The Going Away Party

On Friday May 05 2006 my company had a going away party for my boss. After work all we went straight to a bar and started drinking. By the end of the night I just wanted to go home.

Twenty dollar digital.

So my friend Andrew introduced me to the wonderfull world of digital photography. The wonderfull world of super low fidelity digital photography. Im talking one megapixel. I must say it sounds bad but the low resolution gives many pictures a warm quality. Some of the coolest looking flix I have are from my super small razr phone camera. Whenever I have the foresight to bring my real digital camera to a fuji moment it is ruined by the hyper steril high quality emerengcy room digital picture. I hate gettin my picture taken by my "real" digital camera because you can see everything. Its like trying to look good next to florescent light. Impossible. It is allmost like the picture is too detailed, too good. You can't hide from that high res digital flash photography, but you should. So, to up the illin, Andrew gave me a Jamcam! It was supposto be a cool portable digital camera for teenagers that was affordable at the expense of its photo quality. The extreme camera to take pictures of your friends skateboarding and shoplifting candy! Anyway the camera was extremly unsuccessful and subsequently discontinued. I think its gaining some popularity because of the unique look of its pictures. Here is a taste of what low res digital looks like. They proably wont look kickass untill you look at them full size. So who wants to shoplift some twizzlers while I do my low res thing all over you?

My Desk.

My desk. This is the scene you should visualize when you imagine me at work. I had a much longer post in place but I decided to delete it for this small chunk of honest.

A Wage Slave Is Born

After suspending my carefree days of childhood into adulthood I have been forced to attain gainful employment. No longer do I have to worry about personal finance or free time. The scales have tipped and what once was plentiful is now sparse and vice versa. Before I was employed I had lots of time and no money. Most of my free time was spent searching for new music, reading, seeing movies or skating. Those days of leisure are now gone. I have made a trade off that has affected me profoundly. Once I had a fortune in free time, now I’m well below the poverty line, just getting by. A few hours here, a few hours there. However, the acquisition of a job is not all rain on a parade. I have discovered that my new structured schedule is most likely beneficial to my body. Waking, eating and sleeping at the same time during a majority of the week has to have a positive effect on my body. Also the money is not bad and I have the opportunity to learn more Japanese. The one thing that really bothers me though, is how tired I am after work. I am unable to commit to anything that may stretch into or past nine o'clock at night. Keep in mind that I have worked in construction before and had have endured numerous days of hard labor followed by long nights. Within the construction biz, I was waking up earlier and doing hard physical labor with energy to spare. At Nippon Express I work at a desk all day and only lift a finger to push it down again on the keyboard and I come home unable to do anything requiring concentration or energy. I have never made more money in my entire life and have never had less free time. I sure I'm going to save a lot of money because I never have time to spend any of it. My free time has never been more valuable or fleeting. Huh, this post was meant to be positive describing how much I enjoy my new job and all of the wonderful people I work with. I think it’s time for bed my eyelids are heavier than three ton a/c units. I can’t compete with the Japanese, they work too hard.

Shoes

I decided to break the cycle of purchasing only skate shoes. For the last five years I have only been purchasing shoes of the skating variety. This was not a big deal to me, infact it greatly simplified my shoe purchasing, or so I thought. Skate shoes have certain qualities that some would deam unflattering, they are built to withstand the erosion of constant skating, and they do this by having super thick souls and lots of padding. All of the reinforcement of the shoe causes the shoe to look more like a moon boot. I was comfortable with that and for a while I embraced the huge shoe convention. Well now that shit is over. Just last week, I purchased my first pair of non-skate shoes and after a brief adjustment period I realized that I must have looked rediculous. In fact my skate shoe preferance did cause redicule and such ridicule was the impetus for the regular shoe purchase. I love the regular shoe, its so nice and small. I still have skate shoes in my closet but my preference has clearly changed. This is a big deal for me, my fashion sense is kinda wack and actually moving on to a more flattering shoe is quite an acomplishment. On numerous occasions I have fallen into a fashon rut or habbit that I was reluctant to break. The skate shoe preference was an excelent example of this phenomena. I have a feeling I can run faster.

A Love Hate Relationship

Communication is an important thing in a relationship. For the past two weeks the communication between my computer and me has been strained to say the least. It has a virus, which means my computer is saying "Im sick" and I say "What the Fuck, a virus?". Every time my computer shuts down or a program freezes I want to take my computer and destroy it, I want to set it aflame Hendrix style, I want to smash it in an orgy of violence. Now, don’t get me wrong I loved my computer and it holds major sway over what I do and when I do it. It is my source for news, music, communication and pictures of naked girls. Since its acquisition I have grown increasingly attached to it. For the most part I have been able to keep my "Comp" as I affectionately call it running smoothly. However, in the past I have had my computer related emergencies and they hit hard, so hard that everything else was put on hold until my comp was up and running again. (I still remember the first time I had to reboot it and how I stopped going to class) Maybe it's more of a personality trait than a reliance on my computer that makes everything else secondary until my computer is fixed. Anyway, my computer has had a virus and it’s ruining my life, or more appropriately slowing it down. I don’t know about anyone else but when I get a virus or when my comp is crudded up, it is a total bitch to work with. I already have no patience, and waiting for a page to load or watching letters slowly appear on the screen seconds after they have been typed is a living hell. Plus, I keep running anti-virus software and I even purchases and anit-spyware program which is utterly unheard of and illustrates my desperation. In the past I have never purchased software I would sooner spend hours finding a crack to steal it. In this case trying to find a useable crack for anti-virus software resulted in downloading another virus. I’m almost insane with anger and I wish I could go back in time and purchase a Mac. I have a short fuse, no patience and I'm frustrated as hell because of this shit. In reality this virus isn’t doing anything except pissing me off, my computer is usable but just knowing that there is as virus is enough to make me grind my teeth. I could be worse; it could be a virus that actually does something bad like destroy my Mp3's or rearrange my keyboard. I would almost enjoy the theatratics of a mega virus that throws up an 80's style 3D rendered skull and crossbones with 8bit sounds of hellish laughter and floating radioactive signs. When I was younger, I thought computer hackers and viruses were just like that. I can almost convince myself that a virus like that would be better that what I got now; at least I would be entertained.

A Short Story About A Long Night

The brightness of the morning is shocking. As I leave the sanctuary of a friend’s house, the amount of light dilates my eyes, signaling the first of a number of natural responses usually unnoticed now awkwardly pushed to the forefront of perception. My senses begin to respond and I take a breath of the outside air. Immediately my body is struck with the desire, the need to be comfortable, peaceful and alone. Now comfort means the opposite of everything natural, the opposite of this overwhelming reality. Comfortable means dark, quiet and familiar. With senses artificially heightened, I must take matters into my own hands; bring the stimuli back down to acceptable, ignorable levels. I’m speeding home now, air filling my lungs and blood pumping to my muscles. Powered by desire, fear and intoxicants; excitement grabs hold of my mind sending it racing. I must get home as quickly as possible, avoid every aspect of this bright, loud, active morning. I arrive at home and my mind is tackled with an immediate need to darken the room. As I try to suppress this sensation I realize how unsupresable it is, I leap up determined to rejoin the dark. A state as close to sleep is desired although obviously unattainable. I must now rely on my mind to create an atmosphere resembling unconscious tranquility free from perception. I wonder how my friend is holding up, left to his own devices, mental facilities and personal whims. How much light is invading his sanity and I wonder if similar ridiculous, fleeting thoughts are being pondered about me? As necessity is the mother of invention, I devise a plan and put it to action to combat the light. Cognitive ability, patience, energy, and materials, these are my limited resources. I study the invading light and find a weakness. For a moment a chain of thoughts collide and present a solution. For a moment I am filled with excitement; setting my mind to task with such immediate results is reassuring and surprising especially given the circumstances. Reeling from my conquest, my brain, inspired develops philosophical theories then moments later proving there validity before being forgotten as my mind continues to race. Times like these call for way of quickly transferring thoughts to a medium that can be scrutinized and pondered when sober. I wish I had a tape recorder. The chaotic processes of my mind continue, preventing me from obtaining what I want most; sleep.