It's the fourth of july. A holiday that has always usually been associated with my sister's birthday rather than any special significance for the country's "birth." I'm sure this holiday mattered at some time. But not now. Not after everybody's got a shot of patriotism in their asses and runs around with flags painted over every conceivable surface.

Not when we've become xenophobic and are afraid of everything that doesn't look like us.

Doesn't sound like us.

Doesn't believe what we believe, say what we say, pray to who we pray.

This holiday is supposed to remind us of what we (and by 'we' I'm referring to those specific people who wrote the Declaration of Independence and lost their lives insuring that it survived. I'm referring to the people who did the real work.) had to go through in order to be a country of our own. And all I'm reminded of is the many reasons why I'm disappointed in humanity.

If I could talk to Thomas Jefferson or the other founding fathers, I don't know if they'd be proud of where their creation is right now. I think they would've had higher hopes for us, and I think that we've failed them.

We've failed a lot of people.

So this Independence Day, instead of cooking chicken and sausage on the BBQ and drinking beer and telling yourself how great it is to be a rich, capitalistic American, why don't you reflect on how you should be better as a human? Why don't you try to figure out what you can do to make sure other people get to feel good about living in their country, instead of telling yourself that yours is the biggest and the best?

And only then do I think it's fair to have a holiday like this.

if you're not angry
you're just stupid
or you don't care
how else can you react
when you know
something's so unfair
the men of the hour
can kill half the world in war
make them slaves to a super power
and let them die poor.

Want to know how my day has been? I've been listening to Alanis Morissette all day. And not the new stuff; Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, no less. Which may as well just be a one hour and eleven minute song with seventeen bridges. Today culminated all the shit I've had this week into one brief, five hour period.

So here's the breakdown. First, I'm nearly two hours late for work. I was supposed to be there at eleven. I went to bed around three, setting my alarm for eight am. Then I thought a second, and set it to nine. Nine o'clock comes and goes, apparently, because my alarm clock didn't go off. At eleven thirty Jackie knocks on my bedroom door and asks me if I want chicken nuggets. My first thought is, "Why in god's name would I want that when I can get as many as I want at work? Work. What time is it?" And that's when I let out a FUCK that probably made the heavens shake.

I leapt out of bed, got ready, and called my boss, all in a matter of ten minutes. I told them I'd be in a little after twelve, all the while saying to myself, "Probably around one, if I'm lucky." So I ran down to the busstop. And just as I get there my bus pulls away and leaves me behind. The driver obviously didn't notice me screaming at the top of my lungs like a lunatic, because he paid me no notice. So I sit down to wait for the next one. By now it's noon.

Waiting on the busstop. A guy behind me, also waiting for the bus, cannot sit still and keeps pacing inches away from me. And every now and then he lunges forward to get in front of me and look down the street in case the bus happens to materialize itself because it requires him doing this action fourty times in five minutes before anybody's allowed to get on the fucking vehical! (Say that ten times fast.) So finally the bus comes and I get on and take my seat. It was fairly empty, which was odd, because normally around that time it'd be pretty full and I couldn't get a seat; I'd have to stand.

Moments later, I understood where all the people were. The next stop. Now, there's a reason why I generally prefer to stand up on the bus and brave the furious tides of gravity washing over my body, even when there's an empty seat between two other people. It's because I have to have at least an empty seat on either side of me in order to not feel like I'm being smothered by the fatty lard of the other commuters. But today I was trapped. In seconds the bus was filled to capacity and to my left was a man so huge that I believe the tires buckled when he got on. And he smelled. He smelled like sweat and butter and oddly of bacon. Not a nice combination to have an inch from me. Worse, he didn't get the hint that when I inched away from him, it wasn't so he could fill the void with his humungous ass and thus get closer to me and defeat the point of me moving in general.

But on my right was the worst part. A grandma. What's so wrong with them, you ask? Ah, my naive audience. Old people are by far the worst examples of humanity, I feel. And no offense to them, because it's not their fault. Their brains are simply decaying too quickly for them to make sense of anything. I hate old people. Almost as much as I hate gays and white guys. Yeah, I understand the paradox. Shutup.

Anyway, this particular one had a staring problem. That's something I hate almost as much as people touching me. It's almost the same, in a way. It's an invasion of space, and it drives me nuts. She, however, apparently liked what she saw, because she kept pointedly looking at me every three seconds. Not just looking, her eyes lingered over my torso. And she obviously didn't get the hint when, ten minutes into the trip, I'd had enough and locked eyes with her and scowled. She just returned with a blank, vacant, stupid old person look and kept doing it. But eventually I lost it and I yelled, "What the fuck is so sexy, Grandma?!" and moved to another seat.

The walk down the street and to my job was no better, because it was hot as all hell and somewhere in my mad dash out of my apartment I'd forgotten to put on deodorant. I'm sure you all know how that is. Your body odour and sweat in "that spot" is fine up until you realize you forgot to put any wonderful masking products on. And then you stink and you've got pitstains on your shirt. But, oh, it gets so much better.

Halfway down the street (it's seven blocks from the street where the bus lets me off to my job.) it begins raining. Out of the blue. Today was the first day since it flooded that there hasn't been a cloud in the sky. So I get to work and I'm very soaked. And my boss comes out when she sees me. Do I get sympathy? No.

"You're two hours late for work. This is the last time this will ever happen, Josh. I'm writing you up, and if you're this late again, you're fired." I couldn't even muster the energy for a civil response by then.

"Sure, Kim. You can't fire me. I'm the only person here who does anything," I replied and walked past her into the crew room to change. The problem with that job is I bust my ass more than I ever expected to, I'm rarely late, and I've only missed work four days in six months (two of which were when I'd been hit by a car.), but the second I fuck up in any way, it doesn't matter how good of an employee I've been. All that matters is that I'm two hours late, and my lazy manager has to work extra to fill that time for once.

The rest of the day was acutally pretty average. Because of the rain we didn't have many customers, so I was thankful for that. I so desperately want another job. Ah, christ. I crave a cubicle so much it hurts sometimes. I don't know how people can say they hate them; working on a computer all day would be ideal, as far as I'm concerned.

Anything that would let me sit down, as opposed to standing for eight hours at a time.

I baked Jackie a cake earlier. She told me, "You know, I could really use some cake at this moment," and I said, "Okay," and went and baked her one. It was rather spur of the moment and I usually hate cooking, but for some reason I didn't mind today. And all week I've been making strange pasta dishes with the multitudes of pasta we've got here. I've been making really strange sauces and throwing everything together. Ah well.

As shitty as today was, I felt a thousand times better when I got online and somebody special was there for me. It made everything seem so much brighter.

*what happens to josh when he's stressed and doesn't brush his hair

I drank too much last night, got bills to pay
my head just feels in pain
I missed the bus and there'll be hell today
I'm late for work again
and even if I'm there, they'll all imply that I might not last the day
and then you call me and it's not so bad
it's not so bad and
I want to thank you
for giving me the best day of my life.

Yeah, I was right. The day went pretty much as I'd expected: shitty. All my customers were bitchy (likely because of the rain) and a lot of things happened non-workwise to disappoint me. Today was full of them. Plah.

My parents are still upset over losing their dogs. My mother's started drinking and smoking again, which means my father's probably doing the same. My father doesn't usually drink, but my mom used to do it daily several years ago. And the two of them "supposedly" quit smoking a few months before I left home. That they've resurrected these bad habits again worries me about how they're dealing with their grief.

My sister's birthday is friday, and I'm being made to go. I don't want to; not because of her party and the fact that I hate parties, but because I don't want to spend the day with my family. I really don't. I only requested the day off because Sydney was looking forward to me going.

More sad rememberances: it's been almost exactly a year since I saw Kent. July ninth was the day I got in that airplane and went to see him. Which means it'll be his birthday in less than a month. Diana called me a couple days ago, and I was really surprised to hear from her. We talked for half an hour, and she told me that she was leaving on a five week vacation the week after next. She'd rented an isolated cabin in northern British Columbia and planned on being alone with herself around the time of his birthday.

While we were talking, she said something to me pretty offhandedly that still bothers and upsets me now. She told me, "Well, my gay son's not here anymore, so you've got to take his place," or something along those lines. I can't even remember the context, but it really upset me for some reason. I guess even as much as I've gotten over him and yell at my mother when she tells me that he's still alive, I don't like to be told that he's not here anymore in plain english. While I'm very much aware of the fact that he's dead, I still don't want to deal with it often. And unsubtly.

At least I can look back and see quite clearly that I've become something entirely different this year. And I am always happy to be able to do such things.

so I'll say sort of a prayer
that I've held too long in my throat
I'll say it as I walk away
you and I know we should've let it die a long time ago

I really, honestly despise asking my parents for anything at all. It's storming outside right now and I need to be at work in little over an hour. I obviously can't take the bus, because there's no way in hell I'm walking down to the bus stop and waiting for half an hour, then walking down the street to where I work in weather like this. No way in hell.

So, I called up my parents to see if they could drive me over there. And yes, they could, but only after making me feel like shit for wanting their help. And regretting it.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive them. Not because of the years of shit they subjected me to, the mental and physical abuse, but because they don't feel that they did anything wrong. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive them for that because they don't think it's their fault. And they've never told me once that they're sorry.

Blah. This day isn't going to be a good one, I think.

I'm too tired to listen
I'm too old to believe
all these childish stories;
there is no such thing as faith
and trust
and pixie dust.