The Horrible Day, Week 4: Cause and Effect with The Vixen

The Vixen.

Usually all people are the same; they want something, and once you identify what they want, everything falls into line. For example, I want to get my job done. Once you realize this about me, all of my intentions will fall into line, and you'll know just what to do. Yet, most people- especially The Vixen- have failed to grasp this concept, and they've surely failed to apply it to me.

It all began when I was out sick for a week.

The star new employee, the Beloved One, the Great No-Breaker, Kev, was out sick for an entire week. I work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, because that's the only time we provide food. It went like this: 4 hours sleep on Tuesday, 6 hours on Wednesday (11-hour day), 3 hours on Thursday. This is normal sleep patterning, but on Thursday I forgot to eat breakfast, and then I was so busy I wasn't able to eat lunch. All of that wearing and tearing produced a very sick Kev the following week, and I was still a bit weak this week.

I was fulfilling my duty on Tuesday morning when the boss, Jen, came in and gave me an direct order. She said, "Kev, I know what's been going around, and I know that you can relapse easier than a knob twisted off of a pickle, so I need you to take breaks throughout the day."

"But...I don't...I don't take breaks," I pleaded. "I know you don't. Now make due!" she said. "But how?" "Just go out there, sit down and talk for a few minutes until you feel you've broken! Now, get to it!" I cast down my countenance. "Yes, ma'am."



The work I'm doing is learn-as-you-go,-by-the-way-improve-and-update-and-cater-the-system-to-your-specifications-as-you-learn-it-even-though-you-don't-all-of-the-intricacies work. Not the kind of work you get done when you have to take breaks throughout the day.

A few hours later, I was in my office formulating a menu. I was facing a hard deadline, and I had to excel in it or else I'd be bogged. I don't like the sound of bogging, neither do I know what it is, so I determined to excel, despite having to break.

Like clockwork, here came The Vixen. "Knock-knock!" she said, all perky like an idiot. "Oh, hi," I said, and tried to look really busy. She actually makes me feel physically sick. In a bad way.

"So how are you feeling?" she said. I looked up. "Just great, just a lot of work to do." Pause. "You were out for three days, you must have been really sick! How are you doing?"

"Yeah," I said, "doing fine, strong as a sailor, not as drunk, how are you." She grabbed the dry-erase eraser and began erasing my dry-erase board. I stared in horror. Zofia-1, Tanya-2, Eva-3, Umagon-4, CABAL-5, Kane-6, all erased! If I hadn't of memorized them and kept a separate copy, how on earth would I have remembered them?!

I tried not to let my frustration show. I am a professional; I don't get mad, I don't get sad, I don't get happy. I don't do inhibitions. I do my job. Vixen does not get this. She started drawing a picture of Hawaii, telling me how she wants to go there, how she wants to see Italy someday. Italy? Come on! That's like saying you want to see New York's sewage system someday. Not that there's anything wrong with New York's sewage system.

There are 8 colors of dry-erase markers in my office, and she can actually draw pretty well. It looked awesome, and my heart was about to grow three sizes that day...when she sat down.


If there's one thing that makes me angry, it's when somebody sits down in my office to waste my time. If you are going to waste my time, waste your body's precious energy reserves to do it, damn it.

I interrupted her mid-doesn't like her cousins-sentence. "Charlotte," I said, "could you do me a, uh, a favor?" She looked wide-eyed, but nodded. I nodded. "Could you, ah..." I struggled for the words. "Could you shut the hell up, get the hell out of my office, and let me get some work done, for once?"

I regretted the words before I said them. After a moment of trying to contain herself (I hate that look, I really, really hate it, it kills me), she teared up, stood and walked off. Based on how fast she walked, and that she didn't retort, and that she hid her face, and that she was headed to her office, I'd say that she was probably tearing up pretty badly, likely crying.



I didn't get any work done the rest of the day.

The Horrible Day, Week 3: Meet The Vixen

The Vixen.

What can be said?


The Vixen's...um...not unattractive, let's say; and that's probably her biggest strength, so I'll put that first. She's the brown haired type who wears bell-bottoms a lot. It's hard to tell what else because it's winter, and winter's the time for overshirts, jackets, and ever stylish dress-sweaters. That's something I really envy about women...their wearing of dress-sweaters. When men wear them, they just turn out looking like Mr. Rogers.


Mr. Rogers.



One thing she does is walk really, really slowly, and you have to walk past her, and once you do, she matches your speed. Very unnerving. Then she starts talking. From there, she either follows you, or goes into the room you are heading for and slams the door in your face.

Then, when you open the door, she's standing right in your way and says, "Excuse me," very impatiently, and you have to let her past. And on her way out, she shuts the door. And usually locks it.

I'm the only one I know of that's been able to counteract her...or maybe I'm the only one who cares to. Regardless, I can count at least three times that I've left her on the other side of the door waiting for me to open it; meanwhile, I'm heading in the opposite direction. The Vixen is willing to go out of her way to do stuff like slam doors in your face; and I'm willing to go out of my way to foil her. Normally I would do this out of kindhearted crafty cunning, but she really isn't my favorite person, so there's a good bit of spite in it.


I don't know what her job is, but I don't think it calls for a lot of integrity, skill, work ethic, or morals. Not that any of those are bad in themselves, but usually are bad when (the lack of them is) combined. One point is that I don't think she's a whore, and I don't think she's a harlot. But I don't not think that, either, and this is one of her traits...she's extremely hard to get a read on.


The Vixen. She's about as useful as a box of rocks.

Best to avoid her.


Note: this post was supposed to be posted last week, but I didn't hit 'publish.'

How To Tell You've Been Sick Longer Than You'd Like

Forgive errors, as I'm typing without my glasses on my mom's weirded-out keyboard. Yes, here are some signs to tell that you've...uhh long word, you know what I mean. Some points could be present during short sicknesses, as each case is different, but these are guaranteed if you've been sick for longer than...you know.

1. You seek comfort, and comfort flees from you. You can't sleep without exacerbating something (i.e. horrendous, Cough Level 5), your eyes hurt so it's hard to read, you can't concentrate for long periods of time, and you can't seem to handle cold items long enough to form yourself a glass of ice water that you've been craving for the last five hours. TV is not an option because it rots your brain, and the radio would just make you an upset wreck. Long car rides are out of the question as "no one wants to hang out with the Level 5 Cougher." Usually only your favored activity will remain to comfort you. I don't understand this mercy, kind of out of place.
   
2. You're grateful to smell the worst smells. "Ah, I never thought I'd be glad to smell the cat box! At least I can smell something!"
   
3. You can't eat anything. If you liked apples before, it's a surety that all the apples in your state will be bitter. Not sour, as grannysmith, but bitter. Kind of like...eating grapefruit peel. If you liked kiwis, every store miraculously has their kiwis either purchased by some kiwi-baron-tycoon (what else is Bush gonna do now but stockpile kiwis?), or burned to the ground by pranksters. Then you'll find out that you can't have fruit (surely not peaches), and the only vegetables that you can have are onions and Tabasco. You had no idea Tabasco was an(sic) vegetable, but the Sick gods thus judge it, and you make due with onion-for-bread and Tabasco-for-meat sandwiches. For weeks. It's better than Tabasco-onion soup, and much better than Frosty Onion Smoothies. (Onions blended = taste nasty!)
4. You cough so much and so hard that you come to recognize, quite alarmingly, the existence of 'false ribs'. The aunt's-friend-who-used-to-be-a-nurse-well-I-think-so-but-at-least-I-know-she-knows-alot-oh-maybe-it-was-a-veterinary-nurse-I-can't-remember-not-important-to-know-let's-see-what-she-says tells you via your aunt that it's nothing to worry about, and they'll reconnect on their own eventually.
5. You learn to bend physics, a la The Matrix. Actually, not so a la The Matrix. The only physics-bending you'll be doing is tossing kleenex into a closed garbage can. Quite a feat, it's just kind of like being able to instantly, telekinetically cause your car to break down; not very popular with people, not something you're proud of. They get all hung up on the "Eww, why are you throwing that nasty, used kleenex near me?!" part. They don't care at all that you made a kleenex go through a closed garbage receptacle without harming the can. Ingrates.
6. Everyone else suddenly seems happy, perhaps because of your sickness. Thus you get strong desire to read Job chapter 3. Then you get paranoid.

Then you start plottin'.


Plottin......

.........

Circuit City Goes Poof

Yeah, so I was chillin', right, like always, right?

Then I went to Circuit City's website. It appears that they are going out of business. I really have to stop stumbling on things such as these; they really interrupt my chillin' time. But since I'm here, I guess I should say something lovey-dovey, nostalgic, and witty about Circuit City. Here goes.


Lovey-dovey. Circuit City? Yeah, definitely my favorite place to shop. You know how Target has that...uh, target, and it makes women shop there because women are inexplicably attracted to targets? I'm not sure if that's true; that's just what my dad says. He says a lot of things, if you hadn't guessed. Anyways, yes, their hackneyed logo really plucks the strings of my heart. I'll totally miss it.

Nostalgic. Wow, I remember buying so many neat things from Circuit City. Things that make your bake shake. I mean...your...shake bake. Yeah. It bakes y...the stuff Circuit City sold, bakes your shakes in the oven. My laptop, my awesome headphones that make me feel like RoboCop and Geordi La Forge with a broken neck at the same time...and my most memorable purchase, my loved voice recorder, the Olympus WS-311M. It also bakes my shakes in the oven. Then it goes au gratin on 'em.

Witty. Oh, wait, now that I think about it, I actually bought all of that stuff from Best Buy, their largest and direct competitor! Oh, silly me, I completely forgot!


Wow. My bad.

Frustration: Sins of a Solar Empire

Here's something I'm ashamed to admit. It makes me feel like an absolute wretch.

It's actually hard to say. It says something about me that I certainly don't want to be said. And I don't want to see it, in written form, in front of me. It's much easier to ignore it...but some things have to be said. For the sake of posterity.

I can't play Sins of a Solar Empire.

...


I feel so humiliated.



Yep. And I really, really like Sins of a Solar Empire. Breaks my heart that I can't play it. As far as I can tell it is not a hardware-derived issue; it freezes the heck out of my laptop during the later stages of games, yes, but at that point, the computer is so far ahead of me that even if I wasn't freezing I would still lose miserably.

Kev sad.

Kev humiliated.

Kev go back to cave and start fire, keep warm, hit woolly mammoth over head with club tomorrow. Then Kev invite over man-friends, and Kev start town call Kevtopia. Then Kev and man-friends go hit two woolly mammoth over head and start butcher shop to buy mammoth brains from when Kev sick and no feel like hitting woolly mammoths over head. Kev pay for mammoth brains on Wednesday if Kev can have mammoth brains on Tuesday. Kev need till Wednesday to invent currency.

The Horrible Day, Week 2: Bing Loo, Kim Soo, and 250 Candy Bars

Week #2. I'll try to keep this post light.

OK, first off, I had to go to the store. For the weekly shopping. I was almost out the door when I got a piece of paper and an order: "BUY OR DIE."

Not being one to purposely take my life into my own hands, I bought. Two boxes- 48 candybar-size bags- plain M&Ms. Two more boxes of peanut M&Ms. A box of Milkyway bars, 36 count, and a box of 3 Musketeers, 36 count. For the diabetics. I'm told they'll die without them. And I also got a hundred bags beloved. Those bags make my heart sing.

We got in 30- read 'em, 30- gallons of milk. I told Mrs. Merry, the official unofficial subordinate dictator-in-chief of kitchen affairs (I don't know either, except that she tells me what to do) that I never want to see milk again. She laughed. And then she brought out more milk.

Then she got to talking about how you can make a shake out of bananas and milk. I thought, "Wow, that sounds like the greatest thing since...since...since...ACHOO!" Whoop, sorry. I didn't really sneeze, I just lost my train of thought as I was typing and thought I sneezed, mentally. I only got 4 hours of sleep today with no coffee, and I was so busy I didn't eat lunch...so bear with me. Irony: I make and serve lunch, and I'm the one who's too busy to eat.


They've given me the title of Hoss. I told them, "Yeah, the only difference is, I don't fight like Hoss does. I go straight for the kill; and I'll shoot a man in the back if my fingers get a-itchin'." A-itchin' is the hardest word to pronounce when you're putting on a cowboy accent out of nowhere; it's a cross between uh-itshin and uh-itshun. Try it.


I haven't mentioned Kim Soo and Bing Loo, so here goes...I think they're married. I think. I hope. They're about the most standard Asian couple you could ever imagine except for...a few things.

From my vantage point- bear in mind they never speak to me in English- the case seems to be that they watch a lot of anime. A whole lot. And then they reenact these animes at work. Very, very dramatically. I swear, they're a pair of vocal...oh, I lost my nerve. I'll do it in the next post, I promise, Debbie.

Anyway, they do pretty good. They say something real loud (like they're watching someone go away), one will cry, plenty of weeeird shouts or screams, and the like. You know, anime. They do me the service of scaring the daylights out of me every few days by doing strange things...something about them puts me on edge. Maybe it's that I have no idea what their real names are, and though I call them Bing and Kim Loo-Soo, they haven't corrected me.

They do tend to make an entertaining lunch session. For example, Kim will start crying unexpectedly, and everyone is like, "Oh great here it goes," then they'll assume what I think is some scene about a dating couple where the girl wants to leave the guy, or feels that the guy doesn't love her, or something. Then Bing will get all dramatic. Once, she ran out of the place sobbing. It was quite hilarious.

And that's Bing and Kim. Bottom line: They freak me out.



I also set off the alarm. WHEWHEHWWHEHWHEWHEHW it went. I thought, "Wow, imagine what it'd be like to be cornered in a building- in possession of more than 250 candybars- by the police."

The Crazy Candybar Caper. Read all about it.

Somebody's Daughter: A Path out of Porn

Welcome the 'tas2' tag.


So there I was, chillin'. You know me.

Then I saw the advertisement! It pulled on my heartstrings; the way it made itself look like an ax-murder flick (not that I like ax-murder flicks, but the advertisements are killer-neat), the way it offered me a view into modern-day Christian self-help on a very serious topic...I couldn't resist. It drew me into its world and there, captured my attention.

After four minutes of the same five, indiscernible words being sung fifty times to really bad contemporary christian music, I knew exactly what it was- a case of MDD. Music-driven-drivel.


"Blah blah blah I used to be a pastor, blah blah internet has made pornography available to everyone anonymously, blah blah blah blah."

Every episode (three of them, about twenty minutes each) introduced an agonizingly long, painstaking bit of music- and the last one had a grand finale of three words sang two hundred times. Two hundred times in rap = two minutes. Two hundred times in country = six minutes. Two hundred times "with feeling"? Man, oh man, that song never ended.

The not-so-bullet-pointed point of the movie was that some poor fool who is an pornographer is someone's daughter. This point, as far as I can tell, was only expressed in one song (and not the grand finale)...it seems more like a preview for an actual movie, yet they want to send this to every church in America. And they want me to pay for this.


\
Perhaps my negative feelings on this whole failed attempt at producing Christian self-help is based on what my mind came up with when I read the title.


Somebody's Daughter. (Lightning flashes over title. Dramatic music.)

A man, caught in the trenches of pornography addiction. No one knows. His daughter is at college. One day, he comes across pornographic images of her. Now he has a conundrum; he has to tell his wife about it, but then she'll know how he found it. A story of telling the truth, them having to deal with two disasters at once (and he gets his trust betrayed in a major way as well- and the parents, despite the awesome rift betwixt them, have to stay strong for/against their daughter), lots of tears, and finally triumph. And he realizes that all along, these women have been someone's daughter. Dunna dunn. Dunnnnnnn. Plot, storyline, tension, drama. Stories are like...well...I won't use that analogy, darn it.


Maybe I'm just bitter. Yes, that's it. I'm bitter, and the WHOLE WORLD is sweet. I'M THE ONLY CRAZY, BITTER ONE. JUST ME!







"I only went off course once in my life. I was fourteen and mad at the world. I even got a wonderful red leather jacket...loved that jacket. Few days later, as I walked past a corner, my first best friend hit me right across the side of my mouth with a baseball bat. Then my second best friend stepped out, and they started beating me with them...knocked out five teeth, shattered twelve, seemed to try to break my ribs below my breasts, split my left triceps open by blunt trauma. I kept repositioning...like getting comfortable in bed, but the goal is to not be hurt as much. I looked like a rotten, bruised banana once they were done...blood all in my hair. I cried."
-
"Wow.
"...
"What did you do to them?"
-
"I didn't do anything to them...I did burn the jacket and smelt the baseball bats, though."

The Horrible Day, Week 1: Garbage Has A Disposal

There I was, ordering stuff online with someone else's credit card. I was a bit sick, but not too sick to order stuff online with someone else's credit card. Anyways, then I heard over the phone system: "Jen to the kitchen, please."

I sat up straight in my chair. I was already sitting up straight, so hindsight, I must have overcorrected and actually leaned backwards in the chair. I then set out to find the cause of this summons.

You see...we're expecting Hector the Health Inspector to come by any day now, so I'm extra paranoid. I went out the back door and checked the parking lot. No Hectormobile. Mrs. Jen (Jen is her first name), or The Boss, is the one who deals with the inspector. She knows him the best and it keeps things from getting confused.

No idea why they don't use The Vixen for this. Not that I would agree with that, but still. More on The Vixen later.

Seeing no Hectorial car, I entered the building. Cautiously. I peeked around the corner...I saw Mrs. Merry with a mop and bucket. There was a water spill. Whew, I thought. That's all it is. No inspector. I'm terrified of the inspector. The inspector has a habit of beating you with health violations. Physically.


Anyway, Mrs. Merry, our janitor/head chef, has a temper. Some people have bad tempers, some people have horrible tempers. Hers is just...broken. After screaming at me for what seemed like two minutes, she handed me a mop and asked me to help. The good thing about Mrs. Merry is that once she expends all of her hatred, she's really nice as she mixes up more of that vitriol. Sometimes she'll attack others and be nice to you, sometimes she'll attack you so that she can go be nice to others. And she'll be in a really good mood if she can attack two people at once. It's give and take with Mrs. Merry.


Yesterday evening, as I was cleansing the refrigerator of the kitchen, I had to throw out three gallons of hot sauce. I didn't want to throw it in the dumpster (if I did that to our dumpster, we'd have half the boogeymen in the county after us, but I guess it's different in the city), so I put it down the garbage diposal. It was something to do with the hot sauce being too readily available and going down the pipes too fast, then sitting overnight, and it clogged the system up something fierce.

There was only ten or so gallons of water, but it took an hour and a half to clean up. As I'd later discover, Mrs. Merry's mop could absorb three times as much as mine, and when she left it to me to finish mopping, I continued with the bad one. For another forty minutes. After that I had to go finish ordering stuff with that credit card. Nothing makes you feel better faster than ordering something with someone else's credit card. Think about it: It's buying something with money that isn't yours, that isn't the other person's, either!

I was so happy. Then I got the news. I was informed that a plumber was on the way.

Then I got the bad news. I'd be paying.


So long, stillborn first pay check. I loved you 'ere I knew you.

Marshmallows that Roast in the Rain

Today it was raining. All over Arizona. It waz so crazy, I had to spell 'was' with an "z". A "z". Sorry.

So, being one to be taken with certain oddball songs, I got all nostalgic and asked Mrs. dataDyne and Manny Hitman if they had a recipe for marshmallows that roast in the rain. They looked at me funny. That's a red sign for a condition I call "everyone around Kev has suddenly been afflicted with disunderstandistic misunderstandism." At this point, nobody can form coherent sentences and usually accuses me of being acutely nuts.

I managed to distract them and make a clever escape ("I have to go"). I'm so subtle, it hurts.


Anyway, I remember stories where a wife would read a book- and in this book, it would say "a stew made with cubed beef, beef broth, carrots, potatoes, celeries (sic) and garlicks, as well a nary a not a little onion." And that's where beef stew came from. I figure it's the same with music. Or songs. So I figure there'd be a recipe, or something. The song is called Escape (The Marshmallows Roasted in the Rain song.) Lyrics, maestro.


"If you like pate de foie gras, and marshmallows that roast in the rain.
And the feel of the ocean, and the taste of champagne."

I guess they never heard the song*. That's good.





*-note: I have precisely zero affection or affinity for this song.

"Our Guitars Good For You To Play"

Have you ever been to the Asiaman's Guitar Depot? It's a neat-looking guitar shop on the east border of downtown Phoenix. Or northeast, whichever. Anyways, it looks great from the outside.

Then you see the inside. It looks normal.

It really does. Then you meet the high-pressure salesmen. Plural. Two of them. Per person...but I'm getting ahead of the story.


"HIII!" he shouted and popped up in the air like a piece of toastt. I mean, toast. He landed very stiffly. Then another one behind me. "HALLO!WELCOME TO ASIAMAN'S GREAT GWEETARRS!"

I swear, if he could have turned that exclamation mark upside-down, he would have. Then the other one hit him really hard and said, "NO, you unfortifitable (?) dolt! It's ASIAMEN'S GWEETEAR DYEPOTT!"

It escalated. Shouting, screaming, popping up into the air like toast. Then landing and screaming some more.

It had to be the most uncomfortable argument between two Asian men I've ever had the misfortune of happening to be standing between them while they were arguing, ever. And I mean that.



Then they calmed their feud and we got to the gweetars. I must say, they were expertly tuned. I commented on it. "Wow...so who tunes all of these guitars?"

"YOU play them, and WE tune them!" one of them shouted angrily as he slammed his fist on the wall.

I'm not so sure what I said; he went from telling me that he recently taught his daughter how to braid her hair to trying to put his fist through the wall. I ...can't think of what I said. His daughter sounds awesome, though. He named her "after his grandfather's son's great-great granddaughter." I couldn't seem to figure that one out.

The other one has three boys, "all of them twins, all of them born several years apart." "Wow...those are some neat twins," I said. I couldn't figure that one out, either, but I wouldn't want to start a fight by asking how in the world that's possible. Usually we called three children triplets, and usually they're not all born several years apart.


Anyways, the guitars. Taylor, Takamine, Martin, Gibson. I told them I needed an acoustic electric...they told me I can turn any acoustic into an electric. I said, "How?"

They said, "Just buy an acoustic electric!" and burst into laughter. I was in stitches. Really. But I maintained my cheery demeanor...and after viewing thousand-dollar guitars, three-thousand-dollar guitars, and fifteen-hundred-dollar guitars...where was I. Too many numerical...ah, after viewing those expensive guitars, I asked a question.

"So why are these so quiet and gutless compared to my cheap, $200 guitar?"

Silence.

(1)"No, no, no, you did not say that!" one said, his disbelief manifesting as hilarity. They talked in...whatever they talked in (Asian pig Latin?), seemed to come to a conclusion, and walked away. Thirty seconds later, they were back. (2) "YOU DID NOT SAY THAT!" one shouted with angry, bitter tears. I stared. He walked through the store yelling, cursing, and popping into the air like toast.

(3) "Oh fine, oh fine, oh fine, oh fine," the other pleaded. I felt like I was in a house of mirrors. "What if you bought it at 80% discount?! Would they be better then?" I should have said yes, but "I really need one that you don't have to amp to hear," I said lightly.

(4) They wilted. Hunched. Hung their arms. Became all puffy-faced. And kinda pale.

Then something occurred to me......and a minute or two later, after they had finished sobbing, one faced me.

(5) "I understand your concern, valued and esteemed customer. We will pursue for you the loudest acoustic-electric not-amped gweetar in this land or ah-nee other." They bowed. Awkward pause. The other one popped into the air like toast. I cleared my throat and backed away.



Then I decided I don't really need an acoustic-electric that badly.