Tag: time

On the Road

Reviews

Pretty much all my life I’ve seen and heard references to the book ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac. In movies, on television, in songs… its spoken of as a guide to life, a philosophical journey, even a right of passage… its talked of with a reverence that is usually held for things like the Bible… So, I was at the book store and I saw a copy on sale for $7 and I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and I bought it.

Perhaps the problem is that times have changed too much for Kerouac’s work to hold up, but, man, does this book ever suck!

Seriously, first off, its written in a stream of conciousness style from a man whose conciousness is like a wreck of freight trains, going in a dozen directions at once all piled on top of each other in an enormous mess of words. Secondly, none of his characters are sympathetic… perhaps in the late 50’s and early 60’s and even into the 70’s it was ‘cool’ and ‘with it’ to leave all responsibility behind and just run off and travel the roads, but that time has gone or at least I just don’t get it. The entire book I was waiting for someone to sit Dean Moriarty down and slap him in the face… He’s a completely reprehensible human being. He meets a girl, marries her, gets her knocked up, then immediately leaves town to find another girl. He blows off everything, storms into other people’s lives and leaves charred wreckage in his wake. The fact that Sal keeps hanging around this craphead is just annoying, and even more so that he seems to idolize him.

In the end, as someone who wants to be a writer, I’m glad I read the book. In my opinion, its a perfect example of everything not to do. I just wish it hadn’t been such a slow read so that I wouldn’t have wasted as much time on it as I did.

Sahara

Reviews

This was a good movie. Adventure. Action. Comedy. Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn make the best buddies in a buddy movie that I’ve seen in a long time.

Definately worth the price of admission.

Crossing the Great Divide

Random Thoughts

There is a joke I love to tell… “One of the worst things while driving is when some guy gets right up on your bumper, you know, right in your tail pipe, and he just stays there. You are driving over the speed limit already but this guy is right on your ass. Burns me up. Worse than that though are those people who drive so slow, I mean, you have to get right up on their bumper to get them to move!”

The funniest thing about that joke is that everyone laughs, and at the same time a good 75% or better of your audience is only laughing to cover up the fact that they know they are guilty.

Because of jokes like that, and my desire to avoid as much irony in my personal life as I can… hey, irony is great when you catch other people, but being caught in an ironic situation yourself just blows most of the time… I try to avoid tailgating people, people who tailgate and other like situations while driving.

One that I cannot avoid though are the people who block intersections. First off, when you take the driver’s exam, one of the rules you study and one of the questions you have to answer covers this. Don’t block intersections. Now, the main reason for this is if an ambulance, fire truck, or police car need to go through and you are blocking it… well, lets just say you wouldn’t like to get to heaven and find out that the reason you died was because some schmuck blocked an intersection and delayed EMS in reaching you in time… nor would you like to die and go to hell and find out that you are there because you causes the death of some very nice people because you needed to get to the mall 30 seconds sooner than if you had just waited through the next light.

And that’s the crux of what I don’t get… most traffic could be avoided if people just stopped thinking about themselves and thought about the bigger picture. Traffic sucks, but its a fact of driving. By blocking the intersection all you are doing is making it suck more because while you hang there all the cross traffic can’t go. You might think to yourself, “This traffic sucks so I need to take every advantage I can to get where I’m going.” But do you know why the traffic sucks? Its because other schmucks are blocking other intersections.

So, to rectify the situation… step 1, learn your car. Is your car 10 feet long? 20? step 2, learn to spot length from a distance. You know, you don’t have to be spot on, but if your car is 20 feet long and there is only 6 inches of space on the other side of the intersection, 20 feet clearly does not fit into 6 inches. step 3, don’t pull into the intersection until there is enough room or traffic movement to accommodate your car. It’s actually pretty simple, if the cars aren’t moving and there isn’t enough room, don’t go. If there is enough room, go. If the room is a bit short but you can clearly see cars moving and the light is green, go. And just because the car in front of you can make it doesn’t mean you can. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose… and sometimes you have to wait a whole minute for the next light. Turn up the radio and enjoy the wait.

Sorry for the delay…

Random Thoughts

… mostly, I just haven’t felt like writing. Also, however, every time I would look at this page, I would see that the article on visiting my mother’s grave was at the bottom, and that anything I posted would shuffle it off the main page, and so I hestitated…

Back to our regularly schedule meandering…

Repeat.

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I think to myself, “Why is this happening again?”

The answer I usually come to is that I didn’t learn what I was supposed to learn the last time. But, if that be true, why do all my lessons always have to come with a kick in the teeth?

I wish I had more to say than that, but that’s about all I can feel at the moment. The same mistakes, the same problems, over and over, crushing me.

One For the Record Books.

Random Thoughts

3 days. 4 if you count my day off. That’s how long I lasted at Toys “R” Us.

I’m 27 years old, and when I break down crying because I can barely move being nearly crippled by pain, I think its time to move on. And so I did.

5 years at desk jobs and I can’t be on my feet working for 8 hour stretches any more. Am I getting soft? Getting old?

I don’t think so, but one thing is for sure.. once my feet are back into functional working order again its really time to start doing that exercise I always promise myself I’m going to start doing.

And this time, I mean it.

Job Hunting.

Random Thoughts

Since early this year, the Information Technology market has been less than good. At the end of last year I quit a job and within a month picked up an open ended contract, basically stay hired as long as I wanted. After they moved me to third shift, 11pm to 7am, I decided I didn’t want to any more. So on April 30th I turned in my work I.D. and security swipe card, and set off looking for a “better” job.

I had 4 months of bill money saved up in the bank, 5 if I stretched it. I called some headhunters, recruiters and the like, and started sending out resumes.

Its now almost 6 months later, and I’m still unemployed.

I managed to keep my head above water because my fiancee has a job, and she makes just enough to not quite cover the bills. So we are still slowly sinking, but not having to bail water as often.

I’ll be the first to admit, when I started looking, I had a fixed set of rules for where I wanted to work. But that began to fade after the first month. Slowly, week by week, my standards for employment have crumbled to the point where I think the only thing on my “I’m not comfortable doing that job” list is fast food. And its not just personal choice that has whittled away at my resolve. In nearly 6 months, I have had 2 real interviews.

Two.

Anyone else who bothered to contact me in response to my resume (and that number is small when compared to how many I have sent out) said the same thing: You’re overqualified, you wouldn’t be happy here, we can’t hire you. Even one grocery store which will remain nameless told me that I was overqualified to work stock, and that they would rather hire some high school kid who’s going to quit the first time his job conflicts with his social life over me, someone who just wants to keep food on his table and a roof over his head.

The job market was getting better. Then some maniacal moron had the idea to slam a couple of planes into the World Trade Center. I had 3 interviews lined up that week. All gone now as each company “rethinks its position in this time of crisis.” I don’t mean to lessen the pain of the terrorist attack. I sat at home, being unemployed, and watched CNN all day from the first crash to the very end. And I cried, all day. But as the President said, we must carry on. Those of us not victims of the attacks, our lives did not end on September 11th. We must continue living, we must show that an attack on our buildings cannot destroy our lives and freedom.

And yet lots of companies stopped interviewing. They still post jobs and collect resumes, but if you call them, they aren’t following through. No interviews are being set up, no hiring being done. The process only pretends to continue, it doesn’t actually carry on.

So what am I to do? I need a job. Lots of people need jobs. I’m no fool. I realize that I’m in a pool of thousands looking for work. But I can’t worry about them, because if I do I’ll care, and I’ll starve. Well, not likely starve, but move back home with my parents for sure, and that’s almost worse.

Luckily for me, the Christmas season is upon us. Its a time of generosity, good cheer, and seasonal help in stores all over this great nation. I’ve got an interview today in fact. And if I’m chosen, I’ll get to survive until next year. And if I’m not… I hear you can make up to $12 an hour begging on the street if you do it right.