Now it’s time to find some sort of new routine that I need to follow. What I really hate is that the busses only run every 40 or 50 minutes even during peak hours out there in Arcadia, so it’s really inconvenient for me to take Metro to work. And since there is very little traffic during my commute, driving is a viable option for me.
First Day at Work
Here is a photo of me at my new desk at work looking oh so eager. And below is a photo of me realizing my Funemployment days are coming to an end:
Standing at White’s Point
But that’s all I have to report. No I didn’t finish Gravity’s Rainbow. And now I’m going to fall asleep.
I got back from the Apple Valley getaway. Despite all of my neurosis, it was very nice to relax in a pool for a couple of days. I got some color, as you can see above, and while I didn’t finish Gravity’s Rainbow, I did get to page 400 — just past the halfway point. I did have a moment of stupidity while in the water, though. I was reading in the pool, and I was really diligent about keeping the book above the water and keeping my hands dry. But as I was readjusting my position after an hour of reading, I let my guard down and allowed the book to touch the water. Fuuuuuuck. It wasn’t a lot of water, so no big foul. But ugh.
I received the instructions for my first day of work on Monday meaning Funemployment will be ending in a few days. While I’ve been good at keeping thoughts of work at bay the last few weeks, they’re now starting to slip in. I haven’t even gotten there, and I’m already figuring out the meetings I will need to schedule, the equipment and software I will need to request. And trying to figure out the schedule I want to keep and how to arrange my life around it. Once I realize I’m doing it, I try and clear it from my mind. I guess my cats will need to do a better of job of keeping me company. Stupid deadbeats.
I’m out in the middle of the desert. While last year I went to a house that sat on a 5-acre plot of land in 29 Palms with nothing around (NOTHING!), this year I am at Madd’s boytoy’s house in Apple Valley that is armed with a pool. It’s not quite the middle of nowhere solitude that I do like, but I must admit that the convenience is quite nice.
Since I am exactly one week away from the new job, my plan is to take the next couple of days lounging pool side, accidentally gulping a ton of chlorinated pool water and finishing Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s a hectic action-packed schedule, I know, and I can only hope I don’t wear myself out before I go home on Wednesday.
I find it weird being a houseguest. I’m used to either renting a hotel room or getting an Airbnb where I am alone. I don’t feel I can truly be 100% at ease no matter how close I am with the person — and Madd is one of my closest friends. I always want to be considered a good houseguest, so I’m always walking on pins and needles trying to be as inoffensive as possible. There’s a specter of judgement that hangs in the air regardless if it is true or imagined.
This is the reason I live alone. I can deal with judging myself — I’m a fucking idiot so I can easily disregard what I think.
The other thing that weirds me out is that I don’t have the alarm or garage door opener, so I feel a bit trapped. Actually, it’s more that I feel reliant on someone else for things and my well-being, and I really hate that feeling.
Poolside in Apple Valley. Gravity’s Rainbow porn and foot porn!
Regardless, I am enjoying relaxing and attempting to turn my mind off. Let’s see how it goes.
I think I need to learn how to do this Funemployment nonsense. After leaving behind Disney and Hulu on Tuesday, Wednesday I slept in and only went to the grocery store. Yesterday I managed to get a TB test for my upcoming job then hung out at IKEA with Madd. Which brings me to the photo above: I figured I should take the time today to purge and reorganize and re-everything my apartment.
But after taking a look at this shit and realizing I don’t know where I want to put it, I just want to do this:
Baba dead to the world on the couch.
I do have big plans in setting up a room divider curtain to block off my bedroom area and moving my desk to the “nook-ish” area by the entrance to create more of an office area. I know, this is a fun and exciting vacay!
Actually I am planning on escaping from here with Madd and going to her boytoy’s house out in the desert on Sunday and spend a few days just lounging by and in the pool and hopefully turning a different shade of pale. My goal there is to fucking finish Gravity’s Rainbow. Then after another couple of days, I start the new job.
Maybe I’ll see about getting buttfucked or whipped or fisted tonight…
I finished my final full week of work at Hulu/Disney. Tuesday is my last day, and the minutes sure are dragging.
I went back to the Santa Monica Hulu office on Wednesday for the final time, and I guess I expected to feel something. I wanted to miss the place where I spent almost everyday from 2017 to March 2020, but I felt nothing. Sure, I’ll miss some of the people I worked with there (but not others). But the fucking traffic driving there or the half-mile walk from the Metro station to the office were really fucking annoying. And the fact that Disney rebranded the buildings during the pandemic and getting rid of our beer and wine kegs really took the Hulu identity away from the campus. So as I left the building for the last time after saying goodbye to some of my coworkers, there was no looking back and turning into a pillar of salt. It was just a Wednesday afternoon as I walked to the Metro station to get home.
Now I have two more working days left. How long with they last? Will they kill me before I leave?
Love and Rockets – Haunted When the Minutes Drag (1985)
I’m glad I’ve stuck it out. Now that I’m a few chapters into the second part, the narrative is a lot easier to follow. Instead of random circular vignettes that leave you dizzy and lost, things are following a more linear path. Don’t worry, it’s not a linear narrative. There is a musical dance number with lab rats! It’s fucking insane, but at least I know what the fuck is going on.
Most importantly, however, I came to the portion of the novel that got its Pulitzer prize revoked. In this Part II, there have been a few sex scenes, and this particular one didn’t really raise my eyebrows. It’s a standard BDSM scene until… Well…
As I’m reading this part, I’m realizing there are a lot of details that I missed thanks to the obtuseness of the first part. I figure I’ll have to go back and read those 180-or-so pages much more carefully. Nevertheless, it’s a very fun read. It’s funny, fucked up, strange, and not as shitty as it seems (literally!)
The executive building at the Disney lot in Burbank.
I rarely post anything work-related here because what I do for eight (or so) hours a day is really the least interesting part of me, if there is anything interesting in here at all. But every now and again, something interesting happens that compels me to write about it.
On Wednesday, I put in my two-week’s notice at Disney (nee Hulu.) I’ve been looking for a new job seriously since April, and I’ve finally got the match. I will be the Accounts Payable and Purchasing manager for a mental health non-profit (the irony) starting on September 25. I’ll actually post details later about what the last two years of being there was like and what got me to look for a new job, but for now I’m just counting the days until my last day on the 12th.
You can’t imagine the sense of relief I got when my recruiter called up telling me I got the job and then getting on Zoom with my boss to put in my notice. With the whole neurochemical mosh pit going on in my head, I felt free. I can plan vacations again. I don’t have to worry about the stupid shit the Bob Iger says in public. It just feels like a huge heavy burdensome page is being turned, and I can move into the future feeling light. Well, as light as I can be with my fat ass.
But as happy and idealistic as this all sounds, I do know that there will be a lot of challenges at the new job. I’ve worked at a non-profit before, and I’m well aware of the nightmares it involved. I also know what the current situation is there, so I’m not under any illusion this is going to be a cakewalk.
And, in the back of my mind, there is always a cynic there tempering my expectations. I’m always brought back to a Groucho Marx quote: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
But for now, I will bask in the joy of saying goodbye to Disney.
Here is an email I wrote to my cats’ foster mother as they turn two today. She had kept up with them thanks to my Insta, but since I got rid of it she hasn’t seen them. So I thought I would send this over. Also I just bought this cactus scratcher hammock thingee this past weekend, and they both fucking love it. It’s rare that they cuddle with each other, so I had to quickly take this photo. Aren’t they the cutest things you’ve ever seen? They’re MY babies!!!!!
I hope you are doing well. I know I have gotten rid of my Instagram account, so I wanted to share this picture with you as the now named Mama and Baba turn 2 years old in a couple of days. I was logging off of my computer from work, looked over and there they were cuddling together. I couldn’t help myself.
They are doing well. Baba is very much attention-starved and loves his pets and belly scratches. Although he is not a lap cat and does not like to be picked up, he still wants to be the center of everything.
Mama is still a very anxious cat. She still seems to just tolerate me and will run on a dime to hide under my bed if she feels just a hint of fear. For a while she would only let me pet her in three places: on the dinner table; while I’m sitting on the toilet; right when I get into bed for the night. There she loves being pet and her belly scratches. But other than that, she will run away if I try to get close to her.
But lately she’s been more open to me and wanting pets everywhere. She’s also not running away quite as much. She will slow-blink at me, so I know she is comfortable with the idea of me. She does present her belly. So she’s a complex one, that’s for sure.
Both of them are great jumpers. They love to play and love to annihilate the evil red laser dot. Sometimes a fly will get into the apartment, and they are both piss poor hunters.
But they are both the most well-behaved cats that have ever claimed me as their human. They don’t act up, and they seem content to explore all the different nooks in my loft.
Well, that’s the update on them. I hope you are doing well, and I promise I won’t that this long to send you a picture.
Another benefit I’ve noticed in being off of Lexapro is I’m not as tired as I had been. I don’t need the two-hour naps like I had needed the last couple of years.
On Saturday, I spent the day out with Madd. We spent the day with a late breakfast in Manhattan Beach at the Kettle, hung out until her mom and dad picked us up to go to the Grove and ate at La Piazza. I got home at 10 and didn’t feel tired or fatigued.
And Sunday was the deep scrub of the bathroom and completely cleaning out the drawers and cabinets. Armed with my Mr. Scrub sponge, Bar Keepers Soft Cleanser, Clorox Clean-Up All Purpose Cleaner and Bleach spray, Sprayway Glass Cleaner spray, Dawn Powerwash spray, Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner, a microfiber cloth and shit tons of Bounty paper towels, I eventually got it done. Granted I took a lot of breaks in between, but I did not take a nap.
I did find it odd that I was sleeping so much — I’d sleep eight hours a night and then take another two-hour nap and feel exhausted the time I was awake. But I was too tired to care all that much.
Of course, like with the tweakiness and how goddamn fucking horny I am, I just wonder if it is just my brain readjusting to the lack of drugs. I’ll see how things are in a month or so. In the meantime I’ll just bask in the liberation however temporary it may be.
This fucked me up real good. Translated as Sleepwalker, this Japanese band pissed me off that this is only an EP of four songs. I want more, and like Veruca Salt, I WANT IT NOW! You hear the thrashy black metal throughout, but they used collaborators around the world who recorded vocals and elements of classical, folk, jazz and other fucking insane elements without knowing the context, having it mixed after the fact. According to their Bandcamp page, this album “focuses on the notion of self-reflection, intuition and the outward and inner manifestations of phobia as they relate within that singular world.”
Being on the listening end, it was a low-level terror that I get when I’m about to try something new and don’t know how it will end up, whether I will like it, whether it will be worth it. Whether the guy will leave me in a pile of heaving tears with a smile on my face, or whether I will just be lying there wondering why I took the time and effort of douching and prepping just for that.
Moris Blak – Burial + Void
Moris Blak teams up with GenCAB, Kofin, S Y Z Y G Y X and Rabbit Junk on this six-song release that threatens to get my decrepit bones onto a dancefloor or stripper’s pole. I don’t know what “industrial bass” is, as I’m told that this is the genre. I always had a problem drilling down or caring about the sub-genres. The only that really matters is whether it strikes a chord with us, right?
There is a good range of beats from the album-opener “The Abstract” with GenCAB, a safe dancefloor romp, which makes its way into the more aggrotech “Malevolent” with Kofin. Whether it makes you move ethereally or get stompy stomp on the floor, the beat is what gets you to move. “House of the Fallen Suns” with Rabbit Junk is my favorite since the intro really reminds me of Sølve. I still don’t know what characterizes “industrial bass” by this one release alone, but it just makes me note that I need to listen to more Moris Blak.
