That's pretty much I did all day, in the hot hot heat -- a pick-axe and a black-berry patch. I also painted the side of a new house at the good doctor's house. At the end of the day, five girls in bikini's marched towards the house, saying, "Hi, Bye," as they slank past me. The good doctor paid me for my work, which was on the slow end, but it was also back-breaking, and in the heat, and I told the good doctor that I couldn't return, because I need to get my travelling aspirations out of the head and ready to go. It ain't gonna lick itself, folks. That's referencing travel plans.
Brother's birthday party last night. Good times, he was drunk and passed out before midnight. The other brother and I sat around being gossip freaks. People drank everybody's booze, so as soon as booze would go into the fridge, snakey little hands and fingers would reach in and tickle them away. It's weird being at a party where most people don't know how to speak English.
I've taken to smoking Colts at work. Also to sitting down in a chair that appeared out of nowhere. But that doesn't stop me from keeping busy!
Tonight shall be a night of brothers. Both are in town. It'll also be a night of "How About a Nice Cup of Shut The Fuck Up."
Currently listening to the Foo Fighters' new album, IN YOUR HONOR. Quite good. I haven't given it a full listen yet. I am comparing it to the last great double-album in the rock genre, MELLON COLLIE AND THE INIFINITE SADNESS. The Smashing Pumpkins did a better job at diversifying the sounds, from rock, to weird, to folk, to weird -- we only come out at night, lily, etc. The Foo Fighters are far more straight ahead, but am pleased to say that the acoustic tracks aren't just rock songs with acoustic guitars. The songs and the way in which the instruments have been recorded are textured on the acoustic level, almost like how Beck tracked MUTATIONS, Beck being far more arty, of course.
I don't know what I'm going to do today. I may put in a few hours and get my bike fixed up a bit, go for a ride. I'm rehearsing tonight, and I also want to write a folk diddy. Nothing surprising springs forth, so I may put it off and play more Dylan.
Work was polar. It was ice, then hot. There was give, and there was take. A man gave me five dollars to take away a cardboard box, so I went and bought timbits for everyone. I paraded around the showroom saying, "Take some! Have a few!"
I sat on my ass for four hours, and then my ass almost worked itself off the other five. I almost went snowblind from sitting inside a dank warehouse all day, then dealing with boxes filled with styrofoam outside. In the sun, the styrofoam lit up like snow, only it was hard-on stiff.
So afterwork I got my really, really, really good and quite, quite, quite cheap sushi. I got in the house and a draught of rotting fish skin and the cesspool of a kitty litter box curliqued into my nostrils. All of my clean laundry was wrinkled, because I'm a lazy fuck-head.
If I could pay myself, I would. And I would pay you, too.
For the past week, I've been working in an appliance warehouse. We're behind a large showroom. The showroom being pristine and full of appearance, like the front end of a restaurant, and the warehouse being sort of sketchy and upfront, like a restaurant's kitchen.
There are many types of folks who swing by the garage doors of the warehouse. Here's a list of the types.
SALESMEN
There are no women.
There is
- A Mormon, who disapproves of the porn in the warehouse washroom. He's prone to preaching, though he hasn't hit me yet.
- "Sport," a young guy with a faux-hawk. Talks a lot about the people in Vegas he knows, the large-scale concerts he puts on. Drives his mom's car. Talks like he owns the place. "Hey Matt, could you set aside boxes for me. I'm moving. If you could get on that it'd be great."
Sure thing, Sport.
- A nice, normal guy, who everyone likes.
- A bearded dude who comes up to the warehouse, asks questions like, "Do you have an ERM89XFQ? It was supposed to come off the truck. . ."
- The assistant manager. A guy I quite like actually. He's had a rough path -- doctor's ruined an organ during routine procedure, he flipped out, lived in the woods for the months eating local flora and drinking river mater. Parasites built up and he had a stroke. Walks with canes.
- The manager, always busy. I'll be doing some casual work -- splitting cardboard, hauling refrigderators -- and he'll burst out from around a corner muttering to himself what's on his mind, tell me to do something, and disappear.
30-40 foot trucks come and go. They pick up deliveries. With the trucks, come the drivers.
DRIVERS
Twitch -- a hard guy to like. Notorious for dropping and breaking expensive appliances. He has a massive red goatee that runs from half-way down each side of his jaw-line. It hangs about three or four inches off his face. Always complaining. Rumour has it he has two problems: drugs, and alcohol. Everywhere I go, I hear people going on about him.
Loads of other drivers, most of whom are chipper enough. They come and go.
In the warehouse there are the shipping/receivers, but also glass installers. Not much to mention about them. Though one is a talented musician. This be-quirks me. I take cardboard from them and slice it up.
SHIPPING/RECEIVING
The boss of the warehouse is likable -- always laughing at himself and others. Usually on it. Been there almost a decade. Also a rough path -- lost it all to meth, lost a child to the highway. Short, stocky, shaved head. Let's me do my own thing, he does his.
The other guy besides me reminds me of my younger brother -- tall, muscular, upfront, but friendly. Talks a lot about Mexico, studying foreign literature at UVic, a doctor's son. He and the warehouse boss eat a lot of fast food, which tempts me -- especially when there's KFC filling the air. Oh -- a big crunch! Don't lead me astray, keep my dietary sins at bay, and don't let me fall.
I drove a tractor today, with a hydraulic bucket on the front. Rocks went in, drove rocks to yard, dumped over a stone-wall. I may be from Alberta, but I was never a prairie boy. My mom kept my younger brother and I away from tractors, Wrestling. We had to beg to shoot cans with a b.b. gun. So instead of "picking up" the rocks, I picked one rock up, and pushed the others around.
I was working for a doctor who used to be a doctor for an NHL team. Nice guy. I shovelled the dirt, made garden beds, weeded, moved stuff around, that sort of thing.
On my way home -- 8 miles, one-way, on the bike, I was about to turn left onto Oak Bay Avenue off of Ricmond. I signaled left, and as I put my hand out, this little Oak Bay kid with a sporty little car and a smiley girl in the bucket seat almost hit me, kept on cruising. So I told him to "go fuck himself," then cut him off at the next light. He asked me where my signal was. I was tempted to say "in your face," or "right here" and give him the finger. He told me I have a lot of balls. I said "Thanks" in the vein of "Fuck the Bank."
Tomorrow I start my five day workweek at the appliance store, and next weekend I'm working more with the doctor. This is going to drive me crazy -- I hate working. But I am very poor right now and need to get some finances in check.
Work today was slow -- moving dishwashers, stoves, microwaves, peeing in a roomful of porn, cutting boxes and dividing trash from cardboard, cardboard from styrofoam. Five o'clock hits, off to find a cheap Sushi restaurant, then home to phone Joy at work.
Joy: Can you hold?
Me: Yes.
sound of phone clacking against counterspace
Joy (or so I think): Hello, how can I help you?
Me (Quoting a big sandwich from SATC): Eat me.
Dead silence.
Me: It's Matt.
Joy (or so I think): Matt who?
Me: . . . . . . . . Sorry, I really must have the wrong number.
Five minutes later I phone the store again. I ask in a terrible, obviously fake Texan accent if Joy's around.
Joy: Did you just call and say something to my MANAGER?
Me: heheheheh. . . . sorry! Can I pick you up? I have sushi?
Played a round of pool against Hoochie Loves Chachi, they won. I asked Joy if she was intimidated by their obvious popularity, and she said that yes, she was. I was, naturally, fearless.
Just returned from rehearsal. There's an organ there now, not quite the Funster, but pretty cool. Maybe I'll learn how to play "I Got A Woman." We sounded rough. Almost a month without play, and the jamspace is reconfigured. We cleaned the place out, repositioned the monitors so they AREN'T facing a concrete wall.
Finally got steady work at a job that I can probably enjoy.
My toast is ready.
Father had a mild heart-attack yesterday. Everything is fine, though he looks pretty rough. Hits close to home. Heart problems on the paternal side, Alzheimer's on the maternal. Looks like I should live a life of taking it easy over hours and hours of memory games -- I loathe memory games, but I oughta suck it up and be a man.
J. and I went north to camp with her brother's family and friends. Good times. Went mini-golfing, had some beers, walked along the beach, almost peed my pants trying to get out of the tent in the middle of the night. Played the guitar, drummed a little bit. We were in Rathtrevor park, which I thought I had never been in, but turns out I camped there when I was five, still living in Alberta. Even possibly had a birthday party there.
Early morning laundry and general grumpiness. Couldn't get to sleep until late, like Wendy's late.
Joy's currently flipping through a deck of cards, counting them to make sure they're all there. Dusty, dirty, stained with booze and cigarettes. All acounted for. We're going camping for the next few days, just north of Nanaimo.
Watched DAS EXPERIMENT last night. A psychological thriller based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. 20 random people divided into two groups. One group plays prisoner, the other plays guard. The guards inheirently become abusive, the prisoners receive psychological trauma. In real life, nobody died. In the movie, two people did. So I take it the movie is better.
In other news, London and Brighton "went BANG!" Some people died. Tragic really, but at the same time, all over the world, brown people are dying from far worse and hardly as many people care.
Am currently sipping the world's greatest coffee, looking out the window when not typing. A slow, thick rain.
I went out to Folkfest yesterday, my landlord was kind enough to give me a ticket to the whole shebang. The music is the worst part, or the weirdest part. I got there and there was canned music coming from the stage and all these teenage Doukhobors from Alberta dancing with tambourines and such. Then afterwards a scruffy dude came out with an acoustic guitar and starting wailing on really political ballads as if we had no idea that there even was a 1960s.
The food is good. I ate Kimchi for the first time, and enjoyed it. I expected it to be stringier. And then a portly Black woman with an enormous bust insisted that I order the lentil combination when I told her I had never eaten Ethiopian food. So I did. I got: a floppy pita thing, three different piles of goo, and another floppy pita thing rolled up like a crepe. I was told it was finger food, but insisted on a fork and knife. Quite good, actually. Then a beer at on the floating beer garden, listening to drunk women rant on about drinking.
I need to:
Get my bike fixed
Look for many pieces of missing ID
Get my passport in order
Get a new graphics card to play BATTLEFONT and GTA SAN ANDREAS
All the pictures from Janunary till now are now somehow absent from my digital camera. Pics from the final semester at UVic, from tour, of which there were many, all gone, all dead, stolen by the ether.
In other news, Spain beat us to it.
So I worked today, moving a lot of junk for rich people who've downsized to a large style condo next to a golf course. Thing is, is that I was working out of Esquimalt. If you're not in the know how, Esquimalt is a small section of Victoria filled with the types of folks who wear mullets and go around making comments about the weather being hot enough. Or cold enough. Or not of either. Anyways, this one dude, Ben, who works for Moving Company, starts calling me a hippy, or whatever, because he's bored and kinda lost. I was in a massive truck, fucked if I knew what kind it was, with three other dudes crammed into the cab. One dude had a mullet tied back into a pony-tail, kept on furrowing his brow and frowning at everything, repeating contradictory orders from the dude in charge, Ken. Along with us was this guy from Cuba. I asked him how Fidel was doing, and he replied, "Fidel is doing very good. He's making lots of money."
I had spent 12 bucks on a cab and bus fare to get to work, so at the end of the day I ask for a ride home and Ken says, "Are you nuts? Don't you have a car?"
"No," I say. "I've spent my money on other things."
"Well you know," Ken says. "It is your responsibility to get to and from work. You can make a success out of yourself, but it is your responsibility."
"Well," I say. "I have spent my money on other things."
"You could've spent that money on a car, and you could be making a success out of yourself."
"Well," I say. "When I want life advice from a mover, maybe I'll ask."
"Was that an insult?"
Then the guy with the tied-back mullett says, "Why don't you move out of your mom's house, Ken?"
"Move out? Why?" Ken says.
Fuck! Who does this guy think he is, Parry Mason? If I wanted the moral to an abridged Parry Mason novel, I would've asked. So after awhile, I get let off downtown and walk home.
Luckily on the way home, I stop off at the old residence and pick up some mail. A poet I quite respect had sent me a rather flattering letter with some rather helpful advice. Which made me feel better, but I can't stand dudes like Ken. Type A dick-face, with a lot to learn from in the way that I can't learn a thing from.