Archive for May, 2006
10,000 Hits And the Battle of the Muzak.
Posted on May 31, 2006
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Hey! Lookit my hit counter! Sometime in the last two or three days it quietly ticked over the ten thousand mark.
Did you know I had a website from 1998 until 2002 and it only recorded about 600 hits total? You can still see that lame-as-hell old page by visiting the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive.
I must, however, provide you with the following disclaimer regarding my current 10,000 hit count: I estimate that between 500 and 1000 of those hits are probably me checking my own page. A large portion of the rest are people referred to my blog through poorly constructed google searches regarding safe sex, WNIC and kitty cat skull harnesses. But still, I mean, really!
Today I had a first-time-ever experience that I just have to share with you. During the course of business I found myself on the phone in a conference call with a fellow from SBC* as well as Mr. McEchelsteinski**, a fellow working for one of our client companies. The client had a problem with SBC and didn’t speak obnoxiouslazybastard. I happen to be fluent in both blowingsmokeupyourass and obnoxiouslazybastard, so I was called upon to act as an interpreter.
Pretty soon I had the SBC fellow on the defensive–any minute he would be forced to actually help us. In a last desperate attempt to weasel out of justifying his existance, he put us on hold to talk to his supervisor.
My client and I sat and listened to a static-impregnated instrumental rendition of James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” for a number of seconds totaling more than five and less than one hundred and twenty.
Honestly, I lost myself in the music and the moment. As the song ended and was replaced by an equally white-noise infused instrumental version of Air Supply’s “Making Love (Out of Nothing at All),” Mr McEchelsteinski spoke.
”Joe, you mind if I put you on hold?”
”Uh…ok.” Soon I was hearing another completely different muzak arrangement. I think it was Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” You probably already knew that by now***.
With a growing sense of hopelessness and horror, my sanity ran out of my ears and gathered in a puddle next to the stolen tape dispenser on my desk. I was in a three way conference call with two competing variants of watered down pop music. Normally I can sing along with muzak in self defence. But…
DJ’s mix music together so that they blend into a nifty sounding combination. They line up the beats of the various tunes, sometimes speeding up or slowing down one or more tracks so that they all match. Really cool, but fairly difficult. When it goes wrong, when the music doesn’t match, the cacophenous result is called a “Train Wreck.”
To extend that metaphor way beyond its design specification advises, I will begin by reminding you of the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Japanese commuter train. This conference call was a little like that, but with far fewer tragically dead strangers I never knew or cared about and with far more annoying pop tunes disastrously clashing against eachother and my ears.
I bit my lip and screwed my eyes shut. Eventually a recorded voice, a pleasantly nuetral female, replaced the music on one of the hold lines. She began telling me how important my call was to her, and how all of the representatives were really sorry that they were too busy to talk to me.
Before she finished, an almost identical voice fired up on the competing hold line to tell me how my client’s company is the leader in their business and that they have many services to offer me if I would just wait a few minutes for someone to come and talk at me.
I sensed a competetive edge to their voices. I figured a cat fight was in the offing. Was there, really? Was there?
* Formerly Ameritech
** Not his real name.
*** If for no other reason than that I told you it in the immediate preceding sentence.
**** Yes, I know that I’ve used that picture of me on the phone before. It fits, so deal with it.
Happy Birthday Card Philosophy
Posted on May 29, 2006
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The average sentimental greeting card embodies a certain elevated level of sweetness that makes me feel like flossing again, and how sincere can a sheet of cardboard be, really? Hallmark can’t properly express the human heart for $1.95 and a pink envelope. In fact, I only believe greeting card sentiments when they appeal to the base appetites.
That’s why long ago I vowed only to buy the sorts of greeting cards that have half-naked women and sports cars on them. It tends to confuse my Mom and anger my wife, but I’m a man of my convictions. Here is the transcript of a card I gave my Mother for her birthday:
Cover:
“They’re Gorgeous! They’re Sexy! They’re Single!”
Inside:
“You’re now old enough to be their father. Happy birthday!”
Looking for Closure? I posted Part 18 yesterday, in which our narrator gets naked and takes a shower. Exciting!
Closure Part 18
Posted on May 28, 2006
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The intense cold combined with an equally intense wave of relief and I began shivering almost uncontrollably. Teeth chattering enough to shake my entire field of vision, I plopped into my car seat and hauled the creaking door shut behind me. I twisted the key in the ignition viciously, and as the engine coughed itself to life I leaned back in my seat and carefully gripped the steering wheel. I nodded once in the direction of the plastic cat figurine* hanging from the rear-view mirror and pressed the accelerator hopefully. The Pinata groaned its disappointment at being forced back onto the freeway; ignoring it, I resumed my northward drive toward home.
I gave not a single thought to waiting for the promised replacement cop to arrive. There was, after all, a dismembered body and a stolen coffee pot in the back of my decrepit Pinata hatchback–both barely hidden beneath an emergency blanket. I knew the policeman had probably noted my license plate number, so I’d certainly be notified of his displeasure eventually; but by that time, hopefully, I would no longer have such shocking cargo to explain.
So I returned to wrestling with the unfulfilled death wish my Pinata wanted to share with me. It was either a death wish or it simply loved the concrete wall rushing past the passenger-side window and wanted to give it a great big crashy hug. I was now beginning to get a headache from the cycles of stress the last hour had embodied; my morning routine is usually far more…routine. None of that mattered now, though, because I had finally reached the 11 Mile exit, mere minutes from my home.
I rolled up the ramp and onto the surface street. 11 Mile road was beginning to see congestion as the first wave of morning traffic awoke and began its inexorable crawl toward points uninteresting. I picked up my cell phone from the passenger seat and glanced at the time. 5:00 am. If the evening had gone normally I would still have an hour or so left before bidding Chuck goodbye for the day and going off-shift; instead, I was heading home early and Chuck was coming with me, albeit in pieces. My mind wandered to my brief, bizarre conversation with the confused man named Bananas who had called me on this phone moments ago. Snorting dismissively, I pocketed the Nokia in the breast pocket of my jacket, realizing too late that in so doing I had applied a surprisingly even coat of sticky, strawberry flavored goop onto the poor device. I cursed and moved to wipe my hand on my pant leg, which itself was crusty with the same crap. Crap.
I navigated 11 Mile road for a half-mile or so and turned in to my aging subdivision. Most of the homes here, mine included, were built in the halcyon days of the 1950’s during the height of the baby-boom. Happy, newly minted nuclear families made up of white middle-class men just home from the war, the women who had awaited their return and the children they subsequently produced lived here then. Daddy, in those days, almost certainly worked for one of the “Big Three” car companies: “Furd,” “Comprehensive Motors,” or “Weepsler.” Mommy stayed home and experimented with Jello molds while cleaning the house in high-heel shoes and pearls while junior (or little miss) studiously learned the American way from similarly white middle-class public school teachers. Or so the legends go, at any rate.
A few of us still made a living of sorts in the factories of those aging oligarchs of American industry. The rest of these small bungalows were now occupied by a far less cheery crowd of retirees, renters, single mothers and lower-income families eking out an existence on Walmart wages and government supplemental income. This was the new American way–one you needn’t learn in school.
As I drove the last quarter mile to my house I noted that yet another “For Sale” sign had joined the dozen or so already decorating my street. Cut-backs and layoffs were tearing the rug out from under many of my fellow automotive workers these days. I felt a foreboding sense of shared fate as I read the new sign in front of a tiny bungalow so much like my own. It read, “Detroit Palatial Realtor, ask for Cindy! FOR SALE.”
Rumors had been dire at the plant lately: new Expulsions were sitting on showroom floors for want of customers interested in land-yachts. Furd was being forced to buy-back the unsold inventory. The center console deep-fryer and hydroponic glove compartment** were not enough to stem the tide of newfound sensibility which was driving consumers toward more economical small cars. The line “must never stop,” but it just might. It just might. And how long after that would I be putting up a sign inviting interested parties to “call Cindy” or “ask for Ruth” or “count on your realtor/friend Ashel Hasseed”?
With a rueful shake of my head I dismissed those maudlin thoughts out of hand. Those were the worries of a man who didn’t have a literally bloody mess on his hands. Its all well and good to brood about possible layoffs when that’s your biggest problem, but when your best friend’s bisected corpse cuddles a stolen coffee pot in the back of your car you have more pressing concerns. But now I was home.
My home, identical to every other around it in all but the color of the vinyl siding, sat fairly close to the street and was only separated from my neighbor’s house by the bare width of my driveway. House, driveway, house, driveway; we lived shoulder-to-shoulder in this neighborhood. Narrow, six or seven carlengths long, the driveway terminated at the door of a single-car garage set some twenty feet behind the house.
I pulled the Pinata all the way up to the garage door and turned the ignition to off. I was then treated to ten seconds of post pardem spluttering, followed by a very final sounding wheeze and silence. From its resting place, the hatch of the little car was only a few steps away from the back door of the house. Springing from the car, I quickly climbed the two steps to the back door, unlocked and propped it open. Warm air spilled out as I reached in to turn on the ceiling lamp immediately inside, illuminating the stairway down into the basement as well as the narrow archway leading to my cramped kitchen.
I turned back to the car and popped its hatch. Throwing back the thin silver sheet of emergency blanket, I spared myself only a few seconds to survey the carnage it hid. Breath puffing in my face, I glanced around to assure myself that no one was watching me. First, the coffee pot. I grabbed the steel urn and lid, turned, and in a few steps I’d set it on the kitchen floor. Next, I grabbed Chuck’s pelvis and dangling legs. Heavier than it looked, I dragged his lower body down the stairs by the belt into the basement, Chuck’s workboots bouncing and scraping the whole time. I then worked my way past the furnace, which squatted like Atlas beneath the weight of my little world, and dumped my charge in the corner there, hidden from the stairwell by the aforementioned furnace. I ran back up the stairs and into the back yard.
My neighbor–uh, Bob-somebody, I think–apparently taking his trash out, was stirring in his yard two houses away. A rush of fear came over me, intensifying the damn headache, and I forced myself to nonchalantly exchange nods with him while pretending to busy myself with my own garbage cans next to the back door. An eternal dozen seconds or so passed by and Bob-somebody finally trudged up his steps and into his home.
I didn’t relish another such delay, so I rushed then, reaching into the car and dragging forth Chuck’s torso. I tried not to look at his pitiful face or his pink, be-couriered tongue as I held him close in a rough embrace and back pedaled up the steps into my home.
Down the stairs again, past the furnace, and I plopped the remains of Chuck atop his legs and ass. I paused there, staring down at the dimly lit pile of robot coworker.
Well, Chuck, I thought, I’m hiding you, just like you asked. Your tongue got me this far. What next? No answer was forthcoming and the silence was broken only by the furnace kicking in, obedient to a thermostat shocked by the sudden loss of household heat. Oh yeah, the back door was still open.
It was only a moments work to close up the Pinata’s hatch as well as my back door. Deciding not to go down into the basement again for now, I trudged through my house, stripping myself of sticky, sweaty clothing as I walked. Through the kitchen I went, down the short hallway and into the bathroom; by the time I twisted the knob marked “H,” releasing torrents of water into the tub from my calcium encrusted shower head, I was completely nude and covered with gooseflesh. My head throbbed as I stepped into the tub and hung my head with exhaustion and pain in the stream of steaming hot water.
I stood there and watched dispassionately as clots of red syrupy Chuck-blood ran around and down the drain. What would I do next? Should I tell someone? Who? Could I…fix…Chuck? Was he dead? What should I do next? Would I tell someone? ….I realized then that I was thinking in circles.
Seemingly on autopilot, I slowly went through the motions of washing my hair and body. After turning the water off, the burbling sound of the last few drops of water going down the drain were soon replaced by my own quiet breathing. I toweled myself off in silence and donned my bathrobe, looking into the mirror. I squeakily rubbed a circle out of the condensed steam so that I could peer through it at my own troubled, tired face. To bed, I suppose. Maybe I’d think of something when I woke up.
But first I padded through the house to the front door, opening it to retrieve my morning newspaper. It was probably too soon for news of the factory shutdown to be in print, but you never know. I grabbed the paper from the hooks under the small letter box bolted to the wall outside my front door and began to retreat back into the house when it hit me. The letterbox! I turned back to it and, yes, there was something in there, propping the lid open.
I hurriedly grabbed the severed cardboard head of Boba Fett from the mailbox with a shaking hand and held it before me. Oh, Boba Fett… The newspaper slipped from my numb fingertips and fell to the floor with a rustling thump as I leaned heavily on the door jam. Shit, Bruce? 
I looked up and down my street then, but Bruce was nowhere to be seen. There was no telling how long Boba Fett’s head had been waiting here for me; it may even have been there before I’d arrived home. I tried to calm my nerves, and was about to shut my front door when I noticed a certain pickup truck fast approaching from down the street. It was a small, white pickup, and when I last saw it there were two women aboard.
Now there was but a single occupant. Boba Fett’s head hung loosely in my hand and I watched dumbly as the little truck pulled up into my driveway and stopped. I met the yellowed eyes of Gail Sayer as she stopped the engine of her Furd Paladin. There was a certain smugness to her sneer, and I shivered anew. Damn, but my head hurt.
* Hang In There!
** Do Not Attempt to Grow Marijuana in Glove Compartment.
Hasselhoff Alert!
Posted on May 24, 2006
Uncategorized
I’m not much of an American Idol fan (for those of you in the U.K., “Pop Idol”) but–and this is a big but, folks–my wife is a fan. Wither thou goest, bonny Heather, there goest I.
Tonight was, of course, the season finale in which this year’s model is unveiled to the delight of both consumers and the proud design engineers alike. Do I care that Taylor Hicks won? Nah, not really.
So what makes me write? I’ll tell you.
After the winner was announced the cameras cut away to quickly accumulate a montage of crowd reaction shots. The camera man (or woman, as the case may be) knew their job well; they quickly and efficiently picked out celebrity supplicants for close-ups and adulation.
To my shock and absolute delight there appeared the actual David Hasselhoff!
To make it a completely perfect and literally orgasmic experience (I can only assume this goo came from me) the Hasselhoff was… yes… he was CRYING!
This was worth the entire two tired hours of rehashed pop music.
Hasselhoff, moved to tears by the results of a televised singing competition in which the winner’s most memorable moment was a spirited rendition of “Play That Funky Music, White Boy.”
Good Lord I love modern entertainment.
Closure Part 17
Posted on May 22, 2006
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“Crap.” From behind me the flashing lights atop the Throne Eliza bounced off my rearview mirror and into my corneas. There they fired up a reflexive cringe and triggered a tenfold increase in my heart-rate; a lifetime of driving had conditioned me in fine Pavlovian style to become uneasy at best when subjected to such stimulus. Frankly, I’d prefer the meat powder. Because, you see, in the hatch of my rusty Furd Pinata was a pile of trouble named “Chuck,” a man who was currently sectioned in two strawberry scented, bloody pieces. To make matters worse, there lied next to him a steel coffee urn which was technically the property of Furd Motors and the Millwrights Local 68. The thin emergency blanket I had tossed over them may or may not still hide the mess; it had been a rough ride and I couldn’t see past my back seat to tell.
All of this combined to form a solid, dependable foundation for a sturdy case of abject fear of the cops. I was on the doorstep of incontinence, and I suddenly felt hot around my neck and ears.
“Mr. Minnetola,” an incredibly rough voice spoke calmly from the Nokia I held against my head, “Please tell me what is happening.”
“Uh….,” I began with no end in sight. I would like to say that the sudden squawk of the police siren interrupted my chain of thought, but that train really hadn’t left the station. In fact, it was probably still on blocks in sanity’s front yard. Bananas would have to wait for the answer to his question until I’d ditched the stupid choo-choo metaphor.
I had no thought of fleeing. My Pinata wasn’t actually capable of outrunning a determined moped, let alone a police cruiser. Still stupidly holding the phone to my ear, I used my remaining hand to steer the car onto the filthy shoulder of I75 and slow to a halt. The Pinata had repeatedly made it abundantly clear that it relished the idea of slamming into the side of the freeway anyway, so I didn’t so much steer as I simply quit fighting it quite so hard and allowed it to roll to a creaky halt.
It is interesting, is it not, to look at the concrete barriers lining the freeway from such a close and motionless vantage point? I guess I always thought they were naturally blurry. The policeman, smartly dressed in State Trooper blues and topped with a fine cap upon his head, climbed from his car and strolled casually towards the back of my Pinata. He carried with him what is jokingly referred to as a “flashlight” by the law enforcement community. Let me explain the flashlight.
Imagine yourself pounding nails with a hammer. Bang-bang-bang! Wait! Stop the hammer at the top of your swing, its head over your shoulder, poised to smash down upon the nail with great force and even greater justice. Quick, get rid of the head of the hammer and put a light-bulb on the other end of the thing, barely clearing the bottom of your clenched fist. Oh, and replace the handle with a two-foot-long heavy steel shaft filled to the brim with alkaline batteries numbering in the dozens. You are now even MORE ready to smash down with that ever-loving justice, plus you have your own illumination for as long as the electrons hold out. You now look strikingly similar to the dandy policeman just then reaching my rear bumper.
As he passed the rear of my car I watched his eyes slide across the contents of my hatch registering interest but not concern. I suppose I felt a slight relief that the blanket must still be hiding my cargo, but in all probability he’d soon ask to see what those lumps were.
Bananas spoke again. “Mr. Minnetola, are you still there?”
“Yes,” I hissed, and the cop now stood next to my window. The light of his flashlight played about my head and shoulders, causing me to squint, before roaming across the sun-split vinyl of the Pinata’s dashboard, exploring the torn and dusty fabric of my passenger seat, and finally stopping briefly on the tiny cat figurine dangling from my rear-view mirror; an orange and yellow cat figurine with “Hang In There!” written across its tummy. Finally, the flashlight returned to illuminate my face and my partial mask of red, sticky goo.
Tap-tap-tap! the imperious sound of the flashlight being used to knock on my window made me jump a little. So much for playing it cool. My right hand continued holding the phone to my ear through a combination sheer situational inertia and a certain amount of absent mindedness. With my left hand, however, I began rolling down my window. Slickened with sweat and fear, I lost grip on the window crank twice along the way. I tried to look confident and looked him directly in the eye, saying in a ever-so-slightly quavering voice,
“What seems to be the problem, officer?”
Bananas answered gruffly, “I beg your pardon?”The policeman paused then, looking me over through the opened window. Air drifted in past him and I noted that he smelled of soap and peppermint, and was chewing slowly on something in his mouth—gum, I suppose. His brown eyes, framed with high, chiseled cheekbones and the smooth skin of relative youth, looked everywhere at once while his hand held his flashlight tightly over his shoulder, ready to smite me with those ounces and ounces of alkaline and steel at the slightest justification.
His walky-talky, a small black box strapped to his right breast complete with a cord running over his shoulder, chirped and let loose with a string of loud and distorted chatter incomprehensible to the untrained ear. His right hand continued to focus the flashlight upon my face as he reached across and pinched the walky-talky with his left.
“Dispatch, ten seven sixty eight on an eleven ninety-five.” the policeman said to the world at large, “North I75 and 7.”
The radio on his shoulder responded with renewed squawking and it just might, if one were in the correct frame of mind, have said, “Sloppy hat; hens even six to eight, 11-95, Hose seed.”
Bananas spoke in my ear then, “Ah. Police talk! You’ve been pulled over! How exciting for you,” his voice bubbled enthusiastically in a way one wouldn’t expect of a deep guttural growl, “He did say ‘ten seven sixty eight,’ yes?”
“Yes.” I answered, and the cop cocked his head to one side.
“Sir,” said the state trooper after a moment, “I’m going to have to ask you to put your phone down.” His tone of voice, while studiously polite, was clearly giving an order regardless of its wording.
Banana’s urgent and rushed voice spoke quickly from my Nokia, “10768, got it. Sir, your-satisfaction-is-valuable-to-us, and before I hang up I’d like-to-thank-you-for-using, uh,” there was a frantic tapping, “Franklin Mint activation tech support. Will-there-be-anything-else this time-of-day?”
Still looking into the steely brown eyes of the trooper, I managed a weak, “I gotta go,” before obediently ending the phone call and laying the phone face-down on the seat beside me. The policeman stepped back, still shining that damn cudgel-lamp in my face.
“I think you’d better step out of the car, sir.” So this was it. Hands shaking, I opened the door and slowly swung my crusty red legs out of the car. My teeth were actually chattering while I pulled myself up by the top of the car door and I felt the unmistakable slickness of intense perspiration lubricating my ass crack as I stood awkwardly in the frozen air. Such a juxtaposition of extremes would have been interesting at any other time, but this morning I simply felt panic tinged with just a pinch of despair. The officer’s radio chirped again, but this time the distorted voice on the other end sounded quite upset.
“10-91h, 10-80 and 11-99 at Nevada East and Russel! Repeat there is a 10-91h, 10-80 and 11-99 at Nevada East and Russel!” I wasn’t sure what that all meant, but the trooper’s eyes grew wide and he nearly jerked the receiver from his shoulder in his rush to respond.
“Ten-seven-sixty eight, I’m at I75 and 7. Repeat the 11-99?” “Ten-seven-sixty eight, that’s a code 30! You are closest, please respond. 10-91h, 10-80 and 11-99 at Nevada East and Russel!!”
I watched with detached interest then as his mouth worked, silently repeating the jumble of numbers. I think I heard him mutter, “explosion, officer down, and a stray horse…” He nodded once then, apparently having decided on his next course of squeaky clean action.
“Sir, I advise you to remain here until an officer returns to question you.” He turned then, and left me standing unsteadily next to my pinata as he ran back to his car, light from his flashlight bouncing wildly across the freeway. I heard him nearly shout,
“Ten seven sixty eight, proceeding to Nevada East and Russel!”
The door to the Throne Eliza slammed shut, its lights, siren and squealing tires flooded my senses with harsh stimulation and its lumbering hulk threw itself past me in a cloud of dust. I coughed a bit and blinked the particles from my now-stinging eyes. Standing there alone on the gravel and cracked concrete of the shoulder, I stared up the freeway long enough to watch him speed up an off-ramp and out of sight.
My fingers were freezing cold. I turned toward my Pinata and sighed.
