Of course, that was on the immediate heels of my statement, “The fuck you are”, so…maybe there’s a smidge of credibility to her incredulity.
Maybe.
Of course, my statement was said as I crossed the threshold of my building’s entry and she announced coming in from the outside – as the callbox was dialing up to whomever she was on her way to visit – “Oh, great! I’ll follow you in!” as is she were doing me a favor. My full statement – sandwiching her shocked assessment of my…couth – was “The fuck you are, since I’m clearly leaving – and you can’t use the elevator unless you’re buzzed in.”
See? Context.
It wasn’t that rude.
Especially when compared to her brazen entitlement at bypassing my building’s security. That’s the truly rude bullshittery.
I heard her muttering “I thought Portlanders were supposed to be nice” loud enough for my benefit, and lamented the energy she wasted trying to offend me. Because, care…I do not.
I used to be nicer about it, but I’m done with that. Let people be offended, the result is going to be the same, them trying to get what they want regardless of what’s right.
Oooh, key word right there.
How are people so blind to their own wants that they simply ignore the reality that their want came with the assumption that rules are for other people?
As is my Saturday morning norm, I woke up and spent the morning reading leisurely in bed while caffeinating. Leisurely might be overselling it, since I do fall quite behind during the week, but I always welcome the opportunity to start my catch up with proChristinating on the actual backlog and starting off with one of Geoff’s latest entries since they are easy on the still sleep-addled brain and also reliably produce a chuckle.
If you clicked that link, you’ll know that today’s post from Geoff – it’s pronounced Ghee Off, presumably because one (or both, who knows?) of his parents was a title holder in his hometown’s Butter Clarifying Championship – really ignited the most used part of my brain: the section that speaks acronym.
Don’t you want to go back and read it now? Like I would steer you wrong. Well, sure…if it was solely for my own amusement, otherwise: never!
Case in point, one of my favorite acronyms regularly puts my co-workers into fits.
E.S.B.
I use it several times a week, sometimes daily.
My appreciation and usage of that acronym comes honestly, from a friend trying to make me feel dumb. Aren’t those just the most cherished memories? Well, I mean, when they fail gloriously. Because there’s nothing so memorable as someone who is not smart trying to make someone else feel dumb.
Geez, this story has to be about 15 years old now, as I was about three ESBs into my happy hour when it occurred and I’ve been off ESBs and exclusively onto IPAs as far as beer goes – for the past decade.
Dumb Ass Friend Talking: You’re always talking about how ESBs are the best beer.
Me: Truth.
DAFT: Do you even know the story behind your beer? Like what the name even means?!?
Me: Sure, it says it right on the label under the big letters, you stupid fuck. Extra Special Bitter, and I 100% am what I drink, so how about you get the next round and try to be a little less of a clown the rest of the night?
Somehow, we’ve lost touch over time. But he was a Shittatle person, so I really don’t care. As if my hostility during the conversation wasn’t evidence enough. In retrospect, I suspect he was trying to tease me about being from Portland – the Seattle/Portland rivalry is real – and riffing on the inaugural Portlandia skit about Portlanders ordering the chicken in a restaurant. This tactic failed for two reasons – three, I just thought of a third:
1) He asked two questions and I only addressed the second. He should have stopped at the one.
B) I hadn’t yet seen the episode he was riffing on. Nor would I until I ended up eating in the restaurant that episode was filmed in and someone brought it up.
3) He was dumb.
Yeah, that was the third thing I thought of. But it’s important! You see, while Portlanders are busy being recognized for being the best at things like food culture, having and retaining an awful NBA franchise, not turning down federal funding for creating a world-class light rail system, and producing world famous bands who fame is not enhanced by its front person’s passing themselves away…Seattle is none of those things and they are compensating their asses off.
That’s not their fault, entirely. Well, not the dwindling Seattle natives, anyway. With such an influx of mostly tech bros from all over the planet comes a lot of insecurity. Because those tech jobs have high pay, which Stupid Americans consider a validation of self. And tech bros need validation. Heck, anyone with a high paying job that is the result of years of focus on a specific subject needs validation because they very likely know very little about other things – like social skills – and no one knows anything about what they do because it takes years of focused study on a single subject in order to know anything about it.
A big salary can make you feel secure, but it doesn’t make you happy.
Yeah…what it isn’t is a recipe for happiness? A big salary and a field of study that isolates you from society’s general pop. All you are is still not happy, but with fewer friends and more money.
That’s Seattle to me in a nut shell.
The obvious Plan B there for my friend was to find happiness through eroding others’ happiness until their misery falls below his own.
And that’s where we were – except, having grown up in Portland, my existence default was set to happy, so this dumbass didn’t stand a chance. Bless his heart.
Ironically, Geoff lives in Seattle and is someone I’d have loved knowing when I was living there – especially because he isn’t one of those Seattle people who embellishes the part of town he lives in – another validation tool Seattle folks love. He doesn’t talk about his “part of town” at all, you see. This sets him apart from the other type who say they live in, say…West Seattle, which is a swanky Seattle suburb. When pressed about where in West Seattle someone lives when it comes up – y’know via enthusiastic statements like “Oh, I love X restaurant! It must be nice to be able to walk there and not deal with parking!” or “Yes! Where there’s actual beach!” – these people crumble and retreat to vague statements like “Well, I live on the South end of West Seattle…”
White Center. You live in White Center, you fuckin’ poseur.
Look what song just came on
This song literally includes the words
No postcode envy…clearly she has encountered these Southwest Seattlites.
Nah, Geoff’s not like that. He lives in Phinney Ridge. He’s never said so, but I’m sure of it. If not, he’s got to be at least Phinney Ridge-adjacent…
But that’s a long way from the acronyms I started off with. Specifically, the consternation my use of E.S.B. produces in my co-workers.
Since most of my regular contacts at work work in HR – don’t let me get started on HR…- declaring I need an E.S.B. at 9:30 AM can raise an eyebrow. And that’s why I respect these HR peeps, they also know the root meaning behind that Extra Special Bitter acronym.
When they suggest maybe I go to a “meeting” instead, I clarify that E.S.B. means Emotional Support Bagel.
At least at 9:30 in the goddamn morning.
Closer to noon, bagel makes way for burrito.
And, sure, burrito is replaced by beer toward the end of the day. I’m not some basic problematic person – my crutches have…depth? Nuances?
So, yeah. That is why it’s 10:30 on Saturday morning and still I’m not caught up on my reading from the past week: acronyms.
Geoff’s post contained several amusing incarnations of the acronym S.C.A.M. and I’m obviously a fan of an acronym having multiple meanings. But the whole thing had this kind of homemade vibe going for it. That reminded me of a workplace memo about Special High Intensity Training that I kept a copy of in my desk drawer for years back when I managed people.
I know, highly inappropriate for the workplace given that acronym.
But I feel like I needed to go find it once I mentioned it in the comments of Geoff’s post. And gourd bless it, the internet did not disappoint!
Since this all happened pre-cell phone and certainly pre-meme, finding it and re-posting it basically qualifies as a public service. Seriously, do you think a Millennial, Gen Y or whatever the current generation is called – is it Zoomers? – know the pleasure that a covertly circulated hard copy of faux memo produced in the workplace? They for sure don’t know what a mimeograph is and some of the documents I found online were clearly from that era of document reproduction.
And I’m a big believer in humor as a sign of both one’s intelligence and overall personality. Plus, we all need some safe inappropriateness in our lives to help in fostering our development as humans. Bonus if it includes self-deprecating humor. Seems like the side effect of Political Correctness was to produce a bunch of people who take themselves too seriously and self-diagnose mental illness to avoid being accountable for being a boor.
So, there you have it. Courtesy of this B.I.G.S.H.I.T…my first post in months.
What? I’ve been busy.
But I like that it’s both a tribute to the good, old days and the things we consider modern conveniences today – while still sticking it to the Stupid Americans who think dumb is a personality trait. If I really wanted to show off, I guess I could put that 40 year old memo through an AI filter and see how far it could take the S.H.I.T. acronym, but I gotta get my day back on track before look up and it’s Monday.
I feel like I need my own Yoda. Someone who will hear me say weak assed things like “I’m going to try and write more consistently” and remind me
Luckily, I verbally hedge my bets with that approach, so…no broken promises!
As alluded to in the title, I’ve been busy. Work keeps me pretty occupied. My workdays are a frenzied pace from start to finish, leaving me pretty wiped out at the end of them.
I still try – there’s that hedging again! – to get out and do some delivery driving a couple evenings a week. It’s only a couple hours per night, a couple nights a week, but it seems like an eternity when you hate doing it. The reward is getting worse, too, which makes it harder. I finished a two-hour block last night – after the Silver Fox hyped me up when I was ready to pull the plug and bail – and my average rate was $25/hr. That’s down from around $30/hr, which is a hefty percentage.
My parting thought as I bellied up afterward was “Might as well pay me in pesos”. But where two hours’ earnings might not matter, 10 or 12 hours over the course of a month is an extra car payment, so that’s not nothing. Especially as I scramble to make my goal of paying Angela (my car) off by the end of November.
So, I needed the hype. Especially since I wouldn’t have left my home at all yesterday without it.
Nonetheless, it leaves me too burnt out to write much.
I did get a break from the hard work last month when my family met up in Sunriver for our yearly vacation. Sunriver is right outside of Bend, Oregon, so there’s always plenty to do.
Mostly, this time I just ate. Mind you, I swore I was going to spend time writing each day. I’ll save you a scroll through my blog post library: that didn’t happen.
Why would it, in the High Desert outdoor playground that is Bend, Oregon? Well, that’s where the busted up part of this post’s title comes in: I fell down.
Again.
And it was bad.
The best I could piece together was that I slipped on a cat hair tumbleweed as I walked into my apartment. Cat hair + laminate flooring = a suboptimal traction situation.
I’d been down to the local watering hole for a couple beers – two, literally. I just wasn’t feeling it, so I hoofed the 10 or so blocks to Safeway for a six-pack and snack to nosh on at home while I watched a movie before bed.
The movie – or the snackage, for that matter – never happened. As soon as I set foot in my place, it was lights out for Xtopher.
I wish I could say it was something more glamorous or exciting, a mugging, defending a stranger from danger or even a dalliance gone bad…but it was just my natural clumsiness. My friends tried to nudge me toward a more exciting, albeit alternate, truth – the aforementioned mugging, DB even suggested I’d been roofied after hearing my story – but I could not oblige.
I was actually too harsh when I said “natural clumsiness”…knowing physics and geometry, ok, remembering what I do of my high school and college courses on the subjects, what I was doing and how I ended up adds up to cat like reflexes.
You see, if I was walking in the door and slipped on something, my feet would have gone out from under me, leaving my fallen body laying head first into my unit. Certainly the final resting spots of what had been my bag of groceries supports this. Me, on the other hand ended up facing the door, which could have happened – if I had ended up on my back. But I didn’t, I wasn’t just facing the front door, I was also facing the floor.
That’s where those cat like reflexes come in. Not only had I fallen backward instead of forward, I’d also flipped midair to land on my face.
Fairly literally, by the way.
I can’t tell you the exact order – likely due to being mildly concussed by the whole ordeal – but I know I hit my chin hard enough to break my front tooth and open a cut on the bottom of my chin. I remember pushing myself up once after being unconscious long enough for blood to pool around me. That I know because when I did push up, one of my hands went out from under me and I went back down on my face.
I think that’s where I got the four splits across my forehead. Well, not so much across (because that would blend with my age based creases that I do not call wrinkles) as perpendicular to my eyebrows. However, it could have been where I split the cartilage in my ear open. Remembering two falls and having wounds on three planes of my skull further suggests a concussion.
Since I’m a typically stupid guy, though, I didn’t go to the ER for almost 24 hours, so likely is as close to a diagnosis as I could get on that concussion.
Likely concussion, broken tooth and six gashes on my head…and bruised ribs, probably from the initial impact, that’s my damage.
All because I was too bored at the bar to stick around and decided to come home.
At least my ribs were only bruised.
Until the following Sunday, that is. I’d started feeling well enough to venture out of the house and met my parents for breakfast. Afterward I was tired – from getting up early on a Sunday, eating a heavy breakfast and the actual work of walking my injured ass over to the restaurant – so I layed down on the couch to rest. About 30 minutes of blissful dozing later, I sneezed…probably a tickle from cat hair drifting through the air. That’s what I’m going with.
Ah- Pop-Pop-Choo!
That was some pain. I couldn’t take a full breath. Hell, I couldn’t get up off my back!
After another 90 minutes of shallow breathing my way through the absolute WTF worst pain I can remember, I decided I needed to go back to the ER. The pain from getting off my back almost made me forget the pain of the prior hour and a half. It for sure eclipsed it.
Back at the ER, broken.
I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that. They were somehow surprised I hadn’t recalled them telling me how to sneeze until my ribs healed on my earlier visit. Um, hello? Concussion?
I was actually surprised to hear I hadn’t broken my sternum, just a rib on either side of it. I still think I did…while they were being surprised that I’d broken my ribs sneezing, I was being surprised that them hearing my history of micro-fractures hadn’t mitigated their surprise and prompted a referral for a little nuclear medicine to double-check my sternum. Not that it was worth pursuing, anyway…there’s nothing they can do for broken ribs, so why bother?
So that’s how I ended up spending a week in Sunriver and spending most of my time eating versus biking, hiking or paddling around the high desert.
I think I was three weeks post-fall and two weeks post-sneeze when I got back home. I returned from vacation feeling about as healed as I was feeling before the sneeze.
Progress!
That’s just the condition you want to be in when you move homes, right? But sure enough, I stopped on the way home from the high desert to pick up keys to my new place.
While it is just a short distance away, right across the park from my old place…it was a long time coming. I’d started thinking I wanted to move at the end of last year. I started looking with a mind to move at the end of my current lease: the end of March. Knowing where I wanted to be, my current building, made it seem easier to accomplish but ended up taking nearly a year!
It’s silly, living in a world with people who can own a condo and let it sit empty for two years because they thought the damage a prior tenant did to the floors made it un-leasable. One of the other residents is a realtor who knows both the owner of that unit and me and tried to put us together. The guy took my contact info and just…nothing.
Another unit had an active listing and never replied to my inquiry. It’s still empty, but the listing is gone now.
There was a third unit whose owner I spoke with in January. She wanted to list it February 1st but needed to find a property manager first. In two weeks. I didn’t want to move until April 1 to avoid paying double-rent, but offered to rent her place March 1 if I could rent from her – I loathe property managers. She passed. I get her dis-ease being a first time landlord…but I know eight residents, two of whom are Board members. Someone finally moved into the unit on September 1st.
Idiots. Am I not stupid enough to be rich…is that what’s stopping me from wealth?
The last weird obstacle to my move wasn’t really an obstacle at all, so we’ll call her an honorable mention. It’s the Silver Fox’s neighbor – or would be, if she lived in her condo. She doesn’t, though. She lives in the West Hills, where she moved…closer to 10 years ago than five. And her unit has sat empty for every damn one of those years. Assuming she doesn’t have a mortgage, she’s still paying $10000-15000 a year on HOAs and taxes. That’s cumulatively $100,000! I don’t want to live next door to my best friend, so I never pushed it. Not that it would have mattered if I did. I refer to that kind of wealth as “fuck you money” because they do not take instruction from anyone else.
But I made it! Persistence paid off, even though the reward was moving with broken ribs. When I told my landlord I was leaving, it was because of the crazy neighbor quotient in the old building. Crazy neighbors in four of 18 units is too high, even if it only worked out to an average of three crazy people in the building at any given time.
Little did I know that the cause of the broken ribs should have been the reason I moved in April: a broken HVAC. I told my landlord about it in March and he made an unsuccessful bid to have it repaired. I was heating my place with an inverted 4” terracotta pot over my gas stove in March and April. In June, July and August I became an expert at timing the opening and closing of windows each morning and evening to maximize the overnight cooling.
But the lack of air conditioning – or even air movement – has kept poor Myrtle in a constant state of shedding. Hence the cat hair tumbleweeds.
Ironic that the reason I should have moved this past Spring indirectly became the reason I ended up moving with broken ribs.
I feel like #stamperstartedit needs to join my hashtag lexicon. You see, this is at least the second time this year that I’ve thought that something needed writing about but had dismissed as “too charged” has shown up on his blog.
So, there this particular notion sat – in the dusty corners of my mad mind, collecting cobwebs. Until, that is, this fellow blogger picked up the theme and ran with it. Defying the odds of my insanity much like finding a disturbing truth to the old chestnut that “everybody has a doppelgänger”, he trotted out a post about – as he called it – junk. As I mentioned earlier, this followed another instance of him writing about something I was de-prioritizing in my drafts – which I believe was poop, but I’m damned if I can find the reference now. Maybe it was in another mutual blogger’s comment thread, as we tend to swirl around the same bowl of the blogosphere.
As you may have guessed from the emoji in the title or the euphemism “junk”, this topic is dicks. Feel free to pop on over to his blog to see his take on the topic before continuing on with my post to see where my thoughts on the topic go through the guard rails.
What is it about them that have us Stupid Americans obsessed with the topic?
Well, at least the men. Being men, though, we assume our obsession to be the one, true obsession for us all. See also: sports.
A few months back – told you I’d been sitting on this topic for a while (also, horrid phrasing) – I won tickets to a local artist’s concert. Her name is Julia Logue and she put on a wonderful performance. She also had what turned out to be an equally charming act opening for her. That woman also gave me a pleasantly surprising performance to add to my local music trove.
That this show ended up being at one of our (soon to close and relocate) more awesome small venues, the Doug Fir Lounge, made the prize valuable to me regardless of the quality of the show. It’s a special place. I’m interested in seeing how it manifests in its new location, but needed another trip to the OG space before it closed.
I perched behind the bar watching people and sipping beer before the show started. Since this pic of the googley eyes someone put up in that untrafficked – at least until I sat there to watch the interactions of the crowd – is the only one I have of the venue, you can see that I was not taking a bunch of pics. Honestly, I think I was back there trying to finish a blog post…haha, found it.
I love watching live music almost as much as I love watching people. This crowd did not disappoint. It had everything from a broad – no pun intended, given the female artists – range of ages among the attendees to a healthy dose of sexually ambiguous men for my visual appreciation to a diversity of socio-economic attributes in the crowd (seriously, should someone wear FMPs to a female singer-songwriter spotlight?) to…a gaggle of bros?
Of the foursome, one of them was quite cute. Another was an atypical non-white m, which stands out in the homogenized population of Portland. Yet another was built like Dr Frankenstein had an unknown double-major in plastic surgery or aesthetology, honestly, this guy was 6’6”, easy and built like a damn wall. Obviously, they kept dragging my focus back. Plus, a couple of them – Frankenstein’s Wall and the Unmentioned Fourth – were loud talkers, too. Even though I couldn’t make out what they were saying, their unintelligible booms – accompanied by overcompensating high fives – as well as their central location in my field of vision made them all but impossible to ignore.
Cut to me hitting the can after the show to ditch one of the beers I’d consumed during the show. I was walking, but I didn’t want to hit the midway point – also midspan on the Burnside Bridge – and get hit with a biological imperative that refused to be ignored.
The men’s room at the Doug Fir is located behind the merch booth, both of with are comically undersized when viewed through the filter of 300 concert goers. I squeeze by the group of women sizing up tee shirt options and consider picking one up myself – my new rule is, free tickets require a merch purchase to show support – but the offerings were pretty plain, so I kept on excusing my way through the shoppers to pee.
I open the door and run smack dab into the Unmentioned Fourth and Frankenstein’s Wall standing in front of the sink, talking. I excuse my way past them wondering a) how I didn’t hear them through the hollow core door, b) what they were doing, and c) whether they washed.
My money was on no.
I “peed” longer than I needed to once I heard the topic of their discussion. Frankenstein’s Wall was defending the size of his dick to the Unmentioned Fourth.
But, c’mon…we’ve all heard about body builders.
I peed longer than necessary because I was both wondering how the conversation got here and afraid that if I left the urinal while they were still hashing this out at the sink, we’d all somehow end up leaving together…and I didn’t want to be accidentally associated with them.
“It was alright and everything, I just didn’t get as big as usual because she just didn’t get me that hot, y’know?” Frankenstein’s Wall asserted to his friend. This earned his a non-committal response from his buddy – whether because he didn’t believe him or didn’t care I know not – and an exasperated shake from me.
Resigned, I buttoned up and made up my mind to keep my eyes down – at floor level, you pervs – wash my hands and GTFO, regardless of the crowd outside the bathroom doors, who I assumed had heard everything this micro-peen was scream talking about.
“You know what I’m saying, right?”
Yes, because this is my life, Frankenstein’s Wall had decided to crowd source legitimacy for his position by shanghaiing the affirmations of a random passerby. Bad decision for him since that passerby – or pisserby in this case – happened to be me. Before I rewarded him with my best Julia Sugarbaker homage, though, I quickly looked around for a hidden camera – because it is my life, after all.
“I’m gay, so I’m sure I don’t.”
“But it’s gotta be the same either way, right? No matter who you’re with, if they don’t get you turned on, you just don’t reach full size!”
Oh, lordy.
Ready?
“Look, dude…dicks change size, ok? Over the course of your life, temperature changes, health status or yes…even depending on how horny you are.”
“See? I told you!” he says to the Unmentioned Fourth.
“But how dare you put off your situational size or performance to how hot your partner got you. How misogynistic. And basic.”
Frankenstein’s Wall is standing there with his mouth hanging open. Not the response he was hoping to crowd source, obviously. The Unmentioned Fourth is smirking at the back of his head between him and the door and someone in the stall is openly chuckling.
I move in front of him to wash my hands. No way I’m dying in the bathroom without washing up after taking a whiz. Plus, I suspect these guys need me to set a good example.
“That poor girl isn’t the answer to your biological imperative” I tell his reflection in the mirror, “not that it sounds like you were even horny to hear you tell it. Plus, it’s not her job to ‘get you hot’. Plus, plus…that’s probably how you’ve left every woman you’ve climbed on top of feeling, so think about that. And lastly, if a girl doesn’t interest you as more than a cum dump, do yourself and fate a favor and just jerk off.”
I move past the Unmentioned Fourth, who is nodding appreciably, and reach for the door. Then I hit Frankenstein’s Wall with a Columbo moment.
Turning from my position in the opened door, I say “But this? This is exactly the type of conversation we need to mainstream in this country. Maybe if people like you knew it didn’t matter to anyone how big your dick was, we wouldn’t have the white male problems we do in this country. Gun violence? Racial violence? Domestic violence? Sexism? Women’s rights…all that comes down to the size of some white man’s dick, I guarantee it. And do try to be more aware of your surroundings when you engage in this type of conversation. A women’s music showcase is hardly the time or place.”
I swear that the guy in the stall yelled “Yeah!” as the door was closing.
How I don’t get beat up more often is beyond me. I suspect the Unmentionable Fourth would have defended me if shit got real. Fortunately, Frankenstein’s Wall seemed to be using 100% of his brain power to process what was happening and therefore couldn’t think to pummel me.
I’ve been saying for years – like since the Birther thing, at least – that our country should stop recognizing July 4th. Sometimes I’d even go so far as to observe that the most enthusiastic about the holiday were likely the same bunch that do our nation’s quality of life and reputation the most harm.
And, not to blow my own horn or anything, but I think this past year cements my theory. In one year we’ve managed to remove more rights than in any other period in our history. This generation – actually, let’s call it an era, it’s not fair to lay blame at a generation’s feet since the damage being done is largely caused by members of the dying generation of the day – this era in America will be the first one history looks back on and sees that our personal freedoms and liberties shrank.
That’s never happened before. Historically, we can look at the past eras and see where liveries and freedoms advanced.
Not this one.
As a matter of fact, the only era I can think of that even came close to taking a step back was Prohibition. Luckily, that started the same year women were given equality at the voting booth, so it kind of netted out.
Interestingly enough, both of those things took a Constitutional Amendment to come about.
But not in America 100 years on from them. No, now we just need a stolen Supreme Court to reverse the established laws of the land. The Extreme Court, if you will.
No voters. No Bills being made law. Just six people who managed a law degree. One of whom has voted to restrict the rights of her own gender. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to take away her Voter’s Card, given that she clearly favors less rights for women. Another of that six-member Conservative bloc is most famous for having to defend his college drinking habits, so let’s strip his rights back to 1920 do he doesn’t have to face a repeat of that history. It’s the humane thing to do.
So I think I can really start screaming this pet theory of mine from the rooftops, now. Because I’m not about to strip away anyone’s right to a three-day weekend or a four-day workweek. No, but we change the name. Instead of Independence Day, we call it Gindependence Day.
Let’s just ditch all the flag waving and firework rigamarole and focus on the day’s main activity: drinking. Fewer fires, spared digits – all upside there! We’re really doing a service to all the Coney-Barrett-types out there (aka: Stupid Americans) who can’t seem to act in their own best interests. Plus, we can drink all day…to really enjoy fireworks, you gotta wait for the sun to go down.
I think I’m on to something. And I think the time has finally come. So, join me in raising a glass, and happy Gindependence Day!
I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
Don’t get me wrong, even as a singleton, I enjoy a nice, leisurely any Sunday morning waking up. Laying in bed, catching up on news, emails, social media, all the whatnots of life in 21st century America with the secure feeling one’s cozy nest provides.
Now, if only I could train this lil monster to get coffee refills.
Alas.
At least I have the environmental comfort of KINK’s Sunday morning programming – a program called Sunday Brunch – to deliver audible gems like Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus – to offset the assault on intelligence our weekly rag delivered in its daily news brief this morning.
The aforementioned assault on our collective intelligence is linked at the top of this post. To recap for those of you savvy enough to not click on embedded links of a possibly insane distant blogger’s posts, Willamette Week does a video feature called Hot Mic where they send a local film student out to ask people on the streets a question to get a pulse on civic engagement. It can be anything from the Valentine’s Day question about Oregon’s birthday – which I bet my readers could guess using the meager context cues in this very sentence – to who is Oregon’s Governor, which yielded slightly terrifying results.
In an even worse demonstration of the illiteracy of our voting populace, our intrepid student on the streets took off to find out if Portlanders knew who the Oregon Secretary of State was is.
Ok, was.
You see, Willamette Week has a history of taking down politicians with its investigative reporting. Not just state level, either. City, county…school board. Doesn’t matter, it’s the story – and it’s what voters need to know. Not just about the candidates and politicians, either. It’s what they need to understand about the system itself.
In this case, last month, maybe late February, WW began reporting on a local weed company’s unpaid debts. The stakes were <ahem> high in this revelation, too, since they weren’t just stiffing plumbers or electricians, in an impressive display of Trumpian privilege. They were, of course. But they were also stiffing their vendors.
The most egregious offenses – and what initiated the reporting – was the taxes they weren’t paying: state business and weed taxes, federal income taxes, payroll taxes. The owners of the business had accumulated an impressive ~30 liens against them totaling around $7 million in debt.
All while also donating around $200k to political races and candidates during our last election cycle. Including holding two fundraisers for our newly elected and even more recently resigned Secretary of State.
As SOS, the job is to audit state and local agencies, including the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission – which was another, less terrifying Hot Mic demonstration of the general population’s ignorance, failing to define the agency’s acronym. However, ours had recused herself in February from the audit of the OLCC – there’s that acronym – because of the impropriety of a SOS who’d taken donations from the owners of the second largest weed business in the state overseeing that audit.
Seems legit, right? Like, the audit needs to be done, but farm it out to ensure it’s impartial.
Here’s the rub, though, she recused herself a week after the audit was completed. It was a year-long audit. We only found out about the recusal a month later when it was released.
Then we found out – thanks to WW – that the SOS had put the donors in touch with the auditors and had helped define the scope of the audit.
A hot minute later, we found out that WW had received an anonymous tip – gotta love those! – that the SOS had also taken a freelance job for one of this company’s affiliate businesses for a base of $10k/month. That’s more than the monthly SOS salary…not to mention the $30k bonus for additional licenses this business received thanks to the efforts of the SOS.
72 hours after that disclosure, our Secretary of State had orphaned us by resigning.
Crazy shit.
I imagine the story likely earned national coverage – and will probably earn the paper another Pulitzer for investigative journalism – to the point where even someone in Appalachia country could name our Secretary of State. Even if that person might also call one of their cousins “pa”.
She’s Shemia Fagan.
Ok, I overstated their mission earlier. They just sent this film student out to see if people could pronounce her damn name. Surprised, they were, to find out people couldn’t name her at all.
Like I said at the top…idiots.
And they vote.
At least I can take comfort in my assumption that all Stupid Americans are created equal when it comes to elections. At least our ignorant liberal voters are casting their ballots with a sense of social responsibility closer to what Jesus would counsel than their (at best) equally ignorant conservative counterparts in the party of the Religious Right, Christian Nationalists, Proud Boys, Promise Keepers, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
And…with that, I should probably complete my unrelated special election ballot now.
Crotch Goblins. This is how a friend of mine referred to the children of one of her friends. Now that I think about it, I think she told me that’s what her friend calls her very own kids.
Regardless, I can’t unhear it or unthink it now.
Crotch Goblins. How delightfully graphic. It’s also malleable enough to be mistaken for an affectionate nickname. Entirely unlike the nick that I’ve used for kids for decades: STDs.
Whatever you call them, I’d just like to share what is apparently uncommon knowledge with parents everywhere: leave them in the suburbs, will you? I live in the city so I generally only have to deal with people’s progeny once they’ve at least reached a legal drinking age. I still have no use for them at that point, but at least I can drink around them (to make them more tolerable) without feeling like I’m ginfluencing them.
I’m tired of coming across these entire families where none should be. I accept the fact that because of our current houseless problems in Portland, I have to engage in the mental exercise of judging whether the sidewalk excrement I encounter is the result of a lazy human or a homeless human. That’s really all the concession I care to make regarding my urban life extras.
When people bring their children into this environment, it’s unnecessarily taxing to grumpy old Xtopher. First, I have to weigh whether the parents are selfishly dragging their kids along on an urban adventure they wanted to indulge in but we’re too cheap to pay a sitter for or if they are simply bad parents all-around. Bright side: I would never know or even think about it if they’d just left the kids in the subs. Y’know? This is hard to have a “one rule fits all” point of view on since the Oregon Zoo is walkable from my home downtown, same with OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), which is a frequent field trip destination for the area schools.
Fun Fact, if you’ve ever seen this film:
Then you’ve seen one of OMSI’s main attractions:
But I’ve drifted slightly off topic, I’m just showing you that I know that the People’s Republic of Portland has some built in “fun for the whole family” allure.
However, that does not extend to my breakfasts with the parents. I am the appropriate age child for parents to bring to town. When my mother shushed my cursing at breakfast this morning and reminded me of the destination for the plate of waffles – a child accompanied by three adults at the table behind me – that prompted me to say “That meal is an open invitation for fucking diabetes!”, well…that was too much.
With the exact amount of contrition the situation warranted, I pivoted to “Fine, ducking diabetes! But if they are so concerned for the well being of their Crotch Goblin, maybe don’t bring them to a dive restaurant that is literally alongside the railroad tracks down by the river.”
Am I being unreasonable here? I mean, the guy at the other table behind me finished a beer as I was walking in, ordered another as I sat down and a couple sips later, executed an admirable three-point turn on his scooter so he could go out and smoke a couple ciggies before his breakfast came. This is where top-tier parents choose to bring their precious child?
Then, when they left, the foursome completely blocked off the aisle between tables while they failed at putting their jackets on, completely trapping a server who had gone to drop off food at the next table over. What should have been a 20-second task turned into something like trapping an opossum in a cat carrier. The look of panic and deceleration in this poor server’s eyes. The mother was completely unaware of how her “nurturing” was negatively affecting those around her or how it would likely impact people for years and decades to come because she’d just taught her kid that the world can wait for her to get her shit together. I’ve never hoped that someone end up in a “put your own air mask on first” scenario, but now I can check that off my never have I ever list. But you know this family would fail that simple set of instructions.
Sorry, I might care more about the well-being of your offspring than you do, but I will only demonstrate it at the ballot box. If you bring them within my verbal splash zone, don’t expect the water to be filtered.
Likewise, if you bring your family of four into town, you need to manage that situation. People walking their dogs in an urban environment have to leash their fur babies. I’m not suggesting you leash children, but in the last week I’ve had to navigate a sidewalk with one too many family hazards – the correct amount is zero – twice and I’m kind of done with it.
The aforementioned dog owners? Fine – and they usually have their dogs trained to walk beside them, or at least are present enough to their dog’s behaviors to be able to follow their fur baby to whichever side of the sidewalk their nose drags them. I rarely see a dog sniffing out the latest pupdates on a tree or light post on one side of a sidewalk while their owner stands oblivious on the other side of the sidewalk waiting with the leash cordoning off the throughway.
Honestly, with dogs on s sidewalk, the biggest hazard are the people who have to stop and pet them and ask them “who’s a good boy?”. Why? Because their hit of unconditional love costs everyone around them free access to a sidewalk. Can you be needy elsewhere, please?
Speaking of a group usually referred to as “needy”, then there’s “the least among us”. Those poor – usually drug addled – folks who reside on the city streets. The Urban Campers. They’re a blight and a reason to exercise gratitude simultaneously because it could happen to any of us. For them, I will tolerate the oblivion that makes their existence tolerable to them. They don’t literally bother me – aside from the mental game I mentioned earlier – so I forgive their disruptive presence.
But these fucking families navigating sidewalks and crosswalks? Pass.
At their best they can manage an organized excursion, albeit at a glacial pace. I’ve seen it, but it’s truly rare. Usually, the best I can hope for is a chaotic form of forward progress. The entire family scattered across the sidewalk traveling at different velocities and, to the casual observer, completely unaware of one another.
This would never have flown in my family. My mother did not just develop an interest in how her child’s behavior affected those around her this morning. No, I was raised with that same consideration. My parents kept me on one side of the sidewalk so we weren’t in the way of other pedestrians. There was certainly none of this laissez-faire parenting that results in enough distance between family members on a sidewalk to mistake them for strangers.
Mind you, now I’m an adult, so I can decide on my own whether some Stupid American warrants my consideration or not. A not-shocking amount of those people do not. That’s a fair middle ground, too, when dealing with me: overt disregard. When it comes to managing my own behaviors, if I’m changing them for a setting, the last thing you likely want is me sharing my opinion on your presence. Maybe you brought your Crotch Goblins into town to learn about life, get some culture. You probably aren’t expecting or open to my hot take about your parenting style or whether you are fit for the job in my estimation.
I told you that my overt disregard of your family was a good result. But, seriously, do everyone a favor and leave the kids at home if they can’t behave as well as a dog on a city sidewalk. Easy-peasy.
If you’ve followed along on these misadventures for any length of time, you know I’m a fan of that jaywalking life. But I’ve recently begun to notice that it’s not for everyone.
It’s more of a skill than I’d realized.
Definitely not a privilege.
Jaywalking is a scofflaw life.
A crime of opportunity – although, I admit to some off guard moments of necessity where I wanted to be home quite urgently. If you get my drift…
The short of it is, if the coast is clear, you go. That italicized verb was referring to the stride of Sir Jay, not the thinly veiled bathroom reference that preceded it.
Key words: clear and go.
Here’s my bitch, people are fucking up this shockingly simple transgression. They’ll dart out into the street without so much as a cursory glance in the direction of traffic. Better yet, they’ll just stand at the edge of the street or on the traffic side of a row of parked cars and wait.
And people stop and let them cross! Classic Portland. Also, classic Wrong of Way.
If I stop for those idiots, it’s gonna be to tell them that they’re doing it wrong. I’ll suggest their attempt to save a few steps is wasting their time.
Not that they’ll listen.
Seriously, though…what’s the thought process there? They aren’t making it across quicker if they have to wait. If they’d walk to the corner, they inherit a right of way, especially if there’s a traffic control. But all they’re showing me with their technique is laziness or stupidity.
Stupid Americans.
But the folks that really get me going? Two different groups, but similar imagery. Think: Beatles album covers. Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
The first group that raises my ire is the group of people who are clearly together, but can’t get together – no, wait, if I’m gonna cite Beatles references, it’s got to be come together! – to cross the street as a group. There’s the de facto leader, simply by virtue of being the only one focusing on the task at hand. There’s invariably someone struggling with a load of shopping or an over or underaged person that needs extra care to cross and then trailing the toddler or infirm entry in this parade is the person with their phace in their fone.
Abbey Road, they are not.
Even worse than this group is the group of strangers recreating the pic at a 90-degree angle, so there’s just this line of failed jaywalkers lining the side of a street. They may get an F for their misguided misdemeanor efforts, but they pass social distancing with flying colors. Inadvertently, I’m sure.
And as I pass them, I mentally mow them all down. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Except any of them that went to a corner, mind you.
Is there a Nobel non-Peace Prize? Fine, I’ll start my own.
atleastihaveafrigginglass 