July 23, 2013

  • Been a good run, blah blah blah

    I’ll make this brief.

    Xanga probably won’t survive the month.  It’s unfortunate, because I’ve been here since 2004 and I’ve seen it change a lot and met some amazing people here.  But it’s part of the past now, I imagine.

    Some of you, I haven’t had the chance to become truly acquainted with.  So, if you’re still reading this, here’s my Facebook:

     

    https://www.facebook.com/CaptainCavemanHardcore

     

    Just tell me your Xanga username, and I’ll probably add you there.  If I ever start a new blog, I’ll let people know on Facebook.

    Carry on, ya’ll.  And if this is the last we ever see one another, have a great life.

January 30, 2013

  • How to Be Me

    Currently
    UKF: Bass Culture
    ‘All Fall Down’
    see related

    Five o’clock, AM.  Groan a little as you wake up.  You probably only got four hours of sleep the night before.  Decide you can spare fifteen more.  Five fifteen.  You have to get out of bed now if you’re going to eat anything.  Five twenty-five.  You can at least get coffee.  You feel like curling up, calling in sick, crying for a few hours, and contemplating quitting.  You get out of bed anyway, grind your coffee beans fresh, put them in your Aero Press, and set the kettle on the stove to heat the water.  It will take about 3 minutes to heat the water, and you usually steep the grounds an additional 3 minutes so the coffee is thicker and more robust.

    You mull around while it’s steeping and put on some pants, pull back your hair (which, frankly, you should just go ahead and cut because you aren’t fifteen anymore) and pull on one of your work shirts which is full of holes.  You’d get new ones, but they don’t have them in your size anymore.  Looking ratty and unprofessional is your passive-aggressive way of fighting back.

    Your coffee is ready.  You plunge it into a travel mug since you don’t have time to enjoy it at home anymore.  You pull on your ironic baseball cap that you bought as a joke, since you can’t take yourself seriously anyway.  Might as well slap a sign on your forehead that says ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything,’ and ‘US Border Patrol’ says pretty much that.  Your old company issued hat got worn out and smells like stale sweat.

    You wait for your dad to wake up at the last possible minute he can, so you can both arrive at work anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes late.  He’s one of the leads.  No one cares if you’re late.  No one has said a fucking word about it.  According to the tardy policy, you should have been written up so many times by now that you wouldn’t even be working here anymore.  Yet you’re still here.

    Your chest hurts.  The caffeine and lack of sleep mixed with general poor health aren’t doing you any good.  You had a panic attack back in the summer when you overheated, and ever since then your heart has hurt a lot when you overwork yourself.  This is a decent excuse to be lazy.  You walk up to the nearest booth, asking for a card to clock to.  They probably hand you the generic 2000 Zone Open/Close card, which means you’re doing interior work.  Maybe that one lead who cares just a little less than you will hand you 20 eval cards, shit that needs parts ordered.  You’re among the best at parts research in this hangar.  Everyone recognizes this.  You’re also probably among the worst and least motivated mechanics on the floor.  No one says it, but you’re sure they recognize that as well.

    If you’re not doing parts research, you might get handed a big job.  You don’t do things poorly for the most part; your paper work is good (even if your handwriting looks like a serial killer’s), your reference material is in order and all present per federal regulations, you take care to not damage things or lose hardware and everything is tagged properly.  Rather it’s the galley, wardrobe, pax seats, lav, or just a grocery list of panels, you’re probably going to do it right.  You just do it slowly, because you don’t care.

    You’re technically on the safety committee, but there are rarely meetings and they’re all just a massive circle jerk anyway.  You rarely wear your safety glasses, and have regretted it only once.  You still have perfect vision.  This might come back to bite you someday, but if you’re suicidal you probably don’t care about losing an eye.  And you’re definitely suicidal.  You also wear earphones all day, listening to electronic dance music or slow acoustic music.  You’re trying to block out the world.  They keep trying to get in.  You don’t let them in.

    You manage to make it through the day by barely doing anything.  You’ve thought about killing yourself no less than 15 times in the 10 hours you’ve been here.  You’ve spent more time on your phone sending texts to people who probably don’t care about you anyway.  You clock out.  Your dad sometimes has to stay late because he has to give a good turnover to the night shift leads.  You don’t care.  You eventually get home.  Sometimes you sleep, or masturbate, or both.  Sometimes you go to dinner when your mom calls for it.  You eventually take a shower.  You stay on your phone a lot.  Or you dick around on the Internet.  You think a lot about what it would do to your mom if you just killed yourself right now.  You wouldn’t be around anymore to find out anyway, so what does it matter?

    Entirely too late, probably close to midnight, you crawl into bed.  Everyone else is asleep, for the most part.  You’ll barely sleep.

    It’s five o’clock AM, and you’ve barely slept…