Well the weekend went by, and so did all my money. I purchased clothing over the weeked for work, and even though i look pretty fucking hot i’m not exactly rich anymore. sad eh? paycheck is thursday, but it goes directly to rent.

Today i find out if UPS will pay me for my computer, i think. I hope it is today. If it isn’t, then they have some explaining to do. Allied Services has a fax with the answer on it, or at least they had one friday but they couldn’t tell me the answer because the lady handeling my case was on vacation till monday. Its monday.

I’m worried sick about this shit. I know i shouldn’t be, but i want it over. I want them to pay for my computer so i can move on with my life. If they do not pay for my computer, i’ll be discouraged as hell. This would also mean major postponements for everything i want to do, because i will need to find a way to purchase a new computer. Thats three weeks worth of work. Haha. Thats my logic. To purchase item A, you must put in time B. hehe. I look at life like a game. I’m really tired if you can’t tell. It is a bit early in the morning. It is also Monday.

hope everything goes well with all of you.

So i got to work. Apparently i’ve been neglecting this blogsphere. I’ll be honest. This is wednesday, and i am actually in a good mood. If i talked to you on the phone monday and Tuesday, then you probably noticed i was not in the most energetic mood. The reason is this, i’ve never had a full time job. I needed to get adjusted to the full-time lifestyle.
-=-Work-=-
Work is easy to sum up.
Pros:
– Work begins at 9:00 and i wake up at 8:00 to leave by 8:35 to catch the 8:40 train and get to work at 8:59. Oh hell yes that is nice. It is going the opposite direction from all the traffic, meaning i get a seat and for 10-15 minutes i watch as nice scenery passes by.
– I get paid very well. Promotion would mean a 32K + job with really good benefits (law firms give really good benefits).
– I work with exceptionally nice people.
– I do fairly easy work, just time consuming.
– I am overqualified for the job, which means i’m pretty quick with the work needed.
– I am on my feet all day, so interestingly enough i’ve been losing weight. Of course i’ve also been broke, which meant skimping on the food.
there are more but i can’t think of them right now.
Cons
– I’m not interested in the job at all. Its accounting. That means counting and printing bills.
– Dressing up every day for work is a bit of a hassel, don’t like slacks very much, had to cut my hair, but not to short.
– Shoes hurt my feet, because i’m walking all the time.
– The Shift isn’t great, 9-5 is the average work day, but it means i have roughly an hour to go to places that close at 6 oclock (banks etc). It also means i could probably not interview with other jobs, although i’m going to be asking for time off if this becomes a problem.
– I’ve been really wiped out at night, yet again i’m not used to the time frame structure etc. It is the first job i’ve every had that required me to be mentally active on an 8 hour structure for five days a week.
– I really find the job boring, heh. 😉

Ok well it looks heavy on the con side, but come on. Most of the cons are cons that i would have for any job. I’m a lazy man, so i found out. I’m making law experience which would be nice for the future. It is really good pay, i was looking at some luxury apartments and thinking that me and Mary could afford them. We could, but they would have to feed us after paying rent 😉 (actually we could afford them easily and food, but in the end All i would be doing is going to work and coming home to this apartment i’m renting and staring at the wall, since i couldn’t afford tv or computers. ha ha)

On the friendship side, yeah its barren. I’ve began an importation gig in fact. I’m talking my brother into moving up here. I think it would be great if he did, in fact he is an idiot for not wanting to. He would so fucking love it up here. Hell he knows that. When we were visiting this place he was in love with it. I think he should move up.

Hideous list of pros to entice WDuluoz, HLF, Snaars, etc into moving up here.
– Legal temp jobs are easy to get apparently with high computer skills, you don’t even need a college degree.
– Bakeries for breakfast are nearby so the hungry worker can stop and get a little delicious pastry cooked by gourmet (or something similar) style.
– The most lively city ever.
– Rent and food in jersey city is equal to rent and food in downtown lafayette.
– The climate rules, today it is 70 degrees or roughly with a cool breeze, whee.
– Entertainment in abundance.
– I’m up here, so you have a friend. Mary is also here so you have 2 friends.
– Jobs aren’t that difficult to find.
– Close to family (Wduluoz and Snaars)
– Some of the best schools are around here.
– If you work for delta legal for more then 70 hours, then i get a hundred bucks extra for referring you. AND its yours if you agree to sign a 6 month -> year lease for an apartment ;).

Ok i could do more but i’m not. I really hope you guys consider moving up here. Hehe i need to import some friends.

P.S. Don’t SHIP YOUR PCS WITH UPS!!!! hehe no word yet if they are going to replace mine, they made the claim on monday, and approval should be soon. I hope.

P.P.S. HLF: I know you probably can’t leave your kids. I respect that. Not to mention your working on getting your bachelor’s degree so it would be horrible of me to expect you to move up here and abandon your current responsibilities.

P. P. P. S. Snaars: I know moving is a big deal because your family is secure where they are, and it is horrible of me to entice you when it is probably impossible for you to make such a move. Oh well i can understand why you couldn’t move also.

P . P . P. ad infinitum: Wilbur: You have no excuses. In the end your only option of course is my happiness. You don’t miss me? You don’t miss New York? feh. Fine. Stay down there.

Recap. I found out i had a job with renewable income, i went crazy. I spend 38.50 the first night.
Movie: Palindromes (sp?) (Ava is an example of what this word means, aviva.. or mom… or anna… or toot…. etc) 11.00
Water at the theater: 4:00 + 3.50 for some welch’s candies because to use my credit card it had to be 7:00 and i didn’t have cash.
Blockbuster: 20.00 for renting the following:
-Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
-The Urbz: Sims in urban life.
-Resident… Evil… 4
—-read like the guy says it in the game…

Confessions is great. I love it. Mary hates it. I’ll let her explain why she hates it, i’ll just allude to things i like about the movie.

For one thing, the colors used throughout the film are gorgeous. The lighting is absoluetly fantastic. The main actor is a great embodiement of who i think Chuck Barris is really like. The story has one major strength, it is told by a man who has played fiddle to the world’s demands and being mocked and chided for becoming too sucesseful at giving the world what they want. In the end of all the critical blackout, he flees for solitude and realizing he hasn’t lived the life he wants to have lived makes it better. He writes himself as James Bond. Realizing, like all good authors do, that if his material was too clean and scarred his life too much that the story wouldn’t sell. This causes him to dirty his work up by acting like he was pressured into doing the job he creates himself. In the end he wipes all history of such occurences by slowly annihilating every possible witness to his “assassin role”. He claims there is a mole, but in the end he is an old man who wants forgiveness for his sins(breaches of human compassion, not chirstian sins exclusively). He recognizes that he has treated and preyed upon the weakness of man to profit for himself, and he gets torn up by the jackels. All that is left is his autobiography.

And then Jerry Springer comes along ;). What oh what could possibly happen to him? Could he be Santa Clause? or perhaps he is an infamous drug smuggler….

no idea.

In the end, the real gem of the movie is Charlie Kaufman’s voice. The blended style of scenes, the merging of reality and fiction. Clooney claims that the uncut scene technique was his own idea, but i doubt it. Too many other Kaufman films have that technique. Kaufman uses it in ESOTSM to demonstrate the rail like presentation dreams often take. There are other movies i cannot think of right of hand specifics. I just doubt Clooney had the idea of using uncut sequences. If he did, bravo because it works seamlessly with Kaufman’s script. Kaufman also makes pieces of art. Kinsella once argued that a painting must be framed before it could be sold. I argue that Kaufman approaches his films in the method. In Human Nature the confession method frames the film. As each character confesses and speaks frankly to the camera, the story is told. In adaptation the film itself becomes the framework. As the film is made and the scriptwriter talks about how the script will fall, we see those glimpses as framing the ultimate piece of art. In ESOTSM we see reality framing the dream. In Being John Malkovich the framework is the real world, while the story is what occurs inside Malkovich’s head. In confessions we see reality framing the story being told. The hotel sequence that demonstrates present day gives context and key to unlocking the truth of the story. Of course this is just what i understand Kaufman’s storytelling technique to hinge upon.

The final great thing about the movie of course is the last line, it is so fucking good.

I also saw palindromes/roshomon/the seven samurai so i’ll talk about them later some time.

oh well i went to see an art exhibit for maurice sendak (sp?) who is the writer/illustrator of some of the best children’s books. Where the wild things are has to have been one of my favorite books. It is about a kid with a rich imagination. I’m sure you guys saw it. Anyways at the exhibit i learned that Maurice Sendak is Jewish and lot of his stories that i never read, could in fact be interpreted in a very adult manner. Allusions to cremetories and hitler abound. He even wanted to directly reference it in one book. This information makes his stories so much richer and meaningful. His art was always intricate. Go see Mary’s blog for examples of it.

Thanks mom for exposing me to such a great artist at such a young age. I appretiate it. His art in the exhibit was astounding, and there is apparently a ballet recorded about the story in which the story is acted out. I really want to see that. I saw bits in the exhibit and it was beautiful.

not much else, i start monday. whoo hoo.

I was just thinking as i was talking to Mary, i need friends now. I got a job… Now all i need are a couple of friends to hang out with… hehe..

heh i feel like going out but i haven’t a clue where…

grr..

bleh…
movie perhaps? I need my computer.

WHOOO HOOO!!!!

NO MORE JOB SEARCH FOR ME IN DESPERATION ATTEMPTING TO FIND A PLACE TO GET A JOB SO I CAN MAKE RENT!!!!!!

I START NEXT MONDAY! WOOT

What to say about the last few days. I haven’t spoken about movies lately.

I did not go see Basquiat. I know i know. The lines were insane even when i had to pay to see it. I wasn’t waiting two hours to see paintings of a man i’m not sure i even like. I was interested, but not enthused.

Now there is another exhibit that i see is going on right now that i will go to see soon. It is Monet. Monet’s visions of London. That sounds like fun.

UPS debacle: Not much going on in this front. I was issued a claim number, and now they will decide whether they will pay for it or not. No solid answer, but it looks hopeful. Apparently the lady who is head of Allied Services thinks this is a positive view, but not a guaranteed demonstration of good-will. Oh well.

Job search update: I have an interview with a job that offers 14 dollars per hour and is a temporary position that after three months will grow to a permanent position. The Temp Agency i told you about is “recomending” me for the job, whatever that means. There is still an interview process i’m supposed to go through. Also the job is doing accounting work. If i don’t like the job at any time, i can leave it and the temp agency will look for more work for me fulfill.

If i get it, and all goes through, a 14$ an hour is around 2240 a month before taxes, this is not a bad job up here. After Rent and necessary expenses, it seems i will have a good bit of money to set-aside. This is good because you should see the list of things we need up here.
– COMPUTER!
– clothes to work in.
– Non-Dorm Size Refrigerator
– Dishwasher
– clothes to go out in.
– World of Warcraft back up and running.
– STABLE internet connection.

heh there are more things, but this is right off the top of my head.

Oh well. This was just an update.

P.S. I like Word Press.

I’m supposed to go see the Basuiat museum exhibit tonight which is free. I hope it works out. I’ve heard so much about his work and yet i’ve never really seen it.

I think WDuluoz enjoys his work a lot. Never got word about what temp position i’m being offerred. Shame really. Monday will either really fucking suck or really fucking rule.

I also find out if UPS will pay for my computer, which reminds me. I need to prove the worth of my computer. i’ll be back.

thats what the lady said. She told me to call her back by 3:00 today to get the final word and then she wasn’t in her office at 3:00 so. I will wait till monday morning and find out then i guess.

Disappointed. No other word from any other job, of couse it is only one or two days after i’ve applied for them, so i guess i should give them time.

You know, i just want someone to tell me, “You will get paid on ______ day” so i can feel better when i spend money.

Oh well.

UPS came by yesterday and took pictures of the damage. They will forward the pictures to the “insurence agency” and the insurence agency will make a claim and get back to the “shipping agent” (allied services) with their answer as to whether i will be compensated or not.

The UPS damage assessment people were not exactly helpful, but they were nice. Turns out that according to shipping regulations i was not supposed to use the original box and materials to ship the equipment in. This is news to me because allied services stated that it would be fine to ship my materials in the “original shipping material”.

I have a feeling that i’m not going to get replacement funds, in which case i will be attempting to put the computer backtogether as safely as possible.

Unfortunatly they are turning the situation into an adverserial position. They are saying that it is ultimatly allied services fault for not informing me of the safest shipping method. Allied services is in turn saying that it is my fault because “David didn’t want to pay the money to package the box like we wanted him to package the box, which would cost roughly 40$.” I argued that i didn’t have the 80 bucks prepared to ship a pc to NYC… it is all irrelevant in the end.

I don’t know whats going to happen. I hate insurrence companies though, becuase they never fulfill what they claim to cover. It always comes down to a technicallity. “Sure i’ll protect your house from a flood.*” Of course there are times in which the little guy gets the better of the insurence company, and then the insurrence company deems you unfit for their insurence.. so the cancel your coverage. Fucking insane.

*flood must be an act of god**.

**God doesn’t exist so the flood must be the effect of a nonexistent entity’s action.

There is another reason i haven’t been posting much, because progress in the job search has been so little. Maybe i hinted, or even stated this earlier, but you see nothing is worse then being unemployed and having bills coming up that need money to be paid and the significant other feels like your goofing off. So i avoided the blogsphere 100% until i got some sort of positive progress. If i had negative progress, then it would look twice as bad to the woman i love if i spent 10% of my time writing blogs. aka goofing off. So my time at the computer has been spent working. I wake up at 8-9 and begin searching and sending out resumes.

Today i went to an interview and took tests for delta legal, which is a legal temp agency. I scored as follows:
100% -> Excel
97% -> Word
100% -> Powerpoint
76 Words per minute average typing test.

woo hoo go me. What is not listed above is that I also played IT guy in the back. The computer froze during the tests. I got a secretary to come in and told her how to diagnose the problem. Java script is a bitch, and for somereason it was flooding their computer and freezing it. I told her it might have something to do with having five java applications open in the background simultaneously. She asked how to close them. I closed them. Problem is the problem was recurring. So she got their own IT guy to come out and tell me that the computer was FUBAR so i moved to another compute. I thought to myself, “I could do his job”. After the Interviewer recieved my results she was very pleased with my performance, like i knew she would be.

I’m thinking of going back tomorrow and taking the wordperfect test and some of the more advanced tests. They say we can study the programs before taking the tests. When i took the typing test, i pissed off everyone in the room. They were trying to take their typing tests, and i was throwing them off. Funny.

Vegetarianism isn’t going so good. I have resigned to arguing that i’m a “conscientious eater” What is that you ask? I’m glad you asked, it is someone who recognized the pain and suffering animals go through before I partake of their flesh. I consign myself to being 25% carnivore. I can’t give meat up. I don’t like enough vegetables.

P.S. Now i need to send my resume off to the ACLU and other establishments. Man i hope one kewl lawfirm signs me up for a training position. I really would like to get working in Law.

and depressed. Man I was hit hard. Long and detailed rundown of my life the last few days and my interpretations follow:
– Go to see Star Wars and ended up being mildly disappointed. Well actually really dissappointed. I had built up going to watch this movie so much due to the large amount of time spent at work at M.I. dreaming of the three day stretch i had coming up.
– Go to see NIN in concert and i was mildly dissappointed. Yet again, really dissappointed. “I wanted something i could not have.” The best part of it all was seeing how much enjoyment Trey got out of the concert. There is a little part to the concert you might not know. Since we staggered in so late, we got split up. The whole concert i spent 15 seats from the people i came with. This was very prophetic. Seeing as the next day i would be so many miles away from them.
– I got to the hotel and the realization that my mom that would deposit a check earlier then anticipated, which meant i would get a 30 dollar non-sufficient funds charge. Not the best news to come down to after a concert.
– After getting lost in houston trying to get to an airport i’ve never even heard of, we finally make it to the airport with plenty of time to get through security. But then it strikes. It being the recognition that i will be saying goodbye to some close friends and a brother that i have always been around and influenced by. Needless to say it wasn’t the best feeling to say goodbye to all of them.
– I get on the plane and suffer through some of the worst airtravel i’ve ever been on.
– Landing in Atlanta i learn that the airplane’s departure has been delayed to to rough weather in New York. 3 hour delay plus the original 1 hour layover meant an insane amount of “me” time in the airport. This allowed me to think over a lot of things. The conclusions of which i will never give to anyone.
– Landing in NY at 9:00 instead of the planned 5:00 set me in an odd mood.
– Thursday i wake up to work on getting everything ready to present, but i can’t seem to get motivated. I’m seriously wiped out. Mary and I work on my resume. Trey reviewed my resume and sent back advice. Congealing all the advice into a consistent resume, i came to the conclusion that i need to start looking for a job.
– We go grocery Shopping. It is a lot of money for a week. I worry. Money is dwindling and job hasn’t been secured.
– Friday my computer is dropped off. I have a sinking feeling as i evaluate the box. It doens’t look good. Opening the box up i see that the stirofoam protecting my case has been torn into pieces. My heart falls to the ground. I do this worried pacing thing i always do when i recognize that something is about to go seriously fucking wrong. I open up my case and all my parts fall onto the ground in a disorganized mess. I feel sick. I call Allied Services and tell them my problem, they lodge the report and say they can’t get back to me until tuesday.
– Saturday trying to get my mind off of the week of depressing events, Mary and I go to central park. It is beautiful. We get lost in Harlem as Mary decides to “explore”. Not the safest of places Harlem. Don’t worry nothing happened, just realized that after all is said and done we should have avoided one of the spots we went through.
– Sunday i spend most of my day occuping my time since we have only one computer right now and it is Mary’s computer. She wants to write. So I do other things. Like Zelda Four Swords. Yes. Its a bad game. I won’t get into how boring the game is. I couldn’t do anything productive because my mind was scatterred.
– Monday we go shopping at the mall and i get a shirt to go to interviews in. I finish my resume and finish a cover letter.
– Tuesday i wake up and begin working again about to send my resume out, when i notice UPS HAS yet to call me. So i call allied services again and stress the exact dilemma i’m facing. Lack of computer and the lack of progress with finding a job due to the lack of my computer. They tell me they are trying their best to expedite the procedure.
– In the background here i failed to mention the fact that I am in need of a new phone number. One difficulty in applying for jobs with a louisiana phone number, is that they don’t want to call you back. I can’t change my phone number because the UPS people have my phone number as my only contact information. Catch 22. Except this is not a duality. I force UPS to update my phone number and run off to cingular to change my phone number. UPS uses Mary’s phone number and i get my new phone number from cingular.
– I call UPS and give them my new phone number and i put my new phone number on the resumes and send them out. I send five resumes to temp agencies. Pleased i begin adding more jobs positions to my database so i can send out my resume to even more. I’m doing the shotgun effect to getting a job. Sending out as many resume’s as possible and hoping someone bites.
– This morning i wake up and finish another resume to send out. I call two more temp agencies and set up an interview appointment with one of them. I call Mr. Kinsella and get the information needed to finish my NAACP resume. It is now ready to send out. In a couple minutes i’ll be done with my ACLU resume and i will send it out. I will also be sending out resume’s to the Lambda group and also to the Innocence Project. Each with tailored Cover Letters.
– I finally get a call from UPS and find out they will be sending an insurrance agent soon.

In all aspects, the view from here and now looks positive. And that is why i wrote this blog entry. I’ve been avoiding the blog, because i had nothing but bad news to share. Now i have good news.

Tonight Mary and I are going to a park to watch Garden State under the stars. It should be nice. It is free to. free is always good.