name: amber
age: 22
location: new orleans
aim: sapgirly mail work
June 28, 2001
I have to go to work in about an hour. Grr. I have become so annoyed with working. How can this possibly be? And how can it be that my summer is already HALF over!?
I tried installing my web cam today that my Daddy sent me and it doesn't work at all. I mean, at all. Want an example?
Anyway, that's what the stupid piece of poo is giving me. So much for dad's "bargains". He's always buying stuff at these cheap sites and then doing stuff like giving it to me for my birthday. Like when he bought me a digital camera...the thing took pictures like it was on the sun or something. They all came out like white outlines unless you turned off the flash and the lights in the room. Oh well. I guess my Dad does this stuff for the best. He's just trying to get a bargain. But still! The freaking CDROM didn't even work. ::sigh:: Well, have to think about getting ready for work now.
So I went to Berkeley today. Decided to hop on BART instead of driving and chance getting stuck in traffic on the way back. Right glad I did, too. I have become somewhat accustomed to hanging out with myself and sometimes enjoy it more than hanging out with friends. It seems that a lot of my friends aren't into the stuff that I'm into and a I attribute that to my current location. In any case, I hung out and walked up Telegraph and Shattuck Avenues and rather enjoyed myself. Finished off One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest as well.
The one poetic thing I really have to say is that Amoeba Records really does have an atmosphere, that consists of, if nothing else, the drone of CDs clacking against each other as people sift through the endless aisles of music. If you ever get a chance to go in there, you'll immediately know what I'm talking about. The place is just one big room and each clacker echoes off the walls. It's really quite interesting. Picked up some Soul Asylum, STP.
About the one time I almost got sucked in. Really. I was visiting my aunt down in lovely Bakersfield, California. She dragged my brother and me kicking and screaming to her church service, telling us that we would just love the pastor. "He uses a lot of props" is the actual phrase she used. Anyway, the service wasn't half-bad, and he did use props. In fact, to demonstrate the "sheep" wandering around in the symbolic "field near a cliff," he actually had a couple of stuffed sheep-looking toys. Gallop, gallop, gallop they went--straight towards the cliff when! My GOD! There is God, saving the sheep from peril, but only because the sheep trust in Jesus. That didn't phase me at all.
Then it was time for the groups to split up. All the teens went one way, the babies, tots, middle schoolers and adults another. I hung out with the teenage girls. The subject: why those who don't believe in Jesus go to hell. They talked about it for an hour, the hideous gleam in their eyes, speaking of sympathy for those not accepting Jesus into their hearts. As they went on and on about the perils of not having that belief in "our Heavenly Father," I began to get worried. My goodness! I thought. What if I do go to Hell? This was my first realization about Christian life. My first decent first-hand-experience revelation. These people sitting around me didn't fill their hearts with joy at the thought of Jesus. No. They were goddamn motherfucking covering their bases. Bastard God-lovers. Oooh, it ticked me off that they almost sucked me in, almost scared me into believing that bullshit. If scaring someone into your religion is the way you get people to join, it's time to reassess its basis. I watched the sermon next week with new eyes. While to the outsider, the words they use, the horrible punishments for the non-believers, is hard to swallow, when you think about it with a different perspective, you see that the reason the pastor is up in front of the church, telling everyone that other peoples' souls are going to hell, is because it means that their souls--straight to Heaven.
So, it's Sunday morning and I'm sitting here, waiting to go to work and watching God TV. The very concept is interesting that people are religious enough to turn on the set and get up at 7am, but not enough to get out and go to church. How many people are there that can't get to church? Yeah. It actually really interests me to watch this jarble. I'm pretty sure at this point that it's Christian and not Catholic or something else. I can never tell the difference. They all seem the same to me.
The buy-out last night was pretty cool. At first, it seemed like it was going to be horrible. It was cold, windy and I was in hoochie shorts and a t-shirt. But then I got on deep and things perked up. In fact, there were hula dancers and singers and I'm pretty sure the people that performed were my old hula troupe. Speaking of religion, though, these people were from a church or something. They were humongous Jesus freaks. It was really funny. All night long, the hula singer people played junk like "Jesus is my Savior" and "All Hail the King." They took normal songs and made them Jes-ified. In fact, as I was rotating back into the guard room, I asked this group of people if I could have one of their shell necklaces, which, apparently, everybody got with their ticket--this one lady takes one off and hands it to me, saying it's a "gift from God." These people really get roused up after one of their sessions.
Not that I'm a God-basher. I'm really not. I was making fun of them, and this little person (sophomore) kind of told me "so you're an Atheist?" I told her I kind of did and kind of did not believe in God. I wouldn't exactly label myself an Atheist. Then again, I'm certainly not a Christian or a Jew. Thing is, I believe there probably is a God out there, but He doesn't care about Earth anywhere near as much as these religions claim him to. God is likely the source of the energy in the universe, like a giant heart, circulating it through the universe, pumping energy into the different parts, just as we, like humans, circulate energy ourselves on a small basis.
More than that though, I believe that people are, on average, better off believing in God than not. Nothing destructive was ever caused by a personal belief in a higher being. It's this mass belief that gets all these people hiding behind their religion and doing things in the name of it. Like...wars. Ooh, now it's time for the "Hour of Power." Thirty-one years on air!
Names trip me up. I think all those crazy people that name their kids Shakiwah and Rodono are the really smart ones. A name, a name...it's such a generic title. How many Chrises do you know? In any case, names trip me up. Like...I used to have a crush on this guy named Andrew, and then, directly after him, Andy. Same name, different title. See? You have to understand about my "crushes" that I don't just like...flirt with a guy or something. I completely spaz out and devote my entire life to getting their attention. I'm not even good at it. It's pathetic. But that's not the point. The point is that even though I practically never think about these people, I meet other guys all the time with the same name. Even though it's been months and years, when someone talks about "Andy" or "Andrew," I think they're talking about these guys from my past. What the hell? I mean...we should all have unique names. Disparate titles. Who ever refers to someone with their whole name? And what about Chris Smith?
So...summer's started and I still don't Blog. It's okay, though, I don't have any readers so I don't mind. I Blog for myself. Anyway, I now work almost full time (30-40 hours a week) as a lifeguard at the Antioch Waterpark (Prewett Family, that is). If you go to the site and there's still a picture of kids in a tube thing, I was guarding that day. I found it interesting that the kids in the tube made the fat kid pull them along. They called it a taxi. Her name is Daisy. Anyway, the job's going okay. It's better than most jobs I've had so far, the only one being at Mervyn's. They're doing this whole "Mervyn's starts with me" thing. It's really kind of sick...materialism at its wittiest. (If wittiest is a word--is it whittiest? whit? wit? hmm).
I've been trying desperately to get my hands on a copy of acaslon regular (which is a font) because I am dying to complete some work on my portfolio. I refuse to print in a different font. I had no idea it would be so difficult to get it back. Story:
So, my stepfather is a big ass and destroyed my previous computer. For months, we all tried to get it back to its original performance, which included completely restoring the system...twice, because no one liked Windows 2000. It was, in a word, dead. So, my brother and I made plans to work during the summer, and each chip in half of what a new computer would cost, leaving our poor, defenseless parents dribbling over the old one when, low and behold! we were in my grandmother's living room, having a conversation about our summer plans when she busts out a $1000 check. Shabang! and a month later, a Gateway truck was in our driveway and we had a new computer. But the moral of the story is that you have to get your fonts before your stepfather crashes your computer.
Other than that, there isn't a whole lot going on, as I am like to say. I have started writing again. I hadn't written...since like...November but I sat down a couple nights ago and cranked out some poetry. I have been flowing one-liners through my head all day--like "Her words rolled off me like drops of sweat, stinging my eyes. They tasted like salt and I panted at the weight of their meaning." You know, poetic junk like that. Doesn't really mean anything, but it sounds alright. I've been meaning to update..but what with?
