..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Ironically, in my solitude, i had created something that could only be used in concert with another human being...
- Mother Night


this new job is the shit (that means it's good) besides my workdays being fast and productive, i am left completely to myself, i have every weekend off, i take lunch when i please and get paid to do it, i have a desk without a single Steelers logo in sight, i have a highway drive with no traffic problems so far, i have a fast computer and a comfortable chair, i have access to vending machine that works, i am surrounded by confident, skilled people (which is very reassuring after being drowned by passive-aggressive bullshit and insecurities at my former job), i have a new water bottle that is never more than a foot from my hand, no dress code, more money, climate control, good lighting, a view from my car when i sit in it on my break, an extra 15 minutes of music going in and coming home, a button near my hand that brings a robot hand out of the floor holding a white-chocolate macadamiamia-nut cookie, and, most important, i get an interesting task to perform each day that involves television shows and films that, in spite of being packed full of important information about the disposal of dead bodies and the dangers of tornadoes, provide me with more exercise for my writing abilities than eleven years of college ever did.

i don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but here's the way i see it. i typed my ass off for a decade, never saw anything in print, and ended up reluctantly using the speed i developed from being hunched over this screen to finally get a better job. THEN i go to this job and find that years of typing with no regard for capitalization or punctuation might possibly have made my stories and essays harder to sell. so now i learn all about commas and sentence structure everyday at work and then bring it back home to eventually plug into my fiction. it's like the circle of life, dude. except that i don't think that i can ever bring myself to capitalize my "i."

the most potentially challenging thing at this job, so far, is when you receive a copy of the show or movie and it hasn't been seasoned yet. in other words, the sound effects haven't been added so you have to predict where the glass will shatter or the lightning will crash. i'm not sure how that will all work out eventually. i guess those copies are encoded best you can and any changes made when the studio gets the videotape or video file back just won't match the captions and deaf people everywhere will frown when some character's shotgun barks like a dog or when someone bites into a cracker and tires start squealing.

had a good week. went to see a couple decent bands, obsessively fingered a metal staple in someone's skull like it was prom night, helped empty a wrecked car of seven years of memories (and in the process noticed that, in spite of a wreck that smashed the shit out of much plastic and metal, a stack of styrofoam cups were somehow spared. these cups are being slowly used by me so that i'll have less dishes to do and, with only four cups left, it really feels like there's a metaphor buried in here somewhere), i watched several crap movies from the library and, because i grabbed "Alexander" and "At Home At the End of the World" (a movie that does NOT live up to that title) i had a Colin Farrell festival by mistake, got drunk, got my license back from a botched-paperwork inspired suspension, hung some more shelves on my walls, hung up two more pictures, covered every surface with books, found a baseball that i had sawed in half at a construction job 4 years ago, called some old friends several states away, had a good radio show with lots of new music, enjoyed hearing from callers that told me i've developed a small but loyal following, lined up all my shoes against the wall, and, put new music in my car to listen to after juggling the same 12 cds for more than 6 months. hey! see how i had that 12 and six as numbers instead of spelled out? that's because, even though the rule is to spell out numbers one through nine, at work i'm supposed to make them all numbers if they appear on the screen on the same line of captions. and i just did that shit right now, without thinking. see, that what i was talking about earlier.

no telling what other changes I might see slipping into my next sentence.

::: david - 1:44 PM [+] :::
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