Junie's Online Thoughts
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Thank god that temp job is over. I wasnt a very good employee on Friday. I printed out a lot of information on grad school. I surfed the net. I read my zines. I started umpteen letters. I daydreamed. It didnt matter, since the phone didnt ring much. (I also did some work too....they continued to give me stacks and stacks of holiday cards from the company that I had to sign. I ended up signing two guy's names about five hundred times each.) But I literally RAN to my car at three minutes to five. GET ME OUT OF HERE!! (Before I left, two different people asked me, "are you looking for fulltime employment?" It took all of my strength not to scream, "Im NEVER coming back! Dont make me laugh! Even if you paid me $20 an hour, I still wouldnt pick up that damn phone again!")
Noodle was slow and I didnt make that much money, but after work we all went out to the Brickstore. It was SO MUCH FUN!! Usually at those things, I end up feeling awkward and non-talkative, but for some reason it was relaxed and fun and nice. We did shots of Jagermeister, chatted, stayed until the bar closed, and then I came home. I didnt wake up until Jeremy called me at 11:30....good thing too. I wonder how long I would have slept if he didnt call! Then Jeremy and I chatted, which was nice, until the computer started eating half of what Jeremy wrote. That happens every time we use IM, and its quite frustrating.
I picked up a shift tonight, because I really need the money. Then my friend/ex-coworker's roommate's birthday party is tonight and I'm going after work. Then Sunday Im seeing Randall and Dave for more beers and perhaps some bowling. Im turning into quite a social gal. It feels sooo good after such an extended time of being a little hermit recluse and shuttering myself away from everyone. It all just takes time, and I come out of my shell when Im ready. Thanks all, for being patient with me.
The biggest news that I havent written about yet is: (drum roll, please).......TRISH (Jeremy's mom) IS COMING TO GHANA!! Taylor, Jeremy's sister, organized a huge campaign to raise money to send Trish to Ghana for an Xmas gift. Sure enough, with the help of family and friends, they got enough to pay for her plane ticket. Its so exciting to imagine that we're actually going to have a visitor there, and that it's Trish makes it even better. She's coming a week after I arrive, and already our heads are swimming with ideas on where to take her and what we can see. So three cheers for everyone who made that trip possible (especially you, Taylor and Deanna). Its really, really amazing!!
Friday, December 05, 2003
Here's a list I composed at work today, of all the things I want to do when I come back to Atlanta next summer. I share this with you to keep me on task, and that if I get distracted, you all can remind me of my goals. I guess it could be a sort of resolution list, although these are not my typical sorts of resolutions for the new year. (Those are more like, "be healthier," "be nicer to people," "exercise three times a week," "take calcium supplements".....BORING!) This is more of a list of life goals. Things I've always wanted to do but never actually got around to doing. My friend Erin sparked this idea, in an email she wrote me after the half marathon of all the things she always wanted to do. She had a lot of good ideas. So Im making a list of my own. Here. With witnesses. I've decided that I better start doing these things, while I still have the desire and mobility to do so. Here goes. (In no particular order:)
1. Learn how to bake bread from scratch
2. Learn how to make a killer Masaman curry
3. Buy a banjo and take lessons
4. Finally build my website
5. Practice my Spanish before I forget it all
6. Travel to New York City, Boston and New Orleans, followed by a road trip through the Southwest U.S. (that damn trip to Utah that I dreamed about since eighth grade)
7. Make mosaic table tops, homemade purses and other crafty items from the seventy pounds of crap Ive been carting around for years now and never actually did anything with
8. Read a book on auto repair so I understand the basics of how a car works
9. Plan trips within the next six years to Japan, Ireland and Spain
10. Devise timeline for breeding and other such family oriented business
11. Start a monthly investment account for the buy-a-house fund
12. Pay off my student loans (Only two thousand left!!)
13. Write a children's book, even if Im the only one to see it
14. Be a better activist and work with direct care projects that actually help people
15. Know my neighbors on a first name basis and try to build a community around where I live
16. Volunteer at a hospice facility
17. Finally gain enough confidence in myself, coming to terms that my body will never be super-model perfect and buy a bikini
18. Wear said bikini in public, or around the house, or wherever I damn well please
19. Get hitched
20. Make the effort to try something new each week, whether its a recipe, a new drive home, a restaurant or a pattern of behavior
21. Visit a topless beach (this one came from Erin, but I really liked it and have been tempted with the idea myself) and go topless
22. Learn how to do minor repairs around the house (leaky faucet, change a fuse, etc.)
23. Create my own organic garden with flowers and veggies and other goodies
24. Make spirituality more of a goal and integrate it in my daily life
25. Start reading the hundreds and hundreds of books we've bought but never read
26. Begin the process of creating a kick-ass wine collection
27. Learn how to drink bourbon (I can do it now, but it takes a really long time and a lot of ice that slowly melts and allows me to sip daintily without wincing. I just like the idea of being the type of woman who can drink straight scotch or whiskey or the like and not make that oh-my-god-my-throat-is-on-fire face.)
28. Become a regular SOMEPLACE (the problem with trying new places is that no one ever gets to know me. I love the idea of walking into a restaurant or bar or coffee shop and the employees know who you are and about your life.)
29. Encourage family vacations or fun excursions during trips home
30. Be more patient, with myself and others
Whew! I better get busy!! Its a bit daunting, but I know I dont have to do it all at once. But those nights when I have nothing to do-----why watch tv when I can make bread? Or read? Or shout Spanish to Squeak?
Thursday, December 04, 2003
I had written notes about this week, but never actually transferred them to my blogger. Here's the edited version. My temp job sucks. Monday--received over 550 calls. Most were from desperate, uneducated-sounding people with horrible phone voices inquiring about a four day temporary position as a telemarketer. Others were from currently working, upset telemarketers trying to call the 3rd floor, but no one would answer the phone. Tuesday was more of the same, except now the telemarketers were mad because their paychecks bounced. Wednesday was more of the same, except one of these said telemarketers showed up at my desk at five to five, demanding to see the payroll woman because the Vice President of Operations downstairs refused to handle the problem and sent the guy to this woman instead. (I ended up going to the bathroom and when I came back, he was gone.) Voicemail also went down that day, all the toilets in the building stopped working and a drama started brewing amongst our friends in Ghana. Today was a little more of the same, with the same guy coming back and then calling ten more times today to yell that he earned that paycheck, but just wanted someone to be honest and tell him if he was screwed and wasnt going to get a new one so he wouldnt have to drive all the way from Lawrenceville to wait around for five hours for nothing and call sixty times to get nowhere. Plus the telemarketers called in over and over to say where's my paycheck, im gonna be late, im lost, why is no one answering the phone, why cant someone fax me that new script, why is the woman on the third floor continually hanging up on me? Welcome to my nightmare.
Tomorrow is my last day at the assignment and that alone makes me want to pee my pants with joy. Its been horrid, horrid, horrid. On Wednesday I had to repeat to myself over and over that I really did care about consequences. I couldnt just tell them to fuck off. I couldnt just pick up my desk chair and hurl it through the two plate glass doors in front of my while screaming that I would never answer their god damn phone again. Its a wonder I made it out of there without hurting someone.
Today, on the drive home, I heard this news story, except in that version, there were over 400 respondents, not just five. (Ive edited it for space.) The world is a messed up place.
GERMAN CANNIBAL FOUND WILLING VICTIMS ON NET
Germany was transfixed in horror yesterday by a case of cannibalism in which an apparently respectable software specialist mutilated and ate a microchip engineer. The cannibal says his victim volunteered to be slaughtered. The man confessed after police thwarted his attempt to find a new victim over the internet.
The victim of the ritualistic killing was a 42-year-old leading microchip designer at the electronics giant Siemens, one of the best according to his colleagues. Bernd Jürgen B (his surname has been withheld) was a slim, athletic chainsmoker who lived in a luxurious penthouse suite decked out with £30,000-worth of cutting-edge computer equipment. He disappeared in the spring of 2000 after having first sold his Mitsubishi car and some other valuables.
Police now know that he responded to an internet advertisement announcing: “Wanted: young, well-built 18-30-year-old for slaughter.”
The man who placed the advertisement — and who started to advertise again this year — was Armin M (surname withheld) from the charming half-timbered town of Rotenburg in the western state of Hesse. The 41-year-old computer technician was entirely serious: investigators this week found a slaughtering room, complete with meat hooks, in his apartment. Herr M, a former sergeant major in the German army who later worked for the council in Mainz, video-recorded his butchery.
Police have confiscated 50 videos which are said to be worth thousands on the very specialised market for cannibal acts. Details from the confessions of Armin M were published in all German newspapers yesterday. He says that he and the victim fried and ate the victim's penis ("which was inedible even after being fried") before leaving the kitchen for the slaughtering room, where Herr M switched on the camera and then stabbed Herr B to death. He hung the body upside down on a meat hook to allow the blood to drain and later sliced it into small chunks, which he wrapped and stored in the deep-freeze. Herr M has been eating Herr B ever since; some pieces were found in the freezer this week. He buried inedible body parts and bones in a garden. These too have been recovered by the police.
Since the information about the case comes solely from the confessing killer, police are unsure whether Herr B really did co-operate in his own consumption. The cannibal has been charged with murder. In recent months Herr M has placed 80 advertisements calling for new victims. The five men who replied appear to have been genuine volunteers but police were unwilling to disclose details yesterday. As far as the investigators can work out, Herr M has so far committed only one act of cannibalism but inquiries are being extended to other places where he lived and worked.
A LIST OF OTHER CANNIBALS
March 1998: 30-year-old man in Italy eats two-year-old daughter
February 1999: Venezuelan confesses to eating ten men and says: “I never eat women because they have not done anything wrong”
March 1999: three Finnish men and a woman eat fellow member of Satanist cult
October 2001: two Kazakhstanis sentenced to death for killing seven prostitutes and making kebabs out of them. The meat was shared with neighbours
October 2001: Six Belarusians arrested for eating a man’s raw liver
Sorry Ive been out so long. I keep meaning to write about work, but when I get home its either too late or Im too tired. Will write soon. Feel weird saying bad things about work when Im using their computer. More later....
