Personal feedback loop

I should discuss this very recent realization: while my subconscious mind is of the most excellent caliber, my conscious mind is absolutely useless. But I'm not going to.

Instead I will state that for the first time since I can remember, I feel as if there is no one that i can look to as being- i don't want to say a role-model or hero, because i've never really consciously (there's that word again) had any- someone or something to aspire to or to learn from. Everyone, to varying degrees, seems to be too mired in their own problems and issues to be of any serious use in helping others with their respective problems and issues. This probably isn't true, but rather is a function of my recent cynicism, coupled with my complete disdain for conventional social behavior. Regardless, that's how I feel at the moment. I suppose to justify my own beliefs in regards to human potential i now have to step up as my own model to which to aspire. I'll be interested to see if i can pull this off, or if it turns out to have an effect similar to that of feedback in a speaker-microphone loop.

I just don't believe in it

I don't recall ever having a headache this bad for this long. Which is not to say it's even that bad; but I don't often get headaches, so any at all are worthy of note. If this is a trend it's a decidely negative one. I might like to think it's growing pains, though i know better, that it's probably more akin to a goldfish growing to the very bounds of it's tank, just before its mass bursts through the glass and it dies for lack of water.


And it's almost september. ::spits on ground::

You know what you are blondie?! Just a dirty son of a [ENNIO MORICONE!!!]

My run as stand-in president of Maurer Welding is coming to an end, hopefully as soon as tommorrow afternoon. Quite pleased it's over, yes yes. But I can't help but feel that i've let my gaurd down long enough for the noose around my neck to tighten a bit more. And there seems to be fewer and fewer compadres on the outside to cut me down.

I don't think i've ever had a title to a post be longer than the post itself, but i'm trying it and i think i'm gonna like it.

I feel like someone made a Garden State sitcom and I'm in it.

And we all go down together

All music is destroyed by listeners.
All writing is destroyed by readers.
All art is destroyed by viewers.

Speech is unique in that it is destroyed before it can reach the tongue.

I don't care if you want me to call it unique. It's WEIRD

It was 117 degrees today. And though I was working outside, I was in Bristol, right by the river, so there was a nice breeze coming in off the water that made it seem like a chilly 105 degrees.

Stan (or possibly Tony, depending on whether you went by the name on his shirt or the name tattooed on his arm), the maintenance man for the funeral home, came out to talk to us. Or to talk near us, more accurately, because he talked about topics of his choosing for as long as he chose and would not address our questions. He was a weird character, for certain. He meant well though. Sort of. I guess. Maybe a little anyway. Toward the end of our brief time together, he spotted a human of the female variety down the street. He put on his glasses to get a better look, a look which informed him that the woman was "our age," he told my colleague and I. Then he recognized her as the tenant of the basement apartment in the building by which we were working (a small apartment building presumably owned by the owner of the adjacent funeral home whose employ we were in). He proceeded to inform us that she lived there alone and needed a husband. I politely ignored his suggestion that i should marry her, despite his kind advice in regards to the art of wooing (which mostly involved wine).

But if anyone needs a talent for voice-over work on a cartoon, commercial, or spoken word album that can pull off a raspy, self-conscious, small-industry town accented voice, I know exactly where to find her.

ability as credential enough: but do all abilities have intrinsic value?

Thus far i have not destroyed the corporate entity who's care has been entrusted to me for the first half of august. I am equal parts proud and ashamed of this: one one hand, go me!, i can kind of run a business; on the other hand, this contitutes a dangerous foray into a system i am quite opposed to. So far I've been able to justify it to myself on the familiar "know your enemy" grounds.

Drop-out/buy-in tensions aside, the experience is reaffirming my belief in the essential, base comic value of humans as a species. The shocking truth about the business community: it is entirely clueless, and hilarity regularly ensues.

But as you can see, sleep is direly needed.

I want more than 5 hours of sleep, more than you know, son, but there's twelve strings and a resonating chamber that are just dying to teach me more about the nuanced interminglings of vibrating alloys and the densely traditional manipulation of organic tissues, developed by way of several millennia of social evolution (evolution in a sense that does not assume a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority that corresponds directly with chronological development; that, sir, would be presumptuous and pretentious).

From Belarus, with love.

Precious Maurer Welding Moments
#359

[jule is in the shop office. enter dude from next door]

dude: That machine in there, (makes weird swooping motion with hand) can you run it?

jule: The plasma cutter? (the plasma cutter is a computer controlled machine used for cutting parts from sheet metal)

dude: Yes, can you run it?

jule: Yeah...

dude: can you make a program?

jule: Yeah...

dude: Good, can you quote a job for me?

jule: Yeah...

dude: Ok, I have a drawing hold on...

[dude leaves, comes back a couple minutes later]

dude: Ok, here, (gives me drawings) can you do that?

jule: Yeah...

dude: Wonderful! Do you know what it is?

jule: No...

dude: It's a machine gun mount.

jule: (looks at drawing) .50 caliber?

dude: Yes. So can you get me a price?

jule: Yeah...

Fin

Epilogue: I'm not sure about this, but i think earlier he said he was on coke. If that is in fact what he said, I'm not shocked.

We are on the verge of a Maurer Welding run by Jule the Third, next in line in the Jule dynasty! Behold! Watch as sleep becomes scarcer than sanity in a US presidential administraton!

Speaking of which, my cousin Jenna, who currently resides in Texas, received the following letter in the mail earlier today:

IMPORTANT NOTICE
FROM
THE GRAPEVINE POLICE DEPARTMENT

On Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005, this area will be under tight security. President George W. Bush will be arriving by helicopter at a landing zone across the street from Fire Station #1. The President will then travel to the Gaylord Texan Resort for a speaking engagement.

The U.S. Secret Service has imposed very strict security measures for the entire area during the presidential arrival, stay, and departure.

The part of the security measures that may concern you is that no one will be allowed to be standing on the apartment patios or even looking out of their windows toward the landing zone. (You wouldn't want to be confused for a sniper trying to harm the President).

Leaving your apartment, home or business and walking or driving toward the landing zone will be strictly prohibited. All of the roads surrounding the landing zone (E Northwest, Dooley, Boyd, Ruth Wall, Dove Loop and Wildwood) will be closed for several hours.

Breaches of these security measures will be taken very seriously.

Our best advice is to leave the area before 9:00 AM and don't return until after 4:00 PM.

The Grapevine Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service ask for your full cooperation to keep President Bush safe.

Jule says: it is mildly heartening that this is the level of security neccessary to keep this guy alive.

Tonight I'm feeling a bit more centrist than usual

It is The Year of Some People's Lord 2005, and what does it matter? Still an immodestly brutal world, no? Yet, we find ways of being bored by our surroundings, and of being distressed with the tiniest of things. The post-industrial economy doesn't produce perspective enough for the lot of us. And a post-3am Jule doesn't produce much of interest to anyone but himself. But rest assured (if you aren't already, at this hour) that he is thoroughly amusing himself. So much so in fact that he is willing to take requests for future post topics. Some of his suggestions are: "social dynamics of mid-to-late-twenty-somethings"; "just how totally fucked is the international geopolitical situation, anyway?"; "The failures of modern western models of 'love' and 'relationships'; and, "What you think you're looking for but can't find because it doesn't exist."

Also, I'm a big fan of being able to so easily
center
text here.
I will probably be abusing this feature a lot.