Display Case for the Ductwork

   Ladies, I implore you...

   Our work space was a huge, expansive single floor with about 300 cubicles. Sort of a cubicle farm.  Women, especially young women, tend to turn out for this work.  As a team leader, I spent most of my day milling around helping fellow readers score essay answers to standardized test questions.  I peer over shoulders at monitors, and down at faces.  It's not exactly a professional job, and the dress code is pretty casual.

   You know, if a woman wants to show lots of tit at the club or even at the grocery store, great.  But at work, what are you doing?  Many women, especially the younger ones, don't seem to realize the extent to which they insinuate themselves into the male brain, a brain that just might be stuck at work carrying around a 3 and 1/2 day encumbrance.  Sometimes I'll be walking down an aisle, look up at someone and think, Put that away.  Jesus.  (Other times it's more like, Pick that up.)

   There were two women on my team named Sabrina.  Both sexy.  Black Sabrina, the type of girl who was probably used to getting her way, was a very nice person, but she tested authority.  She would take her own "break before the break."

   Guys would wander over from other projects to chat with her.  Big Glen, our data monitor with a front butt, said, "This is getting out of hand."  I joked with him  that we should set up one of those deli number dispensers at her cubicle.

   "I know, Glen.  There are two black guys and three white guys who come by all the time.  Four, counting me."  Blame it on the wanderbra.

   She had a sweet set of B cups.  I don't know what these brassieres are called, but  hers may as well have been "The Erector Set," or "Display Case for the Ductwork."  She provided a sweet view from above.  The luxuriating mid-size mams with that little strip of connecting fabric.  I was seriously asking myself if I could afford to be let go.

   If you hold a Milk Bone in front of a dog, he's gonna look.  He's gonna do more than look.

   Once in a while a student's essay needs to be flagged and sent higher up.  Anything mentioning suicide, other violence, pregnancy talk, stuff like that.  One day four minutes before dismissal, white Sabrina raises her hand.  She's also in her mid-20s, not quite as angelic, but really pushes the boundaries with her display.  When I get over there, she says, "Is this an Alert?"  (Something about building a bomb and blowing things up.)

   I looked down over her and thought, You bet it is.  Jesus!  I'm seein' pink.  I'm seein' blue veins.  Secure the perimeter!  This is a major alert. Then, conjuring up Groucho, I'm all,  Lady, please!  I need this job.  I've got kids to feed.  And from the looks of it, so do you.

 

 

     

 

 

Angry Money

     Jon Stewart's dressing down of financial celebrity James Cramer four years ago was an interesting phenomenon.  Cramer is a smart, well-informed insider who has something to say.  He is also a guy who loves the sound of his own voice.  I was surprised that he didn't punch back when Stewart repeatedly slammed him as being part of the problem.  He absorbed every last bit of the beating.

     I'm not a fan of Cramer's show Mad Money, partly because I tend not to like loud people.  The guy acts  and sounds like the Wizard of Oz.  One thing I will say in his defense is that he sometimes admits when he's wrong.  There are probably tens of thousands of newsletter writers, stock pundits, gurus, trading system peddlers, advisors, call them what you will, who virtually never admit when they're wrong; and of course, anyone who repeatedly gives trading advice on specific stocks will frequently be dead wrong.

     So what's my point?  It's just that I would think Cramer (and other high profile stock advisors) would have trouble sleeping at night.  I haven't seen Mad Money in years, and maybe they run a boilerplate warning about risk of loss, so that inexperienced, naive investors don't get too carried away in the excitement of the show.  But toward the end of the Stewart interview, Cramer's defense was, "I'm not Edward R Murrow.  I'm a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business."  

     Wait, wait.  Let me stop you there.  An "entertainment" show.  You mean like when a psychic has a disclaimer (or should, anyway) "For entertainment purposes only"?  So people aren't actually supposed to take their hard-earned cash and plunk it down on some snappy growth stock in an emerging new business that you think is aces?  You mean like when those 900 numbers in the back of weekly news rags say, "For entertainment purposes only"?  So... is buying a Cramer stock pick akin to taking the "entertainer" at your local gentleman's club back to the VIP room?   To use the parlance of financial speculators:  "This stock's got legs."

Saunders' Tenth of December

     I've seen George Saunders on Letterman.  He seems like a good guy: modest, funny, likable.  And Tenth of December was hyped on NPR, the reviewer proclaiming it might be the best book you will read this year.

     He has been described as the chronicler of the wage slave, and the best short story writer today, so naturally I had to lay my hands on a copy.

     Here is my review.

     How to respond:  Incumbent upon, and what not.  But what would they say?  Keep wits, no doubt.  Keep wits.  It could be done.  Oh God, voice rec.  Ignition.  Sledding is tough, unbelieving, informal.  Hotel Echo, this is Charlie Delta.  Show some respect.  (Weds OK?)  Coffee shop sample requester.  Direct quote: "cornhole the ear-cunt."  Added bonus or pure liberty?  Takingwise.

     If you've enjoyed my review of Tenth of December by George Saunders, then you might like Tenth of December.

The Universal Language

    During the first few years of my guitar-playing life, I was really livin'.  And learnin'.

    I'd recently traded in my basic guitar for a very well-made cedar top.  The relationship between musician and instrument is an intimate one, and I guard my 6-string with the vigilance of a mama gator.

    There was a folk music club where members take turns rendering their favorites.  The group's organizer and leader, Walt, is well-known locally as a folk music enthusiast and patron.  With his bald head, long beard and black, plastic horn rims, he looked professorial.

     Some people think it would be difficult to get up and give a speech.  Nothing compared to playing acoustic and singing, which requires complete relaxation and immersion.

    In the cozy classroom setting of this club, I decided that "Dark Hollow," a tune derived from bluegrass and made somewhat popular by the Grateful Dead, would be my best bet for a winning debut.  I had almost no experience playing for anyone other than myself and my yellow lab, and I hadn't quite mastered this tune.  But I just figured this crowd would go for "Dark Hollow."  The song ends with the following refrain.

                                         I'm goin' away, I'm leavin' today,
                                         Well I'm goin', but I ain't comin' back      (repeat)

    I struggled with some of the chord changes; my rhythm was iffy; my vocal was flat.  It was a frustrating attempt at communing with like-minded humans.

    As I was putting my cedar top back in its hardshell case, and out of harm's way, moderator Walt said, "Well don't go away mad."

    I actually replied with, "Oh, I'm not leaving."  And I didn't.  I slid back down onto my chair where I quietly held my baby in its shell.  I'm more protective of my guitar, apparently, than I am of my dignity.



 

Has It Been That Long?

     "I'm not feeling too well," she explained when I called Friday night to firm up our Saturday plans.  We'd been dating every weekend for about two months.

     "I'm kind of run down and a little depressed."

     This actually suited me, as I wasn't feeling my best either, and was struggling to come up with something  interesting to do for a date that wasn't too taxing.  Thinking it polite to show some concern for her condition, I continued, "So it's not like a bug or something then... you're just kind of  stressed out?  I have lots of bad days myself but don't actually get sick much.  Usually I get a cold once a year in October.  Actually last year, I didn't get sick, probably cuz  I wasn't working around kids anymore."   Blah, blah...

     I called Saturday afternoon.  We had a long chat that went pretty well: I scored some laughs, cheered her up a bit.  And then I wanted to recap how she was doing.

     "So then you don't have like a virus or anything serious, you're just run down?"

     I'm not sure at what point over the next couple days it finally dawned on me.  God.  Two things:  I'm pretty slow, and I need to get out more.   It's been so long since I've had a regular relationship that I forgot women have periods.

The Dwelling Was Fully Involved

  When it comes to marriage and kids, how involved should one get?  Well, to each his own, but remember that word involved.  It’s a word used by firefighters, as in, “By the time we arrived on the scene, the dwelling was fully involved.  There was nothing we could do.”

  What does  life have in store for me?  Am I fated to holing up like Pynchon or Poe, only without the body of work?  It’s an unhealthy existence, slowly withering on the vine, while the images of me in photographs begin to fade away like those of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. 

  For all those guys bent on a life without kids, George Gilder’s Sexual Suicide is one scary read.  In this defense of marriage, family and traditional values, he seems to suggest that men who don’t have children tend to fare poorly in life.  Men need to be socialized by having a family.

  As for the ladies, he notes that many of them like to broadcast their utter lack of interest in having babies, but he says they are denying their biology.  Childbirth is their destiny.  And here I thought childbirth was a publicity stunt.  (That seemed like a pretty good line when I came up with it.  Then along come a few  headline-grabbing, high-output females, and suddenly it doesn’t seem particularly original, clever, or, alas, funny.  Thanks.)  Carry on with your biological chain letter, your parental pyramid scheme, your human hoarding.  Do we really need to be farming humans in overcrowded pens?   Spawning like shrimp in a fetid pond?  Honestly, I miss the days when TV shows were about families like the Petries, instead of families from Petri dishes.  In the film Get Him to the Greek,  Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, says to the boy whom he thought was his son, “Your mother… is a wonderful mother; but she is a terrible human being.”

  Sexual Suicide suggests that in life’s main event, reproduction, women play the central role.  They have the power.  They’re the Johnny Carson, while the father is standing around like Ed McMahon.  To hear all the jokes that male comics make at the expense of females, one would think that men don’t like women: "Why do women knit?  Gives them something to think about while they’re talking."  (I'm just the messenger.)  The male attitude toward women is shaped by the notion that hetero men have but two choices in life:  (a) Settle down, get married, and have kids.  Or (b) Proceed down a dangerous path that leads to prison.  Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me no pleasure to point out that many names for jail sound like slang for the lady bidness.

·         Cooler..................... Cooter

·         Frig ......................... Brig

·         Clit ........................... Clink

·         The Pokey................. (that could be either, really)

·         (ditto the Walls, Up the River, etc)

·         Hoosegow .................. House cow

·         In Stir ......................... In Stirrups (get ‘em up)

  All right, let’s not belabor it.  So men need to be subordinated by family.  Here’s how it works.   A guy will want to nail pretty much anything that walks by until he has his own children.  Why does having his own kids change his behavior?  Based on my observations, it’s because his kids keep hitting him in the nuts.  When I pay a visit to my younger brother’s family, my seven year old niece Julia (Jules for short) comes running at me.  Sometimes I yell, “Cover the jewels!”  She thinks I’m talking about her.  Ever see a family where the kids’ ages are like 9, 8, 7… and then 1?  That woman is trying to keep her man in check.  (By the way, this is all true:  I looked it up on Wankipedia.)  Uh… I guess you guys aren’t ready for this stuff yet … but your kids are gonna love it!

Naivety Scene

     Out of the corner of my eye, “nativity” appeared to be “naivety.”  An honest reading mistake. 

     In the 21^st Century, naivete  (or the British naivety) helps people believe.  Truth to tell though, if anyone had a naïve young adulthood, I did.  In my late-blooming, sheltered mid-twenties, I went to my dad and earnestly said, “People who believe in God…they’re just pretending to believe in it, right?”

     According to an article in The New Yorker, when a person sees something, only 20% of the image is created by nerve endings in the eye.  The other 80%?  Memory.  Explains a lot.  Fully 80% comes from that part of the brain that controls memory.  Which is why my particular eye/brain combo came up with naivety.  People see what they want to see.  Ex-Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens thought that the fat one-third of a shattered baseball bat was in fact a baseball.  Maybe that's not the best example.

     Another word I have misread is “storied.”  The day after Bonds hit homer number 756, the photo caption read, “Bonds breaks Aaron’s storied home run record.”  Can you think of an apt anagram for the word “storied?”   Need more time?  I’ll wait.  By the way, I am not suggesting that Hammerin’ Hank used performance enhancing drugs, naturally.  I'm suggesting the virgin did.  (Oprah to conduct seance.)

     Of course, for many people, sports is their religion.  Only instead of putting the cash in a  collection plate, they give it to the beer and hot dog guy.  Tithing to the god of nitrates, saturated fat and alcohol.  Seeing what you want to see.  And you don’t want to see how they make the hot dogs.  Or the "miracles."