What A Good Company Does

Chapter 12.

Convincing People

Damn electricity. I forget every year how often it goes in the summer months. And for how long. And also how UNEXPECTEDLY when you're down to the final part of AMERICA's NEXT TOP MODEL and JANE bites the bullet but you don't get to see her cry like a little bitch (which is pretty much the only reason I like watching the show) because KESC has stopped doing its job again. I've got something called a UPS at home. It's supposed to keep providing electricity for a few hours in the event of a power outage (something that's as strange an occurance to the Americans as a kind government employee is to Pakistani's) and it should be able to supply your ass with a fan and perhaps some lights and a little t.v for the duration of the blackout. The problem is, it doesn't. This device is a box about the size of a car battery, containing about the same amount of reserved power as well. It has wires coming out of it that would dupe a damn professional, and a big button saying ON for the dummies that will be using it considering any smart person would'nt invest in one of these to begin with.

So I'm trying for a radio job, right? I haven't even reached the office before this starts seeming like a BAAAADD idea. It was over 200 degrees that day. In the SHADE. I saw a man get out of the car and he screamed from the heat before exploding into millions of pieces. Not that I sat and counted. The interview went alright. I walked out with five little tasks. To be completed by 48 HOURS! I'm not even working there and already they've got me worried about deadlines. That's what a good company does, they tell me. It makes you want to go back to college and rethink your pointless existence.

But fuck that. I'm going into comics. See I've been drawing a daily comic strip concept for a while now. Nothing super, just something I do more for myself than anything else really. But atleast I enjoy it. I'm gonna look into how to contact the newspaper heads and see what the market is for something like that. All of this stuff makes me think about the past you know. The one none of us has seen. Not YET anyway. And how it must have been so easy to exist in a world where your entire community only had like 2000 people in it. Makes me wonder how the cartoonists back then would have had it so much easier convincing people they're special since there was probably next to zero competition around. Of course, that comes at the price of a next to nothing MARKET for cartoons....seeing as paper wasn't readily available and neither was the concept of money.

OR ink.

I'm going. I haven't saved this draft and I don't want to lose it all. Not to mention wanting to watch tv where that Melrose chick has just won YET another round of AMERICAS NEXT TOP MODEL and that chubby Anchal might get the boot, being told she's not showing how badly she wants it, whereas we all know its because she's part Indian and Tyra Banks thinks it's part of their custom to eat black people.

No Better Research

Chapter 11.

At The Foot

I've been downloading a lot of stand up recently. You know, no better reasearch than entertainment. Not the healthiest attitude since by the age of 12 my dad saw no problems in letting us (my brother and I) see films like PREDATOR, which is where I first learnt the word MUNDER FUCKER. You do not want to know where I learnt that (a.) It's MOTHER not MUNDER and (b.) it's not a very nice word to say to your teacher. There, in that cold dank smelling principal's office infested with roaches in it's corners and a metal cupboard which goes clang in the night, when something hits against it obviously, I found myself in an uncomfortable mood when I realised I wasn't here to get happy face stamps or a golden star pasted into my workbook. I think one of the first times in life we ever start succumbing to the will of the system is the follow up to a teacher's "Good morning students" phrase that we are taught. Everyone stands up, and in a chorus line most professional, sings back the words "Good moooorrrnning aauuunnnttttyyyyyy." I'm still not aware of the actual TIME when they changed this word to TEACHER...OR of the conversation that took place among the staff which led to its changing, but I'm sure someone's age was a sensitive and important factor. We wore shorts back in grade school. Blue shorts. Dark blue, but that didn't make it any cooler. There was a time when a COOL kid's awesomely rebellious behaviour was justified when he came to school wearing grey pants. Which was of course the uniform we all had to wait to get to class 7 for. If you ever studied at Beaconhouse Public, you'd know this was pretty much the most motivating factor driving male kids to study harder and pass into the next grade. Grey pants. I was a fat and very unusual kid. It's not like I'm trying to sound unique, we're all wierd in our own little way, but it's just bothering sometimes when you step into a room with 5 people and two of them agree some new kid is wierd, and THREE of them agree some new girl just transferred is weird, but ALL of them agree that YOU'RE weird. I found most of my free time went in entertaining friends with hand shadow stories involving disturbingly horny dogs and their antics, since it was the easiest hand shadow to make, and eventually barking just isn't doing it for you. So there's always an easy way out isn't there? Some people learn how to make 300 different things in origami...some learn one hand shadow, but invent new ways to keep it interesting to the nearby 14 year olds. I remember cricket as a child. Watching it and feeling tired I mean. I never played much cricket. Got in the way of eating. Something about playing sports when you're not going to make a profession out of it seems like a whole lot work for pretty much nothing to me. I like results. And fast. I heard a performance on audio by comedian Dane Cook. He had this bit where he talked about how even when people rear end you in traffic, it's always YOUR fault somehow. I think I remember something like that being ripped off here. I despise unoriginality. It's the reason I'm so particular about anything I throw out there, which adds to the amount of time I take in doing anything in life. It creates a sense of identity when you work hard on your own thoughts. People should start doing that more often in this country. You know, NOT rip things off from lesser known Western entertainment in the hopes that someone won't RESEARCH their way into some of the deepest darkest secrets most Pakistani television shows today are founded on.

It's a reality. I saw a man the other day, at the foot of my apartment building while I was passing by to my place. He was looking at the way the entire area had been dug up to fix the drainage lines in the area. There were so many plastic bags. He seemed like someone who would greet the ban on polythen bags with open arms...only...he didn't have any. He was a beggar. And he only loved his country too much to be able to smile at the noise.

I'm going to go write. Nothing good coming out here.

Nothing funny.