Things I overhear at work even though I really, really don’t want to listen to the banalities spewed by these people

Person #1 (speaking of an older relative) “…And she quilts! Oh my god, the stitches are like 1/8 of an inch apart – perfect!”
Person #2 “That’s real quilting. People today, they use machines, that’s not real.” Said in a huffy, self righteous, judgmental tone.

Ok, first of all, this is the sort of shit I have to listen to all freaking day. Weep for me.

Second, why the fuck would using a sewing machine (I’m assuming the person meant a sewing machine; if something like a front loader was used to make a quilt, I could see the point) make it “not real”? Since when did taking advantage of time saving technology mean something has lost it’s veracity? I’m typing rather than using a quill pen. Does that make this rant any less real? Butter is no longer made using the exhausting hand churned method. Does that make butter not real? Well, actually, a lot of people refer to oleo, or margarine, or, as I like to call it, a bunch of gooey chemicals painted yellow, as butter. That is wrong. That is, in fact, not real butter. But beside the point!

The point is: I don’t like that person and the habitually huffy, self righteous, and judgmental pronouncements that come oozing over my cubical wall so that I leave work feeling like I’m lightly covered in slime from listening to such stupidity all day long.

THAT is the point.

People I Don't Trust

(in no particular order)


• Anyone who voted for W twice (first time I can understand; second time is unforgivable).
• Anyone who refuses to eat more than two small slices of pizza.
• Anyone whose teeth are unnaturally white.
• Anyone who spends more time at the gym than at the playground.
• Anyone who thinks Sacha Boran Cohen is funny.
• Anyone who claims to have never been drunk.
• Anyone who refuses to be seen without makeup.
• Anyone who offers to pray for someone with whom they are angry rather than saying “FUCK YOU”.
• Anyone who thinks stem cell research is bad. (I mean, really?)
• Anyone who thinks anti-choice people are only concerned about the “babies”.
• Anyone who looks to MTV for trends to follow.
• Anyone who thinks WW is a “Lifestyle Change” and not a diet.
• Anyone who thinks diets work.
• Anyone who reads that last one and thinks “But my diet really did. It just takes…”
• Anyone who thinks calories in = calories out (or that losing weight equates it with the Law of Conservation).
• Anyone who thinks thin women are all anorexic, bulimic or have an eating disorder.
• Anyone who thinks eating disorders are good.
• Anyone who can say the store name “Menard’s” and not giggle.
• Anyone who doesn’t like Dr. Seuss.
• Anyone who is not enchanted by books.
• Anyone who thinks torture is justifiable.
• Anyone who doesn’t laugh at baby giggles.
• I haven’t really been a fan since the ‘80’s, but I’m very sad, and still shocked that Michael Jackson died.
• Anyone who thinks “reality TV” is real. Or even worse, great entertainment.
• Anyone who thinks that magic is impossible.
• Anyone who thinks David Blaine is magic. (Most. Boring. Magician. Ever.)
• CHEEZ-IT’s!!!! Love ‘em!!!!!
• Anyone who thinks global warming is a myth. (again, really?)
• Anyone who throws their co-workers under the bus to advance their own career.
• Halliburton.
• Anyone who thinks skinny people are healthy and fat people are unhealthy, simply by looking at their bodies.
• Anyone who engages in sizeism.
• Anyone who thinks racism no longer exists in this country.
• Anyone who thinks feminism is outmoded or is no longer needed.
• Anyone who thinks sexism no longer exists.
• Anyone who thinks “reverse sexism” is a problem.
• Anyone who doesn’t thinks computers and the internet are the Greatest. Things. Evar!
• Anyone who doesn’t like red wine. I’m sorry, you’re just weird.
• Anyone who thinks weird or abnormal is “bad” (yes, I just contradicted myself. In a way. BUT IT’S DIFFERENT!)
• Anyone who thinks this list is definitive. Because it’s not. More later…

Okay, then...

I have no idea what this is or where it is going. Any ideas will be appreciated.

Black painted nails chittered across the tabletop.

“We expected you before this.” She said.

The table was of a blond wood, scarred with years and use. Dark gouges were visible along the length and breadth of the surface, absorbing light into itself.

Her nails were smoothly manicured, but weirdly bent, as if from a vitamin deficiency; curving down on one side but not the other. A quarter inch of keratin gone badly wrong. I couldn’t stop looking at them, wanting to put them right.

“You knew your time was up, and yet you still delayed. You kept us waiting. Why?”

Her voice was like a silk shawl that had been dragged through burrs. Snags and skips that only emphasized the smoothness beneath. It echoed lightly in the gloom.

The room we sat in was full of smoky darkness, lit only by torches hung at intervals on the walls. It was a large space, long and high, with the table running the length of it. Old, moldy rushes lined the floor and dark, arched doorways led off at intervals along the open brick walls. Bright patches where tapestries had once hanged could be discerned against the smoke darkened masonry.

Sitting in a hard wood, high backed chair across the table, I raised my eyes to look into hers. This sounds like a simple thing, but you will never know the strength it cost me to look into that milky blue whiteness.

“What you want is not mine to give.” I said.

I couldn’t hold her gaze. My eyes dropped down to her bloody lips. Her mouth curved into a smile. My head swum and my eyes dropped further to her nails again, crawling along the wood of table, tracing scars carved in ancient times, feeling the damage as a lover caresses flesh.

“Then take it.”

Psychotic Love & Death

A tuneless humming wove itself into her sleeping brain.

Accompanying the non-tune was an irritation that was crawling in jagged bursts up her spine. An irritation which was quickly growing into pain, and bringing her fully to a reluctant consciousness.

Death lay on her stomach with her hands tucked under her pillow. She could feel that the blanket had been drawn down around her hips so that her entire bare back was exposed to the attention of her lover, who was currently, it seemed, carving something into her flesh.

"What are you doing, Love?" she murmured into the pillow, without opening her eyes.

"Carving my name into you so you don’t forget me." Love replied.

Death sighed. "Why would I forget you?" Especially since you’ve carved your name into me about a thousand times already? She didn’t add. Love said nothing.

Death opened her eyes and gently turned over to face her lover. Psychotic Love’s eyes were pulsing, the pupils dilating and contracting rapidly and continuously. A disconcerting phenomenon, to be sure, but also beautiful. The irises shown with rainbow colors that changed with Love’s mood. Just now they were swirling with grays and blues, shot through with gold sparks.

Death sat up, reaching for Love’s hands and carefully extracting the X-acto knife from her left fist. Tears gathered slowly in the corners of Love’s extraordinary eyes, rolling down her round cheek, traveling the curve of her jaw to drop off her pointed chin onto the top swell of her full breasts. Holding Psychotic Love’s hands, Death leaned forward and kissed the tears away.

"Why are you sad, Love?" she asked.

"Because you were dreaming." Love said. "I could hear your dreams and you were dreaming about you and you were dreaming about you with the people and you love them and you were dreaming about being them and I don’t want you to forget me when you go away…" Love’s voice trailed off into silence, which she ended by loudly snuffling back her tears.

"Love," Death sighed. "You know you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not going back to them. I can’t go back. I have my job to do and my world to oversee. My dreams are just sleeping thoughts and memories. That’s all."

"What if your thoughts and memories wake up and want to take you back for real?" Love said.

"They can’t. You know this." Suddenly Death was tired of the game. "Okay, no more carving on me when I’m sleeping. I’m not going anywhere and even if I were…" Love whimpered at that, but Death ignored it and continued. "…Even if I were going to leave this level I would take you with me."

Psychotic Love’s eyes widened and shifted into a medley of oranges and yellows.

"You would? I’d come with you?" She asked, hands clasped childlike under her chin.

Death looked at her and sighed again, but not without humor.

"Of course you would come with me. We are inextricably intertwined, you and I."

Deciding that she would be getting no more sleep this night, Death hugged Psychotic Love, then moved to the edge of the large bed. Standing up she stretched her long body, her back arching until her bones creaked, and indulged in a jaw cracking yawn. She walked across the shadow drenched room and examined her body in the looking-glass. Twisting around she was able to see the bloodless wound left by Psychotic Love’s ministrations at the base of her spine, just above the swell of her buttocks. With her left hand, Death awkwardly reached around and smoothed the cuts away until nothing but a faint scar was left on her dark, luminous skin. Psychotic Love’s reflection appeared beside her in the mirror.

Love’s head came barely to Death’s chin, her long pale hair floating up, seeming to give her more height, and reaching down almost to the floor so that she was surrounded by a nimbus of silver. Her translucent skin was glowing slightly; the beat of her heart visible in the waxing and waning phosphorescence of her blood as it moved through her veins.

Death’s own midnight skin seemed to throb with vital, solid texture next to Psychotic Love’s ethereal presence. Her hair was long, but straight and close to her head, shining blue-black as it flowed down her shoulders. Her skin was etched with swirls and constellations; patterns of life and dreams shining darkly in the night. Only her glowing, pupil-less eyes shown whitely; eyes which searched out and found all pain and sorrow and despair, and gifted it with death, bringing ease and comfort to the souls of all beings as they moved on to their next worlds.

Love’s eyes pulsed slowly through the reds of contentment, the greens of longing, the purple of rage, and the browns of hate. Her thoughts sprang out from her twisted mind like static electricity, reaching into the physical worlds and entering the minds of those who were open to receiving and acting on her emotions. Standing still she infected thousands with her unquenchable desires and selfish loves, she erupted tempers and tantrums, murder and helpless sobbing, unendurable pain and jealous rages. Unvocalized shrieks whipped the air around her and blood-soaked throats voiced the madness she incubated and birthed into the worlds.
Psychotic Love stared without seeing and spewed out emotions without feeling a thing.

Gazing at their reflections, marveling as always that the contrast of their bodies complimented each other so perfectly, Death took Psychotic Love’s hand and squeezed cruelly, bringing Love’s eyes to her own, ending the scattering of insanity into the world for that moment.

Psychotic Love sighed as she looked at her lover.

"We are meant to be together, are we not?" Love whispered.

"Always and to the end of time, I will follow you, and I will ease the suffering that you bring." Death whispered back.

Things that happen in my head:

So, a man was walking in ancient Greece. He came to a village at the bottom of a mountain pass. He went up to a villager and asked how he might safely traverse the pass.
"Well, that pass is the domain of the Gorgons." said the villager. "To get through you would need to talk to Zola."
"Zola is the leader of the Gorgons?" asked the man.
"That's right." said the villager.

"Gorgon Zola is the big cheese."


Ba-dum bump.

Time flies...

Jesus, I hadn't realized how long it has been since I last posted. I'm so glad I don't have kids. I imagine I would be just as neglectful of them.

KY

Okay, seriously, am I the only one who thinks of Kentucky as the slippery state?

American...meh

I did something tonight that I have never done before. No, it had nothing to do with a goat, although that is still on my list.

I tuned my television to Fox, and American Idol...on purpose!!!! I've only ever seen the show two or three times before, never in it's entirety, at my sister's house. She loves this shit. And she's a remarkably intelligent woman. I don't get it.

I tried to keep my snark in, inasmuch as is possible considering the circumstances, but one thing kept reoccurring to me: This was filmed before the writers strike. Is it possible (radical as this thought is), that some of the auditioners are actually actors, hired by the producers and given lines to preform (I'm thinking of the stalky guy in particular) in order to make it "interesting"?

Undoubtedly true as that is, it still doesn't work for me. Even with scripts and professional actors, this show sucks.

The real reason I tuned in is that I read on Hecklerspray that American Idol is less about singing talent and more about watching Paula Abdul's slow and amusing descent into insanity. Screw shrieky, superficial singing, I want to watch a famous person be stupid! I was extremely disappointed, therefore, that she didn't even seem to be drunk. She didn't cry once, dammit!

I am an American! I want to see another person wallow in painful and personal hell! That's what we do! Apparently. Woo!