rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

oh god we’re all fucked

and sometimes, punk is beautiful.
I let my brother borrow “double nickels on the dime” about a month ago. and now he’s 2500 miles from here. still has it. typical.
song gets me, every time, for the full 1:45 it lasts.

minutemen
“corona”

the people will survive
in their environment:
the dirt, scarcity, and emptiness
of our south.
the injustices of our greed,
the practices we merit,
the dirt, scarcity and emptiness
of our south.
there on the beach,
I could see it in her eyes
I only had a Corona;
five cents deposit

I’m going to Mexicali tonight.

you can’t make shit like this up.

the apartment has a cricket problem.
I’m sitting here on the floor of my bedroom, and one of the little motherfuckers just jumped on my pillow. the audacity. now, it’s lost in the folds of my blanket, forever to navigate the sea of pockets that is my air mattress. but I’m not getting up; no, I’m staying away from that thing until I need to sleep. not very comfortable.

I built the Region section today. I was about half an hour past deadline with it, too.
I was in at 5:45. worked straight for about five hours. I’m not kidding, that shit takes time.
but I feel better about it.
it’s strange. I hate, hate getting up in the morning. but once I get there, and the sun finally comes up, I feel better about it. a little.
I can’t imagine this. having a career. nine to five. 401(k). don’t know if I can do this.
I talked to Mike about it. amazing how some people can take the bullshit right out of you, cut through pretension. he usually knows what I’m thinking, and it eliminates any melodrama. it’s refreshing. cause right now, I’m really left to my own devices, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

this weekend, I’m going toward the coast. Neil and Pat, in Garden Grove, I’ll go out and stay for an evening. see the Pacific ocean. I hear it’s pretty big.

listening to “mathematics,” Mos Def.

today we got furniture.
went over to the Salvation Army on 4th St. a salmon-colored living room set. chair and a sofa for like 65 dollars.
looks like it was made in Mexico in the 1970s. probably was. you get what you pay for.
we unloaded it from the truck, took it inside. then, I sat on it. and watched cable.
home, sweet home.

it just occured to me that “we” and “truck” don’t really make sense right now.
I have a roommate. his name’s Greg. he’s 25, from Arizona, and just started at the paper too.
he’s alright. I don’t really have any complaints. it’s not a huge apartment, so we’re forced to interact a lot, but again, he’s a nice guy. so no complaints as of yet.
the motherfucker can drink beer, though. I’ll give him that.
also, I own a truck.
I haven’t read my own blog in a while, but unless I mentioned this before, I now own a pickup truck. wrap your shit around that.
I drove it out here. it actually has cruise control, which makes it a step up from the mighty Saturn. but yeah, I’m trying to work with the stigma of being someone who owns a pickup now. I’ve noticed that people in El Centro generally drive like shit, but I’m not writing them off just yet; it may be that I’m getting used to the intracacies of driving something substantially bigger than a compact car…
fuck that, I’m going with my first instinct. these people suck at driving.
and I mean that. I’m not on the Indy circuit. I do the speed limit, stay in the righthand lane unless I’ve got somewhere pressing I need to be, and I’m generally pretty curteous as a motorist. these savages, however, will pull out into anything. I’ve almost been T-boned about a dozen times, and when it finally does happen, I’m going to fucking snap on the motherfucker who hits me.

my job is… it’s interesting.
being a copy editor, for most papers, means editing and design.
I don’t know how to design. so they’ve been teaching me. for that, I can’t thank them enough. they’re really going out on a limb for me.
however, it sucks at the same time. I feel like I owe them. and I don’t want to feel that way. I like the idea of being able to quit, no questions asked, whenever I want to. which, you know, I guess I could still do, but then there would be some second guessing, some level of guilt involved.
they hired me when I wasn’t exactly qualified, and now they kind of have a piece of my ass. feels strange. I don’t like being beholden to anyone.

but at the same time, I’m not ready to pull up and leave. at all. I put too much of me, too much stock, into coming out here. to bail would be a financial and emotional disaster. no way I could live with myself if I just bailed.
that’s what bothers me the most. the feeling that I can’t just leave. I’ve gotten myself into something that is not easily cast aside: the beginning of a career that I’m not even sure that I want. it is something that requires time and effort. requires me to act like an adult, the way I’ve been trained to do for the last 15 years of my life. I don’t feel like one (I’m considering buying an Xbox 360, for fuck’s sake) but here I am.

I miss home, if only for the change in weather. El Centro only does one season, and that’s “fucking hot.” I’d probably really miss the changing seasons, but it’s not like this place has trees with leaves. I miss the family and friends, mostly. obviously. but I guess this is part of growing up.
it’s sad how bright I got when they hooked the cable and internet back up. I’m truly a child of my generation.

fuck it. move forward. go home someday; this won’t be forever.



I miss you.

alright, so now I live in California.
no shit.
and I just got the internet turned on in my apartment.

El Centro is hot. and mostly hispanic. and dry. and in the middle of nowhere.
so I’m paying my dues.
took me a while to drive here. it’s a big country. about 30 hours…

you know what, I’m not going to try to catch everything up at once. a lot has changed for me in the last ten days, and to try to rush it out right now wouldn’t do it any justice. I’ve got a new job that I’m barely qualified to do, I’m 2,000 miles from anyone I really know, and I live with a guy that I met when he answered the door as I pulled up. in short, shit isn’t fucked, it’s just crazy.

so yeah. anyone who still reads this (Mar) – I will now try to update this regularly. I don’t have anything else to do, presently. so stay up.