and then to a stand to buy fruit for dinner. Then we played ping pong. We went to seneca park, where james and shoko assessed it as a potential wedding site. Finally, we had dinner. So, it was a james/shoko-filled day. I'm going to wait around for them to contact me now, since I don't want to impose on their couplehood too much.
I'm incredibly hot from all the food I ate today. I think I might sleep in the basement, and hope I don't get attacked by cave crickets.
Here is a snipped of conversation I had with a friend on SDF (actually, the conversation took place on AIM).
Bwillyj (12:06:37 AM): Bah, I don't draw anymore. I wish I would, I'm afraid to sometimes though.
me (12:06:44 AM): how come?
Bwillyj (12:06:46 AM): I suppose I'll have to come to terms with what I see in my head now.
Bwillyj (12:07:13 AM): All I can invision is shit like some all black dude wrapped in flames standing on a log with a naked chick that has a snake wrapped around her neck
Bwillyj (12:07:18 AM): and blood everywhere
me (12:07:24 AM): sounds cool
I decided to illustrate his image (below).
Needless to say I probably took some of the 'oomph' out of it.
I have elected to become a bouncer at a local bar because I am being pressured to rejoin society in some fiscal way, and being a bouncer seemed a relatively painless way to do so.
My first night on the job was rather boring. It was similar to every other job I've ever had, where I essential stand around for 3-8 hours, existing. I'm not convinced any of these service industry jobs are actually needed, and aren't rather some kind of elaborate welfare system. I have no idea when I'm supposed to come in to work next, because the head bouncer scuttled off midway through my 'shift.'
I filled out an application about a week and a half ago. I asked the bartender I talked to (who now no longer works there) whom I should contact for follow-up/pestering. I followed-up and pestered this person (the head of security, or 'cooler') a few days ago, telling him that I wanted to be one of his bouncers. He had no knowledge of my submitted resume, but perhaps he liked my voice, because he invited me to meet with him in two days. I did so, and stood around looking bouncer-y, trying to understand him over the deafening Friday-night crowd and band noise. Then I was asked 'can you hang out?' to which I replied 'sure.' then, the cooler asked 'can you come in on Tuesday night at eight?' to which I replied 'sure.' it wasn't clear whether he wanted to me to 'hang out' (stay there for the evening) or 'come in on Tuesday' (come in on Tuesday); perhaps both. It was extremely loud. I left, and no one seemed to object. I returned last night, and the cooler cheerfully told me that he'd forgotten all about me.
The venue is a bar/restaurant/band-area in a wealthy but culturally bankrupt area, so lots of white-bread folks patronize it. There's not a whole lot for a bouncer to do there except confiscate fake IDs.
At 11pm last night, a managerial server told me to go home, so I did. I was told to 'keep track of my own hours.' I wrote my name and number down on a receipt, gave it to another bouncer, and the cooler is supposed to call me today, but no one knows what his schedule is, precisely; it all seems iffy. Technically, I made $30 that evening, but it's anyone's bet if I ever see this money. I think the cooler liked me, because I'm big and scary, but I'm not convinced that he actually needs another bouncer.
A band was playing, and I listened to them while walking around, hoping a fight would break out to interrupt the monotony. I also got to drink free cokes from that funny little bar-hose thing, but I'm sensitive to caffeine late at night, so I only had one. While I watched the customers interact, I got a sense of 'the lonely bouncer,' which I think might be an existing cultural archetype. I felt like this big lug, walking around, implicitly warning the patrons with my bigness, but deprived of social contact. I never thought of the bouncer as lonely, but I'd bet that a lot of times, he is. Servers and bartenders get to smile at and talk to people, but bouncers are silent, scowling fixtures on the back wall wearing 'staff' t-shirts, whose only function is to eject those who threaten profits with obstreperous behavior. One bouncer told me last night that he 'doesn't like people,' that he has no desire to talk to anyone beyond implying the ultimate consequence of physical coercion if they don't comply with his wishes, and that if he approaches someone, people know that this is because their behavior is being called into question. And I suppose this is almost universally true -- if a huge man in a 'staff' t-shirt approached me in a bar, I wouldn't assume that he was there to chat.
Another bouncer demonstrated his rapping for me, and was very friendly. The bouncer who hates people told me about how the only things that 'set him off' are someone threatening him, and being called a spic. If either of these things happen, apparently, he is pushed 'past the point of no return.' then he gave me some gory details on the techniques he would use to beat up the offending person. He told me that he does special operations for the navy, and is on active duty.
Working in a smaller, rowdier place might be interesting, but the place in which I hung out last night is an example of suburban plasticity at its worst: everything tailored to be as inoffensive to as many people as possible -- fostering and serving up blandness for $5 a pound. A lot of the bouncers there sort of try to be assholes, even though I don't think they actually are. The bigger bouncers tend to be the nicest, though, as I'm sure is intuitively true (think 'napoleonic complex').
I've come to realize why I hate debating so much. To debate with someone requires that I listen to them, try to reach some understanding of their point of view, and then work with them to fit both world-views into a compromise. Essentially, debate is about communication through relating to and understanding another person. Most of the work in a discussion is not in presenting an argument, but in properly understanding the opposing viewpoint. This is why I hate it -- I can't relate to people. I don't know how. I don't understand how their minds work, and when they speak it's like they're babbling in some foreign language.
Lately, many of my blog sentiments have been nihilistic -- specifically in that they imply that nothing can be known or communicated. The standard internet definition of nihilism is (try googling on it):
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
I focused on the 'values are baseless' part in earlier entries, but in the past few months I've been all about the impossibility of knowledge or communication.
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Free will contradicts the science of psychology. By the science of psychology, one should be able to predict what a person's thoughts (and consequent actions) will be, but free will states that thought and action are non-deterministic, and cannot be even theoretically predicted, simply because they haven't happened yet. The doctrine of free will is tied to a linear notion of time -- some things have happened, while others are happening, while still others have yet to happen. Determinism, on the other hand, teaches us that everything simply is, and the concept of time is illusive, similar to all perception and all observable reality. This implies that either psychology in its current form isn't a proper science, that the doctrine of free will is broken, or both.
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