'##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!! ##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: =========================================== ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #478 !! #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS! !! ##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: =========================================== ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "Yesterday Was A Text File" !! ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> Styx !! ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 2/3/99 !! !!========================================================================!! yesterday was a text file i'll write right now. or, like, chronicle. whatever. words. so, ok. i woke up yesterday morning (which would have been 01/22/99) at 4:15a.m. this happened because i accidentally fell asleep the night before (01/21/99) at 9:30p.m. i missed the last half-hour of WCW Thunder. but that's alright. so the first point is that my sleeping schedule as of 01/22/99 was really *off*. so after waking up at 4:15a.m. and not knowing what to do with myself until 9:00a.m. when i was due in for work, i decided to go there early. i arrived at work at 7:45a.m. since i'm talking about work, i'll have to explain what i do there. look, i know i'm not all that interesting. this text file isn't about *me*. it's about the *day*, so you can stop your internal dialogue [credit: Bill Hicks]. ok, so my work; you know how when you're flipping through magazines you'll come across an ad for, say, Sears, and there will be a toll-free number where you can order yourself a free catalog? and when you call, it's a recorded message? "at the tone, please say your first name. then press the pound key." "at the tone, please say your last name. then press the..." etc. okay, well, 70% of my job consists of transcribing all of the names of those sorts of people that call those things. so it's first name, last name, street address, city, state, zip, business, occupation, phone number. over and over. there are a lot of people out there that want free things. that's why they're calling, of course. so, alright. the other 30% of my job is Miscellaneous Debris. sometimes i go out to hotels and fix their voicemail systems or whatever. sometimes it's little things - fix a printer here, move a computer there, find warez for my bosses, whatever. it's a good job. it's stable. it sure beats the hell out of the gas station i used to work at. so on this particular day, which was 01/22/99, the amount of calls that came through for free catalogs was amazingly high. our client had started a new advertising campaign, so a lot more people were being exposed to the toll-free number. so i sat there for 10 1/2 hours doing *nothing* but data entry. it was taxing and annoying and exhausting. but i finished everything. i caught up the entire company. alright. so i done good. i signed out. "that's it for me, guys. i'm done for the day. see you on sunday." my boss nodded and i went out the door. got in my car. started it. my boss runs out of the office and motions me towards him. i opened my car door and screamed "what?" he said "i need help moving a computer." i screamed "fuck you" and closed the car door. he continued motioning. i stormed into the office, moved the computer, and stormed out. now i was angry and i was driving, and that's a retarded situation. in my anger i decided to get a brand new hard drive for my computer. it was the only thing that would drain me and leave me exhausted enough to be able to sleep. so i went to the ATM machine to get out some money. next to the ATM machine was a table with cookies and girl scouts sitting behind it, all virginal and pure and smug and waiting for a berating. you know, it's like.. i don't know - i kept my mouth shut. they asked me if i wanted to buy some cookies and i said no and got my money and drove to Best Buy and bought the Western Digital 10.1 gig Enhanced IDE hard drive for $199.00 after a $40.00 rebate. awesome price. i was glad. well, guilty, really, because i knew i couldn't *technically* afford it. but i mean, if i had enough money to buy it, then really i could afford it, so i don't even know how to use the word "technically" correctly there. whatever. words. so i am driving home from Best Buy and i realize that i have run out of cigarettes, almost. so i have to go to the ATM machine again so that i can get money for a carton. so i go to the ATM machine and the girl scouts were still there, and they asked me if i wanted cookies again. and this time i couldn't keep my mouth shut, because i was fuming, and i yelled at them. i told them that by sitting next to an ATM machine selling cookies, they force me into being an asshole if i decline a purchase. that they know i have the money. they watched me get it. that basically they are sitting there making everybody an asshole all night, and that was dishonorable and dirty and low. an asshole conveyor belt right next to an ATM machine. and i realized that here i am at 7:50p.m. on 01/22/99 standing in an abandoned parking lot fiending for cigarettes and screaming at girl scouts. so i gave it up and walked to my car, smoke shooting out of my ears, and went to the pharmacy. bought the cigarettes. drove off. went to the local pizzeria and bought two pies for my family, because i knew they'd probably be hungry. besides, mother had given me money in the morning before work to pick up pizza on the way home. so really, i was just running an errand, not being particularly nice or considerate. there was a guy in line in front of me at the pizzeria. fat wallet pushing out of his back pocket. antenna from a cellphone sticking out of his breast pocket. a cigar poking out of his other breast pocket. this guy managed to fill all of his pockets with things that sucked, and on top of that he was telling the staff to "hurry it up, i'm in a rush." so, you know, i'm already on edge here. i shouted to the staff to take their time with *my* order because i had all night. he fidgeted. i thought he might've done something interesting. maybe he could've taken a swing at me. maybe spit at me. maybe a good verbal lashing. hit me on the head with his cellphone. but all i got out of him was a fidget. he probably knew that it'd just get me more annoyed. got my pizza and went home, finally. 8:30p.m. went upstairs to my room. well, my room *is* the upstairs. i rent out the renovated attic. so i went upstairs to my attic and begun the rigorous task of installing a new hard drive. my goal: install the new hard drive as the master drive, make my old drive the slave drive, and take all of the information from my old one and put it on my new one. what inhibited my goal; there is no bay for a second hard drive in my computer unless i call NEC directly and order their specially-sized rails. what happened: a computer, strewn around and rigged half-assed-like, with wires here and there and some knots and two hard drives twisted into each other to make it work. and it did. i had to trick my computer by putting in an extra jumper thing to make it think that it only had 4096 cylinders or something so that my outdated BIOS could use the 10.1 gigs. something like that. i really don't know exactly what i did. result: 14 cigarettes later, one hard drive, the new one, with all of the data of my old hard drive on it. what counts, i suppose, is that i did it. i had never installed a hard drive before. i didn't know where to start. but i did it. and that's fucking cool, and i'm proud of myself. i'm not hardware oriented at all. at *all*. so then it's about 12:30a.m. (01/23/99) and i go online and i'm trembling with all of the leftover tension and anger from the day and i'm guzzling vodka trying to subdue myself and i stumble across Pezmonkey's page via the h0e staff page and i read "subtext." i don't know if she ever released it in an e'zine or whatever, but it's exceptionally good and i urge you all to go read it. it relaxed me a good deal and i was able to sleep without tossing and turning, which is actually the reason i had bought the hard drive, remember? to, like, export my negative energy. but it didn't work out that way. you can't buy happiness, as a trillion people i will not credit have said. but we still try. because we've been trained all these years into this process of thinking that the only way you *get* things is by handing over cash. but i dunno. whatever. words. i guess that's all, then. go read "subtext." http://www-scf.usc.edu/~lindseya/subtext.html - Styx - 01/23/99 - 11:47a.m. !!========================================================================!! !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #478, WRITTEN BY: STYX - 2/3/99 !!