warning: reading this may subject you to the curse of 242.



on a good note though, it's not a bad curse, it's just weird.

well, i'm assuming that this all started with front 242 but i don't know too much about it beyond my own history.

when i first moved into the city and started hanging out with the claremontians, b.s and b.c to be vaguely specific, the mystery of 242 was presented to me by these guys going 'oh, 242!' any time it was anywhere, which actually was quite often. on a clock, on tv in a video game, on a sign....where ever.

in discussion i discovered that these guys didn't really get it either other than that they both do/did listen to a bit of 242 in their lives and it helped shape them into the music that they listened to and made in their lives.

now, i had only recently learned of front 242 and had one of their albums which was ok. i mean, they are pretty old, seeing as headhunter and welcome to paradise were made when i was 8 years old!

anyway, that's when it started.

242 is everywhere. the number i mean. and it can't just be coincidence, i don't believe that anymore. i can't explain enough how many times a week i see that number. example: yesterday it came up four times. the first was while i was waiting for the bus, a van w/.....oh shit, what's it called.....gerber vision, come bill, help me out from your rainbow spite days......anyway, like the huge guy adds on all the buses, went by with it's phone number all over it and the last three digits were 242. then, around noon i was on the phone with a customer talking about rug pads and when i hung up the phone, the screen said 2:42 as the length of our phone conversation. in the afternoon, i was doing some stuff on one side of the store, totally oblivious to the time, walked the length of the store to our office to have a drink of my soda which was next to the clock, when i picked it up the clock changed from 2:41 to 2:42 right then and there. granted 2:42 happens twice a day but during one week i'll usually look at a clock when it's that time 4 or 5 times! the last was when i was on the bus. i'm a headphone wearer while riding because i can't stand the background conversation. well, i was on the bus for about 20 minutes on my way home when my batteries died abruptly, which was ok cause i alwas carry extras. anyway, before i got in the fresh ones, i could hear the dude infront of me talking into his cell (more like shouting) and damned if he didn't say 'no, 242. 2 4 2, it's a blue house. blue!' which made me smile because it was freaking 242 again.

so yeah, idk, it's something that happens in my life. i must have subconsciously pick it up from b.c. and b.s. amongst others but i don't know for sure. i mean, why is the clock in madden football, in fact in real football i've seen it a few times too, on 242? why is there always a car in front of me at a stop light with 242 in it's plate? this morning, what prompted this was i had 2420 profile views, there it is agan 242.

have any of you dealt with this particular phenominon?

Down with love the flowers and rice and shoes
Down with love the root of all midnight blues
Down with things that give you that well-known pain
Take that moon wrap it in cellophane.



Down with love let's liquidate all its friends
The moons, the Junes, the roses and rainbow's ends
Down with songs that moan about night and day
Down with love yes take it away ... away.



Away ...
Far away ...
Give it back to the birds and the bees and especially the Viennese.



Down with eyes romantic and stupid
Down with sighs and down with cupid
Brother ... let's stuff that dove
Down with love.



Down with love let's liquidate all its friends
The moons the Junes the roses and rainbow's ends
Down with songs that moan about night and day
Down with love yes take it away, away.



Far away ...
So very, very far away ...
Give it back to the birds and the bees and especially the Viennese.



Down with eyes romantic and stupid
Down with sighs and down with cupid
Brother ... let's stuff that dove
Down with love.



happy stinking valentines day consumers!

damn it's cold today.
my skull hurt this morning while waiting for the bus. not my brain like a headache, my freaking skull!
ugh, so what's new?
bar hopped this weekend, was ok. we decided to go to bars we were unfamiliar with. first up was century grill, which was ok, pretty dead, 4 bucks for a pint of blue. meh. after an hour we walked over to hemingways (which we thought was a tad closer than it really was), pint of guiness for 3 bucks, slammin deal. definately more designed with resturant in mind. me 'n' tina got to talkin' to the tender, who showed us a menu. the menu is the dead give away that the digs are owned by the same people who own gabriel's gate. same exact sandwiches and such, but instead of street names....what did they have...oh, stage venue names, like sheas and alleyway and what not, which makes sense seeing as they're in the theater district. just a word to the wise if you go there, they have two different menu's, one for whenever, and one scheduled around show times, so if sheas is letting out when you get there, be prepared for inflated costs. oh, and while talking to us, the bartender got a bloody nose and bled all over the bar leaving us to stare at his blood on the counter while he was away. the other bar tender wouldn't clean it up, we told him, he looked at it and said 'ewww, gross' and walked away. then after a pint and a half (i measure time in increments of alcohol) we decided to check out staples on allen, new bar...no office supplies.
staples, from first appearance, looks like a hallway that serves alcohol packed with people. once you get past that and hang a left, there's a great open area with tables and loungy furniture for chillin' and games and stuff. had my very first red stripe, it was very nice.
so that was my big weekend out. i barely go out anymore, at least to bars and stuff cause it's too damn expensive. but then again, i had fun for 4 1/2 hrs and spent what, 13 bucks, so not too shabby.

see ya

well, it's thursday night which means i'm here alone at the store until all ungodly hours of the night.
well, 9:15.
been here since ten, no shoppers since 11:30ish. what a long ass day.
worked on my inventory for a bit, but it numbs my brain and will give me something to do on saturday if there is aweful weather.

have you ever felt like you're wasting your life at your job?

this is a good job, no doubt, but lately, since about the middle of last year, it all just feels like a waste of time.
i used to be really into my job, used to like coming here everyday.
back when we had customers. psst and employees.
since saturday to today i have been here aprox 40hrs, with sunday off. my only coworker is my boss' daughter who's part time and not very, sall i say.........well, she's the boss' daughter.
she's been here about 10 of those hours, 2 of them being when i was gone on tuesday night, so really for about 8 hrs of my time. my boss has cancer and is not very well and really is not here very often, actually about an hour from sat thru today, all on tuesday.
sure i make hourly and commission, but the steady decrease in customers since we sold half the business (used to be two connected stores) is really atrocias.
i remember days of haveing three sets of customers at once between two stores all day long. today i have only had two customers at all, and neither of them were even close to buying.

idk, i really don't want to work here anymore, especially since i lost money in 2006. sure i have virtually no competition on the sales floor, but i also don't have any help in maintaining the store. i know that (i have fridays off) when i come in on saturday the place will be destroyed like always because of it not being cleaned up after each customer comes in. because of laziness. because of the feeling of being deserving just by being blood and not having to actually earn a living.

the whole situation is depressing and aggrivating.

i don't want to just quit though because i've put too much effort into this place for the last five years and i do owe my boss quite a bit in regards to our actual friendship.
the problem is she's fighting her illness and is never here.
when carolyn got sick the store got sick with her.
idk.
problem is too that i don't really want to leave this job for another one like it because i really do not like sales. it's so redundant with the same kind of people with the same kind of questions with the same bitchy attitude when they're actually expected to pay for their goods.
somewhere along the line a lot of people 'learned' that they're entitled to special deals by just walking in the door. i have no idea where this mentality came from but it's so overly abundant now it's suffocating.

i hope i get into buff state.
i really want to be a historian.

this is my interpretation of doris daytheearthstoodstill, by the future bible heroes. it's a song i really dig and listen to frequently. it's also on my myspace page. i haven't bothered to lean how to add music on here yet, but will throw it on here eventually.

it's from their 2004 album eternal youth, which i highly recommend if you enjoy relaxing and slightly introspective electronica.

these are the lyrics:

they don't know we're out here, as far as we can tell,


jamming all our senses with advertizing hell

and late-night movie heaven is accidental, well

details at eleven


doris daytheearthstoodstill, the hippest chick on firth


let's live always the dream they beam from planet Earth


all our tentacles entwined, snow-blind and without sound


Doris Daytheearthstood still, you make my world go round


grow a new antenna


the signals multiply with

ads for soap and henna,


the products we can't buy


and all across the asteroid,


everyone will die

unless we send the gas droid

doris daytheearthstoodstill, the hippest chick on firth

let's live always in the dream they beam from planet earth

all our tentacles entwined, snow-blind and without sound

doris daytheearthstoodstill, you make my world go round

immediately upon hearing this song for the first time (on a plane to mexico actually) i really liked it a lot due to it's science and science fiction references. and i don't just mean the title, the day the earth stood still still being a very famous old black and white 'talkie'

so, let's break it down, shall we...?

they don't know we're out here, as far as we can tell

-referencing aliens that know of our presence and are aware we have no idea they actually exist, pretty self explanitory.

jamming all our senses with advertising hell

-refering to audio and video waves that venture off our planet into the unknown reaches of space without limit

and late night movie heaven is accidental, well

-this i believe is refering to schlocky late night horror/sci-fi black and whites (like our own off beat cinema) being accidental in the sense that some of them might not be too far off from what might really be out there.

details at eleven

-commercial for local late night news

i'm gonna skip the chorus till last.....

grow a new antenna

-possibly refering to the increase in radio and video waves emminating from the planet over the last 50 years, and/or to the particular alien species own adjustments to being bombarded with the millions of waves we send out.

the signals multiply

-a go between line that connects with the last line and my interpretations and the next one

ads for soap and henna

-showing the insane increase from television and radios early years to modern years of product advertisement

products we can't buy

-cause they're aliens

and all acrossed the astroid, everyone will die

-possibly refering to the fact that as a species, our crazy audio and visual stimuli, as they grow and get more complex are actually effecting these creatures ability to live in one way, shape or form

unless we send the gas droid

-this is directly taken from hubbard's book battlefield earth (not the movie, the book) in which the psychlos first vist to earth is actually a robotic gas drone (changed to droid cause it rhymnes with astroid, although in the cd sleave it says drone) that circles the earth a few times dumping vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere, quickly and efficently killing off most of the planets population. no people = no power = no more destructive beams shot into space, hence, solving the problem of possible extinction for aliens effected by our waves.

doris daytheearthstoodstill, the hippest chick on firth

-ok, this is actually a tough one at the end. my thoughts for the combination of daytheearthstoodstill as one word is that obviously, earlier beamed transmissions would obviously reach the aliens first and in her day doris day was huge and everywhere in movies, tv and she had a big music career. she was the original america's sweetheart. the day the earth stood still was also a super huge movie in it's day, really being the first to be considered serious sci-fi with not only space age action but also the first great anti-nuke message. as waves travel and bonce off things, the reason for the combination of both is due to they high quantites of mention as well as the common word day and the fact that in 1951 doris day was in the most movies at once in her career (she was in 5 that year, when she was dubbed americas sweetheart) and that was the year the day the earth stood still came out immediately becoming the biggest hit (critically and at the box office)of the year (over such greats as streetcar named desire, african queen, and on moonlight bay...with doris day). now then....the hippest chick on firth has always been a little bothersome to me because the hippest part referring to the fact that she was in more movies as an actress in 1951 than any other actress ok, but firth-by definition is a scottish word refering to a large sea bay which may be part of an estuary, inlet or strait created by ice age glaciation. firth is also a synonym for fjord-which does have a connection to hitchhiker's guide, but some what of a streach. that said, i don't make the connection other than it rhymes with earth.

let's live always in the dreams they beam from planet earth

-the alien species possible explination to the causes of these beams from our planet, as they may not have visual and audio entertainment like ours, as well as eluding to the fact that they possibly prefer or gain some sort of euphoric state from the transmissions that are more pleasent to they're particular reality, much like drugs-which does tie in well as a theory to why they very well may become extinct as a race due to the constant presence of our beams. ah ha.

all our tentacles entwined, snow-blind and without sound

-to me this is a reference to the great horror master h.p. lovecraft's longest story 'at the mountians of madness', which details the exploits of an exploritory crew in antarctica who stumble upon a living race of ancient aliens, older than any known thing on the planet, who biologically speaking as we understand it have no audio or visual capabilities, have tentacles and are uneffected by the fact that they're under the ice in the middle of antarctica from before the continents seperated. it's a must as a story, get it!

doris daytheearthstoodstill, you make my world go round

-finishing off whith the title again, perhaps what these aliens call our world, or these visions, or just because it fits well in the song. you make my world go round being a nice juxtaposition to the aformentioned earthstoodstill as well as possibly eluding once more to the euphoric sense the beams create.



well there! take that. you opened it.

and of course i could be way the fuck off, only the future bible heroes know for sure.

well, i hope you enjoy the tune and if you have any input of your own into the message behind this song i'd love to talk about it with you.

thank you.

c