Corporate America

He does not look affected by anything, he looks all right and happy. And for once I would like it if he were to tell me that everything is fine and that he loves it here. However he always says that he is very busy and he has no time to do anything, and this is why he has reported lunch many times already. So he must be under pressure, that he does not even go to lunch. I look forward hearing his story, I wished I would have heard it today, but I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow.
3 December 2005
I am in a free fall! God Bless America!
I woke up this Saturday morning, and once again I acted like I did not know where I was. After a while, after realizing where I was and what I had done by coming here to Los Angeles, I still felt freaked out. It took me a while to understand why, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I spent over $800 in the last two days to furnish my studio-apartment and I have not even bought the car or the TV yet. I am in a free fall!
Oh, and I don’t have an iron board, but I have the iron. I bought everything in Sears because it was the closest shop. I found everything, I bought the cheapest of all appliances, towels and bed linen. I never realized that you could buy a coffee maker, an electric can opener, utensils and dishes, all for 10 dollars each. I never thought I would say this but, God bless America! Pure capitalism has brought us choice and cheap prices. Never mind that everything will have broken down before the new year, at least at the moment I am all set up.
Everything I did not buy in Sears, I bought from this lovely Indian couple living in the building next door. They are going back to Canada after a short time in L.A., they don’t like it here. Their children have been screaming to go back to Ottawa, but there must be something wrong them, perhaps they have forgotten that Ottawa in December is like a freezer. I have to admit that Ottawa, where I lived four years of my life, is a very nice city. Underrated. They should film movies there.
Anyway, I bought most of the stuff they themselves bought in Sears. Everyone at work told me that Sears was a big no-no, to not buy anything there. My parents always shopped in Sears in the 70s and 80s, everyone in Canada did. They were the only shops of that kind with Woolco/Woolcrest/Woolworth.
And if Sears is a big no-no, I guess Woolworth cannot even reach the scale for being judged as a proper place to shop. And if I had not gone to Sears, where else should have I gone? Wal-Mart perhaps? Targets, which I have been told is an up-market Wal-Mart?
Well, I guess they will need to open even more Targets and Wal-Marts in America, because one mile away from me is too far without a car. We need a Wal-Mart in every square half mile, I would reckon. What do you think? (I hope you can read that I am being ironic here, I better remind you, some of my readers have been total spaz in the last few years. Most of what I say goes right over their head.)
The problem with Sears in Canada in the last 50 years, has been that everyone in the country bought the same stuff. You went to your worst enemy’s house, and discovered they had the same fridge and oven as you, that you had the same lifestyle. I bet everyone in my building has bought the same dishes as me, and when asked, they will tell you they bought that in some up-market Wal-Mart. Wonderful!
I called Stephen this morning, it had been a few days since I spoke to him and I was starting to wonder if he still existed or if the last ten years with him were just a figment of my imagination. I found a nice picture of him of when we were in Arkansas. He is standing in shorts with his skinny legs, pointing at a metallic crocodile on the floor. God he is cute! I missed him, until at least I gave him a call.
He went on and on about what I should do about buying a car and the questions I needed to ask. In the end I know I won’t do any of this, and probably just get taken for a ride by the seller. Anyway, he brought me back to reality, it is his way to make me forget to worry about my problems, filling my head with unimportant comments about what I should be doing.
Some days I wish I was a bit more gay, I’m sure I would be clued up about what to do and where to buy. How are these extremely gay people, who know everything, cope with switching countries? I guess they link up with people of their kind and do a data transfer about all this stuff I don’t know about and that by being gay I should have been born with.
Not sure if extremely gay people would have been able to plug two computers together, bought some cheap speakers, and concoct a television with a DVD player on one portable computer, while the other one is free to write on and get emails.
I’m sure most gay people would never have bought towels for $2.38 each in Sears, and now I bitterly regret having done so. They had something like 10 different sorts of white towels, all identical, but with price tags ranging from $2 to $20 each. What’s the difference I thought?
Well, my whole studio is full of fluffy white thingies, and my clothes that were washed with them, and myself. Just great! I guess this is how most gay people learn, through experience. Somehow I feel they would have known better right from the start. Buy expensive things, and you will never have to worry about fluff thingies.
So I better speak about my lunch with the West Hollywood guy. He is officially gay, as if I could have doubted it. I bet he knows what kind of towels to buy, though I’m not sure he can afford them. My salary is probably three times his, even though I feel I have been his assistant for the last month, finding the contact details of the potential speakers he is now contacting daily.
He wrote some musical recently which is produced somewhere, and it is now going unto a DVD. However it is not connected with any big studio or distributor, and hence they will sell 20 copies at most. Maybe 40, if the three guys who wrote that stuff have a big family able to afford a DVD. Maybe 20, family and friends usually don’t buy your books or DVDs.
Still, I only had to speak about my own projects, throw in NBC and PBS, and that was it, shallow people are so predictable. He is some sort of an artificial person. He has a radio phonic voice and speaks like a machine. I told him, he agreed. I feel the poor guy is smiling at all time, but inside it is crumbling and shaking, and he just wants to get out and scream!
I have a hard time describing him, apart from the fact that I thought I was fat (when I’m not that bad really), and three of me would fit in his clothes. He seems young, even though all his hair is of a bright white. How old is he then? 40 something I would venture to say. I could never kiss him, I would die first.
As a friend however, you could not hope for better. I believe he will be my ally in this office, with the valley girl, now that I had lunch with them and told them that I had a small problem with the management. I’m on their side, and that is important.
However, he is so perfect at work, like a robot, he loves the director. I’m glad someone enjoys that job, that makes one. It is in a way reassuring to find out that it is possible to be happy there. If one employee is fine, then perhaps two can be. And this is how I felt this week.
I actually had an intelligent conversation with my boss on Friday. We spoke like equals, passionately, about the most boring subject you could ever find on this planet. Finance and politics. For once, there was not even a hint that he was my boss. We looked like two kids planning a new event, which could be very successful.
And then, oh surprise, the more we research the subject, the more all my wild guesses got verified. It turns out that I was right all along! So ten years in conferences has not scrambled my brain. My report done instantly, was actually right! And that is what we are going to do. God, give me the energy and motivation!
8 December 2005
Weird days in Los Angeles
Today was a weird day. My first weird one since I’ve been in L.A. Some days, everything goes wrong. And I mean every single detail. And today of all days was it.
I am no longer under my boss, I’m back under the director. Now he has to get back to speed on everything I have done so far to figure out what it is that I am doing. He hopes to do that tonight. Good luck!
I have also learned that the research period was over, we’re moving on with the event. I’m going to start doing this thing, and I feel quite confident about it since I have never researched an event that much in my life. I know more about the topic than I do about my own life, that says it all.
But then I got home, I got drunk, I dropped my beer on my new General Electric phone and now it is broken. I’ll bring it back to Best Buy tomorrow or the next day, pretending I don’t know why this phone does not work.
And then I dropped my beer and my glass of water on my computers. Don’t ask me how I managed that, it was a weird day. Almost destroyed both my computers in one night (destroyed one actually), and both my phones. I hate it when it happens, it would not have been the first time. I was so enraged, I almost destroyed everything there was in my studio.
Losing my phone prompted me to call somewhere. But then, having a stupid T-Mobile phone, none of my cards from any of the three countries they are from, could add stupid credits on it either online or on the phone. So I went out, completely drunk, to try to buy credits for that mobile phone.
My Seven Eleven was shut! At 9h43 pm! For god’s sake! Most Seven Eleven are now 24h! Not mine apparently, they close before 11h pm. So I had to go two miles away, to another Seven Eleven.
Over there, an Indian guy. But this one is not your average Indian guy, he’s from Hounslow in England. The very place I come from. He also has a T-Mobile phone from the UK and he’s not happy about it. I knew there was a reason why I had to go four miles return, to go to that lost Seven Eleven on the other side of the 101.
So we talked, I asked him what he was doing here, he appeared lost, so in the end I said: big mistake coming here, wasn’t it? He said yes. Just what I needed to hear, on this weird day! Thank god there was that Californian woman in the queue. She asked me how long I had been here. I said one month, and still wondering if it was a mistake. And she said: Los Angeles is a great city, you will love it here. And now I wonder if you need to be born in the valley to affirm something like that.
Everyone else I meet who’s not from here, truly wonder why they are here and regret coming here in the first place. And that Indian guy, probably does not have any dream to succeed in Hollywood in the film industry. So why did he come here in the first place? Just because he watched too many movies and he thought he would find some sort of freedom here? Working in a Seven Eleven? What a misery.
And then I thought, gosh, I wish I was working in a Seven Eleven alone at night. Reminds me of my long days at Heathrow Airport working at WHSmith. They have so little stock, and sell so little, I would fill all these shelves in a minute. And then just watch the clock until I can find my new found freedom again. No need to think, just count the minutes. It would be great!
These days are over. Now I am dealing with bureaucracy and social hierarchy. The psychology of it anyway. No time to think about work, that’s for sure. Just the misery of having to answer to bosses and justify myself at every single second of the day.
And I must be very drunk to talk like this in my blog. But hey, are you reading blogs to get the truth or what? Otherwise watch the news, it’s filled with all the lies you will ever need, to feel comfy in your little home filled with stuff bought in Sears. Just don’t admit to any of it. Especially the channel you watch the news from. In America, I hear, it means a lot. Are you watching Fox? Then this is not the news, I hear, it is fiction. Oh well, who cares? Not me, that’s for sure.
I’m so drunk now! I’m sure it would not sit well with the DMV of California. The whatever Motor Vehicle thingy. For which I have to pass the test tomorrow, and I have not revised for the test. I don’t care to fail again, a seventh time, over three countries, over a 20 year period.
I have three driving licenses! Which one do you need? Which insurance policy? Whatever else? I don’t care anymore. I’m fed up with all this and your zero tolerance for just about everything that is worth it in this miserable existence. Get a life! And leave me alone!
Apparently the UK passed a new law this week, I can now marry Stephen legally. Shame it came too late. Shame that it will now cause a lot of trouble. Unless we are married, they will not give us any of the rights we have been used to without being married. Shame. It’s too late anyway, I pressed the self destruct button a long time ago. Was it not inevitable? The minute I decided to move here in L.A.? That’s what I think anyway. I hope to still be wrong.
I just finished my White Zinfadel huge bottle of rosé wine from California. It is almost midnight. I guess I should go to bed. But I don’t feel like it. It is one of these nights where, if I had a gun (and it is legal here so I might just buy one) I would not see the sunshine the next day.
What a shame it would be not to see the sunshine the next day, since the South Californian sunshine is so nice, even on a 8^th of December. The thing is, you can only fully appreciate it if you are a lost cause and don’t need to work for a living, for whatever reason. It is not my case, so to hell the Californian sunshine! It won’t help me with my conference which is not going anywhere anytime soon. Dear me…
They’ve hired a real Management Consultant at work this week, he starts next Monday. I guess this is a clear message to me: I’m the fake one. I’m only a Management Consultant by title, by law, for immigration purposes. Not a real one, silly me. How could have I thought otherwise? Was it not evident from the start? I guess these things need to be spelt out. Can’t believe I’m thinking about that now, that’s just too much. I’m going to bed…
God I’m lost. Not only because I am in a strange country, in a strange city… I’m just completely lost. What I am doing here? Why I am still here on this planet? I wish I could end it all tonight. I’m so tired. I’m so tired. I’m so tired…
10 December 2005
Nothing’s Impossible in L.A.
That song Nothing’s Impossible on the new Depeche Mode album, it depresses me. As it used to do, their albums, when I was 12. I only realized that when my valley girl at work said that her parents were freaking out because she was listening to Depeche Mode, and that was the kind of music they thought would make her commit suicide.
It is true that I have been very much inspired in writing my best work listening to Depeche Mode and The Cure, and now I understand that it is very depressing music. It is also very addictive, it brings you somewhere else altogether, perhaps what drugs would do to someone, however I don’t have much experience in that domain.
How could Martin Gore still be depressed after all these millions and success, enough to write a song like Nothing’s Impossible? Apparently he is in the middle of a divorce. His wife, as it the oldest fashion of all times, is bringing him to the cleaners, and will probably keep the money and the kids and everything. Worth making millions and getting married, just to see it all crumble to dust when it is divorce time! And that time always come.
At the beginning I listened to it while walking to work, looking at the palm trees and big mountains in the background, and it was breathtaking. I was listening to it with my own interpretation, as I did most of my life in the case of Depeche Mode, since I barely understood English all the early years I was listening to their albums. And it was much better that way. It left everything to my imagination.
Some lines were applicable to me being lost alone in L.A. with the problems with my bosses:
Just give me a reason, some kind of sign

I'll need a miracle to help me this time

I heard what you said, and I feel the same

I know in my heart that I'll have to change

That was so perfect. And this was me and Stephen lost in London while I’m in Los Angeles:
How did we get to be this far apart?

How did we get to be this far apart?

I want to be with you, something to share

I want to be near you, sometimes I care

And at some place he says “How did we get to be so far gone”, and he repeats it twice, and the second time the voice is like cavernous, as if he was about to lose consciousness. This really gets to me.
I see the stars every night on my balcony, and I’m trying to convince myself that Nothing’s impossible, that I can go through this, that it may be my dreams coming reality though I cannot see that right now:
Even the stars look brighter tonight

Nothing's impossible

How you can connect so much with a song is a mystery. And as I said before, I wish I could achieve that in literature. Seems impossible. But nothing’s impossible, Dave Gahan said it, and he is well placed to know.
Dear me! Just read an interview about the new album “Playing the Angel”, and Martin Gore states as a joke, that the album was taking a direction like:
Anything that appealed to dysfunctional people!
And that’s it, I’m just dysfunctional and I have always been. Terrible thing to say. I’m a freak! As long as I enjoy it, I don’t mind being dysfunctional. Better that than having a normal life, no nervosa, no problems, and of course, no personality and nothing to say. You might just enjoy not existing then. I feel the pain, “the pain that I’m used to”.
I just had a flash, listening to Nothing’s Impossible. The building where I work right now, the walk with the mountains in the San Fernando Valley, the cleanliness of it all, my apartment, the building, the car park of the shopping center, everything.
This is the kind of flash I get years later, once I have left the place and listen to the music I was listening to then. And it was a nice flash, great memories which will last me a lifetime. I think I will get to like the place.
Which brings the question, you know, what place will this book I am writing right now will have in all the stuff I have written in my life? Because, you know, I have few of these books already published and they were sort of popular. And since I’m not going to stop writing any time soon, eventually they might get known in Québec and finally be appreciated.
That’s the plan anyway. And a book about the youngster arriving in L.A., I would think, just by the sheer concept of it, might erase my books about my arrival in Paris and London, or at the very least put all of that in the shadow.
This could be my most important book ever. The one I could be remember for if ever I get more known and break that barrier and finally sell more copies. I had not thought about this up until now. Even though, of course, it has always been at the back of my mind. The only reason I’m here, is because of this book I’m writing now and perhaps the fictional one I will write in parallel (and of course, the film scripts).
It just occurs to me now that it was perhaps more than just moving into a new city, a new life, writing a couple of books, and get out. It could be it, it could be the most important thing. And I am babbling like crazy about the most stupid details and emotions I am experiencing. Nothing grandiose, as grand as the new DepMod album.
But that’s it, this is what I’m known for, this is what I do. It is the only content I can get in here. I even made the decision earlier on, that this would be written for me, and not for anyone else. Otherwise I would not speak of my emotions, my fears, how a wimp I can be sometimes.
I would describe to you some sort of paradise filled with actors and actresses and the whole L.A. experience we have been told existed somewhere around here. I would just have to buy a few magazines, talk about what it says, and it would get you the vibe. The Beach Boy vibe. I’m not going to do that. It is perhaps a mistake, I understand now.
For my most important book, which would be in any case, whatever the content or what I might say. Because what sells, it is the concept, the marketing, the idea. Not the content or the style. I know that now.
The young writer leaving everything behind, London no less, to go and succeed in Hollywood. I don’t even need to succeed, a major flop, career wise, would still make a great book. Because one sentence will make people buy it, will make them dream that nothing’s impossible. When we all know that when it comes to our lives, everything’s impossible and is just the worst nightmare. Even though you could be rich and famous with palm trees all around and a bright sun and summer on 10 December, makes no difference.
Am I making history here with these few babblings without realizing it? Am I putting the last nail on my coffin as a writer? Nothing after that will top this book? Another irony, is that it is the first one I actually write in English. None of my fans so far appears to be able to read English. So unless it is translated (and I won’t translate it, you can be certain of that), this will be the one book they will never read, but wish they could.
So I guess they will do like I did for so many years listening to Depeche Mode, they will imagine for themselves what it is that I’m talking about here. And it might be just as well. The mystery will remain, and they will imagine something greater than what it is. A boring blog from just another blogger in L.A.
And now, I certainly will go to bed and forget I just said that. Tomorrow, one way or another, I’m buying a convertible Mustang. It is not my style, it is not my personality, but I have to do it. I have to get the ceiling down and go to Santa Barbara by the beach, and experience that thing we always see in the movies.
And if that does not do it, then I might as well just pack my bags and go back to London. Somehow I have the feeling that it might just work. Because humans are so imbeciles and it is all so psychological. Feel like you are living a dream, and who knows, you might actually live that dream.
13 December 2005
Driving in a convertible Mustang under an L.A. Sun
For the last two days I have been in bed with the flu. Missed two days of work so far, not sure about tomorrow, the day I’m supposed to pass my behind the wheel driving test since I passed my written one on Friday with only one wrong answer. I don’t think I could do the test, which means I don’t think I can go to work.
How is this going to sit with my bosses? God knows. I’ve seen people in there dragging themselves to work even when they were sick, one even puked on his desk and yet continued to work. It would probably be the first time in their 19 years history that an employee is sick three days in a row.
However, I have no energy, I just fall in my bed and sleep all day. And at the moment they are doing asphalt outside and they are making so much noise! And now I have started to cough. I feel bad about all this and I’m sure there will be great consequences with my boss, who could not even let me go to a driving test too far away if it meant two more hours away from work.
I did not buy the Mustang, I went to a retailer, the guy was not very nice, and the car appeared to be older than what they stated. I was so disgusted by all this that I will not buy a Mustang anymore. It is a Ford after all, it would probably cost me a fortune in repairs. And this one sounded like it needed a lot of repairs, even with only 60,000 miles on the counter. So now I’ll be looking for a convertible that I can buy cash, and I will wait until I get paid at the end of the month.
Stephen just called from London. As usual our phone call was a nightmare. He just got back from Scotland driving a car for his work, he was arrested again by the police for doing 92 miles an hour and zigzagging on the motorway, the very same reason that almost lost him his driving license three months ago, and this time he got away with it.