The Beautiful People

My day off was fairly successful, because I was more productive than I am at work. The incentive is higher when I am not at work, because I care about what I am doing. Some more resumes were sent out and I am still working on the head hunter thing. I know that most people get their jobs by who they know as opposed to what they know. The world is one giant club and I seem to have lost my membership card. Maybe this isn't a bad thing.

Both Tony and I were gone yesterday. It was interesting to see what was and what was not done while we were gone, because our absence cut the size of our department in half. I am sure that the machine could carry on without us if we never came back.

One of the highlights of yesterday was the thrill of driving during the middle of the day and being paid for it. The weather was perfect for driving and it was great not being inside the office.

Brenda and I rented the film Devil's Advocate last night, because neither of us had any real desire to sit through the Academy Awards. Its sad that so many people like to gawk at something they will never be. America has its royalty and they are called celebrities. I am sure that over the next few days I will see who won what category and so on, but it really doesn't mean that much to me. Why should my opinion of what I like to see in film be swayed by what others think.

Celebrities are only vaguely interesting to me. They add very little to my daily life. Maybe if I spoke with one of them on a personal basis it might mean something to me, but its hard to say. Actors spend all of their time being something that they are not. A writer or musician would be more interesting to meet than an actor, because what they do should be more of themselves. Although I realize that there is a degree of distance between the work of art and the artist.

Television makes the world smaller and distorts reality at the same time. On the one hand it is meant to entertain. Yet others try to use television as an educational tool. Entertainment or at least what passes for entertainment is winning though.

Being around Brenda is very enlightening in a subtle way. She is very business oriented and this seeps through into her daily life. An example would be us at the video store last night. She was filling out an application for a new rental card so that I could use it as well. I have my own card, but it is for another video store that is farther away from her place.

The cashier that was helping us started to talk to the cashier to his left. It seems that they were ordering pizza. Brenda was offended that the cashier was more concerned about paying for his half of the pizza than waiting on us. She saw his behavior as being rude. She said that if he had been one of her cashiers she would have fired him.

Then when we were leaving we got the same cashier and he asked us if we wanted to place an order for a new release. Brenda said that she has already ordered the video somewhere else and waited for his response. His price was lower than what Brenda had paid, but Brenda said that some additional things came with her order. As we walked back to the car, Brenda commented to me that at least he tried to make a sale.

What I noticed was that he was older than me and was still working a register at a video store and I thought how unrewarding that must be for a job. I kept wondering why would a man in his forties want to be working in a video store where his peers are high school students and other people who can't get a better paying job. Maybe he sees himself as the next Quentin Tarantino. I am sure that that there is a perfectly good reason for why he is there, but I will never know it.

Brenda and I both judge people, but we use very different standards. She comes from the business angle and I am more of a humanitarian. Business to me is the manipulation of people not the celebration of what humanity can achieve. Money is transitory, but art is timeless.

Yes, here I am ever the dreamer. Cynicism is born of idealism.

Brenda is also fun to watch when we are in a restaurant. She is always scanning the crowd and commenting on various people. This does not make her cruel, it makes her human. Her commentary tells me more about her than what she might choose to tell me directly. The service part of her is always gauging the performance of the waitress.

People like to talk about other people. Humans are described as being social animals, but they sure like to hurt the rest of their kind.

I try not to repeat myself here, but at times it is hard to avoid. There are times when my life really does mimic the title of the journal. Things just seem to happen and I could just care less. I know that the message I keep telling here never changes, but at least I am consistent. On the other hand, I can't live my life by a cliche.

Later in the afternoon

The morning was slow and uneventful as usual. Nick did as much as possible yesterday and I fell into my old groove like nothing happened. I also kept my negative comments to a minimum. All that I said was that I could have three day weekends all of the time. In my old position I did. This forty hour five day a week shift is so old and unproductive.

I really should start writing a book or something when I am work. I have more than enough time to devote to working on such a project. I would work more on my web page when I am work, but I lack a good image editor here on my piece of shit pc at work. Everything that I would do would have to be text.

I finished the Heart of Darkness. Obviously my perception of the story had been altered by the film Apocalypse Now, because its hard to undo the performance that Brando gave as Kurtz. Its not a very uplifting story, but very little in modern society is uplifting. I can see how the story went on to shape other writers such as T. S. Eliot and his poem the Wasteland.

I really need to subscribe to a literature mailing list again. It would be nice to read what other people think about what I have read. I really don't have time to take a class and why pay for something that the web offers for free.

Eighty percent of my day is spent pondering why I am here and twenty percent of my time is spent doing my job. The nature of the job makes me loathe it more and more every day. Its not exciting. Its not challenging. Its not even time consuming. I could dial in and do my job in about two hours each day.

So the question is what do I want to do for a living. I'm still not sure would be my response. Those psychological profiles are way too easy for me to circumvent, because I do understand the English language and can generally see through questionnaires. I could make it seem that I want to be a plumber on one day and an architect the next day. Maybe I should try to work for a small magazine that cranks out free verse and subversive articles.

I apologize for rambling so much today, but it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise. My pattern is that I miss an entry and then follow up the loss by writing an extremely long one.