crush is an idiot...j/k... crush is nice...only because he's with me. xmas was alright... (these dot, dot, dot's are driving me mad!) i met my sister... good. i moved into my new apartment...good. i see nikki in two days...i'm looking forward to it... yeah...merry fucking new year... boun natale... prospero ano... blah, blah, blah

the end result
crush came back on sunday. he *practically begged for me to take him back, so after much back and forth, i did. nothing has changed about our relationship: he will still only call me once every four or more days, will still only stay over one night, will still visit san francisco in search of other girls. what makes it better is that he let me know that he cares. all i really want is for him to be sweet to me, and i'll let him do whatever he wants.
i've been smoking cigarettes regularly lately. for those of you who know me, you know that that's a sure sign of stress. it's work. i'm so fed up. i've never been so disatisfied in my life. my cmc sat down with me the other day and told me that i have what it takes to make it in the navy- i've never been so insulted. people who make it in the navy are not the sort of people i emulate. the fact that i'm being put in the same category as compulsive liars, and those who need a security blanket, makes me want to vomit and run for my life.
the trick to life is to be happy with what you have. the trick to life is being happy with what you have. when life hands you a lemon, make lemonaide. eat your cereal with water if you have no milk- it's good!



*he didn't cry, but he was on his knees at one point, and claimed to have blurry vision and was short of breath when i told him (one of many times) that it was over.

misgivings
i spoke with crush last sunday. his excuses:
1. he didn't know think we were exclusive
2. he doesn't want to be exclusive

all fine and well, but couldn't he at least tell me that before i heard it throught the grapevine? he wants to "take a break from each other" i told him there would be no "breaks" plural, only one break that would end this madness. he said he wanted to see me when he got back and talk about it face to face, and i had to ask what more we had to talk about. i already know he doesn't want to see me anymore, so why would he have to tell me agian? it seems too much like twisting the knife if you ask me. he won't let me go. i have given him many a chance to walk away and each time he has said he doesn't want to go. WHY? and of course if i think he still wants to be together then i won't leave. it's the white trash in me, i guess. all this crap aside, this is my promise to you, and to myself:
i will not get upset when we talk, i will stay strong and hold my ground. i will not settle for less.

that same sunday, i spoke with adam (see archives). i had forgotten the sound of his voice. we talked for a long time and it was good. i miss him.
19 more days 'till chicago.

reindeer sighting
in the mist of the morning i saw him. the crazy upstairs neighbor, with two sticks held to his head like antlers, prancing in the first light. he suddenly stopped, as if he sensed danger, then he crouched beside a garbage can and sniffed the air. when he picked up my scent, he acted very casual, as if the whole thing were a part of his morning ritual. by this time, after a night of wind chimes, rhythmic laughing (hahahaha one two three hahahaha one two three hahahaha one two three...) i had had enough of his stupid ritual. i got in my truck and put on some gangsta rap, revved my engine and "accidentally" honked my horn. the guy has got to be stopped.

jane says, "i'm done with sergio. he treats me like a ragdoll".
she hides the television.
says, "i don't owe him nothing. but if he comes back again, tell him to wait right here for me or try again tomorrow".
such is how i feel.

friday
have i told you lately that i can't wait to go to chicago? my friend phil, who is from the windy city is making me a list of great places to eat. his only advice is that i not eat too much so that i don't end up fat, a destiny which may be inevitable considering all the partying on the horizon. it's sure to be the most fun i've had since i left italy (how tragic).
breaking news: crush has a tart in san fran. i found out yesterday, but haven't had the honor of discussing it with him yet, as he is out of town. rest assured that it's on the top of my to do list:
to do today
1. tell off crush

i'm not sure i have it in me to tell him off though, after all, he has the right to date whomever he wants. i will, however, let him know that i don't appreciate being lied to and relieve him of the obvious burden of being my intimate companion. fuck you crush.

in a jerry springer-esque turn of events, i found out that i have a sister! yes, on thanksgiving day, my father let me know that i have an eighteen year old half sister named sara. i'm still having a medly of feelings about this, so that's all i will say about that.

have a great weekend.

the madness
my upstairs neighbor is insane. the guy never sleeps, it can be three in the morning and I will hear him talking, not to another person because there isn't another voice, just him laughing and chatting away. another bit of craziness is his habit of running across the room and just falling down... the guy is gone. last week i came home from work to find him up to his knees is mud, planting flowers in the front yard. i said hello to him and he looked at me with a deer in the headlights look that told me he was on some kind of drug. acid, mushrooms, pcp, who knows, the fact of the matter is that nobody creates a swamp in their front yard and becomes botany boy if they are sober.
to add to the insanity, my other neighbors have a puppy. they let this puppy ouside all the time unattended and without a leash. the puppy barks at everything that goes by and has made himself comfortable underneath my bedroom window. i'm going to mix antifreeze with puppy chow and set it out for him. it sounds evil, but it gets to be too much when he wakes me up in the middle of the night.
that is all.

there 'aint no future in your frontin'
i know a secret: hanford, ca is a witness protection town. there are far too many houses for the amount of businesses that are present. the people (those not in the military) all have this terrified look on their faces, they're afraid someone might recognize them. How terrible to spent the rest of your life in fear, never knowing if a knock on your door will bring the smiling face of your neighbor, or a double barrel shotgun. i could never do it. why do people front? my guess is this:
people front because they are cowards. they fear persecution and would rather spend their lives in captivity than stand up for their beliefs or take reponsibility for their actions. such people make me want to vomit. seriously, i can't stand them. i know that i should pity them, or try to empathize with them, but i really just want to shake them and tell them that they are stupid, in hopes that they will realiz the error of their ways and change. this has always been a fault of mine, this need to tell people their faults, but lately i've been making a conscious effort to improve.

... and i ask myself...
the first thing i've been wondering lately is: what the hell is a tivo. until about two seconds ago i thought it was some ebonics slang for television, and now that i'm informed, i can say that i still guess it is. through't my extensive research on the "official tivo site", i've learned that tivo is just a trendy new thing that lets one record tv so that they can ff, rwd, stp, pause (what is the abbreviation for that?) etc. whatever. i don't want one. i just got cable for crissake!
the second tickle in my brain stems from a commercial i saw while watching the two hour joe millionaire special. it was an advertisement for some hormone replacement for menapausal women, and their selling point was that it was ultra low in estrogen. apparently estrogen is the enemy when you stop dropping eggs. i wondered: why is estrogen bad then, and not when they are still bleedin? i guess it's one of gods' mysteries- or else one that can be solved by someone familiar witht he ins and outs of the female reproductive system and the effects estrogen has on it. i'll never know.
a third puzzler, and by far the last is why the hell didn't i know about emode before? it all started with a pop up advertising an iq test. i took it and was hooked. i love tests that result in self awareness. turns out that my best quality is that i'm independent because people who are independent tend to be more intelligent, determined and have a greater sense of integrity than most. another stunning report said that my destiny was to be a facilitator, or one who makes progress easier. i like that!! seriously though, his sight has like hundreds of free tests that give you pieces of insight to "the you you never knew" and then you have the option to pay money to go more indepth. it's genious. let me know what your destiny is.

three cheers for me
turning down crush for a roll in the hay may have made him mad, but i have to admit, it was empowering. i haven't spoken to the guy in weeks and he really expected to come over last night, do the deed and dash, but i stood my ground and he went home with a hard-on. there is the tiny voice in my head that's saying he will not stand for such behavior, but if he wants a girls to spend a couple of hours with whenever he wants and doesn't want any other connection with her, then he's liable to have to start paying for such a girl. i am not "that girl". i am not "that girl". this is my mantra.

friday night
friday night, after a very stressful day at work, i decided to get a bottle of wine (i chose "gato negro", a cheepy my friends and i used to drink in college) and i rented "the way we were". for those of you who have not watched it, rent it immediately. now i know why so many women idolize babs streisand- we relate to her in this movie. i cried and cried and drank the whole bottle of wine and passed out. i didn't even hear my phone ring when crush called.
saturday men with sweatshirts and dirty boots came into my apartment to install cable. the rest of the weekend was spent watching the food network and watching program after program on vh1 and mtv about the hilton sisters, the olsen twins and lil' kim. i went to bed at eight thirty on sunday. crush called at exactly ten, we talked for one and a half minutes and i spent the next two hours trying to fall back asleep.
i got my tickets to go to chicago to see nikki for new years. that's the only thing i have on my social agenda- how sad is that?

another good idea
yesterday i signed up for an hour long, $20 massage performed by a student that has recently graduated a massage therapy course. my rationalization is that no massage is a bad massage, so i'll let you know how it goes (my appintment is on saturday).
in other news, on friday, i am attending a taping of the price is right.
i secretly hope that i won't get picked because i've never been any good at that show even from the comfort of my own home- imagine what an ass i will look like on national television. i'll let you know when the show airs.
speaking of television shows, it appears that it is now acceptable to say "bitch" on television. it's never bleeped anymore, and my colleague informs me that the word has made appearances on prime time shows such as "friends" , and even the christian-based "seventh heaven". what's next?
for those of you following my saga with crush:
we spent the night together on wednesday, and he went on vacation for two weeks. he said he would call me on sunday. nothing happening, so i called him monday morning at 6am and told him i was worried- i pictured a plane crash, or worse another girl!- he told me he didn't think i should worry about him. i hung up. later that day i called to tell him off, but softened my approach for fear that i would be the ranting girl who is not even his girlfriend and he was in tahoe! he didn't even tell me he was going there. he said he would call later this week. i didn't say anything. i want to spit at him.

ata, the new black?
i recently picked up a beau of mine at lax. he flew in on some airline called "ata". while waiting in the terminal for his flight to arrive, i noticed the abundance of hep people getting off the flight. they were all young and/or stylish, and all had that travel savvy sense about them. i overheard one of the dudes waiting for his bag at the carousel respond to his girlfriends inquiry as to the legitimacy of ata, and he proceeded to ramble about some plane crash they had in lithuania or someplace and that their flights were subsequently very cheap. i thought nothing of it until nikki recommended them as the airline i use when i fly to chicago for new years, and let me tell you, nikki is never wrong when it comes to travel advice, and this time is no exception. round trip tickets to chicago are $236 from san jose international. i'm impressed. yay ata!

rest and relaxation?
i'm on leave all this week. i'm not going to do anything but lounge. it is a hard life though, trying to fill the hours, but who's complaining? date with crush on saturday/sunday: confusing. i'm starting to think he's just "that guy", which in turn would make me "that girl". *shreek* i'm tired of this helovesme,helovesmenot merry-go-round. incidentally, he read my blog and declared it "interesting", nothing more. could it be because he is made to be the villian in my little saga, or could it be that he never realized he was such a dick, or could it be that he hates the fact that i write about him because he thinks of me as nothing more than a fuck? and speaking of fuck, that's about all that it is anyway, so whatever. i'm really starting to resent him. its harder than i thought to be "that girl". i'm all self conscious all the time: we were making tacos and i was doing the topping part (lettuce, tomato, cheese) and i kept asking him how much i should cut. that is so unlike me! i know how much goddamn cheese to take out, i'm a smart girl, but for some reason i want him to feal in control... maybe because i'm afraid he won't like me if i show him the real me? ah!! i sound so fucking retarded! what would i do to have a regular boyfriend? i want a guy who wants to know what i'm thinking, who wants to come to my parents house for thanksgiving, who reads my blog and tells me that i'm talented. this whole ordeal is bad bad bad for my self image. maybe i subconsciously think that i don't deserve a great guy. is fear of success setting my boundries? hmmm?

i've said it before, and i'll say it again
roundtable pizza is the best pizza in america. i fucking love it. my all time favorite is the king arthur supreme, but a close second it the chicken and garlic gourmet. can i make a suggestion? find one near you and try some damn pizza. it's that simple.
and while we're on the subject of good food: you have got to try a mcgriddle it's mc-fucking-delicious. i'm not a fan of the mcdonalds corporation, but there is some kind of genious in using pancakes with syrup already inside! instead of buns for a breakfast sandwich.
another reiteration while on the subject of fast food- fast food nation by eric schlosser is an eye opener, a modern day
"the jungle". read it!

by the by, still no word from crush. who among you is surprised? i'm trying my best not to be sad about it though. it's his loss, right?

breaking news:elliot smith, xo

ps
i freakin' love the tagboard that matt installed. i never knew people actually read this thing, i always thought they just gave me lip service: "oh, ya... your blog(?) is really funny".
i only wish the "taggers" would enter in their email addresses or web sites so i can know who i have on my hands here (hint, hint).

crackers
i'm not talking about the honkey holdin' a nigga down, i'm talking about the manufacturers of some of americas favorite snackfoods: nabisco. we've all fallen in love with the buttery goodness of ritz crackers, marveled over the fact that fig newtons are in fact not cookies, but fruited cake, and tried not to bite into a chip while eating chips ahoy in the hopes we could sue the company for false advertisement. nabisco has cashed in on americas love for snack food, their inherent laziness and in doing so have created monstrous, overweight children who scream at the top of their lungs in grocery stores that they want cookies. how did we get to this point? a box of ritz crackers retails for about $3- how much can it really cost to make a friggin box of crackers? i'm guessing that given the slave labor nabisco uses to "bake" the crackers and the low grade ingredients imported from south america or somewhere, about $0.05- am i off here? and you know that only about 2% of the employees of nabisco get to sink their teeth into those profits. that's why i decided to damn the man. i will never again buy a product that will cost me less to make than to buy. i can make my own damn crackers! i'm not sure i ever will, but this post is my small contribution to the betterment of american society. no need to thank me, just send money. (wink).

shout out

by the by, thanks to matt for the template change. for those of you who've read all the archives, you will recall that matt was the inspiration for this blog in the beginning and he has sucessfully helped me transitio to my "fall" blog. tks matt.

desperation is an ugly thing. it makes a person do things she would not normally do, think thoughts she might not normally think, say and do things she normally wouldn't. the scary thing is that it's not clear to the desperate person that they are in said state until it's too late and they've gone too far. such was the case sunday night when i lost all of my control and cried all night over crush (in his presence no less). it was terrible. i was a blubbering mess- my eyes were so swollen, my face so red. my heart is just broken over him. it's so sad that we can't be. i'll never understand why fate brought us together only to be kept apart. i know that after sunday it is over between us. i want more than he wants to give and that is the worst thing a woman could want from a man. i'm so devastated.

fresh.

on being a cow, and other amusing discoveries
i talked to my brother doug on sunday. it's good to speak to him as he is a very witty guy. his off the wall humor has aged like fine cheese over the years. inevitably, the conversation turned to whether or not i had a current love interest at present, and, not wanting to say no as i have so many times in the past (doug has been with his same girlfriend nicholl for the last six years), i told him the whole sordid story of crush. dougs interpretation of the whole deal is that crush is basically getting the milk for free. to hear my brother, my flesh and blood, say those words to me, made me realize that it was probably true. i was mortified. crush hasn't called me since we spent the night together on sat.
since being reduced to nothing more than a cow who doesn't know her value, i've been doing some soul searching... is it my destiny to be alone? well, according to my "free sample destiny report" from www.astrology.com, it is. read:

Sun in Aries:

The truth that each of us is essentially alone and that we must ultimately answer to ourselves regarding our choices in life is one that resonates deeply within you. Thus, patricia, your first loyalty is to yourself and to living your own life as authentically as possible. When you are most yourself, you are a risk taker, a trailblazer, forging your own path rather than following anyone else's lead. Whether or not you have the courage to do so, to boldly assert yourself and follow your own star - standing alone when necessary - is crucial to fulfilling your life purpose. Find out more with your full-length report...

There are many ways, both positive and negative, you could choose to express this core sense of singleness and this need to be an original or a pioneer. You may, for instance, simply choose to remain single. Your independence, autonomy, and freedom are very important to you, and at heart you really do not want to be distracted from your purposes or encumbered by the responsibilities and complications that accompany close, ongoing partnership with others. You are by nature a solo. This does not necessarily mean that you will avoid intimate relationships or commitments, but there must be some arena in you life where you are the chief, where you take initiative and make the decisions. Being a sole proprietor of an upstart business enterprise, free lancing, supporting yourself with as little external input as possible - they are all possible expressions of your inner drive to live life on your own terms, by your own inner creativity and dictates. If you do not feel you are your own boss, patricia, you simply will not be happy. Your lifestyle and work must reflect your strong impulses to be self-reliant as well as to create something NEW, in order for you to be in harmony. Find out more with your full-length report...

if that don't beat all.

crush is away since a week ago. i talked to him for an hour yesterday... i'm in love. i told him about my plan to leave the navy, and he was happy. i think he's sweet on me. he says that he thinks about me. i'll see him when he comes back next weekend. i love imagining what my life with him would be like, i love the way he balances my fire with his calm temper, the way he puts things in perspective for me, the way he listens while i rant about my neurosis, the way he accepts me for what i am, how supportive and gentle he is. his touch is truly the softest, most penetrating i've experienced. he makes my chromosomes do backflips.
new apartment, old stuff returns to light up my life. my box arrived marked up with italian paraphenalia. i like to think that people saw the boxes and thought that i had all of my stuff imported from italy.
watched abre los ojos on saturday- the precursor to vanilla sky. set in madrid, it made me long for the experience of living in a strange land where customs, food, people are all different. i'm of the opinion that anyone who has been to europe is more intelligent than her neighbor who stayed in the usa all her life. a girl who has lived in europe is a genious compared to her girlfriend who merely visited for a couple of weeks during a summer vacation.

after my drama filled morning with crush, decided to put things in perspective by calling up the one girl i knew could be very rational about the situation: nikki. i told her the story- how it made me feel, and she gave good advice: if i didn't want to end it, be sure i could keep it casual. seemingly simple, but i know i won't be able to maintain. nikki and i discussed the fact that relationships could never end on a good note, there would always be some degree of pain involved in order to put a stop to things. that was my problem now, there is nothing "bad" about my relationship with crush, it's just forbidden. but then i started thinking about his attitude about the whole thing. why does he keep seeing me, and then get things all weird by talking about how we shouldn't be doing what we are doing? why am i putting up with it? and that's when i decided to quit. i can't put myself through the heartache of not being called daily, or going on a date. i can't handle the guy that i just had soul penetrating sex with tell me that "we can't do this" only to turn around and tell me in the next sentence that he cares for me deeply. i realized that he is playing a game with me that i was so sure men stopped playing in high school, that i mistook it for the real thing. that game caused me enough pain to know that i will have to pull up my boot straps and put a stop to this "relationship".
later that night i had dinner with my newlywed girlfriend since middle-school, taunya. we gossiped about all the people we went to school with and discussed our plans for our futures. i occured to me later that night that out of all the girls in our high school circle, i was the only one without a child and single, and i'm not sure what to make of that. am i just smart enough not to have gotten pregnant or married to a guy at such a young age or am i really missing something? am i like the kid in kindergarten who is intellectually developing slower than the rest of her classmates? what the fuck is wrong with me that i can't even get a guy in secret? i'm going to be 25 and i've never had a serious boyfriend. all of the sudden i'm terrified. i've always joked that i would end up the old lady with cats and a cardigan, but i never suspected it might be true! i guess i just don't have what men are looking for in a girl? but if that's the case, well then that's just the sacrifice i will make in the name of anti-faux eveerything. i can't play games, can't go to a tanning salon and be orange, can't force myself to work my body into a shape that isn't in my dna, can't "dumb it down", can't settle for less. call it feminism, call it whatever the fuck you want. it's just me. so, i'll have to work my dreams of the white dress out of my head for awhile and work ones of a fabulous me in instead because if i'm going to be spending so much time with myself, i might as well like me.

"it's very strange, we always have the idea of missing- missing love, missing tenderness, missing a birthday, missing the peaople we love. this is the spirit of traveling" -phillip starck.

my heart is broken. my starcrossed lovers senario is coming to a head: crush and i spent a passion filled night together that ended in tears this morning- and why wouldn't it? we are, i believe, on the brink of a great love, but it is completely impossible for us to be together due to our differences in social status, so to speak. my heart is broken. i see a future for us, a fututre that promises to bring golden times, but i'm not sure it will happen. so many reasons why and why not. so we decided to keep going as we are, living in fear of exposure. what would dr. laura say about this one? i asked him if he had some support for this issue, someone he sould talk to about it, he said he did, and that the advice of this appointed sage was to run in the opposite direction. the sage has me pegged for some officer and a gentleman type drama, which i was angry about, but now laugh at: i've been through worse things without causing drama. i think crush knows that. but i know he will be one of my great loves, the kind that leaves a deep immpression. pray for me, i pray for myself that the love that i keep stored inside of me will find a dear man apon which i may pour out my stores. someone who will accept it all and all that will follow. someone who will hold on to me, with whose presence i can shatter without the fear, the acid fear, of abandonment. someone who sees my beauty broken down.

extra, extra...
a lot has changed since my last post on august second:
i'm no longer on the dreaded uss carl vinson
i have a tan
i'm taking yoga and water aerobics classes
i put in a rental application for a three bedroom home three days ago
i'm back into blogging

needless to say, i'm happy. it turns out a sailors life may not be quite the life for me. now that i'm back, i've been spending my days leisurely, laying in the sun, eating good food, thinking of my life and the direction i would like for it to take now that i have my freedom back. i'm reading a book by the infamous dr. laura schlessinger, entitled: ten stupid things women do to mess up their lives, and it's a book every woman should read. it's the closest thing to a feminist book this anti-feminist will ever read. she also authored ten stupid things men do to mess up their lives
the best thing that i've done since getting back is talking to my friend nikki meyer who lives in downtown chicago and leads this ideal, mary tyler moore type of life. she never fails to wow me and always sort of wipes the smudges off of my rose colored glasses. this girls is the furthest thing from jaded it gets and one of my very few, but very close girlfriends. i'm amazed constantly at her intelligence and her sense of adventure, for instance, she jetted off to italy this summer to spend two weeks with her ex-lover, jeff, and she and jeff subsequently jetted off to tunisia and spent lovely days basking in the african sun. i mean, that's a whole different continent!
amazing women seem to be the theme of my homecoming (could it be that i fit into that category somewhere?). i've been watching sex and the city, season three over and over again because i refuse to pay for cable and it gets boring sitting around my barracks room waiting for my rental application to come through. i never tire of the crazy misadventures of the four single new yorkers and always find something new and fabulous with every veiwing. i've come to think of my life as an episode of this show, as most women probably do, and i can't help but associate my misadventures with some of theirs. one thing that happened to me, that i can bet would never happen to them, but millions of regular women probably experience daily is this:
at four this morning i awakened to a rustling, no, a clinking of dishes. my assumtion was that it was the few dishes that i had on top of my small refrigerator rattling together as the motor shut down, but when it happened again just seconds later, i became alarmed. i turned on my bedside table light and looked in the direction of the noise and saw this little mouse. i let out a muffled scream and was surprised at how terrified i was. after all, it was a tiny mouse that was probably more afraid of me, but all i could think of was that it was going to attack me and scurry up my neck and get in my hair. then i remembered reading somewhere that women in a survey proclaimed that their biggest fear was having an living thing (bird, spider, mice, etc.) get in their hair and not being able to get it out. i knew where they were coming from. i threw my dr. laura book that was laying next to me at the mouse and it jumped- i swear on my life- two feet, and scurried behind the armoir. i ran out of the room and told the guy in charge of the barracks that there was a mouse in my room. he apathetically suggested i use a broom to swat it, which made no sense to me- what better way than to climb up the brrom handle, for the mouse to get in my hair? he eventually sent his footman to my room to set a mouse trap. the footman was decidedly more of a huntsman than the guy in charge and he cleverly set the trap with a combination of blue cheese and sour dough bread as bait. the mouse would be helpless to pass by such a smorgesboard, and the footman promised that as soon as i shut off the lights i would hear the sharp snap of the trap and my problem would be gone. i thanked him and said goodmorning. i got back in bed and shut off the light, but there was no immediate thwack and i fealt the terror return. what if the mouse, like the nimh mice in the cartoon, was too smart for the footmans' trap and became enraged at my murderous solution to his starvation and called his little mice buddies to get ready to make their nests in my hair as soon as i fell asleep? or what if he did fall victim to the smorgesboard and his little body was trapped beneath the metal, but he was still alive and he was squeeling and making those terrible mice noises? i finally had to get up and turn on loud music and make loud noises and leave. i'm dreading my return, the anticipation that his tiny body will be broken under the wire is too much, but i'll forget about it as soon as someone takes it away. the only thing left for my to worry about then is whether or not he told his little buddies.... dun dun dun!

i've had these overwhelming urges lately to do things:
have a live in boyfriend
decorate my apartment that i don't have yet
cook a meal
travel with aforementioned boyfriend
make love to a man
hang with my parents
have a girls slumber party
volunteer
clean aforementioned apartment
take a shower without shower shoes
have a man see me in a bathing suit and get a hard on\drink martinis
wear high heals
fall in love (oh so hard)
go back to college
spend time with people i love
sit at a cafe with a girlfriend and chat............................
.......................................................................................
the list goes on.
the general theme seams to be interaction with people on more than a superficial level, and a need to settle down somewhat. hhhmmm. interesting.

i'm a lernin!
i know how to perform first aid on a sucking chest wound, also known as a gunshot, or stab wound. all i need is a peice of flimsy plastic, like the type conveniently found around packages of cigarettes. all i do is slap that plastic right over the wound and it acts as a valve so that the injured persons diaphragm won't push all of the air out of the lungs. important stuff to know in such troubled times. another usefull fact: a person needs an average of 20.8% oxygen to survive. 16% is the minimum, anything over 22% will kill ya.
i'm amazed at the reality of the whole "ask and you shall receive" concept. i mean it. i asked for something that is totally against the rules, and i got it. w-o-w baby. i'm also amazed at the ignorance of the people in charge of me. not all of them, but the ones i have direct contact with: i was working on the computers in the ready room, they were all mysteriously running slow. i was doing all the things i knew to fix the problem. halfway through my troubleshooting process some dudes came in and annonced that they were securing the ventilation for maintence. about ten minutes later it became very HOT up in there. so now, i had officers breathing down my neck, wondering why they couldn't log on, a fucking heat wave, and a seemingly unfixable problem. as a last resort, i called tim and asked him to reboot the switch in 314, and as i was on the tele with him, my ADP officer was looking at me in disbelief and telling me that rebooting a switch wouldn't help. i wnated to tell him he was stupid, and to shut up. after the switch was rebooted, it worked. in your face

loenard cohen

THERE IS A WAR
(from the album 'NEW SKIN FOR OLD CEREMONY')

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
and the ones who say there isn't.

Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it,
why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning.

Well I live here with a woman and a child,
the situation makes me kind of nervous.
Yes, I rise up from her arms, she says "I guess you call this love";
I call it service.

Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be a tourist,
why don't you come on back to the war, before it hurts us,
why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get nervous.

You cannot stand what I've become,
you much prefer the gentleman I was before.
I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control,
I didn't even know there was a war.

Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be embarrassed,
why don't you come on back to the war, you can still get married.

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
a war between the black and white,
a war between the odd and the even.

Why don't you come on back to the war, pick up your tiny burden,
why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get even,
why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking?


JOAN OF ARC
(from the album 'SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE')


Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite."

Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.
"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.
"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."

"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?


WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE
(from the album 'THE FUTURE')

Baby, I've been waiting,
I've been waiting night and day.
I didn't see the time,
I waited half my life away.
There were lots of invitations
and I know you sent me some,
but I was waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

I know you really loved me.
but, you see, my hands were tied.
I know it must have hurt you,
it must have hurt your pride
to have to stand beneath my window
with your bugle and your drum,
and me I'm up there waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Ah I don't believe you'd like it,
You wouldn't like it here.
There ain't no entertainment
and the judgements are severe.
The Maestro says it's Mozart
but it sounds like bubble gum
when you're waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Waiting for the miracle
There's nothing left to do.
I haven't been this happy
since the end of World War II.

Nothing left to do
when you know that you've been taken.
Nothing left to do
when you're begging for a crumb
Nothing left to do
when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come.

I dreamed about you, baby.
It was just the other night.
Most of you was naked
Ah but some of you was light.
The sands of time were falling
from your fingers and your thumb,
and you were waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Ah baby, let's get married,
we've been alone too long.
Let's be alone together.
Let's see if we're that strong.
Yeah let's do something crazy,
something absolutely wrong
while we're waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Nothing left to do ...

When you've fallen on the highway
and you're lying in the rain,
and they ask you how you're doing
of course you'll say you can't complain --
If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.



EVERYBODY KNOWS
(from the album 'I'M YOUR MAN')

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows


CLOSING TIME
(from the album 'THE FUTURE')

Ah we're drinking and we're dancing
and the band is really happening
and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high
And my very sweet companion
she's the Angel of Compassion
she's rubbing half the world against her thigh
And every drinker every dancer
lifts a happy face to thank her
the fiddler fiddles something so sublime
all the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
and it's partner found, it's partner lost
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops:
it's CLOSING TIME

Ah we're lonely, we're romantic
and the cider's laced with acid
and the Holy Spirit's crying, "Where's the beef?"
And the moon is swimming naked
and the summer night is fragrant
with a mighty expectation of relief
So we struggle and we stagger
down the snakes and up the ladder
to the tower where the blessed hours chime
and I swear it happened just like this:
a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
the Gates of Love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
but CLOSING TIME

I loved you for your beauty
but that doesn't make a fool of me:
you were in it for your beauty too
and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you
And I loved you when our love was blessed
and I love you now there's nothing left
but sorrow and a sense of overtime
and I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's CLOSING TIME

Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening
and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night
And my very close companion
gets me fumbling gets me laughing
she's a hundred but she's wearing
something tight
and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth
which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth
except to say it isn't worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights,
busted in the blinding lights
of CLOSING TIME

i guess the grievance guy has not balls. he would just prove that he was stupid if he went through with it anyway. i was thinking about my first memory last night and i realized it wasn't the poop story.:
when i was so little, we lived on spinacker lane in san jose, california in a condo. i had a light switch cover with the seven dwarves and snow white on it. my brother had not been born. i was sitiing at the dinner table and i didn't want to eat my food. my dad told me that if i didn't eat it i wouldn't get dessert. i asked him what dessert was because i didn't remember ever hearing that word before. he told me pudding. ... i felt like an alien who had just been dropped ont he lanet and i didn't know what anything was. in my memory even my dad seems like a stranger- that is my first memory.

yep. apathy. i think it may have been the same thing that made the trench coat mafia kill all of the kids in their high school. if you don't care, it doesn't make you a budhist monk, it just makes you an asshole. and maybe it's not even apathy, just a lack of all things good. like the other night in berthing: this girl talked about her eyebrows for a half hour straight, and she was serious about it. she gave us the history of her eybrows and how they had progressed over the years, she talked about her plans for the future of her eyebrow and how her life has changed because of their metamorphasis. i finally had to stop her by commenting on the fact that she had a lot to say about her eyebrows. she got the hint. she could have talked about anything else, but she chose facial hair. another big excitement is that some guy wants to file a grievance against me because he's an asshole. story:
he called and asked for his girlfriend (by the way he's married) and i told him she was on the phone. he asked if i would have her call him, i said yes and hung up. he called back and asked if i heard him, in a very abrasive tone. i said yes and hung up. i was not in the mood to converse with him, nor did i feel the need to. then, he cam down to the shop and started yelling at me, asking if i had a problem. as i was already annoyed, i replied that frankly i didn't like him and that was a problem for me a t the moment, so he flew off the handle and peters had to bring us in back.
whatever, he's a racist black man who is abrasive and the antithesis of a productive member of society. his opinion of me means nothing, but i think it's funny that he wants to file a grievance against me just because i don't like him.
i live and work around the crap of the nation, social rejects from all walks of life. apathy? disgust? is a grievance the only excitement i can expect? can i hope for something more, can i hope for something real? is this my life?

australia has been postponed, but i'm dealing with it. i'm thinking i'll get over it, not sure though. i'm not really even feeling australia right now if you can believe that. it doesn't seem all that great from the perspective of this ship. i have nobody to look forward to seeing, nothing to look forward to doing, its a very apathetic situation and i despise apathy, so you can see where the dilema starts. everytime i go out to the smoke deck i see the same view: sea. sometimes there is the occasional island, or another boat, but mostly it's sea. we've been in fairly high seas lately, upwards of nine feet. it rocks me to sleep. Oh, but damn those high seas and all their non-pulling in ways. reason number four million five thousand twenty not to reenlist. the number after that is the caliber of people in the navy. the ones preceeding that are obviously too numerous to mention in this small post.
since apathy doesn't really lend itself to passionate writting, my post will probably be as bland as boiled chicken, so get over it.

a post for all the addicts
this week has been lame. had lunch with crush on the mess decks yesterday. steel beach was canxed due to the late arrival of a cod and the early departure of a master chief. the cod faired considerably better since the master chief is now waiting it out in the deep freeze pending port arrival. too weird.
the tone was set after sing for something strange to happen, but i didn't know it would be this strange.
we are waiting the four more days in eager anticipation for our next port. it promises to be a good one, but i've been disappointed before.
i've really nothing to write, which is why the readers of capitalization have to endure the fucking story of how singapore got it's name. sorry.
i'm really ready to get off this floating pile of shit and be a real person again. i'm almost afraid i'm too tainted to be normal again.

singapore was cool. i went to a country bar and hung out with some peeps from squadron

The 'Singa' - How Singapore was named

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sang Nila Utama, an imaginative & adventurous king was restless by nature and wanted to travel to far away places. He loved hunting wild animals, so when he heard that there were stags in the jungles of Tanjong Bentam which were not easy to hunt, he was excited and took with him a great fleet of ships to Tanjong Bentam.

When the king arrived upon the island, he and his subjects had a hunting expedition that lasted several hours, slaying many wild and savage beasts, but no stags. This disappointed the king, for he had a sense of unfulfillment in his heart.

Suddenly, a large stag darted out of the bush in front of Sang Nila Utama, giving the king a shock...but the king drew his silver dagger and hurled it at the stag, only grazing the animal. The stag began to run and the king pursued it (in those days, it was either your feet or nothing)

The stag ran through the jungle and darted up a knoll. The king followed the stag up the hill, but upon reaching the summit, the stag was nowhere to be seen. There was a large rock, so the king climbed it and looked the land and sea spread out around him. In the distance, he saw a stretch of white sand - an island.

Sang Nila Utama was fascinated by the sight of the island. He turned to one of his subjects who had followed him.

'What is the name of that island?'

The subject looked into the distance and smiled.

'That is Temasek, Your Highness.'

'Then we are going there.'

The king ordered his fleet to set sail and they began on their journey towards the island.

Suddenly the once clear blue skies were covered with black clouds, heavy rain poured from them and strong bursts of wind threatened to tear the ships apart. The ship carrying Sang Nila Utama was in the very eye of the storm. The crew lowered the sails, started to bail the water from the ship and get most of the cargo for jettisoning.

However, an idea came to the king's head. He remembered a story his grandfather told him of how one of his ancestors became the Sea-King and that his crown was the only thing which belonged to his ancestor. He removed his crown immediately & threw it into the sea.

All at once, the storm broke. As suddenly as it started, the skies began to clear and the crew gave a shout of joy and set sail once more to the island of Temasek.

When the king stepped upon the island, a creature stepped out of nowhere, and the king and his men were awe-struck by the magnificent creature. It was large and moved with grace, had a black head, covered in a furry mane, a whitish neck and a red body. When the king drew his bow & arrow, the beast stared back at him with golden eyes and let out a deafening roar before leaping into the jungle.

'What sort of animal was that?', the king asked.

A wise old man stepped forth.

'I have seen animals in potraits from the Far West. Perhaps this is a 'singa', but I wonder how it got all the way here.'

'This must be a great place if it breeds such a beautiful animal. Let us live here...here on the island of Singapura.'

Footnote: The word 'singa' is actually the Malay word for 'lion'. Therefore, Singapore is sometimes referred to as the 'Lion City'.

singapore slung
wrigly's doublemint is on the 10 most wanted list in singapore. any person caught chewing gum or selling gum will be fined $50 singapore. it is against the law to spit on the ground, litter and outrage the modesty of a female, punishment is severe. remeber the international incident cause by the american bastard who got caught spray painting a car or something some years back and got cained? yeah, that's not some boogeyman fairytale your parents told you to keep you from being a fucking prick as a kid, it's real.
i'm amazed to be in singapore. the city is so clean and full of greenery. as it's location is so near the equator, it is hot, humid, but not as much as guam. singapore heat is relaxing. I read this blog the other day called tonight we "sail for singapore" or something. this couple who live in atlanta or something want to move to singapore, and they are all excited about it. yeah, i want to move to singapore too. there is such cultural diversity, nice weather, beautiful scenery, and everyone speaks english. paradise found? i guess. i was only there for a couple of hours before i had to head back to the ship due to technical difficulties of a friend, but what i saw, i liked. the MRT (subway) is so easy to use. i feel safe in sing. i could probably walk down the street in the middle of the night naked, drunk and screaming "fuck me!" and nobody would even look at me let alone lay a hand on me. too afraid of the caining, ya know. tomorrow starts my two days with crush. i'm so excited to relax with him. to whisper, kiss, drink wine, talk, bathe, sleep, eat with him. it's sure to be a good time.

berthing blues
last night i rolled into berthing at approximately 2325. the lights were on and girls were sitting there, one doing her nails, one doing anothers' hair. i asked them if they were almost done and they said no, so i asked them if the would move to the bathroom, and i walked away. the girl doing her hair came over and started yelling, so i asked her to be quite because people were sleeping, and then she got beligerant. long story short, i'm in to work early to look up the regulations to show a senior chief who knows damn well what the fucking regulations are, but who just played dumb last night so the girl could do her hair. for the record, lights out is at 2200. fucking bitches.

dementia
when i lived in italy, i had this cat. i got her from an italian family who told me her name was pizzetta, little pizza, which i vowed to change, so i studied her personality for a while. she had this habit of suckling at skin. she would just latch on and not stop unless she was physically removed, it got to be disturbing. i named her dementia because this little bit was obviously off her rocker. the suckling didn't stop after she took up solid food as i had hoped, rather it got worse! i would be doing housework and she would be under my feet just hoping for a bit of skin to show so she could get a taste. if i let her sit on my lap while i watched a movie, she would act all calm and cool, but i could see the desire for flesh in her eyes. she would ambush me when i least expected it and i would have to throw her off. harsh? no. believe me if you had a ravenous animal sucking at your flesh you would go to drastic measures to get it off too. i finally decided to cut my losses with dementia after the newly-aquired-so-that-she-would-leave-me-the-fuck-alone kitten sterling shit in my bed in the middle of the night- while i was in it. they were both out the door that very minute. was it fair for me to punish dementia for sterlings actions? maybe not, but dementia faired far better than sterling because after a week, he was missing and dementia was pregnant. after she had her kittens she totally calmed down. did a major one eighty. i still left her ass in italy.

What the fuck?
Nothing going on really. Basically I've been working too much to do anything. I'm suppose to be going to freefall school in Oct. I can't wait. I've already completed basic airborne school at the army post. That really sucked!!! Freefall is out in Arizona. I heard its a great time out there. Have the weekends off so there is alot of partying going on during the downtime. I'm still with the same woman. A part of me is in love with here and thinks about marriage, and another part of me just wants to be free and whatever and whoever I want, when I want. I don't know what to do....guess I'll just be me and take it a day at a time. I know I'm not ready to propose......yet anyway. I know that's what she wants. What do you think?

adam
~
~
why, why, why would he send this to me? is this his way of hurting me, or making me say that i'm in love with him, and he should forget about her and get with me? i'm disturbed, confused, irritated. what an ass.

maxim magazines guide to dating
whenever i date i guy, i can't help but feel as if everything that comes out of his mouth is a line he read in maxim. if i say, "gosh, i really like the way that dress looks on her", i can expect the inevitable reply,"it would look better on you", from my beau. maybe he's just a nice guy, and really means these things, but i doubt it. i've read maxim, it's not like this secret magazine or anything. i can't stand a maxim reply. i also can't stand the reason for these cheesy ass replies: women. men only say stupid ass things because they are afraid to say what they really think. in the dress situation, the man is probably thinking, "yes, it does", but if he were to say that, the woman would get all bent out of shape, hit him with her purse full of beauty products and run away crying. men are not stupid enough to fall for this trap women set. whenver i get the maxim reply, i read between the lines. i know what you guys are really thinking, but it's best you don't say it. other women might hear and hit you with their purses.

snapshot of phil
phil likes guns. phil has a whole aresenal back in washington. phil packs heat wherever he goes. the nra passes out buttons that say "phil for life". when phil becomes president, he will change the title to, "el presidente por vida". phils speaches will never begin with "my fellow americans..." , rather phil will stand at the podium, shotgun in hand, and say, "'sup?". one of the first things on el presidentes' to do list is to nuke michigan, specifically detroit. while some hippies may say this is a bit harsh, phil believes it neccessary. nothing good comes out of detroit anymore, not even cars. next on his agenda is making puerto rico a state, whether they like it or not. after puerto rico, cuba is next on his takeover list- watch your back fidel. once the us has aquired all the mangos, cigars, and marijuana resources of our new states, el presidente will set forth to help the world as a whole. step one is to invade the tiny island known as great britain and liberate its inhabitants from the tyrannic rien of the evil queen mother. millions of toothbrushes and the ada will be dropped by the navy as reenforcements. another worldwide justice phil will initiate is the immidiate cease and desist of the use of the word "aboot" by all canadians. militant english classes will be instructed by the most elite of navy seals.
phils world would undoubtedly be a better world. when phils name appears on the ballot, my check mark will go next to it, how 'bout yours?

ha, ha syphilis is funny
i love the fact that al capone died of syphilis. the funniest part is that he contracted it after he went into the slammer! do you think he was raped, or willingly gave up his ass to the syphilis spreader? speaking of rape, we had an incident in one of the male berthings this morning. word on the streets is that some guy's crying rape. i think that he was getting it on and got caught, so instead of saying he was gay, he said he was raped. hhhmmm. i got another e-mail from oh-so-aloof-adam. this time he was a bit less aloof. he picked up first off the late exam. now he's the hunky first class that i could have been with. i can't even care anymore. we're so over, we need a new word for over.

ha, ha syphilis
For centuries, most doctors believed syphilis and gonorrhea to be two types of the same disease. But a French doctor in 1837 discovered the uniqueness of syphilis and later went on to describe the three stages. Syphilis was treated with mercury, either orally, in vapor baths or topically. These doses of the heavy metal probably reached lethal rates. By the early 20th century, mental institutions were filled with patients whose illness could be traced to syphilis. Syphilis does not discriminate. Famous people who have had syphilis include King Henry VIII, Napoleon, John Keats, Vincent Van Gogh and Al Capone.

i put a chit in for a duty swap so that i might have two full days and nights with crush, swoon. on the opposite end of the spectrum, i got n e-mail from the oh-so-aloof adam. a one-liner, of course. why adam? what happened to you.
closeup snapshot of adam
he was off to rigorous duty, acting as the comms guy for seal teamX. i planned to visit him in virginia, but he found out he was off to the "big sandbox", and our plans got canx'ed. when he got back, it was like talking to a vietnamn vet. paranoia ran rampid. his trust in me and my love for him was shattered. he couldn't tell me he loved me anymore, he didn't love me anymore. he forgot who i was. that's what distance, a war, and anthrax vaccinations will do to a man i suppose. last i heard adam was living happily ever after with his current girlfriend, and mutual friends report him to be a different man. that's were the snapshot fades out, like it was left in the sun too long. it's now discolored, warped and useless.

my response to a 'sermon from a freed man'
adrian,
my parents sent me a book, "a purposeful life". it's a 40 day guide to living the life god wants us to have. day two says, "you are not an accident". god puts us all of us here for a purpose. although your navy experience was one of disappointment, you have impacted so many lives in ways you may not comprehend. we all remember you, and you have given some of us the strength to persevere. you served your purpose in the navy and you should not look back on it with regret. in the short time i knew you, you gave me the gifts of courage and wisdom. courage to endure the attacks set against me by the enemy, and the wisdom to love them for it. i'm a stronger, better person because of these gifts.
adrian, you have always been a free man. nobody can impose limits upon a person he or she is not willing to accept. you've moved on to impact the lives of others, and i wish you peace of mind in your experiences. godspeed.

a sermon from a freed man

(an e-mail from adrian sizemore, the departed rebel)

I was standing on my balcony last night puffing on one of my cigars and
came to a fairly emotional epiphany, I do not miss that boat one bit. I can
honestly say that there is not one thing that I miss about that boat. Some
may say, "Well, at least you always had something to do". For those who may
continue to live with that tid bit of nonsense, Go Die!!! Others could
possibly mention that, "Hey, at least you were getting paid a decent wage".
For those of you who are staying there because of that, you go die with the
other guys. Now for the, "Well at least I will get some type of
retirement", FUCK YOU. What the hell kind of retirement is $1500/mos, not
including the taxes from that, for the rest of you life. You can save your
money invest it wisely and make that much by the time you are ready to
retire. Don’t think so, well I challenge you to step out of you pathetic
little comfort zone and try it. Here is the truth, you do not need that
place. You don’t need their bullshit games and backwards doublethink
philosophy of how to live your life. Look people, those ass holes never
took a chance in there life, so who the hell are they to tell you what to do
with your life. Don’t believe me? Just take a good look at your bosses,
you tell me they stayed cause they, "Love the Navy", or were they scared?

Look, I left the Navy homeless without a place to go. I had to sleep
in a hotel for a week. Yes it cost me about $236.00, to be precise, and I
had to sleep in my car a couple of nights. But every day that I faced an
uncertain future I came to the realization that hey, there really is nothing
holding me back from doing what ever the fuck I want to do. So within a
week and two days I found a really nice looking studio for $370/month. I
met a really nice woman at the unemployment office and she is taking a look
at my evals to help me build a resume. One of the Department heads at the
school I am applying for is enthused to meet me and said that she, "Will do
what it takes" to get me started there. A Counselor at the Unemployment
Security Commission is willingly bending over backwards to help me collect
unemployment, and even telling me how to beat the system.

I can keep going, but the point here is to understand that you will
never be all you want to be while you are there. Sure it's easy money, but
the rewards will never amount to what you could get if you just take a
chance and see what your true potential is. Those ass holes that are your
bosses are afraid of you and your intelligence because it’s a direct threat
to their way of life. They will hold you down and suppress you because they
are too afraid to take a chance. They are too stupid to understand what it
is you are doing so they dumb it down and make you feel incompetent. Don’t
let them ruin your lives. Let it feed your desire to be free; and when you
finally make it to the outside then you will, "Discover that you had not
truly lived".

No one is stopping you from doing what you want to do, but you.

A

p.s.
This isnt my, "Oh I miss you guys and every one there", email. Fuck that,
spread the hate and never let them choose your fate.

sex and the city, cvn70 style
i've been frequenting the smoke deck more often than is preferable. calm seas today. i saw some fish that looked like piranha jumping in and out of the water. no man overboard for me, thank you.
crush and i have been discussing the possibility of taking a roadtrip after cruise, or going to italy. i'm entirely smitten, i'm telling you what. i'm starting to feel weird about how great he is. it's like an episode of sex and the city where carrie starts dating aiden and things are great and she freaks out. "do we need drama to make a relationship work?", she asks. i'm not sure carrie. all my life i've made an effort to be appealing to just the right guy, and now that someone is recognizing that, i'm terrified. do i need the ebb and the flow of a f'cked up relationship to be happy? if he were to start calling me a whore would i be happy? i guess i think that a relationship sans drama equals a passionless one, but maybe it's time i learn otherwise. *thank you crush, for showing me the light. XO honey.*

the blushing bride: Mrs. Taunya Marie Rose

matts response to 101 things....
A:) How the f'ck did you get so cultured.
B:) What's your issue with tatoos?
C:) I would've bet the farm you were an only child... You used to come off like a spoiled brat to me...
D:) What's wrong with Men driving cars...
E:) Old Spice... That's funny...
F:) Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day are my Fav' Bond movies...
G:) Black Licorice is an acquired taste...
H:) I think you "do fucking care"...

thanks for your input dear

are men smarter than women?
back in the days of maincomm, i confided in matt that i thought guys were smarter than girls. he got a huge kick out of it, and promptly told all the other guys, which should have been my first indication that i was wrong. i told him that whenever i needed to think about something important like my plans for the future, my job, or flying in a helicopter, my mind inevitably turns toward my hair, or what outfit i'll wear on my next date.
monday i rode in a helicopter for the first time. i had a flight brief and they gave me this cool little life jacket/yoke looking thing in case we had to ditch out of the helo. the aircrew guys were nice, they strapped me in to a leash that would only allow me to fall far enough out of the helo to break my face open. i was nervous until we elevated off the ground then i got excited. we took off for guam and flew at about 900ft. we flew alongside the clouds, our propellars pushed them out of the way. the air smelled fresh, and since it was so windy my face became numb (lack of oxygen?) i felt like i was riding in a hammock. the approach to guam from the north is reminicent of the appraoch to lajes air base from naples, however lajes is far more picturesque. We got to guam in the nick of time because my bladder was about to explode and kill me. We went to the exchange, ate pizza, walked around, then hopped back on and did the checks for take-off. on the way back i felt more cofortable, so i sat on the floor and hung my legs over the edge, but after a while i got nervous that my shoes would fly off, so i got back inside. all the while, my main concern was whether or not i looked cute. i can guarantee that the aircrew guys were not paying any attention to me at all, they were concentrating on their very important job. i was getting worked up for nothing and i knew it. i couldn't stop thinking about my crush. what he was doing, how i wished he were there with me, all sorts of stupid things.
at sunset we started circling the ship in preparation for landing. the sunset was gorgeous. all golden against the puffy, white cumulous. i was sitting next to smelly aircrew guy, and i wanted him to be crush. i wanted to hold someones hand at that moment. would a guy think about that, or would he be thinking about cars or food or something? maybe guys aren't smarter. maybe the smelly aircrew guy wanted to hold my hand too. i'll never know.

automated information systems is comparable to a three ring circus. at any given time you can look in any one of three directions and see some freak of nature in all his glory. it's amazing.

i want to be a trendsetter. i think i would be good at it. i'm witty, or so people tell me. i coined the phrase "hell, fuck, and damn yeah", and always pride myself in marching to the beat of my own drum, however faint the beat may be. i'll never sell myself short and join a sorority, not that that makes me a trendsetter, but it does make me smart, and smart people generally know what's up. i want to be a trendsetter in the unlikeliest of places. somehwere like montana. people always expect trends to originate from the same old places like nyc, or paris. fools. always expect the unexpected. wear wranglers and cowboy boots with mud on them to posh events. don't use pantene (it coats the hair with goop anyway and will, eventually make it break off). don't be a conformist. there are more, but i'm short on time. holla.(whatever that means)

We had captains call yesterday. i hate to hear people bitch. CO asked if anyone had a problem with CMC and all sorts of shitbag hands went up. i got so pissed i started shaking. "he's not for us, he's mean. he never tells us we do a good job", etc. stupid fucks. he's not there to coddle us. he's there to put a boot in our asses. and he does recognize excellence, but he shows it in a different way. he's the one who got me my "c" school when the whole rest of the COC said no. he's the reason why i'm a second. i had to get in the first Lt's ass yesterday too. she hasn't been cleaning the head, and she was sleeping during cleaning stations. it was like i was a mom telling a kid to clean their room. nobody wants to do their job anymore. i just want to shake people and remind them that we're in the navy, not in high school. who cares if you're sick, you still come to work. nobody brought their mother along to write them a sick note. if training is after your regular twelve hour shift, who cares? where in the fuck else would you go? all in all yesterday was an angry day. i have so much work to do and too much bullshit is getting in my way. i'm going to start punching people in the neck. that will make it all better. i need to stop whining.
my crush situation is going relatively well. i think he's a bit smitten, but i can never tell. i can't wait to hang out with him. he smells so good.

oh shit son!!
what?! they had avocados on the mess decks today. i ate two. ummm avocado.

alright, other than my new crush, things have been alright. work is still retarded, and so are the people i work with. taunya is getting married soon and i'm sad i can't be there. the boys down here captured the butterfly who they named ken, and now he's missing. didn't i say they would kill it? and who names a butterfly ken? yes! mango's. i had one for the first time a couple of days ago and i'm addicted. they sure are a sexy fruit. the kind of fruit i would want to eat with a lover so we could be sticky together. plus they have such a unique taste. sort of a peachy, pinnappley, something else-ish flavor (or flavour as the brits would say. why must they add superfluous letters to words?). someone said pine cone, and while i can understand where that person was coming from, i wouldn't let it scare you off if you're thinking of trying it. alright kids, gotta go, getting past my bedtime.
ps yesterday i received all four seasons of sex and the city in the post. there goes my self esteem.

getting better all the time
the past two days have been the best since arriving at the uss carl vinson. maybe it's because i've been working on troublecalls for my squadron and haven't been in automated information systems, or maybe it's my new crush. god. i can't help but get all swoony. it's my biggest weakness. i'm happy. there, i said it.

orange crush
something about someone with a dangerous/important job that sets my heart a pumping. swoon.

the beginning of a new beginning
there is a butterfly in the automated information systems. the guys say it's from the rotting fruit in the storeroom below us, and it may be, but to me it's a divine symbol of change. things are going to get better. if a fragile, winged insect can survive on this dog-eat-dog ship, than i surely can. it's perched above a printer, and hopefully it lives for a couple of days without being killed. there's something about things that fly and boys wanting to kill them. go figure.
in other news: one of the handsome men i have a crush on is paying me a bit of attention. it makes me blush. hopefully he's not a schizophrenic, pathological liar. i'm sure he's not, he's too cute for that.

adam
once upon a time, in a land two oceans away, there happened a great romance. adam and i started dating shortly before he was due to transfer to norfolk. it was an easy relationship, one that required little effort, it just clicked. he moved away, and we planned for me to transfer to norfolk when i was due, a year later. i ended up deciding to tranfer to california for several reasons: 1. i will never, ever go to norfolk for duty. 2. his job would require him to be gone a lot. 3. i was going to sea duty and didn't want to be "that girl" who followed her boyfriend to a place that she didn't want to be, and put my goals on the back burner 4. where was the guarantee that it would work?
essentially, after i decided not to go, adam went on deployment and it crumbled from there. we planned to reunite in San Diego when we both transfered again (oct 2004), but i just don't know. i still write him e-mails, and once in a blue moon, he'll write me a one sentence cliche, but mostly my efforts go unrequited. i still love him, compare men to him, and hope for a fairytale ending. will it happen? who knows. do i regeret my decision. sometimes.

we had corn dogs for lunch today. i was happy. my new burt's bees bay rum exfoliating soap smells super yummy. i can't explain the smell because it has so many notes to it, but it is reminicent of this incense that taunya an i burned back in high school that we got from pacific avenue in santa cruz. it came in all these metallic colors and smelled better than any other incense ever has, and ever will. it was all bundled up and tied with a string. ah, santa cruz. in high school we used to jump through hoops, skip school, lie, cheat and steal just to spend an hour there. some of my best memories, or lack of them happened on pacific avenue or on the 45 minute (sometimes less if i was driving) drive to and from our mecca. my little jetta, with the sunroof open and pauls boutique blasting was all we needed. well, that and a joint. those were the salad days, to quote a quote. i miss them.

alright, so my posts have been a tad on the bitter side, but whose counting? i hate whiners as much as the next guy, especially if the next guy is doing the whining. it's fine for me to do it, but not anybody else.
contrary to plan, i did no diving in guam. it just became too difficult to try and figure out where to go, and what time i needed to be there, or what to bring. a fucking hassle.
so, what did i do in guam? i stayed out of the sun and saved my future self from cancer. i watched sex and the city over and over and over. it's the fucking visual equivalent to a fashion magazine, with all of their fucking great clothes, and cute boyfriends and park avenue apartments. women should not be allowed to have sex and the city marathons. it lowers the self esteem, distorts self views, blah blah...and a lot of other psycho babble. i "bonded" with the girls in berthing. i ate a lot of junk food and saved my future self from a healthy cholesterol count. i caught up on my precious sleep (i averaged 14 hours a day), a hobby i have severely neglected since joining the navy. and that's about it. i did go out one night in hopes of catching the eye of some handsome pilots, but i was more or less ignored by all the good looking guys, and relentlessly hit on by old men and lesbians. i even had on a very risque tank top with spaghetti straps that revealed a lot, but not too much according to the girls i was with when i bought it. ahh me. those handsome guys just don't know what theyre missing (wink).
so i guess that's caught up. oh, believe me there was a lot more that happened behind the scenes, but a lady never tells all. or so i hear.

civilization has not yet reached guam. i'm not going to say that the gaumanese (?) are a primitive people, but a people who have been beaten by mother nature, and have simply given up. when we were last in guam, i had the opportunity to drive around the entire island, and what i found was a bit shocking. the houses that people live in are like squallows. i assume that they once upon a time had nice houses, but the humidity, typhoons, and cockroaches took their toll and the people just said "fuck it". how tiring would it be to build a nice cozy home and then have it destroyed by a storm. a shack would be easier to maintain than a mansion, especially since i can't see what sort of industry guam has other than the tourist. i don't remember seeing factories with billows of smoke, or even a bussiness district. i'm sure they have the usual maintenance workers to keep the power on, the water safe to drink, and the television on 24/7, but i'm pretty sure that's it. they do have both a maxstudio, and a bcbg in the mall, so that's a plus, but other than those two perks, guam is as "deserted island" as giligans'. i'm not sure i would want to live here, but it is definitely cool to visit. i see it as the poor mans hawaii. i hear the diving is better in guam than it is in hawaii, and i take my dive class this weekend, so i'll be sure to fill you in once i'm a card carrying expert. 'till then.......

so, someone stole my belt. this seems to be no big deal to the average onlooker, but it is, apparently, a huge deal. it serves as a symbol of the grand rape that is my life right now. of course, there are no replacement belts to be found (aka no solutions to my fucked up life in sight), so it will be days before i can get on the right track. you know, when it rains, it pours. the sharks have smelled blood and are moving in for the kill. stay tuned for the thick of the plot.

so, it's official, six more months of this. i'm really not sure i can handle it. i psyched myself out to last this long, i'm not sure, if i can lie to myself very much longer. there is just absolutely no joy anywhere i go. can a person be expected to live like this, even if only for six months? i'm not sure. i think i may snap. i have grand visions of slamming someones head into the wall if they piss me off. of kicking them down the ladder wells when they are walking in front of me. i want everyone to shut the fuck up, or to, at least, think before they speak. i want people to take showers daily and i want the people who clean the head to really do their job for once. i'm tired of being dirty no matter how much i shower, and i'm tired of eating food that has been rejected from hardy's. i'm tired of working for people who think they know everything, and have no grasp on reality. i'm tired of working with people who are only in the navy because they were rejected from society. uuuggg. enough self pity for today.

welcome to 1984
i feel like i'm in 1984. i'm in 1984, and when i wake up from a nightmare, i'm still in 1984. i feel like i felt when i was six and i had an overdue library book (something about caterpillars). i was so afraid to tell my parents because i didn't want them to have to pay the late fee. i felt like my life was over. i felt like i would never recover from the oversight. i'm in 1984, and i'm afraid i'll never get out, there will be no happy ending for me, no end to the borg. this is 1984 folks, nobody escapes, and they are all watching. think happy thoughts!

what's really going on
i think what's really upsetting is the quality of people i've met since i've been in the navy. of course, there have been the exceptions, but for the most part, they have all been schizophrenic, pathological liars. this command has been the worst. everyone i've met, and again, there are exceptions (voorhieses), has been insane! oh yeah, they appear to be normal, but after about two months i realize they are so off. a lot takes place in two months, and i keep thinking i'm safe, but i'm not. these weirdos are everywhere. i think it must be part of the screening process to get into an air rate.
"are you a pathological liar?" the detailer would ask.
"no", the prospective airdale would reply, and that's how the detailer would know he was right for the job.
liars, manipulators, men who molest babies. i'm sure they're all here. they all masquerade as normal, everyday joes, but inside there lurks the saddest men and women i've ever seen. for crying out loud, who leaves one of their travel companions in a hotel room in tokyo city all night? what normal person would let that happen? these are all signs of the end times ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves. these crazies could be coming to a town near you- or worse, they may already be there.

travelling is fast becoming one of my favorite hobbies. i enjoy the thrill of conquering the language barrier and the exoticism of far away lands. japan has been disappointing to say the least, and i'm afraid it's all my fault. first there was the booking of a hotel forty miles away from the planned destination of tokyo in the new tokyo international airport town of narita. when i found out that my travel companions booked the hotel in narita, something told me to screw the whole thing- stay put on the ship and write off japan as a loss. being the headstrong idiot that i am, i chose, instead, to tuff it out- even though i secretly really, really resented the mistake. i did a lot of research on japan before coming here (taking a que from my darling tour guide of a friend, nikki), and i had a rough plan of action, that got thoroughly destroyed. it took us about four hours to get from yokosuka to narita, where we dropped our bags and headed for the first mac-a-don-o-rud-o's, and then to the barge inn, which was reminicent of a hobbit pub and, to my surprise, playing the theme song to twin peaks. after one beer, and much pleading with the guys, i left the barge inn, and headed back to the hotel were i spent the night trying not to throw up (the food here, is not agreeing with me at all- even the smells are making me very nauseas). the next day, we made the command decision to head to tokyo and get a hotel there. we arrived in tokyo station at approximately 1200, and we walked around trying to find an english map and a way to the rappongi district, which i heard was a big party area. we finally found a tourist service and they told us how to take the subway from ginza, where we were, to rappongi. our first goal was to find a hotel, our second, to find an eatery that was not asian (my queasy stomach!) we ended up staying at the rappongi prince hotel where the beds were not suitable for the two guys to share and i could tell they resented the fact that i wouldn't share with them. well, for crying out loud, they are both married and frankly, the thought of sleeping next to either of them was not appealing. anyway, we went to the hard rock cafe and had hamburgers and bloody mary's and then walked about ten miles (maybe a slight exaggeration) around rappongi. by the time we got to the hotel, we were beat. since it was only about six-ish, i figured we would nap and then get up around eight-ish and hit the town. i took a bath so all i would have to do is get dressed and put on my makeup to get ready and lay down to nap. the guys couldn't sleep, so they left, which was totally fine, i really wanted to rest. here's the kicker though- they came back to wake me up at nine-ish, and walked in and said " do you want to go out?", and me, having just been rudely dragged out of a deep sleep said no. anyone who knows me, knows it takes me a bit to wake up, and they didn't really wake me up, they just asked a question... so they left. and they didn't come back until six this morning stinking of alcohol and cigarettes, shirts on inside out (i can only imagine what disgusting things they were doing). i was up listening to npr, ( the sun rose at 0430), and i was all i could do to not suffocate them. i'm so enraged right now it is unreal. i want to leave without them, but i can't- liberty buddies are a neccessity, and i would get in trouble if anyone found me without one.
so that was japan for me: a waste of time and money and friendship. yay!

adrian responds to "a departing rebel"


I once went to the woods to live deliberately,

To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,

And put to rest all that was not life,

And not where I came to die,

I discovered that I have not truly lived.

- H.D. Thoreau

Be careful trish, knowledge and self enlightenment will only imprison you while you are here. For now, just do what you have to do to survive.



adrian

my stay in maincomm has come to an end.

...... little did i know that while i was away, my demise was being plotted by the evil buccholz, a redneck, hailing from the desolate northern california. he sent a letter to all the heads of the automated information systems, pleading with them to banish me to maincomm forever."nobody likes her", whined the evil buccholz......
but there was another force at work...
behold! the forces of good heard of the evil buccholzs plan to destroy me, and went to the heads of the automated informations systems, united against him. the battle was bloody, but good prevailed- the evil buccholz was defeated. the balance of power was tipped toward the light.

a departing rebel

adrian is a misogynist. i didn't know it at first, and in fact, it is still sometimes hard to tell. i enjoyed my conversations with adrian and even started to give in to some of his propaganda. his callousness is catching. adrian bucked the system, won, and is now getting the fuck out. bz adrian. keep spreading your propaganda, and practicing celebacy. i wish you godspeed in all your endeavors.

snapshot of chef

almost 0415: omelette time. The man who matt dubbed the "omelette architect", is really named roland. even though he works in the galley on a aircraft carrier, in the worlds finest navy, he acts like he is the head chef at a five star restaurant. he knows my order by heart (veggie and cheese omelette) and makes sure to have matts ready at the same time so there is never a lull in our conversation. once, when matt was bullied by the guys ahead of us into getting our omelettes from the "other girl", roland got jealous. the day after the incident with "other girl", he pretended to forget our orders, and almost couldn't look at us. it took about half a week for him to forgive us. roland is a fine example of how having passion for ones job leads to loyalism. matt says that if he were a millionare, he would get up at the crack of dawn and fly his private jet to the uss carl vinson on a daily basis, just to partake in rolands delicacies.thank god for roland and all the rolands out there. and thank god matt is not a millionare because he would never be able to fly a private jet onto the flight deck, no matter how rich he was.

snapshot of a crush

he is a force to be reckoned with, one of those people who evokes clint eastwood in some spaghetti western. his eys are clear blue pools his mouth the end of cupids' arrow.

i see him often, my crush, and each time i am rendered immobile.

we glance at each other across a crowded room, never speaking. the night ends and we leave seperately, my crush and i.

the original

this blog has been a long time comming. it all started when, one day, i was discussing my desire to express myself via a webpage with my web savvy friend, matt.

"i want a page that will be fresh, sassy, with side bars and hyperlinks, and be along the same lines as a modern day womans magazine- but not.", said I.

"oh!", said matt. "you want a blog."

and so it began. my week long quest for the very page you are now veiwing. this is history folks. every moment preceding this moment has been leading up until now.

thanks be to matt. i salute you.

stay tuned ladies and gentlemen, theres more to come.