An unemployed muse from the summer of 2001:

I've been through my own landslide.
Got my feet up on someone else's desk,
Leashed to someone else's future.
And I'm just trying to get my little-brother through tomorrow
While my ex-girlfriend tells me I suck.
Stuck honesty first,
Now just stuck.
Five or six beers and you might see me.
All I can see is distrust,
And I don't trust you either.
Everybody's two steps either side of McJobs,
But tomorrow is destiny, white shirt and a tie.
Hey, I almost had my house in my 'burbs,
But I think I'll just live my
Life out in pretentious city cafes
Watching the literati wannabes
Outperform anything I've ever done.
It's pathetic, but what's the point?
If you know where you're going, then
Let's talk in -- say 30 years.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
Someday you'll be famous and worshiped
And cute and funny and all,
But you really fucked me over...
I'll be at my yoga class.

-- tqb (2001-07-16)

I am working on a theory that views each human being as a unique sequence of bifurcations. For example, answer each of the following:

Tables or booths?
John Lennon or Paul McCartney?
Bacon or sausage?
Top or bottom?
California or New York?
Butter or margarine?
Stimulants or depressants?
Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth?
Skier or snowboarder?

I am a tables-John-bacon-bottom-California-butter-depressants-David-snowboarder guy (although I'm currently doing neither bacon nor sausage). Now, I just need to find enough questions to scientifically cover the entire planet.

What type are you?

Remain calm [audio found here].

Blog slump. The words escape me. I'd blame it on the encroaching solstice, but I really think it's my daily nightmares that are doing me in. I've had to deal with these things since age 5 or 6. Every night I goto bed and every night they arrive. The intense ones arrest my sleep with the intensity of a defibrillator sparking my brain. I awake with my neocortex and spinal cord feeling like electrically scorched green jello. Then, after I awake, it takes nearly two hours to shake the fog and rid myself of the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee before I can say "top of the morning." (and who cares if I am saying it at noon?).

I finally plunged the final knife into Hesse's Wolf last night. I could say I completed it, but with all of its strange recursions and subtle, yet exigent philosophy, it's hardly a book that can be finished on its first read. One certainty: all of my subsequent encounters with looking glasses will incite a double take to ensure the reflection didn't have fur and fangs. I'm no wolf, but hyper-empathy has me barking, howling for the moon's pallor, daydreaming fire hydrant fantasies.

Harry Haller -- Hermann Hesse -- Hermine the lover -- Herman, his "boyhood friend, the enthusiast, the poet, who had shared with ardor all (his) intellectual pursuits and extravagances." My ass and left foot too (with a smile). The autobiographical presumptions that can be drawn are too slapped-face obvious -- too big a dose of spoon-fed Hesse deliberation. Hesse complained of misinterpretation, but it almost seems the desire of the novel. But maybe you read your literature wearing a blue collar riding a pro bono publico bus, or maybe you read your literature sitting at an oak table of some Columbia library (or was it Cornell?)? Isn't every interpretation a little misguided?

I play a game of describe-a-novel-in-one-word-or-phrase. The word or phrase must appear in the novel. For Demian, the word is intimate(verb sense). For Steppenwolf, it's problem of existence. I'll rest on my simple sugar one word summaries and leave the correct interpretations to intellectuals as they strive to join the immortals, in or outside the magic theater.

Side note 1: intellectuals do not have sex. There's a lot of horror in the latter half of the novel when the middle-aged, intellectual Haller, err Hesse, err half-man-half-malamute-thingy goes through and describes his sexual awakening,

Yuck (unless a naked-Bill-Gates-cross-naked-Connie-Chung thing does it for you).

Side note 2: America has never made a mistake. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but doesn't self-examination and behavior towards others (read: foreign policy) define your acceptance and sociability?

Of course, I've found that when you beat the living shit out of children, they generally submit and do what's asked of them -- maybe ass kicking is the only answer, err, (final?) solution.

If you are wealthy enough and are plugged into the Capitalism machine (e.g. you own a mini-satellite dish, subscribe to service, and actually make time to watch the programming), check out the BBC America. If you are an aspiring alcoholic, you'll feel right at home. Seemingly, every other commercial is for hard-liquor and liqueur (listen: can you hear the liquor-marketers orgasmic screams? "Hey, people are noticing our products!"). And, not to leave you hungover with a headache, the station also runs spots for a hangover cure (a product called Chaser). What better motive do we need for legalization? I'm sure commercials for coke and dope would be piss-snot funny.

Somebody took it literally. Possibly the coolest letter I've ever received (click to enlarge).



Circa 1990

Forget German cannibalism. If you want a real live Lord of the Flies experience, a slide down the bitter caustic hole of humanity, throw your high-tech-résumé-hat into the high-tech-sector ring. Ouch. In Seattle there used to be a modest amount of tech jobs that were advertised in the Sunday paper. Then, the tech boom came and high tech jobs got their own section. Presently, tech jobs have dwindled to two and a half columns, with half of the available jobs outside the city of Seattle (dearth, baby, dearth). It's over. Developers go home. And, once that giant on the east side of the bridge (MS for out-of-towners) finally goes to sleep -- not realizing that they are completely missing the boat in server technology -- it's going to be over-over.

In the meantime enjoy the soap-opera fights -- geek style. And, if you are currently in one of those fights, you'd better bring more than a pocket protector for defense. Try this for fun: call a few high tech HR departments -- do a little networking with some old developer contacts -- try to follow up on your résumé -- or, try to follow up on that interview you had where they absolutely said they'd have an answer for you by next Friday. Mmm, mmm, watch those defensive behaviors fly.

It's great to see humanity shit on humanity -- it's like free Comedy Central. Additionally, it corroborates trickle down theory: rudeness at the top slides to rudeness in the rest of the company, and rudeness in the rest of the company slides right out the company door. But, it doesn't matter, because tech job seekers will obsequiate tech job hirers until they puke. McSoftware, baby, McSoftware.

You must love customer service in the 2000s. I'd rather have an email that says, "get lost, scum bag -- my under paid ass isn't going to do two bits of service for you." I can't blame them either.

Until I return from the Bahamas and until I recover from Junkanoo (which was a few days ago)... Lots of thoughts when I get back... Birthday day for me today (12/29)...

While waiting for life that sucks to die, why not listen to my favorite unsigned bands: TQ's Garage Band Playlist.