I have only been writing a little bit and not posting any of it. I can't live up to even the humble writing standards of this blog. I've been depressed I think. I am trying to convince myself that I need to go work out today. I joined the gym on the first of the month and a visit today would only be my third.
I did eat a massive portion of fried fish and french fries from a local fishery, and by fishery, I mean a local fast food joint that serves it's fish battered and drenched in grease. Pete's fish and chips comes with a kind of watered down hot sauce mixed with ketchup.
You can't ask for regular ketchup and they charge you 25 cents for a small 1 ounce cup of the stuff. I think they make all the profit from the shop this way. They do sell cokes for 69 cents in the summer and big cheeseburgers for a dollar, so you can't really complain. Even though I just did.
I wrote a long boring article about complaining and philosophy. I said that the only thing universal to humankind is complaining. You gather ten people in room and in no short order they will begin to gripe. Philosophy is just like complaining, which is what turns most people off about it. I defended philosophical thinking by suggesting that it is one method that people use for truth seeking and truth is seeking is the only way one can speak of things meaningfully. If we want any meaning out of our lives we need to remember to seek truth.
Don't worry I deleted it, so I won't appear here. But I wrote that because I was pissed off at EMO-culture and I was comparing it to the (hahah) more enlightened and time tested weltanshaungs of Nihilism and Existentialism.
I always get existential whenever the tedium of my job gets to me. What I mean is there is always the dread living with me. It tugs at me gently (and even not so gently) by the unending exercise of looking down at your stupid groceries, your stupid open swim suit covers that expose your stupid fat chests with stupid too tiny crucifixes hidden in the plump cleavage of a 40 year old women with too much mascara, buying bottles of wine, with her long colored nails digging into her purse for change, asking me if she can buy a deli rotisserie chicken and pay with food stamps. No you cannot.
On and on it goes. Every single human who walks by me and thing they buy- I list off a reason why they should not be on this planet, or why their purchases bother me. I detect skin problems as they fiddle with the electronic payment system. They hand me over their sweaty money with nails invaded by green fungus. They come to the store after work stinking of urine and axle grease. They forget rules of etiquette. They swear and talk on cell phones. The attractive look at me with pity and disgust, or they don't look at all. They go on the next line because the other cashier is taller and thinner than I am. So many of the patrons bore me with conversation that sometimes I bore them back with my stories.
Here is one:
Yesterday and old women driving one of those old people scooters crashed into a front end display full of peanut butter and glass jelly jars. The thing came tumbling down like an avalanche of purple glass. The shattering of which brought a cacophony of thunderous noise to my ears which barely caused me to look up from my screen. I swipe away at the next item. I don't want to seem too interested in the events. Maybe the manager will want me to clean it up.
I am lucky. He asks for help from the customer service desk. A dwarfish female with the sexual perversions of two high school football teams walks over and squats down. She picks glass with the latex gloves doctors use to inspect your rectum, an idea from the manager, who by some small piece of brain engineered power, assumes the quality found in latex which prevents semen from leaking out of condoms could protect hands from the cutting effects of broken glass. He was right. No one was cut, and the old women who knocked down the wall of pb&j passes through my line sheepishly.
She doesn't hear well. I repeat the price and tell her that her total is 25 dollars. She eyes the two twenty dollar bills in her twisted hands with trepidation, almost afraid that the 15 dollars in change she has coming back should be put towards the hundred jars of spilled product that now lie useless on the floor behind her. She does not ask for help out to her car even though she needs it to get the scooter back inside. She wants to leave as quickly as possible.
I pass the time in my head. I remember all the things I need to do.
- I need to go the gym
- I need to stop drinking cola
- I need to drink more water
- I need to attend a communist party meeting
- I should donate money to the needy in Africa
- I must ease up on the masturbation thing if only to allow some feeling to get back into that dumb rod of mine
- I need to stop being so self involved
- I need to buy some antacids
- I need to write a book
- I need to stop spending 8 hours a day on the Internet
- I need to finish the post on sexual double standards -I tell pervy dwarfy girl I call it "Cut Of f your PUSSY!" -- ("Why do you care about those kind of things?" --asks the dwarf) "Why do I care about anything?" I answer the girl.
I search for the meaning of life, but get caught up in the circular meanderings of my mind. The atrophy of depression is confusing to me. I try to think of reasons to do things, but then the back of my throat starts its morning cry.
"Good morning sir, and will there be more soda today? If so you can look forward to the tickle becoming a stinging, like the swallow of bumble bees."
A few burps later and the acid will eat away at the remainder of my esophagus.
"I can wake you in the middle of the night and you can gasp for air. My tight grip will be the noose and you will hang today. We are in the Old West. I will offer you no jury."
At least I understand the horror of asthma now. I was sure I was going to die the first time I woke and could not breathe. I had no idea why. My chest inflated to twice its regular size in a desperate search for air, my eyes are like saucers, my hands wrap reflexively around my neck, I hop up and down in vain. Then magically the grip relents. My throat opens just enough. I drag in the sweet air. I sit up right for the next few hours on my bed. I will not test sleeping again. I swear off cola.
Though I am sure it is just a symptom the acid reflux. A gentle reminder that the ingestion of carbonic acid for 10 hours a day was not selected for by our ancestors. Such sweet terror. Oh, such poor Darwinian luck.
I want to suggest to myself that doing something is better than not doing anything at all. I want to pretend to you that I did not buy the five 12 packs of cola for $12 at work last night, but I did. I place a can can in one of the new cozies that I just purchased. I bought 10 can and bottle cozies, each for a quarter.
I have no idea why I need so many.
