Remember that time I tried to be a train conductor?  Here's a recap of the hiring session:

HR lady had a cheese blintz fixation, and the first hour of the orientation was dominated by increasingly dire predictions of our future in train conducting.  One little known fact is that trains, much like dobermans, can smell fear...

...and will act upon that.  If you aren't "truefful" to yourself, if, for example, you did not wear your seatbelt, or did not really mean it when you prayed, the train may CUT YOU IN HALF (they really said this).  It's like the final scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy and the bad guy have to pick the real holy grail, and the bad guy picks the wrong one and gets eaten up by maggots and rot and blows into dust.  Sobering, folks.  Also, not for me.  And for our hours of early a.m. misery, they didn't give us so much as a cup of coffee, hence my wistful tracing of the carrot nipple I brought in my pocket.

Anyway, on Monday I begin a different job, a job which has risen from the ashes of my transportation industry career dreams on warm gentle winds: hot air balloon launcher.  I know!  So much better than being a train conductor.  Wish me luck.

P.S. Sally, these drawings are very inspired by the ones you used to do in class.  Thanks for showing me that coping mechanism.

Dreams and Sour Grapes

The night before last I dreamed of a woman with seven vaginas arranged vertically down her middle, multiply (-plee) pregnant and a highly popular prostitute.  Last night my wayward soul must have inadvertently entered a swimmer at some foreign, perhaps English or French beach, scaring the swimmer's friend and causing other beachgoers to believe she had lost her mind.  One shocked old man in red flowered swim trunks stands out particularly; he stared at me when I buried my hands in the sand for stability.  I reeled my soul in asap when I realized the mix-up and lurched into the kitchen for water.  On an unrelated (?) subject, I decided optimistically to attempt the ivory tower of grad school.  As with any tower, the approach to this one begins easily but becomes totally dismal when you get to the tower part.  I registered for the GRE.  I looked for scholarships, because nothing is happening without generous moneys.  Would you like to know why I am prepared to resign myself to a life of sometime babysitting and quail egg-peddling?  This is a sample awardee.  Please do read it:

Skroch graduated in 2009 with degrees in Political Science, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, and African Studies. She studied at Université Gaston Berger in Senegal. She was the recipient of the Abraham S. Burack and F. Chandler Young Awards for outstanding research abroad for her year-long fieldwork examining local resolutions to violent civil war in the Casamance region of Senegal. She has worked with international students and refugees in various capacities, with a dialogue and reconciliation initiative in Israel and the West Bank through the QUEST Program, and as a Soliya Connect Program Facilitator, using new media to mediate dialogue on relevant political and social issues between young people around the world. She worked for Wisconsin Public Television as a documentary editor and transcriber, was interviewed on NPR’s Here on Earth about her experiences, and presented a thesis on dependency theory in the Congo at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Violence. Post-college, Skroch was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, researching post-conflict democratic transition via the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, while also interning at a medical rehabilitation center for torture victims. She grew up in the Philippines and Wisconsin, and speaks French, Arabic, Moroccan Darija, and Wolof."

Wolof, huh?  They can program machines to do some pretty amazing things these days.  All that boring human stuff like food, sleep, sex, tears, failure -- gone.  Maximum efficiency.  Fuck me.

My own CV has the stale flavor of a life crisis and seems to be saying, "You're old enough to know that if you ever want to get off food stamps: ITT Tech."  Nonetheless, can I show you a funny thing I made?

Malediction

You wise men and your hideous, oppressive unities, your eternal progressions, regressions, fractals, and universal laws, pure and empty as a fresh condom.  When I see your gnostic, patient smile, glassy, thousand-year fisheye stare, I shudder.  I throw myself behind Satan and say, "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven!"  Swallow your enlightenment like the tongue of a paralytic -- you have settled, mummified in your high seat without even the quickening of maggots or the thrilling odor of bacteria.  If you, preacher of the ONE, the GOOD, all-seer, all-knower, benevolent puffy-lidded lord, are the gatekeeper, keep your nation -- of order, of fascistic columns, serendipitous coincidences, providential meetings, holy numbers, asymptotic lines.  May they rot you through and through like ingested fiberglass, like rigid diatoms do flies.

Oh sweet, wild life, keep me from wisdom.  Gift me with confusion and disaster.  Crush my kingdom.  Undo me.  May I never believe.  May I never ascend to enlightenment.  Give me no powers of persuasion.  Give me sex, accidents, paroxysms of terror, early morning light, swarms of insects, unruly fruits, flowers, thorns, poisons.  Impale me with unlooked-for ecstasies.  I adore you, life.  I scream in adoration, hatred, joy.  Take no prisoners here.