attempting to pee while chained to four other men is a little strange. ultimately, i was only able to do so because there was a tv playing bulletproof monk and it distracted me just enough to get things flowing.
i think PHASE III: Go on an Adventure is similar to that. if you don't take your mind off your problems, they're just not going to get solved. the more i thought about peeing the less capable i became, and it wasn't until i stopped thinking about urine and started thinking about chow yun-fat that i was able to get things a-going.
so the adventure was meant to relax my mind and prevent me from worrying too much about finances in hopes that i could start peeing again.
...i've never been so great with analogies.
i figured i had planted enough seeds that i could take one or two days away from it all and go on an epic walk. there were museum tickets waiting for bites, and travis had recently discovered a 19" hdtv while cleaning his room-- which he gave me to sell.
anyway, i walked out to park life on clement street because it's one of the furthest interesting places i know of and because if i wasn't going to make any money i figured i could at least say, "i walked seven miles today." and all the non-smokers who hadn't walked at all could shut their nice-smelling mouths.
though secretly i was hoping to find some cash on the ground while walking.
i didn't. instead, i found a brass clam, one lego, two pennies, a pair of eyeglasses and a small fijian flag keychain.
but it was worth it anyway, i suppose.
and then when i got back home and skimmed emails, i found a man asking me to deliver the hdtv to his apartment. he was willing to pay an additional $8 if i agreed and i didn't have much choice. the great part was that his apartment was at 7th avenue and clement street-- or just two blocks from where i just was.
of course the $83 being offered convinced me to stop complaining about the awful poeticism of the event and to get on the 1 california. plus, travis was trying to pick up a new printer on 7th avenue and balboa before going to jam on 10th avenue. so we made a date out of it.
travis paid for my muni fare with the promise that i would carry the printer back home so he could meet with his band and jam rather than circling about on the bus for two hours. and somewhere in there i found $5 on the ground.
a small part of my mind felt as though it had pulled that five out of the loopholes in our universe-- like i'd been thinking about finding money on the ground so hard that money just appeared in my reality. but that could've just been the part of my brain exhausted from so little food and so much walking.
still, something about the five made me feel as though the lords of chaos were rooting for me-- though, technically, chaos roots for no one which is part of what defines it.
and when i got home the second time, i realized that chaos was most definitely not rooting for me and was again rooting for the only thing it knew how to root for: itself; chaos.
in this episode, president wishnack's haphazard plans fail miserably!
two things happened:
good times.
i was once told that any good story presents the main character as both the hero and the hapless fumbler. my problem is that i'm mostly the fumbler.
on the bright side, it's helpful that the guy backed out of his purchase because otherwise i'd still have to explain that my pockets had failed me and the tickets were likely in the hands of a homeless man with little to no respect for art.
so while i'd gained $83 for the hdtv and $5 from the ground, i lost quite a bit more. this is much worse than the slug climbing three inches up the wall for every one he slips down-- this is like the wall straight up lighting itself on fire and laughing at the crackling slug.
had everything gone swimmingly, i should've been at about $570. but instead, the mixture of eating, losing tickets, and riding the bus one too many times left me at $403 and no incoming dollars.
i think in movies, this is called the abyss. it's when the leading actor has begun to tackle his initial conflict and seems to be doing almost too fantastically-- it's when luke wilson and will ferrell manage to ace their test and the frat house gets to stay. but then, oh then, comes the brilliantly timed failure: they find out that their deceased friend, blue, was listed on their roster and his failing the test (given he was dead and did not take the test) has lowered their overall percentage and their frat will be discontinued anyway.
that's the abyss. the moment in which all the plans fail and new ones need to happen quickly because there's only about twenty minutes left in the movie.i probably could've picked a better example than old school-- it happens in every movie-- it's when the grandpa dies/kid is colorblind/dad fails his 9 steps to success/steve carrell sees his ex-boyfriend in little miss sunshine. they had a pretty rough abyss.
the point is, i'm there. i have no museum tickets to sell, and have not heard back from the camera store. at this stage i would say it's safe to assume someone more charming and camera savvy has nabbed the spot i was after.
i did go in for a new interview recently, to see if i could be a brand ambassador at macworld again. it seemed to go well considering the interviewer told me, "i feel like i should give you a hug right now" rather than trying to shake my extended hand. but i also felt like the camera store interview went well, so who really knows?
if i get the macworld gig, i can be sure of $300 more before february-- but that still leaves me a hundredish shy of my mandatory goal.
i was also invited to model for a photo shoot which involves a sixteen year-old equestrian, a horse, and walking a four-hour trail. according to the email, "it is very important that you realize the trail is Very Muddy and Nasty. And the mud will come up to your ankles for most of it. Also when you're walking you are obviously more likely to get stepped on or run over by the horse."
and, you know, i may just be desperate enough for cash to risk being trampled by a horse.
last night, things reached a new level: i dreamt about my money problems. it's never good when your worries manage to infiltrate your subconscious. in my dream, i was stealing puppies and kittens from unsuspecting san franciscans and waiting for them to post "reward for lost fluffy" signs so that i could make my remaining dollars.
dream-me is always such a dick.
i guess the important part of that dream is that i full-well know i can make money if i drop my morals and just screw over enough strangers. but that's not something i'm interested in doing-- no matter how much news coverage it would wind up getting.
it also made me realize that if comic books were real, super-villains would likely be the journalists and not superheroes. i've never understood why peter parker wasted his time photographing himself when j. j. jameson always prints libelous articles that ultimately hurt spiderman. same with clark kent-- there's not as much use in interviewing superman as there would be interviewing lex luther. everybody loves bad news and a villain could make double the money by robbing a bank and then writing about it.
either way, i think this is the part when i'm supposed to randomly understand that i've always been able to play basketball and that the flubber had nothing to do with it. but it's a lot easier in the movies.
...i think i might live a more normal life if i wasn't constantly expecting it to be like a movie.
both ways, this brings me to PHASE IV: Come up with Phase IV.
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