Compare, Contrast, Repeat: A Study in Comparative Art
Part I
An Introduction to the Introduction

I’ve just finished reading George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. This is certain to impress you, so I’ll just busy myself with last April’s issue of Lutheran Woman Today and give you a moment for quiet reflection as your admiration of my literary prowess deepens. What, done already? You’re sure? You do realize that The Mill on the Floss was published in 1860, and that it’s chock full of proper people sitting down to a proper tea while discussing what is and isn’t proper using convoluted sentences beginning with “I shouldn’t think” and “I shouldn’t wonder?” Much ado is made of Aunt Glegg’s “fuzzy fronts” and Uncle Pullet’s snuff-box; china and linen patterns are discussed at considerable length, and passionate young people frequently gather around pianos in the parlor and “move” each other with their singing. “With thee delight is ever new,” they sing. “With thee life is incessant bliss.” Apparently, “new” and “bliss” rhymed in 1860. It’s a pity “Oh baby” and “Yeah, yeah” weren’t coined until 1863; then some bonnets would’ve really been knocked askew. The book is pretty long, too, yet I endured heroically. Perhaps a few more moments of quiet reflection are in order? No? Fine, be that way; but why you continue to come here solely to antagonize me is something I will never understand. The world is full of postage stamps that need to be steamed off one surface and stuck to another with some degree of organization...perhaps this is better use of your time?

Anyway, I’m impressed enough with myself not only for the both of us, but for the population of Schenectady thrown in as well. So there, too, Smartypants. The mere fact that I continued on with any book that brutally assaulted my increasingly refined literary senses with the unforgivable line “I am in love with moistness” on the very second page is proof enough that I am willing to suffer for the sake of timeless art. For all I knew, the book could have ended up being about a singing milkmaid who enjoys casting aside her pails and flinging herself into mud puddles with wanton abandon, startling the cows and shocking the townsfolk with her wickedly soiled pinafore. In hindsight, I see now I wasn’t far off.

But merely discussing what the book is about simply wouldn’t do, oh no, no, no, no. After all, classic literature is nothing more than recognized standards of certain story types. Academics, book reviewers, and Reader’s Digest editors all know that when the end product is the same, all that’s left to highlight is craftsmanship. If this blog is ever to have more than 2 viewers without stooping to pornography or incorporating “in a blender” in its address, it’s going to have to become a catalyst for radical thinking and intellectual discourse. After all, walk into any blue collar bar and propose the following question: “Which is better: Ford or Chevy?” I wager you’ll see some discourse then. KitchenAid or Farberware? Dick York or Dick Sargent? Compare, contrast, repeat. The more I thought about, the more I knew there was no way to accurately critique The Mill on the Floss without comparing it to something else. But with what should I compare it?

My first thought was to write my own book, publish it, and then compare and contrast it to The Mill on the Floss. I had a spare afternoon, so I figured “Why not?” But then I realized that writing a book simply for comparison purposes was certain to stunt the organic growth of the plot. I’d write “I am in love with dryness” on the very second page, and the rest of the book would essentially write itself. It’s too easy to be contrite. Where was the art? Besides, becoming an internationally acclaimed best selling author and drug-addicted sex symbol overnight would surely take me away from the very thing I would have written the book to accomplish-this blog. Yes, there’d be blurry paparazzi pictures of me scantily clad and playing cribbage on a hotel balcony in Crete, but I’d be too busy accepting Nobel Prizes and granting interviews to Lutheran Woman Today to sue the tabloids, much less blog about privacy invasion.

No, what I needed was...something else. A story set in another place and in another time. Only by exploring the stories in this way could I hope to dispense with the stories themselves and instead focus on the craftsmanship of their telling. This blog was becoming far more challenging than I had anticipated, but I was far from daunted. I used to work in a book store. I have books. Lots of books. Finding one to compare and contrast with The Mill on the Floss would be simplicity itself. Giddy with the thrill of academic discovery, I rushed to my book cases and scanned the titles:

In Cold Blood

Field of Blood

Blood In, Blood Out

Blood Hollow

House of Blood

Blood and Gold

Play Cribbage Scantily Clad: A Guide to Hotels in Crete.

The Tunnels of Blood

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Much Ado About Quiche.

Yep, I had lots to work with. An overwhelming amount, actually, which is only to be expected from a mind softly overripe with literacy such as my own. How to decide? Which to choose? The first logical step, it seemed, was to dissect The Mill on the Floss for key dramatic elements, analyze the characters and their implied motivations, and define the “feel” of the piece.

Part II
Introduction

The Mill on the Floss is about a family whose home and mill lie along the banks of the River Floss. There is a mommy and a daddy, Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver, and their children, a boy and a girl, Maggie and Tom. Maggie is the heroine of the book, as having dark hair seems to be enough to set in motion any number of societal and family conflicts, never minding the fact that she reads books as well. Much of the early parts of the book revolve around Maggie’s parents sitting in chairs discussing how peculiar Maggie is in a “What will become of her?” kind of way. In the middle of the book, we are introduced to numerous relatives, who come to the house, sit in chairs, and discuss how peculiar Maggie is in a “What will become of her?” kind of way. Toward the end of the book, Maggie is surrounded by admirers infatuated with her peculiarity in an “I must have her!” kind of way.

In chapter four of Book II of The Mill on the Floss (entitled “Another Love Scene,” prompting me to ask, “There was first one?”) Maggie says to Philip, her amorous hunch-backed gentleman caller, “I didn’t finish the book. As soon as I came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up and determined to read no further. I foresaw that the light complexioned girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I’m determined to read no more books where the blond haired women carry away all the happiness. I should begin to have some prejudice against them-If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, it would restore the balance...“

Woefully, this passage doesn’t appear until page 432. Had it occurred earlier, I would have known that shutting the book up as soon as I came to the black-haired girl crying in the attic would have been an action endorsed the black-haired girl herself, for I foresaw that she would do little else but look pretty and cry.

“O dear Luke,” said Maggie in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek...

“I’m so very sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast...

Maggie stood motionless, except for her sobs...

She ran to her father, hid her face in his shoulder and burst out into loud sobbing...

Maggie rushed away so that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen until she was safe upstairs.

“O he is cruel!” Maggie sobbed aloud...

Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went on, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

She slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs...

Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair with the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks...

With these last words, Maggie’s sobs burst forth....

...as Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing...

“Don’t laugh at me Tom,” said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an outburst of angry tears...

The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes...

The sudden joy was almost painful, and by the time her father reached her, she was sobbing...

She slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs...

Oh, but Tom,” said Maggie, her eyes filling with tears...

...as she stood crying before the glass...

...smiling through a haze of tears...

With these last words, Maggie’s sobs burst forth....

It is completely without exaggeration that I say Maggie sobs her way through well over 600 pages, giving her all the charm and likeability of a damp, used Kleenex. She even wakes up in the morning “with her eyelashes still wet with tears.” This is one chick truly “in love with moistness,” right up until the soggy end of the book, when she drowns in a flood, but not before emitting a “long deep sob of that mysterious wondrous happiness that is one with pain.” I was sitting on a bench outside on my lunch break when I finished the book, and when I read the line about her sobbing in the midst of the flood, I couldn’t help but say aloud, “Will you just shut the fuck up and die already?”

There’s a plot in the book somewhere, something about bankruptcy, revenge, and forbidden love, but it was all drowned out by Maggie "The Human Spigot" Tulliver's tears and my own cries of, “What, she’s crying again?” It seems "suffering in silence" was also not invented until 1863. It was obvious that the book would end with her death, though, because, frankly, how else does one make someone who?s always crying anyway more tragic? And it was this that kept me going. "She's gonna die," I'd reassure myself, as Stephen, mad with passion, seized Maggie's arm and showered it with kisses, thus making her cry, "It'll all be over soon."

Part III
Comparison

Days, weeks, a month passed since I had finished The Mill on the Floss, and still I was no nearer to deciding on a body of work with which to compare it. "Crying" is an accessible theme; however "Unremitting Crying" is not. I couldn't find anything about anyone who did anything with the frequency and consistency of Maggie's crying, with the possible exception of breathing, which isn't really a very interesting comparative tool.

Part IV
Conclusion

The Mill on the Floss is the ideal book for anyone who would like to add drinking games to their book club meetings. Every time Maggie cries, everyone takes a drink; you'll all be hammered by chapter 4. Someone is bound to stick a lampshade on their head and say, "Oh, boo hoo hoo! Guess who I am?" I'll give you hint; the initials are M. T.

A Morning in a Day in the Life of a Laotian Roof Thatching Romance Novelist Fisherman
The first email I read at work this morning went like this:

“Dear Bud,

You are a remarkable person. I don’t know how you do all that you do, with such style and such panache. You are a pillar of strength to all who find themselves fortunate enough to work with you. Without you, this entire organization would be lost, frightened, and, on the whole, much less attractive. Your proud, firm buttocks inspire me. Oh, and I like your new haircut, too.

By the way, remember that officer Cletus hasn’t turned in his July 7th leave slip, and you have to fax the printers the Form 6. Update the phone list and ask Rhoda where the fax numbers for Yuma are.”

I receive emails like this all the time...from myself. I send myself one at the end of every day to remind myself of the things I didn’t get done the day before, usually because I’ve wasted time writing flattering emails to myself.

I get emails from other people, too, of course, though these tend to be somewhat drier affairs. “I need this” and “Send me that” and “Call so-and-so.” Nobody ever mentions my new haircut, my firm buttocks, or the new plastic cactus cake decorations I’ve just glued to my monitor. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. It seems like every time I go to the office, all I do is work.

Today, though, I received a real email from one officer Barrel Cactus (note: NOT his real name). It read: “Bud, can you print these pictures out and put them in with the rest of the file? Thanks.” Attached to the message were six photo icons. While slurping noisily from my one gallon iced tea mug (it really annoys the girls across the way...tremendous fun) I clicked on an icon and spun my chair around to make sure my printer was on. I love my spinny chair. I have a chair that spins at home, but there’s no room to really build any momentum. So, slurping and spinning, I waited for my printer to stop doing whatever it does to make all its lights blink and gears grind, a process that takes several minutes and ends with a long, loud beep.

I was slightly dizzy when I turned back to the monitor, where the full screen image of dozens of mutilated pigs piled atop one another, their bodies torn open and their guts spilling out, caught me completely off guard. Iced tea erupted indelicately from my nose as I sputtered and clawed for the mouse, trying to send this image back to hell where it belonged. I’m sure I would have cried out, “Jesus Christ!” but my mouth was full of iced tea and I was suddenly unable to swallow. There was so much blood! I abandoned the mouse and instead seized the trash can, and spat the iced tea into it.

Then I sat quite still, listening, wondering if anyone had heard any of that. It appeared no one had.

I turned back to the monitor to deal with the carnage. So many dead pigs. It was utterly depressing. Curly piggy tails and piggy snouts, all tainted with death and gore. Picture after picture. Closeups. Wide angle shots. Headless pigs and pig heads lying open-mouthed in the dirt. Black, swollen tongues, dead, dusty eyes, and cloven hooves pointing up at the sky. Pictures of the pigs loaded onto a flatbed truck. Pictures of the truck dumping the pigs into a ditch.

I’m used to receiving photos via email. They’re evidence. Usually, though, the pictures are of live horses and cows, or of substandard housing or empty water toughs. Occasionally, I’ll get a picture of a pen lying in the dirt to give a size scale to a foot print or tire track that didn’t come out in the photo. Yes, there is a dead animal here or there, but these are usually animals that have simply toppled over and never gotten up.

My disgust quickly grew into resentment. Who sends people pictures of dead animals, especially disemboweled dead animals, without giving a bit of a heads up first? A little disclaimer, like maybe, “By the way, these pictures are gross,” is most certainly in order. I’m sure Miss Manners would back me up on this.

After that debacle, I needed a cigarette. The problem was I had no cigarettes. And so, shortly thereafter, I found myself walking to the convenience store across the street from where I work. As I crossed the street, a woman approached me and asked, “Hey, do you have any crack?”

“Excuse me?” I said. I was sure I’d misheard her. People simply don’t walk up to other people in broad daylight and ask them for crack. It’s just not done in civilized society. Surely she was asking me for the time. Or perhaps some spare change. I slowed my pace and turned to look at her. She stood swaying in heavy black boots, and wore a tattered flannel shirt unbuttoned to her navel, revealing a soiled brassiere and peeling, sunburned skin. One side of her hair was braided; the other was caked in filth.

“Do you have any crack?” she asked again.

“No, I don’t have any crack,” I said. “Sorry.”

One of the many pitfalls of having worked a good long while in retail is that I tend to be overly polite and apologetic to strangers, including, apparently, junkie crackwhores. Regaining a bit of composure, I put on a disapproving face and continued on my way. After a moment, I was aware of someone following closely behind me, just out of my line of sight. I slowed my pace to let who ever it was pass me, but instead an older African American man fell into step with me and began chatting.

“She just askin’ you for crack?”

“I guess.”

“God DAMN! That shit right there is crazy!”

I smiled politely and quickened my pace. The man beside me kept on talking as if we’d been friends for years. I missed most of what he was saying, but I did notice that what few teeth he had left were as yellow as corn kernels, and just as small. After that, I kept my eyes focused on the convenience store just up ahead. So close!

“Oh hey, man,” the guy said. “You got a dollar?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t carry cash.”

“Oh, ok. That’s cool.”

We parted ways as I entered the convenience store, and took my position tenth in line behind haggard men and women buying lottery tickets and single 45 ounce cans of beer with fistfuls of change. While I waited, the man who had been talking to me entered the store. All of us in line watched as he openly stuffed his pockets with Cheeto’s and Aunt Freshly’s iced honey buns. The young Latina cashier was preoccupied with attempting to pick change up off the counter with her four inch long plastic fingernails, which were orange and glittered.

He was still there when my time at the counter came, his pockets absurdly stuffed and rustling and he waved a dollar bill over my shoulder at the cashier and asked for change.

“I have to make a sale first to open the register,” she said. I asked for a pack of cigarettes, and handed the girl a five dollar bill.

“I though you said you didn’t have no cash,” said the guy behind me.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any money,” I said.

“Motherfucker,” he said.

“Oh, fuck you,” I said.

I thought he might follow me out of the store, but he didn’t. When I last saw him, he was trying to make room in his pockets for the change the cashier had given him and swearing to himself.

I crossed the street and attempted to enjoy a cigarette while sitting on a bench outside in 115 degree weather. I was sweating profusely from the walk and I wanted my iced tea. I put the cigarette out and went to the key card lock by the door to the building. I keep my badge clipped to my front pocket, which is level with the key card slot. I can usually run it through the lock without unclipping it, which is what I was attempting to do when my boss suddenly came out through the door. My apparent intimacy with the lock confused her, and she asked, “What are you doing?”

"Oh, hey," I said, startled. I slipped past her into the building. “Just getting back to work,” I said.

Hell No
Before I begin, I should like to address a serious menace faced by today’s cantankerous blogger. In the past few weeks, I have read an increasing amount of news articles about people getting sued or fired over personal thoughts they’ve expressed in their blogs. Giving away company secrets, defamation of co-workers, and shameless admissions of their own workplace laziness are getting people in mucho aqua caliente. It seems employers view negative statements about the work environment as a form of mutiny. Personally, I’ve never known anyone who hasn’t had a gripe or two about their job, and I’ve met very few people who don’t enjoy griping in general. But since the internet is as public a forum as one can get, the time has come for bloggers to take steps to protect themselves.

Even though my job lends itself to a certain amount of job security (in that no one else wants it, and at slightly over 2 months, I’ve been there longer than the last three people who held the post before me), from now on I shall have to be circumspect and deliberately vague. I will have to come up with pseudonyms and secret codes, and will now hereby state that everything that takes place in this blog actually happens in a small hamlet along the Mekong River in Laos. Furthermore, from here on out, my name shall be Bud Tocks, and I am but a simple Laotian fisherman, or roof thatcher, or romance novelist, or whatever the hell it is we do here in our small hamlet along the Mekong River. I know nothing of your country or your imperialist customs, and any similarities that might arise between my humble hamlet and your godless nation are purely coincidental. Oh, and I’m writing this in English because I am taking a correspondence course on British Copper Cookware of the 1870’s, which happens to be of great interest to me. I must practice my English for my term paper on the Great London Smelter’s Rebellion.

And now, without further adieu, on to the blog I came here to blog about.

As many of you know by now, when I’m not busy thatching roofs before the start of the rainy season or fishing for the Feast of a Thousand Happinesses, I do occasionally work for the Laotian Department of Yaks and Llamas. My position there is multi-faceted, manifold, and tri-fold. A huge facet is taking care of the field officers and inspectors, who, stationed in remote parts of the Laotian desert, require a liaison between their outposts and the central department. Among other things, I am responsible for keeping them supplied with supplies, making sure their vehicles are kept in good repair, and that they follow procedure and submit their paperwork on time. On good days, I like to think that I am the sprocket that keeps the wheels spinning. On not so good days, I feel like a babysitter for dozens of middle aged brats who don’t want to do their homework.

With management on one side and the field personnel on the other, I’ve quickly had to learn the subtle nuances of filtering the communication that goes through me. For example, I have learned that the message “Tell him to go throw himself in a lake, and I mean a deep lake...I want him dead,” is better passed on as, “Sorry, I don’t think we’re going to get approval on this.” A middle man’s job is never easy. On the one hand, the concepts of budgets, record keeping, and accounting are utterly foreign to field personnel. On the other hand, management, while knowing what the field personnel do, at least in theory, have little idea of what is actually required to do the job. What results are a series of negotiations and bargaining, whiny telephone calls, nasty emails, and the occasional interoffice war.

I’m just a messenger. I remind people of this daily, though it’s usually met with a resounding chorus of “Shoot the messenger!” Intercession is not my forte. Nor is ranching, land disputes, or what size flashlight or length of tow chain an officer should be equipped with. I’ve often wondered if my manager, Xena (note: not her real name), actually read my resume before she hired me, and, if so, what part of it gave her the impression that I’d know anything about hauling a dead cow off an interstate. It’s not a situation one encounters with any regularity in a retail setting.

Retail does, however, familiarize one with petty conflict, whining, and argument, and, boy, do we get plenty of that. Here’s a bit of an example:

“Here,” I said to Xena. “This is a list of equipment Officer Cletus (note: not his real name) has requested for his new truck. You need to authorize it before I can get a work order.”

“What? He got a new truck?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“From who?”

“Agnes (note: not her real name) down in accounting, she organized it.”

“Accounting?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on a sec.” Xena grabbed her telephone and angrily stabbed out Agnes’s extension. “Agnes? This is Xena. Hey, I hear you people are giving away new cars down there; put me down for two. Yeah? Well, I’ve got Bud (note: not my real name) (note: I mean, yes it is) standing here with a list of...of...I don’t know what, stuff Officer Cletus says he needs installed in his brand new truck. What? When? Who said that? Who asked him, anyway? She did? You’re kidding me! Since when does he spend our money? I’ll tell you something; he’s gonna have to bend over pretty far to yank eighteen grand out of his ass, because I sure as hell don’t have it. Nooo, she said that? No, I’ll call her myself. Uh-huh. Yeah, you better believe it. OK. Bye.”

“Fine,” said Xena. “What does Cletus claim he needs?”

“That would be on the list you’re holding.”

“Oh. Yeah. Hmmm. What the hell is a light bar?”

“I’d guess they’re the lights that go on top of the truck. You know, like on a police car.”

“He needs those? No one else has those. Why does he need one of those?”

“He says he does.”

“Five hundred dollars? No! What’s this? Speaker mounts? Sirens? He’s a live stock officer, what’s he gonna do with this stuff? Order cows to pull over? A $120 cup holder? Is he kidding me? What the hell is an access panel? Remotes? For what? $400 for a mounted tool box? No! No siren! No speakers! No cup holder! No! No! No!”

“So I should tell him no?”

“You tell him to go down to Wal-Mart and buy one of those 97? cup holders you hang on the door. And then tell him we won’t reimburse him for it!”

“Gotcha.”

This is merely the first stage of negotiations. I now have several tasks ahead of me. I have to call Officer Cletus and find out exactly what he really needs and why. Second, I have to call our mechanic shops and find cost-effective alternatives to the proposed equipment, plus estimates for installation. Third, I run this by Officer Cletus, who will usually begrudgingly accept the compromise. Then I have to run the whole thing by Xena again.

“The light bar is now two flashers installed in the grill, and that’s $150. The siren mount is a standard thing, but we can get a cheaper siren. We’ve scratched the remotes, and the access panel is now a single toggle switch on the dashboard. It’s the cheapest they’ve got. And he really does need a tool box.”

“So he says he needs a siren, huh?”

“He says he does.”

“That’s ridiculous. No siren.”

There are times I feel like a lawyer guiding his client through plea-bargaining. “Cletus, she scratched the siren but you can have your lights and your tool box. It’s a good offer. I’d advise you to take it.”

Once word had spread that Officer Cletus has got a new tool box, all the other officers and inspectors want a new one, too. My voicemail gets flooded with calls about the many hardships of working with an old tool box. “The hinges are rusted and it creaks when I open it.” “Someone tried to break into it, and now it don’t lock so good.” “It’s all dented in on one side. It looks real bad.” “I been here three years longer than Cletus, and my box is smaller.” Blah, blah, blah. The only reason I hear the entire message is that I can’t delete them until they finish. Otherwise, everyone would be cut off right after the phrase, “I heard Cletus got a new tool box, and I been-” It’s not just tool boxes. It’s printers and ink cartridges and horse halters and batteries. The second one of them gets something new, the rest begin to whine. It’s insanity.

There is one officer, let’s call her Ms. Annoying (note: not her real name) because that’s what she is, who needs something every day. Every morning I can count on an email from her, and it’s quickly becoming my favorite part of the day.

“Bud,” her email will say, “the case I have for my GPS device gets very hot when I leave it on the seat of the truck. Is there any way to get one in a color other than black? Also, I need two (2) ink cartridges for my fax machine at home, one (1) 256 MB jump drive for my laptop, and a portable printer. Any word on those business cards I requested? Let me know. Thanks, Ms. Annoying.”

There’s always word on the items she’s requested, and the word is always “No!” After a while, I got a good idea of what was worth asking Xena about, and which were just clearly ridiculous requests. The requests for business cards I had to forward, though, because I knew it would annoy Xena to no end.

“Xena,” I said in my email. “Ms. Annoying would now like to have her own business cards printed up at the agency’s expense. I am forwarding her request to you. Should I tell her no?”

Xena’s response was as follows: “Bud- Do not tell Ms. Annoying no. Tell her HELL NO!!! O MY GOD!!! WHAT IS WITH HER??? Printer? No! Jump drive? No! Ink cartridges? Send her one. Two? No! And who gave her a GPS unit? Ask her. New case? No!!”

“Dear Ms. Annoying,” I emailed. “I’m sorry, but there is no budget for business cards, printers, or jump drives. They only make the GPS cases in black, and by the way...”

And on and on and on. The only thing worse than the officers trying to get something from me is trying to get something from the officers. Only a few of them actually check their emails, so the only way to contact them is through their cell phones. I can usually hear a groan on the other end of the line when I say, “Hi, this is Bud.”

“Oh, hey Bud,” they’ll say, cornered.

“How are you?” I’ll ask.

“Good, good. And how are you?”

“Great. Say, remember that report I called you about last week?”

“Report?”

“Yes, the one about the pit bills that were impounded? The ones that attacked those pigs?”

“Pigs?”

“Yes, the 32 pigs who now have rabies. Remember? It was all part of the drug bust? Eight peole were arrested? They shot that dog that attacked you? Remember?”

“I guess.”

“Well, I still haven’t received your report on that.”

“Oh.”

“Did you get my message? Last week, after we spoke?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Anyway, we really need that report. Any chance you could get that faxed to me today?”

“I can try.”

“That would be great. The DA needs it to prosecute, so it’s really important.”

“OK, I’ll get that sent right out.”

“Thanks.”

It usually takes four or five days of these kinds of calls before I’ll eventually receive a fax. The fax will be of the wrong documents, of course, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s only annoying if you let it get to you. Funny thing, though. When there’s a problem with their timesheets and they risk not getting paid, I can usually get a fax within 10 minutes.

The only thing the field officers fear more than being asked for paperwork is being assigned assignements. But that's a whole other ball of blog.

I Hate Liz
It was a day that would long live in infamy; a turning point, a day of reckoning. It was a day when man and beast would clash amid the primordial beating of the drums of chaos, where the fury of hell itself would spill over into the bright, clear light of judgment, and two men would be left standing alone to reap the smoking ruin of their own bitter, bitter harvest. None would be spared in the savage struggle for power, for dominance.

Before it was over, minds would bend and illusions would shatter. Flesh and bone would be tested beyond endurance of suffering. Blood would flow.

And there, in the profound silence that would pass like the all-seeing eye of a hurricane, Liz would ask, “Whew! What stinks in here?”

Liz, Liz, LIZ! Treachery, thy name is Liz! From hell’s heart, I stab at thee!

Vet visits with Mesa have never been pleasant. Ever since she spent a week in an animal hospital with Parvo, her reaction toward vets clearly indicates she hates them passionately. One can hardly blame her, since her week long stay was at best miserable. Unable to eat or drink, Mesa was prodded and poked with numerous IV’s and injections, all the while confined to small steel cage in a quarantine room that reeked of bleach. There have been few moments in my life more depressing than visiting her in that place, which required one to enter the hospital through a side door that opened directly into her room. Leaving her there was even worse. Weakened as she was, she would bark hysterically and paw at the cage door as we stepped into a basin filled with bleach to decontaminate our shoes before we left the room. We kept our visits to a minimum because we didn’t want Mesa wasting her energy that way.

Not visiting her was hard, too. Although we were in constant phone contact with the vet, Mesa’s prognosis went up and down each time we called. In the morning we’d be told she was doing so well she might be home in a day or two, and that afternoon we’d be told to expect the worst, and that she might not come home at all. Every day added hundreds of dollars to a vet bell we were unsure we’d be able to pay. Our lives revolved around Mesa and were filled with dread and anxiety.

When she recovered and came home, our lives continued to revolve around Mesa. We couldn’t do enough for our poor pooch who had been so very near the brink of death. Handmade dog beds, home cooked meals of white rice and lean hamburger for her sensitive tummy, and an obsessive monitoring of the quality of her bowl movements were just the beginning. While most dogs earn praise for being obedient and well behaved, Mesa was praised for continuing to exist.

“Sit, Mesa,” Shawn would say.

“Yes, Mesa,” I’d say. “Sit.”

Mesa would grace us with an indifferent glance, and then go back to sniffing the coffee table.

“Are we pushing too hard?” I’d ask.

“Well, she did just get out of the hospital two weeks ago,” Shawn would say.

“Good girl, Mesa!” I’d say. “Let’s go buy her a present.”

The fact that Mesa still ignores our commands shouldn’t surprise us, but it does. We knew we were spoiling her, but she deserved to be spoiled. We had no idea what kind of monster we were creating. She knows how to sit and stay, of course, but she rarely sees the point. She knows, for example, that we have to go to work in the morning and don’t have the time to argue, and we’ll take her out regardless of whether or not she sits at the door. But all that is about to change; our last visit to the vet was an awakening.

We disliked Liz’s pinched little face and put-upon sighs the second she entered the exam room. The longer she stood in the room without acknowledging us, the more we disliked this vet technician. They say dogs can intuitively read the emotions of people and react to them. So either Mesa read Shawn’s mind and mine, or she sensed negative vibrations coming from Liz herself. Either way, Mesa took an immediate dislike to Liz, which she verbalized the only way dogs can. Dougal, who had hardly noticed Liz’s arrival, immediately sprang to his feet and backed Mesa up. The chorus of barking shook Liz from her stupor, and she shrank away from us with her eyes wide in terror. I can’t say I was sorry for her distress, but her reaction struck me on a deeper, less vindictive level.

Anyone who works with dogs, it seems to me, should be aware of certain behaviors to which dogs are prone. Barking is a pretty big one. The fact that she didn’t bother introducing herself to us was annoying. But the fact that she didn’t attempt to introduce herself to our dogs before attempting to place a thermometer in their rectums was just plain stupid. Yes, dogs may be dumb animals, but even they know such intimate acts are simply unacceptable from a complete stranger. Liz handled the situation by skipping the temperature-taking altogether. What a pro. I began to miss our old vet, but that hospital has too many negative associations for Mesa and for us. Plus, they’re very expensive.

Shawn and I decided things would go better if Liz had only one dog to deal with a time. I took Dougal out into the waiting room, where he was menaced by a Jack Russell Terrier named Spanky.

“No, Spanky!” Spanky’s owner said. “That dog will eat you!” Spanky was wearing a doggie-t-shirt and yapping, which people thought was adorable. “Oh, look at that little dog barking at that big dog! That’s so cute!” Little dogs can get away with being misbehaved because so few people are frightened by them. But as soon as Dougal began bark back at Spanky, people began to run for cover.

“Hey,” I said, to no one in particular, “Spanky started it!”

When Spanky was at last far, far away, the sounds of an epic struggle began to erupt from the exam room. Mesa’s barking was suddenly silenced, and, fearing the worst, I opened the exam room door and poked my head in. Mesa was wild-eyed and muzzled, and Shawn was holding an ice pack to his bloodied lip, looking exhausted.

“Hi, there!” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Mesa went crazy,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t let anyone near her, so we had to muzzle her. She slammed her head into my face.”

“Oh,” I said.

I shut the door and retuned with Dougal to the waiting room, where we pretended not to know the people in Exam Room 1 and nonchalantly perused pamphlets on pet disease. Our cover was blown after Mesa and Shawn came out into the waiting room and came over to us, Mesa panting heavily in her muzzle.

“Well, they couldn’t do anything with her,” Shawn said from behind his ice pack. “We have to come back. Go see what they can do with Dougal.”

Well, we’d have no problems with Dougal, of that I was sure. He’s a sweet guy. The problem, it turned out, was Liz.

When she returned to the exam room where Dougal and I were waiting, she was visibly shaken and nervous. She stood with one hand on the door knob, poised to flee. I let Dougal walk over to her, where he sniffed her trembling hand and then licked it. Liz yanked her hand away violently, which startled Dougal.

“It’s ok, Doogie,” I said. “That lady doesn’t like dogs. Come here.”

“That other dog tried to bite me,” Liz said.

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

“She’s bitten someone before?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Does that one bite?”

“Of course not.”

Liz took a tentative step toward Dougal, who turned his head to look at her. Liz shrank away as if he had lunged.

“You seem nervous,” I said to her.

“Does that one need to wear a muzzle?”

“He doesn’t, no. Do you need him to wear one?”

“I don’t wanna get bit,” she said.

“Would you be more comfortable if he was wearing a muzzle?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, get him a muzzle.”

When Liz returned with a muzzle I warned her, “You know he’s never worn one of these before. It’s likely to freak him out.”

Dougal, to his extreme credit, took the muzzle in stride. But it was too small.

“It’s too small,” I said to Liz.

“Make sure it’s nice and tight,” said Liz.

“It doesn’t fit.”

“Oh.”

I took the muzzle off Dougal who gave me a look at clearly asked, “OK, now what was that about?”

“Good boy, Doogie,” I said.

Liz reached for the muzzle, and Dougal licked her hand again. She gave him a pat on the head.

“He isn’t mean,” I reminded Liz, who, nonetheless produced a larger muzzle.

I can think of no logical thought process that would explain what Liz did next. She attempted to put the new muzzle on Dougal herself. If she was afraid of him, why was she shoving a strange object into his face? If she wasn’t afraid of him, why was she muzzling him? Dougal reared back and away from Liz, who immediately began to shriek, “He bit me! He bit me!”

“Oh, he did NOT!” I said.

“Yes he did!”

“Where?”

“Right here,” she said, holding out her forearm.

“Where?” I asked.

“Right here,” she said. “There’s nothing there, but he did bite me.”

“I was right here, and I didn’t see him bite you.”

Exasperated, Liz turned and opened the exam room door. “This dog bit me,” she screamed down the hallway.

I finished putting the muzzle on Dougal, who immediately dropped to the floor and began to paw at it. This was all going terribly, terribly wrong,

Another, older, vet tech appeared, and tried to calm Liz.

“He bit me!” Liz was screaming, frantically shaking her head.

“Where?” the other vet tech asked.

“Right here!” Liz said, pointing at her forearm.

“Where?”

“Right here,” Liz said, pointing to the unblemished skin of her forearm. “There’s nothing there, thank God, but he could have really hurt me.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “My dog did not bite her. That’s why there’s nothing there.”

“Yes he did!” Liz shrieked. “And that other one tried to bite me too!”

The older vet tech gave me an uncertain glance, and then looked back at Liz. “Why don’t you wait out here with me,” She said to Liz. “We’ll send the doctor in as soon as possible. You’ll have to wait until a male doctor is available.”

A male doctor? What?

“Excuse me,” I said again. “Why a male doctor?”

“Our female doctors don’t feel they can control that dog.”

“I see.”

While we waited, I attempted to soothe Dougal who was getting more and more unhappy with the strange new thing on his face. He was starting to hyperventilate, and being unable to open his mouth certainly wasn’t helping his anxiety. I was about to take the muzzle off him and take him home when the doctor came in.

“So there’s the troublemaker,” he said. “I need you to take him into the center of the room here and hold onto him so I can get his pulse.”

“OK,” I said. I took Dougal into the center of the room and had him sit. Then I held him still in bear hug.

The doctor then walked around to Dougal’s blind side and put his hand out and touched Dougal’s back. Dougal bucked, and suddenly the room filled with a rank stench.

“Whoa!” said the vet, jumping backward. “We’re not going to get anywhere with this dog today.”

I looked around and saw brown liquid on the floor behind Dougal. “What’s that?”

“Secretions from the anal sack. Dogs are kind of like skunks. When they get scared, they release that scent.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.”

“He’s that terrified?”

“Seems like.”

“He has never been this scared in his life,” I said, appalled. “For a dog that comes from a shelter, that’s saying a lot. Your vet tech made him wear a muzzle even though he was being friendly. If she had just petted him and given him a cookie, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Instead she screamed at him and made him wear this thing. If you had bothered to pet him and say hi before.... And then you sneak up on him! Ooh, I am so mad. This is a disaster.”

I took the muzzle off Dougal, dropped it on the floor, and walked him out into the waiting room. Mesa’s muzzle was off, and Shawn was still holding the ice pack to his lip.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“I....hate...Liz,” I said loudly, taking Mesa from him. “I can’t deal with these people anymore. You go talk to them, and then let’s get the hell out of here.”

In the end, they gave us sedatives for both the dogs and suggested we sedate them before we bring them in next time. For these people, though, there will be no next time. Shawn reported that Liz came into the exam room and subtly asked, “Whew! What stinks in here?”

I am more than willing to admit our dogs are not a couple of Benjis, but neither are they Cujos. But one thing became evidently clear; in order to make them socially acceptable, they would have to be trained to ignore the mistreatment and bungling of others. Our dogs would have to be trained to obey a sit and stay command, regardless of who was attempting to shove what into their rectums.

It’s a long, dark road ahead. I’ll send you a postcard

Out Wickenburg Way
“Wickenburg fills an illustrious chapter in the history of Arizona and the West,” according to the Chamber of Commerce for Wickenburg, Arizona. “Though only 54 miles away from the hustle and bustle of modern Phoenix, Arizona's most western community hearkens back to a different time and place.”

A look at any map will debunk Wickenburg’s claim of being “Arizona’s most western community” in a literal sense, and there are a few thousand ranchers in Arizona who may want to know what, exactly, Wickenburg is implying in the figurative sense. If you ask me, them’s fightin’ words.

The 54 mile drive from Phoenix is a straight shot along route 60, the same road that serves as the first leg in any drive to Las Vegas or Needles, California. Route 60 is flat and gray and ugly, flanked on either side by concrete sound barriers behind which are huddled the planned communities of Surprise and Sun City. Billboards and signs abound along the roadside, advertising luxurious homes starting in the $60’s. Though natural impulse will urge you to put these places behind you as quickly as possible, frequent stoplights will make the drive an exhaustive and frustrating task. “Look right over there,” the stoplights seem to say. “There’s our new Walgreen’s. Need anything? And what’s this? Could it be? It is! Wal-Mart! Why on earth haven’t you moved here?”

The drive lends itself to a certain amount of “Are we there yet?” and the quiet, nagging thought that perhaps you should have stopped at that Walgreen’s back there after all. But eventually the concrete barriers fall away and mountains take their place, and it’s nothing but cacti and yucca and clear blue desert sky for miles and miles. It’s exactly the kind of thing Shawn and I were thinking of when we moved here, so it leaves us with a profound sense of inner peace and accomplishment when we visit these places, with plenty of time left over to contemplate roadside signs reading “DETENTION FACILITY. DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS.”

When you’re near Wickenburg, you’ll know it. Nothing will change much aside from an abundance of signs informing you that “You’re Out Wickenburg Way.” There are few houses, some shacks, and some dilapidated “Gem” shops with chunks of quartz prominently displayed in their grimy windows. It’s more charming than it sounds, and provides ample opportunity to point excitedly out the window and exclaim, “Look! Horsies!” more than any other town we’ve seen.

When you get closer to the center of town, there’s also ample opportunity to excitedly point and exclaim “Trailer park!” and “Wal-Mart!” Wickenburg prides itself on having a genuine “western” flavor to it, and has been a popular destination for “dude ranch” vacations for years. In reality, however, most of the real ranches went out of business long ago, and many of what mainstream ranches remain are carefully manicured for maximum “ooh” and “aahh” from tourists. I sincerely doubt cowboys in 1864 concerned themselves much with high speed internet access or had the leisure time or water resources to maintain an 18 hole golf course. There are, of course, accommodations for the more budget conscious tourist, including a string of small hotels that boast “washtubs” in each room and “fancy cocktails” available at the “saloon” in the lobby. (A small aside here: Arizona, especially small town Arizona, is obsessed with the notion of “fancy cocktails” and “cocktails” in general. I’ve never seen a word so prominently featured on marquis to so many dives in my life.)

Main Street Wickenburg has been carefully rebuilt to remember what it “might have looked like” in the late 1800’s. However, I must (again) sincerely doubt many cowboys spent their money in western-themed gift shops buying paintings of John Wayne or ceramic chili pepper salt and pepper shakers. I daresay a true cowboy would laugh outright at such “fancy notions.” But I digress.

Where, besides to Wickenburg, am I going with all this? Why, to the Vulture Mine, of course, located in Wickenburg. Why did it take me so long to get to the point? Shawn is redoing the bathroom and I cannot take a shower, thus I have nothing better to do but sit here and run on and on about Wickenburg. It’s my blog, I shall do as I like. So there, too. Besides, without the Vulture Mine, there would be no Wickenburg.

The Vulture Mine was founded by a man by the name of Henry Wickenburg, who was washed eastward from California in 1862 by the Gold Rush. The town of Wickenburg sprang up around the mine, which was closed by the government in 1942. Now it is one of Arizona’s most interesting ghost towns, due to many of the town’s structures, which, although crumbling, still remain erect. Most ghost towns contain foundations and piles of rubble that give you an idea that, at one time, something was built there. Hardly worth a 54 mile drive if you ask me.

Understandably, the Vulture Mine is a point of pride with Wickenburg, whose Chamber of Commerce describes it thusly:

“Among the gold searches was the adventurer, Henry Wickenburg. He came from far-off lands, lured by the dream of abundant gold. His quest was rewarded by the discovery of the Vulture Mine, where over $30 million in gold has been dug from the ground. Throughout the foothills surrounding Wickenburg are relics of other mines that stand as a tribute to the pioneer miner and prospector. The mining lore of the region, past and present, adds much to the charm of the area.”

For a town proud of its unique history, this summary is a little vague. It fails to mention that Henry Wickenburg was either Prussian, Australian, or at the very least, European. Though his origins are unclear, what is universally known is that Wickenburg wasn’t so much an adventurer as he was a fugitive. What crime he committed depends on where you think he came from, but everyone agrees that he fled to California during the Gold Rush and learned about gold mining there.

There are many legends about how Wickenburg discovered gold. Some say he shot a vulture and its carcass landed on gold. Others say he was chipping at a bed of quartz and found gold. However he found it, he found it, and the town of Vulture City sprang up from the mine.

Though Wickenburg was eventually named after him, Wickenburg himself isn’t really a very lucky or enviable fellow. Most of the mining structures were built after he sold the mine in 1866 for $20,000 and a promissory note for $65,000, on which he was never able to collect. After selling the mine, he tried his hand at ranching, failed, and ended his own life with a bullet to the head. Strangely, you find no mention of this on the Chamber of Commerce website.

This is the mineshaft and the adjoining blacksmith shop.

The entrance down into the mine, with tracks for the carts. We saw bats down there.

Shawn strikes a mining-related pose by the mineshaft.

The tracks come up out of the shaft and up this structure, where the carts were dumped at the end.

The Assay Office, where gold was kept in an underground vault. The rock used to build the structure are said to contain $600,000 worth of gold and silver ore, which explains why many people have pried stones out of it. I wonder if they have a smelter and ore crusher at home?

The underground vault. We also found a Coors can and a Pepsi bottle in the Assay office. I suspect these artifacts are not genuine.

The "Glory Hole." The mine shaft was supported by columns of stone left by the miners. Some of them attempted to get the gold out of the columns, which collapsed the shaft and buried seven men and tweleve burros. They're still there, under 100 feet of rock.

The ore was crushed in these buildings.

Sonoran Desert, home to the Vulture Mine.

The Hanging Tree. At least eighteen men were hung on this tree for various offenses. It is also the site where the battery in my camera ended its life.

We were given a laminated map of the town when we arrived, upon which were stickers reading "Not For Sale," "DO NOT TAKE," and "Please Return." Someone needs to get these people a Xerox machine. The only other person we saw was an older woman who lived in a shack by the town's entrance. She's the one who took our $7 admission fees and loaned us the map. She was quite friendly and seemed disappointed that we didn't have more questions for her when we returned from our tour. The one question I did have, "What do you keep in here?" wasn't about the mine, but rather two large cages kept out in front of her shack.

"Those are for the snakes," she said. "But we don't have snakes when it's this hot. They die."

Oh. Ask a stupid question.

There was a small gift shop as well, but it shared a room with the woman's personal living quarters, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable. It seemed impolite to browse in her bedroom. I was surprised that there were no other visitors the entire time we were there, but it did keep tourists from wandering in front of my camera and spoiling my pictures. No one wants a picture of a mineshaft that includes Dolores from Ohio, especially if you don't know Dolores personally.

The Vulture Mine is for sale. I have no idea how much it costs, but the idea rather depresses me. Am I wrong to think that it should be government owned and preserved? Anyway, the tour was ever so much fun. I should like to report that thrice I heard the angry buzzing of insects and was twice menaced by bees. I was certain a killer bee swarm was going to attack at any moment, despite the fact that I wore a light colored shirt (yes, there were flamingos and martinis on it, but the base color was white, and besides, this isn't about my occasional impulse to wear loud, tacky shirts, it's about preserving history). There were two old school houses there as well, with old swing sets, slides, and see-saws. They were down a lane lined with saguaro cactus, which would would have made an excellent picture, but, alas, my camera was dead. We were circled by vultures driving home, which was also most enjoyable, but only from the safe confines of a '96 Prizm.

10-4 Good Buddy
Breaker, breaker! This means, “Stop talking and listen to me!” Sadly, it doesn’t work in real life. It only works on the radio. Not the Donna Sommer “On the Radio” kind of radio, but the CB and police band kind of radio. If someone is reading the letter you wrote them on this radio, you’re probably in some kind of legal trouble, especially if you’re a 10-96 (escaped mental patient...which would explain why you’re wandering around in that old brown overcoat).

“10 Codes” were created to make radio communication clear, concise, and universal. Instead of saying, “Hey Cletus, where you at?” you can say, “Hey Cletus, what’s your 10-20?” See how much clearer and more concise that was? And universal, too, because people who may not understand the query “where you at” know that a 10-20 means “state your present location.” Almost everyone knows that 10-4 means “Affirmative, I heard you.” Like the word Aloha, 10-4 is a kind of Hello and Good bye. Want someone to give you a ring on the telephone? Ask them for a 10-21. Want to know the weather? Ask for a 10-13. You’re not drunk; you’re a 10-56 (intoxicated pedestrian). Having a fight with your wife? You, my friend, have a 10-16 (domestic problem).

Using code results clear, concise conversations that go along these lines:

“Cletus, what’s your 10-20?”
“10-56 at Hooters Boob-A-Rama.”
“Your wife wants a 10-21.”
“Uh oh. I’ve got a 10-16.”
“10-4.”

Who invented 10 Code, and exactly how universal it is, is a matter of some debate. 10 Code goes from 10-1 (I can’t hear you, your transmission sucks) to 10-99. 10-99 either indicates a vehicle is wanted or stolen, or that the case has been closed and all units are going out for beers. Code 10-100 (need to go to the bathroom) is unofficial. But 99 10 Codes, it turns out, simply wasn’t enough. There were codes for “I will give you a radio check” (10-32) and the correct time (10-36), but there weren’t any to report fires, suicide attempts, or to call for an ambulance. Thus, 11 Code was born. 11 Code also goes up to 11-99 (officer needs help-urgent). I’ve never seen a 12 Code, nor do I wish to.

The radio in our dispatch room is about three times the size of our computer’s monitor. It has lots of buttons, switches, dials, and blinking lights. A microphone sticks out of the front of it on one of those bendy metal arms. Since I’m usually just a stand-in for the usual dispatcher, I’ve been coping with radio transmissions by ignoring them. I don’t care what anyone’s 10-20 is, since I usually have no idea who they are or why they want me to know. What am I, their mommy? Just shut up and go uphold the peace somewhere, would you?

I’m usually on the phone and miss the transmission anyway. The radio will squawk and squeal as someone, somewhere, prattles on about something. The entire room then fills with tense silence. You can feel them out there, waiting for a response. “LS 612, please respond,” they say. It was weeks before I knew that LS 612 was me. I’ll sit motionless in my chair, hoping that they won’t detect me and will go away. “Ls 612,” they say again. “Please respond.” When backed into a corner this way, I will hit the transmit button and say, “10-4?” That usually shuts them up, but it also gives the false impression that I know what’s going on. I don’t want them to think help is on the way, when in reality, I’m going down to the vending machines for another Snickers.

For the past week, though, Rhonda has been out of the office. I’ve been the dispatcher all day, every day, and I’ve been told that simply ignoring the radio won’t work this time, nosiree Bob. Instead of being trained in proper radio usage and jargon, a few blurry photocopies defining 10 Codes were dropped in my lap. Once again, I was being called upon to wing it (also known as “on the job training”).

Within minutes, the radio was talking to me.

“LS 60, LS 612.”

LS 612, I knew, was me. But who the dickens was LS 60? I cracked open a binder that listed out field officers by badge number. We had a #60, but was he LS 60?

“LS 612,” I said, pressing the shiny red transmit button. “Um...go ahead LS 60.”

“10-7.”

Interesting...but what did it mean? I shuffled through my photocopies and found that, inexplicably, the 10 Codes where not listed sequentially. Of course they weren’t. When you work for a government agency, you get used to things like that. 10-7, 10-7, where was 10-7? I was beginning to feel like a tourist with an incomplete phrase book.

“LS 612, please respond.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, still searching. “Keep your shirt on.” Not only wasn’t I finding 10-7, but I wasn’t seeing a code for “Hang on, I’m looking that up.”

“LS 612, please respond.”

Was there a code for “Go [expletive deleted] yourself?” I wasn’t seeing that either. Just what kind of emergency was LS 60 having?

And then I found it. 10-7, Out Of Service. Next to it, someone had handwritten in parenthesis, OUT TO LUNCH.

“10-4,” I said into the radio.

Out to lunch, indeed. “Quite an emergency you got there, Jack,” I said to the radio, without, of course, pressing the transmit button. “Enjoy your Whopper.”

As the week went on, I found myself in any number of situations where my ability to communicate concisely and effectively was thwarted by a lack of appropriate code. Knowing that 12 Codes were free (to my knowledge anyway) I set about making my own set of dispatcher friendly codes:

12-01 Dispatch is confused, say it in plain English
12-02 Dispatch has a mouthful of donut- stand by
12-03 Dispatch has almost solved “word jumble”-stand by
12-04 Dispatch horoscope unfavorable, hiding under desk
12-05 Dispatch missed first part of transmission
12-06 Dispatch missed second part of transmission
12-07 Dispatch missed the whole transmission
12-08 Dispatch was talking to Sandy from across the hall-repeat transmission
12-09 What?
12-10 What?
12-11 Dispatch is in over his head and signing off, you’re on your own
12-12 Dispatch does not, for the last time, know where Ahwatukee is
12-13 Who is this?
12-14 What are you wearing?
12-15 Sounds sexy
12-16 Sorry, not my type
12-17 Dispatch wondering what life is all about, please respond
12-18 Dispatch out of cigarettes, anyone’s 10-20 by a Circle K?
12-19 Dispatch shoes too tight, emergency response
12-20 Dispatch free for dinner tonight-hint, hint
12-21 Dispatch out to lunch
12-22 Dispatch back from lunch
12-23 Dispatch assures you he was only gone an hour
12-24 Dispatch does not like your tone
12-25 Dispatch has not heard the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the stripper
12-26 Dispatch has heard the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the stripper
12-27 Dispatch is tired and cranky, this had better be important
12-28 Go [expletive deleted] yourself
12-29 Dispatch checking personal emails-stand by
12-30 Dispatch answering personal emails-stand by
12-31 Dispatcher making notes for blog-stand by

I’m sure I’ll think of more as time goes by, but these would definitely make my life as dispatcher a heck of a lot easier. Now, though, I’m 10-7. I’ve got a 10-100. Do not stand by.

Do Not Panic
Mere weeks before we moved cross country to our new Arizona homestead, Shawn and I were lucky enough to catch a special on the Discovery Channel all about creepy crawly things in Arizona that can kill you. The timing was uncanny. I forget the exact title of the program, but I’m fairly sure it included the words “certain,” “death,” and “John and Shawn from Massachusetts.” The show highlighted Africanized Killer Bees, Black Widow and Brown Recluse Spiders, Scorpions, Tarantulas, Gila Monsters, Javelinas, and Snakes. Lots and lots of snakes. Since neither Shawn nor I had been to Arizona before, the show served as something of a hysteria-inducing introduction to the Southwest, inspiring many an internet search with key terms such as “snake+death+arizona” and “bees+killer+arizona.”

Being intrepidly courageous as well as startlingly attractive, we were not about to let a few hundred species of belly-crawling, neurotoxic organisms deter us from new, almost randomly selected, horizons. We were (and still are) men, not the mice constituting the diets of snakes, scorpions, and tarantulas. As men, we had honor and a non-refundable deposit on a moving truck to defend. We had seen the fanged, venomous face of death, and it was scaly and hairy. It was time to go laugh in it.

Part 1
Bees, Killer

Once, when I was but a mere scrap of a lad cavorting at a picnic, I reached for my can of soda and took the kind of thirst quenching chug you often see in slow motion close-ups in Coke commercials. I don’t remember how refreshing the beverage was, though. I was distracted by an odd lump suddenly present in my mouth; leathery, kind of squishy, and intermittently pointy. I quickly did the kind of reverse-chug you almost never see Coke commercials, expelling, along with copious amounts of Coke, a bee. A yellow jacket, to be precise. The alternating yellow and black bands of its segmented body are still vividly burned into my memory, as are the wet and broken wings of the thing. It was quite dead, which was lucky; during the random, often waylaid course of what I loosely call “fact checking” for this blog, I learned that people can and sometimes do die from stings to the tongue or throat inflicted by a bee introduced in the very same manner. The stings cause the airways to swell and close, and the joys of suffocation follow. All I knew then, though, was that a dead bee had been in my mouth. I have never been more disgusted by anything that has ever happened to me before or since.

I hate bees. Hate them, hate them, hate them. I tend to make a public spectacle of myself when menaced by a bee, “menaced” being a loosely interpretable term which could easily mean, “Happens to be flying by within 10 yards of me.” Single, meandering bees are small and hard to see from a distance, so how my sudden leaping up from a bench and subsequent erratic flailing and swatting is interpreted by others is anyone’s guess.

“Say Bob, what’s with that guy over there?”

“Beats me. Could be a seizure. Or some kind of primitive mating ritual.”

“Well, it is strangely alluring.”

“Just keep walking and avoid eye contact.”

The Africanized Honey Bee, or “Killer Bee,” came into existence in 1957, when African honey bees were imported to Brazil by political activist and science-guy Dr. Warwick Kerr. European honey bees had been imported to Brazil some time before, but didn’t hold up well in the tropics. They lounged about lethargically fanning themselves with bits of banana leaf and complaining about the humidity. The idea was to come up with a cross between the African and European strains that would be as “docile” as the European bee, and as hardy in warm climates as the African bee. However, the early hybrid honey bees escaped from Dr. Kerr and began to mate with local European honey bees unchecked, giving European honey bees a reputation for being “easy” and creating the Africanized Honey Bee as we know him today.

“Africanized bees acquired the name ‘killer bees’ because they will viciously attack people and animals who unwittingly stray into their territory, often resulting in serious injury or death. It is not necessary to disturb the hive itself to initiate an AHB attack. In fact, Africanized bees have been known to respond viciously to mundane occurrences, including noises or even vibrations from vehicles, equipment and pedestrians. Though their venom is no more potent than native honey bees, Africanized bees attack in far greater numbers and pursue perceived enemies for greater distances. Once disturbed, colonies may remain agitated for 24 hours, attacking people and animals within a range of a quarter mile from the hive.”

The Killer Bee is spreading at a rate of 200 miles per year. Hidalgo, Texas, was the first US territory to report killer bees in 1990. By 1993 they had moved into Arizona and New Mexico, and by 1994 colonies were firmly established in California. They’ve been seen as far north as Montana, but the colder climate prohibits colonization. The bees made their first eastward appearance in 1999, traveling along the Gulf of Mexico into Florida.

“On July 15, 1993, 82-year-old Lino Lopez became the first person to die in the U.S. from Africanized honey bee stings. He was stung more than 40 times while trying to remove a colony from a wall in an abandoned building on his ranch near Harlingen, Texas.”

“Arizona's first human fatality from Africanized bees occurred in October, 1993 when 88-year-old Apache Junction woman disturbed a large Africanized honey bee colony in an abandoned building on her property and was stung numerous times.”

Killer bees are said to be “less selective” about areas they colonize than the European honey bee, which means that killer bees will move in just about anywhere--sheds, woodpiles, junk heaps, hideous little duplexes on the West Side--and it’s this “slumming” behavior that puts them in closer and closer contact with human beings. As of 2000, they covered over 5 million square miles of land, and their numbers increase as they infiltrate more and more native colonies.

The bees are captivated by the subtle, sophisticated aroma of Elizabeth Taylor’s “White Diamonds” or “Aqua Velva.” They also like the smell of freshly mown grass, which doesn’t say much for Elizabeth Taylor. Bohemian types who only wear black are at a distinct disadvantage, as are those of you with long black tresses. Scientists refer to the bee’s “behavior of attacking dark things” as “a behavior of attacking dark things.” I know scientific jargon can be confusing, but do try to keep up.

Under attack from a swarm of killer bees? Bee Prepared! (Get it? I’m so clever! Actually, I stole that from www.desertusa.com, your one-stop source for all things desert. I could never be that clever.)

• Do not panic.
• Quickly get into a house, car, tent, bubble or other enclosure, provided your idea of an enclosure isn’t closing the garden gate and shouting “Nyah nyah nyah! You can’t come on my property! I’ll call the police!” Once inside the enclosure (I’m calling my car an “enclosure” from now on), close any doors or windows. Bees are not vampires. They’ll come in even if you don’t invite them, and studies about the effectiveness of crucifixes used against them have proven inconclusive.
• Do not jump, dive, “cannonball,” “belly flop” or slide into a pool. The bees will wait until you surface for air to attack, thus initiating a deadly game of “Marco Polo,” during which the bees will almost certainly cheat.
• If you are attacked by bees, run away. Don't play dead or swat at the bees. If playing dead is your best line of defense, you’re either very lazy or a complete idiot (though, frankly, if you can play dead convincingly while being stung hundreds of times, especially in the face, you’d win my momentary admiration). Most people can outrun the bees, but you might have to run a few blocks. Do not wait for a bus.
• Remove stingers as soon as possible to lessen the amount of venom entering the body. Scrape stingers off the skin with a blunt instrument or plastic card. Do not remove bee stingers with fingers or tweezers – this only forces toxins into the victim's body. Remember too that a honeybee can sting only once, since its stinger is barbed and remains embedded in the skin. You have some degree of satisfaction in knowing that the bee leaves behind a good a part of its entrails along the stinger, and so it too will die. But then, you also have the added disgust of being covered in bee guts.

The A.M.A has estimated that 7 stings per pound of body weight is lethal for healthy people without a pre-existing allergy to bee venom. For your average adult, that’s over 1,000 stings. They also kill cattle. Your average cow can weight anywhere from 500 to 1,000 pounds, which paints a pretty scary picture of the size of a swarm. I can’t find an exact number of how many people have succumbed to a buzzing swarm of death, however. These numbers are probably kept secret to avoid unwarranted mass bee hysteria. But I’m here to tell you that you are right to panic, as long as you do not panic while panicking. Suspect every bee, I say! Nay, suspect every flying insect! Your life could, and probably does, depend on it!

Part 2
Spider, Brown Recluse

Allow me to introduce another native Arizonan menace: the Brown Recluse Spider. These spiders probably got their name due to their ?brown? coloring and ?reclusive? nature. I, for one, have never met an especially bold spider. I?ve never had a spider single me out of a crowd and walk right up to me, saying, ?Yeah, buddy, I?m talkin? to YOU!? That?s why so few of them become professional boxers. I suppose it?s hard to be assertive when your mortal enemy is a tightly rolled People magazine. Leave it to the scientific community, though, to give the thing such a dull, literal name, especially in light of what it can do. A brown recluse bite causes something known as (and this is the actual term for it, no lie) a ?volcano lesion,? which is a raised lesion with a discernable opening that can range in size from ?an adult?s thumbnail to the span of a hand.? I?d have called the Brown Recluse the ?Non-Speckled Whooping Volcano Lesion Spider,? but I wasn?t consulted. I?m petitioning the Arachnological Society for a name change, but I?ve only gathered 7 signatures, and I suspect a couple of them, Philip DaGraves and Amanda Hugginkiss, are phony.

The venom from a brown recluse actually kills the flesh it encounters, leaving gaping, gangrenous wounds that take months to heal and leave the type of scarring you?d expect from gaping, gangrenous wounds. There is no known effective antivenom, and in some cases bite victims are treated with Dapsone, a drug chiefly used to treat leprosy. If you want to gross yourself out some time (And really, who doesn?t?), google up some pictures of Brown Recluse bites. It?s disgusting, exploitive, and educational!

Since this reclusive spider is brown, it?s hard to spot in its outdoor desert habitat. Aside from the cactus, everything in Arizona is brown. However, ?They thrive in human-altered environments. Indoors, they may be found in attics, basements, crawl spaces, cellars, closets, and ductwork or registers. They may seek shelter in storage boxes, shoes, clothing, folded linens, and behind furniture.? Many victims are bitten when they roll over onto the spider while they sleep. Severity of the bite, as with all things brown, hairy, and venomous, depends on the amount of venom the spider manages to inject. And when you?re squashing one, chances are you?re going to get all it?s got.

So how best to avoid being bitten? Constant vigilance!

? Shake out clothing and shoes before getting dressed. ?Raid? makes an excellent antiperspirant.
? Inspect bedding and towels before use.
? Wear gloves when handling firewood, lumber, and rocks (be sure to inspect the gloves for spiders before putting them on). Be sure to inspect firewood, lumber, and rocks for spiders before handling. Be sure to check your hands for spiders before putting your hands into spider-free gloves. If you find a spider, inspect it for spiders.
? Remove bed skirts and storage boxes from underneath beds. Move the bed away from the wall. Dig a wide moat around the bed and fill it with boiling oil.
? Exercise care when handling cardboard boxes (Recluse spiders often are found in the space under folded cardboard flaps). Remember to always lift with your knees, not with your back.

I have to admit I?ve always been lax about inspecting my bed before I get into it. Usually I just make sure I?m not jumping in on top of the cat, who, at 14 roly-poly pounds, is pretty easy to spot, even if she is brown and reclusive. I enjoy getting out of the shower and drying off without carefully examining my towel, and putting on my shoes with little more thought than making sure I?ve got the left shoe on the left foot? which makes me a prime target for attack, not only from the Brown Recluse, but from...

Part 3
Scorpions, The

Another hedonistic luxury I?ve long taken for granted is shamelessly walking around in the middle of the night without shoes on. I?m a wild and crazy guy that way, and I don?t care who knows it. This is another Arizona no-no, not so much because of our friend the Brown Recluse, but because of his nocturnal cousin, the scorpion. Many people are stung by scorpions by accidentally stepping on them in the dark. Scorpion stings are usually far less traumatic than Brown Recluse stings, and are often compared to a bee sting, but not an attack by a swarm of killer bees, which, as we?ve discussed, is much, much worse. Two of the 90 species of scorpion native to Arizona are dangerously venomous, but you still don?t hear about people dying from them. Naturally, I suspect another cover-up.

What does make the scorpion worse than a Brown Recluse Spider, though, is that scorpions are much, much creepier in appearance. They?re some kind of demonic cross between an Earwig, a miniature lobster, a spider, and a bee. They?re the worst of all worlds.

My online research attempts on the scorpion were frequently thwarted by many a misdirected detour to fan sites devoted to the Scorpions, a heavy-metal rock band popular in the 80?s, best known for the immortal lyrics, ?Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!? They are the ?best rock band ever,? according to one Gilbert G. Morton, a ?computer hardware engineer? from Houston, Texas, and webmaster of www.scorps.com. Mr. Morton would like all you single ladies out there to know that, shockingly enough, he is single, ?so get the email a coming.? Ladies interested in courting Mr. Morton can find his photo and a brief bio here: http://www.scorps.com/per.html.



Scorpions are arachnids, close relatives of ticks, mites and spiders. There?s a family reunion barbeque I?d rather not attend. It?s a little too similar to going back to Jeffrey Dahmer?s apartment for a nightcap. Partying with anything or anyone who wants to eat you is just plain silly. Just ask John Williams and James Harris, missionaries from London who traveled to the island of Erromanga in the year 1839, and, ?were killed and eaten by cannibals, only minutes after going ashore.? Strangely enough, this event caused the Catholic Church to proclaim that the island had been ?baptized by the blood of martyrs; and Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that he had claimed these islands as his own.? Leave it to the Church to snatch victory form the very literal jaws of that defeat, but what can you expect from a religion that encourages its followers to gnosh on the transubstantiated body of Christ himself? My point? It?s too late for me to save John Williams, James Harris, or Christ, but if this blog helps to prevent just one person from being digested by another person, or stung by a scorpion, it will have been worthwhile.

Scorpions (the arachnids, not the rock band) have ?two to five pairs of eyes,? but yet ?they do not see well.? There?s evolution at work for you. Some species can live as long as 25 years, but your more typical scorpion lives for three to eight years. They range in size from half an inch to up to eight inches long.

Scorpions have an ?elaborate mating process, which lasts from 24 to 36 hours.? Far from a mere romantic dinner and moonlit stroll along the beach, the ritual involves the male and female scorpion grabbing hold of each other?s pincers and running around in circles for hours on end, often singing ?I Could Have Danced All Night.? The romantic dinner comes later, after the pair has retired to the boudoir and ?done the nasty,? at which time the female will devour the male. It has been suggested that reason they spend so much time going in circles is that the male knows he?s Michael Douglas in ?Fatal Attraction? and is trying to postpone the inevitable. This is why it?s always better to wait until you really, really know someone before sleep with them, and why you should always have a preplanned escape route.

Scorpions routinely infest homes, especially newer homes built in previously undeveloped areas. They come up through pipes, and crawl in through vents and windows. They lurk in the usual dark out of the way places, and, like the Brown Recluse, can turn up in your linens, clothing, and shoes. One website suggested putting the legs of your bed inside glass jars, as scorpions cannot crawl up glass surfaces. Another suggested wrapping the legs in duct tape, sticky side out. The Discovery Channel featured one woman who routinely caught five to ten scorpions on glue traps set out in her bathroom every night. I think I?d rather live in precarious denial than be confronted with that squirming mess every morning. What a way to start your day. Yuck.

Scorpions glow under black light. Isn?t that vile? Would you expect less from them? They?re also nocturnal; hence the advice to never make that journey from bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night without adequate footwear. Remember, too, to check said footwear for any scorpions which may be lurking inside. I?d say the whole thing makes a perfect argument for resurrecting the chamber pot, but in all likelihood scorpions would lurk in there, too. You just can?t win when it comes to these little devils. I?ve read that having a cat or two around will greatly reduce any home?s scorpion population. Apparently, if you?re a cat, eating scorpions can be a heck of a lot of fun, but the cats ?must be carefully trained to do so!? I?d sincerely like to meet anyone successful in training a cat to spar with an insect. I?ve also read that if you don?t want a cat around the house, you might consider throwing a couple of chickens in the yard. This will attract wolves and coyotes, but at least they can?t get in through the drain in your bathroom sink, so it?s arguably a valid solution.

Part 4
Snakes, Rattle

Toward the program?s end, we were treated to special segment wherein firefighters were called out to retrieve a rattlesnake from a Scottsdale resident?s perfectly manicured front lawn. Arizona, it turns out, is home to over 72 varieties of snake, 14 of which are rattlesnakes. Arizona?s baseball team is named after the granddaddy of all rattlesnakes, the Western Diamondback, which can grow to 5 feet long. Fifteen people die every year from snake bites. Between June 1997 and April 1998, one hospital treated five people who were bitten by rattlesnakes after the snakes had been killed and even decapitated. Don?t believe me? Follow this ridiculously long URL and read it for yourself:

http://www.bannerhealth.com/patients+and+visitors/facilities/arizona/poison+center/desert+critters/_rattlers+still+bite.asp

Statistics tell us that 80% of people who get bit are males under the age of 30 who think rattlesnakes are playthings. Often, alcohol is involved. There are no bad rattlesnakes, only bad drunk people. 25% of rattlesnake bites are ?dry bites,? meaning that the snake, while annoyed enough to bite you, would rather not waste his time injecting you with venom. Baby rattlesnakes, though, have not yet mastered the art of venom control, and their bites contain the most venom and are the most lethal. Under no circumstances should you tickle a baby rattler?s chin and say ?Kootchie kooticie koo,? no matter how sweet the little darling looks in his stroller. The remaining 20% of bites occur when people blindly step on the snakes, or reach into the mysterious depths of some dark outdoor hole or crevice, thereby ruining Sheldon the Snake?s surprise party.

8,000 people in the US receive venomous rattlesnake bites every year. It?s actually pretty fortunate that only 9 to 15 of those people die. Rattlesnake venom not only contains a powerful neurotoxin that causes paralysis and death, it also contains digestive enzymes that begin to break down (digest, if you will) tissue. The snake is effectively eating you before it eats you. Reminds me of our friend the Brown Recluse. Wanna gross yourself out some more? (You know you do!) Google up some pictures of rattlesnake bites. Aside form the obvious pain and nasty puncture marks; there is an unbelievable amount of swelling. This swelling is often alleviated by repeatedly cutting the skin over the swelling areas, since eventually the skin would split on its own. The cost for the antivenom used in the treatment alone averages $20,000, so you?re lucky if your hospital hasn?t blown its budget on an iron lung and has some lying around.

What to do if you?re bitten?

? Do not panic.
? Avoid movement and keep the area bit lower than your heart. Do not lay flat! You could lie down on a scorpion!
? Remove clothing and jewelry near the bite. Your flesh will assume a reddish-purply color that?s very hard to accessorize.
? Get to a hospital as soon as you can, but without moving or panicking. DO not assume you are okay just because the giant talking banana says so.
? Do not try to cut the bite open and suck out the poison! Who knows where that snake has been? And you will only cause more damage. This should only be done by someone that knows what they are doing and in a case where you can not get to a hospital.
? Do not use a tourniquet unless you can not get to a hospital. If you put a tourniquet on a limb, it may need to be amputated. If your face contorts in agony, it may freeze like that.
? Do not use ice or cold packs on the bite. This will make it worse, because then you?ll be cold.

Part 5
End, The

The show also introduced us to Gila Monsters (big lizards with a nasty bite), Javelinas (a wild-boar kind of thing), hissing cockroaches, and Black Widow Spiders. By then, however, we had reached a dazed state of critical overload, and I was distracted by mental images of my new life in Arizona.

There I was, stepping out into the bright sunshine of another perfectly cloudless Arizona morning, on my way check the mail. Birds tweeted and sang and the palm trees swayed in a light breeze. I was having a good hair day and singing ?Sugar, Sugar? by the Archies, as I am oft wont to do on fine mornings when I?m in a good mood.

?Oh sugar, da da da da da dum, oh honey, honey, da da da da da dum, you are my candy girl?.and you got me wantin? yooooouuu.?

As I open the mailbox and reach inside, a Western Diamondback rattlesnake drops out of nearby tree and onto my head. It sinks its fangs into my arm, the shock and surprise of which leaves me oblivious to the fact that I?ve just stuck my hand into a nest of scorpions who have taken up residence in the mailbox. As they sting my probing hand repeatedly, I attempt to shake the rattlesnake off, sending violent vibrations through the air that attract a nearby swarm of Africanized killer bees. As the undulating cloud of buzzing insects blots the horizon, I stagger toward the house, but the numbness suddenly overtaking my extremities from the venom of the snake, still attached to my arm and rattling furiously, slows me, and the swarm is upon me, repeatedly stinging every millimeter of my exposed flesh. I make it to the door, open it, and manage to get inside, thereby reducing the swarm to hundred or so of the bees which now infest my house.

Reeling from venom, I collapse?onto a brown recluse spider. Oh no! How could it get any worse? I drag myself toward the telephone in the kitchen with superhuman strength and determination, snake still rattling, bees still buzzing and stinging, volcanic lesions erupting. I must get help! But wait, there?s a javelina in the kitchen! How did that get in here? Does it matter? Snorting wildly, the javelina charges, viciously head-butting me and bearing its long, sharp fangs, which glisten with the blood of a previous kill! This looks like the end! And all for the electric bill and some coupons from Pizza Hut addressed to ?Occupant.?

As of now, we?ve been residents of Arizona for well over a year. I?ve seen a chipmunk, small lizards, and many hummingbirds. A couple of ducks briefly invaded our pool, and Dougal had a debacle involving a ducking. The dogs have twice delivered us carcasses of dismembered pigeons and have been confused by our reluctance to accept a ?kiss? from them afterward. That?s about it for native wildlife. I don?t want to go as far as to say that I?m disappointed, but after all that research I was kind of looking forward to a disaster to avert. Actually, I just wanted to proclaim in a loud authoritative voice, and from a safe distance, ?DO NOT PANIC!? Naturally, these disasters would be befalling other people, and after my initial proclamation warning of the dangers of panicking, my role in the imagined event becomes hazy, and my mind skips forward to the scantily clad survivors thanking me in ways unsuitable for this blog.

No, there are no javelinas in the kitchen. These are no scorpions in my mailbox or in my bed. My feet remain unfettered during nighttime excursions, and aside from the occasional stubbed toe, I?ve never suffered for it. While I have seen scorpions and rattlesnakes, they?ve been safely encased in clear acrylic made into paperweights or belt buckles. If there are any Brown Recluses in our house, they?ve earned their droll scientific name by remaining ultimately reclusive. This isn?t to say we?ve let our guard down completely. There?s a birdhouse hanging odd the eaves in the back of the house. Shawn often looks up at it, wondering aloud what might actually be nesting in there, since we?ve never seen a bird anywhere near it.

There is no evidence to suggest the birdhouse is occupied by tarantulas, scorpions, or spiders. There?s no evidence to suggest it isn?t. Either way, we?re not looking.

Wheel of Misfortune
Shawn and I may be the only two childless men over thirty I know who spend their Saturday nights going to Toys R’ Us. This isn’t to say that there aren’t others; it’s just that I don’t know them. The other guys are usually Star Wars fanatics out for first edition collectible plastic light sabers and robed action figures that vaguely resemble Ewan McGregor. Or they’re looking for Dungeons and Dragons paraphernalia. They wear Birkenstock sandals and XXXL Spider Man t-shirts over sporty sweat pants. They have long, greasy hair dangling from the edges of their bald spots like defeated, stringy seaweed, and possess a peculiar odor reminiscent of their parent’s dank basements and Cheetos, and something unnervingly organic and better left unnamed. They appear pale and disoriented under the bright fluorescent lights, and are easily distracted by anything bearing the Lord of the Rings movie logo. I’ve seen them, but, as I said, I don’t know them. Shawn and I are way too cool to associate with people like that.

No, we’re not there for first editions of anything (well, not since the Simpsons craze died out everywhere but on eBay and in our hearts, and in the 20-some-odd boxes it took to move the collective collection). Our odor, like our fashion sense, is at worst inoffensive, and our hair grows lush and rampant. We’re a different breed of creepy guy haunting toy stores.

Shawn and I are game players.

This is not to say, however, that we are “Players”, or even “Playaz;” nor are we “Pimpz,” “Ballaz,” “Shotgun Callaz,” “Hoodrat Luvaz,” “Playa Luvaz,” “Gangstaz,” “G’z,” “Thugz,” “Hustlaz,” or anything else ending with a z. That’s an altogether different scene, filled with “Bling” (expensive accessories, like gold watches or dental insurance), “Ho’z” (women of questionable moral fortitude with all the allure and fashion sense of a prostitute, but none of the expense), “Beyotchez” (see: “Ho’z”), and “Hootchie Mamaz” (look it up yourself). I think I speak for both of us when I say we’d rather be the pathetic mama’s boy in the thick glasses hyperventilating over the latest Darth Mal figure (with Dual Action Light Saber!!) than a “playa.”

Luckily, however, we’re just two guys looking for a new board game or video game. Sometimes we also enjoy thinking of how much fun it would be to have a Batman costume around the house, for, um, Halloween, but the utility belts and chest plates that come with them are always too small. Plus one rarely finds a Robin costume, and one really would need it to complete the Dynamic Duo. But I digress. Shawn and I enjoy spending a quiet evening at home with a deck of cards, a Scrabble board, or even a video game. Or, rather, we enjoy the idea of spending a quiet evening at home playing cards, Scrabble, or video games.

When it comes to games, we’re sporting, but we’re not good sports. In reality, a game of Scrabble can not only ruin an entire quiet evening at home, but an entire quiet weekend at home. We both hate losing. I am the unquestioned Scrabble champ in the house, thus Shawn hates playing Scrabble. Shawn is the undisputed board game champ, thus I hate playing board games. I am the ultimate loser at the Game of Life, and, understandably I think, it makes me irritable. Games of chance and luck are not my forte. The other night, we attempted to play poker. Shawn won the first hand with a pair of kings, and the second with a full house. There was no third hand.

Video games are a toss-up, depending on what kind they are. I’m a shooting, fighting, and melee weapon fool. Shawn can do all the accurate jumping from ledge to ledge and anything requiring timing or puzzle solving. Sometimes we can play a game by passing the controller back and forth, and it’s a beautiful thing, really, working together to achieve a common goal. But our shelves are lined with video games whose mysterious second levels remain a mystery. We no longer speak of certain levels of a video game called Ratchet and Clank, the aftermath of which required a replacement controller, a carpet shampooing, and lots of “quiet time.” The cat hid under the bed for hours, shedding nervously. I have absolutely no recollection of ripping the disc out of the PlayStation and snapping it in half, but there were witnesses, so I suppose I must have. Let us dwell no more on that unpleasantness. Mention the name of another certain video game (let’s call it “Prince of Persia,” for that’s what it’s called) and Shawn gets cranky, thinking of the hours wasted attempting to save a princess from a demonic horde. Mention that the game cost about $50.00 and watch cranky become something more akin to rage.

And so it was that Shawn and I were at Toys R’ Us, avoiding the weirdoes not shopping for wholesome family games or costumes, looking for a game we could both enjoy playing together. Shawn has an attraction to sale bins and red mark-down stickers that rivals the gravitational force keeping the planets aligned. You don’t wanna get caught between him and a 30% off sign. It may be the last time you get caught anywhere. His eyes gleam with unholy zealotry as he lashes out with his elbows and snarls fiercely to keep other shoppers at bay, even if there aren’t any. He hides things he wants to come back for later by stuffing them behind displays of other merchandise in the store. It’s madness.

But tonight, his madness paid off. We found a video game we were sure both of us would enjoy, and it had been marked down.

Spin the wheel.

Guess a letter.

Buy an “E” or an “I.”

Heck, live dangerously and buy a “U.”

Win fictitious cash and prizes.

Live happily ever after.

Wheel! Of! Fortune! It’s all in good fun, whimsical and lighthearted as the chimes that mark the beginning of each round. What will the category be? A “Thing?” A “Before and After?” The Christmas Eve-like suspense! What could be a more wholesome or inoffensive addition to game night? What could be more wholesome or inoffensive than Vanna White? It was the video game equivalent to a trip to a petting zoo. Surely no harm could befall our fragile egos and domestic tranquility from something as sappy as a glorified game of Hangman.

My first spin landed on $300. I requested an “S.”

“No,” Vanna said.

Shawn then spun the wheel sixteen times in a row and solved the first three puzzles.

“Now let’s take a look at the scores,” Vanna suggested, turning her head and smiling as she gestured awkwardly at empty space. The scene abruptly cut and our scores were displayed. Shawn had $14600. I had $0.

Beginner’s luck, nothing more. I was determined to make a comeback. Finally, I was getting the chance to spin that glittering wheel!

I landed on “Lose A Turn.”

“Aww,” Vanna said from off screen. “Bad luck.”

Thanks, Vanna.

I watched in good humor as Shawn finished the rest of the game by himself, as my score of $0 had eliminated me from the bonus round. He performed well. Then it was time for a rematch.

My fist spin landed on “Bankrupt.” My second spin landed on “Bankrupt.” My third spin landed on “Lose A Turn.” Essentially, Shawn played the game by himself, pausing long enough for me to spin a “Bankrupt” or a “Lose A Turn” occasionally. I had had better luck with a Wheel of Fortune themed slot machine in Vegas. (Although even there Shawn proved to the master of the wheel. I won $60 on that slot machine, he won $200.)

I was getting irritated.

When, on my third spin into a new game, I hit “Bankrupt” for the third time, there was a cutaway scene of Vanna, looking sympathetic and glamorous. “Oh, too bad. But I guess it could be worse,” she said, with a little shrug of her shoulders.

“Shut up, bitch,” I said.

Yes, I suppose things could always be worse. I could be a quadruple amputee with a speech impediment. But in terms relative to Wheel of Fortune, how, exactly, could things be worse? There is no “Execution by Firing Squad” or “Rectal Hemorrhage” space on the wheel. “Bankrupt,” spelled out in capital white letters on a field as black and empty as death itself, is as bad as things can possibly get in the land of the wheel. What the hell was Vanna babbling about?

Shawn continued to calmly spin the wheel, guess consonants, buy vowels, and solve the puzzles.

“Why yes,” Vanna told him. “There is an E. In fact, there are four of them!”

“Way to go! That was fantastic!”

“You’ve won quite a lot of money!”

To me, she said “No, sorry. There are no T’s”

“None in this puzzle.”

“Oh, bad luck.”

“Oh, too bad. But I guess things could be—“

“Shut up, you whore!” I screamed at her. “STOP SAYING THAT!!!”

“That’s the way it goes,” she said.

The way it goes, indeed.

It seems our quest for the ultimate game continues. It’s not a total loss, though, because Shawn enjoys playing the game by himself. Aside from the cursing, ranting, and death threats to Vanna, it’s practically the same as playing against me anyway. We’ll have to go back to Toys R’ Us this weekend. There was a nice collector’s edition of Chutes and Ladders there. Maybe we can get a first edition.

Job Fruit
"I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
And heaven knows I'm miserable now."
-The Smiths


I suppose I really shouldn't complain.

After all, 5.2% of Americans are out of work. Over 70% of Zimbabwe is unemployed, half of Nepal doesn't work, and Aruba's unemployemt rate has soared to 0.06%. An average of one person a year dies in Switzerland from a bee or wasp sting, "Extra Soft" in French is "Ultra Souple," and more and more Land O Lakes butter is being imported from Poland, which, indeed, is a land of many lakes. And did you know that if you donate your body to science after you die, you could find your disembodied head propped up in a tray for plastic surgeons practicing face-lifts? You?d look great but you?d still be dead and missing the rest of your body. I?m not sure how you?d smell, but I?m guessing unpleasant. Try going to a job interview looking like that! Actually, try going anywhere like that!

So, yeah, 5.2% of Americans are out of work. And until two short weeks ago, I was one of them. I?d like to say that it was a deeply troubling time for me, that I felt useless, unproductive, and utterly without direction, and that I feared for my future, and indeed, my very identity, in a profound and soul-searching kind of way. But all that would be a bucket of mottled heifer excrement. Except for a profoundly disturbing inability to buy stuff, unemployment fit me like a spangled spandex unitard.

Not being a professional curler, hand model, or dirty cop on the take, I?m used to living on what most people would call a ?limited? income. It?s rather like being in the ?special class,? financially. Since my idea of a good time is eating pizza while watching bloody disaster befall a group of randy, thirty year old ?teenagers? on an ill-fated camping trip, being poor usually doesn?t interfere with my quality of life. However, the difference between ?limited? and ?no? income was far more dramatic and terrifying than anything than anything I?d ever seen in any my favorite movies. This time, it was personal.

I knew there were unemployment offices where one could go to get money for not working, but I didn?t know specifically where these offices were (probably in some building somewhere? like that?s at all convenient), and I didn?t know if abandoning a perfectly good job (aside from that fact that it sucked hellishly) would damage my ability to project a sincere desire to work, disinclining these people from giving me pizza money. There would be forms to fill out, and I?d have to find a pen. I was certain my lack of ?babies? (crack or otherwise) was going to negatively impact the financial worthwhileness of filling out all that paperwork. And if the lines at the unemployment office were anything like the lines at the DMV, I would find myself surrounded by unattractive people in shorts with poor cell phone etiquette, which is part of what made the job I had just quit so hellish in the first place. Was there no escaping them? Why yes, actually, there was. None of those people would be in my house, and so, I chose to remain there.

I wasn?t really worried, anyway. Finding a job was sure to be a breeze. Everyone knows employers nowadays value ?experience,? and I?ve been to a funeral and gone white water rafting. Any employer that failed to impress obviously wasn?t worth working for. When sending out my resume, I carefully screened out any job descriptions that required a ?cheerful and helpful attitude,? or ?liturgical dancewear? and avoided any help wanted ads beginning with ?Are you a people person?? or ?Have a nice body? Like showing it off?? Then I made sure I satisfied the core requirements of the jobs I was interested in; U.S. Citizen? Why, yes! Dependable transportation? So far, so good. Convicted of a felony? Only if they can find the body. Bilingual? Buenos Dias, and God Bless America!

Yep, things were lookin? good. I had planted well qualified seeds in entry-level ground fertile with advancement opportunities. Soon the seeds would germinate, flower, be molested by interview bees, and bear ripe, juicy job-fruit (which I assumed resembled a mango and carried a briefcase).There was little more to do than sit back, turn on the TV, and wait for the offers to come rollin? in. I was fully prepared for the process to take a few weeks. In fact, any immediate responses to my resumes were most unwelcome. I had worked for Target, a place where shoppers open merchandise they do not intend to buy to make little beds in the carts for their children to sleep in while they shoplift Celine Dion perfume and ?Hello Kitty? thong underwear. I had witnessed the breakdown of society and had worn a red shirt with tan pants almost every day for almost a year. I needed a break. I deserved a break.

Aside from the soaps, daytime TV is made for the unemployed. Every technical college and accredited ?certificate? program in the country advertises during Judge Judy and Jerry Springer. You are sincerely urged to join the rewarding, challenging ?world? of refrigeration maintenance and repair, and when you begin to seriously contemplate doing so, you know you?ve been unemployed too long. When you begin to believe Apollo ?College? can put you ?where the action is? with their court stenographer program, you?ve been unemployed for too long. When your heart seizes in anxiety when an announcer suddenly shouts: ?Inventors! Don?t let this happen to you! Have your idea or invention patented today!? and you haven?t invented a thing, you have definitely been unemployed for too long.

If you?re too lazy to get yourself job skills, the lawyers are there to remind you that you probably have cause to sue someone, but you just don?t realize it. People just like you and me stare blankly at the camera and read from cue cards. ?I didn?t even know I had a case, but I got a huge cash settlement. And he took care of my D.U.I. My lawyer was great.? These people usually claim to have been referred to the advertised law firm by a ?lawyer friend,? who really can?t much of a lawyer if he?s giving away lucrative lawsuits. But I digress.

Sure, you could just shut the TV off, but what do you do then? You?ve already emailed all your friends and said, ?Ha Ha! It?s 2 p.m. and I just got up! How?s work???? and they?re too busy working to reply. The dogs are hot and tired, and you discover the reason they?re so hyper when you get home at night is because they sleep all day. You could do laundry, but you don?t have to have nice clothes for tomorrow, so why bother? Clean the house? Shave? Why? You?re on vacation! You could go to the mall, but you have no money. A nap could be refreshing, but you?ve only been up two hours. No calls or emails in response to any of the resumes you?ve sent, and the job listings are the same as they were an hour ago. It gets quiet, too. Too quiet. Hey! Divorce Court is on!

When your hard-earned ?vacation? tarnishes into old fashioned, garden-variety ?unemployment? it happens gradually. The episode of Roseanne where Roseanne is supposedly almost killed by a mailbox hurled through her window by a hurricane no longer amuses you with it?s bad special effects they way it used to. You get angrier and angrier at the idiots on Family Feud who insist on slapping their hands together and hooting ?Good answer! Good answer!? after someone has given ?church? as an answer to ?a place you wish people wouldn?t bring their dogs.? In what universe is that a ?good answer?? Who the hell brings their dog to church? Nobody, that?s who! Moron! The big red buzzing X just isn?t enough punishment for these people. I hope it?s a long, long drive home for these losers and their families, filled with resentful silence that grows and grows until someone finally explodes, ?You idiot! Why couldn?t you have said ?beach??? That?s the Family Feud I?d want to see. See? When you?ve got too much time on your hands, you think of things like this. And the people you live with, who work all day supporting your unemployed ass, aren?t very interested when you greet them at the door saying, ?Oh my God, this woman was SO STUPID on Family Feud today, you wouldn?t believe it!? They?re more interested in knowing why you haven?t started dinner, or cleared your breakfast dishes.

Doing nothing is extremely addictive, like gambling, cocaine addiction, or stalking David Letterman. At some point you?re going to hit rock bottom. You become so lazy you experience real irritation when you have to get up to pee, and rack your brains trying to come up with an acceptable alternative to that long, exhaustive walk to the bathroom (millions of inventors in the world, and no one?s solved this one?). You become fogged and easily disoriented, and sometimes find yourself standing in the back yard with a garden hose and wondering why you?re there and what you were going to do. Time has no meaning, nor do days of the week. Saturday is just as good as Monday. Was it ALREADY 4 p.m., or was it ONLY 4 p.m.? You do realize you?re talking out loud to yourself, right? Shut up, fool! They?ll hear you!

Then, one day, some poor, unsuspecting fool will call you to arrange an interview. By the time this happened, I had totally forgotten what was going on. How long ago had I planted that seed? You?re who and calling from where? Getting up and dressed for the interview was a welcome change of pace. Hey, shaving! I remember this! The interviewer was the only person I had spoken to other than Shawn in a week. I was more than happy to sit and chat. When I got the call offering me the job, I immediately accepted.

"Can you start Monday?" I was asked.

"Absolutely!" I said.

Only after I hung up the phone did I realize that Monday was a mere three days away. Since I was no longer unemployed, I became immediately depressed. My vacation was almost over! It had all been so sudden. Why, oh why hadn't I said I couldn't start until NEXT Monday? Heck, even that Tuedsay would have been better. Now I'd have to do laundry, and there was so much of it! Was I even capable of getting up before noon anymore? How soon could I take another vacation or even a personal day? Why had I not realized what a fleeting joy unemployment was, and enjoyed it more? Why? Why? Why? Just one more week!

Now I get up every day at a 6 a.m. I do laundry all the time. My commute is a mere 20 minutes, but I still resent it deeply. I am keenly aware of the time of day and the day of the week. I like 5:00 p.m. best and Saturdays and Sundays. I haven't seen Family Feud in ages and I miss it.


Job-fruit is bitter.

This Is Stupid
Well, my first week of my “new job” has drawn to a close. From here on out, it will be simply “my job,” or “work.” Alas, everything gets old so fast. Sunrise, sunset.

On my second day, I was asked to swap cubicles with Nick. I am now the last cubicle on the right, back near the fire exit, which isn’t alarmed and is often used as a shortcut down to the accounting office. The cubicle in front of me, closer to the offices, is empty. Why was I moved? Nick suggested it might be a good idea, because it’s closer to the supply cabinets where most of the forms I have to fill out in quadruplicate and then photocopy six times are located. I don’t believe for a second that Nick really cares about how often I have to go back to those cabinets…Nick just wanted my cubicle. After all, why didn’t he just move into the empty one next door if he was giving his up to be helpful?

I have no idea why my old cubicle was so desirable, but once I find out, I fully intend to be quite pissed at Nick. He was so happy to help me move, too, that two-faced rat bastard, but I saw through that act. There was a maniacal gleam in his eye as he pushed my file cabinets through the cubical maze back toward my new post in Siberia, recklessly snagging and ripping the carpet along the way. This was a man who, apparently, was finally having his day. He’s probably had his eye on that cubicle for years, and been plotting and planning, quietly biding his time, until the one day he could sneak into the boss’ office behind my back and helpfully suggest moving the new guy. Nick doesn’t even get a phone, for God’s sake; how important can he be?

So I found myself with a new cubicle, and a new vendetta. My new cubicle, however, is really quite nice, as far as cubicles are concerned. It’s twice as big as the old one, nice and clean, and crying out to be adorned with a disco ball. My boss was adamant that a clock be installed for me, and even climbed up onto the desk to hang one there herself. I wear a watch, my computer monitor displays the time, and so does the electric date stamp I use. But I digress.

For a guy with such a ritzy new cubicle, I spend an awful lot of time in Rhonda’s dispatch room, where I’ve been filling in, though I don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s hard to wing an emergency dispatch code. I don’t know a 101-E from a 1077-S. I do the best I can, but somewhere, field officers are racing toward the scene of a supposed barn fire with multiple casualties only to discover they’re really there to investigate a sheep the owner’s neighbor thinks ought to be sheared. One of my first calls went something like this:

Me: “Animal services.”
Caller: “Yeah, there’s this chicken walkin’ around out here in front of my house.”
Me: “A chicken?”
Caller: “Yes. A huge goddamed chicken. You should see this thing.”
Me: “I don’t think we do chickens.”
Caller: “This thing is huge. I’m not going near it.”
Me: “Is it injured or in a road?”
Caller: “No, it’s just walkin’ around the front of my house, like I just told you.”
Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t handle chickens. We mainly deal with cattle, horses, sheep, that kind of thing. You’ll have to call your local animal shelter.”
Caller: “What’s their number?”
Me: “You know, I probably should have that around here, but I don’t.”

Good stuff. I left a note on Rhonda’s desk that read; “Rhonda, do we do chickens?” The funny thing is that the next call was also regarding a stray chicken. Arizona is a free-range state, which means that you can let your cattle or horses graze pretty much anywhere you want to. Whether or not the same holds true for chickens, I couldn’t say, but it could explain the rash of chickens running amok.

I also got a call from a woman who had found the body of a dead calf and was convinced it had been used in a satanic ritual. Her friend had told her all about it. They cut animals open and remove all the organs, she said. Then they use the organs in rituals. I listened to her going on and on about Satan, all the while wondering how I dispatched a call like this. It involved a cow, so I couldn’t pass it along to the humane society. The cow was already dead, which complicated the “emergency” aspect of our function. Hmmm. What to do, what to do? “Is the calf in a roadway?” I asked hopefully. Large animals in roads are always an emergency, living or dead. I even knew the code for that one. “No, it’s back in the woods near the railroad tracks.”

This complicated things further, as I no longer had a distinct location to dispatch anyone to. I was in over my head. This woman wanted immediate action for something the state would doubtlessly ignore. Chances are the calf had wandered off and been savaged by coyotes or wild dogs. Happens all the time, and it’s cheaper to let wild animals devour the carcass than it is to haul it away. I was about to ask the woman if there was anyway she could get the calf into a road, when I saw “1108-C---public health” scrawled onto a scrap of paper on Rhonda’s desk. So, I dispatched the call directly to the woman’s home as an 1108-C, which I hope means a public health concern, and which probably implies that mad cow disease is sweeping though this woman’s non-existent herd of cattle, but it was as good as I was going to get.

Of course, I get all the paperwork from the field officers to process, so I’m sure I’ll be reading about the calf sometime soon. I’m sure the word “unfounded” will be scrawled across the page, which is how field officers vent their annoyance at having their time wasted. I just hope I don’t find a crude drawing of myself surrounded by stink lines with the word “Stoopid” attached to an arrow pointing at my head. Rhonda is much better than me at telling people the state does not plan to help them with their concern. She actually smiles when she says it, which is odd, since the caller can’t see her. Perhaps it’s just a bureaucracy thing I’ve yet to learn to enjoy.

Another part of my job which keeps me away from my new cubicle is delivering state vehicles to state service centers for repairs, oil changes, and new tires. Once again, Rhonda and I were thrown togther so that she might teach me the subtler points of my appointment, not least of which was where to find these state vehicles I was now in charge of tracking, and where to take them. Along the way, Rhonda pointed out her favorite place to go for lunch. It was a small, perfectly square concrete buliding with no windows. And as though that weren’t ennough to make it throughly uninviting, it was also surrounded the tallest chain link fence I’ve ever seen, atop which was coiled razor wire.

“Looks like a dive,” Rhonda said. “But they have the best chicken fingers you’ll ever have. And their burgers? Mmmmm! That fence thing is new. They did that to keep out all them homeless people.” Personally, I could easily see why a homeless person would be drawn to the place, but I only nodded politely, even when we passed by it again on our way back and she pointed it out again. “See that place? They have the best chicken fingers.”

It was during this ride that Rhonda also asked me if I noticed that the tall, unattractive lot attendant we had just been speaking with was actually a man.

“No,” I had to say. “I didn’t catch on to that.”
“I always refer to him as ‘she’,” Rhonda said. “If that’s what he wants, I’ll go along with it. He’s been there forever, always dressed like that. I don’t know who he thinks she’s fooling. No one ever says anything about it though.”
“Interesting,” I said, deciding not to point out that he/she had been wearing a track suit and a t-shirt, which didn’t strike me as particularly femine. Besides, he/she had been wearing make-up.
“Hey, you know what?” Said Rhonda, throwing her hands up and off the wheel of the state owned pick-up truck. “Whatever!”

Rhonda also informed me that we are allowed to crash a state vehicle three times before we’re banned from them forever. This is a fact I found more intersting than the transvestite lot attendant. Three times? Regardless of how much damamge we cause or how many lives we take? “That’s why you’re always required to wear your safetly belt in a state vehicle,” Rhonda said.

I finished my week learning how to process deposits for fees collected by the field officers. This was an absolute nightmare. My boss, Helen, tried to teach me how to do it, but became so confused herself that she gave up and watched me try to sort it all out, all the while massaging her temples and saying, “See? This is stupid.”

We had a manual that told us what to do, but it was like reading a map with no compass. No less than five departments want copies of every deposit, complete with receipts, invoices, and “back-up” materials, and each department wants them sorted a different way. Also, some deposits have claims attatched to them, which are processed differently, but only for three out of the five departments. It’s as interesting as it sounds.

“What’s this?” I’d ask, holding up a form I had never seen.
“Let me see that,” Helen would say. “Blah blah blah, blah blah. What the fuck? What is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody knows. See? It’s stupid.”
“So, what should I do with it?”
“Throw it in the trash.”
“Really?”
“Fuck no. What is this piece of shit? And of course, if it winds up in the wrong place, we’ll hear about it. If it’s stapled in the wrong order, we’ll hear about it. This is so stupid.”

It’s not exactly like the blind leading the blind, unless the blind swear a lot and have just been moved to a new cubicle. I can’t really say what it’s like at all. What I can say is that I’m enjoying it all immensely. It seems to me the art of the office job is making a big deal out of nothing, having it take forever to finish, and visiting the vending machines and checking your emails several times in between. I think I can handle it, even if it is stupid.

Moo Cow
The night before my first day of my new office job, I asked Shawn, an office manager by trade, a patience-trying barrage of questions fueled by first day jitters. I can handle anything but suspense. The trails and tribulations of office workers and cubicle dwellers were foreign to me, and forewarned, I reasoned, was forearmed.

“Will they give me a box of pens?” I asked.
“No,” Shawn said. “They’ll give you two and show you were the supply closet is.”
“What happens if I get lost and can’t find my cubicle?”
“Ask someone.”
“What if there’s no chair at my desk?”
“Ask them to get you a chair.”
“What if they refuse?”
“They won’t.”
“What if I need a pad of paper? Should I bring my own paper?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if I can’t work the copier?”
“Ask someone.”
“What if someone kicks me?”
“No one is going to kick you.”
“Will I be able to listen to music?”
“Probably.”
“What if the door’s locked and I can’t get into the building?”
“It won’t be.”
“Can I hang Christmas lights in my cubicle?”
“Depends on the office.”


Imagine my dismay the next morning as I stood out in front of my new office building at 7:45 am, smartly attired and well groomed, only to discover that the doors were locked and I couldn’t get in. Imagine my further dismay, twenty minutes later, when the front doors were finally opened and I was led to my cubicle, only to find a desk with no chair. Sure, I had a whole box of pens, but someone had been following me too closely in the hall and had just stepped on the back of my shoe; I hadn’t been kicked in strictest sense of the word, but it seemed many of my worst fears were being realized.

“Hmmm,” said my new boss. “You’re going to need a chair. Follow me.” I followed my boss into her office, where she promptly forgot about the chair and began showing me binders full of lists which I would now be in charge of compiling. She flipped though the books rapidly, and I saw names and numbers all in neat columns, printed on a rainbow of colored paper. “You don’t have to keep them in a binder,” she said. “Some people like to use folders instead.” “OK,” I said. I was waiting to hear whose names were in there and what the numbers represented, and why it was necessary to keep track of them in first place. “But don’t worry about this yet,” said my boss. “I don’t want to overwhelm you.” She put the binder back and she stood there a moment. “Hmm,” she said. She tapped her foot, looking around her office. “Hmm.”

Well, so far so good, I thought. I wasn’t overwhelmed in the least. Confused, yes, and also completely without direction, but never overwhelmed. In fact, not much later, I was sitting in my new chair in my new cubicle, waiting for the IT men to get me “into the system,” which took more than three hours. I was far, far from overwhelmed. I was bored. I poked about in my new cubicle, looking at stacks of paperwork left behind by Angie, my predecessor, and wondering how much of it I could simply dump without being blamed for losing anything. I took down a picture of a crying eagle, superimposed over the Twin Towers in flames with the words “Never Forget” written in heavy, overwrought calligraphy, flapping in a star spangled banner. I weeded broken rubber bands out of the desk drawers and arranged the paperclips by size. I adjusted the mouse pad. I adjusted my chair. I read a fact sheet on the proper care of horses. I wondered if I’d be able to get away with stepping out to smoke a cigarette, but decided not to risk it. Something could happen at any moment.

While I was sitting there, I quite clearly overheard my boss call someone a “hickey on a hemorrhoid,” and instantly regretted the nervous indecision that had plagued me in regard to wardrobe on the day of my final interview. Clearly, a meticulously matched belt and shoe ensemble was under this woman’s radar. I vowed to never again concern myself with such trivial details regarding personal presentation.

Then I went on a whirlwind tour of the building, which is quaint and charming in an old-timey way, provided you don’t look too closely at the black mold steadily making its way across many of the ceilings and darker corners (it’s hard to ignore it, however, when everyone comments on it, or else I may have been there years before I noticed it…now I’m an A-1 “mold pointer-outer”). During the tour, I was briefly introduced to many people. I remember no names except for another John (though I can’t say I remember what department he worked in, why we were introduced, or if I’d recognize him if I saw him again), a woman named Beth Mania, which amused me, and my boss, whose name continues to be Helen despite my repeatedly calling her Susan.

From there, it was onward the ID office to get a horrendous mug shot of myself laminated onto a badge I will proudly wear every day for the duration of my employment.
From there, a jaunt to the benefits office, where an older, more than slightly overweight woman with thick glasses dropped a ream of paper onto the desk in front of me and asked if I had a pen. She was missing several teeth and drifts of conspicuous dandruff had collected around the rubber band around her grey ponytail. Still, a sweet aura of stale cigarette smoke hung about her, and, suddenly quite desperate for nicotine, I leaned close to her and inhaled deeply as she pointed to a sheet on disability insurance.

“Young people like you,” she said, “never seem to want disability insurance. It’s like you think you’re invincible.” She gave me and my smug, young-person’s attitude a dirty, sideways look and I nodded and smiled. I held my pen in a way I hoped suggested she move along and let me get to work writing my social security number, birth date, and name, both printed and signed, several hundred times. I had conflict of interest waivers and oaths of loyalty to sign. I had to promise not to do drugs or sell secret agricultural secrets to whatever foreign government hadn’t quite mastered domesticating the cow. I had choices of income-dictated state tax withholdings to choose, and pensions to consider.

“Think about it,” she said. “You fall of a roof and WHAM! You break your arm. You break your leg and you’re in a cast and out of work for six months. You could get into a car wreck, or get hit by a bus. Hell,” she said, sweeping her flabby arm, which wobbled dramatically, “you could get shot walking out that front door.”

What roof, exactly, did this woman think I spent time on? And if, just if, mind you, I fell off a roof and broke only my arm, I’d think that would be a lucky thing. And which door was “that door?” Were people often shot leaving the benefits office? Why would they shoot someone who had just pledged to be loyal not only to the state and the post assigned to them, but also to all of American Democracy?

“And let me say this,” she continued, “there is never anything put in your file that you haven’t seen first. So you don’t need to keep coming up here and asking me to see your personnel file. There’s no need to be paranoid.”

Paranoid? Well, I hadn’t been, but I began to sense that quite possibly I should be. After all, I had just been threatened with physical violence. What kinds of things was she talking about? Secret psychiatric profiles? If so, what did they suggest? My God, what sick things was I being accused of? Was I being followed? Investigated? Were there blurry black and white pictures of me outside seedy motels? Were they unfavorably accessing my drinking fountain etiquette? Were they making fun of the way I dressed or styled my hair? Were they going to shoot me? This was the government, after all. They can do things like that. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming urge to ask to see my personnel file, but the timing seemed imprudent.

Shaken, but thankfully unharmed, I waived the disability insurance and returned to my cubicle. I discovered a second chair in my cubicle, occupied by Rhonda. Typically, Rhonda sits in a room by herself (aside from several life-size cutouts and posters of George Strait) wearing a headset and talking simultaneously on the telephone, field radio, and to whomever is passing by her doorway. Rhonda looks exactly like you’d picture a middle aged George Strait fan named Rhonda would look like. She’s very nice. Actually, she’s perky.

“Hey!” She said. “Ready to learn how to enter D.R.’s?”
“You bet!” I said. "What’s a D.R.?”

A D.R., you may be excited to learn, is a Departmental Report. Why calling them D.R.’s is any easier than saying “departmental reports,” especially when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know a D.R. from an A.H.A. or an AK-47, I couldn’t tell you. Not that Rhonda and I didn’t have a chance to discuss it. The D.R.-entering program on my computer was malfunctioning. IT, eventually, came to the rescue once more, and by then I knew all about Rhonda’s kids, her adorable nephew, the extra 15 pounds she put on over the winter, her weakness for cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and chicken fingers, her adoration of the disappointing but lovable Arizona Diamondbacks, her upcoming knee surgery and the videotape of the accident that necessitated it, and her mixed feelings regarding Mexicans.

D.R.’s are actually reports on investigations of complaints undertaken by field officers. I found myself entering such information as, “Red and Brown heifer struck and killed on railway, remains hauled to landfill,” and “Dead pot bellied pig found wrapped in blanket. Case closed.” I knew I was working in the animal services division, but I didn’t think I’d be serving them by writing their obituaries. But, to be fair, there are many animals in need that are helped, though “helping” usually means impounding them, and then selling them at a state auction.

There were some 30 D.R.’s to be entered. Half of them were missing information and are still sitting on my desk. I have no idea what to do with them. Many of the others had been entered previously, and we were working with unnecessary copies. There was much stapling. Rhonda’s voice became like the beating of jungle drums. All told, I entered 2 forms. And it was only noon. Whenever I asked for more work, I was told that no one wanted me “overwhelmed.” So I spent the rest of the day surfing the net, writing emails, and watching the clock. I took a magical journey and discovered the men’s room. The phone at my cubicle rang. After I picked it up, I realized I had no idea what to say. After an extended and awkward silence, I said, “This is John,” and the caller wordlessly hung up. Sometime between 3 and 4 my boss left without telling me, and no one had any idea what I should be doing. I was given a bucket of mail to sort, but having absolutely no idea who was who or worked where, I abandoned the project and selected a new wallpaper for my PC desktop. At five o’clock, I got up and left the building. It was a confusing end to a very long day.

However, I now think I have a better understanding of my job description, which thankfully doesn’t end with DR’s. There’s also gabbing with Rhonda and going to the restroom. I’m promised that eventually I will be the busiest person I know, but that will have to be a blog for another day.

Sincerely,
The Working Boy

SLUTZ
I can remain silent no longer. At first, I was going to whine about how incredibly stupid The Witching Hour by Anne Rice was. And I still will, later. However, there is a far greater evil that has commanded my attention like a dull, throbbing cavity…Bratz! These things (dolls, books, cartoons) are so offensively stupid that merely being aware of their existence causes me extreme mental angish. I was blissfully unaware of the entire Bratz epidemic until, while working for Target, a box of them appeared and I was “challenged” (no one tells you to do something at Target…they “challenge” you to do it…thus giving you a sense of empowerment over destiny) to make a display of them. At first, I had no idea what they were. I had to ask a co-worker. “What is this?” I said. “It’s a doll,” they said. “A what?” I asked. “A doll,” they said.

If you’ve ever seen one of those adult novelty inflatable women, then you have an idea as to what the Bratz dolls look like.

There are three generations of Bratz, including Bratz Babyz, Lil’ Bratz, the Bratz themselves (apparently, middle school aged, I can find no source that says exactly how old they are supposed to be), and, of course, the Bratz Boyz. The Bratz, regardless of age or gender, are bound by a single all-consuming passion: “The passion for fashion!”

“Fashion,” in the land of the Bratz, means, “dressing up to look like a hooker.” There are some dolls with miniskirts so short they end above the doll’s panties. One outfit for the Bratz Babyz includes a studded leather belt, miniskirt, and what appear to be fishnet stockings. Do these girls look like they belong in Math Class or on a street corner?

Apparently, the "Bratz Pack" is a group of 10 ethnically diverse girls, all of whom are the same height and weight, and all with lips so huge they consume a full 30% of each girl’s face. This may explain why none of them have a nose. Two of them, “Phoebe” and “Roxxi” are twins. Yes, her name is “Roxxi,” and no, she’s not a porno actress…yet. All of the Bratz have “stylin’” nicknames that reflect their individual personalities. This is how they introduce themselves on their website, www.bratzpack.com:

“Hi, I’m Cloe and I rock! My friends call me ‘Angel’ because that’s what I am!”

Dana is called “’Sugar Shoes,’ because when I step out I do it sweet!”

Jade says, “My friends call me ‘Kool Kat,’ because I love cats! And I’m cool!”

Sasha is called “’Bunny Boo,’ because I love the hip-hop thang!”

Yasmin’s friends call her “’Pretty Princess,’ because I rule!”

Fianna, perplexingly, is called “’Fragance,’ because I’m as sweet as I smell!” (No, that’s not a typo…it’s F-r-a-g-a-n-c-e.)

Nevra, of course, is “’Queen B,’ because I’m sweet like honey and in charge!”

Meygan is the “’Funky Fashion Monkey,’ because even when I just hang, I still look good!” (Hang from what? A gallows? )

Phoebe’s twin “calls me ‘Sugar,’ because I’m as sweet as sweet can be!”

Roxxi’s twin “calls me ‘Spice,’ because I like to spice it up!”



And there you have them. Each as individual and complex as a snowflake, huh? The group seems rife with intrigue and conflict if you ask me. After all, how can Yasmin “rule” when it’s Nevra who’s “in charge?” And who’s sweeter; Fianna, Phoebe, or Nevra? Is Nevra power-hungry? How, exactly, does Phoebe “rock,” and what is Roxxi “spicing” up? And then of course, there are the Bratz Boyz, of which there are only five. Competition for these boys (sorry, Boyz) must be pretty stiff, even if they only real differences between the Bratz Boyz and the Bratz themselves are hairstyles and little plastic abdominal muscles. Just who are these Boyz and what are they like, you wonder? Well, wonder no more.



First we have Cade. Bratz call him “The Viper” because he’s “sly.”

“W’sup? My name is Cameron. The Bratz call me ‘The Blaze’ because I’m hot!”

Eitan is called “The Dragon,” because he’s a “nonstop hotshot!”

Dylan is called “The Fox” because he’s “slick.”

Koby, or “The Panther,” is “always on the prowl.”

Personally, I would have thought “The Fox” would have been “sly” and “The Viper” would have been “slick," but then I guess that would make too much sense. And, by the way, if you look anything like these Boyz, you won't be called "The Blaze" as much as you'll be called "The Flamer." Besides being "hot" and prowly, the Boyz serve to worship the Bratz, take them on "slammin'" dates, and to tell them how pretty and well-accessorized they are.

As you can well imagine, the adventures that befall this group is quite extraordinary. They go to the mall. They go shopping. They dress up. They apply make-up. They're into fashion design, modeling, and being rock stars (of course). They hang out at places like the "Bratz Formal Funk Super Stylin' Runway Disco," the "Bratz Tokyo-A-Go Go! Sushi Lounge with Karaoke Stage and Mic Stand" or the "Bratz Stylin Salon N' Spa: Smoothie Cafe."

Barbie may have been vapid and blonde, but at least she had a job at McDonald's and went camping occasionally. The Bratz spend all their time dressing up to go to the mall to buy new outfits so they can come home and dress up. Don't belive me? Just peruse these fabulous Bratz book titles with me:

All Night Mall Party

Bratz Stylin' Slumber Party

Fashion Funk

Holiday Shoppin' Spree

Bratz Strut It!

The plots are all pretty much the same, and go along the lines of:

Lil Bratz Makin It Up! (Ages 3 and up; $12.99) is much more than just a book. It is a day in the life of the Bratz prior to their going to a movie. Of course, since the Bratz are known for being stylish wherever they go, they must first get decked out and made up. The book comes with four of the same shades of lipstick that the Bratz wear in the book!

Amazon.com will let you preview the first few pages of these books, where you'll find such memorable lines as:

"I'd never draw Jade without her slammin' jewels," Cloe agreed.

She lifted the napkin with her perfectly-manicured nails.

"I've a much better pose you can use," she said as she flipped back her jet-black straight hair and flashed a huge smile. She looked just like a model on the cover of a magazine. Koby obediently snapped another picture.

Jade leaned back triumphnatly in her seat, took a long sip of her strawberry-banana smoothie, and checked out the action going on around her in the food court.

There was Cloe, her long blonde hair pulled back to reveal her big blue eyes opened wide in suprise. "It really is a good picture of you," Cam assured Cloe.

"After you, Bunny-Boo," Cloe told her hip-hop lovin' pal.

"Jade's hair is awesome. And so is her look." She pointed to Jade's funky embroidered jeans and far-out silver glitter platform boots.


Wanna retch yet? Lord knows I do. Is it any wonder children are growing up faster and dumber? In the end, of course, it's the parent's fault, because they're the ones spending their money to rot their children's brains. For shame! They should be burned like witches! IT'S ALL SO STUPID!!! ARRRGHHHHH!!

And now, I'm off to my "Scorchin' Kitchen" for a "slammin' sandwich." Have a "stylin'" day!

Enjoyable Freshness
Did you know that TicTacs now have even more ?Enjoyable Freshness?? A perky blonde in a white miniskirt with matching Go-Go boots told me so. What she didn?t tell me, though, as she struck any number of freshness-related poses in a futuristic, egg-shaped chair, is when the hell ?enjoyable freshness? became a meaningful term, much less a quantifiable unit of measurement. How, exactly, is ?enjoyable freshness? measured? Grams? Seconds? Kilometers? Is ?enjoyable freshness? an imported ingredient, or should we expect ?Enjoyable Freshness? Rendering Plants to spring up all across America? Is it extracted from plant or animal sources? Is magic involved, and if so, good magic or black magic? I don?t want to be eating (by ?eating? I mean ?enjoying?) a mint tainted with evil, now matter how fresh it is. I tried researching TicTac?s ingredients at www.tictacusa.com, but the website makes no mention of what?s in them aside from refreshment. They do, however, have pictures and videos of the perky blonde. What is the blonde hiding? Does she know the top-secret formula for ?enjoyable freshness,? or is she merely a decoy? Or does she know too much? Will her Go-Go boots be found dangling over the edge of a back alley dumpster by a homeless person about to make a grisly discovery?

And if ?enjoyable freshness? isn?t an ingredient, per se, but rather an elusive, ethereal quality possessed by the mints themselves, which impartial panel of lab technicians and electrode-wired test subjects validated the increase of enjoyment and freshness? And is TicTac's ?enjoyable freshness? only experienced while fashionably dressed and in a futuristic egg-shaped chair? If that?s the case, why do so many prostitutes carry them? I demand answers! I demand scientists with pointers dressed in white lab coats! I want diagrams, graphs, and flow charts. I want paid testimonials of average citizens saying, ?Mmmm.?

Is making the mints larger really just a ploy to bombard us with more of the same ol? run-of-the-mill freshness, but in confusing quantities? Is this another example of the Vegas Early Bird Buffet Syndrome? Sure, TicTacs may be bigger, but now you get less of them per package. If ?enjoyable freshness,? like TicTacs themselves, is sold by weight and not volume, then there is no ?more? to be found here. And since when does a product with years of shelf life even begin to concern itself with freshness? The only thing added is another ridiculously asinine marketing phrase that makes me want to hurl my television off an overpass and into the path of a TicTac truck.

Yes, in the end, it?s all about making money with an absurdly meaningless promise, but, unlike the Catholic Church, TicTacs can?t expect to get away with it for long. They?d better be working on a better ad campaign. I?d suggest something along the lines of, ?Now with 30% Louder Movie Theatre Rattling!? I haven?t had a TicTac in years, but it hasn?t been a conscious choice. Now, however, it?s bound to be years before I can walk by them in a store without making enraged sputtering noises and causing a scene. Just ask Shawn. He?ll tell you.

Enjoyable Freshness my ass.

Resume Titles
As many of you know by now, Target no longer has me in its evil, vice-like grip. I?ve escaped with my sanity! I?m free! I?m unemployed! The specifics of my departure and a general listing of work-related gripes will undoubtedly be posted in the future?but for now the horror is too fresh and I simply can?t relive it.

And so, job huntin? I will go. Fiddle dee dee hi ho. (It?s a shame you can?t see the little dance that goes along with this.) After heavily peppering my resume with eye-catching action words (POW! BAM! ZIFF!), I was off to post it on the internet, and was then ready to sit back and let the offers come rolling in. However I hit the same brick wall in every site upon which I attempted to post my resume, and that wall looked like this: RESUME TITLE REQUIRED.

Since when do resumes need titles? As far as I?m concerned, every resume already has the same implied title: I Need a Job. Monster.com suggests that I create a resume title that "creates interest and is meaningful to you." Jobing.com cautions me to keep my title "simple but expressive." I Need a Job works for me. But I Need a Job looked clumsy and backward when compared with posted examples of outstanding resume titles, such as: King of Closing: Semiconductors/Integrated Circuits, Award Winning Graphic Designer, and CPA-Turnaround Expert.

With these simple but expressive, yet meaningful and arousing titles to inspire me, I think I got the gist of the thing. My title must be dramatic, concise, and above all else, alluring! I must entice prospective employers to say, ?Hmmm?what?s this about?? A daunting challenge, but one I accepted! Thus emboldened, I went to watch a few episodes of ?Divorce Court,? ?Dr. Phil,? and ?Family Feud.? Later on, after a nap and a grilled cheese sandwich, I came up with this list of possible titles:


Pow! Bam! Ziff!

I Typed This All By Myself!

Come Closer...Closer...

Pope's Dying Wish: Let John Work

This Isn't What It Looks Like

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Free Toy Suprise Inside!

Don't Make Me Use This

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Last Interview...

SEX! Now That I Have Your Attention...

God is My Professional Reference

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Witty, Sincere, Handsome 33M Looking For New Position

I Am A Rock, I Am An Island

I Need a Job

Ducks
Last week it was all about the ducks. Last Sunday, Shawn and I took our doggies for a walk down by the little concrete canal we have here, where ducks and geese cavort and frolic and the willow trees hang down over the water. If you ignore the apartment complexes stacked along either side, it can be quite pretty, especially in the evening. At some point during our walk, Dougal had picked something up off the ground and was playing with it in his mouth. It was dark and I couldn?t see what it was, so I had him drop it and then tied him to a tree. I went back to investigate, using my lighter for light, and found a tiny duckling writhing around on the ground with its neck broken and the back of its head missing. Aside from feeling horrified and guilty, I was thinking of a way to humanely end its suffering when it died there in front of me. I walked back a few paces, and saw several other ducklings all running off into the darkness, and one lying in the dirt and not moving. The duckling was still alive, and it wasn't bleeding anywhere. But it would not move. We had no idea what to do, so we left it there and came home to try to figure it out.



Naturally, these things always happen late on Sunday nights, when all the wildlife and rescue organizations are closed. We did some research online, and it seemed that best course was to go back and see if the duckling had left or if its mother had come back for it. We went back, and it was still where we left it, and hadn?t moved at all. None of its little friends were there either, and there wasn?t a duck in sight. I felt so awful for the little guy. We put him in a shoe box and brought him home (following instructions from a wildlife rescue website) and put towels warmed in the microwave around the box, so we could drop him off at a wildlife rehabilitation center the next day. But, alas, the duckling was dead by morning. It was very sad, he was very cute.



The next day, two full grown ducks, a male and female pair, took up residence in our swimming pool. It was very funny to see them swimming around in there, and after the winter, the pool looked enough like a pond that they seemed right at home. I chased them off with a pool skimmer, but they kept coming back. I was waiting for Dougal to dive in after them, but after having fallen into the pool two and a half times before (the last time, only his hindquarters hit the water), he seemed to have had enough. After a day or two they flew away, and we haven?t seen them since. You have to wonder if they somehow knew about the duckling. Weird.