An Error Has Occurred!

[Doktor Howl]

LMNO, your nightmare is my dream.

That really struck a chord.

[Faust]

Odd occurrence, last night a car was burned out in front of my house and two al queada agents were arrested ten minutes from me.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Day 7:

I got up before 10am today, the first surprise,got into the car and said "surprise me Eris!" kinda internally went to go take my council tax statement to the office in town with my dad, and got everything set to get my £67 back.  Then I went to my bank to check all my benefit payments. The first payment for my non-rent related benefit went in on the date stated, and there was an extra bumper payment for my housing benefit, meaning I am no longer broke.
This is pretty fortuitous as I need to get some basics for my visit to see Payne, essentials like a waterproof jacket and condoms. So I went into town to get the things I needed, I got a cute womans waterproof in a bag, in a non disgusting shade of purple. When I was checking prices for waterproofs I got a phone call from the sick benefit people, saying that my sick form had been found, the one that had previously been lost, and that they were going to give me some more money, that should clear by Monday! My dad looked at me funny for asking for side salad with duck in plum sauce with noodles, but then I get asked to have rice with it.

The culinary surprises never seem to stop!

[-Kel-]

LMNO I am loving every single post you have made in this thread. I am now looking forward to reading them.

[LMNO]

Day 8:

I may have mentioned this before, but I work in a cubicle field.  That is, the entire floor is open, no walls, with rows of three-foot high modular walls creating "X"s on the floor, and in each corner of the "X", sits a obedient little worker; their standard issue Dell computer, glowing monitor, filing cabinet, phone.  Some people don't decorate their cubes, which is depressing.  Other people spend a lot of time putting up pictures of cats, and Dilbert cartoons, and posters that say things like, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it sure helps!" which makes it even more depressing.  When you see that someone took that much dedicated time to decorate their workspace, you wind up remembering how many hours you actually spend at that desk, and how easy it is to just let the non-work part of your life just slip away.  Eventually, you wind up moving most of your stuff to the office, and only use your house to eat, bathe, and sleep.

They handed out a survey the other day.  It asked us questions about "respect and dignity in the workplace," with a small box next to each question where we could write our answers.  I just stared at it for a few minutes.  There's no way I could complete this.  I mean, I knew what they what they were looking for.  Undoubtedly, HR had gotten wind that some people were unhappy working for the company, and were trying to make them feel good about themselves and their jobs.  They wanted to hear responses like "I don't want to be ignored."  The people working here just want someone to come by once a week, or even once a month, pat them on the head, and tell them they're doing a good job.  They want to keep perpetuating the illusion that their work has value, or that the importance of what they do in turn makes them important, too.  HR was looking for the quick fix for an entrenched problem.  The problem, of course, is that humans have these pesky feelings.  You can't just use them for their analytical brains without also having to eventually deal with their emotions, as well.  The problem is most felt by those who have forgotten about their lives outside the office.  If the company is all you have, then the company is the only thing giving your life any worth.

The whole idea of "respect and dignity at the workplace" is meaningless if you're dealing with people who surrendered their own respect and dignity to the monolithic company.  All you can do at that point is set up arbitrary and cyclical appreciation periods, from the rote "you're all doing a great job, really" meetings to hosting the tab at a bar for your team.  You have to create an artificial life for them, to give them the comfort and affirmations they crave.  But that's not respect.  That's not dignity.  Respect, like communication, only happens between equals.  Dignity is something you hold within your chest like a pike in the face of an oncoming cavalry.  And what each person needs to build their dignity and respect is unique to that person.  You can't just institute a new set of rules that sort of fits a Gaussian average based upon surveys.  It's all one long tail.

If they really wanted to create respect and dignity in the workplace, they would look to help each employee strengthen the quality of their non-work life.  If a person can have something to live for outside of the office and the paycheck, then they don't have to rely on the company to give them a sense of meaning.  Of course, this would necessarily threaten the top-down corporate hierarchy and business model that has been forced upon us since feudal times, for so long that it looks like the only viable approach.  And HR can't have that.  So, as I stared at the survey, I decided I couldn't complete it.  There was no reason to do it if I couldn't be honest, and it was a complete waste of time to try to fit in a contrarian philosophy into a 1" x 3" box that would be of no use to anyone.  I let the survey fall from my hand, onto the desk, and said, "Hey, Rick, what do you think of this thing?"  Rick sat on the other side of my cubicle wall.  He didn't say much, but he seemed to do his job well enough.  I didn't hear a reply, so I stood up to see if he had stepped away from his desk.

He was still there, staring at his computer screen.  "Rick," I said again.  "Hey..."  He didn't seem to hear me.  He was wearing headphones, and his eyes had glazed over, his mouth half open.  Was he asleep?  I glanced down at his desk, he had one hand resting on his keyboard, and the other hand was – What was up with his mouse?  There were chrome bands wrapped around his hand, coming from the sides of his mouse, keeping his hand firmly wrapped around it.  He clicked it, moved it to the left, but no, Rick wasn't moving the mouse, the mouse seemed to be dragging his hand to the left.  He let out a low wheeze, and I looked up at his face.  A thin line of spittle had escaped from the corner of his mouth, and was working its way down his chin.  That's when I noticed that his fancy in-ear headphones weren't actually in his ears.  They seemed to be more like plugs, and were fastened tightly to his head, just behind the jawbone, but just in front of his ears.  The black cylinders had small LED lights that flashed a dark red in a slow, repeating pattern.  The mouse moved again, jerkily, and the spit from Rick's mouth dripped onto his shirt.

I turned and made my way out of my cube, into the field, to get around to his side.  I lost sight of him as I got to the end of the row, but as I came back down the other side, I could see he was still there.  "Rick!" I barked at the back of his head, and then came up short as I saw the interior of his cube.  He turned around, eyes clear, no headphones, hands in his lap.  His mouse looked like just another computer device.  "Hey, what's up?" he asked.  "Sorry I didn't hear you before.  I guess I was just in the zone."  I couldn't speak.  The walls of his cube were covered with picture upon picture of those "cute" animal pictures.  Dozens of kittens, puppies, cartoons of infants with kites, baby chicks and baby seals, pandas, koalas, and all the rest, layered one on top of the other, hastily stapled into the fabric of the cubicle walls.  They were like scales on some kitsch-mad snake, overlapping each other.  Only someone, most likely Rick, had taken a black crayon and drawn a heavy, rough X on their faces and heads, obliterating them.  His entire cubicle had become a negation, a denial of self. 

I said something to Rick; I can't remember what, most likely something banal and nonsensical, and walked back to my desk.  I sat there for a minute, then picked up the phone and dialed a handful of numbers.

"Hi, it's me.  Let's go out and do something tonight."

[Doktor Howl]

I hope to hell you're saving these offline.

[LMNO]

Of course.  I don't trust more than two paragraphs per "post reply" box.

[Reginald Ret]

woah

[Cramulus]

RAH, man, motherfuckin RAH!

[Bella]

Love your reports, LMNO!


HFLS says he apologizes for his absence from this thread and from PD in general, but he's been so busy dealing with the surprises that happened during the past 17 days that hasn't been able to cope with anything more than real life. He says "Fuckety fuckety fuckety fuck!  Thirteen more days to go. Shit!!"   

My guess is he's never going to do this again. 

[LMNO]

Day 9:

No surprise, the one thing that keeps me going in this world is my music.  My parents started me on it young.  Piano, naturally.  But it wasn't until high school I was able to get my hands on a drumset, and that's when things really took off for me.  I've been playing ever since, or at least trying to.  It's become such a part of my life that when I was unable to play for a year or so due to forces beyond my control, I kind of lost my shit.  At the very least, I became a different kind of person, angry and cruel.  For some reason, drumming stabilizes me.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to give it up, although my joints might eventually tell me otherwise.  We'll see.

There was a point in my life when I could have chosen a different path for myself.  I had dropped out of college to play in a band with my brother.  I was 19 at the time, and as oblivious and solipsistic as a 19-year-old could be.  I dove headfirst into the music, playing for hours every day, writing songs, playing basement shows, and getting paid in beer.  Then came the thrill of stepping into a recording studio for the first time, and having an actual cassette in my hands of something I had done (this was before ProTools came along and changed everything.  Pay attention kids, there will be an ancient history quiz later).  As time went by, it started becoming clear that if I was going to do this, I couldn't float along off of handouts and couch surfing.  I'd have to get a job, pay rent, and all the rest so I could stay in town and keep playing shows and getting our band out there.  Or, I could go back to college, and do the band thing later.  Silly, solipsistic me, I thought that I could get right back into the scene after I took a four-year break.

And that, as they say, was that.  At the time, it wasn't clear to me that it's really easy for a foolish teenager to sacrifice creature comforts to chase the dream of being a rock star, but it gets harder and harder as you go.  I never left drumming, and I kept improving as a player, but that door had closed, it seems.  Others kept opening, though.  Which is why I was at band practice last night.  As it turns out, I wasn't really alone in my obsession with music, and it's really easy to pay for rehearsal space when you and your band mates all have good jobs and are old enough to be responsible about coming to practice and paying rent.  And after 20 years, I think I've found something that fits me the right way, again.  And we have a pretty big show for us coming up.  Big for us, anyway.  If things go well, it could bring us good things.  Which is why we needed to practice, and get the set tight.

The place were we rehearsed was in a squat, square, brick building on the outskirts of an industrial park.  Inside, it looked like a college dorm, but more squalid.  Concrete floors, stains on the walls and spills on the floor, and the constant smell of stale cigarettes and sweat.  The hallways were lined with doors, each of them locked, but opened onto a small room, just enough space to cram a drumset in one corner and a couple of Marshall stacks in the other.  It was a fairly labyrinthine structure to get through, and as I walked the twisting corridors to get to our room, I got a strange, Charles Ives-ian mix of music as each potential superstar raced to get to the next big thing, or paid tribute to what came before them.  Thrash metal played next to a Creedence cover band; across the hall, something was happening that sounded like Pat Benetar meets Dashboard Confessional, and that was mixed with a bluegrass interpretation of "Sultans of Swing".  Typical Thursday.  The occasional introverted, hostile-eyed smoker would be lounging outside the door to their space, mastering the art of the "sensitive yet angry poet" look.  I turned a few more corridors, and the racket quieted down.  We had lucked out in our space, because most of our neighbors only played on the weekends, so we had the wing mainly to ourselves, with only a few other bands practicing when we were there.  But it wasn't unusual to see other people hanging around, like the emo kid at the end of the hall.  Barely old enough not to get carded for his clove cigarettes, probably had a fake ID.  Dyed black hair and an outrageously priced haircut both hung in his face and jutted out from the back of his head.  Skinny jeans, tight shirt, ripped sweater, Converse sneakers... The kid was a walking stereotype.  He was standing with his back to the wall, eyes cast down at the floor.

I stopped at our door, pulling out my keyring, and I glanced back over at the kid.  Still standing there, but now he was looking at me.  His eyes were rimmed with red; at first I thought it was eyeliner, but it kind of just looked like he had been crying a lot.  He had a look on his face like he was lost, utterly alone.  I pulled the key from the lock on my door, and turned to face him directly.  He looked like a wiseass douchebag, but that look did something to me.  He just stared steadily at me as the door to what I guess to be his practice space opened, and two more kids stepped out into the hall.  They were dressed the same way, precisely awkward hair, skinny everything, a mass of rubber gasket bracelets around their boney wrists.  They walked over to the kid, who was still staring at me, and the one on the left put his hand on the kid's shoulder, tilted his head off to one side, and opened his mouth, wide.

A mass of sharp, jagged teeth jutted out from his gums, and he leaned forward and bit down on the kid's cheek.  Blood splashed onto his face as he tore away at the kid, biting again and ripping off his ear.  The one on the right grabbed the kid's arm, and, exposing the same wicked jaws, started chewing on the kid's forearm eagerly, getting tendons and bits of sweater caught in his impossible teeth.  The kid hardly reacted to all of this, he just slid down the wall, the two savages following him down, tearing away at his neck, his chest.  Blood splattered the wall, and began pooling at the floor, and the kid was still staring at me.  His left cheek was gone, I could see his jaw and gum line sticking through.  A huge chunk had been ripped out of his neck, and the arterial pulse was jetting red gouts of blood all over the thing that was clawing and chewing into his chest, rearing its head back to pull a particularly tough piece of flesh away from the kid's body.

A grunt passed between them, and they grabbed the kid's arms and dragged him back into the room with stilted, jerky movements.  The door slammed shut, and I was alone in the hallway, blood smeared on the floor and the walls.  In a day, it would just be another stain.  I turned back to the lock on our door.  Maybe this upcoming show was a lot more important than anyone had realized.

[Dalek]

A friend of mine started doing amphetamine  

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Well day 8(yesterday) was more scary. My stepmother seems to be srs tense and is now grabbin pills herself. I was awoken by her using the phone trying not to break down getting on to the doc. Unfortunately no one here is actually communicating and its like walking on eggshells. Then I went to visit the dog my family want to adopt, and his tail had a cone, and so did his head. This distressed the Murphy as being a gun dog breed he's a sniffer and so we went to play with him in the yard they have put aside for letting dogs off the lead and he was upturning the toy box and got exciteable. The cone on his head was almost trashed, and the tail one fell off. Murphy was still excited and bouncing around, then we noticed that there were red flecks on his fur, the tail was bleeding and his body became more and more red splattered. So the visit I had been looking forward to for days was cut short. And it seems my stepmothers BIP has got so small and rigid that it is in danger of slicing her like cheese wire. The first week was more like Telarus' thank you Mistress, gods know what the next 22 days are going to pan out as.

[-Kel-]

Maybe this upcoming show was a lot more important than anyone had realized.

beatuiful man, great build up and arch. loved that ending line.

[Freeky]

Day 9:

*snip*

Holy christ, LMNO!

My favorite bit was how it sounded all normal and stuff, and all of a sudden WHAM! You get hit in the face with the OMG Fucked Up stick.