I got drunk last night and started applying for federal jobs. I'm usually more outgoing and motivated when I'm drunk, but this was a first. One of the jobs I applied for was Bond Specialist for the Department of Homeland Security. I blame the usajobs.gov website primarily. They have these simplistic brief job descriptions and then when I get to the meat and potatoes of the application I realize I'm completely unqualified. But at that point I don't care, and I complete the application anyway. I did this a couple times. One of them really tricked me. It was a job for the park service, tending historic maritime museums and/or locations in San Francisco. The entire job description made it seem like they wanted an intelligent well versed historian and orator. I could pull that off in spades. But as soon as I start the real application I'm bombarded with carpentry questions. Asking if I know how to build an exhibit? What the hell? The Federal Government is obnoxiously inefficient. How are real people supposed to get jobs from them? They can't obviously. But maybe that's the point.
At the begining of each job application it asked me if I was a "dislocated Federal employee". Does the Federal Government really have roving bands of employees that remain "employed" despite NOT HAVING JOBS? I want that job. I want some politician to decide my office shouldn't exist, shut me down, but for me to continue to receive pay from the government.
I've seen all these sweet useless jobs that I know must have required mountains of cock sucking to acquire. These awesome obscure jobs that just make my mouth water. A job that has no boss, only a duty. A job that I could excel at. Where I set my own schedule, and I run the place better than any other. Oh god. I saw it so much in the Navy. I saw how it worked. It's all a favoritism thing. It's disgusting. It's Atlas Shrugged shit. But I don't want the job to look good, I want the job because for once it will be something I can fix. Nearly the entire time I worked for the Navy I thought up ways of making things better, more efficient, more productive, more morally conscious, more enticing, more effective. But knowing how to make things better means nothing when all the people who have the jobs that can make differences are complete asshole douchebag morons. So many times I found myself in offices where I wasn't welcome, trying to pry a little bit of support from people whose sole job description was "supporting the fleet". Supposed experts, that when I turned to them in my hour of need would either a. blow me off, or b. start harassing me about shit that's neither hither nor thither. Entire buildings devoted to people who have the easiest cakiest taxpayer wastiest jobs just laughing and prancing. And when I step in for a fucking washer, a washer! I get nothing but crap. So many times, so many stories. I always wanted to make a difference in the military. I really wanted to have the freedom to fix things. But I was never afforded the opportunity. Only to maintain where they set the bar.
Every time I'd hear a Captain or an Admiril talk about how great the Navy is and how much we mean to them I'd fucking get all tear eyed and God bless America-y but around the literally thousandth time I'd be sweeping the same fucking floor, or wiping down the same clean bulkhead while forsaking actual necessary tasks I stopped caring, one way or the other, how things turn out. The people who work on shore to do nothing but process a couple requests and maybe stamp some products get paid premiums just for having to be on land in the locations I was forced to live at sea, and I received no such premium. Do you hear me? In some cicumstances people with the exact same job title and paygrade as me were paid $800 a month more to do less work and never go to sea. And fuck me if I should mention that military pay is a joke compared to Federal Civillian employee pay.
All I've ever wanted was to do something that I could feel proud to do. And there have been instances where it happened. And those were the best days of my life. But they make it hard. They certainly do. They make those times few and far between.
Sometimes I think only a government job could satisfy my thirst. But the bitter taste is still in my mouth. I started doing full days of manual labor at below minimum wage when I was 13. Don't even fucking start with me on an "honest hard days work" I was doing tedious manual fucking heat stroking finger bleeding clothes ruining back breaking work for years before I was in high school, or even legally allowed to. That's why I'm already half way to retirement as far as the Social Security Administration is concerned. I'm just tired of it. I don't think I'm too good for it, hell I've never turned a shitty paying time wasting labor job down, and I did plenty of manual labor in the Navy, I if I just want more. More. My brain needs more. And I can't have it. There's no purpose for me. I'm obviously not meant to ever have love or kindness around me. Even the deepest ditch digger can get a fucking girlfriend. No, I'm not meant to be happy. But satisfied would be enough. If I could just do SOMETHING that would make things better for people, then I would feel satisfied. Everything good I did in the Navy was made evil or nullified. I need something pure. I need something to mold.
As I spend a few minutes a day playing the meaningless void of a game called Mafia Wars here on Myspace, I think about who came up with it, and how much money it has made them. I think about how much it has boosted Myspace in the process. Such a sweeping change, so much, from so very little.
The Federal Government thinks they're too good for me (as most people do). They don't even have the decency to put up real information on their own hiring pages. Because they know exactly where they will hire from. There's an endless supply of happenstance soulless cocksuckers who are of a higher caste than me. They are born with money and friends and they will phone in their whole life. They will simply tell a friend, and the job will no longer be open. And when some poor bastard hard working scum employee lower than them walks in for a little help, they will fucking shit all over them.
It's all set in place. There is no free enterprise here. There is no capitalism in America anymore. There is no concept of individualism among the majority. Every viable political candidate must be a mouth. A product. And nothing more. Just like in Pink Floyd's "The Wall" That is America now. I have watched as the hearts and souls of thousands of individuals greater than I will ever be get crushed like dead leaves under the tanks of this system. What the fuck else can I hope for but a job working for the system and setting my own hours? Nothing sir. There is nothing more.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Going Back
I walk across the base. All my money is being sucked down a drain in Stockton, so I can't drive. I want to spend more time at home, so I don't ride my bike. 20,000+ people live and/ or work on this base everyday, but I am the only one who walks out the gate. I am the only one without a car or a boyfriend.
After several miles I am out. Walking into a rich neighborhood. I walk the busy road, alone. The cars tearing past don't know this neighborhood. I know this neighborhood, its past, its present, and its lives. I have walked every street. I have been to museum, the library, and the parks. I have read books; I have drunk with the locals. I have eaten all they offered. I have lain on their beach. I have been in the hotels and motels and dreamed of living out my days there. I walk this familiar neighborhood alone. I have corrected a taxi driver who thought the land owned by the Spanish decedents, because those were his primary customers. I explained to him that Coronado was built by 2 Americans. The Spanish and Mexicans had never used the land but for hunting jack rabbits. Jack rabbits that still control the night in North Island Jack rabbits that only I ever see. I the only one of 20,000 to walk the fields in the dark of the morning hours returning from ever fruitless efforts to obtain even the remotest human contacts, failing even the remotest rudimentary means of pleasure and satisfaction. I explained to the cabbie that those with money, do not ride cabs. I ride cabs, the Mexican servants he drives around may be dressed sharply, but only as a living. I walk the road until I come to the bus stop.
It has now been over an hour since I got off work. The sun is setting. It is past 7. I sit on the bench waiting to pay $2.25. The cheapest I can pay without going it on my own. The cheapest I can pay and return home before late night. I once rode the distance. The ferry that ever eludes teased me and I sought vengeance. I kept riding. I rode off the base. I rode the peninsula. Cars screamed past me at 70 miles and hour, and I rode in the dirt next to restricted areas for miles with no place to stop. One long strip of dirt and cars. I kept riding. Until the bay turned to piles of salt, salt several feet deep as far as I could see in that direction. In another, Mexico; if not by name than by all other means. I kept riding past the highways up the hill and down again, for miles through cities I had never seen before. I moved until in the depths of the barrio I could see tall buildings on the horizon. I rode until I was home. But I have no bike now. I could try to take the ferry. It is about a dollar more, but it is more consistent. The bus comes rarely.
.. ..
I sit and wait for the bus. On the bench I see the same faces. I see them everyday, and they see me. They look at me, knowingly. They know I do not belong. I listen to my iPod. I play games on my phone. Music that helps me avoid the silence of loneliness. Terrible overpriced under-programmed games on a phone just to look like I have something to do with a phone.
.. ..
Sometime in the evening a bus arrives. I get on and hope to have a seat. I have been awake for about 16 hours now, and 12 of them I was on watch wearing a gun and a bullet proof vest. The people on this bus are always different and new. I find I hear a new language being spoken each time. Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish, some kind of north European language I couldn't identify. I don't know why these people are on this bus. I don't know where they spent their day. I ride it over the bridge and into the city. It takes the barrio path to 12th. I get off surrounded by bums and tourists and cops. I am across the street from the ball park. I am a block from the convention center. I walk away from that and up the street. There are homeless masses in the streets and on the grass and in the alleys. Every time I wonder my fate, but only in passing. Up I walk past the half way homes and low cost housing and retirement home. At Albertsons I stop and purchase alcohol. I purchase food, and drink. Usually a jar of that Pom tea, usually a pizza, usually some meat and various TV dinners. I ride the elevator up to my room. The weight of my purchases tearing into my hands. I quickly enter my apartment. It is now around 8pm. I put on the TV, I turn up the AC, I make up some food and I drink. I drink. I drink until I am no longer coherent. Then I get in bed and sleep for a long time. Eventually I wake. Eventually I move around, eat, go out, drink, and make the day. Eventually. But soon that is over and I must return to work. I want to spend as much time as I can at home, so I don't ride my bike. I wait until it is 7 or 8 I start chugging whiskey straight out of the bottle for awhile, and then I walk to 5th avenue I live on 14th so this isn't too far. Eventually there is a taxi. I pay to have them drop me off at the gate, and I walk across the base.
.. ..
This was 8 months of my life. Save the girl, I did not.
After several miles I am out. Walking into a rich neighborhood. I walk the busy road, alone. The cars tearing past don't know this neighborhood. I know this neighborhood, its past, its present, and its lives. I have walked every street. I have been to museum, the library, and the parks. I have read books; I have drunk with the locals. I have eaten all they offered. I have lain on their beach. I have been in the hotels and motels and dreamed of living out my days there. I walk this familiar neighborhood alone. I have corrected a taxi driver who thought the land owned by the Spanish decedents, because those were his primary customers. I explained to him that Coronado was built by 2 Americans. The Spanish and Mexicans had never used the land but for hunting jack rabbits. Jack rabbits that still control the night in North Island Jack rabbits that only I ever see. I the only one of 20,000 to walk the fields in the dark of the morning hours returning from ever fruitless efforts to obtain even the remotest human contacts, failing even the remotest rudimentary means of pleasure and satisfaction. I explained to the cabbie that those with money, do not ride cabs. I ride cabs, the Mexican servants he drives around may be dressed sharply, but only as a living. I walk the road until I come to the bus stop.
It has now been over an hour since I got off work. The sun is setting. It is past 7. I sit on the bench waiting to pay $2.25. The cheapest I can pay without going it on my own. The cheapest I can pay and return home before late night. I once rode the distance. The ferry that ever eludes teased me and I sought vengeance. I kept riding. I rode off the base. I rode the peninsula. Cars screamed past me at 70 miles and hour, and I rode in the dirt next to restricted areas for miles with no place to stop. One long strip of dirt and cars. I kept riding. Until the bay turned to piles of salt, salt several feet deep as far as I could see in that direction. In another, Mexico; if not by name than by all other means. I kept riding past the highways up the hill and down again, for miles through cities I had never seen before. I moved until in the depths of the barrio I could see tall buildings on the horizon. I rode until I was home. But I have no bike now. I could try to take the ferry. It is about a dollar more, but it is more consistent. The bus comes rarely.
.. ..
I sit and wait for the bus. On the bench I see the same faces. I see them everyday, and they see me. They look at me, knowingly. They know I do not belong. I listen to my iPod. I play games on my phone. Music that helps me avoid the silence of loneliness. Terrible overpriced under-programmed games on a phone just to look like I have something to do with a phone.
.. ..
Sometime in the evening a bus arrives. I get on and hope to have a seat. I have been awake for about 16 hours now, and 12 of them I was on watch wearing a gun and a bullet proof vest. The people on this bus are always different and new. I find I hear a new language being spoken each time. Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish, some kind of north European language I couldn't identify. I don't know why these people are on this bus. I don't know where they spent their day. I ride it over the bridge and into the city. It takes the barrio path to 12th. I get off surrounded by bums and tourists and cops. I am across the street from the ball park. I am a block from the convention center. I walk away from that and up the street. There are homeless masses in the streets and on the grass and in the alleys. Every time I wonder my fate, but only in passing. Up I walk past the half way homes and low cost housing and retirement home. At Albertsons I stop and purchase alcohol. I purchase food, and drink. Usually a jar of that Pom tea, usually a pizza, usually some meat and various TV dinners. I ride the elevator up to my room. The weight of my purchases tearing into my hands. I quickly enter my apartment. It is now around 8pm. I put on the TV, I turn up the AC, I make up some food and I drink. I drink. I drink until I am no longer coherent. Then I get in bed and sleep for a long time. Eventually I wake. Eventually I move around, eat, go out, drink, and make the day. Eventually. But soon that is over and I must return to work. I want to spend as much time as I can at home, so I don't ride my bike. I wait until it is 7 or 8 I start chugging whiskey straight out of the bottle for awhile, and then I walk to 5th avenue I live on 14th so this isn't too far. Eventually there is a taxi. I pay to have them drop me off at the gate, and I walk across the base.
.. ..
This was 8 months of my life. Save the girl, I did not.
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