Hi-Brow + Low-Brow = Uni-Brow

One -- that infernal christmas "music" finally stopped

Two -- I'm proposing a new guideline at work for my fellow employees and me --

Bitching only in even numbered hours


We have a lot to bitch about.

But I just can't take it any more.

I'm hoping for a full vote on this when everyone is back and I would love to come into 2007 knowing at least half of every shift will be completely devoid of pissing and moaning.

Don't get me wrong. It was the sound of my own voice that drove me the craziest.

I realized I genuinely had nothing new to offer on any of the topics AND the likelihood of any of them improving is virtually nil.

So stay or go. That's the choice. And if it's stay, then it is what it is.

I've sometimes fallen into the delusion that the law of karma applies to *almost* everyone. When I see people putting pungent badness into the world and *seemingly* not getting any of it back on them, I start to get panicky and afraid and fall into an additional delusion that *I'm* the one that has to do something about it.

And then, after some time, I see the inevitable blow up in their face and I feel embarassed for having gotten so worked up over it.

There was a woman who worked here who was so pathologically nasty that when she walked in the room, it felt like the temperature dropped. A cloud of nausea and awfulness seemed to travel along with her.

But then, I noticed that every now and again, she'd come in here and take a big ol'd nasty psychological dump on us and skitter out the room and I would not only not get upset, I'd find it downright hilarious. The difference was not in her but me.

My feeling was that on those days I simply was not on her frequency. Worse that means all that time I was upset by her, it mean I was ON her frequency.

I'm a fairly decent knife fighter but I don't carry one because the idea of using one for self defense is too intimate. I don't want to be covered in someone elses blood and fluids. Also cops tend to notice that sort of thing.

Well it's the same way with getting into a vibe of really hating someone. You end up covered in their stuff. Really hating someone is too intimate. You end up thinking about them way too much. You do that when you're in love too. When you think about someone a whole lot, you end up putting out all these psycho-para-physical tendrils to them and you end up getting a huge dose of them.

I'm not at all saying I'm never going to get upset at or bitch at anyone any more, no this is not a new age daisies kind of world but I am saying that I'm going to try to be real selective of who I wrap my tendrils around.

Speaking of which, FOUR people have asked me in the past three days if anyone heard anything about Chucklehead.

I think there's a reason.

I think he's dead.

On the one hand ... DUH!

On the other, the building feels different. It doesn't feel like there's a really crazy, drugged out psychopath obsessively thinking evil thoughts about us anymore.

The tendrils are gone.

I know that sounds a little new agey and flaky and stuff.

It's just true.

2:15am, I am awakened by incessant and repeated car alarms, a dozen or so. I look out my window and it is a Roto Rooter van parked right outside my window.

Over the course of an hour or so, the alarm goes off every time the repairman comes to the truck to get or return tools. Then he tries repeatedly to start the van, setting the alarm off over and over again. Finally, closing in on 4 am, Karen called the Sheriff's department.

When the deputies arrived I stepped out to tell them what's what, but it was obvious as the alarm was blaring when they rolled up. The RR guy told the deputies he's been on the phone with his supervisor who was telling him how to shut it off but it hadn't been working. (that didn't stop him from trying over and over again)

The deputies tried to shut it off and also failed. They pulled the battery cable and told the RR man to get a tow truck. They said his van would be gone in thirty minutes one way or another, that if he didn't get a tow, the Sheriff's Department would tow it.

About half an hour after that, the supervisor arrived, he plugged the battery back in and tried to see if HE could get it work, treating us to another barrage of car alarms twenty feet from our heads. I opened the window and said "Guys come on, you gotta give us a break." They started the van and drove away with the alarm going.

The time was now 5am.

Ya know ... "Ghost Hunters" was starting to make me like Roto Rooter.

Jason and Grant would have done different. That's for sure.

My coworker Richard -- a Chinese National raised in Burma (it figures in the story), devised a way to get a really good pot of coffee at work. He says he shakes the basket, which is true, he does. But he also brews a half pot using a full pot bag. That's where the flavor comes from. I call this brew "Cafe Rangoon" in honor of his adopted homeland. And every day I walk into his office and say "Hey Richard what time is it?" Sometimes he tells me what time it is, but sometimes he catches himself and says "It's time for Cafe Rangoon" -- which is the correct response.

Well, I walked into his office to do our bit and he said he had just poured himself a cup of tea. He said "I am trying to be more Buddhist and drink tea. Coffee is an imperialist drink." I said "You have a good point, let's discuss it in Tibet ... I'm sorry, I mean China." He threw up his hands and said "I can't get away with anything around you!" I told him he wasn't going to get too much traction with the Imperialist round-eye thing with me.

OK, yeah it wasn't that great, but it was fast and it was like ten minutes after a very fast one I had at Borders books.

I was talking to an older black woman (it figures into the story) and she was telling me about her braces and how hard it was to speak with them in. She said "I hear myself speak and I don't know what that is, I know it's not Ebonics but I don't know what it is." I said "It's orthobonics." She kinda crossed her eyes a second and said "It IS! It's ORTHOBONICS!! You're RIGHT!"

So you see what I'm saying. If I sat around for an hour and came up with that, it would be a sad effort. But it was fast, it happened in real time so I think it was alright.

I think we all learned a lesson here.

Don't do gigs at the Laugh Factory. The audiences won't shut the fuck up.