Stale Chips Again 5 August 1998

The nice girl whose unfortunate chore it is to theoretically be my manager was walking by today, and stopped to chat a little. She mentioned that next week might be a good time to take a few days off. This is the third time in as many days that she's said something like that. I wonder if I'm beginning to smell postal. "Would you please get out of here before you kill someone? And take that stupid can of clam chowder with you."

Bla bla. I think I'm so jaded, hah. A trusting and naive fool, that's what I am. I actually got on the Metro today instead of walking because I didn't want to waste time. That's like sending an express telegram to the gods saying, "Please make the trains crash today, sirs." As it happened, they didn't crash as such - gods never listen - but they did form a nice nose-to-naughty line in the tunnel about 3 stations long that moved at an average speed of not-at-all per hour.

Our driver made it a bit more bearable by acting like a human, though. He told us that the fundamental cause of the holdup was testing of a new scheduling system, "computerized for your inconvenience." What I liked best, though, is when we finally reached the next station in line after we boarded. He very calmly announced that we were all saved, he could see daylight up ahead; that it wasn't going to get any better; and would we all please make our decision - either get off the train here and find another, faster way to go, or stay on the train and don't complain about it. As if we were adults. How droll.

If it had been yesterday's driver... yikes. He was on drugs, must've been. Once he stopped the car in the middle of the tunnel, ran all the way to the back of the car, looked at something in the driver's booth back there, then ran back to his seat and started up again. When we had been sitting in the tunnel for 5 minutes a little later, someone asked him how long the delay would be. "What delay?" After the next station, he very nearly ran into a train in front of him. He slammed the brakes, and the only reason no one got thrown to the floor is that there weren't enough people on the train by then for anyone to have been standing. Someone yelped out "Wow!!!" We hear vaguely back from his booth, "Wow what?" And all this while, he had his collar buttoned completely up, and sweat on his upper lip every time I saw him.

No giant lizard sightings yet. They're probably small and living at the Y for now.

Maybe I do need to get out of here. I haven't taken an official vacation in about ... a long time. What I used to be able to do instead was just not come in on days when my brain said "Stay Home." Now that's not so easy, they're watching me. Oh, go ahead, laugh. They are. They sit right behind me - well, not directly behind, kind of behind and off to the left - yes, my left - and they see me. They note what goes on:
"Ah. 2 pm. Tsk."
"Ah. IRC. Uh uh."
"Ah. Rebooting. Good."

Naturally nothing is explicitly said about any of this. That would be a corruption. People have to save themselves. Good works will not avail you. Only faith will be noted positively at your annual evaluation.

12:00 AM: Neil Diamond!! From The Jazz Singer! Wow! See, I knew that a 100-slot CD player on random would be a wonderful thing.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

yestoday		today		tomorrowday
	archive		semi-bio
listen!		random		privit
previous back two list all random     open pages     webring next five ahead two next
prev skip prev random     archipelago     list sites skip next next
All names are fake, most places are real, the author is definitely unreliable but it's all in good fun. Yep. © 1998-1999 Lighthouse for the Deaf. All rights reserved and stuff. The motto at the top of the page is a graffito I saw on Brunswick Street in Melbourne.