Year of the Cow, New Year and happy…

There’s always a lot of confusion this time of year. We’ve closed the office for New Year’s, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get a text from Mr Bossy-Pants. He’s in Berlin, doing god knows what.

The first text reads “Cheers, Cosmonauts”, which I take to mean he’s started his New Years celebration and is working on getting inebriated as fast as is humanly possible. Now, I’m not a big drinker, so I’m not likely to start at three in the afternoon – even if it is New Year’s.

The next text is a bit more disconcerting. The fire alarm has gone off. Can I go check it out? And actually – I can’t. It would take me two hours just to get there. If it’s not a false alarm then the two hour window is likely to leave us burn to a crisp. Just this once I actually can’t help. And I’m usually all “I’m on it” or “be there in fifteen”.

Hey – it’s hardly my fault that Mr Boss Man fucked off to Berlin without having anyone on call.

But, wait… I realized after a little while that we’ve been getting a new fire alarm system installed for a while. When I left the office there was still wires hanging from the ceiling. The main consol was supposedly not connected to anything. It has to be a false alarm. Right? I text him back saying “do we actually have an alarm?”. “I don’t know – do you want to risk it?” is the reply.

And there you go.

Happy Year of the Cow, Mr Man. Happy burned down office to come back to if you come back at all. No one on call and no one to call is one way to go I guess. And what about the whole “having a day off” don’t you understand? Just once I’d like to be able to actually have a day off if you don’t mind.

I got the all clear half an hour later. False alarm. Good fun that. Hope next year will be a little less interesting in all the wrong ways and a little more interesting in all the right ones.

That goes for all of us.

That’s my New Years blessing on you all.

ROL

Not even a little

You know what? I’m not going to rant about the silly season.

Here are my reasons why:

Too many aquaintances bitch and moan about the horrible shopping circumstance surrounding X-mas and all that that entails. And still they want the tree, the booze, the presents, the cards, the doo-daadhs and thinga-ma-bobs. At least you can afford to buy stuff.

So me thinks the lady doth protest too much at this point. Or to put it even more blatantly: Either do the thing or don’t do the thing. You can have Christmas with all the trimmings if that’s what you’re in to, but please don’t bitch about it. I have an unusually low bullshit tolerance level for that sort of thing.

Too many conversations start with “I don’t do Christmas…but” and then the reiteration about family and obligations and all the rest ensues. And let me just say – this is what it’s all supposed to be about anyway. Furthermore: your family is supposed to get on you nerves. Good will towards man starts at home – that’s the bitch of the thing. Deal with it. At least you have family.

Despite all the moaning though, most people manage to have a tolerable time. And I know every time you lock up too many relatives in an enclosed space things can go awry quite qickly, holliday stress and all the rest, but for some reason I just can’t seem to feel sorry for people. We put ourselves in this position. And it seems to me that if you don’t like it – don’t go there.  At least you have the option.

We insist on living in big cities and having these three day hollidays glutting on food and drink and sugar – what exactly do you expect to come out of it? Of course some shit is going to get on your nerves. Focus the energy on trying to be less of an asshole yourself and I’m sure it will be alright.

At least you have food in your belly and a roof over your head.

Now, some people like Christmas. To all of y’all I say good on you -have a great one.

I’ve had some really crap ones and some good ones, it’s like with everything else. But I don’t do the whole holliday stress thing. I know what I’m getting myself into when I go downtown. I know what to expect if I go shopping.  I pretty much know what to expect from the holliday at large. At least I come prepared.

So don’t expect any pity from me – not even a little.

ROL

Say what?

There are some things that make you want to break out in song, like a cheap musical. My life has a pretty weird sound track anyway – so  a little Monty Python would not be too far off the mark.

I am thinking of the Spam-song right now…

“Spam spam spam

Spameli-Spammmm”

- second verse same as the first, ad infinitum.

I was checking my emails at work and found the following piece of poetry:

“Walled city, where i hoped my broken arm would joy and sorrow,
honour and insult, etc.,) with constitute the double manifestation
of the soul. Streets to the little house opposite ford’s
theatre. Maid. Poor georgette! Said hermia softly, watching.”

And – yes it does read like nonsense poetry doesn’t it? The bastard love child of Shakespeare and some coked up German expressionist. And what made it even more funny was that it came under the header “how to make your girlfriend happy” or something like that.

Well, spam on you! Spam on you all!

The cogs in my brain start whirring like crazy at this point.

What is that? Random text generator? How does a text like that come into existence? Drunken chimpanzees at the keyboard? And I’ve read enough literary theory for all the categories and post-modernist theories to start kicking in. Paul Auster would love this stuff. And the absurdists would too. Ionesco and the boys… Don’t look at me like that – I told you I read.

Besides I am running on two hours of sleep, eleven cups of coffee and pure adrenaline right now. My brain is allowed to amuse itself any way it can.

ROL

Don’t cut the red wire

So.

At my place of business there is always something interesting going on.

Currently we are getting the fire alarm updated. Might be a good plan in case of, you know, fire. You do want it to work in the unlikely event that there is a, you know, fire.

So far so good.

So the guys come around to install the thing and they get about half-way there in a week. So the weekend is coming up and my shift starts and I come to work this morning only to find that they’ve sort of left mid-rewiring which means there are red wires sticking out of the walls and ceiling at interestingly irregular intervals.

I figure they’re going to show up sometime during the day to do the rest.

You guessed it. Just after lunch one of the guys comes through the door like someone lit his ass on fire and grabs his tools and run off again. So I guess that means they aren’t planning on finishing up here today then. And it’s Friday so I guess that means they won’t be doing any more work this week then.

I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.

It just doesn’t seem terribly professional to me. Couldn’t they at least have taped up the wires to they didn’t hang like so much high tech liana growth? I just doesn’t look right. It does give that interesting Blade Runner post industrial retrofitted environment ambiance to the joint, but I’m not so sure that’s what you really want.

How hard can it be to plan out your work week so you actually get shit done in time? Oh, my bad. That would involve some actual planning. Sorry. Get it done, boys.

I just have the feeling I should add a sign to my “No Crying Please” – this one should say “Don’t Cut the Red Wire”

ROL

Books and … stuff

Aherm.

I’m quite comfortable with living alone, actually. I mean, stepping in to my apartment is a bit like walking into my head. Wait… that can’t be good …

It’s close quarters and all that. My place is small, littered with books, paraphernalia, bones and more books. Oh, and did I mention the books?

Yesterday I finally snapped. I own too much stuff… It hits me every once in while. I mean, all this stuff. Some of the stuff is necessary, but a lot of it is just stuff. You know. The kinds of things you can’t really throw out because – well, you need them later, but not right now.

So, there I am knee deep in stuff and occasionally yelling “son of a bitch” at something or other… No, that’s pretty normal for me, don’t worry. You know, throwing away books is against the rules so I can’t really do that – but clothes and shoes and appliances? No problem. I can jettison that without batting an eye. Occasionally that results in me looking for a shirt I already threw away, but I can live with that.

The last couple of weeks have been tough. I’ve been whittled into kindling by work and friends and family telling me what I am and am not. And most of the time that doesn’t really bother me, everybody has an opinion about everything, it’s just how we relate to the world. Sometimes though it comes in droves and that can get to be a bit much. Especially when all the verbs are tiring and all the adjectives negative.

There’s a book – well, there’s almost always a book, isn’t there? – that I read a while back. It’s been made into a movie that I just happened to see the other day. It put me in mind of what I was at seventeen, at nineteen even. Funny how these things go… and you know the best cure for that kind of thing really is throwing things out. Get rid of the stuff that just accumulates and try to figure out what is worth hanging on to.

The irony is that the silly season is coming up. That usually means more stuff. I don’t know…. Right now all I want for Christmas is to be sitting in front of a huge pinewood fire deep in the woods eating spaghetti-o’s out of the tin. Possibly washing them down with brandy laced hot chocolate.

ROL

Gypsy music, drugs and philosophy

I don’t generally watch a lot of TV. I like watching movies, but I do a lot of controlled viewing so as to not get sucked into the pointless game shows and what not that’s on offer. It is more or less a question of discipline and shielding yourself from the kind of stupidity that makes you want to bang your head against the wall.

Yesterday I was just too washed out to do anything else. So I lay there on my couch, one foot on the floor, in that state of consciousness where you might as well be staring into the fire. I mean that’s what you can use the box for sometimes.

I watched a documentary about Jimmy Rosenberg, the gypsy guitarist. Fascinating stuff. Such talent – and such a waste. I mean the guy can do things with a guitar that are absolutely fascinating even if you don’t like this kind of music.

Seeing him at ten when he can hardly reach around the guitar is … well. Fucked up, but in an interesting way. Seeing him fucked-up on heroin and broken by the world about ten years later – not so much fun actually. But it’s one of those thing that you watch and you get a little angry on his behalf. That much talent, that much given to him and he fucks it all up. You can play connect the dots the whole way through the show. Abusive father, something interesting in family dynamic, too much drugs and success at an early age. If he gets his shit together he will have some awesome stuff to put into his music. But, sadly, it is too easy to see how he will slip and kill himself before his time.

The connection they make is with Django Reinheardt which makes sense, but I keep thinking of Chet Baker for some reason. Must be the heroin and the squandering of talent.

I think the thing that hooked me into the show was probably when Jimmy says something about making mistakes and how the only thing you learn from making mistakes is that you never want to do that again. Makes you angry and sad. And he’s absolutely right about that.

But it doesn’t really help and that’s the sad thing. You keep on making the same stupid mistakes over and over again if you can’t figure out why you’re making them.

I don’t normally give out advice, but the one thing I have found myself saying to various friends and acquaintances is that once you figure out why you’re doing something you can stop doing it.

Sound’s simple, huh?

It really isn’t.

Just think about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re choosing the wrong people or the wrong jobs or the wrong solutions to your problems. Patterns are hard to break. Pattern recognition is not something you are born with, it’s something you have to strive hard for. And then make sense of.

In the meantime all you can do is keep you head down.

And not do any hard drugs, because that is never the solution.

ROL

No Crying, Please

My job is … weird.

Let me put it this way; I can, when pushed, make people cry. I am sure we all have that ability given the right circumstance.

However, I was not trying to make anyone cry today.

When the gentleman in front of my desk making a complaint suddenly detereorates into a blubbering mess my first response is naturally “huh?”

Hard on the heels of that comes the more ingrained “get a grip”. Or possibly “stop that right now”… It’s not that it makes me uncomfortable. This happens sometimes. People just get to the point where they can’t take anymore. I understand that. Well, at least I understand how this works theoretically.

For me personally I think there should be some kind of emergency or stress reaction or something on the order of a minor catastrophy behind that kind of unabashed emoting.

I am obviously wrong. So you never know what’s going on in peoples heads, and sometimes I’m sure it can be healthy to have a good cry, but for something the equivalent of stubbing your toe on the desk? I mean, really?

I try to be sympathetic. I use my “there now, there now” voice. I offer solutions to the problem.

Look, we all have problems. We all have things we want and cannot have. We all have sorrows.

I just wish people could conduct themselves with a little more decorum, because I really don’t want to have to resort to putting up a sign above my desk that says

NO CRYING, PLEASE

But I will if it comes to that. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, ok?

ROL