Hey, I haven't updated this thing in a while, which is just neglectful.

Anyway, internet, things are changing slowly. I've moved to Oklahoma City and in with my dear friends Rob and Karen. They're so nice to have given me their extra room, as I couldn't stand being in Tulsa any longer. Things there were just... not cool. I didn't want this to be a post about me, though, but about my father. He's a fantastic writer, and though he may have been out of my life for a long time, I still love and respect him. I hope to show him some respect by getting his writings and poetry up on here just to share with everyone, because I think it would be a good thing to do.

 This is called Uncle George, or Bottle Caps and Violet

  That young man threw that bottle cap far as he could across the road and he still carried the warload from town to town and down every dusty road.
  He started drinking in his young life and he took it cross the rail to no days of wishful thinking and scraping nickles for his bail. And those drivers speed on past him and he lives there out on bail for crying over coffee and the dead friends he cannot hail.
  And if you see him a dollar would hurt his feelings though you can just drop it in his pail and let him find it with his still clean fingernails, cause he's so proud about his little girl.
  And his mama spoke to him of Heaven where we could all of us one day go. There was no lie in what she told him never missing one detail. And he thought of alternatives as he pitched the empty bottle across the rails...
  And he carries a five gallon bucket and washes windows where [he] can and you may see him through them; he's that silent bent young man...
  And he's gentle, yes, he's gentle as he holds out broken fingers, from a fight with a younger man, who said words and things that no real man could stand. There's no pity for the bleeding from the knuckles and broken fingers of both hands.
  And his teeth and jaws don't work now as he drinks his brew from an abandoned empty can...
  And you know he'll likely end his life by freezing beside those same old rusty rails with bottle caps on his eyelids, bruised and battered by a life he's lived too long. And his daddy, was he wishing for those summer days of fishing in some other foreign land?
  He lived much as he ended beside those singing rusty rails with bottle caps and bottle caps when he couldn't sleep in jail for the demons screaming at him through the bars and across the rusty rails... And one daughter who will mourn him though she surmises and puzzles the details...
  And there was laughter in the beginning as, "Well we'll live forever," as the bible told him without fail.
  And his last thought was of Jesus's hands where they placed those Roman nails and hallelujah was the reward after a night in a cold damp cell; beaten but not broken on the byways of hell.
  And just down there the railroad crossing and those diesels without bells and the crossing open calling to a life he'd live so well... Beyond these rusty rails...
  They found him frozen clutching spikes instead of nails and bottle caps on his eyelids and a smile that spoke of Heaven's beauteous golden halls, and bottle caps for his eyelids...
  Is there a lesson for us all?
  And I think his last word was Violet, even though she'd left him years before, and he just saw a face in the window as he was reaching for the door...

O.W.S (Owen (or Owin, like owing) W. Splurge is his pen name)
Copyright Richard Davis, 21 May, 2006

A Strongly Worded Letter. Or, what not to say to an HR rep after being denied employment.

Sent this in through the Dollar General "Contact Us" page today. I don't know what I'm hoping to accomplish with it, save venting my frustration.

---------------------------------------------------------

Hello! I was writing in regards to an application I recently filled out in-store, and the subsequent personality assessment.

I realise that these things are in place to help determine which people would be the best fit for your company, but are they not also limiting in some respects? I feel these tests provide an unfair judgement of character, as an electronically administered test isn't able to really determine what someone is like, only that their answers have placed them in an "unhireable" category. This has been a roadblock to employment for me for many years, and it has nothing to do with what kind of employee I am, only that I seem to not be able to answer the screening questions in a favourable way.

I was told by the hiring manager at a DG store that she would've liked to hire me, as I was the most promising applicant in a while, but since I failed your assessment there was nothing she could do for me, save say that I could try again in two months. The problem with that is... I don't really have that long. I've been unemployed since the end of September, and getting a job doesn't seem any easier with the economy the way it is.

That your personality test barred me from what would've been a sure position in the store is insulting, and serves as nothing more than salt in the wound. I hope that whomever reads this forwards it to any appropriate upper management, so that they may understand my plight and nothing more, and so that they can see that, sometimes, good employees are passed up for not so good employees on the basis that the latter is better able to play the system than the former. Thank you for your time.

Imagine a future...

...where you're still jobless, nearly two months after the fact. Depressing, innit?

Well, you don't have to be depressed, but good luck with that. When you apply to places that say they're hiring and they need people and you don't get a call back, you kind of wonder if you've failed at impressing them enough with your front-and-back-filled-out-application-with-references-and-previous-job-history-and-everything. Or you wonder if maybe you should start to lie about your job history and see how far that gets you (it's very tempting, let me tell you). Or maybe you just wonder whether or not you should give up looking for a job in such a terrible economy and move back in with your mom, go back to school, and just do something very part-time.

If I don't rectify this situation post-haste, I'm fucked.

Santiago

Have some chat (stew)!

[03:22PM] ian: oh i quit my job
[03:22PM] alex: which oen
[03:22PM] ian: sushi
[03:22PM] ian: the manager was being a fucking dick today
[03:22PM] alex: so you just walked out?
[03:22PM] ian: well
[03:23PM] ian: the other server had asked where the lids for togo cups were, and he flipped shit on her
[03:23PM] ian: so she asked me, and i showed her
[03:23PM] ian: then i went up to him and told him i thought he overreacted a bit
[03:23PM] ian: then he flipped shit on me
[03:23PM] ian: aaaaaaaaand then when i went back to the kitchen a bit later, he brought it up and said if i ever fucking did it again, i was fired
[03:24PM] ian: so i repeated myself, and he went off again, and i told him that i don't have to put up with that shit and that i quit
[03:24PM] alex: awesome
[03:24PM] alex: fuck that faggot
[03:24PM] ian: yeah, he can fuck right off
[03:24PM] ian: brb gotta go warm up my curry

I don't update this thing enough

Hi blog world~

There're some changes going on in my life. Like, moving to an apartment near Riverside, losing my car to the ravages of time and/or space aliens, and starting work at a new sushi bar.

Uh...that's about it, kids.

I found a nice new comic called Bear and Kitten

http://www.south20th.com/

Well, technically not new, but it's still pretty rad. <3 Thanks Pokémon thread at SA!

So I've been kind of down in the dumps lately, but I don't know what started it all. Maybe it was the not enjoying my job as much as I used to, or the fact that the amount of money I make now is $600 or so less than what I was making a year ago, or that I probably won't get to leave this state for a while.

But! I have awesome friends, and I would definitely stay to be around them and also my family. Well, maybe my family, but the friends are for sure. Who else would praise me for finding a Hunter S. Thompson tribute beer, or Root Beer Beer. We all agreed that it was fucking delicious. Natch.

I need a better job, so I guess I'll start applying places. Ugh. At least I have weekends off at this place, which is kind of retarded since you technically make the most on weekends... but I don't care. I've never had a job that I could take weekends off, or have a schedule that's close to something you would have at some career-type place. Like an office.

Or OUTER SPACE.

हियर इस अ ब्लॉग इ व्रोते! इन हिन्दी!

Dead At 31

From Cancer

View my profile: ptolemy_booth

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