revision99

I live near cemeteries.

Ghosts walk my street, always behind us, just around the corner, with cries we cannot hear, wounds we cannot bind, restless hungry ghosts. It’s too late for them, their time is past, we have covered them with the earth and made up stories about their lives, how they were loved and honored, and we shed real tears not for them but for our memories of them, our twisted memories, how they would have wanted it, yes, they would have wanted it just this way, vengeance for their deaths, proof for their lives. They faced the enemy, they saved the world, their flesh was torn, the glory and the horror burned their eyes, and yes, they would have wanted it this way. We will follow them down, our holy dead, and we will kill for them, and we will be killed, and in this way we will honor them.

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Hardly any of the Precious Few who read this have gone and gotten their own Gravatar, so I hereby decree that you shall all be SOCK PUPPET BUNNIES until I change my mind.

Jayne, Shephard and Laurie, three who almost never comment here, have gravatars, so they will be represented by their own self-created (or at least self-chosen) avatars. The rest of you, go ahead and leave a comment (or go to a previous post and look at your comment), and you will see that you have become sock puppet bunnies.

To avoid this fate, just go to http://www.gravatar.com and sign up for your own gravatar. It’s free, and then you won’t have to be a sock puppet bunny. (At other sites, your default persona might be even worse!) If you don’t have a picture you want to use, there’s a huge library of free avatar images at Avatarity.com. Pick one and download it from there, then go to gravatar.com, sign up (with your real email address) and upload it there.

I’m tempted to try to explain what a Gravatar is. Let’s just say it’s a picture that represents you when you comment on blogs. Not all blogs have Gravatars implemented, but this one does, and more will follow.

It’s fun, it’s free, it’s kicky!  You know you can do it, so come on, get to it!

Can I get a little sympathy here?

I am the oldest of five kids in my family. As if that in itself isn’t burden enough, I was born at the end of October (no, not this past October), or about six weeks after school started. By the time I was four years old, I had a sister and a brother and another baby sister. It was a Catholic family, OK? My parents probably felt bad because they only had four kids in four years. (Another would arrive soon, but that’s a different story.)

So I was four, but because I would be turning five in a month and a half, my parents were given the choice of starting me in kindergarten at that tender age, or waiting until the following year, when I would be better prepared emotionally and physically to take on the rigors of kindergarten. Blitzed as they were by their self-created deluge of babies, what they decided was “Let’s get this one out of the house as soon as possible.” They probably would have let me get my own apartment if I’d wanted to, as long as they had one less toddler to worry about for a few hours a day. As it turns out, this was a bad decision.

I was not a big kid to begin with. And because of the bum’s rush my parents gave me out of the house at the age of four, all the other kids were older than me, anywhere from a few months to almost a whole year. A whole year! The fact that I was a genius would not come into play until late in high school. What matters to kids is self defense, and everybody, girls included, was bigger than me. So I was in the hole from day one. I just wasn’t big enough to compete in the vicious world of little kids. Throughout my formative years I was surrounded by peers who were a year older, a year bigger, a year stronger than me. We’re all grownups now and we can laugh at our childhood trials and frustrations, right? But when you’re in Little League in fourth grade and you’re throwing like a third-grader, you’ve got a world of hurt, let me tell you.

Of course, at the time I didn’t know why all the guys were studlier than me, or why all the girls seemed more interested in all the guys except me. I figured this out much later. The light started to dawn when I got cut from the baseball team in eighth grade. Actually, I didn’t get cut so much as told not to try out. By the coach. I’m sure he said something along the lines of “The roster is already set - we just don’t need any more players. Try out next year, why dontcha?” But since the school only went up to eighth grade, I figured he was blowing me off.

A guy’s got to have some way to salvage a little dignity in a situation like that, and so I came up with the theory that all the other eighth-grade boys were older than me, and thus bigger and stronger than me, and naturally it would be unfair for me even to try to compete with them. Someone might get hurt, and of course that would be me. Over the next several years I honed this excellent excuse, sharpening it to a razor’s edge, but that’s as far as my rationale went at the time, and actually, I started to feel pretty good about not playing baseball, especially when I discovered that Cathy Dinwiddie was not much into sports.

Cathy was Jay Hardin’s girlfriend. Jay happened to be the varsity quarterback, the center on the basketball team and the starting and only pitcher for the baseball team. He was tall for eighth grade - his parents had probably held him out of kindergarten until he was six - and even among the guys who had made the team he looked like an adult. I seem to remember that he had a five o’clock shadow at some of the games, but that could just be my mind playing tricks on me.

Cathy Dinwiddie was one of the smart ones, and this would be the last year that you could be smart and popular, which she was. She was slightly chunky, but at that age you could call it baby fat, and sometime during the school year the equipment had started to arrive. By baseball season it was in obvious evidence. When I picture her standing near the bleachers on the baseball field, pink-cheeked and vaguely blonde, in her plaid pleated skirt, white cotton blouse straining a little at the second button, little blue cardigan and those black-and-white oxfords with the knee socks over her plump, ripe calves… OK, you have to remember I was in eighth grade, people, and so was she.

I was bitter about not making the team, and Cathy was completely bored at the games, and during one seventh inning stretch on a blustery afternoon in April we discovered that we had something in common: we were both cold. In fact, Cathy was literally shivering. In the spirit of chivalry, I contrived to get her wrapped up in my arms and soon we were generating all the heat we needed, right there in the bleachers.

After a while Cathy said she’d like to walk back to the school, a couple of hundred yards away, and get her jacket from her locker. The bad news for me was that she’d no longer be “cold.” The good news was that I could walk her back to her locker, which seemed like a good idea since Jay had begun glaring at me between pitches, and he already had the first two batters out. Or maybe he’d just been looking in for a sign from the catcher. Considering what I ws doing with his girlfriend, I thought a walk to the school - before the inning was over - would be best.

I had no intention of returning to the game, and as it turned out, neither did Cathy Dinwiddie. We strolled back to her locker, and we held hands, and the wind died down a little and everything I said made her laugh, and her green eyes sparkled and the animals came out from their hiding places in the woods and gazed fondly at us, two beautiful young lovers in Catholic school uniforms who had somehow found each other, against all odds, through the crush of humanity, and we were still laughing and talking and touching when her father came to pick her up and he took me home, too, so I got to sit real close to her in the front seat for another fifteen minutes before they dropped me off and the green-eyed look she gave me as I stood outside the passenger window of her father’s car gave me a hardon that lasted all the way until my mom called us to supper.

Cathy went back with Jay the next day at school, which is the way it had to be. By morning I was worried that I might have to fight big Jay Hardin, but when the school bus let me off they were already sitting together in their usual places in the classroom, and it looked to me as if nothing at all had changed. When Cathy saw me, she stared at me for a few seconds, longer than she ever had before, and I thought she was going to say hello or something.

But Jay was making farting noises with his hand in his armpit, a bunch of his friends were snickering, and she finally turned back to him, and when she laughed it sounded completely genuine.

The irony is not entirely lost on me that since I finished The Protest Song Project, I have been royally one-upped by various Bigger Names.

First came Dolly Parton with her CD “Those Were the Days“, featuring 60’s folky faves Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Where Will the Children Play? and John Lennon’s utopian vision of a better world, Imagine.

Then Bruce Springsteen came along with “The Seeger Sessions,” covering the songs of protest-singing hero Pete Seeger. I admit I haven’t heard this one, because sometime during the eighties I choked on too much Boss, and I can’t listen to any more of his tortured snarl or witness his gotta-be-fake-by-now blue collar pose. Also, he dances like a girl. Nonetheless, I have to say he has jumped on the protest bandwagon with this release, and good for him.

In March The Dixie Chicks came storming back from their three years of death threats and righteously indignant wingnut attacks (brought about by the Chicks’ public opposition to the war on Iraq) with an unapologetic CD and single, Not Ready to Make Nice and Neil Young has just released “Living With War,” a merciless indictment of the moral bankruptcy of the Bush Administration and its bloody and useless war on Iraq (you can hear his entire CD if you click on the link).

Dolly and Bruce are hedging their bets a little, doing old songs by other writers. If they get too much heat for saying bad things about the government they can always claim they just liked the tunes, grew up with them, etc., and wanted to do some kind of “tribute,” but God forbid they actually meant to actually say anything to their audiences, or to the administration. Still, the songs on their current CD’s are legitimate protest songs, and hearing them sung by artists of their stature can only help the cause of peace, honor and justice in America and the world, so I say “Right on, Dolly and Bruce!”

Neil and The Chicks are putting more on the line with their releases. They are unmistakeably speaking truth to power, and attaching their names and reputations to their words, not to mention that their new music might cost them a lot of money, not just now but for years to come, as ignorant jackasses boycott their records and concerts. Do you think “ignorant jackass” is a bit too strong? These are the same people who will “never go to France,” for God’s sake, or drink French wine, because the French didn’t join the coalition of the willing in the runup to our invasion of Iraq. So to Neil and The Dixie Chicks I say “Right fucking on!!”

I don’t have the juice to put a piece of music in front of millions of listeners. But even though it will forever look like these artists came forward bravely at a time when no one else dared speak, you know and I know that The Protest Song Project originated here last June, so we know who really came forward first. My fellow bloggers, I think you deserve a little credit for your vision and your bravery. You’ve been speaking out and raising concerns for six years now, and whether or not you rolled up your sleeves and wrote a verse to Not In My Name, may I offer you my fondest regards, and my best power salute:

Right on, brothers and sisters!

The things I write here are a combination of reminiscences, made-up stories, angry rants, half-baked political theories/complaints, ill-conceived philosophy and expressions of longing.

Sometimes I have an inspiration, and something flows. Often I think I should write something, and I try to force it out, an excercise that doesn’t always work. Most of the time I am aware that I have some readers, and I want to entertain you. Probably that’s because I don’t want to lose you.

There are few enough of you that I can sort of see you all. In some cases I know exactly what you look like, because I’ve seen your picture, but in every case I have an image in my mind, pieced together from your comments here and the things you write on your own blog. I don’t know what I expected when I started this, but I certainly didn’t think it would ever be as personal as it has become. I have actually written posts directly to you, all but calling you by name. I’m sure I have a lot of one-second visitors, next-bloggers who don’t see what they’re looking for, don’t read a word and move on. But I’m just as sure that a small contingent of you check back regularly, read what I write, get it or not, and leave comments to let me know you’ve been watching, and this touches my heart.

I’m not, as some of you might think, a geeky, introverted, antisocial loser. Sure, I spend time with this blog, and more time reading yours, but I also have a job where I am inexplicably well-liked, and real-life friends whom I see socially. I have a wife and a cat, and I take part in household activities. I play guitar and write songs as a hobby.

I tell you these things because I think that I write a lot of downer stuff on this blog, depressed stuff, and I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I am pretty even-tempered and cheerful most of the time. But a lot of the things that make me feel like writing are the sad things, the injustice, the sense of loss, confusion and fear. In meatspace* when I find something broken, I fix it if I can, work around it if I can’t and worry (and worry, and worry) if I can’t do either.

That worry often comes out in negative blog-posting, because I’ve worn out my real-life friends and family on certain topics. They just won’t listen anymore, God bless ‘em.

But here on revision99, when you see some kind of Jonesian bummer coming, you can skim it and bail if you want, or just skip it all together. Please don’t think less of me just because I can’t contain my angst at this imperfect world we’re forced to live in. Take my negative raps with a grain of salt, a spoonful of sugar and a tongue in cheek, and don’t go away mad, or disappointed in me.

As always, my heart sighs with the joy of just knowing you are there.

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I seem to write only about my crummy job lately.

Not to belabor such an admittedly unimportant issue, but this happened today at work and I am still scratching my head over it.

I was walking by an office, and a member of our highly paid, friendly and knowledgable sales staff - let’s call him “Albert,” shall we? - was sitting in there and staring at a blank computer screen. He wasn’t meditating. He just didn’t know how to log in. I see this as a good thing, because once they get logged in the trouble starts.

Sensing me near his door, he called my name, not taking his eyes off the screen. I thought about acting like I hadn’t heard him and just strolling on past, but it was early in the week and I was still filled with good will from taking Monday off, so I went in.

“What’s up, Albert?”

“Hey Larry. I’m trying to [use the computer to perform a function that is against state and federal law as well as company policy, and which could violate my customer’s privacy and compromise his financial information and leave him open to possible identity theft], but I can’t figure out how to get this computer working. Can you help me?” Those were not his exact words, but that’s what he was trying to do.

“Sure, Albert. I know your manager’s password. Let me just log you in. And… there you go. All set.”

“Thanks, Larry. We’d never get anything done around here without you.”

“No problem, Albert. Have a good time.”

I walked on, musing that Albert will probably remain logged on to that computer until the next power failure.

I may have mentioned my crummy job in the past.

It’s wrong for me to be so disrespectful of it. It pays my bills and keeps me out of that large group of Americans who don’t have health insurance. Without it I wouldn’t have this fine, fine computer, with which I blog. And, as noted here in the past, every Monday I am full of resolve to make the best of it, to be friendly and helpful, to keep it light, to solve problems rather than create them.

Maybe it’s the corporate ownership. My company has been absorbed by HugeCorp, a company whose only purpose is to own other companies (and extract the cash). It was created just a few years ago, so no one working at HugeCorp has been around as long as I have, or most of my immediate colleagues, for that matter. They know nothing about the actual business we’re in - that is, the part of the business that generates the revenue. So their “management” abilities are purely theoretical, and as a result the orders we get from them are arbitrary and, well, pointless. And stupid.

This has caused morale on the ground to disintegrate. Everyone’s upset because they are following orders, rather than getting the job done. You spend most of your time following orders, and then when you can fit it in, you get the job done, almost as an afterthought, and certainly not as a result of the orders from HugeCorp.

As part of the takeover, HugeCorp made it clear that it was their way or the highway. I stopped counting how many documents I have signed saying that I understand that I serve only at their pleasure and can be discarded at any time for any reason. The good news was always that I could quit if I wanted to (as if I couldn’t do that anyway). I wonder if they really think anybody swallowed that. In any case, these documents always arrived with our paychecks, as if to remind us that there was a linkage between getting paid and agreeing with everything they wanted.

The progression of my attitude has been: first, I tried to be a good employee, so I could keep my job and continue to get paid. Then, I saw how things could be improved and I moved to do so. Next I found myself having to fix problems that wouldn’t have happened if the company had brought me in to the decision-making earlier. I got a little sour about that.

After a while I made proactive suggestions to increase efficiency and streamline procedures. These were either ignored or rejected, only to be resurrected verbatim by somebody higher up the food chain and presented as their own, often to me! Around the time of the takeover I began to realize that I was not a member of the family, and would never be allowed to sit at the table. I was only greased when I squeaked really loud, and I got pretty fucking sick and tired of that. At some point I just stopped trying to help.

I have a rotten attitude. If I worked for me, I’d fire myself, except I might not be able to replace me without paying myself a lot more than I’m getting now. Also, I might sue myself for wrongful termination, if such a crime exists. The only way to get rid of me might be to kill me, which is why I have an assistant start my car each day when I leave the office.

The other day somebody’s father-in-law died. Your wife’s dad. Terrible news for your wife, no doubt, but just a bummer for you. Nonetheless, I wanted to sign the card that was circulating around the office, let the guy know I sympathized (I’ve never even met his wife). But I couldn’t catch up with the damned thing, and it ended up in the hands of someone I can’t stand to talk to, a know-nothing, do-nothing, pompous jerk who, in my opinion, only works here because he couldn’t manage the deep fryer at McDonald’s. Every time we need each other we both get angry and frustrated. My fault, as much as his.

So I didn’t sign the card, and my empathy became the victim of a toxic work environment that has got me divided from the very people I should be working most closely with - if we were trying to run a good company instead of just trying to keep our heads down and get by with the least amount of friction, so we can go home at the end of the day and start our real lives.

I wonder if this is some kind of new management-by-confusion technique that they are teaching in business school these days. So anyway, I’m a shithead. I can’t take full credit for it. In fact, I’m sure someone somewhere at headquarters is getting a promotion and a raise for it right now.

In other news, last night I ate a rotisserie-cooked chicken with my bare hands. Just tore it apart and devoured the flesh like an animal predator. Got it all over my face and shirt, and didn’t have no stinkin’ salad, neither.

I never know what the hell is going on.

I got lost in my local Big Box store (Costco) the other day, and I found myself in the pharmacy area, amid the bottles of 1,000 Exedrin Extra Strength Caplets, glucosamine and 55-gallon drums of shampoo, and I was trying to find my way out of the maze when I came upon this:

OK, even I didn’t think it was to make your lips explode, but really, how long has this been going on? My high school sweetheart had big lips, and since then I’ve had a thing for the fuller lips, not so much the look as the feel, you know? But I was completely unaware that such a product existed.

So when I got home, naturally, I googled it. Turns out, Lip Explosion does not have a monopoly. In fact, there’s a lot of competition in the non-surgical lip augmentation market. There’s CityLips, Lip Venom, Naked Kiss and Perfect Pout, to name but a few.

I learned from my research that “the most important thing you can do before bed is prepare to plump your pout.” Not sure why, since this stuff only works for a few hours. Oh, wait - is there a naughty connotation there?

I also learned that increased levels of estrogen, such as during ovulation, cause plumper lips, so there you go - all part of God’s Plan.

Now I know all I ever wanted to know about lip plumping, and more. But still, none of it explains this:

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UPDATE, MAY 4 - Warning!!  Do NOT google “big lips” at work or in polite company.  You have been warned.