PRESSURE PRESS ARCHIVE

THE STORY OF OVERTIME it's 7:30 on a saturday morning. it's the middle of may. my daughter will be waking soon to watch cartoons, & diane, my wife, pregnant with our second kid, is working, cooking breakfast at a supermarket's restaurant & no doubt driving the head-cook crackers with her mousey bitchiness. i'm writing after sleeping on the couch for about 4 hours. diane is constantly pissed & i frequently sleep on the couch, the television going & the beercans sitting all over the endtable. tough. i work steady 2nd-shift, get home a little after midnight as the mind still blares machines, guys i've worked with for years & years, all my panic poems. i drink on the job & do stony brain-ripple smoke. we just asshole plebians & our masters're computer kids who got new little cars & blind eyes to the chaos, hallucinations, shit on the floor. we're required to work weekends. orders need filled as fast as a chugged 6-pack piss out the back door. i gotta work weekends to have more money than bills eat, tho in any case i'm a fucked economist, always have been. i just know i make low humiliating wages & on weekends i almost double a regular 40 hour pay. i'll be working this afternoon. i'll have to buzz in early to sign up on a slow machine & take it easy. on weekends us operators don't do rotation. mike will probably be in 2 hours early, but that's ok. there're 4 machines. i'll take the next easiest. got a hit of speed up in my locker so maybe i'll do that & cold-sweat it thru the hours of time & a half. there's a lot of speed going around lately. i don't speed often, fearing a sudden heart bomb explosion splatter inside my rib-cage. rachel is awake now & pink panther's son or sons is on before the smurfs. i fixed her a bowl of 40% bran flakes, she likes the stuff better than sugar cereal!