singing in the classes, music for your masses
I don't know if you can have a sexual harassment class for lifeguarding and pool maintenance. The uniform requirements alone make it kind of pointless. They're thinking of giving us one anyway. At least it can't have a worse movie than the actual certification and CPR classes.
(One of the other lifeguards, out of curiosity, asked the boss if our manager had special sexual harassment rules applied to him. The boss didn't really have anything to say to this except something along the lines of, "You mean he's playing grabdick on the clock? Goddamnit, boy, that's company time!" I sort of agree.)
-I have very little opinion on the Michael Jackson case, except to say that he makes me vaguely uncomfortable and I honestly, for much of my childhood, could not decide if he was a man or a woman because of his voice. No lie. I mainly associate him with.... uh, Free Willy. Didn't he do the music for that?
-Should you ever get a chance to fool around with a strapless gel push up bra, don't pass it up. Wearing it, yeah, that's another story, but these things provide hours of entertainment. I spent about an hour just sitting there groping and poking the bra-- wasn't even on me, it was still in the box-- because it felt so…intriguing is the only word that I'm coming up with.
Of course, if you want to wear it, you had best be prepared to have to yank adhesive tap off your nipples. This is not fun. I cannot think of many things that are less fun than ripping tape off your nipples. You will come out of the situation with funny red marks that look as though you were involved in a particularly perverse sexual act. So maybe you should just buy one to play with.
-Been brainstorming ficathon ideas lately, and I was struck with an enormously weird one, although I think it might be fun. I can't quite decide if one, I have the quality and drive to pull it off, and two, if the person it's designated for would like it. Two should probably trump one. Maybe I'll save it and write it for me.
-I keep wondering if it's worth it to invest in a permanent account. But mostly all I want is the extra icons, and I could probably just buy the extra 50 icon space and be fine. Good thing I'm lazy.
-I also keep wondering if Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe will now swap underwear modeling stories at the next big meet they're both at. Man, I'd pay to listen in on that conversation. "They just kept riding up, so I had to take them off altogether."
-Why is the pineapple the universal symbol of hospitality? (That's not exactly rhetorical, but I couldn't think of any other way to open the topic. Google says, During the colonial days in America, a hostess's ability to have a pineapple for an important dining event said as much about her rank as it did about her resourcefulness. So sought after were the prickly fruits that colonial confectioners sometimes rented them to households by the day. Later, the same fruit was sold to other, more affluent clients who actually ate it. As you might imagine, hostesses would have gone to great lengths to conceal the fact that the pineapple that was the visual apogee of their table display and a central topic of their guests' conversation was only rented.) My point is, why is the pineapple symbolic of hospitality when it's so scary looking? They're not quite as imposing as durians, but they're still prickly and capable of giving someone a good bash on the head with. The first person to try and eat a pineapple must have been fairly brave, hungry, or both.
I think what we're really looking at here is the fact that the pineapple was the metaphorical wang of the Colonial women. Hospitality, pshaw. This was all about symbolically dickslapping someone in the face with a pineapple.
Symbolic Pineapple Dickslap is a band name in the making. Or some kind of final attack limit break, I can't quite decide.
So, I have about fifty lifeguard-related things to mention, none of which I'm sure are very interesting to anyone but me. I do feel it is necessary though to do an update on Fred.
About a week ago, I was visiting Fred for frozen confection relief. Fred, as I have mentioned, is a homicidal ice cream man who plays favorites. I've luckily managed to fall in his good books and can count on ice cream as long as I'm willing to listen to him rant about the weather, his children, other ice cream vendors, and various political issues. Last week, as he pumped out tiger's blood syrup, he made veiled and rather dark allusions with clearly audible italics and significant capitalization (sometimes in combination) on how Certain People were trying to interfere with his business and there was no respect given these days and sometimes Things Had To Be Done. And by the way, would I be so kind as to keep an eye out for them?
I would have probably agreed with anything he had asked, seeing as I was getting free shaved ice, and so I made affirmative noises and then promptly forgot about it.
About a week later, I heard chimes while I was on desk duty. In a Pavlovian response, I leaned over the front desk and squinted out towards the parking lot. All of us have this ingrained into ourselves, and I imagine that fifty years from now a certain type of bell chimes or any musical version of "Pop Goes The Weasel" will cause us all to look up expectantly and start scrabbling for loose change and shoes to go out on the hot asphault with.
But lo and behold, the truck that pulled into the parking lot and right into Fred's usual parking space was in fact, not Fred. It was yellow, and advertised Italian ice on its sides, despite pictures that were clearly shaved ice.
Huh, I thought. That's different. Good thing Fred isn't here to see it. And I went back to reading.
Five minutes later, Fred in his ice cream truck pulls into the parking lot and sees the shaved ice wagon in his usual parking space.
Five minutes and ten seconds later, I decided there was urgent business to be attended to in the supply closet and someone else should be the closest staff person to the parking lot.
Five minutes and thirty seconds later, Fred is standing by the front desk, gesticulating and screeching wildly while I peer through a crack in the supply closet door. There's no baseball bat in evidence yet, but Fred's truck was bigger than the other guy's truck and I would totally not put it past him to try and ram the other guy. I bet there's a little row of truck stencils somewhere under the advertisements for ice cream sandwiches, representing all the competitors he has dispatched.
Since everyone else was too smart to get involved-- which is to say, they closed the door to the guard office and hid behind the various furniture picked up off the side of the road-- I eventually sidled out of the closet with a mop and bucket. I had these vague thoughts of maybe filling the bucket with Pine-Quat and throwing it at Fred and the Shaved Ice Guy to try and separate them, should they decide to go at it.
"There is a man in my spot," Fred said. When Fred is agitated, his accent gets very thick. "Tell him to go away." Just like that. He walked back to his truck, paused, and then started walking toward the shaved ice wagon with vague yet ominous intent.
I went to get the manager. I found my brother coaching the swim team.
"Jon," I said, "There's a new shaved ice guy here and Fred just pulled up and he wants us to do something about it. I think they're about ready to throw down."
Jon said a very rude phrase, which all of the younger swimmers started giggling and then repeating.
Eventually, we decided to tell the shaved ice wagon that he needed to speak to the pool president before he could make a habit of showing up here. This isn't really true at all, and we don't have a formal contract with Fred, but for the sake of diplomacy and no one getting clubbed in the head with an over-frozen Rocket Pop, it seemed the best thing to do. I went back to the front desk to find Fred and the Shaved Ice Guy standing there, glaring at each other. Fred would not actually talk to the Shaved Ice Guy, so everything sort of went through me and Mark, who I dragged along to help.
Fred: (to Mark) Tell him the rules. Tell him to go.
Mark: (to Shaved Ice Guy who is standing right there) Uh, Fred wonders if you could move your truck out of the area it's in.
Shaved Ice Guy: Where do you want me to put it?
Mark: (looks at me) ...?
Me: (to Fred) Where do you want him to go?
Fred: Away!
Me: (to Shaved Ice Guy) Look, maybe it would be easier to try the park across the street for a while.
After explaining the situation to Shaved Ice Guy as best as I could with Fred hovering over our shoulders, the bribery started coming out. The Shaved Ice Guy had said very little up to this point. Mostly, he had been looking at Fred in the same way you would regard-- well, he looked at Fred in the exact way you would regard an angry, overheated, middle-aged Iranian man who was wearing a bright orange t-shirt that said NOT ALL FREDS ARE CAVEMEN.
"I understand," said Shaved Ice Guy, "but I hope you'll consider that we give half price to lifeguards. Here's my business card."
He gave Fred another Look. His business card said he was from Kensington. You could just tell that in Kensington, they have strict policies over territory disputes on the dispensation of frozen confections, and that this guy agreed with all those policies. Either that or he was from a different mafia branch. I watched closely to see if he would throw up a gang sign.
Fred sputtered a little. "I give you free!" he said, and waved his arm at his wagon. "You tell him. I have variety. He has nothing!"
After some more bickering and a few times when I really thought we would have to use the bucket and mop, the Shaved Ice Guy eventually left, and Fred moved triumphantly into his usual parking spot.
"What will happen?" he demanded to know.
"Well, we'll give his card to our president and have the president tell him that he can't come here to sell anything unless he works it out with the board of trustees ahead of time," I said.
"How long has he been preseident?" Fred asked.
"I dunno," I said. "Five or six years? Maybe more."
Fred paused. "I have been coming here for twenty years," he announced grandly. "You tell him that. You put in a good word for Fred, right?"
"Uh. Sure," I said.
"You are a good girl. Good friend to Fred. Fred needs his friends." He smiled very gently. "You want I should make you a snow biz?"
My life is sometimes indescribably weird.
A meme:
1. Reply with your name and I will write something I like about you.
2. I will then tell what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. If I were to apply an o'clock to you, I'll tell you what it would be.
4. I will try to name a single word that best describes you.
5. I'll tell you the most memorable moment I've had with you.
6. I will tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll then tell you something that I've always wondered about you.
(One of the other lifeguards, out of curiosity, asked the boss if our manager had special sexual harassment rules applied to him. The boss didn't really have anything to say to this except something along the lines of, "You mean he's playing grabdick on the clock? Goddamnit, boy, that's company time!" I sort of agree.)
-I have very little opinion on the Michael Jackson case, except to say that he makes me vaguely uncomfortable and I honestly, for much of my childhood, could not decide if he was a man or a woman because of his voice. No lie. I mainly associate him with.... uh, Free Willy. Didn't he do the music for that?
-Should you ever get a chance to fool around with a strapless gel push up bra, don't pass it up. Wearing it, yeah, that's another story, but these things provide hours of entertainment. I spent about an hour just sitting there groping and poking the bra-- wasn't even on me, it was still in the box-- because it felt so…intriguing is the only word that I'm coming up with.
Of course, if you want to wear it, you had best be prepared to have to yank adhesive tap off your nipples. This is not fun. I cannot think of many things that are less fun than ripping tape off your nipples. You will come out of the situation with funny red marks that look as though you were involved in a particularly perverse sexual act. So maybe you should just buy one to play with.
-Been brainstorming ficathon ideas lately, and I was struck with an enormously weird one, although I think it might be fun. I can't quite decide if one, I have the quality and drive to pull it off, and two, if the person it's designated for would like it. Two should probably trump one. Maybe I'll save it and write it for me.
-I keep wondering if it's worth it to invest in a permanent account. But mostly all I want is the extra icons, and I could probably just buy the extra 50 icon space and be fine. Good thing I'm lazy.
-I also keep wondering if Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe will now swap underwear modeling stories at the next big meet they're both at. Man, I'd pay to listen in on that conversation. "They just kept riding up, so I had to take them off altogether."
-Why is the pineapple the universal symbol of hospitality? (That's not exactly rhetorical, but I couldn't think of any other way to open the topic. Google says, During the colonial days in America, a hostess's ability to have a pineapple for an important dining event said as much about her rank as it did about her resourcefulness. So sought after were the prickly fruits that colonial confectioners sometimes rented them to households by the day. Later, the same fruit was sold to other, more affluent clients who actually ate it. As you might imagine, hostesses would have gone to great lengths to conceal the fact that the pineapple that was the visual apogee of their table display and a central topic of their guests' conversation was only rented.) My point is, why is the pineapple symbolic of hospitality when it's so scary looking? They're not quite as imposing as durians, but they're still prickly and capable of giving someone a good bash on the head with. The first person to try and eat a pineapple must have been fairly brave, hungry, or both.
I think what we're really looking at here is the fact that the pineapple was the metaphorical wang of the Colonial women. Hospitality, pshaw. This was all about symbolically dickslapping someone in the face with a pineapple.
Symbolic Pineapple Dickslap is a band name in the making. Or some kind of final attack limit break, I can't quite decide.
So, I have about fifty lifeguard-related things to mention, none of which I'm sure are very interesting to anyone but me. I do feel it is necessary though to do an update on Fred.
About a week ago, I was visiting Fred for frozen confection relief. Fred, as I have mentioned, is a homicidal ice cream man who plays favorites. I've luckily managed to fall in his good books and can count on ice cream as long as I'm willing to listen to him rant about the weather, his children, other ice cream vendors, and various political issues. Last week, as he pumped out tiger's blood syrup, he made veiled and rather dark allusions with clearly audible italics and significant capitalization (sometimes in combination) on how Certain People were trying to interfere with his business and there was no respect given these days and sometimes Things Had To Be Done. And by the way, would I be so kind as to keep an eye out for them?
I would have probably agreed with anything he had asked, seeing as I was getting free shaved ice, and so I made affirmative noises and then promptly forgot about it.
About a week later, I heard chimes while I was on desk duty. In a Pavlovian response, I leaned over the front desk and squinted out towards the parking lot. All of us have this ingrained into ourselves, and I imagine that fifty years from now a certain type of bell chimes or any musical version of "Pop Goes The Weasel" will cause us all to look up expectantly and start scrabbling for loose change and shoes to go out on the hot asphault with.
But lo and behold, the truck that pulled into the parking lot and right into Fred's usual parking space was in fact, not Fred. It was yellow, and advertised Italian ice on its sides, despite pictures that were clearly shaved ice.
Huh, I thought. That's different. Good thing Fred isn't here to see it. And I went back to reading.
Five minutes later, Fred in his ice cream truck pulls into the parking lot and sees the shaved ice wagon in his usual parking space.
Five minutes and ten seconds later, I decided there was urgent business to be attended to in the supply closet and someone else should be the closest staff person to the parking lot.
Five minutes and thirty seconds later, Fred is standing by the front desk, gesticulating and screeching wildly while I peer through a crack in the supply closet door. There's no baseball bat in evidence yet, but Fred's truck was bigger than the other guy's truck and I would totally not put it past him to try and ram the other guy. I bet there's a little row of truck stencils somewhere under the advertisements for ice cream sandwiches, representing all the competitors he has dispatched.
Since everyone else was too smart to get involved-- which is to say, they closed the door to the guard office and hid behind the various furniture picked up off the side of the road-- I eventually sidled out of the closet with a mop and bucket. I had these vague thoughts of maybe filling the bucket with Pine-Quat and throwing it at Fred and the Shaved Ice Guy to try and separate them, should they decide to go at it.
"There is a man in my spot," Fred said. When Fred is agitated, his accent gets very thick. "Tell him to go away." Just like that. He walked back to his truck, paused, and then started walking toward the shaved ice wagon with vague yet ominous intent.
I went to get the manager. I found my brother coaching the swim team.
"Jon," I said, "There's a new shaved ice guy here and Fred just pulled up and he wants us to do something about it. I think they're about ready to throw down."
Jon said a very rude phrase, which all of the younger swimmers started giggling and then repeating.
Eventually, we decided to tell the shaved ice wagon that he needed to speak to the pool president before he could make a habit of showing up here. This isn't really true at all, and we don't have a formal contract with Fred, but for the sake of diplomacy and no one getting clubbed in the head with an over-frozen Rocket Pop, it seemed the best thing to do. I went back to the front desk to find Fred and the Shaved Ice Guy standing there, glaring at each other. Fred would not actually talk to the Shaved Ice Guy, so everything sort of went through me and Mark, who I dragged along to help.
Fred: (to Mark) Tell him the rules. Tell him to go.
Mark: (to Shaved Ice Guy who is standing right there) Uh, Fred wonders if you could move your truck out of the area it's in.
Shaved Ice Guy: Where do you want me to put it?
Mark: (looks at me) ...?
Me: (to Fred) Where do you want him to go?
Fred: Away!
Me: (to Shaved Ice Guy) Look, maybe it would be easier to try the park across the street for a while.
After explaining the situation to Shaved Ice Guy as best as I could with Fred hovering over our shoulders, the bribery started coming out. The Shaved Ice Guy had said very little up to this point. Mostly, he had been looking at Fred in the same way you would regard-- well, he looked at Fred in the exact way you would regard an angry, overheated, middle-aged Iranian man who was wearing a bright orange t-shirt that said NOT ALL FREDS ARE CAVEMEN.
"I understand," said Shaved Ice Guy, "but I hope you'll consider that we give half price to lifeguards. Here's my business card."
He gave Fred another Look. His business card said he was from Kensington. You could just tell that in Kensington, they have strict policies over territory disputes on the dispensation of frozen confections, and that this guy agreed with all those policies. Either that or he was from a different mafia branch. I watched closely to see if he would throw up a gang sign.
Fred sputtered a little. "I give you free!" he said, and waved his arm at his wagon. "You tell him. I have variety. He has nothing!"
After some more bickering and a few times when I really thought we would have to use the bucket and mop, the Shaved Ice Guy eventually left, and Fred moved triumphantly into his usual parking spot.
"What will happen?" he demanded to know.
"Well, we'll give his card to our president and have the president tell him that he can't come here to sell anything unless he works it out with the board of trustees ahead of time," I said.
"How long has he been preseident?" Fred asked.
"I dunno," I said. "Five or six years? Maybe more."
Fred paused. "I have been coming here for twenty years," he announced grandly. "You tell him that. You put in a good word for Fred, right?"
"Uh. Sure," I said.
"You are a good girl. Good friend to Fred. Fred needs his friends." He smiled very gently. "You want I should make you a snow biz?"
My life is sometimes indescribably weird.
A meme:
1. Reply with your name and I will write something I like about you.
2. I will then tell what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. If I were to apply an o'clock to you, I'll tell you what it would be.
4. I will try to name a single word that best describes you.
5. I'll tell you the most memorable moment I've had with you.
6. I will tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll then tell you something that I've always wondered about you.