likeigiveashit

This post really does not have a point. I mainly wanted to use the word 'nigh' in a title. It's such a strange word. Nigh. Why not just use the word 'near'? They mean the same thing. I don't like it I tells ya. Add it to the list of words that bother me.

I also wanted to test and show off this floating text around rotated image javascript plugin I just wrote for myself. Oh you fancy huh. I want those 65 seconds back. See how this text wraps smoothly around the image even though it's rotated? I will explain how I did it if I ever get my tech blog going. Long story short, I had to dust off my geometry knowledge. I really never though I'd use the tan() function on my calculator. Do young folks know what Polaroids are?

I'm looking forward to the consistent warmth of the summer. Sir Duke has been collecting dust in the garage and a season of epic riding is approaching. There have been a couple of unseasonably warm days during the winter where I've taken the Duke out for few minutes of running. Yesterday afternoon hit 75 and I put a few miles on her during lunch. This afternoon isn't going to cooperate. It's cooled down to the low 60's and it is looking like rain. I'm afraid I'm just not that tough. So I will be waiting a little bit longer.

I realize my promised monthly posts have turned quarterly. The main reason is lack of content. I'm going to use this space for my riding, traveling and home-improvement blog. If you want to write as well, drop me a message through my contact form.

My brother and I were having an aimless conversation over xbox live game chat last week as brothers often do. The theme of this discussion was foreign linguistics and their metaphoric use in American pop-culture. Actually, the subject was a trivia tidbit my brother learned, that the automobile used by Bruce Wayne in The Dark Night, the Lamborghini Murciélago, named for a Spanish fighting bull from the late 19th century, translated means ‘bat’. Coincidental usage in the movie? We think not. It sounded more significant and intelligent than that initially, didn’t it?

Anyhoo, the next morning, on my morning train commute into the city, I looked up the automobile on wikipedia to glean the correct pronunciation. The Italians use the southern Spanish pronunciation, roughly “mercy-a-lago”, while it’s “merthy-a-lago” in the north.

As I often do, I absorb more information by reading other linked subjects. I learned a rather fascinating factoid myself in the process. Lamborghini is a fully owned subsidiary of the Audi AG group, owned by Volkswagen. During Audi’s early development, the late 1920s, an American automobile company, Rickenbacker, was purchased for use of their eight cylinder engines. Rickenbacker was headquartered, like most American car manufactures, in Detroit, Michigan. The demonym or gentilic, name for a resident of a locality, for someone from Detroit is Detroiter. A demonym popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright for residents of the United States of North America was Usonian, based on the acronym (hence my title choice for this post).

The factoid I learned, besides that useful information above, was that the inhabitants of Lesbos, a small Greek island in the northeaster Aegean sea, tried unsuccessfully to ban the use of their demonym in referring to homosexual women. The motion did not carry in the court of Athens.

I apologize for my delay in posting. Amusing factoids like this don’t happen frequently and you do not want to hear about the mundane details of my life. I am hoping to post more frequently. Until next time... enjoy the Holidays.

Just when you least expect it and are unable to stop fighting it, things work out. Not all things, of course. Not the things we think we absolutely must have or die in their absence, but some small gifts from the gods that are like a wink of acknowledgement. (You go, girl!)

I got a proper job! In fact, a good one. In spite of all my imaginings to the contrary, I've actually got the universe working with me for the moment.

So here's to holding on tight. And much more to follow. Gotta run before the angst catches me and weighs me back to immobility.

(Where One understands the evil power of combining caffeine with pathologically scary under-confidence and resolves not to make the same mistake again, but inevitably will anyway.)

Here is the best part: Interviewer: Why do you think it is that you haven’t been hired anywhere yet? Me: (Really?) Well, there are a lot of people applying for the same positions. The competition is pretty overwhelming...

And while he seems satisfied with my response, it’s a fucking lie. A lie that is sure to be revealed if I didn’t completely blow this particular interview by talking too fast and refusing to slow down in spite of recognizing that I was blowing it but still finding myself unable to behave normally.

I have done this more than twice.

More than that, I have pulled a kamikaze move. A this-interview-will-self-destruct-in-T-minus-3 seconds tactic. Either I say something brilliant when they ask if I have ‘questions so far’: “I have multiple felony convictions, is that gonna be a problem?” (Not quite like that, but I might as well.) Or at the inevitable ‘is there anything you would like to tell us/me?’ point I hear myself launch into a narrative that can no sooner be stopped than a destructive force of nature. My typhoon of “CRIMEFELONYDRUGADDICTIONPRISON” is delivered in a let’s just get this over with fashion: quick and dirty; but it’s more akin to ripping open my coat to reveal a tailored suit of plastic explosives. You should see what that does to a face.

At least I didn’t do THAT on this go around. I was coming unglued as I sat across the table from the HR manager. Certainly frightening to behold at this writing, with more practice I will surely present as unassuming, perhaps even appealing. This is another one (in a veritable gauntlet) of those walking-through-fire trials. I know I will not get this job, yet I force myself to go through the motions, to wear the suit I cannot afford to have dry cleaned and drive miles and miles, to waste my time and yours, to pretend I’m just any job applicant and not the Bin Laden of entry-level accountant job applicants, so that one day I will arrive! I will get there.

And then look out, motherfuckers!

After having been spat out of hell she would walk through fire, swimming against rip tides and all manner of unnatural quests in order to... is this it? Seems rather anti-climactic yet.

Perchance some semblance of subtext is in order, but I’ll offer little in the way of explanation. It can never make good sense no matter how much I say. The story is settled solidly in the absurd. A life like this can only have been lived blindly, no mirrors, no self reflection. This will come clear in the telling: you will find me a grown woman, still floundering and uncertain as a child. Bottom line: I never knew how to act. I behaved poorly at each offered opportunity.

Once and always, when at a crossroads I’d manage to go backwards. Or fall tumbling and unaware, though the nth time, into some netherworld of my own sordid creation. Now that I am reformed, even if it comes from the most genuine place within me, (I swear such a place exists!) No one can swallow sincerity from the likes of me. Hard to believe that this pretender could be decent. I know I say I’m faking but all that I pronounce henceforth is the truth and nothing but.

It’s the same old story, you’ll come to find. But it’s a good one and it gets better with each telling. Each installment is a new brand of rejection and humiliation and a reminder that there is no walk-away-clean to be had here. You’ll pay through the nose girl. Forever and ever, world without end, amen.

Not that I am without faith, nor do I mind, really. I am well aware this chase will prove endless; there’s no finish line in sight as I run full tilt toward some imagined horizon. Fortuitously, the drive within me is indefatigable and of some alien (divine?) origin. From whence it comes I cannot say. Source matters little though. Watch me, I’m racing in a brand new direction and going nowhere. At least there is solace in movement, at any rate I’ve something to blather on and on about. I’ve a lot to tell.

There was an 5.9 magnitude earthquake, a malformed URL crippled the websites for my employer, a category 1 hurricane is rumbling up the east coast and my morning trains were on-time two days in a row. The end of days is rapidly approaching. My trains are on-time so rarely, that one of the conductors excitedly announced that fact over the train's public address system.

The Japanese consider a train late if it arrives 59 seconds after the scheduled time. NJ Transit considers a train late if it arrives 5 minutes and 59 seconds after the scheduled time.

Not only did my trains arrive within NJ Transit's definition of on-time - but they actually pulled into Penn Station ON the scheduled time! When your train consistently arrives, without fail, 10-15 minutes after the scheduled time - when the unbelievable happens, it's kinda a big deal.

Here I wilt slowly dying, transhit com forever lying. Continued track work or so they say, while my hair grows thin and gray. Apologies for the inconvenience, on-time arrival I have not seen since, I started working in the city four years back. Accountability is what they lack. Why do we continue to permit, such disrespect like this shit? Why waste my time and my voice, because there is no other choice.