[Audio transcript from an updated/location undisclosed recording / Pasted, uncorrected]
Some of the projects I want to make over the next little while:
I want to write a collection of short stories that is just all wacky times, immediately leading up to or following quitting jobs.
Specifically, there is leaving Star Sand Beach Club very quickly and going to Palau and Yap, going directly to the airport and disappearing rather than going to the beach club (in retrospect, seems like the best job ever but for reasons, it just wasn’t.
There is the ATG drug testing, going to Belize incident.
There is the SS Neptune, leaving-to-be-a-schoolteacher-and-getting-karmically-bitten-in-the ass idea.
There is the leaving Kinko’s with a fax at six in the morning and going off to make a film story. That is a pretty good one.
There is the Wirthlin Group phone survey job that was such a nightmare and getting fired from that for not asking personal enough questions, then crashing the office party two days later and mooning the boss in front of everyone and pulling out while the cops pulled in the other way. That was a really good one.
There is Sharpey’s, but I didn’t quit that one, Well I quit but you know with noticing on good terms planning to go back to university of Utah which in retrospect was a colossal mistake. That one was a nice job. The stories aren’t as funny but they’re nice. Although, there was that good incident of getting my car crashed into and taking the insurance claim – this station is called Joyce Collinwood now – taking the insurance settlement money and parting with it and pulling out the dent with a coat hanger.
There is also the Pizza Beast and Pizza Feast incident, that one is a little harder of a story to tell.
There is also the real estate weekly route that me and brothers and I have, where all the papers went into the side yard to make a giant paper of file of pulpy wetness and that was pretty good.
There was also Bob’s story working for that jackass in White Rock that sits by the sea, going in there and me having to play some bodyguard for him. All we wanted was try to get his paycheck. That one wasn’t too bad although not great either, I suppose.
Then there was the job of delivering fliers for the travel company around the campuses in Utah. That one is not bad.
While at University of Utah, geez, I had three jobs there for awhile. “Cinema in your face”, that was a good one, where I delivered the newspapers and fliers to every bar in Salt Lake City – bars, bookshops, coffee shops, etc.
Then I worked for Bing Christensen Land Surveyor. We’d drive up in the hills in a jeep and stand out there in the middle of nowhere until he radios me and tells me that he got the shot and then I stumble down somewhere else.
Teaching WordPerfect classes while sleeping in my van. Well, not simultaneously. During that period, I lived in my van and I also taught the occasional WordPerfect 4.2 or 5.1 or something for DOS classes. But those jobs sort of faded away more than exploded.
Then of course the other really big one I should tell is the story of the job in Japan with the mushroom farm and leaving that day on Mike’s bike and that I have taken up in the trunk of the K car and running away from that horrible job up in the hills with the old ladies.
So if I could bust out ten stories of a thousand or two thousand words each, where it’s really just talking about quitting a job and going someplace rapidly, I think that would be beauty.
Then the other thing I want to write about is my Elsewhere project. It is a story about a lost generation trying to find something to believe in. Sure, that has been written about before but all the great, best books are written about that. All my favorite books really turned my shit upside down.
Where about someone trying to find their place in society and trying to effectuate some change in some manner, not always knowing how to do that and either going crazy trying or giving up or disappearing or something.
Now in this case, it’s going to be somewhere in the early 90’s on dead tour and rainbow fests. Traveling here and there, festivals in the mountains, spare changing, running scams, hustling and shucking and driving; working, getting food from food banks, going to churches to get money for doing a little bit of gardening work, getting parking tickets and getting shook down by cops.
But really [indecipherable 00:05:12] is just a vehicle and then there is the discussion of what is literature? What is art? How does art come about? Is it intent? Is it the quality? Is it because someone else says so? What is literature? How does a book transcend being a book of words and into being a work of literature? That is a big question to ask and I am going to toy around with that. I am going talk about trying to change the world and how its change is effectuating the society. Do you have to buy into the system and change it from within the system? Or you can really do it on your own through revolution?
But there is going to be certainly a bit of cynicism because in this case the generation was handed, kind of a messed up product, I am sure everyone says that. But there is more complacency and consumerism than ever in this society. People, while they want to change the world are like, “Well, shit, so many have failed before, how am I going to possibly do it and why should I even bother trying?” And, “How much of my own personal comfort and lifestyle do I sacrifice in order to make that happen?”
There will also be some brief discussion on religion and personal ethics. You know, in this case, the generation represented by this characters, it is like religions become all dogma and even people who are like, “I am Buddhist,” or “I am Hindu,” or “I’m all free with religion,” they get hung up on all these little all micro culture cult-like systems evidenced on dead [lot] [ph 00:06:49] or wherever.
There are spinners, there are the “holier than thous” and there is the Born Agains. Really, what it all comes down to is taking care of other people, taking care of yourself and being nice to other people, not ripping them off. You can call it karma, you can call it decency but it is just you have to take care of yourself because without individual responsibility, transparency and tolerance, what do you have?
There is also the Uncle Weed Book. In this case, Uncle Weed is going to be up at the Clayoquot blockade or something similar to that. Then he is going to start researching alternatives and he’s going to look at kenaf, flax, bamboo, banana and find worthy attributes in all of those things. He is going to come across hemp, he’s going to research why hemp is illegal with the help of his friend [Walville Wally] [ph 00:07:40] or someone to that effect.
Then he is going to think that what he should do is go spread hemp in the clear cuts. So he goes and does that. It doesn’t work out for him because deer, bugs, rangers and whatnot, all come and he almost gets shot down by the rangers or someone in their squad, you know, camp squad, or whatever. So, then he decides that better than that is for everyone to have four plants.
So he makes these little seed pods and takes these little pods of plants around to everyone as Christmas gifts and wraps them up and you know — like what is that cellophane paper that acts as an incubatory green house — and he gives them around to all his friends with the idea of, “That it’s just a plant! Don’t be scared of it.” If everyone has it, then it is going to help other people understand that it is not dangerous, it’s not weird and that it can have some useful application.
The other idea I want to do is writing a screenplay about the diamond merchant, who is some squeaky clean looking guy with the annoying Tom Shane, Emerson Robbins’ voice who is all white shirt and tie who is giving to his local church when he is in town. But then he goes to Bangkok on a diamond buying mission and wild [inaudible 00:09:13].
Basically what is going to happen is, he is going to be taking South African diamonds and then laser etching them in Thailand to say that they are Canadian diamonds and then smuggle them into the US market to take advantage of Canada’s more friendly, how you do say, “human rights or blue worker’s rights” or whatever because Canadian ones are mined by machines mostly, not children.
So then, there is going to be an incident where he gets someone from Nigeria who is 419 spammer-scammer guy. He double swindles him to go to South Africa and pick up the suit case for him and deliver it to him in Thailand, where he meets him back in the hill tribes. He recruits him to go be some muscle for him when he goes and confronts the hill tribe people who have done something to displease him. Maybe he is always getting some pearls or a pearl necklace in Bangkok. That is it.
Then there is an incident where the guy from the Canadian diamond mine disappears in a helicopter thing. It turns out just like that Indonesian gold scandal thing. He has been double crossing his investors so that diamond merchant takes in the hoop at the end because that mine turns out to be blank and he just invested all these money to counterfeit these diamonds to say that they are coming from this mine that turned out to be bogus, okay?
So there is Joe King, the diamond merchant and he will have his buddies. More of the Emerson Robins, Skippy, Happy-happy kid who unwittingly gets dragged along because he’s thinking that he’s learning from his mentor but instead he’s made to do all these things that he finds distasteful. Then there is the 419 Nigerian scammer. Maybe he will be “Gregory.”
Then there will be the guy from the Canadian diamond mine and I just have to figure out how the point of view on that works. Who is telling the story and from whose point of view. Is there an investigator chasing after him and finding this out? Or is it them, documenting their whole thing? Or maybe it’s the Skippy kid, whose part of his role in the operation is he comes along to film all his new experiences there that he’s learning from his new boss.
END OF AUDIO
Duration: 12 minutes 17 seconds