When I grow up I want to be: Charles Dickens.
Mom tells me she has an image of Merlin as an Alan Rickman-style angel (Mom is far too fond of Dogma), eternally scowling, and barely held aloft by a pair of undersized wings. Dogma is not my thing, at all, but I must admit she has a point. Plus, what she describes sounds like the natural predator of those hideous cherub-beasts of which the Renaissance was so fond. I cannot imagine a better afterlife than one dedicated to their destruction, at least provided that there is lots of fresh water and the occasional brushing. And that one is a cat.
While I'm on the subject of cats as characters in movies I have never watched in their entirety, Butters reminds me very much of Mel Gibson in the first 12 minutes of the original Lethal Weapon. It would seem that James feels the same. On the few occasions when he's chosen to engage, he's bested Butters's technique - leap up, wrap his forelegs around James's neck, and then dangle with his legs off the ground - by waiting for him to twist a little and then dropping his upper body onto Butters's head. From then on, it's just James's patience vs. an immobilized Butters. And yet for the most part James prefers to run away when he cannot simply ignore. That's because Butters cares not a whit about the possibility of death by aggravated James, or death by playing with plastic bags, or death by sliding headfirst into a kitchen cabinet, or death by chewing on an electrical cord, or - perhaps the most likely - death by sinking his claws into my leg one more goddamn time. It stings when I shower because my skin is so generously sliced. The kitten is all pounce and no brains, is my point.
Not that such a condition is limited to baby animals. My coworkers, although much less likely to carry around a knee-high stocking in their mouths, sometimes act without as much foresight as I'd like. Okay, that isn't really fair, but check this out. About two weeks ago, some people in our office mailed 10,000 copies of a survey to a random selection of one of our biggest client's clients.1 Because we would like, eventually, to get some of those surveys back,2 they then sent a reminder postcard to all 10,000 of those people. If you got our survey and returned it, thanks; if you haven't yet, please do; if you didn't get it, you should have; feel free to call with questions. But here's the rub: we're automatically sending a second copy of the survey to every single address from which we either haven't received a completed copy or haven't had the original returned to us marked 'undeliverable'. So all week long I've been fielding three kinds of phone calls. Type 1 goes like this: "I, uh, got this thing saying y'all sent me sumthin', but I ain't seen it, or, uh, I musta misplaced it or sumthing', so could y'all sen' me anuther?"3 "Don't worry, sir/ma'am; we'll be sending another copy to your address this Friday, so you should receive it next week." "Oh, okay." "Thank you for calling!" Savor the pointlessness!
Type 2: "I got your survey a while ago and mailed it in, but now I have this postcard saying you don't have it?" "That's okay; we sent the postcard to everyone who received the original survey, so it doesn't mean we haven't gotten yours back." "Oh, okay." "Thank you for calling!" The thank-you is my own touch, by the way, to make up for having inflicted this idiocy upon thousands of people.
Type 3 is a more or less angry tale of woe, up to nine minutes in length, poured into my helpless ear by someone under the mistaken (though not unreasonably so) impression that, because we sent them a survey and a postcard on hybrid letterhead, we are in fact our client and, as such, to blame for their misfortunes, or capable of easing them. The other day I heard a coworker, after three full minutes of silence, say, with the most amazing inflection, "Yes ma'am, and what can I do to help you today?" Variants of Type 3 include the Caller Who Must Be Convinced, At Length, That The Survey Is In Fact Anonymous, and his opposite, the Caller Who Damn Well Wants [Our Client] To Know What He/She Has To Say, Thanks (including the Caller Who Is Going To Start A Website To Let The World Know About The Misdeeds Of [Our Client], Just You Wait). And of course, the Caller Who Cannot - Or Chooses Not To - Arrive At Any Kind Of Point... I'm assuming they fit into Type 3, but then it's hard to tell.
Anyway, someone in this office spent genuine American dollars to mail 10,000 postcards that served only 1) to confuse people who haven't received the survey yet or already returned it and 2) to attract the wrath and/or anguish of scores of people who think I, personally, am the director of [our client] and therefore, just possibly, the head of a vast conspiracy aimed at their undoing.
Somehow it's never the author of the postcard who answers these calls.
I wouldn't say I'm in it for the money, exactly, but that's not to say I don't spend it. Friday night Daniel and I met down at the Woodruff Arts Center for the ASO's Christmas show, an experience that set me back $13.50: $3.50 in MARTA fare, and a ten-dollar student ticket (Main Orchestra, Row L, verrrry stage left). We were both kinda cutely dressed up (I mean, I was dressed up for me), and got to check our coats and whatever. The concert hasn't changed that much since I was in it (1992?). However, as the outrageous setting of "What Child Is This" to something other than Greensleeves demonstrated, innovation is a double-edged sword. (Corollary: all alternate tunes for "What Child Is This" fucking suck, now and forever. Absolutely.)
Overall, a good price for ninety minutes of largely familiar music, plus a sighting of the Silver Fox, plus the opportunity to puzzle over the engrossing question of whether the second-chair cellist was actually very sexy, or only very sexy in profile. The first-chair cellist was definitely very sexy, if only for the duration of his solo in "The Carol of the Birds." But then all the ladies love a cellist. Oh, and the girl two rows in front of us had a beautifully simple chignon going, so I took time to figure that out, too. The arts center turns out to be extremely convenient to the Arts Center stop - that surprised me far more than it probably should have - which will come in handy if I need to art again. Hurrah for student IDs!
One more sexy guy and a piece of advice, and I'm done for now. Tonight I saw (for the first time) an old episode of "Dirty Jobs" in which Mr. Rowe - no slouch himself - was cleaning a penguin habitat. The keeper, Tom, was an ambiguously gay, slightly low-rent Northrop-a-like, who brilliantly related the story of his accidental seduction of a female named Maynard after her mate, Satchmo, dumped her for her sister. I have absolutely no idea which one of them was supposed to be the straight man during that segment, but it was hilarious. We could get into why I'm attracted to slight, ambiguously gay guys who anthropomorphize penguins, but let's not ruin the moment.
And the advice: if you, like all my family, are prone to pizza dreams - pizza being a good source of crumbs of cheese and bits of undigested beef - you probably shouldn't eat some of one of my everything-in-the-refrigerator-plus-basil pizzas for dinner and then catch up on 10 days' worth of Overheard in New York before going to bed. I got lost in the enormous, industrial putative bathroom of my unfamiliar hosts, spent the night wandering a neighborhood that doesn't exist, and then found myself on an above-ground 6 train that passed several famous landmarks (albeit not necessarily New York landmarks) before it arrived at the parking lot where junked McDonalds PlayPlaces accumulate: conveniently across the street from, I'm guessing, the set of Super Mario Bros. 3. Or maybe it was Candy Land.
Learn from my mistake.
1. Part of being a consulting firm, I'm learning, is never having a simple answer to the question "Who is this for?"4
2. Part of being a secretary is finding that almost everything that's in the best interests of your superiors sucks for you. Because when several thousand surveys do come back, someone has to enter them all into a database - and I sit at the big desk, so I'm real easy to find.
3. Part of dealing with 10,000 randomly selected people is that the 1% that is guaranteed to be heartbreakingly stupid is one hundred strong. How fortunate that our survey, in additional to a bewildering array of checkboxes, contains a free-response section for comments!5
4. Because "Whom is this for?" and "For whom is this?" are also pretty wrong, and at least the first one isn't also snotty.
5. The best comment so far was a clarification after a respondent marked both herself and her "Partner/Spouse" as female: "My 'partner' is my sister - not a disgusting modern 'companion'." The quotation marks take the edge off the bigotry, implying as they do that lesbians - as distinct from, I don't know, the Doctor, or elderly nineteenth-century widows - refer to their adjuncts as "companion."
The runner-up is "The monthly per diem is not enough to take care of a child's daily needs - [x dollars] daily." Face it, kids: Latin is dead.
While I'm on the subject of cats as characters in movies I have never watched in their entirety, Butters reminds me very much of Mel Gibson in the first 12 minutes of the original Lethal Weapon. It would seem that James feels the same. On the few occasions when he's chosen to engage, he's bested Butters's technique - leap up, wrap his forelegs around James's neck, and then dangle with his legs off the ground - by waiting for him to twist a little and then dropping his upper body onto Butters's head. From then on, it's just James's patience vs. an immobilized Butters. And yet for the most part James prefers to run away when he cannot simply ignore. That's because Butters cares not a whit about the possibility of death by aggravated James, or death by playing with plastic bags, or death by sliding headfirst into a kitchen cabinet, or death by chewing on an electrical cord, or - perhaps the most likely - death by sinking his claws into my leg one more goddamn time. It stings when I shower because my skin is so generously sliced. The kitten is all pounce and no brains, is my point.
Not that such a condition is limited to baby animals. My coworkers, although much less likely to carry around a knee-high stocking in their mouths, sometimes act without as much foresight as I'd like. Okay, that isn't really fair, but check this out. About two weeks ago, some people in our office mailed 10,000 copies of a survey to a random selection of one of our biggest client's clients.1 Because we would like, eventually, to get some of those surveys back,2 they then sent a reminder postcard to all 10,000 of those people. If you got our survey and returned it, thanks; if you haven't yet, please do; if you didn't get it, you should have; feel free to call with questions. But here's the rub: we're automatically sending a second copy of the survey to every single address from which we either haven't received a completed copy or haven't had the original returned to us marked 'undeliverable'. So all week long I've been fielding three kinds of phone calls. Type 1 goes like this: "I, uh, got this thing saying y'all sent me sumthin', but I ain't seen it, or, uh, I musta misplaced it or sumthing', so could y'all sen' me anuther?"3 "Don't worry, sir/ma'am; we'll be sending another copy to your address this Friday, so you should receive it next week." "Oh, okay." "Thank you for calling!" Savor the pointlessness!
Type 2: "I got your survey a while ago and mailed it in, but now I have this postcard saying you don't have it?" "That's okay; we sent the postcard to everyone who received the original survey, so it doesn't mean we haven't gotten yours back." "Oh, okay." "Thank you for calling!" The thank-you is my own touch, by the way, to make up for having inflicted this idiocy upon thousands of people.
Type 3 is a more or less angry tale of woe, up to nine minutes in length, poured into my helpless ear by someone under the mistaken (though not unreasonably so) impression that, because we sent them a survey and a postcard on hybrid letterhead, we are in fact our client and, as such, to blame for their misfortunes, or capable of easing them. The other day I heard a coworker, after three full minutes of silence, say, with the most amazing inflection, "Yes ma'am, and what can I do to help you today?" Variants of Type 3 include the Caller Who Must Be Convinced, At Length, That The Survey Is In Fact Anonymous, and his opposite, the Caller Who Damn Well Wants [Our Client] To Know What He/She Has To Say, Thanks (including the Caller Who Is Going To Start A Website To Let The World Know About The Misdeeds Of [Our Client], Just You Wait). And of course, the Caller Who Cannot - Or Chooses Not To - Arrive At Any Kind Of Point... I'm assuming they fit into Type 3, but then it's hard to tell.
Anyway, someone in this office spent genuine American dollars to mail 10,000 postcards that served only 1) to confuse people who haven't received the survey yet or already returned it and 2) to attract the wrath and/or anguish of scores of people who think I, personally, am the director of [our client] and therefore, just possibly, the head of a vast conspiracy aimed at their undoing.
Somehow it's never the author of the postcard who answers these calls.
I wouldn't say I'm in it for the money, exactly, but that's not to say I don't spend it. Friday night Daniel and I met down at the Woodruff Arts Center for the ASO's Christmas show, an experience that set me back $13.50: $3.50 in MARTA fare, and a ten-dollar student ticket (Main Orchestra, Row L, verrrry stage left). We were both kinda cutely dressed up (I mean, I was dressed up for me), and got to check our coats and whatever. The concert hasn't changed that much since I was in it (1992?). However, as the outrageous setting of "What Child Is This" to something other than Greensleeves demonstrated, innovation is a double-edged sword. (Corollary: all alternate tunes for "What Child Is This" fucking suck, now and forever. Absolutely.)
Overall, a good price for ninety minutes of largely familiar music, plus a sighting of the Silver Fox, plus the opportunity to puzzle over the engrossing question of whether the second-chair cellist was actually very sexy, or only very sexy in profile. The first-chair cellist was definitely very sexy, if only for the duration of his solo in "The Carol of the Birds." But then all the ladies love a cellist. Oh, and the girl two rows in front of us had a beautifully simple chignon going, so I took time to figure that out, too. The arts center turns out to be extremely convenient to the Arts Center stop - that surprised me far more than it probably should have - which will come in handy if I need to art again. Hurrah for student IDs!
One more sexy guy and a piece of advice, and I'm done for now. Tonight I saw (for the first time) an old episode of "Dirty Jobs" in which Mr. Rowe - no slouch himself - was cleaning a penguin habitat. The keeper, Tom, was an ambiguously gay, slightly low-rent Northrop-a-like, who brilliantly related the story of his accidental seduction of a female named Maynard after her mate, Satchmo, dumped her for her sister. I have absolutely no idea which one of them was supposed to be the straight man during that segment, but it was hilarious. We could get into why I'm attracted to slight, ambiguously gay guys who anthropomorphize penguins, but let's not ruin the moment.
And the advice: if you, like all my family, are prone to pizza dreams - pizza being a good source of crumbs of cheese and bits of undigested beef - you probably shouldn't eat some of one of my everything-in-the-refrigerator-plus-basil pizzas for dinner and then catch up on 10 days' worth of Overheard in New York before going to bed. I got lost in the enormous, industrial putative bathroom of my unfamiliar hosts, spent the night wandering a neighborhood that doesn't exist, and then found myself on an above-ground 6 train that passed several famous landmarks (albeit not necessarily New York landmarks) before it arrived at the parking lot where junked McDonalds PlayPlaces accumulate: conveniently across the street from, I'm guessing, the set of Super Mario Bros. 3. Or maybe it was Candy Land.
Learn from my mistake.
1. Part of being a consulting firm, I'm learning, is never having a simple answer to the question "Who is this for?"4
2. Part of being a secretary is finding that almost everything that's in the best interests of your superiors sucks for you. Because when several thousand surveys do come back, someone has to enter them all into a database - and I sit at the big desk, so I'm real easy to find.
3. Part of dealing with 10,000 randomly selected people is that the 1% that is guaranteed to be heartbreakingly stupid is one hundred strong. How fortunate that our survey, in additional to a bewildering array of checkboxes, contains a free-response section for comments!5
4. Because "Whom is this for?" and "For whom is this?" are also pretty wrong, and at least the first one isn't also snotty.
5. The best comment so far was a clarification after a respondent marked both herself and her "Partner/Spouse" as female: "My 'partner' is my sister - not a disgusting modern 'companion'." The quotation marks take the edge off the bigotry, implying as they do that lesbians - as distinct from, I don't know, the Doctor, or elderly nineteenth-century widows - refer to their adjuncts as "companion."
The runner-up is "The monthly per diem is not enough to take care of a child's daily needs - [x dollars] daily." Face it, kids: Latin is dead.