I am feeling like things need to be stirred up. Over night trips. Train trips. Road trips, possibly. Bad decisions and wrong turns. Is it compensating for having to work all day? Definitely. Is that wrong? I think not.
Road trips often turn out like this. Take your friends car.
We went to watch the free outdoor movies. It was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Or at least I think it was- I couldn't really tell as the number of jabbering children, screaming babies and general chaos made the experience closer to trying to watch an instructional video while fleeing a burning building. Difficult.
Babies are ugly. But we have alot in common: eating, wanting to eat, sleeping.
Those kids... those damn kids. I feel like I should be shaking a pitchfork at them. How passé is it for childless young people to wax annoying about how they never think they could handle children? Verily, I say: very passé. I mean, none of us think that we could ever handle sitting in a cubicle and seething about our current life path, but we seemed to adjust to that pretty well. I thought I would never stop listening to Metallica and drinking beer from a keg, but I got used to not doing either of those things (well, very much. Some times I have to fire up the Metallica and drink bad suds from a plastic cup. Judge away cruel world, but the memory remains).
I'll tell you the truth: I'm not scared of those kids. I know I could handle them. Kids like me. I know what to do with kids: build a fort, watch cartoons, eat sugary snacks until the situation reaches critical mass, then, everyone breaks for a nap. It's not rocket science. It's just that if you can't get kids the biological way (and trust me, we keep trying, but the boyfriend refuses to become pregnant) it seems like an awful lot of work just so that someone can poop on your couch. I mean, I am sure there are people who would volunteer to do that for relatively little hassle. That would bring it's own phalanx of problems, but a dog, oh yes, a dog would do it while you were at work, saving time. It's really a win-win situation.
That's not completely true; I have three pairs of pants. They rotate. But one of them is kind of uncomfortable because when I was in the store I really had to piss and I just sort of grabbed them thinking “yeah, I'll lose fifteen pounds next week”. I have not, to date, kept that promise. I think it is really unfair that I have to spend money on clothes that I only wear to the office. What ever happened to boiler suits? I feel that, while oppressive, the communist impulse to make everyone wear clothing that basically looks like a potato sack does have it's advantages.
I also enjoy making unreasonable bargains with myself, eg “I'll have the body of a Men's Health model by Halloween, and then I'll buy clothes”. To date, all twenty-nine years of my existence have been lived not resembling an unattainable goal. I think other people must actually LIKE trying on clothes and wandering around malls. Otherwise, they wouldn't spend so much time doing it. If all things were possible, I would only wear things I bought at the salvation army. Because the salvation army, that's where you get the snazzy clothes: fedoras, sanabelt pants, bolo ties. And snazzy, my friends, means never having to say you're sorry.
I've never been good at being satisfied with where I am. I used to just consider it wanderlust, and not a bad thing at that. But sometimes one sees a pattern develop: settle in, get a bit stir-crazy, launch grandiose plans; next thing you know you have moved several time zones, have a new career and a tattoo of Uruguay on your ass. What's the problem with that, besides that Uruguay is not of an attractive shape for assink, you might ask? The problem is that when you look at how lives are built and lived, starting over every three years is not the way to do it. Leaving on the next jet plane to escape mild boredom, while definitely exciting, becomes a repeating pattern. “Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results”, Benjamin Franklin purportedly said; to repeatedly flee normal feelings of boredom and expect that in the new place contentment and placidity will be found seems to fit that definition.
That said, how do we remain happy when all becomes humdrum and routine? I suppose, and I fear this more than a little bit, the answer is to entertain ourselves. Eep.
I am reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton (pronounce in bad French accent for P.F. Points). I started reading it because even though I have just arrived in DC, and I spent the last four years living abroad, and I haven't even been to the Jefferson Memorial yet, the dreams have already started. The dreams always are what start my exodus from what ever life I am living. They are not the kind of dreams that one awakes from in a cold sweat. They are day dreams, of me, being smarter and having a more glamorous job, and having more time to write, and smoke cigarettes and drink red wine at noon, while sitting at a cafe, and speaking in round vowel sounds of romantic languages to bowtied men who bring more red wine and we all laugh that I once lived in penurious slavery for a wage. Or eating roasted new potatoes and lamb shank and sipping on cold martinis while prattling on in Danish about new art and the article I just wrote about South Africa, while sitting on blond ashwood furniture in an apartment looking over the Kobenhagen harbour. See what these have in common? If I move there, I become smarter and more witty and more successful in everyway. Yes, I am completely insane.
The common theme that de Botton follows is that status anxiety, something we all feel even if we don't talk about it, is caused by assuming that we are all in control of everything, a modern concept indeed. How else does one explain Blackberries (the buzzing electronic kind, not the delicious fruit)? His writing is refreshingly not self help, but it does analyze the idea that, in the west, we prize our meritocracy but that egalitarianism comes with a harsh wind of judgment. If everyone can compete on equal footing in a meritocracy, then the failure to succeed cannot be attributed to external events; in a true meritocracy, which we like to think we live in, my failure to be more important, smarter and more successful is deserved because that failure is my doing. Ouch. That's an ugly thought for a Sunday afternoon.
McSweeney's lists made fiery hot coffee fly out of my nose Tuesday morning at work last week. Painful, but ohhhhh so good.
5ives is a man with a mission, and that mission inlcudes making diet coke shoot from my nose Wednesday, 3.32pm. Right onto the keyboard.
These various and sundry lists didn't make it until I read the one about Star Wars and Pants. I, too am disturbed by your lack of pants. Diet coke, 8.55am, right onto the new shirt. Yeah, I drink a lot of diet coke. I like my water to be chemically induced. That's how I roll.
Buh-Bye, now.
I'm being unfair. I have known some men of the law in my days, and I must say that lots of them have a real commitment to civic duty, safe cities and a livable society. But not Officer C.A. Fulda of the Metro Transit Police. He sucks. Friday night I was going home after eating the entire crab population of the Chesapeake Bay at the Quarterdeck in Rosslyn with my brother, his wife and the boyfriend. Sorry if you wanted some this season, we ate them all. They were delicious. Also, the Quarterdeck is the only reason to enter Northern Virginia. That and the Costco at Pentagon City. I walked through an empty fare gate (the gate was closed before I used my SmarTrip card), and we went to the escalators. There stood the offending transit man, C.A. Fulda, beckoning me to approach him by waggling his index finger. In part one of incredulous interaction with the police, he: (a) accused me of fare jumping, (b) refused to listen to the logic of “fare gate only opens if you actually use your card, it doesn't open for magic pixie dust” and then (c) got really pissed when he checked the machine in the manager's office that proved that I had indeed used my smarTrip card and not my amazing magic powers to open said fare gate.
In part two of incredulous interaction with the police, Officer Fulda: (a) claimed that he was doing a favor by making me miss my train [uhhhh...what?] (b) said I was being “uncooperative” [how? Using Metro as indicated on the box?] (c) refused to give me his badge number, saying “Are you blind? Do you see a badge number?” [no, but I can see you being a complete shit] (d) refused to give me his business card, asking “Are you stupid? Why don't you understand that I don't have any cards!?” [because I find that hard to believe] and (e) finally got even more pissed when I copied his name down from his nametag [actually, I think he was most pissed that I asked to borrow his pen for this purpose]. And then I walked away and got on the train with my peoples.
And then it got even weirder.
I looked up from my newspaper as the train entered the tunnel to DC, and there stood our man Fulda. That's right. And he had his official pad of paper out, and he wanted my name because, “If you have my name, then I need to have your name.” Not convincing me of the connection, he continued “I need your name to know who is submitting the complaint”. Let's stop here: no friend, you will get my name from the letter I write to your boss. Not from me, in person. I asked him if he was following me. Which was the wrong question apparently. He got really and agitated and said that no, he wasn't
following me, he was off duty and going downtown on “personal business” and that was I so stupid to know that if a police officer asks for my identification I have to give it. Nice public relations, there C. Maybe it's time for a refresher course. And if you are off duty, then you are just another private citizen shmoe like me, asshat. So shut it. So we got off the train, after reminding him that if he truly wasn't following me, the he would stay on the train. And he did.
And then I wrote love letters to his bosses.
Should public servants be called out in public when they misbehave at work? Well, normally I would say that private citizens should stay that way. But those rules don't apply when my tax dollars buy you a gun for work, Officer Fulda. I'm not a member of the A.V. Club and you are no longer an upperclassman with a letter jacket. Let me be the one to break it to you; that phase of your life is over. So seriously, what's your problem jackass?
Sorry I haven't posted in so long- last week I was finishing up my temp duties (erasing my browser history, stealing office supplies and trying to dodge new work as it came in) and my brother and sister-in-law came to visit (required drinking beer, eating crabs). I was just swamped, as I am sure you can imagine. However, today: the dreaded NEW EMPLOYEE ORIENTATION. I kept a log, retyped here. Talk about being embedded.
8.00am Arrive on time, which is completely amazing considering that, in full important-day style, I forgot my keys and wallet on the way to the bus stop and had to return after walking half way there. I walk into orientation to find I am the second person to arrive and that the first hour will be spent playing a 'get-to-know-you' game. Immediately regret not having brought flask.
8.16am Find out that HR has STILL not processed my paperwork, meaning I cannot get a proper cardkey. Good thing our HR department isn't in charge of anything important, like payroll or the retirement plan.
8.46am Meet woman who lived in Kathmandu and worked for USAID and will now be directing capacity building programs in my organization. Decide to stalk her until I figure out her secrets of success. I want to live in Nepal and work for USAID.
8.51am Discover that no breakfast will be served, contradicting the invitation papers that clearly state breakfast will, indeed, be served. Drink juice, three cups of coffee and sugar packet to stave off growling stomach. Fail. Find tiny packet of airline crackers in bag. Devour like the manna that they are.
9.00am Travesty that is new employee orientation officially begins.
9.08am Attempt to slit wrists with dry-erase marker. Fail. Gnash teeth and weep.
9.19am Watch a video about the history of the organization. I had no idea that dead people would be revived to read from their own biographies as voice over for stock video. Classy.
11.17am I get picked out of the dozing heads to answer a rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions shouldn't be answered, people. But the answer is seven. A man must walk down seven roads before we can call him a man.
11.25am Twenty-five minutes till lunch! Make up a lunch time song that goes: “Sandwich doesn't want me for a lunch beam...” Sing to the tune of Nirvana's 'Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam'. I'm not creative when hungry. Shut it.
11.42am Someone just asked a question about the Izron/Hezbollah conflict. Really? Izron?
11.47am Facilitator asks: “What do you think about diversity? Anybody?” I mean, what do you say to that? It's not like she is going to trick some klansmen in the group to slip up “I like everything lily-white. Shit! I shouldn't have said that!” BTW, we spent 45 minutes on diversity training, but they don't offer domestic partner benefits. Natch.
12.00pm Sweet, sweet lunch.
1.05pm Uh oh. Now we are playing a learning educational stupid game. I wonder why we finished so fast? Oh that's right, we don't care.
1.55pm Urination.
2.01pm “How to Use the Mouse” Network tutorial presented by your grandma. “Oh love, that's right, that's the button to push to “click” the mouse! Does any body know how to double click!? My stars! Everyone! That's right! Click twice! Jeepers it's a smart group!” I can feel the back most brain cells decide they are no longer needed and drink the kool-aid.
2.47pm Play game that involved answering questions about HR policies. Stab. Me. In. The. Eye.
3.27pm HR Policy Panel Question Time: Rollicking good fun, but at least it is relevant to new employees.
3.32pm Nevermind. I think that irrelevance has become the new relevance. Pink's the new black, crap's the new fantastic. Spread the word.
3.51pm Die, HR. Die a thousand deaths.
