I Pity The Fool

BREAKING NEWS:

The shit has officially hit the proverbial fan.  I just learned today that my boss is tendering his resignation at good old Bigass Hospital, where until this year he was the director of an entire clinical department and the proud possessor of an unsullied professional reputation.  Since taking on the position of head of our current program, his career has come perilously closer and closer to ruination under the heavy, pathological, micromanaging thumb of GodzillaBoss.  Incidentally, GB is back from his trip overseas, apparently still married.  I’ve become fond of saying that he racks up the most frequent miles by going to CrazyTown.  At any rate, our regular boss seems to have finally become fed up with the Potemkin village that is our group of programs under GB, and is leaving for greener pastures in approximately a month.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE YOUR HERO AND HUMBLE NARRATOR???

Excellent question.  The way I see it, there are a couple of options.  A lot depends on whether the Hospital decides to honor our internship contracts, and continue keeping us on as employees (with actual meaningful work- it’s not acceptable to nominally continue paying us our pittance while giving us stacks of xeroxing to accomplish).  Our boss says he’s trying to arrange it so that we’d only continue in our current program at half-time, and work in the regular outpatient department the other half of the time.  Unfortunately, this will likely depend on persuading GodzillaBoss not to be such a complete and total asshole -good luck with that- and also convincing his boss (yes, believe it or not, GB has a boss, but it’s someone who generally ignores his shenanigans because he brings so much grant money in) to go along with it.  Alternately, we may just lose our jobs, or decide to quit if we’d otherwise have to be reporting directly to GodzillaBoss every day.  Who knows what the future will bring?  Further bulletins as events warrant.

AND NOW FOR TONIGHT’S TOP STORY:

I freaking cannot wait to get the hell out of here for my vacation on Friday.  As much as I was already preoccupied with my upcoming trip, it’s even more of an obsession now that there’s a specific issue I hope will be resolved in my absence.  Too bad I couldn’t leave sooner!  I will be in California from the evening of Oct. 28 to Sunday, Nov. 6, by the good graces of Orbitz (cashed in 2 1/2 years’ worth of points!  Total cost of trip=$28, and would have been free except I got a little over-excited and only chose the second-best redemption option), American Airlines (please please please don’t cancel my flight you bankrupt people), and the lovely friends and relatives providing accomodations and entertainment.

IN OTHER NEWS, TONIGHT’S SPECIAL FEATURE:

A little recurring* segment we like to call, "Gay or Taken."

Really I don’t know why it surprises me anymore, but apparently my bad professional karma is equalled by none other than my bad relationship karma.  There’s a reason they say all the good men are gay or taken.  I’ve had gay boyfriends since at least junior high school, and I’m not the kind of girl who goes for "taken," which leaves me with relatively few options.

So anyway, I was originally going to post this under the title, "Alone Again, Naturally," except a) not everyone might recognize the reference,** and b) that would imply that at some point recently, I was NOT alone.  This is technically not true.  I did have a tentative date scheduled with a guy I met at a party, but long story short, nothing doing.  This was really a shame since I enjoyed his company and felt we’d hit it off, but who knows what his deal is.  My friend B. has already pointed out: "One of the drawbacks of being exceptional is that most regular people do not measure up…for the record, this guy is a patent fool if he doesn’t call you, and it’s his loss."  I have saved this to my desktop as something of a pick-me-up, but it’s still rather small consolation.
Not hearing from this dude (even after I left him a message) was definitely disappointing, but not just in terms of being an individual let-down, so much as being somewhat symbolic of longstanding issues of mine.  I’ll leave it at that because this post is getting too long and I’m not sure this is amusing or blog-worthy material.  However, I decided to mention it in brief because I think I’ve already posted pretty much all the other ways I feel inadequate, self-conscious, or embarassed (incidentally, I wet my pants in chorus practice in 4th grade), but more importantly, feel free to write in with ego boosts, people.

THAT’S OUR NEWS FOR TONIGHT, FOLKS.  STAY TUNED FOR IRREGULAR UPDATES ON "I PITY THE FOOL" NIGHTLY NEWS.

*in life, not on this blog.  I do tend to wallow in self-pity but not enough to bore everyone else with the subject.

**holy crap, I never actually heard the lyrics clearly.  Rest assured, I have not gotten to this point…

This morning I was delighted to get a seat on the train after just one stop.  I actually did not have reading material with me, but I did have tea that needed cooling and a muffin that needed eating.  At a certain point though, several people got off the train, possibly at 14th Street, and in the span of time before the next crowd got on, I realized it.  Someone had ditched a fart right in front of my face.  For a second I wondered if the new people getting on the train would think it was me who farted.  Not that it particularly upset me, as much as the fact that I was sitting right in the middle of someone else’s stealth bomb.  As any of my close friends (and probably a few people I really don’t know that well) can tell you upon inquiry, I do not have much shame when it comes to farting.  She who smelt it dealt it?  Readily admitted.  It probably comes from a combination of growing up around my dad (if they could figure out a way to derive power from human gas, we’d never pay another energy bill), attending Oberlin (eating in OSCA, no less!), and being friends with Kei (sorry but ya knows it).  At the same time though, I do appear to retain a certain degree of circa-7th grade mortification related to being the OBVIOUS source of stink in a crowd of people I don’t know too well (or business associates).  So when I wasn’t trying not to breathe too deeply this morning, I was hoping the other straphangers wouldn’t be blaming it on me…especially since, in this case, it was someone else.

Sorry to talk so much about farts, but my guess is that anyone who actually reads this blog would tend to be the sort of person who’d find it amusing.

But the stinkfest was not over.

When I switched to the local train, something was Wrong.  It didn’t take me too long to experience waves of appreciation that I would be disembarking at the next stop…due to the fact that the waves of appreciation were precipitated by waves of nausea-inducing, malodorous Ass Funk.  That’s the only way I can describe it.  There was no person in that train car who appeared to be the potential source of the smell, which means that whoever was the originator must have been potent enough to leave a wake of destruction.  Words fail me.  It wasn’t as strong as when you are sitting next to a person who hasn’t bathed in weeks, so much as the type of permeating stench that you pray won’t linger in your clothes like cigarette smoke.

What a commute today.

In a related story, on Tuesday I chastised a woman for leaving a steaming, aromatic heap of dog crap in the middle of the sidewalk.  Something was clearly wrong with the dog that left that behind…however, since she wasn’t rushing it to the vet, it’s no excuse for her lazy self-importance.  She was actually praising the dog as they sauntered away from the monumental pile alongside Bryant Park.  Her lame excuse (in her own words) was that the dog had already shit in the house, so she didn’t think it would shit again.  Can I make this an open appeal to stoners: please don’t smoke up right before you take your encopretic mastiff for a walk!!!  She also turned down the plastic bag I proffered.  This story is not really related to the other two, but I felt I had to share.  At least at the end of this one, a fellow pedestrian complimented me on my plucky concerned citizen routine.  Score one for the good guys.

1. Bride of GodzillaBoss

Yes, someone married IT.  Would you believe the mofo got married a week ago Sunday, then came in to work the next day?  I’m certain it was for the express purpose of giving everybody one last ulcer before leaving for his honeymoon to Spain Monday night.  Except oh, he came in to work on Tuesday too.  I have no idea when he actually left for his trip.  I guess those first class cross-Atlantic tickets seem like less of a big deal when you’re a rich jerk who still gets to comp them as a business expense.  Supposedly he’s coming back the 23rd, although that’s most likely a falsehood as well.  My wedding wish for him was that he eat something on the plane that would bestow explosive diarrhea upon him for the entirety of his sojourn.  Except I don’t want to think too much about him on the toilet (alright, not that it is much more pleasant to think about diarrhea with respect to anybody, but you get the point).

He’s wreaking havoc even in his absence, between ordaining that our laptops should be stored in his office (which is in another building) and signed out by C. and I daily…or at least, that other colleagues should commandeer them from us as often as possible.  I could say more about the fact that we are essentially nonentities at that office, until someone wants something stupid from us.  Then we get upgraded to the status of high school interns (although J., another work friend, pointed out that even the licensed psychologists on staff get treated like college interns.  J. is quitting, by the way.).  But I don’t want to bore you too much with that.  There are plenty of other things to bore you with!

2. Cosmic!

I was upstate this weekend.  I know I’m supposed to be against the whole idiotic fad of co-opting white trash culture, but I can’t resist telling you about two things I saw in one of the local grocery stores:

a) The cover story of the Weekly World News, entitled "FRANKENSWINE!"  This appeared to be a story about a dead pig brought back to life by the combined forces of a determined farmer and a harnessed lightning bolt.  Why didn’t I think of that???

b) A Little Debbie snack product entitled "Cosmic Brownies."  They appeared to just be regular processed food snack cake brownies, except with rainbow sprinkles or Nerds or something on the top.  Now I don’t know about you, but that is not what comes to mind when someone mentions Cosmic Brownies to me.  The idea of kids taking those to school amuses me.

(addendum: apparently some people are quite dedicated to the LDCB.  I just did a search to find you all a picture of it, and there’s rather a lot out there…more if you just search for "cosmic brownie" because then it includes people who misspell Little Debbie…and there may just be an inverse proportion between people who eat more of those and people who can spell the product names…)

3. One Small Step For Me

On Friday, I gave my proposal presentation at school.  Aside from taking the whole day off from work (it wasn’t fun, but between that and my one scheduled Thursday patient switching his appointment to Wednesday, it sort of made for a four-day-weekend), it got me one step closer to the light at the end of the academic tunnel.  It did feel a little funny making a "proposal" for a project I’ve already been working on for about a year, but on the other hand I never would have been able to answer all the questions lobbed at me if I didn’t already know more than I ever would want to know about this project.

I was the first presenter of the day, and I was late.  Only about 5 minutes, fortunately for me, since the trains came quickly despite the wretched weather.  I’d been set to leave on time after very little sleep, when I had a horrible premonition that my disk wouldn’t work at school.  So I took the time to go online and e-mail myself copies of my powerpoint presentation (hey, we still have dial-up, though hopefully not for long).  Of course, my disk did work when I got to school, but you know it wouldn’t have, had I not gone to the trouble of e-mailing myself the files.  It’s the same principle of always shlepping around an umbrella when it winds up not raining…then again, it rained all last week no matter what I did.  There must have been some other poor slob out there who forgot his/her umbrella and has more cosmic influence than I do.

Anyway, I’m currently in the Nutty Professor’s good graces, being the only student on her team of roughly 5 to be currently running on schedule, dissertation-wise.  I stayed all afternoon working on the blasted statistics with her (though I can’t complain, seeing as she mostly did them all herself), and am supposed to write up the next and last sections of the dissertation in the next month.  Scary.  Can’t wait to be done though…til then I never quite feel like I can relax…though I do anyway, and suffer the guilt.

However, I did turn in my last paper ever (outside of the thesis, obviously) on the 7th, and that was a pretty incredible feeling.  It dawned on me that from now on, I can essentially read whatever I want, whenever I want to.  This lifted my spirits immensely, and I’ve already begun excavating the shelves of books I’ve purchased in the last few years and never read.  Monday through Thursday-ish, I read "No Touch Monkey! (and other travel lessons learned too late) by Ayun Halliday.  Friday night I started "A Star Called Henry" by Roddy Doyle, and will almost certainly finish it on the train tomorrow.  Yay for me.

4. Blast From The Past

I’m eating lunch tomorrow with my 8th and 11th grade Spanish teacher.  He’s treating me to a meal at a restaurant I’ve never even been inside: it’s nearby both my current place of employment, as well as the school I attended for six long years.  Too rich for my blood.  I haven’t seen this teacher in at least five or so years, but probably even longer.  When I spoke to him on the phone, he reminded me of an amazingly offensive thing I apparently did (and forgot about) in 8th grade.  I told him I was mortified.  He responded: "You were nasty and sarcastic, and I am nasty and sarcastic.  If I didn’t think it was so funny, I wouldn’t have responded to your phonecall!"  Crazy.

5. Is Your Mama A Llama?

Last but not least, I went upstate this weekend with my parents, as previously mentioned.  It’s always kinda weird to feel like you’re a kid again- riding (sleeping) in the backseat, getting almost everything paid for by someone else, etc.  We went to a Sheep and Wool Festival (hey, there’s not much to do up there) on Sunday, and I got to pet lots of fuzzy things.  I can tell you that angora rabbits look like cotton candy with legs (except they’re not sticky when you touch them, obviously), goats are considered "affectionate" compared to reindeer, and llamas can hum (when they are happy or stressed).  I also bought gloves.

Anyway, I could probably tell you more, but if you’re even still reading at this point I’m probably lucky in my self-indulgent bloglife at the moment.  Cheerio-

What the crap?!

I was just sitting here IM’ing away on this here computer, when I noticed a strange, dark little shadow drop vertically down the opposite wall.  I went over to check on it, since it made a weird, papery scratchy noise, and I didn’t have anything dark, little, papery, or scratchy hanging on that wall- at least not by my own design.  For some reason I thought maybe the fan was blowing around a small sheet of negatives or something…

But No.

It was actually a ROACH THE SIZE OF MY THUMB.  Perhaps it had gotten so heavy in its massively bloated insect state that its disturbing spiny legs could no longer support it on a vertical surface.  Perhaps it was skydiving.  Perhaps it was Gregor Samsa.  All I know is, it was chilling out on one of my throw pillows and I had no immediate way of encouraging it towards the outdoors -or alternately, its next karmic plane.

I’m not usually too squeamish around bugs; that is, not when I’m wearing shoes, and not anywhere near anything I particularly care about that could get splattered with bug gore.  However, neither of these criteria were in evidence.  Think fast!

I slowly moved to pick up the pillow, intending to either shake it outside the window or into the toilet.  Slowly, the bug toddled off onto the floor.  Ack!  What to do?  It seemed to be moving slowly enough that I could remove my attention for a moment to find something to catch it with.  Again, if this were work, or really anywhere easy to clean, and I had shoes, I woulda squished it.  But no.  No it wasn’t.  So I spied a smallish box with not much in it, shook out the contents, and whipped back around to try to get the bug under control.  It was shuffling along rather tentatively- that is, until I tried to catch it.  I had to slam the box down two or three times before I had the bug underneath it; then I slid it over so the bug couldn’t potentially crawl out in a gap between floorboards, and put a couple of books and magazines on top to weigh it down.

Next step. 

     Me: Dad?  Dad?  Are you still up? 

     Dad: Yeah.

     Me: You’re not naked, are you?

     Dad: I’m in my underwear.  Come in, what is it?

     Me: I need your assistance…with an insect problem…about THIS big.

          [demonstrating with thumb and index finger]

     Dad: What kind of bug is it?

     Me: I don’t know, I didn’t perform an entymylogical study. 

          It’s a big bug and I want you to help me get rid of it.

     Mom: Marty, go.

I go back upstairs, hoping the bug hasn’t pulled a Houdini on me and escaped into the cluttered wilderness of my room.  I look for something large and stiff enough to slip under the box, trapping the bug inside until…well, I didn’t exactly get that far, I guess I was sort of imagining loosing it into the bathtub and then stomping it in there, so it would be easy to clean up.  The need did not arise.

My dad brought up the rear command with a paper towel and one of those little nets you can use to get a hold of small fish or other stuff in a tank.  He tells me he wants to see the bug first and rather cavalierly he lifts the box.  Stunned, the bug seems to be lounging around on its back under there, but resignedly gets to its feet and starts zigzagging around in that special giant NYC cockroach way.

     Dad: It’s a waterbug!

     Me: I don’t care what it is, just catch it! [little scream x2 or 3]

This story is getting long enough, but suffice it to say that after a couple of failed attempts, my dad did finally catch the bug in the net, then squished it with the paper towel.  It didn’t get onto too much of my stuff, although one of its immense gams fell out of the paper towel onto a piece of paper that is now in the recycling bin.

     Me: Get it out!  Flush it down the toilet!

     Dad: It’s dead already, I’m just gonna throw it in the garbage. 

          It’s a roach, a waterbug is just a kind of roach.

     Me: So?  How is that better?  They’re both gross and I don’t want it in here.

                                        FIN.

The moral of the story is that someday, I will have to deal with these sorts of things myself all the time.  As hard as it may be to believe, I may not be living right upstairs from my pops, the Least Squeamish Human Being In The Universe, forever.  Although if my mom has her way, actually I will.  In which case, I guess I have a little longer.

Epilogue/Afterthought: On the other hand, perhaps it’s too bad I didn’t save it and think of some interesting use for it.  GodzillaBoss, meet GodzillaRoach.

Heh heh heh.

(Just kidding.)

I’d assume it’s a citywide requirement for all the biggest dumbasses to ride the 4/5 line, except that I already knw those people drive on the Belt Parkway.  The Lexington express line riders come in at a close second, though. 

The other day, a woman started freaking out just because another woman was inching through the crowd to stand by her friend.  She may have stepped on the freak-out lady’s foot or something.  But I’d take that as a calculated loss since we then didn’t have to hear any shouted conversations across the sweaty train car.  Freak-out lady couldn’t just drop it, even after inching-lady apologized 2 or 3 times; not until someone else told her to take it easy.  Now I don’t consider myself a shrinking violet by any means, but I’m usually too scared to tell people to shut up on the train- you enver know, it could be a psycho.  So was the guy braver than me in general, or only because the freak-out lady couldn’t see him, or from where in the crowd he was admonishing her…

Dumbasses come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and socioeconomic levels.  Yesterday C. and I saw a woman standing up on the shaky train, holding her clearly expensive notebook computer in one hand, while typing on it with the other.  Even if you don’t expect anyone to try and steal it, you’re one bump in the track away from dropping the machine and watching your bytes become tiny, tiny bits.  WTF?

The biggest dumbasses of all though, in my humble opinion, are the people who are completely oblivious to being in others’ way, but give you the evil eye if they think for a second that you might impede their own transportation.  These grade A morons are the ones who insist on standing by the door even when mobs of people are attempting to go in or out, even when the entire middle section is empty.  They might have a bike, they might have the biggest juggernaut of a baby carriage you’ve ever seen, they might have nothing on them but their big fat ass, but god forbid your backpack gets into their personal space.  These bastards will insist on leaning against that door even to the last second, even after the doors at their stop, on the other side of the train no less, are already open.  Yet they look at you as if you just spit in their hamburger because you didn’t have a psychic premonition to step out of they muthaf—in’ way, biotch.

Will they ever get their comeuppance?  I fear not.  But I can’t help hoping that someday, they’ll harass someone who’s enough of a self-righteous ignoramus to give them a taste of their own medicine.  It won’t be me though…too scared.  But a girl can dream, can’t she?

Yuppies talking in the movie theater, on the other hand?  It’s friggin’ open season.