although, to be fair, i suppose physical fitness in new orleans is something of a mixed bag. if they were doing this outside they'd be dead of heatstroke within three minutes. of course, my sympathy is diminished somewhat since i'll be spending the next three or four hours lifting boxes and putting them down again in the 400% louisiana humidity.

i can do this only by repeating my mantra--"even a punk needs a paycheck." going to college means spending four-plus years justifying your shitty part-time jobs as only temporary evils, although i look at my manager like he's a human car crash, thirty-seven years old and he's already at the highest point he will ever achieve in his life--running a mall toy store like it's the geneva convention and spending his nights online managing a fantasy baseball league and...well, that's it. toy store and fake baseball. which i'm sure is a thousand times more interesting than actual baseball.

the dubious position of middle management. its so strange. you have this theoretical authority over a tiny sphere of influence, but everybody's got a boss, and as soon as she shows up, you quiver like marlon brando at a denny's. how the hell are you supposed to respect a man like that, much less take orders from him?

that can't be me, can it? this isn't the life that awaits me, right?

i spend every day trying to convince myself that going to school and getting a degree will make some kind of difference vis-a-vis my uncertain future, and then, i go to work to unload a truck at six in the morning alongside my man-child boss and crystal fucking clarity like a gunshot rings just behind my eyes. this is the life that awaits most people.

i have to be famous. it's the only thing i'm qualified for.

and i don't mean famous like brad pitt famous. maybe notorious would be a better word. or infamous. or whatever--you know, i really don't give a shit. just don't let me hump minimum wage for the rest of my life, working sixty hours a week and coming buckets when the new star wars action figures arrive.

"check it out! this box has the variant jango fett with silver armor instead of gray!"

wow, better call mom and give her the good news.

a friend of mine told me once, "in order to get lost you must first know where you're going."

so what happens if you never find out?