misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

Damn! April 3rd already. Let's see, I posted on March 29th .. It is amazing how fast time flies when unemployed. I thought time went fast when you are working .. but I guess not as fast as when you are not working .. Maybe something about loathing your job makes every hour a painful reminder of your failed existence, whereas taking naps and watching afternoon baseball makes hours slip by unnoticed. In any event, here are my thoughts for the day:

* These fake judge shows like "Judge Judy" and that one with the black judge are pathetic. What is the deal with these angry judges yelling at the stupid plantiffs and defendants in a condescending way that is supposed to be interesting? At least Judge Whopner from "People's Court" was somewhat authentic and the cases seemed legit ... Woah! This is some wierd shit. I just used Yahoo! to see if I spelled Judge Whopner correctly and I came up with these two entries, which are bitching at the same thing I am, in almost the same way:

http://members.tripod.com/~The_Boogie_man/DE7.html
http://www.birthdaychallenge.com/steve/11-11.html

Shit. I continue to receive reminders that my thoughts are simply shades of everyone else's. My creativity is roughly the same as 87% of the general public. Well let's see if anyone has said this before:

Guitar piggies running at the keyboard. Jump, mangoes, jump!! Einstein magnets booking the golf club shirt dogs.

Okay, now let me test it on google now to test for authencticity of originality.

Here is what i got back:

Your search - Guitar piggies running at the keyboard. Jump, mangoes, jump!! Einstein magnets booking the golf club shirt dogs. - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

Okay, I still got it.

* I am not particularly good at job-hunting. I am not exactly sure how to go about it. According to movies like the infamous Secret of my Success with the timeless Michael J. Fox, I am supposed to dress up in a power suit, put several copies of my resume in a leather briefcase, and walk up to powerful corporations to hand a resume to the beautiful secretary in the lobby. I don't think that is the way they still do it though, so instead I just cruise craigslist.org and entertainmentcareers.com for cool postings. It is hard to determine what sounds cool to me, though i know if I see the word 'computer' i stay away. There are some vague postings, too, like 'Writer Needed'. Well, I am a writer in the sense that i write. But when they ask me for my resume, I am not exactly sure what they are expecting. Line items about how I write in a journal that five of my friends read? And how once I wrote an idea of a movie down on the back of a napkin? I wonder if that qualifies me. Not sure, but if you have any suggestions for successful job-hunting, feel free to write me at workmonkey@yahoo.com. And if you think it would be cool to work for UPS or Fed Express delivering packages, let me know, as I am yearning to drive those bad ass trucks around delivering packages of happiness to the masses.

Here we are again. 4:34am on a Friday night. I tend to write best when I have had a few cocktails, and tonight is no different. I am, as always, by myself after a night of drinking. Tonight, we celebrated Kenny's 29th birthday. I give full credit to Kenny, as he did his best to consume as much alcohol as possible. He went to sleep on my couch at approximately 3:14 am, but at least he drank. For a man that is basically allergic to alcohol, I was quite impressed. As usual, I want to write about my dissatisfaction with the performance of my friends' ability to drink, or, at the very least, have a good time. I don't give a shit about the past or the future, but I am currently an expert on the present. And the present states that there are only three people out of my entire group of friends that i know I can drink with on any given night. J.C. , Masta P, and myself. I give full respect to Age and Amanda, as they have no interest in either drinking or staying out past the hour of 11 P.M. So they left on call. For some reason, Sy was drinking Sprite. Lee was driving, so I can understand his desire to stick to water. Since my brother came to visit me in San Fran, and noticed that my friends have a peculiar ability to talk a lot of shit but drink a whole lot of nothing, I have been a bit sensitive to the drinking performance of my circle of friends. I have also noticed that for some reason, my friends have an intense desire to act as if they are already 73 years old and on Social Security. I happen to be 26 years old, but feel as if I am living in a retirement home already. And I won't back down from my current statements, the blood alcohol content of my blood being no excuse for my mindstate. If anything, it encourages honesty. And honestly, I am feeling right now as if I am living a life of convenience and stablity, a life in which I will never do anything other than continue upon the same life of comfort and routine with which i now live. Everyone seems so afraid to break their routine, or to venture out and actually experience life, that nothing ever happens other than all the same things that have happened every other friday for the past six years. Regardless, I am not going to use this forum to insult anyone, or portray myself as someone other than the person I describe. All I will say is that we all better get on with death, because we sure as hell seem afraid to experience life.

Agey and I went over to Beau Bonneau casting yesterday to put our names down on the extras list for The Incredible Hulk, which they are filming here in San Francisco .. They said they needed 20-something males who had the 'military look' so Age figured we were prime candidates. As part of the registration process, we had to fill out this very lengthy form asking us questions I didn't know the answer too, but probably should learn .. my hat size .. inseam .. glove size .. don't know if "Large" was a good answer .. it seemed that they wanted numbers of some sort. Another part of the process was to rate yourself in about 200 different activities, the rankings being either novice, intermediate, or expert .. This included things such as kazoo playing, bowling, rock climbing, and snorkeling .. Suffice to say, I wasn't sure whether I should put 'expert' on anything (other than video game playing and wasting away my life, two things of which they didn't have) .. They didn't really have a translation scale .. what does 'expert' imply? In order to put 'expert' in the basketball field, do I have to be Michael Jordan? And who the hell is an 'expert' snorkeler? Kazoo player? The sad part is, I am sure that there is an expert Kazoo player out there somewhere. When I got done with the list, I had no expert ratings in anything .. I guess that holds true with my life, in which I am only trying to get competent at all things, not proficient. Age had the same, which wasn't right, cause I know he is an expert in a few things .. Like not talking .. For real, if age isn't an 'expert' at piano, then I don't know who is .. Shit, he played the soundtrack for Shine .. But as usual, humble Age argued the point .. eventually he put himself down as an expert. One expert rating for Age to a big fat zero for Mark .. I enjoyed Age's logic on some of the choices, too .. when I noticed he put himself down as an intermediate for 'water polo', I asked when he played water polo .. i've been to Hong Kong and Singapore, and sure as hell didn't see much of a market for water polo .. i am not sure i ever even saw a pool (and judging by Kenny and Lee, I don't think Chinese ever really learned the art of staying afloat in water) .. Age tells me he never really played water polo, but he can swim, and if you can swim, how can you not be ok at water polo? I couldn't argue with the logic. Regardless, I am supposed to now upload a resume to my online account for the casting agency's online database .. I am not sure how my HTML knowledge will help me get on The Incredible Hulk, but what the hell .. time to call all sorts of attention to the fact that I played the leading role of the tin man in my elementary school's production of The Wizard of Oz .. I'll just leave out that 5th grade part .. I am on a one way path to stardom .. feets don't fail me now.

I used to be okay with the knowledge of all my grammer rules .. I wouldn't be able to quote the rule exactly, but something inside my head told me when a sentence sounded 'right' or a sentence sounded 'wrong'. You forget those rules over time, as a result of the use of slang and lack of necessity. When I was writing papers in college, grammer rules were important .. when I write an email to Lee, they aren't. But now that I have begun the apply for jobs process, I have to pay more attention .. especially as some jobs talk about proficient proofreading skills ... So today i'll present you with a quick lesson, something that has been bothering me lately during the writing process: When to use 'that' vs when to use 'which'. Tell me what sounds better:

The house that is pink is mine.
The house which is pink is mine.

Now go here and learn about when to use that and when to use which:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/which.htm

Another night after 2 a.m. and I am at my best. You plebians are all sleeping soundly away to prepare for your important work-days. I, too, am preparing for an important day tomorrow. It is time I, and you, accept that I am a creature of the night. I refuse to ever adapt to the morning lifestyle. Right now is my time. I am paging Rosie and Kat, two other creatures who so happen to awake at this hour. I am listening to the Round and Round remix by Jonelle featuring Method Man (download at your convenience). The night is quiet, the lights are soft, and the mood is what I prefer. My energy and inspiration visit me at night. The fact that the world has selected the hours of 8am to 5pm for conducting their average business is fine, though I refuse to ever adapt to this lifestyle. There are some social rules that I will play by for lack of a convenient alternative (paying rent, owning a car, masturbation), but the waking up early rule I will not abide by. If I need be a bartender the remainder of my life, so help me, I will. Just as some people are tall, some people are fat, and some people are Puerto Rican, I am a night person. Making me a morning person is equivalent to making a Rosie O' Donnell a swimsuit model. It just shouldn't happen. At this hour, I write poetry with my mind ... I create ... I understand. In the morning, I throw up ... I moan ... I hate. I have heard every explanation in the book for my night preference ... People have tried to help me with my 'adjustment problem'. They told me that I simply needed to make a habit of waking up early and I would be healed. They forgot that I spent 4 straight years waking up at 6 am in high school to make my 7:30 am morning class at Rancho Bernardo High School. After 4 years, I still did not wake up one single morning with a feeling of that other than a hatred of life. Then I was told that I simply lacked discipline, and that it was laziness that kept me in bed during the morning alarm. So, I took a job at Wells Fargo during a college summer that required me to be in downtown San Jose at 8 am. I was late every single morning for the duration of the job. Damn your discipline. I went to bed early, I took nyquil, I meditated ... Made no difference. Every morning that alarm shrieked into my soft ear drum, I turned it off and told the morning to go fuck itself. I will not release myself to your painful overtures. I will face the fact that I hit my REM sleep around 7 am (i spend the rest of the night tossing and turning), and thus if the alarm rings at 7:15 am, I feel as if I spent the night sleeping on a bed of broken glass and semen. My eyes are redder than the innermost valve of a human heart, my stomach feels as if I ate a breakfast of iron ore and hydrocholoric acid, my muscles are stiffer than the corpse of the underfed puffer fish that has spent the past two days floating in my one-gallon tank set upon a speaker. It simply is against nature. I am a night person, and if I have to adjust my career, my friends, and my family around this simply fact, Q-Tip as my witness, I will. Are you reading this right now at an hour before 11:00 am? Yes? Well, I most likely am asleep. So fuck off, drink your coffee, and enjoy your sunrise .. I have some sleeping to do.

For those of you unfamiliar with my basic history as an adult, I will provide a quick recap. I spent four years in high school, graduated, and then attended Santa Clara University, where I graduated with a degree in English (with honors ... booyah! although I never will recover from finance major k-ro getting a better grade then me in the intro to composition class with douglas sweet ... maybe it had to do with that sensual japanese massage i saw k-ro giving doug ...). After college, I spent five years working for a web consultant company in San Jose, where I worked from a front desk clerk to a technical lead and web programmer (not that there was much difference between the two.) Why am I telling you all this? Because my desired next step in life is film school at a reputable university, a step I have spent the past few months preparing for. And, you ask, what is one of the most important steps to accomplish in my desire to attend film school? The Graduate Record Examination (aka GRE), of course. After proving my talents during sixteen years of schooling and five years of work experience, the various universities I am applying for insist on me taking a three and a half hour test that is somehow supposed to be representative of my skills and intelligence, even more so than the accomplishments of my past 26 years of life. This test requires that I prove my intelligence through word-definitions, reading comprehension, logic puzzles, and mathematical formula memorizing. And the corresponding score will affect my ability to enter the film school of my choice. And what relation does my knowlege of the circumference of a circle, definition of the word salubrious, and ordering of desserts based upon a complex set of rules (i.e. dessert X cannot be served before dessert Y, but dessert W must be served with dessert Z) have to do with my ability to excel in film school? That is right. Absolutely nothing. I can understand how in college, admissions officers need some sort of balance-tipper as a result of the immense amount of students who apply, especially considering that the kids are 17 years old and don't have much life experience to back up their applications ... and hence, the SAT might have some validity. But come on. After graduating a four-year accredited university, don't you think you've established some basic intelligence guarantees? The GMAT, MCAT, and LSAT are even more difficult, and more heavily weighted, then the GRE. It is a straight con-job. I have to spend 100 bucks to take a test that only reflects my financial ability to prepare for the test (how many rich boys have aced the LSAT because daddy spent 2000 bucks on some expensive review course?) and my ability to perform well under duress. All this to prove that I will be competent in loading film into a 36 mm camera and writing a script. The system gets more corrupt when you realize the costs you expend through buying books, practice tests, online test access, etc. It is lame, but I have to play by the rules ... so I will go back to the books now .. I have to remind myself exactly how to find the area of a quadrangle. Cause once I know I will be able to prove my superior intellect over all of you dim-wits.

My problem as a social alcohol drinker is that once I pass a certain point, I try so hard not to lose the lovely buzz that I am experiencing, that I end up drinking too much. Couple that with the carefree feelings about consequences that drinking brings out, and you can better understand why I spent last night at the toilet throwing up from about 4 am till 1 pm. Knowing the bartenders at asiaSF is great because I don't have to pay for drinks, but it is dangerous because they will suddenly break out a bottle of sake and ask you to share it with them. And after three vodka collins, a bottle of sake seems just splendid. Ugh. For the future, I'll need to remember that mixing beer, vodka, sake, jaigermeister, and pizza slices is a recipe for danger. I stopped drinking at 2 am, and was still drunk around noon. I slept until 6pm. It was one of my annual over-the-tops that keeps me away from true drunkeness until the memory starts to fade. So don't get to impressed if you notice the posting time on this blogg. Staying up late isn't too hard when you wake up around sunset.

For the record, something that I was going to blogg about yesterday but didn't get too it (and now I have lost the emotion) is my dislike of motorcycles. They are loud and annoying ... And I was really into my hatred of them yesterday .. Now, though, it is night and I am going to bed and motorcyles really don't seem all that important to me. Oh yeah, I want to insult the people that drive motorcycles too, but i'll do that in some other blogg.

Peace out.

thanks to kat for pointing me to this picture:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020422/168/1fjje.html

the best part is it is a real trophy, and the caption doesn't seem to acknowledge exactly what is going on here .. this is why woman's sports is still at the mercy of men trophy makers ..

another of the many reasons i have never been much of a beachgoer:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020422/168/1fko0.html

The comforting fingers of the night have once again beckoned me into my stained desk chair to embark into the creative world of writing. The brilliant blues of pager sessions flicker upon the bottom of my computer screen, a reminder of the intimacy of late night communication. The thin black line of the cursor flickers at me as well, stopping only when I write a constant stream of words without pause. Upon stopping, it impatiently blinks at me, as if to tell me that my words must never cease being written. An endless game of literary hide and seek. No such thing as 'The End' when it comes to blogger sessions, as this is my journal, and shall only end when I do. I am recovering from the consuming disgust I felt upon listening to a song Masta P told me to download earlier tonight. The song, by Khia, is entitled Lick My Neck, Lick My Back, and is perhaps the most pertinent reminder of the complete ruin of the musical world that I have ever heard. Essentially, the song is a plea to a man to use the sticky warmth of his tongue to probe the vaginal and anal creases of an African-American woman in order to bring her to the euphoric pleasure of multiple orgasms. She coyly asks all women to pop their pussies to the beat of the song. At this point, I am in an internal debate as to what bothers me more, the song, or the fact that my good friend Mike Parket actually likes it. Not only does it serve as a sign of the degradation of the creative world, but of my friend's mind itself. I am sure that song is comforting to the mass amount of talented musicians out there who are trying to make it. Why sing about love and growth when you can sing about vaginas? If Masta P was a stock, and I worked for Morgan Stanley, I would devalue him and release an urgent 'sell' demand to my clients.

I am also feeling a bit drained today after experiencing the fifth funeral in a week for a fish that was doomed to the hellish realm of our fish tank. When Lee walks into a fish store, he is like the Grim Reaper himself, casting his bony skeletal finger towards his next victim. The only comforting fact about today's death was that it only cost Lee eleven cents. The goldfish we had in there (a fish existing only to be fed to other larger fish in aquariams) was at the bottom of the financial creature chain. Who values a living being's worth in cents? At that point, you might as well give us the fish for free. If we were buying 1000 of them to feed our pet shark, it might be valuable. But as we were only buying one to test out the health of our tank, why charge? Suffice to say, Lee only had a five dollar bill which the clerk promptly accepted before handing him four dollars and eighty-nine cents in change. Lee tried to be creative with this fish, and claimed that it was a unique goldfish, as it had white and orange splotches of color like a lepersy patient. Something is errant in our tank, however, and that little fish had no idea that we had sentenced him to the green mile when we put him in that tank. Lee quickly learned that before you go off and spend twenty dollars for a puffer fish, you should be sure the tank is livable. It isn't. Except for the snail that feeds off of our eternal supply of dead fish, that tank is lifeless. I give full props to the snail. He has survived an environment five fish were unable to survive. Survival of the fittest. I think it has to do with the fact that when things start going bad, he can curl up in his shell until things calm down. I wish I had such a shell. Right now I sure could curl up in one, and wait until the job market calms down. I'd probably be pretty pasty and hungry when I got out, but it'd probably be easier then sitting here writing overly lengthy bloggs every night.