Annoying and Boring

You know, the more I read people's blogs and the various comments, the more I realize how annoying most people are. A guy I know put up a post on picketers and protesters in regards to the Schiavo case and abortion clinics, followed by a lengthy quote from some religious guy. I dutifully put in my two cents on how I'm less likely to sympathize with a picketer's cause if they are in my way of getting somewhere. Like those people who lay down in front of buildings or block traffic to get their point across. I have a hard time feeling bad for them when they get hurt because its like, "Well you're standing in traffic, keeping people in their cars from getting where they need to go-they are trying to mind their own business, so why do you have to be in theirs?" So some moron posts something like, "Well, I don't think your comment is relevant here because the post is about the religious aspects, blah blah blah." I wrote back, "the post and my comment are talking about various aspects of picketers/protesters and all aspects should be considered since the post is a public one." What I really wanted to write was, "Hey, moron, this isn't your blog-why don't you leave it to the author of it to decide what is and is not relevant." I didn't because I didn't want to start a big argument on someone else's post, especially since I work with the author of the original post.

Now I'm just sitting here sighing and wondering why there are so many assholes in the world and why there are so many BORING blogs. So many religious ones. Or tedious pondering about spirituality and religion. I would consider myself spiritual, but I don't go on about it-well unless I'm ranting about the boring parts and the disparity between my coworkers and myself. I think spirituality should be something kept private-like the size of one's underwear-you don't go around telling people about it. Talking about one's spirituality wrecks the specialness and makes it trite if you go on and on about it and your struggles to understand how you fit personally into a larger spectrum.

Cadbury Creme Eggs: manna from heaven

Once again, spring is upon us, which means Easter is not too far off in coming. And that means that classic commercial of the Cadbury Bunny clucking his way into my heart, bringing with him the best candy that Britain has to offer: the Cadbury Creme Egg. Every year I eagerly anticipate this foil-wrapped gem; even more so than the tiniest buds upon leaf and soil with their bounties of allergies and insect larvae that will somehow find their way into our house.

True, the egg's contents aren't pretty and its foil wrapper is hardly any protection against the abuse of a mouthbreather CVS clerk. Also, you can't eat them while driving and really, are best eaten with something to drink nearby. But come on: it's Easter from when we were kids, of the days of plastic green grass and awful looking pastel baskets. The overcast muddy town comon, Easter Sunday spent hunting for Easter eggs with kids three times bigger than you, who shove you aside to find those plastic eggs filled with even uglier pastel colored maltball eggs that taste like Ovaltine-flavored gravel. Easter with commericals of that bunny and those two kids dressed like a bunny and a chick for M&M's who say, "Thank ya Easta bunna!" "Bwuck bwuck!"

(I swear, I could have been a nuclear physicist, and still could, if only I could clear my head of 80s pop culture.)

So I salute you, Cadbury Easter Bunny!

Booorrrrinnnngg!

Some people have the most BORING blogs. Some, sometimes; some most of the time. Sometimes when I read them, I just hear white noise in my head rather than their words. Or I think of a duck quacking. Or even a little kid just going, "Mommy, mommy, mommy" and tugging on a sleeve, desperate for attention. I mean, if given the opportunity to read a blog, why pick one topic to write about constantly, or just quote song lyric and think, "Hey what a great blog I wrote." No, you just quoted a song with no explanation as to why. It's like a court stenographer just transcribing. Boring.

Call me Miss Crankypants today

I’m cranky today. For the past two nights, I haven’t slept well. Sunday night-well that’s a given. I have not slept decently on a Sunday night since I was about 5 years old. It used to be school anxieties-first day of school, first day of the school week, and so on. It went from elementary school all the way to college and has moved on to happen every single Sunday night representing the workweek. I lay down, about 10pm and it takes a good ten minutes to settle down: hair out of my face, pillow plumped so I’m not breathing into the material. I make sure my pajamas aren’t wrinkled or twisted around me, blankets pulled to just below neck (at the neck and I feel like I’m being slowly strangled). I figure out good places to put my arms and try not to fall asleep clenching my fists (speaking of arms-I don’t think human beings were meant to sleep on their sides-it would be so much easier if arms were Velcro-ed on or something, But then we would run the risk of having someone else tear our arms off and beat us with them. Or getting too much lint and crud in the sticky side of the Velcro so the soft side wouldn’t stick anymore.).

So once I’m settled, I think about what I need to do the next day, things I did during the current day, songs I’ve heard, books I’ve read, conversations I’ve had, TV shows I’ve watched. I try not to think about the horror movies I’ve seen. I try not to think about what I would take with me if I wake up in the middle of the night because the house is on fire. I toss some blankets off me, I put some on. I roll over and the whole process starts again. By this time, I’m checking the clock and see it’s 10:30pm and automatically calculate how many hours I have to sleep if I were to fall asleep at that instant. Still nothing.

When I finally fall asleep, it doesn’t feel like I’m asleep. I hear bits of songs (often the same one or two lyrics over and over) and I have vivid dreams that always involve activity-running, being late, swimming in a forbidding ocean (the ocean is never calm in my dreams-there is always huge waves, rocky shorelines pummeled by water, sharks and other large fish). I toss and turn, halfway waking up every time I do so.
I swear, I sleep better in the daytime-provided there is no construction outside or junk phone calls coming in. Maybe I was just meant to have a night job.

Which leads to a deeper philosophical question: how much of ourselves is what we try to impose on ourselves for the sake of convenience or society, and how much happier would we be if we did what our bodies are so obviously telling us to do? For example: if I sleep better in the day, why not take a night job? I do it because more can get done in a day-doctor’s appointments, errands, going out with friends-things that usually are daytime related. It doesn’t help how I can’t sleep at night though. Or the fact I always said I never wanted to work in an office, and ended up being an office toady and at the same time, good at it. If I’m naturally good at it, why do I fight it? Or, why is it that Ashlee Simpson insists on being a singer, when it’s obvious she can’t sing, can’t sustain her voice? Because people around her are telling her she’s good, that if her sister can sing, she should too. When will she say, "Hey you know what? I’m scared performing all the time, my voice isn’t strong, I’m going to go do something else."

When is the point where we just give in to these things and take the road we were meant to travel?

Inanimate objects I’d like to huck across the room today

-My computer at work. The management systems are slow today and whenever I add a new product to the page I am working on, I stare at the little work bar that tells me the thing is being added and I can literally count to 20 before it updates the page. Multiply that 20 by the number of times I have to add something new to the webpage and well, I’m losing probably a good HOUR of productivity. But hey, if my company is satisfied with the software they use, who am I to complain? Break out the sticks and papyrus to scrawl on!

-My mp3 player. Don’t get me wrong, without it, the average workday would be the 7th Level of Hell (not that it’s already close at least). I love the fact that I don’t need to bring in 400 CDs in case there is something I want to listen to and don’t have. Plus, it has a radio component so I can feel like there is a world out there, with real live people. The problem is, though, the radio component: in essence, I AM the antenna for the reception. This means that if I move so much as a finger, or tilt my head the wrong way, I get bursts of static on one of the three stations I can actually get within a large, corporate building. (What is it with large buildings-you’d think I could get Radio China from this height, but no. I swear they do that on purpose in designing buildings-probably fill the walls with iron filings and aluminum foil. The same thing happened in college for the TV reception, thereby forcing students to sign up for cable packages that included 8 stations worth of ESPN type stations.) I think this is at least one reason why I have lower back pain-trying to contort myself in just the right position to listen to a radio station that plays the same 10 pop songs every two hours.

-My office chair. Being five feet tall, exactly, NOTHING is built sufficiently high or low enough for me to be comfortable. Either my feet are swinging-bending my leg bones, but my arms and back and neck are fine for the desk; or my legs, hips, back are ergonomically correct but my hands are too high which leads to back/neck/arm/shoulder pain. I reiterate: Humans were not made to sit in cubicles all day. We should be swinging from trees, romping in the ocean surf, and eating each other’s head lice. The hierarchy and corporate ladder climbing would remain the same, so what’s the difference?

-The office water cooler. I don’t know where they get the bottled water from, but it ain’t a spring, that’s for damn sure. "Pocahontas" brand: flat tasting when cold, oily tasting when room temperature. Supposedly it’s spring water from someplace in MA. For anyone that has ever been here, you KNOW there are no springs around here, and if there is, the springs are currently paved over.

-Anyone’s stinky lunch. ‘Nuff said.

(One of these days, I will have to write about something positive and happy. I swear I will, someday.)

I can hear a mouse breathing a mile from here...

I am sensitive to sounds. Apparently over-sensitive, according to my beloved. He calls it "Retard-o-hearing." I call it "Hearing innocuous sounds that send me into a rage spiral." Case in point: I work in a cube farm and today I have been subjected to the rumblings of the conveyor belts in the warehouse portion of my company. It’s something similar to standing on a sidewalk that covers over an underground subway station and hearing/feeling the vibrations through the walls and floors.

There is also a repetitive squeaking sound that comes and goes in non-predictable cycles. Eek eek eek eek…..eek eek….eek…eekeekeekeekeek. Then nothing for a bit, then again.

Next is the click-click-click of keyboards coming and going.

There is the occasional silence suddenly shattered by one of the announcers over the paging system. She has a truly annoying whiny voice similar to the secretary in the movie, "Office Space" ("Thank you for calling Intertech, JUST a mo-MENT!" Only she says, "TODD McCOY please dial exTENsion TWO-four-two-SIX!" half pause, then repeat with the same intonations. We have fastened a piece of foam over the speaker and had the maintenance people turn the volume down, but I guess they received complaints that she couldn’t be heard in some areas so they turned the volume back up since there seems to be only one master volume knob. My coworkers and I are seriously considering ripping out the wiring of that particular speaker (or half-jokingly considering ripping out the woman’s trachea).

And for my complete listening pleasure just today, I have a coworker with a hacking, phelgm-filled cough every two or three minutes, punctuated by the occasional wet, snot-filled blowing of the nose. (This is better left unseen, trust me.) Apparently, cough drops or cough medicine are too rare a commodity to buy, what with the nearest drugstore an astounding ¼ mile away and no Tibetian sherpas available to guide the way. And when someone commented on how he sounds, he replied, "Hey I sound worse than I feel." While I’m glad he doesn’t feel crappy, I also have to note this is his third cold this winter. One word for ya, pal: "VITAMINS."
Other minor sounds in this orchestra from hell: another coworkers headphones as he listens to techno music-the bass thump makes me want to go buy a Glo-stick and look for an Ecstasy dealer. Another coworkers’ headphones that sound like he’s listening to pure white noise.

I know, I could merely turn up my headphones, but even turned up loud, I can still hear most of this stuff, and it makes my own head ring when I listen to my music loudly. I would use ear plugs, but then I’m afraid I will miss something important. But I’m seriously considering it anyway.

I miss having an office of my own…

Whatever day you’re planning, leave me out of it

I was just in the bathroom at work, washing my hands and noticed the latest magazine someone left on the counter for…um, reading pleasure while on the toilet. (At least that’s what I assume it’s there for-who would leave a magazine on the counter in a ladies’ room for someone else to say, "Hey! Free ‘zine!" and take it back to their desk.) The magazine was an issue of "Real Simple: for body/mind/soul/living" from May 2004. The cover listed titles of articles presumably found within, like "How to have a healthy mind and heart in 20 minutes" and "How to get a clutter-free closet." But one in particular stuck out for me:

"The Best:
swimsuits
mayonnaise
bandages
travel bags"

and I tried to think of how these things would go together and I left the bathroom humming "One of these things is not like the other!" from Sesame Street, and thinking of a Simpsons episode where Homer is buying illegal fireworks at a Quickie-mart and ends up buying a bunch of other items so his main goal isn’t really noticed. He comes home, Marge opens the grocery bag and says, "Magazines, beef jerky, beer, maxi pads, fireworks-Homer, whatever kind of night you had in mind, leave me out of it."