60 and cloudy

the spaces between seats are narrow, and it is impossible to navigate them without bumping someone with my carry-on.

a lady next to me is sacked out in her seat. she has herself twisted to the side, her legs tangled under her, her face pressed against one armrest. i can't help but wonder if she will end up with a nasty red, hard-edged strip across one cheek when she awakes.

i do a double take as it appears an old grandmotherly lady a few rows over is openly reading a porn magazine. i am about to applaud her audacity, but upon closer inspection i realize it is just a full-page ad depicting two scantily-clad blondes sitting very close together.

ever since i hurt my thumb and subsequently launched upon this pictorial drafting debaucle, my writing is atrocious and i can only do it for a bit before my hand begins to ache.

the sky is a beautiful shade of robin-egg blue with the sun shining luxuriently. i'm going to trade them for the perpetual gray and drizzle i love so much.

the two ladies across from me are discussing a bad experience with another family member at a family reunion from which they are on their way home. one has a mannish, mr. spock haircut and glasses, and the other's sunglasses are tucked into a feathered 80's style 'do.

the one with gray spock hair grabs her water bottle, causing one of her bags to fall over, bumping the ankle of the sleeping woman, whom i wish, upon waking, would turn towards me so i can check her cheekbone.

another lady joins spock and tina turner hair, obviously related. there is a brief exchange, and the first two leave to get something to eat. as soon as they are gone, the third gets on her cell phone and proceeds to bad-mouth the first two at length to someone on the other end.

i decide they are this flight's terrorists, with plans to hijack delta dl 2758 to minneanapolis, and crash it into one of our national monuments, mt. rushmore. joke's on them, as nobody will even miss it.

i overhear someone behind me say, "i'm dying on the inside." i fight the urge to offer to match up the rest of him.

off to get some water and a snack.

other notes of interest: while i always miss the pacific northwest, i do not miss her traffic.

my back feels like someone used a cheesegrater on it. pics soon.

to the old fucker in the truck who nearly hit me/ran me off the road when changing lanes without signalling/looking; and the metric fuckton of commuters who slammed on their breaks in unison to rubberneck world's smallest and least interesting fenderbender: if i find you motherfuckers, i am beating you soundly till my arms drop off.

that is all.

darth sardonic

a lame ass attempt at an update

yeah yeah, don't even start.

i actually had a medium-sized post i had thought about doing, but after telling the details of the events to others who weren't there, and not receiving the laughter and such that i expected, i think it might be possible that said events fall into the categories: "funnier in my head" and "guess you had to be there" so i may or may not tell that story at a later date.

it's the first day of spring break. yay. bust out the six-pack surfer boys n the nubile bikini chicks (o and believe me, my droogs and only friends, my beloved ptitsas and malchicks, my non-existent readers, they are out, in full force. and yours truly isn't complaining about the bikini chick part either. pretty sure mrs. sardonic doesn't mind the increased presence of male eye candy for her daily commute as well. but i digress--)

tomorrow, in the afternoon, i fly back to the evergreen state (pierce county motherfuckers!!) to do another largish patch on the back tattoo. we rapidly approach the end of this megalithic testament to my artist's ability to create beauty in a patient person's skin.

i may post live from my mom's computer room, orting, washington. or i may give you, the beloved non-existents, a run-down of the week's shenanigans and debauchery upon returning to the land of surf n turf. i'm not sure.

however, until then.

darth sardonic

sometimes the smallest things...

it really is the little things, o beloved non-existent readers.

it's the "fuck this, i've had it!" escapism drive down i-95 at speeds in excess of 70 mph in the interceptor with rainer maria emoting "you just can't turn me on and off" and the sun shining through the window and the ac blowing ice cold.

it's the pleat in a pair of my dressy pants and the looks i draw as i walk to my class (hey, i'm happily married, i aint dead! everyone still wants to feel sexy, right?) to knock the kiosk presentation i have been unduly stressed about out of the fucking park like a grand slam homerun that wins the pennant.

it's the final project for autocad 3d that won't be easy but won't really be hard either and for which i have already picked my subject.

it's the friend of mine from my pictorial drafting class that says, "you wanna do the final project as a team?" which i do. and while the teams have to do more work total than the individuals, if you divide it evenly between two people, it ends up being less than you would have to do if you did the project alone. we will be designing a bar/club for the international space station, since he wanted to do a bar, and i wanted to continue with my space theme.

these tiny things become the real life equivalents of a sit down on a hard stool and a bag of ice for my bruised face, and i know that i will be ready to step back into the ring at the bell and take a few more hits.

and what is funny is i used a line from rainer maria's song "catastrophe" for my post about being on the ropes, when in reality i should've used something from this song by them:

southpaw, by rainer maria

Cracked knuckles, and my fists
are bandaged up for the fight.
Am I ready?
There's the bell.
How many rounds can I go?
And how can soften the blows?
Can I avoid them altogether?

But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feels like my first hit.
(and it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(yeah, it hurts like hell)

So don't tell the crowd...

Black eyes, black threads, and bandages for the fight.
Who are the odds on,
me or him?
How many tricks do I know?
And how can I soften the blows?
Or can I avoid them altogether?

But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feel like my first hit.
(and it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(yeah, it hurts like hell)

So don't tell the crowd,
but I'm gonna let my guard down.
You're the only one now.

My heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
(I'll let you take me)
It feel like my first hit,
and it hurts like hell.
(I'll let you take me)
Black eyes, black threads, and bandages.
(I'll let you take me)
It feels like my first hit,
and it hurts like hell.
(I'll let you take me)
My heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

Catastrophe keeps us together.

i am on the ropes.

a few years back i posted about how i never quit fighting though i am low, and bleeding, and hanging onto a turnbuckle for dear life.

and i am reminding myself of having said that. over and over. because, o dear beloved non-existent readers, who so lovingly commiserate with me time after time after motherfucking time and still keep cheering from the cheap seats; shouting: "get back up! keep going! you can do it!" i am reminding myself that i have said this because i am on the ropes, and i really want to toss up my hands, toss in the towel, wave the white flag and sink onto the bloodstained canvas for a very long nap.

i want to piss it all away into a mud of self-loathing and self-pity and wallow like a fat pig.

needless to say, it's been a rough couple of weeks.

i kinda don't want to dwell on the why too much. suffice to say, in the past week i have: taken my car to the shop for the third time in a month, thought i was done with my kiosk project in pictorial drafting only to find out today that the teacher failed to let us know clearly that there was still more to do, ordered a new cell phone after i washed my old one with the jeans the cats used as a litter box one morning, and showed no. 1 pictures of homeless people so that he might start getting prepared for the career his current attitude is setting him up for.

that's the cliff notes.

i am exhausted. i've lost count of the rounds i have gone, let alone the jabs and uppercuts that have landed soundly. i am reeling, punch drunk and dreaming of being normal drunk instead. i can't remember the last thing the coach said as he slathered me with vaseline and spread medication on my swelling eyes and nose.

i don't quit fighting.

i also remember a time when a very tiny darth sat in a very tiny room at a very tiny ronald mcdonald house and begged a very large god to take a very tiny break on a very tiny family and its very tiny newest member in particular.

i was punch drunk then, too. i was seeing double. i was stumbling around trying to avoid any more blows, cause i knew another one would lay me out.

i was begging for the bell like i'm begging for the bell now.

i won't stop fighting. i won't. but a nice sit on a hard stool, a swig of cold water, a bloody spit in a bucket, shouted advice from a grouchy old cuss with a stogie jutting from his gob; these might be in order.

i'm hanging in there, o my droogs and only friends, but i'm tellin ya, one more solid punch and i am going backwards through the air, my hair whipping sweat, like brad pitt's character in snatch to lay flat out on the boards, watching from a watery metaphor below as my opponent kicks me repeatedly in the ribs.

hey, god? can we ring the bell, just for a bit, please?

darth sardonic

...with fingers crossed for everything you do

i had been bugging dr d for weeks. ever since i noticed the twin "vw" (as in volkswagen) buttons he had on his corkboard in his office.

"you've got two, n my corkboard in x-ray is barren."

incessantly, almost on a daily basis. man, dr d was a laid-back guy who managed to put up with a lot of shit from me.

time passed. i bugged him occasionally about the buttons, but it never really was a big deal.

eventually, i forgot about it.

then i was having one of those days. the days when it's the little things that kill. when the morning starts off with something stupid and annoying, and then moronic coworkers exacerbate the situation, and then you get a short lunch because someone else was lazy, and an unusual amount of extra patients come in and you are the one expected to get them all situated. the kind of day where i joke about ropes or razor blades. the kind of day where my eyes sag.

by three in the afternoon, i feel the unshed tears of aggravation and frustration fighting their burning way to the surface, and i go to hide out in the x-ray exposure room. this room was perfect for this purpose, as it had a regular door instead of the revolving door most x-ray rooms have. so i can shut the door, lock it, turn off the light, and anyone that might need me would have to knock so as not to unexpectedly expose x-ray film to light and render any films i might've taken useless and subsequently face my justified wrath. and after the knock, i can say "gimme five minutes" and make sure i have washed the tears away and look normal when i come back out.

i shut the door slowly. flick the lightswitch down. sit in the beat up discarded computer chair that serves as my office chair (this little five by eight room being the closest i have ever come to my own office in my entire air force career, and i get to share it with two developing machines, a counter where i keep extra films and cleaning supplies, and a sink).

i cry. i let all the frustration out in little streams down my cheeks. i hang my head and see teardops falling, glinting red in the subdued exposure room lights.

i do what needs to be done, and decide i better clean up before someone realizes i have been in here with the door shut for awhile.

as i rinse my face in the sink, i look up. on the bottom of my corkboard, oddly-colored in the red lights, a single "vw" pin is tacked into place.

i cry more, but not from frustration this time.

the other day, when i hit the cat, as i was still feeling wracked with grief and guilt, i got a text from j, my buddy from autocad classes:

what kind of coffee u want? at panera

it seems that invariably when i feel lowest, some show of support and love appears unexpected.

truly, i am one of the luckiest motherfuckers ever to tread.

darth sardonic

i mean, really!

ok, if you have been reading at this tiny bit of broken glass on the beaches of the world wide web for any length of time, you know i am completely down with nudity (my own, and that of others).

it's also possible, o my droogs and only friends, my long-suffering non-existent readers, that you might've also cottoned to the fact that i am a firm believer that there is a time a place for everything.

so here's the rub: i will not be finding any new pals to add to the list today as a result of one particular blogger somewhere in germany.

i clicked on "naked lunch" in my favorite books and commenced traversing the blogsphere like a much taller and only slightly less rounder bilbo baggins. blog number four featured a not-so-slim fella who apparently held the camera just below his (rather small, shriveled, ugly, and uncircumcised) genitalia and snapped a pic upwards towards his face, so that the very first thing greeting my upon looking was his semi-erect cock.

now, again, penises don't bother me. nudity does not bother me. but when i am fucking searching for blogs to read, i really don't want to be bombarded by your dick! i'd rather not find myself positioned somewhere slightly below your scrotum like you and i are on the most intimate of terms. these sorts of things need a certain amount of warning, of prep, or at the very least, the proper mindset to start off with: "ok, it's no big deal, i am gonna be seeing a naked middle-aged man. so don't freak out." at the very least, right?

but here i am, munching on a sandwich, thinking (the truth comes out as to how i search for pals, lol): "boring, boring, full of himself, boring, way too high-maintenance, bor--holy fucking two-week old fuckstain!! what the fuck?!!? who would do that?!? fucking warn a guy, jesus christ!"

so if i have no one new to add, you, the beleaguered non-existents, might understand why.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

Had a nice grip on my life 'til you twisted my arm

ah, how life twists and turns and weaves and bobs. the "pals list" is cleaned up. for the most part, i removed people who don't post anymore. in a few others, i removed people i just don't read anymore, and i suspect don't read me. it was a little painful removing krissie. i've no idea what happened to her. i actually had her on my fb as a friend as well, and she is no longer there either. gringa, if you might shed some light...? i kept a few around for a bit longer to see what the authors do next. soon hopefully i will venture back out into the blogsphere and see if i might find some new "pals" to be interested in. but lately i have been too busy and stressed and here's why:

warning: long whiney ranting blog to ensue. proceed at your own risk.

when i signed up for pictorial drafting, i knew it was going to be a hand-drafting class.

what i did not know is that the class would be 50% interior design students, the majority of which have never drafted in any way shape or form, and 50% drafting and design students, most of which have only drafted on the computer. furthermore, i did not know the teacher would be disorganized and ramble for literally an hour about things that will not be useful ever, not even in the drafting job market. i did not know that she would not bother to teach us any hand-drafting techniques whatsoever, but rather; would give us our very first project to accomplish as a group in hopes that we would just pick up the necessary methods for properly hand-drafting.

i did not know that the teacher would give us our first project on the very first day of class, and that we would start project number two the same day we turned in that project, and project number three would start the same day number two is due, and so on through to the end of class. i did not know, that when i say, "this aspect of this project doesn't make any sense, and should be changed" the professor would hide behind "i didn't come up with the projects, i just teach the class" and leave us to flounder with some requirements that seem almost contradictory. are you not the teacher? is it not your class? can't you step up to the plate, make a command decision, display some guts, and say, "fuck this lame-ass project, we're not even gonna do it"?

i did not know i would spend literally every weekend, and most weeknights, since starting the class, at the kitchen table with vellum taped to a piece of foamcore, carefully and painfully mapping out floor plans or elevation drawings by hand with a t-square.

here's why it is so much more frustrating than your average, run-of-the-mill drafting class with way too much homework and a disorganized teacher:

first, the class is an elective. i didn't have to take this class. i could've taken vector graphics, or pro-e. i chose pictorial drafting because i needed to have a full time course load to get the full amount of g.i. bill each month, and this one worked with my schedule. if i could travel back in time, i would tell the then me "no way, dude, you don't wanna do this."

secondly, the teacher is a career interior designer. and the other teachers of this class are as well. which means that not only will i have to draft stuff by hand, but i will be required to design things. and not just design these objects (most recent, a kiosk like you find selling cheap jewelry and shitty cell phones at the mall), but wax lyrical about what kind of carpet or paint i might use and why the color of the plastic chairs will bring out the gold that is in the... whatever. i am not an interior design student. i will be an autocad operator. i will draft the things that are given to me. i will not decide what cloth the furniture should be upholstered in. and yet, i need to do that for one of my projects.

third, and perhaps most important: hand-drafting has moved from the ranks of necessary job description to art form. the analogy i keep using is this: let's just say you are having a great party. all your friends show up, everyone is having a wonderful time, all the guests are laughing and playing and enjoying themselves. you want to capture this moment to remember always.

now, you wouldn't call rembrandt or dali or van gogh and have them come over to paint you a portrait of the good time your friends are having at your party. that's ridiculous, it's ineffective, it's time-consuming. you would grab your camera and take a (or several) picture(s) and download them to your computer.

with the advent of computers, and computer drafting software, hand drafting has been rendered obsolete. despite how the professor goes on and on about how she thinks it will impress our future employers to see carefully hand-drafted plans; and how she thinks it is just easier and faster to hand-draft an idea rather than doing it on the computer, hand-drafting is a waste of time. in something like a half-hour, i had successfully drafted out (in 3-d, no less) my kiosk idea on autocad, so that i would have an idea to work from when i am hand-drafting the different elevations of my kiosk. it takes nearly a half-hour to get my vellum taped down properly and all the tools i need to do the task out and ready to go. forget all about actually laying a pencil line down.

this particular kiosk project pisses me off to no end. here's why, o my beloved non-existent readers: initially, the teacher said she wanted us to "design" a kiosk. in my sardonic, flip kind of way, i decided i was going to make a space-kiosk to sell tang to the astronauts of the international space station (i actually kept saying the mir space station until one of my friends said, "i think they blew that up." "no way!" "yeah, don't you remember taco bell put a big target out in the ocean, and if the mir hit the target everyone would get free tacos?" "what?!?" and yes, as it turns out, he's right on both counts), and eventually moon base alpha and then colonies on mars. i was very excited about the idea, because i wanted to use the millenium falcon and elroy(from the jestons)'s little space scooter as my main design inspirations. it was a project i was actually excited to get behind.

then the teacher told us that we had to pick from a list of (rather uninspired and mundane) objects to sell.

well, smoothies were on there, so switch it to tang smoothies. problem solved. but then my kiosk has to fit into a 7'X5'X7' cube. bleh. then it has to have 42 linear feet of display. (i ask her, "if i have a smoothie shop, what exactly am i displaying?" "well, maybe you have to display the fruit or something.") it also, above and beyond the display, has to have 70 cubic feet of storage. (again, i ask why i would need that much storage in a smoothie shop. i am told that that is what i will have to figure out. i reply, well you can't slap a one-size-fits-all requirement on kiosks selling merchandise as varied as smoothies, ties, surf boards, and hermit crabs. she says again, "well, that is what you will have to figure out." i say nothing, but think, "i have already figured it out. i have figured out that all this display and storage space would be completely unnecessary in my kiosk, but that a human operator would sure appreciate the room to move around.") i actually contemplate just finding a kiosk at the mall that is selling something on the list (ipods or jewelry), measuring it, taking a few quick sketches, and cranking out someone else's idea and turning it in as my own, so strict is the rubric. and the teacher actually says that this isn't a bad idea(!!!)

comme ce, comme ca, o my droogs and only friends: my kiosk is actually going to be in a hallway of the international space station. the makers of tang have designed a revolutionary advance in the field of robotics called the "smoothiebot 5000" that will hover over the 84 (count 'em, 84!) cubic feet of storage and create your smoothie within the confines of its titanium belly. fresh fruit as well as canisters advertising the different flavors of tang that can be used in the smoothies will equal about 48 linear feet of display, and there is absolutely no way the teacher can complain about my kiosk as it meets all her requirements as delineated in the syllabus, and i get to do a project i can actually be somewhat enthused about.

just seven more weeks of this stupid shit.

darth sardonic