what should i do about this ringing in my ears?

has anyone else seen this commercial for lipoflavanoid, the miracle drug that can stop the ringing in your ears?
if you have, did you also think that it was hilarious that it was an old woman, talking into a phone that clearly had no one else on the other end? she was talking far too quickly with far too few breaks for her to have been talking to anyone else.
this leads one to the obvious conclusion that lipoflavanoid does not work, because if it did, she would not have answered the phone that was not ringing, and would not have spoken to the caller that was not there.
this commercial brings a sick smile to my face every time i see it because it smacks of delicious irony, and because i'm laughing at an old woman.

working on saturday

well, i'm here, and its saturday, so that means that i'm working on a saturday. not so terrible when you come from a server background. as in the field of waiting tables, saturday means big money even for those tethered to phones. i'm getting overtime, which is bomb, but i still have to sit here. i knew it was going to be slow, because everyone warned me, so i planned on doing the online traffic school program that i have to complete so that my driving record isn't tarnished. i was done with it by 2:30, mostly because it got so boring that i stopped reading every last word of it. seriously, there were like 12 pages of text for each section i had to complete, and at the end of each section there were between 8 and 10 questions about the material. so, it didn't take too long for me to figure out that i could skip through the material i was supposed to be reading, go right to the quiz section and get the answers from the text as i needed them. this was a trick i learned in elementary school, and it has served me well since then.
lets see...what else has happened since i finished my traffic school. well, basically nothing. i read everyone's blog. read fark for a while. went to the bathroom...all sorts of fun things. i have had to answer a few phone calls, and that has only been troubling because such a large percentage of the calls involved an angry person. for some reason people get really pissed off when i tell them that they can't make a payment over the phone right now because the accounting department doesn't work weekends. i mean, i'd be pissed too because its virtually impossible to talk to us during the five working days of the week. but still, there are probably several thousand people who manage to call us during normal business hours. and see, that's the thing, they are called normal business hours because that is when business takes place. i'm sitting here right now, mostly as a formality and as a tiny courtesy to our customers who might be stranded without gas. there's a possibility i can help them, but chances are that since they are the ones working on saturday, they aren't the ones paying the bills and therefore, not the ones that i'm allowed to talk to. there's always an awkward moment of silence when i tell someone, "well, since you don't know the password on the account, and you aren't listed as a contact, you're going to need to contact your fleet manager or whoever manages this account and have them call in." that awkward moment of silence is filled with their internal monologue, which reads as follows, "i need to call my boss. but its saturday...should i really call my boss on a saturday? what the fuck am i doing working on a saturday?"
speaking of angry people, i just got a call from a guy who hasn't paid his bill since july and he's all pissed at me because his card doesn't work. i actually asked him flat out, "sir, what exactly have i done to you to make you this angry at me?" his response was that i was the only line of communication between himself and this "shitty little plastic card." ohh! i get it now! since you can't communicate your frustration with an inanimate object to the actual inanimate object, you should take it out on the poor soul who has the unfortunate job of sitting and dealing with your stupid bullshit.
whatever, i'm a phone monkey, and i can deal with that. in fact, usually the way i deal with that is by arguing with people, getting them really mad at me for getting all mouthy, but then having them eat out of the palm of my hand because eventually i'm going to point out that they are yelling at possibly the only person who is willing to try and help them. eventually they all come around.
not today though, i think it has something to do with the full moon. all the crazies are coming out of the woodworks today. they're all like "i haven't used this gascard in 2 months, i'm gonna call them, ON A SATURDAY, and yell at whoever i talk to.
since i've been out in california i've had many jobs, and bitched about all of them. since i've started working here i've had to work 10 hour days, work on holidays, work on weekends and have angry people yelling at me all the time, but for some reason i've never been happier at a job. i don't know what it is. its casual here, so i don't have to be all fancy. its close to home so i don't have to drive more than 10 minutes. and i'm good at it. i'm good at it and it doesn't just piss me off all the time. sometimes people are interesting, mostly not, the people i work with are kinda cool, and i don't get in trouble for putting my dirty puma's up on my desk.
i mean, there's a whole lot more out there that i'd rather be doing, but for now, i guess this will do.
shit, i still have another hour and 15 minutes left before i go home. that kinda sucks.
oh well, back to fark.

being drafted

last night i had a dream where i was being drafted by the US army. in the dream i refused to be drafted, and in fact delivered quite a moving and heartfelt monologue to the draft administrators and told them they could lock me up, but there was no way i was going to war. the most fun part of the dream was when they didn't lock me up, but instead sat me down like we were going to be friends (in the dream, part of me even felt like maybe i had impressed them with my ballsiness and they wanted to talk to me) and offered me a drink. i watched my two interrogators drink of the same flask from which they had offered me some brandy or scotch or whatever, but refused to drink it, assuming that they were playing nice until the drugs kicked in. one of them even asked me if it comforted me to see them drinking from the same flask, to which i replied "no," at which point they threw their snifters at me and i felt the glass shattering on me and the liquid soaked into my shirt. pretty soon i started to feel drugged and they started the whole brainwashing me thing. somewhere around here is when i woke up, and was so startled that i just sorta lied there awake for a while. soon, suzanne tossed and i immediately asked her if she was awake, because i was so thrashed by this dream that i ended up crying in her arms (i'm a sensitive guy) until she could calm me down. i'm usually not too affected by my dreams, especially when they aren't very specifically emotional (like the aforementioned dream), so it surprised me that i was so affected by this one.
i think, and suzanne pretty much agrees, that this dream is indicative of me feeling as if i have no control, even when i make a solid decision and try to stick to it. it sucks because i've finally started coping with my job and have been trying to balance it with real life, but then i have a dream like this and it makes me feel like i'm not making any progress.
anyway, it was a fucked up dream.

depression

well...i've started a new job and i can feel the numbness slowly starting to wash over me. its scarier this time because i know whats happening and i still can't stop it. its more powerful now because my job takes up so much of my attention for so much of the day that i don't have enough left to combat it. i'm numb because my brain is being taken over by a foreign entity, and that entity is the complex underbelly of two of my most loathed foes, oil and credit. i don't know exactly how it happened, but i managed to find a job in an industry that combines these two, which is actually very simple because its just a credit card that is used specifically for gasoline, so i get to discuss the complexities of living beyond your means and the skyrocketing price of gasoline...all day long! woo hoo, hooray for me. do you know how many people say this exact sentance, "well, you know, with the way gas prices are going, we're going to have to eventually increase my credit limit cuz i'm running into this problem every month," that problem being that they've maxed out their card. everyone says that exact same sentance, and they say it the same way, with just a hint of "goddammit you better give me more credit otherwise i'm gonna take my business elsewhere."
well the point is that all this is turning me into the person i always turn into. i'm not thoughtful, i'm not introspective, i'm not caring, i'm not interesting, i'm not fun, i'm not a good boyfriend...but i do have money. money that i don't know how to enjoy because every organ inside of me is too busy trying to belch forward the invisible poison that is taking over, and every cell in ever organ inside of me is committing suicide because it would rather give its life to freedom than to keep a boring, thoughtless, joyless loathesome shell of a man alive. while i'm at work, i'm convinced that my blood actually slows down and thickens as if i were dead because all i do is sit in a chair in a very cold room and move only my hands deftly across a keyboard like a magic wand as i fix other people's credit problems.
i don't even like myself, so how can i expect anyone else to like me. how can i expect my loving girlfriend to keep putting up with my stupid boring bullshit as i careen towards that cliff again. and when i get there and grind to a screeching hault which way will be more appealing, the sedentary, constant, secure and steady ground that i stand on or the uncertainty of lunging forward over a cliff into the unknown that i'm trying to avoid because i know once i'm in it i'll have to deal with it all and won't be able to pull myself up out of it. it doesn't matter either way because i'm convinced i'll be miserable nomatter what i do.
when did my life become so insufferable? what decision did i make that landed me in a situation that i can't control? what can i do to take it all back? how can i get through the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next...? the end of the tunnel is so far away i can barely see the light and its not real enough yet to make me want to get to it.
what a boring blog. i even hate my blog. i hate my thoughts, i hate my actions and i hate my desires.