Category: Daily Grind

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.

Because the darts wouldn’t have stopped him.

A 500-pound tiger somehow got loose last week and wandered around in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, for four or five days. At first there were just mysterious seven-inch wide paw prints, but this morning (Wednesday) there was a sighting. So far nobody knows who lost the tiger. There are no native tigers in Ventura County, so it is assumed this one was being kept by someone.

Anyway, authorities were called. They could have used tranquilizer darts, but said later they were “concerned for the safety of residents and motorists.” So they shot him dead.

I’m trying to blog, make coffee, watch a movie and find my tax documents.

All these activities have to take place in different rooms. So I go in to where the big TV is hooked up to the digital cable box, and there is Clockwatchers, a sad, funny movie about four young women killing time as temps in a huge office. Also, there are the papers I have been sorting through for half of this dreary day, looking for my tax stuff. This stuff has been piling up for months. It has now been separated into three piles: The biggest pile is recycling – mainly flyers from local grocery stores. I don’t know why I didn’t chuck them the moment I saw them. Then there is shredding – the endless junk mail I get that has my real name and address on it. Blank checks I (or anyone who finds them) can write against my credit accounts, subscription renewals that just might tell someone too much about me – have you noticed how personal, how targeted junk mail is becoming? The third pile is stuff I’m pretty sure I have to save, but I don’t know why or where.

So I go to the kitchen to get a paper bag for the recycling and there is the coffeemaker. I am a coffee freak. I buy roasted coffee beans at health food stores (!), organically grown, and unsprayed with poison. Coffee is the most chemically treated crop in the world, you know, so if you’re going to drink as much of it as I do (don’t ask) you don’t want a pesticide cocktail along with it. I mix at least two different varieties of coffee most of the time, and grind the beans one pot at a time. I have been using a glass Melitta stove-top cone-type coffee pot since the Spanish American War, until last Christmas, when someone tried to bring me into the 21st Century by giving me an electric coffeemaker. I had told this person many times that I liked the ritual of the stove-top model – the measuring of the water, the boiling of the water in a separate vessel, “surprising” the coffee with that first brief squirt of hot water, refilling the cone a couple of times until the perfect pot of coffee was there, visible in its’ gorgeous mahogany glory in my glass pot. But I got the electric coffeemaker anyway. “Look,” he said, “it’s a Melitta, and it uses a cone!”

So for a few months a good part of the coffee ritual was gone from my life. Water in this hole, coffee down here, press the button and walk away. Might as well walk away, because the carafe is stainless steel, so you not only don’t have to do anything, but you can’t even see if anything is happening. Also, you can never tell for sure if the pot is clean, because you can’t see through it.

But some of the ritual element is returning, because the electronic mechanism that detects when there is no more water and the coffee is ready has gone haywire, and now the coffeemaker stops brewing at random times during the process, sometimes after only a cup has gone through, sometimes in the middle or near the end. When that happens you have to push the button again to make it start. Lately it has been stopping three or four times before finishing a pot of coffee, each time necessitating a manual restart. It’s not exactly a mystical ritual, but it’s all I have left. When this thing breaks down completely, I’m going back to my ancient glass rig.

But why am I standing in the kitchen with this paper bag in my hand? Oh yes, the recycling, which is on the floor in front of the TV. I leave the coffeemaker and go out to gather up the papers from the floor, and now I am back watching the movie. The four temps are amazed and disgusted that some new girl has been hired on a permanent basis to do a job that any one of them can do easily. There is no justice.

After bagging up the papers to be recycled, I get smart and pick up the papers to be shredded, so my walk back to the kitchen can have a dual purpose. I take the shreddables into where the shredder is, which is also where the computer is, which reminds me that I have a bunch of blogs open in tabs, and these obsessive bloggers will be looking at their site statistics and trying to figure out who was reading their blogs for six hours. So I try to read (and close) a few of my faves while I stuff paper into the shredder, hoping that sorting this stuff while watching Lisa Kudrow’s long, long legs in a short, short skirt hasn’t made me put my tax documents in this pile by mistake, because, hey, it’s too late now. Then I think Well, maybe I’ll type a few notes myself, and I start to do that but then I remember that I want some coffee.

I go in the kitchen, and sure enough, the coffeemaker has stopped. So I restart it and go back to type some more, but while I’m at it I realize the movie will be ending soon and I’ve never actually seen the ending. Do you do that in this era of cable movies? Watch parts of movies here and there, now and then, out of sequence, until you’ve seen the whole thing?

But I have missed the ending, my stuff that must be saved is still sitting on the coffee table and… Coffee table! Coffee!

Back in the kitchen, the coffeemaker needs another restart, and now I can’t find the bag of recycling. Shit, it’s in by the shredder, next to the computer, where the blogs are waiting to be read and written.

I haven’t found the papers I was looking for, and I haven’t had my coffee. But I have filled up a trash can with shredded paper, read some and blogged some, and that’s something.

Oh yeah: And I had a brief video relationship with Lisa’s legs.

I heard a loud ka-thunk in the backyard the other morning, and I went out to investigate. Using my Holmesian powers of deduction, I pieced together what had happened:

A couple of possums (yes, I know they are really opossums, but I just can’t say it – or type it – that way) had been engaged in some hanky panky on top of a six-foot cinderblock wall. They had become transported by their amorous activities and lost their balance, slipping off the wall as one possum and crashing together into the top of a 5o-gallon plastic trash can. This caused the ka-thunk. They must have immediately rolled off onto the ground.

At this point, Ms. Possum evidently decided she’d had enough and it was time to call it a night (this was at 7:00 AM, people). She had managed to wriggle about ten feet from their original landing point. That’s where they were when I came upon them.

As you can see from the picture, the boyfriend (or BF) was not finished with her. They were not cuddling in this picture. They were coupling. About five seconds after this picture was taken, Ms. Possum (the one in the lower right portion of the frame) broke free and the two of them scrambled away into the nearby bushes. I felt bad enough for getting this compromising shot and I didn’t pursue them. For all I know they continued their debauchery in the bushes for the rest of the day.

I like possums. They are the only North American marsupial. They are quite successful. That is, their population is not threatened, because despite their slowness and what sometimes seems stupidity, they apparently have figured out how to get what they need to survive side-by-side with man. Some think they look like giant rats (the two pictured here were probably ten pounds each), but I think they are kind of cute, like an AMC Pacer. This is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. But I’m glad these little guys are in my neighborhood, and I wish them well as they start their family.

I told you I’d be getting back to writing about sex. And there’s more where that came from.

It’s raining again in Los Angeles.

It started last night, and continues now, on into the weekend. Rescue teams have already pulled someone out of a flood control channel today. They might as well stand by with their equipment, because for sure someone else will fall in tonight. As I have said before, it is a no-brainer to stay the hell away from these treacherous man-made maelstroms during a storm. For background on this, you can check this post.

This has been a wonderful wet winter in Southern California. Those of you who live in other parts of the country, forgive me for rhapsodizing about something so mundane, but this part of the world is a natural desert. If it weren’t for all the water we steal from Northern California and Arizona (via the Colorado River), the amout of rainfall here would support a community of about 80,000, and it wouldn’t be pretty. It would be brown, because we’d be drinking the water, not putting it on our lawns and gardens. I shouldn’t say “we,” because I wouldn’t be here.

I have a window cracked and outside the room where I type this stuff I can hear the rain. It’s a soothing, musical sound, and lulls me, making me dreamy and forgetful that the garage is probably flooding. So what? I have long ago lifted everything important off the floor out there, my spare monitor is resting safely (OK, precariously) on the seat of the excercise bike, the incredible array of cardboard boxes full of useless junk that I can’t throw away has been placed inside of waterproof plastic boxes. Why would I do a thing like that? It was a big job, but I did it because it semed like a big job to actually sort through the stuff and organize it. So I avoided one big job by doing a different, less useful, big job.

At the beginning of this winter I put rye grass seed down on the lawn. I just found out about this two or three years ago. I should have known about it, I guess, because apparently eveybody does it, but, to be generous, I’m a late bloomer. Professional gardeners and deep-rooted homeowners put fertilizer on top of the grass seed, which stinks up the neighborhood and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t do anything for the grass. Mine grows just as well, without the manure. Anyway, rye grass seed goes down on top of whatever grass you’ve got, no fuss, no muss, and it grows lush and green during the winter, then it’s gone. With all this rain, I’ve got me one bright green yard, and in the dead of winter. Sorry, Minnesota. At least you’ve got The Vikings in the Superbowl. Wait, you don’t have that, either.

I love this rainy splashy sound so much. After my jangling, jarring work week, it is a joyful pleasure just to sit and listen and write. This is not Big Storm rain, just a steady, gentle shower that covers everything, and washes away all my sins.

I have to put something on top of that last post, and quick.

I wouldn’t want it to be the first thing people see when they look here. I really don’t know what gets into me. Am I like that all the time, and most of the time I’m hiding it from myself and everyone else? Or am I normally well-adjusted, confident and cheerful, overtaken by the howling only on those rare dark nights of my soul? Well, no matter now. I’ll deal with it when I have to.

I was going to discuss what I did yesterday, but it’s probably more germane (what does that mean, really?) to tell what I ate yesterday. I was invited to two Superbowlâ„¢ parties. Have you ever noticed that the TV commercials for big-screen televisions that proliferate in the weeks leading up to the Superbowlâ„¢ never say the word “Superbowlâ„¢?” Beer and taco commercials, too. They always refer obliquely to “the big game.” That’s because the National Football League has claimed the word “Superbowlâ„¢” as their own, and if you try to make money with it, they will make you pay. Dumbass idea, since everybody and his Dutch uncle knows what is meant by “the big game.” I’m going to trademark that phrase. Then I’ll get that Lexus and that penthouse.

Anyway, I could hardly sleep last night, not because I was pondering the monumental importance of who won the game, or who was even in the game, or the fact that I didn’t get to see Paul McCartney’s tits (although I was told that Alicia Keyes was trying to have a wardrobe malfunction, but nothing happened). No, I couldn’t sleep because the things in my stomach weren’t getting along, and some of them were trying to leave the way they came in. Because I ate

20 grapes
5 pineapple pieces
8 pieces of salami
8 pieces of cheddar cheese
1 hot dog (no bun or condiments)
1 hamburger (white bun, mayo, catsup, pickle relish)
Chex mix (numerous handsful)
Doritos (much crunching)
2 bowls of pasta salad with feta cheese
5 pieces of rotisserie chicken (very small)
1 10-inch skewer of little shrimps (possibly poisonous)
20 round crackers of some sort, plain (couldn’t find anything to put on them)
2 bowls of chili (cheese and onions on top)
7 glasses of water (due to heavy salt intake)

It should be noted that I consumed all this in less than three hours, and that the water was in addition to the usual amount of water we all drink every day (you’re swallowing eight glasses, right? Good.). This intake was necessitated by the extremely high salt content of everything else I ate yesterday. Add in the fact that I didn’t do much chewing, but simply kept stuffing things in the front, thus forcing earlier items down the back and you can see that my stomach had a big job, and one it was not used to, or, evidently, up to.

So I stuffed in two pounds of useless crap, stayed up way too late on a school night, lay in bed moaning for a good long while before drifting off into a fitful coma, and I still don’t know who won the game.

Also my pants don’t fit.