Recently at work I've been reading All Quiet on the Western Front while I listen to phones ring and harras housewives about their PBS memberships. I've read this book a few times, as I've always dug the vicarious military experience and the particular mix of brutal ugliness and polite class you found around 1915. It's like training the twich ( Read more... )

Spending eight hours asking people for money and never personally recieving the profits of your hustle can be pretty wearing on a guy. Especially when said guy is bearing down on his 25th birthday in seven days. As I come awake from my calling fugue, I took a second to survey what surrounded me and account for the base facts of my life. I've been ( Read more... )

So here I am, living in St. Cloud and part of me loves it. It's the part of me that enjoyed being unemployed, that revels when I light a cigarette, that delights in peering out at bright, beautiful days as I huddle in the dark indoors. Basically St. Cloud is fostering the growth of my worst aspects, my antisocial shiftless self. I've been up here ( Read more... )

I suppose I should state, at some point, that I got a job fundraising over the phone for a company called Auria Communications. It's schlocko telemarketer work, but I never have to call people to sell things and we only call people who've donated before, so I don't have any crushing soul burden to bear. In fact, most people are downright nice. ( Read more... )

I hope I cannot get fired for raising funds for WNYC, New York Public radio in a fake, gruff Texan accent.

I hope none of the supervisors was listening to those few calls.

But goddamn was it a ton of fun.

Everybody has good days ( Read more... )

Two teeth lighter and temporarily saved from the writhing doom of dental corruption, I find myself back in St. Cloud taking stock of my options, my finances and my foodstuffs. One thing is becoming rapidly apparent; I need to find a tipping job, and I need to do it with the swift, sure strike of a thunderbolt. Also, I'm desperately short on ( Read more... )

Toothaches are a bad deal. I don't know how many of you folks have ever had one, but I give them ZERO stars. It typically starts off with a nice, strong wave of pain that washes back and forth. Never steady enough to ignore, because that would be too easy, oh yes. Then, after a few days of that, your body gives up on The Brain and takes matters ( Read more... )

That has to be like the 74th time I've misspelled "hotmail.com" as "homotail.com"

do you want butts, brain?

IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT

Thanksgiving 2536 ( Read more... )