From my journal this time last year.

oday I walked to a well known sporting goods store to inquire about a job. I walked in, talked to the cashier, picked up an application and walked out to find a warm place to fill it out.

Stopping at the neighboring movie theater to sit on the bench inside, I was approached by a homeless looking fellow who promptly sat his stuff three inches away from where I was sitting.

"Selling your soul to the movie theater, are we?"

"Actually, its for Big 5 next door"

"All the same," he smirked "a soul is still being sold"

He went on to tell me about Working class rights, and how our we as the government weren't doing our part to make our country better.

"Read your constitutional rights," he said. "RON PAUL FOR 2008!"

I thanked him for the conversation after finishing the application and walked back into the sporting goods store.

"Your Back!" the plump cashier said to me.

"I told you I would be."

"Do you have a second?"

"Sure, I don't see why not"

She called out the store manager, a slender man with tired eyes and a obviously fake smile that said "I hate my job".

"So you are the one inquiring about a job." like he had nothing else to say.

"Yes I am" I replied in the same fashion.

He led me back to the counter where the store kept the knives and guns, and had me fill out a math comprehension test so easy an illiterate monkey could have passed. After the test he started going over job duties. Mindless, Soulless….

After that he looked me up and down and described the dress code.

I was wearing my usual street clothes. The only kind of clothes I really have, Band tee-shirt, blue Jeans, Running shoes, beanie cap, and my organic wooden gauges. (I flipped my Septum ring into my nose)

"No facial piercings, no earrings, those plugs will have to be taken out, no visible tattoos, No street shoes. Hair must be combed and neat, no blue jeans, no tee-shirts, et cetera. The standard work outfit here is what we call 'Professionally dressed' This includes button up dress shirt, Tie, Slacks, dress shoes, that sort of thing"


The previous conversation with the homless man flooded my mind.
Pretty much everything that makes you an individual is stripped right out of you in order to prostitute yourself to make a few extra bucks.

He handed me some extra papers and told me to bring them back when I had filled them out and I would have the job. I took the papers, filed them neatly in my backpack and thanked him kindly for his time.

After making a pit stop at a gas station for a lighter, I headed straight for the nearest park. I pulled out a Permanente marker that I carry around with me and the papercliped pile of papers to write in big black letters on the back:

"FUCK YOU, YOU SICK CAPITALIST BASTARDS

You don't get to have my soul"

I took out the new lighter, ripped the paper a couple times, lit the pages on fire, and threw it into the nearest fire pit. I sat and watched the flames gobble up the pages hungrily, devouring each blank in which I was supposed to sign away my life for petty cash.

Once the flames died down and embers burned most of the paper away, I decided it was time to go. Knowing the only appropriate way to make sure that the fire wouldn't burn down the park, I pissed all over the still smoldering pages.

Four days later i stopped by the park to retrieve my application, and dropped it off on the steps of the corporation.

This was the most liberating feeling I had felt in months, and thus i was able to keep my soul for at least another day.