Hello world!

Seeker: Part I

I arrive into New York’s Laguardia airport and hail a cab. I like flying into Laguardia because the absence of the AirTrain which runs to JFK airport makes taking a cab socially acceptable or at least an understandable offense. I say offense because I have not paid rent in more than a year, and my ‘poor student’ routine is constantly contradicted by my seeming dependence on 40 dollar cab rides and similarly priced bottles of wine. But if I am to have the things I love then I am most certainly poor and incapable or offering any monetary contribution towards the apartment where I spend more time and use more of the building’s amenities than my cheque writing flat-mates.

This is why I am have returned to New York City in mid-August, when the place is more of a Malthusian armpit than usual, to secure a source of income. So, when the first of the month rolls around I can toss my pittance into the pot, and I can once and for all prove that I am valuable part of society capable of holding a job and more importantly prove I have become responsible, an ‘adult’. The prospect of joining the legions of work-attending citizens leaping over the cliff every morning into the office milieu with lemming-like satisfaction has rendered me thoroughly depressed and quite incapable of focusing my attentions to do anything to better my financial predicament.

As the taxi nears the apartment building, I instruct the driver to stop off at the liquor, bribing him with a mini bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Had he been particular, I would have sprung for the black label just so long as I arrived home with am ample stock of alcohol. It is essential that my mind is well saturated in ethanol so I am assured minimal productivity and if any attempts are made to secure gainful employ they will be career damaging blubbering attempts to mask my loathing for employment with an honest work ethic and a sense of affability. My ruse often evaporates after the first sentence of my cover letter, leaving potential employers to marvel at how little I actual want to work for them or anyone really.

I walk into the livingroom and greet my roommates, who have been ‘dude-ing out’ as I prefer to call such activities as ball scratching, video gaming, and drumming along with beat driven music. I drop my luggage on my bed and steal a nip of Johnny Black before returning to common area to offer a round of bosom-pressing hugs to the rather desolate bunch of males who rather than leave the apartment in my month long absence have opted to increase the vigor with which they proverbially measure penises.  Tonight’s ruler is Mario Kart, a racing game with obstacles one can throw at one’s opponent or at one’s opponent’s penis.

I take up a controller, but after a few devastating losses find the idea of jobbing hunting suddenly less daunting. I rouse my laptop from its hibernation and check my email, my myspace, my facebook, and when I have exhausted every social netowrking site, and I have tired of googling baby animals, I turn to craigslist.org, the most unreliable and competetive place on the web for one to find a job. With a few fingers of Johnny in a glass, I move the mouse towards the glowing link ‘writing jobs,’ as yet unclicked, but before my finger can depress the ‘left click button’ my phone begins warbling.

Greedily, I snatch up my phone, salavating for any form of distraction. “Hello?” I declare with an eyebrow arched in a curious question mark.

“Vanessa?” my mom whimpers on the other end.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, suspecting something has gone horrible ary since my departure earlier this morning.
“Joe is dead,” my mom manages to squeak out before breaking out in a wild sucession of painful hoots and wails about the loss of her only brother.

She hangs up on me, and I snap my cellphone shut, determined and with a clear sense of purpose; over craigslist.org/jobs-to-fix-your-problems-and make-people-respect-you-again.org I type cheap-tickets.com. Afterall all, cheap tickets are all this poor student can afford.