revision99

One day I will hit upon a traffic-generating scam that will make this blog the Most Popular Destination on the Web.

The revision99 Protest Song UnContest was not it, however. I am reviewing the entries this evening, and I have a few thoughts:

• Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who wrote lyrics and proposed song ideas. My creative days are long in the past, so I really need this stuff if I am going to maintain any sort of illusion of vitality.
• I will not name names at this time, because then everyone will know what a flop the UnContest was. Besides, you know who you are. If any of you “win,” – and this is a big if – I will request permission to identify you in this blog.
• Apparently, not many of you are very angry, and those who are, aren’t really angry, just a little annoyed. You have to stoke up a pretty heavy head of steam to actually want to write a protest song (or, apparently, even to say a protest sentence), and I guess I just didn’t piss off enough of you, enough.
• I thought my list of things to be angry about would get your creative juices flowing, and just in case, my reprint of the lyrics to “Eve of Destruction” should have made it obvious that there would be no reason for embarrassment, no matter what you wrote. But most of you who said anything, said you “didn’t know how” to write song lyrics, or that you “suck at” writing song lyrics. You should listen to “Achy Breaky Heart” a few times.

But, whatever. I warned you what the punishment would be if you didn’t cooperate on this: I will write a protest song myself. God knows I am angry enough. I will steal what I can from the songs and ideas you have sent me, mix in a little tambourine and acoustic guitar, and try to put them together into a rousing anthem for the New Revolution. When it’s finished I will record it and post it for you all to hear. Then you’ll be sorry. Get your picket signs ready.

If you’re here for the first time, details about the UnContest (which is over unless you want to enter now) can be found here and here.

Au revoir, my friends.

Last week I went away to attend a graduation, and I was completely disconnected from the internet for almost four days. I got so far behind in the daily serial that is my bloggin’ buddies’ lives that I felt guilty. Every blog I visited had three or four (or five) posts that I had not read. I was not just disconnected from the internet. I felt like I had been disconnected from life itself.

I tried to catch up, but I am hopelessly behind. Whatever was discussed is gone forever, and I am destined always to be out of the loop when references are made to the occurences of that long weekend. Oh, wait. I’ve been out of the loop since Reagan was shot, anyway, so what’s new?

Now, the very next weekend, I have another graduation. This one is right here in my town, and the wrap party is right here in my house. Due to the close family connection of this graduate (my niece), many relatives are descending on my town, and I will be entertaining them, probably every second from Friday early in the morning (who flies at 6:30 AM? My sisters.) until late Sunday evening. My only plans for entertaining all these people is a backyard party and barbecue on Saturday. Other than that all I’ve got is getting ready for the party, and cleaning up after the party.

The party might not be so bad, because my niece may have hot teenage girlfriends, and I have made it clear that there will be no underage drinking at my home. So I’m assuming they will be loaded to the gills when they get here, and you never know what those crazy kids will do.

So again I will be out of the blogging loop, in the dark, incommunicado. Naturally, I’ll be right here close to my computer much of the time, so I might be able to sneak in and check some blogs. But I have a large, demanding family, and I’m not in any way ready to throw a party for hot teenage girls (OK, and boys), so with all the last-minute running around I will be doing I anticipate that I will be offline again for the next few frantic days.

I’m guessing this is going to be mildly disappointing to about eight people. I don’t seem to have as many readers as Pops, or MPH, or Theresa, and they (you) don’t seem to be as fiercely loyal. But they make up for that with their intense, uh, their, ah, occasional mild curiosity, or something. Maybe. I’m not jealous or anything. All those people who don’t visit me here, well, it’s their loss. This really is one of the only places on the internet where “to, two, too, there, their and they’re” are never misused, and all apostrophes are placed correctly. Oh. Maybe that’s why no one visits me here.

Well, I just thought I should let you know. About my upcoming busy weekend and all. Busy, busy, busy.

A Few Items:

1. I was out of town since Thursday, attending the college graduation of someone I have known since the day of her birth. I was cut off from all computers, so I haven’t written anything or read anything you may have written.
2. I discovered that I really miss being on a college campus. I have almost no daily intellectual stimulation at my crummy job, whereas on campus, there’s tons of that.
3. College kids today have little to no fashion sense, at least in Santa Cruz, California.
4. If you think I am going to stop promoting the Protest Song UnContest, you’re wrong. I’m just too tired to do it tonight. But let me assure you the entries I have so far are stunning. The rest of you have a little more than a week to deadline. Don’t put it off, people. The punishment will be a protest song by me.
5. As always, my weary heart overflows with love and bittersweet joy.

I just washed my car this morning.

OK, I didn’t exactly wash it. I went to the car wash. The point is, my car was freshly scrubbed, and looking good. Then I parked it and went in to work.

When I came out of my office eight hours later, I discovered that the automatic sprinklers near where I had parked had come on and sprinkled my car. My beautiful red car was covered with muddy waterspots. As you may be able to see from the picture (or not, now that I look at it), the spray from the sprinkler went all the way across the car to the street side. The spots show up nicely on the windshield, but let me assure you that the entire car was covered, front and back, left to right. Then the hot sun dried them out, and now I will have to go back to the carwash, or else wash it myself, the very next day.

This really pisses me off. Why do the sprinklers point out in the street? They must, because there was no wind today. The sprinklers were simply aimed at my car. I wonder if any water got on the grass.

I will admit that this is not as bad as being attacked by snakes, or having lunch with Dick Cheney. Maybe I should count my blessings. But, damnit, I spent time and money at the carwash, and then my paint got all fucked up, like, immediately.

OK. Sorry. In other news, my story called Promised Land has been moved to this location. I couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to write right here in front of everybody. So it has it’s own space now, where you can read it if you feel like it, and I get to work at the leisurely pace befitting a man of my age. I don’t expect any readers to go there and make comments on it, but I have enabled comments just in case, so feel free. Getting it off this blog makes it easier for me to just write, and even go back and make changes, the way you’d do if you were writing a story, and not a blog. I will also add Promised Land to my blogroll in the sidebar. Don’t get me wrong: I’m hoping someone will read it. I just won’t come after you if you don’t.

Well, OK. It’s never too late to learn.

Boy, that last post sank like a stone, didn’t it? Let’s bury it a little further right now. It was just stream of consciousness, in a way. I bit my tongue, I wrote about biting my tongue, I bit my tongue because I was eating too fast, food was in my mouth because of the eating, and yeah, it made kind of a nasty picture, but believe me, the reality was much worse for me than the description was for you.

Somehow it just turned into that kinky kissing thing which, coming right after the ghastly image of half-masticated food – and come on, some of you were also thinking about blood, too, weren’t you? – well, I can see now that it was just too much. Since I am a sophisticated man of the world, you’re probably thinking “How could he have committed such a faux pas?” I could say that I love you all, and I was overwhelmed by the desire to plant a smooch on you. In fact, that’s really my only defense, weak as it is. So that’s what I’ll say.

Sue me.

No one can make me happy about working at my crummy job.

For the past few months, due to mismanagement and bad planning, my job has been a brutal nightmare. If I were not already highly skilled and efficient at what I do, I would surely have fallen apart. But the fact that I can make up for failures elsewhere in The Corporation doesn’t mean I want to, or that I enjoy it, or that I should have to. I have complained about this all I dare in previous posts, so some who are reading this now are aware of my attitude. I’m a little grumpy.

Now, things are more or less back to normal and I don’t have to use my super powers to get the work done, and this annoys me, too. Mind you, I don’t take credit for this turn of events – it was just a happy accident. The various managers, supervisors, vice presidents and directors forgot to screw things up this month.

I refuse to act busy, so I find myself going around looking for things to do. At the Post Office or on a Teamster job, this might get me killed, but at my job they already think I’m a crazy misfit, so they barely notice.

I ran out of things to do by mid-afternoon, so I checked my email a thousand times, redesigned a form I want to start using, read a bunch of blogs and commented on a few, and then I just sat in my office for a while, sort of becoming one with the furniture. I tried to make my mind a blank, and it seemed to be working. But I looked in there and the thought that I found was this: I wonder if I can touch the top of my head with my big toe.

Think about it: The lowly foot getting to meet the head, home of the brain. They probably haven’t seen each other since I was a very little baby, made of some kind of highly flexible rubber. The only communication they’ve had for all these years would be the brain sending down orders to walk, or run, or stop. One-way orders, no discussion, no compromise, no warning. The only way the foot would have had any input is if it sent pain signals, or if it simply broke. If I could touch my head with my foot it would be like a chauffeur getting a sit-down with the CEO. Who knows what good might come of it?

Remembering my psychocybernetics, though, I thought it would be the better part of valor to simply imagine vividly that I was touching the top of my head with my foot. Because as you know, the mind cannot distinguish between a real event and one vividly imagined, and besides, I didn’t want to be carried out by my colleagues and driven to a hospital.

So I looked at my foot, gauged the distance and the bending that would be involved, and it only took a few seconds for me to say “Damn! I could actually do this.”

Of course, that was just a theory, and it had to be tested. So I closed my office door, took off my shoes and got down on the floor, and yes, it turns out that I can touch the top of my head with my big toe. Not only that, but I can do it with either foot. OK, I admit I had to grab my ankle and drag my foot up there, and I can’t put both feet up there at the same time, but what do you want? I’m putting it on my resume.

Sadly, the foot-brain conference did not take place. The foot got one look at the hideous haircut I got the other day, and went back to the garage, laughing.

Paper towels, huh? What would we do without them?

If I had been a pioneer I would have stolen a bunch of land from whoever was there ahead of me, and I would have tamed that land, and planted it, or mined it, or raised cattle. Whatever the hell I was doing outside, the little woman would have to be in the kitchen, cooking for me and the men. And when she spilled something she’d have to clean it up with a rag, which would then have to be washed. Until it was washed, it would sit around and stink, or perhaps get moldy. Jeez, what a mess!

But not if you have paper towels. If you have a lot of big, sturdy paper towels, you can wipe up any mess you make, and then just throw them away! Spill some beans on the wood-fired cookstove? No problem. OK, I think we’re all on the same page now. Let’s move on.

I went to Supercuts this morning, a chain of haircutting shops where English is a second language. You never know when you tell them how to cut your hair if they get it or not. “Take a half-inch off” might mean “leave a half-inch on.” They always act like they know what you’re saying, but I don’t understand anything they say, so why should I expect them to understand me? And let me just tell you right now that I have nothing but the highest regard for those who have immigrated to the U.S. from other places and are making their way in this strange land, getting jobs, buying houses, learning a new culture. Greatest respect. But now I am sporting perhaps the worst haircut of my life. It could be the worst one in Los Angeles, although – and I can’t verify this – I might be very hip in Cambodia. I don’t know how such a small amount of hair can be made to stick out so forcefully in all directions.

But I am not proud. I took my weird haircut like a man and went on to the rest of my errands. The main one was I had to exchange a telephone that I bought at Radio Shack. Since I bought it at Radio Shack, I saved all the packaging and the receipt, because I figured I might have to take it back.

This was not a cell phone, but a regular wireless home phone. It has big buttons, though, and a volume control, stuff that’s hard to find. I took the phone in to the store, where two pleasant-looking young people were standing behind the counter. This is what I told them:

“I bought this phone four days ago, and it seems to have a problem. I charged it for 12 hours, and it went completely dead in less than an hour. I charged it for another 12 hours, and it lasted a bit longer, but I have never gottten even four hours of use out of a charge. So I think it’s defective, and I’d like to exchange it for another one just like it.”

To my surprise, both clerks agreed, and one of them went into the stockroom to get me a new phone, while the other one started to ring up the transaction. Alas, the price of the phone had gone up in the few days since I had made my purchase. This was a serious issue for the Radio Shack Kids. They huddled over the register for a few minutes discussing this impossible customer service conundrum: How can we charge this guy an extra 20 bucks now that we’ve agreed that his phone is defective?

They had to call tech support. I’m not kidding. They had to make three phone calls and wait on hold for five minutes each time. One of the calls was because they had forgotten to ask something on the previous call. But I was patient. I was in the right and God was on my side, it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t going to ruin it by pulling out a weapon and demanding justice.

It turns out the issue was that the phone had gone up twenty dollars, but there was a twenty-dollar mail-in rebate on it. If they changed the price for me, the computer would still have printed out my rebate form, thus I might get away with something. Rule Number One in modern corporate sales: Never let the customer get away with anything. The solution, no doubt provided by the president of the company was this: Change the price for the man, and keep the rebate slip. The clerk who finally did this for me and handed me my new phone actually tried to convince me that he had wanted to do it that way from the start.

Why then, did he have to talk on the phone for twenty minutes while I stood there cooling my heels? Then it hit me: The hidden cameras in the store were taking pictures of my grotesque haircut, and it was being emailed to all the stores so the schmoes who had to work on Sunday could have a laugh.

Now I have no boss at all.

The place where I work has always been pretty loose. We are now part of a huge corporation, having been bought out a few years ago, but we get our part of the job done, so we have mostly been allowed to do it our own way. The main difference is we now have to report every breath we take on poorly-designed Microsoft Excel spreadsheet forms that we get from headquarters. It took them two years to figure out how to protect the cells with formulas in them. For all that time the spreadsheets came with warnings: “DO NOT TYPE IN THE CELLS WITH FORMULAS!!”

This laissez faire mindset has extended to the relationship between the worker bees and the local management. Basically, management is ignored, unless they threaten to fire you, and then you kiss enough ass to keep your job, and soon you can go back to ignoring them. In general, this suits the managers OK, since they don’t know anything about hiring, firing, training or motivating anyway, and being ignored relieves them of having to either learn something about managing or act like they know something about it, and gives them more time to check the horse racing results on the internet.

The good thing about a really big corporation (I think this is true, although this is my first experience with this sort of thing), is that nobody you meet in the halls knows exactly who you are, or, more importantly, who you know. You might be friends with the Regional Vice President. So if you maintain the right attitude and a certain swagger in walk and talk, most of the suits will leave you alone, because what if you’re important? At the same time, of course, I don’t get to browbeat anyone I meet in the halls, for much the same reason. So there’s good news and bad news, I guess.

Much of the way things work is like an army. No one knows what you’re doing, and you don’t know what they’re doing, and none of you have been told exactly why you’re doing it, and it has to be done that way because, goddamnit, that’s the way it has to be done. In an army, though, everyone wears uniforms and insignia, so you know who gets to boss whom, thus taking away the natural camouflage we in corporate life enjoy. We have the same confusion as they do in the army, but we also don’t know who’s in charge.

So now the Big Guy at our location has been moved Somewhere Else, and he has not been replaced. Essentially, there is no one at the helm. We don’t know when or if a new Big Guy will be appointed. We know that The Corporation has a penchant for hiring young, eager college grads for jobs that they might be ready for in ten years. We assume it’s because they cost less than people who actually know what they are doing. But we don’t even have a whiff of a taste of a water-cooler rumor as to what the fuck is going to happen.

So now, as might be expected when there is no leadership whatsoever, everybody is ignoring everybody else, no one knows if the new Big Guy is already among us, or even if it’s one of us, and the miracle is that the place still functions pretty much as it always has. But I actually have no one to report to. I have to think up work, assign it to myself, with a deadline, complain about the workload (to myself), miss the deadline, give myself some shit and promise it’ll never happen again.

Sa-weeet.

I think I know how Charlie Allnut felt.

Humphrey Bogart and Kate Hepburn starred in The African Queen in 1951. He plays drunken riverboat Captain Charlie Allnut, she’s prim and proper spinster missionary Rose Sayer, and they are in Africa. His boat is a filthy, decrepit, 30-foot tub called The African Queen. In 1914, as World War 1 gets underway, they begin a journey, alone together, down the river. All I can say about the story is that they must get down the river to the lake at the end. It’s a matter of life and death. They must overcome many obstacles, but there is one scene in particular I am thinking of today.

On its way down river, the Queen becomes mired in weeds and muck, and surely they will die in the jungle if they don’t get moving. The broken down old steam engine can’t make any headway in the shallow, overgrown river, and the current isn’t strong enough to move the boat. Reluctantly, Charlie climbs overboard, attaches a line to the boat, and slowly begins to tow it himself, trudging slowly through the muddy river, a surly anti-hero, doing the right thing in spite of himself.

Eventually he climbs back into the boat for a break, and in a moment they both notice that he is covered with leeches!! They are all over his body, black, slimy slugs, tightly attached to his flesh and — say it with me — sucking his blood. He cries and dances in horror and revulsion, slapping at himself and begging Rose to “get ‘em off me, get ‘em off me!!” Together they peel the disgusting things off, and Charlie’s near-psychotic episode gradually subsides. When he can stop shaking from fear, Charlie and Rose must reassess their situation. The boat is still dead in the water, and there is still no current. It is clear what has to happen. Charlie, a look of infinite sorrow on his face, takes up the rope, slips over the side into the leech-infested river, and begins towing again. Only this time he knows what will happen to him while he is in the water.

That’s how I’ll feel when I go to my job tomorrow.

Behold the grandeur that is the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker!

Sensuous brushed aluminum surfaces. Stainless steel thermal carafe. Imposing. Important. Taller than a runway model. A coffeemaker that tells your friends “This is the coffeemaker of an imposing, important man, who doesn’t have time to brew a pot of the best-tasting coffee in the world when he wakes up to begin his important day, so I, the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker, will wait all night and then start myself up and brew his coffee automatically, five minutes before reveille, like only the very best wives would do.”

This was the promise. OK, I admit I was seduced by her looks. I mean, look at her. She’s gorgeous. From the first minute I saw her, I wanted her. I knew she would be high maintenance, but I thought we could work things out. And let me tell you, the honeymoon was rockin’! I thought the buzz would never end.

But the problems started after only a couple of months. First she stopped brewing coffee automatically in the mornings. I took over myself, and did it manually. She became lazy and her appearance went to hell. Eventually, she even refused to make a full pot of coffee. As I told you in this post, she would make a few cups and then stop without telling me. I’d have to start her up again manually, only to have her quit on me again after a couple more cups. The coffee tasted bad, as the grounds were drying out several times during the process. Eventually we weren’t making beautiful coffee together at all.

I couldn’t help myself. A new coffeemaker caught my eye. Shorter and plainer. No grandiose promises, but practical-looking, and no nonsense. This one, I thought, might be one I can live with. Maybe, I thought, we can build something together. Melitta had already checked out, and so I brought this new one home. I’m happy to report the coffee is once again fantastic. This one, a Cuisinart, says she will make coffee automatically in the morning, but I have decided against it. I’ll carry my own weight around here from now on, and perhaps there will be less bitterness in this new relationship.

The Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker? Last time I saw her she was hanging out with the garbage cans in the alley, the trollop.