Pain

Pain is an interesting thing. It is an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, a constant that, at least in part, defines who we are. How we deal with pain and how we mitigate the pain of others goes a long way toward showing those around us our true character. Do we break, do we bend, do we stand, do we fall? Will you wear it on your sleeve for the world to see or bury it deep down bellow the cockles of your heart so that no one will ever know?

Of course, there are lots of different kinds of pain. There's the emotional pain of losing a loved one or the inner pain of personal turmoil and then there's the physical pain of being hit or the traumatic pain of getting five teeth ripped out of your skull.

I'm currently feeling the aftereffects of the latter most situation. Currently my wisdom teeth (and one really rotten molar) are not residing in my mouth and the holes left there are a source of no end of pain. The real question is, how am I handling this pain? Well, for starters I'm loaded up on drugs, apples sauce and am laid up on my couch watching possibly the dumbest show on the television at that moment, "Dog: The Bounty Hunter". Like watching a train wreck though, when observing Dog's mullet you want to look away but some sick, morbid part of your mind just won't let you.

This may be the drugs speaking, but there's something just intrinsically wondrous about watching a man in a platinum mullet with a wife who's breasts dwarf some action stars heads as they hunt down scumbags. I guess watching the show is another kind of metaphysical pain all on its own.

Holy Days

I don't exactly know when the commercialized holidays that we know today started (I'm guessing the '80s, some fucked up shit happened in the '80s), but what I do know is that I think we need a revitalization of the old pagan festivals. You know, bring the family goat up to the local henge to spill its blood upon the altar to the Elder Gods lest they visit their wrath upon the village.

But that's just me...

I'm a Sane Man

Or at least I'd like to think so. Of course, if I were insane I doubt I'd admit it to myself. (here's hoping someone tells me when I go around the bend because I sure as hell won't) And in my blatant sanity I do not, when I look at my rugged good looks in the mirror, think of myself as womanly or girlish. I do not look at my own face and say, "Huh, you know from a distance I could be mistaken for someone of the opposite sex." I'm sure there are some of you long-haired types out there who may concede that fact, but I am not among you. I am a man. A bearded, burly armed, belch-out-loud, fart-whenever-I-please, man.

So when one of my customers at 7-11 last night said, "Sorry, I thought you were my girlfriend." I was taken slightly aback. This was not a regular customer, so (thankfully) I might never see him again and this will never come back up, but here is how it went down.

I had just finished ringing this guy up and I say (as I usually do), "Have a good night."
Now, over the combined sound of the radio below me and the clink of change as I sorted it back into the drawer, I did not exactly hear what he said next but as I looked up to the sound of his voice he merely paused, looked at me and said, "Sorry, I thought you were my girlfriend."

Now, I may not be the most experienced of men when it comes to relationships, but I have never mistaken a stocky, hairy man for any of my girlfriends, friends who are girls, sisters, mother, teachers or any other of the woman in my life. This is not to say that the opposite is not true *shudder*, but I don't usually remark on it openly, much less at the time.

I really don't want to bash on this guy, I'm sure he just had a simple "brain fart", as they say in the scientific community, but to be so unaware of ones surroundings as to mistakenly say something like that is a tad moronic.

Dude, man, bro, kid, young man, sir, foo', dawg. All of these are things I'm called on a regular basis and I'm sure there are plenty of names for me that I don't hear said to my face, but this one kind of caught me off guard. I'm not sure (nor will I ever be sure) just what that guy said to me to make him try and explain himself (which kind of makes the whole situation a bit funnier), but in the future, if something like this happens again to anyone who comes in while I'm working, I hope they just keep it to themselves.

What I'm Watching While I Write:

• Angel, Season 5

What I'm Reading In The Midst of Writing:

• Whedonesque.com
• Leasticoulddo.com
• Girlgeniusonline.com
  

Anger

Anger is a funny, terrible little thing.

Funny because it can be set off by the most trivial, stupid thing. Your shoelace comes undone, you don't have the cash to pay for dinner, you drop a pack of cigarettes. Stupid trivial little things that, on any other day would only make you pause for a moment before retying your shoe, busting out the credit card or picking up the cigarettes; but on that one day, that very specific instant, something inside you breaks. And what starts as a stupid little thing starts rolling like an avalanche.

It picks up speed and gathers up all the stupid little things. Your bills were a day late. You missed "30 Rock" this week. It's been a year since your last apple pie. Your boss is an ass. The people you work with are idiots. You roll up all those stupid little things and get one big terrible ball of frustration and rage and jaw tightening, hard eyed, Dirty Harry, piss-in-your-face, anger.

It's moments like those, when that white hot anger inside of me is screaming, that I really start to think about what separates me and the pissed off, no-holds-bar, monster I might become. It's all those little opportunities for spitefull assholery that I pass up on a daily basis. Chances and encounters where I could easily do hurtful things to make everyone around me just as miserable as I am.

I close the door behind me just as a woman is walking up. I decide to card the guy who's buying the beer and then tell him to march his five little friends in from their car, just so I can card them too. Don't tip my waitress. Cut off the jackass in the Hummer. Don't refill the toilet paper roll. Curse as much as I damn well please in public.

After a while all these feelings pass, but at the time all I can do to keep myself from screaming is set my face and speak slowly, counting every syllable until I can sneak off to some dark place; alone and away from the world, and shout my throat raw in defiance to a world that has pissed me the hell off.

A few hours pass and I smile and laugh and make jokes and pretend that everything in my life is just dandy.

Until next time.

What I'm Listening To As I Write:

• Push It By Static-X
• White Knuckles By Five Finger Death Punch
• Down With The Sickness By Disturbed
• Float On By Modest Mouse
  

Fear Itself

-Recovered from the journal of Samuel Chaar-

Dec. 6th, 1999

I'm not sure what to make of my current situation. Do I bow to my instincts and gut feelings, letting this fear that has fallen upon me control my movements and strategy? Or do I trust in the cold logic that I am so fond of when confronting the vast tide of darkness beyond man's feeble understanding? Either way it seems I am damned. Logic would dictate that what I have seen cannot exist and yet the tremble in my hand and the sweat running down my spine seems to dispute what science says cannot be.

At first it wasn't anything. Shadows in the corner of my eye, windows rattling with the wind, the hairs on my neck telling me that I was being watched. Little, inconsequential things that one will always experience when working in the late hours of the night. The absence of other human beings will let the mind play terrible tricks in the darkness passed midnight. And at first that is all I thought it was, my mind. Yet as the weeks pressed on I noticed more and more that those little occurrences were growing in scale and frequency.

I saw movement where there could only be stillness. I heard doors open when they were locked. I felt hands touch my shoulder when I stood alone.

Then the voices began... Small whispers that never say anything of importance. Murmuring endless nothings that no living person, not even myself, was meant to comprehend. They were followed by the drums in the night. Off in the hills and through the darkened trees of the parks I could hear them echoing. Coming out like a steady heartbeat that would eventually become a staccato rhythm.

Then came The Figures.

It was always different. A man, a woman, a child, a mere shadow across the street. But always I would see their eyes and know the truth. Bright amber irises that shone like those of an animal in the night's few lights. I would see them in passing or, at times, they would look at others near me and I would see them for what they truly were. Fate though, it seems, is not without a sense of humor, because where I thought that an otherworldly host had taken root around me, stealing our faces and walking among us, it seems I was gravely mistaken.

There was no host, no untold numbers, there was just the one; a predator that stalks us as we would the lesser beasts of the wilds. I would see those amber eyes fall upon others and think that they were doomed to join the endless Figures. But yesterday I looked into amber eyes and I saw the curved smile of a wolf in human skin. It comes for me now, it hunts me even as I pen this.

Logic tells me to stand and Instinct tells me to flee. The only question left to me is, does prey stand or flee in the face of the predator?


What I'm Listening To As I Write:

• Red Fox By Tomahawk
• Cthulhu Dreams By The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
• Red Right Hand By Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  

Workin' for the Man

There is something to be said for manual labor. Being able to look out over an area that you've been working on and seeing the change you've affected is extremely gratifying despite the amount of sweat that you may have grumbled about while working. And while I may be talking about the leafs raked up this afternoon, I think the principle is the same no matter what you're doing.

Of course, this is also something to be said for having enough money to hire someone else to do it...

But even if the day comes that I become obscenely rich and have enough money to make some guy clean my yard, I think I'll still make my kids clean up the leafs because there are just some things I don't want to pay day laborers for. Now, if I need a bush in the shape of a recently extinct marsupial, then I'll hire some guy, but if my yard is leafy, I'll leave it to my progeny. Just like my father before me...

What I'm Watching While I Write:

• Demon Hunters

What I'm Listening To Today:

• Metallica (The Black Album)
• Rob Zombie (The Sinister Urge)

What I Played Today:

• Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
  

Carpe Noctem

I gain a certain amount of satisfaction from sleeping the whole day away. For most this would result in the horrid realization that anything they'd hoped to accomplish during the daylight hours is now unattainable, but for someone like me, someone who makes a living by staying up all night, it means that I've actually had a surprisingly uninterrupted sleep period.

Dearest Internet, it's like this; my livelihood derives from my job working as a clerk at my local 7-11, but not just any clerk, no! I am the fabled Graveyard (or Sunrise if you prefer) clerk who wanders the world between the hours of 10pm-6am. I've seen things and talked to people that just aren't around when the sun is in the sky and it makes for a very anecdotal existence. But wackiness aside, working this kind of shift, you get into a type of rhythm when it comes to sleep, because if you don't, you end up curled up behind the counter and snoring. With this rhythm comes a certain understanding between yourself and those people in your life who exist within a certain spectrum of awareness (I.E. they know what you do for a living).

With this understanding comes the knowledge that, if I'm called during the day, it is an approximation of me calling them in the middle of the night. Now, for most, this isn't a problem. My friends and most members of my family will aim their calls for some time in the late afternoon when, presumably, I'd have stirred from my rest. But for some reason, despite the fact that I work for them this understanding has yet to cross the minds of my bosses.

I will regularly receive calls about store matters that, while important to them at the time, will seem like trivial and bewilderingly stupid reasons to wake me up when they KNOW that I sleep during the day! Asking me whether or not I hit the End of Day button on the vault at the end of my shift, when they have all the evidence to suggest that I forgot to do it, is, in my opinion, something that could have been resolved without my redundant input and A WASTE OF MY F@#$%&G SLEEP!

Ahem...

But no worries, I got plenty of sleep today!

What I'm Listening To As I Write:

• Red Fox By Tomahawk (From the Album: Anonymous)
  
• Polar Bear By Puscifer (From the EP: "C" Is For [Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference HERE])
  
• The Hounds By The Protomen (From the Album: The Father of Death)
  

A Bitter Wind

Don't get me wrong, I like the cold. I like watching the Californians turn blue and keel over, I love the smell of crisp winter air, I can't help but love an excuse to wear my awesome coat in tandem with my equally awesome hat. But when a wind such as today's whips across my face, I can't help but curse whatever gods were put in charge of it. (Possibly Loki or Coyote in my opinion)

But don't worry my dear and beloved Internet, for today is also an auspicious day, one marking my ascension from mere observer to participant in this great experiment that is the World Wide Web. Okay, that's a bit of a dramatically overstated lie... I've braved dank forums to combat the vicious trolls therein and I've seen videos of myself get railed on Youtube and FunnyorDie because apparently I'm not as funny as I thought I was. Hell, I've even tried my hand at this kind of thing before (blogging that is), during my woefully misguided attempt to join the myspace trend of my mid-late teens. But today is a new day and a new outlook!

I'm not at all certain what this Blog will become, be it a self promotional propaganda machine or mere exercise in semi-daily writing, but know this dear Internet, there are some things a'brewin' in this unassuming writer and it isn't the corn dogs I had for lunch (though it could easily be the Cheese-Its I had for dinner).

What to Expect in the Future:

• Fictional posts based in various fictive universes (D&D, Cthulhu and Firefly, Oh My!)
• Rationally and irrationally angry posts based on my experiences in day to day life.
• The Adventures of a Graveyard 7-11 Clerk! (You see some funny $#!+ after 2am)
• Basic updates and needless promotions for things I like and/or am involved in.
• Reviews of any Video Games/Books/Movies that I Play/Read/Watch.