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The Hogs of Entropy 0478
'##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: ===========================================
##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #478 !!
#########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS! !!
##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: ===========================================
##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "Yesterday Was A Text File" !!
##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> Styx !!
..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 2/3/99 !!
!!========================================================================!!
yesterday was a text file i'll write right now. or, like, chronicle.
whatever. words.
so, ok. i woke up yesterday morning (which would have been 01/22/99)
at 4:15a.m. this happened because i accidentally fell asleep the night
before (01/21/99) at 9:30p.m. i missed the last half-hour of WCW Thunder.
but that's alright. so the first point is that my sleeping schedule as of
01/22/99 was really *off*.
so after waking up at 4:15a.m. and not knowing what to do with myself
until 9:00a.m. when i was due in for work, i decided to go there early. i
arrived at work at 7:45a.m. since i'm talking about work, i'll have to
explain what i do there.
look, i know i'm not all that interesting. this text file isn't
about *me*. it's about the *day*, so you can stop your internal dialogue
[credit: Bill Hicks]. ok, so my work;
you know how when you're flipping through magazines you'll come
across an ad for, say, Sears, and there will be a toll-free number where
you can order yourself a free catalog? and when you call, it's a recorded
message? "at the tone, please say your first name. then press the pound
key." "at the tone, please say your last name. then press the..." etc.
okay, well, 70% of my job consists of transcribing all of the names of
those sorts of people that call those things. so it's first name, last
name, street address, city, state, zip, business, occupation, phone number.
over and over. there are a lot of people out there that want free things.
that's why they're calling, of course. so, alright.
the other 30% of my job is Miscellaneous Debris. sometimes i go out
to hotels and fix their voicemail systems or whatever. sometimes it's
little things - fix a printer here, move a computer there, find warez for
my bosses, whatever. it's a good job. it's stable. it sure beats the
hell out of the gas station i used to work at.
so on this particular day, which was 01/22/99, the amount of calls
that came through for free catalogs was amazingly high. our client had
started a new advertising campaign, so a lot more people were being
exposed to the toll-free number. so i sat there for 10 1/2 hours doing
*nothing* but data entry. it was taxing and annoying and exhausting. but
i finished everything. i caught up the entire company. alright. so i
done good.
i signed out. "that's it for me, guys. i'm done for the day. see
you on sunday." my boss nodded and i went out the door. got in my car.
started it. my boss runs out of the office and motions me towards him. i
opened my car door and screamed "what?" he said "i need help moving a
computer." i screamed "fuck you" and closed the car door. he continued
motioning. i stormed into the office, moved the computer, and stormed out.
now i was angry and i was driving, and that's a retarded situation.
in my anger i decided to get a brand new hard drive for my computer.
it was the only thing that would drain me and leave me exhausted enough to
be able to sleep. so i went to the ATM machine to get out some money.
next to the ATM machine was a table with cookies and girl scouts sitting
behind it, all virginal and pure and smug and waiting for a berating.
you know, it's like.. i don't know - i kept my mouth shut. they asked
me if i wanted to buy some cookies and i said no and got my money and drove
to Best Buy and bought the Western Digital 10.1 gig Enhanced IDE hard drive
for $199.00 after a $40.00 rebate. awesome price. i was glad. well,
guilty, really, because i knew i couldn't *technically* afford it.
but i mean, if i had enough money to buy it, then really i could
afford it, so i don't even know how to use the word "technically"
correctly there.
whatever. words.
so i am driving home from Best Buy and i realize that i have run out
of cigarettes, almost. so i have to go to the ATM machine again so that i
can get money for a carton. so i go to the ATM machine and the girl
scouts were still there, and they asked me if i wanted cookies again. and
this time i couldn't keep my mouth shut, because i was fuming, and i
yelled at them.
i told them that by sitting next to an ATM machine selling cookies,
they force me into being an asshole if i decline a purchase. that they
know i have the money. they watched me get it. that basically they are
sitting there making everybody an asshole all night, and that was
dishonorable and dirty and low. an asshole conveyor belt right next to an
ATM machine. and i realized that here i am at 7:50p.m. on 01/22/99
standing in an abandoned parking lot fiending for cigarettes and screaming
at girl scouts. so i gave it up and walked to my car, smoke shooting out
of my ears, and went to the pharmacy. bought the cigarettes. drove off.
went to the local pizzeria and bought two pies for my family, because
i knew they'd probably be hungry. besides, mother had given me money in
the morning before work to pick up pizza on the way home. so really, i
was just running an errand, not being particularly nice or considerate.
there was a guy in line in front of me at the pizzeria. fat wallet
pushing out of his back pocket. antenna from a cellphone sticking out of
his breast pocket. a cigar poking out of his other breast pocket. this
guy managed to fill all of his pockets with things that sucked, and on top
of that he was telling the staff to "hurry it up, i'm in a rush." so, you
know, i'm already on edge here. i shouted to the staff to take their time
with *my* order because i had all night. he fidgeted. i thought he
might've done something interesting. maybe he could've taken a swing at
me. maybe spit at me. maybe a good verbal lashing. hit me on the head
with his cellphone. but all i got out of him was a fidget.
he probably knew that it'd just get me more annoyed.
got my pizza and went home, finally. 8:30p.m. went upstairs to my
room. well, my room *is* the upstairs. i rent out the renovated attic.
so i went upstairs to my attic and begun the rigorous task of installing a
new hard drive.
my goal: install the new hard drive as the master drive, make my old
drive the slave drive, and take all of the information from my old one and
put it on my new one.
what inhibited my goal; there is no bay for a second hard drive in
my computer unless i call NEC directly and order their specially-sized
rails.
what happened: a computer, strewn around and rigged half-assed-like,
with wires here and there and some knots and two hard drives twisted into
each other to make it work. and it did. i had to trick my computer by
putting in an extra jumper thing to make it think that it only had 4096
cylinders or something so that my outdated BIOS could use the 10.1 gigs.
something like that. i really don't know exactly what i did.
result: 14 cigarettes later, one hard drive, the new one, with all
of the data of my old hard drive on it.
what counts, i suppose, is that i did it. i had never installed a
hard drive before. i didn't know where to start. but i did it. and
that's fucking cool, and i'm proud of myself. i'm not hardware oriented at
all. at *all*.
so then it's about 12:30a.m. (01/23/99) and i go online and i'm
trembling with all of the leftover tension and anger from the day and i'm
guzzling vodka trying to subdue myself and i stumble across Pezmonkey's
page via the h0e staff page and i read "subtext." i don't know if she ever
released it in an e'zine or whatever, but it's exceptionally good and i
urge you all to go read it. it relaxed me a good deal and i was able to
sleep without tossing and turning, which is actually the reason i had
bought the hard drive, remember? to, like, export my negative energy. but
it didn't work out that way. you can't buy happiness, as a trillion people
i will not credit have said. but we still try. because we've been trained
all these years into this process of thinking that the only way you *get*
things is by handing over cash. but i dunno.
whatever. words.
i guess that's all, then. go read "subtext."
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~lindseya/subtext.html
- Styx
- 01/23/99 - 11:47a.m.
!!========================================================================!!
!! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #478, WRITTEN BY: STYX - 2/3/99 !!
