Duh.

2.15.05
8:19am
The 7 to 3 shift at the Hospital is always the hardest for me (Note: All complaining is based on things that are bad to ME, hence Guido’s Fuckrant Page and not Someone Else’s Fuckrant Page. I understand that all of you have much worse lives waking up at 4 in the morning every day of the week to go and be whipped by fat, smegmatic, myopic trolls who constantly ejaculate flaming sand onto your genitals, but I am not used to this routine and so what follows is bad from my point of view, not yours, yes, I understand.). The whole thing is just very jarring to my system. Anyway, I arrive here today, eat my bagel then begin to stare blankly. I cannot watch movies or listen to music on this shift and my eyes are not ready to actually look at anything yet so reading is out. At that moment, the only stimuli brushing up against my shattered nerves are the VERY black conversation being carried out by two security guards about a series of movies (?) two of which are titled “Family Reunion” and “Cookout” or something like that (maybe Johnson Family Reunion/Cookout?); based on their reenactments and quotable quotes (“Hey hey hey! Who you think you talkin’ to playa playa?!” was said at least six times and, apparently, it’s the best line in the movie…) these movies are the African American equivalent of the National Lampoon movies from recent years that no one saw (Last Resort, Family Trip, Seven Deadly Sins, Christmas Vacation 2: Eddie's Caribbean Adventure- I’m not kidding about that last one, it’s on my NetFlix list as is Christmas Reunion which features one Judge Reinhold playing the timeless role of Clark W. Griswald- also on my list), the god awful “hits of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today!! (I remember when these stations were just hits of the 80’s and today, that’s fucking old school)” radio station (which isn’t always horrible, it’s better than a lot of stuff, and they do play Prince so that’s redemptive) and the general ambient beeping that is ongoing here. I began to let myself drift and found myself thinking of last night when I called K Rock and asked them to play the new Beck single, then thinking of calling them and asking to somehow break into this broadcast just to shake things up and then I found myself thinking about a radio station in Florida (Real Radio 104.1) that had a call-in show on weeknights. The last two or so minutes of the show were simply open to people; you would call, hear the phone ring, here it pick up, you’d yell something and it would go out on the air (if it was in accordance with FCC guidelines, of course) and the phone would go dead. Seven seconds later, you would hear yourself on the radio. I always loved that. After that I began thinking about this and that, and then I pulled out my non-live journal and wrote for several pages. I was collecting bits of thought fluff from the branches of my subconscious and giving each puff a chance to be interesting. One tuft seemed interesting and pertinent enough to bring to you all (eight people). I reflected that I felt like I was losing my ability to spell and my perspicacity (I always think that using this word in this capacity is ironic and funny, but in this case, it is neither, it is accurate). I traced this to the fact that for two decades I had been in a school of some sort. Suddenly, poof, no more school. Even though it was boring and we all skipped our share of Finite Mathematics, Latin or in Will’s case Space Law, our minds were being given information and they were interpreting and cataloging it. For twenty years of our lives, our minds were expanding and working without us always knowing it. That has stopped. None of us will gain knowledge unless we do something that adds to the store we have already accumulated. I remarked to myself that after college I had been left to my own devices and that, sadly, my own devices consisted of video games, the Internet and, for reading material, Stephen King novels. Mucho depressing. I realized that I wasn’t doing anything to better myself. None of my jobs were. They were all mindless, distracting tasks. Working at the Roundabout swindling people out of money is the only thing that required any sort of thought. Dog walking should be an excellent opportunity to wander through my mind without distraction, but I always insist on bringing music to distract me. I had a moment of fear in which I imagined turning off the music to hear my thoughts and receiving only silence, but thinking back to the times I forgot my Discman or left it home on purpose or the batteries went flat while I was listening, that fear was assuaged. Basically, I came to realize that the continuation of my education is up to me and I am doing nothing about it. At this point, the only manifestation of this deficiency is the loss of perspicacity and the slight decline in my ability to spell (although I blame a lot of that on the over-dependence on spell checking and the rise of very VERY lazy people (I am merely “very lazy”) using “u” in place of “you” and “r” instead if “are” and other such further bastardizations of the English language in e-mails, IM and letters (what’s a letter?) and since I really enjoy language (yes, six and a half years of Latin) this is a bummer. I hope to change this, although my inherent laziness will surely fuck those plans up. Luckily, I am an intelligent person and I don’t have to start from a 9th grade level or anything. I need to start reading again. I need something more entertaining than didactic, but not solely entertaining. I have a few books lying around my apartment that I meant to read but haven’t, I’ll start with those. My question to you is what are you doing to better yourselves. Grad school and classes are good, but what about those of you not doing these things? Are you happy and comfortable with the knowledge that you will continue to forget information until you are as stupid as the people you make fun of?
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I just watched an interview with Beck on a Norwegian music show. His parts were in English, but the rest was in Norwegian. It was very soothing. I like Norwegian.