Yesterday was the most surreal day at work I have ever experienced.
The day was moving along as usual until the afternoon. I had been subbing for one of the ladies in the vault and when I came out I went back to my usual work area where we unpack new shipments. Two guys were in there working and I noticed that they were being ususually quiet. I asked what was going on and one of them said "I'm about to go see the grim reaper" What? "I just got a call that said to come down to the conference room in HR in 15 min." Stunned, I said said good luck or something and then went upstairs to take my afternoon break. I spent the whole time thinking about what might be happening. It made sense, work has slowed down to a crawl, its friday afternoon, and, even though this has never happened before at this company there is a first time for everything. When I came back downstairs I saw someone from shipping in the hallway I said hey how's it going and he said "it looks like I'm going home" I asked if he got let out early and he said no, he's going for good. That's when I noticed the HR person hovering nearby. So, not completely surprised but certainly unprepared I just mumbled something and walked into my area.
As soon as I rounded the corner I could see pandemonium. Some of the ladies were crying, or huddling together, there were managers and HR people all over. the guy i talked to earlier was cleaning out his desk while the manager looked on and I wondered who else got the axe. I walked over to josh and we looked on in stunned silence trying to absorb what was going on. We didn't know who or how many people got laid off and there was nothing like a general announcement so we just waited to see what was going to happen next. Eventually we got the full story from our manager about all the people around the building who were gone. The atmosphere was tense and fearful. Eveyone was looking down at the ground or crying. Work came to a grinding halt as we all sat stock still frozen in shock. After all the all the desks were cleaned out we stood around and stared at each other. Some of these people had been working together for over 20 years. These ladies loved and hated each other but they definitely tried to develop a strong community. and, now, out of nowhere, that community had been sliced apart and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I felt like someone had just died. I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.
I kept my job but who knows for how long? If there is a round two will I survive that too? I think I would because I have a strong work record and I'm at the bottom of the pay scale. but, really, who knows? Time to come up with a plan B just in case. And, maybe, a place C, D, and E.
They said this would never happen. They said the company had weathered many a recession and never laid anyone off. We believed them. We had to. But now that useful gullibility is gone. Things are changing and not for the better. One of the great things about this job was the stability it provided. The belief that, no matter what, you still have this job. No matter how boring or pointless it may seem you will still have that income. Now that stability is gone and I think we might all feel a little bit betrayed by our employer. Yesterday was the shock. Now comes the fallout.
next week is going to be hell.

Hey kids,
Woo hoo, party!!! yowza its cold out there huh? I've a been freezing my tookas off. Tookas? Anyway, you're friend John is very caffeinated and happy right now. He has a date with a lady friend tonight and he is looking forward to it with mucho gusto! Anywhose. What I really want to talk about is the following:
what it means to be a skeptic.
I swear that word has such a misleading connotation. You only ever hear of people being skeptical when they doubt something. Washington is skeptical of the claims made by the big three auto makers or Skeptics of scientology point out that it is total bullshit, etc. The impression that is given is that being skeptical of something means that you doubt it or don't believe it. Well that is often the case but there is a positive side of skepticism too. Skeptics believe things just like ordinary people do to. We just don't take leaps of faith. We don't jump right into any belief but, rather, search out facts and use them to construct a worldview that is reasonable. The evidence comes first and the belief that arises later is a logical product of the facts. This means that as we mature personally and as we ( the human race we) learn more that we can update and expand our beliefs. Skepticism is a way to continue the growing and learning process. I probably can't point to any belief I have that I am 100% certain of and would be willing to die or kill for. There is some uncertainty but I am comfortable with the fact that I don't have the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything because the answers we do have are pretty cool. What is the point of trying to base your personal life on ancient wisdom? Who in the first century ever would have thought of the internet, black holes, DNA, or classic Coke? We can use modern and even contemporary wisdom to guide and shape our beliefs. There's no need to try and retrofit bronze age morality onto a modern mind. I mean, its an interesting thought experiment. Something to toss around in a philosoph classroom but the fact that millions of people take it so seriously and that is manifested in powerful institutions is just insane. They believe because of faith. We believe because of facts. This means that our beliefs aren't as comforting and epic and eternal. We don't get God the creator, comforter, and provider of the eternal party. Nope, just the four score and seven and then you fall asleep one last time. I mean, probably but who knows right? Sound Nihilistic? I don't think so. It just point to the fact that life is short and precious. If there is anything that needs to be done in the world you have to do it. Injustice in the world? Do something about it because noone is going to balance the scales in the afterlife. Do you notice how corrupt and insane this world can get? Do something. I know several people who literally have given up hope for the world and are waiting for Jesus to come back and fix everything. That is what they believe. I want no part of such a depressing worldview. So get on board the skeptical band wagon kids! We don't have magic or any crazy afterlife parties but we do have some pretty good conversations at the bar!

I'm sitting here in my cataloging class and I don't know why. I've skipped the last three weeks and now we're meeting in a computer lab for some reason. I have been sittin here fro about 45 min. with no clue what site I'm supposed to be at or what the point of tonights lessonis supposed to be. I know that I'm weeks behind and I know that I've been drinking jack daniels from my travel mug incognito for the last two hours. I've been traversing the retarded and underfunded MTA system in a foolish attempt to get to class on time. I failed at that project. But I'm hoping that my presence here tonight will have some positive effect. I hope I pass this class. I don't know what is supposed to happen tonight but I hope that my trip out here hasn't been a total waste of time. It is frickin freezing outside and I would have preffered to stay at home. DAMNIT! On the plus side I managed to break up for real and final with Catherine last thursday giving me the closure I so desperately sought and giving me the kind of clear consicence neccesary to meet a new person. Which I did on friday night with a Biology grad student from Cornell. We spent friday night together, then the day after, then the next night, and, finally sunday morning as well. Good weekend all around. Why and how did this happen? Is it my mad pimping skills? Possibly but I doubt it. More likely is that I got lucky. I'm happy to just ride this out for know. Fingers crossed that I see her again! John C

sup yall?
yes indeedy I can't sleep right now. So what to do? Read NYTimes online for the gazillionth time, troll the intertubes, and now I'll write a blog. Blarg it is freakin nasty weather out there right now. It was cold and drizzly and windy and overcast ALL DAY. Im sure cases of depression are just bound to go through the roof. My room was freezing and I thought the land lord was never going to turn the heat on so I've been going to bed wearing full clothes and my stocking hat only to wake up about 3am almost sweating and feeling the heat from the radiator. At least that cheap ass turned it on. I thought they were just going to keep it above freezing in here so the pipes didn't break. What? call 311? yes, well, I'd love to but we have no contract and are just waiting for this guy to get his act together and offer us one all the while hoping that he doesn't just tell us to leave in 30 days in which case we would just have to with barely any rights at all. Is this a good strategy? you might say, to which I would reply "Go fuck yourself, I can't think of anything better to do right now" If we have to find a new place then so be it but I'm not going to go looking again unless I have to. I'm sick of moving. Without exagerration, in the last 17 months I have moved Five hundred and eleven times. That's true. And I'm sick of it. I'm not doing it again until I am forced to by circumstances beyond my control. There it is.
On the plus side....
Halloween is going to be awesome baby! I got an old sport jacket that is about three sizes too small and ripped the hell out of it with a knife on saturday so that when I put it on it looks like I just crawled out of a grave or something. I got my green foundation makeup at the halloween store on Broadway and my lady friend, Catherine, has got her whole Sara Palin blazer outfit complete with toy gun and shopping bag. We're heading down to the gaudy drunken craziness of the parade in the village on friday. going to meet up with some of Amy's friends at a bar first, then hit the streets, and, if there is time, end up at a few parties at my roomates friends' houses. Expect pictures. Im sure I'll have a lot of keepers.
G'night Everyone I hope you aren't awake like I am,
John C

So had a date on sunday.
We met up at the 5th avenue apple store just before noon. I originaly wanted to walk around Central park but it was pretty overcast and I was feeling skeptical. Catherine showed up right on time wearing sneakers and a track jacket. She was ready for some walking. I caught her eye right as she walked up to the steps. I was sitting outside in the courtyard. As I walked up to her I noticed her making some gesture of greeting. Is she going for a hug or a handshake? Whatever it was I waited a little too long to decide and it ended up with an awkward handshake. Luckily we both ignored this and never spoke of it again.
We did some serious walking. We walked more or less north up through the trails of Central Park for a few hours until we both got hungry and got some lunch. We went to a restraunt in the upper east side. I knew it was a pricey area but this place was a diner, nothing fancy on the menu how bad could it be? Pretty bad it turns out. How does anyone afford to live there? So we had been talking non-stop about everything under the sun this whole time. Politics, science, small talk, Britney spears, you name it. This was only the second time I had every talked to her. The first was two days previous at the NYC Tall people meetup so I really didn't know much about her at all. It slowly began to dawn on me that this girl is smart. Eerily smart. No matter what the subject of conversation turned to she seemed to know a lot about it. And not in that opinionated know it all superior kind of way, she was just interested. This was so great. After throwing out the general knowledge topics that anyone can talk about I started getting more specific. Steering the reigns into skepticism, science news, and so on. She knew about almost all of it and just from general knowledge. She wasn't part of a skeptical community or anything. I began to wonder if there was anything I could tell her she didn't already know. At the same time she was telling me all about these behind the scenes political stories that were jaw dropping. Not conspiracy theories about 9/11 but more of the Kennedy family or political dynasties in this country or hundreds of years ago in russia. So after lunch we went back to the central park and walked and walked. And walked. Good Lord we walked a lot. I remembered a scenic location on the North end where i used to go and read when I lived at the hostel and had no money. It was a beautiful spot with those Giant rock slabs justting out of the ground, you could sit on top of them and get a great view of the northern lake/pond. We stayed there for hours talking and enjoying the sun that had recently decided to make an appearance. It was beautiful for the rest of the day. And as the hours ticked by neither of us made any mention of needing to be somewhere else. It just continued and, eventually it was time for dinner. As night fell everything in the city became a romantic backdrop. We walked back through the park in search of a place to eat and saw the horses and carriages, the picture perfect spots with bridges or steps or statues or landscaping. It felt like I was in a movie. Like someone with talent had put this scene together to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible. We had a great dinner and some more walking around. Eventually she had to leave. We made plans to go out again.
After she drove away ( she has a car nice!) I looked at the time. It was 9pm.

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Hey folks,
I don't know about you but I find that it is hard to figure out exactly what the differences are between the presidential candidates. Most of the stories get stuck on personal interest stuff like the lip stick thing and then I forget what their specific platform was supposed to be. I mean other than the broad strokes. Obviously change or experience is going to be the slogan but, hey, they both are talking alternative energy, bringing troops out of iraq when practical, stimulus packages, what the hell? I think it is high time to vette the candidates on our own. You can check the voting history of every presidential candidate here: http://www.votesmart.org/election_president.php?dist=bio.php
Is Ralph Nader still in this thing? That crazy little fucker.
John C

I've been wanting to write this one for awhile.
You know how when you are at work and everything is going along quite fast. You're in the zone and thinking 12 steps ahead, your mind is racing, you feel productive and useful. It is great. Then, even if the work slows down, you're still in that state of mind. You get all the cleaning done now. You check under the counter, reorganize the paperclips, and windex whatever you can find. Right? Now think about the oppositte of that. When work is slow and has been that way for days. You see there is one job to do, it will take 5 min., and then you'll be back to doing nothing so it's a tease anyway. So you just sit there. After awhile even the internet is boring. What do you do? Time slows down to a crawl and now you look up and notice that a few things have piled up but you just don't have the energy to do it. You start procrastinating things for no reason other than the inertia of your own lazyiness. I fight this battle all the time espescially when I'm at home. Sometimes I get home from work, find there is nothing to do and begin to slip into that lazy-bored state of mind where I can't even summon the will to make a glass of water. Other times I get home and feel overwhelmed so I procrastinate. Either way I find myself going down the spiral of lazy-procrastinate-bored-lazy etc. until I wake up on monday morning to discover that I have gone a whole weekend and I am sleep deprived, have no food, no clean clothes, my room is messy, and I still haven't cleaned up my dishes. Some weekends I am able to do better. Some times I will wake up late on saturday morning, drink my pot'o coffee, read my book and feel ready for action. Though procrastination had created a backlog of chores my over-caffeinated self feels energetic and optimistic about being productive. Other times I don't get that emotional push and I have to do it another way. Some saturday mornings I wake up and I am grey. Whatever I did the night before just got the best of me and no matter how much coffee I drink I'm not getting out of the fog. These mornings are spent shuffling from room to room, seat to seat half-heartedly taking in my surroundings trying and failing to become interested in anything. This is the boredom trap. Because in this state of mind any chore I can think becomes a target for procrastination automatically. I can't even play video games because they require too much attention. But then I may wander into my jacked up room and move the bag of tortilla chips into the trash. A simple move but it sets a standard. Then I go back in my room and move the block of cheese that should have been in the fridge hours ago into the fridge. From there I notice piles of trash on the floor and move them into the trash can as well. Slowly but surely, I move from big objects to small, on the counter, the floor, the bed, and so on and I find that I have cleaned my room. Now I am in a feeling useful and productive and I notice a bunch of dishes in the sink. I do those. Then I notice the floors. Scrub scrub scrub! hey, what about the bathroom, that draino isn't going to pour itself! Glob glob glob! Now we can wash our hands in the bathroom sink! Isn't it great to feel productive!
I have been horribly horribly unproductive the last few weekends. for whatever reason I just never got to that mental tipping point where I could start with the cleaning. But that has been changing. Tonight has been one of the most productive nights of 2008. In fact I'm putting off sleep to write this blog! Although there is some utility to getting down your thoughts before trying to fall asleep. It seems to clear them out of my head for a bit so I can actually fall asleep. Well that's all for now.
Guten tag,
Johann

Ahhh,
I just had a nice wholesome sunday afternoon biking in the park. I was planning on biking somewhere today so when my roommatte invited me along for a bike ride down to the park with his friend, Richard, I said yes. Ryan's friend lived in Greenpoint which is a kind of industrial/residential area filled with artists and hipsters. We got to Richard's place and stored our bikes at the base of the stairs. He had a huge loft apartment with big windows and white walls. there were 4 bedrooms off the main room. Although bedroom 4 was really just a wooden ladder up to a cubby hole that a small sized person could sleep in. they had made a little oasis of plants and patio chairs on top of a square of astro turf just outside on the roof. You could climb down to it from one of the windows. It was what I had always imagined a new york apartment would be. So then we hit the streets with our bikes. Our destination was prospect park. I had to follow Richard around as he knew the way and he led us through a maze of side streets and busy main streets. We went on to bike paths and off on to the side walk. He went through traffic lights and kept up a pace that was just killing me. Up hills, down, watch out for car doors, watch out for pedestrians, watch out for cars, watch out for other bikers. bikers are the worst! We all go too fast and we never stop for traffic lights. We finally get to prospect park and lock up our bikes. by this point I was just out of breath and my nerves were shot. We spent the next few hours just walking around the scenic areas of the park. There is a section of prospect park that is all woodland area with crisscrossing trails and we meandered through it. Later we met up with Richards boyfriend who had brough his cat out to the park. A little later Ryan and I biked home the short way. Apparently Richard had brought us down the scenic way because there were some brown stones he wanted to show us. By the time I got home I was done. I was so exhausted and feeble minded that I layed back on the couch and watched a football game. No offense football fans, but the only time I've been able to find the sport interesting is while my brain is impaired. Later I watched some pentecostal woman SCREAMING into the mike on brooklyn access TV. She must have been reciting some part of the bible I could only make out a few bits of recognizable english " lean not on your on understanding" I think it was. I thought she was speaking in tongues before I recognized that tidbit. But, no, she was screaming so loud into the mike that she was losing her voice and you could hear the raspy inhale of breath after every word. THE LORD, eugggghhhhhh, I said the LORD, EAUGHHFG:DAHDSAHFHHH!!!, etc.. Shortly after that I said it was time for a nap and I conked out for a few hours. Now I'm awake but I'll try to go to sleep soon.
G'day mates!
John C

Greetings friends,
Sorry I've taken so long to post this stuff. I got a haircut last saturday and I know some of you have been eager to see the new me. So here I am so fresh and so clean, clean:



Josh has been pestering me to clean up my look for a while now so I thought I would just go all out. Nothing half assed here. I've had long hair for about five years now and I have to say the change has been an adjustment. Like amputees who often get phantom tingles from non-existent limbs I can sense the absence of something I feel should be there. Sometimes I reach back to adjust my pony tail only to realize I don't have it anymore. I like the new look and I've been getting a flood of compliments about it. The ladies at work were absolutely stunned when I walked in tuesday morning. They were all lined up in front of the vault waiting for the carts to come out as usual. I walked up and got a few blank stares from everyone as they registered who this person was. A few seconds later I got a bunch of exclamations of surprise and then they actually started clapping. I got a standing ovation. Since then the last few days at work have been filled with people all over the building doing double takes and complimenting on my haircut. I have never recieved so many compliments about my appearance in such a short amount of time.
I think Josh was right.
Thanks, buddy.
G'night ya'll,
John C