Oil and Water

It was 4th or 5th grade. Hay-Edwards Grade School, 1-6. I do remember that we were in the 456 building, the Edwards bldg. Art class. We were supposed to bring our art supplies in a shoebox.

Don't remember just why, but I had my artstuff in a hatbox. I think I was the only kid with his stuff in a hatbox, the lone circle in a room full of rectangles. And for some reason, a little girl in the class snapped at me,

"Why can't you bring your stuff in a shoebox like everybody else?"

I don't remember this being the consensus of the whole class at all, but pretty much her problem. Everyone else could've cared less. But somehow that just blew her world.

To this day, there's always at some point that one kid I just don't seem to hit it off with. Usually they're an uptight, anal type individual, quite often with great organization and often little imagination, which is in direct contrast to me- someone with dreadful organizational skills and gobs of imagination. Their strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa.

You'd think we'd learn from one another, and I suppose in a perfect world(or at least one appreciably better than this fucker!)we would. But all too often we just see the negative in one another. The "sloppy loose camp", of which I'm a lifelong member, tends to see the " tight orderly camp" as having a stick up their collective butt, and they see us as having diahrrea all over the place. Not a pretty picture either way.

Well I think this particular individual from 4th Grade(the one who seemingly started it all)had a screw loose to begin with, based on some of her subsequent "screwy" behavior, and I just happened to be in the way that day. Me and my hatbox messing up her shoebox-world. But it's always been that way in damn near every aggregation I find myself in: I get along with everybody but that one person.

In my 16 years on my job, there've been a couple of course. Always a more anal-type individual. We have one now, been working in the building for awhile, whom I'll refer to as Mrs Howell. As in Lovee, Mrs Thurston Howell. Never anything acrimonious between us, just a sort of icy silence, as if she were saying, "Gilligan, you oaf!"

Now I have nothing against Mrs Howell, and I don't think she has anything seriously against me. Okay, she's a bit uptight, but that's nothing to dislike someone for. If anything I feel sympathetic there: gee I wish you could loosen up. Still, uptight or not, she's very cool toward yours truly, only speaks when spoken to and even then briefly and perfunctorily.

So consequently I don't speak much to her. If someone can't deign to speak to me, well I sure ain't gonna deign to speak to their ass either. And then you get your basic Mexican Standoff, where nobody's speaking to nobody. Silly? Yes. Infantile? Right again.

But all too human. As I said, I have nothing against Mrs Howell, absolutely no ill will. I'm disappointed that she chooses to give me the Frigidaire Treatment, but don't take it too much to heart. After all, there are plenty of folks--usually all but one or two--who like a guy who defies convention enough to bring a hatbox to Art Class.

Plowing through the week

Too bad they can't predict the weather week-by-week a year at a time. Or even a month at a time. That way you could plan your vacation based on the nice week(which of course poses the potential problem of everybody wanting the nice week--which of course not everybody can have, but that's another blog).

I just had a week off, which I'd planned 3 weeks prior, which was nothing but rainy or overcast days. It stopped raining just long enough for me to mow my front lawn, and then went for pretty much my whole body of time off. Except for Sunday, the day before returning to work, which was sunny and beautiful. Every day since has also been sunny and beautiful. Why the hell can't I have those days?! But no-o-o-o, I get the shitty dismal-ass days..

Okay. Enough of my kvetching. So, yeah, back to work, it's a beautiful sunny morning(naturally, since I'm back to work- oh, sorry). We're heading to a Training Session, 4 of us from the office, and one individual, known for his earthy homespun humor, is getting on a roll. Being a down-to-earth individual, he has little patience for those who put on airs, and was kinda holding forth on the subject, in usual fashion.

"Yeah, you get these people who think they're hot shit on a stick when they're really just a cold turd on a toothpick!"

Well I don't know about your humeris, but mine sure got a kick out of that one. As did the other passengers. This is the same person who coined the term POETS Club, which stands for Piss on Everything, Tomorrow's Saturday. It's celebrated pretty much every Friday night by me anyway, and is referred to pretty much every Friday afternoon.

Sometimes the funniest thing in the world(or at least the most enduring)is that same old corny joke you make at the same time every week. Like the old Bullwinkle routine of "watch me pull a rabbit outa my hat!" "Again?!!"

The humor somehow transcends the situation, and certainly the repetetiveness of the joke. My Dad had a few lines like that, things that we as kids heard over and over(and over..)but was still funny. Actually even funnier after his passing, possibly because you appreciate them more now. Two of my favorites:

(1)"That's like the difference between Chicken Salad and Chicken Shit!"

(2)" I don't shit ice cream, son."

Well I guess today's gems reminded me of some of those past zingers. Many more such examples from the office and this individual exist, but they're really as much in the telling as anything. Thus much would be lost in the translation to blog, however faithful I may try to be to capturing each nuance of expression.

So, all told, not a bad day. Actually I'd rather work on a sunny day than a rainy one, as the disposition of our clients is usually much - well, sunnier. Harder to be in despair on a beautiful sunshiny day. And if you gotta work, it might as well be a nice day too.

And the jokes don't hurt either.

4:30- time for Wapner!

The weather could be a hell of a lot nicer for a vacation week. It's all rainy and windy here, totally overcast, plenty of sunlight but no sunshine--Nature's unsmiling face..

But then it could be a whole lot worse. The house is still standing, and everything works, so I consider that a victory right off the bat. Mother Nature has certainly gone on her share of rampages this year, at least around here..

The dogs are having a conference about something, mine here in the house and one of my neighbors' in their yard. Makes for an irritating exchange, at least to me sitting here trying to write. But I guess it was important. The neighbors' dog is still carrying on.

You have to like dogs to live where I do, since so many folks have them. My next-door neighbors used to have five dogs in their backyard. And they would all get to barking on occasion, which was quite a ruckus. The dogs were of vastly different sizes, from 8oz to 75 lbs or so, so their barks varied accordingly. Actually it was a comical ruckus, at least to these ears.

Except for the occasional canine outbursts(and the even more occasional human ones), it's pretty quiet here in the 'hood. Working as I do in a relatively noisy environment, I really appreciate the quietude of hearth and hame. I think it's another physical phenomenon with age, just like your eyeball changing shape, that your ears become more sensitized. Mine have at any rate.I find noise increasingly irritating as I get older.

The dogs are still conversing next door but fortunately mine hasn't joined in for awhile now. They must be talking about stuff that doesn't concern him.

Thus goes another vacation day here, with one yet to go. Basically a DVD/Video viewing, soda-drinkin' , cheeto-eatin' time with nary a constructive thing done beyond mowing the front lawn and buying groceries. Well you do what needs to be done, right? Sometimes it's nothing.

Hopefully a more "substantial" blog will follow...

lame-ass post Easter blog

Damn, something about having time off that makes you act like a kid with his parents gone for the evening. You can smoke cigarettes or drink beer or watch dirty movies on the TV, all those forbidden fun acts you don' t ordinarily get to do what with the folks around.

As a grown-up who no longer smokes cigarettes but does drink some beer and view the occasional dirty movie whenever he pleases, I tend to do excessive movie viewing/junk food ingesting when it comes to Mom and Dad leaving the house to me for the evening. Sometimes I'll have a Cheeto or two too many, and spend an hour or so paying for it with (brrp!)indigestion. This morning, at a rather early hour, to put it delicately, I spent enough time on the throne to qualify for a position of royalty.

The Earl of the john, I guess. Well I'm sure, in this wide and wacky world, that there's a blogsite that goes into detail about such matters:

Sunday, April 8, 2007 5:36am. Dropped a couple lincoln logs in there. Good color.

Fortunately this isn't one of those blogsites, however I may digress. But then that's half the fun in writing this drivel, the wide-ass wrong toin at Albuquerque that may steer you to a shitty place or a good one but certainly a different place. At least for a minute.

Damn, what was I writing about? Beats me, but it is Easter. Well I guess most of the world has some sorta fambly dinner and goes to Church today, among other things--is there football today? We useta do the family dinner thing on Easter Sunday, mostly to appease my Grandmother but still regularly after that on a well-this-is-some-sorta-special-day-so-we-might-as-well-eat basis.

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Okay I started this blog yesterday, on Keester Sunday. Keester Sunday, for me, largely consisted of sitting on mine, mostly in front of the TV. Fortunately, I was able to curb any junkfood overindulgence this time and thus avoid that pesky "throne time" one serves a few hours later.

This was supposed to have been a road trip weekend for me. Had planned on visiting some family one state over(about 3 1/2 hrs away by car)but they all had other plans for Easter--with other families, no doubt. This happens as you get older, as far as family get-togethers, the shrinking family. People get old and wear out, or they get divorced or they just have something else to do on these occasions. It happens.

Having been to my share of noisy family functions, a quiet day at home ain't all bad either. Would've been nice to rub elbows with kinfolk I don't see very often but used to at every single one of these-type occasions(thus if there's some dysfunctionality in there it's been so long it's been wiped from conscious memory), but I'll also take the peace and quiet of hearth & hame here. Particularly after working all week in a noisy-ass room fulla noisy-ass people.

I do miss the family events, but maybe they weren't as great as I remember. Actually there are very few negative aspects I can recall. Well, let's see. My cousins had this tiny hateful dog named Tiger who'd come at you with all 8 oz if you looked at him wrong, but that's about it. Come to think of it, my maternal Grandfather had an equally tiny and equally hateful dog, named Boy--what is it with these miniscule canines to give them such rotten dispositions anyway?!

Well I guess there's always next Easter, for whoever's still around and of a mind to have dinner. And again, it's not half bad just hanging here at chez Roundly catching a DVD or two. Caught and taped the first episode of the last season of The Sopranos. Very cool. Got 7 episodes of Spongebob yet to view. Life could be better, but it could also be a whole lot worse..

Don't Mess with Sally's Ice Hole

Okay, you have to not only work where I do to understand that one, but you have to work right at my desk or in the row of desks next to mine. We had a bit o' drama in the office this week over somebody's personal space & items being violated, and instead of them allowing for the possibility that hey, maybe they just spaced out and took the items home, they started pointing fingers, running amok accusing folks of messing with their stuff.

I'm thinking of the Buffalo Springfield song, in which is said, Paranoia strikes deep/ into your life it will creep/ it starts when you're always afraid/step out of line and they'll take you away. With some people, it's stuff from the refrigerator or their office, with others it's the air in their tires.

Well, the place I work is an inherently nutty one, due to the folks we help and their various problems and complaints-- my weekly ride is sort of an atonal Merry-go-Round with malady, disharmony and arhythm fueling the machine. So if you have some nuttiness in you, it'll surface at some point. Some people get paranoid, others go crazy in other ways.

I guess, just like the TV show The Office , every office has one: the tightly-wrapped individual who always seems to have a crisis going, whether it's people into their stuff or the wrong colored pens, and is usually in the manager's office a good 60% of the time voicing said problems. One of the people working near his office said that it happens so much with one individual that you don't even hear what they're saying anymore, just a wall of sound- much akin to the Peanuts specials where the voices of adults(school principals et al)were done with a trumpet w/plunger mute-wawawawa....

Well what the hell. It's happened before and will happen again. Like other office equipment that malfunctions from time to time, it's in the wiring with this individual. A little oil and a tweak and they're good as new. At least for the time being..

Perchance to Blog

Let's try the xtra-big print here. Easier on the eyes- especially if those eyes have a few miles on them. The eyes are, of course, one of the first things to go. Besides the fact that your eyeball changes shape in the course of your lifetime(taking you, for instance--most common--from nearsightedness to farsightedness)the picture gets fuzzy. Guess you could adjust your head or your ears, and see what that does, but...

I am having trouble at this point with teeny-tiny type. Gotta hold it at arms' length and then some, being one of those poor slobs who's gone from near to far-sightedeness.Well, these things happen.

Been watching the Kill Bill movies this weekend. Immensely entertaining. I love the retro music in Quentin Tarantino's films, particularly these 2: the "actual tremolo" guitars(I am old enough to remember when tremolo was an actual setting)and 'right on' 70's bigband stuff, plus the epic spaghetti-Western harmonica/pan flute score.

I was thinking of how cheezy many of the sounds really were, particularly the harmonica/pan flute epic ballads- which were usually played as someone got an arm hacked off and blood was spurting like a geyser from their truncated appendage. Nice combination of images there.

But then that's what makes it for me, the very inappropriateness of the sticky-sweet neo-70's soundtrack to what's on the screen(usually dismemberment of some kind..). It raises the kitsch level even higher.

His movies seem to at once honor and satirize such mannerisms of old. Right down to the tremolo guitar..And the sound effects in the fight scenes are also really choice- every blow lands with a resounding SWAK!

A nice place to go for awhile, the movies. Got one room in the house- a small room with a big TV in it- in which you can really get engrossed and lose yourself in the movie, to where it's always a jolt turning the light back on and returning to reality (well, depending on the movie, that could be a relief)..I should probably program in more such excursions during the week.

Also listened to some classical music, all symphonic stuff, by one S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatte`. Russian-born composer(1899-1974), lived in Austria and Canada. SC stands for Sophie-Carmen. Very lush without being syrupy, neo-Romantic stuff written in the quasi-tonality of the time. Cool stuff. Her Piano music sounds like Prokofiev(this is a good thing, at least to me, being someone who loves Prokofiev's Piano stuff).

Okay then. I guess that's all I've got for this end-of-weekend blog. If you like to read, and like adventure stories, go to http://jameshartisley.com and pick yourself up a book.

Damn, these weekends go fast! A few challenges in the coming week, but it'll make that Friday Corona taste that much better..