Work and Stereotypes.

In The Dark Tower series written by Stephen King there’s a character named Odetta Holmes who has multiple personalities. Her other personality is Detta Walker. Detta walker is the offensive black stereotype. Saying things like fiddy and gawd and shit like that. I found it really quite ridiculous. Well tonight I trained this lady. Well she doesn’t have multiple personalities and doesn’t want to destroy the fo’special, at least not to my knowledge, but with the speech patterns and all.

Now if you don’t know I work security. It’s an easy job. Walk up and down piers (at least where I’m training this person) and hit metal buttons with a metal reader thing. Very simple.

Well I’m just beginning my shift. I begin by calling in so that they know I’m there and put me on the clock. The lady who answers asks if I’m training somebody tonight. My response was I don’t know it’s possible. They never tell me anything. She then tells me that the lady who’s supposed to be there is lost and asks if I know where the First Baptist Church of Bay Area or some shit is. Of course I don’t I’m on the phone with the call in lady pretty much telling her I don’t know where you’re talking about for about 10 minutes.

Eventually she hangs up and I go about my business. I get started on my first round I’m not 10 minutes into when I get a call from my boss saying I’m going to be training somebody tonight. She says that she didn’t tell me earlier because she didn’t know if she was going to be able to make it.

What the fuck is that? You tell people to be somewhere they’re there or they’re fired. Well at least I know how it works now. No more working overtime for me. Yes!

Anyway. My boss tells me that the lady who’s going to be there is lost and is talking to another one of my bosses for directions. And that I should call her later today to tell her how it goes. The reason being is that the lady I’m training is afraid to work by herself in the dark. So I have to report upon the competence of this new guard. Just fucking great.

About 30 minutes later I get a call from Elton that other boss I mentioned. Saying that the lady is here and I need to go find her and tell her where to park. I need to tell her where to park? Arg. This is going to go well. I go out to the parking lot next to the office and there’s nobody there. So I drive around a bit, and find her parked in the middle of the street with her hazard lights on. She honks at me like I don’t see her, which is just insulting, and then tells me she’s been lost for like an ‘oura’ and that I need to tell her where to park. I say anywhere in the parking lot is fine. And she replies with I’ll just follow you. *sigh*

We get her parked. I sign her in. I have her fill out the necessary paperwork, and we get started on the rounds where I left off. I start to head down the pier, and she stops me for a minute and asks, “We have to go down there?” Yeah. We have to go down there unless you have magic x-ray binoculars that can tell you when a boat is sinking or on fire from way up here. She then mentions she’s afraid of water and doesn’t know how to ‘swum’ which is how I think she put it. So to recount she’s afraid of the water, she’s afraid of the dark, she’s afraid of being by herself, she’s also afraid of birds I find out. A great security guard in the making, no doubt. Not to mention it’s hard to understand what she’s saying most of the time. This is an improvement upon what I normally have to work with.

But all I’m really trying to say is I! HATE! TRAINING! PEOPLE! That’s all I’m really trying to say.

Love? Lust. And Hatred!

A couple of months ago I found myself looking back over my life. My thoughts were mostly of Love and three specific incidents that I’ll be writing about today. The thought progress was something like this. I was thinking about my current girlfriend and getting a bearing on how I felt which lead to thoughts of love which lead me to thoughts of my first girlfriend. You’ll see why in a moment. This reminded me of how much I’ve changed over the years, and I was remembered 2 other incidents that illustrate that change, and are hopefully amusing.

The first conversation happened when I was 12 maybe 13, and it was with my girlfriend at the time. Below is a brief transcription. This happened on the phone, by the by, I hate using the phone.

Her: “How come you haven’t said the L-word?”
Me: “What the hell is the L-word? I know the f-word, b-word, s-word, d-word, h-word, I don’t know any L-word.”
Her: “You know the L-word.”
Me: “No. I don’t. Really, what the hell are you talking about?”
Her quietly to her mom on the other end: “Mom, do you know what the L-word is?”
Her Mom: “What, Love?”
Her: “Yeah that’s it.”Me: “Oh! Love. Yeah okay I know what you’re talking about now.”
Her: “Well?”
Me: “Well, what?”
Her: “Do you?”
Me: “Oh! Yeah, of course I do.”

Jump to a week later. I’m outside the band hall playing cards with some friends when one my girlfriend’s friends came over. I didn’t like this girl. She didn’t like me. Pretty simple, straight forward and I didn’t care. And like in that episode of south park.

Her: “She breaks up.”
Me: “Huh, what?”
Her: “She breaks up. She doesn’t want to go out with you anymore. She says you can still be friends.”Me: “Oh. Okay.” I turn back to the game at hand. “I bitch slap you, and first aid.”
Her: “…” then she leaves.

So we broke up and I never saw her again, but that’s just the way things go. In AL-ALLL-AL-ALLL. Anyway, I think she was waiting for me to cry or get angry or something. But it didn’t bother me that much. I didn’t like that she had her friend do it, but the end result wasn’t bothersome. I wonder why it ended.

This second conversation happened when I was 15 or 16. I know it was during the summer I got my drivers license I just don’t remember whether it happened before I got it or after. This girl was visiting friends or family that lived behind me. She was there for the entire summer and was attractive. Problem number 1. The second problem…well you’ll see.

Her: “You know if you say Godsmack backwards you say smack god. Oh I shouldn’t say things like that. God will get angry.”
No. Idiot, if you say Godsmack backwards you get cams dog. I thought.
Me: “Hmm, you’re right I never thought of that before. You’re intelligent.”

I was 15 and the hormones were in charge. I’m very ashamed of myself. I can thankfully say I haven’t done that again or at least nothing quite so obvious. Looking back on it thought it’s pretty funny to me anyway.

Third and final conversation happened in s’ymmoT (I typed mockingly) apartment. In the presence of .J (again with the typing mockingly) and éneR (let’s have one more). The three of us were in the living room probably playing mage or just talking about random crap when Tommy’s desperation lay decided to interrupt by saying stupid shit. Like she had a tendency to do.

She said something. I don’t remember what exactly, but I disagreed with it. I said no that’s not right or I don’t think so or something to that extent. Not 2 seconds later she says, “You know guys don’t disagree with me.”

René started to point a finger, but I beat him to it. “I just did. You’re wrong. And I’m sure that they disagree like these two here. They don’t agree with you, but they’re not saying so. I disagree you’re wrong.” Or something to that extent. “Okay well besides you guys don’t disagree with me.” She left a few minutes after this and allowed us to continue what we were doing.

That last one is probably a poor example of my evolution with dealing of the opposite sex. What with me hating that lady. But it did happen in a different phase of my life and normally even in that phase, which is still continuing, I wouldn’t have said anything. I just didn’t like her, and I only met her like twice. Unlike J. who had to deal with her pretty much every time she came over.

I think that covers it for those conversations I might talk more on it later. There have been some awkward moments in my current relationship I may or may not go into them. Probably won’t though.

Economics and stuff

So I got my economic stimulus check in the mail the other day. I got the full amount possible a grand total of 600 dollars. It’s great that I got it before my credit card bill came in. I just bought a computer and now I can pay the whole thing off in one go. That’s how I like to pay off my credit bills when I decide to use it.

I’ve got a solution to stimulate the economy. It’s pretty fucking simple too. Lower the mother-humping gas prices. I remember when gas was $1.50 per gallon. I never had any money then. I was always buying shit games, movies, cds, going to the theatre, going out to eat. Of course I didn’t have a job either. That probably had more to do with me not having money than everything else, but I was able to do that other stuff too. Unlike now where I have to balance my damn check book just to make sure I’ve got enough gas to get home. It’s completely ridiculous.

Luckily, I guess luckily anyway, I only have to fill up my car once every 1 ½ to 2 weeks. This now costs roughly $50. It used to be 25ish. When it was 1.50 I could fill up my F150 for 15 to 20 bucks. Obviously it didn’t last 1 ½ to 2 weeks. Bah I hate driving anyway.

I was editing my favorite channels on my cable box on Friday. I’ve apparently got some new channels available since I started with DirecTV. I also got rid of HBO because I wasn’t really watching it anymore. Anyway while I was going through my available channels I ran into the greatest channel known to mankind. Chiller.

It’s a 24 hour horror/thriller television station. They play horror movies and TV shows (like tales from the crypt and tales from the dark side). I recorded the original Village of the Damned. Haven’t got around to watching it yet, and while I was getting ready for work Friday night they were showing Return to Horror High which has George Clooney in it. So of course I recorded that too.

I think Prince Caspian came out this Friday but I can’t remember. I’ll look it up when I get home. Which means, by the time this is posted I’ll know, but if so I’m hoping to catch it on Tuesday.

P.S. Warcraft 3 has a great story, but the game proper is kind of crap. Well made and all but not quite how I like my rts’ (hmm. How do you plural an abbreviation or whatever it’s called) to work. Hopefully Starcraft 2 doesn’t follow the same system.

P.P.S. I’ve got another post that’ll be up tomorrow…probably…maybe.

Entertainment stuff.

I remember after a movie my friends and I saw in a group I started talking about a game that I saw on x-play that looked really cool. I couldn't remember the name of the game or even the name of the company that was making it. Thankfully penny-arcade has come through again.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33953.html This is if you didn't check the link on the penny-arcade site. It's a co-op zombie fps made by Valve. So the quality should be there. Hopefully the material can hold up. I can barely wait.

Prince Caspian comes out this Friday. I really enjoyed the first one, and I've been waiting for this one. So I'm happy about this.

Beginnings

As you can tell I went all biblical on my blog. I've decided to start anew. Much like god and his flood. I've deleted all the old crap and have decided to start putting up a whole bunch of new crap. Yay new crap.

I still don't have anything of interest to say, but I'm going to try a little harder to post on a regular basis or at least semi regular basis. Hopefully you enjoy my rants or ramblings. Most likely it'll just be ramblings.

I'll talk about various things. Generally entertainment related stuff. However next post I think I'll talk about three very different conversations I've had in three different phases of my life. They might prove to be entertaining.

Until then. Sometimes you eat the bar, and well, sometimes the bar eats you.