March 17, 2002: Get a Real Job

I know I've done my share of shit jobs in the past few years. I've walked through huge factory warehouses with a broom on the end of a fifteen foot pole, sweeping down spider webs. I've crawled under houses to spread out sheets of plastic, for reasons that are still unknown to me. It's been a recurring theme in my life in recent history. I still remember the summer of '99. Working for twelve hours shoveling dirt for the foundation of a house, resulting in back spasms and prescription muscle relaxers that cost more than I made for the job. Hanging sheet rock in a new house, resulting in coughing up chips of sheet rock sawdust for the better part of the next year. And all that to earn my way to bus tickets to Pennsylvania, 40 bucks at a time, to meet an internet chick who didn't think enough of me to, you know, show up. But this isn't a bitter emo article; it's a bitter career one, so that's another rant entirely. It wasn't supposed to be this way, you know. Everything was all laid out in front of me a few years ago. Big fat scholarship for my big fat ass to go to a big fat school, which would someday lead to big fat paychecks.

Todd Pettengill: The Ideal.

Oh, but I had to screw it up somehow. A combination of laziness and burnout from thirteen years of school had me losing my big fat scholarship and transferring to a smaller school, where I basically flunked out and have been stuck in "oh, I'll go back this fall" mode for about two years now. Not that it really matters anyway. Even after thirteen years of school, a year and a half of college, and two years to sit back and wallow in it all, I still have no fucking idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. They tell you to do something that interests you. Do something that makes you happy. Well, aside from watching wrestling and playing video games, there ain't a whole lot that's interested me lately. And that's not half as disturbing as the sudden realization that Todd Pettengill once embodied my ideal. But that's another rant entirely. It's kinda sad, really. After defending capitalism so much on this goddamn site lately, it continues to kick me in the face and call me a bitch. You ungrateful swine. I tell people that in our society, anyone has the ability to succeed, as long as they take all the opportunities they find. And here I am, too dumb to take my own advice, stuck in the same "oh shit, my future is uncertain, what am I gonna do" position that makes Communism so appealing to all those other dopey kids.

You get a little older, your bones are frail and weak Dizzy in the morning, your pulse is sounding weak You hate to go to work, just living for a job Wake up and smell the coffee, and get a real job

"The future." Damn, those two words scare the shit out of me lately. Am I going to be doing the things I do now twenty years from today? Is my future based around killing insects and stacking boxes of fruit? Am I going to have to be doing the same thankless jobs for the same non-salary for the rest of my life? Am I going to have to keep answering the same stupid questions? Like when people ask me the PLU code numbers for the bananas,

The back cover of Sacred Reich's The American Way, featuring an artist's rendition of me spraying someone's backyard.

when there's a sticker with "4011" right on the damn things, or when people ask me what kind of chemicals I'm spraying in their homes, when they know in advance that they'll have no idea what I'm talking about? (I generally ease their fears, by telling them that the indoor stuff has the same basic pesticide as dog shampoo. I choose not to tell them that the outdoor chemical is an organophosphate, which is the same family of chemicals that provides the tangy zip of sarin gas.) Some people have told me that I could probably be a writer. I'm sure there's a huge market for authors who name-drop professional wrestlers every third sentence, and tag on a "but that's another rant entirely" in every fourth. Seriously though, I have always been pretty good at writing, but I don't think I'd be able to write in a way that would keep me from starving to death. I'm much more likely to write a rant about why I hate Linkin Park for a website no one will ever see than to write the Great American Novel. Speaking of name-dropping wrestlers, other people have also told me to try "following the boyhood dream" and actually becoming a pro wrestler. Eh, it ain't gonna happen. Until I lose 100 pounds and magically cure my bad back, or until the low-impact, high psychology style of Harley Race comes back into style, the best I could hope for would be twenty years of twenty-dollar payoffs and bleeding in front of less people than were at the last Laaz Rockit record release party, then only to "retire," which would mean spraying bugs and stacking fruit, but doing it while I was fifty. Clearly not an option.

Soon you will retire, or maybe have a stroke You cannot feel your fingertips, because some veins have closed But still you drive a hack, or push a hot dog cart, and now it's too late for you to get a real job.

Continuing to work shit jobs until I'm in my seventies is not the way I envision my future. I've always watched the old men walking around in dirty coveralls from doing some sort of back-breaking work, and I always knew that I wouldn't end up like that. Yet here I am, all primed and ready to be digging ditches until I'm lucky enough to have a massive coronary. All I know is that I have to figure something out soon. Just about everybody else that I went to school with are out of college, and some are married and buying houses. They're already well on their way. And here I am, still basically in the same place I was four years ago. The worst part is knowing that it's all my fault. (Although I must mention that the career aptitude tests they gave us in high school told me that I was best suited to be a well-puller. Gee, that's going to make me rush off ace every college exam.) I've screwed up somewhere, and now I've got to figure out how to fix it. Until then, any wealthy widows (preferably attractive, but I'm flexible) looking for a cabana boy or employers offering high paying, easy jobs that require no real job skills can email me. Wish me luck.

*For those of you not True™ enough to know, the quotes are from the song "Get a Real Job" by M.O.D.

2006 Refections: Today, I'm 25, and I work at Wal-Mart. FUCK.