Don't Join The Baby Seal Club

I think I have undergone a cuddly, Kafkaesque transformation. Unlike Gregor Samsa in Kafka's famous The Metamorphosis, I do not wake up and find that I have become a vile giant insect. I wake and am somewhat slow in realizing that I have changed into a precious Baby Seal.

Goddamn, but I am a cute bastard, I think as I look into the mirror. And it is true, for I am adorable. I'm a baby motherfuckin' seal!

Hello Mr. Bus Driver!

Hello My Favorite Passenger!

The driver grins and lowers the wheelchair access ramp for me so I can waddle aboard.
A disembarking gentleman gently lifts me into one of the front seats before stepping off onto the sidewalk. He waves goodbye.
I make a squeaking sound, pleased.

The entire bus erupts in cheers and applause, two dozen beaming smiles light the vehicle's interior with a warmth that would make roses bloom. I resist the urge to take a bow, a prudent caution given that I have no legs or waist with which to bow.

Instead, I wiggle my flippers in happy reply.

They love me, I think.

I love them back. It's a special feeling on the bus. This is the bus to happiness and I am it's happiest passenger.
We are riding on paradise and I'm the only one who knows it.
It shouldn't be a secret.
Who should I tell?
I tell everyone I see, and they all concur.
Some of the people even give me sardines.
Life is good. You don't have to be a baby seal to know that.

At lunchtime, I try to tell this to the Fur Trappers.
Using mallets, they bludgeon me to the edge of extinction.
Crimson stains blossom on my snow-white coat.

I escape their nets and somehow manage to make it back to my lodgings.
On my porch, someone has left a bucket of herring guts decorated with a ribbon. I nourish myself with this gift and my wounds quickly mend, my fur regains it's unsullied fuzzy whiteness.

Ahhh...

And that's how it's been the last two days. Everyone I meet either wants to cuddle and feed me or they want to beat me with blunt objects and flay me alive. That's how people react to baby seals. Cuddle or destroy. Compassion or cruelty.
There are no minor events, only the grandest of celebrations and the starkest of tragedies.

Ahhh...*ahem*

Dude. Don't you think that just maybe you are getting a bit worked up over a few bills and petty aggravations? Why don't you change back into a human and start over, and try making sense this time, eh?

Um. Ok.

Well, yesterday sucked. But I can't go into that here because it involves 150 other people.

So...good news!

Today I finally got my raise! It's only a few cents an hour, but it's retroactive to the beginning of the year- I am suddenly two hundred dollars ahead!

When I got home, my mailbox was jammed with bills. First I open my power bill.

Good news! The power company has issued me a credit for nearly $175! I had been over-charged last summer, something I thought was a lost cause, but someone must have filed a class action or something...I dunno, all I know is I won't have a power bill for months!

Hot Buttery Damn! How often do you open the power bill and do a Snoopy Dance?
First, a retroactive raise and then a credit from the Electric. Now I'm $375 ahead!

Keep on rollin'...

The cable bill is exactly what it should be. The last one.
I have canceled my cable and decided to save the money for better things: fifty bucks a month = $600 a year. That's airfare to London, that's what.

This makes me pause and think of other good news- today I got confirmation from the State Department that I will have my Passport within three weeks. Application approved! Anyway...

That leaves the phone bill, which is always the same.

Except it's not. It's $375 more than it should be. I have let my guard down and Verizon has shafted me to the tune of ninety cents a minute- for 400+ minutes! After sifting through the gobbledegook, I find that next month my DSL goes up from $15 to $40. Injury! Insult!


Screw that. I had to work my ass off to get that $15 price- years ago, Verizon had tacked me with $400 of long-distance that I contested-and won.
After they cleared my account , I was so mad I told them to cancel me, I was switching. To appease me and keep me on-board, they offered me ultra-cheap DSL and a cheap long-distance plan that was subject to change.
Frickin' fine print. Damn me for missing it.

I called the competition and got my services switched- at about half the price. The slight increase in my new DSL is offset by the savings on the phone, so I feel pretty good about it- I'll save about twenty bucks a month...

Hmmm...for twenty bucks extra, the new company will add digital cable w/ a year of HBO.

Sold!

Dude. So after all that kvetching and gnashing, you are basically even, money-wise, as well as being a few steps closer to travel? Things have evened out and as a bonus you also get cable TV again . Is that what you mean? Is it?

Uh...yeah. I guess it is. Balance is maintained and all that. Harmony, y'know?

So have you learned anything from this?

Um...it's better to act like a man than to feel like a seal?

Welcome to the world. Have a sardine.

Honk

I have an early childhood memory of riding in a car with two of my adults, but without my brother. I think I was four or five and it was probably 1969 or 70, but I'm not sure and there's no one for me to ask.
We were winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and were forced to go very slowly because the car in front of us was barely creeping along. The steep mountainous roads were narrow, full of cutbacks and blind turns and it was impossible to find a passing zone; there was nothing to be done other than to follow the slow car at it's own pace. In hindsight, it had to have been going pretty slow; we were in a VW Beetle and I don't think that little car was much of an uphill racer.

I was in the backseat, reading comic books and I wasn't really concerned about going fast or getting anywhere. During my childhood I moved a lot. I was always going somewhere I didn't want to, often without any warning at all, so a slow ride to nowhere was fine with me.
I had my books, that is where I wanted to go.

My adults were considerably more tense.

"Goddamn son-of-a- fucking bitch, get off the fucking road!", screamed the male adult behind the wheel.

Where? How? There's a forest on one side and a cliff on the other.

My driving adult started honking the horn. Honk! Honk!

The car in front of us maintained it's sluggish speed.

"You stupid fucking asshole! Drive, you dumb motherfucker!" Honk! Honk!

Then he started tailgating the car, pulling to within a few feet of it's rear bumper. I looked up between the two seats to see what all the shouting was about and saw that the car in front had two elderly people in it and the female passenger had turned around in her seat and was looking at us.

It was a look of fear. She was trying to mouth some sort of message, a plea or explanation.
She ended with a weak, apologetic smile and held up her hand, palm facing us.

Calm down please. Stay back a bit, OK?

"Goddamned stupid fucking wrinkled old cunt," yelled my adult. Then he gave the old lady the finger. She blanched , turned around and said something to the gentleman who was driving. His panicky eyes reflected back at us in his rear-view mirror. He reached for something with his left hand.

In front of us, the car's Hazard lights started flashing.

Inside our vehicle, my adult was screaming bloody murder. He was preparing to throw a half-empty beer bottle forward through our open sunroof.

"Don't," said my other adult, a woman whose name I cannot recall.

She reached for the man's arm and our car swerved, almost colliding with a Ford Econoline coming the opposite direction. The driver of the van honked his horn, cursing us with his finger.

The two adults started yelling at each other and I went back inside my comic book.

After some time, we came to an overlook and the car in front of us pulled off the road, allowing us to pass. My adult cursed some more and flung the now-empty bottle out of our car as we sped by, the tiny VW engine revving in the trunk behind me.

I don't recall where we were going or where we were coming from, but I do remember one thing: I remember what I was told after we got there.

My female adult found a moment to talk to me alone. She thought that the man's violent display of anger and rage might have upset me and she wanted to comfort me. This yelling and throwing wasn't anything unusual in my experience, but she didn't know that, so she tried to explain an idea to me. An important idea.

"Allan, I want you to remember something. I want you to remember how [ my male adult] acted when we were on that road. When you are old enough to drive, you will be stuck behind cars just like that and I want you to remember this. This is important."

Important enough to stop reading Spider-Man?

"Yes. Put the book down. You see, sometimes cars break down and they can't go very fast. Sometimes cars get tired or sick or wear out and when they go up and down hills it is hard for them to go the same speed as the cars around them. But unless you are in that car, you can't tell what's wrong with it. There might be nothing wrong with it at all and it might the hill that is the problem, but you can't know that. Yelling and screaming at it isn't going to help it move any faster, the car can only go as fast as it can go. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

Yes, I lied, and returned to Spider-Man's world.

Today, I am ashamed to admit that I do not know who this woman was. I feel a sting of guilt and humiliation because she was trying very hard to teach me something and it took me over thirty years to understand it. Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about- all I wanted to do was read my comics. I didn't care about cars, all I knew of cars is that I seemed to live in them nearly as much as I lived in houses.

Like cars, houses sometimes broke and stopped working and the proper adult thing to do in either case was to yell, scream, get drunk and break things- in no particular order. That's what grown-ups did.

And when I grew up, that is what I did. Because I had forgotten what she said.

It wasn't until I found myself driving a fucked-up old Plymouth station wagon up a long, steep grade on a very similar stretch of road that I even recalled her words, much less understood them. The old beater was straining and it still wouldn't do more than 35, which was the posted limit, I believe.
It wasn't long before a trail of vehicles had queued up behind me, honking and flashing their headlights. I'm sure there was cursing, but I had one eye on the road and the other on the thermostat and couldn't hear them over the engine's death rattling...my car was struggling.

When the road widened to include a third lane, the parade of cars that passed each took their turn at cursing me .
Some of them yelled.
Some of them flipped the bird.
Others did both.

Every single driver had a deep and personal anger, hatred really,and it was directed at me- just for being on the same road as them. I was going as fast as I could and I wasn't breaking the law. I was just there and they hated me for it. It was mean in spirit, and worse, it was cruel. It reminded me of the past and that is always cruel. To some degree, anyway.

I wasn't in much better condition than the car that I was driving at that time. Circumstance and addiction had put me in a dark and haunted place, and by the time the last car- a BMW convertible driven by a woman who would have been beautiful if she hadn't been yelling "motherfucker!" at me- passed by, I was devastated. I arrived home in tears and went straight to the bottle and stayed there until all thoughts of screaming, all sights and sounds of honking cars and women who hated me had been blotted from my mind.
I was forgetting when I should have been remembering.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I remember what the mystery woman was trying to tell me. I know those words. I don't recall when they started making sense to me, but they do now.

It's not complicated.

It's simple. It applies to everything we do and since what I am doing right now is blogging, I will try to apply her wisdom to that.

Imagine that blogging is a sort of road- an internet highway, if you will.
Catchy metaphor, eh?
Let's consider blogs as cars and bloggers as drivers.

Imagine that there are thousands of lanes on this highway- more lanes than traffic could ever need. Most of the lanes are clear in both directions as far as the eye can see.

Now picture a sedan plugging along on the shoulder of this vast road. Maybe it's going as fast as it can, maybe not; in any case it's off the main lanes and it isn't blocking anyone. There are no flares or SOS signs.

In a passing car, another driver sees this, peels off the highway and slides onto the shoulder behind the slower vehicle. The driver follows the sedan at a distance of less than five feet.

From that close it's easy to read the bumperstickers on the leading car.

The stickers identify the politics, spirituality and sexuality of the car's driver, as well as a half-dozen other traits and opinions specific to that person.

They aren't the same as those of the driver of the second car.

So the driver of the second car starts cursing at the car in front. Personal words based on information scanned from stickers - words of hatred and rage, wielded like a weapon; a full-auto, hi-capacity handgun of hate. Aimed at the back of a stranger's head.

They honk their horn: HONK! HONK! GO FASTER!

And they curse: MOTHERFUCKER! I HATE YOU!

In the first car, the driver looks behind them and wonders: Why don't they just pass me?There are a hundred empty lanes. Why the hell are they yelling at me?

Meanwhile, back on the highway, cars roll by.

Some of the drivers look over and ask:
-What is that asshole yelling about?
-Why don't they just get back in their own lane and keep moving?
-Don't they have anything better to do?

When I see hateful, harmful and even abusive unsolicited comments left on the blogs of others, I tend to form a very low opinion of the person who left them.
Do you see them too?
What do you think?

It makes me think of a mad driver, too preoccupied with someone else's bumperstickers to notice that they themselves are driving erratically, swerving dangerously close to the cliff on the far side of the shoulder.

YELL! HONK!

Swerve.

There's a squeal of tires, a shriek of metal as the guardrail gives way.

10,000,000 lanes to choose from and some will always choose the cliff.

And they will honk all the way to the bottom.

Third Birthday

I almost forgot.

This is my blog's third birthday.

First post was 3/21/04.

I feel old.

Sick and Tagged

I am tagged, nauseous and ashamed.

The tag is from Thivia. I am to list five things that most people don't know about me.

The nausea , I believe, is from the stomach flu or perhaps arising from something that I ate.

The shame is a result of the realization that I haven't yet linked this:

Reconstruction: Why We Blog

Why We Blog is the work of Thivia and many others , and it examines...well, the reasons people blog. Duh.

A number of bloggers were consulted as well. This was my humble offering.

-----------------------------------------
So. The tagging thing.
Five things most people don't know about me:

#1: I am six minutes older than my twin brother.


#2: I once sold a comic story for real money. It was about vampires, a subject that bores me to undeath. It was a long story...here are some pictures.
The title, Destiny Angel, didn't scan very well- in several meanings of the word ...it was a female vampire character created by the publisher, who really wanted to publish a book about female vampires.
His character's background?
She is a female vampire- surely you can come up with one hundred pages based on that, said the publisher.
For a grand? No problem.
The cover title is in red foil print, a common comics-industry 'collector's item' ploy. What it really meant is that a crappy comic that should have cost a buck or two actually cost $4.50 !
In 1996 dollars!

It was awful. Even the fine print sucked. My publisher couldn't spell and was too proud to let me proof-read his copy. "Concent", anyone? Sheesh...



#3: If I am lost, someone will inevitably ask me for directions.



#4: I don't perform routine maintenance on my equipment as often as I should.


#5 : My next-door neighbor is plotting to kill me. She is going to drop a flowerpot on my head as I walk underneath her porch on the way to my car.

Winners and Loser

Wednesday we had a 'contest' post. It was based on information found on the Blooger dashboard telling us that we had published 1,000 posts.

Pretty simple, eh?

Nope. There were variables.

As if having a million furiously typing chimps wasn't enough to manage, I had to go and employ a human assistant that can't accomplish the most simple of tasks...count to one thousand, I ask him; write less about politics and more about sex and celebrities, I implore in a "constructive" manner; write something that'll require swimsuit pics, I suggest...bah!

I get variables.

Variables.

Christ-in-a-motherfuckin'-Cuisinart, even this seemingly simple enumeration was beyond my lackey's ken.

First: He forgot to account for all our unpublished drafts- I now know that I only publish 87.8% of what is written for Blooger- my rejects could fill several blogs. Several shitty blogs- you should see the crap that guy tries to foist off on me- a drunken chimpanzee could do better.
I should know, I wind up re-writing half the crap that does see publication.

Second: Some of those posts are re-runs. History repeats itself and so do we.

Third: A number were written by Susanne, who is an independent poster and isn't currently aware that there's a talking chimp calling the shots here. She may well have guessed the truth by now.

Lastly: I have no idea how many posts have been deleted. I'm guessing at least 100, but I don't trust my assistant. He writes god-awful drek , leaves it up just long enough to embarrass himself and then pulls it down....he thinks I don't know this.

So we have no idea what the correct answer is. Does it even matter?

It should be obvious to the web-savvy reader that there are no real Free Lunches or Big Prizes
on-line.
Click the Flashing Target to claim your Free Laptop!
uh huh.


Right, whatever...so who the fuck won?

That depends on your perspective:

If your glass if half-full, you can congratulate yourself. You are a winner! Depending on how the data is interpreted , all of the answers given are (were) correct. Even Sling's!

If your glass is half-empty....well, let's just say you didn't win. There's only room for one loser on this blog and that position has been filled since Post One.

If your glass is reduced to shiny smithereens and stored in a tattered Zip-Loc bag that leaks like a sieve- welcome to my world.


Would you spare us the bullshit and just get to the prize?

Well, all the entries were 'virtual', so the prize is likewise of a 'virtual' nature.

What's a virtual prize, you cheap bastard?

Use your imagination. Literally.


I am sorry that I have nothing more tangible to offer, but I feel like a winner every time you read this blog.

Thanks for that feeling.

Many Happy Returns,

Pissy the Chimp
Editor/Publisher, Camelsbackandforth

Smell My Browser

Here's my latest million-dollar scheme: Digital 'Interscents' - a programmable aerosol device attached to one's PC that emits specific fragrances upon receiving commands, i.e., you could send a squishy-lovey email that would smell like roses when opened...how charming!

Of course, like most of my good ideas it'd probably cause more trouble than it's worth.

Imagine comments and emails imploring you to "come over and take a whiff of this post" -and when you finally give in and check out the post, you are greeted with something like this:

CHECK OUT MY NEW WEBCAM!!

*click*... suddenly your cubicle smells like the interior of someone else's ass.

You know it would happen.

I think the Japanese are working on this technology right now, but I might be wrong. I'm too lazy to fact-check, but it sounds like something the Japanese would develop.

What's that smell?