You know, I really like bluegrass. It’s folk (or country) music on speed. Even the saddest bluegrass song is full of manic banjo-picking goodness. Happy bluegrass is joy in a bottle. And I’ve been listening to it since yesterday. Thank you, Pandora. And especially the Dillards, who, among other things, covered “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and turned it into a bluegrass staple.

Anyway:
Diary of the Proletariat, Day 8:
-Overtime! Two extra hours today because of a safety seminar (don’t get hit by forklifts, kids! I'm sorry, industrial lifting trucks). Sadly, no German forklift safety video.

-Brilliantly, sandblasting equipment features gaps whereby certain smallish parts may fall into the sand reservoir. That was an adventure.

-Felt poetic for a while. That was fun. I also realized I haven’t read much good poetry, or prose for that matter, in quite a while. The poetry part is being remedied by a book I picked of the Reg’s “free books” pile at the end of the year.

-In general, did a lot of thinking (what else am I going to do?). Mostly about poetry, songwriting, and considerations related thereto. I also realized my philosophical side has been heavily suppressed, probably because of the general air of pretension that seems to surround such things at the U of C. Still, it’s much easier to succeed as a poet when you have thoughts and feelings about things. Although even calling myself a poet feels a bit pretentious. There’s this cultural tradition wherein poet is a half-step from prophet, fire on the mountaintop, wisdom from on high. Inspiration is likened to the voice of God. But I write poetry; I am a poet. Any act of expression or creation, in at least a small way, is a proclamation: “My thoughts are worth writing down! My observations are worthwhile!” But this is the blog generation; we should all be used to that feeling by now. Heck, blogging and poetry have a lot in common. Certainly, the intersection of bad blogging and bad poetry is the heart of many a livejournal. And this is why, as a last measure of protection, I keep my poetry on a separate page. And, er…

“Food for thought… Though from food!”

-NEXT TIME: The exciting world of jury duty, in which I try to figure out why the hell I have been assigned to the courthouse in Rolling Meadows!

Diary of the Proletariat, Day 7.
-Oh god, it's morning again. 4:30 alarms are brutal. I will fiercely hate the world until I down a Pepsi five minutes before the shift starts.

- Very few things in a factory fail to produce some ungodly mess. For example, sand-blasting leaks sand all over the gorram place, and that's one of the cleaner operations. Today I was on the drill press, and let me tell you, when you drill 2,464 holes (616 pieces, 4 holes each) through brass hinge-dealies, you get a metric fuckton of brass shavings... possibly just an actual metric ton. I kept finding bits of brass in my hair. Other than that, running a drill press pretty much just involves putting things in and hitting buttons, so it's not a bad deal.

- Speaking of drills, a drill ate one of my gloves. It was a little alarming. Hooray for tear-away rubber gloves. The real bitch was peeling the thing off (rubber gloves, while required for safety, catch on everything).

- When I'm caffeinated enough, I apparently start trying to write bluegrass songs. I'll see where that goes. I'm seeing songwriting as the best shot I have at mental productivity here, especially as no one else will actually hear me if I try to sing my way through it. I myself should probably wear earplugs if they put me on the drill again. Not much in a factory is quiet either.

-And a thought from my drive home: "Hey! that police car just made a left turn without signalling! That bastard!"

Oh, weekends. Working on an Intonation review, but the gist of it will likely be how awesome Jon Brion is. But speaking on working, time to get ready for bed. Goddamn 6AM shift at the switch factory. Gotta start writing down me "Diary of the Proletariat" too (there's not a lot to do mentally in a factory besides self-narrate). Early conclusions: Sand-blasting is more fun than buffing. Keep that in mind.

Alright, the good news is I'm going to Pitchfork. And that will be thoroughly awesome. Also, the Mountain Goats are fantastic.

And the bad news is... ha! you thought there would be bad news, didn't you? Well, serves you right for expecting cliches to be fulfilled. I have nothing but good news this time around.

The good news is that my job is starting tomorrow, and I will begin earning cash monies. Now, some would point to the 6 AM start time (not tomorrow, but all my other days of work) as bad news, but I'm going to disregard that and consider it a fantastic opportunity to see more sunrises than usual.

The other good news is that a housewarming party is in the works for my apartment sometime in July. Yes, of course you're invited! I mean, assuming I know you. Anyway, it's sure to be fantabulous. Details once I figure them out etc.

The other other good news is that we were not hit by a tornado earlier today at the Altier lake house. Although rain during our attempted boating expedition was a mixed blessing, at best. And man, does small-town America love Jesus, but the ice cream makes up for it. Not that I don't love Jesus and all.

Also, U-S-A! U-S-A!

Also, he who is not jumping is not Slovak.

Finally, for those interested, I am still writing poetry/songs. "Memories" is up in the archive.

Right... long delay. Much intermittent goodness/wackiness.

We won ScavHunt. I was personally an affront to God, country, and all human decency. And that's not even counting what I did with that cigar. I'll tell you later.

Right now:
-I am surrounded by twenty-some quietly humming Linux machines.
-I'm running on 4 hours of sleep, with no plans for further sleep until after noon tomorrow
-I am wearing my last clean shirt, which is Italian and comically small.
-I have one bottle of Pepsi, two bags of pretzels, three scoopfuls of Runts, and enough Fourier transforms to choke a small, periodic, horse.
-I am cursing the fact that my TA wrote a really potentially helpful program which WILL NOT COMPILE.
-By God, this computer will produce recognizable vowels in a mathematically sound way by 10:30am.

I'll see you all after I finish this goddamned project and die horribly.