4.10.02

YAAAAAAWWWWWWN. Man, am I tired.

Been a pretty crazy week for me. Took my car in today because it was heating up. Turns out, it wasn’t heating up, apparently. My car has always run at a temp of around 160. Last weekend it was getting up to and over 210. To me, that’s heating up. However, the mechanic said that’s where my engine should be running. So, I don’t know what to think now. It surprises me that my car ran at one temperature for 3 years, but now suddenly I find out it wasn’t running hot enough? Eh…I’m going to keep an eye on this thing for a while.

Other than that, I’ve been trying to get some writing in – mainly poetry for my creative writing class. I hate poetry. Not that I hate poetry, I just don’t enjoy writing it. I don’t feel like I’m very good at it. Although I wrote one a while back that my professor just got around to reading in class (he’s been having health problems, so he’s been absent quite often), and he loved it. He even went so far as to say that I should send it in to see about getting it published somewhere. I dunno. Weird how things work out – the thing you believe you have no talent in might end up being the only thing you’re good at. Go figure.

Looking forward to an interesting weekend, if nothing else. Friday, a buddy of mine has gotten tickets to go watch TV pilots as part of a test audience. After watching an hour of TV, you fill out surveys saying whether or not it was a good show. I love market research like this and have always wanted to be at test screenings for films – TV will be a nice substitute, though. I only pray we aren’t subjected to shows made for younger audiences (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Full House, etc.) That will definitely ruin my evening.

On Saturday I’m going to an stlmustangs.com gathering down in Festus, MO. One of the members lives down there and has invited us all to do some barbequing and socializing out in the country. Car people fascinate me, so spending an entire day around them should be fun. Just something about a person who is willing to put hundreds of dollars into a part that takes hours to install, all so they can get five extra horsepower, is an interesting mindset to me. Best of all are those who will spend thousands on something even less important; for example, the stereo system or adding an LCD screen into their dash so they can watch DVDs. What makes these people tick? How can someone have so much love for an inanimate object? Fascinating.

So this week we had to do a safety training meeting here at work. The topic: Violence in the Workplace. As you might expect, the video we watched mentioned that one possible reason for the rise of such occurrences was an increased amount of violent content on TV, music and in the movies. The tape then went on to show reenactments of a man being stabbed with a screwdriver after fighting with a co-worker; a man who got fired and then waited outside the office with a handgun, ambushing his boss and firing six rounds into his chest; parts of a rape scene where a woman is held down on the floor with a man’s hands around her throat; a fistfight between an angry customer and the employee he confronted about some shoddy auto repair; and another man who, for no said reason, walked into his office and started pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers with an AK-47, killing at least seven people, most of them female. Can you say “irony”, Boys and Girls? And I love how only men are betrayed as being violent while women are seen as victims. Now that I think about it, I believe the purpose of the video was not to educate us on the dangers of workplace violence, but to serve as an educational tool to help us kill more effectively. So basically, I learned that the weapon of choice if you’re going to off your co-workers is an AK-47: not only do you get the maximum amount of firepower and ammunition in reserve, but while you’re firing rounds into the receptionist’s chest, no one anywhere else in the building will hear those gunshots and you can still surprise them while they talk on the phone behind the closed door in their office. God, I hate my job.

Well, Kids, sadly I have to get to bed. I’m pretty wiped out and still need to write another poem or two for class tomorrow. Have I mentioned I hate writing poetry?

Space Monkey X