This is going to be an edit of a post I had on MattThoughts. That site was made to be exactly what the spirit wanted, which is often not all that close to what Chicago wanted. Still, I think that site came out well, but, still, I think I could do better, in terms of editing style. So, here’s something cleaner. This is what this post would have looked like, or something more like it, would I work with you.
So, it’s funny that someone’s worst week of their probation would be so relatively late in it, after having been through the majority. It’s funny that, especially having had some of their most pernicious restrictions taken away from them—or, let’s be frank, one most pernicious restriction (that being forced medication based on fraudulent reports by a prosecution psychologist, a crime that should have gotten him sent to jail, but instead, just made it worse for me)—the worst week, probably, of their probation, would have been this one.
So, in the span of one week, I had a dilemma (a clear-cut case of one employee breaking the rules) that would burden me with its being solved in a bad way, and then one with my taxes, which had been fraught with dilemmas, revealing itself as not only not solved but potentially worse off than it had been, before.
And then, thirdly, having switched to a new monitoring software, on both my phone and my computer (not by choice, because nothing is by my choice, except I guess if I were to be a woman and I wanted to murder my baby, that would be my choice, everything else is up to somebody else—with a bigger gun*—after having switched monitoring softwares), the battle to try to end my account with the software company that the government was no longer using came to perhaps one of the most absurd heads I’ve ever seen rear themselves up before me in my life. In my old, whole, entire universe.
By the way, this is being recorded while I am getting interruptions for not one but both monitoring software systems, because the one that they’re no longer using is still fucking me over daily, and actually probably contributing to my phone being slower than ever—what with the second one, being there.
Hopefully, my phone will return to a somewhat more efficient pace once the old monitoring software is actually deactivated. Hopefully, as well, they won’t push me to pay for the old software I’m no longer using into the new month—when I haven’t been using it—or at least, when the government’s not been using it (and I have not wanted to have it since just about the middle of last month). And I’ve already been in contact, on three different email threads, with the people from the old monitoring software company, saying, “Could you please shut down my account, because I’m no longer using it?” But, I’ll get into that story later.
But, in any case, I’ve been interrupted with pop-ups, saying, first, “spmonitor is not responding” (to which you can say “Wait” or “Close Program,” or something; closing it causes the system to freak out, and say, “YOU MUST TURN THE MONITORING SYSTEM BACK ON. YOU MUST TURN THE MONITORING SYSTEM BACK ON”), and then the other one—which I just got with this new recording, which I’m going to be transcribing for the reading—popped up, saying, “WChildAPP is not responding,” to which I—I guess I could have just clicked “Close,” in this case, because (A) that system didn’t freak out when you said “Close,” although of course, I think the probation officer would have seen—which is why it would have generally just asked you again, to basically turn it back on—and generally, you would say, “Yes,” because you would likely get in trouble for disabling it.
But, of course it’s just the height of shoelaces-breaking, or the height of whatever drove the guy from Falling Down over, to have not one but both systems—one of which is no longer used by the probation department, none of this having been your idea in the first place—interrupting you in what you’re doing to tell you that it needs you to either wait for it to start working or to close it.
By the way, I just had a moment similar to the Bible chapter I finished yesterday, started the day before, and didn’t realize that I hadn’t finished because I got to a section heading and looked at it un-closely enough that I didn’t realize that it was not a new chapter, it was just a differently named section of the same one.
The chapter was about—oh, wait, no, that was the chapter after this one. Well, in any case, the chapter was about Isaac, no, wait—it was Abraham, telling one of his servants to go find a wife for Isaac, in some land of his relatives, and then he, the servant, when he gets to the watering hole, or maybe before he gets there, he says something to God, basically, saying: “God, please let the perfect woman for my master’s son be the woman who responds to me asking her for some of her water at the watering hole with, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels.’” Anyway, I often do this with myself, and, by the way, Damien Echols—oh, by the way, when I’m saying this, I see a car with “666,” actually, [Redacted], as their license-plate number, in front of me, a couple spaces, so this may be a sign about what I’m about to say, but. Basically, and essentially, or—Damien Echols says that The Bible is a great manual of Magick.
And, I think this might be one of the sections he might be talking about. Because, basically, you sort of state to God, or to whatever you consider the higher power to be, or to your “higher self,” or whatever it is, you’re anticipating something, and that if that something happens, then that will direct you to the right action. This can also be seen, actually, in the movie Mississippi Grind, when the main character says that if the next person who comes out of the bathroom, or through a certain doorway, is wearing glasses, or sunglasses, or something, then he should bet on the next horse race, or then he will win his bet, on the next horse race, or something. Even though those are interestingly Different examples, to use, it’s basically the same situation.
If not with the same setup. It’s the character doing a similar thing. So, today I did a similar thing—and I was at the gas station, this was after all of the stuff that I’m about to tell you, and I said something about, or I said, to myself, or I thought, it, something about how, if I get exactly twenty-five, on the gas pump, then I will—everything, will turn out okay, for me, or, right, for me, or something. And, if anyone has pumped their own gas, they know how difficult it can be to stop it, on a particular number, because those numbers go by relatively quickly.
And, when I stopped it, it went from twenty-ffff—it stopped, I think, at twenty-four ninety-nine, and then it shifted over, or it stopped, at, something leading into twenty-four ninety-nine, and then it, shifted over, at least, to twenty-five. So, you’ll See, in the image, on this very, blog post, that I got twenty-five even. So, perhaps, that is the symbol, for Me, similar to Rebekah saying “I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking” that God is, looking for Me.
Anyway, as a further aside, before I get to the three things that happened this week, all of them being in some way or another me having no say in what was, essentially, something that happened unjustly, or at least something that happened based on the, largely the failings of others, but that I had little to no say in the solution of, I’m—going, to be putting together a book of the verses from my rap albums, titled Blatherworth: The Verses. This is partially inspired, or at least further goaded on, by my recent searches back into the work of Tony Hoagland, a poet whom I’ve actually seen on two separate occasions, one of which was as part of an AP Literature class trip, in high school, and the other one, of which was, I think, perhaps, something that I was required to go to, for a class in College. And, at both of these events, Tony Hoagland was reading poems.
I had bought What Narcissism Means to Me, I think at Barnes & Noble, from him, of the poetry that he has put out. Years ago, but this I had either thrown out, or lost, at Some point along the way. So, this past week, I actually went and found all of the books that I could, before they started saying that they were “Currently Unavailable,” by him, on ThriftBooks.com. And, potentially, I bought, basically, All of the books of poetry that he put out, throughout his lifetime, because Tony Hoagland is now Passed.
Interestingly enough, and here’s another connection, Tony Hoagland, like the author Rick Moody, was actually interviewed at Brookdale Community College, which was a college that wasn’t that far from my childhood home, in New Jersey.
I’ve gotta say, Brookdale Community College, had a pretty decent series of author and poet interviews, or at least “Poet” in the case of Tony Hoagland, although I did today receive a couple of books of his Essays, Most of Them, I’m assuming, having been on poetry, in the Mail, today, from that ThriftBooks order. The other, of Which, to make, up the Whole, order, Are coming in, Soon.
And now, let’s get on with the three dilemmas. One paragraph each. So the first one was me asking, months and months ago (last fall) the people in charge (you’ll notice a pattern) to get another employee to stop staying, oh, an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes more like one, rarely fewer than forty-five minutes, into my shift, after his one ended. This started out by being irritating and has turned into a full-blown ordeal. He’s the only one who stays that late, he has the same job as the others who don’t, and he just leaves certain things until after his shift that then take him, almost invariably, an eighth or even a quarter into mine, to do, while he’s pumping his bad energy into me, the entire time. They started out by saying, last fall, that they would talk to him, about it. Then they said, months later, well, we’ll talk to him about it, and it’s okay if he stays a half-hour into your shift, but no later. In fact, he’ll have to write a list of reasons, for staying longer! (And getting overtime pay, by the way, I think.) Then it became, well, we have fewer people on, right now (which, by the way, is changing your schedule to be something you weren’t told it would be, from what you were told it was), and so during this busy season, you’re just going to have to give him a wide berth. Then, it briefly became “You both are just going to have to be okay with working in the same space” (i. e., you have to be okay with him staying late), and then it quickly became, “With two people on, more than a half an hour late is unacceptable.” That sounded good. Then, without any warning, it became the new, highest manager, saying, “He’s actually going to be staying here, sometimes, until two or three AM,” i. e., three or four hours, into your shift.
Next: H&R Block wasn’t able to send in my Federal taxes by the online method because the goodhearted IRS was protecting my identity by sending a PIN to my old address, or to the new one that I didn’t check the mail for, in the mail, once. And then making it impossible, for me, for various reasons, to get a new one from them, or get that one, and then thus, doing it physically, myself, was the only way. But the tax professionals didn’t tell me that I would also have to send in the two state returns, physically. Which meant that I waited until June, called the Rhode Island taxation department, myself, and found out that my state return had never been sent in. That morning, I had almost fallen asleep on the road, driving home from work. That morning, I would spend three hours driving around, getting my state forms printed out, and then sent in, with 216 dollars for the glorious Rhode Island government, which blocks my progress to work, every night, almost, and then taxes me for the privilege for working outside the state. And when I finally got to sleep, that morning, I was woken up by one of the members of the tax office that fucked me, asking me a bunch of questions I’d already answered, and then telling me a bunch of things I already knew, while I was deliriously tired, and just hoping I would get back to sleep, before work.
That morning, I was also having my third thread of confrontations with the old Monitoring software company, each time telling them, “Hey, I’ve got a new, worse software. I need to cancel this one.” Then, when they sent me a bill, for next month, I said, “No, I have a new software, I need to cancel this one, and I’m not paying that bill.” They said I would need the probation officer’s approval, to do that, which he actually sent them, in that same email thread. Then, this week, I got an email telling me I needed to set up a maintenance appointment for the old monitoring software, and I said, “I need you to cancel this, not update it,” and they said, “Well, we’ll need the permission of your probation officer, to do that.”
My entire life is people fucking up around me, and me getting caught, for it. Me getting the punishments. Them getting no punishments, and getting rewarded, over time. Me getting the crimes. Me getting the penalties. Me getting fucked.
* P. S. To anyone reading this, especially in the government, I have no gun, and I have never had one, and now, in America, at least, I never will be able to.
MattThoughts 2 
Leave a comment