So Happy It's Thursday

So here I am beginning a three day weekend. I've never had Good Friday off before, so I'm really going to enjoy this. It almost makes me wish I was the religious sort. Well, I am ... but what I believe in doesn't really jibe with what They believe in, so what can you do? I'm off tomorrow nevertheless. And because I hate to squander my valuable free time, I have a plan.

The plan is to spend most of tomorrow writing. Since I've been struggling with this same scene for the last week, I've decided to go ahead and kick it old school. What that means is that I'm getting up early, packing up my gear, heading over to West Lebanon, and setting up shop at Borders. I'll need to get there early, because I know if I waste any time getting there the tables near the windows, which are the tables next to the electrical outlets, will be gone. I intend to be there for the opening bell. That means I have to make sure I get my lazy ass out of bed tomorrow morning. Because I have to be elsewhere six days a week normally by 5 AM, I tend to stay up really late on the one night I can stay up really late, and then I sleep in. Well, I still intend to stay up really late tonight, but I can't let myself sleep in. I *have* to get up. This is the plan.

I intend to do some serious damage on that chapter tomorrow.

*****

This afternoon while watching the Darjeeling Limited, which is a delightful and quirky little movie, I was indirectly inspired to come up with a line of narration, which I quickly jotted down in the small notebook designed to hold these things until they are needed. Oh, and I think it's a really good line, too. At the time I jotted it down, I believed it to be one of the finest sentences I've ever crafted.

It has to do with Laurel, and more specifically, how Kelly really feels towards Laurel. Something in the movie made me think of something related to Colleen, and a fairly recent anecdote, which I wasn't present for, and then I thought about how something like that might fit into a scene somewhere, and then the line presented itself. I won't reproduce it here, because a) like the tomato joke in Pulp Fiction, I think I've built it up too much now, and b) it might invite some debate, not over the quality of said line -- anyone's mileage may vary on that anyway -- but because it can be read as me putting myself down. I don't think the line *really* reads that way, but I can see how a person might see it that way. The line, instead, is really meant to express how Kelly sees Laurel, and I think it's a pretty good compliment.

And taken out of it's fictionalized context, it's more or less what I think anyway.

*****

For a short week it's been a really long week, and I'm glad it's over with. Work has been about the same. There are guns that go really good, and guns that go really sucky, and most days waffle between the two. But it's been a long, trying week because Cooter is really getting on my nerves. Last week he turned himself around and was pretty on the ball. To be honest, though, his switcharound was contained mostly to the easier of the guns. When we got back to the harder ones, he started his shift back towards shiftless and lazy. I'm used to that. But he's also been a mouthy little punk lately, too, and he's pissing me off.

He's the type -- we've all met them -- who can dish it out with no regard for anyone's feelings, but can't take it. He feels free to say horrible things to me at will, such as, "No wonder you don't have a girlfriend. Because you're such a dickhead. None of them want to be around you." What provoked that rant? He was goofing off and I asked him why didn't he get his ass in gear and do something to help me get the fucking guns through? Now when he stabs at me like that I don't just take it quietly, but I don't fly off the handle either and get all pissy, like he does. I slowly take the gloves off and pick him into little itty bitty pieces with the kind of surgical precision that a textbook Virgo such as myself specializes in. Thanks to my astrological sign, I was born with the mutant power of zeroing in on a person's most fragile areas, and in Cooter's case they pretty much stick out with flasing neon arrows pointing right at them. And because I'm me, I don't always know when to stop, especially when I'm mad, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort for me to whip Cooter right into a frenzy. He's left there *pissed* at me more than a few times, but in my defense he did bring it all on. I don't just shoot on him unprovoked. It's bad form.

Even so, I'm the only one in the cell he can get along with for more than a few minutes at a time. He and Jim don't get along at all. Jim is the one I mentioned before who can be a real asshole with the joking around, and he gets right under Cooter's skin, really for only pointing out that Cooter isn't doing something the way he's supposed to be doing it. I point out stuff like that, too, but it's like talking to a wall. He doesn't listen (or care). Christy, especially, can't stand him, and thinks he's a worthless lump. I can get along with both Christy and Jim pretty well, and that gets under Cooter's skin, too. I might have a three sentence conversation with either of them and then I'm a "kiss ass". When Jen called me a "pushover" back at LSI it did piss me off, but she was right. Cooter isn't right. I know how to get along with people and can exist in the world without fighting with most of it, but I'm not now, nor have I ever been a kiss ass. I'll just stand on my past work history and let it speak for itself.

He wants to transfer. He and I are both unable to transfer out of Mini-14 for a year. That's June 28 in my case; May 16 in his. I don't plan on going anywhere. I like it there. He wants out. And he's mouthy about it, too. This is about all I've heard about for the last couple days. Because he's been a little mouthy fuckwad to me aside from that, I've just taken shot after shot at him with abandon. He was talking about transferring in May, so I asked Barney right in front of him if we could move it up to April instead. I was checking some headspace for Justin from the machine shop this morning, and invited him to the going away party we were going to throw for Cooter ... the day after he was gone, again right in front of Cooter.

Him: "I'm just tired of it. I'd rather work maintenance anyway. I'm not much for assembly."
Me: "I've noticed."

But I'm not the only one willing to take some shots. Yesterday, right before break, Cooter and I were having a heated exchange over something or other. Brad, the Grumpy Old Bastard (and my personal hero) said we should just kiss and make up.
Me: "How about I just pound him into the ground with a hammer instead and call it even."
Brad: "Then you'll get arrested for pollution."

He's really quick. That's one of the reasons Brad is my role model.

Anyway, even though it'll leave us another person short, I hope he does transfer. I'm tired of being his babysitter, and I'm tired of having to carry him on my back, too.