had another interview with the st. louis public library system yesterday. they seem to like me in the human resources department, or maybe they just don't like the supervisors. anyway, i'm not holding my breath.

leaving for thanksgiving today. 500 miles to knox vegas. should arrive about midnight. i should call my mom. and pack. and shower. and feed the dogs. so why am i here telling you all of this? because i'm a procrastinator extraordinaire.

happy thanksgiving. eat way too much, and then think about the starving people in the world. i hear they taste like pork chops.

that's just what i heard.

things are not always what they seem. the job today didn't work out.

loyal readers (all three of you, thanks to the reverend dave clary), my streak of bad occupational luck is not yet ended. as i stated last post, earlier today, i didn't get to go in to do some painting as early as i thought. instead, i waited for a later phone call from nancy. ten o'clock, no call. ten ten, no call. ten twenty, no call. ten thirty, i decide that perhaps i misunderstood, and that she wanted me to call her. i called, and she was still running the errands she told me about this morning. she told me that i should go ahead to her house, where her nephew joe was working. the gate would be locked, so i should go around back and yell "joe!" to get his attention. this is not something you might see your average geronimo doing on a regular basis anywhere, but least of all in south st. louis.

i went to the house, finding it very easily. i went around back, hoping to see the elusive joe. instead, i found her next door neighbor.

Neighbor guy: (looking wary of stranger skulking around his back yard) how are you?
G: not bad, thanks.
Nei. guy: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

i explained to neighbor guy that i was supposed to work for the lady who lived next door. he recommended that i go knock on the front window, so i thanked him and did just that. i was greeted by joe, who pointed me at some window frames and said that they needed a coat of primer. he also mentioned that since it was getting nice out, we could move the operation outside. this was great. in st louis today, it did not get over 43 degrees. i do not own a lot of warm clothing. i worked for two hours, getting a thin coat of primer on all of the aforementioned window frames, as well as a reasonable amount on the windows themselves. i went inside to see what joe was doing so that i could help. joe's job consisted of sitting on the fucking couch, drinking a fucking pepsi, and watching Allie McFucking Beal. i sat with joe for about one minute to drink a glass of water (i hate pepsi), and then nancy arrived. she immediately left to get food. when she returned an hour and a half later, she proceeded to complain about all of the work that i had done so far.

i worked until 4:35, doing a job i knew nothing about and had no instruction on, and then left.

EPILOGUE: suzi's sister's friend had a birthday get together at blueberry hill. suzi's other sister showed up with her new girlfriend, who got me the job. this was the most butch woman i've ever seen, and as i said last post, me and the lesbians, we're like this (crossing fingers). she said that nancy called her saying that i wouldn't work out. ha. i spent a day ready to walk out, and she effectively tries to lay me off again. ha.

well, a merry gofuckyourself to you, too.

i have a job (at least for the moment). i get to put my construction experience to good use as i get behind the wheel of a paintbrush and putty knife (all in one day!). i was supposed to start at seven thirty this morning. nancy (i have a feeling that this is a lesbian contractor. more on that later) told me to call when i was ten minutes away from the jobsite. as it happens, i live less than ten minutes away from the jobsite. i stopped into the apartment, wearing my shitty jeans and work boots and ready to go attitude, and i made the call. it seems nancy was "working" late into the night and was barely awake (blogauthor's note - as i do not know nancy from more than a phone call, my quotation marks around working represent only my cynicism, not actual knowledge of her drinking habits). she told me to hang out at the house, and she would call me around ten (there goes my nine hours today). so here i am, still rarin' to go, tying up the phone line at 8:40.

back to the lesbian contractor comment. the area i live in, soulard, and the area i used to work in, lafayette square, have a much higher than st louis average population of gay and lesbian couples. from my experiences serving them as customers, as well as personal friends, i have learned that i get along very well with lesbians. almost ridiculously well. perhaps this is because i'm a non-threatening guy. i emphasize guy because i see it as very different from man or male. i hope all this translates into a good working relationship, as i would then have a fallback position shoudl i decide to take another job. one of the beauties of construction type work is that there is nearly always work for those who don't apply drunk.

tightening my laces and rolling my cigarettes up in my sleeve...

i need a job. badly. i really can't take being at home any more. god damn i need a job.

damn this machine! i wish that if my posts weren't going to go through they would at least be saved somewhere so i don't have to go back and try to reconstruct what i said. anyway....

i went to tennessee with suzi this weekend. that means friday we drove down, talked to my mom for a fewe minutes, then went to bed. saturday we went from relatives to relatives, then over to my friend's house, then to bed. sunday we had breakfast with my mom and rick and his children, then we drove back to the stl. the high point of this whoel trip was Haven. he has grown a lot, he has a number of teeth already in or about to be, and he will probably say a real word very soon. he is six months old, which i understand is very young for a child to start talking. however, since i said my first word at six months, maybe it's just my mom.

i had my library interview yesterday. it went well on the whole, but....
-i was the first one interviewed. as far as i can tell, you never schedule the person who looks best on paper first, because you rarely hire the first person you interview. at least, i never did.
-i couldn't think of any questions. i never can, because the only one i ever really need to know is what the job pays, and i feel like an ass asking that at the interview.
-they are going to try to make a decision in THE NEXT TWO WEEKS! meanwhile, i need a job so badly, i'm almost ready to go to the fucking mall and ask to be a goddamn elf. i need a job so badly, i'm ready to fiinally ask the age old question "do you want fries with that." i need some work, starting as soon as possible. a strong work ethic is killing me!

but, other than that, couldn't be better.
-g

the complete story of the Haven saga thus far

last october, my cousin got married to a guy that most of our family didn't care for. for the sake of anonymity, let's call my cousin Fucking idiot (to be abbreviated f'idiot) and her husband runt. at about the same time as f'idiot and runt's wedding (same time of year, not same time of day), f'idiot got pregnant. runt had no part of this. however, runt also did not notice for nine months that his wife was pregnant. (i am so glad that morons like this aren't mixing with my gene pool, yet, but more on that later).

in may, i recieved a call from my mother, informing me that f'idiot had just had a baby. as neither i nor anyone else in my family knew anything about the pregnancy (she lives in a different part of tennessee than my mother), this came as something of a surprise. even more of a surprise was that the baby was hispanic, and thus, not runt's child.

f'idiot claimed that she had been raped but had not spoken of it because she was ashamed (we have learned the truth since; she was having an affair with a mexican man at work). runt was furious, and refused to see her or the baby at all. after two weeks of such foolishness, my cousin was at her wits' end. she wanted to be with her husband (god only knows why), but she also didn't want to give the baby up for adoption. to make matters worse, runt called her one night and told her that he had just swallowed a large quantity of pills so that she wouldn't have to make the decision he had forced on her, that of the baby or him. f'idiot, in shock, sent an ambulance to get him. he was taken to the hospital, and his stomach was pumped, unfortunately.

my mother, though something of a control freak, is the type of person whom you'd want around during any emergency because of the way she handles herself in a crisis. during this crisis, as always, she was ready to take the steps that needed taking. she drove to f'idiot's home town, where f'idiot was staying with runt's mother, her husband still not willing to see her or the baby. young Haven was at this time two weeks old, and still being breastfed by his mother, but my mother offered to take him for a week or two until the whole mess could be sorted out, upon which time, she hoped, she could return the baby to his mother.

with Haven in Knox Vegas with my mom, f'idiot and runt could see each other once again. they were reconciled fairly quickly, so it seemed that all would be fine. however, f'idiot only called my mother to check on her son one time in the first two weeks, and when she did, she seemed none too ready to retrieve him.

two weeks turned into six, with only two more phone calls about Haven, then six weeks became three months. it seemed that f'idiot had forgotten about the fact that she had recently given birth. by this time, my family in knox vegas had grown rather fond of the child. they decided that since he was going to be put up for adoption anyway, one of them should be the adoptive parent. my aunt and my mother were the most likely candidates, and since my aunt already has three children, my mother volunteered. i was to have a baby brother, something that i had wanted so much as a child.

because they were married at the time of his birth, runt and f'idiot both had to sign an adoption form. f'idiot being a habitual liar never told runt about this, and thus the form never returned. if the matter was to be taken up in court, he would either have to sign or take a paternity test, thus taking him out of the proceedings. after months of trying to get in touch with him, he was served a court order at work, and he signed the form. it looked as though all would go well.

today was the second court date that was supposed to be the finalization of the adoption process. friday would have been, but as the judge is a stickler for rules, my mother and her attorney decided to postpone until today. runt and f'idiot were in the courtroom today to protest the adoption. runt now has thirty days to get himself a lawyer and try to reclaim custody of the baby. he stated that he and f'idiot were trying to have their own baby now, but since his wife was raped (remember, she was nothing of the sort), they wanted custody of the child so that they could give him up for adoption to strangers, so that they would never have to see him again. actually, to clarify, runt has never seen the boy, and this whole thing is to get back at f'idiot, my mother, and the rest of my family.

and if i were to kill him, I would be the one to go to jail. jesus!

wellity, wellity, wellity. i held auditions today for a new sketch comedy troupe. my last attempt a group failed miserably. this one was a modest success. we started with three members, and now we have four.

i really wish i could properly tell the sergeant slaughter story. i really wish i could work alliteration like that into my day to day life.

i need to smoke a cigarette. good eve.

well, read the last entry and use the contact link above, since i can't imbed a mailto link. damned computer illiteracy!

ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, boys and girls, sadists and masochists, your good friend geronimo has gone on the public dole! well, ok, not exactly, but i did just file for unemployment on-line to allow myself time to find a job that i may actually like! any suggestions? i could do with some intellectual stimulation, not to mention a reasonable rate of pay. e-mail any suggestions to
that is all for now......

well, i don't work at the chocolate bar anymore, so this is the last time i will mention it.

on saturday, at the end of my shift, the owner called me and the pastry chef outside to the patio. he sat us down and told us that the hardest thing he had ever had to do was to let the two of us go. i, however, didn't wholly fall for it since only a few months ago, he staggered in off a bender and told me that he was thinking of laying sarah off. i was one of the many voices to talk him out of it. apparently, the absence of my opinion made the matter easier to accomplish. he gave us each two weeks severance, a pittance, but better than nothing.

today is jordan's birthday, so i have to get going. perhaps i'll post some more tomorrow.

today, at work, my fourth set of customers were a pair of women, i would guess them to be fifty. one of them had a libree and eyebrow piercing.

I remember my dear old grandma
her darlin' old wrinkled face
with about ninety extra holes,
stainless steel all over the place.

she was so sweet and kind
always sympathetic
but she stayed away from the fridgidaire
cause her face was so magnetic

CHORUS
all of grandma's piercings
are so special to me
her jangling ears and her shiny nose
alternative and free

lower lip and eyebrow
she had a double and a triple
she sewed my pants with the needle
she first used on her nipple.


grandma liked the pain
from the needle going through
her ears and tongue and belly button
and her solar plexis too

grandpa rarely said
that he liked her less or more
but once he told me after church
she tickled like an old west whore

chorus

grandma passed away
a year or two ago
like a pincushion in a casket
i'll really miss her so

we put her in the ground
buried her with a tear
take my metal detector to the cemetery
i can just feel she's near

chorus x 2

ok, so since both of my readers have requested such, one in person, i will post again. don't get too excited, i get bored easily, and most of my life is not interesting enough to share (or so i'm told).

news from the front
haven will be officially my brother november 8th. my mother sent this news along with a new picture of the lad, and he is painfully cute. though he is really my first cousin once removed, we actually have the same dimple (on our faces, you sick fuck!). last time i talked with my mother, she put the phone up to haven's ear so that i could talk to him. this may well be the dumbest thing i can think of my mother ever doing, but i suppose it is cute to an extent. haven is six months old, and doesn't quite yet grasp the concept of the telephone unless he is truly advanced (which wouldn't surprise me, but i'll not count on it).

go angels. i was pleased to see the giants lose last night, but i must say that rooting for the team that didn't beat your adopted home team takes some of the fun out of the world series. nonetheless, it was a good series, and i probably would have posted more if not for it. well, even though that isn't true, it is a nice lie we tell ourselves nonetheless, right?

i have got to get out of the restaurant biz. the lack of intellectual stimulation is killing me. i have memorized everything i need to know about the job, down to the prices with tax of every item we sell. this is no way for a reasonably intelligent man to live.... but i hear it's hard all over. it does seem though that all of my friends have decent jobs that require more head work than leg. maybe i shoulda got me one a them degrees!

my sketch comedy auditions are rapidly approaching. the group is to be called the bastards karamazov, after a sketch i wrote with andy von crankenhaus. i have written a few things for the audition and hopefully later use. no church groups, please.

finally, i am always late to the new revolutions, i just started playing the sims. suzi is much more deeply addicted than i am, but i know i have a problem. i can't go without my artificial people too long.

there is no rest for the wicked, but at least they have better sex.
G

so.... the last post i made didn't go through. i wonder why? do you think it's because i used the word TERRORIST? peut etre, peut etre non pas.

to the best of my recollection, my last post had to do with, surprise surprise surmotherfuckingprise, the chocolate bar. a new anecdote.

on of my top five worst customers. probably number three since my first restaurant job at 15.

horrid bitch: hi, i'm looking for some chocolate
G: (thinking "what does the sign say outside? the asparagus bar?") ok, you'll have to be a little more specific than that
hb: (scoffing) you know, a box of chocolate?
G: we have boxes of our truffles
hb: i don't want truffles, i want chocolate
G: well, all of our pure chocolates are over here.... (guiding the horrid bitch)
hb: God, all you have is dark chocolate? don't you have any milk chocolate?
G: this is milk chocolate
hb: is that all you have? i hate dark chocolate!
G: well, milk chocolate isn't really that complex, so we only have one var...
hb: what i'm looking for is (brand name i have never heard of). do you have any of that?
G: i can't say i'm familiar with...
hb: it's a chocolate with a hazelnut filling.
G: like a truffle?
hb: yes.
G: our lafayette square truffle has a chocolate hazelnut filling...
hb: fine, give me a three pack
G: here you are
hb: i don't want that! i want a box of chocolate!
G: (looking at box with chocolates inside in hand) ok......
hb: i can't give that as a gift! i need a big box. give me a three pack of the l.s., but i want it in a box (describing dimensions erratically)
G: you only want three?
hb: you obviouslydon't understand what i'm saying. i want a box of chocolates...

this continued for several minutes. if she ever comes back, i'm calling the police to report the crime that i am about to commit on her.

alright, i never know who to trust in the world....

the only person i work with during the vast majority of my daytime chocolate bar shifts (i am call am manager not because i manage the staff, but because i can manage without one), sarah, is a passive agressive backstabber. damn it all, why do the people i like have to be hatin' and shit? this is the second time she's put her own feelings into someone else's mouth (the pm manager, meg) and then quoted them to me to avoid a confrontation. i'm not that much of an asshole! i can listen to constructive criticism!

if you have any constructive crit for this blog, fuck off
(or send it to maggotbrain@excite.com maybe that worked?)

thanks to alissa for linking to me. perhaps now i'll have a reader that i didn't tell to read my stuff!

fuck 'em all but six, and save them for pallbearers.

not that i have ever had a single reader or anything, but i'm sorry for staying away for so long, but, you know, you didn't make much of an effort either, you know.

news.......

suzi finished her first week of teaching. she loves it. even after i make my billion, she will probably still want to teach. it's people like this that could have made me like school.

i have a meeting tomorrow on my day off. the world is a shitty, shitty place sometimes.

and i accidentally said fuck to my mom on the phone.

sigh

i have made a long journey into the land of my birth, and it was good. suzi and i went to tennessee for a week ending today. a few highlights.
--- Haven. my new little brother, Haven, is among the best and brightest infants in the sport today. his bold competition has made him a true standout in a spectacular field for the last four months. i haven't seen a baby this ridiculously precious since north hampfordshirecester, 1939. the child is actually my new little brother-to-be from a "springer-guest-to-be" cousin of mine. (yes, i admit to being of trailer trash stock, but how i want to think i have risen out of the mud!)
--- my accent (the one that i never had until i moved to st. louis) has returned, just to prove i'm still pretty muddy.
--- i have a scanner. as soon as i get a cord for it... and find out how to post photos, i'll have some pictures of Haven.
--- suzi and i already miss Haven, and it's only been eleven hours.
--- my mom is getting remarried. i'm happy for mom, i like his kids, but (for the sake of anonymity, we'll call him) nick is not who i want raising my baby brother. (on second thought, let's not insult the devil and santa that way; let's call him) lick works at the produce market at which my mother used to work. he is crass, boorish, and a drunk (says the young pot to the old kettle). lick is going to be my new stepfather. (shudder) "Y'onna buhr?"
--- i didn't get to see my surrogate mom for more than a few minutes this trip. she's my best friend in town's mom. she rules.
--- mom and i get along better when we're both drinking. it's great. we get along pretty well anyway, but now, we have a tie that thins any and all bad blood (eventually): alcohol.
--- (Parentheses are fanfuckingtastic [which if i may {and i may}], is a word of which i was at least one of the original users [to the best of my knowledge {fanfuckingtastically speaking (if nothing else, i should try to copyright that bullshit)}]).

--- i'm pretty tired, so i think that this will be the end of the list. goodnight

well, today was my last day of work at the chocolate bar before my vacation, and i am loving that. i don't have to go back there until a week from tuesday. i don't have to talk about single origin chocolate, fantastic home-made desserts, or chocolate covered strawberries for over a week!
this is something that has been weighing on my mind for the last, oh, say, nine years. why, non-food service persons, would anyone be rude to the person who is going to be handling something you intend to eat? where is the logic in fucking with someone wielding that kind of power? i don't do gross things to people's food, but i damn sure could if pressed in just the right way. i know lots of servers and cooks who do, so why do we as an industry take so much shit?
"there's something very interesting about this cheesecake... i can't quite put my finger on it"
-g

so since i haven't posted it yet, if anyone wants to send me an e-mail (which i sincerely doubt, as this is hardly the most interesting blog of the last two you've read), my address is maggotbrain@excite.com. if that link doesn't work, i'll try to put one up that does, soon, i swear. ok, probably not. i get enough email i don't really want.
so, who's up for some drugs, eh?
sorry about that. there have been times in my life in which i allowed drugs and alcohol to get the better of me. after elementary school, though, i learned to handle myself a little better. now i live a nearly vice-free existence. i'll be right back, i have to get a beer and smoke a cigarette.
(insert pause. you should go listen to a medium short funk song, which should clock in at about seven minutes.)
as i was saying, the key to drugs and alcohol is moderation. wait a minute, i've never said anything like that in my life. so i don't know if i've mentioned it, but when i'm at home, i smoke on the front porch. this is because suzi is a recent non-smoker, and no one likes a whole house reeking of cigarettes, even me. now, i get to go outside and feel the loving kiss of the 93 degree st louis night. thank dog for air conditioning. thank doug i don't feel like writing anymore.

hello again from the chocolate-hawking world...
My name is geronimo. it has been for the past six years to a large number of people (basically everyone who has met me in a social or academic context in that time). for those of you who are curious, it is not the name that i was given at birth. i chose it late in high school as a replacement for a name that i thought didn't fit me. when i got to college, i started telling people that that was my name. they rarely if ever asked questions, but rather decided that it was cool to know someone named geronimo.
thank you for sharing, geronimo. does anyone else know what it feels like to be more than one person at a time?

just a few more things i forgot.
the chocolate bar, my place of business, was mentioned earlier, but the link never materialized. sorry about that, blake.
also, i went on a float trip this weekend. nine of us rented rafts and floated down the meramac river. suzi and i were in the only two person raft, but since each raft only got two paddles, we actually moved the fastest for lack of weight. some impressions:
i am from east tennessee, home of the ocoee river. if you haven't heard of the ocoee, you must have missed the white water events for the '96 atlanta olympics. when i think of float trip, i never expect that a lot of floating is going to be done. i think excitement, rapids, warnings, and guides. i don't think beer and cigarettes and eating while on river. this midwestern existence is killing me.
guy on the canoe with the rebel flag tattoo: she's a pomeranian. we just shaved her for the summer, and she was in the water. she loves it when we shave her. that's why she looks like that.
i don't know if he meant the rat standing on the bank near him, one of his two children, or his wife.

souxsie and i babysat her niece tonight. i like babies. they taste like... no this is a kinder, gentler geronimo. those motherfuckers bounce like superballs. no, again, just kidding. i really do like babies, strange as it may seem. and once i get warmed up to them, they generally like me too. baby emily was no exception.
i love beer.