Crossing the mucky muck...
For those individuals that decide to brave the megalopolises of the world with only a back pack filled with clothes and as much money as can fit into a wallet... I look upon you with eyes of admiration and pity. I say that because what sort of job is most immediate to your cause? Restaurants. I stand in the same shit filled bog as yourself, and man if this doesn't harden your skin into blackened iron... being on your own... then I guess the only thing left would be to join the military.
Working in a restaurant is like fighting in the mud and shit filled trenches of a front line battle. Wave after wave of happy and ignorant filled customers assault us poor workers with demands of immediate gratification and parallel processing. I sometimes think I have grown extra appendages, either that or my ability to act out several functions simultaneously has improved. The Weekends can be a testing to your patience and nerves. I feel like I am often treading on the edge of a razor, if I stumble and fall and cause a huge folly then the gears of the machine may seize up and fall apart. Or maybe thats how they drive you to keep working at the level you do? Such a heightened sense of panic leads to adrenaline pumping through my like cold fluid, making me more aware and more alert to my surroundings, not too mention adding an extra punch of much needed energy. I won't deny this strange and contradictory fact.. when the rush is upon me and I am operating without a fault... it can be quite gratifying.. I almost thrive from that energy as long as nothing goes wrong. When things do go wrong I feel like filling a cup with hot scalding water and throwing it on my face to burn away my sense of sight and hearing so that I may avoid the ensuing chaos.
However steel can only be forged with fire. The job does have many benefits. Since many Embassy's take residence west of here, we get many diplomats as visitors. I did not know that foreign diplomats are exempt from taxes! So when they come in to purchase food I have to remove the sales tax. Justin (one of my co-workers and all round cool dude) told me that many people who work in the embassies are provided a list of all the laws and situations they are not apart of, almost making them above the law! I sometimes have the chance to strike up a conversation with these people, and sometimes the exchange is wonderfully enlightening. Ridiculous... I also have a great boss/owner, Walter Rhee, who is always dropping knowledge like a gnarled old man who saw too many battles in his lifetime. My other managers are a'ight. Plus I have been drinking wine every day and I like to imagine that the ingested fluid flows through my body and makes improvements based on some strange medicinal property monopolized by the ol' grape fruit.
Regardless... working in the Wine Cellar is cool but I don't know how long I can possibly last.
With Jeff gone I can't help but say that DC can get a little dull. My roommate often works in the evenings and I often work during the days so we can go a few days without seeing each other. Not too mention that he also sleeps in blocks of 10 hours, which doesn't help much. I would really like to go out to some bars and such but Ben is often busy and I need to build stronger relations with the others. Koko is always M.I.A. as I have been told. I think I may just start going out by myself to some bars or something. I have met a lot of cool people at the Wine Cellar, but no opportunity has arisen where I can be asked to come hang out or vice versa. Deadmau5 is coming to DC but the show is completely sold out. Damnit, should have bought tickets when I had the chance.
Even with periods of dried up excitement, I still make do. I joined a DC based writing group to help me focus my energies and such. I presented my recent "resignation letter" of the scientist writing to his daughter. I received mixed reviews, and man o man is receiving criticism like a punch to the gut. I was told that though my ideas are good, my writing can be superfluous and my grammar is poor at times. Plus the letter is mainly exposition without much narrative structure. It read as a history book I was told. I was also told that some of the material in the letter did not seem all that appropriate to a fathers last letter to his daughter. I would agree. There is much to improve on and I am glad I at least found some sort of help to discipline my writing.
What did I watch recently that really left an impression on me? The Baader Meinhof Complex. Its sort of a historical biopic of the founding and blossoming of the Red Army Faction, which was a left wing group that was formed in western germany to stand up against encroaching policies which they deemed fascist. It was a very well constructed film in my opinion and I enjoyed it immensely. Recently I had a discussion/debate about how the youth of today has nothing to rebel against and that they/I/we live in blissful times. That is what my friend had said, I on the other hand said otherwise. Though I was in fact wrong on many of my own arguments, as I would later recognize through a period of self inflicted reflection, I do still believe that there will always remain an opportunity for the youth or anyone for that matter to revolt against. The Red Army Faction was mainly forged by the youth, who probably felt alienated from their government and parents, since they were born a generation apart from the influence of Nazism, and had quite a different take on life. It started as simple demonstrations but once the lines were drawn and sides were being chosen, history once again rolled the dice and the future became uncertain. There was no well defined pretense to that situation, like the revolt we saw State side against the Draft, but it just goes to show is that all you need is one "good" facing off against another "good". Different ideals. Unfortunately the RAF became more perversive over time and the founding philosophies drowned in the flood of retaliatory behavior.
History intrigues me to no end. I will have to research more about the RAF once I have time. Currently I am reading a book on Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader often credited to laying down the foundation to the countries current rise to power. Then we have the Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the best anime I have ever watched! It follows a period of time in Human history where we have expanded into space, and two opposing forces, the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empires who are embroiled in a century long war against one another. The story follows the rise of two military strategists on either side, and how their decisions influence that period of history. Some episodes are told from perspective of the corrupt politicians and others told by the nameless soldier on the battlefield. 110 episodes, hundreds of characters, old school animation, and epic space battles that focus on the strategies and tactics rather then the coolest way of blowing shit up in space.
I have been wanting to write something related to this sort of stuff. A revolution taking place today or in the near future. I would call it the Children's Revolution of Tomorrow, about the youth who fight back against the older and gentrifying population and their policies that they think have brought ruin to the world. The idea mill is in overdrive!
The scripts to Fire Sale and the X-mas story continue to build themselves in the ship yard.
Working in a restaurant is like fighting in the mud and shit filled trenches of a front line battle. Wave after wave of happy and ignorant filled customers assault us poor workers with demands of immediate gratification and parallel processing. I sometimes think I have grown extra appendages, either that or my ability to act out several functions simultaneously has improved. The Weekends can be a testing to your patience and nerves. I feel like I am often treading on the edge of a razor, if I stumble and fall and cause a huge folly then the gears of the machine may seize up and fall apart. Or maybe thats how they drive you to keep working at the level you do? Such a heightened sense of panic leads to adrenaline pumping through my like cold fluid, making me more aware and more alert to my surroundings, not too mention adding an extra punch of much needed energy. I won't deny this strange and contradictory fact.. when the rush is upon me and I am operating without a fault... it can be quite gratifying.. I almost thrive from that energy as long as nothing goes wrong. When things do go wrong I feel like filling a cup with hot scalding water and throwing it on my face to burn away my sense of sight and hearing so that I may avoid the ensuing chaos.
However steel can only be forged with fire. The job does have many benefits. Since many Embassy's take residence west of here, we get many diplomats as visitors. I did not know that foreign diplomats are exempt from taxes! So when they come in to purchase food I have to remove the sales tax. Justin (one of my co-workers and all round cool dude) told me that many people who work in the embassies are provided a list of all the laws and situations they are not apart of, almost making them above the law! I sometimes have the chance to strike up a conversation with these people, and sometimes the exchange is wonderfully enlightening. Ridiculous... I also have a great boss/owner, Walter Rhee, who is always dropping knowledge like a gnarled old man who saw too many battles in his lifetime. My other managers are a'ight. Plus I have been drinking wine every day and I like to imagine that the ingested fluid flows through my body and makes improvements based on some strange medicinal property monopolized by the ol' grape fruit.
Regardless... working in the Wine Cellar is cool but I don't know how long I can possibly last.
With Jeff gone I can't help but say that DC can get a little dull. My roommate often works in the evenings and I often work during the days so we can go a few days without seeing each other. Not too mention that he also sleeps in blocks of 10 hours, which doesn't help much. I would really like to go out to some bars and such but Ben is often busy and I need to build stronger relations with the others. Koko is always M.I.A. as I have been told. I think I may just start going out by myself to some bars or something. I have met a lot of cool people at the Wine Cellar, but no opportunity has arisen where I can be asked to come hang out or vice versa. Deadmau5 is coming to DC but the show is completely sold out. Damnit, should have bought tickets when I had the chance.
Even with periods of dried up excitement, I still make do. I joined a DC based writing group to help me focus my energies and such. I presented my recent "resignation letter" of the scientist writing to his daughter. I received mixed reviews, and man o man is receiving criticism like a punch to the gut. I was told that though my ideas are good, my writing can be superfluous and my grammar is poor at times. Plus the letter is mainly exposition without much narrative structure. It read as a history book I was told. I was also told that some of the material in the letter did not seem all that appropriate to a fathers last letter to his daughter. I would agree. There is much to improve on and I am glad I at least found some sort of help to discipline my writing.
What did I watch recently that really left an impression on me? The Baader Meinhof Complex. Its sort of a historical biopic of the founding and blossoming of the Red Army Faction, which was a left wing group that was formed in western germany to stand up against encroaching policies which they deemed fascist. It was a very well constructed film in my opinion and I enjoyed it immensely. Recently I had a discussion/debate about how the youth of today has nothing to rebel against and that they/I/we live in blissful times. That is what my friend had said, I on the other hand said otherwise. Though I was in fact wrong on many of my own arguments, as I would later recognize through a period of self inflicted reflection, I do still believe that there will always remain an opportunity for the youth or anyone for that matter to revolt against. The Red Army Faction was mainly forged by the youth, who probably felt alienated from their government and parents, since they were born a generation apart from the influence of Nazism, and had quite a different take on life. It started as simple demonstrations but once the lines were drawn and sides were being chosen, history once again rolled the dice and the future became uncertain. There was no well defined pretense to that situation, like the revolt we saw State side against the Draft, but it just goes to show is that all you need is one "good" facing off against another "good". Different ideals. Unfortunately the RAF became more perversive over time and the founding philosophies drowned in the flood of retaliatory behavior.
History intrigues me to no end. I will have to research more about the RAF once I have time. Currently I am reading a book on Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader often credited to laying down the foundation to the countries current rise to power. Then we have the Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the best anime I have ever watched! It follows a period of time in Human history where we have expanded into space, and two opposing forces, the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empires who are embroiled in a century long war against one another. The story follows the rise of two military strategists on either side, and how their decisions influence that period of history. Some episodes are told from perspective of the corrupt politicians and others told by the nameless soldier on the battlefield. 110 episodes, hundreds of characters, old school animation, and epic space battles that focus on the strategies and tactics rather then the coolest way of blowing shit up in space.
I have been wanting to write something related to this sort of stuff. A revolution taking place today or in the near future. I would call it the Children's Revolution of Tomorrow, about the youth who fight back against the older and gentrifying population and their policies that they think have brought ruin to the world. The idea mill is in overdrive!
The scripts to Fire Sale and the X-mas story continue to build themselves in the ship yard.