The clonk-mysteries

There are certain times when you feel… oh, how shall I put it… perhaps a little more vulnerable than others.

Now, I’m a fairly paranoid person, but in a healthy “don’t take candy from strangers” kind of way. That is to say, I’m not a “nut living in the wilderness with a 110 pound Rottweiler named Butch and a knife collection” kind of paranoid. Uh… okay, so maybe a small knife collection, but it’s really very reasonable and it’s not like I collect them on purpose, they just tend to accumulate.

Anyway…

So there are times when you feel slightly more vulnerable than others, is what I’m trying to convey here in my very “not a loner in the woods” way.

I take my baths seriously. Yeah, I’m one of those people. I like the temperature just about one degree below my-god-I’m-cooking-alive and I bring a pitcher of water to drink and occasionally a book. You have to be specific about the book too, just in case there’s unintentional slippage hence leading to the reading material becoming slightly more soggy than nature intended.

So there I am in my bath with my book. The inevitable relaxation that the near cooking temperature induces has just started setting in and knotted muscles are unraveling at the solid pace of about one layer ever tree pages, if you measure your time at reading pace. I’m getting good and mellow.

Suddenly there’s a clonk.

Let me define this clonk a little more clearly. I live alone, I haven’t given away any spare keys and there should be no appliances, devices or living entities capable of producing a clonk anywhere near my vicinity. Especially not while I’m wet and naked.

We’ve all seen this movie, haven’t we?

If I ignore the sound the crazed ax murderer will wait until I lean my head back and close my eyes and then ax-murder me in the tub, blood spatter reaching the ceiling and splashing decoratively over some white towels by my side.

If I get up to investigate, wearing only a towel, the crazy ax murderer will hide behind the door and then wait until I’ve done a walk through and then ax-murder me just as I turn my back to the door to get back in the tub.

If I go for my phone the only sound it will produce is the tired bleep-bleep of a dead line and then the ax murderer will be standing behind me to ax-murder me when I turn around.

Still, there was a clonk. The clonk will not be ignored.

I ponder it for about a second and a half and then I figure – fuckit.
I go back to my book.

When I do get out of the bath, a well cooked piece of relaxed paranoia, I do the walk through anyway. You know, just in case the clonk did originate somewhere that might actually require some kind of attention from me.

Things are eerily undisturbed.
I guess I’ll never know the nature of the clonk. The origin of the clonk. Its very clonk-ness eludes me.

And the quote of the day comes from the excellent movie Strange Days in which Philo says “Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale”.

Down, Butch!

ROL

I’m kicking my evil twin’s ass

Waking up in the morning to mystery bruises and blood on the sheets is actually not that uncommon for me.

Huh.

Well, it isn’t.

So my theory is that my evil twin watches me work all day, gets bored and takes over when I pass out, or fall asleep, whichever comes first. Then Evil Twin heads down the boozer. And gets in fights.

I get to wake up in the mornings with the mystery bruises and the weird sprains.

A couple of days ago, though, we obviously got into more than we could handle. I woke up with a split lip and blood on the pillow. Complimentary mystery bruises on my arms (defensive) and that’s just it. If my Evil Twin is getting me into fights it should at least know to pick on people we can beat. Sheesh.

And while I’m right about there in my thought process – you know, evil twin, fighting, split lip and mystery bruises I start to realize that I’ve joked around a lot about Tyler Durden and Fight Club, but sometimes, just sometimes life does a fairly decent job of imitating art, doesn’t it?

It doesn’t mean I am not going to kick my evil twins ass, though. Bastard totally has it coming.

ROL

Strenght and weakness

Okay, so, I was giving instructions to a complete stranger the other day.

She blew through the door in all jittery and jacked-up and basically humming with tension after having spent seven hours  in the car. That’s a pretty long drive by anyone’s standards.

It would make me need a nice long walk, or maybe a short hard run, so I figured that explained the restless body language.

Having been asked a pertinent question I start explaing, giving instructions and she just stops me dead.

-Hang on. I have ADHD. I’m not good at explanations. Take it real slow.

Well, alright.

I break down my instructions to minor parts. I make sure to keep eye contact so I can see if she’s got it.

It’s got to suck to be that jittery all the time. I mean, I can fuel up pretty well on coffee before I even start to talk fast. I don’t even want to contemplate what that would be like to have that all the time. And yeah, I know it’s normal to her, she doesn’t know anything else and all that, but still.

What I think is cool in all this is that she just flat out told me straight off the bat. “I have ADHD. Take it slow.”

You know, that’s kind of cool.

Means she has come to the realisation it’s quicker and easier to just get it out there before people start thinking you’re a complete spaz.

Me? I hide my weaknessess. Seriously. Deeply. Actually, so deep you’re going to need some heavy mining quipment and a breathing aparatus to get to them.

There’s a Depeche Mode song “hide what you have to hide, tell what you have to tell” – something like that.

Works for me.

ROL

Swing and a miss

I got to work today and saw glazed expressions on several faces. I know that look.

Just this once, and I’m not saying that means I’m safe, but just this once I managed to duck the all-out shit storm they had yesterday.

I know it’s nothing personal, okay, it just sometimes feels that way when everything just contracts and then spews on the same day and well, that’s usually when I’m working.

I actually missed the veritable monsoon of trouble raining down. Which is… Good. Just good. No glee involved, I do pity the poor bastards I work with, but it’s just that the Gods were on my side for once.

Oh, I’m sure I’ll get mine this weekend. I mean, the weekend can be long and cruel as I’m sure I have commented on before.

There are definitely clouds gathering, you get to know the signs after a while.

They got it all – power outage, things springing leaks, tech stuff turning HAL, tech stuff breaking down, people acting unpredicatbe and twitchy, the whole solid long list.

Meanwhile I was at home, sipping my coffee and having a nice long slow bath. No, not at the same time… that would just be wrong. I think…

So – just to be sure this weekend maybe I shoudl wear some body armour just in case.

ROL

I’m a model citizen

Ok, so I was hanging around outside the front door of my place of business when suddenly a guy stops his car and yells at me.
“You got a phone?”
-Yes.
-Mine don’t work. There’s a guy breaking in to a car up the street. Do you see him?
I look up the street, and sure enough, there’s the guy. He’s got the window on the driver’s side popped and is climbing in to the car as we speak. I call the police.

While I’m talking to them the car thief drives past me. I get the licence plate number.

Now, I’m crap with cars. I mean normally I don’t know a chevvy from a semi. So it gives me great pleasure to actually be able to say to the nice police officer I’m talking to as he asks “Did you see what kind of car it was?” – no, but I can give you the licence plate.

They like when you do that. Seriously.

Adrenaline tends to go all spikey with shit like that going on. When I hang up the nice police man has the platenumber, the adress it was stolen from, the direction it was travling in and a general description of the thief.

They’ll probably never catch the guy, but at least the guy who had his car stolen won’t get into trouble with his insurance company, right? It’s not like the car hasn’t been repported stolen, you know.

Never a dull moment at my job. Oh, I lie. Actually it’s more like the army, it’s all hurry up and wait.

When I told my pal about it the first reaction was “what did you do?” You know, what with me being one of those “I’m on it” people. But this time I was too far away and anyway, I’m not going to be chasing any junky carthiefs any time soon. At least not if it’s not my car – but then if that happens, all bets are off.

ROL

Mother?

In the classicl SciFi movie Alien starring the always equally lovely Sigourney Weaver the space ships main computer is called Mother.

When everything goes to hell in a handbasket and Ripley has to shut down the main cooling units, the ship informs her that it’s about to blow in that friendly, servile and pleasant tone of voice that runs completely contrary to Ripley’s desperation and screaming frantic pleading.

“I’ve turned the cooling units back on Mother!” she yells as she runs down the steam-heavy corridors.

It doesn’t help, of course. Mother doesn’t care.

Neither does our fire alarm.

It was all installed yesterday came on-line during the night. This morning it didin’t work. And the way in which it didn’t work was quite spectacular. Bells a-ringing, lights a-blinking. The tech shows up after lunch of course and on a Friday and everything. So whatever is wrong is going to stay wrong for at least the duration of the weekend.

After pushing all the shiny, shiny buttons and checking the installation with fun tools and gadgets the Tech looks at me.

“Mother’s broken”, he says.

Well. Of course she is. I knew that. And here I’ve been thinking we needed an exorcism. No, that’s not it at all. Mother is broken. I’m guessing he means the Motherboard.

My way is funnier, though.

ROL

Get a Helmet

I was talking to my brother the other day.

He’s not happy with his job. Well, now.

The conversation goes something like “I don’t think this is what I want to be doing”. So I ask him what he wants to do instead and he talks about getting some cushy office job, something he’s trained for, something nice and steady.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but come on… we all want things we can’t have and isn’t that a bitch? We have similar CVs and I know for a fact that everything he’s trained for and everything he’s actually worked as don’t match up. I have the same problem.

We’re the most similar siblings of the litter. High IQ, lots of education, lots of book learning and a lot of menial physical jobs.

I point blank him.

I don’t mean to be rough on the guy, but come on… we both know that you hit a certain point where you have to be honest with yourself. I ask him what kind of job he really wants. Does he want a nine to five that he can do and then go home and forget all about or does he want a life style? ‘Cause if he just wants to show up, do the job and then go home to live a rich and fulfilling life that’s actually a pretty easy fix. It’s just a matter of finding something that you can get up and do without wanting to hit your head against the wall every morning.

If, on the other hand, you’d rather do something that might in the end turn out to be a lifestyle you could start your own business. He’s worked as a cook so he could start a restaurant, a café, a bar… you know, something like that. No, no he doesn’t want that. Too much work. Long hours. Not enough pay and it would never work anyway and he’d hate it and he’d fail and so on and so forth.

He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want what he has. He doesn’t want the things he could have. He doesn’t want to try for anything else.

I am a great believer in the theory that if you’re not happy where you are you should move on. Hate your job? Find another job. Don’t like your apartment? Move. Fallen out of love with your significant other? Break up.

Travel light, move fast. Life’s too fucking short.

But don’t bring the bitching to me. I’ve been through this too many times. I will play the pity party fiddle or any other instrument either.

I get on the computer and find a couple of jobs he could apply and give them to the guy with a “here apply for these” which is short for “get your shit together”.

I told a friend about it and she laughed. She said that’s the thing about me. I do that to people.

Huh? I do?

Yes, obviously. And being on the receiving end is no fun, but good for you none the less, she said.

There are some days when you have to just look people dead in the eye and say “life sucks, get a helmet”. I’ll be there for my own all the way – whatever I can do, really. But for this kind of uncategorized and general feeling of “I am not where I want to be” I just can’t.

ROL

I Think I Killed It

I actually had a day off today.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t set my alarm, because I am a good little worker bee and always get up early in the morning.

Okay, so that was obviously a blatant lie, but still.

I set my alarm. The thing went off. Now, I hate that sound with a passion, like we all do, but when I know I can ignore it I can more or less tolerate the damned thing.

Still I must’ve rolled over this morning and decided that snooze was in order.

When next I woke up it said 13:15… that can’t be good. So I slouch off into the bathroom, blink blearily at myself in the mirror and just… try to get my bearings. The weather has been dark, wet and misty all day, so there’s no real daylight and nothing to indicate what time of day it is in the least.

I make my breakfast and turn on the TV.

I obviously killed my alarm clock this morning. I must have aimed for the snooze button, but hit the time reset button instead. It’s only twenty past ten.

I guess I started the day off in the wrong trouser leg of time this morning which just goes to show that time is indeed a relative thing. It’s like – five minutes are nothing if not put in relation to say if you’re waiting for a buss on a rainy day or if you’re waiting for you best friend in a bar.

Getting up in the morning is still a bitch, but you have to try and be a little philosophical about it I guess. And try not to kill the messenger – though technically I don’t think I did. I just fucked with it. I’m good like that.

ROL

Hotels, and whiskey and sad luck days..

There’s a Tom Waits song called Blind Love … the actual lyrics are “Since you’ve gone it’s hotels and whiskey and sad-luck dames” which I found myself singing for the past couple of days at random moments. I’ve got sad luck days, though. I stay away from the sad-luck dames.

The sub-conscious is a weird little drummer boy at times. Keeps its own beat. I guess it’s in part the weather – rain rain rain – and in part the fact that I’m trying to find a hotel that isn’t going to ruin me completely while I try to find a new way of making money. So the old adage that “you have to spend money to make money” is certainly true for me this time.

Priceless looks on faces of friends when I said I had to go to see a guy about a thing, by the way. I mean, I didn’t really want to talk about it until it felt like I might actually get the job. Just invites false commiseration. Not that they don’t wish me well, but we all know what the human animal is. And people like sniggering when they get the chance. I try to be everything I say I am – that’s actually a lot easier if you stay as close to the truth as possible and don’t shot your big mouth off at every chance.

I can’t count the number of times friends and acquaintances have bragged about being in line for new jobs, new boy/girl friends, new opportunities, bigger and better cars, homes, whatevers, only to be shot down at the last minute. It’s kind of hard to live down.

-But I thought you were going to move to/make a lot of money/buy a …?

-Yes, I was, but then God himself reached down his might hand of Thou shalt not over-reach thineself and gave me a righteous slap across the arse.

-Oh. That’s too bad (snigger snigger).

Actually, that kind of conversation has a tendency to spin into one of those woe-is-me kind of things that just go on and on about the general injustice (Salute General Injustice here) of all the gods and their goofy ways. And I just do not have the patience.

So, here I am, trying to find a decent place to sleep. Oh, crap. Not again. And I know I will be working late into the night in my room so I can’t just get the cheap-assed Happy Cockroach Motel. I will be needing some peace and quiet thank you very much. And that means expenses go up. The price of doing business, I guess. So I’m not bored – but I might be broke by the time this thing gets going.

On the other hand it’s just money. As long as I have it it’s always just money. The next couple of weeks will be hotels. I’m sure that will provide me with lots of good rant material.

ROL

Plan Ahead, Children…

It’s raining.

No, really. It’s raining.

I mean serious head-for-the-rafts rain.

I now have the opportunity to make an interesting observation. I was chatting casually to some people at work today who were looking unusually despondent. “Why the long faces?” They were going to a wedding.

That didn’t seem like the thing you should look like a kicked puppy for.

It was an outdoor wedding. And the wedding party didn’t have a Plan B. You should always have a Plan B. An escape hatch, at least. A tent. Something.

I am not a likely candidate for getting married. Partly because I am a horrible pair of old cynicky-boots and partly because no-one will have me. But it’s mostly the boots thing.

If, and that’s a big fucking If, mind you, I was going to get married I would certainly not go in for any of that new-age hippie pagan-vegan crap. There will be no reciting of poetry under the canopy or listening to the gulls at the beach while someone plays the panpipes. We’ll go Old School. Only way to do it really. Otherwise what’s the point? You’re going to wake up with “Property Of …” tattooed on your ass anyway. Might as well do it in front of God and sundry.

Anyway – I check the forecast. It is grim. It says rain, rain, rain and more rain for the next twenty-four. Cold, wet and windy.

That wedding is going to suck out loud.

Which brings me to the interesting observation. I have some friends and acquaintances who have gotten married (and yes, there were some pagans) and they seems to plan a whole hell of a lot for the wedding, but spare not one thought for the actual marriage as such. I mean you should at least let your thoughts glance off the idea of what your life will become afterwards. Ricocheted reflection if nothing else.

And that’s why I will probably never go there. I always see the potential for failure, to coin a phrase. I just thought that was an interesting observation… in an observationally interesting kind of way.

ROL