the navel times and observer

Yeah, I bombed another one at the paper this week. Again, got there later than I should have to get out of the newspaper on time and as a result I didn't get to start writing my story for the newspaper until after I'd taken care of lots of smaller tasks.

This time, however, I was forced to call in a reinforcement. I hate calling others for help in this job, particularly when I am being PAID to get the newspaper out on Saturdays BY MYSELF. But I had to call, there was simply no way I was even going to get close to making deadline if I hadn't called the assistant editor in.

In the end, I was still half an hour late, which is pretty damn impressive when all I had to do after 7 p.m was write one story which turned out to be 25 inches long, place that story and three photos in the middle of a page one the editor designed, spot a few items on the rest of that page and finish designing another page. Pretty damn lowly for it to take that long, honestly.

Yup, flopped another one like another dead fish on a wharf.

The thing is, I just can't seem to shake the feeling that I am entirely incapable of doing this job I've set out to do. This is the third place in the last year where I managed to fail at my job in this profession I've decided to get in to. It's got me pretty firmly convinced there isn't any profession I'm cut out to succeed in.

I mean I managed school ok, but I never really excelled at it. I made the grade, but then the grade these days is pretty damn low. And once I left school that was it. I didn't manage to do anything right beyond that point. I got two jobs and successfully managed to lose them, not that I was fired but there was intense pressure for me to leave and one was an internship.

On top of that, honestly, I've lost motivation to do a lot of things. I go to work, I still volunteer a few hours every week, but I can't seem to get myself to go to bed until early in the morning and can't seem to convince myself to wake up until the very last possible moment. And dating, well, I was convinced a long time ago I'm just screwed for finding a date. It's fairly clear even if I were to get a date I'm just not gonna get a second date.

For the few times It seemed close to working out circumstances either directed it to go elsewhere or I just wasn't ready at that moment. Had I known those were going to be my last opportunities of finding anyone I imagine I may have behaved differently.

Not that I could afford to go on a date even if against the odds I acutally got one. I'm barely able to keep my broke fat ass in the black as it is.

But please, don't pay attention to my bullshit.

I got flooded by a Republican swamp yesterday, but it certainly swayed my opinion in the election. After hearing Talent speak (and completing another name on my politico card, so far the governor (thrice), Kit Bond (twice), Roy Blunt, Claire McCaskill, John Cornyn and a couple Texas congressmen), I know I'm voting for Claire. The only politico I definitely want to meet is Ike Skelton, my current congressman and a Democrat (thanks!). He'll be here on Monday, conveniently I won't be.

But in any case Talent was on his way through town as part of a value-touting tour and had the governor and the local state rep with him. I got to cover, it naturally, and stand out in the hot sun listening to the baby-faced kid talk about my "Missouri Values", like poking holes in the arctic wildlife refuge for six months' worth of oil, claiming that McCaskill isn't going to do her best to support biofuels or anti-meth laws and telling me my Missouri values include discriminating against millions of gay people by not letting them marry whoever the hell they want to.

I thought it was honestly a little funny, I mean personally while I don't plan on getting married I don't see how my friend marrying his boyfriend is really going to affect the sanctity of my wedlock or that of any of my siblings or cousins.

I really (really) wanted to ask Talent if he planned to enact controversial new anti-divorce laws next session, but it seemed like it'd be kinda flippant. On top of that "protection of marriage" is nothing but a politician-sponsored buzzword for "those fags want to marry in my country?" and they hardly think about it and certainly don't expect anyone else to take it seriously.

So I didn't ask him.

The question I should have asked, the pertinent one, was one I didn't think of until today, 24 hours later. Talent was spouting about the federal anti-meth law he put through which requires cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine to be stored behind the counter at the pharmacy.

The result, he said, would be to "choke off the supply" to meth cooks.

The question I should have asked is simply this. A meth cook will turn a massive profift even if he purchased his cold medicine legally. Enough, I could easily imagine, that it would be worth his while to travel to dozens of pharmacies in any given big city and buy a couple boxes of cold medicine at each one. Heck, he could even go to another slew of pharmacies the next time he's looking to cook.

It's not like he's taking a big hit driving around, and he could bypass the current federal legislation without giving it a second thought.

The question is, what's stopping the meth cook, Sen. Talent?

The other pertinent I had to ask that day was for the governor, who's broadcasted his opposition for the statewide initiative on the November ballot to raise Missouri's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.50 per hour. I mentioned the issue and unfortunately he filled in the minute and a half I had with him talking about how he was for a federal raise but against a state raise so he would more easily bring new businesses in.

The other thing on my mind lately is my sister and her persistence in getting older.

I just realized tonight looking at Facebook that my sister is actually graduating high school in May. This scares me about as much as I was scared when she turned 16 about two years ago.

Why does this happen? My sister is the only member of my family that I don't remember always being around. Evan was born when I was just barely one and a half, Lee was born just after I turned 4.

But on the day my sister was born I remember waking up early and seeing my mom and dad leave the house. I asked htem what was happening and mom was on her way to the hospital. I even remember dad telling me who our babysitter would be. I don't remember another thing about that day, but I remember that as clearly as yesterday.

Heck, I remember visiting mom while she was still in the hospital with Kelsey. The three of us were there with dad who had brought us by. I don't remember that room at all save for mom was there, but again, it won't leave my head.

I know the stories about Evan picking Kelsey up out of her crib and I've seen several times the video tape of Kelsey being born (the only of the four of us to have that recorded) and the tape ofher first birthday party. It's strange that this person who was only entering 8th grade when we moved to Kirkwood suddenly being just nine months away from adulthood.

I mean it wasn't long enough ago five years ago that my family traveled from San Antonio up to Columbia to drop me off, the first of the four of us, for my first year of college.

There hasn't been enough time gone by for Kelsey to have written me a letter a couple months after I left to tell me how much she missed me. It just hasn't been long enough, even though Evan started college and will graduate in May five years later and Lee went off to school last year.

It just hasn't been long enough.

Ironically, on that note, Kelsey's will be the first of my siblings' high school graduations that I'll actually be able to see. I was in Mexico during Evan's and I was in Toledo when Lee graduated.

I can't help it, though, while I know and want her to go wherever she wants to for college (and I don't think i'm going too far out on a limb to say I don't think she's really too thrilled about extending her academic career, though I believe she knows how important school is), but, given that, I'd still like her to go to school somewhere in state and somewhere not too far away.

Ideally she'd go to school in Columbia, the same school Evan, Mom, Grandma and Grandpa Watters, several relatives and I went to for undergrad and Dad went to for grad school, but it's also only two hours away from me and I'll probably still go up there fairly often next year.

Now, Missouri State's only 50 minutes away, but, honestly, I just don't think the Watters brood is an MSU family.

The only school she's mentioned to me lately is Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, which is a good ways from me, but very close to several cousins already going there and only 45 minutes away from mom's hometown where our grandmother and a lot of aunts and uncles live.

I can't help it, while I'm honestly only vaguely aware of her social life (the extent of my awareness really is just asking who her beau is every few months) and am definitely not anxious to know her every move, I still want her nearby so I know at least vaguely where she is and, secondly, I'll be close by if she needs me.

Kelsey, you know we'll do anything for you.

Well, not completely, it's a pretty shallow sort of love.

But I did notice reading through my company (a small, one-owner company within south central Missouri) employee manual that I don't get any vacation for a whole year (yeah, i knew this) and for the first five years of my employment I get only 1 week each year.

Ironically at my last job, which, albeit, was part of a large nationwide corporation, paid me $500 less per year for simply reporting rather than photography, editing, designing and reporting, but gave me I believe nine days vacation time after just seven months of employment (it was also ironic that, while I left for a number of reasons including my inability to meet the job's requirements and frequent errors, I only became eligible for vacation days less than a week before I left).

So, while a small company has its benefits (I know the company owner by name and face, he knews me and has been in my cubicle just to talk casually), I feel like I kinda got the shaft in the terms of benefits. Ouch.

Oh well, while there's far less to do around here than there was around Joplin and while I'm not reporting for a real city as much as I am for a small town, I am actually meeting the objectives of this job, which is a significant advancement over working in Joplin.

In short, I dunno, I still wish I could say I were writing for a city of Joplin's size, even though I've managed to prove by now that I just don't meet those standards. On the other hand, I'm not putting myself under stress every day just to live (only those Saturdays where I don't come in on deadline).

To update my readers on Saturday's entry. I was pretty well calmed down by the time I finished that and actually ended up staying awake the rest of that night just because it was late enough by the time I calmed down.

I topped it off with an early-morning 7-mile walk around town. Felt good.

I thought I was through with this bullshit.

So, albeit, I started late today. I woke up late, I ended up reading too long after waking up late and I made it to work ... late as all fuck, like two hours late past my deadline. It actually feels worse than the entire rest of the summer where I managed to fail terribly at getting anything worthwhile done at this miserable fucking job.

I started at 3 p.m. with a story left to write that ended up being at least 35 inches (God, I hope it came out all right because when I finish my stories at 11 p.m. i surely don't have a whole lot of time to go about proofreading my own work because, after all, this newspaper isn't going to pay two people to work on the news side on a Saturday evening). There was a couple here who adopted a black girl three years ago and became part of a New York Times story Thursday as a result.

So, the father, an attorney, told my publisher about this and I got the story and took the picture (a very adorable kid, it might be on the Web site here Monday). Unfortunately my fat lazy ass didn't begin writing the damn thing until after I'd gotten several things done on a day that didn't start until at least 3 p.m.

It's not a bad story, the newspaper took on an actual issue in a story -- race -- we spend far too little time on those. And I feel like given the circumstances I didn't do a terrble job.

In any case, it was 11 when I finish that God forsaken thing and only at that time (remember, deadline for the whole shitter is 11:30 p.m.) did I get around to starting to design page 1. Now, 3 and 4 are someone else's department, as are pages 6 and 7. My coworker and I finished pages 5, 8, 9, 10 and 11 Friday and page 12 is a full-page ad. I finished designing page 2 before finishing the page (one of those tasks i had finished before finishing my story). So at the end of the night I just had 1, 13 and 14 to finish up and I was done.

Well, to have those all done in about two hours on top of screaming curses at myself could possibly be considered something. Unfortunately this asshole started that all so damn late.

So I felt like the absolute piece of shit I am when I walked into the printing press at around 1:40 a.m., a good 2 hours after deadline, and waited there until I had finished proofing the finished product. For the last 15 minutes of that time the staff which folds the paper and puts the inserts in stood behind me, yeah, that felt terrible.

Now positives, there are few of them. For the first time I "worked" a photograph. I don't know what this means, but I believe it's essentially adjusting the densities of each of the four colored inks on the page (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) so that your picture looks like it's of people who actually look like people and not like blueberries or look like they're either blushing brighter than a tomato or suffering from some overwhelming rash.

In any case I worked my first two photographs by myself today and they didn't seem to come out all that badly. They also took up a good twenty minutes each because I wasn't used to taking a shot at working a photo and having it actually turn out how remotely near what I'd planned.

But in the end, it was an utter failure and after all of I feel like an utter failure.

How clear is it that you're really ready to go to bed after a pretty sleepless night when you find yourself imagining action movie scenarios starring Michael Landon?

Little Road House on the Prairie, anyone?

Let the psychosoma-tosis begin!

So I was out on my apartment's balcony smoking a cigar (yeah, secret's out for those who didn't know, i smoke cigars and a pipe on occasion) this evening and when I came back I felt a spider web on my arm. Now sometimes, say, outdoors, in the woods, I wouldn't be that bothered so much about a spider web, but then I didn't realize there were spiders on my balcony and I've been out there many times.

So my interest was really piqued when I saw this small black spider with a huge abdomen hanging to the inside of the curtain in front of the door. I didn't see any red violin-shaped features but then I wasn't going to ask it to turn over so I could check. It was pretty damn scary.

I grabbed a whole bunch of paper towels, picked up the bug and threw it out immediately. Of course that didn't help very much.

I've been itching a lot more, especially around the scar from that bone graft on my side, but it's really all over. I pulled my shirt off once outside to shake it out (not something i typically do outside at my bulk) and another two times inside my apartment again.

Off and on I get the impression that my muscles are tightening up, but so far my throat hasn't been restricted. And with luck the foxhole prayer'll work and I'll still be here tomorrow. I hope someone would notice before they don't see their expected paper Sunday.

Really I know if anything were to have happened I'd be feeling it a lot more about an hour later. Doesn't stop me from itching a lot more than I think it should.

For anyone that's heard it, my laughter sounds like a maniacal cackle and those unnerved enough at having experienced it got to be a little unnerved this week.

So ever since March when I got a speeding ticket for hotdogging it through Osage Beach I've been indebted to the state for traffic fees. That situation wasn't much helped a month later when I got a second ticket for going 11 mph over the speed limit. The first ticket cost me about $280 but it was the second ticket I was really worried about after paying $110 for a lawyer to take care of it for me.

Having spent that much to try to avoid getting points taken off my license I figured trying to get the points taken off of two tickets might easily cost me up to $300 -- having never before tried to shake my license free of points.

It was a relief today to get a call from the lawyer's office and hear my court costs and fines -- the sum total of all the costs of this little endeavor after the lawyer's fee -- are only $155. Now, it's not like I can drop $155 anywhere and not miss it, in fact I'm pretty much dead broke every two weeks or so (like right now), but I can't afford $300 at all, so $155 isn't bad.

It was enough to get a laugh.

The time before that wasn't near as universally recognizable, it turns out a newspaper I used to work for in Stockton couldn't edit it's photos because someone was accessing the computer server at another newspaper I worked for in another town about 50 minutes away (they're part of the same company). Specifically, that person was running the one licensed copy of Photoshop for the Stockton newspaper. Stockton just had the application saved on the server, not on any of their computers.

So randomly througout the day Stockton for weeks apparently called the other paper, in Buffalo, and told them to get off the server.

In other news, I get paid Friday (hoorah!). Lets slow down the rapidly increasing debt train!