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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Just a few thoughts I’ve had while watching the Yankees-Red Sox game (which the Sox are losing, right on schedule):
Is there anything even conceivably worse than watching the (Damned) Yankees win an important game in their own stadium? I’m sure there are probably some normal, likable, intelligent Yankees fans out there… but damned if I’ve met any of them yet. I’m still not convinced they’re not an urban myth. As far as I can see, Yankee Stadium is filled with hairy, wifebeatered, gold chain-wearing cab drivers and teamsters, with an MGD in one hand and the other glommed around their big-haired, nose-jobbed, gum-chomping Jersey girlffriend, both of them pumping hairy-knuckled fists in the air and screaming, ‘Eh, fuck Pedro! Fuck ‘im!‘
Or maybe I made that up. Damn, I hate the Yankees.
Fox has absolutely the worst baseball announcers ever. Seriously, I think I could tolerate Fran Drescher and a coke-nosed Bobcat Golthwaite more readily than this bunch of blubbering boobs. Joe Buck apparently learned not a damned thing from his famous, and infinitely more entertaining, father. Tim McCarver is pedantic, rambly, and full of useless drivel that he’s all too happy to share. (Uh-uh-uh — don’t even think of saying, ‘Oh, like the guy who writes this blog, maybe?‘ None of that, bitches.) Bret Boone was added to the booth as… as… well, as what, I don’t exactly know. I thought he was going to be a ‘player expert’. But he acts more like a ‘retarded mime’. The dude says nothing — not a friggin’ word — for three innings, and then pipes in with something like, ‘Well, he really wants to get a hit here.‘
‘He really wants to get a hit here.‘
Ooh, that’s fuckin’ priceless, man. There’s a hitter at the plate, and he’d like to get a hit. Damn. Where does a guy have to go to school to develop that sort of brilliant insight? Forget discussing strategy, or his own experiences in the playoffs, or his brother — his frickin’ brother, fer Chrissakes! — who plays third base for the Yanks. No, sir, Bret. Just tell us that hitters want to hit the ball, and pitchers would prefer to get them out. Absolute genius, man. Somebody pay this guy, would ya?
But the worst, the absolute vilest, is Steve Lyons. He’s not covering this particular game; you’ll be able to hear his particular brand of ‘slope-browed stupid’ tonight, when the Cubs and Marlins play their grudge game. Just don’t listen too hard — I swear to God, you’ll bleed from the ears. The guy’s nickname is ‘Psycho’, but it ought to be simply ‘Dumbass’. It’s actually a relief when Lyons states the obvious, because it means he’s not butchering someone’s name, or mis-remembering a stat, or just plain making shit up as he goes along. If I didn’t love hearing the crack of the bat so much, I’d watch the damned games on ‘Mute’. Why can’t they all take a cue from Bret Boone?
Speaking of McCarver… I’m not really that surprised that he just used the word ‘reticent’, as he’s always dropping fiddy-cent words into his telecasts. The real shocker is that he used it correctly. I think that’s a first, folks. I half expected him to say something like,
‘Jose Contreras is originally from Cuba, but now he’s a permanent reticent of the US.‘
Yeah, that’s the Timmy McC we all know and loathe. Where’s Deion Sanders when you need him?
Ah, yes, this is more like it. The Sox have come back to tie this thing. And come to think of it, I misspoke earlier.
(Okay, fine, I ‘mistyped’. Nobody likes a nitpicker, man.)
Anyway, I said the Sox were losing, ‘right on schedule’. But this is just Game 6. Truth be told, I fully expect Boston to pull this one out — preferably with a brawl, and a healthy dose of ill will — and then blow the next game. You know, just to make things more interesting, and to make the fall that much harder when it comes.
Hey, the Cubs are doing the same ‘drama’ thing, right? They could have put the Marlins away yesterday, and had their young phenom on the mound to get it done. But no — they tanked late, and now we have a Game 7 in that series. Which the Marlins are pretty much destined to win, right? Sammy’s gonna lose a fly ball in the lights, or Kerry Wood will walk in the winning run, or some shit like that. And the lovable losers will go down again, after being soooo close. That’s just the way it goes.
And really, I think that’s what Cubbies fans want, deep down inside. They’ve been tortured and disappointed for so long, I think they’ve started to like it that way. They’re like little old Jewish women — they complain all the damned time, and nothing’s ever good enough… but really, they wouldn’t have things any other way. Rooting for the Cubs — and bitching, nonstop and loudly, about the Cubs — is fun. But if they were to ever actually win the big one? Oy vey.
Of course, you’d never get one of the diehards to admit it. It’s ‘root, root, root for the Cub-bies‘, and all that crap. But think about it — just about everybody in the frickin’ country wants the Cubs to get to the World Series, if not win it. It’s the underdog factor. But if the Cubs actually win — if they take home the trophy — then they’re just another bunch of obnoxious, screaming, partisan fans. They’re no longer special, and nobody will ever give a shit about what the Cubs do again.
(Not unless they can manage to put together another ninety-year-or-so losing streak, of course.)
So while the Cubs themselves most certainly want to pop the champagne corks in October, I’m not so sure about their fans, no matter how loudly they say otherwise. ‘Cause if the Cubs are ever World Champs, nobody’s gonna listen to their fans’ moaning and groaning ever again. They’re cute and all now, but once the team is successful, all bets are off. Who knows what would happen then? With nothing to complain about, what will the Cubheads do?
My guess is that they’ll be just as obnoxious, but now with an attitude. Just one more reason to cheer for the Marlins, if you ask me. Can you imagine six million Cub fans using all of that compaining energy on gloating and jeering other teams instead? Christ, they’ll be worse than those damned Yankees fans. Shit.
Go get ’em, Marlins. Kick some Cub ass tonight. ‘Cause as much as I don’t want to hear their whining, it’s a helluva lot preferable to the alternative. Let’s keep the assholes in the Bronx, shall we?
Permalink | No CommentsParking is the new bane of my existence.
(So you’re off the hook, Old Navy commercials. For now. Just wait until I figure out where to dump my car every day, though — I’ll be back on your ass like flies on shit. Goofy-assed cheesy ads.)
Anyway, for the next… um, forseeable future, actually — I’ll be parking illegally during the weekdays. Half the time, I’ll be doing it in one neighborhood, in a ‘Resident Parking Only’ area, and hoofing it twenty minutes or more to one office. The rest of the time, I’ll be… well, I don’t know what the hell I’ll be doing, to tell you the truth. Today I parked at a two-hour meter right outside the office, and fed the annual GNP of a small Latin American nation into it, in quarters, to avoid getting a ticket.
(Which would cost me the annual GNP of a large European nation, so it’s worth it.)
But I can’t go on doing that forever. For one thing, I mis-timed my trips outside every freaking time today. A couple of times — out of, like, six — I knew I was late. I’d gotten caught up in a conversation, or a meeting ran long, or something. But the other times, I scampered out to my car with the firm expectation of having a couple or three minutes left on the meter, only to be greeted with the big fat red ‘EXPIRED‘ sign. Either I can’t tell time — which is not outside the realm of possibility; I still have trouble tying my shoes, and I’ve been described as a ‘potty training accident waiting to happen’ — or the meters are cheating. Today, it didn’t cost me; maybe the meter bitches take Hump Days off. I don’t really know. What I do know, though, is that eventually I’m going to lose that little game of bitch-and-mouse, and so I’d better find a better solution. Fast.
Unfortunately, the prospects aren’t good. I think I’m going to end up driving to some arbitrary, but relatively safe, spot, and schlepping the rest of the way in via public transportation. The idea doesn’t exactly get my ‘nads all wet ‘n’ slippery, if you know what I mean. I’m not a big fan of commuting as it is. The last thing I want to do is add another half an hour to it, not to mention a half an hour spent not in my cozy, comfy car, but rather in a funky, hazy train, being rubbed up against greasy businessmen and stinky-assed babies and random fat farty people. If I wanted to put up with that kind of shit, I’d go to my damned family reunions. Bleh.
I don’t want to hear that ‘Lots of people do it, though‘ crap, either. That poo don’t fling, people. It’s supposed to mean, ‘Well, if those other people can manage to do it, then you should, too.‘ But to me, it just says, ‘Hey, look, there are a lot of slack-jawed morons out there doing something foolish! Why don’t you join the herd?‘
Which is not to say that commuting for an hour or more each way every day is ‘foolish’, necessarily. But it’s not to say that it isn’t, either. Sure, there are a few good reasons for wasting a quarter or more of your waking life getting to and from your job. Maybe your spouse works at a job that’s just as far in the other direction, so you’re compromising. Or your kids just have to be in some certain school district. Or maybe you have to live in your current house, and no other, to fill some asshole requirement in your great uncle’s will, or else you won’t inherit the fourteen million dollars. But you know what? That’s about it, as far as I can see.
(And frankly, I’m not so sure about the second one. Damned kids don’t get to pick their schools — what the hell is this world coming to, anyway?)
I really can’t fathom any other good reason for spending as much time — or more! — getting to and from work as you do on all your other non-work, non-sleep activities combined. Seriously, spending an hour getting ready for work, and then two hours getting to work, working for eight hours, and then two hours getting home from work… what’s left? That’s thirteen hours right there. Match the four it took to get back and forth, and you’re up to seventeen. Seven hours of sleep, and it’s time to giddyup and go all over again. Uncool.
Of course, that kind of analysis makes me look like a doofus, too. Sure, I only had a twenty minute commute or so to my last job, and I went in around ten. Or eleven. Or ‘Hey, it’s almost time for lunch; maybe I should just go in after I eat‘. That sort of thing. But I was usually sleeping until nine-thirty. Or ten-thirty. Or — well, you get the idea. And then I’d work until seven or eight at night, or later. So I’d have to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get in my four hours of ‘home time’, and I’d be exhausted. So I’d sleep in until ten the next morning, and hop on the merry-go-round again. Not exactly the ‘American Dream’.
(Unless you’re a crack-addicted workaholic insomniac-American, of course. Then, it might be right up your alley. Go you!)
But the difference — I told myself, over and over — was that I wasn’t wasting time getting to work, or from work. And that was the key. At work, I could feel like I was doing something. And at home, I could relax and enjoy doing nothing. But in between? Nothing but hassle, and jackasses, and potholes, and Masshole drivers to swerve around and feed the finger to. Blue-haired old ladies who can’t see over the dashboard, and slicked-up greaseball rich fucks with gigantic SUVs (gee, you think they’re compensating for something, hmmm?) who won’t pick a damned lane. Bastards.
So I’m not a big fan of lengthening my commute. If it were up to me, I’d live right across the street from my office, and just roll out of bed and into the door in the morning. (Or after lunch, maybe… you know, it’s already eleven-thirty — no sense in going in on an empty stomach now.) That would be sweet, too — I could keep an eye on my desk from my window at home. I’d finally figure out who the hell was stealing all of my pens and re-adjusting my fricking desk chair.
(If I had a goddamned dime for every time I came back to my desk at the last job, only to slam my ass into the seat because the stupid thing was a foot and a half lower than I’d left it, or do a flailing backflip out of my cubicle because the release for the seat back had been fiddled with… well, let me just say I wouldn’t be at my current job. A man could retire on that kind of money. Shit.)
I suppose there’d be drawbacks to living right outside the office, of course. I couldn’t very well make the ‘*kaff kaff* Um, boss? *ker-choo!* Uh, I don’t feel so good today… *hork*’ call while I’m loading my golf clubs into the trunk of my car. Plus, I’d never get a frickin’ snow day. They’d probably install a damned T-bar from their door to mine, to be sure that the winter weather wouldn’t keep me away. Those bitches think of everything.
Ah, well. Maybe this parking thing will work out, after all. I just need to find a meter that’s never checked, or a neighborhood where the police don’t bother to enforce the ‘Residents Only’ rules. Of course, even if I find such an oasis, it’s likely to be six frickin’ miles away from the office. I’ll have to get a Segway, or hire a rickshaw or something, to get from there to the workplace and back. Feh. Whose idea was this job thing, anyway?
Permalink | No CommentsMan, I’m pooped. This going to work business isn’t as easy as I remember it.
(On the other hand, I didn’t show up at eleven, take a three-hour lunch, and then get loaded, either. So it’s not like my last job. Not yet, anyway — it’s only the first week. Oh, hush up.)
It’s tough to actually do shit again, though. And so much shit, too! I walked, and I thought, and I listened, and I made conversation. I was like a real person again. Which was very foreign, and a little bit creepy. I was getting pretty close to perfecting the ‘asocial hermit’ thing; just another couple of weeks, and I think I’d have had it down cold. The grumpy muttering, the yelling at neighborhood kids, going out in my boxers and a T-shirt to get the mail… really, I almost mastered the whole bit. I was born to play that role.
And then I was unceremoniously thrust back into society. It’s a shock to the system, really. I feel like an astronaut coming back from a long space voyage; suddenly, the whole weight of the world is on my shoulders, and it’s a struggle even to stand up. Much less kiss ass properly, or jump ‘how high’ they tell me. I’m just not ready, dammit!
Eh. Maybe I’m just tired. I got up at seven thirty this morning, which is roughly four hours earlier than usual. And I still had to rush around all willy-nilly to get to my nine o’clock meeting on time. And then to be around people for the next eight hours, and three hours more for my class? Please! How about a little ‘me time’ over here, huh? Who do I have to sleep with around here to be left the hell alone?
(Um, actually, apparently the answer to that last question is ‘Every girl I’ve ever known except my wife’. But let’s just move on, okay? No need to dig up that sort of thing. It’s all hoes under the bridge now. Hoes under the bridge.)
Anyway, I’ve got to get up and do it all over again tomorrow, so I think I’ll cut this session a bit short. I’m not sure how many days of this in a row that I can handle, you see. I may have to start getting in bed by midnight, or even eleven!
(In other words, four hours earlier than usual.)
I’m a delicate damned flower, you know. Gotta have my resticles.
But I’ll get back into the groove, I think. I’ll relearn how to function before ten am — not function well, of course, but at least be able to friggin’ breathe without having an aneurysm. And I’ll probably remember how to use my brain for things other than baseball stats and fart jokes.
(On the other hand, both those sorts of things would seem to play well at my new office, so I can’t go too overboard with the cerebral shit. Yeah, like that’s a possibility — I’m going to be too cerebral. Sure, that’ll happen. And then I’ll grow nipples on my ass, and get my jollies squirming around in my chair all day. Right. Not gonna happen, folks.)
But I’ll cope. Hell, before this summer, I’d been working non-stop for a dozen years or more. I’ll get it back — I’m gonna make it, after all. It’ll just take some time, to adjust and adapt to the demands being placed on me. And if that means hopping in the sack before three in the morning… well, so be it. I may not know much (and I don’t), and I may annoy my new coworkers (and I will), and I may steal office supplies and sneak vodka into my Pepsi bottles (and I do). But dammit, I will find a way to do something useful at these early-morning meetings.
More useful than drooling on my chin and scratching my crotch, that is. That shit, I can do in my sleep. Come to think of it, it’s just about time for some more practice. Drooly-chinned itchy-crotched sleepytime land, here I come!
Permalink | No CommentsOkay, you’re going to think I’m weird.
I know, I know — your opinion of me couldn’t get any lower. I’ve already sunk to the deepest depths of bizarreness, scraping the very bottom of the bizarro barrel, right?
Wrong.
I went to my first day of work at my new job today. We had a meeting at nine am (which I was on time for, a small miracle in and of itself). At said meeting were my two new co-bosses and various lab personnel. Just another day in the workplace. I paid close attention to the first twenty minutes of the meeting.
Then.
Then I turned to my right to look at one of my new bosses, who was explaining something Very Important™, and Very Complicated Indeed™. And I noticed that he has a mole on his left cheek — the one facing me as he spoke. Now, it’s not a big scary old-person mole. It’s not hairy, or swollen, or warty. It’s not ginormous, or anything; this is not a Gorbachev type of mole. It’s just a mole. A birthmark. An overgrown freckle.
But.
The thing is, I’ve got the very same sort of mole, only mine’s on my right cheek. In other words, the one facing him as he spoke. Again, not hairy, or huge, or Gorby-gross — just a plain old garden-variety mole. But it got me to thinking. And after just a bit of thinking, I came to the only logical, obvious conclusion:
Clearly, he and I are a superhero crime-fighting duo. We’re like the Wonder Twins, only our special shape-shifting abilities are activated when we ‘meld moles’. We’re the Fabulous Mole Duo, or maybe the Freckle Friends, or even the Benign Birthmark Battle Boys. We’ve got secret hideouts, and costumes, and stuff. Really secret — so secret that I don’t even know about it, apparently. Now that’s keeping a low profile!
And we get into lots of fights and scrapes. And just like all the other superheroes out there, we lose — pretty miserably — for the first three-quarters of the melee. But then — just as things look bleakest — we brush cheeks and call on our Mole Morphing Power to save the day. I assume the form of a cactus, or a bowling ball, or a slice of American cheese. Meanwhile, he turns into a down comforter, or a katydid, or maybe a charm bracelet. Whatever it takes to repel the force of evil.
So, anyway, I zoned out for pretty much the rest of the meeting. Sure, I was there in the room physically. But in my mind, I was battling crime, fighting off the Whiner, and Dastardly Duck Sauce Man, and the Homeless Boozer. With my crimefighting partner, of course. Can’t do it alone, you know.
Of course, I have no real way of knowing whether all this is true, or just some sleep-deprived fantasy I’ve concocted. No way of knowing yet, that is. See, there’s only one way to know for sure, and I’m working on it as we speak. It’ll take a little planning, and some subterfuge, and perhaps some drinking — yes, quite a bit of drinking — but eventually I’ll come up with a scheme. Some excuse or ruse to brush against the man, cheek-to-cheek for just a moment. And as our freckle-spots glide against each other, I’ll call out,
‘I assume the form of a French ballerina!‘
Either I’ll immediately morph into a tutued nymph, or I won’t. Either way, I’ll know for sure about the superhero thing, and that’s what’s important.
(And either way, I’ll probably have just a bit of explaining to do. Erk.)
So that’s my story. Not so weird once it’s all explained, right? Um, right? Fine, be that way. Poopyhead.
I didn’t want to talk to you anyway. But I’ll tell you this, mister smarty-farty-pants — when the Homeless Boozer shows up at your door, pissing on your carpet and drinking you out of house and home, don’t come crying to me, all right? Me and my magic mole are gonna be busy that day. So nyah!
Permalink | No CommentsThe summer went way too quickly.
I’m not talking about the weather, per se. Frankly, I prefer the fall — all that hot, humid shit is for suckers. Who wants their undies in a bunch clinging to their ass all damned day, anyway?
(Somebody else’s undies, maybe. But your own? Nah.)
No, what I’m really bemoaning (and it’s ‘be-moaning’, people, not just plain ‘moaning’, all right; I don’t need any more nasty letters from the Peanut Gallery) is the end of my temporary retirement. My non-self-inflicted sabbatical. My extended vacation. My ‘fat lazy unemployed slob’ phase.
For you see, at nine am tomorrow, all of that changes. My new job starts. Suddenly, I’ll be a fat lazy employed slob again. It’s the end of an era. I’ll have to get up, fight commuter traffic, actually interact with people during the day. Possibly, I’ll even have to carry on conversations with some of them, or make eye contact. The horror!
(On the other hand, I am a software engineer. Which means that a bit of asocial behavior is pretty much expected. Maybe no one will talk to me, after all. I think I’ll start wearing Birkenstocks and grimy T-shirts and grow a Jesus beard, though. You know, just to be sure.)
Anyway, it’s going to be tough getting back to the grind, I think. I was unemployed for three whole months. You can break a lot of habits in a quarter of a year, you know. I’ll have to remember how to be polite to people, and greet them cheerfully in the morning, not to mention how to put my damned pants on.
(Last time I wore pants, I strapped a pair of my wife’s jeans to my head and chased the dog around the house, yelling, ‘I’m a bunny rabbit — hippity hippity hippity hop!‘ until I crashed into the kitchen table. I think it’s good to keep the puppy on her toes, in case a real wild animal should ever get loose in the house. But mainly, I just like wearing my wife’s pants on my head. Is that so wrong?)
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get all my shit together in the next twelve hours or so, though. It’s probably a good idea to blend in for the first few days on the job, before I let them know the kind of guy they’ve really hired. I even put the kibosh on a couple of antics already. Like pushing all the elevator buttons when I went to the interview, or futzing with the TB test I had to take.
(Yeah, they gave me a tuberculosis test. I think it’s standard procedure; my new employer is a hospital. Of course, it could be because of the tofu I hid in my hand and pretended to ‘cough’ all over the guy’s desk at the interview, too. Hey, I said I vetoed some of the shit I was planning on doing — I never said I nixed all of it.)
Luckily, I was given this last day of reprieve before getting in there and getting my hands dirty. (Thank you, Chris Columbus. You go, bee-yatch.) But tomorrow is D-Day. T-minus zero seconds. Showtime, and all that shit. And there’s so much I left undone during my hiatus from gainful employment. All those rounds of golf left unplayed, the Madden NFL championships unwon, the mid-afternoon drinking binges I never managed to find the time for. It’s sad, really.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad to have a job again, and this one is actually really exciting and interesting. It turned out to be a great fit. It’s just going to be an adjustment, that’s all. I’m not used to being out in public any more. I haven’t seen the light of day in a while. I’m like one of those kids you hear about who do something bad, and then get chained to the radiator for a few years, and lose their ability to socialize properly. You know the ones. What? You don’t? That doesn’t happen where you are? Hmmm. Must just be my neighborhood.
(Now you wanna visit, don’cha? Yeah, you know you do.)
So, anyway, life changes for me tomorrow. I just wanted to warn you. Hopefully, you won’t even notice. But if the firehose stream of words eases up a bit for a while, don’t be alarmed. I’m just adjusting. And I’m away from home three evenings a week. But on the bright side, I’ll be out in the rat race again, in the world of men full-time. So I’ll no doubt witness lots of asinine boobery to write about. The Content-O-Meter will be through the roof. That should even things out.
Now, if I can just find the time to write all that shit down, in between meetings and status reports and putting-on-pants lessons. Man, this ‘having a job’ shit is going to be hard.
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