IPOD
RADIO
Hey everyone.
Overnight at the TA in Binghamton NY tonight.
My hands are getting a little rough from work. My old GF Erica told me at least once that I have beautiful hands. Which I guess I've often thought myself. But now I'm getting older and working them pretty hard for a living and they show it. Bah.
I've decided that what I want for Cristmas is a magic Kerouac Express Card. This is a charge card that covers your expenses while you're touring the country on a motorcycle, photographing and writing about what you see.
I guess my journals may well have been a lot less interesting of late. I've just been working a lot and not seeing so much of the country. The short days and cold rainy weather play a role in that. I dislike what the stress does to my mind. Now and then when I've changed jobs or changed positions in the company I've come into a few days off and I really notice myself recovering from work. My comments that I leave in peoples' journals or in various groups get longer and happier and wittier. Work wouldn't be so bad if it left us more of ourselves for our own time.
Long time ago I dabbled lightly in Dungeons and Dragons, where my friends were deeply immersed fanatics. At one point I was thinking of playing a monk, and I noticed that the highest level a D&D monk could attain was Grand Master of Flowers. I do not find such a title for any monkish attainment in the real world, but that title has always stuck in my mind, as one that I would like to have. I read an article in either Tricycle or Buddhadharma about Tibetan Embodiment meditation, where you visualise yourself as embodying a quality. I try to visualize myself as embodying mellowness. The Grand Master of Flowers is one very mellow person. He is one with life itself. He is the unfolding of leaves in the spring. I find stillness in imagining myself as that. I wish I was better at focusing on that sort of thing for longer periods than I am.
Overnight at the TA in Binghamton NY tonight.
My hands are getting a little rough from work. My old GF Erica told me at least once that I have beautiful hands. Which I guess I've often thought myself. But now I'm getting older and working them pretty hard for a living and they show it. Bah.
I've decided that what I want for Cristmas is a magic Kerouac Express Card. This is a charge card that covers your expenses while you're touring the country on a motorcycle, photographing and writing about what you see.
I guess my journals may well have been a lot less interesting of late. I've just been working a lot and not seeing so much of the country. The short days and cold rainy weather play a role in that. I dislike what the stress does to my mind. Now and then when I've changed jobs or changed positions in the company I've come into a few days off and I really notice myself recovering from work. My comments that I leave in peoples' journals or in various groups get longer and happier and wittier. Work wouldn't be so bad if it left us more of ourselves for our own time.
Long time ago I dabbled lightly in Dungeons and Dragons, where my friends were deeply immersed fanatics. At one point I was thinking of playing a monk, and I noticed that the highest level a D&D monk could attain was Grand Master of Flowers. I do not find such a title for any monkish attainment in the real world, but that title has always stuck in my mind, as one that I would like to have. I read an article in either Tricycle or Buddhadharma about Tibetan Embodiment meditation, where you visualise yourself as embodying a quality. I try to visualize myself as embodying mellowness. The Grand Master of Flowers is one very mellow person. He is one with life itself. He is the unfolding of leaves in the spring. I find stillness in imagining myself as that. I wish I was better at focusing on that sort of thing for longer periods than I am.
Greetings from glorious Rochester.
I was actually thinking this might be sort of a nice part of Rochester, but actually it's a bit of a blah part of town. But I did find a noncorporate eatery called hots where I got a mediocre dinner and got to watch House for the first time in a while.
Night before last I had a dream where I broke my left wrist, It was pretty mangled. Then later on when i was at my delivery stop my left arm was really sore and weak and I couldn't account for it, and I was thinking oh fuck, but then it hit me that the problem was that I had been wearing my watch. It was the first time it happened with this watch, which has a worn out velcro band, but what happens when I have a watch with a tight band on my left arm is that the muscles(i think) don't get move as freely around the screws and plates that my arm was repaired with when it was broken. So I generally wear my watch around a belt loop. A while ago I another similar dream of massive breakage, but it was my teeth, my teeth were all destroyed like a shattered plate and then later in the day I broke a tooth.
Wow that was exciting.
Today I've been thinking about the trouble I have owing to my strongest emotion being fear. Sometimes direct fear of something particular, but most often just anxiety that seldom goes away.
When things about work piss me off I tell myself that those things are irrelevant. What is relevant is that I have let fear rule my life and it is that which has brought me to where I am, and what am I going to do about it. I guess maybe I have to meditate on it, examine it very closely, and try to do things that my fear would normally inhibit me from doing. But there are certtain things that I have so long avoided that i really don't know how to do them.
I was actually thinking this might be sort of a nice part of Rochester, but actually it's a bit of a blah part of town. But I did find a noncorporate eatery called hots where I got a mediocre dinner and got to watch House for the first time in a while.
Night before last I had a dream where I broke my left wrist, It was pretty mangled. Then later on when i was at my delivery stop my left arm was really sore and weak and I couldn't account for it, and I was thinking oh fuck, but then it hit me that the problem was that I had been wearing my watch. It was the first time it happened with this watch, which has a worn out velcro band, but what happens when I have a watch with a tight band on my left arm is that the muscles(i think) don't get move as freely around the screws and plates that my arm was repaired with when it was broken. So I generally wear my watch around a belt loop. A while ago I another similar dream of massive breakage, but it was my teeth, my teeth were all destroyed like a shattered plate and then later in the day I broke a tooth.
Wow that was exciting.
Today I've been thinking about the trouble I have owing to my strongest emotion being fear. Sometimes direct fear of something particular, but most often just anxiety that seldom goes away.
When things about work piss me off I tell myself that those things are irrelevant. What is relevant is that I have let fear rule my life and it is that which has brought me to where I am, and what am I going to do about it. I guess maybe I have to meditate on it, examine it very closely, and try to do things that my fear would normally inhibit me from doing. But there are certtain things that I have so long avoided that i really don't know how to do them.
I'm not feeling too good right now. Had my biggest mishap yet with the truck a couple of days ago, I sideswiped a telephone pole and broke it off at its base, when I was pulling into a parking lot. I should have known better than to do this account, because it puts me in all kinds of places too small for a big truck.
I don't know if they'll fire me or not. I shall have to play my cards close to my chest. I really need to get over to coca cola and start up with merchandising for them, and if they can't hire me as a driver because of my accidents I shall hopefully at least be able to stay on in the merchandising job.
I have two NYC deliveries tomorrow, which fortunately are not in the hardest places to get to. Unfortunately though the odds of my being able to get back home for my brother's bday party tomorrow evening are maybe one in a hundred. NYC family dollar employees are so slow to unload your truck you want to apply a baseball hat to their heads, repeatedly. Actually with me it's more that I want so scream at them, lollygagging fucks.
A while ago when I had my last mishap I had been thinking about peace of mind, where it cannot be dependent on conditions, and it recently occurred to me that you cannot "attain" peace of mind, insofar as attainment is a condition imposed on the possibility of peace of mind existing. Or perhaps I should say that you cannot have peace of mind if having peace of mind is a criterion for having peace of mind.
And I do not really expect to achieve it any time in the forseeable future. I'm very unhappy with my career right now and I don't feel any more sense of belonging or personal worthwhileness in the work world than I ever have. I'm failing in my job, and I've never made enough money to make payments on the thousands of dollars I got myself in the hole for, to learn to do this job. I tell myself a lot that I'm never going to feel good ever again, to try and get some relief out of a sense of fatalism.
I need to cut the crap with my photography and get serious about shooting the 4x5. I'm not going to be able to make great images with a digital point and shoot camera. I've been thinking a lot about Tom Hanks' character, the baseball coach in a league of their own, when he's talking to geena davis about how baseball is supposed to be hard; if it wasn't hard it wouldn't be great. I've been trying to make photography easy, and it doesn't work that way, at least if you want it to be great. So I need to lug that speed graphic around, mix up some fresh chemicals and get working in the darkroom. And I really need to get the fuck out of werner and with coca cola to have the schedule to do that.
I don't know if they'll fire me or not. I shall have to play my cards close to my chest. I really need to get over to coca cola and start up with merchandising for them, and if they can't hire me as a driver because of my accidents I shall hopefully at least be able to stay on in the merchandising job.
I have two NYC deliveries tomorrow, which fortunately are not in the hardest places to get to. Unfortunately though the odds of my being able to get back home for my brother's bday party tomorrow evening are maybe one in a hundred. NYC family dollar employees are so slow to unload your truck you want to apply a baseball hat to their heads, repeatedly. Actually with me it's more that I want so scream at them, lollygagging fucks.
A while ago when I had my last mishap I had been thinking about peace of mind, where it cannot be dependent on conditions, and it recently occurred to me that you cannot "attain" peace of mind, insofar as attainment is a condition imposed on the possibility of peace of mind existing. Or perhaps I should say that you cannot have peace of mind if having peace of mind is a criterion for having peace of mind.
And I do not really expect to achieve it any time in the forseeable future. I'm very unhappy with my career right now and I don't feel any more sense of belonging or personal worthwhileness in the work world than I ever have. I'm failing in my job, and I've never made enough money to make payments on the thousands of dollars I got myself in the hole for, to learn to do this job. I tell myself a lot that I'm never going to feel good ever again, to try and get some relief out of a sense of fatalism.
I need to cut the crap with my photography and get serious about shooting the 4x5. I'm not going to be able to make great images with a digital point and shoot camera. I've been thinking a lot about Tom Hanks' character, the baseball coach in a league of their own, when he's talking to geena davis about how baseball is supposed to be hard; if it wasn't hard it wouldn't be great. I've been trying to make photography easy, and it doesn't work that way, at least if you want it to be great. So I need to lug that speed graphic around, mix up some fresh chemicals and get working in the darkroom. And I really need to get the fuck out of werner and with coca cola to have the schedule to do that.
Hey there again folks.
It is perhaps to cultivate self indulgence and banality to blog too often, but on the other hand, some noteworthy writer once said that he always wrote down his dreams so as to preserve what would otherwise spill over and be lost.
So anyway, earlier today I had a moment of stepping outside my mind, and examining the thoughts therein from something of an outisder perspective. Just a brief glimpse, mind you. This morning when I woke up very annoyingly early again and again could not get to sleep, I spent some time thinking about the awesome sexual relationship I had with my first giirlfriend, Amy. Thing about it was that seeing a woman's breast, represented in a mind viewed from an outsider perspective, itlooked a lot smaller, and it kind of reminded me of Spaghettios. Kind of similar in color and shape, and quite soft and squishy. Perhaps one of the stupidest things you'll read about all day I guess.
Today at work presented some vexation. I had two loads to pick up to bring back to the Rome DC. I had a bit of difficulty finding the second one, because, in part, when you're in a spagettios complex mess of looping on and off ramps you might not pick the one your gps is trying to tell you to go onto if its refresh rate is not fast enough to get you on the right track. Anyway, I got to the second pickup on time, but the shipping and receiving office told me that they had not been called to schedule my pickup. After some phone calls and rigamarole they did load me, but I spent way too much time there and as a result I'm way benind sched for my deliveries tomorrow. They've already postponed them two hours but I'm thinking now that I'll need at least another hour, realistically. They told me to get as far as my hours would allow, and to run with the load, and that rubs me very much the wrong way, that I should be asked to hurry on account of other peoples' mistakes. I resent that people want me to hustle or get into a state of mental agitation for the sake of dellivering a load of bottom end retail merchandise on a predetermined schedule that naively assumed nothing would ever go wrong. Whatever. You could level the criticism at me that if i had true peace of mind such a trivial occurence as this could not overthrow it and you'd be right. True peace of mind is stable, it makes itself.
Was also thinking a bit about the "bong hits for Jesus" thing that was in the news a while ago, that the Nana dustup reminded me of, Not that Nana's photoset was really comparable in its intentions.
Thing about the Bong Hits for Jesus censorship debate, is that noone that I came across really understood what the BHFJ sign really meant. What it was was a critique of our culture's hypersensitivity towards various taboo subjects. It was a critique of literal mindedness and the psychology of those who tend to place themselves in positions of custodianship of institutions. "bhfj" does not represent any movement of thought that actually exists, as far as I know. Noone could construe it as a serious advocacy of anything. The point of creating a sign that said that was to provoke literal minded unsubtle custodial types into spoofing themselves, to reveal their reactivity and stupidity,
I recall an NPR interview of the defense attorney in the case; he was careful to make the point that he disliked the message of the bhfg sign, but that he was defending its right to be displayed on the basis of constitutional grounds. The attorney who defended larry flynt before the supreme court was also careful to point out that he didn't like what larry flynt was doing, but was also defending the constitutionality of flynt's publishing activities. It seems to be standard procedure for attorneys in these types of cases to make it clear that they have unassailbly bourgeois sensibilities but that they must uphold the constitution. But anyway, the bhfj attorney demonstrated his nonunderstanding of the sign's message in that interview, and I suspect that that was syptomatic of a broad based cultural nonunderstanding of that sign's true message.
The supreme court ruled that the school principal could infact censor the sign, even though it was not on school grounds, for whatever reasons I didn't really look into. But what I see as very dangerous is the precedent that has been established whereby the State can regard things as not being protected speeech by virtue of being too stupid to understand the nature of what is being said. If the stupidity of the state can thus be empowered , if the state can decided what speech is or is not criticism of the state and therefore is or is not protected speech, based on ITS standards, you're really setting the fox to guard the henhoue. To have the most unsubtle minds judging sharp criticism is repugnant to me. I despise a great many human minds for their lack of vision.
Anyway, enough ranting for today I guess
Ta-Ta
JBL
It is perhaps to cultivate self indulgence and banality to blog too often, but on the other hand, some noteworthy writer once said that he always wrote down his dreams so as to preserve what would otherwise spill over and be lost.
So anyway, earlier today I had a moment of stepping outside my mind, and examining the thoughts therein from something of an outisder perspective. Just a brief glimpse, mind you. This morning when I woke up very annoyingly early again and again could not get to sleep, I spent some time thinking about the awesome sexual relationship I had with my first giirlfriend, Amy. Thing about it was that seeing a woman's breast, represented in a mind viewed from an outsider perspective, itlooked a lot smaller, and it kind of reminded me of Spaghettios. Kind of similar in color and shape, and quite soft and squishy. Perhaps one of the stupidest things you'll read about all day I guess.
Today at work presented some vexation. I had two loads to pick up to bring back to the Rome DC. I had a bit of difficulty finding the second one, because, in part, when you're in a spagettios complex mess of looping on and off ramps you might not pick the one your gps is trying to tell you to go onto if its refresh rate is not fast enough to get you on the right track. Anyway, I got to the second pickup on time, but the shipping and receiving office told me that they had not been called to schedule my pickup. After some phone calls and rigamarole they did load me, but I spent way too much time there and as a result I'm way benind sched for my deliveries tomorrow. They've already postponed them two hours but I'm thinking now that I'll need at least another hour, realistically. They told me to get as far as my hours would allow, and to run with the load, and that rubs me very much the wrong way, that I should be asked to hurry on account of other peoples' mistakes. I resent that people want me to hustle or get into a state of mental agitation for the sake of dellivering a load of bottom end retail merchandise on a predetermined schedule that naively assumed nothing would ever go wrong. Whatever. You could level the criticism at me that if i had true peace of mind such a trivial occurence as this could not overthrow it and you'd be right. True peace of mind is stable, it makes itself.
Was also thinking a bit about the "bong hits for Jesus" thing that was in the news a while ago, that the Nana dustup reminded me of, Not that Nana's photoset was really comparable in its intentions.
Thing about the Bong Hits for Jesus censorship debate, is that noone that I came across really understood what the BHFJ sign really meant. What it was was a critique of our culture's hypersensitivity towards various taboo subjects. It was a critique of literal mindedness and the psychology of those who tend to place themselves in positions of custodianship of institutions. "bhfj" does not represent any movement of thought that actually exists, as far as I know. Noone could construe it as a serious advocacy of anything. The point of creating a sign that said that was to provoke literal minded unsubtle custodial types into spoofing themselves, to reveal their reactivity and stupidity,
I recall an NPR interview of the defense attorney in the case; he was careful to make the point that he disliked the message of the bhfg sign, but that he was defending its right to be displayed on the basis of constitutional grounds. The attorney who defended larry flynt before the supreme court was also careful to point out that he didn't like what larry flynt was doing, but was also defending the constitutionality of flynt's publishing activities. It seems to be standard procedure for attorneys in these types of cases to make it clear that they have unassailbly bourgeois sensibilities but that they must uphold the constitution. But anyway, the bhfj attorney demonstrated his nonunderstanding of the sign's message in that interview, and I suspect that that was syptomatic of a broad based cultural nonunderstanding of that sign's true message.
The supreme court ruled that the school principal could infact censor the sign, even though it was not on school grounds, for whatever reasons I didn't really look into. But what I see as very dangerous is the precedent that has been established whereby the State can regard things as not being protected speeech by virtue of being too stupid to understand the nature of what is being said. If the stupidity of the state can thus be empowered , if the state can decided what speech is or is not criticism of the state and therefore is or is not protected speech, based on ITS standards, you're really setting the fox to guard the henhoue. To have the most unsubtle minds judging sharp criticism is repugnant to me. I despise a great many human minds for their lack of vision.
Anyway, enough ranting for today I guess
Ta-Ta
JBL
Hey folks
Reporting tonight from Inwood NY. I delivered a load here today, and it wasn't all that great a day. Not exactly terrible, but not great. There were three people assisting me to unload the trailer but they were perhaps the slowest lollygagging jackoffs I've delivered to yet. It took ten hours to unload the truck but with that much help it really only shold take about half that long. I'm still parked in their parking lot, fortunately I didn't really have anywhere to go to until tomorrow.
Also the trailer was filthy inside and the person(s) who loaded it did a pretty shitty job, they put all of the stuff that won't roll down the rollers way up at the front of the trailer.
Whatever. It doesn't seem that my complaining makes for readable blogs, judging by the lack of comments on my last one.
Couple of nights ago I sat in a very little bit with some musicians who were playing in a coffee shop up in northampton. I am really impressed with the musical talent of various of randoms who play places like that. One person will suggest a song and everyone else just seems to know it, or they'll be able to improvise along if they just know what key it's in. And they switch off instruments if someone wants to go grab a coffee. I spose I might teach myself certain basic things that I've neglected in my overspecialization on fingerstyle blues. I really love music, and I find that playing in a group of musicians is one of the greatest feelings in the world, if you can credibly keep up with them. It makes me wish I had just a little bit more than the meager talent I have. I think one thing I oughta do when I get to doing local work is to take guitar lessons, preferably with groups of people, to broaden my experience and help with my motivation.
Nother thing I could complain about is that lately I have trouble sleeping more than about five hours or so at night. I disintegrate around ten or eleven after a day like today, but then I wake up at about 330 am and I can't get back to sleep, and I totally hate it. On the other hand though when I'm real tired from unloading a truck I can sleep more, so whatever.
Hope all are well.
Reporting tonight from Inwood NY. I delivered a load here today, and it wasn't all that great a day. Not exactly terrible, but not great. There were three people assisting me to unload the trailer but they were perhaps the slowest lollygagging jackoffs I've delivered to yet. It took ten hours to unload the truck but with that much help it really only shold take about half that long. I'm still parked in their parking lot, fortunately I didn't really have anywhere to go to until tomorrow.
Also the trailer was filthy inside and the person(s) who loaded it did a pretty shitty job, they put all of the stuff that won't roll down the rollers way up at the front of the trailer.
Whatever. It doesn't seem that my complaining makes for readable blogs, judging by the lack of comments on my last one.
Couple of nights ago I sat in a very little bit with some musicians who were playing in a coffee shop up in northampton. I am really impressed with the musical talent of various of randoms who play places like that. One person will suggest a song and everyone else just seems to know it, or they'll be able to improvise along if they just know what key it's in. And they switch off instruments if someone wants to go grab a coffee. I spose I might teach myself certain basic things that I've neglected in my overspecialization on fingerstyle blues. I really love music, and I find that playing in a group of musicians is one of the greatest feelings in the world, if you can credibly keep up with them. It makes me wish I had just a little bit more than the meager talent I have. I think one thing I oughta do when I get to doing local work is to take guitar lessons, preferably with groups of people, to broaden my experience and help with my motivation.
Nother thing I could complain about is that lately I have trouble sleeping more than about five hours or so at night. I disintegrate around ten or eleven after a day like today, but then I wake up at about 330 am and I can't get back to sleep, and I totally hate it. On the other hand though when I'm real tired from unloading a truck I can sleep more, so whatever.
Hope all are well.
Hey there
I'm feeling a kind of deep in the bones frustration right now. I just put a couple of hours into doing up an online application for Coca Cola and I hit a wrong key and lost a lot of work. Job applications are one of the things that I hate most in this world. All of the questions and questions and questions looking into my very soul. Wanting ridiculously dietailed information that totally doensn't even fucking matter. I fucking hate the humorless prying accountants of personality who design and implement these things, and who interview you when you show up in person. I fucking hate work and employers and I hate that they try so hard to discover that about me. I hate that they want such detailed information about exactly where and when and who and what I've done. Fuck you employers with your fucking questions and fucking references and explanations and phone numbers and dates of hire and invalid entries fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU.
Even though I HAVE a job, applying for another one still makes my skin crawl. And I've put it off longer than I should.
Also in my habit of second guessing myself to death I'm having doubts about whether to keep the canon camera I bought on sunday. It doesn't have Raw capabilty and it's rather too high in contrast for some of the landscape shots I tried with it. Some of its pics are really beautiful but it has a tendency to clip highights. So in one sense to get the pics I want I should save a few more dollars and get a Sony DSLR to use my maxxum lenses with, and in another sense I should just be shooting large format film to get the high picture quality I'm obsessed with.
I SHOULD just redo the application now, with the proviso of making sure I have all the relevant info at hand when I begin, or maybe I'll just try again tonight.
I'm feeling a kind of deep in the bones frustration right now. I just put a couple of hours into doing up an online application for Coca Cola and I hit a wrong key and lost a lot of work. Job applications are one of the things that I hate most in this world. All of the questions and questions and questions looking into my very soul. Wanting ridiculously dietailed information that totally doensn't even fucking matter. I fucking hate the humorless prying accountants of personality who design and implement these things, and who interview you when you show up in person. I fucking hate work and employers and I hate that they try so hard to discover that about me. I hate that they want such detailed information about exactly where and when and who and what I've done. Fuck you employers with your fucking questions and fucking references and explanations and phone numbers and dates of hire and invalid entries fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU.
Even though I HAVE a job, applying for another one still makes my skin crawl. And I've put it off longer than I should.
Also in my habit of second guessing myself to death I'm having doubts about whether to keep the canon camera I bought on sunday. It doesn't have Raw capabilty and it's rather too high in contrast for some of the landscape shots I tried with it. Some of its pics are really beautiful but it has a tendency to clip highights. So in one sense to get the pics I want I should save a few more dollars and get a Sony DSLR to use my maxxum lenses with, and in another sense I should just be shooting large format film to get the high picture quality I'm obsessed with.
I SHOULD just redo the application now, with the proviso of making sure I have all the relevant info at hand when I begin, or maybe I'll just try again tonight.
Spose I should update.
Have an actual normal weekend, oddly enough. Pick up a load on monday and deliver in Buffalo on tuesday.
My back is sore as all hell. Don't know if it's from work or maybe from having fallen asleep in a bad position on the couch this afternoon.
Presently I'm feeling pretty close to picking up a new digital camera. One with a longer zoom, better macro and shorter shutter lag time than my present one. Kind of tossed up between the canon s3is and a fuji 7mp camera. the fuji is a lot cheaper but the zoom is slightly shorter. The fuji has a filter threaded front so I can use a polarizer and other filters on it. I know that I have way too much material shit but the digital camera I bought a couple summers ago is one of my most used posessions. I've been hoping all year to save for a new camera and I've been really frustrated up to now that trucking has never paid well enough for me to get one.
The Nana dustup made me feel pretty bad. I dislike censorship but Nana herself did not handle the situation gracefully. Albertine handled it much better. I didn't see the set myself or read any of her journals so I can only opine based on what other people have said, which is not a great thing to be doing.
A while ago the Valley Advocate, a local freebie paper here in western mass, changed sex advice columns from Ask Isadora to Savage Love, by columnist Dan Savage. Savage love was a lot more graphic and rougher edged than Ask Isadora. I don't know if I ever loved it but finally one day one of the letters started out "I am a black male who enjoys drinking the urine of other black males." And that was it for me, I did not get pleasure or amusement out of reading such things as that and I never read Savage Love ever again. Eventually savage love was dropped and ask Isadora came back. So I guess it's just the way things are, that not everyone has the same taste. It would be unworkable for SG to try to be to everyone's taste, and they have to have some standards as to what a reasonable number of people are going to like to see, simply so that they can have some membership so that the site can exist. It's not a great position to take from a philosophical standpoint, but philosophical absolutes aren't always viable in the material world.
Earlier this week I rented Gangs of New York. One of my favorite films; first movie I've rented in a long time. I wonder how well it did at the box office. Bill "the Butcher" Cutting, played by Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the all time great screen villains, imho. I think it's a pretty important film, actually, it's about the rough time the irish immigrants had in the nineteenth century confronting "native" americans who did not want them here, and about realities of daily life and politics in NYC around the time of the civil war.
Noone ever seems to like movies or books that I recommend, so I don't recommend it. But it's the sort of movie that really changes the way I see the ordinary things around me, and how I see american history.
Well, I hope everybody's doing all right. Take care.
JBL
Have an actual normal weekend, oddly enough. Pick up a load on monday and deliver in Buffalo on tuesday.
My back is sore as all hell. Don't know if it's from work or maybe from having fallen asleep in a bad position on the couch this afternoon.
Presently I'm feeling pretty close to picking up a new digital camera. One with a longer zoom, better macro and shorter shutter lag time than my present one. Kind of tossed up between the canon s3is and a fuji 7mp camera. the fuji is a lot cheaper but the zoom is slightly shorter. The fuji has a filter threaded front so I can use a polarizer and other filters on it. I know that I have way too much material shit but the digital camera I bought a couple summers ago is one of my most used posessions. I've been hoping all year to save for a new camera and I've been really frustrated up to now that trucking has never paid well enough for me to get one.
The Nana dustup made me feel pretty bad. I dislike censorship but Nana herself did not handle the situation gracefully. Albertine handled it much better. I didn't see the set myself or read any of her journals so I can only opine based on what other people have said, which is not a great thing to be doing.
A while ago the Valley Advocate, a local freebie paper here in western mass, changed sex advice columns from Ask Isadora to Savage Love, by columnist Dan Savage. Savage love was a lot more graphic and rougher edged than Ask Isadora. I don't know if I ever loved it but finally one day one of the letters started out "I am a black male who enjoys drinking the urine of other black males." And that was it for me, I did not get pleasure or amusement out of reading such things as that and I never read Savage Love ever again. Eventually savage love was dropped and ask Isadora came back. So I guess it's just the way things are, that not everyone has the same taste. It would be unworkable for SG to try to be to everyone's taste, and they have to have some standards as to what a reasonable number of people are going to like to see, simply so that they can have some membership so that the site can exist. It's not a great position to take from a philosophical standpoint, but philosophical absolutes aren't always viable in the material world.
Earlier this week I rented Gangs of New York. One of my favorite films; first movie I've rented in a long time. I wonder how well it did at the box office. Bill "the Butcher" Cutting, played by Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the all time great screen villains, imho. I think it's a pretty important film, actually, it's about the rough time the irish immigrants had in the nineteenth century confronting "native" americans who did not want them here, and about realities of daily life and politics in NYC around the time of the civil war.
Noone ever seems to like movies or books that I recommend, so I don't recommend it. But it's the sort of movie that really changes the way I see the ordinary things around me, and how I see american history.
Well, I hope everybody's doing all right. Take care.
JBL
Hey folks
I got a day off today but unfortunately a bit of a virus decided to join me. Probably still will be with me tomorrow when I have to get up and head off to work again. I'm also pretty vexed at how badly my wireless connection is performing again. I wasted maybe 45 minutes down at the holyone barnes and noble trying to get connected, earlier this afternoon. So I came up to northampton, my basic habit I guess, and I'm using the wifi they have at the haymarket cafe. Lately I seem to be having pretty good luck meeting up with people I know up hereabouts. There's one fellow I've seen around that I know but I'm not sure if he knows me, his name is eric and he was one of my former girlfriend Erica's old boyfriends before me. I don't really know if he knows that erica was killed in the auto accident, though I would imagine that would have heard. I guess I'd like to talk to him but I don't really know him beyond who he is.
But opportunity knocked this afternoon, my brother called me up and told me his boss wants to talk to me. Coke bought that vitamin water company which will increase their volume of business; as my brother says movement is afoot. According to him I wouldn't be driving right away though, I would be doing merchandising.
Nother thing which vexes me is that I'm now about twice as old as some of the college students I'm seeing around here. Heartbreakingly beautiful girl I saw in a mexican restaurant made me all to conscious of that. Maybe I'm a perv or something for finding a girl half my age "heartbreakingly beautiful" but that's literally what I thought, so maybe my mental age is not as geriatric as my physical age. One thing about getting older is that at least as it seems to me, you appreciate the beauty of a lot more women that you did once upon a time, when what your sexual mind fancied was nothing more than what the mass media had told you to.
Don't much wanna go to work tomorrow; It's cold out for the first time in a while and I shall have to be out earlyish to get out to Rome and back to Cambridge. Whatever. Never gonna love work.
I wrote about it a while ago, but playing chess against my computer the other day I again realized that I have no notion of how to attack, no impulse to do so. I cannot overstate how huge a handicap this is in life. Without that impulse it's like nothing about you is really real, you don't do the things you think about doing, and talk about. You're a map but not a journey. I have been fighting against this tendency, however unimpressively.
Well, take care everyone.
I got a day off today but unfortunately a bit of a virus decided to join me. Probably still will be with me tomorrow when I have to get up and head off to work again. I'm also pretty vexed at how badly my wireless connection is performing again. I wasted maybe 45 minutes down at the holyone barnes and noble trying to get connected, earlier this afternoon. So I came up to northampton, my basic habit I guess, and I'm using the wifi they have at the haymarket cafe. Lately I seem to be having pretty good luck meeting up with people I know up hereabouts. There's one fellow I've seen around that I know but I'm not sure if he knows me, his name is eric and he was one of my former girlfriend Erica's old boyfriends before me. I don't really know if he knows that erica was killed in the auto accident, though I would imagine that would have heard. I guess I'd like to talk to him but I don't really know him beyond who he is.
But opportunity knocked this afternoon, my brother called me up and told me his boss wants to talk to me. Coke bought that vitamin water company which will increase their volume of business; as my brother says movement is afoot. According to him I wouldn't be driving right away though, I would be doing merchandising.
Nother thing which vexes me is that I'm now about twice as old as some of the college students I'm seeing around here. Heartbreakingly beautiful girl I saw in a mexican restaurant made me all to conscious of that. Maybe I'm a perv or something for finding a girl half my age "heartbreakingly beautiful" but that's literally what I thought, so maybe my mental age is not as geriatric as my physical age. One thing about getting older is that at least as it seems to me, you appreciate the beauty of a lot more women that you did once upon a time, when what your sexual mind fancied was nothing more than what the mass media had told you to.
Don't much wanna go to work tomorrow; It's cold out for the first time in a while and I shall have to be out earlyish to get out to Rome and back to Cambridge. Whatever. Never gonna love work.
I wrote about it a while ago, but playing chess against my computer the other day I again realized that I have no notion of how to attack, no impulse to do so. I cannot overstate how huge a handicap this is in life. Without that impulse it's like nothing about you is really real, you don't do the things you think about doing, and talk about. You're a map but not a journey. I have been fighting against this tendency, however unimpressively.
Well, take care everyone.
I've scored a bit of a long weekend due to a snafu at work where a fire marshall closed the store I'm delivering to until monday, and I elected to sit on the load rather than drive all the way back to the DC and get a different one.
As you can see I've undulged my habit of poking around old graveyards. I brought out my old Speed Graphic 4x5 and took a couple of shots with that as well. I tend to wait so long between shoots of film that I don't know if my chemicals will still be any good so first I shall test them on a picture I'm pretty sure is screwed up anyway. But it's high time I got my butt in gear with the serious photography.
I swung by the rents' house when the shooting light was past, found both my brothers home as well. My younger brother rick told me that Coke has bought a vitamin water company and that this will result in a lot more work for their drivers. Which could be good for me, maybe get me a job there sooner than I had reckoned likely.
Thought I'd a bit more to write about. I guess I could edit and add if I think of anything.
Evening folks.
Presently I'm at a McD's in Buffalo NY. Been in better and worse moods. I'm close enough to downtown that I spose I could head into town on my bike if I wanted, and it's unseasonably warm; but this is a bit of a dodgy neighborhood and I'm just parked in a parking lot, not a truck stop and I'm not entirely sure of the security of my truck. I could carry my laptop with me or lock it in one of my cargo bays I suppose.
I broke down and got myself a garmin GPS system because they're all but indispensable for this job. On the first day that I did this job by myself, I had two very easy stops to find and get into, and the last was a nightmare. I got to Poughkeepsie NY in plenty of time for my appt. But let's start before that. Finished last stop, called ahead to next stop to verify directions. Guy on other end did not sound very promising intelligencewise so I requested direxions through my satellite communication system. I thought those were suspect, and in fact they put me into a different town several miles away from where my stop was supposed to be. So I fell back on the ones printed on my bill of lading and they were all right as far as they got me, but then the last street I needed failed to appear. So i called my dispatcher in the hopes he would have the directions that ran over allocated space in my BOL, but he just got me into a conference call with the idiots at the store I was trying to find.
Store is on Hooker ave.
Me asking store idiot : " if i'm on main st, will hooker be a left or a right?"
idiot: -pause- "it's a left"
Me: when I get on main st from off of route 44, is it any particular distance down Main st? ( i had already been down main and not found it) half a mile, a mile, two miles?"
Idiot: -pause- "No."
Actually this conversation was before and not after I went up main and down church st looking for hooker ave.
So after I fruitlessly drove down main, and asked a crossing guard if he knew where hooker was, and he
said it was back uptown, he told me how to circle back uptown, whereupon i again did not find it, and found myself driving down a minor highway where I stopped in a grocery store parking lot and tried the store again.
This time I got a person with a brain, It is interesting how different someone with a functioning brain sounds on the phone; they have clearer and more pointed voices, and they don't have that pause while trying trying to focus a thought of the murk of their dim dim minds. The nonidiot included the important transitional street of south grand ave, which is the left off of main; Hooker runs parallel to main, and until that last phone call not one person had been able to tell me that I had to turn on south grand ave.
So when I got there I was late and massively stressed out, and the store has a small parking lot that I had to blindside into from where I was. The manager who came out told me that other truck drivers turned around a couple blocks ahead somewhere. I went ahead to try and find that place but no obvious place appeared and when I was nearing the river I had to try and turn so I did, all the while going through residential neighborhoods with lots of low trees that were beating the shit out of my trailer as I was driving through.
Finally got there, got truck unloaded, didn't know how the hell to get back to the highway. A woman in the store told me go two lights and turn left, but that didn't appear to be right, so I kept going and went on to a main road, and by good fortune got back onto a road I knew, got to the highway and ran flat out to a truck stop, just making it by the skin of my teeth before running over hours.
Incidentally, I can tell you, having been in an auto accident a few years ago where I got hit by a truck, that unloading severral tons of freight by hand from a truck has about the same effect on your body, only slower.
So tonight whe I got here I was a little stressed out as exit 13 does not exist heading south on 190 and I had to be a smartass and try going south cuz it looked easier and more straightforward than going north. Buffalo is a vastly easier city to fuck around in than Poughkeepsie, if you get lost. So I got here, and kind of debated what to do before hitting my bunk and drowsing for a while. From both physical and mental stress and some unwillingness to leave my truck unattended with my comp on it, or ride around with my comp on my back. Whatever, I spose I'll get used to it, or maybe not. These neighborhoods will often not be as secure as truck stops and that will never be totally ok I don't think. I'm thinking about bringing my nice SIG 220 along with me but I would have to carry it all the time, I couldn't leave it on the truck, and it's pretty big and people would likely notice, if I didn't wear a jacket all the time while unloading the truck. Which is a sweat intensive activity. Might also be a problem if I get pulled over for a DOT inspection.
So whatever. I really need to open up that Garmin box and get my gps system going, or at least do yahoo maps on this comp this evening, which I was going to do here in the restaurant but I forgot to bring the addresses in with me.
Werner is a lot like a kid you're driving around with who keeps demanding "are we there yet?", always wanting you to update your eta, not happy with you just being there on time. They have one hundred millon dollars cash reserve in the bank but they won't buy me a set of rollers that aren't half destroyed. I dislike them. Resent them.
There are things I could do to make my life easier, I could do more computer mapping to examine where I'm headed, and I could look harder for other work opportunities.
My last load was to Ipswich mass, north of boston. I had a hell of a time getting there, missed my turn and had a hell of a time figuring our where I was and turning around, but once I got there ipswich itself was beautiful sort of new england town. Streets were laid down about 300 years before anyone got the idea of trying to drive 75 foot long trucks down them, but at least the parking lot was big enough. I actually had to park the truck at a train station parking lot that was on the street I was looking for and get out and walk around town to find the store and its parking lot.
Well, here's hoping the GPS will save me some trouble and hoping noone will steal it out of my truck, knock on particle board with plastic verneer.
Love and kisses to all, I hope you're all finding your fortunes.
JBL
Presently I'm at a McD's in Buffalo NY. Been in better and worse moods. I'm close enough to downtown that I spose I could head into town on my bike if I wanted, and it's unseasonably warm; but this is a bit of a dodgy neighborhood and I'm just parked in a parking lot, not a truck stop and I'm not entirely sure of the security of my truck. I could carry my laptop with me or lock it in one of my cargo bays I suppose.
I broke down and got myself a garmin GPS system because they're all but indispensable for this job. On the first day that I did this job by myself, I had two very easy stops to find and get into, and the last was a nightmare. I got to Poughkeepsie NY in plenty of time for my appt. But let's start before that. Finished last stop, called ahead to next stop to verify directions. Guy on other end did not sound very promising intelligencewise so I requested direxions through my satellite communication system. I thought those were suspect, and in fact they put me into a different town several miles away from where my stop was supposed to be. So I fell back on the ones printed on my bill of lading and they were all right as far as they got me, but then the last street I needed failed to appear. So i called my dispatcher in the hopes he would have the directions that ran over allocated space in my BOL, but he just got me into a conference call with the idiots at the store I was trying to find.
Store is on Hooker ave.
Me asking store idiot : " if i'm on main st, will hooker be a left or a right?"
idiot: -pause- "it's a left"
Me: when I get on main st from off of route 44, is it any particular distance down Main st? ( i had already been down main and not found it) half a mile, a mile, two miles?"
Idiot: -pause- "No."
Actually this conversation was before and not after I went up main and down church st looking for hooker ave.
So after I fruitlessly drove down main, and asked a crossing guard if he knew where hooker was, and he
said it was back uptown, he told me how to circle back uptown, whereupon i again did not find it, and found myself driving down a minor highway where I stopped in a grocery store parking lot and tried the store again.
This time I got a person with a brain, It is interesting how different someone with a functioning brain sounds on the phone; they have clearer and more pointed voices, and they don't have that pause while trying trying to focus a thought of the murk of their dim dim minds. The nonidiot included the important transitional street of south grand ave, which is the left off of main; Hooker runs parallel to main, and until that last phone call not one person had been able to tell me that I had to turn on south grand ave.
So when I got there I was late and massively stressed out, and the store has a small parking lot that I had to blindside into from where I was. The manager who came out told me that other truck drivers turned around a couple blocks ahead somewhere. I went ahead to try and find that place but no obvious place appeared and when I was nearing the river I had to try and turn so I did, all the while going through residential neighborhoods with lots of low trees that were beating the shit out of my trailer as I was driving through.
Finally got there, got truck unloaded, didn't know how the hell to get back to the highway. A woman in the store told me go two lights and turn left, but that didn't appear to be right, so I kept going and went on to a main road, and by good fortune got back onto a road I knew, got to the highway and ran flat out to a truck stop, just making it by the skin of my teeth before running over hours.
Incidentally, I can tell you, having been in an auto accident a few years ago where I got hit by a truck, that unloading severral tons of freight by hand from a truck has about the same effect on your body, only slower.
So tonight whe I got here I was a little stressed out as exit 13 does not exist heading south on 190 and I had to be a smartass and try going south cuz it looked easier and more straightforward than going north. Buffalo is a vastly easier city to fuck around in than Poughkeepsie, if you get lost. So I got here, and kind of debated what to do before hitting my bunk and drowsing for a while. From both physical and mental stress and some unwillingness to leave my truck unattended with my comp on it, or ride around with my comp on my back. Whatever, I spose I'll get used to it, or maybe not. These neighborhoods will often not be as secure as truck stops and that will never be totally ok I don't think. I'm thinking about bringing my nice SIG 220 along with me but I would have to carry it all the time, I couldn't leave it on the truck, and it's pretty big and people would likely notice, if I didn't wear a jacket all the time while unloading the truck. Which is a sweat intensive activity. Might also be a problem if I get pulled over for a DOT inspection.
So whatever. I really need to open up that Garmin box and get my gps system going, or at least do yahoo maps on this comp this evening, which I was going to do here in the restaurant but I forgot to bring the addresses in with me.
Werner is a lot like a kid you're driving around with who keeps demanding "are we there yet?", always wanting you to update your eta, not happy with you just being there on time. They have one hundred millon dollars cash reserve in the bank but they won't buy me a set of rollers that aren't half destroyed. I dislike them. Resent them.
There are things I could do to make my life easier, I could do more computer mapping to examine where I'm headed, and I could look harder for other work opportunities.
My last load was to Ipswich mass, north of boston. I had a hell of a time getting there, missed my turn and had a hell of a time figuring our where I was and turning around, but once I got there ipswich itself was beautiful sort of new england town. Streets were laid down about 300 years before anyone got the idea of trying to drive 75 foot long trucks down them, but at least the parking lot was big enough. I actually had to park the truck at a train station parking lot that was on the street I was looking for and get out and walk around town to find the store and its parking lot.
Well, here's hoping the GPS will save me some trouble and hoping noone will steal it out of my truck, knock on particle board with plastic verneer.
Love and kisses to all, I hope you're all finding your fortunes.
JBL
