Take that!

Apparently, if faced with a horde of small to smallish children I could take on 30. How 'bout you? After all, it never hurts to know who'd have your back if kinders ever rose up and tried to rule the world. I'm all for the enforced nap time but no one tells me my clay-snakes are shite. No One!

http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/

By Pure Accident...

I was cleaning my work computer up before the much needed replacement comes in,and I came across the following, oddly enough, by pure accident. Seems I was having a "PC-Parents are Idiots" day. Enjoy. Or don't. I'm having a "Don't give a toot" day, so there.... No, wait; I lied. Please enjoy it and comment and pretend like once again I haven't traded all my creativity in for a hefty paycheck and a 9 to 5 exceuse to wear clothes that don't fall under the PJ category.

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June 13th, 2007

By pure accident, I heard something interestingly disturbing this morning on the radio, the kind of disturbing that can make you question everything you went through as a child, every trial, every goal met and exceeded and failed miserably, every time your sister made you eat a quarter…

One of the morning DJs talked about a recent kid’s recital. Now, the term recital makes me assume it’s your basic childhood competition where there’s a first, a second, a third, and hopefully a bunch of other young, impressionable people motivated enough to try a little harder next time. In this instance, hopefully is where things fall miserably, despressingly, pathetically short.

It seems that right next to the picture station was a table laden with additional trophies…for sale… I’m not talking Honorable Mention ribbons with just enough Hoorah! to get them dreaming of excelling. I’m talking about actual, frickin’ trophies for sale so parents can make their kids feel good, even the ones who don’t deserve it. All children deserve praise, but aren’t you just belittling the handful of children that actually excelled at something, who worked their little (or possibly chunky) keisters off for a shiny bit of Better-than-You?

What kind of message does this teach?

Presenter: I’m sorry, Timmy; you really, really suck. You obviously didn’t practice and spent all of the competition trying to shove your flute up Williams’ butt.

Parental Idiot: How dare you?!? My son is a genius. Here you go, Timmy-sweety-peety,tweety-poo; here’s a trophy anyway. It says Mommy’s Little Pussy-Wussy, and is much better than what that mean old man was giving away to those loser children with nothing better to do than practice.

Lucky-Ass Timmy: You mean I didn’t even try, and in fact I went out of my way to just make it look like I gave a rat’s ass, even going so far as to smuggle a high school band nerd into my room in the evenings and have him play in exchange for sexual favors and pictures of dad in the shower, and I get a trophy? I could have been whacking off and violating the neighbor’s parakeet? This is sweet! Screw effort!

I Feel Finny

I have never been over the Mississippi. Ever. I've been at the asshole end in Louisiana, but never past it. It's like a big wall. A big wet wall that I never found the time or energy to wonder what was on the other side of. And now I have. The end.

I hate touristy, look-at-our-shiny-bits, news-reels-be-damned websites built by those whose well-being and livelihood rely on unsuspecting suckers traipsing about and looking foolish. (Note to self - figure out how to buy stock in fanny packs and ugly shirts). I want to know where the locals go (the less insane ones if I can catch 'em), or at least someone who isn't paid to peddle.

The Still Kinda Gruntled Nerd's Guide to Places that Might not Suck

My first foray into this unknown world of the mossy and the southern is Charlotte, North Carolina. Right off the bat, I'd describe it as kinda humid and slightly racist (I can't tan, people. Deal with it!)

I'm on loan from our home office in the nice, dry, less pretentious desert, and I never thought I'd miss it; but I do. Don't tell anyone there. 90% of them wouldn't understand you anyway.

Before heading out I requested suggestions of friends, both online and domestic. If I hear one more request for something NASCAR-ie I'm gonna drown myself in free hotel shampoo that smells oddly of Off. There were also great suggestions concerning restaurants I could try (something other than Mexican food is always greatly appreciated) and museum trips (my hometown's idea of a museum is pretty sad. I think we're one step away from a "Tortillas of the Virgin Mary" exhibit) and big purdy houses full of the rich and somewhat snooty (we've got teeny houses packed to the below-code rafters. How many cars do you have to park on your tiny front lawn before anyone becomes concerned?).

Small problem:

Southern Streets are not Built on Logic

or rock and roll

They were built on moonshine and nonsense. 'East' and 'west' mean nothing here. You'd think they'd at least pay a little closer attention to the concept of 'north' and 'south' but nooooooooooooooooo. If I were a turtle and NC were the sea I'd get lost, never mate and swim into oncoming whales and end it all. Luckily the hotel has a bar and snacky food, so I won't starve.

Even tho the streets were planned by and for the cross-eyed (who is this Sharon person and why do all her streets and lanes converge at one point only to wander off and be named something else?) who don't mind stop signs blocked by shrubbery as long as it has flowers, the houses I got lost around were gorgeous. Oh and I won $10 on a NC scratch-off (I said 'on' not 'at'. I don't think I'd like to be anywhere near a scratch-off competition unless I had a hazmat bunny suit...complete with ears and fuzzy tail of course...then again it'd be more of a frizzy tail...stupid humidity... dear god, I'm tired...)

Most of my day has been filled with variations on the theme:

*grumble grumble grumble*

frickin' humidity

*grumble grumble grumble*

curly hair

*grumble grumble grumble*

rental car agency maps slash placemats

*grumble grumble grumble*

Did I mention I seen purdy houses?

Oh and I was called a Yankee:

Clerk: Where you from?

Me: West Texas

Clerk: *mumble* Yankee Tourist *mumble*

Me: Do you sell maps of the US?

Clerk: Yeah, over there.

Me: Good, go look up Texas. It's the really big state souther than you.

As for the streets, all I ask is that when there are a 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th all lined up nice and tidy-like, 7th should not be allowed to meander about all willy-nillish so I end up 10 miles from where I was aiming before I realize it.

What makes 7 so special? Did someone a long-ass time ago, like in the 80's or something (sorry, I'm trying to not feel so old) think that the punchline "'cause Seven Eight Nine" was so frickin' High-lair-ee-us or, even scarier, a true and frightening tale of the awesome power of primes, that it deserved more respect than all the other numbers? Even more so than 8 who I hear is really a cannibalistic bastard intent on chewing away its own divisibles?

Oh, and one way streets are for weenies.

Viva la Little Mexico!

I think something in me broke when I crossed the Mississippi. Another traveler said they'd found a Super Wal-Mart and it was like he'd said god was giving out free enlightenment and Slush Puppies down at the in-convenience store and the first 30 people get a free Polaroid of Jesus during his nakey phase.

I'm sitting in the Eastern time zone but my body's stuck on Mountain but it seems to have backfired.... I miss sleep... and offices where people actually talk and move around and do stuff other than clack clack clack on keyboards and shuffle papers about and work still gets done.... I need a Feeny hug and a Pi-Pi wake up 4 am wake up call... I need a Conner belly rub... I need a drink.

I'll leave you with this thought:

[insert life-affirming notion of peace, love, happiness and free cable here]

You're welcome. Donations are always appreciated. Then I might be able to buy a real map without cartoon caricatures of smiling buildings and streets that are directionally retarded.

Random Bananas are Haunting Me!

On my commute I pass a local Social Security office every single day, and every single day there are 2 plastic bananas wired to one of the trees.

Why are there plastic bananas!?! I haven't gone to introduce myself to them yet, but really I'm just assuming they're plastic because they are still discernable as bananas. What if they aren't? What if some Social Security nut simply replaces the aforementioned bananas every morning to taunt me? And what does this craziness (theirs; not mine) mean in regards to my future retirement? If banana-man (sorry, Banana-Person) snaps a little more will my benefits be used to buy stock in Chiquita?

Why does no one else seem bothered by this? Am I the only one that can see the bananas?

What if there really aren’t bananas on that tree and in some screwy Matrix-knock-off kind of way they’re a marker for the daily transition I make from Dork-Grrl to CAD-Biscuit every weekday? This doesn’t happen on the weekend when I don’t pass them; so really, this could be a plausible anomaly of my existence that other than really tweaking my cookies could explain a great deal about the inner workings of my reality.

That or that stop light is way too frickin’ long.

And My Clothing Continues to Torment Me

And no this isn't about the fact that a coworker misread my t-shirt and my new name is Stinky.

I have learned to never take clothing out of context... or would it be "used"? Whatever it is it was a bad fashion choice this morning. You would have thought that the memory of all my past mockage of people wearing sun visors and tennis wrist bands in movie theaters and malls would have come to my rescue, but noooooooo.

For the ill-fated softball games I bought a longsleeve Under Armour shirt. For those who have never heard of this stuff, it helps keep you cool when you're working out/in the heat for a while, which is a must for me considering this area has 102 degree summer days and very little cloud cover and I have a bizarre sun allergy that turns me into a drooling mass of delerious pain.

This morning I thought, "Hey, it's a $40 shirt and it certainly isn't going to be seeing any physical exertion until my knee heals up," and decided to trade my usual under-tee long sleevey shirt for this uber-science-like, so-far-beyond-cotton masterpiece of engineering.

While it is a lifesaver when out and about in the cruel, cruel sun, it is not, I repeat NOT prudent office attire. I'm freekin' freezing and I can no longer feel my fingers.

Shirt Choice Proves Ironic

Or maybe purely co-inky-dink-y. It's too early for Alanis Morisette bouts of theological discussion.

This has been the first full week back at work after my Softball Faux Paux/Knee Popping Extravaganza, and it’s been tiring and severely, mind-numbing, muscle-spasming painful. But it was my own stupid, wanna-be normal fault, so I take my punishment with as little whining and bitching as possible. For those of you who know me, you'll nod when I say that at the least this is annoying, at the most it’s a great way to learn new cuss words and frighten small children. (Nod, damn you!)

So TGI-Frickin’-F everybody! It’s the unofficial silly t-shirt day.

The week before last’s tee, which proved to be bizarrely prophetic, consisted of:

1. A cutesy wootsey cartoon bunny head - A tribute to Conner the Wonder Chunk? A love of strategically placed ears? The caricaturish manifestation of my desire to be light and fluffy and accepted wherever geeks are bold perhaps?


2. Pink crossbones – Doomie doom doom, apparently; no conundrum there.


3. Oh and whatever animal t-shirt comes from, of course

This morning, through a haze of night-time pain killer remnants and a severe case of eye-crunchies, I opted for an old favorite. Perfectly worn in, with that comfy familiarity slack-off clothes tend to harbor, I left the house secure in the knowledge that tomorrow I could sleep in and cope with 5 days of pent up pain and frustration.

It wasn’t until I was already hobbling in the general direction of my office that the true significance of this particular choice hit me. My life is a series of obscure metaphors and bizarre happenstance, and just like the mediocre fun my witty little shirt advertises, I too travel very slowly down stairs.


I’m also fun for girls and boys, but that’s an entirely different post.

Lessons Learned

If I ever get it in my screwed up head to become a normal, social adult I want you to poke me in the eye so I can begin my new life as the pirate I know I've always been meant to be. The eye patch will go real nice-like with my wooden leg and crutch. Ok, so it's not a wooden leg, per se; but I can't move it and I'm prety sure there are termites.

First game of the season, first hit of the season (and it was a great one, by the way) and first mind-numbingly painful cockup. I decided against buying the oh so fashionable kleats thinking the crappy place we practice must be the same as the nicer place where the games are. I ran, slid, bopped around trying to regain my balance without landing on my bad knee tearing 3" of skin off my good knee in the process, made a spectacular popping noise and ended up sprawled on the ground feeling really shitty for cussing in front of coworkers' children.

I sprained my knee and added a slight tear where the previous damage was. It could have been a helluva lot worse, so I'm slightly okay with it. Oddly enough, the most pain comes from the skinned knee (it's really more of a scalping of the knee, there's that much gone) and hobbling about on crutches in a hoppy sort of way that makes the crunchy bits on the scrape crinkle and crack and hurt like a mofo.

Weasels! I can't think of a title....

Yesterday I was faced with an interesting question. It flitted about in the back of my mind as I went about my daily activities. It popped up like an exasperating round of Whack-a-Mole for the better part of an afternoon, bouncing about Arsenic Treatment Vessels in glorious 3D and slithering in and around what seemed like miles and miles of virtually virtual piping.

“If she was a real mother and not some fairy tale mock up of an evil pain-in-the-world’s-collective-patootey (I still love, love, LOVE that word!), how much would I be happily willing to spend on a birthday pressie?”

I thought and thought and thought and took a break for a cookie and thought some more. It wasn’t until I was well on my way home that I settled on a nice round number, the kind of number that makes even the humblest of giftees utter a resounding “Holy Shite!”

Finally equipped with a value but before I could begin the narrowing down of wonderful shiny things that could be purchased with just such a fabulous and oh, so generous number, the reality of it all hit me. I remembered (as if 8 years of witnessing it all first hand could be easily set aside) that she wasn’t some lovely, caring Mom or even a halfway decent Mother. I balk at even referring to someone who would spend a lifetime belittling and tearing to shreds every single person around her (even tho her own sad excuse for an existence is pathetic at best, parasitic at worst) as “That Thing that had you Removed.”

So faced with the unsettling fact that the old adage of the evil mother of the groom can be a reverberating, disturbingly, and empathically True, I took that deliciously zoftig number and found an enormously more therapeutic and much more fulfilling use for it – I bought myself some shoes and a pair of Happy Bunny socks that say “It’s not my fault you’re icky.”… in Blue.

Now to summon my squirrel army!

My Life as Defined by "The Man"

Wow, never thought I'd get to use that phrase...ever.

So after years of snickering and great mockage of locals who ever thought a ruling body incapable of keeping its own scarred, mangled corpse out of harm's way could/would take the time to smack anyone else down/keep anyone else out, my drive-time epiphany was quite the shocker.

For years I've struggled in vain to find some metaphor for my existence (everyone should have one; I highly recommend them for those days when you just don't know why you want to beat nuns with sacks of penguins while humming the theme song to Dobie Gillis) but aside from the occasional "Life Sucks Monkeys" I've come up short time and time again.

Then on my student-free commute (who'da thunk all those idiots driving like jackasses were the future leaders of our nation?) on a dreary, time-skewed Monday it hit me:

Daylight Savings Time is the metaphor for my life. The perfect illustration of the monotonous cycle of Me.

Always a whiz at the Falling Back.

Completely inept at the Springing Forward.

Well maybe not completely, but it certainly wouldn’t count as a Spring. I can Stumble and I can certainly Flail, but ‘to spring’ is a verb gone AWOL.

The Tail of the Tech-Monkey and the Existential Conundrum

Or
To Flee or not to Flee…

This may or may not be the most opportune time to post something like this, but the last few days have really got me pondering. And to Ponder is to Mull, and to Mull is to ruin a perfectly good dose of Joyful-Expectation that’s been a long time comin’.

How much can one thing own another?

I’m not talking about relationships based on esoteric stuff like warm and fuzzy feelings or various planes of disdain. In a professional capacity that does not involve the selling of one’s immediate future to a governing entity, how much of one’s existence can be detained by another? And how can wanting to better oneself be such a taboo?

I have an opportunity to not only move slightly up and over from the position I tentatively hold now, but to do something that the possibility of accomplishing on this current path has a measly shelf life of 2 or 3 years tops – return to school to get a real degree in something I actually love doing. I know myself and my life well enough to be realistic; if I wait much longer, I won’t.

My new job is going to be beyond this everyday tech-biscuit business, but I’m looking forward to it; and the ability to expect the best used to be something that this life had all but broken in me. If I don’t keep learning and growing, I get Bored and when I get bored I get Complacent and Complacency leads to Swelled Head which causes me to tilt off center which makes children stare and point and… It just leads to no good, I tell you, no good a’tall.

So I opted for the one that will give me the things I require more than money. Don’t get me wrong, money is right there on the list beneath “Happiness” and “Cranial Stimulation,” but it’s not the end-all-be-all of my contentment. It’s a nice perk that I hope gets even perkier as time goes on.

Back to the original question –

I can understand the other side’s point of view; it makes sense to think that effort and privilege bestowed on another should be rewarded with respect and loyalty. But at what point does Loyalty become Obligation? And when Opportunity to excel is denied, doesn’t Obligation bleed out into Resentment? I would like to think I’m bigger than that, better than the baser human state of selfish resentment and mounting odium, but I can’t say for sure that if I’d stayed, if I’d turned down an opportunity the likes of which would either never be offered again or I would be too smug/afraid/bitter to consider accepting in the future, that self-destructive little germ would not have started burrowing its way into the darkest parts of me, festering and scheming.

So, how much of me is beholden and for how bloody long?

A Surgeon Unsexed my Kitty!

And they hate me. Well, Pi does anyway. Phi has no idea that there's anything missing and is bouncing off the furniture. Pi on the other hand is a tiny mass of hate at times and a bundle of pain at others. Why does it work like this? Even in humans it's "Snip Snip Buh-Bye" for men and "I'll trade you a uterus for a wollop of pain" for women.

Fuzziness Incarnate has some new additions, and before anyone asks how come it’s 99% pics of them sleeping, you try keeping 5 month old kittens still long enough to take a portrait with a camera-phone.

Reality-Slapped, Crisis Averted

It seems that, according to some reasonable-mined individuals (ha!) who believe that there is always a perfectly logical reason for everything (doubly ha!), my ears are in fact not shifting/ roaming/ planning a sight-seeing tour of my nether regions after all. Because in the black and white, rather plain world that is the sensible land of the upright/ uptight/ no-funsees, ears and other external humanly parts do not ramble away in fits of ennui. It seems in this sane, sensible plane of the clear-cut and the wary, glasses, however, do require adjusting. Despite their best efforts to make me see (through lenses requiring tweaking, no less) existence in a straightforward, tidy manner that revels in the idea of a world that twirls off-kilter in an exceptionally boring way, and after reflecting short and squishy on the realism of one versus the mirthful morbidity of the other, I’ll take my twisted noggin’s notion any day of the week. Except for every other Tuesday after a Monday that does not end in suck, at least, as those are my “Make like the World is Shiny” day.

They Call Me...Shifty Ears

Yep, that's right. Me ears be shifty. Okay, shifting. It seems they've tired of their usual placement on the sides of my head and have decided to take a tour of my scalp. So far they've only ventured a bit left, but what if they get more adventurous, if the urge to see the sights that is my cranial region grows to a fever pitch and I awake to find I can hear myself blinking? What if a jaunt around the block no longer thrills and they opt to winter down south?!? The vision of my future freakish self kindly asking a cold-handed specialist not to shout is almost enough to make me run off and fashion some duct-tape earmuffs. I wonder what other parts and appendages are planning off-season vacays in the wonderful on-me-doors. Shall I awake to find ankle-biter has taken on a whole other, much more fun-at-parties meaning?