daily shriek

i started my own online social network once, and cultivated it like a garden, styled in a manner i hoped would make it unique and appealing, attempting everyday to push it to take on a life of its own. i made it invite-only and male-only and left it in a listserv format that didn’t require people to visit a website to make it more a conversation. i really worked very hard for three years.

and i am not sure how or where i failed, but though it still exists, it is limp and lifeless. i learned a lot about how write posts that elicit responses and for a time the members felt as though they were a part of something special, something they created. or perhaps is was just a mirage, my own cheerleader-like personality whipping some friends of mine into a short-lived sort of party that like all parties must end. they’re still my friends so i don’t really care about the network, and maybe that’s what’s at the core its demise, perhaps we all felt that way.

so i was reading that facebook’s numbers took a hard hit in january and february and it got me to thinking that social networking may have begun to run its course, perhaps sliding in to decline. but, the interwebs themselves are naught but a social network of astronomical scale and are just the latest means to interact with one another, simply tribes, nations, what-have-you.

wrapping a bar around people and corralling them in ironically concrete places such as second life failed to work because the virtual world exists but in the mind and 3D-animated avatars are in the end, unnecessary. the various mmporgs are just convenient gamer circles and myspace has become what geocities once aspired to and linkedin is strictly business.

today, the cyberlandscape seems at once barren and cluttered and the chaotic choir of empowered voices raised in indiscernible static have become the human background cosmic radiation and computers have become tuners, looking for broadcasts as well place phone calls. our heads truly are in the cloud.networks such as a few private ones to which i belong offer a freedom not known in public spaces, and silliness too — i check them more than i do my e-mail.

but while these are virtual, they share one thing in common, that their roots border on familial and predate the cyber universe in which their collective dopplelganger reside — i already know most people within them.

the virtual world on which i gaze in wonder is but the telephone and my son will think me a relic and will never know the newness nor the awe i hold and sadly, i will most likely never grasp his realm.

i am but a fool think i am seeing anything new.

seems like everytime i go on a job hunt, i go though the same mixed bag of emotions, self-doubt, and a re-evaluation of what i really want to be doing with my life. i’ve been working strictly as a contractor for the past five or six years and so i no longer have the fear of that.

however, i see from time-to-time good opportunities for full-time w2 gigs that tantalize, but i always have this strong aversion to signing on at any one company.

on the other hand, i do tire of forever being the outsider. to wit, after six months on my current gig, i feel more isolated than when i started. the full-timers can’t help but see me as an outsider and i can’t really fault them for leaving me out of things.

i dunno, i’m such a jumbled mess.

now add into the mix that in six short weeks, my wife and i are going to have our second child, for whom we are nowhere near ready and the fact that the holidays are fast approaching, and you can see why i might be bit scrambled-up in the head.

i’m a wreck.

i’ve neglected this blog too long, sorry to my readers, hope i haven’t lost you

so anyway, i made it to the gym this morning, worked out for half an hour and it was good, and by good i mean it sucked — getting up at five a.m. everyday sucks ass. but i have to do it. i can’t spend my remaining days lugging around a fat lazy mortal coil, i got kids to keep up with.

sheesh.

my birthday is on or about the autumnal equinox
annually
and as my years progress,
the obvious metaphor looms like a harvest moon
over my fat, balding head

and i’ve just discovered a year or more ahead of time
that my 40th will arrive on a monday

damn.

i swear to god the water in the bowl gurgled just after the first of the three amigos i dropped off at the pool landed its swan dive, then i realized it was because the women’s restroom had just flushed, however that did nothing instill confidence…

after the third amigo landed its triple somersault, i [edited for content] and then flushed the bad boys, only they didn’t go down, the water welled to halfway up to bowl’s brim…

i washed my hands. then bravely, gently flushed again, no avail, panic as the waters rose in a flash flood of wretched refuse, nearly brimming over…

i ran and hid in my cubitainer where i now am contacting you — i am on the run…

the poo patrol is surely sampling the dna and comparing against scatalogical samples looking for local pizzarias like some twisted csi episode…

CSI SEWER PATROL!!!

i keep walking around muttering to myself sentence fragments like ‘ok, we gotta take a look at this’ or ‘this has got to stop’ or ‘where am i and what am i doing?’ that don’t really express any real thought that i am having, or have any real meaning. almost like tourrette’s or something.

anyway, it’s kind of making me feel like i’m crazy. i know i’m not, but when i go off the adhd meds i take, i often wonder how in the hell i ever made it as far as i am in life, but i get a clear picture of why it’s taken me so long.

damnable thing, this adhd.

that kid in grade school, who shall remain nameless herein, who bullied me mercilessly for the entirety of my fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and basically stole my childhood.

to this day i have the fear that a dirty look is going to bring violence, i fear that i am a target as i walk down the street.

i’ve been in fights since then, stood my ground, etc. but there’s no replacing those moments in my youth when i let myself be bullied — what did i know? i was a fucking kid.

i have fantasized plenty about the time i found a .22 cal pistol at the flea market when i was in 9th grade for only $100 and how different my life could have been, or sneaking up on him now and beating him senseless. i’m not a scrawny kid anymore — i could do it.

there are times i have sympathy for the kids that take guns to school and in a twisted way mete out justice. oh, were it only that simple, oh were it only the bullies that were killed.

well fuck it, there’s nothing i can do about it now, but i know for the rest of my life, i’ll remember that time in hell, how everyday was worse the one before.

he was a fat, ugly kid, and so by abusing me, he got to feel a little better about himself, felt like he was one of the guys maybe. i was hyperactive geek who could never fit in anywhere and could never shut up; maybe a smack-down should have been a good thing for me.

but the systematic abuse i endured in silence — i never once told my family the extent of it — simply cannot be justified for any reason. i suspect now that he laughs about that dork he used to beat up on — he probably thinks i deserved it somehow.

every now and again if i find myself googling his name to try and find him, but deep down i fear what i would do if i indeed did find him. i’m sure i would not visit violence upon him, but the lust for vengeance is strong. i would like him to know that one summer i almost bought that gun. better to never let our paths cross…

anyway, i doubt that i will ever be able to forgive him, and i will have to answer for that one day — i will tell you this: my kids are going to learn karate so that they don’t have tolerate that kind of crap.

so i had an interview yesterday for a job at an insurance company that is currently in liquidation.

the job was a full-time w2 job, which i have avoided like the plague since 2001.

but this job was bankers’ hours, working on a fully-funded, well-defined project, with an easy commute, in a cool building, benefits, with no threat of underbidding sales reps!

they coaxed me out of my inherent loathing of all jobs requiring my social security number and interaction with human resources.

i agonized over it, and in the end, i gave in to the promise of stable income, steady work, actually getting to know my coworkers, happy hours, that kinda shit you don’t get as a contractor.

i prepped for the interview, ironed a shirt, boned up on my code knowledge.

i thought i managed my own expectations, i didn’t really go on about the job to any one, but i guess i really had my hopes up

they fucked with my dreams, made me think long and hard about what i wanna be when i grow up.

then they just said “we’re going to take a pass, you’re a little light in some of the skill sets we’re looking for”

yeah well fuck you asshole, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

holy fuck, i actually feel depressed — how fucking dare you pieces of fucking shit, you have no idea how much you just ruined my whole perspective

hate *looks away, might just fucking sob* hate, true seething hate

check back shortly