Post Modern Primal Screams

I sleep like a bear.

I have one of those deep, black numbers. That's when I know that I am tired. There's not enough energy in me to make images and characters to make any common sense. I open my eyes and the time in One in the Morning. One in the fucking morning. I just look at the clock on the Microwave and swear at it. It turns to Three in mid-cuss. How did that happen? I'm tired. I roll over and close my eyes and this time I drift off to dreams.

I am selling myself. My time. I am returning to the workforce, where your time, the bulk of your life, is not yours to live. We sell away pieces of ourselves, big fucking pieces, to people who sell pieces of themselves, to people who do the same. I am tired of seeing pieces of me flake away like leprosy, but that's what I have to do. I had a pretty good schedule that I was used to. I had Dr. A. every Friday, which I moved to Wednesday because I wasn't making Fridays too well. I had Dr. D. on Tuesdays, but I wasn't making him much at all, but I wish I was now. I have Dr. W. coming up quick, and to see her, I have to send her an email stating the need for a doctors note.

Yeah...to see my doctors, I have to have Doctor's notes from now on, just to see them, so as not to miss a day from this thing I now call work. I have to provide what they call 'documents' if I miss a day from work. There are no vacation days, there are no holidays. Nothing. You have had enough time off work. They have you, and they have you jumping through their hoops. I have to consider how I'm going to get 'documents' to make my skull therapy or doctor appointments. Shit, I have a MRI that just may take all day to do...how do I get a doctor's note from the technician that that's what I got done. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I get up, get ready, go downstairs and wait as the knuckle- heads, and Snow White have a long discussion with one of Paula's Crows as to the appearance of water bottles. A nice, long, conversation, while a line forms behind their empty headed chatter. Tears of restraint were running down my eyes. I was running out of time and just didn't make allowance for STUPIDITY. I just stand there, with four others as we wait until they break up their stupid session and let the knuckleheads figure out what you're supposed to get for breakfast and lunch. I get my shit and head out, my time is now tight, so you know the Way is just going to fuck with me. The number 1 is right in the station, waiting for me, and then it crawls to Hudson Street as if it had two broken legs and a broken arm. Motherfucker!!!

I get off and out and down to FEGS WEFEAR and find that I left my classroom paperwork at home. I DONT' KNOW what classroom I'm supposed to be in. I go to the one that I was in Friday, room 4L and see Ms. T. She is a sweetheart and leads me to room 4D where my class is. I sign in, and make it just before the deadline. Fuck, that was close. A minute or two later and I would need documents. Fuck I was close. I am directed to take a stack of papers to fill out, and lo and behold, I realize now that I left my pen home. Finding a pen proves to be impossible as I just sit there.

Now, it's time to waste our fucking lives. I swear....A line of profess- ionally dressed losers walk into the room and set up seats, and one at a time stands to introduce themselves, Job Counselors, Employment Developers, WEP directors, Teachers, Instructors, and other than their stupid names they basically SAY THE SAME THING!!! 'Okay, good luck' they all end. I sit until I just about rest my head on the table and close my eyes. And just before making such a fateful decision, they are done and gone. Now, It's time for the hobo to do some multitasking. I get a dull pencil from one of the Instructors...a pencil so dull that if I would have jabbed him in the eye with it, it would have snapped in half.

No sooner do I sit down and begin to fill out the form I am given four, small plastic containers, and a big container filled with little nuts. I look up at the instructor. "Hobobob," he says. "Put a hundred nuts in each container," and then he's off. What am I going to do now, become a pharmacist? I do both, rocking back and forth between the two projects, and when done with the nut counting I call out that I'm finished. The instructor comes up to me with 3inch pipes and fittings and a finished drawing. "Hobobob, make what you see in the diagram." You've got to be kidding? Am I a plumber now?

So now I'm fucking with pipe fittings and pipes. I get through all of this at break time, and afterward, I'm behind a computer. Thank god, a break from the stupidity. There is an online exam and questionnaire that I breeze the Hell through and then I go online to read my email. Suddenly my name is called and I have to explain the form that I filled out. It is heavy with computer requests. Request for this job in computers, and that job in computers. I'll do ANYTHING in computers. I'll even come in dressed in a computer. "Oh," one of the Instructors says with a raised eyebrow. "So you know computers?" She leans over my computer and sets it up to give aptitude tests in Microsoft Office and operating systems. Pretty solid tests, but I breeze through these too until it's time for lunch.

To blow off steam...I do my thing. I walk thirty minutes to the East, and then thirty minutes back to the west. That airs out my brains and allows me the time to regroup and rejoin. I return to my computer and polish off more aptitude tests. I'm done with the day, and I run out of FAGS WESNARE and head the fuck uptown. Lord knows, I don't know how much of this testing that I can take...and this is only my first day. The worst thing is that it will only get worse. I have a feeling that FAGS is not there to get us employment...its not there to test any aptitude. It's there to waste our time until we fuck up and have to be marked FTC, or Failure to Comply. Once that happens, there is called a Fair Hearing, and back through all that shit again.

I've been through TWO fair hearings. Paula said that she's been though something like NINE.

Why do I have a feeling that these motherfuckers are going to FTC me?

Hobobob