Soundtrack of My Life

Song: Fuckin' in the Bushes
Artists: Oasis
Album: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (2000)

You know when you're pissed and just feel like closing the doors to the world, telling everyone to go fuck themselves and doing your own thing? This is the song I put on at those times and today is those times.

Work blows.

As much as I try to convince myself that the busy season is coming and it's going to get better, it's only going to take a couple more 3 hour shifts on a Friday night where I make $40 and there's way too many staff on before I just throw in the towel, lock myself in this office and write from sun up 'til sun down.

When the day comes that I actually do finish the book, walk into wherever I'm working and quit, this song will be playing in my head.

There are a couple reasons why I love this song so much despite it's lack of actual lyrics:

One - it's reminds me of the university days with Pauly and Tommy and Stu and getting blasted at The Bomber, the height of my "fuck what everybody thinks I should do" stage of life. As much as I was a colossal idiot, I loved those days and wouldn't change them for the world.

Two - it plays in the final fight scene of Snatch and it's awesome and I'm totally going to watch it tonight now.

Maybe it's just the general "like we give a fuck" attitude of Oasis that makes it even better.

I don't know really.

I just know that the minute I got home from my bullshit shift tonight, this song got turned on and cranked up.

Now all I want to do is just smash out page after page of the book so I can quit and be done and move on and hear this song play in my head as I walk out one last time...

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Where Is My Money?

Did I miss a newsletter or something when I started doing this freelance thing?

Is there some guidebook that I didn't pick up that explains how getting paid pretty much is never going to happen, because it sure as shit seems that way.

Passion Magazine is now 100% officially tits-up without every having put a dollar in my pocket. Three issues, four articles, some 6,000 words amounting to zero dollars and zero cents. I know there is the exposure of having a byline in a national magazine, as well as a picture in one, and the clippings are great for my portfolio, but none of that puts money in my hands.

On the heels of Passion's non-payment comes the situation I currently find myself in. All the spots I write for, save for one, have yet to pay me for some very good work I have done and I'm starting to get more than a little concerned.

I'm wondering if my lack of cents comes from a lack of sense. Should I have known it would be like this?

I filed my article for Trot Magazine a couple months ago, after several hours of interviews and work, plus a rewrite to better express the tone and voice the magazine was looking for with the piece.

As it hasn't been published yet, this one doesn't have me as worried, especially because I actually get emails back from my editor, which is more than I can say right now about Canadian Sports Magazine at the moment.

Same story as with Trot - interview done and put together, complete with additional pieces should they want to make the piece larger, invoice sent and...

Nothing. Not even a reply to acknowledge they got my invoice.

Most nerve racking of all is Bugs, simply because I've never run into this situation there before.

It's July 17th and I haven't seen our June numbers yet.

Normally this wouldn't matter much to me as I tend to make around $1.87 a month. But last month was a banner month for me, complete with an SI Extra Mustard link and some serious pub thanks to my on-going tete-a-tete with the Drunk Jays Fans.

Not that I'm expecting millions, but this could be a hundred dollar month and a guy could really use a hundred bucks right about now.

Instead, I'm left checking my Gmail account thirty times a day to see if I've gotten the email yet, only to be disappointed time and again.

I know the Bugs thing will work itself out - I have the utmost faith and respect for my boss over there and he's never given me any reason to doubt him in the past.

Just, when everyone who owes you money stops returning your emails and phone calls, you start to get a little paranoid.

And broke.

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D'You Know What I Won't Miss?

The 8 a.m. stomping and shouting matches in the apartment above us.

I mean, it's bad enough that they apparently are on the cutting edge of the fashion industry and are the first to realize that cement shoes actually are a great look, especially when you come home loaded at 2 in the morning, but then how come they can't be like the rest of us after a good drunk?

Sleep in and stay as quiet as possible. Hell, I turned our fridge off two Sunday's back just because it was making too much noise...

Not these people though; they're up at 8 a.m. slamming doors and screaming at each other in between trips to their deck to smoke darts that end up making the yard look like a giant ashtray.

I could handle it when it was the 3-year-old kid; he doesn't know any better and that's what kids do, right? I got up every morning at 7 to watch cartoons and have pretend wrestling matches with pillows as opponents on the L-shaped sectional couch we had for 47 years...

But grown folk should know a helluva lot better than to be up and screaming and stomping that early in the morning, especially when you're in a non-soundproofed house with four other people.

Try to keep it to a dull roar for the poor bastards that'll be moving in underneath you once we clear out.

Or at the very least, take off your goddamn shoes!

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The Rundown: I've Had A Bad Day or Two

Starting with this post, I'm getting my ducks in a row and hammering out as much writing and work from this computer as possible on a daily basis, because this is what makes me happy (aside from Sarah, puppies, babies, great movies, better books and sushi) and I'm sick of being miserable.

That being said, we're doing some cleansing today.

Warning: I'm getting real serious and personal here, so if that's not your bag... vamoose!

Five Worst Days of My Life

5. Kicked Out of University - May 1999
You think telling your parents you failed a course is hard? Try telling them the school they're paying good money to send you to has kicked you out entirely. Fuck me did this day suck. I managed to drink and party my way to a low enough average that the school didn't even want my money... and then I had to fess up to it to the 'rents. The old man told me I should just get a job in one of the Hamilton steel factories because that was all I would amount to anyway. Faye told me to stay home, go to Mac and get coddled. I moved back to Waterloo in September, worked for four months then rattled off sixteen straight months of school with a 71% average to graduate in June 2001.

4. Grandma Kyte's Funeral - November 2005
Bad for so many reasons, first of which is having to say goodbye to someone who was very, very important to me. My Grandma was crazy - she drank, she smoked non-filtered cigarettes by the truckload, she cursed more than I do. She was the best and I loved her dearly. This day gets extra awkward points for being a Kyte Family Function, meaning the extendeds whom I hadn't seen or spoken to in some time. Oh right, there was also some real nice Phil Time too.

3. The Night Before My Uncle Jack's Funeral - January 2004
That night, I decided to have a sit down with the old man after around a year of not speaking with him, wanting to get everything settled and start building something new. My cousins were never going to be able to speak to their father again and I didn't talk to mine by choice and that was ridiculous to me. So I tried... and failed... miserably. When conversations end with the one person (my old man) hollering at the top of his lungs (in public too) for the other person (me) to "Go Fuck Yourself," it's not really a very good evening. I've said seven words to him since.

2. Two Sunday's Ago - March 9, 2008
My brother ended a conversation with me in the same manner as my old man did, telling me to "Go Fuck Myself" and the worst part of all? He sounded just like the old man always did - He's right, you're wrong and if you can't see that, why bother with you? I got one brother and I don't want to lose him the way I have lost my old man...

1. Divorce Announcement - November 1999
See, I contend that it sucks more at age 21 than it does at age 6, because at 21, you know what all the problems they're talking about are. When you're younger, you can't comprehend these things and eventually it just becomes the way things have "always" been. Learning there was a whole lot of lying going on throughout your formative years really sucks balls. At least, to me it does.

* * * * * * * * * *
"Do it now 'cause tomorrow ain't promised today"
- Christopher Brian Bridges... Stand Up!

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I Know Which Dwarf I Am...

Grumpy.

I'm at that point where I'm just tired of everything.

I'm tired of being a moron who wastes a great night out all dressed up with his girlfriend getting shitcanned and announcing to a room full of strangers that, "I'm Spencer and I'm awesome because I have a mohawk!"

I'm sick of busting my ass at Blockbuster effing Video for the last nine months to find out that that transfer they assured me would happen whenever I wanted to move back to Ontario isn't as assured as originally advertised.

I'm pissed that I've spent countless months talking about all the ideas I have for a book and a movie and writing and haven't done shit about it. Not one single word.

I'm grumpy as fuck and d'you know what?

It's about goddamn time too!

Reaching the point of total and utter frustration moves you in one of two ways:

1. Prolonged periods of laying on the couch in the fetal position watching old movies and crying
2. Sitting at this computer every spare minute I have either trying to find a better job that shilling movies or writing the book / movie that will make me never have to shill another movie ever again.
   

I'm not much for the fetal position, so starting NOW, the search is on for a different job and the writing starts first thing tomorrow morning.

Schedules. Routine. Habit. Timelines. That is the only way these ideas that have been bouncing around inside my head for the better part of the last year are ever going to become whatever they are meant to become. I just need to sit down and do it.

No more Baseball Mogul 2008.

No more three hour cycles of The Score.

No more laying around watching old movies.

Writing, writing and more writing.

P.S. You don't want to mess with Grumpy... consider yourself warned.

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