PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The third day of my ‘real estate promotion guy’ job at the Southland complex. It’s been copied verbatim and has not been altered in any way, hence the grammatical mistakes and poor expression. Each number corresponds to a page in the A4 note book I used to write all this rubbish in.





Sat 26/06/2004



1.



9:18am  Note to self: Never again plunge into the depths of a poetry site until you’ve tested the waters and made sure it actually IS a poetry site, and that its owner isn’t some sex-deprived psycho with no sense of humour!

Gotta say… I feel relieved actually. Four months of that place is enough for anybody. It was too crowded with illiterate rednecks kissing each other’s arses anyway. C****** poems my ass! It should be renamed cliché-poems.com, and instead of the “come share your creativity” statement, it should read “come share your self-pity in poorly expressed and misspelled, tiresome, cliché poetry!” D***** O****** - a sad, sad excuse of a human being. He apparently had a weight problem and managed to lose most of his excess flab, but this did nothing to improve his love life. He just doesn’t understand – he has no personality. Women don’t fall for good looks, like men do, they fall for impressionable characters; though good looks don’t hurt, but they’re not essential. And if you don’t have a sense of humour, you may as well go lock yourself up in some Hungarian monastery and become a eunuch!

I learned a lot about what women ‘want’ during my brief stint of online dating. The “I want a guy that can make me laugh” theme seems to be the one universal thing they all have in common. D***** couldn’t make a hyperactive teenager, drunk and high on acid, laugh, little less a bored woman. Having said this, I found this theme a bit depressing as all these women profiles seemed to be longing for a certain somebody to alleviate their own responsibility of self-amusement. In my own profile I wrote something like: You all say the guy “must have a sense of humour” yet you leave no indication of having one yourselves. If you can’t create amusement by and for yourself, or enjoy and feel comfortable spending time alone, then I probably won’t click with you.



2.



9:44am  Ugh… another shift following a night of vodka and four hours sleep.

Polished off ¾ of that 700ml bottle of ‘clarity’ potion I picked up after work last night, chatting with C***** for the greater part of the evening, after burying my ‘c*******-p****’ existence.

What drove D***** to create the site in the first place? He doesn’t even know what poetry is! The only poetry he’s ever read, I suspect, are mushy Hallmark rhyming verses on birthday cards, given to him by obliged relatives. People with no sense of humour tend to attract these types of greeting cards, as relatives will always opt for the insurance of sentiment, rather than risk upsetting their ‘tender’ souls. Fuck that shit! I’ll always buy a witty Larson card, and if they can’t take it then “they” will probably soon fall out of my orbit anyway.

My favourite card I gave to my little sis on one of her birthdays – a Larson cartoon with two happy and enthusiastic dogs watching their owner open a can of dog food, the caption reading: “Oh boy! Dog food… Again!”



This is my first weekend shift. Should at least provide a large variety of shopping crowds. It’s only 9:59am, but the place is already fairly busy. Not that I’m counting on improving my 3-person haul of my previous two shifts.



I’m so fucking tired. I’ve now accumulated 12 hours of sleep over the past five days. I MUST go to bed early tonight, or risk developing eird and incurable psychosis. My eyes are so heavy… think I’ll have to pop my last two dexters now. Was gonna try and hold off until noon, but fuck it.



3.



10:07am Hmm… I think



10:11am  Wow! New record! Hirst daily interest!



Perhaps I won’t put the headphones on after all… might have a ‘busy’ day. :op



“Do you know where…



10:19am Shit! Another one… well I shoulda guessed. The weekend is when those who work, and actually might have some spare funds to invest, go shopping.



Still haven’t eaten breakfast… didn’t think my vodka-lined intestines would handle it too well this early… the dexters will help kill the hunger pains… will just hold off until lunch, whenever I decide to take it.



10:44am  Three people already and it’s not even 11am. K**** will surely be happy. Though I’m sick of deciphering peoples ineligible handwriting.

Back to Coupland…



10:52  Page 112, 2nd last paragraph, in my Scribner edition of “Shampoo Planet”, the word ‘new’ has been erroneously printed, in lieu of its intended word ‘knew’. I wonder if the publishers are aware of this? Perhaps if I write to them they’ll sack their copywriter and employ me instead? :op



11:44am  Five names already and it’s not even noon. Was even proposed a “business opportunity” by some woman who said she and her husband have their own internet retail company and are always on the look-out for “sharp” people.

Me? Sharp? Must be the slicked-back hair – gives off a pseudo-sales guru aura.



4.



12:43pm  Nine people already, one minute before I got my FIRST name, the same time, on Wednesday. If this trend continues I’ll have 20 names at the end of the day… fuck! I’ll have a monster report to type up, considering I’ve yet to do one for yesterday and Wednesday. Oh well… suppose I gotta do some work for the money they’re paying me. Still, can’t wait to fly off to Nigeria for some REAL work. This gig, and that train station one, are both just occupations that test your tolerance of time-trading your freedom for cash. At least when you build telephone exchanges you are actually creating/producing something. I’ve always needed that aspect in employment; to feel like I’ve accomplished something, upon reflection on that which I created. You don’t get that from middle-man work. I’ve always loathed middle-man work and believed that the world could survive just fine without them, if not be an altogether better place.



16:35pm  Enough reading… I haven’t put the headphones on once today… perhaps this is why I got so much interest? I was thoroughly engrossed in my copy of “Shampoo Planet” however. Must test these theories out tomorrow by switching the equation around, spend all day listening to music and writing.

Nah… I can’t stop reading now that I’m almost finished. Four days of solid Coupland consumption. Was very close to buying “Hey Nostradamus!” today on my lunch break, but the cheapest paperback version I could find was $22.95. too much for a bum like me, who’s only got $25 to live on until Wednesday. But I was panic struck by the possibility of running out of fresh literature, so I had to buy something. Scavenging the $4.99 bargain bin, I found a copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Lullaby”, and although I’ve never read his stuff before, my decision to grab it rested purely on the thoroughly enjoying experience I had watching “Fight Club”. A man who concocts such plots mustn’t be all that bad to take a punt on.