dreadcrumbs

The Travail of the Public Hermit

I feel like I'm a pretty friendly guy. But not social, by any means. If I could choose between, say, eating a bagel in complete solitude at home or having a steak dinner with a crowd of beautiful, famous, and rich people, I would choose the bagel. Which isn't to say I wouldn't have a good time eating that steak. Just, you know, if I had a choice, I'd do something else.

I think my wife is okay with this. She's generally a much more social person than I am, and sacrifices opportunities for "party fun" sometimes just for my benefit. But, like I said, I think she's okay with it. She has developed an obsession with yellow wallpaper for some reason, but other than that, she seems fine.

Anyway, despite my hard friendly shell, it still feels weird when I pass coworkers in the hall that I don't know that well. You know the kind. They aren't the people that you work with every day. They aren't the people that you just see that work in a completely different department and never deal with. They're those people who have been in some of the same meetings as you, someone to whom you may have said a word or two in those same meetings, but that's it. What's your greeting obligation in the hall? A nod? A "how's it going?" Just ignoring them seems rude. I don't know. It all seems awkward.

I just got out of a meeting with a number of people who fit this nether-acquaintance category, and then, not 2 minutes after the meeting ended, I pass one of them in the hall. I do the mild smile, nod, averted eyes thing, but he delivers a "Hey, hey, hey!" punctuated with alternating finger jabs. This freaked me out, of course, but I responded with a polite chuckle to cover my flabbergastation.

The exchange gave me an idea, though. If everyone is going to feel awkward anyway, the best course of action is to make the other person feel more awkward than you. That way, by comparison, you're as cool as a cucumber. I think I'm going to start greeting these "barely-knowns" with a vigorous two-beat chest thump followed with a "What what" and a nod. Next week I'll start doing scat. The singing, I mean. Not the poo.

Microstory Monday

Watson
"Tendons carry sound better than string," I shout to the man I call Edison. "Better, even!"
When I put the tin can to my ear and pull it tight, a muffled scream sounds in the next room.
"No screaming, Edison!" I shout. "Say words!"
There is a pause, and then a tinny voice sounds through the can. "please...stop..." it says.

Friday Fives

Top Five Reasons Today is Significant

5. It's Tibetan National Uprising Day.
4. My son moved his first object with his mind today.
3. I found out what that growth was.
2. It's the sixth anniversary of the most questionable decision my wife ever made.
1. It's the sixth anniversary of the best decision I ever made.

Checks and Balances

I've never been a check person (or a Czech person, for that matter, despite the Hebrew letter carved in my forehead), even back in the days when checks were about the only way you could pay for goods and services. That is, if you were reluctant to carry all your money in your pockets and were too young to have a credit card, like I was. Sure, some thrice-curst devils among us might say you're never too young to have a credit card, but I didn't really ever get one until just recently. And that was because I was lured by the promise of sky miles.

Anyway, checks. I've written probably ten of them in my life, and all under duress. The advent of direct deposit for just about every recurring expense has transformed me from a forgetful delinquent into a pillar of economic stability. That and my wife, who writes the checks for things that don't have direct deposit. (I'm actually not even sure what these are. Coal delivery? Ether and Tonic? Chimneysweeps?)

Thus, when I was at the store in line to purchase my consummable product of the hour, I was perturbed to find the person in front of me pull out a checkbook and s...l...o...w...l...y... fill out the amount she wished to pay, painstakingly sign her name, and tear the check out in seven easy tugs. Now, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this. It's just that, like a good human being, I'm skeptical, distrusting, and irritated by anyone who does things differently than I do. I mean, who is to say that waiting listlessly for the swiping machine to authenticate my debit card is any less irritating?

I might even convince myself that any annoyance I felt in the situation was due to my own ignorant caprice but for the joy I get from watching our machine slaves toil to do their meaty masters' bidding. Who would possibly want to do any task that you could make a robot do for you? Not me. I know I'd have felt a lot better about that woman paying with a check if she'd had a little mechanical midget doing the writing and tearing.

Blood from a Stone

There is a advertisement in the Designated Notice Square inside our company elevators for the Red Cross. It's about donating blood, and has what looks like an amateur photograph of two women standing at a water cooler. Under the woman on the left are the words "Susan donates because her employer Encourages it." It feels a little insidious, especially with the capital "E" in "Encourage," but its the words under the other woman that disturb me.

"Hanna donates blood whenever she has an hour between meetings."

Um...I understand that they're trying to address the person that says "I just don't have time to donate blood," but whenever you have an hour between meetings? Yah. I guess that's one way to get people to attend meetings.

I mean, I have a moment between meetings right now. Oh. Wait. My phone is ringing.

...

It was the Corporate Community Service Liaison. She says my needle is ready.

Microstory Monday

To Live A Life Without Flavor
Caught on the drain, the small shavings of pink meat at the bottom of the sink quiver as water trickles past them. My heartbeat pulses painfully inside my mouth as I prod the pieces with my razor, forcing them down into plumbing obscurity.
"Buh-bye, dayth budths," I say, risking some slippage of the gauze wrapped around my tongue. "Buh-bye foheveh."

Friday Fives

Top five things you're most likely to see in a mirror

5. Your own mortality
4. Objects closer than they appear
3. An inevitable dystopian future
2. The Other Side
1. The person behind you

So start taping them up, people.

Tastes Like Ham

Is there a flavor you could live with tasting all day, every day? You know, and not go crazy? Like, even if you really like roasted almonds, wouldn't you go nuts (heh) if you had to taste that flavor every moment of every day? And the strange thing is, even if you could make a short list of flavors you might possibly be able to deal with (no, water flavor doesn't count), the one that you do taste all day every day, RAW MEAT, wouldn't make the list. Yes, you read right. Because what is your own mouth and tongue if not raw meat? Living meat? Still wouldn't make the list.

And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives like we're savoring the living skin of legless pigs covered in spit, we still manage not to go mad. Most of us, anyway.

My current theory is that there is something, some chemical or hormone or enzyme, that keeps us from being able to actually taste ourselves. That our own meat, to us, is tasteless. So to speak. My limited experiments (come on, who hasn't eaten a hangnail or two?) reinforce this idea, but I can't really prove it without hacking off a digit or limb and cooking it up the way I would any other meat. And I'm not quite willing to do that. Not yet.

But I'm happy to hear what you have to say. 

The Flight of Pigs

After several years of life experience and a lot of thinking, I've decided that the best way to get anything done is to get as many people as possible in the same room. Ideally each of these people will either have particularly strong opinions about everything or feel like they have something to prove. Or both.

Additionally, if you can have those people randomly lose and regain the ability to understand spoken language (or just be of subhuman intelligence), you are able to ask the same questions in many different ways. As a result, concepts can be explained over and over again, and you are able to keep yourselves sequestered in the same room for hours and hours. Communal bliss.

Just kidding. March Fool.