And here, after much whining and begging, I bring to you a guest entry written by none other than the love of my life, Dirk.
Welcome.
Agent Skatter asked me, Dirk, to make a guest entry for her journal thingy. So first, let me describe myself. I'm a 7 foot 4 inch black man with 3 teeth and 2 butt piercings. I don't know what Agent Skatter has said about me on this journal thingamagiger, but if she's confused you, I'm setting things straight now. So let me tell you about my life (it's really fascinating, trust me).
I'm in a punk rock band called God Says Fuck You. Despite what our ex singer remembers, he didn't name the band. Our first rhythm guitarist, Jason A-, did. We formed in 1995, and have spent at least three of those years on hold due to lack of rehearsal space or full members. The first lineup was Roachboy and Jason A-. Then this guy (I think his name was Chris [ed. note — I think it was Jeremy or something. Anyway, he was a dick.]) played bass, but he got kicked out for beating his girlfriend on a regular basis [ed. note -- sarcasm is used throughout this entry. If you're a little slow, feel free to e-mail me about the parts that confuse you.]. Then I came on board for lead guitar, and we got my neighbor to play drums; but he sucked because he needed a cig break after every song. Then we got Agent Skatter to play bass, and this guy Paul that Roachboy met at college to play drums. Again, Paul was a shitty drummer. Nice guy, just a shitty drummer.
We stayed together for maybe a year or so like that. Then Roachboy and Paul left the band. Paul left ‘cause he was mad I took a stab at Roachboy's girl (Agent Skatter) and Roachboy left ‘cause he wanted to move in with his parents (for some reason I've had this Lou Reed song stuck in my head all day). Anyway, we did shit for about a year and then wrangled my brother, Aaron, to play rhythm guitar. I can't imagine anyone being a better rhythm guitarist than Aaron, and I'm not ass-kissing or anything. He just blows me away with his intensity every time we play...fucking punk rock! Then we got this great guy, Doshu, to sing for us, and the guitarist from my brother's old band, Greg, to lay drums. Now Greg left the band because his dad couldn't stand him being unemployed any longer, so now he works instead of practicing. Of course, Aaron writing the song "I Hate Straight Edge" didn't help his motivation any. Greg is a Straight Edge. And then Doshu just up and left. Fuck. Sometimes I think I'm living with a curse cast on me by Roachboy.
But the news ain't all bad. We just got a new drummer who actually knows how to play, and play well...really well. His name is Joe and the fucker has an 18 piece drum set. He says he likes to use a set that big because on a regular 5 piece there's too many lapses in different tonalities. I guess so, but when we went through "Crosseyed and Painless" last Saturday, he was going on like Keith Moon or something, no shit. He impressed me big time. So now all we need is a fucking singer. Sometimes I get the urge to ask Roachboy to come back; and then I realize....damn, where did the rest of the six pack go?
So that's one half of my life.
Then there's my job — I work at a hardware store, stocking the shelves. Sounds like a shitty job...guess what? It is. It does pay good, really good for the overtime I get, and the company does have one of the best benefits plans in the country. There's people I work with who've been there for about fifteen years who are millionaires. No shit, just from the stock options. Why they keep working, I have no fucking clue.
Here's how my job goes: There's two stocking crews. Team A comes in at 5:30 a.m. and leaves at 2:30. Team B. comes in at 8 and leaves at 5. I'm on team B. There's 4 of us on B, there's 8 people on A. And we (the B team) do twice the work...then we have to put up A team's overstock (shit that won't fit on the shelves go up to the top shelves. Overstock is a bitch, by the way. If you've ever had to carry an air conditioner up a ladder without falling you know what I'm talking about). We have to do their overstock because they unload the truck — except now we have to help them unload the truck— because they basically don't feel like working. But anyway, the people I work with are great. There's this guy on my team, Lester, who's a 45 year- old guy who's balding and has spent a fair amount of time locked up in mental institutions. Lester's also a native New Yorker, so he's a fucking blast, as you can imagine. He runs into french doors with fork lifts and shit, then laughs about it. One time, this guy Terrence was picking on Lester back by the trash compactor. Now, Terrence is this big black guy who works out a lot, and Lester's a 45 year old white guy whos, at best, 5 foot 9. Lester lost it. He took out his cutting knife an said in his joyful laughing voice to Terrence, "I'll take this knife and cut your heart up into little pieces, you motherfucker. Don't believe me? Hold still for a minute." Like I said, Lester's a blast to hang out with. The following Monday Lester punched Terrence right in the fucking chin and he dropped like a rock. Didn't say a word to him, just walked right up to him and knocked him on his ass. Strange thing is, Terrence never said a word about what happened.
Then there's this guy Josh who's 19, 6'2", and must weight 300 pounds, maybe more. He looks like a mix between Dennis the Menace and a bear. He's a really sweet guy who entertains himself by coming up with uncomfortable names for everybody. He calls me Lurch. Whenever he sees me he says in a low voice, "You rang?" That gets irritating after, say, three weeks. But I've nicknamed him Triple B (Big Butt Bot) after the Big Butt Bots in the move The Fifth Element. But he doesn't get it...oh well.
Then there's the toys. Now this may sound odd, but in my opinion you don't know the joy of life until you've driven a fork lift. Those things are cools as shit. The other day I had to stack and organize the back yard of the store. This means stacking old metal shelving. These things are anywhere from 8 to 12 feet long and at least half a foot thick. Each piece must have weighed 50 pounds each....about 30 goes to a stack and I did about 6 stacks. At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, which made it shittier. But the cool thing is flinging those fucking things around on a fork lift. I'd slam the gas, then slam the brakes and watch these heavy-ass stacks go into the air and crash, making this loud "cling!" sound. Cool fucking shit.
Then there's the cherry pickers. A cherry picker is something like a forklift, but you stand up while driving it. Basically, it looks like a big yellow phone booth with forks behind it. The cool thing about them is that you can make the forks go up, and the booth goes up too. That way you can stack things on top of the shelf that's to heavy or big to bring up with a ladder — like, say, a bathtub. The cool thing is the view of the top of a hardware store. You're looking up there, trying not to bump your head into the lights and shit — you can see everybody— and then htere's the knowledge that all you have to do is take one step in a certain direction and....you die.
The star wars is the other toy. It's just like a fork lift, but like the cherry picker, the "cockpit" is like a big yellow telephone booth. Except on the star wars the forks are in front of the machine and just the forks go up. But they also tilt and go forward and back. They call it the star wars because it's controlled by two things: the steering thingy and a joystick. It's hard to drive those things.
The other wonderful thing about my job is doing deliveries. Basically, when a customer comes to the store and buys a refrigerator and doesn't have a car that can hold a fridge, we deliver it. The store has drivers to handle that, but I'm called on about three times a week to go as a helper. At our store, Bill is the driver. He's a big white guy who looks like a Jewish bear. And damn he has the temper of a fucking pit bull.
Last week we were delivering the biggest fridge the store carries into a town house. The front door leads directly to the stairs and into the living room and then into the kitchen. Now this place is a dump. They have one cat, and the whole house smells like cat piss. The people who live there are practically talking to the billions of cockroaches wandering about. The rug is a stained ruin. The kitchen floor tiles are sticky. Basically, a complete and total dump. The store offers this for a ten dollar fee. Anyway, the old fridge is leaking. Not only water, but oil. Motor oil. Plus the top of the fridge is coated with a quarter inch thickness of this bizarre goo. Its texture is sticky, yet oily. Dusty, yet filled with cat fur. And it has also become a cockroach graveyard. And I'm having to shove this leaky filthy fridge up the stairs, embedding my hands in the goo on top of the fridge, while it leaks all over the carpet as we heave it up the stairs. Well, Bill pulls out his back on this little adventure, and blames me. I sprain both my wrists. All this and the guy didn't even give us a tip. So deliveries are the high point of my week, as you can see.
So basically, that's my life at the moment. The rest of my life is in my reading/studies, and I won't get into my studies right now other than saying I'm a big Noam Chomsky fan and the war against microradio in this country is sickening. So, I've been spending some hours at work finding pieces to make pipe bombs that I can use to bomb the FCC and the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters). I was trying to figure out the other day if this would work: remember when you were a kid and you always had some science project when a kid would make a model volcano, and would mix baking soda and vinegar to make the "lava"? Anyway, I was wondering if you took two pipes, attached them both with a ball valve, and put a ball valve on each end, then filled one end with vinegar and the other with baking soda, then opened the middle valved, would the pressure be enough to make the pipe pop? I.E., a pipe bomb? I dunno...pipe valves are a little pricey...oh well.
Last, but not least, there's my life with Agent Skatter. Which I can't really go on too much about right now [ed. note — I was standing behind him, telling him to hurry the hell up]. All I can say is Agent Skatter makes cute little noises when I pinch her butt.
You can e-mail Dirk here. He's got the same blocks on his account as I do, so don't get any funny ideas. Everything here is exactly as he's written it, with only a few grammatical changes added by me so that it flowed a little more smoothly.
