I was so tired during work today a truck could have hit me and I wouldn't care. My cash register kept glitching, so I had to keep calling for my manager to come and approve of steps taken to restore the program (sometimes the cables came loose, sometimes it just froze, sometimes it wouldn't acknowledge the drawer's been shut and would not allow me to continue ... The usual crap, just unusually accumulated.) The overseer came to the shop four times. There were serious speeches all around, but I was absent from all of them, being behind the main register. The last time she came, she informed me I've recently had a 'test' buy and one of the customers was, in fact, working for her. I should have fainted or something, I duuno, but I just said I don't honestly care, I am so tired I have no answers for her and if I did something wrong it wasn't because I wanted to but because we're being over-worked and relentlessly criticized and belittled. But as it were, I haven't done much of anything wrong, I found the scarf he hid in one of the gift boxes, I charged everything properly, not because I particularly worried, but because it's just routine. He was, for example, told to purchase two exactly same scrunchies, but which had two different sales codes. Normally people would just mark x2 and scan one, but I tend to just pick objects out of the shopping basket one by one and scan them, I very rarely multiply. Even then I normally check for codes. I don't know why; it's just how they showed me the first day and I never had the mental motivation to alter their instruction. Whether or not this was another of the demeaning routines or they were actually trying to catch me at fault, I honestly couldn't care less. They are pushing so badly, sooner or later something will snap. Because their bullshit is transparent - someone comes and says the shop is lovely, we're doing a good job, the next day someone above them comes and says it's garbage and someone will be fired and then, as a result, everyone is saying it's garbage. Ye. There are almost as many people over-seeing as there are people working and those whose job is to over-see - and it is a sweet, well-paid job - must pretend they have a reason to be paid so well. We know. It's just not quite so very funny anymore. 

Yesterday I

- cried like an insane person because I didn't dare get off the bed down a ladder (we have a high bed.)

- cried like a little bitch watching videos of sportsman behavior (like a footballer missing a penalty on purpose to even out a mistake of the opposite team; boxers giving matches to Down syndrome opponents, a footballer saving the life of a player who incidentally swallowed a tongue when hit,;judo fighter carrying his opponent off the mat for an injury, stuff like that ...)

- cried like crazy watching acts of human heroism, like a cop talking someone off a ledge, then hugging them; firefighters resuscitating a kitten; someone saving a drowning dog ...

- Then spent the rest of the night watching Pokemon porn. (Pikachu detective trailer just dropped and Mewtwo continues to be insanely hot.)

The General, who was at work on graveyard shift, (this being the week he "goes to work an hour early".) said you can set a clock by my hormonal imbalance. I don't leak often, I just go complete apeshit once a month. 

Dunno. My behavior still seems kind of normal to me. I don't see how men would be shining examples of stability if they had a massive surge of testosterone in the middle of the afternoon.

Woke up tonight with a perfectly written short story in my head. And it was a good one, too. I'll post it after I come home from work. My brain does that sometimes - does something brain-like from time to time. Usually, it's just a random mess that seems awesome up until I start brushing my teeth, but this one passed the dog-walk test. 'Course, I slept for three hours after lunch yesterday and for nine hours tonight, so I can barely move or stretch. But I feel better, rested. Minor toothache, which I am actively choosing to ignore. The tooth seems fine, I don't know what the fuck it's complaining about. I have other matters to attend to, financially, spiritually and ergonomically. Monday morn, people. Come on. March forth. The week isn't going to screw itself.



.... okay, maybe not after work, because I'm always too tired. but eventually :D


... (a month later). It's just not happening, I am just too tired to remember to write. I barely remember to read.

In short, it's about this guy in some village and he falls and glass gets stuck in his upper spine and he knows if it gets pulled out he'll instantly die, so he goes around his village (like a Sicilian town type a thing), looking for this nagging old bitch of his wife. She's terrible, but he kind of wishes to watch her face as he dies, kind of sticking it to her. He meets all sorts of people whom he tells this, some continue to follow him around. In the end, the woman hears he's looking for her and that he has a glass shard stuck in his neck and he begins to tell her he wants to see her one more time, but she just shuts him up, rolling her eyes, 'You're such an impossible whiner' and dismissively pulls out the shard. 

The first batch of half-pans and tiny boxes arrived!!!
Hello, February Christmas! 

Good to know after thirteen years I still got it :D 8) To have a lover pass out whimpering, that is certainly a compliment to one's technique. 

Mold genocide collateral damage ....

The beautiful General in all of his infinite wisdom decided to clean the mold off the walls in my studio, without telling me. This was for several reasons. Well, I like mold and I like the patterns it makes - the walls are green and the mold is silverish and I like all living things and mold as a superior species in particular. I would have not allowed him to kill it had he asked, even if he argued it could probably kill me. Another thing is that he also either killed or scared away all the spiders above my work desk and I keep those on a first name basis.
      So, the point of the story is, he didn't tell me. I spend too much time with my work manager, whose principle is: Just tell me it was you and what you did and how you will fix it and I will not be upset. So I come home and - if you don't turn on the lights, the studio corner is a fairly dim lit place - I don't notice anything particularly off for a while. My hands start to itch, which I assume is the result of the shit I'm handling in the dollar store. I had to pick up glass yesterday, fully aware you're never supposed to do that. I notice some of the screen-lit surfaces are kind of sparkly stained, which I dismiss as maybe since I was drinking fresh Coke, that sprayed around a bit. And my mouse is not running as smooth as I am used to it on its pad. Finally, when I try to cut a glossy carton, I see it's actually quite filmed over. In fact .... everything is filmed over. And my palms have gone from itchy to purple and swollen in patches, burning AF.
      Anyone's first instinct is always, of course, to phone their lover and yell what the fuck did they do to your desk. But he calmed me it's okay, it wasn't a pesticide, it was just bleach. My studio is now a tiny graveyard of myriad blameless toxic souls. Some of my pocket change I kept on the desk has corroded. Most of the rest was easily wiped off. Had to change the bedding, tho. No matter, the days are so lovely, bright and warm, taking a naked nap after some smoochy, in a freshly made bed was just what it took for me to stop yelling at G.
     Not to mention if your hands are really burning, you don't think so much about your burning/hurting feet. Silver lining. Silverish.

     poor mold. :( 

The Favourite

I shunned this movie, because I kind of resented the Oscars snubbing Toni Collette for her work in Hereditary, a film I'm quite fond of, though I've not seen all of it, and thought people will downvote Roma as a frontrunner simply for not watching it, being a foreign film and all. I didn't think this will be very good, I assumed it will be crazy rich women being shitty wicked to one another. 

I was right. They are. 

It's very good. The women are amazing in it. I really really liked it. 

Which part of your life, do you suppose, I should envy?

Me dad, back in the day, had this thing for trying out different 'low' jobs, for three reasons. One, he was curious and wanted to learn new skills; two because he then wrote articles about them and people he met and three, probably bit subconsciously, because he wanted to see what those who knew him would say/do. (He'd be a miner, a chimney sweep, etc...) One of such jobs was shining shoes at the train station. He told me that when his peers saw him, they'd smirk and talk down on him. He even tried being a beggar once and said he was called everything but human.

Someone from one of my previous lives came to my dollar store today. Someone well off, wearing very nice clothes, driving a new Audi, some legal clerk position in Brussels or something. Very nice hair, well maintained. They told me I looked better with a camera around my neck and if this is where I ended up?

Later, while sweeping the floor, my feet killing me, my pockets full of stray marbles and beads, I wondered, honestly, what do they think (I did not have the heart to tell them the truth), exactly, they have when they come to their house at the end of the day, that I should envy?

Do they have more books than me? More poetry? More notebooks FOR poetry? Better music? Better movies? Bigger and faster computer to play stupid video games that make them brainlessly happy? More lamps for their camera corner, a better camera? A bigger studio with more paints and canvases at a ready for the summer inspiration to come knocking? More inks and pigments and paper - the materials I favor to all others in the world? Is their dog dumber than mine and cats more retarded? Would I drink wine, do they think I would not have fine wine? Are my walls not set with art, my windows not large and bright enough, my floor not old wood enough and my ceilings not fifteen feet high enough?

Hm. Well. Maybe. Here is what awaits me at the end of each daily story, when I walk through the door. (Actually, the General has only failed once to 'surprise' pick me up from work and even then he stayed with me on the phone the whole time while I walked the long street, as if we live in fucking Beirut or something.) There is going to be dinner for me in the fridge and some bonus yummy on my work desk, candy or a cookie or my favorite yogurt or something. The deepest, clearest intelligent voice is going to ask me how my day was, tell me how his day was and we will talk about folly and philosophy, bullshit and politics and sexy nonsense. Largest, warmest hands will touch my face and hair and hands and the behemoth of a man, that massive blacksmith's body, a warrior farmer, will hold me and grab my boobs. He may read for an hour or so and I'll nap beside him, listening to the pages turn, and he'll caress my hair meanwhile, playing with my lashes and ears and collarbone. If he can restrain himself, we'll get to the bed and do fun things there, or he won't hold back and he'll just pound me brainless from behind on the sofa. We may watch a movie or play Warcraft or I'll write and he'll watch YouTube tutorials on how to bushcraft or make sharp weapons in an at-home shop.

Which part of this can be improved upon, mm? That a Brussels job and an expensive haircut would improve upon? A new Audi instead of an old Mitsubishi? High-heel shoes instead of hiking shoes? Pretty clothes instead of cargo pants and windbreaker? A vase of expensive flowers in the middle of the table as opposed to a shitload of crafting material piled on a desk? Tell me again what they have that I should envy so? They travel more? I traveled enough for three lifetimes. What beauty has their eyes caught that mine would not? Because I cannot think of three things I would want to change about my existence. And not two of those are achievable with a little bit of planning and a shitload of sunblock.

I am now certain - dad was right - dollar stores are good for the soul. :P

    Supposedly there is an 18th century Bologna recipe for watercolors that's top of the market ... So whom do I have to sell my dog's firstborn to get that recipe? 

Hey, we had purse inspection in my dollar-store workplace. That felt unusually invasive ...

         One of the inspections against us is an unannounced showing up of an overseer late at night, after we've already closed everything: we start rolling down the gate and the overseer comes into the scene. We have to return inside, all the registers are checked again, all the books and we have to show the contents of our purses. I am amazed by that every time, since we are not really allowed to approach the customers about thieving, we are in fact discouraged to even be on the lookout for probable shoplifters, even though we find evidence (empty boxes and whatnot) by the dozens every day. But cashiers, we are to have our purses inspected. At least on the boat, they were looking for firearms and explosives, which made sense. Here they just seem to look for more ways to degrade the workers. 

          Guess how many people think that is normal? 

Inks and pigments and sketchbooks, oh my...

Touching a wee bit on the subject of my future passion project ... so far I don't like most of the stuff I touch, but slowly, I hope to  ... well, snail crawl out of the fucking depression, as it were. I worked on the logo some, some on the label, I did some bullshit promos which I posted on the so far dormant Insta site ... the one thing that I do look forward to, someday when I have two nickels to rub together, is purchasing the chemicals. Found a local site with most of the stuff I require. I have no idea on the quality of the pigments, but that's tested easily enough. Soon, snail, soon.

... I keep thinking ... how ardently I try to convince the General of these projects... Then I wonder why do I need to convince anyone of what I choose to direct my creativity towards and, all in all, do with my own money? .. but then I remember I have no sense of the reality of my own and if G says it sounds legit, it's legit. If he is not convinced, then clearly I am nowhere near ready to believe (in) it myself.

Wild Wild Country

Trying to watch the documentary about an Oregon cult farm ... But it's just too messed up. I actually saw quite a few really good docs and some that were said to be great but were not bad, and I skipped some bad ones, starting with Shane Dawson's Tanacon shitshow explanation (he later made a series about Jake Paul, but that was really bad, basically just bullshit clickbait allegations and looking into the camera all the time with an utterly shocked/appalled expression, regardless of what the scene in the footage was about). Then I watched Won't You be my Neighbour, RBG, American vandal Season 2, a couple of Fyre docs and a bunch of stuff on YouTube about random famous people. All of that stuff was really cool. Especially wide shots of nice places, before and after. I only don't like it when shitty people do shitty things and get away with it. That unnerves me and leaves me angry.

I think people hate cults for two reasons. One - how can people be so utterly retarded as to behave like that, I will never understand. You are grown men and women, for crying out loud, and that's how you behave? Listen to shit like that, talk shit like that, act that way and not be ashamed of yourselves? Ye, cultists prey on rich, miserable people, there's never a shortage of those. But are you fucking kidding me? 

And mostly, the main reason, is because cultists can go from quirky/vegan to full-blown homicidal/suicidal lunatics on a whim of their two-faced profiteering leaders. Leaders run away in their private jets, whereas a bunch of freaks in uniformed dresses kill themselves and all their children. Every religion does terrible, terrible things and everyone knows them and does nothing about it. Cults are that much worse because they rub it in everyone's face, bragging: "there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's our right to act like crazies, because we're rich and miserable!"