Man, fuck coffee. Or fuck my body. Something's not right — I drink a beverage and now I can't control myself? Fucking Parkinson's juice.
Cigarettes are dumb too. I found one at a party last Saturday, brought it home and smoked it. Now it's sitting in my scented candle-turned-ashtray, all tan, white and black tainting the sky-blue wax, a perfect metaphor for itself. I look at it and feel cool for having a cigarette mashed into my candle. It looks cool. That's fucking ridiculous.
I have work in an hour, and it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Working at Jimmy John's, an expanding company that's glorifying a man's idea to rip off the masses for a solidly made sandwich, thus exploiting the fantastic American laziness and allowing Jimmy himself to live his life however he wants, which he deserves no more than the panhandlers that'd love to score a J.J. Gargantuan that day, sucks. It's a minimum wage job that doesn't compensate its employees with a free meal or sandwich (or cookie, or pickle, or day-old bread, or garbage) unless you work a double-shift. I've worked their four hours today already and have 5-and-a-half ahead of me. Let there be life.
Death is such a fag. Hanging over my shoulder every unhelpful second, checking my work and making silent judgments. If this is the last thing I ever write, and it had better not fucking be, I want death to know that I saw its game for what it was.
Sadness too. Sadness can shoot itself in the head with a dick-loaded rocket launcher. It's either there like a blanket, keeping you draped in it so you're impervious to outside emotions, or its worn like a hat, purposefully worn for certain situations for as long as necessary. You take it at your leisure through movies, books or stories about high school kids whose sports teams get better after they die.
Sadness should be like death, hanging over you but mostly avoided. Death should be like work, necessary for most people but totally fucking stupid to do and done for the sake of others. Work should be like cigarettes, trendy and eventually fatal but people do it for some reason anyway. And cigarettes should be like sadness, unfortunately permanent or sparsely but willfully consumed. Coffee should just calm down; whatever.
--Eliot Sill
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2012
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Being boy
The three of them move in a swirl around the keen brick-patterned pavement, shuffling their feet at what they'd call a run, and losing control of their vocal chords — due in part to the harsh disruption caused by their pace and in part to the ecstasy they don't even realize they're feeling. Of all the wealth smeared around the Illini Country Club today, any eyewitness will inform you; the ones living it up the most were under the age of seven.
One, to the naked eye, dons a Batman shirt. Another pound-for-pound champion grits her teeth and growls so ferociously her diaper-equipped swimsuit nearly bursts. The third, the team's leader, patrols his troops as they employ (giant) leaves for cover to make a move on the base of whomever. Little do we know, the first isn't merely commercializing the Dark Knight, he is Batman, or so he tells my co-worker Brita. The reason for the team's mission is simple: dinner is boring. The outcome of the operation is staggering: pure, sweet, holy innocence — on display in front of the most primped and toxic crowd in town.
That isn't to say these kids were causing mayhem at a packed restaurant; they weren't. There were maybe three or four other occupied tables at the time, but these kids put on a show. And I — manning my post at the tiki bar awaiting 40 men to finish a round of golf — had the best seat in the house. At first the parents in the situation acted, perhaps as they should have, against the three children, spouting empty threats and offering inconsequential countdowns. Eventually though, the urge to unwind prevailed. They let the kids do their own thing for a while, as long as they weren't crowding anyone else's space.
Meanwhile, these two boys began falling deep into their imaginations and the girl (the youngest of the three) followed blindly while working to enjoy herself as much as possible. Before long, the adults revert their attention to the lot and observe an unprovoked bliss. Instead of inhibiting their children, they reached for their cameras. They wanted to capture the moment. If only.
The kids strutted their stuff and began to show off with wild antics as my manager comes outside to talk to a nearby couple to make sure they weren't pestered. Eventually the digital version of this phenomenon is sufficiently chronicled and the kids wound down a bit before the group leaves. These are the kind of nights that, as a kid, you forget about, until you see someone else doing it when the world comes back around.
When I was a kid, I was adventurous. Sufficiently rambunctious, I was a leader to an extent and a follower to some degree. In other words, I was a boy. I did stuff I was told not to. I came home with dirty feet. I went out the next day with dirty feet. I liked bugs, I liked digging. I liked trees, I wanted a house in one. I feared strangers and craved the unknown, I prepared for the worst with the utmost confidence that I could get out of it. I ate clover, I sold lemonade, I plotted, I carried out, I lied, I cheated, I stole, I broke, I fell, I cried, I came home and I lived to fight another day.
But today I stood still. Today I wore a nametag. Today I sold things for someone else to profit from, unlike that lemonade Pam and I cooked up way back when. Today, in my uniform, I watched someone else lead a carefree life while I pondered how I would be getting home from work. I became envious of the legs Batman was running around on; they were so tiny, at their thickest point the width of my wrist. More importantly, they were going to get so much bigger. I'd be willing to bet he wished he were my size. I bet he envies all the cool teenager stuff I do. And I envied that fact about him. More than anything, I wanted to be an old man and tell him how much I envied him. How he should appreciate being young, and that his whole life was ahead of him. As if, somehow, he would hear the words differently than I did when I was that age.
Every boy at some point figures out they're going to grow up. We see the fiction in Peter Pan and begin placing direction in our lives. Others do it for us, too. Because well, unfortunately we need it. Schools, churches, friends and family all start providing living standards we can't choose. That direction takes us away from our innocence, burying our creative instincts, so that we have to dig for them if we wish to use them later in life. Some are good at digging them up, and others have them shallowly buried, but if you think you can think like a kid, you're wrong. Because I said so, if you will.
Every guy wants to be Atticus Finch, with a steel nerve and a perfected moral code. To understand how kids think, even as an adult. We want to have good values, and know how to instill them into our children. There is something so fulfilling in teaching. Just the feeling that you've provided another person or group of people with helpful tools and information, it's enough to get high off. But some things you just can't teach, and being a child is one of them.
Today I remembered how to be a kid. If only I could remember how to have the time.
--Eliot Sill
One, to the naked eye, dons a Batman shirt. Another pound-for-pound champion grits her teeth and growls so ferociously her diaper-equipped swimsuit nearly bursts. The third, the team's leader, patrols his troops as they employ (giant) leaves for cover to make a move on the base of whomever. Little do we know, the first isn't merely commercializing the Dark Knight, he is Batman, or so he tells my co-worker Brita. The reason for the team's mission is simple: dinner is boring. The outcome of the operation is staggering: pure, sweet, holy innocence — on display in front of the most primped and toxic crowd in town.
That isn't to say these kids were causing mayhem at a packed restaurant; they weren't. There were maybe three or four other occupied tables at the time, but these kids put on a show. And I — manning my post at the tiki bar awaiting 40 men to finish a round of golf — had the best seat in the house. At first the parents in the situation acted, perhaps as they should have, against the three children, spouting empty threats and offering inconsequential countdowns. Eventually though, the urge to unwind prevailed. They let the kids do their own thing for a while, as long as they weren't crowding anyone else's space.
Meanwhile, these two boys began falling deep into their imaginations and the girl (the youngest of the three) followed blindly while working to enjoy herself as much as possible. Before long, the adults revert their attention to the lot and observe an unprovoked bliss. Instead of inhibiting their children, they reached for their cameras. They wanted to capture the moment. If only.
The kids strutted their stuff and began to show off with wild antics as my manager comes outside to talk to a nearby couple to make sure they weren't pestered. Eventually the digital version of this phenomenon is sufficiently chronicled and the kids wound down a bit before the group leaves. These are the kind of nights that, as a kid, you forget about, until you see someone else doing it when the world comes back around.
When I was a kid, I was adventurous. Sufficiently rambunctious, I was a leader to an extent and a follower to some degree. In other words, I was a boy. I did stuff I was told not to. I came home with dirty feet. I went out the next day with dirty feet. I liked bugs, I liked digging. I liked trees, I wanted a house in one. I feared strangers and craved the unknown, I prepared for the worst with the utmost confidence that I could get out of it. I ate clover, I sold lemonade, I plotted, I carried out, I lied, I cheated, I stole, I broke, I fell, I cried, I came home and I lived to fight another day.
But today I stood still. Today I wore a nametag. Today I sold things for someone else to profit from, unlike that lemonade Pam and I cooked up way back when. Today, in my uniform, I watched someone else lead a carefree life while I pondered how I would be getting home from work. I became envious of the legs Batman was running around on; they were so tiny, at their thickest point the width of my wrist. More importantly, they were going to get so much bigger. I'd be willing to bet he wished he were my size. I bet he envies all the cool teenager stuff I do. And I envied that fact about him. More than anything, I wanted to be an old man and tell him how much I envied him. How he should appreciate being young, and that his whole life was ahead of him. As if, somehow, he would hear the words differently than I did when I was that age.
Every boy at some point figures out they're going to grow up. We see the fiction in Peter Pan and begin placing direction in our lives. Others do it for us, too. Because well, unfortunately we need it. Schools, churches, friends and family all start providing living standards we can't choose. That direction takes us away from our innocence, burying our creative instincts, so that we have to dig for them if we wish to use them later in life. Some are good at digging them up, and others have them shallowly buried, but if you think you can think like a kid, you're wrong. Because I said so, if you will.
Every guy wants to be Atticus Finch, with a steel nerve and a perfected moral code. To understand how kids think, even as an adult. We want to have good values, and know how to instill them into our children. There is something so fulfilling in teaching. Just the feeling that you've provided another person or group of people with helpful tools and information, it's enough to get high off. But some things you just can't teach, and being a child is one of them.
Today I remembered how to be a kid. If only I could remember how to have the time.
--Eliot Sill
Monday, July 5, 2010
Nick - This Whole "Text Messaging" Thing
It was maybe two months ago now, I think, that I got a new phone to replace my crappy $20 one. And not just any phone, mind you; one with a keyboard. Needless to say, I am fascinated by this strange and alien technology now in my hands. How long has this clandestine web of discreet communications been winding under my feet without my knowledge? I realize that I'm a little late to the party on this one, but hear me out; from an outsider's perspective, this whole thing is astounding.
Text messaging, or "texting," if you will, frightens and fascinates me. It's like a whole other facet of your relationship with someone. It's a way to get a quick word in with someone who you might not see for awhile. If I really want to tell somebody a story, or apologize for something slight, or ask a trivial question, I pull out my phone, type what I want to say, and wait eagerly for this mysterious contraption to shudder and vibrate, signaling the arrival of a reply. Now even if I haven't seen a person in awhile I don't feel estranged from them.
Some crazy things that I've noticed so far:
-I'm a little bit alarmed when I hear people complain about not receiving a reply quickly enough. I've got stuff to do, y'know?
-I'm always secretly a little bit disappointed when a get a text message from somebody I get text messages from all the time. When I feel my phone sputter and buzz, my mind is immediately filled with the image of a person whom I only slightly know revealing some dark secret to me. But then it's just my mom. This process leads me to be slightly disappointed by about 90% of the text messages I receive.
-I tend to read text messages in their most serious possible intended connotations. For example, when Conor texted me earlier today "Note to self: never talk about music around Nick," I immediately assumed he was angry, even though it was obviously a joke. Actually, he probably was, a little bit.
-If I never get a reply to an initial text (And I don't mean if they stop texting me back and forth, I mean if they just never answer my first text) I tend to worry that the person is annoyed with me, even when I know they aren't. There's kind of a bitter taste in my mouth until I see or hear from that person again.
-The amount of punctuation and capitalization in text messages is directly proportional to the coolness of the author. Actually, that's probably just what I want to think because I type with perfect grammar.
-Texting is minuscule compared to interacting in person or on the phone. As soon as I talk to a person face-to-face the worry that they might have been angry about a text message or annoyed and didn't answer me just vanishes. It's hard to explain, but you know what I mean.
-There's a very very slight difference in how I feel when I'm alone. I went on a bike ride today and hung out at my place in the park, and then biked through Terra Hills and a few other places. But while I usually feel totally secluded for awhile, there's now this nagging feeling that anybody could talk to me, they just aren't right now. I'm not sure yet if I like that feeling or not.
The last thing I want to mention is that I'm worried I'm going to get in trouble at work. But it's not the getting in trouble I'm worried about, I just don't want to be that guy who texts while he's supposed to be working all the time. It was my little holdout, my one untouchable reason for why I was the best employee. And now I'm just a slacker.
So I'm going to have to work on when I can and can't be checking my phone. When I'm bored at home texting is great to have, when I'm at work or on a bike ride is not so great a time, and when I'm alone in the park I'm still not sure about.
I don't know why I'm choosing to write about something you all (I assume there are maybe seven or eight of you) clearly know more about than me. I hope it's interesting to get a different perspective on something you probably take for granted.
Anyway, I'm going on a long car trip to Missouri this morning and I expect you all to entertain me via text message.
-Nick.
Text messaging, or "texting," if you will, frightens and fascinates me. It's like a whole other facet of your relationship with someone. It's a way to get a quick word in with someone who you might not see for awhile. If I really want to tell somebody a story, or apologize for something slight, or ask a trivial question, I pull out my phone, type what I want to say, and wait eagerly for this mysterious contraption to shudder and vibrate, signaling the arrival of a reply. Now even if I haven't seen a person in awhile I don't feel estranged from them.
Some crazy things that I've noticed so far:
-I'm a little bit alarmed when I hear people complain about not receiving a reply quickly enough. I've got stuff to do, y'know?
-I'm always secretly a little bit disappointed when a get a text message from somebody I get text messages from all the time. When I feel my phone sputter and buzz, my mind is immediately filled with the image of a person whom I only slightly know revealing some dark secret to me. But then it's just my mom. This process leads me to be slightly disappointed by about 90% of the text messages I receive.
-I tend to read text messages in their most serious possible intended connotations. For example, when Conor texted me earlier today "Note to self: never talk about music around Nick," I immediately assumed he was angry, even though it was obviously a joke. Actually, he probably was, a little bit.
-If I never get a reply to an initial text (And I don't mean if they stop texting me back and forth, I mean if they just never answer my first text) I tend to worry that the person is annoyed with me, even when I know they aren't. There's kind of a bitter taste in my mouth until I see or hear from that person again.
-The amount of punctuation and capitalization in text messages is directly proportional to the coolness of the author. Actually, that's probably just what I want to think because I type with perfect grammar.
-Texting is minuscule compared to interacting in person or on the phone. As soon as I talk to a person face-to-face the worry that they might have been angry about a text message or annoyed and didn't answer me just vanishes. It's hard to explain, but you know what I mean.
-There's a very very slight difference in how I feel when I'm alone. I went on a bike ride today and hung out at my place in the park, and then biked through Terra Hills and a few other places. But while I usually feel totally secluded for awhile, there's now this nagging feeling that anybody could talk to me, they just aren't right now. I'm not sure yet if I like that feeling or not.
The last thing I want to mention is that I'm worried I'm going to get in trouble at work. But it's not the getting in trouble I'm worried about, I just don't want to be that guy who texts while he's supposed to be working all the time. It was my little holdout, my one untouchable reason for why I was the best employee. And now I'm just a slacker.
So I'm going to have to work on when I can and can't be checking my phone. When I'm bored at home texting is great to have, when I'm at work or on a bike ride is not so great a time, and when I'm alone in the park I'm still not sure about.
I don't know why I'm choosing to write about something you all (I assume there are maybe seven or eight of you) clearly know more about than me. I hope it's interesting to get a different perspective on something you probably take for granted.
Anyway, I'm going on a long car trip to Missouri this morning and I expect you all to entertain me via text message.
-Nick.
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