12/31/03
Yes, it's been another two weeks since the last update. Christmas was busy, as you likely know, but it's been busy since then too. Just yesterday, for example: I was cleaning a library until the wee hours and got home at 3:30am, set my new probe thermometer/timer for 3 hours 26 minutes, got up at 7:00am to go to jury duty, thereby skipping my day job (yaaay!); I sat twiddling until 2:30pm and at 4:15pm had convinced a judge and both attorneys that they didn't want me to participate in particular case (when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, it's said – I pulled a lemon out of my ass and squeezed hard), then when I got home I had two hours to prepare for my parents coming over (for those keeping score at home: this is the first time since my marriage five years ago and the second time in the ten years I've lived in the Puget Sound region they've paid me a social call), and mere minutes after they left I had to head to a library to work again... and it began snowing hard in that few minutes. So to say a few words on Christmas: I had a great time. Paige and I have switched roles this year: historically she was the lavish one and I was the frugal one, and I usually get passive-aggressive about the lousy gifts I get while she's good with whatever is in the boxes; this year I liked everything I got, even the pointless things, while our sister-in-law got Paige some real freakishly useless items in addition to the gift card she asked for (the ONLY thing she asked for), and I'd collected goodies for her all year while she was hesitant to spend any money due to our bad finances and eventual bankruptcy. Oh, and the lights around the edge of the house [see last entry, end of the first paragraph] are now clear purple and blue, I replaced all the white lights for originality's sake.
As I say here every year, I don't make resolutions. The things I would like to accomplish I don't say out loud, since I believe those hopes are similar to the wishes one makes on birthday candles (make a wish, close your eyes, blow out all the candles in one go, and don't tell anyone what you wished for, then you will get your wish). But for 2003 I did actually make one promise to myself, again which I kept to myself, and for the most part it worked: I wanted to lose some weight, since I had gained a pound a month for the three years I was at Earthlink. I made the pledge to myself that in the new year I would go out on my Kangoo-Jumps more often and do something about my shape. Knowing that the biggest hinderance to any resolution is how the time it is made is during the holidays, I chose to start acting upon the resolution when it would be nice outside so I could bounce around, April 1. A week after I made the resolution, I lost my job, which one could say reduced the amount of sitting and regular eating I was doing. I started bouncing and walking nearly daily for a few months, then found myself tapering off as autumn approached. I had lost 20 pounds, or roughly 2 pounds a month! But life being full of balances, I got the job with Amazon.com in October and thus have been eating regularly and sitting a lot, but I haven't weighed myself so don't even want to consider whether anything's come back and if so how much. I don't have any new goals for 2004, but I think it would be nice to finish what I started and lose another 15-20, and the main goal from 2003 still holds: to get a gawddamn job!
The R.A.T. honorable mention of the day goes to the anonymous woman who left a pair of diarrhea-streaked grey maternity panties in the tampon disposal bin at the South Hill Library. I'm not a scat fan (I will admit a pregnancy fetish though) and women have told me that accidents do happen when one has a baby pressing up against their excreatory organs. The honorable mention is because I found myself laughing hard at the concept of a pregnant chick shitting herself messily, ditching the evidence where anyone could find it, then going home 'commando'... possibly on a city bus. Or maybe I needed a good nonsensical laugh after jury duty; while I was there I kept thinking about the book/movie "Twelve Angry Men" and looking around the room at my fellow jurors, captioning them "Seventy Bored Stiff People."
Today's R.A.T. anecdote, as a way to close the year, is supposed to be a lesson in simplicity: the story behind the statement, Cold cookies and warm soda are good for you. Several times while I lived on the lake, Chrome and I would get together to talk or write philes, and there was a new supermarket which had opened four miles down the street. It didn't seem like four miles, but mathematically if I had a North First Street address and the store was on 40th, it had to have been that far. We'd go there, sometimes on foot and sometimes on bike, to purchase what sounded good to us and we had the change to afford: a bag of President's Choice chocolate chip cookies and a box (one dozen cans) of President's Choice cola. [This isn't intended as a plug for the 'PC' brand, which is best known as a store brand in Canada, and the local market chain has renamed their store brand... but 'PC' cola is good and their black cherry cola is excellent.] We'd take the goodies back to the mobile home I was sharing with a teacher and get ourselves loaded up on sugar then try to write coherently. There was one day that we decided to go on a run for cookies and pop, and what was significant about this day was that there was a foot of snow on the ground, the lake behind my house was frozen solid, and the only way we could get there was to brave the elements. Dry cookies and room-temperature soda, were they worth the risk? Something internal to us determined it was integral to the day, a part of our friendship, a voyage we needed to make. We bundled up our overcoats, walked out of my trailer and down to the dock, then traversed the lake. The symbolism of walking on water didn't escape us but it felt more to us like the scene cast by Kate Bush's song "On Ice" – the staccato of your life crossing a surface you can't predict the thickness of, pleasure awaits at the far end and peril lurks underfoot. We continued off the ice shelf onto the frosted landscape and forded through snow to the road less travelled, followed up Fruitvale for three and a half miles, and purchased our bounty, then returned in our footsteps in the biting yet gentle wind and subzero cold. And the meal was good; the soda colder than when it had left the store but still tepid enough to give us a warming lift inside, and the cookies were more than a mere snack. This is all the moment required, store-bought machine-made cookies and cheap-yet-tasty soda. It wasn't until the next month, after a few crossing of the lake on other trips, that we discovered this was the third harshest blizard in the last century, and we'd gone out in it, on thick and thin ice, like it were nothing special. In the decade that has followed, I've never seen that lake so solidly and quiescently frozen, and the friendship between myself and Chrome endures with the occasional cookie and warm soda (usually Mountain Dew straight from the box in my pantry) though not as many of our discussions and noodlings wind up in typed form for public perusal anymore. Someone told me years ago that a true friend is someone you don't have to clean house for, which is akin to the thought that a friend is someone you don't have to go out of your way to impress. I apply the thought to entertainment, since some people get so wrapped up in "what are we going to do? where will we go, what movie shall we see, how much will this cost?" KISS - keep it simple, stupid. Honestly: Cold cookies and warm soda are good for you. Some people have known this for centuries, using tea and whatever confections, but we moderns sometimes forget.
From the Reality Avoidance Therapists to you and yours, may your 2004 be blessed and bountiful. --#2
12/15/03
Hi-eye, I seem to be a week behind in the Daybook and two weeks behind in the Rant. But that sort of thing happens during the holidays (yeah, that's my excuse...) and things have been fairly nonstop here. It's the most wonderful time of the year, so they say, and everyone wants to get you involved in whatever happening they happen to be hosting. Last night, for instance, I went to my former coworker Peggy's place for an ornament party while my wife went to a baby shower for my lesbian sisters-in-law. Chrome — R.A.T. #1 if you recall him — has been in my area for awhile doing Guard duty and at this writing should be wrapping up a six-day "camping trip" which I'm sure didn't serve s'mores around a gathered-wood fire. (Yes, he keeps referencing the fact that he hasn't offered up any Daybook goodness but does have plenty to say about recent stupidity in his life. He is happy to announce he's finally got some help with his assisted-care facility job so he will actually get a little time off weekly.) I got an email from Emmer — R.A.T. #3 if you recall her — with a job announcement for Chrome and little about herself, so I can at least confirm she's alive. I'm not unwell myself [thanks for asking, Wayne] and it seems we did get the display case at the Parkland/Spanaway branch of the Pierce County Library again this December, but we decided instead of putting in antique ornaments like last year we would fill it with Paige's collection of Christmas-themed M&M's stuff. Drop in there if you're in the Tacoma area and see far too many tins, toppers, stuffed characters, and other merchandising. Today's accomplishment was putting up the 7' artificial tree and the blue & white lights around the edge of the house.
Usually what I write in the Daybook as the second or third paragraph is an anecdote of the recent past or a story (clean or sordid) from the distant past. Today I wish to confess something that really bothers me and can make some people's opinions turn yet has nothing to do with sex. (That's a change for me, I realize. <g>) Part of this comes from living near a couple military bases, part is from living near a metropolitan center, and part of it is simple human nature, but there are a lot of black guys who have white women on their arms locally. Some women who date black guys are what are known as "whiggers" (white people who wish they were black and try hard to act like the black stereotypes, including the negative ones) and those aren't the people I'm speaking of; as they saying goes, "you can have 'em, I don't want 'em." (I say the same about otherwise-intelligent white women who go out with white men who are "whiggers" because it shows a serious defect in the women's thinking process; to me it's like the women are trying to insult their own intelligence by association... presuming they had any.) Some women who date black guys are average to good-looking, well-dressed, fairly intelligent and upright, and to their credit the men they're with are also good-looking, well-dressed, fairly intelligent and upright; I don't have much of a problem here because both parties are functional members of society and it just so happens that the man is not white (and I'm told the guys sometimes hear from other blacks that they are "acting white" and are called traitors, but I've also been told that the guys respond, "Why do you feel that way... because I'm successful?"). The people that have me irked are the fashionable, good-bodied, pretty-faced, darned-hot white women who choose stereotypical blacks or black guys who dress and talk like urban youth. And before you say anything, this is the point where I explain my reasoning by saying that many black women express a similar point of view when it comes to the aforementioned successful black males (and worthwhile average black males) choosing white women over black women: It bothers me because there are fewer beautiful people of my fleshtone to chose from. Never mind that I'm not on the market myself so I couldn't ask these chicks out anyway, it's the principle of the matter. (And if you have never seen a sistah go off on a black male who has forsaken sistahs, it is quite hilarious to witness.) I want to clarify, I'm not stating any form of prejudice against African-Americans whatsoever and one of my dearest friends in the world is very much a black woman (functional, successful, speaks English properly, dresses very stylish, and gets aggrieved about how she's still single at age 30 because all the best black men she knows personally are either married, gay, or only date white women). I am however loudly stating my prejudice against those stunning svelt blondes, brunettes and lily-white redheads in curve-hugging shirts and hiphugger pants who can have anybody they want, and pretty much any Caucasian male would eat shit off of china to get close to, yet those women choose to go gheto. There, I have said it. I feel better.
The shindig, well, I think it went okay. I say 'think' because I missed it. I thought it started at 3 p.m. so that's when I showed up, but no, it ended at that time and started at 1 p.m. So I didn't get to talk to anyone beside the curator, though a couple of the visitors were still there and they gave me their appreciation. I celebrated the event by, at soonest ability, taking Chrome to Renton to visit the Fry's Electronics for doodads and the IKEA for some awesome STRÅLA light strings. (Hey #1, they finally got the long strings of blues in a week later... told ya they existed!) Am I ready for Christmas? Pretty close, I do need to buy a couple more things for my beloved then wrap and I'll be done. --#2
11/26/03
Here in the United States, Thursday is Thanksgiving. A day of food, family, and (in theory) fun. I'm dreading my day, not just because I'm working at a library until 4 a.m. so won't be fresh as a daisy when I have to face anyone, but because I have to spend it with my wife's family. Now don't get me wrong, I like them. But I don't want to be with them tomorrow. This is once again due to my sister-in-law Anne having gone lesbian a year ago, because she's attempting to get every male in her life she isn't related to by blood (and some she is related to because she begat them) out of her life, and will resort to any sort of trick and fabrication to do it. And since the oldest sister is between husbands, she herself is divorced and living blithely, and her younger sister's widower doesn't venture over here very often, the only unrelated guy left is... me. Having Anne's disapproval wouldn't be much of an issue if her oldest sister and her brother hadn't decided, "in order to stay on the girl's good side, we need to shun him too." They've flat out told Paige that "although he's never been a problem to us," they don't want me over at their houses... how fuckin' Christian of them. Thanksgiving is at their mother's house, and Mom likes me plenty because I make her daughter happy. She's still in the minority and I hate being outnumbered, no matter how pleasant the rest of the crowd chooses to act tomorrow.
Thanksgiving in younger years was spent at Aunt Mayme & Uncle Frank's house, and they were truly wicked cooks. Christmas was also spent at their house, whether it was the two-story old creature in downtown Wapato, the little mobile unit out toward Ahtanum, or the four-bedroom off Yakima Avenue which Aunt Mayme bought off of one of her sons after Uncle Frank passed on. I had my first taste of buttermilk under their auspices, and not the modern kind where an acid is added to lowfat milk to curdle it – this was the real deal with little blobs of butter in it. Damn near curled my toes in shock when I drank that. Every year at eating holidays I'd ask if she had any pickled lemon rind or pickled watermelon for the hors d'oeurve tray, and about ¾ the time she did. Those were the days when I'd fill my plate immoderately at Thanksgiving and basically have to shove the rest of the food down my throat with my foot to not waste what I'd taken. The tradition of spending the holidays at their house started falling apart after my grandmother, Aunt Mayme's sister, passed on, because my family didn't feel as attached as they had been, or maybe it was just too sad to my mother that her mother wasn't there, plus one of my cousins had grown up and started a family so she was inviting her immediate relatives to come spend the holidays with her... and as my aunt got older the family of one of her sons took over the Thanksgiving duties most of the time though my aunt's last Thanksgiving was spent at my parents' house. Uncle Frank died of old age in the late 1980's, while Aunt Mayme suddenly developed ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) which progressed extremely quickly and left us in the mid-90's. With the exception of Uncle Frank's sister Lenora "Smitty" Smith, all of the relatives I had any deep respect for are gone, and I haven't seen Aunt Lenora in a long time. Holidays aren't a sad time for me, I want to clarify; holidays are just a time when I don't know where I'm supposed to be anymore.
today's story... Some things make your head spin a little when you think about them years later. The popular image is going to your high school reunion and discovering to your surprise who had a crush on you that you never knew about, and then you can't help thinking how much different life would have been had you known about it when it mattered. It wasn't high school that produced that sort of moment (darn it), it was college. I spent five years at a nondenominational Catholic college on the outskirts of the town I grew up in – and met the woman who became my wife there, as well as the girl who nearly became my downfall – and when I arrived the average student age was 42, and when I left it was down to 36. There were few people I knew of who were approximately my age, but I did recognise Gracie Serrano as being an agemate, who I don't recall ever having a class with but she would always greet me happily and I guess you could say nervously. Five years we passed each other in the hall, made chit-chat on random occasions, and did little more than acknowledge one another's existance. I graduated in 1991. In the Fall of 1993 I visited the school with the kindred spirit from the opposite side of the state I was hanging out with at the time, just to see how the place had changed and pick up some free computer equipment from my old mentor, when there she was in the library... Gracie was still there, now working for the school. (That was long a joke at that place, that people would graduate then move to the other side of the counter they'd been standing at.) We greeted each other happily, and she was one of the only familiar faces seen. And that's when the moment transpired: nervously (as always) she suggested that if I was in town for awhile I should come have dinner with her family. Where did that come from? I wondered, since we'd never so much as had lunch together in the cafeteria when we were students. I was only at the school for maybe an hour, drifting around quickly, so I didn't get any time to further that conversation, but once I was in my friend's vehicle going toward our next destination I couldn't stop thinking: Where could that have gone? If only I had more time to ask... I realized somewhere down the road that the answer to the question of "why didn't we investigate the possibilities when we were around each other daily" was simply, because we weren't who we are now. We weren't ready. And once we were ready, we weren't able. I haven't been back to that neighborhood during school hours in a long time so that day in October 1993 was the last time I've ever seen Gracie. I'm writing this to blow a kiss on the wind to someone whom I never realized was interested in me when it mattered, and as a karmic means of finally acknowledging her warmth since I didn't do it once I realized it. --#2
11/19/03 and yes, the museum is decorated, go see it - open house on Dec 7!
The next step in the process of declaring bankruptcy transpired yesterday: we went to the courthouse to stand before the trustee. If you've never been around a bankruptcy, here is the visual... Instead of a judge, there is a trustee sitting at the bench. In front of him is a table where the applicants sit on one side and their attorney sits on the other. Contrary to a trial, the attorney acts on the court's side and asks all the questions of the applicants, unless the applicants choose not to hire an attorney and then it's the trustee that asks the questions. (Okay, so why would anyone hire an attorney then?) After the basic questions are asked, the trustee then asks the courtroom if anyone has anything to add, at which time the representatives of any creditors owed can come forth and try to negotiate something for their interests. So on with the story. We got to court and were the eleventh case on the docket, so we got to sit and watch the procedure. I felt for the trustee, he seemed like a nice guy who was frustrated by other people's lack of preparation or lack of competence, and that frustration showed as he chided the attorneys who failed to prepare their clients (or themselves) in all-but-"you dumbshit, you're wasting my time!" tones. He was a lot of fun to watch. In the seats on the right side of the courtroom were some representatives of businesses owed money, and the two people most often seen waiting to get their digs in was someone from Citibank on behalf of Sears and Pam from the Les Schwab tire store here in Spanaway. (No wonder I never see her behind the counter there anymore!)
We got called forth and since we represented ourselves, we got right down to business. The trustee asked Paige all the pertinent questions, then turned to me and asked "do you agree with everything she said?" I gave my uh-huh. I saw the Sears representative pacing the aisle, and we do owe them for some large appliances. Our counselor had told us awhile back Sears would be a sticky one because they actually show up to these hearings. But the trustee did something unexpected: he didn't ask if anyone wanted in on the act. So he dismissed us and we went down the hall, remarking among ourselves how well that went. We should be receiving word through snailmail about the next court date soon.
Sordid story time... Years ago one of my favorite loose-moralled Mormon girlfriends introduced me to her friend Loree. She warned me before she brought her over that this chick would "stick to you like gum on your shoe." I thought she had to be overstating the case, so I said 'bring her on.' Loree and I hit it off pretty well. She was a blonde with a pushed-in nose and a nice enough body, who loved to talk – and had one of those complexes where a person speaks disrespectfully of their friends and constantly asks if you think they are 'better' than other people. (For the record, insecure people who diss on others and fluff themselves up make me itch.) She started coming over and hanging out with me, and would call daily. This was all very amusing until I realized she didn't really listen to anything I said. It was particularly amusing the time we were discussing, oh, I don't know, probably auto parts or something as impersonal, and she suddenly replies with "You want to see me every day?!" Uh, where did you get that response from? I also came to figure out her game, which is something I called "flying under the radar." Being a church girl, there were a lot of things she couldn't ask directly for, but if she talked around the subject things would be fine. Like she'd ask me to close the curtains so it would be dark, then ask me to lay down on top of her, and as I would be moving my body to the horizontal one of her hands would slide her dress up and panties down. But under no circumstances was I to see the goods, I could only touch them in the dark. Any attempt to see the goods, try another form of amusement such as oral, or rework this scheme in any way would result in her standing up and walking out of my apartment. She also asked me to drop my pants while I was laying down (not before, when it would be convenient – she'd see my body and that likewise would be bad) and "scoot forward" with the intended result being that our genitals would interlock. She couldn't ask for a screw, but she could arrange things physically so that it would happen. But this amused me more than it aroused me. That's my way of saying I purposely stayed flaccid when she'd pull that manoeuver, I didn't want to Do It with her. This happened a couple times, and after the second she never came back to my apartment. But I more or less sealed that fate anyway: After she'd see me, she'd call our mutual friend and tell her a few things, some which were true and some which were wishful thinking, then that friend would call me to ask what really happened. Well, the second time I spurned her desires, she left and it was I who called our friend to tell her what transpired. Later on she called me back to say that Loree had claimed that I attacked her and tried to give her the bone, but the girl already heard my side of the story so she knew what was what: that giving her the bone was the complete opposite of my intentions. Loree called after she found out our friend already knew what happened, angry that I'd blabbed to our friend (in the same manner she had always blabbed first) and I said I was just making sure the true story got out, and that I knew she was telling the story backwards about who threw themselves at whom. She never called again. I've seen her a couple times since then, and in both cases she ignored me outright. She also doesn't talk to our friend anymore, heh. She also gained about fifty pounds and may have gotten married to the first guy who'd have her. My sympathies to that guy; the sex couldn't possibly be worth it. --#2
11/12/03
Tonight I am decorating that tree at the Prairie House Museum, so you are all welcome to visit and see the wonderment. You know your collection of anything is out of hand when you can fill up one 50-gallon tub with something you fancy and yet it doesn't make a dent in your supply. I'm doing okay at my day job, as I suspected I would be once the brain-busting training was over and I had learned some practical stuff by doing it, and still getting some hours with the library. I was surprised to get a rebate check from my mortgage company, which says it overestimated how much tax we paid – read: acknowledgement that they're charging $10 too much per month, heh. I was also surprised by something that happened the other day at a craft fair: Years ago, I hung out with this woman by the name of Jynnifer who worked in a thriftstore, and thereby met her sister and her sister's two children. My friend moved away several years ago and I only see her sister at random intervals; her sister's kids and I haven't really ever had much of a rapport. I saw the oldest daughter, now 19, working at the 'photo with Santa' area which I have seen her at in previous years, and she greeted me excitedly with open arms. Gee, I never knew you cared, Sarah... :) For even more surprises, I went to this Christmas boutique called Sleighbells which is located in a house on the Historic Register in Sumner WA, after procrastinating about visiting since July. Oh. My. Gawd. It's like all the Christmas shops of of Leavenworth WA all rolled up into one small building, but without the yearly visits from Christopher Radko I always miss by a few days. It's a beautiful house that is jam-packed with Christmas clutter of all varieties, most of which is tasteful (I hate 'country' Christmas kitch, I'm a classicist, and this place specializes in classical). I picked up some colored reusable tinsel and blown glass ornaments. Now, all I need to do is shop for other people...
Today's anecdote, speaking of Jyn, was actually a R.A.T. function. I believe it was New Year's Eve of 1995... Chrome had come over for the passing of another year, and we were sitting around sort of bored. Around 10:30 p.m. the phone rings, and it's Jynnifer, inviting us over to her house for the event. Sure, no problem! We go over to her house, and she's got a flock of youth over. They reportedly were on acid, but they weren't really acting like it though I recall the pipe being passed so there was something in the air. Someone gets the bright idea to go to the minimart on the next block, so we all go out as a herd. Jyn is wearing one inline skate and one go-go boot. We push her like a dolly to the market, her hanging on myself and Chrome (we're looking at each other like "wtf?"), and when we got back to her house she put in the videotape of Pink Floyd The Wall and we absorbed that. Being sober made it less exciting for us than everyone else thought. Eventually he and I went back to my place and drank some carbonated grape juice that had fermented, no complaints, wishing we could have brought a couple of those creatures we were laughing with home with us. Days later I was talking to Jyn and she said, "I was dressed in a drillteam outfit, wearing a go-go boot and an inline skate! I was with nearly a dozen people! Why didn't anyone tell me I looked cheap?!" I said, "We thought you knew." :) --#2
11/2/03
Greets, cybernauts. Before I go much further, I need to right a wrong. In the last entry, I said that my birthday went by without much notice, including by me, and I was oddly comfortable about that fact. My friend Gabriella pointed out that my phrasing implied that no one took notice, which wasn't true and isn't fair to those who did remember my birthday and took the time to acknowledge it. In thinking about the matter, I figured just putting an "almost" in front of the words "no one noticing" wouldn't be enough because people who have already read something don't backpedal to see if something changed. So to clarify: Most of the world was blissfully unaware of my turning 36, which has always bothered me in the past but this year didn't seem to be an issue, and I'm always happy that a select few (typically those who mean the most to me) took notice. I'm sure that's how it is with everyone, so I'm not special, but at one's birthday they want to feel special, right? My wife and my good friends make me feel special on a daily basis, a fact that shouldn't be overlooked. I think I've figured out why this year I was less bothered by doing nothing: Most years my birthday falls on a weekday, so anyone I would want to spend the day with is unavailable, therefore I don't take the day off from whatever work I'm doing and feel upset that I'm not out partying with the gang (not that I've ever really had a peer group). This year, it was on a Saturday, so I was empowered. And it seems my choice of things to do with that power was... nothing whatsoever.
As a token of friendship, or as a sweet birthday present, Gabriella sent me some Krówka tejkaramella (milk caramels) which are simply out of sight. I'm not positive they arrived from the week or two of transit in perfect condition, since they look like regular caramels when unwrapped but have the consistancy and flavor of a Vermont maple sugar candy, like the repeated temperature changes messed with the crystal structure of the sugar – but this does not matter because the candy in the form I have been eating it is shocklingly rich and amazingly good. Thank you, Gab... I can honestly say that I did receive a birthday gift this year, and one beyond compare.
I received some good news to put me in the Christmas spirit and to give me the opportunity to once again share my antique Christmas ornament collection with the world! The Spanaway Historical Society contacted my wife the other day, asking if we'd like to set up a display tree at The Prairie House Museum [924 East 176th Street, Spanaway WA; (253) 536-6655; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. every third Sunday or open by appointment] which is on the grounds of the Fir Lane Funeral Home. We need to call them back to set up a time to get in there and decorate (as you can see, they have wonky hours!), but we intend to be there this year. You're all invited to go visit once we get our stuff arranged. I have lived in or near Spanaway (yes, the place immortalized by a Seaweed album) for the last nine years, and even lived 2½ away from the museum, yet I didn't know the place existed until now.
I want to get this posted and go to bed (ahh, the many joys of having a day job) so today's weird anecdote isn't one of my own per se, but a story told to me by Robin Gordon years ago. She's the daughter of the minister my church had when I was a teenager, a very conformist rebel – that means that she talked like a free spirit but was too entrenched in her station to actually act like one, which is a different beast than today's 'rebel conformists' (today's youth who all wear the exact same 'alternative' gear, proving the statement "You are a unique individual, just like everyone else") – and about the edgiest thing I ever saw her do was wear a robe which had been cast off from or was stolen from a mental hospital, that she had found in Goodwill. (And underneath that robe, she wore a tan bra that resembled fleshtone. Trompe l'oeil!) Robin was the girl mentioned in my special 'how Mushy lost his virginity' Daybook entry awhile back as standing in the bedroom doorway as Things Transpired Inside, crying "When I said `what's a little sex among friends?`, I didn't really mean it!" Her complaint about the summer camp we attended was that the people weren't the same way the other 359 days of the year as they were when they were at camp, and I said that's what I liked most about the place – you could be who you wanted to be, not who you had to be. Anyhow... She told me that she had gone on a double-date with her truly rebel friend Jaleh, and both of the guys were bisexual. At the beginning of the night, Robin and one of the guys were in the front seat and Jaleh and the other guy were in the back, but by the end of the night the two girls were in the front seat playing cards and the two guys were in the back seat, hmm, let's just say they were having a better time together than they had been having with the girls. That has got to be the worst date imaginable, short of your date running off with your younger sibling. (I have had dates run off with my best friend, but I've never lost a woman to one of my brothers.) --#2
10/27/03
"All these people that you don't like – aren't they happier than you?" -- Sarah (Vera Stough), in the 'mental hygiene' school film The Snob (Centron Corp., 1958)
Man, I had a flock of things to say about my birthday and life in general, but I've misplaced most of them. The birthday itself went differently than usual; there were no gifts, there was cake (carrot, with cream cheese frosting) and a tea-light candle on top, we didn't really go anywhere because we got up and organized so late, and I didn't feel the usual grey clouds of having a birthday or the dismay of no one noticing. That fact is surreal; I'm not used to not feeling bad. A week later, once my bride and I both were paid by our usual jobs and I'd finally received a week's pay from that online bookstore thing, so now we could afford to get a rack of ribs at Pete's BBQ and buy a few niceties (primarily a National Lampoon cartoon collection and the fixin's for cornbread). I have attained my stated goal of surviving the two-week training class for this holiday job (so now I can delay getting up by an hour!), and though I haven't taken a call yet I get the feeling that it's a good thing this is just a holiday gig. I have the worst desk in the building, it's literally Grand Central Station right behind me, and no amount of polite discussion (or, to be fair, outright usurping of prime real estate elsewhere) will convince these folks that they should allow me a different seat, one where concentration is an attainable goal. Someone speculated that the management knows that corner is shit, and it's a test of my character (I have found myself humming Recoil's "Edge To Life" when pondering my placement, yes) to see if I can survive; this is what Mushy gets for asking questions since questions are, afterall, a challenge of established authority. [And it must hurt to have tits so saggy or a weiner so short, yet be so young and powerful. My sympathies to your families.] There was one glimmer of sunshine: Dionne, whom I worked with at Earthlink (started in customer service, came down to tech support), is one of the next wave of trainees. I figured I'd see more Blinky-expatriats already working there, but belated is fine too.
I'm holding a few eBay auctions on behalf of my dear friend MeLissa, and one of the books is this 1905 anti-masturbatory tome steeped briskly in religious fire & brimstone called What A Boy Ought To Know. (It's also been released as What A Man Ought To Know I've learned, since now other people are listing their copies of the book...) The first week, there were no bids. So I submitted the listing to WhoWouldBuyThat.com as the auction was closing to amuse other people. After the next update, I got email from six people asking if I'd relist the title. Of course! Three days into the second auction, I got an email from my ISP saying that 800 megs of traffic had passed through (courtesy of the first listing, which had 1800 hits when I looked at it before relisting) and I'm only allowed 1 gig of webspace downloads per month. And I have five other auctions running right now (ending tomorrow, though) and five more I should start soon; I need that webspace to not be shut off (which is what will happen once the limit has been met). I've attempted to remedy the situation by editing the graphics so one view is worth under 125 kilobytes instead of four or five times that amount. Give me a month and I'll share the direct links to the pictures with you kind folks, m'kay?
When I remember what great stories I was going to tell here, I'll post them. I just need to get into the groove in this new shindig. So far I've ascertained that just because a company's corporate beliefs say that work should be enjoyable, there's nothing written therein which says it's supposed to be fun. And that a number of my coworkers have been convinced that's how it's supposed to be. (This is a big shift for me, see, because my last job was fun and yet stuff still got accomplished, and the founder of that company left because he was no longer having fun. The founder of this company is still having fun, but he's one of the only people allowed that priviledge, likely due to lack of supervision.) I somehow survived 72 hours or so on only 5 hours of sleep – I was in class from 8am to 5pm, then in a library from 10pm until oh-dark-thirty, on Monday and Tuesday of this last week, so when I got home on Wednesday evening I hit the sheets in a big way. I'd never done that much time without sleep before, and I hope that I won't soon repeat that madness.
"Hello, I'm: Totally Bored" -- name badge seen on a cashier at Big!Lots --#2
10/17/03 — yes, tomorrow's my 36th birthday
I'm a little behind in writing because I've spent the last week training. I'm sure that my supervisors would consider a quantity of what I could say about the place "proprietary" (it is no breech of confidence to say that some of the folks who oversee me are nice to look at from the front but appear to have spent too much time sitting from the back, and some pray to their deity on a regular basis that He/It will grant them the gift of being interesting on a personal level), but I will say that it's surprising the number of tools good e-commerce requires and how intricate they are in use. That's the real uphill battle to a job in customer support where the supported base of items is pretty broad, as was the case at the ISP job I had for three years and the impression I get from this thing I will have for around three months: so much to know, so many things to learn, and there will always be some new item or procedure to be introduced to as situations develop. Even my instructors are still climbing the learning curve since stuff keeps changing; I can think of two items we learned in class this week which will have significantly changed by the time the class ends in a week, for instance. Will this turn into a solid job come January? I really can't predict, because a gaggle of people were trained two weeks earlier and another gaggle will come along as soon as this group is done, and judging by the cattle-call we received in email (a nice bonus for recommending new trainees) there will be more still. My biggest criticism of this job says more about me than whomever I'm working for: I'm starting at 8am every day, and when I hit the floor as a real temporary Amazonian it will be either 8am or 9am – which neigh unto kills me since I'm anything but a morning person. But could be worse, I could be working nights cleaning libraries in addition... which I'll be doing later today (but tomorrow starts the weekend) and Monday (oy vey! I'll get home from Gig Harbor around 4am then have to get up at 7am for class). No rest for the wicked, and some would say I've got 'wicked' down pat.
I was thinking about a short chapter of my life recently, which I'll title the "H.O.M.E. BBS" story. Back in the old 'hood a lot of people ran computer bulletin boards (BBS's), since the public Internet was still five to eight years away. (And from whence R.A.T. gets the notion that a system operator – sysop – is anyone who has a computer, a modem, a phone line, BBS software, and a smart friend to set them all up. Nowadays one only needs half of that list and one can earn the title "webmaster.") One of the most popular boards around was Dyk's Data Works, a BBS which had three nodes (phone lines connected) so people could go to a chat area and talk to one another. People really dug this, and wished there were a way to get more than three people to conflab at a time. Steve Dyk eventually closed his board (to be truthful, loaned it to a school which only had one phone line available, then it went offline without fanfare) which left the community with plenty of places to post messages and one or two BBS's with two nodes and a less simple means of chatting, but nothing really comparable. One to two dozen people who frequented the local BBS's were discussing the absence of good chat systems in some online forum, and out of this a guy by the name of Michael (actually his middle name) got the bright idea that he'd put together a mainframe – not merely a desktop PC, but a six foot tall PDP-100 mainframe – and write some BBS software for it, plug in 20 modem boards, and give the people what they wanted. Michael was this buff guy who was built just like his white Marine dad but had his mother's Japanese eyes, and he was engaged to this green-eyed beautifully-busted red-haired earth muffin named Jodi who worked at the YWCA. (She was the first person that I constructed one of my mantras of life around, the one that says "this drop-dead cute girl shouldn't be with the guy she's seeing, but if that's the kind of person she's interested in then this says a lot about her mind and I wouldn't want to date her.") Enough people had used the magic phrase I'd pay for a service like that! and he took them at their word. He formed a work party, and he started digging up his hardscrabble yard with the help of myself, Chad (the author of a poem about me, I'm Very Breathless), and this other guy whose name escapes me (whose house was so unliveably immaculate that it was like something in a magazine) that had a thing for duct tape. We spent a week digging a two-foot deep trench from the phone juncture at the street to his office, a good eighty feet since we did it rectilinear to the edge of the driveway and then alongside it instead of running directly across the yard (he was renting, and that configuration was what his landlord would agree to). Chad, what's-his-face, and I came up with a bit in honor of the project, patterned after Mike Meyers' "Lothar Of The Hill People" themesong from Saturday Night Live: "<chanting four times> Michael of the Trench People... <self-narration voice> I am Michael, of the Trench People! Many beers have I drunk and many cigs have I smoked. Join me now, will you not? For I am Michael, of the Trench People!" He laid eight lines initially and figured upon putting in more as soon as he had cash intake from users to support it; meanwhile he and a programmer-dude were writing code for the BBS, and after he'd tried to keep his project secret from the general public until things were in motion he finally came out and said: you all asked for a multinode chat board, I've got the multinodes and the chat board is being cobbled together as we speak... so everyone kindly put your money where your mouth is because this board ain't free. Crickets chirped. One person out of the throng ever sent a $20 check. You can guess just how pissed off he was, as well as envision how impoverished he'd become since he put forth a few hundred dollars to build this when he didn't really have visible means of support other than his computer consulting business (back before the masses had computers) and his girlfriend (who had nothing to do with the project except to occasionally interrupt him while he was barking orders with some trivial question, to which his lion voice would go lambish: "honey?" in this rediculously nasal voice that Chad and I imitated for a long time after). It was only a month or three later that he and Jodi picked up stakes and moved to Arizona or something, since they couldn't pay their bills anymore... he stuck his neck out and in return the BBS'rs cost a guy his home. Sad.
Since some of R.A.T.'s fans claim that no entry is complete without some sordid story (bless you for seeing things my way!), I do have a quickie to pitch out, one of those things I don't think anyone back in the old 'hood ever knew... It was the last day of school, 1985 (the end of my junior year), and one of our classmates is driving a pickup around with a dozen or so of us in the back. Sitting on the wheelwell across from me is Randy, and in his lap (as much of a lap as one can have when sitting on a wheelwell) is his girlfriend Sylvia in blue shorts. [aside: they had two kids together by the time they graduated, and they were still together when I saw them at the class reunion seven years ago.] The truck went over a pothole or bump, and Sylvia slides off Randy's lap sharply to the bed, and she decided to just remain sitting like that with her legs apart to bolster her. She now has a frontal wedgie. Her pubic region and labia are in plain sight from where I sit. I wanted to take in as much of this as possible, while trying not to make it apparent that I'm staring (I put my arm up across my eyes so they wouldn't see where my gaze fell), but Mother Nature did Sylvia a favor; with the wind one encounters in the back of a moving vehicle, my eyes were watering so bad that I couldn't focus on anything! That's about where I realized that it's not always what you saw or did which makes life memorable, but that you can truthfully say you saw or did it. And that one should take a camera to events to make them even more memorable! :) --#2
10/5/03
I have some good news! The world's largest online bookstore called to offer me a holiday customer service job, which I'll be starting this Friday. Good karma prevails afterall! I'm not quitting my night job, the occasional janitorial gig, because it pays much better per hour and usually doesn't conflict with Amazon's hours (plus the custodial job will still be there in January, there are no guarantees about Amazon). I should be getting my paycheck from the Fair in a day or so, then... we file bankruptcy!! That may sound bad (it's surely not a great thing), but with the loss of income in January we've gotten so behind in our finances that we're out of options. We get called 20 times a day by money collectors (no exageration), according to the Caller ID box and the answering machine. This will make much of the noise go away so we can get ourselves established again, and judging by some sleepless nights we've had this year it's overdue.
This afternoon I felt this pain in my midsection, similar to having an arrow splunked through me (a mental image of Saint Sebastian came to mind but without the justified martyrdom), which came from someone telling me a few facts I already knew but with a subjective statement thrown in: "And you're ugly." I don't claim to be anything special outside (you can check the Gallery for proof), but that was unnecessary and unChristian, even if it was said jokingly or in the heat of the moment. Once I'd tugged that arrow out – "I saw you laugh when the knife was twistin' / It still hurts but the pain has shifted" [Martin Briley, "The Salt In My Tears"] – I thought about a previous time when I felt punctured much worse by someone with whom I was emotionally involved, who I refer to as 'SFZ' and which I wrote a little about in the fourth ever Daybook entry (June 28, 2000). She had gone from "I need you beside me" one day to "I don't want to be your lover, I want to be your friend" after three days [as seen in the entry] to her mother finding her typing a page full of the phrase I hate him! after seven days. She had a case of buyer's remorse; she got what she had specifically asked for, what she had wanted either consciously or subconsciously (else she wouldn't have asked), and discovered after a few days that she either couldn't handle what she'd received or the fact that she had desire for it. I was nice about things, since I believe it's truly wrong to be hateful toward someone you have warm feelings about, and told 'SFZ' that while to thineself she had to be true (getting me out of her picture) there was no going back to where she had been she'd been so eager to leave (and no amount of hatred could turn back the clock). It took me a few months to get my head on straight again after that girl did a 180° on me, but situationally I had little else to distract me at the time (and washing dishes at a Pizza Hut gives too much time to think/stew). The current piercing, an unkind word from a respected and previously kind stranger, will heal long before that person's dislike of herself for ever giving her respect and kindness to me fades away.
Yeah, I wrote a new Rotating Rant at last, it's political an' stuff but there are some things that really need to be said (at the least so that search engine spiders can lay their eggs on them). And speaking of writing, I've been asked if I would be willing to work on a newsletter which is being started by a guy whose writing and websites I admire; details as they arise, I know nothing further at the moment. "Anything to extend my ego another seven inches," I told him. I don't have any other big announcements to make except that I officially cross the midlife line in two weeks, and I have no idea how I shall celebrate my birthday. At this point in my poverty and with the happy moments of the last few weeks, I'll probably have to be happy with the nonmaterial gifts I've received recently... and I admit that memories mean more to me than mere possessions. Well, that and I can't think of any music I need other than store-bought copies of a couple albums I've downloaded, heh heh! --#2
9/30/03
There was one t-shirt slogan that I forgot to put on the 9/22/03 entry. You ready?
• WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
It's only blasphemous if you somehow believe that He would want us to write "WWJD?" on our clothes and stuff. That wasn't in the Book, as I recall... Oh yeah, another item I was going to bring up, tangentally. Every year there's this booth run by some holy roller church which asks people, "Are you going to Heaven? Take this two question test." (The two questions are intricate enough that it's actually like 20 if the first answer isn't Yes.) I saw someone from that stand wearing a T-shirt that said, "I'm going to Heaven! Ask me how I know." My instant response was: whoops, pride is a mortal sin; BEEP, you're disqualified, drive through please. And I honestly looked skyward and said, "Lord, protect me from your followers." (Yes, folks, I do believe in the existance of God and that Jesus died for our sins. Don't chase me with torches and pitchforks. But someone's right to swing a Bible, Qu'ran, Torah, or Necromicon at me ends at the tip of my nose.) --#2
9/27/03
There's been a spate of celebrity deaths lately, all from natural causes, which has a few people I know of a little wigged out because this has exceeded the "3 person rule" which says that if two famous people pass on it'll only be a matter of days before a third goes. I'm not that sentimental about any of them (though I do feel something about the losses of Johnny Cash, Robert Palmer, and possibly John Ritter – they contributed something to my little world at one time or another), but there was another loss I just found out about which affects me... a soon-to-be-famous writer.
My wife is always talking about this member of the Library Friends group who has been very generous and kind to the library staff. It so happens she lives a block away from us, and a month ago she called me to get a little help with her computer so I walked over to see what was the matter. It wasn't anything crucial, there was this page break that kept coming up in the wrong place in this 24-page document she was working on and wouldn't go away. (The 'Dummies' manual for the word processor came right out and said there was no way to remove a page break once it has been added. Very bright, Microsoft.) I did some jiggery-pokery and got rid of it, and she was very happy. I couldn't accept money for deleting one errant character, so I accepted a rootbeer, an Olympia beer (it's the water...), and a Diet Pepsi for my spouse (who refused to drink it because the expiration date was October 14 1996!). We sat down and chatted for about an hour about dozens of things. The document she was having trouble with was a chapter of her autobiography. She was in a writer's discussion group, and when she revealed that during World War II she was a young female taxi driver [she was born in 1924] the other members demanded that she write a book about the experience. She didn't take to the task immediately, but as the anecdotes came back to her she realized they were right, this is a book that must be written. She was just putting the polish on the work, as far as I know, when my assistance was requested, and was consulting with a publisher. I didn't read much of the chapter that I was fixing, but it seemed a good work. As we sat in the livingroom petting her attention-hog dog she told me a few stories, some from her days as a taxi driver (and how she identified a couple German spies to Federal agents and received only verbal thanks when they were captured) and others from the other things she'd done in her life, like being part of an inspection group that toured sweatshops in Third World countries. I noticed the Puyallup Fair badges pinned up on a corkboard and mentioned I work there every year too, and she told me she works in the art building so we might see each other sometime. I made it a point to go looking for her, and I never did see her the entire Fair but I didn't think anything of it; it's a big place, hours are staggered, and it's not like I'd go visiting the arts building frequently (most people don't visit it at all!). She's a neighbor and a Library Friend so I'd find out what was up sooner or later.
I saw her obituary on a counter in the backroom of the library she was a Friend to while I was cleaning the place. She had passed on September 11, a week into the Fair; I didn't find this out until September 25. I'd just made the acquaintance of this amazing woman, touched the tapestry she'd spun, and expected to see her again because she didn't look like she'd be leaving anytime soon... so as you can guess, this came as a surprise to me. I hope her family sees to it that her manuscript gets published; she had the sense to make record of her life, managed to get what she was trying to say complete, and intended to share with the world, and in her honor they should make sure her wish came true. --#2
9/25/03
Top 10 Customer Questions At The Mad Greek - and notice that only one relates to gyros:
10 - Where can I find [various descriptions of a pirosky]? (At Kaleenka's, down yonder. I don't recall anyone directly asking "where is Kaleenka's" this time.)
9 - Do you have spanacopa / falafel? (No. Want a soggy baklava?)
8 - Where is the Blue Gate? (By the bathroom... pointing left)
7 - Don't you find the air horn on the ride next door annoying? (Fuck yes. But not as annoying as their habit of playing "Wanna Be A Baller" by Lil' Troy once every hour, or putting CCR/Petty/Skynyrd CD's on loop.)
6 - Do you have beef/lamb gyros? (Yes, stupid. It's the first thing on the menu. Why is it the only thing you see listed is chicken?)
5 - Where is the bathroom?? (By the Blue Gate... pointing left)
4 - Where can I get elephant ears/latte/scones? ("right there," pointing to the booth that is mere yards away and in plain sight)
3 - Where is the nearest ATM? ("State Patrol office wall," pointing right)
2 - Have you gone on the SuperSling? (Not this year, thanks, but the previous four)
1 - Do you have lids? (NO!!!!)
Top 10 Other Questions, Asked Of Me Or Asked By Me
10 - Can I buy your t-shirt? (No, despite my having six. Even a coworker with two asked me this.)
9 - How can you be tired? You haven't done anything today. (Suck my beef gyros and just cook, bitch!)
8 - Did you tell me the customers at your window were being served already? (Yes, twice; not that it's your concern...)
7 - That's the head manager of your company?? ("Yes, but only because the real one is 9 months pregnant and couldn't fly in... and as soon as the Fair's over, he's getting his walking papers. He doesn't know this yet.")
6 - Aren't you sick of making tortilla soup? (Tanya at Vita-Mix: "yes!!")
5 - Are you gellin'? (I'm so gellin' I'm smokin'.)
4 - Why are you wearing those beads? (Me smart, me potentially get flashed. Why Anthony ask? [My boss replied, "because he's Anthony."])
3 - Could you rub my feet please? (Could you change your socks, please? Nurse, rubber gloves...)
2 - Sign in the Charmin-sponsored bathroom: "No tips, please." For what? (No, the attendants do NOT wipe for you. And what exactly does chamomile-treated toilet paper do, put your ass to sleep?)
1 - Are there any morbidly obese women who do NOT come to the Fair?! (I've only met one, and I'm guessing it's because she's a workaholic so is too busy.)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul has been updated early so go look at some funny photo captions already. --#2
9/22/03
Welcome to the inside of my friggin' skull. It's the day after the Fair ended and I have a little headache. I'm a little better rested, not as bilious or sanguine as I was mere days ago (thankfully), and I think waking up to a furry orange cat and four episodes of Good Eats on tape (I can't get enough of Alton Brown sometimes) helped immensely. Life is indeed resuming its speed: in a couple hours a friend is coming over with a computer that is having issues, and then I'm going to clean a Library building later on. I didn't come up with any workable job leads in the last week but there's a job fair coming up on Wednesday which hopefully will offer something. To my surprise I had a good time at the Fair afterall; I guess it was a matter of patience, I had to get over myself and just let the good times roll, and the rest would come on its own terms. This paragraph is where I tip my keyboard to the people who some people who saved me from myself: Carl and his mother (they can walk upright now, or just lay down and stay down), Nancy of the funnel cakes (a woman without a plantar fascii tendon?), Tonda (kindness and sisterhood when I didn't expect it), Janelle (a blast from my past in more ways than I'd ever admit, thanks) and even Kyle (attention Chris Elliot: You will not be back, surprise!! This makes many people's days). I didn't work directly with any of those folks, that's why they were so helpful. Special thanks to Rich's for the hottubs and stoves, I enjoyed both more than a person is entitled to... I can go happy now.
As for my own work environment, as usual I had a good time with the worthwhile folks: Crystal, Jackie (#9), Lura (she's gellin', not cornin'), Vickie, and of course the big guy Erik. Other comments I have to make include: glad that you only worked weekends, Bree; step off, Rae; you've really gotta set your chickens free, Desiree (a contradictory naming if you ask me); it'd be nice if you actually were fun, Stephanie; the best karma I can think of for your asshole personality, Jimmy Jam, is that you married a fat bitch a few months ago; one day you'll realize you're not alive, Pricilla; you're latent, Jeremy, just let yourself dance; and to the fun guy across the way at the cotton candy stand whose name I never caught but talked to frequently: Teach Jeremy how to dance. I was good about my goodbyes and such, but I pretty near lost it when I decided to bid adieu to Basil Anton, the man who had employed me for six years (who is leaving the Fair biz after 36 years)... He's been married forever to a lovely and charming woman by the name of Thalia, the company bookkeeper (who was at orientation this year, glad to see her active) and for the past couple years she's been fighting a battle with two kinds of cancer. She's not winning, and there's no secret about that fact. I went to his office to shake his hand and thank him for the fun, and he was surprisingly chipper (he's usually so gruff). I told him to give my love to Thalia, and he said something which hit me blindside: "Be good, or my wife will come back to haunt you." I think that was the most meaningful, heartbreaking, final thing that's ever been said to me at the end of a Fair.
In the next Daybook entry, coming in a day or three, I'll post two Top Ten Questions lists: Top 10 Customer Questions At The Mad Greek, and Top 10 Other Questions I've Asked Or Answered. Surpringly, the location of the deep-fried Twinkies/candy bars wasn't on the list this year! In the meantime, here are three statements seen on T-shirts which bear repeating, out of the hundreds seen and rare few jotted down:
• It's better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you are not.
• Pigeons should never eat chili.
• All bigots will be reincarnated as gay homeless people of color.
Stay tuned for the next installment. This year I don't plan on disparaging further on the stupid or shortsighted people I encountered; this year my philosophy was to live like this was my last Fair, and actually see things instead of pass them by, even if it won't be. It's said that there is a buyer for the booth I work in, some company based in Oregon that does fairs but doesn't have a presence at the Puyallup yet, but no money has changed hands yet, and while I didn't meet the investor other people did (and Jackie gave them her name and number, and I told her that if they do call to make sure my data gets mentioned). The stupid I just kind of blinked and continued on my way past; the shortsighted got an eye-roll and an "it's your loss", which for me is pretty mild. I didn't want to bring any further baggage. I've discovered that I know when I'm upset by what someone has said when my scalp tingles and I can feel a bloodrush to the inside of my head, like this is the precursor to a stroke or (to be less extreme) this must be how a cat's flesh feels when kitty raises the hair on its back in defense. It's not as though I'm going to drop dead or turn into the Incredible Hulk, but it'd not a feeling that I want, and mere unwisely-chosen words (even the ones I'm just thinking about later on!) bring it on, and as I recall it was one of the things I feared most about working in tech support because it happened every so often from strangers – at the Fair, it happened nearly daily from coworkers who should have focused on their own tasks instead of guiding me at mine. (I also was reminded that coffee is a strong diuretic in my system.) There were bright points and wonderful people, make no mistake, and I thank the Fair Committee, the people who attended, and the people who worked it (especially certain ones, you know who you are) for making this a good thing.
My final comment here is a micro-interview with a woman by the name of Trish, who has been with the Fair for many years according to the stickers on her nametag; she's instrumental in orchestrating the talent that performs on the small stages or walks around the grounds, and as I was leaving yesterday I saw her office (this closet of a bulding that forms half of an open stage area between two buildings) and I was granted permission to admire the wall of autographed posters and promo photos. She said she doesn't quite understand why all these performers believe they must give her thanks – heck, hypnotist Travis Fox has five different signed photos up in there from his ten years appearing in the space facing her office, and the array of performer images goes back at least fifteen years – but they indeed do feel the need. Seeing her space was the last thing I did at the Fair this year, about 45 minutes after the Fair officially ended, and that was actually the best display I saw the entire 17 days. --#2
9/10/03
I'm 5 days into the Puyallup Fair. So far things have been okay, fairly slow, and I've seen some of my favorite people. At the same time there are periods where I have bouts of anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure)... "I'm experiencing dopamine deprivation," I thought to myself yesterday. Every year I look forward to the fun of the Fair, but every year I forget one small detail: that there are a lot of people who are younger and prettier than myself, who would be (at first thought or glance anyway) wonderful to know either personally or Biblically. And it's just an illusion, I can't have any of them. I was talking to my friend LaRoy (a camp counselor from my Lazy F summercamp days 20 years ago and a counter guy at Earthquake Burgers), who is fifteen years older than me, and he was speculating about whether he could make any time with these females around him if he were age 20 again. I thought it over and decided that even if I were 20 and/or single again, girls wouldn't be so quick to ignore me but yet by the end of the Fair the result would still be the same: I'd get nothing from them. You can call that pessimistic if you must, but remember that that's what I lived the first time around, I didn't just pull that guess out of my ass to be mean to myself. What a drag it is getting old, as Mick Jagger sang before he got old himself. I realize the solution is to do a priority shift – to be happy with what you have and to enjoy what you get, instead of focusing on what you don't have and can't get, afterall this is supposed to be FUN. I do have fun, when I'm too busy acting for others to think about myself. I don't know how to do a priority shift consciously. A shout out to a couple coworkers of mine who look great but like to flirt with guys with rediculous hair and piercings by holding up signs: You wouldn't know a good time if it bit you on the ass, and even if it did you wouldn't know what to do with it. Hopefully you'll learn something valuable in college in the near future, if you can be coaxed off the pedastal for a few minutes.
A quick plug for Karen Quest and her cowgirl rope tricks. She's really good with a whip and a lasso. 'Wierd Al' played the Puyallup tonight but since this was my day off I wasn't there. And what is looming on everyone's mind at my stand: the folks who employ me and have been at the Fair since 1968 are giving up the restaurant and concessions biz, so I for one have no idea what I'll do next year. It would be nice if my booth (which isn't physically connected to anything, and I believe the name and logo are franchised for Fair use) got to change ownership and not close, and would invite me and others back. A lot of people like our gyros and salads! I need my summercamp afterall. And on that note...
I grew up going to Lazy F, a Methodist Church camp outside Ellensburg WA (maybe you've read my talk about it a dozen times before?), and I cherished it for a few reasons, including that it got me out of my house for a week and that it got me out of my life for a week. How does one escape from one's self? Put the static and noise behind them, drop all the concerns, and be who they believe they should be? That's what I did at Lazy F; all the sexual thoughts and secular nonsense got ditched on my front steps, and while I was there I was able to think clearly. The Fair has become a substitute of sorts for the camp I became too old to attend the regular sessions (and they stopped offering the Young Adult 18-30 sessions right before I was at the age I could attend them, so I was outta luck), but it's not quite the same. Not only is this secular, it's commercial. Sexual thoughts are encouraged, not eradicated. I sleep in my own bed so I'm not escaping all of my life. It's about 3 times as long as camp and I get paid to attend, which as a grownup is a good thing (and impetus to attend) but on thinking about it that's tantamount to being a counselor instead of a camper; I'm often too busy directing traffic to stop and smell the roses. There is no escape from my head, which is what I need more than money or time off from whatever job I'm holding. And I miss that. --#2
9/1/03
The most R.A.T. thought I've heard in a long time comes from Cryptozoa, a comic by Androo Robinson. The image (of someone in glasses getting really close to a baby dandelion coming out of a sidewalk crack) is something I'd need permission to share, but it's the text that matters anyway:
Over the summer I met a freelance tourguide. What she does is, she takes you on a tour of the street where you live, but first she ties your shoelaces together and gives you these crazy frosted goggles, so you're forced to walk slowly and get really close to things in order to see them.
Laugh all you want, but this was the best vacation I've ever had.
My bride, her aunt, and myself went to Packwood yesterday for the annual citywide swap meet, and it was the largest rendition of the event I have ever seen. There were more vendors than ever before, and it was a great day for a yardsale. We tried to be as conservative with our money as possible, which we usually are despite ourselves, and this year we made quite a killing in our shopping. I came away with a lot of antique Christmas clutter and seven undated photos from the 1940's-1950's (courtesy of Hunter's Antiques out of Seattle) for the Spackle site – which has the September update posted already, go check it out. And I bought some rope so hopefully I'll be able to yank out the dead rhodadendron in the back yard with my car. Most of my purchasing was done up the road at the Randall firestation before we got to Packwood, so all that tramping around town in the hot sun was just for exercise. There was one uplifting karmic note to mention...
When I was in college, I typed papers for a few people, including this nice older man by the name of Emil. He was a Native American of the Swinomish tribe and quite proud of his heritage, a renewed bachelor in his 50's (and was still on good terms with his exwife Elizabeth until she died shortly after he graduated), and always cleanshaven and sober (though this wasn't always the case earlier in his life); he was a Job Corps counselor who commanded respect merely by his strong yet unintimidating presence, and his heart belonged to a woman called Blue. She was also a student in social sciences, a woman without eyebrows who had parted from her coffee magnate husband (I don't know if they divorced or not) in a nearby town. He lavished her with gifts, revamped one of the two bedrooms of his humble home to be their lovenest (the other was his 'solo' bedroom, which was so tidy that you could see exactly where he slept since that side of the bed was the only thing out of place in the entire room), and if I recall correctly they were engaged. Then came an entire year that their schedules never quite meshed so they didn't see each other except for over coffee, which didn't make much sense to me because I knew their lives were not that busy to not be able to find an hour a week or a night a month to be with each other. But he was blinded by love, and after a friggin' year of this game she finally confessed that she'd gone back to her husband. He didn't take this very well, and I've disliked her ever since. It seems she and her husband have some summer property right on the main street of Packwood, so every year I see them behind the house in chairs selling some items (the back of their house faces a field where vendors congregate) and try not to make eye contact. This year, I noticed two things about her: first, that her hair has gone completely grey; second, that like some older women she's started to retain fluid in her legs " her hips, thighs, and calves have swollen up massively, and while the thickness of her ankles hasn't changed yet you know they will swell up too, and eventually she might not be able to walk. I tried to keep myself from laughing; in my mind Emil has been avenged for her coldheartedness.
You know your financial situation is bad when you finally follow the advice of those advertisements and go to a credit counseling place, and after they've told you about how they work and have tallied up your bills, they dejectedly tell you that they can't help because your income only covers your living expenses (house, auto, food, utilities, etc.) thus there's zero funds left for your credit card bills. Well, nertz! --#2
8/25/03 We have to find a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though I don't have to apologise for there being 11 days between Daybook entries – the contract I made to do this once a week was with myself and no one else – I have figured out why I've been irratic at it lately: I work better with a routine. Before I lost my job seven and a half months ago, I had a system. Once I lost my job, I updated more frequently because I had more time and more things to get out of my system. But once the shock of that wore off, and my usual complacency about having nowhere to go and doing nothing practical (I didn't say 'having nothing practical to do', which is seldom true for anyone) set in, then I lost the routine and haven't thought "hey, it's been a week as of tomorrow, I should write something tonight" like I used to. So to segue from there, I haven't any new work prospects lined up, other than doing the Puyallup for seventeen days, come Sept 5. The citywide yardsale in Packwood, WA is in a few days, over Labor Day weekend.
One bug I have to pull out of my ear is this, and don't sweat it if this makes no sense... I found out the other day that the biggest dick I've met in the last few years has indeed gotten married recently to the chick who ditched him and moved a thousand miles away a year or two ago. I read about it on a message base, and it was posted by one of their new neighbors (the couple lived with her folks until they got this apartment last week) who said there'd be some wife-swapping in the works. I read that and thought, "dickweed hasn't checked his mail lately, has he?" He'd shit through his pants when he read that, he's just that jealous sort (and the track record proves such). I suspect she'd jump on it with both feet without inviting him, but she just seems that devious sort (and the track record implies as much). Sure, possibly they'll live happily ever after in gamer-loser & ugly-shrew land, but I can't help but smile and think, "karma is a bitch when it hits your doorstep, and yours is in transit right now."
I remembered one of the stories I was going to tell earlier, at last. I was walking home from school in the seventh grade with a friend or two one afternoon, and this group of upperclassmen girls was on the same route. You'd think it would be us younger guys thinking dirty about the older girls, but actually that day the tables were turned. The girls, all ninth graders, were going to the house of two of the girls, and they kept imploring my friends and I to "show us your 'fluffy'." The two lived two houses away from Jay, so he was able to get away. The women had set their sites on me for some reason, and Johnny (who lived a block away up a side street) was trying to persuade them to leave me alone, but it was no use. And they surrounded me and took me back to that house. And they kept requesting to see my 'fluffy.' (Years later my boss at the Internet provider was nicknamed 'Fluffy', and I couldn't help but think of this day. The thing they were asking for, and my opinion of that boss, were the same dingle-dangling item.) At that time, there wasn't much that was 'fluffy' about my genitalia, though I know I'd attempted to stretch it out while thinking about one or two of the women present previous to that moment. For some reason I was refusing to play along, this bevy of wenches scared me. (In retrospect, that sounds pretty stupid. But only one of the females, "Juicy Judy Jugs" as she was referred to by the boys, was blatently worth the effort, though the girl with the facial portwine splotches wouldn't have been bad and probably would have liked the attention.) Things came to the breaking point, and Sheri the blubbery bossy house resident decided to take action; she shoved me into a tool closet with one of the girls and said that I wouldn't be coming out until I'd shown her my 'fluffy.' I was a little more comfortable with this arrangement for some reason, but by some twist the girl shoved into the shed was the other house resident, Toni (who had more peach fuzz on her face than I did and her normal disposition wasn't what you'd call sunny). Toni was fine with the taunting of me, but once she found herself involuntarily imprisoned her opinion of the situation changed; you could say her sudden situation had her on the verge of panic. She whispered to me that I was to make it sound like I was whipping my gear out, and then she'd say I did it and we'd both be freed. That's the plan we followed, with me thinking "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" but figuring her suggestion was a better idea since the room was fairly stifling, and it worked. (I would have played the situation out a little more, possibly, if the person in the closet was a willing participant or had been one of the other girls. My biggest fear was that Sheri would want in on the act!) I don't recall coming in contact much with any of those girls again after that, which is just as well though once I got to the local high school (having been sent to a different school in my sophomore year) the girl with the portwine dapples had graduated so by the time I could appreciate her she was gone. :) That day was the sort of thing guys like me dreamed about constantly, yet it was also another instance of the old saying, "be careful what you wish for, because you may actually get it." --#2
8/14/03
Today's movie review: American Wedding. The weakest link. Sure, it had the requisite funny stuff and grossout humor, but it didn't have Sherman and Nadia, no matter how many father-son speeches there were none ended with a zinger, Michelle didn't call Jim her bitch even once or mention band camp, and I didn't hurt from laughing even though I laughed a lot and found more jokes in the movie than the other dozen people at the matinee I went to. Most other elements of the formula used in the American Pie movies stayed intact in some form, and the soundtrack was pretty good. I know, movie reviews aren't what you came here for but the part of the experience which applies here, being the fact that MeLissa was supposed to go with me (we've seen the previous two together) but did not, was too short a story. We were to go last Friday afternoon; she calls that afternoon to say she has to take a friend to the doctor, so we'll go on Sunday morning. Sunday, no call. It's Wednesday now and no call. I was pretty bothered by this all until my vacationing friend Gabriella said something to the effect of, "you act as though having promises broken by some of your friends is unusual." Indeed it ain't. On that note, my ol' bud Wayne is due to come to town in a week, and I await to see if he actually stops by.
I made $50 today just for running the LovSan/Blaster removal tool from Symantec on someone's computer, then the Microsoft patch to fix the gaping hole which allowed the virus in. (Thanks, Microshaft! If you won't employ me directly, your customers will.) I finally got inspired – which is to say that I remembered a few songs I had forgotten about from 20 years ago, and located a couple songs whose titles/lyrics I couldn't remember correctly enough to do a successful Google search a year ago – to put together Bitten By KATS compilation CD volume 7, subtitled While On Bucket Brigade. ('Bucket brigade' was the term folks at Toppenish High School used for the vice-principal's afterschool campus cleanup program for naughty students. I explained here previously that KATS, 94.5 FM "the Valley's Best Rock", is the radio station I listened to as a youth, which was mighty awesome in the first half of the 1980's but since they're now owned by ClearChannel they suck dead mule. So does their overbusy website so no link.) You could say it's eclectic; along with stuff they played for a couple weeks to a few months which never gets airplay anywhere anymore, I put in tracks by The Village People ("Can't Stop The Music") and à;GRUMH... ("Ich und meine Ananas") for variety. Is it still piracy if no one is selling what you wish to buy? Chrome #1 has called me a couple times from the road to The Windy City, but I don't have any news (reporting is his job anyway) because the last one was from the motel room on the night before he was to meet these strangers. I guess by interpolation one could say he made it there safely without any hindering automotive troubles, and that's good news.
When I was running around with Chrome last week, trying to find a faster processor and more RAM for his notebook computer, a couple of stories came to my mind from some part of my past I hadn't previously broached before. Of course, now I can't remember what part that was or what stories those were, but I'm hoping to get those thoughts back soon. In the meantime, I did think of one ribald tale which always raises my eyebrows when I think of it. I worked at a Pizza Hut in downtown Yakima for all of two weeks, before half the crew staged a walk-out (on a Friday night at 5 p.m.!) in response to the other half being canned without just cause. (The manager of the store understood. It wasn't him who did the deed, it was his boss the district manager, who was no longer working for the company when I went back to work for Pizza Hut a year or so later.) There was this young woman working there as a salad bar arranger, who was 17 and lived in a cheap motel room. She was from somewhere else, and she was a big girl with the sort of complection I could take a safety pin to for hours (zit removal fascinates me). I sometimes put her on the back of my motorcycle and gave her a ride the 4 miles back to the motel so she wouldn't have to walk through the night. There was one night when I gave her a lift home and she invited me in. She showed me her room, and after the tour we were sitting on the bed talking. She pointed to this electrical cord on the floor under a chair and informed me that if she had her druthers, she'd tie me up with that cord, throw me in the bathtub, and have her way with me. After the moment of shock (no pun intended) from her words and the mental image of the act passed, I told her I was quite flattered. If ever there was a time to go running screaming into the night, this would be it, I thought to myself. Not content with my amused response, but possibly sensing that I was trying hard to keep my wits together, she opens up her little refrigerator – one of those small square ones people keep under their desks at their cubicle-based jobs – and pulls this butter knife out of the freezer tray. The knife was solid stainless steel, but its handle end was shaped like it was made of bamboo; the metal was supposed to resemble jointed canes for whatever style reasons. She introduces the knife to me as "her boyfriend" and made a comment or two to clarify that she didn't need anything that went buzz in the night, this frigid utensil was dildo enough for her. After the initial surprise and another mental image which alarmed me, I asked if that would cause one of those "tongue on the flagpole in December" moments in an area of anatomy one normally prefers not to jeopardize. It was getting to be time for me to leave, being nearly midnight, so I was trying to bid her fond farewell, and I consented to a hug. It became one of those silly rocking hugs, and we fell onto the bed. Then rolled off the bed onto the floor, which terrified me for an instant because she was a big girl and I was the one whose back went off the bed thus would have been landed on... but to the surprise of both of us, our combined weight had crushed the mattress so much that there was only an inch or so between the bed and the floor, and we made a soft landing; no lives were lost. I left with my head spinning a little, and for the next couple days she called in sick at work with a cold so I didn't see her. Finally I drove over there after work to say hello and see if she was serious about her earlier statements. She was happy that I came over because she was quitting the Hut and leaving town in a day or two; she'd found someplace to go, and this was just a brief stop along the path. And before I could find the words to ask if there was something grin-inspiring I could do for her before she left, she cheerfully told me that while the guy next door was taking care of her during her bout with the cold he'd "sucked my clit for two hours solid" the evening before. Looks like I'm off the hook, I thought to myself slightly disappointed but moreso relieved. It was only a few days later that I quit that job and a couple weeks after that I gave up driving a motorcycle (the police figured out I didn't have an endorsement), and I've never resented either of those 'quittings' or what I didn't do with that girl. I figure all three of those things would have shortened my lifespan if I'd stayed with them. --#2
8/10/03
Two bits of amusing reality avoidance to share...
• First, my grandparents had this 78rpm album (it coulda been my mom's?) of Arthur Godfrey's "Slap 'Er Down Again, Pa" – a song that may have been funny in the 1940's but sends your average feminist, battered women's advocate, or politically correct person into conniptions. I'm certainly not recommending knocking your kid around for choosing her own boyfriends, or knocking anyone around at all, if you needed a disclaimer. You want mindbending? I found the lyrics on Bob Vila's website. The song is just a blast from me past (now if I could just find "In The Doghouse Now" and "I Get A Kick Out Of Corn" by a pair whose names I don't remember, which we had on 78rpm picture disks, things would be awesome) and as I recall a Mormon schoolteacher with a flock of kids of his own used to lip-synch this song with some other guys, back in my old backwater town... *lyrics* *sample*
• Second, I finally saw a license plate frame I could agree with: Don't let reality wreck your day. --#2
8/07/03 in which Chrome #1 and Mush #2 write in tandem:
[1] Yawning... So we've been lamenting the state of the world and spewing verbiage over our woes, present and past. So we've been reminiscing & ruminating & prognosticating upon the ruination of the world. In short, we've been pissing and moaning about anything and everything... and it has mostly felt good.
[2] Reminiscing is a good way to find one's laughs and one's biggest gripes about what we have become in our lives. "The past is just a goodbye," as CSN said. Sometimes we don't realize what we learned and how until much later, when we wish we could have unlearned them. Our families play into this heavily, and it's kinda tough to be removed from them when we're in the formative years. I'll not begrudge mine right here (I do that constantly, as longtime readers know!); let's just say that I try to make good on the thing I've said since age seven: I never want to be like you. Am I? Once in awhile I realize why things happened. Most of the time, it still eludes me. And when I understand why things happened, I try to figure out if that's good or bad.
[1] Ah yes, family ... the reason why Mush & I have had the opportunity to catch up these last couple of days. I'd made arrangements to take a few weeks off and depart from Yakima to Chicago for the sake of meeting my younger half-brother. It was about three years back when he found out that he had siblings of any sort, and we tried to make arrangements for me to come visit. No dice. Now I'm in a position where this is possible. Arrangements have already been made and paid for, but it's hard to be sure if this is a good idea. Brother wants to go visit with our father, who has been (partially) responsible for the ongoing trainwrecks that are my sisters' and mother's lives. Bah. Somewhat more immediately, what will we have in common? What will we have to talk about? What reasons will we have for associating other than (half of) a common bloodline?
[2] Holidays were always when I got that sort of feeling... my sister (4 years my junior) and I were the only ones in similar age; my brothers played with the younger boys (they were all boys in that family) and anyone older than me was a grownup. Then once I was grown up myself, the question became: should I visit my parents? What do we have in common? What do we have to talk about? What reason is there to associate beside the fact that I sat in their nest for nearly 19 years? Pthhht, I can't name any anymore. As said, I'm not going to rant about all that, it's been done before. When not telling stories about myself, I am telling stories about other people. Chrome and I were sitting around discussing teachers we would have slept with if the chance came up, classmates and coworkers from a ways back who did crazy things, and a particular girlfriend who was the epitome of "you are what you are raised as"; it makes me smile when I discuss these folks (and he laughs along 'cept about that girlfriend, too busy wincing) because they're someone else's problem. Our own lives are the crosses we bear, not always proudly.
[1] meandering further afield Crosses. What crosses we bear. What crosses do we bear? Neither of us needs to look far in order to see those who bear crosses that crush them. We know some of the burdens we bear are inconsequential in the larger picture, or even completely self imposed. Yet I still feel this burning (as in acid reflux or bleeding ulcer) desire to drop the cross and leave. It's nothing like the desire in the last eight months or so prior to leaving Ft. Lewis, yet it is still there, undeniable and unwilling to be ignored. So I feed it small parcels by doing things like taking a (very probably) completely pointless cross-country trip.
[2] My solution to the issue of the pointlessness was to escape from the folks who created the issue. Call it running, call it walking away, call it giving up on an unbeatable battle, but if someone doesn't accept me for who and what I am, I don't stick around. (Part of why I took the name 'Mushroom' was to separate the wheat from the chaff. Call me what I want to be called and you're in.) Family is a slightly different story because, well, they're family, but I've applied the theorum to them too. I talk to my sister once in awhile because she is a great person and she lives within 30 miles. Everyone else... out of sight, out of mind. This became important about ten years ago, when I was raging on about some injustice my mother had committed on me half a lifetime prior, and she wisely said, "But that was so long ago! She's not here to hurt you now!" I hadn't thought of it that way, I'd been too busy over-thinking about what went wrong so often. Have I forgiven? Nah, no point, but by the same token I don't leave myself open to repeats of the past either. I was wondering the other day just how much R.A.T. (Reality Avoidance Therapy) is still a part of my life, since it's not like Chrome and I talk as much as we used to and the Daybook gets filled with anecdotes instead of examples, as it had been in the early days. It occurs to me now: what was once a vice is now a habit; what we had to do to survive tricky days by invocation now is first nature on a daily basis. I have become that which I have espoused without realizing it. And for a reason.
[1] It's true and possibly lamentable that we don't chat enough anymore. The last time I updated site links here was over two years ago, and you probably have to look that far back to find a daybook entry. My last two visits to the Mush/Gigi homestead were almost a year apart. Why does so much time pass without me really noticing it anymore? Why is it that the things we used to converse about and get excited over simply don't matter all that much anymore? We still see same examples of mass stupidity. We're in a handbasket, descending rapidly. Now we don't scream as loudly anymore. I don't really try to deny the reality around me, it's just that I seem to have used up my capacity to care (or do anything) about anything that doesn't directly affect me. Lately, when I hear bad news about family members or old friends, my response is indifference or annoyance rather than asking what I can do about it. Why? Can't say really. Maybe it's been too continuous. No time between disasters? That's not it. I think. Maybe. There's also the knowledge that with some of them, a real offer of help will do nothing but suck you down their vortex...
[2] Many years ago I had a penpal by the name of Vickie D. Webb (VD Webb?!) and she seemed to be a tragedy magnet. There are some people who invite/invoke bad things unto themselves, like they get into bad relationships or what have you, and then there are people who are honestly trying to get through the day or their life and yet shit falls from the sky like there were winged cattle. She was always a popular target; she always sounded so sweet and innocent when she'd write about how it's taken a bit longer to reply because ___ [fill in the blank with some of the most terrible stuff imaginable] and yet she still seemed to have some aplomb. I see some of that locally with friends, including Chrome (especially Chrome?), where they would just like to get through the year or the next decade without any problems – and OTHER PEOPLE hurl incontinent cattle through the skies at them. And then I feel kind of bad since I have met a few of these catapult-loaders, and wonder WTF is going on in their heads, "if anything is going on between their ears" as some would say. I'm a big believer in 'to thineself be true' and that everyone has the right to fuck up. But I also believe that you shouldn't strafe others with the splatter of your falling body, that shit is hard to wash off fine linens. And when it's family or other people who are dear to you, you can't help but get some on (or impaled into) you. I stood back. :) But other people are right there within range, no matter how physically distant they may be. To thineself be true, but for gawd's sake, to the survivors be merciful!!
[1] Yes, we're not in a Happy Place for now, yet we'll keep plugging along. We'll try to make others believe that we believe it'll get better. We'll smile and nod instead of telling the idiots to go rot in hell. Beyond that, I can't see yet. Perhaps it's getting close to time for a change of location and/or vocation again. Maybe not. I need patience, and yesterday, damnit! Yes, maybe it isn't self-delusion to think thinks should be getting better. My job isn't bad nor is the work difficult. The worst of the people I have to deal with have been given the boot or put on notice. The lingering stench from associating with the Guard will be gone in six months. I've got a few good friends within five minutes drive to escape with once in a while. A few of my better friends will be moving back into the area soon. The only unaddressable complaints about job and home life stem from these two things being inseperable. By neccessity I live and work in the same place, and therefore only have "off" time by prearrangement. It becomes difficult to find a balance. Let's continue to ignore family for now, it seems to have been working recently...
[2] There's a lot of bitching I can do about the state of my life: the cable company doesn't want me, I found out today; I work 24 hours (in a week or in a pay period, depending on others); we have stopped answering the phone because the bill collectors call no less than 5 times a day (or in the last 24 hours, 25 times after telemarketers); and the mortgage is due and we don't know where that extra $200 is going to come from to pay it. But if financial matters are the only issue in my life, this is good. (Sure, financial matters can translate into other realms we'd all prefer not be meddled with...) I have my health, I have my wife and my cat, I have Chrome sitting here showing I'm still a part of his life and I have friends near and far whom are glad to see me when we make contact, and I have this computer and my Internet connection. And plenty of minutae that I wouldn't want to be without, in the "without which this moment would not be possible" vein. I just need better work and mo' money. And a bit more sanity but people in Hell want ice water. And a different government but that can be arranged in a few months if other registered voters do their part. Still, bottom line and the crux of today's dual rattling: we have seen happy and we have lived sad, and it'd be nice if the happy were in the now and the sad were in the long past.
--#1 & #2
7/26/03
Pardon my tardiness... there were operating system issues here. Normally a geek says, "cheese this noise, I'll just wipe the hard drive and reinstall, stuff'll be better." But that's exactly what I did, and after seven attempts to get the installation to finish in the span of nine hours, it still kept crashing or rebooting spontaneously before the end. The next morning I turned on the computer, it began the setup procedure on its own, and it finished without an error. What the hell was up with the day before?!? Shannon Morrell was right: computers are diabolical! So I'm back up now and have invested in some drive backup software to fix this thing instantly the next time it mistakenly claims a vital driver is missing.
There have been other days at the beach with MeLissa and even one where we dragged her friend Angela along, and I'm told this is an accomplishment – something about how people who have known her for ages can't convince her to get into a bathing suit and hit the water. I'm nicely tanned now, and almost done peeling. After a week of not getting called to work, I finally did get conscripted into a couple days (one of which with the simpleton to the easiest and most distant places because, in the boss' words, "you'll go with accompanyment until I feel you're ready", thhpt)... I figured the silence was because the other position he was hiring for closed and he needed to train someone new but, well, no one has said a peep about him actually hiring anyone. Moving along, last Thursday I interviewed with Comcast for their call center section titled "the people cell phone users call to bitch about their bills to." This ought to be interesting since there are 200 jobs and they received 1000 applications. I should hear on that in a few days, I'm told. I'm also expecting to hear from my Puyallup Fair boss soon. Mushy's adult autumn-camp starts September 5!
A shout out to the fine folks of the Nile Valley, upstream from Naches WA. There's an annual festival in that neighborhood near Chinook Pass the third weekend of July, and every so often I manage to make it there. I give this shout out because as far as I can tell they don't have a website (ergo when I was looking up the date online, it was the site of a band which played on Sunday which had the location and date information). It's your average lumberjack affair, with crosscuts and spike-driving but no pole scaling like they have at the Sultan Logger Festival (second weekend of July, Sultan WA, which we didn't attend this year). We caught the egg-toss, and it's apparent some people need more practice while others (the mother that put her 18-month-old daughter in the 7-years-and-under event) could use a clue. The food is good and inexpensive, there are no rides, and everything is punctuated with the sound of muzzle-loader fire from the target range behind the main event. (I haven't shot one of them in about 20 years.) And bless the two girls, ages 8 and 11, who played guitar and banjo very well, but coulda peeled the paint off the new restroom facility with their screechy voices. Maybe puberty will do the older one some good, as would some more sheet music (some people should not sing "God Bless The USA" [oddly that includes Lee Greenwood] and it's not often you hear anyone at all sing "Tin Man" by America). From Tacoma to Upper Naches is one big loop; from my house one can go left then over White Pass or right then over Chinook Pass, and the two roads meet at a place known as The Y (there used to be a minimart there, now they sell chainsaw art). It took 3 or 4 hours to get to Nile Valley via White Pass but only about two hours to get back home over Chinook... so we took the scenic route; no hurry on a Saturday, right? We stayed about 45 minutes, and yes, all I got (beside a burger) was this stupid T-shirt. Next event? We're game to anything but at this writing I believe we're spending Saturday at the Ethnic Fest, at Wright Park in downtown Tacoma. It's probably a good thing that "Out In The Park," a celebration of gay life, was last weekend because Wright Park is best known for its cruising. (And bocce-ball.) Sunday, we might go to the Highland Games in Enumclaw (the King County Fair was last weekend) for the haggis. But $10 admission!? As for the Pierce County Fair in Graham? That's August 7-10, thanks for asking.
I know, you came here for funny anecdotes from the past. These will be quickies. While I was attending Toppenish Junior High in the eighth grade, a couple girls from the journalism class were meandering around pulling people out of classes to ask them survey questions for an article they were writing. One of them was holding a clipboard to jot down opinions and such. I was in Mr. Miner's intro to computers class, and was behooved to give my two cents on whatever the question was, along with another person or two. We're standing there talking outside the classroom and the girl with the clipboard has it pressed against the wall by the classroom door as she writes our words down. The other girl finally said, "Uh, [girl's name], move the clipboard." She goes 'huh?' and slides the clipboard to the right... and under where she'd been doing her work, there was a pencil drawing of a huge winged boner on the stained-red wood wall. Her reaction was similar to if she'd seen the real thing, oddly. I've always thought huge winged boners were funny, even before then (the year before I'd revised a poem about the Space Shuttle in Science News to be about them). They've been around forever, even Hitler got one in de bum in a 1940's anti-Axis propaganda cartoon book. But 'tweren't me who drew that beastie on the wall, and it disappeared soon after. And just down the way (no, not another flying cock story)... The next year I was sitting in Ms. Buoy's Washington state history class, along with a couple dozen other people, reading about some historical thing silently to ourselves. One of the kids from the Title I (read: special ed) class, who wasn't 'differently abled' but just lazy and stupid, decided to skip class and work on his belching skills. And he chose the end of that building as a place to practice. This building was a long row, and there was a narrow courtyard between that building and the one we're in, so he's basically burping into an echo chamber. We can see him right there, he wasn't as hidden as he thought he was. He's standing there going "uuuuuuurrrrppp. uuuuuuurrrrrrppp. uuuuuuuurrrrrrppppp." We're breaking a sweat... Rheta Buoy was the frostiest turd in the school, someone who could have used one of those huge winged things; no way were we going to let ourselves laugh lest we be punished, and it was difficult. And it was harder still when we watched the vice-principal walk out the end of the building we were in and patiently stride over to where the dimbulb was standing, seemingly unaware of what was coming in his direction. And speaking of stress-testing in Buoy's classroom, there was one afternoon that three dogs were in that echo-chamber corridor; one was copulating with another, and the third was calling cadence. Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Right outside the classroom window, in plain view of several classes and earshot of half the school. I don't recall any adults going out there to break up the party, but by the same token, I think this was the only class resembling sex ed I ever attended the entire three years I went to Toppenish Junior High. (Which is probably why that town has such a high teen pregnancy rate: not enough information at the time the fruit starts ripening, and no one keeping time, "Pump! Pump! Pump! Pump!") --#2
7/14/03
So far I'm learning a lot about how the well-oiled machine known as a library system's cleanup department works. I've been paired with an older woman who sometimes smells like a distillery but has a good heart about her (when not telling anecdotes to my boss that he eventually calls me about), a guy who hasn't touched a bar of soap in many moons and never shuts the hell up (ever needed to hide during your 15 minute break just to find silence?!), a loud woman who knows her job very well and lets you know this, and a storybook simpleton who gets a lot of slack because he's the boss' brother-in-law. No joke, the other day he hummed "If I Only Had A Brain" the whole shift. It was too perfect. I'm enjoying the work somewhat, which is a good thing because I haven't found anything else in the last couple weeks... I did interview for a page position last week but didn't get it, no surprise, and not much else has become visible on Monster.com either. And at last the bills are getting paid. On that note, have you submitted your phone number to DoNotCall.com yet? I have, but I don't think there'll be much change. The way the system is supposed to work is, if a telemarketer calls after you've signed up then you submit their phone number to the DoNotCall website. First: most telemarketers don't have their numbers listed on Caller ID, so you don't have that information. Second: charities that call every three weeks are exempt. Third: businesses you already have dealings with, such as Texaco/Shell or Sears, are also exempt. So how many calls does the program cover in my home? One per week from the local vinyl siding/energy efficient windows/new roof package dealers and one per month from windshield replacement businesses. The four calls a day which do not come from friends, family, or employers are untraceable or exempt.
Half a lifetime ago my sister and I were hanging out in our grandparents' basement one afternoon, as we sometimes did (it was cooler in temperature, there were good books and things to explore, and the furniture was nicer), when it occurred to us that the bedroom which our mother grew up in had one small window(?) high up the wall and no bathroom nearby. The only plumbing to the basement was that which is associated with a clothes washer. So we asked Grandma about the potty situation, and she said that our mother didn't come upstairs in the middle of the night to pee – she used a coffee can. And there was indeed a Folger's can in the corner of the room. We couldn't wrap our minds around that image, possibly because we didn't realize she was a much more petite girl in school than she was when we met her, and she'd always been so fussy to us about bathroom habits. What brought this memory to mind was a female friend who told me about having to use a chamberpot when she'd stay the night at her grandmother's house (which was also low on plumbing), and how it is hard to aim correctly since half the time she'd miss; we had been discussing the basis of this month's Rant shortly after I encountered the situation.
Since I'm a week late in updating this page – I'll blame my night job – I should tell you about my Fourth of July (that's the Independance Day holiday to those outside the States). My wife stayed at home with a stack of good books, in rememberance of her youngest sister Amy who died ten years ago that day, so with her blessing I went to the Tacoma Freedom Festival with my friend MeLissa to watch fireworks and odd people. Yes, I put on SPF 50 sunscreen, which was good since we were there from 1 p.m. until 11 p.m., but I missed a spot on the back of my left arm (you can *see* the finger marks where I did get the lotion!) and parts of me got rather cooked (and two days later, highly itchy) anyway. The Freedom Festival, as far as I saw, was a long series of booths and bands placed along the waterfront of Commencement Bay from downtown Tacoma out to Ruston, and a lot of these booths and some of the entertainment looked familiar to us – we both work at the Puyallup Fair every year, just like they did. Despite the long expanse of places to go and things to do, we mostly stayed on my blanket so we could protect our viewpoint and our goods; we brought a couple coolers and found a spot with a good view of the barge where the fireworks would be shot from. This afforded us also a good place to watch ugly guys, cute girls, mixed-race families, gays and lesbians, and the occasional overdressed dancer go by. My fear when we went to this was that we were going to hear a lot of patriotic talk and such, and you should know from reading my Rants this year that such praise of current administration (along with bright sunlight for extended periods of time) makes me itch; I was thinking this was a rememberance of when we had freedoms, since the boobs in charge presently are taking them away. But we lucked out; the section of park where we were audibly serviced by Bahamaian group (two sources of music: a steel drum band which did extended covers of popular songs [ever heard Don McClean's "Starry Starry Night" last 10 minutes and sound upbeat?], and a sound system which played Christian reggae and 15 minute instrumentals with annoying beats) so there wasn't anything vaguely patriotic until the fireworks started... or anything we'd recognise and want to hear until they needed to clear the crowd out after 10:45 p.m. A Jamaican marking of an American festival was certainly different, I'll grant that. The fireworks were pretty good. Getting out of the place was kinda bad but this is to be expected; we had found this perfect and really close parking spot, but it was on a one-way street so we had to follow traffic slooooowly to get out. But it could have been worse: on the way in people had parked on both sides of some nearby narrow side-streets, but on the way out the police diverted traffic through those neighborhoods, so anyone who was pointed downhill was facing traffic with no hope of escape for an hour or so (unless someone stopped and waited so they could whip a U-turn, I suppose). We had a great time. Of course, days later she and I went to a beach to frolic and I skipped the sunscreen completely... the burned parts I missed on the Fourth are now brown, and everything that was itchy and pink is now lobster red and starting to peel. But hell yes, the sunburns were worth it, and we're working on that list of Things To Do Differently Next Year for a better outcome in the future. --#2
7/1/03
Truth is still stranger than fiction. I went to an interview with the local library's janitorial supervisor last week and he pretty much hired me on the spot. I sat there with a dropped jaw, wondering how THAT happened since everything else I've ever seen from this place required rumination and time to jog through red tape. I won't complain about the expediency, the job seems to be pretty mellow. It's a substitute position so I'm on-call, but since it's summer (and people get hurt from lifting stuff wrong) there are indeed hours for me. I'm still looking around, and haven't heard anything new from the two places within my realm of talent I'm most confident of getting an interview with in the last week or two (when one acknowledged the two things I applied for with them a long time after I applied, and the other hasn't peeped but the position's supervisor lives 3 houses down the street so I can check up on it).
Every payday when I worked at the Pizza Slut in downtown Puyallup, I'd deposit my check then take a little money to the Pioneer Bakery a couple blocks away to get treats for my coworkers on the morning crew. And this typically was baklava, which was my way of showing a little more taste than just cheap donuts, as well as my way of finding out who had good taste by their eating my goodies. But also found in the bakery was this cute girl with glasses, whom I never quite knew how to flirt with effectively but I tried. After awhile, school was out so she left the bakery and I figured she was going off to college or something. Some months later, I'm at work and she walks in with this dopey-looking big guy. She introduces him to me as her fiancé (and I knew she'd broken up with some guy months earlier so I was wondering how this came about so quick), and they bemoan that they have nowhere to go: he's from Oregon so he knows no one, and when she introduced him to her family they told her to get out of their house. Me being a nice guy, I suggest they come stay with me for a few days, while they prepare to get her moved to Oregon or whatever their next step was. The first night was fairly nice – he fell asleep and snored on the floor, she and I sat up and talked into the night and this is where she replied to my coy question "so when you became available, did you ever think about ME?" with a surprising statement, "you were never far from my consciousness." She fell asleep mid-sentence in the wee hours, it was the damndest thing. The next morning had its possibilities to be good too: I woke up and was going to write something, but realized my pen was in the kitchen so I walked through the house and picked it up, and it wasn't until I was almost back to my room that I caught out of the corner of my eye they were naked and screwing on my living room floor. They weren't aware of my presence until that almost-passed moment either. Man, I gotta open my eyes when I get out of bed; that would have been the only renumeration I received for the week they stayed with me. Day by day, things went downhill with those two; you can imagine what two hungry people without money will do to a person's cupboards, and they had no compunction about skulking through my stuff. Some would say the road-tar on my white comforter should have been the last straw, some would say finding this trinket I've had in a little red safe in my room since age 10 in the livingroom under a pile of their clothes should have torn things, but the thing that twanged me (other than never seeing the chick naked, which the guy said "if it were any girlfriend previous to her I'd be cool about helping you out but this one I care about", or any other sort of rent payment / food replacement plan) was finding my bottle of Ostheimer Cellars grape juice opened but put back like it never happened. [Tangental story about why this matters, you can skip what's between brackets if you want: Long ago I was in a band called the Out Of Time with Jimbo and Adrian, and our sacrificial wine to friendship was this non-alcoholic stuff produced by my dear friend Alene's family. It was vintage and limited in supply, and had sentimental value because of where it came from and what I'd applied it to. It may not have been fermented but it was carbonated and bottled like wine, so when the seal was broken it quickly became garbage.] They started to see that I was getting upset with their total lack of respect, and left before I could say anything harsh or discovered the extent of their doings. Someone shortly after that asked if I had learned any lessons from the experience. I tried not to list any that they wanted to hear; I said that one can easily overestimate other people's maturity, and that while the girl was a known quantity I would have gladly had stay at my house (but preferably with me) I didn't know the other person so I took a chance on him and I got what I got. As they were getting their goods into his car, I asked her about the plans she'd told me she was going to pursue when we'd originally lost contact months earlier; she intended to sign up with the Navy and fund schooling that way at that time. She said that she did indeed sign up but now "I'm getting out of that," she said as she patted her belly in a loving manner. She wasn't pregnant. That's what stripped the last shred of respect I had for her away... that she was determined to throw away her future for a handful of nothing. I've long suspected that within a week or two of leaving my house she caught a clue about him, once they had to fend for themselves, and long hoped that it wasn't too late for her to get back on track. It's your hell, baby; I ain't in it. — Pretty & Twisted, "No Daddy No"
My latest jones is Television Without Pity, a site for talking about TV shows and commercials, both old and new. Excellent snarky reviews of show episodes. It's hard to keep up with the chatter, there's so much posting in their forums! And the guilty little secret I have is that I'm a fan of Date Plate on Food Network; I wonder how they audition that show to get the most flaky women possible to be the date bait. Like last week, the woman does not eat fruits or vegetables and was won over by a chocolate brownie in the shape of a dog bone (sure, she has a Rottweiler, but chocolate is poisonous to pups, yo!). Anyhow, continue wishing me luck in finding a real job, and you can sleep better knowing that more of the bills will start getting paid (so stop calling me every morning, IKEA, we know! we know!). --#2
6/24/03
In the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction department (and no, I'm not referring to TNN, of all stations, broadcasting the not-for-kids reanimation of "Ren & Stimpy")... I haven't heard back from Lynette about my past revelations, but I did get an email from someone from my waaaay-past which asked the same questions. It seems a girl that I haven't gone to school with since the fifth grade looked me up on Classmates.com, and updated me a bit as to her life. At age 35 she's a grandmother, so you can guess why we weren't in school together come junior high. I hadn't heard a word from her since the early 1980's, when last we saw each other at the old school yard and she gave me a photo of her baby daughter, who is the spitting image of her mom and now has a baby of her own. Good to see you around, Lisa, and thanks for thinking of me to my eternal surprise. I had this mad crush on her in Mr. Hall's class, where I proclaimed I'd never fall in love again since she didn't see me the same way. From the mouths of babes, I tell ya...
A few bonus words in regard to last week's Daybook entry: First, I took the library page test and didn't miss any math questions, hurray! Which left me free to mess up two questions in alphabetization, erk! Pardon my pessimism, but c'mon, 2 other people tested with me and they were running tests all week... one job, dozens of applicants. But in better karma, I have an interview with them tomorrow for an after-hours cleaner-upper position. It's something, right? Second, the day after I did that cell phone support test fiasco, I checked my work-related email box and there was a note in there from that company, telling me how to get back into the test if I wasn't able to complete a section. And this is where I find out that after one passes the personality fraud, er, assessment, then the questioning goes to stuff that matters like experience and customer service skills. Which as noted, I can't take because I've already been precluded for not matching their profile: it appears the
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