MG's Verbal Shock Therapy

JOURNAL ENTRY

MG's Verbal Shock Therapy
..[two ladies are talking about something gossipy]
..MG walks up to them
MG: y'know, I could really go for a soda pop!

-----------------------------

a customer kept calling MG asking sales related questions that a sales rep should have been handling. Instead of politely asking the customer to call the sales rep for those sorts of questions, MG exasperatedly ("I'm at my wits end!") gets her manager involved so her manager can get our boss involved so our boss can get the sales rep involved telling the sales rep to call the customer to tell them that the customer should call the sales rep the next time. the "he" to follow is the customer.

MG: he's on me like flies on pot roast!
..[I see her in peripheral vision looking around for someone to laugh at her "joke"]
MG: hee hee heee!!! like flies on .. HA!! like flies on pot roast!!
..[no one acknowledges what she's said]
MG: heee hee heee...!
..[pause]
MG: well I thought it was funny

--------------------------------------

..[two ladies talking to eachother, MG walks up to them]
MG: hey DD, do you ever get sausage fingers?
dd: ....sausage fingers?
MG: yeah, you know.. like when..
dd: I dont know, no
MG: you know, when it's really humid out and your fingers feel all fat, I call 'em sausage fingers
dd: ohhhh
MG: yeah, now I just need some eggs and hash browns to go with it! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
dd: ....cant say I ever get sausage fingers
MG: hey MC, you ever get sausage fingers?!
mc: nah, but I had a heck of a time buttoning up my shirt this morning, I dont know what it was, I guess I was just really tired.
MG: sounds like you had sausage fingers
mc: yeah, maybe. I just couldn't wake up this morning.
MG: hey, MC, what train do you take to get here?
mc: the 1 normally but today I took the
MG: oh, I see
..[pause]
mc: ...but I took the 7 to Penn Station 'cause of some congestion of trains somewhere
MG: oh my friend said she saw some Arab jump a turnstyle and the cops chased him
mc: oh ya?
MG: yeah, I dont know what that was about.

----------------------

MG: hee hee hee!! like flies on a pot roast!!
..[pause]
MG: hee HEE!! HEE!!! like flies on a pot roast!

----------------------

MG: hey DC, wanna get some [makes stupid chicken clucking sounds]
..[in my mind, I see DC's eyes roll]
..[silence]
MG: I guess that's a 'no'.

-----------------------

dd: no, I'm sick! ...and I think Kory's the host..!
me: what? no! "I dont get sick" (my personal 4-word-shield-against-sickness)
dd: no, I know.. you're the host, you brought it in!
me: HA! you're probably ri--
--[interrupting]
MG: Oh my god, do you know who I ran into on the bus today??!
..[pause]
MG: this guy, he works at channel 11. it was sooo interesting!
..[pause]
MG: yeah, he had all these stories.. working at a tv station, just so interes..
dd: oh yeah? some bus flirtations, eh?
MG: no, it wasn't like that. we just started talking. I told him my knee wasn't hurting so bad today and the weather.. we talked about. And then he was telling me all these things about working at a tv station. sooo interesting!

POST-SCRIPT: $10 to the first person who correctly identifies MG's brand of neuroses. $15 to the person who cures her.

MG - Comedienne Extraordinaire

BLOG ENTRY

MG - Comedienne Extraordinaire

Well.. you asked for it. Or.. I'm pretending you asked for it: A compendium of inanity, an accounting of pedantry, a syllabus of the supercilious.. ok, that last one was a stretch. How about just "Stupid Sh!t A Certain Someone In My Office Says"..? No? ok, I'll keep working on a title.
--
MG: dd, I meant to ask you... are you french?
dd: oh, you mean my last name, yes, it's french.
MG: Oh, I was wondering
dd: yeah, my husband is Haitian
MG: oh, it's french... then you must like Au Bon Pain, Ha ha ha ha ha.
..[silence]

----------------------------------

MG: did you see the Martha Stewart movie last night?
mn: no
..[pause]
mn: oh, DD did you see Desperate Housewives last night?
..[MG answers even though DD was addressed]
MG: no, you know,.. is that show good?
..[mn frustrated by conversation hijacking by MG]
mn: yeah, it's good
MG: yeah, I really feel I should watch it 'cause it gets such good ratings!
mn: yeah, it's really good.
MG: huh, interesting. I would have watched it but I was watching that other movie.
mn: other movie?
MG: yeah, the Martha Stewart movie..
..[pause]
MG: I think I'll watch that Desperate Housewives... was that like... the last .. episode?
mn: huh?
MG: are there more of them, or was that it? is it on ... every week like?
mn: yeah, every Sunday
MG: oh, ok. so.. yeah, maybe I'll watch that then. I would have watched it last night but the Martha Stewart movie was on.

----------------------------------

dd: what do you have over there, DC?
DC: I've got Raisinettes, you want some?
dd: ooh, I like Raisinettes
..[pause]
dd: but do you have Goobers?
DC: no, no Goobers, I dont like those so much
..[pause]
..[pause]
MG: what, have you been watching too much Andy Griffith?

sadly... so so sadly.. i got her joke. (<--- #12) ....making it all the more painfully un-funny.

----------------------------------
today...

MG: why do we keep getting all these hurricanes?
..[no one answers her]

----------------------------------
yesterday...

MG: why do we keep getting all these hurricanes?
..[no one answers her]

----------------------------------
day before yesterday...

MG: why do we keep getting all these hurricanes?
..[no one answers her]

----------------------------------
..the set up: in the telecom world, there are circuits called "hoot and holler's" - dont ask why, like most things in telecom, it's not important or interesting why they're called that.

MG: so.. DD, I was going to ask you...
..[pause]
dd: ..... ...yeah?
MG: yeah, I was going to ask you, do you give a ..hoot... about your hoot and holler circuits?
..[pause]
..[pause]
..[collective office cringe]
..[pause]
dd: no

----------------------------------

MG: oh, what is it "Rosh huh shunuh?" - Ohhh, maybe that's why the freeways weren't so crowded.

----------------------------------

dc: that army private lady got sentenced. Mmhhmm. 3 years.
dd: 3 years????
MG: you know... you know... I dont even think she should have been sentenced at all.
..[pause - no one wants to touch this one]
MG: yeah.. I mean, they behead our people and blow us up and..
me: so.. we should humiliate them? physically and mentally and mock their religion to their faces and..
MG: no, well no.. you're right, I just mean..
me: isn't our military supposed to be better than that? U.S. as world police, right?
MG: yeah, they should be.. they are, what she did was definitely wrong.
me: so she should be punished, dontcha think?
MG: well.... yeah.

----------------------------------
Triscuit Watch 2000:
MG's thing for the past few weeks has been Triscuits. she brings them. she offers them to everyone. no one takes any, except to occassionally be polite for her constant offering.

9/12/05
MG: hey, I brought some Triscuits... aren't they just so good? Would anyone like some Triscuits?
..[no one says anything]
MG: well if anyone wants any, let me know

9/13/05
MG: hey MN, want some Triscuits?
mn: huh? oh. um.. sure, I'll try one.
MG: good, huh?
mn: yeah,.. they're good with melted ch...
MG: I love Triscuits, I eat them all the time. well, not all the time.
mn: I have them sometimes with melted gruyere and red p..
MG: oh yeah?? that sounds good! Yeah, I like them better than Wheat Thins.

9/15/05
MG: ohhh, I forgot to bring Triscuits. shucks. what will I eat now?

9/20/05
MG: hey, DD?!! I brought some Triscuits!!
dd: oh.. yeah?
MG: yeah!! want some?
dd: no thanks.
MG: hey MN, I brought Triscuits! one sec..
..[she walks over to MN to force Triscuits on her]
MG: Kory, you want Triscuits?
me: no,.. thank you though
MG: what's the matter, you dont like Triscuits?
me: no, I like 'em just fine - just not wanting one right now, thanks though
MG: ok, well if you change your mind
me: thanks
MG: I've always got 'em, feel free to come get some whenever

9/23/05:
..[badly singing the 50's Triscuits jingle]
MG: a Triscuit, ..a trasket, ..a da da da dum da da, I ..la la la da da da da

9/26/05:
MG: God, I forgot to bring in Triscuits again! I know - I'll go to Duane Reade at lunch.

9/28/05:
MG: Hey, DD, want some Triscuits?!??! MN, want some Triscuits?

----------------------------------

MG: hey MC!! ....MC! hey. ... hey MC, you want some Triscuits?
mc: oh. I do love those, but no, thanks though
MG: I love them too. I got the cheddar kind this time, but I dont know if I like them
mc: I usually just get the regular
MG: me too, but I got the cheddar this time
mc: oh yeah?
MG: yeah. I'm not sure if I like them.

vball / saturday 9-10-05

I sat on the Great Lawn, Central Park after v-ball (below) and hand wrote a more detailed Journal entry (people still write by hand?? craziness) but I keep forgetting to bring it into work to transcribe here. It'll most likely be the first entry of the next journal distro.

JOURNAL ENTRY
volleyball was ... about as frustrating as volleyball ever gets. i played really well for all but maybe 5 plays. my defensive play was phenomenal, as if i were an actor playing the role of some olympic caliber defense-specialist. sadly, it was those 5 plays that my all-spanish-speaking-/-all-gay-/-all-the-time teammates chose to focus on as somehow representative of my play for the entire day. Ok. - actually, that was really only the last game of the day that was like that. everything up to then was me being the only non-spanish-speaker on the team watching uber-flamboyant, mostly-entertaining-sassyness ... play with itself, let's say. In other words, spanish-speaking-gay-guys stick together and set eachother almost exclusively and talk to eachother in spanish-only and pretty much subject the white man (or half-white-man) to what the white-man has undoubtedly subjected the spanish-speaking-gay-man to in various all-white-man settings, for years.

Links & things

BLOG ENTRY
---driving L.A. to NY in a few time lapsed minutes.
-------A must for days in need of a smile.
---still the best site in the universe, ...as rated by me.
-------how i feel after lunch and after work.
---I am at a loss for how to describe this.
-------I am internet famous. except that, aside from my initials being used, it's anonymous. They manipulated the "overheard" though.. to give it more zing I suppose. guy # 1 was a straight guy, guy # 2 was his out-of-town visiting gay friend.
---Sarah Jessica Parker stalked me all throughout Gourmet Garage last night. she was very sly about it, pretending to shop the whole time. She didn't fool me in the slightest.

Unsolicited Music Reviews.. all up in your business!

BLOG ENTRY
Baby Dayliner
I cant stop thinkin of this guy as a gothic (music) staple born 20 years too late. and he doesn't even KNOW it.
f'n genius!!
---a cross between new order, joy division, the smiths, japan, peter murphy and probably a few others. it's almost disturbing how addictive this song is. and the video is just so damn happy (ok, and mega-gay, but i think that's for a semi-unintentional comedic 80's-retro effect)
-------the video:
http://www.brassland.org/video/raid.mov
-------the m.p.3:
http://www.brassland.org/sound/babydayliner_raid.mp3--------
...yet ANOTHER amazing band that New York Noise has exposed me to.
-----others include:
Eltro - Motorboat - (now one of my fav songs ever)
Le Tigre (and other videos by them)
Enon - Daughter in the House of Fools
LCD Soundsystem (and other videos by them)

that oughta keep you busy for a while.
seriously... dont make me say it:
("dont be a loser, ..download or watch the videos!")

End of an Empire

JOURNAL ENTRY
DM was let go about a month ago. I know. I'm sorry.
--I didn't have the heart to tell you.
----Turns out she'd fallen a bit behind in her work. Her HR claim against 'napoleon' for just generally being an abusive boss probably didn't help either. Not that she was all sweetness and light of course. Anyway, it's sad. Sad for no more classic DM overheards, sad 'cause she could be kinda funny and was as quintissentially NY as they come, sad because the woman who replaced her is pretty much a female version of Temp Guy. This new lady is not quite as self-eye-gougingly stupid as Temp Guy but she more than makes up for it by talking all the time. Oh yeah. it's true. All the time... about things no one could ever really care about. including her. Not quite Energizer-Bunny-mouth, but close. It's more the content of what she says that disturbs everybody. Questions for questions sake. Questions where the question is a shot at gaining respect through asking the right questions, but they all come off as suck-up, attention-starved, interact-with-me! type desperate grabs for acceptance. Yes I feel bad talking about her this way. YES, you would understand and say the same things if you had to sit through hours and days and weeks of this also. I'm at a loss for a cool nickname for her, so I'll stick with initials for now, MG.
----Case in point - there's a new frustrating contact at one of our customer locations, Wilson Lee. All the provisioners who've dealt with him are being driven mad by his rude and uninformed way of doing business (rude + uninformed is always the best to deal with, right?) - so every once in a while, you'll hear someone grumble angrily and say "blah blah blah that Wilson!!" to which, MG -just now answered- "Wilson?? are you talking about the basketball? ha Ha heh" See what I mean? If this happened in your office, no one would be laughing or someone would make the polite "heh" laugh... or MAYBE... maybe you'd hear a "heh heh", which would be extremely generous. Are you beginning to get the picture? No? Fine, a MG Chronicles it is then... stay tuned.
----And yes, I know I've got an E ticket for Hell for all this talking about people the way I do - truth is, I've got two tickets and I'm taking you with me.
----But I DIGRESS...! I know! I never do that, right?? Yeah, ok, shut up. - Soo... a few days before DM was let go, they moved me to a new cubicle so that a new provisioner could sit in my cube, thereby keeping all the provisioners in the same space. No problem, I figured. Sure, I'd be away from my precious DM but I'd be out from under the occassional scrutiny and chit-chat and overheard-ness of the rest of the office monkeys and I'd be nearer to the kitchen, the front door and .. Mmmmm.. a view. So I loaded up my truck and I moved to Beverley.. orrrrrr, the other side of the office, as I like to call it. I threw everything into a box, did a rolly-chair move across the office & set up shop in my new, more spacious digs. Everything was going smashingly.. no three-conversations-going-on-at-once, no printers printing, staplers stapling, phones a ringing or ladies gabbing. I was damned close to heaven, as far as office jobs go. Until... until I became aware... of.... a low,.. thrumming sound... Which i quickly determined was coming from the building's air conditioner vent overhead. 'No problem', I thought - 'it must just be cycling on or working overtime being that it's a hot summer day. Ignore it. Turn your music up. There... no worries... back to work'.
--Four minutes later... a slight tinge of vertigo from within my chest, as if I've walked through a revolving door into a highly pressurized room and then walked right back out into normal pressure. Ok, that was weird. The thrumming bass rumble of the A/C, almost sub-sonic, reverberating in slow rhythmic waves... straight into my chest... and now my skull. Great. Yeah, this is going to work out just fine. 'It's probably only a .. summer thing or.. maybe just a mid-day thing.. I'll see what it's like in the morning' I tell myself.
--The next morning, there's the noise again. Except to call it a noise is to describe the least maddening aspect of the experience. Truly, the ... phenomenon? .. was more felt from the inside of my body outwards ..than it was something I heard. I felt as if I was being microwaved by sound - and honestly, that's probably not far, scientifically, from what was actually happening. And yet, whatever was happening, it was driving me insane. Or trying to. I fought it, or tried to... for days. I asked people if they heard the noise... 9 out of 10 couldn't. Thank the gods that two others in the office could. I was not losing my mind. (not for the subsonic sound reason at least) I understood why they wanted to move me, but where they'd moved me to was quickly becoming a torture device.. almost.. as if.. it had been planned. Hmm.. conspiracy theories swirled. 'Nah. Just tell someone who can move you, something will get done' - So I tell napoleon's right hand (wo)man that it's driving me crazy and can we get a building technician to take a look at the A/C. Long story .. long... two days later, an A/C repairman comes, takes a look & says there's nothing he can do because the A/C for THE WHOLE 34 FLOOR BUILDING is a 15 by 15 foot box and is sitting one floor up, right above the cubicle I was in. Two days later, I was at my wits end .. to the point where I was almost at my jobs end. I was feeling helicopters coming in to land.. charlie in the bush, my platoon bloody and tired - "you're never too young for a Vietnam flashback" * (see below)
----So I told DL (napoleon's right hand woman) that I was extremely sorry but I either needed to take a sick day or I needed to move cubicles. She finally saw that I was serious about the noise/reverb-effect and even remarked that if -I- was complaining about something, it must be serious. Obviously, she's never read my writing. And so.. another painful day later, I was told I could move into DM's old spot. Yesssss... full circle, you see? Sometimes I -am- actually capable of talking about something, digressing and then coming back to topic.
----And so here I am. Sitting in DM's cube. The very cube that spawned such classic, loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed, mouth-offing's to any who dared cross her path. I feel... as if I have a duty to uphold. Like Luke in Empire Strikes Back, I weild the right hand .. or.. um.. cubicle spot.. of what I thought was a former foe.. who turned out to be... my.. father? Yeah, ok.. so that analogy doesn't quite work. I feel like I should sass-mouth at least one person a day, just for sitting here. I hope I'm up to the challenge.

BLOG ENTRY
"you're never too young to have a Vietnam flashback" * as quoted from Wonder Showzen (best - show - ever) - click on VIDEOS, scroll down to VIETNAM FLASHBACK. Also watch any of the BEAT KIDS clips and any of the clips with the blue guy with the googly eyes, like WILL YOU ACCEPT JESUS, POLITENESS, WHAT ARE YOU RUNNING FROM, etc. The show is ridiculously irreverent, sometimes... ok, -almost always- it goes too far, if there is such thing as too far. And yet it's the best television I have seen in... Too too too many years. I cry laughing at Every Episode. if you do not cry laughing, there is something wrong with you. please have your funny bone checked for fractures.
--
"With Wonder Shozen (airing Fridays at 9:30pm on MTV2), a new Dadaist spoof of Sesame Street and its progeny, Vernon Chatman and John Lee have found a way to unsettle jaded viewers by employing a device that most purveyors of 'alternative' comedy wouldn't touch with a ten-foot boom: live human children, who take part in gonzo interview segments that are juxtaposed with raunchy puppet shenanigans."
- TimeOut New York, April 21-27 Issue No. 499
--
"In one segment, a 6-year-old confronts a stunned Wall Street broker with: 'Who did you exploit today?' "
- Daily News, Wednesday, April 27, 2005
--
" 'Wonder Shozen' is a messy mix of animation and live action, part 'Sesame Street' parody, part stoner indulgence, part lazy censor-baiting, part pure inspiration."
- The New York Times, Thursday, March 31, 2005
--
" 9:30-10pm Wonder Shozen (MTV2, TV-MA)- Why does MTV bury this hilariously twisted Sesame Street parody on its bastard son of a network? Because numbers and letters rumble while a Jewish J and an Arab 8 have puppet sex that would make Triumph the Insult Comic Dog blush? Or because an angelic tot reporter asks Wall Streeters, 'When the revolution comes, where will you hide?' Sure this show, as dark as the bottom of Oscar the Grouch's trash can, will give your inner child nightmares, but it's the only way he'll learn.
- Josh Wolk, Entertainment Weekly

home away from home - otherwise known as 'work'

JOURNAL ENTRY

I like to say I work in Manhattan's southernmost building. It's not exactly true, of course. I could work for the Staten Island Ferry or for the Coast Guard or I could work at a hot dog cart. For that and other reasons, I think I'm ok not being Manhattan's southernmost worker though I do like being pretty darned close. I like working down here because it's an easy map point to give people in need of a mental reference to where I work, but mostly, I love the unique NY-ness of the neighborhood:
-
1/9 Subway train - 5 stops, 16 minutes door-to-door. Clean cars, good A/C. Bitchy train operators chastising non-English speaking tourists for not being in the first five cars. Does it get any better?
-=-
South Ferry (and subway) Station -
This is what the station used to look like. And an in-construction picture of the new terminal. For about two months, people travelled to and from on the N ISLAND (FERRY) as the STATE in "Staten" I guess are very difficult letters to make . Since then, an ever changing array of new paths in and out of the new building point to what must be the fun puzzle game of balancing the traffic flow in and out with the construction that needs to take place. Here's entirely too much information on the renovations taking place. Info such as: 65,000 people travel to & from Staten Island each day. And yes, in case you were wondering, they all somehow manage to get in my way on exiting the station. And they all seem to want a damn AM New York or Metro paper immediately after exiting the station.
-=-
AM New York / Metro - NY's two free daily tabloids. Trashy, gossipy, sensationalistic, 16 page time wasters handed out by an army of .. paper-persons at most major subway entrances. Seriously - they must be making bazillions on advertising if they can keep thousands of paper.. persons employed handing out free papers. Did I mention what crap they are? For reals. They make the NY Post look like the Wall St Journal.
-=-
Bowling Green - Bowling Green was NY's first public park. Today, it's my lunch and reading spot. And a damn fine one at that. True, it's loud as hell (Broadway and Whitehall branch off around it) and it's often crowded at lunch time and sure, there's one arsehole homeless guy who does his best Angry-Homeless-Guy routine when the Parks people come around to ask him not to lie down on the benches or upon waking up from one of his drunken naps, to sit up, take a leak and then lie back down again - (the police sometimes come but cant force him to leave)... grr. ..dont get me started. Annnyway, aside from all these things - it's a great place for sun.. or for shade.. for eating lunch and reading for an hour, for people watching and more people watching. It's ideal for spotting Law and Order being shot in the neighborhood (I think the use the Native American Museum, formerly the Maritime Museum as their "courthouse") and the dozens of other commercials and movies and tv shows shooting in the area... It's great for the Tues & Thurs farmer's market that keeps my love of blueberry cornbread alive... for the banks and restaraunts and shops in the area... for the grass and flower ring around yet another beautiful city fountain.. For all these things and maybe more.. but mostly for the escape from the duldrums of work it provides.
-=-
The Wall St. "Bull" - Ohh, the Bull. You've seen the Bull. Everyone's seen the Bull. The Bull sits at the north end of Bowling Green park. It's big and stupid and people LOVE to take pictures with it. Oh god, how they love to take pictures with it. I dont blame them, it is a NY landmark I suppose. I can, however, blame the constant stream of people who take posed pictures with the Bull's balls. No matter how much I'm minding my own business, sitting in the park eating or reading.. Every Time I look up, I see someone posing the the bull's balls - cupping them, kissing them, pretending to lick them, posing & smiling next to them - Every Single Time. The beauty part of course is that they all think they've come up with this joke. I see them walk around the Bull, marvelling at it's impressive bronze form. Invariably, they get to the rear of the thing and look down and then... Eureka! Photo Op! "hey, hey hey! get a picture of this!" "oh my god, wont this be so funny??!?!" - No. the answer is No. it was so funny the first time the guy who made the sculpture did it for his friends.
-=-
Battery Park - Hmm.. how to describe Battery Park? Well... as it affects me of course! It's a fine park... or it would be were it not the tourist superhighway to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferries. Along the main walkway is the sphere that sat between the Trade Center towers and now is a photo op on the way to and from other city photo ops. Groups use it as a meeting point before or after their Statue of Liberty / Ellis Island trips and are usually all hepped up with touristy energy from having just gone on their ferry trip to the islands or because they're about to - which again, is understandable - but lends an aire of irreverence to the sole surviving symbol of Sept 11th. And yet.. every time I see the groups doing their group thing, there's always one or two people who stand near the back of their group and.. 'get it'. Or so it seems. I like those people.
--The park itself is inhabitted by throngs of a yet to be determined nationality of Africans who sell watches and glasses and purses in one of two ways: straight out of a briefcase. straight off a blanket that had minutes before been bunched up and placed in a 3ft by 3ft box being rolled around on a dolly. Seriously, it is either one or the other: Briefcase-guy or Big-box-carrying-a-blanket-full-of-stuff-guys. They set up their wares along the walkways and draw tourists in with an atmosphere of bargains and haggling.
--But back to me (ahem.. as it should be) - It's actually one of the best places for a sunny afternoon nap when you get away from the cattle-run walkways.

I have nothing interesting to say

JOURNAL / BLOG ENTRY
Sadly, I've felt this way for a few weeks now. Everything's going fine, I just dont want to talk about it. Maybe I dont feel like talking because things are going so well. Yes, partly for my fear of jinxes but also because my life seems mostly fulfilling these days and my time seems better occupied living it than writing about it. And here am writing about it.... 'it' being my life. 'about' meaning things that pass before my eyes, such as:
-=-
-Candy. A new coworker in the office is pretty obsessed with the stuff. Sweets, chocolates, mints, caramels, swedish fish, you name it, she'll ask you "what you got?" & then eat it. She has no qualms about asking you point blank if you have candy and then taking it without asking but while making small talk, as if the taking of candy is part of a common social handshake system between coworkers.
--I'll admit, I've gone through phases of candy binging at work, but for the past few years I've steered mostly clear of the stuff. Lately though, with our new candy monster urging me on to buy more & more candy so she can eat all my candy... well.. I've been buying some candy. Mostly, I stick to old-timey favorites like Nips and Jolly Ranchers but sometimes branch out into the (still old-timey) craziness of Now & Laters. Now & Laters, while Highly Highly Delicious are for all practical purposes, a brutal 'Spanish Inquisition' to the soft fleshy tissue of your inner cheeks. Really, I think they make their candy this way to aid you in self-control, lest we all burn straight through 7 pounds of Now & Laters in one sitting. Despite their best efforts, it isn't really working. I want this candy gone from my desk drawer. No, I cant give it away or throw it away - are you crazy?? I must eat it, .. I must. It's too good. And too painful. Yea tho I walk through the valley of candy, I will fear no candy. I think that's how the line goes.
--So you see? I have no choice. take my candy, please. or dont complain when I complain to you about my sore cheeks.
-=-
friend who is a girl - jumble those words around and then discard the three shortest words. Ya. I think I have one. more later if I haven't already jinxed things all to hell.
-=-
touch football - Our touch football league kicked off on Sunday. Lordy, lordy is that fun. I played quarterback the whole game and needless to say, I am destined for the touch football quarterback hall of fame. The details: 5 guys, 3 girls on each team, 23 minute half's, 2 completions for a first down plus a first down for crossing the 50 yard line, every 3rd play must be a "girl [involved] play", no "picking" or blocking, pass rush on 5 mississippi's. I just lost about half of you, didn't I? Dont worry about it. It's football, you can sort of imagine how it might go. One thing I could not imagine is how sore I'd be the day after, considering that I was running around like crazy on defense only.
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Volleyball league(s) - One league/team ends... umm.. two more begin. Why two? because I've come to terms with the fact that I would rather have too much volleyball (and sport in general) in my life than too little. One volleyball game per week was not even close to enough. Lately, I'd added outdoor (asphalt) court volleyball in Central Park to my v-ball doings but even that plus my league night wasn't enough. So now it'll be touch football on Sunday + 2 weeknights of volleyball and if that isn't enough sport for me, I will.. yes, be seeking counseling. Not to mention a masseuse.
--The season that's ending, as I may have mentioned, is the league where one of our teammates who's been playing for years in our league has never won with whatever team he was on and I believe, secretly talked league officials into putting our team into a lesser skill level which is great for easy wins but sucks for enjoying the game. We're almost assured a winner's t-shirt (Oooh!) but at what cost? Well, almost at the cost of my ankles, as inexperienced players often go flying around the court and under the net.
--This current team has generally been a little hard to deal with... with two bad-attituders, one sulky when he's not playing well & the other gets bitchy/complain'y when others make errors (she gets that way when she makes errors too but it comes out as bitchy/complain'y about everyone else's errors somehow). Co-ed sports in general is an interesting cross-sectional window into the disfunctional personalities people in metropolitan areas try unsuccessfully to hide. For the most part, people are quite normal and fun, but volleyball is prone to one of the extremest forms of covert narcissism, of holier-than-thou-ness, of elitism, classism, outright snobbery, whatever you want to call it. In other sports, people of varying skill levels intermingle and enjoy a game together, hardly aware at times of the shortcomings of teammates or opponents - not so in volleyball. Every point is a judgment of skill and consistency, every bad bump or hit into the net is that much less your teammates will trust you with the ball - it's kind of sick, actually. And yet it drives everyone on and makes them better. Maybe that's where the disfunctional personalities come from - a constant fear of looking stupid in front of your peers. Yeah, that sounds healthy.
--One of the teams I'm going to be playing with this coming season, on the other hand, is thankfully short of any kind of snobbery like that. They're all wonderfully nice and funny people who kick ass at volleyball but will never flaunt it. In exchange for lacking the snobbery disfunction, they've chosen instead: functional alcoholism. Yeah. they drink like fishes. Or drink with gusto, ...like fishes. Half of them are from my softball team, so I've seen them drink. Jaegermeister is not an evil word to them. In fact that word "jaeger", plus the word "bomb" is a commonly used term after games, it seems. Crazy kids! If we all had a car, I'd be the designated driver by default since there's no way I could keep up with them.
--My other volleyball team is yet to be determined. I'm going to the open gym scrimmage night to "pick up" a team from scratch. Yes, "pick up" in quotes because open gym night ends up feeling like some sort of forced dating scenario where you have to pick up on 5 to 7 people within half an hour, half of which also happen to be guys. Yeah, it's kinda creepy.
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Summer winds down - praise be to all the major deities, Summer is coming to an end. Ohhh sure, I'll miss the short skirts and low tops, the see-through blouses and short shorts, sundresses and bikini tops... and that's just in MY closet! ("HAY-OWWW!") So many things to miss and so so soooo SO many things NOT to miss. Like sweating. A Lot. All the time. Everywhere. Muggy, steamy, smelly heat you can almost see and touch. No thank you.