sound and fury (signifying nothing)

And while I wouldn’t be so melodramatic and silly as to say the top of my world came crashing down, it’s been something of a wet firecracker.

However, I would put forth that I am getting it back on the road now, and I’m taking the long way. In a precarious Neon that, while it’s running better for the time being (amazing what changing your spark plugs for the first time in three years can do), I in no way trust to take me across 1000 miles of Interstate.

I’ve had a pretty productive weekend. Pretty much all I have left to do is the requisite cleaning, and packing my computer and bedding. This is good, because I have to work tomorrow and Tuesday, and I’m leaving Wednesday. That’s pretty close-cutting and crazy even by my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-britches standards. Originally I was planning on taking those two days off (and using my personal hours, since I’d heard from several people that you don’t get to cash them out like your PTO, you just use ‘em or lose ‘em). I was gonna use them to do all the shit I’ve gotten done yesterday and today.

So now I have everything I’m going to take with me (space in my car permitting) in the corner of the living room. Seems to be a theme with me; when we were moving out of the Fayetteville place, I measured off a 10×12 space in the living room (or however big the storage room was, I forget) and made sure we could cram all our shit in that space.

That’s pretty impressive (and nowhere near the amount of crap I/we had then, especially since the only furniture I have is plastic and/or inflatable). The computer bag is empty (obviously). the ORM box will hold my mattress, nightstand (which is plastic and comes apart easily), and lamp. The box under the laundry basket is full of books and DVDs. I never thought that I’d have gotten to a point in my life where all the books I owned would fit into one box – not even the whole box, just two-thirds.

The Haemonetics box will definitely take more stuff. Ditto for the clothes box behind the suitcases (one for clothes, one for shoes). The Trima box is empty but my television will fit perfectly into it. It’s chuckleworthy and sort of sad that my tv is small enough to fit in a box that holds half a dozen apheresis kits.

The sad news in all this superficial stuff-mongering is that I won’t be able to take my desk chair with me. I like this chair a lot – it’s soft, it tilts, it’s armless. But I can’t figure out how to take it apart into manageable pieces so I can jam it in amongst all my other crap. However, my current computer desk is a plastic piece of junk with PVC pipes for legs: it was one of the crappy tables that they kept on the box trucks and replaced with better-quality folding ones. I salvaged it from the crap they throw outside the staging door when they’re too lazy to carry something 30 feet to the dumpster, covered it in contact paper, and have been putting up with its wobbling ever since. In any event, I’ll be glad to be rid of it.

Part of me wants to congratulate myself for my ability to let go of so many of my material possessions. I’ve brought a carload to the Salvation Army and will have a few more things for them before I’m done. The other part of me says that I should really be able to get rid of all my junk. That at least half this stuff, if not more, is just sentimental foolish crap. Or, in the case of the television and other frivolities, just crap.

I don’t know. I’m keyed up and tired and stressed out and can’t finish a sentence, let alone a thought. But I’m excited. I’m really on a great adventure.

And this time, I’m gonna wear sunscreen.

Music: Fiona Apple – Sullen Girl

I am so much of a perfectionist I’m a perfectionist about my perfectionism.

This thought stems from today’s events. I don’t really feel like going into all of it again; the only thing I’m going to divulge is that there are perks to being very hard on yourself, namely that when you fuck up spectacularly, they might go easier on you because you tend to punish yourself enough. Finally all this self-hatred has paid off!

I know it’s the acme of asininity, but I feel almost like I don’t have the right to be anal-retentive. That uniformity must exist, and that I don’t have permission to be a perfectionist because if I truly were one, I’d have finished school and would be living the dream with a split-level ranch and 2.7 children. I wouldn’t ever get angry or moody or messy. I wouldn’t be driving around with a gaping hole in my car where the back glass used to be.

(Okay, you could counter these with the assertions that pragmatism wins out over perfectionism, since it’s not at all feasible for me to have new glass put in, and FEMA wasn’t any help in that regard; that as a human being with emotional variances I am permitted to have, well, emotions; and that I never wanted the prepackaged plastic life anyway. But still, I should have at least finished school.)

What the fuck ever. I maintain (and will until I die, because among my other wonderful and lovable qualities, I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, inasmuch that I might say what needs to be said for the sake of pacifying the other party but keep on just thinking what I was thinking anyway) that not only am I not too hard on myself, I am not at all hard on myself. I am honest. I am pragmatic.* I don’t think I’m the shit, I don’t have an ego, and I am perfectly willing to humble myself to others because in my mind, I’m pretty great.

But in my mind is exactly where it should stay.

* This is one reason it’s useless to try and compliment me when I’m pissed off at myself. It makes me mad, it’s useless, and it undermines my ability to take you seriously. So when someone starts asking me why I’m so hard on myself and then lists all these supposedly great qualities, such as “you’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, you’ve got the figure,” all I can think is “Of course you think I have a great figure, you’re built like Barney the Dinosaur.”

I received a fresh shipment of pith this morning, and I’ve been busy all day stocking my shelves.

This doesn’t actually mean I’m going to be any funnier or any more imaginative or really even more interesting than I usually am. I’m just trying to prove my mettle on the world’s saddest second-rate game show, “Fit All Your Worldly Possessions Into a Neon”.

Part of this process is paring all my useless junk into manageable proportions, and part of that task is getting rid of piles of useless paper I don’t need. Not that these papers are that bulky or take up that much space, but they were all sitting on top of my scanner, and I want to pack that and decide if it’s worth the bother of selling or small enough to take along.

So here are a few notes from my Repository of Malnourished Ideas. May they live long and prosper or die quietly and with little digital fanfare.

[I am] just a regular old sinner

Very true. Not sure why I felt compelled to write that down.

against my wind/the trees don’t sway/they merely bend/and stay that way

I think I came up with that one myself. I like it, despite the fact that it’s rhyming, it’s poetry, and I vigorously defend my position as a prose-only type of girl.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that those elements of my life that aren’t lightly dusted with fail are actually coated in fail batter and deep fried

This is some fantastic[ally retarted] memery and the tail end of some random incoherent scribbling about my job. I cut out the bitchery about the job because I do it enough anyway, and because I’m trying to get away from that, man, just let it go.

You’re retarded. Would you like a to-go box for that?

One of those ever-occurring lines that never occur at the right moment.

Uglier than a dog’s ass but smarter than the average bear…

I actually used that phrase to describe myself. Not precisely how I’m feeling at the moment, but useful nonetheless.

Hovis, HIPAA and Hillary… sometimes you’re in a bad set of circumstances. If you’re rich, you buy a lawyer; if not, you are screwed, ’cause when it comes to sucking parasitically to make $, some lawyers will take cases on a contingency basis, but when it comes to defending a man’s freedom or life, guess who gets the shit end of the stick?

I honestly don’t have any idea what the hell I was talking about. I know not all lawyers are evil (there are about 7% who make it through school with their humanity intact), and I know that Hovis and I probably agree on Hillary. Ye gods.

Snark in the dark: 1. disfranchisement is okay as long as it’s not of the majority 2. who doesn’t like feeling like a child, or being scolded like one? 3. positive outcomes are whatever benefits the victors 4. I do what I’m told; that’s all the information I need 5. I trust my supervisor only not to chop me into pieces with an axe 6. I receive communication sufficient to make me feel like a tard

Heh.

What’s your deal? 2/$1.99

Another one of those lines I may never get to use unless I’m writing dialogue for barely-plausible characters. No one ever asks me what my deal is. I think because I generally don’t have an attitude problem.

For the random-ass file: “You’re so good-looking, but you need to slow down when you talk”

Not work-related, actually. I talk plenty slowly at work; in fact, I’m probably one of the few people who actually interviews coherently. (I also realize that interviewing is still part of my job, because I am a unique and precious snowflake.) This was actually from a dream I had. What about, I don’t know. Who about, I’ll never tell, mua ha ha.

The power of sleuthery

Probably something I wanted to make a title for something, but I don’t really do that much sleuthery, and sleuthery isn’t even a word.

10-23-07 If I am anything in relation to God, it’s a fucked-up canvas that He, for some reason, couldn’t bear to throw away.

God, melodramatic much? Although I will give myself some credit here and say I try to keep the female hysterics to the page, which in this case was in my day planner and scribbled on my way to my first Harrison trip.

I have the OMGs

That sounds like a phrase I need to inject into my everyday vernacular. If I want to sound like an idiot.

If you could say “I saw so-and-so on the internet” like you could say “I ran into Jane at the store,” would we then be so cavalier about the places we went or the things we said online?

That’s something I wanted to explore in depth but instead wound up using as a bookmark.

I never died, I just got tired of living in Tennessee

A line from a song I heard on about the only FM radio station you can pick up in Clarksville (without a digital tuner, I suppose). I wrote it down because I meant to look it up, and apparently it’s from a song called “God Save the King” by a gentleman named Phil Pritchett. I suppose I jotted that down as a reminder to check out some of his stuff. Note to self: check out some of Phil Pritchett’s stuff.

Non-reactive pupil in a briskly-reactive world.

Life according to the GCS. Ha!

And now some quotes. I believe these speak for themselves.

You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it. – Malcolm X

The west won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-westerners never do. – Samuel P. Huntington

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. - Major General Smedley Butler

President Bush was quoted as saying that our Iraq campaign “has no goal other than to return control of the nation to its people.” While they’re at it, it would be nice if the same could also be done for the United States. - Michael Bloom

A civilized society does not kill innocent people. - Bill Press

Through this world I’ve rambled/I’ve met lots of funny men/Some rob you with a six-gun/Some with a fountain pen. – Woody Guthrie

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes. – Thomas Paine

Here’s the thing about my ideas, and I know none of these are very good ones. I have no mechanism, or no sense to get some mechanism, to record the good ones as they come to me. This kind of stuff is the cream of the salvaged crop. Which is like going to a salvage yard and finding a wheel that fits your car perfectly. Which I have done, so there’s hope yet.

Why put it online, though? Because I can’t bear to get rid of these. They’re the closest things I have to children. And I lost a child known to me only as “2003.”

Plus, I’m putting off other events in the Moving Halfway Across the Country Olympics, like calling various bureaucracies and informing them of the impending need to discontinue services. Especially Cox, because I know I’m going to have to fight with those fuckers. I know they get points for a “save” every time they dissuade a customer from canceling, but something about cable companies makes them extra ridiculous. Unless you preface your call with some kind of bitchery, then they just think you’re a bitch and “accidentally” leave your service on for another year.

Music: Better Than Ezra – Teenager

While I may never agree with it totally, I will probably continue think fondly upon my favorite assessment of my physical person: “you’re not at all fat.”

That said, I am coming to appreciate my body. It’s kind of worn out from being on my feet all day and having walked four and a half miles on top of it. But it’s a good feeling, one of almost pride.

I think this line of thought was kick-started by seeing a handicapped license plate, and thinking, “hopefully I’ll do everything I can to prevent deteriorating to a point where I need one of those.” I have a good body. I never thought I’d say that, although I’m speaking more from a mechanical than an aesthetic standpoint. The warranty’s up, but there’s a lot of tread left on the tires, and a lot more miles left on the engine.

It’s not the 10 miles I used to loop around Travelers Rest as a teenager, but I also no longer have boundless energy and free time to do this kind of thing anymore:

There are only two hills on my trek around Van Buren: a long one with a gradual upslope, and a short, nasty one with a grade of something like 45%. I honestly don’t think my car could handle it, so it’s kind of a victory that I barely lose my breath anymore on a hill that would cause my car to shit itself.

I’m kind of impressed at my progress on that one, too. The first time I climbed up, I had to sit on the curb while I counted the spots swimming in front of my eyes. Then again, I was still smoking then.

I think my body is trying to tell me that maybe I’m in shape enough to start running again. But my brain’s saying that I’m really not out of my mind enough to.

Music: Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat – Lucky

I think I do a 4 July post every year, and every year it has only the vaguest of ties to Independence Day and its meaning.

I think a running theme is my annual flat tire. Like a present from our Founding Fathers themselves, I’ve gotten a flat tire on this day at least three years out of the past five.

This year, I’m really living it up. Today’s itinerary includes such activities as:

• giving my apartment a much-needed cleaning
• cranking it up to eleven and dancing around while I do aforementioned cleaning
• getting together boxes (I’ve graduated from “piles”) of stuff to get the hell out of here: one of trash, one for Goodwill
• attempting to pare down some other extraneous shit in my life, including all these notes on top of my scanner (otherwise known as the Repository of Malnourished Ideas), either developing them into something to write about or setting them on fire. Perhaps setting them on fire then writing about it
• massaging my scalp in a weak effort to make my hair grow faster
• updating my blog in the weak and grasping assumption that anyone but me gives a shit

Music: Magnetic Fields – All My Little Words