Bad Dog, Bad Fish, Bad Writing

What do all of these things have in common?  They usually stink.  The dog rolls in something long dead.  Fish is often sold several weeks after it was caught.  And writing?  Some of it, some of mine, just stinks because it's written carelessly, quickly and with no thought to the reader's ease.

The fix?  Wash the dog, trash the fish, and dish the words you mean to say and make it count for something.

What prompts this topic is the abundance of poor writing, language and spelling on that quintessential Blather of the Masses known as Facebook.  Many people simply believe a post like

"... . have a wonderul Easter adn remember, Jesus wouold've died if it had JUST been for you.  God is gud!...."

is "about the message not the messenger."  No, no, no, no and positvely NO!  This shitty writing says more about the messenger than their Curriculum Vitae.   If I write "God is gud," are you overwhelmed with the depth of my faith and loving demeanor?  I sure as hell hope not.  You should be appalled by my utter lack of initiative to give half a rat turd about my communication skills.

My first thought when I read a poorly composed post is that the messenger is a flippin' numptie and then my eyes roll so far up in my head that it hurts me.  My second thought is that he or she hasn't read a book since their last year of schooling.  Jumping to a recognized cognitive insufficiency like dyslexia doesn't even flicker over my dumb-shit-o-meter.  Rather, I conclude that this person doesn't care about what they say, who their audience might be or if their message even gets through.  They just want to blather about nothing and everything - - much like I do only with reasonable employment of decent grammar and spelling.

What does this say about me as a person?  Am I a bad person for "missing the message" and focusing a baneful eye on the shit-for-brains moron who believes every word out of their mouths is golden?  Perhaps.  More to the point, it says I know that words have power.

Words become images in our minds.  Language incites us to a myriad of emotions as we read, talk with someone, listen to our favorite music.  Care enough to let your words bear the weight of your meaning.

"Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To Dream Perchance to Pee...

Pee dreams.....everyone has them.  You're in the middle of a crowded party and suddenly there's a toilet and you need to pee.  So you do, in the middle of the party with chatty non-curious people on all sides and on a toilet that has "problems."  It's either full of something, missing its seat, or looks like a giant sauna box where your head sticks out and you converse with folks whilst doing Number One.

Sometimes in my search for relief in these dreams, all starts out perfectly well and sane.  I'm seated comfortably and then notice that the walls have turned to clear glass or there are people having a conference behind me at a large table that's only just appeared.  Or I'm sitting in my sauna box and three or four other people are sitting in their sauna boxes around me.  And the toilet paper is the size of a twin sheet and made of neoprene.

Why, I ask myself, don't I just awaken and go to my own little space to take care of business?  Well, where would be the fun in that?  Apparently the Minions of Morpheus would rather I start peeing in the dream, wake suddenly horrified in my bed and feel around for evidence of it being real.  I can hear them laughing in my head as the shreds of sleep waft away with me trundling down the hall to my little space.  After all, the Minions only get six to eight hours of sleepy-time gamboling a night and they must make the most of it.

The mind works in mysterious ways.  You can have a pee dream that takes you all the way to emptying your bladder into a toilet located in the middle of a busy intersection set atop a twenty foot pillar, but you can't get the swarthy prince or comely princess to get to third base in the sexy dreams.  Damn you, Minions!

"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep...

Or not.  Mostly I'm tossing, flailing and squirming; trying to get comfortable while my mind is very uncomfortable.  

It's been nearly two weeks since I was let go at my job in order that "I might find happiness" elsewhere.  The sense of betrayal continues to overwhelm me.  As the Sandman seeks to shut my little eyes and fill my dreams with visions of the sugarplum tree, the Death Squad at my former workplace, Bollocks & Psychos, Ltd., walks with cloppity shoes inside my head.

In hindsight, I realize all the signs were there:  once friendly and trusted co-workers avoiding me like the plague, Mr. Milquetoast (the only decent guy) giving me squinty side-long glances as he hurried past, none of the office sows piling into the doughnuts I'd brought in that morning, and the complete serene calm of Pisser, the office manager.  She was getting her way and life was good for her.

Yes, I'd been on the Death Squad of B&P, Ltd. myself in the year I'd been there.  I'm not proud to either admit it or know what I did to relatively innocent co-workers.  The typical day for the Soon-To-Be-Fucked-Up-The-Ass started out much like any other with all of the rest of us scathing bitches having full and complete knowledge of her fate.  Soft strains of the Jaws theme song would commence around 4:30 p.m. and we, the horrid and conniving puds, would wait in gleeful anticipation of the other cloppity shoe dropping on ol' STBFUTA.  Ha ha HAH!  

The saying "What goes around, comes around" has been permanently affixed on my psyche since I left that day.  I reaped what I'd sown.  If time could be turned backward, I would have refused to participate in the awfulness no matter what the personal cost to me.  

I knew my day of reckoning was inevitable.   You swim with sharks, eventually you will get eaten.  Nom nom nom...

Please, Sir, I Want Some....

...one to continue telling me in certain and ambiguous ways that I am defective and unfit for normal work-a-day worlds - - each and every one of them.

It would appear that my marked inability to work in the "regular world" should have been sufficiently clear by, say, 1990.  Taking tongue-lashing after ass-kicking from humans and the Cosmic Frying Pan in the Sky, one would think I'd have "gotten it" by now.  Hmmm?  But, I go back repeatedly and beg for the whack on the head.  Much like Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of hideous slop, I knew the outcome of my continued returning to a regular workplace.  Ol' Ollie probably knew the slap to his head was but an arm's length away, but he had a hunger for more.

So am I stupid?  Not hardly.  Stubborn?  Well, yes but not always in a good way.  A do-gooder with a heart of gold who believes she can change not only the world but her Self each and every time she goes back to the hum-drumity of the work-a-day life?  Pffffftttt!....yes, that's what I think or always thought.  That the next place would be better, different, "the thing."  Only I was still the same person trying to fit into an environment I had no business entering, much like a sex addict in a convent.

I once had a boss tell me bluntly that no matter where I went, if I was planning on doing the same damn thing in another location, I would fail.  Each and every time.  I mistakenly thought he was just a self-righteous and brilliant S.O.B. who couldn't be bothered to go get his OWN SANDWICH from 100 feet across the parking lot.  But he was right and we both knew it.

My hunger will only be assuaged by taking a leap of faith that the writing life is mine.  This is a lonely, scary existence, knowing this.  God, the Universe, Mother Nature, the Cosmic Frying Pan in the Sky - - they all know how I feel.  And they laugh.

Here I Sit...Brokenhearted...

I'm not exactly brokenhearted.  Mostly just bewildered.  That's right, I am once again unemployed.  Was it my fault?  Well of course it was - - mine and several others.  I am happy to bear the blame, but not without first editorializing about the who, where, why and 'cest wut ler fuk.

So, first and foremost, I can be an insufferably arrogant bitch when I am forced into a position of subordination by a work-douchebag (i.e. someone with no credentialing in your occupation but operating under the belief that they are smarter than you).  My not-so-inner jackass screeches to halt, stamps its teeny hooves and glares in utter defiance from behind my lovely blue eyes.  I'm starting to think that people can actually see my not-so-inner jackass, whom I will now name Gokissmyassi.  (She's Native American like most primitive totems and beings-of-inner-power.)  Pride goeth before a fall, you say?  To each his own, but I'd rather fall and get up a million times than be walked across for fear of stepping outside my comfort zone.

So, in any event, I go on vacation the week of my birthday.  Yippity for me - - I'm 48 and unemployed!!!  Whilst on vacation, I am alerted to the fact my employer has posted an opening for MY JOB on a popular Maine job search engine.  Well, howdy doody, you spineless motherfuckers.  I go look and yes, yes it is my job.  And it reads in part:

"...We are looking for someone who can think outside the box for patient satisfaction.  Candidates must have a consistent work ethic and be drama free. ...We need someone who can multi-task with a smile.  Advancement opportunity and benefits."

Say, I would love this job!  No, wait - - it is my job but they've described it in Utopian (i.e. horseshit) terms and it now appears there is "advancement opportunity".   I might note here that two of the senior employees have been salary-ceilinged since shortly after the turn of the century.  Apparently "advancement opportunity" means "if you don't like it, you may opportune yourself to advance to the exit."

Let's address this line for line shall we?  "Thinking outside the box" is what got me fired.  I thought for myself and each time got a milque-toast tongue lashing from our manager, whom I will call Pisser.  "You should have asked before you..." was her pat response to me when I took initiative.  My co-hort in the lab was back-handedly volleyed "it's a problem when a pony thinks they're a horse"-type response to his taking initiative to solve a client's issue.  Does it sound like "thinking outside the box" is healthy for an employee in this establishment?  Mmmm, no.

The new lamb for slaughter must also "have a consistent work ethic and be drama free."  Perhaps this flies in the face of our own office manager quitting her previous job willy-nilly because she "got mad?"  And as for "drama free," let me just say that my office was Bitchfest Central.  Pisser, herself, would come in to bitch unceasingly about a certain hiring partner whose pantyliner was perpetually stuck to her pubic hair.  The other lead bitcher/drama mama, whom I will call Wilhelmena, also spent considerable oxygen to gasbag about the awfulness of her job, her husband, her mother, and said panty-liner-constricted boss.

Let's not forget that they also require "someone who can multi-task with a smile."   Does this make anyone else feel unprotected or harangued around their nether regions?  Such a pat line, designed to intimate that the previous employee went around growling and scowling the whole time.  I've always said the employee who gets ousted is the Villain Extraordinaire until the next employee gets ousted.  I wear the badge proudly.

My recent "praying" for a fortuitous whack on the head from the Cosmic Frypan in the Sky to guide me to my next great thing has come to being.  CLONG!  Now being forced back to the keyboard, to my writing, to a path of intense fright and second-guessing my alleged talents, I still feel happier than I've felt in the past year.  What will come of it?  It may be like the famous quote by Samuel Johnson:

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

I have felt the ground slip away beneath me.  The death of illusion is complete.  Now I hope to fly.