This post has been a while in the oven, and true to the metaphor it took too long for I'm helpless in the kitchen. My friend's been pushing me to get back to writing from the heart, and a couple of days ago I stumbled upon an article about Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors and a full-fledged SciFi god, and found out he lives with dementia. You don't get too many excuses with that in the back of your head. Tis the season to be jolly and all that falalalala.
I got a little confession to make, I ran away from an injection last night. And no, I don't mean it metaphorically where I got all giddy then tightened that upper lip and took it like an adult homosapien, I mean I bounded across the room and threatened to bite then got bribed into it with candy, and it wasn't even legit candy, it was sad millennial candy that took the form of a diet pack of biscuits and a light beer. I got another little confession to make, I am 21 years old. Growing up sucks, it does, and I'm starting to think all those other people who look like they've got it together are undercover CIA operatives, or a race of clones that have always been that old.
And what the hell is up with nurses? Angels of mercy my sorry ass (quite literally, my ass is sorry), they descend on you like demon monkeys and pin you down to the nearest bed then poke at you with such zeal, an inter-dimensional observer might mistake them for banshees. When did they get so vicious? This is not the rant of someone who's merely butthurt, my dear readers, I'll have to take one of those every night this week and right now it feels like I was shot in the ass with a fire-thrower, and it's bad enough that the stupid shot I'm taking has to be mixed with anesthesia because even the pharma overlords admit it's napalm goo. I've come to fear the daily shot as pathetically as Barney Stinson once feared his slapsgiving quota, for pretty much the same reasons.
And much like the repercussions of Barney's one-time bet, all I can do is wait for an impending giant Marshall-sized hand every night in horror, which has made my plots to kill the nurse more creative by the minute. I've pledged to cut the harridan's butt, stick it on her face and gouge out her eyeballs with ginormous needles. I've taken an oath to turn her intestines into hospital chow. She ain't getting no hannibal gourmet treatment, nu-uh, slimy backdoor cuisine she was and slimy backdoor cuisine she will be. I've sworn that by the time I was done with the waif, she'd wish she were nearly headless Nick as she haunted the halls of the cafeteria. I could go on, but it sounds less friendly and a lot more personal as I go along and the TV show references dwindle. Do nurses sleep? (Read: Can nurses be killed in their sleep?) Stay tuned.
However, just when I thought that this growing up thing doesn't quite run up my alley, I turned down a paid internship at a call center for an unpaid internship at a feminist organization. It was one of those light bulb moments, when you tune out the lady on the phone and weigh your options amidst the all-singing all-dancing pots of noodles that'll make up most of your meals from now on, past the fields of paperwork where you picture yourself running errands dressed up as a German maid, up the have you lost your bubble gum drops creak and into the screaming goblins in patchy little suits dancing around your social life. It lasted for a couple of seconds and then I informed a surprised lady the CV in my outbox is heading at the back of another white collar's head. I'm doing it clean-for-Gene style, changing the system from within the system.
Which brings me to another little rant that's been giving my Adam's apple a run for its mortgage claim, that internship at the call center was sent on our university e-mails, and I got a call from their HR department without actually applying for the position. I seem to be the only student who thinks this wonderful opportunity is downright preposterous, and here's why: For a stuck up private university that manages to flush down the life-savings of thousands of middle-aged blokes every year, you'd think they'd get us a better chance in the big bad world than a call center, don't you think? They're begging for people to work there, that job is at the bottom of the food chain, taking in people out for a quick buck only to have them run out at the first taste of a fat paycheck. I get it, it's an entry level job that a dimwit could do, it inks the first blot on many blank CVs, it channels students into the unquenchable monster that is the call center business and nobody minds a little extra money in the summer and a good excuse to stay out of the typically miserable middle-eastern house on a 9-5 basis. It's win-win situation for all those involved, but honestly, you'd think they'd have it in them to set up a couple of internships at some decent start-up corporations with that big-ass name it pounds on the educational scene, or NGOs even, but nooo. Why should they use their contacts to start up their own students? What's worse, the kids are excited about it. They all got sparkles in their eyes when they opened that e-mail, they all eagerly applied and signed off three months of their precious summers into a contract that'll have them say 'Hello, how may I help you?' so many times, they'll forget they never learned how to help them in the first place. Stellar service.
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It's shit like this that gets me wondering how it was that dogs never got disillusioned about human nature if they've got good instincts. Dogs can tell if a person means malice. They're irreplaceable on drug busts, they dig up bodies and can find their way back home from miles away. Hell, dogs can smell cancer, google it. Yet, somehow, they still think we're dope.
Some things never change. Humans are on the top of that list. The fact that humans confuse me is a close second, and it regularly roundhouse kicks the former and sits cross-legged in first place when they change sometimes, or make you think they did, only to have you find out much later that they never did, but you keep it in first place nonetheless because in a convoluted way that proved its claim.
Case in point: the government recently gave a statement that the clock is to be set forward an hour for daylight savings for a month, then set back in Ramadan to ease the fasting, then set forward an hour again for the aforementioned reason. That conveniently confused people for a couple of days, especially that it was released on a Thursday night. The funniest to behold was Saturday morning. Dad and I were sipping coffee at the window as we watched a bunch of freshmen realize a little too late that they've missed the university shuttle bus. First they patiently waited for 30 minutes, doubting themselves a thousand times and making a dozen calls to mommy and daddy to update them about their Geo-locations. Then they spent 15 minutes furtively looking at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move, checking if they're the only idiots around or somebody else did something wrong so that they could march saint-like into doom with the comfort of not having fucked up alone. Then there was a lot of walking around and running up and down the streets like headless chickens as a couple of initiative souls scouted the streets for any sign of a magical orange school bus. Then came the sedan procession; and it was the same scenario with every poor kid, the parents would show up, seem to be yelling at their kids who in turn seem to be defending themselves that "they just didn't know but that's okay because look at all the other people who didn't know too!", parents would scowl and look around the street in superman poses then lead the freshmeat back to the car by the back of the neck and drive off into the bus route.
Dad and I don't remember laughing so hard in a good while. The only creature in the vicinity that wasn't thrown off balance by the government change of the people's sense of time - sounds omnipotent when put that way - is our neighborhood 5:20 morning songbird. I've mentioned him in older posts, but I'll write about him again all the same. Dad noticed him first, being the hopeless romantic that he is and always has been. Every day at 5:20 am, this songbird, who always stands on the same branch, would always wake up before all the rest, and would always wake up all the other birds. He became an inside joke to dad and I, since we're both diligent night owls, but not in the sense of a conventional inside joke, but rather about how he draws a smile on our faces every morning in the same way one would smile at an unanticipated act of kindness by an asshole or at a rude joke quipped by a child at the expense of a great injustice. We'd always wonder if that bird knew how important he was, we'd always think what would happen when that bird eventually dies, and we'd always get into an argument about how maybe every bird is different the same way every human is different and that other life-forms aren't necessarily lesser than mankind and how maybe it's not all down to genetics after all, which would always get us talking about how maybe life forms exist that we don't understand and we'd trail off until dawn breaks and the songbird's tune gets drowned out now that he's successfully bugged all of the others out of their carefree slumber.
Now here's the punchline: That songbird now wakes up at 4:20, to the second. Knowing that, I'll bet an arm and a leg that having a face now makes your face flush.
I got a little confession to make, I ran away from an injection last night. And no, I don't mean it metaphorically where I got all giddy then tightened that upper lip and took it like an adult homosapien, I mean I bounded across the room and threatened to bite then got bribed into it with candy, and it wasn't even legit candy, it was sad millennial candy that took the form of a diet pack of biscuits and a light beer. I got another little confession to make, I am 21 years old. Growing up sucks, it does, and I'm starting to think all those other people who look like they've got it together are undercover CIA operatives, or a race of clones that have always been that old.
And what the hell is up with nurses? Angels of mercy my sorry ass (quite literally, my ass is sorry), they descend on you like demon monkeys and pin you down to the nearest bed then poke at you with such zeal, an inter-dimensional observer might mistake them for banshees. When did they get so vicious? This is not the rant of someone who's merely butthurt, my dear readers, I'll have to take one of those every night this week and right now it feels like I was shot in the ass with a fire-thrower, and it's bad enough that the stupid shot I'm taking has to be mixed with anesthesia because even the pharma overlords admit it's napalm goo. I've come to fear the daily shot as pathetically as Barney Stinson once feared his slapsgiving quota, for pretty much the same reasons.
And much like the repercussions of Barney's one-time bet, all I can do is wait for an impending giant Marshall-sized hand every night in horror, which has made my plots to kill the nurse more creative by the minute. I've pledged to cut the harridan's butt, stick it on her face and gouge out her eyeballs with ginormous needles. I've taken an oath to turn her intestines into hospital chow. She ain't getting no hannibal gourmet treatment, nu-uh, slimy backdoor cuisine she was and slimy backdoor cuisine she will be. I've sworn that by the time I was done with the waif, she'd wish she were nearly headless Nick as she haunted the halls of the cafeteria. I could go on, but it sounds less friendly and a lot more personal as I go along and the TV show references dwindle. Do nurses sleep? (Read: Can nurses be killed in their sleep?) Stay tuned.
However, just when I thought that this growing up thing doesn't quite run up my alley, I turned down a paid internship at a call center for an unpaid internship at a feminist organization. It was one of those light bulb moments, when you tune out the lady on the phone and weigh your options amidst the all-singing all-dancing pots of noodles that'll make up most of your meals from now on, past the fields of paperwork where you picture yourself running errands dressed up as a German maid, up the have you lost your bubble gum drops creak and into the screaming goblins in patchy little suits dancing around your social life. It lasted for a couple of seconds and then I informed a surprised lady the CV in my outbox is heading at the back of another white collar's head. I'm doing it clean-for-Gene style, changing the system from within the system.
Which brings me to another little rant that's been giving my Adam's apple a run for its mortgage claim, that internship at the call center was sent on our university e-mails, and I got a call from their HR department without actually applying for the position. I seem to be the only student who thinks this wonderful opportunity is downright preposterous, and here's why: For a stuck up private university that manages to flush down the life-savings of thousands of middle-aged blokes every year, you'd think they'd get us a better chance in the big bad world than a call center, don't you think? They're begging for people to work there, that job is at the bottom of the food chain, taking in people out for a quick buck only to have them run out at the first taste of a fat paycheck. I get it, it's an entry level job that a dimwit could do, it inks the first blot on many blank CVs, it channels students into the unquenchable monster that is the call center business and nobody minds a little extra money in the summer and a good excuse to stay out of the typically miserable middle-eastern house on a 9-5 basis. It's win-win situation for all those involved, but honestly, you'd think they'd have it in them to set up a couple of internships at some decent start-up corporations with that big-ass name it pounds on the educational scene, or NGOs even, but nooo. Why should they use their contacts to start up their own students? What's worse, the kids are excited about it. They all got sparkles in their eyes when they opened that e-mail, they all eagerly applied and signed off three months of their precious summers into a contract that'll have them say 'Hello, how may I help you?' so many times, they'll forget they never learned how to help them in the first place. Stellar service.
It's shit like this that gets me wondering how it was that dogs never got disillusioned about human nature if they've got good instincts. Dogs can tell if a person means malice. They're irreplaceable on drug busts, they dig up bodies and can find their way back home from miles away. Hell, dogs can smell cancer, google it. Yet, somehow, they still think we're dope.
Some things never change. Humans are on the top of that list. The fact that humans confuse me is a close second, and it regularly roundhouse kicks the former and sits cross-legged in first place when they change sometimes, or make you think they did, only to have you find out much later that they never did, but you keep it in first place nonetheless because in a convoluted way that proved its claim.
Case in point: the government recently gave a statement that the clock is to be set forward an hour for daylight savings for a month, then set back in Ramadan to ease the fasting, then set forward an hour again for the aforementioned reason. That conveniently confused people for a couple of days, especially that it was released on a Thursday night. The funniest to behold was Saturday morning. Dad and I were sipping coffee at the window as we watched a bunch of freshmen realize a little too late that they've missed the university shuttle bus. First they patiently waited for 30 minutes, doubting themselves a thousand times and making a dozen calls to mommy and daddy to update them about their Geo-locations. Then they spent 15 minutes furtively looking at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move, checking if they're the only idiots around or somebody else did something wrong so that they could march saint-like into doom with the comfort of not having fucked up alone. Then there was a lot of walking around and running up and down the streets like headless chickens as a couple of initiative souls scouted the streets for any sign of a magical orange school bus. Then came the sedan procession; and it was the same scenario with every poor kid, the parents would show up, seem to be yelling at their kids who in turn seem to be defending themselves that "they just didn't know but that's okay because look at all the other people who didn't know too!", parents would scowl and look around the street in superman poses then lead the freshmeat back to the car by the back of the neck and drive off into the bus route.
Dad and I don't remember laughing so hard in a good while. The only creature in the vicinity that wasn't thrown off balance by the government change of the people's sense of time - sounds omnipotent when put that way - is our neighborhood 5:20 morning songbird. I've mentioned him in older posts, but I'll write about him again all the same. Dad noticed him first, being the hopeless romantic that he is and always has been. Every day at 5:20 am, this songbird, who always stands on the same branch, would always wake up before all the rest, and would always wake up all the other birds. He became an inside joke to dad and I, since we're both diligent night owls, but not in the sense of a conventional inside joke, but rather about how he draws a smile on our faces every morning in the same way one would smile at an unanticipated act of kindness by an asshole or at a rude joke quipped by a child at the expense of a great injustice. We'd always wonder if that bird knew how important he was, we'd always think what would happen when that bird eventually dies, and we'd always get into an argument about how maybe every bird is different the same way every human is different and that other life-forms aren't necessarily lesser than mankind and how maybe it's not all down to genetics after all, which would always get us talking about how maybe life forms exist that we don't understand and we'd trail off until dawn breaks and the songbird's tune gets drowned out now that he's successfully bugged all of the others out of their carefree slumber.
Now here's the punchline: That songbird now wakes up at 4:20, to the second. Knowing that, I'll bet an arm and a leg that having a face now makes your face flush.
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