Welcome Back to the Suck

I had a rude awakening...

It seems, time and again I've been reminded, that good things don't last forever.

Here I am, a happy worker. My job, which is answering stupid text questions from stupid Americans, is going pretty smoothly, with me getting a fat wad of cash for it. I live a normal day schedule, and it works so well that I decided that this is the perfect time to be a working student.

I felt so good about things that I kept on buying genuine video games, spending cash on really tasty food, hanging out with my workmates, and being so happy that I felt like I already reached nirvana. So good, in fact, that now I plan to fully upgrade my PC (aka the one I'm typing my post in right now), and finally take the first step in finishing my education with a course that I was born for.

Unfortunately, there's the so-called Global Financial Crisis. Companies closing, people losing jobs, sales at an all-time low, and commodity prices soaring to near-feverish levels, figuratively speaking.

Of course, to me, that translates to "I will give the company no reason at all to relieve me of my duties. After all, my job is so piss easy, I'll earn a fortune while maintaining an efficient winning streak."

And that's me when I turn on the 'Overconfident Jerk' switch in my head.

I was in my high school, requesting for a Form 137 and getting my yearbook, when my workmates texted me that we're gonna go back to Directory Assistance. At first, the words seem like hieroglyphs, but when I got on the bus home and texted them, including my boss, for details, it soon became all too clear.

We're going back to the very reason we left. I mean, the reason why I switched to the SMS account is because the job back at DA is so damn tiring, the night shift is taking a toll on my fragile health, and I'm avoiding certain... people... who changed my life.

And now, they're all coming back.

And it seems ironic that, despite our team ranking #1 in the QA standings, enough for us to throw a pizza party, we, the tenured CSRs who have been in the company for several months, a year, hell, even 3 years, get the boot.

What's even worse is the horrifying prospect that my team will get split into a hodgepodge of different schedules. If that happens, I'll miss my team a lot, but I'll never, ever, forget the things we all shared, good or bad.

Hey, it could have been worse. It's better to get booted back to a harder job and get lesser pay, than get laid off and live without a job.

Unfortunately, right now, I have no choice but to accept the reality of my situation, and say these words once again: "City and state, please?"

Like what Cpl. Troy said in Jarhead, "Welcome [back] to the Suck."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just replay the music that reminded me of a terrible and painful time, because... well, it's Valentines, right? I just felt like it.

"Redifining 'Emo'" or "Emo Posers Fuck Off!!!"

You wanna know the real reason I closed my old blog?

Two words. Emo *FUCKING* posers. OK, two words and an expletive.

Back in my old blog (you can still check it out, if you like), I talked about the popular subgenre called 'emo', most of it focused on the Santa Rosa, Laguna-based Typecast.

How craptastically wrong I was.

What I defined as 'emo' back then was simply a hodgepodge of pop-punk/pop rock/alternative rock bands that the layman vaguely defines as 'emo', when in fact, they are not 'emo' at all, in the musical purist sense, that is.

So, what is emo? The true emo, I learned later, was the second wave, 90's emo. If you don't know what I'm bantering about, that means, this iteration of emo was more melodic than chaotic, more indie than its original hardcore punk origins, and IMO, the proper definition, since the lyrics and vocals alone define it.

Examples of these bands (and their respective albums) include:

- Sunny Day Real Estate (Diary)
- Weezer (Pinkerton)
- Jimmy Eat World (Static Prevails; Clarity)
- The Get Up Kids (Something to Write Home About)
- Mineral (The Power of Failing)
- The Appleseed Cast (The End of the Ring Wars)
- Pedro the Lion (It's Hard to Find a Friend)
- The Promise Ring (30° Everywhere; Nothing Feels Good)

Now, if you're a self-declared emo and you don't recognize any of the bands I've mentioned above, then let me officially label you as a POSER.

Emo is NOT Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Hawthorne Heights, Alesana, Saosin, Silverstein, The All-American Rejects, Boys Like Girls, Coheed and Cambria, Dashboard Confessional, Fightstar, Funeral for a Friend, Quietdrive, Matchbook Romance, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Senses Fail, Something Corporate, The Starting Line, Story of the Year, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, and ESPECIALLY NOT My Chemical Romance.

Secondly, if your idea of emo 'fashion' looks like this, either partially or completely:

Or this:

Worse still, this:

Or, if you're an emo girl, and your idea of emo 'fashion' looks like this:

Or this:

Then let me officially declare that YOU ARE A POSER.

Bonus poser 'points' if you actually look like one of these wackjobs.

Believe it or not, and as funny as it may seem, a true, genuine, authentic, and 100% real emo looked like this:

So, bottom line, if you're any one of the emo posers i've labelled, then GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.

The real reason why I closed my first blog, then? These posers are fucking fawning over it, making me sound like I'm their savior, just because I talk about emo in a favoritive view. For the record, I AM NOT EMO. Why? Just because I listen to it doesn't mean I am it.

Secondly, I have recently developed a distaste for the current mainstream music, since it used the term far beyond its original intentions. Back then in the late 90's, being 'emo' is synonymous with being 'underground', 'indie', or 'cool'. Sadly, times changed.

Third, and most important, the most ironic thing I hear nowadays is how you can easily tell what music a certain person listens to just by looking at how he/she wears. For me, that's just bullshit. If you're trying to be against all forms of authority, why wear this emo fashion like a fucking uniform? That's not rebellion; that's conformity; the same type of conformity that convent-bred schoolgirls adhere to.

In the words of Rob Dobi, creator of yourscenesucks.com, and the images I used here:

"Everyone seems to be involved in some sort of strange contest where the winner wears the tightest jeans, puts on the silliest looking makeup, and sports the worst haircut. In the end, everyone loses. You all end up looking the same."

See what I mean?

EMO IS NOT A FUCKING FASHION SHOW. IT ISN'T ABOUT BITCHING ABOUT HOW PATHETIC YOUR LIFE IS, IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, IT'S NOT FUCKING GAY, AND MOST IMPORTANT: IT'S NOTHING ABOUT SLITTING YOUR FUCKING WRISTS!!!

And if you still think emo is all that, then I suggest you look at the title of this post for my parting shot.

Please stop sending us Magic 8-Ball Questions!

NOTE: Believe it or not, I wrote this post (unedited and all) while at work. Why? When your team gets banned from doing anything else, you're bound to resort to something. And this post essentially just popped out of my ass. OK, enough rant. Let's start.


Here we are, my team being punished because we think so high of ourselves.

For a minute there, I thought that my team is so fucking metal, we kick every other team's arses.

Then reality kicked us right in the stomach and shouted in our ears that we're only human.

No playing, no loud chitchatting (sic), no searching. 'No playing' I can endure, I don't play games much anyway, even when I'm bored and on the verge of... well, I'll leave that to your imagination. 'No loud chitchatting' I can handle, I mean, I'm not much of a chatter anyway; I prefer to be silent. But no searching!? Damn, that's the only thing I'm doing whenever there's not a texter around asking some stupid Magic 8-Ball question.

Which brings us to the topic of this 'blog' 'post', which will be deleted an hour later because I have to take a 15-minute break.

Ever had a Magic 8-Ball? Me neither. I never had one, simply because I have no knowledge of its existence. But I've seen it countless times in movies, on TV, read in books, hell, even played in video games. This little plastic ball, made to look like an 8-ball seen in a game of billiards, is filled with liquid and has some weirdly-shaped dice-like thing that has writings on it, that every time you ask a 'yes' or 'no' question, you shake it, then some answer pops out, hence the name.

I remember our trainer/DJ, Aaron/CutterJ, mention something about this text service being treated by most people as some new-fangled 'Magic 8-Ball'. Truer words have never been spoken. Because right now, most of the questions we receive are almost always in this format:

"Will Amanda ever love me?"

"Will I be rich in the future?"

"Does this blouse make me look chubbier than I already am, because I'm a stupid, fat, lazy fuck who does nothing but sit around eating junk food and whatnot, debating useless, pointless stuff on Internet message boards, and giving some reed-thin geekazoid from Cambodia a righteous '+99 silver staff of the moon' of smiting?"

The first few times you get these types of questions, you're like "OK, maybe they just need somebody to talk to", but later on, you'll get so fucking annoyed that these people think that we do know everything. Wow! Like we have security cameras wired on every street, every house, even in your fucking bathtub, in all of the 50 states!

Then again, when your text line guarantees people that we can be asked ANY question, you know you're gonna expect the worst of society: racists, haters, or the just plain stupid.

But hey, thank God Almighty I have a job. And these people are paying me to fill their apparently empty heads with some fluff that I only know too damn well that they'll shit it out eventually.

Damn it, Greg! Why the hell do you like grunge!?

Well, to answer the very question in this post, let's start with the blatantly obvious: what is grunge?

Grunge, in super-nerdy Wikipedia-speak, is a form of alternative rock popular in the early 90's. Its music is described as a fusion between teenage angst so common of Generation X, the intensity of hardcore punk rock, and the slow, meandering tempo of heavy metal, to the point that is sounds kinda "grungy", which, in itself, is American slang for "dirty".

Of course, when we talk grunge, it's hard, and often impossible, to not mention Nirvana, which, IMO, is one of the greatest rock bands of all time. If people say that Nirvana is overrated, that's because they base their judgment on their most popular song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which is often touted as the anthem of Generation X.

Of course, there are other grunge bands as well, like Pearl Jam, with their best song (IMO) "Jeremy", Alice in Chains ("Them Bones"), Stone Temple Pilots ("Sex Type Thing"), and Soundgarden ("Black Hole Sun"). But to me, nothing compares to Nirvana, particularly because of its well-known frontman, Kurt Cobain. His was a life that burnt fiercely, but briefly. He was known for his lyrics, which, to my point of view, were obviously written from the heart and are very insightful, not some commercialized bullshit like the ones from the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and any other Disneycore bands out there. Thing is, nobody knows why Kurt decided to squeeze the trigger into his head. Hatred of commercialism? Heroin addiction? Or murder?

Now, why do I like grunge? Well, after being annoyed by the idiot masa because they totally fucked up emo, what with their poorly executed bangs, overdevotion to My Chemical Romance (there are other bands, people), and overused emo layouts on Friendster, I decided to turn back time and do 90's grunge, to set myself apart from the crowd (although I still listen to emo, these days I just redefine them as "post-hardcore").

Another reason is that, to describe myself as a person, I have the ghost of a Generation X-er trapped in the shell of a Generation Y-er. In simple, "I'm not on weed" talk, I feel that I'm more connected to Generation X than Generation Y because I experience an unimaginable level of angst connected with a troublesome past I experienced back at high school, I vehemently decry the level of commercialism I see in pretty much every branch of the arts, and I often have a problem with authority, be it my parents, or my professors, or even my superiors at work, which accounts for my rebellious attitude. Now that's why I like grunge.

Sure, grunge may be dead today, or maligned by it's radio-friendlier version, post-grunge (aka the likes of Daughtry, Nickelback, etc.), but to me, and hopefully a few people worldwide, it's still alive in my fragmented, tortured, and angst-ridden heart.

And I won't change until something else makes me get out of my angsty stupor.

On an unrelated note, the letter X, to me, also defines that I live a straight-edge lifestyle, i.e. you'll never see me smoke a cigarette in the lung center at work, you'll never smell alcohol from my breath, and if I ever die, it won't be from a heroin overdose or cannabis poisoning (I often joke that I already have a factory of weed in my head).

My life in the call center, so far...

I could never know why it's so hard for me to keep on writing, let alone write itself. I've been so swamped at work these past few weeks that I often say it's an actual accomplishment for me that I'm still able to write anything.

So, after enduring several days of taking the pain ride, the unthinkable came: I was finally transferred to the UK account, which, for those who aren't schooled in the ways of the telecommunications industry, is an account where you absolutely take no voice calls whatsoever, just texting your customers and all that shit. And, contrary to popular belief, you actually enjoy higher pay, and you learn something everyday, since this shit is beyond just fucking directory assistance, you can be asked anything that the customer thinks in his head right now, like "Why is life so unfair?" or "I'm lost in London, where's the nearest tube station?", and "Who created the cartoon named SuperTed?"

The thing is, the moment I was transferred to a 3-week training session (where my trainers are all crackers), I felt that I missed taking calls and picking fights with irate callers. Whatever free time I have is spent prowling the call floor as if I'm a ghost, looking for friends and TMs still stuck in DA, and annoying the hell out of them, often to the point that I can get a CA for it.

And somehow I find it hard to go home, since my new shift is now at 2PM-10PM, and at 10PM, going home is a matter of preparing your balls for the worst: going toe to toe with persons of evil intent. So I decide to sleep the night out in the company, at least until the morning, when I'll take the pain ride home.

And that's because I have a huge investment in my pocket. What is that 'investment', you ask? A new cellphone, which, without exposing its actual value, I paid an arm and leg for, or funded through blood, sweat, tears, and resisting the temptation to take VTOs. And now, I'm down to my last buck. Here I am, hoping to survive before the next payout while listening to anything and everything that has Kurt Cobain's name on it.

And, why the repeated mentions of grunge music? Well, again, that's another post to discuss. But this time, I'll write it right after this one, so I could go another week without being bugged by the thought of not writing another post.

The Pain Ride

Right now, I'm typing this post in my battered, just-out-of-work self.

I decided to hide the link to my blog from the old one, so to keep this pet project of mine that i call this blog totally underground. Why? Because I feel like it. So if you stumbled upon this site because you were click-happy while reading my blog on Friendster, well, congratulations. What you're reading right now is a continuation of my first blog on Friendster, Backwater Wikiality, entitled 'The Barbedwire Confraternity'. Why the title, you ask? Well, it's better than 'Untitled Blog', I can tell you that. Anyway, I'm not here to write about the blog itself, I'm here to talk about the subject matter of the blog, i.e. anything goes.

OK, enough rant. Let's start.

I've been through a lot, lately. Ah, yes, here I was, revelling in the victory that is my regularization, my very proof that I can stand up to the pressures of the corporate grind.

Or, at least I think I can.

Being the first (and youngest) from my training batch to get regularized, I had something of a rock star status from my peers, congratulating me every time I bump into one of them. On the contrary, my status as a 'regular' makes me turn into a jerk when it comes to punk-ass trainees.

You see, I dunno when it started, but the new batch of trainees tend to be cocky for reasons I somehow can't explain. They hog the shuttles (we'll come to that later), talk in very loud voices in the sleeping area, play games in the game room (a fact that my peers and I severely dislike), generally, they act as if they 'own' the place. Normally, I wouldn't be an asshole to trainees, after all, one man's 'noob' is another man's 'pwner', but man, their attitude is appalling at best, as if they know that our job is piss easy.

And it seems that my short-lived 'rock star' status didn't stop there. In the days before the next "schedule shift", I was stunned to discover that I was made 'Team Employee of the Month', because I was aggressive enough to improve my stats. The prize: a few gift certificates from colonial-mentality capitol Starbucks Coffee and SM.

Then comes the "schedule bidding". This is the time that you can pick a schedule that you want, and if it isn't taken yet, it's yours for keeps. In my line of work, the most 'normal' schedule you can get is one that runs from 9 PM - 6 AM, with day offs on weekends. Naturally, I picked that sked, because with it, I could easily go home early because of an available shuttle in the morning.

Which brings us to the main point of this post: the shift and the shuttle.

My shift's alright, guaranteeing me a good working station every time. And who wouldn't love an earlier shift? The bad thing is the shuttle: it's always late. I mean, there have been several times that the shuttle is extremely late for it's loading and departure times that I often get tempted to try an alternate route. Second, the damn trainees tend to clog up the bus that regular CSRs like me end up standing up clinging on to the handlebars. Third, I don't have any close friends in the shuttle, and I'm not a very sociable person, really. I only trust the friends that I value the most. Thing is, they're not with me because they're on later shifts. Bummer.

And I have to endure this sorta thing every frickin' day.

Coupled with the fact that I couldn't move to an easier job in the center because HR tends to put me on hold, essentially imprisoning me in the job I'm too tired to do nowadays.

I realized that as of this moment, I have no choice but to take the Pain Ride.

Oh, and if you were wondering what the hell 'pain ride' is, it's fake grunge lingo for a bus ride.

But, what is grunge? Well, that's another post entirely.

Obviously, this is a test post.

If you came to this website by way of clicking the link in my last post (Backwater Wikiality), congratulations, because there isn't much to read here yet, since this site is still under construction!

Come back in a few days and hopefully, I'll come up with something fresh.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Greg