making up for lost time, apparently

Yeah, this really happened: I just completed my second consecutive day of working two jobs with an hour and a half break inbetween. We're talking about twelve hours of work. Eight in the beehive and four or five at the restaurant. My life continues to operate in extremes. Then my mom tried to tell me I should be working twelve hours a day all the time.

I nearly cut the bitch!

And I want to at least realistically have some time to write, read, excercise and I'll be able to afford to land in Austin by the end of October so that's all grand and I need...to stop writing this.

I'm having a really intense queer/stoner moment in that everything that is being said on Celebrity Poker Showdown is like sooooo totally gay. Phil Gordon just refused to answer on TV whether it was perhaps not a wife that he was looking for. And, I mean, he's really cute. He's a poker genius. And really tall. Maybe he's also Canadian? Call me! Maybe I'll go on a nude-picture liquid diet and prepare the complete stalking package?

Ok, and, yes, you caught me. I'm obsessed with watching Celebrity Poker Showdown. Watching it brings me untold joy. And for fuck's sake, I can't believe I've never noticed how cute Phil Gordon is.

looking forward to the end

So, my update is that I start an elaborate and deviously cruel training period tomorrow at my second job. It's going to be seven weekdays of training from 6 am to 2:30 pm. Yeah, fucking AWESOME! Tomorrow and Friday are going to be hell because I'll be work twelve-ish hour days both of them. But I swore I would not be a workblogger, and this is all speculative anyway. Right. The second place is a scary beehive inside of an old shopping mall. There's like probably a million Dilbert cartoons floating around that fucking place.

Then, I have miraculously managed to not have to work on the restaurant on Saturday night, so I will be running off to Missoula to party my ass off for the Triple Virgo Birthday Madness at Travis and Minnie's.

Let's just say I will heartily look forward to the escape, I expect. And only thoughts of the greater escape shall sustain me. I think I should be able to get to Austin and buy myself little prezzies in the mean time, like an iPod or perhaps Twin Peaks on DVD. Little gifts like that should be able to prolong my shrivelling sanity until the great peacing-the-fuck-out of six or so weeks from now.

So I might take a brief bloggabatical until something wildly fascinating happens, for all of our sakes.

new job, getaway

Not that the second must be preceded by the first, but in this totally non-coincidental case, it did.

My first night was pretty awesome. I only waited on two tables, and the second one was AWESOME. I got to banter with a cool collection of older peeps INCLUDING a real, live Francaise! It was awesome to get the chance to speak French and showcase my dusty but unparalleled charm. However, all that work for a normal $20 tip? Though I suppose I should be thrilled that the French woman was not tipping, though there is indeed the possibility that she culturally overcompensates. Anyway, it was pretty awesome, especially since she dated a French prof at the U and wanted to hear any dirt I had.

Anyway, I made $50 and it was surprisingly chill. Being a waiter in training living at the parents' house beats unemployed depressed deadbeat living at the parents' house every time.

Then the next day it was off to Missoula, where I had hoped to see one of my euro-loves, Liana (who alas was not able to make it). We did get the chance to regress via telephone, and suddenly I was awash in a Berlinin haze of memories, like the purchase of my fave shoes, the true initiation of my now acclaimed/treasured digital camera, and the old chestnut known as sketchy drug dealer park. Ahh, memories.

Speaking of, I got to hang out with one of my very old friends from freshman year who had since disappeared and has now reconstituted in Missoula. It was pretty boys' night in, featuring a vast array of wine and Apples to Apples, which my parents actually non-coincidentally purchased and I have been regularly stealing ever since. If you don't know what I'm talking about, get thee to thine nearest game merchant and have at!

I said goodbye to my good friend and future roomie Jared, who should now be en route to Austin, where I hope to be seeing him in a mere SEVEN WEEKS. That's exactly how many days lie between me being here and the arrival of Halloween, my chosen arrival date. Holyshit, that's really close.

Which brings me to my second job, which I'm going in about tomorrow. Phone shit, helping people change their basic bank information. Apparently I will have a week of training before I have to take on that shit. Exciting, no? The only reason it fills me with a low, humming thrill is that I'll be that much closer to getting to Austin via this job, which will surely suck. But I've never really had a point in my life where I was working constantly. Because I don't count the college paper experience, because I was too permastoned to ever be particularly constructive and it was never really insisted on until after midnight anyway. This will be an interesting experience, one that will lead to me probably not having a day off until I leave, which is seriously fucking OK because a day of rest here is still basically hell, so I'll be in hell wherever I am.

See, that was almost a positive attitude moment. I have also already earmarked my next motivational treat, which will mothafucking be the first season of Twin Peaks on DVD. Don't I deserve it yet?!

Speaking of things I deserve, I picked up a freaky HOT pair of sunglasses, now featured in my profile pic here, complete with short hair and scary red beard. My friend said it made me look like I should be skiing through mountains of cocaine (europeanishly, of course).

ohmygawd!!

Dudes. Brace yourself, mmmkay?

I actually kind of have a job. Waiting tables at a pretty fucking nice, local restaurant. This will be helpful in evading high gas prices since my commute will be nonexistant. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need another job to scrape together sufficient moolah to peace the fuck outta here for Austin. But I have already tossed in my application to work at an assuredly-horrifying place that takes calls for various tech support stuff. Hopefully that'll happen soon, because I'm running out of time, mofuggahs! But, I have one job. Which is definitely something.

If I had un-arrogantly responded to my dad's tip earlier (even before I was horribly pissed off at him!) I could have been working there at the beginning of this month n'shit. But I didn't. Because I figured that he had lied (he often does) and begged this poor woman to pleaseplease employ his son, who was embarassing him deeply enough by being home.

Anyway, I finally followed up today (desperation beats pride again!) and the woman wants me to come in and do some training tonight. HOT. Hopefully I will still be able to escape to Missoula this weekend to see my long-lost Berlinbuddy and party with my friends for the pre and post Willie Nelson fest. Also, my darling friend Lydia suggested creating a gawker-esque group blog for Missoula and western Montana, to humble the various cultural offerings and smacketh-down-upon news phenoms. I should probably try and do some work to make that happen.

Mini-Culture Snack: I recently checked out some tracks by Devotchka after looking at the jealousy-inviting lineup at Bumbershoot this year. They are fucking AMAZING. The first comparison I will trepidatiously make is to the inventively instrumented music of The Decemberists, who have recently been falling out of favor with me. Imagine a version of that band with gorgeous vocals, imaginative songs that don't draw attention to how wildly folkloreish and intellectual they are, fused with the musical sensibility of Yann Tierson, who composed the soundtrack to Amelie. There's a clear and admitted tone of Eastern European folk music, fused with an unsual rock sensibility that works much more than one would expect. In short, kickass and I love it.

wow

God damn, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last wrote.

I'm fairly thrilled to actually feel like I want to write again, though the jabbing from my former recovering francotrash Zach certainly helped.

Things have been short of spectacular, to be perfectly honest. I am now shorn of my eurolocks, perhaps re-romanticized for me as I have done a shitload of updating onto the super-exciting photo blog, which I would heartily recommend to be checked out at your leisure. I'm looking forward to going through and writing little bits of info for the photos.

I am still not employed. I'm living at my parents' house. I find their presence to be semi-unbearable and therefor am finding my general enjoyment of life to be heartily lessened. And once again, I am nearing the netherside of a bag of dope and it looks like I might have to kiss my lovely libation buhbye for a bit.

Which is fine.

I was on the verge of being employed as a car rental guru, but my friend couldn't hire me because he knew I was temporary and his upperboss would probably shit on him. Nonetheless, I still made my mistake of attaching all my hopes to that working out.

I know I'll be working again before long because I have very critically decided to be in Austin, TX by Halloween and let the consequences be goddamned.

I'm still rather deeply reeling from the conclusion of Six Feet Under. It definitely had a huge impact on my life and punctuated eras of my life, bringing about spells of joy, tears, outrage and grief. It will be missed and forever references by myself and many of my proches.

However, I've been watching the shit out of the last season on HBO and I impulsively bought the fourth season on DVD mere days after the series finale. So, there is the glimmering/dwindling hope of televisual methadone. I'm definitely feeling freewheeling crazed Claire of the last two season, most uncomfortably when she's lying on the floor and says, "I'm always so much happier when I'm high."

Yikes. But, a propos, I would like to plug this AWESOME NPR interview with genius Alan Ball, which really enriched my SFU viewing. Or something. Special thanks to superblogger Andy Towle for the link.

Also, I just started the new Harry Potter (FINALLY!) and hopefully I will make it after all. I feel a strange, compulsive obligation to comment on the apparent complete destruction of New Orleans, a place that opened up my mind to so many of life's pleasures, perils and plunder. It fucking sucks is basically all that seems sufficient.