Tag Archives: white hen

Quietly Screaming

30 Tuesday Oct 2007

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Going mad-mad-mad in third-shift land . . .

John, my venerable cop chum who I’ve befriended in my graveyard shift pulled me aside and gave me a hushed warning, told me to call him if there was ANY sign of trouble and I thought to myself, “Cripes!  I’ve been awake for 29 hours…I can’t handle a gang war.”

We’ll get back to that.

First though, and more cheerfully, it’s a scientific fact that hot cider tastes better while listening to ghost stories.  I got to further support this theory on the 20th, at Volo Bog.

Second, I apologize to all my close friends, all the friends I normally see on a normal basis, all my far flung friends that I might visit on occasion, and all you electronic lovelings on the internet—I’m way, way, WAY behind on emails and even further behind on phone calls.  I’m not shunning anyone.  I’m just in a frenzied, bad place and have very few hours.  By way of example…let’s get back to the start of this post…

I’ve been working 40 hours each week, 3rd shift, at 7-11 (the artist formally known as White Hen)—but with the wind chill and demanded extra shifts; it’s more like 50+ hours.  I don’t want to get off on a rant about my job, but I think that if I died and went to Hell, it would be working at a convenience store, and all the clocks would be broken, and my watch would be blank, and I’d keep doing tasks of Sisyphus-level productivity, and occasionally ragged, insane, and damaged lost souls would wander in and jabber incomprehensibilities before leaving and my mind would be too fogged to recall what day it was or when my shift began or when it would end, too fogged to recall just what lay outside the fogged store windows…

Meanwhile, a couple Wednesdays ago, my brother Nick and I went to Chicago for an audition he discovered on Craigslist for the pilot episode of a TV show about vampires.  Brutal traffic, but we make it on time and the we do some readings and it goes well.  The director seems impressed with the both of us.  He’s in a rush to cast the thing and film it over the weekend (it’s more of a pilot teaser to shop around).

Nick, our friend Dori, and I all go and film as badass vampires, a couple of Saturdays ago.  But that Saturday I was told (I was not asked) that I would fill in for someone and work at 7-11.  That meant a 33+ hour workday:  3rd shift Friday night into Saturday morning, straight to the shoot Saturday morning into Saturday evening, straight to another 3rd shift.  I’ve been awake that long before . . . but never actively working straight through it (except for a 40 hour writing stint when I was finishing the White Wolf novel draft, which caused me to go quite mad).  My body didn’t like that.  My mind started giving out.  And to top it all off, John the cop came and informed me (in whispers) that there was a potential gang battle between two gangs from towns on the opposite sides of my town (and I being only thing open in the misty-mid-region between).  This was not the thing I wanted to hear at a point in time, when I thought the cash register was changing the locations of it’s keys on me as part of some prank (and I swear I could hear it laughing Puckishly!).

No gang battle.  John and his comrades shut down a party one of the gangs was throwing (apparently to plan nefarious deeds), and said bangers were sent packing back to their town.  John came back to inform me.  I gave him more free donuts, coffee, and sandwiches.  I got home Sunday morning, saw Nick sleeping, and realized, to my horror, that he had slept twice in the time that I was awake.

Fast forward to Monday the 22nd.  Nick gets call from the vampire director.  Bad news, he lost the footage (computer crash)—could we film again on Wednesday.  Yes.  This meant another long day for me (3rd shift—shoot—3rd shift).  Egads!  I had enough Monster energy drinks to flat-line the Leviathan.

But I survived.

This is just to illustrate why I don’t have much time for socializing.  It’s not you, it’s me and . . . ugh . . . sorry . . . cliché head freeze.

There is one tiny advantage to this burn-out pace—I’ve lost 7 pounds in the last week and a half.  Of course, it’s probably not healthy weight loss.  It’s probably seven pounds of muscle, internal organs, and happiness.

I got to loose this job.

Saturday night, I started yawning.

“No yawning yet,” said the woman I was training.

“I’m not yawning,” I said, “I’m screaming very quietly.”

If you need a way out, just look for a hole, shaped like my silhouette in the wall of the Real World

01 Monday Oct 2007

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Why Can’t Ahab Hunt the White Hen?

Gotta get out of this job.

I wish the White Hen building would sprout giant chicken legs and run away like a Russian fairy tale.

I dislike most every inch of it.  I hate working 50+ hours a week, just to barely make my minimum loan payments.  I hate being at the mercy of every creep and looser that comes out of Island Lake’s cracks in the wee hours (and there are a lot of cracks…oh there are some nice late night misfits, and we can smell our own, but there are plenty of carbon based life forms I could do without on this gig).  Stories of what happened to other night shift people who got robbed at many of the surrounding White Hen’s doesn’t help (I suppose I’m lucky the cops visit mine so regularly).  But even worse than that…I’ve been missing out on a lot lately—had to skip out early on a good friend’s wedding reception—missed the double feature of Psycho and The Birds at the outdoor theater—and tonight is the last meeting of Twilight Tales at The Red Lion Pub…and I’m missing it.



The Red Lion, a building with a lot of ghosts, a lot of memories, built in 1880, and chalked full of creaky, precarious charm, is receiving renovations…but not just renovations…they’re tearing up the whole building and rebuilding it from the ground up.  I know the Red Lion will be back…I know I’ll still get to read at Twilight Tales (they’re temporarily moving to another location)…but I’ll miss the old Red Lion.  I spend enough time in safe, modern buildings…I want to drink rum and beer and read ghost stories in a place that speaks and creaks, under the beer garden tree, over a congress of very large, and by now very literary, rats.

Bah.

Medieval Times
As far as I can tell, the Medieval Times gig did not pan out.  My little sister got a call back over a week ago and will be doing further auditions…but I haven’t heard anything.

Alas…and all that.

However, breath expended to cheer me up would be better spent wishing my little sis luck.

Auxiliary Escape Pods
I’m sure there must be another way to escape this White Hen.  The problem is it sucks up so much of my time…it’s hard to take the time to make the escape—this convenience store is like a nasty, self-fulfilling prophecy…one that sells tasty sandwiches and burnt coffee.

I’m applying, near every day, for various teaching, tutoring, and writing type positions.  Haven’t heard anything back yet.

Hyena In My Throat
White Hen did afford me a moment of amusement.  I was working, per usual, when a couple of college-age guys came in the convenience store.  They made their purchase, looked at me, did a double take, and one of them said:

“Dude.  Dude!  OK.  I’ve got two questions.  First, have you ever seen the movie, Clerks?  And—”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “And I know what the second question is, and yes.”

“Dude!”

I then gave them an abbreviated story of the Halloweens and events that Nick and I went as Jay and Silent Bob—how we won several hundred dollars at a costume contest and how dressing like the duo even got us on stage with Jenna Jameson once upon a time.  They were impressed, thanked me, and took their purchases and were about to leave…when the guy who spoke up originally suddenly stiffened.  I could almost hear the gears turning and saw the light bulb over the head flicker precariously, the wattage far exceeding the fortitude of the filament.  He was in the throes of an epiphany.  He turned around, came back and delivered it unto me…

“Dude, do you not find it ironic that someone who looks like Silent Bob now works as a . . . . clerk?”

Sometimes, despite ourselves, we laugh.  Hard.

Autumn Rituals
I’ve developed a ritual of sorts, over the last two weeks.

By the end of a graveyard shift at the Hen, my back and feet hurt.  A lot.  I’m more of a shower person…but I’ve started soaking in the tub after most shifts.  But with so little spare time…I hate to waste it…I wanted to validate it somehow.  Absorbing stories is enough validation for my time so I started bringing the I-Pod with me.  I soak in lava hot water, turn the lights out, and sit in sense deprivation, in a warm womb of audio fiction via the head-phones.

Mostly, I listen to free podcast horror fiction at Pseudopod.

In the dark of Sunday morning, not feeling like drawing a bath, I felt like something different, to celebrate the coming of my one day off and October (or rather, October’s Eve).  I grabbed my coat and fedora to keep warm, sat in the back yard, and smoked rum-dipped cigarillos, and listened to some of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked this Way Comes (a quintessential October story) and stared into the forest until it stared back…or the sun rose…

I don’t remember which happened first.

Ghost Stories at the Bog
I’ll make another post on this, with more details, tomorrow—but on Saturday, October 13th, there will be professional storytellers telling ghost tales at Volo Bog.  It’s a very fun event.  I’ll likely be going and I’ll likely make reservations come Thursday.  If you want to come, let me know, and I’ll reserve a spot.

Boo

I had a clever metaphor but I clutched it too tightly and it died

20 Thursday Sep 2007

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Real World:  OK Joshua, your education is all done.

Josh:  Really?  Whoohoo!  What do I win?

Real World:  Well, you get $100,000+ of debt and menial work completely unrelated to your degree.

Josh:  But…but the degree is the reason I owe so much.

Real World:  Them’s the breaks kid.

Josh:  Damn…

Real World:  OK.  ‘Nuff talk.  Back in line.

Josh:  It’s so long…where does this one end?

Real World:  Late retirement.

Josh:  Fuck.

Argh!

There are so many stresses and traumas that can completely floor other people (that I’ve observed)…but have little affect on me.  Certain things that cause rage or despair or depression or that eats away at self-esteem and sanity . . . and most of these things roll off me like rain drops.  I am impermeable.

But you take everyday, ordinary banality…and I have no defense, I dry right up into a husk—keel over like the aliens exposed to the common cold at the end of War of the Worlds (and I don’t even get Orson Welles to narrate it . . . well . . . sometimes I do, if I close my eyes and imagine).  All my Quixotic manias dry up and I’m left feeling hollow and useless.  Not even a week into my White Hen job and I feel it.  Broken down…I owe about $1,200 a month in minimum payments . . . and working full time I make…well…pretty much that—nothing left for gas or savings or anything else.  So thoughts of living on my own or getting on with a real career seem pretty distant…maybe when I’m in my late 30’s I can get an apartment…maybe in my 40’s I could date again…

And, running under the gun of monthly payments…I’m not so sure I have the time to do the professional things I want to do, or take the creative-crazy steps to get out of this.  When was the last time I really wrote something?  Ugh…too long.  And to top it all off, with a rancid cherry, I know that plenty of other people have to do the grind (my Dad included) and work hard so I can’t even get the satisfaction of really, really whining about this in a dramatic fashion without feeling selfish and silly.  In fact, I’m only going to allow myself three paragraphs . . . which I’ve pretty much used up.

Ah well…Fall is here and that feels good and I feel that if I could only put on a silly rubber mask and play in a giant pile of leaves I might get back something of my old self.

I miss getting regular, in-depth time with my close friends.  I see people…but on a scattered basis these days.  I want to go running with Torrie every day and hang out and play Mario Cart.  I want to have rehearsals with Rich Funk every weekday.  I want…ok…I was going to make a whole list of all of you and some activity I like doing with all of you…but there are a lot of you and I hope you forgive me if I end here (in the interest of getting to bed…this 3rd shift monkey is tired).  I want to go on an IGA run or a late night outing (minus Central IL cops freaking out and searching me for weapons…but at this point, I’d accept that as the price).

On to happier things.  The MEDIEVAL TIMES AUDITION…a lot of people asked me about it.  It went well…I think.  Hard to tell.  It was very quick…but didn’t feel dismissive.  I was a little nervous (I haven’t had a real audition in a while).  But we’ll see.  I tried out for the King and for the MC positions (the MC being the witty, right-hand man of the king and host of the show). They said they’ll hold call backs next week and those they call will actually get microphone and run the lines in the main space.  I have to say, it was cool to go for an audition/interview in a castle and even cooler to hear, “We’ll do the audition in Hall of Arms.”  Also, my little sis tried out for a princess/maiden role as well.  Good luck…to us 🙂

Oh.  The sun is up.  I have to go hang upside-down in my closet now . . .

in need of swag

15 Saturday Sep 2007

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Just a few quick points:

-I discovered a pile of text messages today.  I can’t answer them.  My phone can receive text messages, but it can’t send them.  I’ll try to reply to those of you who texted me in other ways.

-I received a request, regarding MY LAST POST, to not have other people give me a kenning version of their names, but to myself give people some kenning namings.  Sounds like fun.  If you want a kenning, let me know.  I can’t promise I’ll get to all of them….but then I just might.

-This week I started my new night shift job at White Hen.  You learn a bit about your local community when working at the local convenience store.  The people there are pretty cool and it’s not all that bad . . . but it does make me yearn for a job that actually uses some of the things I incurred so much debt “learning.”  That being said…

-A few days ago I sent in my headshots and resume to Medieval Times as they were looking to fill a number of positions.  I today got a phone message from a guy over there, saying he was looking at my headshots/resume at that moment and wants me to go in on Wednesday to audition for the MC/King.  I’ll start practicing pulling swords from stones right now.  Wish me luck.

-No new word on the novel yet.  My editor, James Lowder, is still waiting for word from White Wolf on the latest iteration of the revised outline…once we get notes back on that, we’ll make final changes and then start working on the next draft…and then the exciting dates and deadlines will start falling.

-Speaking of falling…I’m excited at the change of autumn hitting.  It makes fires in the iron pit in the back yard fun, the rum dipped cigarillos better, and coffee tastier…

-I need a sugar mamma.  Maybe I should put out and ad—gives great back rubs, will travel.

-Barring that, I need a rich patron…whatever happened to the patron system!  Aren’t there eccentric rich folk out there…just a hair more creative than all the vapid heirs and heiresses fluttering about, who’d like to one-up their fellows by getting something a little more interesting than a ANOTHER house or car . . . a court poet…now THAT is power.  I’ll even wear motley.

Jingle-jingle!