Gibbon & Crotchface

Written by B. Hollingsworth. Filed under Bad Times, The Library, Work. No comments.

First off, I just manually upgraded WordPress for the second time ever and I am very proud of myself.  It just doesn’t happen often enough for me to get the hang of it.  Anyway…

So, it’s been nothing but bullshit with my two co-workers that I have not been getting along with for the past six months.  There are two of them and they are both Chinese, and no, I’m not being a fucking racist.  Well, maybe a little, but don’t forget that I’m a little bit Chinese too, dickface.  Several times in these past six months they (or one of them, I’m just not sure) have attempted to get me in trouble for doing things that they are guilty of too, just, they haven’t been caught or squealed on for it.  The thing about me not being sure about whether it’s just one of them narcing on me or both of them is because when my superiors ask me about the offenses, they don’t tell me.  The last time, I was just told “the others were wondering if…”

It is possible that it’s just the one taller one (aka: Crotchface) with the disturbingly annoying voice.  She has never liked me, and from the very beginning.  I never understood it really until another co-worker brought to my attention the possibility that she could have been jealous that when I started working with them, me and the other Chinese girl (aka: “the Gibbon”) hit it off and started hanging out.  I have an additional theory as to why Crotchface never liked me: she’s a closet-case lesbo and is in some way infatuated with the Gibbon.  I don’t know though, but even when we were all I guess “getting along” or “not snitching” (I have NEVER snitched on them, by the way) Crotchface always seemed kind of awkward and quiet around me – completely different from how she is now that it’s just her and the Gibbon.  Back to her “disturbingly annoying voice,” god damn, I can barely explain it.  She has a deep voice for a supposed female, and when she talks she has something like a tonal problem.  It sounds as if she’s trying to chop wood with just her voice.  In conversation, she sounds like she’s trying to speak up so that the entire fucking library can hear her talk about her boring bullshit to the Gibbon.  The sound pierces the ears, and is anything but pleasant.

And, holy shit, you should see them in the workroom when they’re together.  First of all, almost every time that I walk past them, the Gibbon seems to throw out a giggle like Crotchface said something funny, which is fucking impossible because she is incapable of being funny.  If not a giggle, then the Gibbon will say something where you know they were just talking Chinese shit about me like, “Oh my god, I know, right?”  It is kind of sad and hilarious when the Gibbon pretends to laugh at something the Crotchface says though because Crotchface is sometimes like wtf did I say something funny?  Being able to hear their lame conversations where nothing has any comedic value or anything close to it and then hearing them laugh or giggle at it is perhaps the saddest part of my work day.  You have to know that the Gibbon is a huge daddy’s girl and she’s 18 years-old, and her voice is just as annoying as Crotchface’s – it’s the exact opposite, it’s wayyy too fucking high for her own good, depending on how nervous she is and how badly she needs to be accepted.  So basically all of their conversations are about how their only real friends are their parents and how they go out to restaurants and do a bunch of shit with their parents – WOWWWWW!, that is hilarious, guys, can I laugh too?

Once, Crotchface was talking about how she and her sister and mom went to a store and bought stuff, and when they were leaving the store they realized that there was a sale and if they had bought all of their stuff together they could have saved money.  So Crotchface goes to an employee and asks if they can return all of their ugly shit and then be rung up all together so they can get the discount, and the employee tells them NO, they can’t do that.  Filled with Kung Pao Chicken Rage, Crotchface demands to talk to the manager – WUUTTTTT – omg, you can bet that she felt fucking REAL when she said that, more real than her unfortunate voice could ever afford her in the normal, intelligent way of dealing with other human fucking beings in society.  What angered me about that was the fact that this bitch has probably never had a shit job in her life, and maybe because of that, she feels above anyone else who has to work a real, shit job, because please, the library job is not a real job.  I think that her fascinating story revealed a lot about her shitty character, and really, I’m glad we never hit it off.

So, after all of that character development, we finally come to their sad tactics.  Basically what happened the first time they tried to get me in trouble was they were spying on me when I went out to take my breaks.  At our job we don’t clock-out when we go on breaks, we just leave and come back.  I would go on my breaks and, if it was slow, I’d smoke an entire cigarette before going in, whether or not it exceeds my break time.  At a meeting for the student helpers, Crotchface brings it up, but doesn’t directly name me, she just says “Certain people,” gee, who could that be, right?  My problem with this is that both Gibbon and Crotchface take breaks that far exceed their breaks, only thing they’re more sly about it.  They sit down on the metal library stools and read books in the upstairs sorting shelves – if Crotchface would like to be a stickler for the rules, well then, she’s nothing but a fucking filthy rat hypocrite and can suck an AIDS dick.  So basically, it’s okay to take longer breaks as long as you’re inside of the building, okay, I understand now.

Crotchface’s second complaint about me was about my friend coming into the library and talking to me.  First of all, it’s a public library, and everyone has a right to public services, Crotchface.  Secondly, I do not stop working to talk to my friend, I keep on shelving the children’s books that NO ONE ELSE wants to shelve because that floor just sucks.  And thirdly, the bitch is just jealous because she has no friends.  I will need to add a “fourthly,” which is: that I work on a completely different floor from them, and so they have no real basis to say that I just slack off when my friends visit me – slack off, as in sit down, read a lame book, and hide in the second floor sorting shelves?  We should probably define our terms in future times.

This last time that Crotchface or Crotchface & Company have complained about me, it was about how they thought I was slacking off when I close BY MYSELF on Saturdays.  Due to the fact that you can fit more than double the amount of children’s books on a shelving cart than the adult books upstairs (which is un-officially their floor), I spend more time downstairs than upstairs when I am working by myself.  And so when the library is closing and I go upstairs 15-20 minutes before closing and see all the crap they they could have alleviated when they put in the sad barely minimum in the morning when library patrons aren’t even allowed in yet, I get pissed and I leave it sometimes.  Sometimes I just don’t have time after finishing up the first floor closing, and when I get upstairs I’m almost running everywhere to straighten up books, chairs, stools, and carrying stuff back to the sorting shelves.  My problem is that, if it means SO MUCH to Crotchface or Crotchface & Company, then they should be putting their “concerns” into actual ACTION and being there WHEN THE LIBRARY ACTUALLY NEEDS PEOPLE TO BE THERE.  But they have no conviction, just the sand in their vaginas.

Desole

Written by B. Hollingsworth. Filed under Bad Times. No comments.

This is only my fifth official post of 2010.  Life sucking, that’s pretty much what you’ve missed if you were keeping up.  Not the usual “life sucks” that most people say in sighs, but fucked-up reality-altering “life sucks.”  I’ll spare you the really personal shit…

I’ve been back and forth, living both in town and in Waipahu which, according to MapQuest, is 17.5 miles apart.  It’s about an hour to 1 1/2 hours bus ride, which is how I usually commute to and fro.  It’s a weird thing, coming into town three days a week and going to the same job I had when I lived in town, seeing the same fucking people and places but not really feeling like I belong there.  I always know that I have to return to Waipahu, and I always know that I have to return to town, where I belong, only to have to eventually go back to Waipahu.  It’s depressing either way, where ever I am, and I have little relief from this mindfuck.  The only time I feel happy is when I’m with friends, but when that’s done for the night, I return to the shit that is my life.

I’m sorry if this depressed you.

Two trails and the adventures of others

Written by B. Hollingsworth. Filed under Food, Good Times, Mini Roadtrips, University. No comments.

Yesterday I woke up around 5:30 AM to get ready for hiking with my roommates.  Actually, I hit the “dismiss” button then, and two more times, and didn’t actually get out of bed until around 6:40 AM to get ready.  That is the earliest I’ve ever gotten up for something I wasn’t getting paid to do or something I wasn’t paying for, but it feels good knowing I am capable of doing it.  We hiked a mile-long trail and it was probably the first time I’ve gone hiking in a couple of years.  I’m sure I hiked this trail before, like when I was in elementary school or something, just because it just seems like one of those “everybody’s done it” things, but none of it seemed familiar, not even the modest waterfall at the end.  Oh, I got injured twice on this trail.  The first time, I was stabbed in the kidney buy a protruding tree branch, motherfucker.  The second time, I was using a bamboo stick to help me down a muddy ledge-like area when the fucking stick snaps in half, causing the piece of stick remaining in my hand, as well as my hand, to stab me in the side of the head.  Fuck you, bamboo.

Then, we ate at KFC where I tried their Fiery Grilled Wings, which were actually pretty awesome.  In an effort to undo the progress made by the early morning hike, I also ordered mashed potatoes, coleslaw, a biscuit, and a corn on the cob.  It was all pretty tits.

The second trail we hiked was on the other side of the mountain, and this was a more difficult one.  First of all, the main problem with this trail was the damned mud.  Mud, mud, everywhere!  That, combined with the fact that I don’t feel as light-footed as I did earlier in my life, probably owing to a spill off a skateboard last Fall (there was blood), made this trail a huge bitch.  I think here the scariest parts where the several times we had to cross a stream and not slipping on the wet, muddied rocks.  I was totally no bullshit and on all fours during these parts, and I don’t give a fuck because you know what, I was the only person in the group who didn’t eat shit or get their shoes completely submerged in the water.  After several episodes of steep ass stairs that made my heartbeat audible in my skull, we made it to the grande finale, the area where people were jumping off ledges into the cold, muddy water below.

This was a long day, so I’m not finished yet.  Later in the evening I met up with Scott and had some awesome fucking pizza with spinach, mushrooms, and garlic.  Then, we went to the fine wines and liquor store to buy some Prosecco and Asti, which were pretty good too.  It was kind of complicated at first though, because I had locked my bike at the pizza parlor and we were now cruising around town with my cousin in her car.  We finally decided to meet at my dorm to hang, them driving there, and me grabbing my bike and meeting them back there.  I feel like I got there in 15 minutes or less, but pretty fucking fast nonetheless.  After I arrived at the dorm and locked my bike, I saw that they had arrived and that my cousin wouldn’t be joining us after all due to the lack of parking at the dorms (fuck you, school administration, or you know, whomever the fuck is responsible for the disregard to the social lives and independence of students).

When me and Scott got up to the room we watched Be Kind Rewind (2008), but we weren’t really paying attention to the movie because we were talking about shit like Scott’s recent trip to Italy with his girlfriend.  I also got to look at about 200 photos from the trip that he got developed.  We also watched some Steve-O DVD’s which are always fun.

Food and Ghosts

Written by B. Hollingsworth. Filed under Food, Ghosts. No comments.

‘Tis Spring Break.  Not really though, if you’re me.  Or if you have a job that you still must go into at normal work hours.  Not us.  I have nothing planned, really, except to watch the new Anthony Bourdain on Monday with a classmate.  That should make me excited, but I’ve just been fuckin’ down, man.

Tonight I met up with my cousin and we watched a movie at her place while eating pancakes and bacon (an awesome combination).  But that’s not all, man.  I think there’s the possibility that there’s some kind of paranormal activity going on in her kitchen.  First of all, she’s never mentioned anything to me about weird goings on in her place, and it wasn’t until I mentioned something that she told me that she has noticed stuff too.  I was sitting on the couch, watching the movie and from my left I thought that her mother (the only other living person in the apartment with us) walked up to me, so I turned to look, but no one was there.  There wasn’t a sound or anything, rather, it was the feeling that someone had walked right up to me and was standing there.  It was kind of like the pressure in your ears when you’re on an airplane, but not as intense.  This “feeling” happened to me several times before I mentioned it to my cousin.

“Do you notice a ‘shift’ in atmosphere on the left side of the room?” is exactly what I asked her.  It was scary because before she answered me there was this kind of shocked expression on her face.  Then she told me that she experiences almost the same thing from the kitchen area, as if there are people there, and sometimes she thinks she see’s things but there’s nothing there when she looks.  Scary, man.  But if there are presences there, I don’t think they’re dangerous or vindictive since no one’s been physically harmed yet, and no one’s actually seen anything concrete.  It just creeps me out a little.

Here’s to spring break.

Retardiation

Written by B. Hollingsworth. Filed under Bicycling, Good Times, Movies, Reviews. No comments.

Went on a 1:30 a.m. bicycle ride through town again, to return a couple of movies and also get one of those super-annoying bells for my handlebar.  The two movies I returned were actually really good, I watched Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) and Brand Upon the Brain! (2006).  I wanted to see Umbrellas for a long time now, for one thing I knew it was some kind of musical, and another thing was because it has a young Catherine Deneuve.  I was surprised at the ending, yet, for being a French film, I know I shouldn’t have expected anything, but that just made the film even better.  It was a musical, it had Catherine Deneuve, and it had a sad ending – sound remotely familiar?  I’m thinking Dancer in the Dark (2000), you know, the fucked up musical with (fuck yeah) Björk?  Anyway, Umbrellas is a definite must-see, even if you’re not into France or French things, because the films themes are beyond all that crap, and the cinematography and colors are amazing.

Brand Upon the Brain! (yes, with that exclamation point at the end) was a fucken trip.  I had never heard of this film before, but it was a Criterion release so I figured it had to be awesome in some way.  It’s a fucking amazing film that unfolds in twelve (or thirteen? I forget) chapters about a man who returns to this island where he grew up with his sister and parents, and where the parents ran an orphanage in an old lighthouse.  The mother had a dying wish for the son to return to the island and repaint the lighthouse to make it look awesome again, and upon starting to do this, the film goes back in time in the man’s life to when he was a young boy and all the fucked up shit that happened at the orphanage.  The story has really interesting elements that, on their own or, portrayed by a less imaginative director, would seem lame or ridiculous, but in Brand, everything adds to this very unique vision of family, and obligation, and self-obliteration as a result of those things.  I regret not giving these two films at least a second viewing, oh well, save that for the future.

After returning the DVDs, I was on my way to Walmart for the bicycle bell when I encountered two ex-coworkers having a post-work smoke out on the street.  It was really unexpected, I mean, the place that they work usually closes at 1 a.m., and I know I left my room at at least 1:35 a.m.  That was probably the coolest part of this journey.  The bell that I got afterward is pretty cool.  I had to also purchase a screw driver for the purpose of attaching it onto my handlebar, but hey, at least I have a fucking screwdriver in my inventory now.