rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

today, I built page one.
that’s kind of a big deal. one more step towards self reliance.

of course, it didn’t go very well. at about 7:15 this morning (jesus, christ) I was sitting there, waiting for all of the front page stories to go through the copy desk so I could pull them, put them on the page, and I thought this is going to get worse before it gets better.
not metaphorically. I meant for that morning.
I was right. flash forward about three hours and I’m still not done with the motherfucker, and I’ve got half of the newsroom standing behind me trying to reword a headline because the one I had they didn’t like and I was already past deadline. all I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep on the air mattress.
I gotta build page one again tomorrow. at least I won’t be lacking things to do.

soon as I got home, I fell asleep on the couch. had some bad dreams, though I can’t recall exactly what they were. nothing violent or scary, just morose. stuff that makes you glad to wake up. when I came to, Greg was here. I beat him in Tecmo Bowl.

I bought a plane ticket for Thanksgiving. going to Va for a few days. it’s roughly five weeks from now, and already I can’t wait. I don’t mind the area, I don’t mind the climate, I don’t mind my coworkers, I just miss people. I’m far from the first person to ever go through this, and I know I won’t be the last, but you forget sometimes how hard it is to start out.
this is better, I will admit. when I first left for college, I was a fucking basket case, but I became accustomed. now I’m back at square one. I’m much more adjusted this time; I’m handling this one better, and it does get better every day. I’ve got more of a routine, and I’m getting used to it, and I’m using my limited time off to see everything I can around me. sometimes, I just wish I didn’t have to do it by myself.
if I ever gave off the illusion that I wanted to start again, somewhere new, entirely alone, then that was a mistake. and I’m not caving on this motherfucker; I will work this job until I feel comfortable in leaving it. that means feeling I’ve gotten enough experience, and won’t have fucked my employers by leaving too early. but until then, I have a right to bitch and mope while I try to make my surroundings better. I’m trying. really.

come on, everybody hurts. REM wrote a song about it.

this post sucks. look for well-developed opinion elsewhere.

sometimes I hate sports.
never the Bears, though. thank god.

anyway,
I know none of you saw, or heard, of the fight that happened during the Miami/FIU game this weekend.
during a, uh, contest that network television desperately wanted to become a rivalry, the college football teams from said schools talked a lot of shit to each other, let tempers get high, and then got into a bench clearing brawl that resulted in about a dozen immediate rejections.
I guess there’s some tension in Dade county that the rest of us weren’t aware of. I’d imagine it having something to do with Miami having a nationally recognized program, and Florida International full of players who probably committed one too many armed robberies in high school to play for Miami. the Canes pump out NFL-bound players, many of whom are honest-t0-god local talent, and FIU probably had a bit of an inferiority complex due to it.
who knows? I’m not interested in laying blame.
either way, during a Miami extra point, somebody jumped on the kicker, and then this giant, swarming, testosterone filled fistfight broke out. the color commentator in the booth sounded like he wanted to go down there: “Miami just said, ‘not in our house.’ you don’t come in here and disrespect this team. they should finish this in the tunnel.”
wait, what the fuck? their house?
it’s the fucking Orange Bowl! it’s not your god damned house, you undereducated hoodrats, it’s probably owned by FedEx, and you’re basically dancing for loose change at the expense of your bodies.
I digress. this belies a larger problem. all of this Under Armor, ‘gotta get paid’ bullshit, is fucking ruining sports. most of those motherfuckers don’t ever consider actually completing a college degree when they can make millions selling Coke and credit cards.
none of this hasn’t been said before, and more eloquently.
ugh.
I’m watching this on youtube.
when I see the University of Miami getting hyped into a swarm, milling about on the sidelines, huddling up, swaying and chanting destroy the other, it reminds me where our propensity for war comes from. you’d think that FIU had fucked somebody’s mother.
I mean, can’t we all just get along???

Mom and Dad apparently lived here for a few months about 30 years ago.

wall art is big in this town.

more El Dorado.

Kyuss rules.

murals galore.

I had my 30 day evaluation Wednesday.
apparently, it’s been a sort of evaluation period.
my boss calls me into a conference room. my heart picks up a beat or two. I don’t especially like my job right now, but I don’t want to be fired. I’d like to leave someday (couple months, or as soon as I feel comfortable that I haven’t been a giant tease to an understaffed newspaper and can justify to myself that I didn’t lose more money coming out here than I made) but on my own terms. don’t want to be let go because of incompetence. that’d be like a kick in the nuts. I think we can all agree.
so she calls me back, and we sit down, and she shows me a paper with a sort of grading scale on it. 1-5. 1 means pack your bags; 2 means you’re either not fully competent or a new employee; 3 means you’re alright; 4 means that hey, if you copy edit this well then you probably get laid a lot; and 5 means that you can have a news clerk killed, if so be your desire.
I got a 2. “but only because you’re a new employee. I’ve been reprimanded for being too lenient with my evaluations.”
oh, stop, you’re just saying that.
“honestly, I feel you’re more of 3, but you are a new employee, and I graded you as such. I feel that so far you’ve been a good hire.”
I bet you tell that to all the girls.
“so keep up the good work. sign here.”
it was around this time that I scratched my head, and realized that because I hadn’t bathed that morning (was late, got up ten minutes before 6 a.m.) that I must have a dandruff problem. because I started to fucking snow. little flakes, floating down to the table on the air conditioning breeze.
I looked at my boss, squeezed her wrist hard and said, “no one must know.”

no, I didn’t do that last part. but I imagine it would have been funny if I had.
either way, I’ve got to work in about 30 minutes. I’m not exactly excited about that, but I’d rather be going in now than before sunrise. such bullshit. what kind of organization puts out an afternoon newspaper? in the 21st century?
mine. this desert is fucked.

so be it. freeze on principle.

Halloween is three weeks off.
but that’s a sidenote. who wants to have a party?!
I worked until midnight tonight. shift started at 3:15, and I was going to try to get out of there by 11:45 (eight hours and my state mandated 30 minute lunch break) but I fucked up. got back to late. so I had to stay another 15 minutes.
about 30 minutes until zero hour, Greg the mystery roommate calls me.
“dude, I’m at a party. it’s kind of dead right now, but it’s a costume party, and I think it’s going to get pretty rad soon.”
at this point, I’ve been at the paper for about seven and a half hours. I’m ready to go home. I’m up for anything, my dislike of house parties not withstanding. but Greg doesn’t know how he got there. so I say I’ll call him back later, after he’s gotten better directions.
so I call him back after I get out.
“yeah, dude. go left.”
“go left?” I say.
“yeah, left.”
pause.
Greg is not in right now. please leave a message.
“alright, dude. if you get a little better directions, call me, and I’ll try to come out.”

five minutes later, Mario (coworker) calls me. gives me decent directions.
I get out there, and it’s a pretty big party. not everyone, but most, are dressed for the occasion. I’m wearing a flannel shirt, so I guess I could go as “doesn’t have fashion sense,” but that’s been done, so I didn’t attempt the lame joke all night.
as I had expected, the mystery roommate was far gone. I’m telling youse, that guy doesn’t fuck around when it comes to drinking; he goes hard, or he doesn’t go at all. I got there about 12:15, and he was lightyears ahead of me. I’m having trouble putting my finger on it. either he’s an incredible lightweight, or he’s got a alcohol problem. and he’s not that small, so I tend to lean towards him having an issue with the sauce. who knows? I’ve got months to figure this out.
either way, it’s a Halloween party, and there are a lot of girls there (parties tend to be hit or miss; sometimes, it’s nothing but guys standing around a keg, sometimes not). almost all, unequivocably, are dressed “slutty.”
you know what I mean. the slutty cat. the slutty bee. the slutty cop, the slutty cowgirl, the slutty CPA (that’s a joke). it doesn’t matter, all you’ve got to do is take a costume, shorten its hem to about a half an inch above your gentials, and show a lot of cleavage. I’m only human, and it’ll get persons like me to stare.
that’s kind of what the party is like. someone’s backyard, lots of top twenty hip hop singles, and slutty nursemaids. this isn’t my scene. so, predictably, I’m drinking to get drunk, but I guess I’m getting better at handling my beer, cause it isn’t really working out very well. I end up talking to Mario and Eric (also a coworker, both cool dudes) most of the night. Mario tells me that there’s an Ultimate Fighting Championship event coming up next weekend in Mexicali (no. shit.) and it’s being held at a place called “Club Galia.”
so I have to go, of course, because of the nature of the event and the name of the club. nothing makes me think of the Octagon more than Gally. I also need to figure out what her phone number is, so I can call her and tell her. if anyone out there knows it, please get ahold of me and tell me. appreciated, thanks.
anyway, while all of this is going on, the mystery roommate is working on getting annihilated. steadily. and unbelievably, he kept it up. at times he would wain, slide back into sobriety. but the lure of kegged Miller Lite was too strong, and pretty soon, he’d get another one going, and he was drunk again.

I’m going to pause here, and take this opportunity to say I’m not upset with the mystery roommate. this didn’t really piss me off, turning into a psuedo-designated driver. you know, I enjoy getting drunk every once in a while, too, so this isn’t meant to be one of those “I’m all bothered and want to vent” posts. I’m just relaying a set of circumstances and happenings that I found interesting. jesus god, that’s all I’m saying, so lay off.

by the end of the night, the party was slowing down, and it was pretty clear who was driving, so I led the mystery roommate, slowly, through neighbors’ yards, around hedges, in and out of parked cars, to my truck. showed him where the door was. drove him home.
I’m driving back into town, listening to “Hotdoggin’” by Fu Manchu (just to set the ambiance) and he says something, slurred. I don’t really catch it.
“cut yer hrrmmf.”
“what?”
“sometimesI wish they would jus’ cutyer throat.”
maybe I was a little drunk, but that creeped me out a little bit. in retrospect, it wasn’t really anything, but at the time, I was thinking that maybe I was seeing a side of the mystery roommate that would end me up as the victim on an afternoon special on Court TV.
“who, man? me?”
“nah.”
I thought, not very hard, for a second. “girls?”
there were a lot of them at the party.
“yeah.”

that’s it. that’s what you read all the way down here for.
Greg must’ve been looking for something. didn’t find it.
sometimes, I wish they (girls) would just cut your throat. don’t play wif my heart, baby!

I’m listening to “she’s a rainbow” by the Rolling Stones. give me a dollar for the most random Stones single ever!

I’m basically paraphrasing a Dan Froomkin column in the Washington Post, but here it is.

President Bush is out and about, stumping for Republicans for the midterm elections. unless you’ve been fucking about for the last couple months, you already know the GOP is looking down the shitter right now. so Bush is reaching pretty low into the bag right now.
he was here, in California, speaking on behalf of some dickhead named Doolittle. he was talking about the CIA’s secret use of torture, and the White House support of it. talked about how Democrats are weak on national security.

Bush said:
we just have a fundamental difference, and it’s a key difference for all Americans to look at and listen to. during the debate on the Senate floor, one senior Democrat, their ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, compared the brave Americans who question the terrorists to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. I believe this exposes a dangerous mind-set on the part of Democrats in the United States Congress. you can’t defend America if you can’t tell the difference between brave CIA officers who protect their fellow citizens and brutal dictators who kill their citizens. (applause.)
I’m not making any of this up. (laughter.)

what Sen. Pat Leahy said, and what President Bush was referring to:
imagine you are a law-abiding, lawful, permanent resident, and in your spare time you do charitable fundraising for international relief agencies to lend a helping hand in disasters. you send money abroad to those in need. you are selective in the charities you support, but you do not discriminate on the grounds of religion. then one day there is a knock on your door. the government thinks that the muslim charity you sent money to may be funneling money to terrorists and thinks you may be involved. and perhaps an overzealous neighbor who saw a group of muslims come to your house has reported ‘suspicious behavior.’ you are brought in for questioning.
initially, you are not very worried. after all, this is America. you are innocent, and you have faith in American justice. you know your rights, and you say: I would like to talk to a lawyer. but no lawyer comes. once again, since you know your rights, you refuse to answer any further questions. then the interrogators get angry. then comes solitary confinement, then fierce dogs, then freezing cold that induces hypothermia, then waterboarding, then threats of being sent to a country where you know you will be tortured, then Guantanamo. and then nothing, for years, for decades, for the rest of your life.
that may sound like an experience from some oppressive and authoritarian regime, something that may have happened under the Taliban, something that Saddam Hussein might have ordered or something out of Kafka. there is a reason why that does not and cannot happen in America. it is because we have a protection called habeas corpus, or if you do not like the Latin phrase by which it has been known throughout our history, call it access to the independent federal courts to review the authority and the legality by which the government has taken and is holding someone in custody. it is a fundamental protection. it is woven into the fabric of our nation.

these are the obvious differences in Bush and Leahy. A) Leahy name-dropped Kafka, and B) I can guarant-fucking-tee Leahy wasn’t leaning on his podium and slurring his words when he said all of that.

go back a few posts. and read. cause pictures get you only so far, and then you need Matt’s calm, soothing prose to get you through your lunch break.

I’m listening to “little pink houses.” why does this seem fitting?