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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Sometimes I think I can deduce what people watch on TV based on how they behave. I just assume that overly melodramatic people are big soap opera fans, and people who like to cook watch a lot of food shows.
(Of course, the inverse isn’t necessarily true. I watch a few “foodie” shows, and I couldn’t cook my way out of a microwave popcorn bag.)
Generally, I figure an awful lot of people I run into must be watching Jackass rerun marathons every few hours, but that’s not the point just now. Instead, I’m thinking about the viewing habits of a woman in my office. And I’m convinced she’s into Columbo, the old police show starring Peter Falk.
Now, maybe you’re not familiar with this particular show. Perhaps you don’t watch a lot of detective dramas, or you’re not ridiculously old enough to have caught it in its heyday. Or, possibly, you’re really ungodly old, and you were busy watching Matlock and Walker, Texas Ranger instead.
“That’s loosely translated from Latin. Via the Temptations.”
(But you’re reading a blog. So you can’t be that old, surely. Unless your AOL search is acting up, and sent you here accidentally. So sorry.)
Anyway, why Columbo? Because, in his parlance, this lady follows Columbo’s M.O. That’s modus operandi, of course, meaning “the way you do the things you do”.
That’s loosely translated from the Latin. Via the Temptations.
I’m not saying this person has adopted all of Detective Columbo’s various peculiarities. For instance, he wore a shabby overcoat and chewed cigars a lot. So far as I know, she doesn’t do this. Maybe in the privacy of her own home. I haven’t asked.
What she does emulate quite well is Columbo’s particular style of interrogation. Which is particularly unsettling, given that she’s not actually a detective. And that I’m not a perp. And that she only comes to my office to ask computer questions. Frankly, I’m not quite sure how to respond.
She’ll come sauntering in aimlessly — very Columboesque, you know — and start with a bit of harmless-seeming chitchat. The weather. The weekend. Woolly mammoths, for all I know — I usually tune this part out.
Next come the questions. Little ones at first, just nibbles. How much RAM does this take? Can I open this other thing in Excel? What’s a megabyte? Every once in a while, the interrogation will cover old material; that’s when I feel like a ’70s-style suspect from the show, with an overwide collar and paisley socks and maybe a body stuffed under the stairs.
“We’ve covered this!” I say.
“Oh yeah, of course, sure. That’s right. I just wanted to make sure.”
And so I smile that tired indulgent smile that the perps used to smile at Columbo, and we let the session run its course. She gets her information, bit by bit, drip by drip, until finally there’s nothing left to learn. And then she stands, and heads for the door.
And she reaches the doorway.
And she turns.
And then, invariably, like Falk reincarnated, rest his stogie-chomping soul, she squints a little and waggles a finger back in my direction and delivers the signature, soul-crushing, suspect-damning line:
“Er, ah… just one more thing….”
And then she asks another half hour of questions, and I wish I actually did have a body under my stairs so I could tell the cops about it and escape. But I don’t. So I can’t. And the dance of faux Columbo goes on.
It could be worse, I suppose. She could be like one of those other TV detectives. The really nasty ones on Law and Order: SVU, for instance. She could come in slamming doors and desks and growl, “NOW HOW DO I MAKE A PIVOT TABLE, SLIMEBALL?!”
That would be uncomfortable. Possibly preferable, on some days. But definitely uncomfortable.
Instead, we’re locked in on Columbo. It’s almost like it was still on television, in fact. Every week, for about an hour, we have our episode. Thirty minutes in, the “just one more thing“, only there are no commercial breaks and I don’t get thrown in jail at the end. I suppose at this rate, when I can see it coming, it’s just about manageable.
But if this lady ever goes into syndication? And schedules an all-day Columbo marathon?
No. At that point, I’m out. I’m a patient man and all, but I’m sorry. If it gets any worse, this lady will just have to go Falk herself. Series cancelled.
Permalink | 1 CommentIt’s been six months since our precious pooch scampered off to that golden kennel in the sky.
(Not really; I’m being euphemistic. She’s actually in an urn on our bookshelf.
And probably peeing in it.)
Without a mutt to meander with, I don’t walk around the neighborhood as much as I used to. And when I do make the local rounds, I apparently don’t pay much attention to the signage. Because it was just yesterday that I noticed, a couple of blocks over, an old sign on an apartment building that reads:
Please Keep Dogs on Leash
Clean Up Mess
$25-$200 Fine for Violations
Now, the leash thing I’ve got no issue with. We kept our dog on a leash at all times outside because, frankly, she was kind of an idiot. Oh, there was little chance — in her last eight years or so, anyway — that she’d bolt into traffic or run away to join a fleabitten circus or something. But she was curious, and stubborn, and off leash she would’ve wound up sniffing poop behind a thorn bush or up a telephone pole or some other dumb inaccessible place. Leashing was just easier.
“This poop math, it’s not an exact science.”
Likewise, I’m all for people — including me — cleaning up their dog’s droppings. My wife and I were quite diligent about this, partly because it’s just the polite and neighborly and responsible thing to do.
But also because if we left a pile of turds lying around somewhere, we’re the sort of people who are likely to step in it later. So “neighborly”, yes. But also, we just don’t watch where we walk so much, and we can only tolerate so many pairs of stink-ass shoes.
(I’ve done some math on this subject, by the way. We had our dog for twelve-and-a-half years. At two bowls of kibble a day, plus Snausages and biscuits and whatever she snarfed from strangers, and four to six walks per day, lessee… carry the one, an extra walk on weekends, and… I estimate that we’ve bagged roughly forty-three billion turds since the turn of the century.
Give or take a steamer. This poop math, it’s not an exact science.)
It’s really the last part of the sign that concerns me. Not because there’s a fine. Not because of the size of the fine. What concerns me is that there’s a range of values to the fine. Which makes me wonder:
What criteria determine the size of a dog poop fine? And who decides?
I picture a guy, some flunky on the police force or at the county courthouse, whose job is to review the turd files. Maybe he goes over pictures or forensic evidence. Maybe he even interviews witnesses:
“Was the poodle fully in the azalea patch, or just hovering its butt above?”
“This doesn’t look like malamute plop. Are you certain it was a malamute, sir?”
“What the hell are you feeding that thing — firecrackers with sriracha sauce?!”
Probably not once of those “love your job” kinds of job. But now I almost want a dog, so I can walk it over to the apartment building and leave piles of terrier turds on the lawn until someone catches me. Not maliciously; I just want to see the process. Is a sidewalk stain an extra twenty bucks? Do you pay more for spread, if it’s not in one of those curly little piles? These are questions just sitting up and begging for answers. It’d even be worth a hundred bucks to find out.
Or a hundred and fifty, if I take a Saint Bernard. Those mothers can poooop.
Permalink | No CommentsThis weekend, the missus and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. We’ve been married for brgzuflught years, and… what’s that? You didn’t catch the number? Oh, well, it’s not important. Let’s just say it was a little while ago.
We could also say that the last ice age ended a little while and a smidgen ago, or that the sun coalesced from a cloud of hot cosmic gas two or three little whiles ago. But we won’t do that. Will we? No. We won’t.
As we often do at anniversary time, we decided to get away for the weekend. In the past, we’ve gone to more or less ‘down to earth’ places — Maine; Providence, Rhode Island; the movies — but this time we decided to hit another New England spot that we’d never gotten the chance to see: Martha’s Vineyard.
“I figured it was a bunch of people with polo mallets and stiff haircuts drinking out of highball glasses and wearing white at the appropriate times, but never at the non-appropriate times, whenever the hell those are, respectively.”
Now, I didn’t know much about what happens on Martha’s Vineyard. I figured it was a bunch of people with polo mallets and stiff haircuts drinking out of highball glasses and wearing white at the appropriate times, but never at the non-appropriate times, whenever the hell those are, respectively. And it totally is that, in some places on the island. Those are not the places I’m allowed to go, or to be seen near, or to reference by name here, lest the inhabitants look sternly down their noses at me in contempt. So I won’t.
We were, however, allowed entry into quite a fair number of Martha’s Vineyard locales, and they weren’t quite so posh as to turn us away completely. Sit us in a corner, perhaps. Throw a presumably stylish and high thread count sheet over us, sure. But we still got to eat, or drink, or shop as we liked, so long as we didn’t scare the fancy folk.
But the clearest hint that I may not be a ‘Vineyard person’ was that I couldn’t even figure out how to describe it. People asked me if we were going away this weekend, and where, and I didn’t know what to tell them.
“We’ll be at the Vineyard.” ?
That sounds a little too polo-mallet for my non-blue blood.
“We’ll be on the Vineyard.” ?
It is an island, after all. And frankly, I’m not sure I saw any grape vines anywhere we went. But syntactically, this sentence makes no sense to me. Unlike:
“We’ll be in the Vineyard.”
That sounds more like a weekend I would have — possibly including sleeping there, among the sauvignons and burgundies and Concords or whatever. I don’t really know from grapes. But they do look pretty comfy after a long day of wine sipping.
So I don’t know how to describe it — at least, not without breaking the rules of grammar or sounding like a Kennedy’s poor suburbanite illegitimate cousin. But it’s been a great trip. We’ve had a nice ferry ride over. A romantic dinner and evening at the hotel. And tomorrow, we’ll visit an alpaca farm and a brewery.
Those are two different places, by the way. They’re not actually brewing beer next to alpacas, and serving pints in soft wool coozies or something.
At least, they’re not yet. I’ll talk to them both tomorrow; maybe we can work something out. Meanwhile, it’s anniversary weekend. I’m checking out — from the Vineyard. G’night.
Permalink | No CommentsThere’s an odd phenomenon happening at my desk at work.
Okay, to be fair, there are lots of odd phenomena happening at my desk, most any time I’m there, but I’m not talking about those. Probably, you’ll hear about those sooner or later, too. Unless the HR lady hears about them first.
This particular odd phenomenon is different, not least because I’m not the one causing it. I am, however, perhaps the only one noticing it. It involves cell phone reception.
First, let me say that signal — at least, T-Mobile brand signal — seems to have a tough time penetrating our building at all. We work in an office in a big converted structure — it used to be a train station or a molasses warehouse or a zeppelin hangar or something — and there’s a lot of room for wavelengths to get lost in. I’m assuming that’s how wavelengths work, anyway, because most places I go in this big cavernous hulk, wavelengths get lost.
“Nobody wants me in a laboratory. I don’t want that. The company doesn’t want that. The world doesn’t want that.”
I get no reception downstairs, none in the back hallway, and none in the laboratory spaces. Luckily, these are places I don’t go to — and not allowed to go to, mostly, being largely shackled to the desk in my office. Which is fine. Nobody wants me in a laboratory. I don’t want that. The company doesn’t want that. The world doesn’t want that. Trust me.
The thing about my desk is that it’s maybe twenty feet inside the wall of the building, a conference room-width and a hallway from the outer bricks. This is, coincidentally, just about the distance that my carrier’s signal will travel inside before being degraded into its component atoms or wavicles or cellular bosons or whatever. Which means, one side of my desk has signal. And the other does not.
This creates some challenges to actually using a cell phone in the office. I’ll remember — usually — to drop my phone on the right (i.e., outermore) side of the desk, if I’m expecting a call or am anxious to see the next word some virtual ‘friend’ has played in fake Scrabble. But it’s easy to get distracted. I’ll take a call, and edge a bit toward the office door to stay in range. But then I’ll roll back to the laptop to look something up or find directions, and the call winks itself away. It’s like an electronic fence — only, instead of keeping a dog in, it’s keeping me off the phone. And my shock collar is made by Samsung.
I won’t pretend there aren’t some advantages to living on the crest of a signal wave. For instance, if I don’t want to take a call, I’ve only got to drop my phone on the left side of the desk, another three feet away from the outdoors. Over there, it’s a paperweight. That side of the desk hasn’t heard from a carrier in at least a year and a half. By now, it’s probably thinking of having T-Mobile declared legally dead.
(This also works when I’ve got a shitty rack of tiles, and don’t want some smug yahoo dropping a bingo on my QVJKBUT and ruining my afternoon. The pseudo-Scrabble door swings both ways, friend.)
Sometimes, I’ll have a little fun with some stranger who’s cold-called me up. These don’t happen often, so I like to take advantage. Once I figure out it’s some phonomarketer or survey taker, I pretend their nonsense is my new favorite thing in life. Well, of course I want to buy fourteen magazine subscriptions! And yesyesyes, I’d be thrilled to participate in a ninety-minute questionnaire for a shot to win a refurbished Sony Walkman! It’s a dream, I tell you! A dream come true!
Then just about the time they’re asking for my credit card, or gender / age range / income bracket, I start eeeeasing over toward the Dead Zone. Still enthusiastic, still eager. Here, let me start the first four digits of that card… and tell me again how ‘strongly agree’ differs from ‘moderately agree’, and-
*click*
Aw. Did I lose you? That’s too bad. And is the phone going to sit on the shelf over there in no-man’s land for the rest of the day, in case you decide to call back? It is? Awwwww.
So it’s not all bad, I guess. At this point, I’m just curious about any health effects this might have. Some day, when there’s a study linking cell signal exposure to some awful chronic disease, I’ll probably only be affected on one side. That’s… comforting, sort of, to know that only the right side of my brain will explode, or only one testicle will catch on fire. I suppose it could be worse.
No. I know it could be worse. I could have Verizon. Yowza.
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