PLAZA DE ORO

Calling Off Christmas

whitneytaylor — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:15:07 +0000

So the time between saying so and so days before christmas, at my new temp job that was supposed to last a week, and actually being days before christmas, melted away like so many hopes and aspirations, ambitions and desires. The job dragged on and on, each day an ultimate test of getting through the day. The good thing is that I’m currently employed. The bad thing is that it’s the worst job I’ve ever had, AND I don’t make enough money to get by. I don’t even have enough money to buy anything worth drinking from the CVS, and it looks like it’s only going to get worse. The banks are to blame. They stopped giving me new credit cards with low rates, and with my current ones they raised the rates on all of them. So I’m sitting back like our forefathers, just waiting, waiting, waiting for crack to slip through, or a throat to cut, or a train to jump on, or a brand new gold rush. But it may take awhile, and in the meantime, there’s no christmas this year.

78 days until Christmas

whitneytaylor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:23:24 +0000

I say that kind of thing to piss people off at jobs, kind of like going around whistling Christmas songs in the summer. But I’m still unemployed. It’s like the employers here have stopped hiring until the winter is over. So traumatized by this winter we’re having. I’ve never seen so many people freak out or just climb into their little hermit crab shells and wait until spring. The thing is, it’s not even that bad! I mean, if you’re used to New Orleans or something, it’s probably bad, but this is nothing like the winters we used to get up in Canada. Does Guy Maddin stop making movies just because it’s winter? Try living in northern Maine some year and find out what a real winter is like. Maybe that’s why Stephen King writes so many books, and people are always acting kind of weirdly in his stories. Okay, I didn’t live in those places, but how about the Twin Cities– they have winters like this every year. It didn’t stop the Replacements. Though something stopped them, I think it was drinking too much. Which, by the way, has been my approach this winter. I simply built a bobsled run to the CVS and stocked up on Cocoribe and Malibu and had little Plaza De Oro tropical parties. The only thing missing was the girls with coconut shell bikini tops, but we’re working on that. Anyway, back to the job hunt.

Job Hunt

whitneytaylor — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:49:00 +0000

Now that the summer is officially over, I guess it’s time to get back in the Job Market. I was considering Manpower, but they’re moving into Milwaukee. That would be okay, but it seems ridiculous that they’re no longer in my neighborhood– I mean to work there. The commute would feel like some kind of absurd travesty!

But I sure need to work! I can no longer afford to drink ANYTHING at the CVS near my beloved “Plaza.” I have to ride my bike well into the asshole of Glendale to the skuzzy Figpucker’s Drive-Thru for a bottle of Cisco. It’s depressing.

I figure the one job that ought to be available in the Milwaukee area is putting up those “Sidewalk Closed — Use Other Side” signs, because they’re EVERYWHERE. You can’t get to the nearest Taco Hell without having to switch sides of the street about four times. I never see anyone putting those things up, either, so I figure you have to be fairly stealthy. And that’s my middle name.

Spring finally comes to Whitefish Bay

whitneytaylor — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:32:59 +0000

The street is repaired, there are buds on the trees. Down the street, where I saw the bald eagle in the shrubbery– wait where was that that I saw the bald eagle? I’m not entirely sure it was a bald eagle, actually.

Tired of the CVS and hangovers. I’m going to find a job now that it’s warmer and I can get around well on my bike. I went riding around this weekend, it was great! I spent some time at the library, which looks like a church inside. Not only do they have a little book sale room, they have a free book shelf in the lobby! With some actually good books– for free!

So things are looking up, I think. It was a long, depressing winter, but I can finally see things getting better here.

March of the Unemployed

whitneytaylor — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:43:15 +0000

OK! It’s March already, I’ve really got to get a job and start paying off some of this debt. (Though it doesn’t FEEL like March out, not that March is ever very warm. It feels like January 15th.)

I heard they are moving the MANPOWER headquarters to downtown Milwaukee. Not that I have gotten that desperate… yet. But I thought that I might apply for a job at the Manpower HQ, which is like five minutes away on bike. But if they’re moving…

I might start a new journal, here, to try to keep track of my debt, and to help me to overcome it. Somebody recommeded that. I don’t know how KEEPING TRACK of your debt is supposed to help you overcome it… but I’m willing to try anything. . .

State of the Union Address

whitneytaylor — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:15:17 +0000

Things haven’t been going well, not at all. Maybe I should have been writing stuff here all along, though–maybe that’s the point–but I don’t know. No one wants to hear the complaints of a depressed person. The roofing job didn’t work out, or should I say the roofing JOBS. So I’ve just kind of taken some time off trying to work. Went up to the Twin Cities for the holidays, and now I’m back, and it’s colder here than up there.

I’m running out of money. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to move to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where I know no one, after all. I have no job skills, no savings, no friends. The only thing I have is this pretty good apartment at the Plaza de Oro, and a belief in some kind of magic that is so strong, so unwavering, that I keep walking out to the CVS Pharmacy day after day, buying things that amuse me, various forms of decongestants, laxatives, and pain killers, along with whatever liquor or wine looks the most absurd to me. I may soon have to expand my horizons, however, and then, look out!

Old Monk

whitneytaylor — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:33:34 +0000

I pretty much spent the end of December, the holidays, and all of January in the grip of the Old Monk rum, from India, which they had a special on at the CVS. It’s pretty harsh, kind of sweet, and scented with little subtlety with cloves and maybe some cardamom, a bit of cinnamon, and god knows what else. The sugar content certainly gets the alcohol to your brain more efficiently, and I’ve pretty much forgiven the Whitefish Bay CVS for not stocking Mad Dog, Night Train, Thunderbird, and Richard’s. This is the rum that Johnny Depp would drink if he had ANYTHING in common with that stupid pirate character he’s always playing and not just a big fat boring pussy.

What led me to drink grim poison.

whitneytaylor — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:08:31 +0000

Now I’m at Heinemann’s for breakfast, I order breakfast, an Omlette and decline the toast, because I’m gluten intolerant, and as usual, they suggest that I don’t eat the potatoes as well, thinking I’m on the Atkins’s Diet, but I have to insist that “YES, I WANT THE FUCKING POTATOES.” A woman sits next to me, and she’s on her cell phone THE ENTIRE TIME SHE’S LOOKING ON THE MENU, ordering, one call after another. This is her office. I am now eating breakfast in SOMEBODY’S FUCKING OFFICE! She holds the phone aside while she orders, she’s trying to order a CHEESEBURGER at 10:30am, but they say they can’t start making lunch until 11. She argues, she pleads, and I think her strategy would be to argue for a half hour, but there is someone waiting for her on the phone. The waitress goes to check if the cook will do it, comes back, says, okay, the woman gives the waitress some MORE OF HER TIME. “Do you have a low-carb bun?” she asks? The waitress says no, the woman sighs, dismissing her; you just lost a customer, and forget about that TIP! But she’s back to the phone, now talking to her mechanic, they have her car, the AC doesn’t come on fast enough. It works but it don’t come on FAST ENOUGH. Then onto another call, she just found these low carb chocolate chip cookies, sugar free, only 6 carbs… I try to shut her out; I try to shut her out… I concentrate on the music playing, MUZAK, oh no, why did I do That? It’s now going right through my skull, not even bothering with my ears. I can just FEEL the PAIN of these musicians who are playing this, or if they happen to enjoy playing this crap, the pain of their childhoods that made them into a person that could play this, happily. I struggle to shift my attention away from it, back to the woman. She’s on another call. “No, no, no,” she says, “it’s all sugar and carbs!” Then she’s talking about her upcoming vacation somewhere, she’s worried about it, she’s afraid there will be nothing to do. “I just can’t sit and look at the water.”

This is the most horrible dining experience I’ve had in awhile, and I’m only here because earlier I went to Himmler’s Bagels and sat down, and no one waited on me or even looked at me. I just sat and wrote in my notebook for half an hour, until I got sick of hearing the TV and left. I guess I should have asked someone, but I was already in a bad mood about the job. Maybe it’s just me. I’ll go into a place and sit at a table writing in my notebook and the waitperson will say, “Do you need something?” as if it would be okay to just go and sit and not buy anything. I don’t know, maybe it would be? Okay, then two guys eating there got up and left, and then the one guy looked at me like I was a circus clown sitting there or something. Do I look that weird? Do I have MINNEAPOLIS written all over my face, tattooed? Or something, maybe I should get a #4 Packers jersey, just to fit in.

Back at the restaurant, that woman’s VOICE, it just burns through everything, her conversation: “What he does for a living—it’s—not that great…” There is some quality to her voice that’s taking me down a spiral path downward, to HELL, into the television sound coming from the next room. Commercials for tomorrow’s programming, an entire afternoon of “Judge” shows: Judge Judy and Judge Montel Springer, Judge Ratchet and Judge Hatchet and Judge Hang-em-High, Judge Reinhold, and Judge Speen, Judge Rice, Judge Dancing With The Stars, Judge Extreme and Judge bin Laden, Judge Carbohydrate…

It’s too much, I can’t get out of there fast enough, and I stop by the CVS Pharmacy and buy some Peanut Butter Schnapps, because right now I hate myself.

Follow-up Foul-up

whitneytaylor — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:13:27 +0000

I’m between jobs again. I was working at this roofing company, I don’t want to say the name of it and get into trouble. There were two roofing companies side by side. They were two brothers who had feuded, and then split up the business. The employees of the one I worked at called them Oral and Anal, because one likes to talk a lot and the other is, I guess, really anal.

SO I got fired at the first one, and then had an interview at the second, as an aluminum siding installer. A big guy interviewed me, he looked just like Will Ferrell and he knew it—it was painful. He was wearing a Wonderbread shirt, and kept doing half-hearted, pathetic attempts at comic characters. I told him I had no experience, but he said “no sweat” and they like to teach people THEIR WAY. Just as long as you previously worked for the brother and hated his guts, you got the job.

So I went into work on my first day, and they said: Sorry! They had confused me with someone else—it was with a woman named Whitney, who was hired as a receptionist. “But when I called to get my work assignment, it was obvious I wasn’t a woman, right?” I asked the guy. “I don’t know,” the guy said, “what can I say?” and he stood there dumbly looking at me. Just then a woman, really voluptuous in an obvious way, came in carrying a clipboard, and Will turned to Jell-O as she handed some papers to him, and he said to her, his voice turning to mush, “Thanks, Whit…” Then stopped himself. She winked, smiled, turned around, and walked back, like Jell-O on springs, to quote Will Ferrell. “Wait,” I said, “that’s Whitney?” And he nodded yes, and shrugged his shoulders, sheepishly, totally, busted. I just stormed out, then, instead of waiting for a pathetic apology.

Then I stopped at the CVS pharmacy on the way home and looked again in vain for Mad Dog or Night Train. No dice. What I finally settled on then was a bottle of 42 proof “Southern Host,” which is cheap, fake Southern Comfort. I took it home for a depressing evening.

Working

whitneytaylor — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:41:55 +0000

I have been too busy with working, lately, do write anything here, or do anything else, really. That’s the way it goes. I’ve written a few things in my notebook, so I’m going to go back and find those entries and type them here, in order to try to get caught up!