I realize that my previous dispatch had no cohesive thoughts, just the spent ramblings of a moron. I apologize for that. I was on my last waking moments when I typed it out, knowing I was about to pass out into a freaking coma. I spent all weekend yawning and getting back up to speed. Tired just doesn’t cover how I felt, I was truly exhausted. Luckily, the busy schedule and frantic drive was done on Wednesday which meant that when I (barely) arrived home alive on Thursday morning I had all weekend to catch up. In between all of our scheduled appointments and all but still, it’s nice to be home with Teresa and Becca.
I felt better by Friday night and although I was still tired, I was back to normal because “tired” is my standard MO. I felt fine Saturday evening but had trouble sleeping. Sunday morning the bottom fell out. I spent all morning “being sick” and all day recuperating from the pure violence of the outbreak. I remember being sicker and I have been told I have created more “cinematic displays of protein spills” but most of those stories involved mass quantities of alcohol. I had none in me when the fit started and by the end there was nothing at ALL left in me. Even into Monday afternoon I haven’t eaten much. Even the smell of food makes my stomach lurch. I spent most of Sunday holed up in my den pretending to watch movies and sleeping through them. I have a really good movie I want to watch but it is subtitled and I really want to pay attention to it. So I get about ten minutes into it and realize that being tired and sick is not the best time to watch Japanese epics. I put on some old favorites and doze in and out. Teresa comes in every fifteen minutes to check on me. She’s so sweet. When she’s sick I try to do the same thing but she doesn’t want any one around and gets upset. I, on the other hand, will eat that attention up like a baby. When I’m sick I’m always “dying” and Teresa always puts up with my shit. One day she’ll get tired of me but… not yet. Thankfully, I don’t get sick very often at all. Thanks baby.
So now it’s Monday again and I’m back here in Pensacola. The equipment is lost in shipping and we have nothing to do yet. I would normally be upset at this news because it will probably mean that the delay will push us into Friday instead of being done on Thursday but this week it matters not to me. I have requested time off for Friday and Tuesday and even if the equipment doesn’t show up until Thursday afternoon, I’m still going home on Thursday night. Up until very recently I was the guy that would encroach upon my own plans to get the job done but I have come to accept these delays as “normal” now and if the company isn’t willing to make the process any better or more efficient, why should I give up my vacation time to make the same futile attempt? Especially after I got the call last week that they were disapproving my overtime charges after I had already cleared them earlier in the week. I give a lot of my own time to the program and when I charge OT it is always approved and it is probably only one fifth the time I should be charging. Are they sure they want to piss me off? I know I’m just another faceless cog in the machine but… but nothing. That’s just it. I am just another automaton. I am the tool in the traveling toolbox and what do you do when your tools wear out? You get new ones and throw the old ones away. I have no real value here at work. I may be one of the shiniest tools in the box, but I’m still only a tool. And if that’s how they look at me, that’s how I will act. And this tool isn’t fucking up his vacations anymore. He’s going to Disney World.
Yeah, I can hear you groan. “Disney World again?” Yup. Every year. We go because we like it there. Teresa enjoys different things than I do and we can hit them all in the same vacation there. Becca is always excited until we remind her that we’re riding the “Tower of Terror” and she puts on a display. I don’t know what she enjoys more; the ride (once she’s on it) or the reaction she gets out of us when she plays the “I’m scared” part before she gets on it. Our little drama princess just loves to pick up on every little nuance from her mommy and daddy and amplify them into her own neuroses. Free-falling is a great feeling. The anticipation of the free-fall is enough to make me nuts. I get strapped into the ride and as soon as the doors shut, I get tight. I don’t know if Becca picks up on this but now she’s the same way, multiplied by ten. Once the ride starts the drops, it’s all laughing and screaming but until that point you’d think we were torturing her. This year we paid the extra to include the water parks in the tickets. Becca has really wanted to visit them and we agreed that we should check out something new. So, we are going to the water parks the last couple of days of the trip. But only if she doesn’t fuss about riding the “Tower”. We’ll see how well this little ransom game works.
I don’t know how the speed of the trip will go. You never know until you get there. I’ll never have enough time to just sit in Epcot like I want to do. I’m hoping some of the bands will be out there and I’d live to see a lot of the reenactments and such (“Off Kilter”, the “British Invasion” and the Taiko drummers in particular) but waiting for them is such a time killer. There’s so much to get done. Even if I lived in Orlando (NEVER!) and had the annual pass, I don’t think I’d ever get tired of running over to Epcot after work and checking out the World Showcase. Maybe I would, but I’d like to put that to the test.
As I type this out (It’s now Tuesday morning) I am reminded again about how I’ll never live in an apartment. The people in the room above me are practicing for the ballet. Maybe playing polo? How about stampeding cattle? What the fuck is going on up there? It has been a constant rain of heavy footfalls from 6pm until 2am. There’s no discernable pattern, no rhythm. Every time I get used to it, they break stride and make me take note of them again. How much time do you think I’d get if I went out to the truck, got my tools and my ladder, carved out the drywall ceiling, drilled little holes in the floor above me and stuck nails in the holes so that when they plodded along on the floor their heavy, hammer-like feet will be torn to shreds? If I first coated the nails with some Hamlet-grade poison do you think they’d convict me?
Once again, I am rightfully called out on my tendency to say things in a very flat and general manner. Let me amend them and clarify what I mean. Although I use the terms “Stupid, idiot, moron, etc…” often, I use them loosely. There are very few stupid people (although there are plenty of people with a severe common sense deficit) There are, however, people with varying degrees and areas of expertise. I know a little about many things, a lot about nothing. You for instance, might know everything there is to know about botany and when I am put to the test in that subject, I would be discovered as the fool. As someone who is very fond of knowing bits of history, I found it inconceivable (you keep using that word…) that the next wave of humans entering into decision-making society would be so completely devoid of any sense of our own history. For those of us who have been out of school a while, it is forgivable (even anticipated) that the knowledge we do not maintain and reinforce should slowly wane. I am sure that at one point in school, if you were asked those questions, you would have known the answer to most of them. But because you may not be a fan of history, many of those factoids have dropped into the dark recesses of your mind, making room for other, more useful facts like, “Where did I leave my car keys?” I can spout off innumerable little nuggets of fact, even recall a few upon questioning, but if my car keys aren’t on the hook by the door, they are lost forever because I will never find them. Everyone uses their brain differently and your choice in how you employ yours or how another chooses to employ theirs, in no way implies that one is smarter than the other. If I came across as a prick, I apologize. Intelligence should never be confused with wisdom. Simply being able to regurgitate fact is never as impressive as being able to take what facts you do know and act upon them accordingly.
My original point was about how ridiculous it was that this “comedian” thought was would all fall for this as a “completely real” situation and that they didn’t set this one up in the script. Maybe I was a bit vague and too sarcastic in my original post. I HATE the sanitized “wacky” and “zany” comedians. These people are so low on material that they play to the lowest levels. Morning radio shows are where it gets to be really painful to listen to but that’s why I bring my own music. I don’t listen to morning radio for that very reason. One really lame skit can fuck up my whole day. They insult our intelligence by playing so low and if this is your kind of comedy, be happy, you are in the majority. I am not. I prefer my comedy to be a bit more interesting. Give me George Carlin, Dennis Miller or Lewis Black. They will make me laugh but I’ll also think a little bit. Hell, give me a Sam Kinison or a Bobcat Goldthwait who were never considered “cerebral” but still had better material than “get-r-done!” A gimmick alone is not funny. You have to have material. A gimmick on top of the material makes you stand out and be remembered, but if the material is no good I want no part of them.
So Jay Leno (and the lot) set up little skits like the one I talked about and swears it is true. If they did it on Saturday Night Live (which I’ve heard hasn’t been funny in years) it may have been amusing but the part that made me want to stab him with a shish-ka-bob skewer through the left ventricle was the swearing that it was real. Does he think so little of his audience (of which I admit I am not a part of) that he thought they would fall for that? Look at the questions he asked and the answers they gave. It LOOKS like a script written by a comic that couldn’t cut it in the real world. It just wasn’t funny, it was insulting. Can we get Al Sharpton in on this one and push to get Jay Leno off the air? He was insulting a vast majority of Americans who, although they don’t watch his show, shouldn’t be insulted in that way. No, I guess Al won’t give a shit on this one, he can’t hear my cries for justice. His “Ruff-Ryders” CD is up too loud.
Leave a Reply