Make that Chinese. I mean it’s like close, right?

Among the many perks I’ve written about here in the place of
employment, not sure if I threw out there pretty generous paying for
classes bene. Not only that, they are so into edjumacation, they even
arrange some shit for the whole place allowing lazy shits, such as I,
to just wait until a class falls within walking distance.

A little while ago, they sent out an email saying if they could get
five or more folks interested, someone from a neighborhood language
institute would come by and teach Mandarin on the premises. Since the
beau, with whom I am co-habitating (I guess as opposed to the vast
number of beaux with whom I do not live), anyway M., speaks many
Chinese dialects and was schooled in the royal Mandarin tongue, I
signed up.

The first class was last night in a conference room about 10 feet from
my desk. I have never felt more awkwardly white and incapable of
learning from outside my Celtic encampment in my life. There’s all
this shit about tonality, and I am pretty much tone deaf.

I’m feeling a bit better about it after spotting this weblog:=20
http://wantingseed.com/weblog/2003/09/15/tonally_challenged.php (I’ll
make a proper link when I’m not posting by mail.)

If I ever get the opportunity to travel to Asia with M., I think I’ll
have to practice being a sweet, submissive type o’ gal who lets the
man do all the talking.

All I can say is them Chinese sure sound all different than anything
I’ve ever heard.

(Actually, part of my problem is with the probably arrogant,
undoubtedly white linguist dude who years ago worked out the
transliteration scheme to romanize the spelling out of characters,
called Pinyin. What the fuck, dude? How did you get Q to mean the
"ch" sound?

For awhile now, I’ve taken to chucking my clothes into locker 41 in the workplace gymnasium. Why? To remind myself I’m 41 and at the goddamn gym.

Tucked in the back of that locker one day I found pellets. Not some kind of polite term for scat, but ammunition for an air gun or bb gun or something on the harmless end of the relatively lethal weapon scale. Of course, the Boston Police were able kill a Red Sox fan with pepper spray, so mileage could vary.

I found evidence of gun play in a work locker. Can you imagine what would have happened at my last job?

If they were able to fantasy violence where there was none and go to extremes based on fantasy, I think it safe to bet that the discovery of a box of BBs would require full on SWAT teams, metal detectors, gunpowder sniffing dogs and POW camps.

It rained today. The obvious response — so the fuck what?

Yeah, I would have thought so too. Only in my largely glass box of a workplace, well more stable than a glass box (I fucking hope ‘cuz it’s on a fault line) but all windowed out, any way you can like see the weather. It’s getting grayer and grayer all day, and then someone exclaimed, no shit, I mean “exclaimed,” like yelled out, “IT’S RAINING.” Kind of like it should have been raining frogs or blood or something cool like that.

And, people are commenting on the sound and that there was lightening, and when there was thunder someone else piped up, “Hey, was that thunder?” The person all concerned sounding about the goddamn thunder once lived and worked and hung out and breathed in the old People’s Republic of Cambridge, replete with New England weather. I know, because we talked about it.

Get a hold of yourself, woman, I know you’ve heard thunder before.

I’m thinking, “Jesus Fucking Christ, why is this news?” And, someone else tells me that sometimes when there’s lightening it gets reported on the actual, broadcast media, you know, like it’s news.

Rain. Thunder. Lightening. OOOOHHHH-WOAHHHH, I’m scared. Oh wait a minute, step back, these things are not serious weather threats.

Then, the fucking lights went out in our building.

Not our computers, mind you, because this building is one mother-fucking state of the art structure, so there is redundancy and backup generators and mechanical whirligigs and doodads and woohas to keep the place running in an actual emergency. Not just for when the lights go out, because why? Because it’s raining.

Sad, wimpy California. I am so going down when the earth quakes.

Since I flew in last night, drank way to fucking much on Friday and
Saturday, have allergy issues like you read about and lost my voice, I
sound like 19 octaves below whiskey, cigarettes and a lifetime of
regret. My voice is shot, and I sound quite unwell.

So, the woman in the adjacent cubicle just offered to cover for me.=20
She suggested I go into the "Retreat" * and lock the door, while she
runs blockage in our corner.

I’m actually fine, I just sound like the embodiment of poor decision-making=
..

* Did I mention the Retreat? Apart from being all green and luxe and
California style, this modern office space has a special room.=20
There’s a fainting couch, sink and medicine cabinet behind a closed
(and lockable door), where one can retreat from the trials and
tribulations of office work and rest up. There ain’t nothing this
place doesn’t have.

It is quite strange to be back "home" after spending the weekend in
New England. I’m completely flummoxed, confused, confounded and
cognitively dissonant over where home now is.

I guess I’ll go by the old rule of thumb — Home is where the bulk of
my undies is stored.

It doesn’t help that I’ve switched back and forth between time zones
and have almost successfully fucked three different meetings for the
bosserooni today trying to work out East and West Coast differences.=20
Damn, how do jetsetters, who spend weekend after weekend intoxicated
and jumping coasts, handle it? (I’m assuming the glittering allure of
coke becomes more glittery and attractive.)

Part of the weird dimentia about what would be home now, I think, is
due to Pat’s leaving the mortal coil. Every other time I’ve moved
away, her house anchored down that little corner of the universe.=20
Always at least a couch to sleep on and the larger abstract concept of
home stayed put.

Now, if I fly into town, I’m flying away from my own bed and could be
wandering the streets without phone calls and arrangements.

It doesn’t help that when I went "home" to the East Coast, I wasn’t
there long enough to meet up with any friends. The completely shiny
wonderfully bright side of that is I absolutely missed this year’s
Boston Comedy Festival.

Thank fucking Christ for that near miss, but successful miss just the
same. Reading a couple of weblogs and bulletin boards and what not
reminded me of all the impotent bitter anger that event engenders. On
paper, it’s a great idea, get some of the area’s best together and
maybe invite some others from around the country to make with the
merry of comedy hijinks.

But, in truth, the guy primarily responsible for setting the shindig
up is so vested deep into his own selfish self interests, comedy
suffers and travesties abound. It becomes hard to focus on the good
stuff — like night after night of foolish drinking and carousing and
blowing comedy philosophy smoke up each other’s orifices with a
critical mass of friends and fellow travelers. That really is the
only plus side left, I think.

Speaking of comedy (sort of) and public speaking (kind of), this
weekend was also a bit of a personal first for me — at the rehearsal
dinner I decided to get up and say a couple of words about the groom.=20
Despite a past of not at all being the one to stand up in a family
crowd, I decided to reveal what was in my heart to honor the guy who
has essentially been a little brother to me.

Sadly, what was in my heart was a hammy, hacky, crowd-pleasing turn
that included two different dick references and an ethnic slur.

Yeah, been drinking for a couple days. Which is unusual, since at my new home I mostly don’t drink at all. But, upon hitting the East Coast, the elbow just kept bending.

Weird thing about ‘blogging and writing and trying to build a rep on writing and like loving the truth over the fiction but exaggerating the truth into the personal memoir bullshit nonfiction that is so hip and happening and de riguer and all that. Anyways, interesting thing about all that is when that reality bleeds into the real one, the real reality.

I’ve been in Little Rhody (or as a minister referred to it earlier today, Rhode Island and its plantations) for my cousin’s wedding. So, my cuz is one of the people central to my growing up. His folks were my family, his brother’s death changed me like I hope I never experience again, and his childhood was my inroad into babysitting and understanding procreation and a whole lot of complex social constructs. If you were to write down central characters (as I guess I’m doing here), the cousin would be a major re-occuring role.

Fitting too that I would head back for his wedding above all other weddings, because I grew up in a single family household and anything I ever learned or felt or thought about the idea of “partnership” and life partner was from his mom and dad. They probably always will be my ultimate role models in that whole coupledom realm. (I secretly think my mom, another main character known as Pat, kind of hoped their idea of partnership would rub off on me.)

I’m not the only one who thinks the groom is the bomb. He is the cousin for whom every other cousin showed. Must be cool to be in the center of that kind of attraction. Just his mother’s family accounted for about 25 guests; none of whom I think would have thought of skipping.

Shit, people thanked me and thanked M. for making such a long trip. Honest to god, I couldn’t have, wouldn’t have wanted to miss it. By the way, the bride is cool enough to wed a central character. I really think they will both be happy in the union, or whatever the bourgeois classes call it.

So, it was a family reunion in a lot of ways. Pat’s family was all out in force; she would have dugged the pageantry and probably given her sister shit about the cost. (While also busting with pride and all sorts of emotion for the kid who essentially was her first grandkid, even if his official title was nephew.)

And in the family reunion the scary, funny, fuckedupness of the world wide web and the always poorly named “blogosphere” came in focus. They all knew M. before I introduced him.

Sitting in the airport. Flight’s delayed. For the first time in knowing each other for years, M. and I are gonna be getting on a plane together. Unless, of course, mother nature fucks us anally, and the weather on the East Coast means are delayed flight is a non-flight.

First time back in six months. First day off from work that wasn’t a holiday.

Hey all in Boston, I’ll be down in Providence, RI at a wedding. Call me on my cell, drive down and have a beer.

(By the way, just about now, a crew of my all time favorite Boston comic folk have just auditioned for the Aspen Comedy fest. While the odds are not in their favor, it would be nice if someone got a little taste of notice.)

The title of this post relates to the situation in which I am occasionally scolded by the lord and master of this household for my hygienic practice. Some day, if he ain’t careful, he’ll find himself shuffling around in Kleenex boxes worrying about every germ floating in space and potentially landing on his flesh.

The boy is clean. And, undoubtedly, I should be showering right now instead of writing.

The funniest part about it to me today is I felt a million miles away from my base-line life, the comfort zone of childhood, the known, the assumptions, my roots, all because of a conversation about showering.

Actually, the conversation was kind of a real-life coda to an abstract discussion at a meeting I was in today. At the meeting, someone was looking for correction or clarification in a document that referenced “minorities.” Here, where I now live, so-called minorities are the majority, and it is not a matter of political correctness but accuracy to mind tone and language.

Back where I come from, and most certainly in my plain vanilla suburb, where Jon Feldman spoke to the entire school about Jewish tradition and of the three Asian children I knew, two had the last name Goldman and one that of Twomey, minority was a statistical truth. It’s a little weird some times to wrap your head around the sort of artifice of that lily white living, drop what you learned and live in the real world.

So, in the real world of the Left Coast, where so many people are from somewhere else, I joked about the “American” obsession with showers with a woman who came from India as a kid and the ultimate test of my xenophobia, a Yankees fan, while mentioning my ethnically Chinese man. How many fucking miles of psyche is that set up from south suburban Boston?

Oh, and once again, I attended a staff-wide meeting that wasn’t laden with empty bullshit and posture. It was long and painful to be sure, as is the nature of meetings, and I did drift off into a place where white lint contrasting against my black T-shirt took on mystical properties holding my interest in its wonder. But it wasn’t prolonged with gas.

These people really are quite fucked up and living in a bizarro, opposite world to the one in which I dwelled.

That bizaroo effect also explains the compliment I received today. Apparently, in my three-month tenure of employ, some of the folks have noticed little ol’ me. The compliment specifically alluded to a little bit of tact, good naure and such like lubricants that would give the appearance of social deftness.

Seriously, me, diplomat, tact, cool-like and taking it easy and getting along. Little chipper, happy monkey of helping out. Really makes me want to tell some people I used to know to go fuck themselves on the steel pole of my good will.

Some recent emails and phone calls have me feeling the first pangs of homesickness. Not really, though, since I’m completely comfortable here. I miss people not places.

Part of the pang is the sense of being something other than what I was. It’s more of an identity crisis, but it’s likely more rooted in my drama queen essence than substantial existenstial angst.

After several, many, hundreds, billions, thousands of years. OK, quite a few anyway. A few years of truly working at establishing myself as an independent entity, someone out there at comedy clubs, writing alone at night into the dimmest of the wee hours, self-destructing the “career job,” because it had to be done, I’m a million fucking miles away from all that.

Now, I’m half of a couple. A mostly happy couple, mind you, but WAY THE FUCK different from the slighter loner self wandering into the back of clubs and insinuating myself into a scene. Of course, that characterization is somewhat fucking ridiculous, since all of my friends who matter (I guess meaning that I like) from comedy have met M. He didn’t exactly materialize over night.

And, I’m back in another potential career gig. Mind you, it fits better, although there is at least one person pretensious enough to bring back some of my old bile and leave me choking back some office-flavored bitterness.

Speaking about the work place the synergy with what’s going on in the news and the poorly named blogosphere continues to confound, amaze and intrigue me. Today’s episode had me trying to figure out if the ex-prez scene, officially known as the Clinton Global Initiative or CGI to the hip and trendy, is gonna have a dress code.

You search that initiative and dress code on the web, though, and you hit a certain critical mass of FReeper bullshit. Interesting, much of the broad brush, snarky commentary against the CGI events dismisses it as maximum dog and pony pageantry. Smoke, mirrors and nothing much.

Sadly, the FReepers seem to be saying that that emptiness is indicative of any and all participants, most especially the left leaning, and that the event cannot be the bipartisan love fest it claims. I say sadly, because I now know some passionate participants, who some may be personally left leaning, a couple others perhaps not, but all professionally and deliberately willing to work with whoever makes sense. In short, pretty OK people looking to make the ball of shit we live on a little less dung-like.

They are also afraid of pageantry, smoke, mirrors, razzle dazzle. But, at least they are willing to have a teeny weeny bit of hope that at least it’s something. It’s pretty easy to piss on a parade. It’s a bit tougher to get in line and try to move the parade along.

The other sad thing about the FReeper commentary involves a certain infamous, cum-stained dress. Jesus fucking Christ, people, even the shittiest open miker at the saddest comedy night in the world isn’t still envisioning Clinton splooge dampening the cheek of a chubby intern. Let it fucking go already.

OK, now that I have reflected on the shooting of powerful and charismatic bodily fluids, I’m feeling slightly less homesick.

And, Mike Brown resigning from FEMA marks me as teetering on giddy. A Bush appointee on unemployment, hard to imagine.

Now, my biggest dilemma in life, apart from hectoring the boy-o a la Janet in Rocky Horror — Touch me Touch me Touch me, I want to get dir-ir-irty– is how to get away with writing about the shit I now encounter.

A while back, I worked for a place in which the brain trust in charge envisioned themselves masters and mistresses of the universe. In their mighty presence, I wrote about the mundanity of their sphere and tried to elevate it into something worthy of a joke, at least.

Now, I am working with people who go out of their fucking way to minimize any play or sway in the bigger world. All the same, I am one single degree of separation from world leaders, ex world leaders, money brokers, power brokers, statesmen, scholars, journalists and all manner of colorful names you’ve read about or just read. No lie, I have the hotmail (fucking hotmail, not even gmail) addy of a dude from the original, Afghani provisional government.

One degree of separation.

All in all, I stick with this life, because so far I haven’t been able to predict the ending.