Ghetto Jr.

So, now that GooGoo owns EVERYTHING, I've noticed that they've added some cool thing to the Blogger site. One is an easier way to post puictures...Pictoores...fuck'n photos. Okay, maybe not pictures of people fucking but...wait a minute, I spelled pictures right in that last part, maybe I should go back and edit this post. Oh fuck it. I'm too tired. I'm still taking classes trying to get into that god damned radiology program at Kaiser. They make it so hard to improve your life. I seriously hate them. They keep added pre-reqs as if you have all the time in the world.

Here's a picture of Some "guys" at the Gay pride thing a couple of years back. I'm thinking of taking the girls to see it just because they like pink, purple and balloons. I'm unconcerned with any questions the girls may have if they come up like: Look "Daddy that baby has two dad or mom's!"; they're use to that. But I don't want to hear: " Daddy, why does that cowboy not have any pants on?"

As offensive as Gays may be to some, I'd pay good money to raise my girls in a Gay neighborhood, rather than this Trash culture drive-by shooting pisshole part of the East Bay. I swear, you'd thing the people living here would appreciate living in a good weathered, near the ocean location without a Klu-Klux Klan? But nooooo. There's this one fucking house on the block where this woman has like three boys between 19 and 23 all living there. The youngest likes standing on the sidewalk with his thuggy friends as if he were living in Da- hood, some say he's selling drugs out of their garage. Personally I don't care what you do, just shut up when you do it, but nooooo, him and his side-show-boom-car friends tried to make as much noise as possible to yell:"Hey! Look at me! I'm a drug dealer! I'm Snoop Doo-Doo,Nelly 50 Cent. I'm not some middle class brat living near Berkeley. I reject your open attitudes and crank my stereo up at 2AM!" A week earlier, him and his Snoop-Dogs were standing on the sidewalk at 1AM, Did I mention that they are the only house in the neighborhood that act like this? It's like a Jr. Ghetto on our street. I literally said: I bet the real drug dealers are going to get sick of this pretend cartel and take them out. A week later, While in the kitchen, I hear: POW! POW! POW! POW! Sure enough a genuine drive-by shooting in suburbia. A billion shots into their garage were fired. Nobody was hurt BUT the little old lady next to them, who has been calling the cops on them for 13 years, had 2 bullets trough her window! They missed the target (or it was a warning). Note to drug dealers. Learn to shoot. It gets worst. Now you think the mother of the boys would learn to watch her son's activities more? Noooooo. M, wrote an e-mail to her news group complaining of the event and asking for suggestions, somehow Ma Barker got ahold of the posting. I know she doesn't read the news group thing otherwise she'd learn how much a pain in the ass her house is. The woman prints out the e-mail, types her respose on the front and sticks it in the mail box of all of the houses on the block. Most of these people had no idea who she was or even that they were the annoying house with the drive-by. In the letter she talks about how smart she is, how her son is in college, how yes she has a gun but it's registered...Wait, YOU HAVE A GUN? The letter went on with things like that, I can't report more because I'm afraid she'll discover this blog and shoot me or worst, write another response.

Ever since the drive-by, we are seriously looking for another place to live. Apparently we aren't the only ones, you can't go one block without seeing a 'for sale' sign. Meanwhile in the good-outer and inner neighborhoods, I rarely see anything decent for sale we can afford.

The house across the street has been quiet for a while but so what. The competition will be back I'm sure and this time, I'm sure they'll have those shooting lessons.

EM

Mr. Cake

m “ Daddy, I want Mommy.”
M: “Here I am.”
m: “ I want Daddy.”
Me: “Here I am.”
m: “I want Grandpa.”
Me: “ What a coincidence, he happens to be here now.”
m: “I want grandma.”
Me: “She’s here too.”
m: “I want whomever is not here so I can have something to complain about.”
Me: “Jesus fucking Christ!”
M: “I want Jesus.”

This basically sums up what life is like with two 2 1/2 year old girls. They always want the parent who’s not there. They look for any excuse to scream or piss you off and they sleep about 10 minutes at night before waking up and screaming about the boogie man/ it’s too cold/ I want some water/is Bingo the name of the man or his dog?

"m" is becoming more and more of an artist in spite of me trying to prevent it. Perhaps it’s just a phase. She keeps taking her toys and arranging them into these instillation pieces. You’ll come in the room and all of her dolls are lined up and facing the window. I asked her what she called it and she said they’re people, watching TV out of the window. Wow! Like living with Cindy Sherman. "a" is the queen of imitation. She can hear a song once and sing it back to you (albeit full of la la and yadda yadda for the parts she doesn’t know). "a" is also going through the Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Phase more than "m". Even if mom is holding another kid, a sack full of groceries and a backpack of bowling balls, “a” wants to be picked up too. She will howl and scream as if her parent’s were Michael Jackson and Joan Crawford.
In short, my kids are cute and annoying.

Okay. It’s been a while for blog-gagging. So let’s do a flash back: Got fired, tried to look for another University job, they all want someone with waaaay more dick sucking skills than I’d ever want to do. Hey! Here’s an idea! I’ll sign up for dick sucking lessons. So I look into college courses (regular ones, I don't think they teach dick sucking, except at Texas A&M) But what do I want to do? What do I like to do?…Okay what do I NOT want to do: let’s see: retail, work for the Universities printing department, suck dicks.
I come from a medical family. Perhaps I should see if there’s a special gene in there and pursue a career in something medical related. I mean surely, working at a hospital may suck but at least you can strap on a red cape every now and then and save a couple of lives. I just want something that I can enjoy that’s NOT art. I’ve had it with trying to make a living as an artist. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to do art but I’m tired of being treated like the lowest person on the business totem pole. Artist are always the most abused, fired and underpaid employees. It’s like all bosses think they can replace the artist with someone off the street and heaven for fucking bid if the artist wants to make enough money to start a family, buy a house and live a life that doesn’t consist of getting drunk, eating Ramen noodles and saving your money to buy used records.

I don’t have 11 years for medial school so I look into some kind of assistant program: Here’s one:Phlebotomy. Sticking needles in peoples asses. That’s one right up my alley (or their alleys). If a customer pisses me off at my job? I’m holding a big ass needle! Get ready for the pain train motherfucker! Woooo! Woooo!
They teach a 1 year course at Kaiser so I call them up and they say: Oh yeah, just get all the stuff done on the application and show up at 8 Am on October blah blah blah and no queing!. The application required a long list of things; including TB test, Hep B vaccines, Measles immunization etc… along with a certificate that says you know CPR. CPR? Call Police Really fast?
I take a one day CPR class complete with 3 kinds of dummies to resuscitate: Annie, Andrew and Andy. A man, a woman and kid. What the hell is wrong with that family? Can they not swim? DO they drink pork milkshakes? We had to learn to do chest compressions on them and mouth to mouth using plastic mouth covers, as if we were giving head to prostitutes. The secret to chest compressions I discovered is that you really have to put your weight into it, otherwise you can’t get to the heart. In most cases, if you do it RIGHT you pop right through the joints of the rib cage and cause some damage. Some people in the class barely made the dummies chest rise when they breathed into it and for all of their weakling chest compressions, they’d have a better job bringing a hamster back to life. I passed the course and got my card. Next I got a gazillion blood test and immunization shots. So many, I can probably drink a glass of unfiltered African water and butt fucking a lab monkey. I get everything done a day before the application deadline. I remember the woman said show up at 8Am and no queuing! I know that there are only 14 people allowed in this class so I say, fuck it: There’s the rules and then there’s what people do. I’m gonna show up at 7:30! I get there the next day and there are 30 people already there! Two girls in the front of the line have lawn chairs and had been there since 4 am! As if they were buying concert tickets! M convinces me to stay and wait in line because you never know. Perhaps some people didn’t get all of their shots or really are trying to buy concert tickets and got confused. 8 Am comes around, and then 9. This female security guard tells the people in front how wrong it was for them to show up early. Oh good, I think, is she going to make them go home? No, just a useless finger wagging. Around 30 people line up behind me. At one point the lawn sprinklers cut on, drenching the people in the front of the line. This made me temporarily happy. Finally the doors open and people start going in…and coming out. Huh? What the? One by one, some people would go in and come back out. Their applications were being rejected! They didn’t have their shots or took the wrong CPR course or really were there for concert tickets. M was right. Closer and closer I got. From 26 people in front on me it got down to 10, then 4! Some people were getting accepted but a lot were coming out including the two wet girls who had been there all night! I had this one Indian guy in front of me. I think I heard him say he may have the wrong CPR card: Whoo hoo! Another person got rejected. They had one more slot to fill, the Indian guy went in….......and got accepted. That was it. No more applications will be accepted until the next year. I was one person away from getting into the class! On my angry walk back, I cursed all gods and the world itself. Not only is life unfucking fair but life has a cruel, cruel sense of humor.

After calming down a week later. We discovered that the same school teaches a radiology class. This one, although allowing a small amount of people, had a more school-like application process, which didn’t allow for cueing up style. But I did have to take some prerequisites: Anatomy, physiology, college level algebra and some other courses as frosting. Kaiser taught their own Anatomy and Physiology class so I signed up for that one. As for the Algebra class. I failed algebra in high school with flaming colors and had to go to summer school. I sighed up for classes at a local College. (Insert bouncy music here) that’s right, I’m an angry 41-year-old man going back to school!

It’s interesting to see what your adult brain can do without the worry about getting laid, your parents divorce or pimples. So far, I’ve done pretty well in both courses. Back in high school I did back flips if I got a 75. Now I get pissed off if I make under a 92.
The classes are polar opposites. The algebra class was filled with 32 students, that talked about nothing but working at the GAP, playing video games and smelling like dirty sneakers and the Anatomy class is mostly older people who are probably already working at the hospital and are tying to get better positions. Of the 32 Algebra class mates they’re about 9 of us left. The rest could not be separated from level 4 of Grand Theft Auto. One particular individual I called Mr. Cake, actually showed up on the first day of class eating a slice of cake! On a plate! Cake I tell you! Where the fuck did he get cake? And why eat it in class? The other drop outs, and I have to say the mot disruptive students were a group of fat Black girls who ate boxes of Wheat Thins, had loud cell phone conversations when the teacher was explaining quadratic equations and if they showed up for class, at all, would come in, get their names on the sign in and then leave, to do what? Why did you sign up for this class? Why are you here? You’re 18 and finally out off the house? More differences: The algebra class is taught by a short handicapped Asian guy who when he gets excited will talk really fast and leave your tiny brain back at the 1+1=2 starting line, the anatomy class is taught by this tall muscularly silver haired bo-hunk professor who, if I were gay…we’ll if I were gay, I wouldn’t be in any of these situations because gay= no kids=no reson to buy house=no reason to take shity art job to get fired from in the first place.

But this is where I am, in school, doing okay in the grades department. In my home life, lots of D's: Depressed a lot, Dealing with screaming 2 1/2 year olds, Doing most of the cooking and cleaning while trying to study and heaven forbid, Do some art to maintain my sanity. M rags on me when ever I do anything that’s not cooking, cleaning, kids and school. It makes me miss having a shitty job. I mean, if I had a job, and I came home and worked on art then they’d be no questioning but being unemployed, it’s like you’re now a shark. If you stand still, you die. An employed person at rest is relaxing, an unemployed person at rest is lazy.

That’s it
E.M

Fire the sparrow

“Lemme dew it!” This is the official battle cry of the two year old. This is usually proceeded by: “I need help.” The girls are not necessary in the terrible twos as they are the tiring and annoying twos. With constant whining and screaming protest, they try to assert themselves as much as they can. We usually ignore them unless we’re in a hurry and have no interest in waiting for them to put their own shoes on as we are 30 minutes late for something and they still haven’t put their pants on. “m” has become the mistress of speech as she constantly flexes her vocabulary muscles, usually beyond her limited reach. You can hold entire conversations with her even tough you may have to stop her a couple of times to ask: “What?” to which she’ll repeat: “I have big cock.” With a little bit of detective work, you can figure out she meant to say: “I have hiccups.” “a” has become a danger mouse. Climbing up various structures and doing head stands in the crib (which inspire m to do the same). Her freakish agility and acrobatics have convinced me that she might be an X-Man. What’s next? Fire from the eyeballs?

This has been the year of sickness. We have so far survived: Cold, flu, pink eye, stomach flu (throwing up for a full week, what fun!) and recently strep throat. They say that the average kid gets 6 colds per year: Multiply that times two and that means we will be sick12 months per year!


This morning, as we lay in bed, there was a “tweet”. “Is that a bird?” M asked. She got out of bed and ran to the window to see if there was a bird trying to get in or something. A second later, a black feathery flapping shape flew from behind the bed; over my head and around the room. This sent me flying out of the bed in a girly-girl panic, falling onto the floor and dragging the entire bed linen with me. “It’s just a bird.” M said. Obviously taking the role of the “Man”. I ran out of the room to get a broom to shoo the thing out. By the time I got back, M had already got it out and probably had a short conversation worth it:
Bird: “What’s HER problem?”
M: “Oh, he’s just a little stressed, he lost his job.”
Bird: “What a wuss, try spending all night in a bed room, with two cats sleeping in the same room!”
This was true, the cats were in the room with this bird all night and not once did they wake up, meow or try to catch it. Lazy, dishonorable cats.

Oh yeah, did I mention I got fired? Well, technically they laid me off but the way they did it means they don’t have to hire me again. That’s right after 5 years of bullshit and threatening me, they found a way to fire someone who’s doing a decent job, never calls in sick and won’t just quit. They knew they couldn’t do it without a good reason, like punching another employee or masturbating in the coffee machine, punching a person whose masturbating in the coffee machine or punching a person while masturbating in the coffee machine: Note to employees, don’t drink the coffee! They knew that they couldn’t fire me, so what do they do? They destroy my job. They eliminated my job position saying that there was no work for me to do (lie). They listed me as a cameraman even tough I’ve been doing nothing but typesetting for the last two years. But on paper, my title still says cameraman so they say there’s no jobs for a cameraman because there’s no more camera. Therefore we have to lay you off. BUT there will never be a camera so there’s no job to go back to! Which means I’m actually fired. They say I have 1 month until I’m out, take me away immediately away from my computer to prevent me from sending out that virus I created that makes your face melt off like in Indiana Jones and stick me in the warehouse in the back to do…filing?
I - am - freaking - out!
After a while, my fear turned into joy. After 5 years of eating bullshit with a red-hot fork, while someone tells me that a loser worker I am, I’m finally free! Free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some employees actually told me how they wished it were them so they could finally have a motivating excuse to get out of there. And that’s how I felt (feel) like life could see me eating more flaming hot bullshit with an aged rusty fork, for the next 15 years, at which point they fire me, right before retirement! So it’s good that this happened while I still have most of my teeth and don’t need adult diapers.

I had no interest in doing filing for my last month there. I remember, long ago the incompetent assistant manager saying how they had an account with an online training company and if I wanted to, I could schedule some time and take some classes. Motherfucker, I never took lunch, how the fuck could I take online training. But wait, I thought (after apologizing for calling him a motherfucker) I have all the time in the world now. Okay, I say. I’m signing up for those online classes, NOW motherfucker! And oh yeah, since you took me away from my computer, I need to be somewhere with a computer. Perhaps the other campus, near the bay or near Golden Gate park. And that’s what I did. I started spending my days learning new computer classes at other locations where the neighborhoods were not filled with crack/heroin addicts. Where you didn’t have to constantly avoid the human turds land mines. Where, on hot days, the streets don’t smell like boiled piss and you have a view of the Oakland bridge or Golden Gate park instead a cock roach taco stand, discount salmonella food store or front row seats to: la Cirque du Clochard*

Because I have no job to go back to, I’m basically starting from scratch. I’ve talked to many departments and people whose job it is to deal with lay off workers. One told me I could apply for jobs within my union category that I’m qualified for and can get first dibs on them. Jobs which have nothing to do with typesetting or even art: Senior Editor, Firefighter (it’s true), Computer IT Specialist, Submarine Captain, Jedi Knight level II. I mean how stupid, I’m only Jedi Assistant level.

Getting back to the giant bird that attacked me this morning…okay it was a tiny sparrow–but still. I looked up ‘sparrow in the house’ in superstition and came up with: There will be a death of someone in the house soon. Oh…great on top of everything else I have a medieval curse in my house. We do have an 18-year-old cat so I’m hoping if it’s true...Well, you know. But that day, when I went to clean the porn screensavers off of my computer and get that virus sent, The Ass Manager told me to see them when I was done. Oh great, what else can they do to me, official going away ball kicking? When I was done and people’s faces at the other computers started melting off, I went to see the incompetent assist manager and this awful Asian woman who’d steal the pencils out of a blind beggar’s cup for a job promotion. They gave me my last check and made me turn in my badge and keys. I can tell you, nothing finalizes a firing more than that. It took all of my strength and anxiety training to prevent from fainting on the sidewalk outside (that and if you touch the sidewalk in the Mission District, you get dissentary). Like I had been reduced to a civilian or once had super powers and had been kryptonited. I felt…dead? Ah, so hopefully that’s what the sparrow was all about. It seems with all change, something old must die. My job is dead and good riddance but it’s tough adjusting to life after a long abusive relationship. We all know that Dar-lene needs to leave her wife-beating NASCAR luv’n husband, Mullethead and their shot gun shack trailer park paradise. But where the hell can Dar-lene and her 80 kids go on her skill level? We both have the same chance of being a Jedi Knight. Then again, there’s always school.

Time to find Master Yoda.

That’s it
EM


*Clochard [klo-shar] n tramp