Nonculture

4 Asbach colas, 2 captain/colas, 4 vodka orange, 1 scotch.  That is the roadmap from tonight.  So far.  Work’s been suckin’ blah blah, plus they’re talking about laying people off again, so why not…just, why not.  The fact that it’s Monday night is irrelevant.

I do have an untouched bottle of Bacardi left here by a friend, but I’m debating the rations of ice left and what they should be spent on.  Somehow, Bacardi never comes up in the top spot.  The scotch is top shelf, but I’m putting it on top of this sweet mixer, which is probably a mortal sin.  A proper mouthwash with it solves that, but it also nearly makes me gag.  The burn going down is excellent as usual, but the fucking taste in my mouth is as bad as the stale, smoky air trapped in this fucking cubbyhole in the apartment; and like work, it all truly makes me want to throw up.

I’m house hunting, which is unreal in itself.  I’m keeping my 13 year old bimmer on the road with electrical tape and brake fluid bottles every week, but it’s working.  Apparently there’s a loophole in the home buying system where they don’t care if you can get a car loan – fuck it, they’ll give you a house!  So, sure, I’m qualified, and looking.  My agent has so far sent me every house in the motherfucking ghetto, but to his credit, they’re fairly nice houses.  I think I’m going to go outside the box and get something in a decent neighborhood; if I have to lose the pool to do it, well, y’know.  Life is tough.

Shit, a fucking house.  I have trouble getting 300 dollar unsecured credit cards.  Say what now?  But, to be honest, I’ve rebuilt all of that bad 20’s anti-credit, and am now a responsible citizen.  Maybe they can smell it on me.  Or maybe they can smell the fact that my credit score has jumped over 100 points in two years.  Either way, they need to get their noses out of my ass.  Maybe they smell me giving up.

I’m semi-under the grid.  Being completely off the grid would be awesome, but outside of winning the lottery or walking down to the labor pool every day at 7am, I don’t see a way to pull it off.  The labor pool isn’t that bad; I did it for a while.  You walk down, sign up, and wait for a job to come up.  Sometimes you wait for an hour or two and you are shit out of luck, but if you do get called, chances are it’s some kind of new shitty job in some new area with some other shitty boss.  The variety isn’t all that bad.  The work, maybe, but like today being Monday, that’s irrelevant for this post. 

I’m sure that made sense somehow.

 A few friends and I have had many discussions on weeknight drinking and the best way to pull it off.  How to avoid hangovers, how to make it in to work without getting pulled over, etc. 

Our latest one was about stinking of booze at work and how to avoid detection.  You gotta realize the stink stays with you all the next day.  There are three ninja steps to pulling this one off:

Douse

Distance

Deflect

Spray on that cologne, pop those tic tacs, make sure your clothes are clean – Douse the alcohol coming through your pores.  It sounds like common sense, but don’t just do it in the morning, you need to keep a fresh application of distracting scents going all day.  Make sure you are at least 2 plus feet away from your client at all times if possible.  Always talk with the least amount of breath you can manage exhaling if you can not Distance.  Deflection can be particularly tricky; it involves settings like elevators where you are forced to be in close contact.  In these situations you need to slightly shift your person so that any perceivable alcoholic odor is transferred from you to the person next to you.  This can confuse others as to who is still drunk at 8am.  It takes practice, but be sure to throw in a confused looking eyebrow at all times; this lets people know you are in on the smell and it can’t possibly be you.  Looking at the corner of the ceiling and the wall isn’t a bad ploy either; it makes you look like you are trying to determine the source of something.

Keep these steps in mind, and you should be successful at surviving the sweat out.

The hell of another on call is over.  For those of you looking to get in to the IT field, let me assure you, when they say you’ll be working stupid hours, they aren’t fucking around.  Burnout is a word used a lot, and many times I think I”m close.  Sometimes I want to do an American Beauty and roll up on a fast food joint and tell them to give me the job with the least amount of responsibility.  But that would mean no more cigars, switching to generic rum, and if you want a woman worth a shit, they also usually give a damn if you can play the game.  At least in the American culture.  So I plod on, fixing shit that shouldn’t break to begin with, and not giving a rats ass about computers in general, except for what they can do for me. I put the time in early on; I ate and shat computers to get my foot in the door.  Now I’m kicking back whenever possible and wondering how a salary that would have been astronomical to me 8 years ago is barely enough to support my borderline childish, bachelor lifestyle.  I can’t do Vegas every month, but if I wanted, I could do the gambling boats.

 I only got drunk once while on-call.  I make it a rule not to drink while on it, but this on call was extended to two weeks.  I almost made it.  Friday I got blasted and fired off a pissed off email to my boss about how fucked up the system was.  For those of you with a hankering for the drink and looking to get into corporate culture, here’s a bit of advice:  If you don’t have the proper supplies around, don’t go on a binge.  Mixing rum, then white wine, then an entire bottle of shitty, uber-sweet champagne that just happens to be lurking in the back of the fridge isn’t a good idea.

But, fuck it, I still have a job, and I still manage to write every now and then.  It’s the old stereotype-that-is-completely-true:  work sucks the creativity right out of you.  Those great ideas you have about what you will write/paint/compose during work all turn into faint shadows by the time you take off the shoes, yank on some jeans, and pop a beer.  TV or the internet or a game or porn are just too convenient as distractions.  There’s something to be said for those who cut off their outside stimulus for the sake of their art. 

Who wouldn’t like some shack with a typewriter/easel, no distractions, maybe a cute little foreign girl who doesn’t speak your language so that you can nail her without having to talk to her, who also brings you groceries (aka liquor) every now and then and cleans the place up for you for peanuts a month?  Though I suppose to make that a monetary reality your sabbatical shack would need to be in Borat land, or something. 

Only eight or so full edits to go on the existing ones, and only nineteen or so more to be written for the next self-pub project, a short story collection.  Fuck.  Where’s that shack?  Where’s the drive thru?  Why haven’t I found that stress-free, self sustaining artsy lifestyle?

Because, like everyone, I play the game for safety and security.  I don’t forsake my TV and internet for my art.  And that is why you will never see my name on the top of the bestseller list.  And don’t leave a comment about how Stephen King wrote is early stuff while teaching; teaching doesn’t count, because it’s not doing.  Teachers only work like, 100 days a year or something.