"I haven't sat at home and gotten drunk in a while." I think this to myself hours earlier. Bad fucking decision. Five drunk later skip to hours or whatever the fuuucckk. . .There's about 5 crazy Mexican parties. (Excuse me, 'fiestas') All I hear is constant yelling, the same beat over again and quite possibly the sound of a teenage pregnancy happening. For the love of god, it's 9/11. This doesn't make any sense. My keyboard keys look like they spell "Smash head here."
Watching something on the history channel about people at the Marriott hotel directly next to the WTC. This is absolutely fascinating, yet disturbingly hits close to home. During the interviews, the emotional experiences they are talking about, I am intimately on the same page with. It's one of those situations where I know it is detrimental to me to see it, yet I can't look away. Thank God I didn't know anyone who died that day, but in some respects I feel a connection with those whom survived it/were affected by it. I feel like we'd get all get along and have something in common to share. It actually kind of bothers me that this board has not paid respect to the 9/11 anniversary. Just because it's been nine years, doesn't mean we will forget. Whatever.
Samr, do you mind me saying that it sounds like you're trying to insert yourself into a tragedy? It's not that I don't understand the impulse to wish to be taking part in something rather than reading it on the news (or, for that matter, to wish that 9/11 hadn't happened), but to claim a bond of sorts with people you've never met and whose intense personal grief is both national news and national policy is rather presumptuous. And yet you're also quite glad that the personal grief is left to be felt by someone else. Although I guess you can at least admit to the narcissism inherent in it. As for commemmorating 9/11, well, I don't see a collective need for it. We all know what happened and we all live our own lives beyond the forum; reading stories and watching documentaries is a far better way of remembering than a sticky post from an admin expressing thoughts and condolences that any decent human being has. In unrelated news, I wish it wasn't so late so that I'd have more energy and could pour out a glass of Scotch and keep reading La Peste. But the French, it is still hard for me to understand so fluently. And for that matter I get bored with fiction in English. EDIT: Fuck me, it's not brown liquor season. The reason I don't want scotch is because I'm really after a vodka and tonic.
I have been home about an hour from a 10 hour shift. Damn my feet hurt. I stopped at the liquor store on the way in to work this afternoon so I am currently tossing rum down my gullet. Thankfully I don't have to work tomorrow. The job is going decently except for the game trading keeps fucking me up. There are so many rules that you have to remember and people get PISSED when you tell them how much (little) you'll give them (it's all predetermined in the computer - I have no say). And if I forget the rules and take something that I'm not supposed to or I take something that doesn't work, I have to pay sticker price (with my discount) for it. Plus, I am supposed to sell these reward type cards and it is a tedious, monotonous pain in the ass. I hate it when people pitch extra shit to me and now I'm on the flip-side. I mean, I personally know how beneficial the card actually is - my husband bought me one for my birthday last year but that still doesn't change the fact that it's difficult. A couple of random observations: Other mothers are idiots, cunts and/or bitches - usually a combo of all three. Buying your very young son the latest filthy M rated game isn't going to make him love you any more. If anything, it only reinforces that you don't pay enough attention to him to do basic research on the game you just bought him. You just want to shut him up and make him hole up in his room for a week while you binge drink and blow the landscaper. Fantastic. Kids aren't stupid. They know who to play and how to play them. This one little guy - couldn't have been more than 7 tagged along on the big downtown shopping excursion they had going on in town today with his grandmother and sister. He then talked grandma in to driving the extra mile or so to my store and proceeded to beg for everything in the store. She relented and bought him a used WWE game but as they were standing there, he pointed to a new game in the cabinet that he wanted. "Maybe for your birthday, <hipster kid name>." she said. The game? Dante's Inferno. Kid butchered the name of it badly while I informed grandma that it was SO not a kid's game while scowling at her. Geeks are the saddest, loneliest bunch on earth. They will stand in a store for an hour talking to me when I'm bustling about while trying to give them the hint to leave and let me get back to work. STFU and GTFO, thanks. I don't hold any notions about this - they do this to the guys that work there too. Too many people have an entitlement complex. The world doesn't owe you shit. We all have our problems and most of us don't go around ramming them down other people's throats. This woman came in with her son the other night. Son was 18 at least. He was deaf and picked out some random used game until he saw Prototype in the new case. We didn't have any used copies so he asked for the new copy. Paid for it, I recited the required warranty policy (14 day warranty on new games) on their way out the door which she signed to him. It goes without saying that, especially in this day and age when you can save entire games to your hard drive, you cannot return an opened game the next day and honestly expect your money back. Right? Wrong. She showed up the next day squallering that her son didn't like the game and she should be able to return it. Threw out the "disabled" card when the district manager refused to give her her money back. Called the BBB on us. BBB told her to read her receipt out loud to them. First line of policy on the bottom? "Cash refunds only on new, unopened merchandise within 14 days." Sorry, lady. People are stupid in general. We also sell used DVDs for $4.99. People will come in with one DVD to sell and then act all indignant when I tell them I can only give them $1.50 for it. What the hell do you expect?!
Decided to have a bum weekend (first one in months), and so far it's been fantastic. I've been pounding beers for the better part of 2 hours while watching shitty Pac 10 football, but that's ok - I've got nothing better to do. Except shave this ridiculous pre-NFL season beard.
I wrote about this kind of in the "birth rape" thread, but it's immensely interesting to me that, while I was admittedly psychologically scared in surviving what others might consider a routine brain surgery, there are people out there, even on tv, that survived possibly one of the worst national tragedies ever. Why I am permanently scared by something magnitudes less than that which others appear to have handled routinely, I do not know or understand. I feel like a fucking pussy. I have personally visited the 9/11 memorial site, as well as "ground zero;" I have vivid memory of walking up to a police officer that day in NY and telling him thank you for his service. I could draw from memory what the reconstruction site looked like, after climbing physical barricades to keep me from viewing. It didn't hit home then, because I don't think I knew what "home" was. But I climbed the chicken wire fence wrapped with blue tarp because I knew I needed to. Years after 9/11, I visited Ground Zero, in the most intimate way possible and having yet no clue of the personal repercussions to come, because I felt that I needed to see the years-later destruction. I felt is was my obligation, as an American, to try to understand. I still don't understand why I am reacting rather severely to something minor in comparison to those whom personally experienced 9/11. Maybe the doctors on board can shed some light. Why do some react severely and negatively to minor circumstances, while others act heroically in the face of national danger? Is it inherently genetic in someone, is it based upon circumstance, or are there other factors or genetic abilities involved? My doctors are going to hate my questions next week.
Realistically, I have no connection to those involved with 9/11. I cannot -- even with the help of doctors -- even begin to comprehend the magnitude of the events. The survivors are "above" me, and I neither wish nor ever will attempt to put myself on the same level as them. They are national heroes; I am not. I don't want some "sticky" post, nor do I expect people to react to it to the level to which I have. However, I do feel some camaraderie with the victims, in the sense that I feel as if I have gone though something similar, to which we can relate. I'd rather those victims not feel my personal grief, and I take no pride in being even peripherally related to them. My medical narcissism is based upon numerous experiences detailed in the linked thread. I make no claim that it is "right" or appropriate. But, it does exist, and as much as a "victim" can have a "God complex," I do have a God Complex over my own self. However, I am intimately aware of its existence. Right or wrong, it is what it is. PM me for more details. Samr is drunk on rum and Monsters.
Too many long ass posts to read to really care what anywone else ahs to say tonight. I somehow got convinced to play some stupid ass card drinking games with my roommate instead of going downtown to drink with my buddies who just got back into town...and now i'm shitty.
I didn't think you deigned to fraternize with us peons. Civilians if you will. Commoners. Steerage. Same diffy. I'm kind of impressed!* *And kind of drunk. Ignore me. I dare ya! *hic!*
The one thing I've read about PTSD is that it's not so much the experience you go through, but rather, the power you have in that given situation. Fear and horror can be overcome with training and teamwork (the reason the military does everything in units of at least two is that you're less likely to give up on your buddy than to give up on yourself). A police officer or firefighter has a duty to respond in a given situation and is more or less equipped to respond appropriately. Furthermore, if he or she is with other police officers and firefighters and paramedics, the collective peer pressure and sense of duty and loyalty to buddy next to you will overcome fear. A normal guy walking down the street might want to help but is so useless as to actually impede progress. So, well, he sits there and stews and if the experience is sufficiently traumatic, winds up tortured by what he's seen and how he didn't help. It's pretty fair to say that the people you're describing as heroes would bridle if they heard it. That said, there are still interpersonal variations about PTSD that's not entirely explained by how much power someone has in a given situation. It's reasonable enough to assume that some people's internal dials are just set at a different level, but the ins and outs of why that happens is best left to the world of conjecture. And if there's one thing I don't like, it's non-evidence based conjecture about why mental health disorders arise. "Gee, Shannon's really good at gymnastics, you'd think that would give her some self-esteem and keep her from getting depressed."
Jesus I'm not sure this tailgating business is for me. I just don't think I'm capable of drinking all fucking day long. I think I have some sort of inner drinking clock that lets me reach my peak level of drunkenness after about 5-6 hours which would be fine if I began drinking at say 9:00pm. Replace that with starting to drink at 10am, and by about 3:00 I'm shitfaced. Except instead of going hoe and passing out, I go to the game and stand in the sweltering heat for about 2 hours, then sit around and hang out for a little bit and then go home. I reach home at about 7 and crash hard. And now....I just woke up. It's 230am and I'm just about sober. What the fuck am I supposed to do with myself now?
Fuck me. You are taking one of the greatest things about Football and crying about it. Two years ago my friend and I went to a Panthers/Giants football game at the end of December. Game time temp 10 degrees F with wind chill in the negatives. We tailgated and got shit faced for 6 hours before the game, watched the entire game (which went into overtime), sat in the parking lot for an hour after the game (also for the driver to finish sobering up) and then drove an hour and a half home. But you can't handle sunshine and nice weather. I bet you sleep in the stands, don't you. Edit: Also, are people holding you down and pouring it down your throat? Have a couple drinks, then grab a water and some food and chill for a bit. Have a couple more drinks then another water and some more grub.
I've got all you motherfuckers beat no matter what you're doing tonight. I'm going paintballing at 1:30am, and we don't stop until sunrise. Then, we get drunk.
No no, don't get me wrong, I had a blast. I had never been to a college football game before and it was a fucking trip. I just need to figure this shit out; go in with a better plan, pace myself on drinks, stay hydrated, remember sunglasses, etc. all those little things.