|
The 15-hour day. Hour 1 (10:30 - 11:30 a.m.): Somehow the brain works, even when the body does not. The first hour of a Wednesday newspaper deadline day is a disgusting one. Procrastination is not possible. The work must start early, even with the acceptance that, no matter what, the work will never end early. Hour 2: This week, because some bitch is on vacation, there is not one newspaper to finish, but two. The bitch's isn't done yet. My own isn't started yet. Two hours in and I'm two days behind. Hour 3: Time for lunch yet? No. Must. Keep. Going. Must. Finish. This. Page. Time for lunch yet? No. Time for lunch yet. NO, BITCH, FINISH THE GOD DAMNED PAGE! Hour 4 (1:30 - 2:30 p.m.): Why is this newspaper not done yet? What do you mean I spelled AVAILABLE wrong? Why? Why? Lunch must wait. Where did my caption go? Why are you people bothering me? Hour 5: Did someone say lunch? Fuck you, the first newspaper isn't done yet. I'll finish that, and then I'll treat myself with a hoagie. Another editor just comes into work. He'll be done later than I will, but the question is: will he be here as long? And do I care? Do I hope the guy next to me pulls out a gun and starts shooting everyone? Definitely. Am I going to get out of here anytime soon? Definitely not. Hour 6: Oh look, the sun. I forgot it existed. It's hoagie time. I buy. I sit in my car. I eat. I watch other cars drive by. I think about not driving back to work. I drive back. I work. Hour 7: (4:30 - 5:30 p.m.) This newspaper will be more difficult than the first, even though it is my own. Shortage of stories. Shortage of photos. Entirely too much blank white space that needs to be filled with SOMETHING, and a photocopy of my ass is out of the question. For now. Hour 8: Most people in the building have gone. Others are leaving now. The five editors remain. The crap I put into my paper amazes me sometimes. A guy sitting on the roof of an elementary school. Wow. Now that's news. Hour 9: This is the last damn time I'm doing two newspapers in one week. I gotta get out of here before anyone else takes another vacation. I gotta get out of here now! What if I just quit my job and worked at the mall or something for a while until I found something better. The banner headline this week: "District mourns drowning victim." Sad story. Student drowned while swimming in the river. I would not like to drown. Hour 10: (7:30 - 8:30) Phillies on the radio. They're losing. This pisses me off even more. I'm getting hungry again. No food until home. How many pages left to fill? Don't know. Never count. Any number higher than 1 always seems way too much. Another editor bitches and bitches and bitches about everything that crosses his 20-something (going on 80-year-old) brain. He gives me attitude. He thinks I work less than he does. He's wrong. Hour 11: Normally, this would be the homestretch. The end is not in sight, and this scares me. Hour 12: Three editors, including myself, remain. Going slightly delirious. Eyes tired, very strained. The monitor is too bright. CANNOT PRINT TO EDITORIAL 5000 ERROR -34. What the fuck! Hour 13: (10:30 - 11:30) Another editor is on track to miss his 2 a.m. deadline. Good for him. He complains too much. My deadline isn't until 6:30 a.m. Maybe I could go home, take a nap, and come back. Maybe I could buy a cow and slaughter it for a midnight snack. Hour 14: (11:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m.) Good morning, Thursday. It's my day off. Or is it? At this rate, not really. But the end is in sight. Keep printing. Fixing headlines. Running spell check. 131 words detected on three pages. Hello, my name is ROOOOOOOOAAAARRRR! I'm a lion! Hour 15: (12:30 - 1:30) Last revisions. Last 'softproof' in the production room. And the pages are off. Sent instantly to some place in New Jersey and they're out of my hands. Mission accomplished. Does it feel like 15 hours? Not really. Too busy to realize that so much has passed. Must quit soon. An opportunity is coming.  Just the usual Sunday afternoon at the ballpark.  Thanks to the doc, for the past week I have begun to look like a character from Requiem for a Dream.  And sadly, this is the result of a second attempt at getting blood out of me. The first attempt, on my other arm, yielded no blood no matter how far she drove the needle. It was fun. ---- I'm selling out for the first time. My other site, a fan site for the Phils, will soon have ads for a ticket broker. I will spend the money I make on more Phillies tickets. ---- I like warm weather. ---- Contrary to popular belief, sometimes I do have interesting things to say. For those who are finding fewer reasons to come here anymore, just hang with me a little longer. The summer brings some unexpected events. Question of the day: Do I spend a week's worth of pay on front row Phillies tickets for this Friday? I think the answer is yes. 1:54 PM I'm really surprised more people didn't comment on the Where's Waldo thing. Did you guys try it yet? Come on. You gotta listen to the music that plays when you're doing it. That's key. You would think that by the amount of excitement I feel when I see that other people have posted to their blogs that it would compel me to post a hell of a lot more on here. And it does ... but it's just a matter of having something somewhat interesting to talk about it, and that hasn't been happening frequently enough. Part of the problem is my obsession with baseball this year. I don't know why or when exactly I became to so obsessed, but when I miss a Phillies game, life is somehow less complete. I feel like I have wasted a day of my existence. I've been changing my work schedule, my gym schedule ... basically everything revolves around watching baseball. When I'm done writing this, I plan to do some quick cleaning around here, perhaps start some laundry, but it all has to be done by 3, because that's when the Phils come on. The Philadelphia Flyers, by the way, who are in the middle of a truly exciting Stanley Cup playoff series, do not matter. Phils come first. Unfortunately for me, I have never played on an organized baseball team, and, as I am sure I have said before, this is my worst regret in life. Football, basketball, soccer, track, wrestling ... even bowling ... I've tried them all, and it's a shame because baseball has always been my favorite sport. Year after year I passed up little league and later I passed up the middle school teams, because I had always felt that other kids had already been playing for most of their lives. It was always too late for me to start. Always just too late. But, I don't care so much about that anymore, because I'm sure I still would have been just a mediocre player, and I would have stopped playing eventually. But watching baseball is another story this year. I don't even care what teams are playing. When the Phils aren't on, I look for other games. And when there are no games on, I go online and (pay to) watch older games that I've already seen this year! Tell me that's not obsession. So the doctor says I'm not going to die. Not even a stroke. Jeez. ---- A little over a year ago when I first moved to the upstairs of my house, I told myself I would never put in an air condition because, at the time, the summer was just about over, and I was determined to be out of the house by the following summer. Well, there goes another plan down the drain. ---- mecca lekka high, mecca lekka hienie ho ---- I promise more interesting posts this summer. And maybe another site redesign. And Doritos. Lots of Cool Ranch Doritos. I'm at work. And I have the sudden urge to watch Mary Poppins. For the bored: http://www.funnyjunk.com/pages/waldo.htm 9:57 PM For sale: 1 soul Tomorrow marks the 1-year anniversary of this blog, which is somewhat hard to believe. I still feel like I just graduated from college a couple months ago, and the fact that I'm applying for jobs again doesn't help this disorientation. I'm a year older and yet I feel like nothing significant has happened in my life since last May. That said, I've decided I'm moving to Quebec at the end of June. I'm going to buy a VW van, pack up my things, and leave. On the way, I will pick up a dog and name it Johnson. In Quebec I will work at coffee shop and teach Johnson to do stupid tricks. I will buy a video camera and make a movie about French candy. I will eat the candy. By winter I will own eight new sweaters and I will wear them all at the same time so I won't need a jacket when walking in the snow. Johnson will walk with me. At night I will find music. Poetry. Theater. I will read a book about trucks. Monster trucks. In Spring I will kill Johnson with a baseball bat and dispose of his body in a river. I will buy cat. His name will be Jesus. Leprechauns will come and ask me how I feel about reconstructive surgery. That's nonsense, I will say. Leprechauns don't speak about reconstructive surgery. And we will laugh and dine over cheese. I will fast on my birthday in remembrance of Jesus, who will surely die at the hand of Curiosity. My hair will turn gray. I will move to Ontario. I will jog eight miles every morning and the locals will recognize me as the politician who saved their homes from fire and robbed the mole people of their babies. Or ... I will just sit here.  Blame it on my irregular workout routine ... Blame it on years of fastfood and pizza ... Blame it on my excessive worrying about the littlest things in life ... Blame it on George W. Bush ... but there's no denying the now constant tightness in the left side of my chest. It's interesting really. It will probably make life more entertaining over the next week or so, as tomorrow I will schedule an appointment with the doctor. That's a pretty big deal for me. Throughout the average week, I experience at least 50 new pains or discomforts in my body that usually last one second, and are followed by this thought: Huh. That was interesting. And then my day goes on. But for this one, since it has lasted a couple weeks now, I will make a trip to the doc primarily for the fear of sudden pain and embarrassment. You could tell me I was going to get hit by a bus tomorrow, and I'd be fine with it. But a heart attack, for example, would probably not feel as pleasant and would happen when I am surrounded by a bunch of people. I've already pictured it really. In the middle of work. Just sitting there quietly as I always do when suddenly an excruciating pain causes me to writhe out of my chair and onto the floor, meanwhile all my coworkers will spin around in their chairs to watch for a minute or two before their thought that something is amiss causes them to actually do something besides laugh. "This is it, people," I will attempt to say. "You see what you've done?" But anyway, off to the doctor I will go, which I don't mind really, as long as they don't find reason to shove something up my ass, as they have in the past. Twice. Otherwise, it's all just an inconvenience. Damn. I need a haircut too. What's with all this 'stuff to do' shit? Hello, May. How are you today? -Not bad, and yourself? I'm doing arlight. It's been a while, hasn't it? -Yes, about 11 months, I'd say. No doubt. So what did you do in the off-season? Anything exciting? -Not too much really. Just waited my turn, you know me. 'April showers bring May flowers.' That whole thing. Definitely. -Yeah. So how's ol' June doing? -What are you trying to say? Nothing I was just asking-- -What do I look like? Nothing, I-- -You're an asshole. |
Late night snacks. Bite-sized ramblings. Old-fashioned eats, served fresh daily. Open 24-7.  Other blogs Fireballs and Tsunami JeffreyDavis.net Mismatched Parentheses NimbleSixpence One Tortured Soul Palpably Inadequate Picnic, Lightning Pony Legs, Temporarily Supernouveau Wander Lust In my DVD player Archives June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 Other stuff Homestarrunner One Slime DeepDiscountDVD Olde English Sketch Comedy Live Music Archive Copy Army Copywriting Service Love & Radio This One Time Email me mmjunior / at / hotmail   
|