M. called me today. From a cookout. Where was I? At a cookout. Once again, miles apart, we’re running on parallel paths.
I better plan a trip to see him in person again. I have to make sure he’s still cute and worthy of my affection.
It’s too nice to make this post long, and I have too much to do today (starting with picking up my car left in Harvard Square, when a couple of people bought me a couple of beers).
However, I do have to post something. That something is the thing with doing comedy sometimes I think it’s like I’m given another shot to reenact my twenties, but knowing what I know now. So last night, after a fun set at the Comedy Studio, which I really should have plugged here before the show, I hung out afterward. The thing to know is there are a couple of comedians who are a brother duo, who are also pretty much pranksters. So, any night in which Dave, the elder brother, is being the cruise director is not going to be linear. It turned out he had us walking from bar to bar down Mass Ave (I guess that is linear), and we ended up at the Phoenix Landing, where the young people were dancing to urban dance mix-ey kind of stuff. The crowd was “urban,” as they say in politically correct code for Black and diverse minorities.
There I am in my five foot three fortiness. I don’t know, maybe it’s the long hair with blonde streaks, maybe it’s the ampleness that seems to be the cultural ideal everywhere but in my own, or maybe they all could sense I missed my man like crazy, but all over the bar, guys were trying to get me on the dance floor. As an aside, when exactly in history did it become socially acceptable for a guy to rub his chubby up and down a stranger’s ass and thighs? Fellas, if I want to feel that particular body part, why don’t we do this–I’ll tell you politely that’s what I want, OK? Until then, why don’t you just rub against a wall or your hand or something.
The part I like about all of this scene, though, is that in my twenties I would have probably done something foolish, or been overly flattered or something. The inevitable outcome would be going home with someone and embarking on some kind of ill-fated romance guaranteed to end in shattered pieces and a bit of despair and shame.
Today, though, I just think it’s funny. It’s a tiny ego boost and an adventure, and I’m home alone and laughing to myself, unsullied. And, even if for some ungodly reason I got ready to slip, going out with a pack of male comics is a lot like going out with your brothers. You have someone to watch your back and possibly even protect you from yourself. I could have used that kind of chaperone back in my twenties (although I would have missed a lot of wacky good times, too).
Finally, to the guy who looks like Hank Azaria, sorry you were too drunk to understand “I have a boyfriend,” and thought I was some kind of tease.
I really should be sleeping. Honestly, I’m torn. Writing or sleeping? And, then, of course, there is masturbation. That has a certain allure. (And, yeah, I know, my keeping a ‘blog may be masturbatory enough.)
Having a few epiphanies about my job, my life, my relationship, comedy, writing and all of the ball of shit I got going on here. Here’s the big epiphany, and it’s actually lame and pretty far from astute, but if I live it, I imagine possibilities. Anyway, it’s that no one is really any more further along then I am. In some ways, I have a remarkable knack for keeping myself on the fringe of straight up definition. In high school I was in the accelerated classes, but I skipped and got high with more middling students. The straight and narrow “good” students, thought I was a burnout, the burnouts thought I was a Bomar.
(So I typed Bomar instinctively in some sort of wayback machine in my head, because that was the word back then. But, really, I don’t know from what reservoir it came and the second I typed it, I had to look it up, because it certainly ain’t common now. It’s pretty damn funny and anachronistic that the smart kids were named after a fucking calculator. A four function calculator; my phone has that built into it. What am I goddamn dinosaur?)
Anyway, at work, as an adult, I’m still on the edge of in and out, in the same way I was with the burnouts and the Bomars. I’m in on a ton of
“senior management” meetings, which is essentially a higher level of middle management, and I get to converse now and again with the actual leaders, but I don’t have the rank and title of the other players. I also have a rep for cracking jokes and speaking up (and generally lively-ing up some dry as a vermouth-less martini meetings), and I occassionally clown around with the support staff, some of whom just figure I’m another kind of admin assistant, but not really. Same as in high school, not quite in with the managers or the secretaries.
And, so it is in comedy. I’m not in the shows of the folks I like or respect, but many of those folks certainly talk with me like I belong and am a peer. I spend my nights at the open mikes where anyone can get up, but I’m in a different place than a lot of the other open mikers.
Burnouts/Bomar; Managers/Support Staff; Comics/Open Mikers — It’s all the fucking same, and I stay between not fully in one or the other. Why?
Partially commitment. You know, you might miss a party on the other side, afterall, and half the time I can decide which group is more appealing.
But the bigger part is probably goddamn, fucking, irrational, pathetic, frustrating insecurity. That nagging feeling that I don’t really belong in whichever you perceive as the upper eschelon.
And, the epiphany? Because, I know, a little getting to the point is more than fucking in order right about now. The epiphany is every fucking walking entity to one degree or another is worrying about the same shit in their own unique way. The difference is all in how they front it and what happens when it all comes together.
So, at this moment, which will no doubt pass, I am just as fucking funny as any other comedian, I am as loveable as any other lover and for Christ’s sake I am manager enough to know that I would never have fucked up the whole entire shooting match with the wretchedness of DEMONware. (The careful reader may note that in this little self-affirming paragraph no mention was made of intelligience, although the whole thing started with the smart kids in high school. That is because the one shred my ego holds onto (with the clamped jaws of a pitbull) is that I am alright on the stupid scale, maybe even most people might think I’m a click or two above the median. You know what I figure the trade-off is on that hubris — enough comprehension of the world to really wallow in good old self-doubt. To be aware inside my brain wiring is to have a little bit of a problem with finding shit to deprecate.)
I hope “shit to deprecate” is the lowest I go in word play.
OK I wrote, now to sleep or wank.
I still owe the world a couple of good Pat stories. One is sticking in my mind about my date with the boy from the local regional, technical high school, i.e. the one Pat dubbed unworthy. No time to type it out now, since sleep is a good thing.
The other thing would be the Pat lexicon of words and phrases. Maybe I’ll just start with a Pat phrase of the day and it’s hidden meaning.
Pat would say: “Denise likes to go to the store and do her shopping here. She likes the choices down here better than near her house.”
The meaning: For a whole series of complex reasons and rationales and most importantly rationalizations, I am not really capable of managing grocery shopping entirely on my own. However, to admit such a thing out loud would be to admit defeat; I would feel weak and small, and in many ways I already do inside, so really why does the world have to crush me down any more than I feel like it has. I’m old and I fear my mortality. Can’t you just give me my peace and dignity and keep a good face on? Denise knows it means, hey, why don’t you come here and help me get food, what do you people want from me?
I also like to think that Pat’s wicked sense of humor loved the sheer prank of that one (I almost wrote “canard” instead of “prank,” then wimped out on my own pretension, but not enough that I’m not telling you I’m a pompous ass). Anyway, I think she knew how absurd it sounds to say that someone who lives in the city travels to the ‘burbs for the variety in shopping. Because, yeah, it’s the urban areas where homogeniety is king. The ‘burbs represent diverse, diverse, and diverse; Nothing whitebread about the suburbs. My sister was convinced there was something I could buy in a Braintree grocery store that I wouldn’t be able to find in Cambridge anywhere. That’s prankster poetry, my old mom selling that story.
I think she won twice on that story. She got her groceries and a chuckle.
Coming attraction:
Reasons why Pat might say she was “livid.”
Right now, I am missing quite a few things.
I’m missing M. Lately, just finding a time, convenient to each schedule and each coast, to talk is tough. I blame DEMONware.
I’m missing mirth and frivolity. The thing about spending a night at a comedy open mike is that you go through a wide spectrum of emotions in an evening. Most of them are off-shoots of angst, ennui, apathy and fatigue. It used to include anxiety for me, but that takes too much effort now. The emotions not experienced include joy, whimsy and gaiety (old school “gaiety,” that is, I personally have not experienced a homosexual emotion at an open mike so far.) I blame DEMONware.
I miss writing here. I truly blame DEMONware.
I miss the blush of my youth, in which tripping and crashing to the sidewalk may have meant some scratches, but not an elbow aching so that the old joke rings true about the guy saying to his doc, “it hurts when I do this.” So the doc says, “then don’t do that.” It’s hard to blame DEMONware for the loss of my youth, per se. But, it has taken some time off of my life expectancy.
I don’t know if the creators of DEMONware could in fact be classified as evil. But I will say after the most painful computer system conversion in history now about 3.5 weeks into it’s still birth, if they’re not evil, they are second to Satan alone in sheer soul crushing torque. (I’m assuming that torque would be what’s needed for effective crushing of souls.) DEMONware is on fire with whatever the needed condition is. I used to be a mildly happy, somewhat well-adjusted little worker bee. Now, I am lifeless, dead from the inside, completely unable to access any of the usual tools to do my little toil. And, the bitch that has slapped me down to limp and vegetative? DEMONware. I curse your name. Fie on you. Fie, just fucking fie.
It’s Mother’s Day. I’m “celebrating” (quotes because it’s not really a big fete kind of a day) by not giving birth.
In my last post, I referenced ex-boys’ relationships with their moms. My sweetie, who commented below, has a long, long, long fucking row to hoe to be in their leagues. Here’s the round-up of freakish mama boys I have known:
Dave. Good old, Dave. He and I dated off and on for maybe 5 or 6 years after I graduated college during the years I worked in financial services and got a rep for dying my hair orange (need I say it was the 80s?) He would never bring me home to meet his family, because he wasn’t sure what kind of impression I would make. Because, of course, you know, I’m a fucking badass chick from the wrong side of the tracks with a prison record. Oh, wait, no, that’s not right, I was a chick in my 20s who came from a nearby suburb to his, graduated a pretty competitive school with honors and had a regular 9 to 5 job. Hmmmm, come to think of it, maybe he was signaling his commitment to the relationship.
So, Dave, struggling grad student, often went home for meals and family gatherings and just to spend time with his loved ones. He did invite me to the family manse once, when he had a house party while his folks were out of town on vacation. And, how did I at last realize that he was not the one? When we had a long talk about his deciding to leave his apartment he had only recently taken, because, you know, living like a grown up ain’t all thrills and chills. The capper that made me realize he was not “the one” and that brings him mention to this special entry, he explained to me the trials and tribulations of apartment living, the cleaning, the cooking, the negotiating with roommates and the expenses. And, finally, “You don’t understand, if I move home, there’s always food in the ‘fridge and at home my mother takes care of everything. I just am more comfortable letting her take care of me.” Gee, Dave, what a healthy attitude for a 30-year-old man.
And, there’s Tony. His middle name is Tony, but he goes by it. His first name is even more Italian Stallion, it’s almost disappointing that Guido didn’t fit in some way. After a series of obsucure and difficult to follow stories, one of which may have involved a woman changing the locks on their shared abode, Tony too lived at his mother’s. Although, I think it was a semi-detached or basement apartment of some kind, since he was working on it to make it suitable for renting.
I did get to meet his mother once. She wouldn’t look at me or say anything to me. She spoke only to her son, her son. And, she went back to her ironing. She had a lot of ironing, because her three grown sons, all in their 30s to 40s, dropped off their laundry. Tony explained this to me, “It makes her happy. She likes to take care of her boys.”
And, the grand-daddy of asshole exes, Solomon. His mother is in another country, so the impression within his life is a different one. She is a distant and holy paragon of virtue and womanhood. She cooks, she cleans and she is everything that a woman should be. Most importantly, I gather, she oozes self-respect. How does she exhibit her mountains of self-respect and all around wonderfulness? She sweeps the dust from her house constantly, and I am told, even would sweep the dust when all she had was a dirt-floored hut. This woman cleaned dirt! That is virtue incarnate.
Now this realization about that woman’s myriad virtues was revealed to me in an argument about my own housekeeping. You see if I had a dirt-floored hut, I would likely fail to clean that dirt. My dirt would be filthy. House cleaning is not a virtue I possess, I admit it, but my place is free of vermin and I rarely leave dirty dishes or food around, and the bathroom is kept acceptably clean and odor free. What I apparently failed to realize about this sad state of affairs and my slovenly ways, but Solomon helpfully pointed out, is that it’s because I have NO self-respect. I don’t like myself. I am not comfortable being a woman. Because, if I did like myself, was happy as a woman and had self-respect, I would clean. I would clean like I meant it, I would clean like the wind, I would clean, clean, clean until my self-satisfied fingers bled in joy and happiness. I would be whole and I would be a wonderful woman, like Solomon’s mom.
All these stories are a tribute to men who love their mothers, because that is a wonderful thing. But, I think Sweet summed it up best
Love is like oxygen,
you get too much it makes you high,
not enough and you’re gonna die…
It’s a special day for mama’s boys all over the country!
This doesn’t really deserve an entry, but I can’t get the image out of my mind. I saw a guy with the most pronounced man nipples, the contours of which were protruding in a most unhandsome fashion through his shirt. I think the issue was, besides his very pre-pubescent appearing buds of breasts, the clinginess and translucency (or apparent translucency) of the nylon shirt he was sporting. It was one of those shirts you wear if you are of a certain demographic prone to scratching tickets, buying lounging wear in the form of a track outfit and collecting disability.
I think no one should ever wear such things, especially if you are not cut like someone in a Bo-Flex ad. The visual scourge is just too distracting from an otherwise lovely Friday. If you are a man and your T-shirt silhouette makes you appear on the brink of young womanhood, buy something with buttons.
Oh and if I have time this weekend, the plan is a special edition Mother’s Day entry or two. I think a couple of stories in reminiscence of Pat are in order, and I was thinking of all the asshole men I have dated and their maternal relationships. The adage is true, watch how a man treats his mom to get a sense of both his measure and the shit you are likely to fail in his eyes.
Just got this link in an email:
The masses of the conservative and unfortunately stupid are getting louder, we need to shout back to keep rights and freedoms intact.
Possible premise for something on stage at some point — I left work again late tonight. I work in a somewhat shitty neighborhood that is kind of spooky vacant at night. As I was leaving my building, I decided I should keep my work ID badge clipped to my belt, that way if the shit came down and I was lying in the mean streets unable to communicate, boom, they can ID me.
Either I’ve watched one too many episodes of Law and Order or it’s the natural progression of one of my OCD-phobia kind of deals. I can’t leave the house without some form of ID with me and, perhaps better yet, on my person. I have an irrational fear that I might become a “Jane Doe.” When I used to ride my bike a lot more (which is also before seasonal allergies really began to kick my fat ass), I would always find a place to wedge my license, just in case, in my hightops, my sports bra, my waistband, any where. Part of the irrational element of this behavior is it on face can’t help anyone find someone who knows me. I guess that part of my brain is hoping my relatively rare last name will at least give me hope. What would I do if my name were “Smith” tattoo my next of kin somewhere?
The premise is using my badge as my protection in a bad neighnorhood, not necessarily boring shit about how I’m a-scared of leaving the house. Although, I am afraid of the dark a little.
And, on a much, much lighter note: Earlier this evening I left sang on a certain someone’s voicemail. I do not sing. I cannot sing. I should not sing. I think it speaks (or I guess sings) volumes that I am not the least little bit self-concious with M. That poor, poor man, my restraint would probably be a welcome respite.
Also had a couple of interesting conversations today with opposite ends of the spectrum about dealing with emotions. I have the possibility of doing something with each of them this weekend, and I’m sure the gulf would be wide — on the one hand, a house party of hippies who strive to get more in touch with every emotion (it seems like every time I’ve gone there, I have walked in on some intense tete-a-tete, where weeping threatens to break out any second) or maybe dinner and some entertainment with someone with as reserved an upbringing as mine (that is, stop that crying, keep your legs crossed, clean your plate and ideally keep your voice low and modulated at all times. I admit it, I failed most of these ideals.)
Mostly I blame DEMONware for the state I’m in right now…
Valuable time, the precious commodity of life has been taken from me, and I have been coaxed closer to the inevitable march of mortality onto death wasting time with this software “solution.”
Impotently (is there any other way I do things these days), as I struggled with the system, I started to count how many separate screens I needed to connect to in order to buy one lowly pack of paper. In all, there were 23 separate screens that required access in order to complete the ordering process. I will be generous, and I will say that perhaps as much of half of those pages will not be necessary as I gain facility with keystroking in the various fields of near as I can tell practically random digits. (Watch out world, my muscles will develop to awesome breadth and strength as I key, not one, but as many as 10 separate fields, each and every time I order a pad of paper.)
Let’s think about this system a bit, shall we. Let’s even be a tad crude about it and look at the basest of data, dollars and sense. (editor’s note: “sense” was a typo, but a friggin’ apt one.)
For the sake of this argument, let’s say I make $20 an hour (I don’t, but the math is easy and $10 would just make me frowny). I just spent an hour keying in a supply order request, because due to an epic fiasco of implementation someone forgot to turn the switch to allow our administrative staff to buy stuff like they could in the old system. Back to the equation, though. In that hour, I added 13 line items to a requisition. Despite allegedly being linked to the Staples catalog through a searchable database, of the 13 items, seven could not be located (and required me to search both generally by description and specifically by item number before overriding to allow data entry). Once all items were located and keyed in, requiring at least one search of the database for each (Total=13 searches), there was data entry of item id #, description, quantity, unit and vendor (5 fields*7 remaining items=35 fields). Then, each line item requires separate entry of the account to charge for payment, which is comprised of three fields and a drilldown to three sub-fields (6 fields*13 line items=78 fields) So, right now we are at data entry into 113 separate alpha or numeric fields (no telling which! and up to 12 characters long, but searchable) and at minimum 13 catalog searches.
The money to pay for the supplies is coming from the same place, the vendor is all the same (Staples), and all items are easily located in both the vendor catalog we are given and Staples on-line store.
What stole an hour out of my life, my sweet unreplaceable existence for that hour, was the sheer volume of absolutely required data entry, the unbelievable slowness of the interface and server and a horrible, horrible non-intuitive design. And, while you are able to save “Favorites,” as with any web-based system, there seems to be no way to automate and/or simplify repetitive tasks.
Now, back to the reason I mentioned that fictional $20/hour. That hour it took, cost this establishment $25 for my salary itself, plus the costs of the fringe benefits I earn with each hour worked. For this $25, I accomplished a significant amount of data entry, which will now flow to the people in Purchasing who are responsible for checking Staples orders, which is an entry-level Purchasing position, i.e. one that is reimbursed at a level < $20/hr. Again, to be crude, let's say that position is recompensed at $15/hour, but in this this scenario it is much simpler for that person to perform, taking only 20 minutes to proofread and submit, so salary plus fringe benefits would only cost the institute $6.25. Total cost, therefore, to the institute for initiating the purchase order (leaving out the actual receipt and delivery entirely) is $31.25 for a total of one hour and 20 minutes work.
Now, what is data without comparison? Nothing, I’ll tell you what. It’s meaningless. So, let’s compare, shall we?
In the previous system, I would generally be able to process the same 13-line order in 15 minutes. I would be required to only key in the overall accounting data once (requiring only 2 fields)and an identifier for each item. It would then pass to the same entry-level Purchasing position. It would be up to that person to both proofread the information I had provided from the supply catalog and KEY IN THE DETAILED DATA. Presumably, where that position is comprised of dedicated, centralized tasks, such as data entry, unlike mine, that staff is likely far more efficient with time and have developed skills for these tasks. (Simply, if you are responsible for blue pens every day, you learn about blue pens, whereas if you are responsible only once a quarter your knowledge of blue pens is bound to be lacking.) Therefore, let us assume, they can key in the same order in 3/4 time compared to a monkey, such as I.
For the old system then the final tally is (($20/hr+25% fringe benefits) * 15 minutes) + $15$15/hr+25% fringe benefits * 45 minutes). Total money expended by the institute $6.25 + $14 or $20. Total time expended equals one hour.
So, folks, if you are still with me, and if you are, what the fuck is wrong with you, you bean-counting turd, the final comparison is thus:
Old, unevolved, low-tech system – $20 spent during 1 hour.
Piece of shit DEMONwaret – $31 spent during 1 hour and 20 minutes.
What can you buy with $11, you say? How about a share in a goat to keep some impoverished villagers somewhere rich in chevre for the rest of their days.