Marcheline Pays it Forward

Today, in honor of getting unfairly screamed at yet again at work, I went to the Taco Bell website and sent in a compliment on the excellent customer service I received at the drive-thru window today.

I was trying to buy a Chicken Chipotle Grilled Stuffed Burrito - but, alas! They are no more. So my only real choice was a regular Chicken Grilled Stuffed Burrito. The Chipotle used to be $3.47, but the regular one is a few cents more.

When I got to the drive-thru window, I asked the guy why the price difference. I don't know if I expected him to roll his eyes, shrug his shoulders, give me my change and move along to the next customer, but I certainly DIDN'T expect what he did. Which was to give me a fully detailed answer to my question, including the full list of pertinent ingredients in each type of burrito, all without making me feel even slightly stupid or picky for asking the question.

I know that most people have had bad experiences at fast food drive-thrus at one time or another. Come on, these people get paid peanuts - the likelihood that they actually give a shit about their job is next to nil.

But this guy was really great - and knew a lot about the products he was shoving through that little window all day! It wasn't a lot to ask, five minutes out of my day to give someone a kudos for doing a good job.

Just because my boss treats me worse than the stupid dog that shits all over his office is no reason I shouldn't make someone else's day a little brighter.

Right now, I'm going to have a glass of wine, watch a recorded episode of Rosemary & Thyme, and make my own day a little brighter.


Ciao!

Cracked or Going Deaf? You decide.

First thing that happened to me when I got to work today:

My boss screamed at me for sending out a package yesterday via "FredX" Ground, when he wanted it sent Overnight. Mind you, he never indicated how he wanted it sent. Furthermore, the VP stood at my desk yesterday and told me to send it Ground. Why did she tell me to send it Ground? Because I asked her how the package should be sent. It was yesterday afternoon, not three years ago. I remember it perfectly. And do you think VP stood up for me and owned that she told me to send it Ground? Right. She did not.

Last thing that happened to me before I left work today:

My manager, while going over a case file with me, found a document in the file that didn't belong there. It was from another case. She pulled it out, handed it to me, and said "Send Mr. X an email asking him if Mr. Y wants to spend the amount noted in this document." Then she went back to the case we had been reviewing.

I went back to my desk afterwards, and with the intention of getting the task done before I could forget about it, I sent the email to Mr. X as she had said to. And I even cc'd a copy to my manager so that she would see that I got it done in a timely fashion.

Just before I clocked out for the day, my manager called from her office, "This isn't what I had in mind!" I had no idea what she was talking about, so I stuck my head in with my eyebrows raised. She said, "I meant for you to write a letter to Mr. X, which I would then review.... now I am going to have to call him first thing tomorrow!".

Okay, peeps, I just have to say this. As far as I am aware, I have no hearing deficiencies. On the contrary, my hearing is quite sensitive and I often have to turn down the radio and TV because my acute sense of hearing can't take the blaring, squawking, or screaming. I can hear a mouse fart three miles away. Well, maybe two and a half, but that's still damn good hearing.

Another thing. I don't make shit up in my head at work, and then run around doing it. I would never have shipped a package, nor had a package to ship, unless someone had given it to me and told me what they wanted done with it. I would never have had the document in my hand, nor known what the hell to do with it, unless SOMEONE HAD PUT IT THERE AND TOLD ME WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

I mean, really. The only ways to avoid this situation entirely would be to:

• Carry a voice-activated tape recorder on my person at all times during the work day.
• Carry a notebook on which I write all verbal directives, then require that the person giving the directive put their initials next to the command.
• Insist that anyone wishing to give me a directive do so via email.

As anyone who has ever worked in a high-pressure work environment knows, the implementation of any one of those ideas would be met with a few other directives, namely to shove it up my ass, and go to hell. Possibly followed by the words, "Get out, you're fired."

And so - I am left to wonder how this keeps happening to me. Am I being set up? Am I really such a horrible employee that I cannot hear and follow the simplest of instructions? Am I really expected to read the minds of people who can't be bothered to tell me what the hell they want out of me? Am I so unhinged mentally that I cannot understand the English language nor follow a task from its inception to its completion?

WELL?!?!?!?

WE HAVE TENANTS!!!

PARTY NAKED!

AND INVITE
ANGELINA JOLIE!!

Excerpt from an email I received today

Support our troops!

Write to a soldier!

ANY SOLDIER

Never forget.

Whispers of success... and bulleted lists!

Even Angie is all choked up about this!

It is Wednesday - only two more days until Friday. I'm not looking forward to Friday for the same reason most people do. Yes, it's payday, and the beginning of the weekend, but...

ssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh - I've got a secret!

This past weekend, a young couple came to look at our vacant apartment. On Sunday night, they called to tell us they loved it and want to live there. (!!!) (!!) (!)

Then, on Monday night, they came by and put a binder on the place so that we wouldn't show it to anyone else until Friday!

Friday is the big day, peeps. The big effin DAY. They're coming over to sign the lease, and pay us the first month's rent and the security deposit.

DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THIS WILL MEAN?!?!?!?

DO YOU?!?!?!?

I am doing my level best not to do the following:

• Jump up and down and scream
• Face in the general direction of the poor house and blow loud raspberries
• Make rude hand gestures at my pathetic checkbook
• Count my chickens before the lease is signed

I have to say this effort is not an entire success. But this is why I am blogging about it. Not to gloat, no sirreebob.

I am blogging about it so that all of you {{{{{{{{Out There}}}}}}}}} (this includes all my established blogfriends, as well as those of you who were really searching for photos of Amy Winehouse shaking powdered crack on her spaghetti and meatballs but accidentally ended up on my blog) can cross all of your fingers and toes, and send out oodles and oodles of positive energy and prayers and excellent mojo and whatever else you've got that helps, in support of the following:

• That Friday actually arrives
• That this couple actually shows up at our house
• That they sign the lease
• That they live in the apartment (happily, quietly, cleanly, and debt-free) for the forseeable future

OK, got that?

GO!

Ingredients: Two bags of Funny As Shit...

... mixed with a spoonful of hilarity. Add ice, shake well, and serve to all your friends.

Ingredients: Two bags of Parody...

... and a full cup of humor. Add a dash of lookalike and whip until silly.

Ingredients: Two bags of Napoleon complex...

... add a hefty dose of brainwashing, sprinkle lightly with crazy, and stir.

Once upon a time... at Starbucks

Bear and I showered up, threw on jeans and tee shirts, and headed out to Starbucks. This is notable for several reasons, two of which are:

A) We are currently in dire financial straits, and therefore never venture out of the house if it means the possibility of spending money, and

B) We don't "do" designer anything, much less coffee

The reason we went was to meet up with an online, Zen-related acquaintance of Bear's, and it was an enjoyable encounter. And I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I didn't reeeeeally like the sinful concoction they call a Caramel Machiatto.

While we were sitting at the very tiny round table and talking, I let my eyes and my mind take little forays around the room, soaking in details about the people around us. Maybe it's my ex-cop brain still doing security duty, maybe it's just that I'm insufferably nosy. Maybe a little of both.

I took in the two women who sat at the next table over - one of them the size of a Sherman tank, determinedly perky in her bright red sweater and manically-gelled hair, the other very small and trim, wearing the middle-aged woman's "I've still got it" costume. Precisely faded jeans, high heeled leather boots, jacket that features a tying belt to show off the waistline.

I took in the tall, thin gay man with the combed back, collar length dyed-blond hair who alternated between reading his newspaper and looking around in glum disdain at the rest of us. He clearly wished this was a New York City Starbucks, which would, naturally, be filled with people as tragically hip as he.

I took in the gaggle of gangly girls fresh from the dance recital in black satin tights, black satin shorts, and Ugg boots. It was one of those moments that brought back fond memories of myself in a red sequined bodysuit, doing backbends and walk-overs as an "apple" in my dance class recital. It simultaneously made me extremely glad to be past all that, having finally reached a point in my life where I'm confident enough to leave the house without makeup, or with glasses on - sometimes *gasp* both.

But it was the lone girl that caught my attention. She was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, wearing jeans and a black turtleneck Polo shirt. She was slender enough not to have a tummy bulge, but had enough meat on her bones to make some curves. Her dark brown hair was what I call "weekend hair" - clean, but not coiffed, curled, or hair-sprayed. The whole casual look she was trying to pull off would have worked except that she gave it away with her makeup. Her face was as porcelainesque as a flight-attendant's. The color palette wasn't extreme, but you could see that she'd gone the whole nine yards. Her face had that oddly flawless look that comes from base makeup foundation with powder over the top. Her lips were lined with colored pencil and filled in with matching lipstick, and her eyes were loaded - liner, mascara, and shadow. All guns blazing.

She walked in, bought a coffee, and approached the seating area after we had already taken our seats. There was something oddly intense about the way she surveyed the entire seating area (and everyone in it) before choosing a spot. I could tell she wasn't just looking for an empty chair. There was an agenda.

After fifteen minutes or so, the magazine she had brought in with her lost its power to keep her attention. She kept looking up every time the door opened, and started leaning to look out the windows into the parking lot. I could feel the tension radiating from her, and I realized this was a scene straight from the 1940 Jimmy Stewart flick, "The Shop Around the Corner" (remade in 1998 as the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flick "You've Got Mail"). This girl had a date... and, what's more, he was late!

I began to worry for her a little as time ticked on, but he finally arrived - a nice-looking, stocky, slightly shorter-than-average guy with wavy black hair that had gone silver at the temples. Her smile was 100 watts the moment he walked in, and he looked sheepish and apologized for being late. I was wishing we were seated closer to their table so I could eavesdrop on their conversation a bit more, but I did manage to hear a few snippets of conversation.

He noticed that she had already bought her cup of coffee, thus foiling his first opportunity to be "man as provider". But hell, he was the one who showed up late, so he swallowed his pride and walked back up to the counter to buy his own coffee. I snuck a few peeks back at the girl, who had opened her magazine again and was doing a fair job of pretending to read it, while a half-hidden smile made a dimple in her cheek.

When he rejoined her at the table, I heard her say that she had just moved into the area, and then she said, "It's brave of you to come and meet someone like this, in a coffee shop." At this point, the gaggle of dancing girls drowned out the rest of what she said, but I got the impression that this was not only a first date, but a blind date - these two had probably met online, or through some other avenue, and I got the feeling that they had never actually seen each other before this moment.

I felt sort of privileged, being able to view this first encounter, being able to read their body language across the room, to vicariously feel the buzz of excitement they were experiencing - that heady mix of knowing that right now, for this split second, there was no commitment, no danger, they could walk away unscathed if it didn't work out, and also knowing that the possibility existed that this person was THE ONE.

As a fly on the wall, an unseen (or unnoticed, anyway) observer, I could see the nervous tics they each displayed - she chewed her lips while listening to him talk, he kept laughing at his own jokes. While I inwardly chuckled at their awkwardness, I mentally applauded their bravery. Neither of them were exactly youngsters. Each one of them had probably had their hearts broken before, and yet here they were, in a Starbucks coffee shop on January 19, 2008, going out on a limb and giving it another go.

I will never know the rest of their story. Even so, I'm glad I was there when the first line was written.

Beware the dreaded MAN COLD!

Got a Troop? Let's support 'em!

I am adding something to my blog, to hold the soldiers that are near and dear to my blog friends in our hearts.

If you know a soldier who is currently serving, send me their name (Pvt. Whatsis or Lance Corporal Whosis is fine - you don't have to send first names if you don't want to) and I will put them up on my side bar in a special "Support Our Troops" spot.

You can email the names to me at this address: clairefraser11@hotmail.com

And no, my name is not Claire Fraser. Claire Fraser is one of my favorite novel characters of all time - she lives in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.

Hope for military moms? I got yer hope right here.

My blogfriend Janet from Kittens on the Keyboard has just posted about her son going off on a military mission. She's worried about him. She says the following:

"But I'll tell you, I really don't want my child to have to kill someone, no matter how justified. I want him to do it if it means his life or the lives of those he serves with, don't get me wrong. But I don't want it to have to happen at all..."

Janet, I know the rest of your post was mostly about politicians and why they suck. I agree with you. But about your son, and about his military experience - I just wanted to tell you that no matter what form his military service takes, it can be one of the most important experiences of his life.

I know this. I married a combat soldier. He took all of his military experiences - the good, the bad, and the stuff he wishes he didn't remember - and let them forge him into the complex and wonderful person he is today.

I don't know another man on earth who is as tender and compassionate as he is, and yet I pity the person who would raise a hand to harm me or anyone he cares about.
If a good time is to be had, he's there with bells on - but when the shit hits the fan, he doesn't panic or take off for the high ground. He digs in and starts planning a way out.
He is the best partner anyone could ever ask for.

Never having had children, I can't begin to fathom the fears that must pull at you when you think of your son being overseas in a military capacity. I wouldn't even try to tell you not to worry for his safety - you are going to do that no matter what anyone says.

But when you think about his service to our country, please also think about the pride, the honor, the team membership, the leadership training, the bonding with people of other nations and beliefs (our troops are there for this reason as well - something a lot of people don't know), all of which give strength and direction to a soldier's life. He will be pushed to his very limits, and he will learn that he can do more and reach farther than he ever thought he could.

When he comes home, he will be a different man. Even if he does not see live combat or fire a single bullet, he will not be the little boy you remember. Regardless of your feelings about the war or the politicians that controlled it, he will still need you to love him - no matter what -every bit as much as that little boy did.

Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession. I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor and high "esprit de corps" of my Ranger Regiment.

Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air. I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.

Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be. One hundred percent and then some

Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.

Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.

Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

A cuppa memory

I've always been fascinated with watching people do things. Not necessarily big, important things like building skyscrapers. The things which interest me most are the small, personal things. Watching someone do something that is part of their everyday life gives me insight into how they think, and what sort of person they are. Watching someone that I love (like Bear) do something (like shaving) also gives me the reassuring feeling that I am part of their life - that I am privy to their little everyday routines, things that no one else in the world shares.

One of my earliest memories of intent watching involves the contraption pictured above. Every weekday morning, my mother would come upstairs and wake my sister and I for school. She'd oversee our getting dressed, she'd brush and braid our hair, and then we'd troop off downstairs for breakfast.

My mom is a woman of few vices. She doesn't drink, swear, or buy things online. But she has always allowed herself one daily indulgence - coffee. I remember standing on tiptoe and leaning my torso across the counter that separated our kitchen from the dining room, watching her prepare her morning cuppa.

She'd put a small amount of water to boil on the stove. Then she'd get her favorite mug, plop this weird little black plastic doodad on top of it, and line it with a cone-shaped paper filter. In went a few spoonfuls of ground coffee (Mom likes her coffee stronger than Chuck Norris). By this time the water was boiling away happily.

With a jeweler's precision, she'd hold the steaming pot about an inch above the loaded coffee filter. Tilting it infinitesimally, she allowed a small stream of water to pour down into the center of the cone. Then she artfully moved so that the stream of water caressed the sides of the filter, just an eighth of an inch from the top edge. This insured that all the ground coffee got wet - that all the dark, caffeiney goodness was properly and completely transferred to the waiting vessel below.

At first, the water would pass through the filter quickly - but as the coffee grounds got soggy and settled to the bottom of the filter, the flow slowed up considerably. This is where things got exciting - this is where Mom started living on the edge.

With coffee grounds now bogged down into the point of the paper cone, a froth of bubbles would rise to the top of the water, which now rose steadily upward, upward, to all appearances heading for an overflow. And would Mom stop pouring? No, she would not.

She kept pouring, making the stream of water thinner and finer, a master artiste of hydrocontrol. Those coffee grounds that dared cling to the sides of the filter didn't have a chance in hell. They were washed back down toward the center with unerring accuracy. I would catch my breath, heart pounding, leaning across the counter, sometimes even squealing "It's going to spill over!" And somehow, no matter how close to the filter edge the water came, she never stopped pouring until the mug was exactly full enough. And somehow, she never told me to shut up while she was trying to pour boiling water.

In my memory, it never ran over. Now that I am grown, have my own kitchen, my own favorite mug, my own black plastic coffee contraption, and my own paper cones, I attempt to perfect the art of the seamless, spill-free pour. Like life, it's not as easy as she made it look.

And now, for something completely different...

Before I drop this on you, peeps, I just want to stick a little note of my own in.

I, like millions of others, came to know of the actor Alastair Sim through the movie "A Christmas Carol", in which he captured the perfect essence of the character of Scrooge, both before and after his life-changing transformation.

I'm typically unsatisfied with leaving things as they are. I like to take things to extremes and go digging around trying to find out about the lives of the actors I admire, no matter the era. While looking for Alastair Sim trivia, I came across this speech, written and given by the man himself in 1948, to the Edinburgh University, where he started out as Fulton Lecturer in Elocution, and ended up as Rector.

This is his Rectorial Address - and I will tell you, it's wordy. But trust me on this. If you will turn off your cell phone and turn off the radio and turn off the television and actually read this speech, you will find serious gems of wisdom, as well as things that will make you laugh. This speech is not only a window into the sharp, witty mind of Alastair Sim, but a mirror that he holds up to each of us.

What you see in his words will tell you something about yourself.

THE 1948 EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
RECTORIAL ADDRESS
BY ALASTAIR SIM

Forgive me if I begin this Address on a somewhat nostalgic note.

At this moment I am thinking of happy carefree days - no not here in Edinburgh, but in London, only a few short months ago, when I had nothing to do but play all day, and far into the night.
It is certain that I had no thought of having to do anything at all difficult, least of all of having to make a considerable speech to a gathering of learned and scholarly minds, however tolerant and kindly disposed.

There was I, quietly living my own obscure and sheltered life, doing no one any harm, minding my own business, happily cultivating my own garden (I speak metaphorically). Then suddenly I am lifted up and spirited back into a world of studious concentration from which I thought I had escaped for ever.

I don't pretend to understand it, but somehow I feel that it is all very significant. Certainly in having been gracious to a mere mummer, you have, at one stroke, dispersed the snobbishness of two worlds. By that I do not mean merely that Athens has embraced Bohemia . Between ourselves, I am not a very typical Bohemian. No, you have done more daringly than that. The scholar has honoured the truant. The Cap-and-Gown has exalted the Cap-and-Bells.
I can only hope that your example will be followed, and developed, in other and wider fields. Who knows? Perhaps we may yet hear that Congress has been invited by Moscow to receive the Freedom of the City.

Now I can well imagine that those of you who have been mainly responsible for setting me in this exalted position are sitting now, in ever-growing trepidation, as to the outcome of your action. If it is any comfort to you, I know exactly how you feel. I have walked hand-in-hand with the father and mother of trepidation for the past six months. In fact there is probably no word in the language that I comprehend more fully, or savour the significance of more completely, than this word Trepidation . I might almost have made its analysis the basis of this Rectorial Address, since words have always fascinated me, either by their sound, or by their power, or (at a much later date) by their sense.

But although there are hosts of words that one could talk about, I do not wish to show preference for any particular one, seeing that I have earned my living at the expense of so many - all of them fortunately arranged and ordered by brains far cleverer than mine. I only had to learn them by heart, try to understand them, and then speak them well enough to be allowed to go on speaking more.

No, I am going to talk about words in general. Not the utility words of everyday practical affairs, but those abstract words which so subtly affect and distort human relationship. And I am doing this not so much for anyone else's sake as for my own.

Such words have been an endless source of worry and anxiety to me. I have cared for, tended, and tried to love them as much as any hired nanny has ever cared for other people's wayward children. But, like many a nanny, I have never really understood them. At least, only a few. Those few I have grown to love and trust - but the others I distrust. No doubt they have winning ways and there is a certain amount of good in them, but they are too easily led and they keep getting into bad company.

Before I unburden my troubles upon you I had better tell you something of how I came to be in this pitiable state.

As you know. I have gained some little notoriety in the world of shadow and illusion, and far-too-large-sized photographs. But you also know, as well as I do, that public eminence in any department of communal life is of a very suspect quality, perhaps most of all in the theatrical world, where egocentricity and self-exploitation are not entirely unknown.
Let it be confessed that in varying degrees these qualities can be positive assets to an actor. After all he is unlikely to convince his audience that he is the very devil of a fellow unless he is -well, a quarter convinced himself.

Of course this is only a little trick of self-hypnosis which every actor acquires from the day he first sets out in search of "the bubble reputation," even in the camera's mouth.

Now far be it from me to set myself up as being more self-effacing than the general run of my fellow-artistes. Perhaps the word "artistes" is an euphemism, but I beg you to let it pass. We are all rather partial to that word in our states of self-hypnosis. I admit that even to this day I enjoy being called an artiste, and if anyone likes to qualify it with some such adjective as "great," "incomparable," "superb," then you can rely on me to finish the ritual by reacting with becoming modesty. But I shall know it is all nonsense and just another example of the waywardness of words.

So much for my profession.

Although tempted, I shall spare you any extensive sentimentalising over my early life here in Edinburgh . However highly painted we imagine them to have been, most early lives are pretty dull except to those who are actually living them.

I don't know whether I was a typical young man or not. I certainly thought I was exceptional in some indefinable way, apparently beyond the perception of those who knew me, and I was mostly concerned with planning and replanning my own particular success story. This took only the most nebulous of forms, but I know that my aim was to combine the minimum of work with the maximum of authority. I was just as bold as I dared to be in the company of my fellows and just as bright as their fierce competition allowed. I was naturally much bolder and much brighter in the select company of my own imagining.

Unfortunately, proud as I was of my imagination, I know now that it was lamentably subjective, and so I passed my youth uninspired by any sense of awe. Which was a very great pity. Because without that sense there can be no inspiration.

So much for my wasted youth.

The next phase was climactic and decisive.

As I was approaching the ripe age of twenty-five, and looking a little older than I do now I came to the amazing conclusion that my true vocation was teaching I had already been ensnared by the bright ring of words. I thought I understood a message in them, and I wished that all should hear. You will note that I meant well. You may also note a total absence of any sense of the ludicrous. So I taught, I Judged, I assessed - with passion and enthusiasm - and indulged to the full my fancied flair for helpful and constructive criticism.

Mark you, I did no great harm. I may even have done some good, since I know now what I did not know then - that a bad example is sometimes more informative than a good one. I can only trust that I unwittingly served my erstwhile students as a warning rather than as a model.
I continued in this blithe folly for some years, but at last the gods relented, and, moving in their mysterious ways, proceeded to instruct me through a series of rude shocks.

The first happened when a student came to me with a slight hesitancy in his speech. Nothing at all to worry about. In fact it was rather attractive.

But he wanted to get rid of it, and as it was scarcely noticeable I had no doubt at all that I knew the cause and could cure him.

First I taught him how to breathe. Yes, I taught him how to breathe.

He had been breathing quite happily and without apparent effort for twenty odd years, but I put a stop to all that. Next I outlined the principles of voice production, with the help of a pig's larynx which I kept by me, pickled in alcohol, presumably to add excitement to the subject.

We certainly got excited. We loosened our collars. I went on to demonstrate the mechanism of enunciation. I showed him exactly what his tongue and his soft palate ought to be doing when he articulated correctly, and the awful things they were liable to do if he didn't. We stood making horrible faces at each other, and exchanging short fusilades of weird-sounding vocal noises.

The strain became considerable and the atmosphere electric. So we removed our coats and rested. As I was remarking that it was "am-m-mazingly m-m-mild for the time of year," I became conscious that I had somehow acquired my pupil's impediment, while he-well, he, apparently, was unable to utter a sound. From then on he only nodded or shook his head to anything I said. At any rate he went away without a trace of a stammer-just breathing-a little irregularly.

I am relieved to say that the gentleman in question soon recovered the charming hesitancy in his talk, and has no intention of parting with it ever again.

This was the first shock to my confidence, and it left me with the beginnings of a conscience, the beginnings of doubt. I was at last formally introduced to humility.

But I was a slow learner, and I can well believe that I diverted a lot of talent, and perhaps nipped an odd genius or two well and truly in the bud, before my confidence was blessedly shattered.

Fittingly enough my greatest humiliation came at the hands of little children.

I was very fond of children. I still am fond of children-in a way. A sort of non-committal way. For instance, I like to wave to them-from a suitable distance. I also imagined that I understood the child mind, and that I knew what would please it. So I tried my hand at a children's theatre, here, in Edinburgh.

What a field of constructive work was here, I thought! The unformed, the uninhibited minds of children would prove to be rewarding soil for my enthusiasm.

I was determined that it should be no namby-pamby affair, this children's theatre of mine, nor too goody-goody either, or wishy-washy, or airy-fairy. Please don't suppose that I was out to demonstrate that "might is right," or that "crime always pays," or anything of that sort. I simply wanted to eschew aphoristic moralising. It was to be a grand, rollicking, rumbustious, and thrilling entertainment. Excellent! I see no reason to alter these views of what a children's theatre ought to provide.

Everything went smoothly and gaily and according to plan, until I myself made an appearance on the stage. I think it was as the Erl King, but I may have been an ogre; I have tried to forget. I know I expected gales of laughter, possibly swelling to a cheer. Instead, there was a sudden deathly hush. Then thin, isolated wails of misery came from the body of the hall. These grew, and spread, and I was aware of a stampede of mothers leaving the hall with their unhappy offspring, between angry mutterings and reproachful backward looks.

This incident was a revelation to me. It revealed with conclusive certainty that I was a fool, and that I had always been a fool and was likely to remain a fool, and I went home and prayed that I might know it and never forget it.

I felt then what I imagine to be the ineffable relief of graduation. I was a qualified fool.

Since then I have been as happy as any man has a right to be.

But when you are happy your greatest need is that others should be happy too. And it occurred to me that there might possibly be a sufficiency of others with afflictions similar to my own whom I might help. (Even in my new-found humility I hardly dared to think I was unique.). Also there might easily be untold numbers who, while rejoicing in their clear-sightedness, may have failed to find laughter through the inward eye.

Here, then, was a life work and a pleasant one. Could I play the fool and know that I was one? Could I wring laughter even from throats unused to laugh? That is the fool's peak of achievement. In fact, if he can do this more or less consistently he may, without any great loss of self-respect, allow himself to be supported by the community. But, above all, he must see the folly in himself before lie holds up the mirror to his fellows.

I have told you that I found happiness, and no doubt you will be justified in thinking I found it in a fool's paradise.

That may well be. Also it may well not be. For here we are back again among the wayward words that are always slipping off into different meanings for different people -words that in the wrong company become little better than verbal gangsters. It is possible that unqualified fools live in a paradise of their own making, but the true fool knows only a benign purgatory.

Come now for a moment into this fool's purgatory and see what we see and hear what we hear. It is pre-eminently a bedlam of words. Words are our obsession. The eternal struggle to make sense of them, to force them to communicate truth. The counter-struggle to understand their meaning, and the meaning of the meaning, and finally to explain it. The result of all this is increasingly pathetic, and increasingly funny.

When we pause for breath we vaguely sense the true meaning of a few simple words like "kindness," "pity," "affection," "friendship," "trust," words which we believe mean approximately the same things to all people; and it is a strange and significant fact that as we ponder on these words our sense of humour returns, and we long to indulge our greatest gift, the gift of laughter, happy laughter, without any trace of hysteria.

So we laugh. We laugh at our own folly, at the folly of each other, and at the folly of absent friends. We laugh at our seriousness, our rights and our wrongs, our airs and graces, our piety, our wickedness. We come near to laughing at our fears.

But not quite. For whichever way we look at it we come to the regretful conclusion that fear is just not a laughing matter. So we fools decide to ostracise fear, ignore it, pretend it isn't there, and get back to the laughter that had such a right note to it - that united us all in tolerance and sympathy. And we determine to enjoy the simple life, and leave complications to those who have a mind for them.

But our resolve is short-lived. The simple-seeming words, which pointed the way to our communal happiness, begin to make demands of us. Of us, mark you - not of other people! And such demands! First they invite us to meet their poor relations, and present to our notice their unhappy opposites. Painful, embarrassing, fear-haunted words. And we had decided to blackball fear. Life, in accordance with the simple words, is not proving quite so easy-going as we thought. They begin to teach us more than we wish to be taught, and we begin to be nervous of comprehending too much. They point out, reasonably enough, that it is not for us to blackball anything, that if we would praise life we must praise all of it, the light and the dark. They explain patiently, but with insistence, that we cannot even begin to appreciate the light until we journey through the dark - and when they say "dark " they don't mean the romantic gloaming or the sentimental dusk. They mean the dark.

Soon, to our dismay, these naively tyrannical words are calmly asking for a degree of courage, sacrifice, altruism, and faith that would leave us no time at all for pleasure, offering instead a purely hypothetical and rarified happiness.

Small wonder, then, that we cut short "the initiatory spasm " and rush to take refuge again with the crowd, neglect friends for acquaintances, think again with a group mind, and quickly seek the company of inferiors in order to feel superior.

Soon we are revelling as before, in various degrees of hysteria, in an avalanche of fine-sounding but misused and misdirected words! Slave words; but slaves decked out to look important in grand uniforms and tall hats. Words coined originally by sages and seers, to serve and help our understanding of the simple ones such as I have mentioned. But the servants have somehow broken loose, and have been hailed as masters and dictators on their own account. Words like "freedom," "duty," "patriotism," "success," "failure." and all the rest, to name but a few mildly inflammatory specimens. Words which elude all efforts at exact analysis, which may mean anything, everything, or nothing according to whether they serve with discretion or rule in chaos.
But for the most part they rule - and with an emotional tyranny almost beyond belief. We hear daily expressions of honest opinion among small groups of sensible people, which if voiced publicly or quoted in headlines, or so much as hinted at in the schoolroom, would let loose a torrent of vituperation and trouble out of all proportion to the face value of the words used; or, for that matter, out of all proportion to the face value of any individual's opinion not backed by a lengthy and reasoned justification. Yet all the righteous fury of umbrage and outrage would unite to persuade us that a sanctified taboo had been desecrated, some neurotic little idol would be mortally offended, and would scream its silly head off for sacrificial appeasement.

Now we fools are not concerned with the rights and wrongs of a case, but we are appalled at the enormous power words seem to have for creating harm, without anything like a corresponding power for creating good. And that in spite of the fact that the great writers, poets, thinkers, and philosophers of all ages have laboured magnificently to make words ring for honesty and truth. But how few have listened! And how many find words easily palatable if presented with resounding power but little meaning, or with persuasion and charm but no intellectual conviction - like quack lozenges to stimulate or alleviate fear, as expediency dictates.

Now it may sound ridiculous to some of you to hear a confessed fool talking glibly about thinkers and philosophers and intellectual conviction as if he knew the first thing about any of them. But it might not be as ridiculous as it sounds.

Allow me, as one with inside information on the subject, to help clarify the picture of an average, qualified, and fairly competent fool.

I say qualified advisedly, to distinguish him from the unqualified variety, the ones who are not yet aware that they are fools. Alas! they are ubiquitous, and though their case may not be serious while they are young they become increasingly dangerous as they grow older. They become drugged with the wrong words, the false analogy, the quotation out of context, until bemused and often passionately vehement, they serve as the dupes and stepping-stones of personal ambition and misguided mission.

Unhappy in himself, the unqualified fool is infuriated by the capacity for happiness in his qualified brother, whom naturally he has a word for - " irresponsibility." But let him not lose heart. So long as he is basically a fool, and does not acquire isolated cleverness on his own account, he is not beyond redemption. He may yet know happiness. He may yet love and be loved. Anyway, his despised kinsman will joyfully assist in any stratagem to turn his gaze towards the magic mirror.
Now the authentic qualified fool is simply one who has recognised the inadequacy of verbal communication among human beings on any but the simplest terms, and the fact that words, for the most part, are used as an anodyne for the pain of thinking.

For do not suppose for a moment that a genuine fool never thinks. Oh dear yes. He suffers agonies of thinking. Thinking is his vice. His intellect has been impaired through thinking. It is concentration which he lacks. His thinking is centrifugal - it flies off at tangents as it discovers ever new joys and enchantments in the simple things which have the simple names. And so he never gets beyond the simple things. Later he is glad he never tried to get beyond them. And when he learns that certain famous fools of old were actually pounded to death in giant mortars merely for saying something that was a bit too witty - a bit too simple - he becomes aware of unsuspected dangers all around him. Is it words that are the danger? Or is it men? Or is it the simple truth? Or is it fear? Fear of the simple truth? The fear that stirs up the illusory frenzy of self-defence. If the fool thinks long enough and hard enough he arrives at a somewhat involved postulation which, I imagine, might be something like this: That in simple things lies everything that amounts to anything, notwithstanding the fact that all around the simple things there is a complicated something, amounting to little or nothing, but very, very dangerous.

From which he concludes that it is fine to be clever, better to be good, and to be both is asking for trouble.

At this point he remembers, perhaps with relief, that he is only an average competent fool, that greatness or martyrdom are not for him, so he settles down to earn his living as honestly and happily as he knows how. He continues to mock at much that is impressive and seemingly important, but never at honesty, or pain, or fear, or kindly love. In this way he serves as the crossing sweeper for the sage, the philosopher, and the exceptionally sensible person. He clears away a little of the debris in their path. Very, very little, I am afraid, for I should have mentioned that the true fool never makes the mistake of mocking anything he does not quite understand, and as that is practically everything his contribution to progress is slight. And because it is so slight he is accepted even by the enemies of wisdom in a spirit of amused tolerance, and hardly ever does he have to be murdered.

Now there is something rather incongruous and foolish about my having to use so many untrustworthy words in order to express my anxiety over their untrustworthiness.

If only we had been living in a telepathic age there would have been no need for a wordy Address. I should simply have stood here and sent out a succession of thought-waves loaded with gratitude, affection, and wishes for your happiness which, while they might have excited your sympathetic concern for my mental limitations, would not, I think, have displeased you because of their clear intensity. I should have sent no wishes for "prosperity" or "success" as, in a telepathic age, these would long have been spurned as containing no thought-content whatsoever.

We should then have conversed for a while by "thought-transference" or whatever the new communicative method might be called, and I have little doubt that instead of delivering an Address I should have been the receiver of a most instructive one from your multiloquent transmissions. No word need have been spoken, though the occasion would not necessarily have been silent. In fact I think it would have been blessed with a rewarding hilarity which I, being a fool, would in no way have discouraged.

Attracted as I am by sportive speculation on the coming of a telepathic age, I am still more attracted by the evolutionary prospects implied.

In the transitionary period it would be highly interesting to compare what a public speaker was saying with what we knew he was thinking. Words constantly subjected to such a test would soon find honest masters, would soon serve mutual understanding.

Meanwhile in the absence of any Paranormal Faculty at this or at any of our Universities, I can only haver and hope. I hope that your futures will be endowed with all that a qualified fool most envies, admires, and sadly lacks in the way of scholarship and learning. But I would like you to grow in wisdom as in knowledge, and I would like to feel you shared with me a degree of doubt over much that is accepted, a tendency to question, even when you are told the answer.

Students of Edinburgh, you have made me extraordinarily happy. I have addressed a profusion of words to you, and whether they have made sense or nonsense I am not at all sure one way or the other, but they were the best I had to offer. However that may be, my happiness is the greater for being sure of this: that there is one gift which we do share, and shall always share - the gift of laughter.

When I'm down and out, I just lift up my head and shout:

JULIA ORMOND IS 43!!!

(Well, maybe not in all of these pictures, but still....)

Overheard in the grocery store today:

(A very young boy, to his even younger brother)

"STOP IT! You're just doing that so I'll hit you and you can get mad!"

Imagine that! At such a young age, he's already mastered reverse psychology. Maybe there is hope for the future, after all.

Nah, he'll probably get gunned down by a fellow student at college.

We're doomed.

Who DOES this? I mean, really!

I'm pretty easy-going at work. By this I mean:

• I put up with an ugly-ass, brainless dog taking endless bathroom breaks on the carpet in my work area.
  
• I put up with having to do three people's jobs (for no extra pay) when the boss pisses the new-hires off and they quit before they've finished out their first week. All this, and I don't even get a gaddam Christmas bonus.
  
• I put up with training (and fingerprinting) all the new-hires-but-soon-to-be-ex-employees every time a new sucker gets reeled in. Over, and over, and over....
• I put up with the bi-polar office temperature. One day, it's Ecuador. The next, it's Juno.
  

And I'm OK with that. Sort of.

But you know what really burns my biscuit? I'll tell you what. People who work in a cubicled environment (read: if one person farts, the entire office knows who it was even before the miasma has passed the person's ass-crack) that are too fucking lazy to PICK UP THE DAMN HANDSET OFF THE CRADLE WHEN MAKING A PHONE CALL!

Come on, Inconsiderate Office Worker - how many brain cells does it take to figure out that nobody else in the office wants to hear you talk in the first place, nevermind talk to someone else on the phone? That nobody cares who you're calling, or why, and nobody wants to listen to the hold muzak when the person you're calling is making you wait?

Just because you're pissed off at having to make stupid phone calls during the day is no reason to make the rest of us suffer. Part of my job is to call our seven satellite offices to check the answering machines for messages every morning. Yes, it's a stupid task, and yes, I dislike doing it. Yet I would never even consider using the speaker phone. I am not so all-important that I need to make use of the speaker phone feature to make calls while I simultaneously use my hands to type out the magic formula to the cure for cancer on my computer keyboard. And I have news for you, Inconsiderate Office Worker - NEITHER ARE YOU.

In my experience, the only people who have used the speaker phone method of placing calls are:

A: Asshole bosses who not only want to display their utter lack of concern for your ability to concentrate on your work, they want you to lose concentration so that they can ream you for any mistakes you made later!

B: Co-workers who are so lazy that making a phone call constitutes such an excessive outlay of energy that they cannot even consider picking up the handset, much less the peace and quiet of people who are trying to stay with a train of thought until it pulls into the station.

What's more, it will never occur to these assholes to shut their office door (if they are lucky enough to have one), or to turn the volume on the phone down to a level at which only they can hear it. Nope, they crank 'er up to full blast, so that the sounds coming through the phone are distorted and crackling - and then they bellow at the phone, making the whole process a freak-show, instead of the phone call it was supposed to be.

I'm pretty sure that the whole idea of the speaker phone was not intended to give lazy-ass people another venue for their inconsiderate behavior. I'm thinking it was probably introduced so that a room full of people (in an important meeting, say) could hear and converse with a client overseas. Or so that a family could call their son or daughter in military service, and all sing "Happy Birthday" to him/her at the same time. Or so that people could have private phone conversations about the caller having the clap while letting their current girlfriend listen in undetected. Things like that.

The time Madonna got inside my head

Everyone with a memory sharp enough to recall when MTV used to actually play music videos (and artists used to put real effort into making their videos) has favorites.

Some are favorites because you can get up in your living room and lip sync while mimicking the moves (best example: Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"), or because the concept of the video was so different for its time that it was intriguing then and remained so for all time (example: anything by Peter Gabriel).

However, on rare occasions there was this overwhelming feeling of melting into a video, as if the music, the lyrics, the artist, and the visual landscape were ingredients of a magic potion which had been perfectly measured. The proof of this is that each time the video is seen, it evokes the same euphoric result.

For me, it was this one:



There is so much symbolism in this video that resonates with me. The three of her, maiden, mother, and crone. The sentiment of the words themselves. The ravens, and the Doberman (my soul-dog, if such a thing exists). The perfect blackness of everything.

It's as if the crazy radio in Madonna's head picked up my frequency, if only for a little while.

Whatever happened to...

Way back in the 1980's, there was this great show called "thirtysomething", made all the cooler (somehow) by its disregard for capitalization.

This show had everything - love, angst, corporate wangling, betrayal, loyalty, tears, and people that occasionally asked each other why the hell did they have kids, anyway?

And the main question on my mind has been - when the hell is the complete boxed set coming out on DVD anyway? So I did what anyone with half a brain cell would do - I googled it!

I came up with posts on all the major entertainment websites (amazon, borders, etc.) crying along with me about how sad it is that the series had never been released on DVD. But there was a website highlighted across the top of the screen whose highlighted link read "THIRTYSOMETHING - COMPLETE COLLECTION ON DVD!"

I clicked, and the site in question turned out to be one called "dvddonkey.com". The site looks like a complete scam, so I googled it, and sure enough - a BILLION people have written in complaints about this company charging their credit card and never sending the items, or sending discs in plain manilla envelopes with no bubble wrap so the merchandise is destroyed by the time it reaches the buyer, or that the discs arrived intact but they were bootleg garbage that was completely unwatchable.

So, if any of you out there have been trying to find thirtysomething on dvd - stay away from the asshats at donkey. And join with me in the fight to get the series released legally!

COME ON, YOU EIGHTIES FREAKS, I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE!!!

2008: Welcome, welcome, davu damus!

Last night, Bear had his yearly bartending job at the local catering hall. I text messaged him my well wishes for a profitable evening. Then I made a huge bowl of popcorn and a whiskey sour, and settled onto the couch. I had in my lap my latest crochet project plus a cat or two, and we welcomed in the New Year with my yearly date, the warm, friendly, ever-impeccable Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. This year the films du jour were back-to-back Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. Oh la la!

Bear came home at around 2AM, and we counted the kitty, which was nice and fat. A good kick-start for the new year. While I don't "do" new year's resolutions, I do have some thoughts about 2007 vs. 2008.

This is Chuck Norris before 2007

This is Chuck Norris after 2007

Egad.

Things I learned in 2007:

* When your husband is your best friend, even the tough times are good. Going through hardships with someone you love by your side is like forging a sword - it may be hot as hell, and you might get banged around a lot, but it just makes you stronger.

* Sometimes you have to put aside your pride, ask for help, and be able to accept it gracefully. The thing is, if we are willing to help when help is asked of us, and we are willing to accept help when we need it, then we find out what really makes the world go 'round.

* Death is always a surprise, even if it's "expected". There are things you feel when someone dies that you couldn't possibly foresee. My uncle was disabled for his entire life, and suffered more than any one person I have ever known. When he died, I actually felt relief. Sadness for my grandmother and my mom, but relief for him. And the death of a pet can be as painful as the death of a person, because they are just as much a part of our lives. Somehow, perhaps because of their inability to express themselves in words, they become as intricately woven into our souls as the people we know and love.

* Sometimes thinking outside the box is more beneficial than all the tried and true methods in the world put together.

* "It's A Wonderful Life" not only gets better every year, but hits especially close to the heart during years like 2007.

* Actually enjoying the work you do makes it a lot easier to put up with the inter-office quirks that every job has. Even inter-office quirks like dog shit.

* Good friends show their true colors when your life is at its suckiest - they come through in all sorts of ways, helping not only physically and financially, but in a million small spiritual ways that let you know you're not alone.



Things I hope for 2008:

* Great tenants for the downstairs apartment, who want to live there for a long time.

* A truly wonderful garden this year, and the ability to get my hands in the dirt and work it.

* That my grandmother comes to live with my mom, or my eldest aunt. She is currently living with my mother's younger sister, who is evil and mean, and I fear she just wants my grandmother out of the way, however she can achieve it.

* That Bear and I continue to enjoy the magical closeness and loving happiness at being together that makes every day better than the last.

* That Bear and I, as well as all of you, my blog friends, experience a new energy, follow new dreams, and discover wonderful new things about ourselves and the world we live in that we never knew before.

The best life is never boring!

Bring it on.