“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

That’s a Bukowski’s quote. I was struggling to get up this morning, really fed up with everything and seriously thinking about pulling a Steven Slater. I was listening to the radio and the host said that today was Bukowski’s birthday. He’s my favourite writer and for some reason thinking about his stories of misery and failure made me feel better — I guess we all feel better to hear that we might not be doing as bad as a lot of other people out there… Anyway, it gave me the push to function today.

I went to work thinking about the one million different things I needed to do and wondering how I could possibly manage. The moment I sat at my desk I realised that everything was so fucking complicated and was not up to me. I have no control over anything and this would be confirmed a couple of hours later. I had arranged with one of the teachers that he would teach this week’s 3-day immersion. I had nobody else to do it — except myself — and my boss knew about it. Done deal. I sent the schedule to all the teachers involved and a few minutes later, in comes the teacher I had already arranged the classes with. He tells me he might have to teach a guy at PUC at 7:30am guess when? Tuesdays and Thursdays, the very days I had told my boss I would need him for immersion. The cute part is that hadn’t he come to talk to me about it, there wouldn’t be anybody tomorrow to teach. So, who’s fucking filling in? MOI! As always! Who has the class right after lunch? Moi! Who will have the last class of the day? Moi! So, I’ll basically have to stay the whole fucking day there because those pieces of shit didn’t have the courtesy to let me know what had been decided. Last Friday.

In the meantime I have assessments to write, interviews to do, phone classes to teach and e-mails tasks to correct. And schedules to plan. As lessons to prepare. Seriously, man… I really don’t need this shit.

So I thought about Bukowski again. Maybe some of his literature would help me out…

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Breaking bad

This is unbelievable. You really can’t make this stuff up. Well, probably everybody on the planet with access to Internet has seen this but it’s worth mentioning. In short, this flight attendant guy flips out after a passenger refuses to remain seated, goes on to tell the passenger — and frankly everybody else on the plane — to fuck off over the PA, grabs a couple of beers and makes a movie-like exit using the emergency slide. For the whole story, click here.

Now, the only thing I have to say is that I wish I had the guts. This guy represents thousands and thousands of people who think about doing the same thing every single day of their lives. I only think he was a little modest by taking only two beers for the road, I would’ve certainly grabbed them all. I love these breaking bad stories — obviously, as long as nobody gets hurt — and again, I wish I had the guts. I’ve quit a few times already. Some of them were a little melodramatic, with some crying involved, some name calling. Once I failed to show up to work for three days and I got a call from my boss. He asked if I was planning to show up at all. I said “no” and hung up the phone on him. Failing to show up reminds of the classic story of my friend quitting but not telling the employer of his decision. After a while, the company filed a missing person on the guy and he saw himself with the police knocking on his door. Priceless…

And then, there is this video…

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It’s been really hard to get any new TEDTalks to translate, so whatever is available I’m on it. I got lucky, though, and translated this talk by Carl Safina during TEDxOilSpill in June about the consequences of the disaster, the people responsible as well as the ones affected by it. Riveting talk available here. Translation reviewed by Durval Castro.

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Last weekend I saw the first episode of Breaking Bad, which looks like the story of a high school chemistry teacher struggling to make ends meet and diagnosed with cancer. He teams up with the local dealer and starts making his own crystal meth. Sounds interesting. With Bryan Cranston, former Seinfeld’s Tim Whatley… He’s good.

(Update: I hadn’t posted anything for some 10 days and I saw that there were some subtle alterations to the page. It wasn’t me, and it took me a few minutes to reorganise everything)