While I was working at the register today, a woman came in and asked for help jumping her car. This is pretty much a foolproof task - red to red and black to black, under both hoods. Start the nonbroken car, and then star the broken car, which will mooch off the nonbroken car's battery.
After clipping the terminals of one car's battery, it's somewhat important not to let the other set of clips touch each other while carrying them over to the second car, or they will yield some somewhat disturbing sparks. This has happened to me a number of times (I've probably jumped 5-10 cars in my life), and it was never disastrous. Just a little light-show, and a reminder that some reasonably high voltage is being transfered, at least compared to AA batteries.
The women were taking shelter under the fact that girl-culture doesn't really include jump-starting cars (even though it's not any harder than operating an electric can opener), and were desperate for some stud (that's me) to come swaggering up, pop the hoods, clip some things together, and save the day. The women were quite bad in that sense, and were really making a show of being dumb about cars. It was a little bit disconcerting.
They'd parked their cars in such a way that the jumper cables wouldn't stretch from battery to battery, so, squinting mannishly, I told them they'd have to re-arrange them. I pushed the jumpee's white sedan up a slight hill (rawr) to the opposite curb, and signaled mannishly to the woman sitting helplessly in the pushed car to hit the brakes. Then, I mannishly directed the other woman in the k-turn necessary to achieve sufficient battery-closeness. Then, I attached the clips to the jumper and jumpee's terminals. I told the jumper to start her engine first. After her engine was going, I told the jumpee to start hers.
'Nothing's happening', said the jumpee. I poked my head into her cab, just to make sure she didn't have her transmission in drive or something. She didn't. As I stood there, stooped over and peering into the dark interior of the jumpee's sedan, she said 'what's that?' as she gestured towards her hood.
Smoke was wafting up. I walked around to the front of the car, and noticed that I had clipped red to black and black to red. I don't know why or how I managed this -- maybe it was some form of battery dyslexia, the same thing that causes me to type 'my' instead of 'me', or hand-write a letter before the one that should precede it.
More smoke poured out of the clipped terminals, and I gestured to the jumper to cut her engine with a straight hand moving across my neck -- apparently not a universal, jungian signal. It took the jumpee yelling 'turn off your engine!' for the jumper to respond. At this point, the plastic around both sets of clips was bubbling, like a thick yellow stew.
After the jumper's engine was off, I reached for the clips, and pulled them off, giving myself only a minor second degree burn on my right ring finger. I grabbed the chord by its middle, and yanked it towards me. It behaved exactly like that one strand of pizza cheese that stretches from pizza-to-mouth, and won't disconnect from the pizza.
The yellow cables had become a gooey yellow band, maybe the consistency of the plasticine sold in the art store a few feet away. The cables stretched to maybe three times their original length, the clips popping nicely off the jumper's car while globs of bright yellow plastic splotched down onto the front of both cars and my left boot. I have to admit that it all looked quite artistic.
The cables were apparently hot enough to melt the copper wire under the plastic, since both cables had stretched into a string of yellow toothpaste. They must have been pretty damn hot. Maybe I'm lucky that one or both batteries didn't explode and shower me in hydrochloric acid, but I'm not sure if that was a possibility; let's say 'no'.
'What happened?', said the jumpee.
'I'm not sure' (even though I knew exactly what had happened). 'do you have a cell phone?'
'Yeah..'
'Well...i don't know what the deal was there. I guess you'd better call for help. I should go back inside and be a cashier now -- I'm really not supposed to be doing this anyway'.
I walked inside, and stood at the counter, my hands shaking a bit. i hoped that one or both of the women wouldn't come back inside and scream at me after realizing that what had been done (the destruction of a pair of jumper cables, and the execution of a 'jackson polluck' all over the noses of both cars, the parking lot, and my boot) was entirely my fault, and not the result of well-shrouded mechanical mysteries, unbeknownst even to me, the master mechanic.
I thought maybe they'd call a tow driver, to whom it would be obvious what had happened. Maybe he'd come inside and say 'WHO JUST TRIED TO JUMP THIS CAR?!?'
'I did'.
(punch)
I saw the jumper drive off in her red car, so at least I didn't fry her battery. I think maybe I didn't fry the jumpee's battery either (it was already dead), and perhaps another jump would have been successful, provided 1) the clips were on the right terminals and 2) the jumper cables hadn't been reduced to spray confetti. So at least all I did was vandalize a couple of cars and ruin a pair of cables.
I assume the jumpee (or potential jumpee) called someone less idiotic than myself, who quickly jumped her car into a successful start. I guess my blunder really wasn't that big a deal, but it was pretty horrible to watch, and to consider, with respect to my gross incompetence, and with respect to my responsibility for damages, which thankfully weren't addressed by anyone.
Either woman might have sued dick blick inc. For 'mental harm', 'destruction of jumper cables', and/or 'scraping the yellow shit off the front of the car'. Hey, I'm just an innocent arty space-cadet art store clerk -- I can't be held responsible for this sort of thing. Clearly the corporate evil dick blick inc. Was responsible, for not passing out a memo with the subject: 'never jump start customers' cars'.
In reality, I was totally at fault -- I was grossly, grossly incompetent, and should be flogged and beaten. But I'll bet you $1 that dick blick inc. Could be successfully sued.
I guess it was also my manager's fault, since she suggested I go out there and perform my manly duties. But, who cares at this point? I got a funny story out of it, which I relayed to my manager, another clerk, and a few customers, showing them my yellow-speckled boot. Everyone was entertained, even though I felt pretty bad for a while. Jumping a car is pretty much 'question one' on the man-test, the one that's the first in a series of increasingly difficult questions. I had just scored a '0' on the manly SAT.
I guess I'm not out of the woods yet, because when the woman describes what happened, someone might think 'hey! Some dumb-ass mixed up the clips on the car's battery terminals!', and then someone will come in to the store tomorrow and yell.
But, I did the best I could. It's not my fault that I'm the stupidest person in the world. Also, I feel I went above and beyond the call of duty of an art supply store clerk, and shouldn't be held at fault, since I didn't deliberately set out to destroy anything. I guess one could call it 'gross negligence', which would probably hold up in court, but I thought I was doing a good job. I just didn't see the colors, or something. I'm brain-damaged, remember?
I really am an idiot, though. I haven't stopped kicking myself for this, even though I'm sure it's happened thousands of times in the history of automotive maintenance, and to otherwise-qualified people, even mechanics.
It was pretty cool, in a away, and especially six or so hours later. I'm going to examine the parking lot tomorrow and see if I can find any hardened remnants of yellow plastic. I managed to peel most of them off my boot, and I hope the two women can do the same with their cars.
I'm looking ahead, and I'm thinking that I don't have all that much to look forward to. BARTing down to berkeley for 45 minutes, a mile-long bike ride before and after, to work a retail job at which one hour's salary is equivalent to one round-trip fare to and from work? Mark and wei, who are getting sick of me, constitute my social life. I've run out of books, and I can't get a library card with a Maryland driver's license. I even feel like my internet community is starting to get tired of me.
I know a lot of people's first instinct would be to say 'cheer up! There are people who have it a lot worse than you'. I go back and forth with my feelings on this. On the one hand, I could be in a torture chamber somewhere in iraq. On the other hand, I might suffer more, being here in concord, or just being alive, than someone else in a torture chamber would. So, yes, it could be a lot worse for me. But before you pass judgment and assume that I don't have it that bad, I should remind you that you don't know how it feels to be me, with apologies to tom petty.
No, I don't know what tomorrow will bring. But, I also don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. If I'm not able to improve my life here shortly, I think I'll try somewhere else. But, it's likely that that would be even worse, since I'd have no support network whatsoever. I'm telling you, I need either a dog or a wife. 30 year old people are always doing idiotic things like going to see movies and going out to dinner. But I don't really know what else there is.
I've heard people tell me that life is full of options, and is some kind of open book or ongoing adventure. I just don't feel that way. On the one hand, I can take a clue that I feel bad today, and felt bad yesterday evening, and that I've been taking my drugs on schedule and in quantity. This makes me think that my problems might indeed be situational, and that a new scene would be better. But, maybe it's a problem with attitude. The people who say things like 'there are endless options', 'a new attitude can actually change brain structure' and 'a sense of direction can be learned' are, of course, the same people who were able to do make that change, learn those things, and accomplish those things.
I hope I feel better tomorrow, but even if I do, I won't have any reason to, and feeling better will be my idiot brain's survival mechanism kicking in, as it assumes I'm going to breed and therefore need not to realize that life is shit and stare at the ground until I die. I truly believe that optimism is a disease; as I said, a survival and species-propagation mechanism. There's no logical cause for it.
It's sort of embarrassing to be 30 years old and still working in retail. I think I'm going to go lie down until 3pm, which is when I get on my bike for another day in corporate retail. Then, I'll get back home at around 11pm, and probably go to bed immediately. I guess a lot of people do this, but I don't really like it all that much. I suppose they feel as though they HAVE to do it, just like some of them feel that they HAVE to go to college, HAVE to get married and have kids, etc.
Sometimes, the alternative might be less pleasant (such as being toothless and homeless). I guess I really don't understand how anyone can have a pleasant life. Must be something to do with brain structure.
If I do indeed feel better tomorrow or later, then I'll re-examine those reasons to be pessimistic about my life and see if they still make sense. I think that they will, but that I just won't care. Pessimism and optimism are strange things. I'm sure 'looking on the bright side' really does change neural structure, make you happier, etc etc, but I just don't know how to do it. I can't practice 'positive self talk' without doing it sarcastically.
Here I am, at mark and wei's house again. I met a bay area SDF user today, with whom I walked around in berkeley. Before that, I got to talking with a girl bike mechanic (not all that rare, actually) in the 'berkeley bike station', which offers free indoor bike parking and is something one would only find on the west coast, and probably only in berkeley. Tom weller, in _culture made stupid_, probably said it best (paraphrase):
it's important to remember the proper pronunciations of these words. When referring to the 16th century philosopher thomas berkeley, the pronunciation is 'barkly'. When referring to the city, the pronunciation is 'moscow'.
Anyway, suffice to say it's full of bicycle amenities and coffee shops, at one of which the other SDF user and I had a cup. Actually, I had some kind of frozen coffee beverage/milkshake/whatever, but the previous sentence was already complicated enough. What was that example that winston churchill gave of the horrid result of following english grammar to the ends of the earth? Oh yeah:
ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Anyway, I spoke with this bike-girl for a while, and then asked her if she'd 'like to hang out some time'. This is maybe not the best line, but I think people are pretty forgiving of poor pickup lines, since it's understood that asking someone out is such a difficult, vulnerable, and hellish task. She said 'sure', but didn't want to give out her phone number ('i don't like to give out my phone number at work'). She or I (i don't remember who) suggested that I give her mine, which I don't have memorized. So, I then suggested that she call mark on his cell phone (the only number I've committed to memory), and ask him for my number. Of course, this is ridiculous, and no-one in their right mind would ever call someone they don't know and demand a phone number of someone else they don't know. But, she agreed to do it, which tipped me off to the fact that her telling me she planned on contacting me was complete bullshit, spoken as a substitute for 'i don't like you -- go away', which is sort of hard to say to someone (for some reason).
Then, I remembered the miracle of electronic mail, and gave her my addy. All in all, I visited her at the bike-parking facility three times: once before my coffee-adventures with the SDF user, once afterwards, and once after I walked around berkeley on my own for a while, looking for hardware materials with which I might manufacture a pocket-watch chain (i managed to do it -- it's pretty cool). I don't remember which meetings correspond to which information requests, but I believe I asked for her email address during the third and final encounter, because I realized that 1) she probably wasn't going to email me, 2) guys are supposed to pursue women who clearly aren't interested in them, and 3) it's the guy who's supposed to initially call (or email) the girl.
After I asked, she stood there staring at me for a good many seconds, and then said 'ok'. She was reluctant to clarify the spelling of the domain. This is almost always necessary, I find -- I don't know how many times I've had to tell people how to spell 'barnacle', including one of my ex-professors.
Her email domain is riseup.net, to which I just now directed a web-browser. It's a nonprofit, gay hippy outfit (surprise!) that offers free shell access, email, and possibly web server space to people who fill out the application form in a proper way. The proper way is to indicate some job or activity that is gay enough and hippy-ish enough to pass muster. Just for fun, I applied for an account (basically because my first instinct is to behave like a stalker). In the section in which one indicates gay hippy-ness, I told them that I work as a volunteer webmaster for a civic, nonprofit, conservation and preservation organization, which actually happens to be true.
I didn't indicate that I agreed to do web stuff for candocanal.org principally because the then-secretary (mrs.white) agreed to feed me on command, and that I alternate between not giving a shit about preservation and conservation, and actively working to foil preservation and conservation, via such acts as throwing out aluminum cans when there's a recycling bin right next to the trash can. I know, I know -- gaia will smite me. And in truth, I sometimes think I'd like to be an environmentalist and adopt that as some kind of spirituality, etc etc, but most of the time I'm just concerned with minimizing the amount of time I have to spend conscious and considering the infinitesimal options of everyday life.
The object of my affections is 1) a bike mechanic and 2) possibly a computer geek (or at least not a hotmail user), two qualities that I arguably share. She seems relatively smart and able to communicate in some way, and isn't monstrously ugly. In truth, she's not a dreamboat, but neither am i. A fatal flaw in dating is an incorrect appraisal of one's own attractiveness, and the resultant trolling for bigger fish than will fit in one's boat, so to speak. Caviar taste and a pizza face, to quote the now-defunct sit-com 'married with children'. Aptly put, I think.
Bike-girl's face uncannily resembles the face of my ex-service manager at my former employer, 'performance bicycles' in Maryland. This was a little bit creepy, when I got to thinking about it, and the more I looked at her the more apparent this fact became. I felt like calling deadbarnacle at performance and telling him I just asked out a female bike mechanic who looks almost exactly like him. I think he'd find it hilarious.
After today's adventures, I biked from the 'north berkeley' BART station to mark's house, which is really severely uphill all the way. Riding today necessitated breath-control amounting to timed inhales, as deep as physically possible, and forceful exhales, carrying with them a 3-foot spray of spittle-droplets in a trajectory in front of me. The moving air invoked my vocal chords, and I sounded like someone exercising.
I took a shower, and just for fun I sprayed on some 'victoria's secret - secret love' body spray, but it was so atrocious that I had to immediately take another shower and wash it off. I put on a pair of mark's sweatpants, which are of course way too small, and look like a pair of ballet tights on me, as well as one of his athletic sweat-tops, which actually fits me for some reason. I put today's clothes, which were sweaty from my ride and filthy from carrying my bike around and rubbing my bike's chain rings against them, in the wash. They're drying now, and I'm sitting here in a familiar place: mark's double-flat-screen workstation, doing SDF-related things (such as blogging).
That was more or less the sum of today. Hanna made breakfast this morning -- it was pretty good. The SDF user and I got along well after getting over some initial and predictable shyness. And now, I have a badass home-made pocket-watch chain. Pictures of it, as well as of the SDF user and me will be forthcoming (i think).
I have a chance to blog again. I'll make it short, since I'd like to go to bed.
Suffice to say that I'm working, and things are going a bit better. I don't have much of a social life, and that worries me some, but I'm meeting a unix buddy on Wednesday, and there are people at work who wouldn't be totally unsatisfactory companions. Plus, there's always mark and wei.
I'm starting to like work, if only because it's the primary place at which I get to interact with other people. I guess this a normal thing to do, and is why so many relationships begin in the workplace. Anyway, there is only one person at work whom I dislike. I call her 'boob-girl', or sometimes 'tit-girl'. The first time I saw her, she was wearing a pink top, cut down to the middle of her chest and skin-tight. Her breasts were spilling into clear view like the proverbial pair of eggplants -- I couldn't have designed a sluttier shirt if I had tried. Stack these attention-getters on top of purple hair, numerous facial piercings, and full arm-coverage in tattoos.
These are visual ornamentations, intended (obviously) for display. So, it puzzled me a little bit that she became annoyed and seems to be holding a grudge based on the first day we met, when I literally couldn't take my eyes off her chest (or her tattoos, the metal trinkets stuck in her face, or the phrase 'LISTEN TO BOB MARLEY' written across her tiny t-shirt). It strikes me as ridiculous that she wouldn't expect, or even desire, this reaction. Why draw visual attention to something that you don't want looked at? It doesn't make any sense. At any rate, she doesn't like me, and now I don't like her, as she's been condescending and rude ever since that first day.
I fantasized about calling her a cunt and smashing the bridge of her nose into her brain, but I think that I'd rather not go to jail for assault in california. So, I'll just avoid boob-girl as much as possible. I didn't work with her today, and today was my most enjoyable day yet. The rest of the people there are extremely pleasant, with the possible exception of the general manager, who is still tolerable.
There are two or three girls there whom I wouldn't mind spending more time with, perhaps not even with romantic inclinations but rather pure-hearted social ones. The options for socializing are pretty limited at this time, and I'd like to expand them a bit (i think). Of course, I inevitably sort of hate anyone with whom I spend a great deal of time. Maybe I haven't found the right person yet -- my blog is one enormous 'personals' ad. Pass the link along.
Gorby really isn't interested in me, and I'm not really interested in his lifestyle either. I think I'd like to live somewhere out in the country with my dog, living on disability payments and the occasional odd job. That sounds nice.
Hannah told me that I could stay on the computer and work, and that I wouldn't bother her. I guess she meant it -- I can hear her snoring. I pay hannah $300 a month for room and board, which means I'm allowed to stay here and that she makes me meals. I had forgotten what it's like to have 3 meals a day prepared for you, and never having to enter, rummage around in, or even think about a kitchen. Meals just magically appear on the table at spaced intervals. This is really the way it should be, I think.
Anyway, I'm not dead -- whatever readers I haven't lost via infrequent blogging are privy to the information that I'm alive and sitting in concord, CA. I take the BART to work in berkeley four or so days a week. I work weekends, of course, considering that I work in the service industry and the best time to serve normal people is when those normal people are off from work. I swore to myself that I'd never work admin or retail again, but here I am, because it's all I can do. Maybe it's time for a restaurant gig.
I hope I'm losing weight, on this radical 'three meals a day' diet plan. But, I've got a long way to go before I even begin to approach a normal figure. And I don't even know that I'm losing weight -- hannah's meals are pretty big.
The last page was getting really long.
I was afraid my blog's date would be really screwed up, and I'd have to fudge it again, making today's entry succeed the previous by one indicated day, even though today's actual date might be different. But, it wasn't, so no problem. Today is actually the 10th, and yesterday's blog actually fell on the ninth, in accordance with the written indication.
I decided to take my watch off and strap it to my backpack, for two reasons. 1) I'm tired of being on a schedule all day, and obsessively checking the time. I find that I do this several times a day, and I think it amounts to unhealthy behavior. 2) digital watches look uncool, especially when they're worn to job interviews in ~*~*~*THE CITY*~*~*~. I will never, ever get over how lame that signifier is.
Maya is still in my apartment, and she's threatened to make dinner for 'everyone' tonight. I'm 99% sure everyone doesn't include me, because she thinks of me more or less as bomi (mark and peter's dad) does: a loud, slobby, fat, uncultured, stupid american, unworthy of his clan's cosmopolitan company, but nevertheless some kind of retarded, deformed family mascot.
I've been looking at myself in the mirror more, and it's really quite disgusting. I haven't lost an ounce of weight since arriving in the Gay Area, even though that was my intent. This hope was based on my balitmore experience, during which I lost quite a bit. However, I was younger then, lifted weights, and basically ate nothing but canned soup and packages of peanuts. And yet, I STILL wasn't able to get rid of that final layer of softness enveloping my torso, nor drop below about 215 pounds.
My genes just want me to be fat.
I saw a show the other day that described neural pathways forming when new behavior is learned, and how these pathways are solidified while others atrophy when that learned behavior is repeated. I think muttering 'i hate myself' over and over again, and telling myself how fat and ugly I am is probably not good for the formation of 'good' pathways. 'the power of positive thinking' sounds like the title of a new-age paperback or sham website, but it's essentially building new neural paths in the brain. Stating it like that lends some scientific credence, just by giving a new name.
Speaking of new names, some people in san francisco have taken on the hobby of running around in said city, pretending to shoot each other, finding prizes, calling themselves 'the assassins', etc. They're essentially playing a LARP, or Live Action Role Playing game. I mentioned this. That nominative carries with it implications of extreme geekiness that I'm sure they'd rather avoid, even though it's become arguably cool to be geeky, or at least this is what the geeks tell us.
The power of the nominative is great -- it was as if I had just called them a bunch of niggers.
The concept of 'many names for the same thing' is something that for some reason baffles, upsets, and causes cognitive dissonance. For instance, I referred to the thing that can be referred to as a 'crane fly', 'mosquito hawk', 'diptera tipulidae', or 'grotesque giant mosquito' as a 'crane fly'. Someone else referred to it as a 'mosquito hawk', and was incredulous that I had used a different name. 'they're mosquito hawks!', that someone said. I responded, 'they're two names for the same thing'. I was met with silence.
My ex-girlfriend would get extremely flustered when I referred to fizzy sweet drinks as 'soda', whereas she called them 'pop'. I would tell her that they were two names for the same thing. 'no! It's pop!'.
Derrida and saussure (and probably a number of other french fruitcakes) got pretty excited about this, and called these different names 'signifiers', while the things they referred to were called 'referents'. Note that these frenchies are signifying what might be called 'name' and 'thing' with 'signifier' and 'referent', which is a cute little strange-loop.
Furthermore (get ready for this!), the signifier DOES NOT equate the referent. Wow! That's an amazing concept! The name 'cat' is not the actual 'cat' itself! I'm being sarcastic here. I think the structuralists, poststructuralists, desconstructionists and postmodernists' thinking that this is some earth-shattering concept has got to do with their doing nothing but reading incomprehensible essays and then generating from them more incomprehensible essays. For these people, 'all is text', as they crazily claim, applies to the rest of the universe.
According to doctrine, the actual cat-thing, which is called 'cat', exists in something called the 'referential realm', which I believe without reading a bunch of murky, translated nonsense, is a place of ideas without names. For french contemporary-ish philosophers, text implies idea implies thing.
I disagree. The actual cat-thing isn't just the text of 'cat' or an idea of 'cat'. It's my (and, I think, a reasonable person's) contention that a thing, the idea of a thing, and the name of a thing aren't the same.
For the literary franks, the signifier 'cat' not equating the referent 'cat' is difficult to comprehend, because they do nothing but read and write all day (like me, except I also work shit jobs and eat), and just can't wrap their minds around reality, around this moment, independent of time and memory. But, they suspect 'cat' might not be a cat, and so they write thousands of pages on this. In some ways, they're pretty stupid guys.
I like the terms 'signifier' and 'referent', because it makes these things a bit easier to talk about; 'name' and 'thing' can be ambiguous and confusing. So, I give derrida et al due credit.
But I don't think 'signifier and referent' is an earth-shattering concept. Apparently some people do, and not just post-WW2 french thinkers: when one signifies the referent as 'soda' rather than 'pop', there's confusion and anger in the american midwest. So be it; I'm not heading a revolution here.
Running around in an imaginary world shooting people is cool if it's called 'urban warrior games' (or whatever), but uncool if it's called a 'LARP'. Sometimes I just don't know what to do with people.