< did i mention i have yet to sleep?  it's hours past midnight and i'm writing in my blog!  holy hell! >

   I'm going to keep this short and simple (simple, being a relative term: few people can comprehend my English, and short, being completely relative, given the way I write) for now.

   After graduation I swore, for the love of "Pete," a non-existent non-friend of mine, that I will never, EVER, work for a paper as long as I live.  Two years of my high school life (3rd year and 4th year) were spent in nothing but my beloved press office, my beloved balcony, and spending office hours playing Worms.  So I swore off writing...

   But here I am, in some secluded place far away from meningococcemia (I wish... it's not that I'm breathing through a mask or anything), writing and editing everything in PageMaker and Photoshop, and getting paid for it.  Now, as my Luckies are slowly being reduced to ashes and my coffee getting all cold, I have finally come to a conclusion that  I am not writing for the masses, as most people would assume I am (or, people would point an accusing finger at me and say that I should get a life, pass Math 11 and get the hell out of UP and get a job).  I am doing this for the hell of it.  It's... well, penance.  This is the typical Sartrian hell.  I should have quit writing and spent the rest of my life in peace.  Screw the masses.

   FYI: Jean-Paul Sartre is a French existentialist philosopher.  You might know him, if you read "Nausea" and "No Exit."  Dammit, I should have taken another course that would have led me to a better existence than having to deal with people like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre.  And I am not a Philo major or minor... whatever.  Now this is alienation.

   I said before that we need to objectify the term "masses," but if this is the agenda being pushed by the paper I work for I have to take it.  Normally, if I get crap I throw it back, but this is an abnormality in the continuum of my sick and twisted life, God forbid if I even had one to begin with.  Presswork sucks, and the idea of having to sit here for a break, quickly, and then get back to that other computer and do what I'm paid to do... well that's something I have to deal with.

   I don't have a manic problem with getting abused, or a sadistic tendency of rejecting my inalienable right to sleep in my bed (my inner-inner blanket being a fancy shade of pink... well that's just plain sick) in order to make a paper someone would sit on by the time they're done reading it.  The only consolation I have so far when it comes to doing this is that some people actually ask me for an autograph.  I'm not a rock star, I'm just a social degenerate.

   Yeah, I work for the OutcroP (for you UPB people, I'm the guy with the long hair in a half-tail who's almost always seen carrying books out of the library like I own the place).  I don't write for the masses: apparently, this invisible aggregate of people gave me the right to write... that ubiquitous "them."

   So what does presswork have to do with all this?  With this short of a blog entry you have to know that I have a job to do and this typing has wasted close to fifteen precious minutes of my extremely valuable time.  Heck, I need some sleep, I need some smokes and I need to get out of here before my mom starts calling me again.  Or before my colleague (I don't have a "friend" when it comes to work) asks me a question about linking files in PageMaker.  Or before I just go mad and fill this whole page up with my blabbering.

   To all you young'ns who are reading this, I'm telling you right now to run for your lives and stay out of this job.  If I remember military ethic correctly (hey, I was an officer back in CAT... and I regret it), many are called, few are chosen, and only the best remain.  Allow me to digress on that a little: those who remain are either firmly dedicated to the task at hand, or they are just plain insane.  These aren't ideal types: these are categories.  I fall on the latter: only the terminally psychotic would take up a job like this without giving any consideration to their lives.  At least, those who are truly dedicated to the cause of the people still have time to ponder on the meaning of serving the people.  I don't even think of the masses anymore at the rate I'm going.  No, it's not second-nature, it's sui generis.