hi, · im · the · temp · person

"i'd sabotage anyone if i had to." - Colin Sauer, my 8 year old cousin

recent things in list form: (the list form, the antithesis of my every hope and dream. a simple effortless way to describe oneself, and a universal cop-out from creating anything with depth or interest, i will not do a list form. one second.)

i am recently coming off of my worst academic term, and am still slightly afflicted with a cold-turned-flu turned-cold again. my cat, skeletor is afraid. the new cat, (a dwarf cat) named asaki (Japanese for "morning wood"),lives entirely to strike fear into skeletor's heart. he no longer goes to the bathroom in the quaintly termed, "shit-box" but instead prefers sinks and linoleum flooring, although carpet will do if no linoleum presents itself outside the vicious grasp of Asaki.

the work scene is desolate. the cafe will not be having me back, it seems, and i feel all the better for this. i have saved a few hundred dollars to go across the country this summer, and as my good friend dean jansen has put it, "remember, you dont owe them shit". remember i do, and winter is now here. ive worked on music. and writing. and playing night games. my legs are still sore from winning the first round of urban capture the flag last thursday.

quickly on the music note: Jeremy Hernandez and I's band, "forty hundred thousand locked up guns" is going well, except for the natural holiday hiatus that i am taking for presents and bikes. what can skulls tell us AKA: my friend project, is going well and i continually write every night before i go to bed. i try to write about one friend a day, and hopefully by the end of winter break, i can start recording (bad news is, it seems my portable tape recorder has blown its speaker? i suppose this follows suit with my historical speaker experience: played loud, until blown and broken)

my parents came to portland and we indulged in holiday shopping, where i remembered that it is not options that we give ourselves when we go shopping, it is solutions. we dont think of gifts until they present themselves to us. we are not choosing gifts, the gifts choose us. i realized the powerlessness behind shopping and malls and suburbs and this is reflected within me lately.

i am happy to be home (in albany i mean, it is home for me. sorry, portland) for the first time in months. i forget what it is like, but i do enjoy it. tomorrow i continue my gift making for my friends, and have to get my car checked out by the car doctor, if i want it to take me across the country this summer.

i am once again falling in love with everything, but after watching the lion the witch and the wardrobe, i feel like if i were in any kind of serious battle, id be too spaced out to do anything.

for everyone who wasnt at our last minute party, which was focused on welcoming my brother to our home, it involved a few integral things:

1) my brother

2) his loud stereo system

3) the beatles

4) our basement

5) a studded leather coat

6) musical drum circles which involved religious songs, an acoustic guitar, a cardboard box and a harmonica

and finally

7) .22 bullets

yesterday was a bunch of good things and bad things. i guess its trite to say that, because all days are full of good and bad things. i mean, it just depends on how you want to qualify your time. is it good? is it bad? is there any use to attributing these two words to anything in the world ever? to simplify a more complex and interesting day, i will say this: it was good and bad.

ask me if you wanna know why because i think that this is all i really wanted to say right now.

Dudes, theres only a few things that make me exceptionally happy lately, which actually means "a lot of things."

First and foremost, i saw in a bathroom stall that somebody had written "Meet me here on Wed. 28th at 11:30am" which sikes me out that somebody had an anonymous sex meeting on my birthday.

Secondly, i get uncontrollably siked when i go to the plaid pantry near my house and some dude tells his friend, "HEY THAT GUY LOOKS LIKE BRIAN CHURCH." Ive seen him twice, so i told him he could call me brian, and i told him that i am going to call him "brian church guy." Also, somebody thought that i looked like somebody they knew in missouri, which is rad as usual.

Thirdly, i enjoy thinking about Hairy Hunted Buffalo's day-long project of carving pumpkins, and then finishing the halloween album!!!!! BOOOOOOOOOO! (mutherfucker!)

Fourthly, i am glad that i have co-written and recorded a song about Quaaludes, truckers, and being wiccan.

good things in my life:

club claw: generally clawing it up, and requesting $1,000 bucks from the school.
music: making halloween freak out recordings
bunk beds: party on the top bunk kreep killaz!

bad things in my life:

school: very behind.
sleep: in process of catching up
friends: i wish i could see more
music: accidentially not having the 4-track on while we sang a dual song titled "ghost-stories/goat-stories"


i didnt realize how busy i was until i went into to talk to a counselor about having an existential crisis, and he asked me why i thought i was having this, i told him:

"well, i turned 21 last week, and i drank for four days in a row, and got about 12 hours of sleep in three of those days, and ive been working two jobs and taking 12 credits at school. and i have a radio show. and i have this student group, and we just asked for a lot of money. and im either working or schooling for 12 hours every day."

it turns out, as he suggested, i should probably just rest. and sleep a lot. and that it usually takes about one and a half weeks to get un-freaked out after prolonged drinking.

that is all.

i never knew that turning twenty one means partaking in (somewhere between five and seven) late nights, sleepovers and drinking hot-chocolate w/ hard alcohol. i recall things like forcing everyone present to play a song, even if it is just the top gun theme sung to "bloops" and "bleeps" or spoken word, or a cover song. i, miraculously, did not obtain a hangover on any one occasion throughout. i napped often but breifly. i trudged and groaned and was spaced out but excited. everyone, and i fucking mean this, everyone, should have their birthday celebrated for an entire week (or so). it feels so good, and i thank everyone involved. i love you sonovabitches, and i love the sonovabitches that didnt make it, or the sonovabitches that didnt know about my birthday because I am weird with birthdays. and i thank the people who used to come to my birthdays, like devin and jonathan and brian and andrew (all middle school creep crawlers who are long past, occasionally forgotten, but who I guess are continually apparent in the back of my mind and character).

the results and repercussions were: academic negligence (repercussions still to come?), showing up to work tired unshaven and with huge bags under my eyes, and serious attempts to get stoned so I could see laser floyd. it turns out that i am really cruddy at smoking, and that omsi wont let a few stoned and drunk post-teens in ten minutes late so that they can space out and go into laser induced trances. it turns out that i peed on their building for this.

mostly its weird because i realize that im no longer a rebel when i drink now, its just some legal thing thats kind of funny. which, is worth acknowledging. im grown up, or at least thats what my driver lisence says now. but hey, at least i can get kicked out of places without going to jail? the quest to cause ruccus will soon overfill my life, watch out mutherfuckers.

Ive realized that i dont understand how some people can be so frustrating, and others I can love and be amazed by so incredibly much that i cant believe im actually living with people who do things again, and they are okay.

my friends, one going to spain, one gone to boston (which this has finally hit me, that i will not see dean for four months or more), a soon-to-be car mechanic, singers, new-housed persons, new friends and a new job.

some people have drifted off and i dont know if i will ever see them.

i know that fall is the most emotionally intense time of the year and im not sure i need to do anything more to prove this statement.

things keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping so often and so fast that you cant keep track of whats already over and what has started.

i think school is beginning soon, and im not sure if this feeling of not being ready for it is going to be here or gone by the time it does begin.

has 41 shots actually lost one of his fathers?

i am the RIDE TO SURVIVE 2005 CHAMPION.

pictures forthcoming.

I am glad to say, after about five days of recovery, that I am now 90% sure that I have not suffered any noticable, permenant, brain damage in the last week or so. For a few days (mostly sunday and monday) i was positive that i would carry out the rest of my life living with some sort of dissability. It was difficult to differentiate between what was real and what i was thinking, and to boot, my coordination, speaking, and judgement skills were all off by obvious measures.

here is an abbreivated list of things that i remember about last weekend, starting on wedensday:

wednesday
-Drinking in the shower, at 10pm, yelling along to Pinkerton
-Listening to Hairy Hunted Buffalo songs

thursday
-Going to Nathan's birthday party and spilling beer on his brother, followed by over-done apologies

friday
-Arriving at Diana and Sarah's going away party; convinced that i would not drink much
-making several trips to the nearby 7-11 and buying cigarellos, cheetos, and a big bite.
-playing real-life street fighter. i was blanka.
-trying to smash a beer can on my head, something i think everyone tries to do at least once. well, this was that one time for me.
-writing the words, "ANAL FETUS" illegibly on my chest with a ball point pen
-tipping over park benches and chairs
-throwing cheetos at cars
-having my brother come up to me and saying "DUDE I FOUND THIS CHAMPAGNE! I THINK ITS FOR SOMETHING ELSE, WE BETTER JUST DRINK IT SO THEY DONT KNOW!"

i think its appropriate to note here, the things i do not remember about this weekend. at the going away party i was told that I:

-found/broke off a tree branch, and was hitting people in the head with it in the backyard; but in a playful way.
-tried to do the trick where you pull a tablecloth off of a table. i shattered 4 beer bottles, but wore the cloth as a cape.
-peeing together with dean, while videotaping it

saturday
-around 4 in the morning, flipping off two hillbilly-types, off a road in rural albany oregon. they skidded their car to a halt, i freaked and figured the best thing to do was to throw my cell phone as far as i could into a mint feild (while i was still talking to someone) and yell "JON GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!" Jon, alleviated the situation, with a simple "DUDE, ME AND MY BUDDY HAVE LIVED HERE OUR WHOLE LIVES, NOW JUST GO ON!"
-running away from Jon's house at 5 in the morning. my hands covered in what i thought was blood, but turned out to be dye from red bell peppers, the button mysteriously missing off of my pants, and still drunk.
-eating a jack in the box breakfast burrito and watching the hot air balloons. sobering up.
-driving my brother to his golf match. picking him up on the side of the road as he pissed into some bushes, and dropping him off right in time to put his contacts in and chip a golf ball rediculously to the right.
-finding a tall boy smashed into the front grill of my car. presumably, from my brother.
-going to a wedding, spaced out as shit.
-attending the reception, at a barn no less, getting once again shamelessly drunk and dancing with my mother while chewing copious amounts of bubble tape
-shotgunning a milwaukees best in front of my father.
-drunken heart to hearts with friends of my brother
-lighting a fire
-putting out the fire
-hearing from a farmer that it is not "burning season" which doesnt make much sense to me because the fire started pertty well.

from sunday to current, i have been recovering.
i think there is a lot more artful way to explain my last week. i think the entire thing was quite a bit more artful. but right now, i cant concentrate the best, and my cognitive abilities are at an all time low. one thing i do remember, is riding in the backseat of a car in Tillimook, with the wind blowing so strong in my face, like i was being drowned in water, and accepting it, and thinking about how incredible and insane life is yet i am goign to get better, and if i dont get better, at least i will have the wind blowing in my face in rural oregon, which is pertty fucking sweet, right?

sometimes its a bad idea to get drunk before work and other times it isnt

and im not sure but i think its one of those times

EDIT (while i am still drunk): I ACTUALLY MEAN BEFORE I GO TO BED AND GO TO WORK. YES.

Today I met the woman who I will be working with for the rest of the year. She is amazing, a philosipher, and at one time--no joke--was a Private Investigator.

Working at Pacific Legal is so close to over that with every passing day I am remembering less and less about data sets, spreadsheets, deliverables, and DLT Tapes.

I am excited for the next few weeks, and Albany, sweet/sour smelling mutherfucking mill-scented Albany (with a big floating plastic duck, which also excites the shit out of me to know Albany is known for a duck that continually is in a state of abduction, or firearm abuse)

i feel bad winning the 'employee of the month' award at my temp agency.

i am only going to work there until i have enough hours to qualify for the scholarship they offer, and as it sounds like from them, i am a shoe-in for.

this is really odd. i guess i just needed to be a mediocre worker at a temp agency to get recognized as exceptional.

i get three day weekends because i lie to my boss!!!!