Category Archives: Life

Humor, or the lack thereof…

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Some people are funny – and no I don’t mean in that “Hey, pull my finger” kind of way. There are virtues to that kind of humor too, of course, but I’m think more about people who can turn drop a perfectly aimed barb on a dime. They have the knack. It’s some combination of timing, ability to turn a phrase, topical awareness, and lacing your words with just enough poison to let the point drive home without ever doing more than brushing against a subject.

Sadly, there are another group of people who wield sarcasm like a brute force weapon – a cudgel with which to beat people about the head and neck repeatedly. It’s a pity, because sarcasm is a real art form when it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, it leaves you looking like a total ass. There’s a fine line there and it’s critical to know where that line is at all times.

People who don’t have the gift just really shouldn’t try to force the issue. It shows every single time and it never stops being uncomfortable. There are few thing more awkward than a person standing around throwing out what they think are zingers while the rest of the captive audience is forced to ponder just how much of a tool that person really is. Here’s a hint: if no one else in the room is laughing, you’re probably doing it wrong. You should stop immediately. And you should consider never doing it again.

The world is a big place. Not everyone needs to have the same skills. For the love of God, if you don’t have a knack for humor please leave it to the professionals – or at least to the skilled amateurs. Sometimes it’s ok to enjoy the show rather than try to be a part of it.

Precognition…

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So far today I’ve have the opportunity to enjoy all of my usual warning signs that some kind of head cold / sinus thing is in the offing. Itchy eyes? Check. Sore, scratchy throat? Check. Difficulty focusing on any activity lasting more than ten minutes? Check. Constant state of cold/shivers? Check. General feeling of “not quite right.” Check.

Usually my body is kind enough to give me these symptoms as a kind of 48 hour warning that I should wrap up anything important I’m doing and plan on spending a few days on the couch. Since my throat started tickling a little after lunchtime yesterday, I’m willing to bet that my noon-ish tomorrow, maybe as late as close of business, I’m going to feel like warm death. It’s not always a sure thing, but the signs are pretty consistent over time – consistent enough that I’ll be utterly shocked if I don’t end this week feeling like crap.

Thought I’ve often wished for the power to predict the future, I generally only want precognition for important activities like tonight’s winning Powerball numbers or the correct finishing order for a trifecta at Preakness. Going through life knowing with certainly when you’re about to get a cold feels like an awfully lame bit of foresight into the misty uncertainty of tomorrow.

Choices…

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“We make choices. I’m well aware there are forces beyond our control but even in the face of those forces we make choices, and then we live with them. And then we die with them.”

Gold star if you can pinpoint the source of that little pearl of wisdom without racing over to the Google. Here’s a hint: It’s from deep inside a television series that could have been great but met its end before being fully realized or appreciated. I came across it a few days ago and it’s stuck with me for whatever reason. It’s one of those rare quotes that’s really gotten inside my head and left me to ponder. Not that I mind pondering. As far as I’m concerned the ability to ponder and think deeply on a topic is one of the very few things that really separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Choices. Making them, giving their power up to others, changing our minds, and then choosing all over again. Knowing that we’re always making them without having all the facts and with an imperfect sense of how they will play out, still we make choices every day and live with their consequences – or die with them.

Is all that too dark for a Tuesday night?

Kris Kreeper…

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santa-flasherI don’t generally “do” Christmas music. It tends to make me want to jam pointy objects into my ears. However, being the season, the occasional festive tune is unavoidable. The one I’ve been hearing most thanks to a television advertisement for something I’ve already forgotten about is Santa Clause is Coming to Town. It’s cute. It’s endearing. And it makes the gift giving fat man sound like a world class creeper.

Ponder if you will the lines:

He sees you when you’re sleeping;
He knows when you’re awake;
He knows if you’ve been bad or good…

Does this sound like the casual level of interest that most people have in one another? Of course not. It sounds like the misguided and deviant actions of a stalker. The song itself warns that “You better watch out.” And yet year after year, we’ve perpetuated the myth to generations of children that it’s not just acceptable but encouraged for this kind of person to sneak into their home in the dead of night while their family sleeps.

Kris Kringle, the purveyor of elfin-made gifts, or Kris Kreeper, the pervert in our midst? Take a good hard look and I think you’ll know the right answer. Good God, where’s the moral outrage?

So apparently it’s not a stroke…

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Not long after lunch this afternoon my left eye twitched once and then felt like someone was jamming an ice pick into the socket. My first thought, after the initial WTF, was “Wow, this is how it’s going to end for me… Stroking out at my desk after being utterly overwhelmed by stupid.”

Thirty seconds pass and the pain lets up enough to be mostly a roaring headache situated just behind my left eye… annoying but not debilitating. Since there was no face drooping and no obvious slurring, I went on about my business.

It wasn’t until around 2:00, when I reached for a long empty mug of coffee that reality dawned. I wasn’t about to stroke out at all. I was unintentionally coming down from a years long caffeine high and my brain was rebelling against it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I got so busy that I didn’t reach for a refill until almost the end of the day. It could easily be half a decade or more. After all but mainlining three cups, the pain in the ol’ brain box settled out from a dull roar to nothing at all by the end of tour.

Consider it lesson learned. Now that I know the unfortunate results of under caffeinating, I’ll never, ever let it happen again.

Something something chickens hatching…

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Long, long ago someone told me something about chickens hatching and getting the count wrong. While out and about surveying the fine interstate system here in my home state this morning, I had plenty of opportunity to run a few basic calculations – mostly involving the cost of fuel, my own average miles per gallon, and my best guess about what next year’s pay tables might look like.

If for some reason yet to be determined my daily commute were to more than double in distance the corresponding increase in salary I might expect due to this unforeseen circumstance wouldn’t quite cover the additional cost of fuel expended in traveling to and from. It certainly wouldn’t cover the cost of acquiring and maintaining a secondary, more fuel efficient commuter car. Even if it did, I’d then have to dig into my pocket to hire a dog walker due to the presumed two hour increase in the duration of the commute.

Now these chickens I’m looking at aren’t even eggs yet, but my natural tendency with life is to play all sorts of interesting “what if” scenarios out in my head. Barring a change in one of the inputs, I don’t see a clear path to balance the equation. That bit is troublesome to say the least. Of course it’s all speculation and conjecture at the moment so we’ll just proceed on assuming there will be eggs or chickens available at some point in the future. That fact too remains to be seen.

Extra hour…

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Victory-Cigar-Congress-Passes-DSTWhile I’m sitting here at 9:30 with most of the items on my list knocked off for the day, I’m enjoying the “extra” hour today. Sure, now I know most people want to use that hour for rest, but lying in bed wide awake for an hour just isn’t my speed. That being the case, the solution was obvious – get up and start getting stuff done at 5:30 this morning. The baseboards are ready for the heating season, the air conditioner is ready to haul down to the basement, the living room and kitchen got cleaned – but not before there was a real ham and eggs breakfast, the leftover ham is now in salad form chilling in the fridge, and a leftover chicken bits from last night are simmering themselves into stock for eventual noodle soup. All days should be this productive.

Check back with me in about 7 hours when we’re approaching dusk and I’ll sing you another tune. That part of the “extra hour” makes me crazy – if for no other reason than needing headlights to get home from work for the next five months is so damned dispiriting. With the impending end of yard work and a lot more dark hours to fill, it’s a good time of year for writing. If there’s any real silver lining that’s got to be it. I guess it’s time to drag out the sweaters and wool socks and kick this whole hermit thing into high gear.

Indoor outdoor…

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Picture it… a semi-lit auditorium fills nearly to capacity, the public address system crackles to life, and a hush falls over the 600 gathered seat-fillers. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please,” the disembodied voice implores. “Today’s ceremony is an outdoor event being held indoors.”

And that’s the point where they lost me. The longer my career runs, you see, the more I come to realize it’s largely been a series of ridiculous propositions. As a writer I recognize that words are powerful. They are precise and have meaning. In the best tradition of the bureaucracy, however, the actual meaning of the words has little to no applicability to how we chose to use – or abuse – them on a daily basis.

By nothing more than an announcement from the podium, all of us in a partially filled auditorium collectively accepted that for all official purposes we were sitting outdoors. The sun was officially shining. The colors were officially fluttering in the breeze. They were decidedly not hanging limp and sodden from their staff. There absolutely was not official mud on the sidewalks from having bleachers towed into position during a driving rainstorm. Mud, droopy flags, and indoor ceremonies, you may know, never officially exist. They’re simply a figment of our collective, unofficial, imagination and a blatant violation of policy.

Why, you ask, perform the linguistic gymnastics of engaging in an indoor outdoor ceremony? As best I can tell it’s so the small group assembled on stage didn’t have to take off their hats. When you make the case thusly, how can it make anything other than absolutely perfect sense.

Experience has taught me that it helps dramatically if you’re willing to completely suspend disbelief for at least eight hours daily. On the other hand, if you you’re unwilling, it’s the kind of thing that might just drive a man to drink.

Third time’s the charm…

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So far today I’ve sat down with every intention of blogging three times now. The first two obviously didn’t take. Hopefully the third time’s the charm. I’m not expecting much… and maybe that is, or at least should be the them for the post. Or the week. Or possibly even the month. In reality it’s probably been the theme for a lot longer than that.

The only times in my life I’ve ever really been let down where when I let expectations get the better of me. The best things have always come when I didn’t expect much at all, or more specifically when I was expecting the worst possible outcome. Surely that informs my approach to getting through the day. If you walk in expecting everything to be on its way to hell in a hand basket, often enough it is in fact heading that direction. Other times, though, it’s not and those moments come as a pleasant surprise.

If I can attribute my own warped sense of pessimism to anything, knowing where expectations most often lead is probably somewhere near the root cause. If only from the point of view of keeping my blood pressure more or less in check, the occasional pleasant surprise feels like a better idea than daily consistent disappointments. I seriously don’t know how anyone walks into a day full of optimism knowing that the its ration of shit is never more than a few minutes from hitting the fan. It seems like you’d be setting yourself up for a whole lot of unnecessary disappointment.

My next fix…

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Usually I sit down at the computer with at least a vague notion of what’s going to end up on the screen. It should be something heavy, but not too bleak. Something entertaining, but not too frivolous. It should be witty, but not comical. None of those are hard and fast rules, of course. They’re more like selectively enforced guidelines. Since on any given day what’s going to end up online is up in the air right up until the last minute, I find it best to have very few hard and fast rules. All they tend to do is get in the way of posting something halfway interesting.

Even disregarding the guidelines, I’ve had some trouble today focusing in on what I wanted to say this evening. There were plenty of news articles that I could justifiably talk about. The office? Sure, it’s full of ridiculous things that would be easy enough to spell out in 300 words. The Fortress of Solitude? There’s always something dinging around that I can make sound new and noteworthy. Still, none of those struck a chord today. Nothing stood out screaming “write about me right the hell now.” Most days by the time I get home I’ve got two or three ideas in the running. Days like today, it’s like the theme is just grinding it out, jamming one foot ahead of the next, and getting through to the end.

It’s the kind of day that makes a guy appreciative of the other days – the ones where things go like butter, the words fly onto the page by their own accord, and you’ve got some spark of life left when the lights go out. Three-day weekends, man they mess with the routine. A holiday weekend is a great thing, but getting back makes me feel like a junkie coming down. There’s plenty going on around me, but all I’m really thinking about is where I’m going to find my next fix.