aftermath comes ematics

Sweet.

I was at the Indians game when I started the wave. I'm going into a new line of work as a drunken motivational speaker. I come in, you give me 8 or 10 beers and then I get your office workers to stand-up in a cicurlar pattern with their arms raised, go "whoooah" and then sit back down. When you read that, you can envision many different standing/arm raising/yelling patterns. That's why it will cost you 30 grand. That's how motivational speaking works, people.

Like I said, I'm not a big fan of the wave as it is applied during circumstances in which the masses should be paying attention to the baseball game. But as you can't see by the link you didn't follow, it was a hella-boring game. It took some doing (think Tommy Boy being convinced to do the duet with Big Tom Callahan at the reception) but I was eventually persuaded to do everyone a favor and take their minds off that rather boring and increasingly depressing Indians.

At any rate, I apparently upset the cosmic wheels of justice (or the wheels of cosmic justice?) - not sure, I did something, by not being hungover on Saturday. By then my tale had traveled far and wide and all who were regaled with it thought I should have been punished for making such a muleboy of myself. Well, I am sorry as the gods were pleased! No punishment would be had! There was a slight - SLIGHT headache, one which required no pharmalogical succor, but rather some succoring of KFC. I don't care what anybody says, KFC is delicious. The green beans, not so pimp, but the "C", delicious!

And now, I'm safely 30, having bravely weathered the storm of our mostly-arbitrary-age-numbering system.

the beginning of the end

Today I am 30. I worked from home all day, on work-work. I started the wave last night. I saw a co-worker (prior to starting the wave) and am not quite sure what I said to him. I don't really like the wave, but I do like to drink.

LLCoolRA

Despite the fact that we're days and days away from my birthday - wait, that would be a minimum of 4 days, huh? - ok, despite being days and day away from my birthday, my co-workers have already regaled me with a little birthday cheer. Why you ask? Well, some of my co-workers are odd and this kind of thing is standard procedure.

Happily I was typing at my desk, making some shit happen on the old CPU. That's how I roll - dropping case statements all up in my motherf*ckin' COBOL program - beeeatch! Whoah. Sniffed too much paint thinner. You know how there's the nice buzz going and then you go and get greedy . . . at any rate, I'm sitting there typing or reading one of your blogs, whatever I was doing. All the sudden - *goose!* - somebody's grabassing me.

This is not uncommon. I'm forever having people try to cop a feel, co-workers, passers-by, cops. The ladies were much disturbed in the late-90's during my "jog constantly" stint that my caboose had grown (?) so wane (or, in the words of my mom, I had "ran my ass off.") Where could they grab? Since my caboose is back at full capacity, this type of hands-on behavior is typical. Sure it's sometimes disconcerting, but I've grown accustomed to it. But this was so early in the morning. I startled me, to say the least. I turn and what does my eye spy? Kelly crouched behind my chair, tying a balloon to it.

Remember how earlier in the post I said that I had some odd co-workers? Kelly is one of them. She has the most unfortunate eyeglasses and hair style choices. She also tends to make social situations awkward by crouching behind people and tying things to their chairs. I don't know about you, but that is not the spot I want to hang out at. At any rate, I kind of turned and she said something about surprising me with the balloon (and attempted sodomy?) or some such. I said, "Oh, it's not at all totally fucking weird that you did that. By all means, carry on." And then she left. And I kind of shrugged and tried to think of something else.

they're talking . . .

Should I be listening? Always a question to ponder with a conference call.

You should pay attention a little, in case they ask you a question or in case the call ends. Nothing sucks more than sitting on a conference call any longer than absolutely necessary. That's the worse of the two sins. If you miss a question, you can always say the connection was a little fuzzy or that you got kicked of the call or something. If you hang on too long, you have to cry the cry of solitary shame. One is the loneliest number indeed.

dialogue . . .

guy1: Oh, sure, I've heard a lot about you.
guy2: I see my reputation precedes me.
guy1: Yes. And your odor follows.
guy1: Yes. And your cologne follows.

wardrobe

Panama Jane today metamorphised into Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. It's all crocs and lobsters with that one. I wish I worked with her. She would surely be a treasure trove of bloggo (like info, only blogging material).

Her outfit reminded me that it's time I exposed myself as a cultural fraud. Not that I ever intentially passed myself off as some sort of hipster. But I think you all kind of figured that I was this cool, neo-beatnik that watched a lot of movies, smoked unfiltered cigarettes and attended as much performance art as possible. That picture is slightly skewed, I'm afraid. For is there a cool cat such as that who does not adore Annie Hall?

The little exposure I had had to Woody Allen left me wanting. Wanting for a protagonist who didn't annoy the fuck out of me. So, I decided, maybe I hadn't given him a proper chance. Maybe the fact that I consider him a questionable human being (of highly dubious morality) that I am biased against his work. That led me to Annie Hall. And upon second thought, I found my first thought pertinent. Honestly, we all have a Woody Allen friend. The second you see them they start bitching and moaning about some such mess they've gotten themselves into. It's cute and charming for a while, but then it gets kind of grating. After about an hour, you've had enough, and are looking for the skip button. Finally, you find the remote and kind of zone out, moving through a few chapters only to find that when you've stopped your friend is molesting his adopted daughter! WTF kind of movie is this anyway?!

Yes, yes, I know, separate the man from the art. Well, since Woody makes the man Woody, such a large (in a tiny kind of a way) part of his art, it is pretty hard to extricate one from the other. And, I don't know about you, but I have a feeling in real life, he's even more unbearable.

30 seconds or so you're never getting back

There's a woman in the office who works out while clutching her bag of "stuff." I guess it's her work clothes. She then does one set of a few reps on each weight machine dealie.

Today if she goes to the gym, her bag will be filled with something from the Panama Jack/Croc Hunter line of work wear, khaki all around and topped off with a safari hat. Were there crocs on the loose? I'm not sure, maybe harmful UV rays were seeping in the building and she wanted to protect herself. At any rate, when I saw her in the caf, preying on lunch, it made me laugh. And keeping laughter to yourself is just sad and wrong. Continue with your lives. Go. I bet you wish I had more work friends.

real dialogue of hilarity

me: Did you get the belt as a kid?
theMonica: Yah. Did you?
me: No. My mom used a wooden spoon.
theMonica: What are we going to use on our kids?
me: Fists.

Lesbian, Nazi Hookers, abducted by UFO's and forced into weight loss programs

I'm a member of The Aislers Set Yahoo group. The idea is that they send out an email to the group and let me know when they're "dropping" an album (as the kids say) or doing a show or whatever. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Here's a snippet from the first email I received:

This performance is part of a benefit show for the sylvia rivera law
project, a collective not for profit organisation that provides legal
services to low income transgender people of color.

That's some really specific fundraising. I bet the Sylvia Rivera Law Project is like top 10 not-for-profits providing legal services to low-income transgender people of color, probably top 5.

that's really messed up

Last week I attended a co-worker's retirement "party." I say "party" because no one got drunk - not even the retiree. I think everyone was depressed because it made us think about the 34, 35 years that were left until we got to retire. At least that's what I was thinking about. I've got 30+ years left as a working stiff and look at this smug bastard, getting retirement gifts. Damn! It was truly an Office Space moment. "So it means that every single day you see me, that's on the worse day of my life."

I worked with him for seven years and he was my "mentor" in the beginning of my career. I say "mentor" because really he just gave me stuff to do and let me on my own. Perfect for me because that's how I like to work, but others might prefer more direction. I congratulated him, shook his hand and thought about how I'd probably never see him again. And that he wouldn't have to get up early to go to work the next day. That kind of upset me.

Then I remembered he took a job working at a K-Mart somewhere to consume some of his time. I am NOT going to be one of those people who is lacking in things to do upon retirement. I have hobbies, that take time that I don't have right now. Would I do them though if I had a preponderance of time? Or is my lack of time the thing that gets me focused on, let's say, writing posts for this blog? In this case, I'm at work, but I am leaving as soon as I'm done with this. What motivates me to hack away at piano keys when I improve at the rate of glacial movement? Why do I waste my time trying to learn new things? I'm not sure, but I hope when I retire I'm not a greeter at Wal-Mart. I hope I'm so busy writing a kick-ass blog (let's face it, by then I should be good at it, no?), taking college courses and schooling my grandkids at basketball that I don't suffer the anxieties of nothing to do. Wish me luck.

the high priority email flag

for when you think you're important.

ameliorating the pain of my absence

I performed a personal biathon of recreational sports yesterday. First I had a roller hockey game. The thing about the roller hockey goalie is that since the game is not played on ice, it gets a little toasty wearing all the gear. And by toasty I mean I nearly drown in my own sweat by game's end. (Nice imagery, I know.) After that loss I went and played some pick-up basketball. Although I finished with a "winning" record, since it's pick-up, it did not emotionally offset the earlier, for serious, loss.

You might wonder where the post is going and how it got so bad so quickly. Well, due to last night's activities, I had the darndest time waking up this morning. My eyes were bloodshot like I'd been on a 3-week bender; my throat was dry; I had a strange pain in my jaw and general weakness throughout the rest of my body. That wasn't the worst part. I've come to realize that today my brain is operating at 3% of capacity. That's not 3% of the entire brain, but 3% of the supposed 10% our brains function at. 3% of 10% of 100%, that's like, not a lot of brain. See what I mean? Normally I bust out fraction math for kicks - in my sleep. Sleep. I'd say the longest I can sleep before someone walks behind me is 1 minute of every 15. Come Friday I should have a pretty good nap in.

dialogue . . .

girl: Is there anything I could have done differently?
guy: No. It's nothing personal. It's just not working.
girl: What do you mean it's nothing personal? It's entirely personal. There are no other persons involved.
guy: I'm not breaking up with you; I'm breaking up with us.

do i have to do everything around here?

Every once in a while I check the Technorati to see what's going down. Clearly I'm not doing this for the fame and fortune (or that stuff is in the mail), but I did find this chart kind of amusing; I hope the y-axis doesn't represent one person:


Unchartable graphs always make me laugh.

The Man with a Cloak (1951)

Ok, so I was going to lie and say I saw this on Netflix (I really recorded it off of Turner Classic Movies), but sadly, it is unavailable on Netflix (and therefore, probably unavailable on DVD).

Anyway, I thought it was excellent. I guess any movie starring Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck has a pretty decent chance of being enjoyable. And I really enjoyed it.

Ok, I'm going to be honest. I especially liked it because I "figured out" the small twist at the end of the movie. I mean, really, it was pretty obvious what the secret was, but I guess it's the simple pleasures that make life enjoyable. So program you Tivos and happy watching.

Ok, I'm going to be honest. I was eating a really good pizza while I was watching this movie.

Ok, I'm going to be honest. I never actually saw the movie, I'm just making a number of broad assumptions.

Ok, more honesty. Have this post is filler and the rest of it is good, quality information. Which is which? You decide!

for the two of you who don't read both of our blogs

Nukie/Bubba commissioned me to write a story on one of the seven deadly sins. I, naturally, chose gluttony. What did I get for the honor? The ability to embarrass myself on someone else's blog. Embarrassment, much like playing the stock market, is all about diversifying.

Anyway, go over there and pretend like I'm cool or something. While you're at it, check out his stuff. But please come back one day.

because of you

I will now try to squeeze a post out of my jumbled mind. Computer finagling can sometimes causes brain swelling. Not the good kind of swelling, where new information is being crammed into your brain and increasing its mass, but the painful kind of swelling. That's never good. The brain starts bulging out, pressing against the skull. Little did you know that blog posts are generated in the fluid between the brain and the skull. Since that space is being taken by my brain now, well, only a few, small ideas have survived the slaughter.

Is there a cure? Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. Right now I'm standing on my desk wearing a frozen goalie helmet too tightly. No, that doesn't work. I could try to get people to leave me alone at work. That would help. My brain would return to its normal, compact size and I'd be able to do what I truly love, work on this blog.