Lately Collin's been on a candy binge. We rented two movies on the way home tonight, and he can't leave the store without grabbing a handful of Reeces Pieces. I'm not talking about just 'eating' candy. I'm talking inhaling. A wide-mouthed blue whale sucking in plankton is a comparison that comes to mind. Wolfing. Open another package. Wolf. Corey says that on most work days, Collin and his work partner stop and get a huge bag of candy to consume throughout the day.

This isn't a condition that he's in any way ashamed of. Self gluttony is fine by us if you can get away with it.
He says that he'll stop his ritual though, if the time comes when he can no longer see his "rock hard abs". Such a thinker. It all makes perfect sense.

I got to get off work early today for a dentist appointment. Usually, I'll try and brush my teeth before going, but this morning I packed toothpaste in a lunch box without any toothbrush. One of the maintenance guys at work said I could use his bristly pipe cleaner though. Its the thought that counts.

WHY, do people feel like they have to brush before going to the dentist, ....only to get their teeth cleaned once they arrive? Today I was going to be different. Fresh off two Snickers...to the dentist, wearing dirty paint-covered work clothes, and a motocross hat. I would get, my money's worth. They'd have to work overtime on these teeth.
I think this action resulted in the dental technition lady being overly physical with my mouth. "These are such beautiful teeth." she said. "You don't seem to be taking care of them." The last time my I had a dental experience this horrific was in 7th grade, sitting at the orthodontist when some 'new' lady tightned my braces up WAY too much. Bleeding gums and apple sauce for 3 days.

Today was pretty bad though. My teeth got smacked around and gang raped. That's affirmative. We're still hurting.

Saturday night, walking around thinking, I hear a verse from an eagles song. a nerve struck.

Take another shot of courage
Wonder why the right words never come
You just get numb

Sunday. Sunday great. It hadn't rained here for weeks and weeks, so of course there just had to be a huge thunderstorm that tried to mock any and all plans. I don't care. My day, ...my day was sunny.
I would guess that people who live in Seattle or Portland just love sunny days, because they don't come around very often.
I understand.

Justin: "Sure we'll give you a tow, if you give us back our tubes."

If we lived anywhere near town, I would SO get one of these clown bikes

Around here, the proper pronunciation of the term "swing shift", is "swaang shift".

I think school has to some degree pulled my accent in the other direction, but working around these type of people has brought me back where I started at the barber shop talk level, and then some. The place I work is a breeding ground for a stronger version of southern speak than you'll ever see on Nascar.

Most people who haven't lived in the deep south simply don't understand just how far the southern accent has swayed from the rest of the English speaking world. And no, watching stupid old movies like White Lighting or Deliverance won't even get you close to what I'm talking about. A guy at work thought it was kind of odd that I even brought the subject up, and said:
"What are you, ..some kinda word'ologist?"

I'm getting better at wiping the sweat off my face with the end of my short sleeves. Walking around lifting your arms up one after another all the time reminded me of watching old documentaries of German soldiers marching in formation.

Updated difference.

Mornings are journeys of nodding awareness and sleepy eyes. Five hours of sleep after an all day/night work schedule pays it's dividends at sunrise when you fall out of bed to the alarm clock and drive to work dressed in clothes that you don't remember putting on and carrying a lunch box equipped with one package of ramen and a microwavable bowl that you can't even remember packing.

During work, my mind likes to play music. Its nice most of the time, humming along as I paint, to an old Boy Dylan song or lately a song from Tonic. But this morning I was in no mood for musical accompaniment. Still, my brain kept attempting to introduce melody to my train of thought as I kneeled there, trying not to fall asleep with a paintbrush dangling in my left hand. The tunes would be forced out, only to be sinisterly faded back in after a few short seconds…….MAKE IT STOP.

Pure misery is not far off from a tired man trying to look busy when he can think of nothing else but to find a corner and die. And these stupid tunes keep popping in my head if I don't consciously put forth the effort to keep them out. Weird.

I stood straight up from where I was kneeling and started walking towards one of the many open bay doors leading outside. It was 8:30, already hot sunny and humid. I stopped just outside the door and stared at the tall brown grass and the razor wire fence that separates the pavement storage yard from the highway, thinking about why the heck I couldn't get rid of this music and had a funny vision. For some strange reason, I imagined having a short stocky man, holding his hands on his hips, with an English accent, yelling at me: "Have you gone completely mad!" He said it with a voice like you hear on one of those early 1980's British situation comedies. "Sir, (like: "suuuuu") Have you gone completely mad?!". Seriously, no joke. That was the thought in my head at that exact moment. It came out of the blue, and made me laugh at how pathetic my situation had become.

Walking around and talking to people in the morning keeps me alert and semi-conscious, so I did. Most of the people there are just as miserable as I, with the one exception that they've all most likely had a full night's sleep. Walking back to my designated work area, I stopped to read one of the many bulletin boards. I borrowed a pen and copied something off of it because it made me laugh, uncontrollably:
"Continuous improvement will result in relentless productivity."

Afternoons are good and sometimes great though. This job ain't so bad once you get over the suicidal urges of the a.m.

Sunday.
Sunday might be great. We'll see. There's still time left to screw things up between now and then. Ah forget it. Whatever happens, happens. I'd just like to not come across as a complete socially challenged idiot.., ..for once. To really break down and be yourself, …doesn't ever come easy when you most want to.

My job isn't so bad. I can get used to just about anything, given a little time. Most mornings still suck though. I need more sleep. This summer job gig is only a temporary thing, so I'm still holding down two other part time jobs that support my aquisition of goods and services during school. Keeping two other jobs on top of a grueling 40 hr work week allows for little free time. What kind of moron would do THAT? this one.

The time period right after coming home, and before sleep, is usually spent checking email and maybe typing something here if I'm not shooting the bull with corey n collin about what it's like to have a "social life".
Of course, mathimatically this period "P" can be expressed as: P = (24hrs - worktime) - sleep.
We're talking 30 minutes max on average, excuse me it's not called an average; it's called a "mean". Thank goodness we got that cleared up.

So basicly, take everything that I'm involved with right now, and it's the other stuff that's more important.

I just got through checking out a thread on a message board about "what's the best song ever".
I dunno. That's a hard one.
Lately though, Bad, by U2 has been high on my list.
Music is one of the only things that keeps me sane.
Today I walked out of a hot sweaty manufacturing plant and got in my truck; tired and beat down by the day.
Right when I turned on the truck I hear the radio. Simple Man by Lenyrd Skynard was just beginning to play.
I love, how a song can turn around your attitude; from beat down, to proudly driving down the road with the window open and no shirt, knowing you've put in a hard day's work.

Today after work, I came home and
A. found out that collin gots himself a new ride. (98 4x4 Tacoma; it's totally phat, red, and sick)
B. Tooled around the house

I'm tired of all the junk mail with my hotmail account. Somewhere around 40 per day...all with pathetic subject lines and amazingly stupid offers. Most of them are insulting, ...inviting you to some porno site or telling you how you can get a college diploma for the cost of a postage stamp. It really pisses me off when my mental filtering system is compromised though. Today's 20 second waste of my time was the result of the clever subject header: "we charged it to your visa". Some people I care about actually get bored enough to send me email once in awhile, so the frustration of sifting through tons and tons of spam, ...produces a certain motivation. A motivation to find the skinny litte moron who spends his time, ..wasting other peoples time, and grabbing him by his scrawny little neck. He'd suffer. An embarrassing physical barage of pain....right in full view of his fellow cubicle buddies. They'd all feel sorry for him as I kicked him in the nads repeatedly, all the while calmy explaining to him why he deserves it. But they'd soon forget about the incedent and all and drive home in Geos at 4:00, gayly tapping their fingers to the beat of Michael Bolton and John Tesh mix tapes.

Speaking of things that vex, why can't I ever seem to do things right. I either go overboard and become a quick annoyance to a girl, ..or go to the other extreme and act like I couldn't care less. Nowhere in the middle of these two extremes. Have I ever operated. When it mattered. Such a moron. Such an idiot. Such a ....self pitty comes easy. Let's dwell on it.

I like most of this album. Alot. It speaks. To me. The idiot.

Me and Miles discovered a new word today at Benegins that I've been using forever, but never thought about:
Useta'could
As in: "I useta'could eat a whole bag of twizlers at the movies and still have an appetite, but not anymore. I useta'could though. You shoulda'seen me in action, back in the day when we would kick it oldschool without any girls around. Hey, where'd all the girls go?"

stupid, idiotic, photos, ..from memphis.

In other news:,
the Onion brings us a tale of great tragedy and despair:

300 Naked Women Feared Lost In Computer Crash
ELLICOTT CITY, MD-- An estimated 300 naked women, including actresses Pamela Anderson and Shannon Elizabeth, are feared lost as the result of a tragic computer crash Monday. "One minute, they were there, and the next, they were gone," said a visibly shaken Jonathan Blauvelt, 33, the Ellicott City resident whose Power Mac G4 was the site of the disaster. "To lose so many young girls in the blink of an eye like that, it's hard to comprehend. Angelina Jolie, Anna Kournikova, the chick from Species--it's just too much to bear." As data-recovery workers comb through the hard drive for remnents, Blauvelt is asking well-wishers to pray for the naked ladies' safe return.

My summer job:
1. Strips away all time and opportunity to do the things I want/need to do.
2. Is hot and sweaty and hot and sweaty and insultingly boring.
3. Is ruining my clothes.
4. And my back.
5. Is trying to teach lessons about hard work that've already been beaten into me dozens of times.
6. Will allow me to purchase food when I'm back in school.

August 23, ....is sure taking it's sweet time in coming my way.

Let's compose yet another sentence including the words "me", "I", and "my".
This weblog thing is stupid. What the heck am I doing this for anyway? goal? purpose? need? agenda? How about fixation with self.
From now on, I shall write about other people, ..and their problems, even if they aren't aware of them yet. yeah. this'll be interesting. Screw all this "me my I" crap. Who gives'sa what's going on with me anyway? I'll just go back to work tommorrow and continue to melt into a subhuman shell of a man/boy.

Another day, another 8 hours of pathetic menial tasks. ...and I'd like to see Martha Stewart make Ramen.

From the movie Suburbia, a new way to describe your typical hometown strip: "a mosh-pit of consumerism"
I like that movie. It relates.

All I need is a bathrobe that hugs my body with compfort and style. Everything else will take care of itself.

Ah. What a great day.
It's nice to hang around people who know how to take it easy and have fun without getting bent outa shape over little inconveniences.
And no, I've never, ever, seen that much sunscreen on one person. And no, don't ever show Brent your sandwiches. He'll eat'em all up. Moocher. Alota people mooched of us today, ...foodwise anyway. This is a totally unfamiliar concept. People mooching off the Stephens boys at the lake, instead of the other way around. Astonishing, fascinating, I'm intrigued. Different is nice. Could this be the start of a trend? I should think not.

Fun shouldn't cost this much money though. Mad cash being thrown in every direction. It's not like I'm broke or anything, cause this summer I've been working WAY too much. I've got money stashed everywhere. I've just been blowing it all at Disc Jockey and Best Buy. What a moron.

I can remember being in 8th grade and coming home every night with nothing to do and nowhere to go, ..turning on an old ibm machine, playing around with an old paint program in between hard-core sessions of Tetris, and listening to a Boston album over and over and over. Great music. Never. Gets old.

I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away.......

When I'm tired and thinking cold
I hide in my music, forget the day
and dream of a girl I used to know
I closed my eyes and she slipped away

Nod head back and forth; that guy from glassdog has laid it all out, plain and simple:

"We can now say without qualification what ecommerce meant up to this moment. Ecommerce meant free delivery of underpriced stuff in little brown boxes with smiles on them.

Ecommerce today means something else altogether. Ecommerce means paying list price and shipment charges on the same things you can go get at the mall but which you are A) too lazy B) too pressed for time to get. Ecommerce is now defined not by Outpost's free overnight delivery, or Kozmo's DVDs and ice cream in an hour, or CDNOW's 30% off everything, everything, everything because when you were online there were *too many* options and the vendors would do nearly anything to get you to come and buy
from them.

Which meant steals rather than deals, and absolutely no brand loyalty because you came to expect the lowest prices/fastest delivery/easiest shopping interface rather than customer service or pleasant surroundings or even (shudder) reliability.

But that's all gone, because the players have mostly left the table. What we have left is amazon.com, and what today's amazon offers is not low prices and free delivery, but rather selection and convenience. amazon succeeds (barely) because it's always there, it offers everything, it knows what you want -- even when you don't -- and it acts like one, huge, pleasant if decidedly ordinary concierge, taking your hand and leading you through the virtual aisles of merchandise, pointing out the things you and your friends would enjoy based on the things you and your friends have already purchased.

That's ecommerce today.

And that's all it is."

Laughing that hard I have not done for a considerable quantity of days.

Adam just told me about his dog, who will remain nameless, ...because I don't know it's name.
Anyway, Adam and all fellow house occupants would be gone to Kentucky for three days, and requested that a certain individual feed and water the dog, ...who mostly resides in a small fenced in paramerter. (pen)

This individual forgot to carry out this task, because he was very busy. (And no, this individual is not me.)

flash forward three days:

Adam and company arrive home. The dog barely responds...behaving in a manner that could be descibed as "semi-dead".
Slowy, the animal becomes alert and after persistant prodding, tries to move around. A bucket of water was filled up and placed near the dog, and in the words of Adam, "It DOVE into the water. The dog drank, and drank, and drank. Anybody woulda been thirsty after 3 humid 97 degree days cooped up in a pen...out in the sun. ...and drank. and drank.

Anyway, ....the funny part:

On the following day, the dog is let out of the garage, where it had been drinking and eating and drinking pretty much all night.
Upon exit from the garage, the dog assumes urinating position, ..one leg up, and begins to let it all go. ..and go ...and go...and go.

And go. Adam said the dog pissed for five minutes. It got so tired of holding it's leg up, that it had to repeatedly switch legs. And go.

On a totally unrelated note, me and corey listened to Cake on the way home tonight. ("Fashion Nugget" to be precise)
I love how some albums can suck massively,....the first 2 times you listen to'em, ...and then become one of your most prized albums of all time. I pity the fool who hasn't been properly exposed to Cake. And for those who have....and still don't like it, ...turn around for I shall smack you. With the back. Of my hand.

Month and a half until school. It'll be rad to actually be a senior, for no other reason than being able to enroll in all the top level interactive multimedia stuff that I've so been looking forward to. A semi-solid foundation in design is a must, ...if a person expects to really excel at such things, so all the lower and mid level art/design instruction that I've received is going to play a HUGE part in what I'm capable of creating. I was pretty pissed off as a freshman whenever I found out that I would have to wait three years to enroll in these classes, but looking back on the knowledge, skill level, and maturity, that I possesed at the time, it's critical that these doors are opening now instead of back then. Translation: Back then I sucked. Now, I got mad skills. The big toys are comin down off the top shelf and into my big manly hands.

Today sucked. 16 hours of hot sweaty work. Let's break it down: 8 hours of wiping and painting, 8 hours of trimming hedges and mowing. Today sucked. Somethins gotta give, ....soon.

The concert at Juanitas was rad. click! click! boom!

Got photos from memphis today. Oh yes, they're real, and they're spectacular. Corey's got a phat new scanner, but I gots no time. Maybe next week.

It takes awhile to get used to dreadful meaningless labor. The first half of my day, ..was spent sweeping out nooks and corners inside a manufacturing plant, ...that had already been cleaned the day before. These kinds of activities are mostly designed just to keep me out of my supervisor's hair until he can think of something better, or, perhaps to even some kind of score. Mindless work takes awhile to get used to. The first 30 minutes is horrible. Then gradually, you learn the zen art of being somewhere else....focusing mental energies on worthwhile ideas, and letting your unconscious mind take control all that is physical. I've come to find out something very scary about myself in the process. I do a much better job at such tasks when not actively thinking about what I'm doing. I don't know what that means, so don't ask.

The afternoon was spent painting. And painting. Yellow. Everywhere. The forman, while sitting next to the plant manager in the "club cart", provided the simple to remember guidelines that would mold the way I would carry out the task of painting yellow rails.
"Just remember Drew, at the end of the day, I want there to be more paint on your shirt than on this nice shiny floor."

Simple pleasures are great. It was at least 110 degrees outside. I walk up to a half-empty gatorade dispenser. I was SO hot, the Gatorade was SO cold. I rarely feel such fulfillment. There are good things associated with hard hot work that I don't care to explain, but the best thing of all, ..is when you stop.

The last time we went to Florida, we pulled a popup camper and stayed a week on an island near Fort Pickens. Friday afternoon, a boy was swimming there and a shark bit off his arm. And yes, it gets better. His uncle, ..jumps in the water, wrestles the 7 foot 250 lb beast to the shore, and pries the arm from the stomach of the shark.
Yes, there's a reason why they call it the redkneck riviera. We southerners know how to survive, ...or retrieve appendeges from sharks, ... etc.. whichever opportunity presents itself first I guess.

we can skin a buck, and run a trot line, cause a country boy can sur....., you get the idea.

What happens when eric gets a copy of photoshop 6?
DrewsMysteriousConnectionWithHitler.jpg

It's that time of year when the frogs come out at night and make mega noise. I can't remember the last time they were this loud. It's insane. You would think that something so loud would be incredibly annoying, ....thousands of amphibians joining together in an all-night, pulsing, barage of sound, but it's exactly the opposite. It's almost soothing to sit outside and listen. I'd even be tempted to leave my window open and go to sleep with that sound, if it weren't for all the killer spiders and humid heat of the maddening darkness. be afraid. be very afraid.

Monday I started work at a manufacturing plant that makes high voltage insulated underground cable. It was under the assumption that things would be different there than the last summer spent working there. The whole time was spent cleaning, and mopping, and wiping, and mopping, and mopping. But things would be different this time, .....right. Since Monday I've been doing the same, things. Oh what fun. The making of money. Is.

Things aren't that awful though. I'm used to work of this nature, and the people I work with are interesting to say the least. Imagine going to work every morning with the characters from King of the Hill. However, this would be the HBO version.

Anyway, I saw her there this weekend. She wasn't even supposed to be there. This time I would act ...begin to think of what to say, how to proceed. ....until I find, .....she's with somebody else, and it's been on my mind alot. I'm such a moron for sitting around and waiting for the right moment and the right opportunity. Good things do not come, to those who wait.

So, tommorow and the next day and the next, I'll return to the mop handle and have more time by myself, .. to try and think about something else.

Back.

Things did change in memphis. ..more than usual. I've been thinking about those things so much over the past 3 days that I can't really put any of it into words.

I wrote my response to one of these things down on paper though, right after it happened.
I was almost thinking about spilling the whole weekend out right now, but dad's got to wait on corey and collin to not call home. Oh well, there's always my next chance to get online at home: April 2004. Back to sleep, ..back to work. work work work. This SUCKS.