yesterday I had a 90 day new-hire review.

My boss rated me higher than I would have. I guess he's really happy with me.

he was going to put me in for a raise, but he said he could give me a bigger raise if he waited till the 6 month mark. (? I could use the money now, that would be nice if he's not bullshitting me)


We talked about the direction he wants me to go in the company, blah blah, etc.
I described the track I wanted to take, but I guess it was all kind of a half-lie, because I don't always know or care where I'm going in life.
Sometimes I do.



My homey from college is getting married today.
I'm going out there (roch), I didn't get a hotel room.

This will force me to find a girl to spend the night with. (optimist?)
Or maybe to sleep in a doorway (pessimist)

Have you ever, all of a sudden, realized that you are in love with someone?
And then have you ever been cerebrally pissed off at your feelings, but couldn't change anyways?



Naw me neither.


But I did realize this weekend that I really like (NO, NOT LOVE!) Buffalo.
Once I realized this, I recoiled, but I think the damage has allready been done.

Fuck you Buffalo, I think I love you.



I mean, Buffalo has its problems. We all are aware of this.

The city proper is beat. Its been decayed, decaying at least as long most of the people on (e:strip) have been alive. (Roughly)


Get out of your happy place and just drive down Main St or Broadway, William, etc, ad infinitum. A fucking shell. Shit-town.

Contrast that shell to the throbbing mass that is the hulk of the suburb mass in the Greater Area.

You can almost look at it like a star swelling before it goes SuperNova, or a heart, balooning as as the patient suffers from congestive heart failure.


Well, nothing as dramatic as that.
Similar difference though.



Plus many other items, but the decay is what consistantly gets me.



But I still like this place. I compare every other city I vist to Buffalo. Fuck, thats twisted.


The music, the food, the streets, even the crappy lake.
Maybe if i was more articulate, I could help explain it, but it seems like most of the people here allready understand what Good about Buffalo anyhow.


(I changed roots to and from work. Instead of taking the thru-way to Dunkirk each day, I've been taking Rt 5. Much better) (screw parentheses)

Taking Route 5 is fucking awesome. The city really looks like a sexy bitch from like Woodlawn.

But my favorite is the skyway. The SKYWAY!!! The way to the future!
Actually its a pretty obsolete future. Some decades ago, the skyway was the shit. Cars in the sky!

I get vertigo thinking about the difference in decades, from when the skyway was awesome, and where we are today.
But that view of the city, coming up over the skyway, gets me every time.
Continue that drive up along 190 by the water, and under the Bridge, and I'm in love.

Reluctantly in Love.




Fucker.

Lilho cut my hair the other day. I dunno, I think she did a good job, shes a good haircutter.

My dome is huge though so she had to charge me extra.


Work is stupid but fun lately. Today the capper on line4 lost timing and the accumulation conveyor on line2 was jumping and the high-speed fan on cooling tower 5 needs to be sent out to be rebuilt. We tried to change the pushout regulator on Line4 but it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be. So I worked on all that plus did research on the air-blower offer for Line1.

This is all so stupid. Why do people drink so much juice? Nobody thinks juice is cool and the money sucks and the commute is fucking awful.


But it still is fun to me because of the weirdness of it, and the challenge of doing something so different. I laugh every day there and its starting to get fun because I'm almost starting to get good at the job.

I really need something else, but if I know myself, I'll stick around there too long.

I told my boss I had to talk to him today (it was about something benign) but his face dropped and said he thought I was going to tell him I was leaving.
I wonder what the significance of that was.


Maybe if the just paid me more I would just be too fat and happy to care about all the drawbacks of the job.

This stuff:





is good hot sauce.


[Backstory: My folks go on vacations down in South Carolina, et all.
One year they bought back this really good sweeet hot sauce. I ate the bottle really fast before I knew what I was doing.

Then I lost the bottle, and forgot the name of the hot sauce. I've been asking them to get another bottle ever since.

This past trip they made, they came back with like 6 different bottles of H Sauce, trying to find that one sauce. We haven't found it yet, but this shit is daaanng good.]


I poured too much of this on my food (Wegman's 33¢ Mac/Cheese) and I tried to pour some milk down my throat to mitigate the death going on inside my esophagus.


Now as I look over at that carton of milk, theres an awful lot missing, and feel like puking.

But that afterglow is so worth it.


Jenks: check out the cassette deck in the background (file photo)

buy my carpet!


cheap!

Where are all the Bullet fucking trains??

FUCK

I very clearly remember reading in Weekly Reader that we would have Mag mutherfucking Lev trains in the future!





Dammit where the fuck is my futuristic mass transportation?!




My morning commute is really long. Too long, but thats not the point. The point is that I think we're short a few bullet trains here shooting down the lakeshore at Bullet Speed.
What about that bullet train tax we paid in the 1990's?


In all seriousness, we're pissing our future away, away down our gas tanks. Why so much gas?

Fucking gas to go to the store for milk, gas around some more to pick up the kids, gas over to the gym. Gas to sit at red lights in Amherst and gas to show Wally how good you are at brake-stands.

Gas to fucking cart around a GIANT vehicle, filled with air, fucking leather seats, and your 110 lb carcass.


We need more bullet trains fucking now.

Bullet trains could be a non-scumbag, yet not-totally-gentrified mass transportation that our fore founders popped boners over. Think about how cool!
OK if you can't think about how cool that would be, think about if Apple or Gatorade or Nike did a commercial about bullet trains!
There you go, now you get the idea!


BULLET TRAIN FAQ

[Q1] Buffalo allready has a few modes of mass transportation, the metro bus and the metro rail. The ridership is pretty low, why do you think people would ride a bullet train?


[A1] Wait, did you hear what I fucking said? Bull-let Traaayne.
Bullet Trains are way more cool and lethal than busses or shitty subways. Did you know that if a Bullet Train and a city bus both left Niagara Square at 10AM, the Bullet Train could kick 68% more ass?


[Q2] Japan has a very niche set of constraints, both economic and physical, that make bullet trains a viable transporation option. Without these constraints, what makes the bullet train a viable solution.

[A2]

A college roomate of mine is getting married in June.

His bachelor party was Sat. No need to go on in detail about that, except that I have finally figured out how to have fun at strip clubs.

Seriously, this was the first time I didn't hate a trip to a strip club.
(Actually I was there with (2) bachelor parties: my roomie and some dudes I used to work with)


So anyways, the cool thing that happened was that we were hanging out at this dudes parents house before everyone went over for the party.
His dad plays the banjo, and me and him hung out for a good hour talking about the banjo.
I guess I never really appreciated the intricacies of the instrument. But Tex could do some relaly sick shit on the ol' 5-string.

And this also made me think about how much banjo music is in my life.
Which is pretty much nil.
Except for that 'Grateful Dawg' album, which is OK. But Tex said that David Grisam doesn't have cred within the banjo playing community.

I think I'm going to stop drinking.



In like 35 years.

Wed night was the game, and that was fun.
I walked down the block to Faherty's.
Its fun in there when its packed. You end up meeating a lot of different people.


Anyways I wonder how drunk I was last night, because I remember doing some stupid/strange things.

I went with some girls down to Mothers, on Virginia. I don't ever remember how I Met them, I think I just asked if I could go with them.
(this is wierd, because they were all hot, and I think I would usually be intimidated by a group of hot cool girls)

We hung out there for a while, then we all got set to go somewhere else. I started walking in front of the group then I just started running.

I ended up running all the way to New York Pizza. (what the fuck? running??)


At New York I ended up in the back, talking with some really drunk people. They gave me a yoohoo and topped it off from a big ol bottle of canadian club.

Then I started washing dishes there.



Goddamn it, this shit is too wierd. What the fuck is going on? Am I OK?


I really like summertime. I'm sitting here on my couch and my window is open and I can hear the street and the city I don't think there is anything more relaxing than this.

OK so time can hit in (3) ways.

[A] HAMSTER WHEEL.
This is when time just keeps wrapping back on itself.
You can keep going and going, but the faster you go, the faster stuff repeats.
Tip: chill out in the hamster wheel, read good books, get enough sleep, and enjoy the scenery cause the ride sucks sometimes.

[B] CHUTES & LADDERS.
Similar to [A], but different topology.
It doesn't matter where you are on the ladder: theres always an eternity above and below you.
Consider: doesn't it ever seem weird to look back at, say, the 1950's and check out what they thought was ultra-modern. A lot of it seems ultra-silly now, but trust me, we (2000's) are going to look dang ridiculous in 60 years. Such is life on chutes & ladders.
Tip: chill out in the hamster wheel, read good books, get enough sleep, and enjoy the scenery cause the ride sucks sometimes.

[C] WAVE OF MUTILATION
Ever feel like you're on the nosecone of a rocket hurtling through space(time)? My friend you are riding on the wave of the future. There is no AAA guide to where you are going.
Welcome to the frontier....of the future!




Right so thing about the above. I might not be a good writer (or explainer) but I think that helps describe a lot of stuff about the human condition. We can expand upon that at a later date.


I want to close tonight in saying that I am pretty sure that the blue-jean pant is to the human ass as the electric guitar is to rock and roll.



Think about it.

I had a dream last night about a bird woman.

Actually it was a bird (like an ostrich? or maybe another flightless bird) that became anthropomorphic and kept changing into a lady.


At first I was on the floor and afraid of being trampled by the giant bird lady, but as she became more human, she grew a female ass.

I started to work on her, but she turned around. With a big beak head.

Then I woke up and realized I was late for work.