I can't sleep. I went to bed at 7:30pm like a good little boy, and I woke up at 11:30pm that same evening, incredibly hungry. It was impossible to lie there with my eyes closed any longer, so I got out of bed at this 12:20am.
The good news is that UPS doesn't care if I have a goatee or not. I was told that I needed to be clean-shaven, have short hair, wear the uniform, etc, but I think they may have been talking about driver's helpers, because some of the people doing the same job as I are pretty hideous. Notablym this hippie dude with really long, ratty hair and a goatee, who also wears camoflage pants, square glasses, and a painter's cap. So, I think UPS will survive if I grow my goatee back.
I shaved it off, and feel emmasculated. I look like a big, fat, doughy baby when I'm forced to shave. Shaving is bad and dumb, anyway. Why would you dutifully scrape all of the hair off your face each morning with a metal blade? The cultural norm has really outdone itself here, in terms of stupidity. I shaved last year for UPS as well, and looked even doughier inasmuch as I was forced to jog around with packages and in a jacket that was far too small. Also, they didn't give me a shirt -- I was made to wear the bomber jacket, even though it was something like 70 degrees. I thought I was going to pass out.
Yep, these service industry peon jobs are great. The nice thing, the rather unheard of thing, about working for UPS is that the peonage gets weekends and holidays off. You NEVER get weekends and holidays off in retail/restaurant -- weekends and holidays are when people buy things and eat out. But really, it's not a big deal. Actually, it might be preferable to have days off during the week.
That way, you can run around, do errands, eat fast food, visit the bookstore, etc, and not be mobbed by the teeming horde as they surge in the same activities. Also, it's really only beneficial to be off on Saturday and Sunday if your recreational life centers around social activity, which mine most certainly does not. God, I'm glad I don't date; there are few things as unpleasant (and expensive), except maybe job interviews, which are almost indistinguishable. Really, who wants a career or marriage, and why? I think it's some kind of mass hysteria and hypnosis.
In peon jobs, admittedly your days off (or hours off, rather) rarely come in one discreet package, as they do for normal 9-5ers on Saturday-Sunday. But still, it's ok; either look on the bright side, or suffer a nervous breakdown.
But this is all academic; I get Saturday and Sunday off, whether I like it or not. It's nice to work the early morning shift, if I can force my sleep schedule around it, something with which I'm apparently going to have trouble. Working this shift, you have the whole day, basically, to do whatever (buy shoes that don't crush your toes at wal-mart). You miss out on the late evening, but that's ok -- in pehistoric times (which didn't exist -- the world is 5,000 years old), it would stand to reason that people went to bed when the sun went down, and got up when it rose. This is almost what I do, save for the "get up at dawn" part (I'm a pre-dawner). Except that people only need eight hours of sleep, so what the hell do I know.
The meditation retreat people wake you at 4am, which is going to be peanuts for me -- I laugh in their faces. Of course, if I can't fall asleep and am filled with the need to get up, there's no computer, internet and pot of pasta waiting for me down a flight of stairs.
Ima go watch tv. I don't think I'll be exhausted for work, but I think I'll collapse sometime during the day tomorrow (today...something...it's confusing), unless I strive to avoid it (don't lie around on the couch watching the "Star Trek marathon" on SPIKE TV). But, it's ok to screw up my sleep patterns for now, because I have a four day thanksgiving weekend, like a normal human being. I have to take precautions not to exit the house during these four days, and most especially not to enter a retail store, or I will die.
I never really know what day it is, or what time it is, so sometimes I make the mistake of partaking of the fruits of civilization on the weekend or during rush hour. When I realize it, I grimace, and maybe bark out an involuntary "fuck!" while I'm in the car.
It's not that I "hate people" so much as it is I hate crowds. Oh, and of course I don't really like being told what to do, even though it's bearable, sort of. But sometimes, when I'm out on a bookstore/restaurant sojourn, I'll even interact with strangers for the hell of it, and enjoy it! I sort of pretend I'm in a movie, and am playing the part of the gregarious, friendly oaf.
This thing is for sure: I can't be around people, no matter who they are, endlessly. I need some "recharge time." and, once I'm recharging, I tend to find that it's more pleasant to recharge more than it is to re-enter the fray. A lot of the time, I really would rather be alone. This is a big reason why marriage and family seems like a dubious prospect.
Most people go sort of crazy if they see too little of people, but I'm the opposite way (go crazy if I see too much of them). My tolerance is pretty low, now that I think about it. In an ideal world, I'd be alone in a cabin somewhere with my dog, and have company over if and when I felt the need. Of course, the existence of potential company is a result of an active social life to begin with, so maybe I'm up a creek here.
I wont say something as common and puerile as "i hate people," but I think maybe I'm not as social a creature as some. All of the jobs I've done the best at and enjoyed the most have been pretty much "work alone" jobs, where I didn't have to talk to anyone, or be around anyone. I think perhaps it's not so much that I detest interacting (well, maybe a little, if I do too much of it), but that it drains me horribly.
That's the key -- too much people. I like interacting, friendliness, talking, blah blah, but I can't take too much of it. Furthermore, the longer I've been cloistered here in the house, the more difficult it gets, and the more I want to remain isolated. Strangely enough, I've never been lonely. Never. Weird, eh? I bet if my mom weren't here, I would. You know, ~*~*IN JAPAN*~*~* it's expected that kids continue to live with their parents until they get married.
One is looked at with suspicion, like people looked at the unabomber, if one opts for a hermetic lifestyle. But it's what some people, not effected by affectation or mental illness, want. It's not that I don't get lonely, that I don't like people. I do, or else I wouldn't be so obsessed with email and online chatting. What I don't like is interacting excessively with them face-to-face (or even over the phone), not because it's horribly unpleasant and I hate their guts, but because it's really difficult, stressful and draining. Shit, e-chat even gets to be too much for me.
I'm exactly the same as everyone else in the basic structure of my social needs. It's just that I fall a little (a lot?) further on the "time alone" end of the continuum than most others.
Ah, fuck it. The TV calls. Let's sum up the self-analysis (and all past and future ones) with "i exhibit diverse behavior."
"It's logically inconsistent to say 'I hate people,' and then go look at porn." -- Me
Just like last year, working for UPS during the gift-buying season is really throwing consumerism into sharp relief for me. But I won't dwell on it overly much (it constitutes beating a long-dead horse), nor will I condemn it from a lofty position, because I'm guilty of it too. I'm not a hypocrite -- what do you think I am, from northern california? HAHAHAHAHAH. Just kidding; go back to your odwalla shakes.
It's ok to shake your head at consumerism, but it's not ok to do so spitefully. Instead, one should do it sorrowfully. It's not these people's fault that they're buying crystal cats -- they're victims of society, and victims of culture. They have no choice but to buy crystal cats, and send them around the united states via UPS, where I have to load the boxes into a truck, and screw it up to the point where it has to be repacked by my supervisor.
Two things struck me today:
1) how useless, and not just arguably useless, 99% of holiday gifts are.
Every once and a while, I saw a gift that does something, like a turkey deep-frier. Of course, that's stretching it, but at least it does something. But the vast majority of packages were crystal cats, or something very much like them; in the crystal cat category. People should give and receive as presents groceries, or clothing, or window replacements. Albeit nice ones, fancy ones, pretty ones, nicely wrapped ones, etc, but still -- practical things. Or better yet, just give everyone money. Everyone in the world should give everyone else in the world $100. That'd cut down on UPS's fuel expenditure.
Shit, now I'm afraid someone will read this and assume I want a dozen eggs for christmas. Not true! I want a crystal cat! Sheesh. I should just call a spade a spade and move back to the bay area. But hey -- I'm a victim of culture, too.
2) eventually, most of these things will be thrown away or end up at a yard sale. So it's a cyclic thing, and I'm there for the shipping part. Think about how much crap you have in your basement. Where do you suppose that stuff came from? It was delivered to you by UPS, aeons ago.
Of course, jobs are created at all of these stages, and thus we have our crystal cat economy. It all reminds me of the japanese government hiring out contractors to pave the river bottoms, purely to create jobs and stimulate growth. As christ's birthday draws nearer, I'll be expected to be at work at 2am.
I wonder if any readers will actually gift someone, or be gifted themselves, a crystal cat. Possibly. I guess they're pretty cute.
In other news, I have a fan club. I got the idea to comb my server logs for people googling on my name. I found a few. Here are their cities of origin. They might be in the suburbs, however, or even further away -- geobytes places me in silver spring, based on my IP address. Sometimes a computer's canonical name will include some abbreviation of a city, which is another clue. Anyway, here we go:
It's possible that some of these people simply can't remember my domain, and are googling my name every time they want to read my blog/peer at my other inanities. But my domain isn't really that hard to remember. I don't think. Although, my mom has trouble remembering domains. She has a mental block there -- she can remember names, places, and other data like that, but not domains or email addresses. I think maybe others have a similar problem. So anyway, maybe the google searches are partly explained by that.
Did you know that there is at least one other namesake with a decently prominent web presence? Sirname-sharers lurk in the north american midwest and norway in nontrivial numbers.
It's nice to know this, just so there can be some ambiguity about who's publishing these horrible things on the web, if I'm ever put on the spot about it ("i dunno...must be someone else of the same name, in gaithersburg doing seasonal work for UPS"). My evil twin is from somewhere in the middle of canada -- I wrote to him, once. Anyway, maybe that has something to do with the mysterious calgary personage.
Of course, I have no sure idea who these name-googlers are, even though I can make a teensy bit better than wild guess, in most cases. Being certain of their identities is simply a matter of social-engineering that information from their internet providers:
Thanks for calling comcast communications, this is stephie. How may I help you today?
I'm the customer with the ip address 68.50.175.76, and I probably live in the general area of woodbridge, Virginia. I've forgotten my name, street address, telephone number and email address -- will you give them to me, please?
The last one on my list (g'burg, MD) is embarrassing, because it's me. I search on my own name from time to time, and visit my own site. How shameful.
Woops, the power just went off and on. I lost web traffic for about 30 seconds. Microsoft, dell, intel, or someone decided yesterday to stop recognizing my USB 2.0 hard drive for a few minutes, so I had a data-loss scare. Then, mysteriously, it started working again. This all smells like hardware problems. !@#$ gmail notifier isn't working, either, since yesterday. I hate computers.
