What I Need

Mr. Baker,

As an employee of an institution of higher education, I have a few very
basic expectations. Chief among these is that my direct superior
shares an intellect that ranges above the common ground squirrel. After your
consistent and annoying harassment of myself, and my co-workers during
the commission of our duties, I can only surmise that you are one of
the few true genetic wastes of our time.

Asking me, a network administrator, to explain every little nuance of
everything I do each time you happen to stroll into my office is not
only a waste of time, but also a waste of precious oxygen. I was hired
because I know about Unix, and you were apparently hired to provide
amusement to myself and other employees, who watch you vainly attempt
to understand the concept of “cut and paste” for the hundredth time.

You will never understand computers. Something as incredibly simple as
binary still gives you too many options. You will also never
understand why people hate you, but I am going to try and explain it to you,
even though I am sure this will be just as effective as telling you what an
IP is.

Your shiny new iMac has more personality than you ever will. You walk
around the building all day, shiftlessly looking for fault in others.
You have a sharp-dressed, useless look about you that may have worked
for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you
pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for
your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the
blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like
you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.

Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a
full frontal lobotomy, I am forced to tender my resignation; however I
have a few parting points:

1. When someone calls you in reference to employment, it is illegal to
give me a bad recommendation. The most you can say to hurt me is “I
prefer not to comment.” I will have friends randomly call you over the
next couple of years to keep you honest, because I know you would be
unable to do it on your own.

2. I have all the passwords to every account on the system, and I know
every password you have used for the last five years. If you decide to
get cute, I am going to publish your “favorites list”, which I
conveniently saved when you made me “back up” your useless files. I
believe that terms like “Lolita” are not usually viewed favorably by
the administration.

3. When you borrowed the digital camera to “take pictures of your
mothers B-day”, you neglected to mention that you were going to take
pictures of yourself in the mirror nude. Then you forgot to erase them
like the techno-moron you really are. Suffice it to say I have never
seen such odd acts with a ketchup bottle, but I assure you that those
have been copied and kept in safe places pending the authoring of a
glowing letter of recommendation. (Try to use a spell check please – I
hate having to correct your damn mistakes.)

Thank you for your time, and I expect the letter of recommendation on
my desk by 8:00 am tomorrow, not ONE minute later. One word of this to
anybody and all of your little twisted repugnant obsessions will be
open to the public. Never f*ck with your systems administrators, because
they know what you do with all your free time.

—-

I sure felt like writing something along these lines today. Grrr At my life.

No… YOU’RE Out Of Context…

So.. Well this is the THIRD post that I’ve written today… And as you can tell, none of the other’s have actually posted… FUCKERS! Every computer that I’ve used has died just as I was getting to the end of the post. The first one was like 2 pages long… And then Netscape died. The second one was an abriged version of the first one. When I went to hit “Blog This!” IE decided that it couldn’t find the page to post it too. Fucker. So I lost that one. And then the third time, the whole fucking computer up and shit on me. RARR! So this one better fucking work!

So Friday was good, we went out and did stuff with a hell of alot of gay people… There were also alot of new gay people, who were cute. However, not the nicest people ever. Well at least in my encounters with them they haven’t been. But anyway, Friday was TONS of fun…

That night Adam and I went back to my Apartment and spent the night hanging out… Well actually we were way to tired to do anything, so we went str8 to bed once we got back, but it’s still nice to have him there.. That place gets so lonely at night.

Saturday we got up bright and early and headed back to Ankeny for a garge sale thing. I wanted to buy a Mac, but they only had old 5260/100’s and older machines. I was hoping for at least an original IMac or something, but nope. So we didn’t get anything. From there we went back to Adam’s house and he called his mom to see what we were doing. She said that she couldn’t get a hold of the guy to find out what we needed to until “later.” Adam assumed that would mean like 1 or so. So we said alright… What to do now. We decided to go see Andrew at work and get one of his 6 foot subs for $3.50 that he swore up and down they were going to have. When Adam called him mom to tell her to call him on his cell phone when she found out what to we were going to do she essentialy flipped. So we went there instead and started picking up trash and the like. It was fun working there. Although I have a HUGE blister that popped now on my thumb. It really hurts to even get water in it! Ouch!

After we were done working there we went back to Adam’s and showered and then went off and did random things. After a while we met up with Andrew downtown. It looked as if was just going to be us three that night.. But people eventually started showing up and everyone from Friday night was there again. It was much fun and I’m enjoying myself alot more. I’m starting to feel at ease with them all. Andrew, Adam and I had a hilarious talk about dildos and the like. That was great and Mike and Andrew both molested me. Ha, it was great.

We also ran into Julian and Dean downtown. It was good to see them again. We really should hang out with them sometime, it’s been so long since we did that… Perhaps another road trip somewhere would be in order! lol. But anyway, they’re going to the Cher concert. I really want to go to the Cher concert.

After we left downtown, I took Adam home and then went home myself. I told him that I’d probably sleep in really late, so not to expect me anytime in the early morning.

Sunday morning however, was I in for a surprise. My family decided that they wanted to rip half the house off, in the early morning FREEZING hours. I had to get up and help them tear out the fireplace cause they’re getting a new one tomorrow. So my dad took all the siding and stuff off the outside wall of the chimney and we had to push the fireplace out from the inside. We now have a large picture window where there once was a fireplace, and that made the house VERY cold all fucking day.

It was kinda cute though cause like 10 seconds after we had the opening and the old fireplace out of the way, Gordy jumped up onto the platform and walked right into the house as if that doorway had always been there. lol. Perhaps I’ll get pictures once we get them developed.

Oh, that’s another thing, Andrew and I were twins on Saturday night, I really wished I had taken my camera with us. It would have been great!

But anyways, after we were done with the fireplace work, I called Adam and he was still in bed. So that was cool, cause I told him that I’d probably sleep in late. He called me though about 12 and said that his dad had called and he had to go have lunch with him. He said he’d be back around 3. So I was annoyed much by this, but was ok. I wasn’t annoyed at Adam, but the fact that his dad feels he can just call after a month of not talking to them, and expect Adam to drop everything he was doing to go have lunch. Perhaps if he wanted to have lunch, he could have made plans to do so, but I was expecting to have that time, and to not have to sit around and wait for him to show up.

So 3’o clock hit and Adam still hadn’t called me. I said alright. If I haven’t heard from him in 30 minutes, I’m going back to Ames, and thus, the pissed off mood set in. So I sat there, with both phones in my hand, waiting for them to ring. 3:30 approached and I was in the process of dialing Adam’s cell phone when my cell phone rang. It was him, saying that he was just leaving his dad’s house and that he’d be home in 20 minutes. I said fine. That I’d meet him there. He called back about 5 minutes later, just as I was gettin ready to leave and said that he’d just meet me at my house, and that we could go to Saylorville. I said alright.

About 10 to 4 he called from his house and said that he had to go to Wal-Mart, and get the pictures that we took last weekend. I said alright. But was oh so pissed by then. About 4:15 he still wasn’t there, so I called him ready to tell him to just turn around and go back home, that I was going back to Ames. He said that he was like 2 seconds from my house, so I said alright.

He got there and I tried to be friendly as I could, we sat on the front porch and talked about the pictures and his visit with his dad. From there we went to Big Creek and walked around. It was nice to just hang out and stuff, although he was more interested in the damn trees then he was with me trying to be semi-romantic (arm around while walking, etc.). After that we were heading to Saylorville when we drove past the pizza place in PC. He offered to buy pizza so we stopped there and ate supper. I love thier pizza. We sat in there and I reminiced (sp) about how it used to be my dad’s store, etc.

It was hard to hold back the tears as I sat there and told him exactly where everything was supposed to have been, the early mornings that I worked there, starting when I was like 10. The dreams that I had had, hoping to get the store when I “grew up.” Sunday night was the first time I’d ever been in there since he closed, and it was hard. It’s hard for me now to not scream at the ass hole for closing it, because it was so much a part of me. Even though it is really just a stupid store, it was a part of me, because he bought it the same year that I was born. It just really meant alot to me.

I understand why he closed it though, because of the way that people in PC are. They just don’t beleive in supporting local businesses, sure we may have been a bit more expensive then Dalh’s of Hy-Vee, but we were there in town, we offered fresh produce, we got fresh meat nearly every day, and cut it in house. We’d cut it how you wanted it. But people in PC just like to complain. They complained when we had the store, and they complained when we closed it. Because they said “It was such a great thing for the town.” Yet when it was there, they just didn’t want to support it. Fuckers.

After pizza we departed our ways and I came back to Ames, I really didn’t want to though. I just wanted to hang out with Adam for a little longer. Oh well.

Today’s the first day of the fourth week of classes. It’s semi-exciting. The first round of tests are coming up. All on Wednesday. So I’m going to spend tonight studying. I’ll probaly stay on campus tell like 5 at least. Perhaps 6ish. Cause I just can’t study at home. Too many other things to do there. I can’t wait tell this semsters over though, just far to much stress. Rarr!

MI$ + M$

So today I remembered one of the reasons why I didn’t want to go into MI$. It’s because every MI$ person seems to be in bed with M$. Why is this? It’s not like they make our job any easier…. Or so they? No, I think they don’t.

Today in MI$ 331, the prof was talking about how GREAT M$ is and blah blah blah, how the new C# will rule the world in programming, she failed to mention that C# is pretty much Java, just changed enough so that they wouldn’t get thier asses kicked and a nice pretty interface for stupid MI$ people like her to figure it out.

Then she somehow got on this random tangent about her buying a new computer, and babbling something about her house not beig wired right for a UPS, so then she said “Why don’t I just go buy an Imac, plug it into the wall…. Oh, because I like knowing where my stuff goes…” She just totally ripped on Apple, and everyone laughed, it’s like HELLO! I have more problems figureing the hell out where M$ puts my shit then I do when using Apple. And then she went onto bitch about Linux/Unix and how there’s no GUI, etc.

I wanted to stand up and scream at her and say “HELLO! Have you used Linux/Unix recently” What a stupid bitch. I will not be one of those MI$ majors that’s totally in bed with M$, I refuse to! Damnit!

Speaking of all that though, Julian’s yet to send me that article he wrote about M$ and linux, so when you get a chance could you send that over to me: black@krellinst.org

Thanks!

Anyway, not much else going on, the hot boi saga continues, and continues to grow… I can’t wait tell this weekend. I’m spending it at Adams cause his parents aren’t there…. Lets hope he just doesn’t spend all the food money before Saturday again. lol

Ok, off to scout out more hot bois, and well just look at them tell they give me funny looks! roflol

Laters all!

Oct 24, 2001

Oct 24, [Elton John, "Can You Feel The Love Tonight"]

The trouble with intimacy is that it means vulnerability. Everyone wants

intimacy but few of us are very good at vulnerability We pay lip service

to "openness" and "trust," but usually these are mask

words which we use to hide ourselves and to keep others at bay. Get too

close to me and I’ll beat you over the heard with my openness and trust.

With the vocabulary provided by Freud and his followers, and the time provided

by increased leisure and life expectancy, our generation is the first in

history to set out self-consciously and in massive numbers to search for

the joys of intimacy. But there is no evidence that we have much progressed

over our predecessors in our skills at vulnerability. We attempt to make

bricks, despite the biblical lesson on the subject, without straw.

How much authentic vulnerability — as opposed to the synthetic kind acquired

on encounter weekends — have you observed on the expressway to intimacy?

The vulnerable person is strong enough to risk getting hurt — not pointlessly,

not irrationally, not as an inverted defense mechanism, but as part of a

reasonable if not altogether rational risk. He can give himself to another

human being not like a dive bomber crashing into an aircraft carrier or

like a Mack truck crumpling a Volkswagen, but rather in a gentle and subtle

process by which the other is incited, indeed seduced, to give himself in

return.

How many such people do you know?

The vulnerable person takes a chance on having his heart broken. He strips

himself of his defenses in the hope that when the other sees him as he is,

the other will find him irresistible. In such a defenseless position, he

can very easily be hurt, badly hurt.

Furthermore, he will be hurt. The lesson of all our experience is

that the vulnerable person does indeed have his heart broken, he is indeed

ridiculed, rejected, made a fool of. Sometimes the pain of such a heartbreak

is healed as reconciliation restores the violated intimacy. But only the

most naive believe that all stories have happy endings. Some broken hearts

remain broken.

Yet the deadly paradox of intimacy is that either we strip away our defenses

in a continuing process or we build them up in a similar process. We either

let the other get closer to us and thus get closer to him or we push each

other away. There is no middle ground. When push comes to shove, most of

us push instead of surrendering.

In our pseudosophisitcation we try to persuade ourselves that we are no

longer troubled by the shame of physical nudity. It is an act that normally

does not work. But physical nakedness is a symbol — indeed a "sacrament"

— of psychological nakedness. We are "shamed" when we take off

our clothes because we have nothing left under which to hide, nothing to

protect our weaknesses and deficiencies, we are defenseless, easily hurt.

Psychic nakedness is much more terrifying — and hence much less frequently

attempted. For if the other can see us as we are, then we are open to being

destroyed by him.

So we hedge our bets and protect our own apparent worthlessness. The cynical

"Why take the chance?" — rarely spoken but more a barrage of

words claiming that we are not afraid. It is all the other people who claim

to be "open and trusting" who are kidding themselves.

The theologians used to call this fear of the other "original sin."

The name may be out of fashion, but reality is not. Blessed be he who does

not take chances for he will not be hurt. Woe to him who risks giving his

whole self, for he surely will be hurt.

But then it may be worth it. And the name of that thought, according to

the old theologians, was Grace.