it takes my pain away

First, there's been an explosion of activity on my street lately. it all started when I woke up one morning and the side mirror of my work van had been quite efficiently smashed off. Though easily repaired, I was concerned for the possibility of future events and started poking my nose around the hood. Turns out the pickup down the street ALSO lost a mirror, and a ford focus one street down was rear ended one evening a few nights later, and the assailant drove off. More data collection revealed that our next door neighbor has some expensive gear ripped off from his garage a few months back.

Now, info up to now has been factual... essentially; here comes the biased stuff: We live one block from a local high school (with a fine reputation for producing losers) and there's some punk-ass teenagers that live across the street with what would seem to be an absence of supervision. (Do I sound old yet?) Combined, the neighbor kids and the local high schoolers are always wandering around our house, since the kids across the street seem to attract the best of the local element. These kids are "teenage punks" in the purest sense; they walk by our house in groups of 4 or more, 37 times per trip around the earth's axis and spend the remaining 14 hours of the day on the porch directly across from us, sitting in darkness and talking trash. They (now we're talking the neighbor's AND the other local roustabouts) are always rolling deep and frontin' hard, with their stupid hooded shirts and what not. And then there's the trash talk; i thought only in movies did people walk down a street and yell sexual innuendoes, physical appearance assessments and invitations to fornicate at passer-byes. I was wrong.

Once an obvious enemy had been established (the punks) and a perimeter defined (our property) we had the workings of a battle plan. So last week we drew it up.




It's pretty straight forward; your red indicates your threats and their potential movements into our positions. The work van represents our already weakened forward defensive positions, while our allies and potential allies are outlined along with whatever data we had or happen to drunkly think we had.

we've already had updates with this situation, so watch for those later. The reason i had time to type all this crap up today is because i called off work and took a sick day. I did this, not because i was sick (unless you're reading this and you're a coworker, in which case everything that follows now is the OPPOSITE of the truth) but because i had a job interview with Chrysler's Truck Engineering facility in Detroit. I tend not to discuss the workings of things like this until a clear conclusion has been established, but this particular job is pretty noteworthy. It's not that I'm superstitious, but i do believe firmly that should the powers of the universe happen to look up and realize I'm excited about something (especially a prospective job) those powers will snatch it away faster than you can say "what a fucking waste of four and a half years and $50,000." But fuck it, most everyone knows about this one anyway. The deal was this; the guy was interviewing two candidates today and had already interviewed two others. A staffing co. set this up, so those lucky bastards have multiple candidates for the same position. Think about this; they're standing there wishing me luck and shaking my hand and filling me with their BS, while they're ALSO the bastards supplying my competition. Fuckers. Anyway, the interviewer is leaving for Mexico Monday and had to make a decision TODAY. "Awesome," i say, "an interview with clear and prompt resolution." Now, most of you can probably figure out that i've been trying to break into the auto industry for about, oh, three years now unsuccessfully... This is the perfect job; open to those with no experience with the auto companies, dealing with prototype cars and trouble shooting the issues there in and very closely related to exactly what i do now (i.e. have experience with). I'm so into this job i could puke. More so than any before it. The rub is, instead of getting an answer today, the interviewer decided to postpone his decision until monday, and indicated only that i was one of three candidates still in the running. So now i'm screwed... the powers know full well that i would kill somebody in front of they own momma for this position and it's inevitable that they snatch it away. I'm not going to sugar coat it... I hate my job, and the idea of going back to it monday after having spent the morning at Chrysler and seeing the "green pastures" of the promise land is unbearable. Here's to irony, chance, karma, luck, retribution and coincidence.