Idea People

Idea People make me want to puke.

And by that I mean these bright-eyed, toothy-grinning, vacant nincompoops who spend their days blowing spitbubbles and staring at their beige ceilings, THEN, at usually the very end of the day, send out emails to a scattershot of various doers, middle management, and grand frommages suggesting that we do something obvious and/or unattainable that will solve all our problems.

"We need to get Microsoft to donate money to us."

"Our website should work better."

"We should cure cancer."

When it's gently inquired as to how the Nincompoop would have us accomplish said goals, she shakes her coiffed mane, bares her whitened teeth and says, "Oh, I don't know about THAT. I'm an IDEA PERSON."

So idea people make me want to puke.

Oh God Please No

He comes to see me every day. Sometimes twice, three times in a day. No matter if I look busy or not, he sticks his head in my cube and just... starts... talking.

He natters on about things I could care less about. He repeats himself. He tells me stories that he's told me, honestly, literally a dozen times before.

He laughs at his own jokes BEFORE HE TELLS THEM. He's sure everything HE finds hilarious I will find hilarious, too. I am his confidant, you know. He tells me EVERYTHING and never finds it odd that I don't tell him all about my worklife, my home life, my rich and varied background. Never occurs to him.

Why oh why doesn't he just go back to his office and do his work? Why does he continue to share his bad stories, his bad jokes, his superior attitude, his "well of course I'm right and you agree with me" smugness?

He is eating my soul, one little crumb at a time. And I, trying to be nice, wanting to maintain peace amongst my coworkers, is allowing him to.

Oh please go away and stay away today.

Fuck Me / Sweet

With apologies to all of the good/bad, awesome/bogus, in/out lists in the world, here is my Sweet / Fuck. Me. list for the workplace, just this week.

Everybody EVERYBODY everybody in this honkin’ building thinks I’m the answer man. I get asked questions regarding areas I have NOTHING to do with. They expect answers, and are PISSED OFF when I have nothing for them or they’re PISSED OFF at the answers when I do have them. Fuck. Me.

I’m beginning to truly enjoy pissing off stupid fuckers. Sweet.

My boss is a wonderful man, and I love him dearly. He’s smart. He’s exceptionally capable in his discipline. But he appears to be entirely disinterested in running the office, he won’t truly delegate anything, and he has no stomach for the political infighting required to have Our Say heard at the highest levels. Thus, our office grows immobilized, less competent and marginalized in the grand scheme of the organization. Fuck. Me.

I appear to be one of the few people in my office willing & able to manage simple operational tasks. Thus, when the boss suggests to everyone that we should have a meeting about something that I’m adverse to, I just don’t schedule it. No one else picks up the ball, and it never comes off. Sweet.

Sets of my beloved colleagues appear to hate each other, and spit vitriol at me about each other. I like them both/all and am a good listener. Which is why everyone comes to see me and spit vitriol. I’m covered from head to toe in snake venom that’s not intended for me. Fuck. Me.

I’m becoming worse at masking my frustration and impatience with poor behavior and douchebaggery. My eyes roll, my tongue lolls, my face reddens and I get all Lewis Black on people. Ugly behavior. Fuck. Me.

People try to calm me down, give me what I want, and stay out of my way when I act this way. Sweet – but a poor way to reinforce my own bad behavior.

Occupational bipolar disorder is setting in. I find myself walking down the halls, whistling cheerfully, then suddenly remembering a current or past slight, causing me to grumble darkly and audibly to myself. Then I forget all about that, and start whistling again. All within 10 seconds or so. Sweet. This is how my career will be remembered...

Ugly, Homicidal Thoughts

... are not good to entertain at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.

Just sayin'.

Damned If You Do/Don't, Repeat Until Insane

There are days I feel like Sam Lowry.

I work in a self-fulfilling bureaucracy, that being an agency that ofttimes finds particularly new and charming ways of screwing itself. Into the ground. Deeply.

To wit: I am responsible (heh) for a contract for an annual service we use here at the Glorious Palace of All Knowledge. It's a good service. We like it. I'll call it the Wonderful Service. No one else has a service that does what the Wonderful Service does. It renders a useful and widely used public service. All are happy, and no one holds a candle to it.

Each and every year, I submit to our Purchasing Office (PO) to renew the contract for the Wonderful Service. It expires on July 1 and therefore (knowing the speed at which my fellow bureaucrats work), I put in for this in March. And wait. And nudge. And cajole. Around May, the PO gets back to me with questions:

What is this?
Is this new?
Does anyone else do this?
Have we used this before?
Has the price changed?
Who is offering this?

Please keep in mind that I've answered ALL of these questions with my initial submission. Then I answer them ALL again, with the same answers I used last year. And the year before that. With extensive physical and electronic record backup. Then, the PO writes back, on May 28, that if the submission isn't complete by May 21, they can't process the contract to begin on July 1.

Oh yes, please read that sentence again.

I argue that I submitted the completed submission in MARCH, that the service period ends on June 30, and we need to get this through, and what's the problem? The PO writes back to inform me that all is okay, they'll get it through on time.

A month passes. I'm turning purple with rage and insanity by now. Finally, the PO submits the completed approved contract to the Wonderful Service vendor. The period of performance is September 1 to June 30 (10 months rather than 12), for the full 12-month price.

I foam at the mouth and yank out my hair. No, no no no no no no no no. Fix this. FIX THIS. They stall. They delay. A month and a half goes by. They agree to make the contract 12 months instead of 10. The new period of performance is September 1 to August 31.

The Wonderful Contract vendor joins me in spitting nickles out our noses and giving birth to live ducks. THEY don't want to give us two free months. I don't want them to give us two free months. (Did I mention that they haven't cut off our service on July 1 when they could have? Did I?) I go back to the PO and tell them to reissue that contract from July 1 to June 30. They say no, no no: we can't go backwards in time.

So I am stuck by other people's stupidity, laziness and obstructionism. The only way I can truly make this right is 1) for me to get the Wonderful Contract vendor to GIVE US TWO FREE MONTHS of their not-inexpensive service (which I'm not about to do); or 2) appear before Congress to explain myself. (No lie.) Which, once again, I am not about to do.

Fucked again! This, THIS, my friends, is what makes old, gray men out of us hopeful, bright-eyed boys.

I Really Can't Complain...

I have a high-paying, very secure job with amazing benefits. I have an enlightened, non-screamy boss. I work at arguably the most interesting place in the country, even the world, with a bunch of really neat, nice, smart, cool people.

So I KNOW. Shut UP.

But still, shit drives me crazy. Things that you KNOW can be done better, smarter, cooler, faster, BETTER -- can't be done. Stupid bureaucratic roadblocks. Management that spans the gamut from mediocre to malignant. The uninspired and lazy impeding the enthusiastic and smart. Throwing good money down a rat hole because an outside consultant thought it might be a good solution to a problem that everyone here knows the solution to. Money that could have been used to FIX the problem.

Smart, bright, eager people turning into angry, jaded, bitter workers. That may be the worst part of it. Seeing the best minds of my generation destroyed by the madness of sluggish apathy. The madness of management that doesn't know how to lead. The madness of old creaky leadership that doesn't know when to retire and get the heck out of the way.

Damn, I got to cheer up.

You Know the Day Is Bad When...

You start humming "All You Need Is Love" in your head, only to have the lyrics shift over to "Stab You In the Eye."

All together now!

Those Wacky Dames

Just looking in long enough to note that I really really really love The Bloggess. And to really get her, read about a year of her posts. Seriously. Funny funny sad happy cool life-affirming absurdist stuff.

And one of her friends writes THIS blog: Mommy Needs a Cocktail. I have no idea if it's any good, but with a title like that, what's not to like?

Underestimation Nation

It's happened before, but not for awhile, and it always brings me up short when it happens.

Out for a working breakfast today with a couple of publishing types from the New York City area. After a fairly lengthy discussion on various ideas for partnership, we exchanged some personal background.

The fact that I was borned, raised, schooled and now live in the Mountain State of West Virginia was a topic of some interest. Once again, the cityfolk were just stunned that a lad of such humble origins was "so well-read," "so knowledgable," "so sophisticated."

In other words, isn't EVERYBODY in West Virginia a toothless, cousin-fugging hillbilly?

Sigh. I know they were *trying* to compliment me. And I know that, deep down, they aren't entirely two ignorant, condescending, shallow little author-wannabes who, not being able to make it in their chosen field, instead sidle up to it by working in tangential publishing firms. Not entirely.

And granted, we DO have our share of toothless, cousin-fugging hillbillies. As does Pennsylvania. And Missouri. And New York!

Granted further, I do use the West Virginia Card a great deal. "Aw shucks, I don't reckon I can cipher what it is y'all er talkin' bout, since mah people er just a bunch of poor, dumb hill folk, I reckon." Well, not as bad as THAT, but pretty close sometimes.

It's good to be underestimated ... except when you DON'T want to be underestimated. But do your estimation of me based on my face value, not based on where I'm from and your notions of geographic superiority, please. That is all.

My Head Asplode #248, Collect 'em All

It all started with a simple request. Get the boss his new model of Blackberry, and have the agency IT group link it up. Sounds fair, since I'm one of the two people in the office who can do this kind of procurement. (That's what we call "buyin' junk" in the gummamint.)

So I buy said Blackberry and present it to the Division IT gal up on the top floor. She bitches me out, as I'm supposed to activate it for cell use first BEFORE they link up the email. Mmmokay, lesson learned #1. (By the way, our agency has NO standard operating procedures for buying & linking up Blackberrys. But I digress.) I apologize profusely for something that is not my fault (otherwise it won't get done), wag my tail like a good dog, and go back downstairs.

I return to my office, activate the phone, and take it back up to Division IT gal. She puts in a ticket for Agency IT to come take the unit, link it to agency email and return it. She puts said unit on the Division Reception Desk for Agency IT pickup.

Nobody tells Division Reception gal about this, so she calls and reports that my boss's Blackberry is on her desk, someone please come get it. Our office admin goes up, gets the unit, gives it to the boss. Boss commences to bitch me out because his email don't work. I apologize profusely for something that is not my fault (in order to calm down excitable boss).

I buzz Division IT gal, ask why the Blackberry wasn't linked up. She bitches me out for picking up the unit before Agency IT had a chance to get it. She also blames my boss. Uses term "great steaming pile of dumbass." I apologize profusely for something that is not my fault (otherwise I'll never get help from her again) or his fault. Division IT gal is well-known skittish mare, must be handled carefully. I'm known in my office as the "Tech Whisperer."

I take the Blackberry back up to Division Receptionist, who bitches me out because no one told her why the unit was left on her desk, and why the unit is being left on her desk AGAIN. I explain, smile, grin, aw-shucks, play dumb and yes, apologize profusely for something that IS NOT MY FAULT. (This is ALL I know how to do by now.)

I return to my office. My boss glares at me because he doesn't have his Blackberry and he wants to leave for his beach house. The Division IT gal snarks in an email to me about the overall clusterfoop, exactly 1/2 of which is her fault. I have yet to get a surly crankogram from the Division Receiptionist (responsible for the other 1/2 of said foop), but I'm sure she's getting it around the Big Office what a dunderhead I am. And STILL I don't have the stinking Blackberry, which isn't even mine, that was sent upstairs on a RUSH order, I might add.

All in a fuckin' day's work, I says.

Government Efficiencies

Life at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge is often edifying and inspirational, but every once in awhile, it becomes apparent that we are, at the end of the day, a government agency.

So my nice-guy boss authorizes everybody who didn't have one to get a new ergonomic & easy-to-adjust desk chair. And since I'm the Doer of Things that Need Done around here, the task fell to me to make it happen. ("He's an old guy. He has a beard. He'll know what to do.")

It's all within the budget and doable, so long as you don't run afoul of the furniture-buying police (which I did, another story for another day). Everyone got his or her new chair, and I was the hero of the day, for the moment.

The problem is, in any bureaucracy, is getting rid of the surplus. For a solid month, a row of sad, worn, lightly stained desk chairs were lined up outside my cubicle. We put in the Formal Request for the removal of the chairs (into the system, hilariously, known as Facilities Automated Services Tracking or FAST -- hyuk!) ... and another month went by.

My kind and dutiful receptionist, seeing my plight, started calling the Facilities folks frequently. After a couple of weeks of yowling, three (3) experts showed up, and looked the chairs up and down. (This is starting to sound like a Dr. Seuss book.) They carted away all of the chairs except for one (pictured). Those ones were apparently reusable. This woebegone misfit wasn't.

The pictured chair was, at one time, a top-of-the-line craftmatic adjustable chair, will all the bells, knobs, whistles and lights available. The user, a crotchety old cuss, tugged, pulled, adjusted, and even finally yanked an entire arm off the thing in order to suit her peculiar needs. Hence, the Lost ErgoTortureChair from hell.

The experts wouldn't take it away. "Not reusable," they sniffed. Too weird. Too weird for government work. Two more months have passed, compelling me to write this post. If no one comes for this thing in another week, I'm going to go push it into traffic in front of the Capitol. This will, no doubt, render me a national security risk. Keep your eye on the news.

I Ain't Nobody's Mentor

As I cruise, sails in full blow, into my 50s, it's more and more apparent to me the things I DO and DON'T want in life, work, etc. And being a mentor is one of the don'ts.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, it was kind of flattering for the boss to delegate his responsibility (but not his authority) to me to run herd, run things, run amok. It was my first real taste of supervision, and I got to say, I didn't care for it. In fact, the best mentee I ever had far exceeded my own abilities, and I was happy to just let her off her leash and sniff out all the truffles on her own, to brutally extend the metaphor to its snapping point.

So the people that DIDN'T need it, I enjoyed. The people who DID need it, well... sometimes I could help, but sometimes I just shook my head and threw up my hands.

For awhile there, I was mentor to a bunch of college guys, which is pretty fun. In that case, you just try to keep them from doing Extremely Stupid Things. Not too hard. Moderately Stupid Things is harder, but also manageable. (Forget about Basic Stupid Things, they do that the moment they wake up.)

Anyways, that was then. For awhile in my 40s, I was the youngest guy in the office (hah!) and no one dreamed of asking me to mentor anybody. Now, after a few years on the job, I'm the most senior guy in the office. So suddenly it's my responsibility to mentor all of the baby chicks as they come in.

It's not that I don't like the little fresh-scrubbed bright-eyed bushy-tailed little darlings. Some of them are very nice. But at 50, I'm starting to feel the distance. I could relate to the squabs when only 10 or 15 years separated us. But now, I get that old fogey-ized contemptuous glaze when they don't figure out what I'm saying before I say it.

What's worse (and one of the worst experiences in my working life) is when you try to help a colleague out by throwing some work/credit/love their way ... and when you get stabbed in the back in return. That's an ouchie. And in both cases, being a mentor and not a supervisor gives me all of the pain and NONE of the ability to take real action and slap some shit down on these mofos when they don't play the game right.

Here's the deal. I love my leadership chain. Lovely people. But like me, they'd rather WORK than LEAD. But here's the other deal. They're being PAID to lead AND work. Ha ha ha! Really? Did it say that in the position description? Yep, right there, podner.

Boy Blue here made a conscious decision several years ago to STAY AT HIS PAY GRADE so as not to have to be responsible for shit that those work+lead types have to do. He didn't apply for promotions he could have earned. He hung back, stayed out of the limelight, kept his head down. He, too, likes to WORK and not LEAD. And this is the price he pays for it, cheerfully.

So attention managers. Do your friggin' job. Lead. Don't take the pay hike, then dump off your dirty work to old hands just because they're here and they know the ropes. USE them, certainly. But don't just abandon your hires to the rank and file. We're okay and we'll help. But you surrender your valuable chance to put YOUR stamp on these newbies, rather than mine. And I may not be so kind and generous – or too kind and generous. Either way, they're looking to ME for leadership and not YOU, and that's not good.

That is all.

Old, Old, Frackin' Old

In my mind, I remain 26. But some things sidle up to my blind spot and conk me over the head when I ain't paying attention.

For instance, last night I'm cruising the 637 channels available on my Greater Cable Box. I land on St. Elsewhere, one of my favorite shows from a bygone era. It's followed on the same network by LA Law and Hill Street Blues, terrific shows, all. And, in their day, they were known as edgy, controversial dramas.

Watched all three on ALN, the "American Life Network," a Christian channel touting its programming as family-friendly.

I have now lived to see the controversial dramas of my youth turn into Andy Griffith. Sigh.

And I Was

I used to be able to levitate and leave my body (not simultaneously). Honest.

The levitation wasn't a huge deal. It was always while I was in bed, flat on my back, and I could rise only about two or three inches off the mattress. Couldn't go anywhere or do anything with it. Could really do it best when I was in the throes of some childhood illness and bedridden. Had to be pretty quiet, and I had to be near sleep. Fever helped. *

The out-of-body experiences were somewhat more subtle and more regular. At least a couple of times a week, I'd feel entirely like I was watching myself from a mid-level balcony. I was going through the motions of living, but also carefully observing it from a short distance, quite detached. Very very strange in many regards, but a big part of me liked having that occasional distance from my own body.

I stopped levitating almost immediately upon entering puberty. Maybe I stopped believing in it, or maybe when the hormones kick in, your brain can't settle and make the quiet necessary to unhook your body from gravity. I never understood how quite it worked, but I couldn't make it come back.

The OBEs, on the other hand, continued through my 20s, then fell silent. But just recently, I was walking across the parking lot at my condo from the bus, when I was suddenly watching myself like I was in a movie. Like my body was a machine working on its own, and I was off, apart, somewhere else, recording its functions. It was a real revelation, and made me entirely remember both of my youthful phenomena -- which, quite frankly, I'd nearly forgotten about completely. (I'm writing this now so I'll remember them.) **

While it was unsettling as hell in one respect, it left me with a little bit of hope. I know it'll be easy and easier to engage in one of those little spiritual detachments again, when the time is appropriate. And maybe with some patience and work, I can get back to floating over the bed. Maybe six inches.

* SOME of you may scoff and say that this was just a manifestation of the youthful fever delirium. Well, I've see the cast of Gilligan's Isle with squirrel heads, and THAT is a childhood fever dream, not gently floating up off my bed.

** Not crazy. Really. I think.

Another Reason I Like Facebook

This little exchange from two acquaintances, regarding the recent Saints/Vikings playoff games.

FB1: Man, none of the Saints' players thanked Jesus for the win.
FB2: No one in N.O. loves Jesus, just ask Pat Robertson.

FB3: Did Jesus kick the game-winning field goal? I don't think so.

Gutlessness

I'm not going to get nostalgic, because I'm not sure it was EVER anything but this way.

But I completely detest gutless management. There is nothing worse in the world than people who are put in a position of responsibility -- in fact, people who have CLAWED to get that responsibility -- when they are terrified of employing it.

I work at a great big gummint agency. Like all great big places, we go through changes. Operating groups rise and fall. Strategic planning teams come and go. Cooperative consensus building committees are called into being and extinguished with equal ease.

What's rackling my hackles today: one of these operating/governance groups, which has been around for a few years (and of which I am a member, of course) has actually been one of the few groups that has gotten some things done around here, in a relatively collaborative and productive way. In fact, in two separate out-of-house evaluations, this group was cited for its transparency and its effectiveness.

So of course, I find out today that it's begin replaced. Granted, we were unwieldy (24 members at the mid-manager range), and the new board includes 10 high-faluting types (including my boss, which I'm happy about). And I actually agree with most of the strategic reasons for replacing the old group.

However 1) no one consulted with any of the chairs or principals of the old group before making the decision to move on, so the new group has no idea what it's getting into; 2) no one in the 10-member board has the same level of understanding of the task at hand like those in the 24-member group, so the previous group will have to be around as a shadow cabinet for quite some time; and 3) no one plans to formally inform the old group that they're no longer wanted. None of the terribly important types has the guts to just tell us that we're through and thank us for our work. (I found out about it when my boss shared that he's been appointed to the new group. I still like my boss, a lot.)

While I should be relieved and jumping for joy to be rid of this frankly onerous burden, I am annoyed for my colleagues who have literally had the rug pulled from beneath them, after years of hard and thankless work. It's rude and gutless. I realize it happens everywhere, it is a fact of organizational life, but I don't have to like it.

If you're going to BE a manager, then manage. Tell people straight, good and bad news. Don't just let the announcement hit them on the ass on the way out the door. And learn how to say "thank you." Fuggers.

Thanks, I Feel Much Safer Now

Okay, six months, whatever.

Today, class, we're ranting on our paranoid and excessive national response to the statistically insignificant threats to Our Homeland.

I work in a federal building. A lovely, dull, strategically unimportant federal building. We happen to be linked by a series of interconnecting and secret tunnels to the Great Home of Our Republic, the Capitol Building. BUT EVEN IF WE WEREN'T, we'd have to put up with the New Improved Blitzkreig Series 9000 Magnitometer/X-Ray/Scanomatic whenever we enter the gray halls each day.

The aforementioned BS9000 is 175 times more sensitive as its previous incarnation, which was known to squawk whenever you had too many keys on your chain. Now, the thing hums when you go through it, and you feel the iron in your blood platlets tingling. The thing buzzes for watches, clips, metal clasps, zippers, fillings and that piece of staple that got lodged in your thumb back in college.

All of which causes MASSIVE delays entering the building and results in HUGE lines out the doors. All of which during the biggest cold snap in D.C. in 35 years. Yes, it is now confirmed. The bastards are trying to break our will.

At this point, I'd be content to report to a locker room, strip down, and have the first two layers of my skin burnt off each morning, just so long as we could GET THROUGH THE DAMN LINE before I was late for my first coffee break.

Hey, I'm still a government employee.

Ear Infestations

You all know about earworms, I hope. No, not those beasties that ate Chekov's brain in The Wrath of Khan, but those tunes that get into your head and you can't get them out. For instance, the theme to the Andy Griffith Show. Or "Help Me Rhonda." There, I've already ruined your day twice.

Well I got one better on the earworms. They're more like ear-mosquito-bites. These are tunes that once you get them in your head, you want you need you HAVE to hear them again and again. Much like scratching that bug bite, there is NOTHING more satisfying than hearing THAT song. Over. And over. Again.

Maybe I've got some soft musical spot in my brain that feeds on certain keys, certain orchestrations, certain voices and treats 'em like heroin. Used to happen every couple years or so. Now it's happening four or five times a year; I get a song -- not even a great song or a meaningful song -- in my brain, and I HAVE TO HEAR IT OVER AND OVER.

So the current resident of Rooty's broken jukebox? Sob. The theme to "Dr. Who." Not the old version, but the new, fully-orchestrated, Johnwilliamsian version. I'm not a gigantic fan or anything. I like the show. But the brain just has to have the theme. And no low-fidelity YouTube version, either. Bought it on iTunes so I could play a nice, high-fidelity version of it at work. Over. And over. Sigh.

The good news is, after a COUPLE THOUSAND TIMES, I'll get tired of it. But right now, I'm only in the dozens.

Absurdity in the Workplace

Another fun day at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge:

Going up to the cafeteria, hit the "up" button on the elevator. The door opened, and -- seriously -- 25 little kids dressed in identical blue outfits and bright yellow "crossing guard" belts and sashs streamed out.

"Jeez, it's like a clown car," I muttered to myself.

The last hall monitor, a rotund, bespeckled lad of all of four feet, heard it, stopped, and glared up at me. "That's not funny, mister," he grumped, then shuffled off with the rest of his tribe.

I don't agree.

Grumpy Notes

Just a few idle cranks:

• On real good days, I wear my Surrender Shoes. They are large, ugly, boxy boats (which describes MOST of my work shoes), but in this case, loafers. No laces. For those days when I can't even be bothered to bend over to dress. Eh.
  
  
• Okay, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Let me OUT of the elevator before you try to board the car. Don't be rude, LET ME OUT FIRST. I'm bigger than you, and I WILL crush you. Don't make me crush you.
  
  
• Monday morning 9 a.m. meetings are complete wrong on every level.
  
  
• Why does the warm weather--for which I have yearned for so, so long--bring with it the rotten stinking pollen? Curse you, plant world, and your sweet, sweet oxygen that I crave so.
  
  
• Cluck, cluck, cluck. The sky is falling! Cluck, cluck, cluck. Swine flu! Cluck, cluck, cluck. Can we work from home now?
  
  
• The good news: with the declining economy, government employment becomes very viable (stable), and we are attracting good new talent. The bad news: with the declining economy, government employment becomes very viable (stable), and the miserable stupid deadwood won't leave or retire early.
  
  
• Oh, and if you're so damned worked up about the Swine Flu, WHY THE HELL DO YOU WORK ON CAPITOL HILL, GROUND ZERO TO THE UNIVERSE? I mean, really.
  
  
• All my gay friends are Really Worked Up over Bea Arthur's death. I mean, completely. Like, you can't completely make a stereotypical observation about it, that's how much.
  

I Love "Cul de Sac"

... and this is why. Read it every day.

Understanding the Mess We're In

Apologies for the cross-posting on Facebook. But I think this is pretty important.

I'm a fan and regular listener to the radio-documentary-magazine-potpourri series "This American Life." Usually just good fun and terrific slices of life. But over the past few months, they've done several episodes that managed to distill the trenchant details of some of The Big Problems of Our Most Recent Times and present them in very economic-dummy friendly terms.

If you are averse to the whole left-wing media oligarchy, don't fret. These broadcasts are as objective and clear as I'v encountered. Three so far in the series. Download all three and become enlightened, I personally guarantee. One caveat: they may cause nightmares for the less-than-optimistic. Folks, the AIG bonuses are the LEAST of our concerns.

• "The Giant Pool of Money," focusing on the real estate crisis that precipitated (but was more a symptom than the cause of) our current troubles;


• "Another Frightening Show About the Economy," first broadcast right after that week in October 2008 where everyone was saying it's the end of the world as we know it; and


• "Bad Bank," an amazing summation of the situation we're facing and the painful options that we can't avoid.

Also available on iTunes. Highly recommended!

Scenes from the Workplace (Public)

Lots of folks come to the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge. I was stepping onto the elevator today when three giggly, befurred and bleached-blonde specimens bounced off the car, babbling in some slavic tongue. "Vhere is cawfee-teria?" one of them asked me. I pointed them in the right direction, and a second one burbled back at me. "Oh tenk you! I am seeink sign!"

Couldn't figure THIS one out. Grad student doxies from Minsk? Post-Soviet Library groupies? Whatever-they-call-the-KGB-now agents, seekink information on our nuclear wessels? Whoever they were, it was lunchtime, and even femme fatales gotta eat, I suppose.

A Love Bizarre

Is it wrong to love... to FALL in love with someone... (someone who will never reciprocate this love)... but to fall desperately in love with someone because he is amazingly terrific at his job?

You know by now that I work at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge, that whirlpool of joy in a seal of federal grayness. But it is just that federal grayness that fills our ranks with soul-dead vocational zombies whose only joy is the persistent slowing and stopping of Things Getting Done.

Those of us who still have tiny scraps of bright, living soul left scattered within our brittle, broken shells do our best to work around, under, over and through these human roadblocks of even the smallest bit of progress. We despair, yet accept the realities of contracts taking six months to get through, position vacancies needing 9-12 months to fill, and minor purchases requiring acts of Congress to complete.

Which is why, when I met Fred* the contract savant, I was, at first, stunned. Then flabbergasted. Then swept off my feet. In a single 1/2 hour meeting, he saved me months -- MONTHS -- of wasted labor. Today, he removed major DEADLY roadblocks from two of my contracts and one GIGANTIC contract of a colleague. He is simply and utterly brilliant, he knows federal contracting law like a rabbinic scholar knows his Talmud, and he counsels effective, confident action and knows all the legal options available.

I'm just like a little girl around him. I giggle. I swoon. I bat my eyes. I said, out loud in front of him to my colleague today, "I just love him." Then I asked him if that made him uncomfortable. He didn't bat an eye. He just smiled.

The boss thinks it's cute. "You have a man crush on Fred!" I can't deny it. He knows things. He gets things done. He reduces my workload. He makes me effective. He completes me.

He's Government McDreamy.

* Not his real name. Really.

Observation

I came back to work on the day after the Inauguration and was amazed, stunned, at how ... neat and tidy Capitol Hill was. I mean, we had 2 million stinky tourists or so swarming the place. And with any big event (July 4, for instance), there's always a one-or-two-day trash hangover. But my work neighborhood looked pretty damned spotless the day after the biggest crowd in Washington history strolled through.

Then, on Thursday of the same week, a few thousand pro-life advocates marched in the same location. In the aftermath, I've never seen as much trash strewn about. Dozens of signs stuffed in overflowing trash cans. Paper cups, candy wrappers, food boxes everywhere -- on the lawns, on the sidewalks, in the streets. Some of them even left their signs and other trash in the shrubbery and along the window-naves of our building.

Both crowds were primarily out-of-towners, but I was struck at the difference. I'm trying not to judge folks based on an issue or a political bent, but jeez. Maybe the people for Event #1 had more respect for the place, the process. Maybe people for Event #2 just wanted to come, have their say, and shit on the site. I don't know. It just made me a little sad.

Another Walk Down Fogey Lane

I hate to move away from the Big Warm Glow that seems to be infusing our National Capitol and beyond in the wake of the installation of the new regime, but something cheesed me off today.

I'm walking down the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue (yes, THAT one) to pick up some lunch, when I hear an uncommon sound out there, in the 10-degree noontime sun: the canned voices of news announcers. I look all around, thinking somebody's brought out a portable teevee or listening to a radio.

Finally, I look up. Attached to a building along the street, about at the second floor, is an all-weather television and metal speaker. Now, television is out there on the sidewalk. Broadcasting CNN.

Okay, some full disclosure: I was raised by television. I was one of those babies that was plopped down in his playpen in the living room and who stared at the big blue box. In fact, they didn't even need the playpen with me. Stick me in front of the idiot box, and I'd sit happily for hours. Our old black-and-white Zenith taught me to talk, read and sing.* And this was BEFORE Sesame Street.

So I love my sweet nanny very dearly. Even so, there's times when you need to get away from the old girl. I don't WANT television chasing me down the street. I don't WANT teevee in every establishment of fine dining and/or dive bar that I go into. I don't need 75 screens surrounding me in the sports pub! I don't! Not even on Game Day, okay?

In Washington, I didn't notice this so much until after 9/11. Then, suddenly every damn restaurant and bar in a 100-mile radius installed a screen tuned to some form of news channel. (God forbid we should miss a bit of BREAKING NEWS to terrify us.)

Get away, get away! I like Soledad O'Brien and all (for maybe JUST her name), but I don't want 5-foot Soledad heads screaming at me from every corner.

Today, after taking in this unpleasant little surprise, I shook my head in curmudgeonly pique and marched down the street a few doors to my lunch spot, one of those great buffet-by-the-ounce places that, since it also doubles as a caterer, often has a terrific selection of tasty treats. And there, mounted to one of the two buffet tables is the biggest honkin' flat-panel screen I've ever seen. This, mind you, in a joint that seats around 15. And it was screaming CNN. Holy crap.

Well, other people have said it, but I just thought they were cranky old farts (... WAIT a minute...) But it seems Orwell was right. Now we have screens everywhere, and it won't take much to go from us looking at them to them looking at us. And even WITHOUT the Big Brother motif, I could do without the constant yakka-yak always-on poorly-coordinated-scroll-box-from-hell ** blather coming at me in EVERY HONKING PUBLIC SPACE. I swear to God, they'll be on the subway cars next.

I look at a stinking monitor all day as part of my job. Can I just get a break here? A station break? A word from our sponsor?

* I have ingrained in my memory and can sing the theme songs for dozens of TV shows from the 1960s and 70s. Also commercials.

** You know what I'm talking about: Video from the livestock show with a scroll about some actress getting plastic surgery, video of war explosions over a scroll about the medicinal properties of cabbage, blah blah blah.

I Used to Rule the World

Since the majority of my seven readers are over 30, I feel comfortable addressing another topic in Impending Fogey-ality (Fogeiarity? Fogeytude?)...

If there's one thing my four-year stint at a small college of distinction convinced me of (however erroneously), it's that I could pretty much do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it. (It certainly wasn't grammar.) The tiny school encouraged its students to get involved in all kinds of things, no matter what your major. (With fewer than 700 students, it needed everybody it could get.)

Emboldened by this idea that I could do anything, I came out of college and took my first couple of jobs by storm. I was the go-to guy, and took on (and completed) any assignment in any discipline. I went from being a publication designer to a data base developer to a human resources manager to a purchasing and properties chief to a director of operations. Anything anybody threw at me, I hit out of the park. Granted, this wasn't in the world of Fortune 500s, but I never dropped the ball and never missed a deadline -- and had nothing but withering contempt for those who did. Ah, the arrogance of youth.

After a stint in the free-lancing wilderness, I returned to the workaday world and went from designer to office factotum in about one year flat. (This was not my intention; I wanted to be a faceless federal drone, working from 9-5:30 and getting my two coffee breaks and lunch until sweet, sweet retirement. But my best-laid plans went awry.)

When I started once again taking on all the crap that no one else wanted to do, the difference in me between my 20s to my 40s became stark and evident. Physical and mental resources fell short. I started missing deadlines. I couldn't get EVERYTHING done. Sometimes I couldn't get ANYTHING done. It began to make me crazy.

And instead of redistributing my work load (or compelling supervisors to do same), I just thrashed around not quite getting everything done. Chasing away people who wanted to help. Falling further and further behind. Becoming a first-class emmer-effer.

Now, around 2 p.m. every day, I usually hit a wall. I stare at my screen. I fiddle about. I take walks around the building. And I've learned to ... um ... stop giving so much of a shit about it. Projects big and small just pile up. When people ask me about them, I just grin and point to the stack. When a pile becomes critical, I focus on that for about a week to the exclusion of all else, and we avoid catastrophic meltdown ... then on to the next crises. But in between, I do a lot of shoulder-shrugging.

I never really wanted to become THAT guy. The guy that stops caring about his work. But two things drive all but the very strong to that point: 1) knowing that you'll NEVER get EVERYTHING done to management's satisfaction, and 2) you can't burn 500 watts every day and reenergize with beer, pizza and poker on the weekends like you could 20 years ago. So the hard-chargers of their 20s and 30s become the "Eh, I don't give a honk" guys of their 40s and 50s.

I'm not that guy. I love my work, in both jobs. But I truly understand how people can build that hard coating around their "I Care" to shield it from assault from the "too much do / not enough time." And I understand how some of the ones that don't do that, instead pump up their "I Care" soooooo soooo much that it makes them appear crazy to their coworkers. Got a lot of crazy, frazzled people at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge who care WAY WAY too much about what they do. Bless their hearts.

In the meantime, I gots to find that middle path, once again, between apathy and insanity. I'm tryin' real hard, Ringo.

The Land of Gooey Facebook

Yep, I'm there. Like many of us middle-aged fogeys, I've taken the plunge and joined the Facebook Revolution. I was wary, skeptical, somewhat dubious and highly suspect. (I still am highly suspect, but that's another post.) But there I am and here I am, six months later, with 145 friends (yow). What's the deal?

Well, let me tell you. I'm hooked. And it's not like the way I was hooked on Tetris, or Netflix, or "House," or heroin, or all those other things that jumped into my life that were kind of bad for me. I actually think Facebook is a Good Thing. Here's why.

Like so many of you, I don't keep up as well with all of the lovely people who have entered my life and done nice things for/to me. Lame Christmas cards and the annual status letter (what I didn't do this year) are just that... lame.

Now, after a few months on Facebook, I have hooked up with not only my usual crowd of associates, but a bunch of childhood, high school and college friends with whom I have not yakked in years. And in a way that really doesn't require intense discussion, face-to-face encounter, or other potentially awkward moments.

The beautiful nature of Facebook is the ability -- no, expectation -- to shoot little bitty status updates, comments on pictures, shared links, etc. No lengthy propositions. Kind of like IM, but not so immediate and with no expectation of reply. *

In this way, I'm MUCH more aware of the condition of my friends (the ones on Facebook, anyway) in a manner that really amazes me. Me, the old technology grouch.

So there you are. If you aren't now, you should get on Facebook. And don't worry, you only have to accept the friends you actually WANT to accept.

* Caveat: Facebook DOES offer a version of IM, which I find a bit annoying. I'm not on Facebook to converse, but to post and await comment, or to comment and await response. Kind of like writing on the bathroom wall. Don't get in my face with this "hello!" shit.

Fighting Grinchery

I know how much we all need the mid-winter revelry, the Christmas, the yule, the Festivus. I am the VERY FIRST to start bitching and moaning about winter, and all the grumpiness, binge-eating-drinking-sleeping and borderline personality behavior it brings out in me.

And I truly recognize that the Very Best Solution for a whole ton of grump like that is an excuse to be holly and jolly and eat and make merry and deck them halls and git and give Jolly Xmas toys for good little girls and boys. I get it, I really do.

The early fathers of the church weren't dummies, either. Christ was most likely born in March or April, I think I read once. But damnation, we need ourselves a big mid-winter blowout, so let's situate His Royal Mangertude's birthday when all those pagans are having their Saturnalia, so as to hook up with an already necessary break from the grueling depression of Middle Aged life. (I mean Middle Ages as in Medieval times, not as in how old I am now. THAT is the topic of ANOTHER post.)

That all being said, I have more than my share of Christmas Aversion Syndrome, mostly because I set my goals too high. Hand-drawrn Xmas cards (hah, NOT THIS YEAR), thoughtful gifts with heart-felt messages written in their little tags. Whole-house holiday decor. Visits with friends I haven't seen all year. Holly jolly happy merry. Not to mention taking a week off work to catch up on a million non-holiday obligations that continue to vex me.

And then suddenly, it's Dec. 24, and I haven't done a damn thing. I dash about at the last minute and am wrapping at 10 a.m. on Christmas morning. (Which I HATE. Christmas is a day when you UNwrap, not wrap. If you haven't met the deadline, you should have to wait 'til next year.)

So I stay entirely whipped up, stressed, then furious until oh, about 5 p.m. Dec. 25, when the warm glow of too much food and the third rebroadcast of "It's a Wonderful Life" kicks me around, and I find myself weeping openly over Zuzu and her honkin' petals. And by the time the Ghost of Christmas Present wraps me up in his big robe, it's nearly New Years.

I really want to be one of those guys who loves Christmas and always keeps it well. I want to be Fezziwig.

Offered Without Comment *

* but with credit.

News Has NOT Stopped Being Funny

Two items from our slushpile of occasionally-read newsfeeds...

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), bigwig mucky-muck for the majority over in that section of the Capitol, had this to say at the opening of the new, giant, underground, air-conditioned Capitol Visitors Center:

In Reid's remarks, he noted that if nothing else, the indoor facility will end the permeation of tourists' body odor, since they'll no longer need to wait outside in the muggy summer weather. "In the summer time, because of the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol," Reid said. "Well, that's no longer going to be necessary."

Dat one CLASSY guy, yep.

In perfectly dreadful news from the fast-dwindling Other Side of the Aisle comes this little morsel of hell:

Hank Williams Jr. for Senate?

It was reported recently that country music singer Hank Williams Jr. plans to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee in 2012 -- the next time a Senate seat is up in the state. An intriguing notion to say the least, but no announcement has been made yet, according to Williams's publicist.

Well, I guess if they let Fred Thompson and Bob Byrd in, they'll take ANYONE.

Just Saying

Not bragging or anything, but --

This week... no, YESTERDAY, in fact, Boy Genius here established a $50,000 charitable endowment for a local park AND signed the paperwork for a $1.55 million municipal bond issue to upgrade and improve a public water supply.

So YES, I deserve the rest of the week off. And I want to hibernate, thanks. Seeya.

ALL WHO OPPOSE ME MUST DIE

Once again, it's the onset of winter that's putting me into this foul mood, I'm certain. While things in my various work lives and personal lives are, of course, busier than ever, it's surely nothing terribly new.

THEY SHALL LEARN THE FOLLY OF THEIR WAYS, AND I SHALL DESTROY THEIR PATHETIC CIVILIZATIONS

I think it's probably the coming holidays that really get me spinning. I realize that they are supposed to be the time of cheer and festivity, but (like everything else in my life) the things that I want to do ends up far outweighing the things that I'm able to do. It's a challenge to just create a simple Christmas card.

And I find that I'm getting much more easily irritated with the people and situations that I encounter both here at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge and back in the homeland. Fortunately, this isn't extending to the people I actually love. It's more like... the people who are normally just day-to-day nuisances ... well, I want to KILL them.

THEIR HAPPINESS IS FORFEIT, THEIR SPIRITS ANNIHILATED, THEIR SAD DREAMS CRUSHED UNDER BRUTAL HEEL

I want to raise armies, identify enemies of the state, point fingers, and take action. I want to snatch people on the way to work and have them vanish forever. This is NOT acceptable behavior or even appropriate thought. But I can't help it. Something about this time of year makes me really understand how all those crazy dictator types got the idea.

One day, apropos of nothing, you can just have it UP TO HERE with all of these useless, whining, complaining, lazy, stupid, mean, aggravating knuckleheads that are put into our path to make us stronger people.

THE SEAS WILL RUN RED WITH THEIR BLOOD, THEIR HOMES SHALL BE LEVELED AND THEIR LAND SHALL BE SALTED

And I'm just saying... there are days that I just don't WANT to be a stronger person. Days that I just want to lay waste to Greater Ninnydom. If only they all lived in one country, or state, or neighborhood.

I know I know I know this is NOT civilized thinking. And I have yet to mobilize and wage war and annex the Sudetenland. So don't worry. But aren't there days when you know that with the right hatchet in the right hand and the right word from the wrong person, you just might be an ax murderer?

'America's Crazy Stalker Ex-Girlfriend'

She continues to buzz around our lives, much like pre-post-during-meltdown Britney and in-out-of-jail Paris.

Go away! We really meant it when we said we didn't want to see you anymore! No matter what anyone else says!

UPDATE: Oh jeez. Really. I'm serious now. Go away! We're going to have to get a restraining order, I swear.

My Work

I have a job. I go to a big building almost every day. I sit in a cube when I'm not in meetings. Besides lunch, here's what I do, with a time percentage breakdown:

• 50% Wiping Dirty Bottoms. This entails serving my boss, my boss's bosses, my coworkers, other assorted types and the masses at large. Giving answers to people who are paid to know the answers to the questions they ask me. Repeating myself when they don't understand simple directives in plain English. Following up with an email to make sure all is understood (and to avoid ugly finger-pointing later.) Answering phone calls. Answering LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of emails. Doing things for people that they know how to do, aka enabling the lazy. Squirting grease into the gears when those gears have locked up. Unwillingly managing projects that are not my own. Picking up heavy things. Taking inventories. Making schedules. Hiding from annoying, time-sucking cube remoras. Cleaning up messes. (Lots and LOTS of that. Lots. And lots.)
  
  
• 25% Knocking Heads Together. I sit in meetings and try to compel people to do the simple or the right thing (not always the same). Or I try to stay out of their way. (I'm large.) Try to stay awake. No playing with the Blackberry!
  
  
• 10% Goofing Off. Okay, I'm exaggerating. It's probably WAY more time than 10%.
  
  
• 10% The Job That I Was Originally Hired For. No need to go into THAT.
  
  
• 5% Serious Brain Work. This is the tough stuff, mainly because 1) you really need quiet reflection time to do this kind of junk and 2) I really don't have that serious of a brain. Strangely, it's what I should be spending about 40% of my time doing, based on the current pile of priorities in my lap. Even more strangely, I'd like to reduce my amount of this to 2%. (And it's what I should be doing right now, actually.)

I want to stress that I'm no genius, I don't have all the answers, and I'm not even particularly that good at what I was Originally Hired For (which is why I want to spend MORE time on it). I just got sucked into this "he'll do it, it'll get done" vortex. And suddenly, people think I'm Mr. Wolf or something. (I wish. Julia Sweeney was HOT in that movie, and he got to walk off with her.)

No. No no no. I want to retool my percentages in the above categories to 10, 15, 73 and 2, respectively. I know, good luck with THAT.

A Little Bit of Wonking

I've been pretty quiet, but not for lack of things to think about and yap about. Just been too serious lately. But I just had to get one more bit of seriousness off my chest. I really liked what James K. Galbraith had to say in the first couple of paragraphs of his short essay in the latest issue of Harper's, so I share. I share, because I love:

The problem is not how to save capitalism but how to save the unique and successful mixed economy built in the United States over the eighty-five years since the New Deal. Our system is not capitalism. Our economy has a large public sector, which at its best was competently concerned with research, defense, financial stability, environmental safety, social security, and large measures of education, health care, and housing. Today, after thirty years of attack on government, all these functions are damaged and in peril.

The rot comes from predators posing as conservatives and mouthing the rhetoric of "free markets." They are not actually interested in free markets. Their goal is to use the government to build monopolies, to control resources, to block regulation, to crush unions, to divert as much as possible from taxpayers into private pockets. They have a reckless attitude toward war-making and they put the financial system in peril by failing to enforce standards of ethics and transparency. As a result, they imperil the country's credit in the world. True conservatives recognize this, which is why they defected from Bush and McCain long ago.

Our postwar system was built on technological leadership, financial stability, and collective security. The world gave us credit and used our currency. Why? Because we gave it back [in the form of] the public goods of peace and economic progress. We were the bulwark during the Cold War. Our system wasn't imperial: we spoke instead of community, of freedom, of common purposes and common values, and the world took us seriously because we had paid our dues.

He goes on to suggest our next successful model, but the point that screams out to me is the mantle of conservatism that our modern robber barons cloak themselves in, and how they've baboozled a lot of good people by just repeating "cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes" over and over.

End of quoted rant.

Oh What a Workplace

Back at the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge, I'm trying to better my pear-shaped, er, shape by taking the steps when I can. (Sure, we only have eight floors, but they're TALL floors.) And on those bigass concrete gummamint-building stairwells, I have found a rich subculture.

Regular readers know that many, many of the people who work here at the Glorious Temple are, well, crazy. So I should not be surprised. But today, just in the context of walking down ONE flight of stairs, I encountered:

• A woman who was just standing on a landing, waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. For a friend? For a secret meeting? For a bus?
  
  
• From Very High Above (I was on the first floor, this sounded like at least from the fifth), a female voice deep in conversation, noting, in a Very Loud Voice: "What do you think I told him? No! No sir! No how! No WAY!"
  
  
• And finally, a jolly soul in checkered shirt and Bill Gatesian haircut, merrily walking -- no, PRANCING down three flights (zipping from behind me and leaving me in the dust) and finally, delightedly and delightfully, shouting "48 STEPS!" as he reached the door to the next floor.

Is it any wonder that I love this place?

N.B. While today's illustration is a nice one on the subject of crazy, it is actually a shout out to my buddy, Nootsmaak, who is fast becoming a cheerfully crazy Canadian cat lady.

Inadvertent Workplace Comedy

Well, we come at last to brain-boggling "found" humor in the workplace. Selected software names redacted to protect the clueless. I've left the capitalization intact.

Every [Inertiaware] User must follow [Tech Office] Directive 02, Password Directive:

1 - Every USER WITH an account ON an [Agency] SYSTEM IS responsible FOR safeguarding ACCESS TO that account.

2 - A PASSWORD must NEVER ever be SHARED WITH anyone, INCLUDING the [Tech Office] hotline. [Tech Office] hotline may give you A TEMPORARY PASSWORD which you must CHANGE. DO NOT tell the [Tech Office] hotline what your PERMANENT PASSWORD IS.

3 - Supervisors must NOT request OR KEEP LISTS OF passwords used BY subordinates.

4 - GROUP passwords (i.e., SHARED accounts WHERE ALL GROUP members USE the same account AND passwords) must NEVER be utilized.

5 - An account owner should NOT CHANGE PASSWORD more THAN once A DAY. [Inertiaware] will NOT let you USE A PASSWORD that you have used IN the past 11 times. Also, 660 days must have expired BEFORE reusing A PASSWORD IN [Inertiaware].

6 - An account owner must CHANGE his OR her PASSWORD WHEN prompted BY the SYSTEM.

7 - Minimum PASSWORD LENGTH must be 8 characters AND consist OF AT LEAST 2 alpha characters, 1 NUMBER AND 1 special CHARACTER. Maximum password length is 12 characters.

8 - A PASSWORD must have no consecutive repeated characters.

9 - A PASSWORD must NOT include your USER name OR ANY part thereof.

10 - A PASSWORD must NOT include the names OF A spouse, children, pets OR one's OWN name.

11 - A PASSWORD must NOT include ANY regional sports teams OR players.

12 - A PASSWORD must NOT include ANY office symbols.

13 - A PASSWORD must NOT include your social security NUMBER OR ANY subset OF your social security NUMBER that IS more THAN A single NUMBER.

14 - A PASSWORD must NOT include words that can be FOUND IN ANY DICTIONARY, whether English OR ANY LANGUAGE.

Remember TO LOG OFF [Inertiaware] WHEN you have TO leave your workstation.

So, children, to sum up:

1. The first rule of FIGHT CLUB is there is NO FIGHT CLUB.
2. Everything not FORBIDDEN is COMPULSORY.
3. Two legs BAD, four legs GOOD.

'Yummy Goodness'

It's corny, but some days my boss is My Hero.

Here we are, working at the Supreme Temple of All Knowledge, lodged in the very maw of the hellmouth, Ground Zero, the slowly-rotating nexus of all gray bureaucracy. Cheer stifling, soul crushing, "get-back-to-work-YOU" mentality, brain numbing Federal employment.

Well, he's sort of fun. And he writes our company blog. MOST of the time, he puts a lid on his zany, toeing the corporate line, talking all respectful like, being hayve.

Today I think he was a little giddy. He actually referred to some our collections as "yummy goodness."

I know it's a fairly common phrase these days, but I still giggled uncontrollably. I figured he's either dragged our august institution into the Grand Social (Networking) Experiment at last, or he's jumped his own personal shark.

Hating the Vague Naked Dream

Okay, we've all had them. Those dreams in which you find yourself naked. They fall, generally, into two camps:

1) Sex dreams (hardly ever, sigh); and

2) Dreams where you're late for the senior high school Calculus exam after missing class for three weeks and not understanding a damn thing about the subject anymore, and when you finally DO sit down to take the test a half-hour into the final, you not only have forgotten your pencil, but left the house without a stitch of clothes.

A good analyst would probably tell me that I had me some math and/or high-school anxiety issues that were playing themselves out. Actually, I'm mostly amused when this dream pops into the old brain DVD, which it does at least once every couple of years.

But this morning, as I was walking to work,* I got one of those "flashes," a brief, vague remembrance of a dream I had last night. It was a naked dream. I know it wasn't the calculus dream (and certain it had nothing to do with sex, dammit), but I had some disquieting memory of standing someplace without clothes.

Dammit, I hate not being able to remember when and why I was naked.** Don't you? I wonder if nudists have embarrassing clothed dreams?

* Yes, 3/4 of all Rooty posts have their genesis during the pedestrian portion of my commute.

** Apologies to those with ultra-vivid imaginations for grinding the visual concept of "Rooty Naked" indelibly into your brains. Hadn't really thought of that until now. Urrgh.

R.I.P, Killer

Another great from the pantheon of childhood icons passes: Walter "Killer" Kowalski, meat-and-potatoes bad-guy wrestler extraordinaire. He was right up there with Haystacks Calhoon, Jumpin' Johnny Defazio, and a dozen or so other greats from when rasslin' was local and most of the antics were reserved for inside the ring instead of outside.

I love this quote from the NY Times obituary, part of the longer story about how he got his name:

"I was leaping off the rope, and Yukon Eric, who had a cauliflower ear, moved at the last second," Mr. Kowalski told the Chicago Tribune in 1989. "I thought I missed, but all of a sudden, something went rolling across the ring. It was his ear."

Emphasis mine. Now THAT was WRESTLING.

Dangerous Landscapers

Coming in to work, saw a flashing road sign indicating some upcoming roadside gardening. Brain saw:

INVASIVE
TREE WORK
AHEAD

WATCH FOR
MONKEYS

Of course, it really said "Watch for Workers." But then I envisioned either machinery that would grab the trees and shake them hard, causing the little chimps to fall out of the trees, landing on car roofs...

OR (even better), a chittering band of happy apes, armed with trimmers, clippers and chain saws, hard at work and chopping up everything in their path. A little uneven, to be sure -- but with the crackdown on illegal immigrant labor, they're available and cheap.

Big and Small

Okay, I know I've gone on about this before. But I'm a big guy. I'm not sure where it came from: my mom and dad were shrimps, and two older sisters also on the runty side. My older brother and I are both 6-foot-plus. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he and I were both born just downriver after the first nuclear power station in America was opened.

Anyway THAT, plus my prodigious appetites have resulted in my cutting a rather imposing physical figure in the workaday world. I'm no ginormasaur or anything, but I ain't little, and I bonk my shoulders and knees on doorframes and hard furniture that extends too far out from the wall, that kind of thing. So I tend to watch where I am and where I'm going...

...UNLIKE the teeny-tiny-tinkertots out there, the sawed-off shorties, the wee folk who dart and spin and whoosh around my lumbering hulk like gnats buzzing the sleeping hound dog. I'm not talking children here, but the altitudinally-challenged adults I encounter in my commute, on sidewalks, in public thoroughfares everywhere. Whether they move fast or slow, for some reason, they're not seeing me lately. Until it's too late.

Now I have a disadvantage here. I'm five heads taller than most of 'em. I can't SEE down there they are. Hell, I can't even see my feet most days. So when these elfs scamper alongside me, I usually do my best to avoid them. But lately, they're all throwing themselves in my way, expecting the me to spin, dodge, and not crush them like bugs! And while I'm a graceful man, I'm starting to lose my best moves.

WTF is up with these people? Can't they see that the honkin' Death Star is bearing down on them? I mean, I'm no linebacker or anything, but any FOOL can see that in a collision between the Battleship Potemkin and a leaky dingy, the dingy ain't going to fare so well? If I don't simply bowl them over and plow them into pulp outright, the best they can hope for is to be pulled into my gravitational field, after which their utter destruction is still ensured, but only after a long, painful spiral into my soul-crushing troposphere.

As you can see, I have a very Walter-Mittyesque inner life as I walk amongst the other humans. But seriously: I'm not asking anyone to clear a path when I come through. Isn't it just common courtesy to NOT push directly into the path of someone else as you're walking? And isn't it just common survival instincts to NOT walk out in front of a bus that's moving? I think I fit somewhere in between those two extremes.

I can't help it. Tiny, rude people make me cranky. And people who use their lack-of-size as an advantage to tangle up my brobdingnagian legs make me really, really cranky. It's a wonder that Andre the Giant wasn't a raging angerholic, smashing all within his path.

Long Year, 2008

I've never intended this little platform to be a diary of inner thoughts, etc., as much as I've wanted it to be a little writerly playground for me to spin tales and make wry observations for the general entertainment of a tiny, tiny circle of bored readers. However, I'd feel odd not mentioning the two things this year that have kind of taken some of the wind from my sails and kept me from being a regular blogger.

In February, a wonderful working colleague who was becoming an even more wonderful friend died quite suddenly and unexpectedly. And last week, my mother -- who had been ailing for the better part of the last ten years -- also took a sudden turn and passed away. It's been more than a little rough dealing with each, separately ... and now together as a kind of pallor for the entire year.

On the one hand, I wanted to have had the chance to get to know Ed so much better before we lost him -- we had just hired him, I was tasked as his mentor, and he was real joy to be around. He was escaping from a terrible job and monster boss to come work with us, and not a day passed without him telling us all how happy he was with us. He was five years older than me ... and one day complained of the flu, went into the hospital, and died.

My mother, on the other hand, has been infirm for the past decade, but still sharp and funny and full of love. The chances I missed with her were the times I didn't go up to visit, the kindnesses I didn't get to do for her, the opportunties I didn't tell her how much I loved her. She was 82 and truly ready to go, but I should have been there for her more.

So now, with Mom's funeral last week and a few days of focussed grieving, I need to put the life back into some kind of gear, but the transmission is slipping. I don't want to sit around alone and mope, but I don't want to go back to work either -- although I know the act of work will help me process and cope with all this better. Nor do I really feel like spending time with friends, family or other loved ones: It's hard for me to listen to the kind words of people and friends when I really don't know how to respond. "Thanks," is just about all I can muster. Even simple socialization seems more than I want to deal with.

I know death is part of the great big circle, and that I need to work harder to understand and appreciate people better before they go. And I know that having regrets and feeling grief are natural and important and prove that I actually do still have a soul. So there's that, I suppose.

Still.

Má Vlast

Boys and girls, West Virginia Day is coming fast. Tomorrow, in fact. And since I don't hardly every post daily, I figured I'd better say my piece about my fatherland today.

What a place of glory and misery. Highs and lows. Methamphetamine and Oxycontin.

We are a place of rare, amazing beauty. But that beauty seems to attract some real nutjobs. And what we don't bring in, we find homegrown.

When we're in the national news, it always seems to be ... well, in the "goofy news" section. You know. Billionaire lottery winner gets robbed in strip joint. Girl aged 12 stung by scorpion while shopping at Wal-Mart. (We have a LOT of those -- Wal-Marts, not scorpions.) That kind of stuff.

We have our own celebrities. Don Knotts. Bob Denver. Jessco White.

We have our history. Or didn't you know that the government bombed its own citizens (well, West Virginians, anyways) from the air in 1921, in support of mine owners against striking coal miners?

Hell, most people don't even know that we're an actual state. ("So where in western Virginia are you from?")

And oh, the jokes. We won't go into all of them. Let's just suffice with this actual law from a West Virginia municipality: "It is legal for a male to have sex with an animal as long as it does not exceed 40 lbs."

But what can I say? Although born across the river in Ohio, I've spent the majority of my days as a resident of the state that is actually shaped in the form of flipping the bird. It is a placed filled with cruel joys, terrible beauty, fiercely kind people, and astonishingly untapped potential. There are days I hate the place and days that I love the place -- and always will.

So happy 145th birthday, old sod. (We know you're a LOT older than that, but 1863 is just when we started counting, official-like.) I'll be back up again this weekend. Take a weekend off breaking my heart, will you?

The Devil's Work

Having a cheerful week, more than a little because of my recent download of Season One of "Lucy, Daughter of the Devil." I'm watching a couple episodes every morning on the commute, and it makes my whole day better.

The show is an acquired taste, and best described as a relationship sitcom among Satan, his goth-chick art-school-grad daughter, DJ Jesús (messiah/escape artist/house music spinner), and trio of Vatican demonbusters (two priests and one nun-assassin). Best of all, the animation style is that of children's Weeble toys come to life. Yay!

Strangely, my favorite episode so far was... well, let me just quote the Wikipedia episode synopsis: "After the Devil has a teratoma removed, he names it Terry and befriends it. He then begins to question their relationship when it starts taking over his job and getting romantically entangled with Becky." Oh ha ha ha ha ha!

Random Notes from the Field

1) After being away from the Glorious Temple of All Knowledge for a week and a half while I did my community service as Howard Sprague, I really dreaded coming in today. So much so, that I compared to the other worst first day of my life, that of 7th Grade. Ugh.

Oddly, after I got here and spent my first hour, that horrible dread lifted and was replaced by the six-inch thick comforter of malaise that lets me look at everything in the work environment with that necessary "what-me-worry" attitude that keeps me from going insane.

I mean, I speak quite glibly of it. But I truly feel entirely lifted from the anxiety I had yesterday and this morning about coming in. And no, "it's just not as bad as you thought it was going to be" doesn't explain it. I think my brain has developed a defense mechanism, a kind of morphine-substitute that it releases when I enter this place -- or, more specifically, when I encounter senior management and/or particularly rabid co-workers.

2) Loud Bald Fat Man on the Metro
A Commuter Poem

Loud bald fat man on the Metro:
You do not belong here!

This is a train for quiet commuters.
Can't you tell?
A car filled with people
And your voice bounces off the plexiglass.
Why do you yell at your seatmate?
Who, sadly and obviously, works with you?
Why do you bellow at the details of your worklife?
He is more soft spoken,
but you can hear him just fine.
I know he can hear you.
I can hear you.
I sit four rows away.

I don't care about the Phipps Project.
The other people in the subway don't care about
the mean client project manager
who dissed you in yesterday's all-hands meeting.
We don't care, but we're forced to know.

Why do you shave your fat head bald?
It is NOT a good look for you.
You cannot be more than 35 years old.
You are not Michael Chiklis.
But your neck is nearly purple and
there are veins standing out on your pudgy skull.

You scream at your boss through your cell
that you are going to be 15 minutes late for work.
Lucky, lucky boss.

3) Today I'm in avoidance mode. I avoid most of my co-workers. I avoid my boss. These are the people here that I LIKE. I have shluffed off two meetings. I am SERIOUSLY avoiding senior management, for whom I have become a bit of a "flavor-of-the-month," a go-to guy, someone who knows where things are and who can do them. Ugh.

I want to scorch through my email, clean off my desk, and go the frag home. And sleep. This be fine sleepin' weather, by gum.

Banjo Morning

I obviously need massive jolts of negative reality to get me back into my snarky blogging ways.

This morning, at the end of my soul-devouring commute, I arose via the escalator from the Stygian depths of the Washington Metro towards the bright, bland grayness that is my government job, only to hear ... well... the sounds that VERY FEW people want to hear at 7:15 a.m.:

The tentative plucking of an amateur banjo player.

I had half-a-flight of escalator left when I realized that some sorry-ass sad-sack street musician had actually GOTTEN UP BEFORE 5 a.m. to man his post at the Metro station exit to face what must have been an army of first-surprised, then-horrified, then-angry pre-caffinated commuters.

I think I saw it in his face. Banjo pickers are supposed to be a happy lot. But this one had a still, cheerless expression ... as if he was sent by Lord Hades himself to stand guard at the Hell Mouth and lash us all a little on the way to our daily toil, unhappy in his own role but unable to do anything about it.

It's a good thing too. I think if I had seen a big, cheese-eating grin on the sorry fugger's face, I would have pulled a Belushi on him.