Monday, July 23, 2007

La Dolce Vita, Coco the Corolla, "Where are the cows?", and FEVER

It’s been a while since I posted my last post but I have been busy with work and with my social life in general lately. See, I work at a place called La Dolce Vita and well, I hate and love the job. The good thing about the job is that the pay’s good (at least for the amount of work experience I have) and the people who I work with are a pure joy to work with. The bad things about the job are the hours and my boss, who also happens to be my brother.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my brother, but sometimes he can be a little irritating. He tends to have things done the way he does and he can be a prick sometimes. All in all, though, he’s a great guy and a fair boss but since my older sibling is my boss there are certain things that I can’t do in this job that I can do in other jobs. For example, if you’ve have a job for a while and your boss isn’t someone you’re related to, you can call in and tell your boss that you fell ill and do something else with your friends. I can’t do this at this job, because if I do I’ll be fired instantly.

In a job where your boss isn’t your sibling, even though you’re not supposed to, you can slack off some days and get away with it. Not in my job. If I slack off and I don’t finish all I had to do in a reasonable time I have to come in earlier the next day or in one of my days off in the week to finish the work I didn’t do.

Finally, in a job where your boss isn’t your sibling, you get off of work when your shift is over. Not in my job. In my job, I usually don’t get off until after at least an hour and a half after my shift is over. In fact, there is only one day in the month that I’ve been working there that I got off in time and one day I stayed an extra 4 hours and a half. That’s not good in my book… Hell, that’s not good in anyone’s book. And all of this, is because my sibling is my boss.

On Thursday I sort of complained about it to my brother. My brother thought that he was doing me a favor by letting me stay after my shift was over. How in the hell is that a favor? Do I get more money, yes, but how in the hell is that a favor? This is my job and I don’t really want to be a cook, and let’s face it, when you have a job all you want to do is get in and get out as fast as possible. All I’ve been doing is getting in as fast as possible but getting out later than I’m supposed to.

All my brother did to fix the problem was give me more hours. He made my shift end at a later time than it already does and he told me that most of the time I’d get out before my shift ended. He asked me if that would be a problem and I said it wouldn’t. I had a problem with staying after my shift ended, but leaving before it ended is not an issue for me. Most people like to leave before their shift ends because that means they have more time to do shit or can do extra shit before the day is over.

Anyways, another thing that’s happened lately is that I finally got a new car. Let me explain.

I have bad luck with cars. I don’t know why I have bad lucks with cars but I just do and when it comes to car accidents and things that have happened in my car that are bad they usually are a lot worse than other people car problems. Let me break down the bad things that have happened to me when cars are involved.

1) One day when I was walking across the street during my lunch hour in High School, a car hit me. I survived, obviously, but several things happened after the incident, including people calling my house while I wasn’t in school to ask when my funeral was, getting sued by the person who hit me for a broken windshield, and permanent scars on my arm and my head from the impact of the car crash.

The fucked up thing about the car accident is that I was never going to press charges on the person who hit me, but when I did after she pressed charges on me, the police seemed to be a lot more forgiving to her than they were to me, because I was technically breaking the law by not crossing the street on a crosswalk. The reason she hit me is because she was looking for a cigarette in the bottom of her car and didn’t see me when she wasn’t even legally old enough to smoke.

Crossing the street on an unmarked crosswalk where everybody already crosses the street or looking for something you’re not supposed to have legally and hitting someone marring and traumatizing him or her for life. I think the latter the worst, but the police don’t seem to think so. That’s why I now hate the popo and they can kiss my fat ass for all I care.

2) When I had my driving permit I was driving down a hill known in Austin as Spicewood Springs. The hill is very steep and when people from Dallas are over here and we drive down the hill they think that they are in a fucking rollercoaster ride. At the middle of Spicewood Springs, which is the bottom of a hill before it climbs up another hill, is a four way intersection that has cars driving at either side about 60 – 70 miles per hour. There is also a red light that there is usually a line for and the green light is on for about only 10 seconds before it turns back to yellow then red for about 5 minutes.

Anyways, I was driving down Spicewood Springs and I pressed on my brakes to go slower. My brakes gave out. I plummeted down the hill even faster and I was screaming so much – fearing my life – for the second time in less than one year that I completely disregarded my emergency brake. Finally, 3 quarters down the hill my brakes started to work and I saved myself. I didn’t have a car for about a year after that while my parents tried to find someone who could fix a car for free. They didn’t in the end.

3) When I was supposed to get my driver’s license, Pisha and I went to the DPS office to tell them that I was there to take my test. We parked the car and we got out. We were about to go in when we heard the sound of air escaping. We looked over at my car and I apparently got a flat tire while my car was parked… That’s just fucked up right there.

4) Shortly after I got my driver’s license, I was driving Pisha’s aunt, Dahling, back home. It was late and it was foggy. I turned into a one-way street driving down the wrong way. It wasn’t a big deal at first because the street was abandoned and I could easily do a U turn and get back on the right track. However, as I was doing a U-turn I saw a bus coming and my trauma from the car crash kicked in and I crashed into a ditch and a tree.

The police came, gave me a drinking test that I placed with flying colors and took me to a place where I could be picked up. Ever since then, Pisha and Dahling never let me forget it and freely tell everyone how bad of a driver I am. No one ever trusts me with their cars because I’ll apparently drive them off a cliff. It’s OK though, I really am a bad driver, which brings me to problem number

5) Every time I drive I happen to mess up one way or another. I’ll run a red light, I’ll run a stop sign, I’ll forget a light has turned green, I’ll drive on the wrong side of the road, almost crash into cars, peoples, animals, and plants, and other several big mistakes. One of the these days the police will see me and stop me from driving, give me a drinking test which I’ll pass and Pisha and other people will tell everyone how bad of a driver I am and my confidence with cars will diminish even more.

6) And finally, the most embarrassing thing that’s happened with cars and me is that I crashed into my garage door. I was sober and I wasn’t tired but I still managed to crash into it. It was three days before my 21st birthday and I had just dropped of Pisha at work. I drove back home and attempted to park in my driveway which drives downhill. I pulled in very carefully, aligned my wheels and then I stepped on the brakes… Or so I thought. I actually stepped on the gas and I drove right into my garage door, breaking it and drove halfway into my garage.

I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing but a few days later my Mom told me, “We’re fixing the garage door. Happy Birthday!” My parents used my 21st birthday money to fix the garage. That’s pretty fucked up too.

That’s pretty much it. All of these things, my bad luck with cars, my bad driving skills, and other things that I prefer not to mention have led to things that I’m not really proud of. However, the reason I don’t have my car isn’t really my fault. You see Pisha loves the East Side and loves to visit it frequently. She knows the place like the palm of her hand and she can easily take you anywhere there. One day, after we picked a friend down there, we were driving back to my house so we could meet up with another friend and go have some dinner.

While we driving back home Pisha drove over something and we heard a terrible noise. We weren’t sure what had happened but after we got on the Highway my oil light turned on. We couldn’t park in the highway so we just decided to drive home. While we were driving we stopped at a stoplight and we noticed that my car was literally smoking. We got scared so we rolled down the windows to jump out in case my car caught on fire. We could smell burning rubber in the air.

We got home OK but my dad didn’t let me drive my car anywhere else that night. When he tried to fill my car with oil the oil leaked out and we found out that whatever we drove over had punctured a hole into my oil tank. When we took it to the shop and they didn’t return my car for over a week we called them and we learned that when we drove the car with no oil, we fucked up my engine so I didn’t have a car anymore.

That happened a few months ago but in Tuesday I got my new car. Sad thing is, even though it’s mine, the person who had driven the most has not been me, but Pisha and since she drives mostly when we’re together and we hang out all the time, basically it means I’ll hardly ever get to drive my car and it sometimes annoys the hell out of me.

However, I do have fun with Pisha and we’ve done a lot since I got my car. Actually, the first day I got my car we took a little road trip to San Antonio to see Pisha’s cousin, Satina, and to see a movie and basically hang out. Satina is 11 years old and she already drinks and smokes. She’s already gotten used to the taste of alcohol and she smokes cigarettes and I heard she wants to try weed. I can understand why though… She also lives in the country and the city is like half an hour away from her house. Basically, she’s an alcoholic/ drug addict waiting to happen.

However, Satina is fun to hang out with and we had fun with her, until we went to see a man that shall be called Seven. Seven is a Mexican who’s very unattractive. He used to be Satina’s neighbor until she or he moved but they still know each other. One weekend, when Pisha was in San Antonio Seven began to text Pisha on my phone. I didn’t really mind since I don’t pay my phone bill anyways.

Anyway, Pisha became very annoyed with Seven because he kept calling her sweetheart and baby and shit like that when she’d rather to be called a bitch and a whore. He kept texting her and to be funny I started to text him and tried to turn him bisexual. I think it worked because he wanted to meet me shortly after I began texting him. Anyways, on the morning of the day that we went to San Antonio Pisha texted Seven and asked him for one of her cousin’s phone numbers.

Seven though it was me and replied with a “You fucking cunt, you just woke up Seven.” Pisha was caught off guard and asked him who Seven was and he replied with “My other half.” This basically freaked Pisha and I out but we decided to meet him while we were in San Antonio. After we met him he texted me with a text that read, “You just met Seven out of Nine tonight. Trust everyone, just don’t trust the devil inside of them.” This totally freaked us out because in our mind Seven has nine split personalities and people with split personalities are usually bad news.

After that we’ve decided to avoid him.

Pisha hasn’t been the only one who’s driven my car. My other friend, Sony has driven my car too. Sony is a great guy. He’s only 16 but ever since I’ve met him I’ve had a huge crush on him. I know it’s sick because I’m 21, but in my defense he does look like an 18 year old. But yes, it is bad that I’ve never gotten over him because every time I’m reminded that he was born in the 90’s and I was born in the 80’s (even though it was the late 80’s) I feel like a pedophile.

Anyway, Sony is very attractive for his age and he goes through boyfriends like a girl on her period goes through tampons. He changes them ever so often. I think he’s had at least 10 – 12 different boyfriends since I met him and I haven’t even known him for a year. The only gay guy he doesn’t seem to want to date is I and it’s hurts because I am tremendously infatuated with him. He does sometimes hurt my feelings. He’s also gay but he loves my friend Pisha and sometimes disses me to talk to her when I’m right next to her and it hurts.

Last night (Saturday and Sunday), he hurt me in one of the most brutal ways possible. Sony’s parents don’t let him drive his car because he drives like a bat out of hell. He drives way too fast and breaks a lot of traffic laws. Anyways, since I had my car Sony decided to drive with Pisha and me and we had a marvelous time. We had to drop off Pisha later but Sony still wanted to hang out. We were supposed to go to San Marcos to see a friend of him and well, I thought he just wanted to hang out. I was wrong…

When we got to San Marcos and we met the guy (who I didn’t think was very attractive), I learned that they had only met briefly online and they were getting to know each other. I didn’t really care but it still sounded like hanging out to me. We were just making a new friend. We hung out with this guy and his other friends for a while and then we all decided to go see Hairspray! (which was fantastic if I may add).

I let Sony and his new friend drive in the front seats in car because, I don’t know, I’m a generous guy. When we parked in the movie theatre though, Sony and his new friend leaned over to each other and kissed. A red flag went up in my mind. THE WHOLE TIME, IT WAS A DATE! I was the third wheel and Sony had used me so he could have access to car on his date. I felt betrayed, hurt, angry, but most of all humiliated. I couldn’t believe that Sony, who knew how I felt about him, had done this to me.

I acted like it didn’t bother me and I was happy with it, but it did bother me and every time I saw them kiss, cuddle, and just be lovey dovey, I felt like they were dangling it in front of my face to make me jealous. I’ve wanted a boyfriend for a long time and this guy was making out with a guy whom I’ve been attracted to for months. It was brutal. When we drove home I was considering telling Sony what he had done since he seemed completely oblivious to it. However, when we parked he did something that made me forgive him: He said Thank You.

He was grateful that I had let him use my car and he had a great time. He said, “Thank you for tonight DC,” and then he gave me a hug. I don’t know why, but when he thanked me and hugged me I forgave him for the mistreatment he had given me that night. I know I’m completely infatuated with the boy, because when we touched, I could feel desire pulse throughout my blood and I could feel myself be flushed with fever. Sony had given me Fever like no guy ever has but it also hurts, because I know that he’ll probably never feel that for me.

However, I have no choice but to continue to hang out with him. I could break up with him and not ever speak to him again but Sony gives me fever and for me, it’s hard to give up on any guy who gives me fever, even if we don’t end up dating in the end. Sony was and has been my friend first and even though I may never have a chance with him I’ll always call him my friend

Monday, July 2, 2007

Video of the Week for July 1st, 2007 – July 7th, 2007

It's officially July and in Wednesday it's American Independence Day. July is sort of a sad month for me. Two summers ago my father's cousin, who he was really close to died. It was July 4th and the next day we were supposed to come back to Austin, but then my grandmother's condition (she had Alzheimer’s disease) worsened so we stayed longer than intended. 7 days later, my grandmother died.

However, since it was almost two years ago all the tears that I needed to be shed, have been shed and I'm ready to enjoy this July as much as possible. Two years, even though I did spend it with my cousins, it was ruined by two deaths. Last year, it was the first July since my grandmother died and I was living sort of sedentary.

Now, however, I spend my time with great friends of mine, I have a good job, I have a good life, my whole life is ahead of me and I'm still young enough to change it if I want, yet old enough to make calculated and thoughtful choices. And like the song, if you look hard enough, in someone's face you can find the map of the world.

So without further ado, the Video of the Week for July 1st, 2007 – July 7th, 2007 is:

From Yesterday by 30 Seconds To Mars


((Next Week: Any Suggestions?))