A Touch of Irony

Well, it's Valentine's Day again, and Indiana has chosen to show it's love for us by dumping about a foot of snow on us.  Which is a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, I got to enjoy something yesterday that I haven't experience for a decade.  A snow day.

There is no singular thrill that compares (for slackers, at least) than to discover all of a sudden that you do not have to go to work/school.  There's something special about snow days that regular days off just doesn't have.  Like a Christmas present.

I went to work yesterday, listening the entire time of all these businesses getting closed for the state of emergency.  My own place of employment, American Stationery Co., is always the last to go.  Aimee went around to everyone about 8 o'clock to tell us that we can leave if we want to.  My retarded fellow employees were convinced, somehow, that if they actually held out until the building was closed they'd actually get paid for the rest of the day (not true, according to my union steward).  I, however, decided to get while the getting was good.

I then proceeded to sit on my ass watching reruns of "The Awful Truth," Michael Moore's shortlived TV show.

Here's the mixed blessing part.

Between the snow drifts and the snow plows, my car was literally buried in four feet of snow.  All told, it took me two hours to excavate my car.  The entire time, my father and I listened to the radio to see if Am Stat, like Square D (who also very rarely closes due to weather) was delayed.  Finally, at 7:00, my car still half-buried, I called into work telling Aimee I would be late.  Imagine my surprise at 8:30 when I discovered we had a two hour delay.

My radio station, a Peru station, failed to mention that.  Instead, only the local country station actually relayed that.  Like I'd ever voluntarily listen to country.

But only a bare skeleton crew showed up today, giving me the easiest work day in the past few months.  I wrapped for one person.  One.  It was wonderful.  Even better, more people left after 11, leaving only one press in the entire department running, and a couple of superfluous employees hanging around.  So, they took volunteers to go home, and I did.  It was wonderful.

Sadly, there's a dark shadow hanging over this joy.  We are currently in the throes of our busy season, and two days without a full staff is bound to get us pretty damn backed up.  So all this time off comes with a price: I'm going be running my fat ass off for the next two months.

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An update on Morgan's father:

Apparently, Roland's girlfriend, Tina, wasn't his girlfriend at all, but rather his wife.  The cruel irony is that she was the one to determine whether or not to cremate him.  I only hope that they did a thorough enough autopsy, because otherwise she'll be desposing of evidence.

But speaking of evidence, apparently Morgan's uncle found a diary in their apartment that is pretty damn incriminating of Tina.  Hopefully, some devious lawyer won't be finding a way to get that thrown out.

Morgan, as can be expected, is taking this pretty hard, especially since the local news channels won't stop going on and on about the murder.  Watching all this is tearing him up, but it's like a car crash.  It's so horrible you can't look away.

Mel will be coming back to Tenessee in a couple of days, Morgan a week after that.  He still has a few loose ends to tie up.

And that's pretty much all I know about the situation thus far.

It's been a very weird week, more jam-packed with ups and downs than a roller coaster or the gas prices post Bush.  For the sake of convenience, I'll begin in chronological order.

As I mentioned before, we've been short-handed at work, so I've had to, on and off, cover all eight of our presses.  I've headaches before, and I've had backaches, and I've had toothaches, but before this week I have never had a whole-body ache.  Short of taking a bath in Icy/Hot or simply shooting myself, I've never seen any over-the-counter cures for that one.

To make things worse, I felt like I was being teased and tantalized throughout the week.  An operator would leave, which would then free up a catcher to help me wrap.  Then a catcher would leave, and I'd be left on my own.  And so on and so forth.  Every time I would settle into a nice comfortable routine under the delusion that I finally had help, my help would leave and I'd be left frantically trying to keep up.  I told Aimee on Friday, "You need to tell your catchers to stop going home so much.  They're killing me."  She said, "No kidding," and showed me her appointment book which showed, day after day this week, long lists of people who either called in or left early.

Finally, on Friday I just said "fuck it."  If I got backed up, I got backed up.  Ironically, this put me in a better mood than I had been in all week, and Friday was the worst of the worst, proving once again the therapeutic value of apathy.

Thursday, I made contact with a girl who I've been unable to reach by any other means than texting for a year and half, and made a date with her.  Or at least plans to make plans to make a date.  Or something.  We'll see how that goes.  All I can say is that, given the brief intermittant history between us, I haven't got much hope that this is going to turn out, which means that it probably will turn out and thus I have high hopes for it, because that's just how my romantic life operates.  It's when I let myself hope that it all turns to shite.

But hey, what can I say, there's slim pickin's in this fucking town.  You take what you can get.

Friday, I was told something so horrible I have to deal with it in a seperate post, after I've fully processed it and spit the bile out of my mouth.

And Saturday, Mel told me some really bad news.  Morgan's father was apparently beaten badly the night before, and had to be put on life support.  Mel and Morg had to fly down to Maryland right away Saturday morning.  Apparently, the prime suspect is his girlfriend, with whom he's had a history of violence.  He passed away last night.  Morgan, at least, got to spend a little bit of time with him before he passed.  He's been through a pretty traumatic couple of days.

Well, that's all for last week.  Let's hope that next week is slightly saner.

In sanity,

Jon

Urg. It's been a helluva week. And it's only Tuesday, which says all kinds of wonderful things about the way the rest of the week is going to be.

Sunday, of course, was the Superbowl. Being someone not terribly inclined towards football unlike 90% of my fellow males, I ended up supporting the Colts because (a) They're local, and despite my frustration with Hoosier life, I guess you have to root for the home team, (b) My Colts-worshipping mother probably would have disowned me otherwise, and (c) because I had no real reason not to.

It was probably one of the strangest Superbowls I've ever seen. The Bears getting the first touchdown of the game within the first 15 seconds (my poor mother was inconsolable over that, let me tell you). The fact that, at some point during the game, someone replaced the real football with a brown, football sized and shaped bar of soap. The half-time show, in which The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As ... Prince finally supplanted Michael Jackson as the Gayest Man In the Universe. The worst, most intellectually devoid, and the most boring Superbowl commericals in television history. And considering the quality of the Superbowl commercials sets the bar for the quality of commercials throughout the rest of the year, I'm suddenly glad I hardly ever watch TV. Otherwise I might as well get myself lobotomized now and save myself a year's worth of trouble.

I did, however, discover that I actually enjoy football, provided that I have a book handy to get me through the dumbass commercials, the dumbass commentators, and the irritatingly long penalty deliberations and the plethora of replays that must fill in the gap.

Monday was pretty rough. Dante got his finger pinched in a cabinet door, so he was fussy as hell for the rest of the day. Thankfully, he got tuckered out about 6 o'clock, and slept for the rest of the time until Cory and Rho showed up to relieve me.

And today we were short handed, so of course, because my supervisor still considers my job a monkey job that anyone can do and thus expendable, I was left to wrap for all eight presses. To give you all a sense of perspective, wrapping for five presses is to me, a two year veteran, a brisk pace. Eight presses, therefore, is an Olympic endurance trial.

It says a lot when everyone back in Weddings is shivering from the cold, and I have both my fans on and I'm still sweating.

And, finally, things ended before they had the chance to begin with the girl I was supposed to be set up with. I waited all week for her to call (she didn't, apparently, feel comfortable with me having her number, which was slightly annoying), only to have Will come up on Friday and say "Hey, my friend called me last night. She says you have a wierd Myspace page."

"I do?" I replied, fully aware that I had a Myspace page, but not considering it all that wierd.

So, getting on Myspace after getting back from work, I found she'd emailed me, telling me about herself, asking me about myself, and basically saying that, from the looks of my Myspace page, it doesn't seem like we have much in common.

Which, to give her credit, we really dodn't. She's apparently a die-hard Christian to the point where her life revolves around her church, while I'm the kind of guy who will pretend to be a Satan worshipper to scare off Jehovah's Witnesses. So that was a deal breaker for her. She listens to country music to the exclusion of all other forms of music, while my appreciation for country music is exceded only by my appreciation for the lowing of a cow that's being kicked repeatedly in its stomachs. So that was a deal breaker for me. 

So, of course, I told her so (in slightly more diplomatic words).  That was Friday.  Still haven't heard from her.

Ah well, such is life. And now, apropos of nothing, here are...

Gratuitously Adorable Baby Pics!!!


This is my godson Dante, a.k.a. Bubbies, a.k.a. Booger, a.k.a. Baby Bear, a.k.a. Bosco (don't ask, his grandma calls him that for some reason), a.k.a Dantane/Dantaytay/Fontaine (his great grandpa still has no idea what his name is).  Not even a year and a half and he's aready posing for the camera. A ham, just like his dad.

But seriously, taking pictures of Dante is like trying to herd cats. He either tries to grab the camera-phone when you're taking the picture, or he moves the exact moment you hit the button. As you can see with my two failed attempts below.







The newest vogue in Paris fashion: Ravioli masks. Get rid of the mud masks that is so last year. Exfoliate your skin and leave a nice, pleasant marinara smell.

This is the last time we're eating ravioli, the little booger. He wasn't hungry after he got back from daycare, so instead he grabs two big handfuls and starts rubbing his face with it, with this result. What's ironic is that Dante doesn't like getting his face washed at the best of times, let alone having ravioli scrubbed off his eyelid.



"If I just wait a little longer, I'll grab that phone right out of his hands. Wait for it...wait for it..."

Dante and I have this little game we play where we'll try to identify parts of his face. I'll say "where's your nose"...


And he'll point to his nose. And we'll clap. Or "where's your ears"... 



And he'll grab his ears. Unfortunately, these are the only parts of his face he's identified thus far. If I say anything else, he'll just grin and clap preemptorily.



Dante revealing, at last, that he did not in fact disappear, but rather was hiding behind his hands the entire time.





Like father, like son.



"LET ME OUT OF HERE YOU BASTARD!!!"

 

"...please?  I'll give you a book!"

Interestingly enough, Dante has become utterly obsessed with books.  In fact, "book" is one of the very few words he actually knows.  He won't even let me change his diaper unless he has a book in hand, and he has to be the one to pick it out.

I would really like to say that was my doing.  MUAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAAH!!!

And, that's all the cuteness for today.  Considering all these were taken over the span of one week, you can expect many many more.

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Oh yeah, two shout-out's here.

First, Mel has officially been quoted.  It's an article about the library and their efforts at teaching Tennesseans how to read.  Check out her quote at http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070122/LIFESTYLE/701220301/-1/CUSTOMERSERVICExx.

Second, my friend Rachael has, like me, just recently joined Live Journal.  Say hi to her at http://sw33tbabyray-82.livejournal.com/.

And since this is her first blogging experience, we should put on some tunes and give it a sense of occassion.

"DON'T ... KNOW... WHYYYY..."


AHHHHHHHHHHH!  Damn you, Billie Holiday!

Well, I was originally planning on going to Kokomo today. I needed to go to Verizon to get a new car charger, since Walmart failed to provide on this occassion, and to see about getting the annoying beep-beep-beep sound that plays every time I'm roaming silenced on my phone. But mainly I was hoping to hang out at Starbucks and email myself all the unbearably cute Dante pics I've been taking with my new, uber-swanky camera phone.

But alas, Indiana has become the winter wonderland of death.

It wasn't so bad this morning, albeit slicker than lard on linoleum. I went up to Amboy for my normal Saturday morning Amish breakfast with mom to find 19 a horrifying death rink. I'm terrified of driving on snow at the best of times after my little automotive ballet a couple winters back. But with drifting snow slithering back and forth across the highway, elegantly hiding the treacherous stretches of black ice, driving became a holy terror only a paranoid schizophrenic could fully appreciate.

But that was before it started snowing. And blowing. And snowblowing.

After breakfast, I headed towards 18 to go to 31, hoping the highway would be more or less clear. And thankfully they were, after a fashion. But 18 itself happened to go against the direction of the snow. The sheer amount of powdery show blowing against my car was like driving across the bottom of Satan's own frigid sugar bowl.

There were terrifying moments were I couldn't even see my own windshield. And in these moments, going 30 in a 55, the image of some redneck in a nine foot tall Humvee going 60 in this deluge, unable to see the taillights of my little car until we came together in a horrible union of twisted metal, kept rolling through my head.

Fortunately, I managed to survive, though with the knowledge that, had 18 been a little less straight, and my alignment just a little less perfect, I would have been down on ice planet Hoth without a Wookie (take that, Star Wars geeks!).

When I finally got to 31, I once again debated just soldiering on and go to Kokomo, but seeing the drifts obscure everything within a quarter of a mile, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned right. I ended up safe in what was the automotive equivalent of the buddy system down Highway 31, each car keeping track of, and following closely, the car in front to keep from getting lost in the white haze. I got home tired, strung out, and utterly sick of snow.

So no outrageously cute baby pictures today, unfortunately. But instead, I'll do something just as warm and fuzzy. Something Mel probably thought/hoped I had forgotten about.

Oh yes, Mel. Here they are. It's time for...

OOEY GOOEY WEDDING PICTURES!!!


Oh yes, they will be cheesy.



This is actually one of my favorites from the bunch. It was supposed to be like the picture above, except at the exact moment I was taking the picture, mom shouts out "Wait, no, I mean lean your heads to the side!" which, of course, led to the both of them bursting out laughing when the picture was taken. Perfect comedic timing.

 

And here is Mel, exhausted with me and my perfect comedic timing.

By the way, if you notice that the pictures are slightly out of focus, it isn't because I tried to do that fashionable blur that every wedding photographer does to give the picture that "My five year old wiped his greasy hands on my camera lens, and I forgot to clean it off" effect everyone, for some reason, adores. It's because my dumb ass forgot to check the switch that determines whether the picture is up close, or far away, giving almost every picture I took all week long a very nearsided look.



The only scenic picture of Gatlinburg that actually turned out, thank God. It was the one I really really wanted to turn out. It was during the sunrise the day we left, and it was the only time you could actually see the mountaintops above the haze. It was a breathtakingly crisp, unbearable beautiful morning, and the sun was just about to peak over the mountainside.

 

Mom cheesin' out from inside the chateau.



Mel and Morgan outside the Justice of the Peace's house. This is the disgustingly cute picture mom was trying to have taken at the moment of the second picture. It's the "awwwww" picture.

 

Mel and Morgan were married on January 23rd by none other than Matlock himself. Oddly enough, the actual TV show was playing in the background.

 

This extremely blurry picture is mom holding the official witness of the elopement, Millie.



 

The obligatory "You may kiss the bride" moment.



 

Why does Mel look like she's about to say an (the?) f-word?



 

Me, Mel, and Morgan and our gratuitiously fake smiles, in descending order of height.  That was not intentional.

 

I don't know why I have this "I don't get the joke" look on my face.  Probably because I didn't get the joke, whatever it was.

And there we are.  The few good pictures that were actually salvaged from my stupidity.  But they were so worth it.

Okay, Mel.  Embarassment over with.  For now.

MUAH HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!!!

I have a confession to make.

I have somehow, of late, picked up a rather ridiculous and potentially life-threatening pasttime.  I call it "Death Racing."

Allow me to explain.

Main street in Peru has about four blocks dead center of town where there are two lanes coming and going.  Go east and eventually the right lane will merge left.  Go west, and the left lane becomes a center lane, and all traffic merges right.  Anyone with any brains knows that one of these two things will happen eventually.

But that doesn't stop an asshole in a big-ass truck, for example, going west on Main Street to reach the point where it becomes a turning lane and suddenly hit the gas and try to get ahead of the smart person (i.e., me) who wisely stayed on the right lane.

This is where Death Racing comes in.

When these assholes come up (and I always know who they are) and hit their gas to get past me, so do I.  I don't care if I have to go sixty mph down Main Street, I absolutely refuse to let the asshole in question pass me.  In fact, to add insult to injury, sometimes I'll actually pace myself with the asshole in question until he finally backs the hell off and gets behind me.  And then I'll slow back down.  If I'm feeling particularly insolent, I'll actually slow down to a mile or two below the speed limit to really get the road rage flowing, but these moments are rare.

I love doing this so much.

Doing this going east is a lot more fun, becaus the asshole in question knows he'll have to merge eventually, and knows he has exactly one block to do so before crashing into the cars parked on the side of the road.  Anyone can ride the suicide lane to try to pass the stubborn bastard on the right, but you can only go so far without having to eventually merge.  On a busy traffic day, I've actually caused people to have to slow down to a crawl before remerging with the one lane, which leads to joyous hooting from my car.

I have no idea why I do this.  As much as I loathe stupid people (stupid people in SUV's especially), I should be smart enough to know that there is no such thing as a harmless idiot.  And I know that, with my luck, it'll be me, not the asshole in question, who will get pulled over one day for this obnoxious behavior.  

What's even funnier is that I'm one of the least aggressive, least competitive people in the world, under normal circumstances.  But there is something about these particular morons that gets my blood boiling.  Maybe it's my hatred of SUV's, and their general attitude that little cars like mine aren't a threat, and my overwhelming desire to prove them wrong.  I don't know.

But it sure as hell is fun.



-In other news.

I'm being hooked up with someone.  I have yet to decide how I feel about that.  Updates will soon follow.



My Bloody Valentine has officially won my award for the most fucked up band in human history, sadly displacing Radiohead.

I had fully intended this to be a nice, productive weekend full of writing my alleged "book."  Instead I found myself sitting on my ass watching movies and other amusing but totally pointless pasttimes.

Sure, the movies were "Escape From LA" and "What Dreams May Come."  Sure, I can claim I watched them for research and inspiration.  But let's be realistic here, people.  I'm just being lazy.

And now I'm here, writing.  Writing something that is quite definitely not my book.  "99 Red Balloons."  Yes, productive is what I am.

Ah well, such is life.

I finally broke down yesterday and bought a camera phone.  I've been drooling for one ever since I found out this sort of James Bond technology existed, but alas, two years ago when I signed up for my first phone, they were too new and too expensive.  But still, I am a big ol' picture whore, and I always hated the feeling that, oh, if I only had a camera.  But originally, I hated getting pictures developed, and when I finally got a digital camera, I hated carrying the heavy thing around.

But now, thanks to state of the art spy technology finally declassified into the civilian world (well, probably not, but it sounds cool), I now have a camera in my cell phone.  And some sort of MP3 player, which I'm sure James Bond would have wanted MI5 to put in his cell phone.

The downside is that there's no way to move the pictures to my computer without emailing it.  Which sucks because my hometown is too backassward to have a Verizon tower.  So, the only way I can get these pictures off my phone is to go to Kokomo and send them direct.  So unfortunately, my phone is not an adequate replacement for my camera.  But at least now I'm prepared for those emergency Kodak moments that spring up every time I don't have a camera.

By the way, Mel, I don't know if my phone is similar to that Chocolate thingy, but I don't think it's an MP3 player in the sense you might think it is.  You can't hook the phone up to your computer and upload stuff.  I think you have to get your music from the internet service verizon provides on the phone.

Anywho, I am now off to pester my best friend at his place of employment.  Expect some horrifically cute baby pictures of my godson in a week or so, because you know I'll be taking a bunch now.

Chiao.

So, here I am again. Blogging. Yay.

I have just returned from a nearly year long sabbatical from writing in which I did Jack Shit on a frequent basis.

This has mostly to do with a terrible Xanga burnout that I had to escape from. I gave up blogging, partly because I was sick of all the emo, whiny, cry-baby teenie's constantly going on about all of their life's little tragic minutia, then leave comments like "Why don't you ever come to my site?" Partly because I had chronic writer's block. Partly because I got lazy. But mostly because I set myself up for a fall.

Ya see, kids, I wanted to write, and I wanted people to read what I had written. Deep down, even the most secretive of diary writers wants their innermost secrets discovered, like Anne Frank. It's why they put their thoughts and emotions down in this medium. If they didn't actually want anyone to see their work, they'd just express themselves by screaming into a pillow.

Fifty subscribers later, I discovered a problem with my method. Subscriber maintainance. Keeping up with all the blogs of all the people who subscribed to me in the hope that they would read my own posts. It got to take up the vast majority of my time, and with the mass of people reading me, the more pressure there was for me to write. This little pastime of blogging stopped being for myself, and started being for my readers, like I was a full time writer keeping up with my deadlines. If I missed a few days, or a week, I had dozens of people coming on asking "Where are you?" "Did you fall off the face of the earth?" Blah blah blah.

So, I did fall off the face of the Earth. I quit Xanga cold turkey. Without warning, I stopped posting and stopped commenting, and gave up on Xanga, and blogging, altogether.

So why go back? I've been debating it for a while. I've started working on my satire again, and blogging was what initially sewed the seeds for it. Writing ad hoc my daily events with an ironic twist produced a great deal of material that I later used in the story. It was a great brainstormer. And regarding my annoyances with Xanga, my dear sister assures me that the LJ crowd is a much more mature audience.

Soooo, here we go again. A little older, a little wiser, a little less conceited and craving attention. Those who reads this will read this, those who don't won't, and life will just keep on going.

Back to my self-satire. Welcome, all!