palmerpink

I made some friends last night; two of whom individually went on marvelous talks about grammar with me, and one of whom chatted authors and writing, too. It was fantastic :-) What's sorta amusing is that even before I met them I was in a bit of a literary mood. I had some time to kill, and I was already hanging at the Dupont Starbucks, so I scribbled out some poetry. Some of it actually turned out pretty nice. I'll have to poke at it with a colored pen a bit, but maybe I'll have something typed and viewable on the lit blog I'm always neglecting. EDIT : Surprise! I actually did get one typed up . I added to the written draft when I typed it (typical), but when I accidentally deleted the last third and had to reforge it, it came out even better. I'm actually pretty happy with this'un. Hence coming back and adding this lil post scriptum . So you should totally go read it . As I mentioned in the preambling notes, there's another, longer, more interesting...

So I finally got some grownup stuff done in the last couple days. I paid a goodly amount of my loan payments, opened a savings account, and called my credit card people. It wasn't exactly easy for me to face--mainly due, as I might have expected, to the somewhat overwhelming possibilities mixed in with it all. However, it was, as I might also have expected,  much easier than I feared. Once I got going, once I changed my inertia from stasis, it kinda all fell into place. I, finally, gave myself a chance and, finally, put it to good use. And some shit got done. Isn't that always the way it turns out? Maybe I'll learn that for real one of these days. Sigh. Until then I guess I gotta keep trying the best I can, and nothing less.

So I'm writing this on a TV. That is, my super fabtastic desktop tower is currently hooked up to my parents Dynex HD TV of 1080p magnificence. It's pretty sweet, not gonna lie. I'd been dreaming/thinking of this for a good long while--ever since I saw the VGA port on teh back of of it---but never really got the chance to try it until this weekend when my parents went out of town for their anniversary. I wasn't sure if it would be worth it: it was only VGA, this computer, for all its other awesomeness, lacks an HDMI port. It's turned out pretty alright, actually--right now it's happily churning out at a resolution of 1600 x 1200, and doesn't look too bad, either. Someday I may get a video card for this computer with an HDMI port (I may not always get to use this TV massiveness but after this bit of spoiling.....I may put "pretty new monitor" on my wishlist....). I might not, though; it's already got an Nvidia Radeon HD chipset built into t...

In good news, Parker and I are going up to New York for a weekend at the end of July. I'm kinda excited. I feel a bit like a grownup--putting aside money for the trip, talking about bus tickets, even looking up some things to check out while we're there. I do feel like a bit of a dick for leaving most of the planning up to Parker (and Mani), but then it really was his deal from the start. In other news, I'm becoming reacquainted with some old, familiar anxiety. And some more recently acquired ways of dealing with it.

So I've come to the sobering realization that I do desperately need a second job. Sigh. That's gonna require me to go a'huntin for jobs again. It's also gonna mean that, once I get said job, I'll have less free time to laze about, jerk off, and otherwise waste my time blissfully. It's funny--that's actually among my biggest causes for apprehension. I guard my free time like some paranoiac; it's  mine , it's  my right. But besides that, I so often find myself tired and worn out and burning out on my one job, so how the fuck am I gonna do a second job?! It's kinda like before, too, where I was scared to get my (current) job because I was so scared of failing. Here, I already have a job, it causes me stress and fatigue, so now I'm worried that not only will I struggle at the second job, but that its added stress & fatigue will fuck me over at the first  and second job. :\ All the same, it should be noted that in becoming less wholly...

Parker recently got a Nintendo DS--which I kept stealing to play Pokemon. Yes, at my age. You have to realize that I was  the go-to guy in 6th grade for all things Pokemon. I nearly got sucked back into my addiction back around 10th grade but then summer ended. This time...I don't know if I can/want to stop it......... XD Anyway, the obvious solution was to get me a DS of my own. You can imagine how frustrated it was making Parker finding his DS constantly missing. Yup, I was that dickish about it. So yesterday we traded in a PS2 and a buncha its games and some games for gamecube and also pawned an old Xbox and its games. We walked up to the GameStop clerk and the following conversation ensued: Me : We'd like to buy one of them pre-owned DS-lites for $80... Clerk : Okay...not a problem.....do you want any specific color or will anything--? Me : I want pink. Clerk : .....seriously? That's right, this is really happening. I have a pink DS-lite. And it looks lik...

I really hate bad parenting. Or, rather, bad parents. Like, kids can be awful enough on their own. But bad parents  always make it worse. We get a fair bit of this in my store. Kids running around, pulling shirts (or heaven forbid whole piles) onto the floor, screaming, crying. Getting on my nerves, simply put. But my ire centers on them for but a moment at a time, because in almost every case these children's obnoxiousness is the fault of their parents. In almost every case, they are ignoring their kids, permitting this behavior, and even tolerating some measure of child endangerment--who knows what would happen if their kids tripped and busted a lip or wandered off and got lost or got in the way of an associate carrying a heavy ass box. Honestly, I doubt they'd even notice. That's just how it is. And, like, I understand that parenting is tough. It wears you down. This kind of attentiveness and oversight I'm expecting takes a lot of energy & focus, and I...

Last year, around this time, Parker and I first met. It was a bit of a messy meeting—confused by boys and odd misunderstandings—but I wouldn't trade it for the world, any of it. We met at Rocky Horror. This was before I actually joined the E Street cast but I'd been a good handful of times. We'd each planned to go with friends, but were more or abandoned at the last minute. I was in good spirits. The parade had been fun, the night was young, I hadn't been to Rocky in much too long . I'd just bought a hotdog and flirted/caught up some with an old friend, when I turned and saw Parker just sitting to the side watching about with his trademark childlikeness—that hopeful, open, soft look of possible adventure. I was feeling unusually confident and he was hot/cute/there so I said hey and we got to talking. I soon found out he'd never been to Rocky—a virgin! >:-D—and had also been ditched, so naturally I took him under my wing. Later came the rockier bits, ...

We luv da Parkerz Happy (almost) one year anniversary! That's right--we met for the first tine after last year's pride parade. Ah, memories.

I was literally on my way to work when I wrote most of this post: I don't much like my post from the other day. It's in that whole category of rambly, unnecessary, even tedious posts. Surely redundant, too. But beside that (and the high school esque tone of its platitudes) it was a good effort overall, I suppose. I've caused myself a lot of frustration at work recently, and it's good I'm trying to do something about it--and something generally responsible at that. And what's also great is I feel I have been making progress at work. I think I'm getting my game back; my general effort and performance particularly has improved. Out of 8 transactions the other night I got 2 people to apply for credit cards. That shit ain't easy. It helps that I'm praying again. I almost hadn't noticed i'd lapsed, but it feels nice to get back into it. They're still modest little prayers, and I'm still praying to Walt (Whitman), but it helps some, I th...

So I variously fessed up to my managers that I felt I'd been slacking off at work recently. It felt really good to get it off my chest, even as they scolded/judged/otherwise sighed. It was tough. I don't like revealing moments of weakness--especially to authority figures (whom I invariably look up to, desperately). I don't like giving people the chance to think less of me. What's kinda funny is how my standards for myself are at least as high if not higher than my managers' expectations for me. That's all well and good (I guess....) but the moment I catch myself slacking or opting for the less tedious routine, those high standards come back to bite me in the ass and just demotivate & demoralize me. And then I start despairing--I've lost the confidence to even try again and it only gets tougher. It just came to a point where I didn't feel like "hiding" it anymore. See, I can be all too good at spinning bullshit just right so people ne...

Yup, it's pretty much proof of the second coming. Or something otherwise fantastic & (probably) inevitable. Parker and I are starting a comic together. Obviously, it's about us biffles and our biffling and our forever weird/fabulous biffleship. There's one where I nerd out about Doctor Who (like, I even name the Novikov Self-Consistency principle...) while Parker fails at paying attention utterly. (That one has some really sweet references to one of my favorite Radiohead songs, too. If I do say so myself.) Another brings up one of my favorite of our inside jokes--"ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT!?". The third's pretty simple--Parker's recently discovered the phrase "anal fisting" makes me squeal in eeeewness. What's funny is for once I'm not the slacker/lame-ass slowpoke. I've written three scripts so far, and now I'm just waiting for him to actually  draw them. In his defense, I've loved his concept doodlings so far. He...

Not really, but it was a funny joke all the same last week. Apparently, Park Police happened upon a pair of joyriding tweens and got to play big cops for an hour. One of those things where the guy pulled up behind them at a stop sign, the kids--being either high/drunk, stupid, or just plain bored--assumed this guy was a real cop ( and after them) and took off. Real winners these kids. Of course, Mr Park Police gave chase. It's the dream of all Park Police, (mall) Security, and other breeds of Rent-a-Cops that they will someday level up & evolve into  real cops...or is that just Pokémon? Somehow or another they wound all wound up at the elementary school near my house (regression much? as I said, these kids are  winners .). They hopped the kerb with the stolen car and promptly fled on foot through the school yard. Leaving a confused and bewildered Park Police guy. (This wasn't covered in the training seminar, see.) Anyway, we (Parker, Kial, and myself) happened t...