I thought I'd enter a new world of the human work ethic when I left Logan's for Austal. Truly, I did. I mean, think about it. Food servers vs the people who are entrusted (and highly paid) to build the US Navy's next model of warships. Precision work, there, yah?

What I've learned: Humans are humans, and fucktards are fucktards, and somewhere along the line, America learned the exact OPPOSITE lesson from the one that Japan learned.

Most of us... and I'm happy to say that by "most" I don't mean an OVERWHELMING majority. Just a majority. But yeah, most of us are so fucking LAZY!!! And it seems to stem from this idea that the world OWES us something. We're ENTITLED to absolutely fuck off at work. Like, for the entire workday. While accepting someone's pay to do otherwise.

These fuckers don't feel like thieves! No shit! Neither at Logan's nor at Austal! They seriously don't, as far as I can tell! It's like they haven't done the math or something!

How can I judge them? I've BEEN a thief, from my closest friends and family, and quite recently at that! But dammit, at least I had the common fucking courtesy to know that I was slime. These cats...

So anyway, I did a little social experiment at work today. I simply asked the hard-ass workers AND the slack-ass thieves how they typically voted! And did you know that I came up with a 100% trend? No shit!

The hard-assed workers: Republican

The fucking thieves (except they're not thieves... it's the world's JOB to hand them free money for doing fuck-all): Democrat

There were no exceptions. None.

This struck me as both funny as fuck and sad as shit, simultaneously.

Not to mention soooooooooooooooooo fucking obvious. What do people THINK these social programs represent? What do they imagine special interest groups ARE, other than a betrayal of that whole "equality" ideal that used to serve as their foundation?

Fuck, we humans sometimes make me sick.

Actually, I don't feel adequately talented to chronicle said demise. So fuck it.

I'm online now. Like, you know, at home. Woo hoo!

So that's journal-worthy news, I guess.

You know, I think I typed in maybe one entry, or maybe a tenth of one, before the whole point (as far as I'm concerned) of LiveJournal was lost to me. Imagine it! A site where you can really pour out your BRAIN, and have people read it and tell you just how fucking crazy you are... but they don't KNOW you! You don't have to fucking face them at work the next day.

In other words: A JOURNAL. But with anonymous witnesses.

This is no journal. It's a fucking bulletin board. I mean, don't get me wrong... the idea is still sort of, vaguely, kind of, in a general sort of way, more or less, (insert five more qualifications HERE), to mutter to myself. But I know that Shellie, for example, is almost certain to read every word of it, AND to know exactly who wrote it.

That's not a journal. That's a monologue.

Guess the solution is obvious. Open a new account and tell none of you about it.

Wow, I just wasted a whole shitload of paragraphs.

Anyhoo, yeah, here I am on the official Dennis Fucking Bulletin Board to My Friends and Such. So? May as well post whatever news leaps to mind whilst I'm here.

Austal's pretty neat.

"The Watchmen" was worth the 20-year-wait. Go see it RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

There was something else REALLY IMPORTANT that I thought about mentioning to all you cats whilst I worked today, but now it's gone.

That last note wasn't a joke.

The above woe is nothing new.

Heh. That subject line was so unintentionally condescending, I think I'll keep it. But is it still condescending when it's true?

Oh, my lovely, lovely wife. My best friend. How wondrous she be!

Lunch. That's the recent poster child for her coolness. I get up at, like, 5 am, stumble around in a half-awake shot at getting dressed, and finally disappear into the night, off to Austal to band more (fucking) cables. I'm in love with my job, never ye doubt it, but still... there's no missing the fact that bad career choices were made along the way. Especially given my age. We 42-year-olds, as a rule, should *not* consider kicking off a brand new career in the industrial field.

It's cold on that ship, this time of year. (If I haven't mentioned it, we're building a warship for the Navy.) The work is usually repetitive, and there are countless opportunities for me to really, deeply appreciate my hardhat. (Were it not for that little item, I'd have been dead at least 20 times over, already.)

Come lunchtime, I've this little spot of numbness inside me, and the only joy of it is that it ain't the same old despair-related numbness that dogged me straight into a crack habit. No, this is just more of a world-gone-grey-but-I-guess-that's-okay sort of thing.

Then I open up the lunch that my wife packed for me, and you know, there ain't been a day yet when she didn't manage to inject a bit of color back into things.

The love that she puts into it, every time. Yesterday's fare included a kiwi fruit, wrapped in cellophane. (There was LOTS more... there always is. That was just a little side item.) As I unwrapped it, I considered the fact that she'd packed no knife. No big deal. I shrugged and prepared to tear the thing in half.

Hardly necessary, it turned out. She'd already cut it into quarters for me.

This morning, I put off making coffee until it was, like, 5 or 10 minutes 'til time to go go GO, baby! I was screwed. Then as I went into the kitchen to grab my lunch, I discovered that she'd already gotten up and made coffee *for* me. Beside the pot was a little note, basically expressing her love and stuff. Eyes only, so sorry.

You know, I didn't accidentally fall into a crack habit. It was one of the most deliberate choices I'd ever made in my life, 'coz earlier that same evening I found I didn't have the balls to just slit my fucking throat. So? Enter a street guy who was willing to share my wine with me, and who was packing a handy, more gradual means to the same end.

Turns out, yeah, crack threw me a couple of curve balls. I caused far more people faaaaar more hurt than I'd imagined I ever could, and that was hardly in the game plan. But y'know, that was about the *only* fucking bad surprise involved, and after you've hurt the *second* person you give a shit about, you get the idea that it won't be enough to stop you.

The point being that I never encountered anything sufficient to get me back *off* crack.

Except, you know, my kids. Their needs.

And my wife. God, I love her so.

'Specially around lunchtime...

I get these powerful takes on where I am now, and where I'm going, usually around the time I'm walking from the shipyard to my car. 101 observations, all cute and white with their little black spots and their cold wet noses, all come crowding into their brain and yapping to be released onto a page.

And as I've known on each such occasion, the moment of literary truth finds me cold, played out, bereft of any real desire to say much about the whole thing.

Besides, I'm distracted. There's this reasonably pretty gal on this "Snorgtees" ad right beside the part where the entry materializes as I haltingly do my typey-type thing, and my goodness, is she ever giving me the old "fuck me" eyes...

Vixen. (Us old fucks get to use words like that. "Vixen.")

Anyhoo, life is good. (That's another one best reserved for the geriatrics. "Anyhoo.") Very good, in fact. I'm on a four-year track toward becoming a Dept of Labor-certified electrician, and this pleases me inordinately. Were it not for the available overtime, I'd have been making more whilst I was waiting tables... but the predicted raises are both adequately substantial and charmingly rapid. Give it a year or two, God willing, and I should be in a most interesting place, materially speaking.

Be nice to pay Jeff back. And a few others, but that's the one that always stings the hardest. The time I betrayed a stewardship toward one of my closest friends. I don't think I'll be emailing him about it again until the money in fact sits there in my bank account, waiting to be sent; there was a previous false alarm involving OTR trucking. But it's nice to believe the wait's just about Oscar Victor.

Let's see. School is a gas gas gas. Work has its ups and downs, but they're mostly ups. Emotionally... it's weird. I said above that "live is good," and that's certainly true enough, but it's hard to get a fix on how I'm actually FEELING about all this.

It's like taking an embarrassingly large quantity of something VERY similar to happiness (but not exactly), and mixing it with an equally liberal dose of something like (but again, not exactly) the kind of hot-blooded savagery that a predator cat might feel as he gives up the stalking phase of a hunt and actually starts ripping full-tilt after the prey. The expectation of bloo--

Oh. Yes. Bloodlust. That's it. Durh! So yeah, REALLY happy and utterly bloodthirsty, yet not exactly either one.

I think maybe it's what happens to "hope" when it kicks back into gear after a nice, long hiatus.

Mmm, and now it's maybe a week later, and I'd thought the above had been lost when the library computer that I was on froze up. Neat.

So what else is new?

Oh! Yes! HERE COMES THE FUCKING WATCHMEN!!! MY BOY RORSCHACH!!! Yes, in case you've somehow missed the commercials, I think it's supposed to be in theaters on, like, maybe March 1.

I have alternately wished and waited since the mid-fucking-80s for them to make a movie out of "The Watchmen." 'Bout time.

Hope it doesn't suck. But... well, how could it? Rorschach's in it! "...and they will look up and cry, 'save us!' And I will look down and whisper, 'no.'"

I suppose, on second thought, this ol' town ain't so bad.
Wouldn't hurt me to unload this load of mine.
There's a For Sale sign
on a little house
I saw just about a mile or so from here...

--Billy Currington

Well, fuck. I had this long-assed entry all written and stuff, but wanted to do that little condensing trick before I sent it so's I wouldn't piss anyone off by filling up their Friends page, right? Alas, a-fucking-lack, I can't remember (nor figure out) how to do it. So lucky you; all that copious data is now deleted.

The short version: I've been hired by a sweet little ship-building company called Austal. I start Feb 2. I'll still have to moonlight at Logan's for a couple of weeks, in a desperate (and I believe vain) bid to pay a couple of dangerously late bills, but give it a month and my ties with that little institution will be wholly severed.

To call this a "good thing" would be an understatement of British proportions.

Oh, a funny thing about it: You know how some folks (example: me) see God's hand in life's sweeter events? Well, this time, it couldn't have been any more blatant. A lot of this good news has been due to the direct efforts of a couple of folks (one of them the pastor) at this church that Tammie and I have recently been attending.

Nifty. Thank You, God! (Like, for real. No sarcasm happening, here.)

Oh, yeah. And courtesy of my younger brother, we've a computer again. No internet; can't afford it yet. But a computer. It's fun to play video games again.

Current Location: Where else? The local excuse for a library.
Current Mood: okay

Well, okay, whatever.

So the guy supposedly has historic ties with organized crime. What politician isn't a criminal as well? So he likely has some anti-white issues, if only through his previous church affiliations. Again... so? We elected him, and there he sits, and that's pretty much that, as far as misgivings are concerned.

On the bright side...

This country is, what, 232 years old? Founded by a bunch of white-blooded, sometimes black-slave-owning English colonists who tossed us several historic phrases like "of the people, by the people, for the people" and whatnot. A representative democracy in which everyone gets at least a shot at a fair deal.

Within about a hundred years, give or take, we abolished slavery altogether. Later, the 1960s came rolling along, and we (sometimes violently) addressed all *sorts* of civil injustices, with profound results. It's a new world, a place where people sometimes actually *notice* atrocities happening in other, far distant lands, and America played a huge role in making it so.

And now, within only a little more than two hundred years, we've taken a fellow from a race that our founders used to enslave, and declared him the most powerful and responsible among us. He holds the reins. He's our boss and our foremost representative. And let me point it out yet a third time... twice in one paragraph, even! All this in just a little over two hundred years, 'coz that's how this country was *built* to operate. Free elections, and all that.

Are we perfect in our fairness? Oh, FUCK NO!!! We are human beings, which automatically includes the wee little detail that we SUCK. Just like everyone else in our sad-assed, selfish, cruel, typically stupid species. But oooooooo baby, have we ever just shamed the living shit out of far, far older nations and cultures out there. America has once again sent out a message: "Do not fuck with us, kiddies. We're such a *young* nation, but look at how rapidly we're growing, at least in ethical terms!" (And who needs more growth on the more material field? Once you're the world's leading superpower, you kind of win already at *that* game.)

Wow, what history we've made. What a changing of the guards and attitudes and all that.

From the get-go, today's little ramble has gradually been building up to a specific point. See, I also think about how many other nations out there despise us for whatever reasons. I don't mean those fucked-up jihading Muslims (who should be exterminated for the sakes of our own children, 'coz the Koran is pretty specific about the handling of any non-Muslims, and it's a dark and terrible way of doing business, and anyone who tells you differently is pissing in your ear). No, I mean all those snotty-assed peoples out there who affect a pretense of despising us over our wealth, arrogance, power, ignorance, aggressiveness, and general shortage of evolution.

Got a message for you condescending, secretly envy-ridden fucks: Eat it. Think about it first, right? What we've done (no matter how horrible the consequences may prove to be). The mandate that we've just honored. THINK about it, o France and all you other tired, Old World fucks, and then kindly eat your garlic-scented little hearts out. Once again, we've made history. You know, like you used to do, looooooooooooooooooong ago.

You're welcome for the harnessing of electricity, and for the lightbulb. You're welcome for the automo-fucking-bile, and for airplanes. If our country has ever saved your asses in, say, some World War or other, then you're welcome for that too. And on the day when you can finally get it through your sorry heads that we fucking ROCK (for humans), I might even consider inviting you to one of our raves. But in the meantime, yeah. Eat it.

Just hope nobody lynches the poor sot. (Not until he earns it, I mean.) That'd be embarrassing...

So yeah, a dirty trick has been played upon me.

I've this son and this daughter and this wife, and they mean all the world to me, fucking period. Words can't encapsulate the experience. It's new to me. It's outside the pale.

Thanks to this, I can't properly miss all the things I *used* to love.

That sounds so fucking mundane, so trivial. Not to mention ungrateful.

But dammit, there are people and places and events that were so precious, they made my very soul weep. I cherished them at the time, and took a certain pleasure from missing them when the show was ended. An intense pleasure. I'd been there, enjoying that thing, or that person's company. The memory was there, primordial, visceral. Sweet, sweet stuff, even if all you're getting out of it anymore is MISSING IT.

Now... I don't have that luxury. My thoughts are too wrapped up in the present. How the fuck am I gonna make rent happen *this* time? How the fuck am I gonna be a good father, with crack cocaine in my recent history? How this, how that, fuck fuck fuck bullshit etc. NOW matters, period, and that's the way it jolly well should be.

Right?

I miss missing Savannah.

I miss missing James Chanlee Stowe.

I miss missing Tiana Rabusin.

I miss missing more people, places and things than I can possibly enumerate here.

(Dennis, you sound a wee bit crazy. The present world can't in fact invade your brain and limit what you choose to MISS.)

How much money would you like to bet on that, fucker?

Jenn, Elizabeth, Deb. Pete Clark. Preston Pollock. Fucking pushing a train. Rush, the Cars, Phish, Eric White. Jeff, Radar, Shellie, Brydie, Dasher, Dancer, fucking Vixen, FUCK.

God, I want to miss you all. You DESERVE to be missed, 'coz God knows you're special. Enriching. The Good Stuff.

And all I typically feel anymore is this sort of numb thing that I used to actually SEEK OUT, back in my high school days. This... no, you can't call it apathy. I care. I want to feel, beyond my love for my wife and kids. What do you call it? Numbness. Just plain numb... beyond the immediate. Wife. Kids. Those, at least, are real and enriching.

But that seems to be all that I have room for, on the average day. Love the wife, love the kids, try hard to base my choices upon that love, and drive the fuck on.

I miss feeling like a human being instead of just a provider (however inadequate). I miss missing things.

...and all the boards did shrink.

So here I am in world-famous Meridian, MS, at my third store opening. Not sure what feelings to express regarding this; I only mention it as a point of reference.

And yet it means more than that. It's an abrupt and quite serious change from the routines that I've come to take for granted. No wife, no kids, no immediate money flowing in (although in about two weeks, the check I receive for all this will do much to compensate for the lost right-now money). Time to think, to feel.

An added joy: Some of my fellow trainers do this all the time, so they've phat money, which translates into neat toys. Example: Laptop computers, like the one I'm typing on right now. Nifty! Wow, what an accumulation of emails... from total strangers. My friends have faded into their own lifes, as have I.

I miss my friends.

Another benefit of having a co-trainer's laptop offered for my use: YouTube.com. It's been nearly a year since I've experienced Mike Doughty's "Looking At the World From the Bottom of a Well" video"... the studioesque one where he's lying flat on his back near some park. That's 'way too long. That video... Man, it explains a lot of my shit. Nice to not be lonely, even if my "company" is some total stranger who just makes good video.

In terms of my personal morality-related aspirations, crack has been one of the greater setbacks. Guess that one's a no-brainer.

In terms of my personal morTALity, though, I think I regret cigarettes the most. Sure, all the other things have enjoyed their impact upon my lungs, heart, liver, brain, whatever. I imagine the crack tore the shit out of my heart.

But man, those fucking cigarettes. What, about a pack a day since I was maybe 19? Total fucking suicide, and any smoker knows it, and of course we hate it. But there it is. Fucking tobacco-flavored death.

T and I await a little more material improvement before we invest in something like that Zyban. Barring anymore catastrophic behavior -- or catastrophic consequences of previous said behavior -- we seem poised to be there in about a year.

So that's something.

You should probably ignore this post, o thou who see these words. I foresee neither any insights nor amusements, confessions nor accusations. I'm mostly writing now because I've run out of books to read, and such a circumstance is as depressing as it is novel. (No pun intended.)

And so at the moment I just write aimlessly, for at the moment writing aimlessly beats playing more Solitaire. But then, I've reached the point where a nice root canal might compete favorably with the idea of more Solitaire.

And Hearts.

Holy shit, I'm finally tired of Hearts. This is smileworthy; I feared the day might never come.

Mm. Well. Guess there's still Spades.

So hello, God and me and anyone else who didn't take my advice at the start. Welcome to my post for the night. As advertised, the score remains Detroit 27, Mars 0. I'm rooting for another team entirely this season, soooooo my congrats to Mars fans and condolences to Detroit fans in equal measure. Do remember, Detroit... the game ain't over until someone reaches -ph (pronounced "negative fish," but you knew that). So hang in there.

I miss my wife, and I miss my kids, and I miss my books.

And parachute pants, but who doesn't miss those? You ever ride down a stairway rail in parachute pants? You reach Mach 1.

I could go write in my notebook, I guess. Quit taking up space here. I've forgotten how to condense these things, so that'd probably be the polite thing.

Yeah. G'nite, whomever read this far. Peace.