SPRING BREAK! (bitches)
I am relatively poor because I am a poor bastard, but what with the random gift of $900 bestowed upon me by the UofL gods of randam financial gifts/fuckovers, I had a bunch of money to spend and not much to spend it on.
As such, I purchased a trifty nifty digital camera and went on a quick little spring break vacation to Gatlinburg, Tn.
Tuesday and Wednesday I stayed in town and played with my camera and not much happened except that UPS gave me Tuesday night, by far the single worst night of employment I have ever endured in all my years of capitalist whor-ry.
The belt was understaffed and so everyone there had twice the ammount of volume than they could handle, our supervisor refused to call for help or aknowledge that we were having trouble because he's new and doesn't know any better, and by the end of the night, the volume we got was almost four times that of what we normally get this time of year (these are actual stats, mind you), and by the end of the night everyone was so exhausted that when we got our busiest, when the big mucka-muckas from the office came down to our belt to see why we were so backed up, by then everyone was too tired to move and so we moved slowly, which caused the big mucka-mucka supervisors to say that we were being lazy. Which was fucking infuriating but it didn't matter by then because I was too exhausted to yell at them.
To make things worse, at some point, while lifting some unneccesarily heavy box, my pants split in the ass, quite comically, the way they do to fat people in cartoons. I'd laugh at this except that (1) I was already too fucking furious about everything else going on to put myself aside and laugh and (2) that was literally my last pair of jeans.
Seriously, I own only work pants now.
At some point I literally fucking exploded, spewing forth goo everywhere but once Allah resurected me, I took my anger out, screaming at the top of my lungs, and throwing around every random object I could lay my hands on. The kids on my belt and supervisors from other belts cringed back and laughed nervously because I had just fucking snapped.
To them, I am incapable of anger.
And to repay me for this outburst, John, our brand new supervisor, he sent me to another belt where I stayed until daylight the next morning. I was, to my knowledge, the last person to leave the building I work in. Of course by then it didn't matter because after I had exploded everything else was just sort of a haze. I kept shaking. Standing still I was zoned out, no thought. Just catatonic mind.
My hands shook for no reason.
To follow this up was wendnesday when I went to the desert to see my family.
My parents asked me kindly if I could come visit one day during spring break as I would have time off. So I went. I took Alex. She met my family. My parent's living room looks like the Victorian era had come trampling through it and my brother's new bedroom that my dad built in the basement for him is bigger than my entire living room.
Oh well. At least I have a living room.
That night I made it back in time to show for work at UPS and the people who were gone on Tuesday asked if I was okay, because apparently me exploding had become infamous in the hours since it happened.
Immediately after work I went home and ate left over pizza and watched a bit of Barry Lyndon, which is Kubrick's worst movie in that it's like Amedeus but everything that gave Amedeus life and made it engaging and wonderful was drained out of it and what was left was THREE AND A HALF HOURS of fucking bland frumpiness. But being a devout Kubrick fanboy I watched it a bit.
Then, I was off.
It's a four hour drive to Gatlinburg, the first hour and a half of which was spent in total Kentucky darkness. Outside of Louisville the state is all sticks and mountains. It's rural farmland and wife beater tank tops and Marlboro hats and wooded mountains with a single McDonalds as the center of culture and development.
Louisville on the other hand, totally different. Outside of Louisville, the phrase is, "Louisville isn't Kentucky."
When the sun started coming up and the fog was fading out, we were driving through mountians and listening to Bob and Tom on the radio. At least I was. This is to keep me awake. Music makes me fall asleep because I hate it. Talk radio, especially funny talk radio, keeps me alert.
Alex, in the passenger seat of her car, slept like a corpse.
We got outside of Gatlinburg around 9 or 10 in the morning. Before entering the town you are forced to drive through this stretch of land known as "Pigeon Forge"
A pigeon is a rat with wings. Pigeon Forge lives up to that title completely.
Alex took to describing it as a carnival midway, but personally I feel that the creepiness and general annoying nature of cary-folk is a complimentary understatement of the horror of Pigeon Forge.
The town is one long stretch of Tennessee State Road 441. Covering it is a repeating pattern of Jesus, pancakes, go cart, bujee jumping, adult book stores, lazer tag, tourists traps, shopping outlets, and mini-golf.
Repeating over and over and over.
Religious centers stand next to porn shops. We passed the "Miracle Theatre" dinner theatre, the "Alabama" (the band) dinner theatre and the "Black Bear Jamboree" dinner theatre. Every few feet was another worthless hotel and somewhere in the mix is Dollywood. Pancake houses seperate every building like the bars between frames of a comic book.
But once you pass that, you drive around a mountain, and you're in Gatlinburg.
My family used to vacation there a lot when I was a kid. I haven't been back since eigth grade. The last time I was there my hair was in a bowl cut and was still naturally blonde. The last time I was there I had just discovered Eddy Izzard and people kept saying that I looked like Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
I was right about to enter high school.
Now I'm 21. I'm going on the first vacation I've ever been on with just my girlfriend. We're riding in Alex's old black Pontiac Grand Prix, the same kind my dad used to drive.
The same kind we drove to Gatlinburg the LAST time I was there.
We were staying in this condo called "The Summit" which is where my family used to stay when we vacationed here. It's expensive but worth it because the Condo rests on practically the top of a mountain. From our condo we got to see the expanse of the Smokey Mountains which stretch on forever in a beautiful green carpet. The first thing I did in our condo was to drop my pants and stand out on our balcony, looking out onto my kindgdom and announcing loudly to my subjects that I was raising the taxes. You know, in my underwear.
Alex took a picture.
The condo had a "canopy of mystery" which was kinky.
Aside from Alex sleeping for two hours in the car, we hadn't slept at all before coming out here, but rather than nap we hit a nature trail called "Rainbow Falls."
It's a two and a half mile hike, round trip, going up a mountain at an angle of straight up.
But it's absolutely beautiful.
And because it's Gatlinburg's "off season," the trail was mostly empty of people and the weather was nice and cool.
The top of the trai is this ten story tall waterfall which is astoundingly awesome.
On the way up I kept describing it to Alex as 40 stories, but I guess I've grown up a bit.
After the walk we were completely exhausted and starving and from the loud crashing of water our ears were ringing like we had just left a rock show.
So we went to get burritos which were delicious but we were both too exhausted to talk and neither of us could hear a god damn thing.
Then to the condo, where we passed out.
Three hours later I awoke to the TV playing "And You Don't Stop" and talking about how Snoop Dog changed the face of rap.
It was nine at night, and it was dark outside, and we both work third shift and nine is absolutely NOT the time to go to bed for us.
So off we went to downtown Gatlinburg.
Truth be told, downtown Gatlinburg is a lot like Pigeon Forge, the difference is that the Gatlinburg shops have SOME sense of class and variation, and what's more is that, unlike in Pigeon forge, where everywhere you look is filthy and disgusting and looks quite literally like Pigeon shit, Gatlinburg is clean and pretty because it's carved into the mountains, and so everywhere you look you get distracted by the pretty pictures and don't mind doing things like, say, paying $20 for admission into Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.
Ripley's "Believe It, You're Being Ripped Off!" Inc. practically fucking owns Gatlinburg from the look of the place. They have museums everywhere, and nifty looking ones, from the outside anyway. And I looked at one, "Ripley's House of Haunted What the Fuck" or something like that, and I thought, "That will be a total rip off, but I'm intruiged. I would like to see the inside of that. But Alex will never go for it. She'll say, 'no Ben, that will be a total rip off', and we won't go."
But then Alex said, "You know, that will probably be a rip off, but I kind of want to see it."
But unfortunately, because it was 10 at night, it was closed.
Gatlinburg basically closes at ten. The only things left open are bars, and Alex isn't 21 and I don't drink. The only thing that was open was a place called "China Bazaar," which sold crappy or fake swords and knives.
Incidentally, Gatlinburg is America's number one outlet store for cheaply priced shitty Rebel South t-shirts, Japaneese death weapons, Ripley's Assorted Fuck Off, Old Timey Photo booths and Fudge Shoppes.
While in China Bazaar, Alex was looking at the swords and weapons and oohing and aahing because she can kick my ass and knows how using either her hands or stabeys.
I prefer my death weapons to be starlight and rainbows and wishful thinking because it's much less strenuous and slightly less illegal, but while in there I caught a glimpse of something I liked:
A Hitori Honzo Sword.
From Kill Bill.
A mother fucking Honzo Sword.
With Bill's emblem on it. The Dev-eel.
And it's fake, of course. There's three or four more of them and they're on sale for $30. The rational side of me says this:
1) You have no use for such a sword. You don't need to spend $30 on it.
2) You hate duchebags who have walls full of stabey weapons that you know good and well they'll never use. The Pirate in you hates the ninja in them and also they're always fat bastards like Brad Ohlman who will never use that sword in they're entire life except to turn on his PS2 from a long distance so he won't have to get up.
3) Even if you DID get a sword, the one you're getting is a shitty fake.
4) Not only is it a fake, but it's a fake from a Tarrantino movie, which would make you like the dumb asses buy the glock nine because the gangsters in the movies use the glock nine.
And while the rational side of me says that, the little boy in me says:
IT'S A MOTHER FUCKING HONZO SWORD.
In the end I figure, you know, I'm on vacation, I'm in Gatlinburg, this is what you do. So I bought it. I bought a mother fucking Honzo sword. And a wall mount to put it up in my room. It's there now, sitting. Waiting to strike. Me.
Alex bought a sword too but hers was real.
We came back to the condo after that, ordered a $30 pizza and passed out. The pizza was $30 because it's Gatlinburg and pizza is expensive because it can be. Add to that our location on the mountain. To drive up and down this thing you have to keep your car in low gear or it will destroy your breaks and transmission. The road swerves at severe curves and constant blind corners. The slightest miscalculation will send your car falling like flaming metal doom off the side of the mountain and into the woods below. So there's a huge delivery service charge to drive a pizza up. Plus tip.
And the next morning we woke up feeling fantastic and well rested.
We only had two days to stay, one night, so day two was spent shopping.
We checked out of the condo, said goodbye to my subjects on the moutain below, and descended for the last time.
Ripley's House of Haunted What The Fuck is nothing more than a haunted house. You think it's a ride or something because you start off in this cage that moves along a track, and you think, "This will be cool," and then you get to the end of the track and go, "Oh shit. It's a haunted house." When you leave, you look at your ticket, which features pictures of people running, screaming in terror out of the haunted house and then you realize that it's because there people just remembered that they payed $25 for two tickets into a shitty haunted house.
I also bought the single worst t-shirt ever made because it features a topless, built cowboy standing in front of a rebel flag and reads, "Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy." So it's unfunny, stupid, references a country song I hate, redneck, and gay. I had to have it.
On the way out we played putt putt in Pigeon Forge and ate pancakes at an IHOP which was so strongly bear themed that I asked our waitress if bears owned or ran the business. She kept assuring me that no real bears were in the restaraunt, but the shop out front was full of bears and the windows were full of bears and across the street (not joking) was some tourist trap that advertises allowing you to see AND FEED 5 LIVE BEARS, so I was skeptical.
I thought for a bit that perhaps they had bears washing dishes, the bears wearing brain control devices shapped like strainer couldrons, the devices forcing the bears into this wicked smile on their face. And as soon as a bear breaks a couldron on their head, they begin to growl in anger and prepare to strike, but then the manager, startled by the growls of freedom, shoots the bear to death to set an example for the other bears. And the other bears would be, you know, sad about the death of their friend but they wouldn't show it because they're being forced to smile all the time.
I took a lot of pictures of bears while there.
We got back to Louisville around 9 or ten at night. Patrick and I fought with me and Alex's honzo swords.
Just before we left Gatlinburg, I said, "This is like at the end of the movie, where the main guy's like, 'It's time to go back home, to New York, where things make sense'."
And I got to Louisville, to the city, and things did just kind of make sense. But somehow it felt incomplete. The city was missing something.
Ten minutes after leaving Gatlinburg, Alex, who had never been there before, said, "I want to go back (sadness)."
And I said, "Me too."
As such, I purchased a trifty nifty digital camera and went on a quick little spring break vacation to Gatlinburg, Tn.
Tuesday and Wednesday I stayed in town and played with my camera and not much happened except that UPS gave me Tuesday night, by far the single worst night of employment I have ever endured in all my years of capitalist whor-ry.
The belt was understaffed and so everyone there had twice the ammount of volume than they could handle, our supervisor refused to call for help or aknowledge that we were having trouble because he's new and doesn't know any better, and by the end of the night, the volume we got was almost four times that of what we normally get this time of year (these are actual stats, mind you), and by the end of the night everyone was so exhausted that when we got our busiest, when the big mucka-muckas from the office came down to our belt to see why we were so backed up, by then everyone was too tired to move and so we moved slowly, which caused the big mucka-mucka supervisors to say that we were being lazy. Which was fucking infuriating but it didn't matter by then because I was too exhausted to yell at them.
To make things worse, at some point, while lifting some unneccesarily heavy box, my pants split in the ass, quite comically, the way they do to fat people in cartoons. I'd laugh at this except that (1) I was already too fucking furious about everything else going on to put myself aside and laugh and (2) that was literally my last pair of jeans.
Seriously, I own only work pants now.
At some point I literally fucking exploded, spewing forth goo everywhere but once Allah resurected me, I took my anger out, screaming at the top of my lungs, and throwing around every random object I could lay my hands on. The kids on my belt and supervisors from other belts cringed back and laughed nervously because I had just fucking snapped.
To them, I am incapable of anger.
And to repay me for this outburst, John, our brand new supervisor, he sent me to another belt where I stayed until daylight the next morning. I was, to my knowledge, the last person to leave the building I work in. Of course by then it didn't matter because after I had exploded everything else was just sort of a haze. I kept shaking. Standing still I was zoned out, no thought. Just catatonic mind.
My hands shook for no reason.
To follow this up was wendnesday when I went to the desert to see my family.
My parents asked me kindly if I could come visit one day during spring break as I would have time off. So I went. I took Alex. She met my family. My parent's living room looks like the Victorian era had come trampling through it and my brother's new bedroom that my dad built in the basement for him is bigger than my entire living room.
Oh well. At least I have a living room.
That night I made it back in time to show for work at UPS and the people who were gone on Tuesday asked if I was okay, because apparently me exploding had become infamous in the hours since it happened.
Immediately after work I went home and ate left over pizza and watched a bit of Barry Lyndon, which is Kubrick's worst movie in that it's like Amedeus but everything that gave Amedeus life and made it engaging and wonderful was drained out of it and what was left was THREE AND A HALF HOURS of fucking bland frumpiness. But being a devout Kubrick fanboy I watched it a bit.
Then, I was off.
It's a four hour drive to Gatlinburg, the first hour and a half of which was spent in total Kentucky darkness. Outside of Louisville the state is all sticks and mountains. It's rural farmland and wife beater tank tops and Marlboro hats and wooded mountains with a single McDonalds as the center of culture and development.
Louisville on the other hand, totally different. Outside of Louisville, the phrase is, "Louisville isn't Kentucky."
When the sun started coming up and the fog was fading out, we were driving through mountians and listening to Bob and Tom on the radio. At least I was. This is to keep me awake. Music makes me fall asleep because I hate it. Talk radio, especially funny talk radio, keeps me alert.
Alex, in the passenger seat of her car, slept like a corpse.
We got outside of Gatlinburg around 9 or 10 in the morning. Before entering the town you are forced to drive through this stretch of land known as "Pigeon Forge"
A pigeon is a rat with wings. Pigeon Forge lives up to that title completely.
Alex took to describing it as a carnival midway, but personally I feel that the creepiness and general annoying nature of cary-folk is a complimentary understatement of the horror of Pigeon Forge.
The town is one long stretch of Tennessee State Road 441. Covering it is a repeating pattern of Jesus, pancakes, go cart, bujee jumping, adult book stores, lazer tag, tourists traps, shopping outlets, and mini-golf.
Repeating over and over and over.
Religious centers stand next to porn shops. We passed the "Miracle Theatre" dinner theatre, the "Alabama" (the band) dinner theatre and the "Black Bear Jamboree" dinner theatre. Every few feet was another worthless hotel and somewhere in the mix is Dollywood. Pancake houses seperate every building like the bars between frames of a comic book.
But once you pass that, you drive around a mountain, and you're in Gatlinburg.
My family used to vacation there a lot when I was a kid. I haven't been back since eigth grade. The last time I was there my hair was in a bowl cut and was still naturally blonde. The last time I was there I had just discovered Eddy Izzard and people kept saying that I looked like Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
I was right about to enter high school.
Now I'm 21. I'm going on the first vacation I've ever been on with just my girlfriend. We're riding in Alex's old black Pontiac Grand Prix, the same kind my dad used to drive.
The same kind we drove to Gatlinburg the LAST time I was there.
We were staying in this condo called "The Summit" which is where my family used to stay when we vacationed here. It's expensive but worth it because the Condo rests on practically the top of a mountain. From our condo we got to see the expanse of the Smokey Mountains which stretch on forever in a beautiful green carpet. The first thing I did in our condo was to drop my pants and stand out on our balcony, looking out onto my kindgdom and announcing loudly to my subjects that I was raising the taxes. You know, in my underwear.
Alex took a picture.
The condo had a "canopy of mystery" which was kinky.
Aside from Alex sleeping for two hours in the car, we hadn't slept at all before coming out here, but rather than nap we hit a nature trail called "Rainbow Falls."
It's a two and a half mile hike, round trip, going up a mountain at an angle of straight up.
But it's absolutely beautiful.
And because it's Gatlinburg's "off season," the trail was mostly empty of people and the weather was nice and cool.
The top of the trai is this ten story tall waterfall which is astoundingly awesome.
On the way up I kept describing it to Alex as 40 stories, but I guess I've grown up a bit.
After the walk we were completely exhausted and starving and from the loud crashing of water our ears were ringing like we had just left a rock show.
So we went to get burritos which were delicious but we were both too exhausted to talk and neither of us could hear a god damn thing.
Then to the condo, where we passed out.
Three hours later I awoke to the TV playing "And You Don't Stop" and talking about how Snoop Dog changed the face of rap.
It was nine at night, and it was dark outside, and we both work third shift and nine is absolutely NOT the time to go to bed for us.
So off we went to downtown Gatlinburg.
Truth be told, downtown Gatlinburg is a lot like Pigeon Forge, the difference is that the Gatlinburg shops have SOME sense of class and variation, and what's more is that, unlike in Pigeon forge, where everywhere you look is filthy and disgusting and looks quite literally like Pigeon shit, Gatlinburg is clean and pretty because it's carved into the mountains, and so everywhere you look you get distracted by the pretty pictures and don't mind doing things like, say, paying $20 for admission into Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.
Ripley's "Believe It, You're Being Ripped Off!" Inc. practically fucking owns Gatlinburg from the look of the place. They have museums everywhere, and nifty looking ones, from the outside anyway. And I looked at one, "Ripley's House of Haunted What the Fuck" or something like that, and I thought, "That will be a total rip off, but I'm intruiged. I would like to see the inside of that. But Alex will never go for it. She'll say, 'no Ben, that will be a total rip off', and we won't go."
But then Alex said, "You know, that will probably be a rip off, but I kind of want to see it."
But unfortunately, because it was 10 at night, it was closed.
Gatlinburg basically closes at ten. The only things left open are bars, and Alex isn't 21 and I don't drink. The only thing that was open was a place called "China Bazaar," which sold crappy or fake swords and knives.
Incidentally, Gatlinburg is America's number one outlet store for cheaply priced shitty Rebel South t-shirts, Japaneese death weapons, Ripley's Assorted Fuck Off, Old Timey Photo booths and Fudge Shoppes.
While in China Bazaar, Alex was looking at the swords and weapons and oohing and aahing because she can kick my ass and knows how using either her hands or stabeys.
I prefer my death weapons to be starlight and rainbows and wishful thinking because it's much less strenuous and slightly less illegal, but while in there I caught a glimpse of something I liked:
A Hitori Honzo Sword.
From Kill Bill.
A mother fucking Honzo Sword.
With Bill's emblem on it. The Dev-eel.
And it's fake, of course. There's three or four more of them and they're on sale for $30. The rational side of me says this:
1) You have no use for such a sword. You don't need to spend $30 on it.
2) You hate duchebags who have walls full of stabey weapons that you know good and well they'll never use. The Pirate in you hates the ninja in them and also they're always fat bastards like Brad Ohlman who will never use that sword in they're entire life except to turn on his PS2 from a long distance so he won't have to get up.
3) Even if you DID get a sword, the one you're getting is a shitty fake.
4) Not only is it a fake, but it's a fake from a Tarrantino movie, which would make you like the dumb asses buy the glock nine because the gangsters in the movies use the glock nine.
And while the rational side of me says that, the little boy in me says:
IT'S A MOTHER FUCKING HONZO SWORD.
In the end I figure, you know, I'm on vacation, I'm in Gatlinburg, this is what you do. So I bought it. I bought a mother fucking Honzo sword. And a wall mount to put it up in my room. It's there now, sitting. Waiting to strike. Me.
Alex bought a sword too but hers was real.
We came back to the condo after that, ordered a $30 pizza and passed out. The pizza was $30 because it's Gatlinburg and pizza is expensive because it can be. Add to that our location on the mountain. To drive up and down this thing you have to keep your car in low gear or it will destroy your breaks and transmission. The road swerves at severe curves and constant blind corners. The slightest miscalculation will send your car falling like flaming metal doom off the side of the mountain and into the woods below. So there's a huge delivery service charge to drive a pizza up. Plus tip.
And the next morning we woke up feeling fantastic and well rested.
We only had two days to stay, one night, so day two was spent shopping.
We checked out of the condo, said goodbye to my subjects on the moutain below, and descended for the last time.
Ripley's House of Haunted What The Fuck is nothing more than a haunted house. You think it's a ride or something because you start off in this cage that moves along a track, and you think, "This will be cool," and then you get to the end of the track and go, "Oh shit. It's a haunted house." When you leave, you look at your ticket, which features pictures of people running, screaming in terror out of the haunted house and then you realize that it's because there people just remembered that they payed $25 for two tickets into a shitty haunted house.
I also bought the single worst t-shirt ever made because it features a topless, built cowboy standing in front of a rebel flag and reads, "Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy." So it's unfunny, stupid, references a country song I hate, redneck, and gay. I had to have it.
On the way out we played putt putt in Pigeon Forge and ate pancakes at an IHOP which was so strongly bear themed that I asked our waitress if bears owned or ran the business. She kept assuring me that no real bears were in the restaraunt, but the shop out front was full of bears and the windows were full of bears and across the street (not joking) was some tourist trap that advertises allowing you to see AND FEED 5 LIVE BEARS, so I was skeptical.
I thought for a bit that perhaps they had bears washing dishes, the bears wearing brain control devices shapped like strainer couldrons, the devices forcing the bears into this wicked smile on their face. And as soon as a bear breaks a couldron on their head, they begin to growl in anger and prepare to strike, but then the manager, startled by the growls of freedom, shoots the bear to death to set an example for the other bears. And the other bears would be, you know, sad about the death of their friend but they wouldn't show it because they're being forced to smile all the time.
I took a lot of pictures of bears while there.
We got back to Louisville around 9 or ten at night. Patrick and I fought with me and Alex's honzo swords.
Just before we left Gatlinburg, I said, "This is like at the end of the movie, where the main guy's like, 'It's time to go back home, to New York, where things make sense'."
And I got to Louisville, to the city, and things did just kind of make sense. But somehow it felt incomplete. The city was missing something.
Ten minutes after leaving Gatlinburg, Alex, who had never been there before, said, "I want to go back (sadness)."
And I said, "Me too."