packing

Man, was it ever a bad idea to work two days after getting back from Maine and before moving out of my apartment. This won't make much sense without some context. The rest of my vacation in Maine was pretty awesome. Zach, Jess, and Nicole came up to hang out with Katie and I, and we had a great time. We did all the normal tourist-type shit: went to the beach, perused the tourist traps and little shops, and drank obscene amounts of alcohol. Not much else to do in York Beach, but the company was good and so was the weather. So very relaxing.

Then back to Boston. Uck. Hot. Work. Bad. Katie left for western Mass so she could pack. I stayed to slog through two shifts and finish packing up my apartment. For some reason these last two shifts were horribly annoying and tiring. The amazing music swap that Zach, Nicole, and I conducted made me feel a bit better, as well as watching The Doom Generation and Nowhere, which might be two of the best American films I've seen recently (as always, read the imdb.com user comments; half total idiocy and half people who get it equals almost as much entertainment as watching the films). Reminded me of a more graphic Twin Peaks, which is fantastic, obviously.

On Saturday I went out to spend one last night with Katie before she left for Jordan. This was difficult. Not to delve too deeply into personal stuff, but we had a really good summer and it was pretty hard to say goodbye. It was probably for the best that she was occupied with arranging all her stuff and fitting it into her suitcase, because just about every time I looked at her I practically burst into tears.

Back to Boston. I hate the Mass Pike. Those fucking rest stops have to be the most depressing outposts of big corporate hegemony ever. For those who've never had the pleasure, when you're on the Mass Pike you can't get off without paying a toll, and are therefore stuck with purchasing your gas from Exxon and your food from McDonald's, D'angelos, or Boston Market. And for no extra cost, you get to enjoy your genetically-modified flash-frozen MSG-laced meal in the ruins of someone else's "Great Food At A Great Price!" while the howling bat-children of fat bag-eyed parents engage in the highly uncoordinated destruction of everything around them. Also: The amount of yellow "support our troops" ribbon sticker thingies was frightening. Cue Noam Chomsky!

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."

Then I spent a few joyous hours in the sweltering swamp-heat moving the mounds of crap I accumulated this year out of my apartment (so long you dingy piece of shit! I'll miss your flimsy doors and leaky faucets and tiny bathroom and maurauding ants!). With the estatic assistence of my parents, we jammed everything into our automobiles and set off!

Of course, I promptly got lost because the turnoff for 95 South is hard to see and I haven't driven home in awhile so, y'know, it only took me an extra hour to get home after speeding around fuck knows where in southeastern Massachusetts for awhile. And, of COURSE, within five minutes of arriving home and taking off my shoes, I had THREE fucking mosquito bites on my feet. Beautiful.

Fortunately, the previously mentioned Christopher Burke was on hand to save the day. He came over and we had a long talk about how fucking EXCITED we are about our respective trips to Europe, drank some nice wine, smoked a wee joint, and just generally did what we always do when we hang out, which is make each other laugh a whole lot with our collective insanities. He leaves Wednesday, and as much as I'd love to hang out with him more, it's probably for the best--if he were around I don't think I'd get anything done.

The Czech film bug is buzzing around my head now, which is a lot better than the fucking mosquitos, so I'm gonna go watch one of the seven(!) DVDs I ordered. For reference purposes, I shall list them: Daisies (Vera Chytilova), Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and The Joke (Jaromil Jires), Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmejer), Closely Watched Trains (Jiri Menzel), Loves of a Blonde and Black Peter (Milos Forman). Seek them out. You'll be happy.

Or give me a call and maybe if you're real special I'll watch one with you before I leave.

practice

Strange seredipities seem to be the status quo as far as my life goes these days. I know, I know, all of life is essentially one massive chain of coincidences according to the current line of postmodern thought, but they just keep cropping up. For instance: over the past two weeks I've been working my ass off in coffee hell (pastry purgatory?) with no real objective other than making money. Essentially I had this space of time to make as much as much as I could before heading to Maine on vacation, then moving out of my apartment, then taking off for Prague.

So what happens? The cafe is a bit shorthanded, forcing my manager, Will, to work behind the counter for a few shifts. He schedules me to work with him for most of them. What does this mean? (Fellow hell-dwellers already know, but) TIPS, people. Salaried folks don't get them. Hourly peons like myself do.

Friday was also a good example of fortunate coincidences. During spring semester I worked pretty much every Tuesday and Thursday from 12-6 as I didn't have classes those days. The majority of these shifts, I worked with Jason, and because we're both such potheads, we got along quite well, Jason fitting quite nicely into the trend of really good friends of mine who are what most people would call "weird" and/or "hyperactive." We haven't seen each other much this summer as both our schedules changed up, but Friday we worked the ol' 12-6 together one last time. As the BU campus is in a sort of interim state between the end of summer classes and the beginning of fall semester, things in the cafe were pretty relaxed.

So we're having a good time, joking around, chatting with customers, doing our normal shtick, when the dude who's been running these interesting little tests on random customers for some MIT professor (it involves money and honesty, that's all I'll say) comes up to the counter and asks if we wouldn't mind helping him out. He's always got a new wrinkle in the procedure and this time it's that someone besides him has to hand out the cash to the people who take his test. Will we do it? Sure, man. He'll pay us. Well all right! So in addition to the sixteen bucks I made in tips, which is twice what I would've expected to make on a slow Friday afternoon, I walk out with an extra fifteen bucks for doing hardly anything at all.

Cash aside, it was great to get one last chance to hang out with Jason (who is leaving Boston as well). I know he's an acquired taste for some, but he's one of the few people I know who makes it his purpose in life to be nice to everyone he meets, and the kid practically glows with generosity. All you Boston people are going to miss the hell out of him when he's gone; there aren't enough people like Jason in that grumpy old city. Just think of what the cafe will be like without that crazy loud laugh floating out from behind the counter. He really made the place his own; I can't even begin to count the improvements he suggested and put into practice. And I know working in a dumb coffee shop is about half a step up from McDonald's and we shouldn't get too excited about the cheap temporary labor we provide, but who can say what things would be like if we all approached our jobs with the degree of enthusiasm and appreciation that Jason has, not just for coffee, but for life in general?

Call me sentimental but I really appreciate being around someone who can take a frustrating situation like food service and still enjoy life enough to laugh and constantly make new friends out of all the unsuspecting caffiene addicts who shuffle in and out every day. Standing behind a counter for six-plus hours serving drinks to hrodes of unappreciative half-wits who've never cleaned a toilet or washed dishes or pushed a lawnmower in their pampered lives is hardly how any of us would choose to make a living, and yet Jason, I would say, does a better job than any co-worker I've ever known of letting it all slide off his back, somehow staying friendly, and remaining faithful that the next person in line will return his smiling "Hi, how are you today?" with a "Hi" and maybe even eye contact (gaaaasp!) instead of staring at the menu and mumbling "Ahllhavvacoffee." Maybe it's all the ganja.

I'm not very good at this myself; it's hard to work some stupid coffee job when you have a million other things you rather be doing but need the money so you can actually do those other things, all while receiving treatment one suspects would make an automated coffee vending machine want to start spraying people with scalding hot water.

In any event (my digressions are bad enough even before I get on the topic of serving coffee), here are some further fantastic coincidences (in bullet format to keep my babbling in check).

--Randomly heading out to lend a hand with Jess' boyfriend Frank's cable access TV show, agreeing to help out by being a guest, then having Frank come up with a character for me: a scientist who has mastered time travel. This is a topic upon which I can espouse at length thanks to my obsession awhile back with the exploits of one John Titor.
--Again sort of randomly going along with Jess and Nicole to Savers (think Salvation Army but not a charity) and finding a freakin' awesome big tweed overcoat that will keep me warm in Prague, as well as some shirts, a pair of pants, and a tie which the tweaked-out gay black guy wearing a t-shirt that said "Gain 'N Glow" underneath a pair of flaming black dice gave me for free after we commiserated about how hard it is to find good clothes that actually fit when you're male and not as freakishly tall and fat as the rest of America (at least in the minds of clothing manufacturers, apparently).
--Discovering that this house my parents rented in Maine has a hot tub for me to soothe my aching back, legs, and feet after working for nine straight days.
--Being somewhat disappointed that I finished off my stash of weed the night before coming up to Maine (what's vacation for if not getting baked and lounging around?) only to have my sister's boyfriend save the day last night with his own sack.
--Taking off for an aimless wander around York Beach today after going stir crazy alone in this big house because the family went off to eat lunch with some softball people and the girlfriend declared her trip to the beach with her friends to be "girl time," then happening across those very same girls as they were heading back from the beach. We ate lunch at Katie's friend's house, which is on this cliff overlooking Long Sands Beach, just sitting in the sun and enjoying the amazing view.
--One of my best friend from Rhode Island happens to be taking a two-month trip to Europe, hitting England and Hungary specifically and wandering about in between. Prague's been around for a pretty long time, but I'm pretty sure if anyone can burn it to the ground, it'll be me and Monsieur Christopher Burke.

Come to think of it, this whole big study abroad in Prague deal that I'm doing sorta came about randomly as well. I wasn't looking to study abroad, or visit Prague specifically, until one day Katie sends me a link to the program in Jordan that she's doing. I start searching around the website, clicking on the arts programs first, obviously, and, well, here I am, about to head off to Prague for a semester. Crazy.