Living in Oblivion

In Hudson Ohio for Thanksgiving. It took us close to 10 hours to make a 6 hour trip. it was fun.

another day, another half dollar

things were boring last week, and I managed to lock a set of important keys inside a decaying apartment building, and they were the only keys that would fit that building, and the archdioscese didn't have any spares. This must have seemed like it was an action perpetrated in revenge, because prior to my losing the keys, I had been struggling with the shopvac--filled to brim with insulation, but I didn't know that yet--and was lamenting the fact, in my head, that I had become a construction worker only to vacuume offices. At least the office was in the middle of being demolished. But so I had gotten this shop vac out of the east attic, which can only be accessed from the roof, I had wrapped and twirled up the various cords and hoses as best I could and dragged it around the roof, almost falling to my death a few times (that's an exaggeration, OSHA, I swear!). Dennis was on the scaffold, and the idea of trying to move that vac down the stairs was impssoble, and there was a well wheel, so , you know i used it. The entire time I lowered the vac, I was plagued with the everpresent mental images of throwing myself from these great heights, these images that always appear to me. I've thought about it, and it's not a suicidal urge or something, but rather some kind of bizarre phobia that has been with me my entire life; I used to be terrifically scared of heights, to the point where when I went with my family to prettyboy resevoir dam I would run around bent over, so as not to see over the edge. I was able to surmount my fear of hights, because what it was I experienced was not vertigo, but rather as I would near and edge, see the bottom of the canyon, river, whatever, my mind would flood with looping images of me free falling through space, me running and launching my self, me flying. Problem was, all of this great flying imagery was seconded by lots of hard hitting, splat stuff, and that was what my fear of heights derived from. I don't know, perhaps this happens to lots of people, but it still happens to me, I just sorta ignore it, and avoide spending too much time looking down. but so I got the shop-vac down, and hauled it around two city blocks to that office in the condemed apartment office building that the archdioscese desperately wants to explode so that they can have a better view of the mount vernon park center, but can't quite justify destroying since it would cost them close to 2 million dollars in tax credits from the historic registry or something. I got that damned vac into the office, with the sole key to the building, and in a move that foreshadows how horrible my old age will be, I placed the keys on the table, instead of thinking to put them into my pants pocket. well teh duct cowboys, who have been looking at everything that is not chained down on teh jobsite with great hunger, borrowed the vac previously, and now it most certainly could not suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, not like it's little 6 horse power engine used to. well that kind pisses me off, so I leave to find some kind of authority figure to complain to--as a new guy, you aren't expected to be competent or intelligent, though I am generally both, and so if you desire to waste time, you can look for various bosses to solve a problem that you could easily solve yourself, and in the process waste 15 minutes walking around and not thinking abotu stuff and etc. Except in this case, my little time wasting maneuver was in fact a bad idea, since I left the keys. I was crowned noodlehead king by george, and chad told me to stand on teh corner and think about what I'd done wrong. He was joking, but then again, I ended up standing on the corner waiting for them later to find tools to BandE the building with. I somewhat redeemd myself by pointing how with and adjustable wrence and a big screwdriver we could break in through the front door without breaking windows or calling locksmiths, but they still made me feel that the the latter half of last week.

Since I am in american now, thanksgiving is next week. That is a good thing, mostly, and I am greatly pleased that I only have to work 3 days to get paid for 5 this week. very good. too bad it involves a long car drive to suburban ohio, i'd much rather spend my time off boozing in toronto at einsteins and the dance cave, but it's not a choice for me to make.

listen to the wrens, they are good. they are also from new jersey.

suicide pt. one

**I dug up some stuff on my Hard Drive from a bunch of years ago. This is one part of a High School assignment where we were to tell the same story in three different writing styles. This one was supposed to be a rough copy of David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, Supposedly Fun Things We'll Never Do Again) and Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow). I'm not sure how sucessful I was, but this was certainly the best of the three pieces, and it was the most fun to write. I wish they'd had us do this kind of shit in college, maybe I would have been proud of the fact that I was an english major, but then again... Probably not. So, the first suicide thing. and yes, it's supposed to be really badly puncuated and stuff.



David Benson had never thought of himself as suicidal, but then he had also never bargained on loosing his expensive job, his partner / wife and his N.Y., N.Y. pound-extracted mutt of a dog. And from up here, none of that mattered was what he would have been thinking, had a single coherent thought really been occupying space in his head. Instead, 50 stories up, peering onto the Hudson and the N.J. crackling towers by the turnpike that seemed as much a landmark in The City as the Statue of, well, Liberty, Dave, or Mr. D. Benson, as his x-employer at the firm had called him, was finally ready to end it, end his troubled life and go that route that so many had gone before him. The Cables of the bridge were humming in a malignant, nightmarish way, and David B. thought that he could perhaps maybe possibly see vague goatish figures capering (or more likely running, as nothing in this city truly capers) around one of the parks partially hidden by the immense city eating shadows that the skyscrapers created.
And but so the point is that Dave’s probably going to jump and hit the water at an extremely high speed, turning him from the highly invested in and educated piece of flesh that he is to just another mashed thing in the N.Y.C. morgue, chilling and waiting for his Westchester-residing family to I.D. the vaguely Dave Benson-like pieces that would sit coldly on the plastic. Dave thought about his reasons, remembering the old vacations to The Camp in Maine, N.E., U.S.A., and remembering how much more gratifying it was to pull crabs out of the low-tide seaweed than it was to close deals and SELL THAT STOCK, as all his training classes and mentors had urged. At this point, to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t, like, even care frankly about his fucking wife and her issues. Goddamn dog was never really any good anyway, its previous owner would beat it methodically and keep it tied up for days, and that kind of aftermath was something that D. Benson and his posh but shallow 20th floor apartment wouldn’t mix with, and well come to think of it, that apartment would have been pretty good to jump from. Hell, to tell the truth, it wasn’t even a choice, really, though. Thinking things incredibly fast, Dave just tilted, tilted towards the edge and it was done, he was away. Dave, like most human beings wasn’t meant to fly and his descent was almost spectacular to say something because the wall-street shirt bought at a nice store that he can’t remember is like flowing out behind him like some kind of white expensive fucking flag, and the sound is just down right strange as the usual bustling metro-rush-hour bridge honkings and screeches fade into a dull roar that fills his ears and he notices that his eyelids won’t stay shut and there is a queer sensation, not to use the word queer in any homosexual sense because that would go against the polite distrust that Dave B. had for gays, as he feels his body sort of peel and fold inward on it self and the colors and his boss’s office and the apartment and the fragile porcelain / plastic mix of his wife’s face and everything else about the damn City blur into blue and white streaks and Dave B.’s Body’s motions look oddly choreographed as he fades towards the water and finally as if to say enough already, he just hits the water with this hideous and horrendous and fucking huge slapping sound, sending practically Surfing waves away from him as he brokenly descends to mingle with the oysters, aborted babies and muck that inhabits the bottom of the Hudson, earning himself a notch on the Old Suicide rate and fading politely from everyone’s memory.

heh.

Conor, I find your blog to be a refreshing mix of on the job hazards, Death Cab for Cutie lyrics, and pictures that I can't seem to download. It's the next best thing to being there!

that is more than I EVER COULD HAVE HOPED. IF I BECOME HOMOSEXUAL AND GAY MARRIAGE IS ALLOWED I WOULD MARRY YOU.

this is a song that is long and prolific

hmm. I just recalled that my buddy charles has started a blog. He is way funnier than I, so I suggest you check him out at his blog. He's incredbily prolific and he makes me fell silly, but then again, I have a suspicion that he has a thousand word a second monolgue constantly running in his head at all times, so this is probably a theraputic activity for him.

I should have known...

well it happened, and so fast! I haven't updated this silly thing. chalk it up to a combination of being tired all the time, a perpetual lazy streak, and a terribly uneventful last couple weeks made up of carrying granite a lot and sleeping a lot. I haven't even been able to use my car much since my dad's saab died once again and my job just so happens to be near a metro stop... ah well.

one interesting thing did happen at work a little while ago. I was taking out one of the infinite wheelbarrow loads of granite that I've moved in the last couple weeks, and I had to haul it from the basement of the basilica, completely around the jobsite and through the street to this alley, where I was supposed to stack it. I pulled into the fenced in alley, and noticed that something weird was going on at the bottom of the alley. Charles Street, which if it were in Toronto would be kinda podunk, but since it's in baltimore is a fairly big deal street is at the bottom of the alley, and a portion of the alley is unfenced so that the parking garage can still use its alley exit sometimes. But right beyond that is our fence, topped by barbed wire, and backed up by my boss's 7 ton F-350 extended cab behemouth darth vader truck. so in anycase, I'm trying to move this wheelbarrow into place when I notice that theres a shitty toyota at the bottom of the alley with it's door open and engine running. Then I notice that right behind that there are three cop cars, all pulled hastily in behind it with cops pouring forth like mad hornets. Then I notice that theres a dishelveled dude with long greasy hair sprinting up the alley with a bag cluched in his hand. He kinda attempts to surmount the fence, but isn't too sucessful, and about five cops grap him and subdue him on the concrete--use your imagination, it involved nightsticks because the dude was flailing around. At one point one of the cops laughed out loud and said "boy, you sure picked the wrong alley fella." Turns out the guy robbed a bank downtown and tried to escape, but was pretty much an idiot for a.) robbing a bank in an area with congested traffic, speed limits of 35 MPH, and about as many cops as people on the streets, and b.) the obvious mistake of turning up an alley that is a dead end. It was like a cartoon. We all had a good laugh, until one of the religous reformed ex-cons who works in the basement mentioned that when he robbed a bank, he did so with a clicque of dudes, and they through the money off the bridge. That kinda shut us up. But he loves jesus now, so that means he MUST BE ALLRIGHT! HEY BIG GUY!.

His partner in crime--ahem I mean partner in the LORD-- came up to me the other day and asked me point blank, "Hey Big guy, Who is the Redeemer?" I looked at him funny, knowing the answer he wanted to hear, and instead responded "For who? You?" and he shook his head and said "For all of us Man!." I said, "Well let me guess.... ... .. I know! JEsus!" "You See!" he said "I just did you a great service" and he walked away. My boss walked up to me, looked at me kinda funny and said, "You just been thumped man."

Also--Randy, the asshole dude I mentioned earlier, I have decided is the Baltimore embodiment of Appleton City's very own CLIFF YABLONSKI! (http://www.somethingawful.com/cliff/ihateyou/) He told George, my boss that he used to be a terrible drunk, and one time, after waking up in jail, he decided that he would quit drinking so that his son wouldn't think him a horrible piece of shit. I guess he failed terribly, but the electritian foreman made a salient point--maybe he was a really nice guy when drunk, and now that he's sober all the time, he's a terrible asshole. maybe.

I've noticed that he takes a shit in the port-a-potty everyday smoking a cigar with the door open. Really nice that he does that. Also, he regaled us with a story about how he tortures moonies and hare chrinsnas. When he sees moonies he apparently gets out of his car and stamps on their flowers while spewing curses, and there was this one time, so he says, that he was behind a bunch of hare chrishnas in the supermarket. THey were apparently going "HMMM HMM HMMM" and Cliff, er Randy, started ramming them from behind with his shopping cart. Apparently their HMMMMs simply increased in fervor.

I have tons of carhart apparell, and now, after a trip to visit my brother in Anne Arbor, I'm sporting a Wolverines Hat. Funny how I don't have any real UofT Apparel. oh well, I'm not crying. so I guess I'm kinda construction looking, which is good.

heres my favorite quote from king lear, which seems to have dissapeared from my book collection, along with most of my other shakespeare texts:

What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all: come on.

I'm taking guitar lessons and progessing. I look forward to the day that I can take the stage at einstiens and actually play a song. that would be fun, I think.

until the next time, sleep tight, as my old friend alan used to say.