The bright side of a Moon
I caught a bit of Keith Olbermann’s show last night while I was changing in the gym. He had Kermit the Frog on. Kermit is celebrating his 50th birthday, which is a good age for a frog.
Olbermann was jokingly trying to connect I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s indictment to the Muppet with the same (nick-)name.
Kermit’s response was, “Yes, and the White House was very mad about that. They asked us to remove the letters C, I, and A from ‘Sesame Street.'”
Bank of America, even though they’re a huge soulless corporate bank, still rocks. They give a very good impression of caring about me above and beyond the normal predatory “caring” corporations have for their customers these days.
Proof?
Well, how about their Keep the Change promotion? I just signed up yesterday. I’ve gone over it and I don’t really see how it helps them, other than encouraging their customers to save money and keep that money in BofA, which, of course, they can use to make more money, but that’s what banks do.
It works like this: First, you’ve got to have a checking account, a debit card, and a savinngs account with BofA (there’s the lock-in). When you make a purchase on your debit card, the amount is rounded up to the nearest whole dollar, and the “extra” amount is then credited to your savings account. So, for instance, my Starbucks breakfast this morning was $5.30, so BofA will transfer the $0.70 that would make that an even $6.00 into my savings account.
On top of that, BofA is going to match all of my “Keep the Change” transfers for the first 3 months. After that, they’ll match 5% of my transfers every year, which is like getting an extra 5% interest on that money. Of course, there’s fine print; they only credit the matching funds annually, so I won’t be getting lots of compound interest on that money. But what the hell; it’s still money I wouldn’t ordinarily see.
You see how it works; it’s like a change jar for your debit card. I already save my pocket change daily or thereabouts. This is just going to accelerate that savings. I think it’s a great idea, and it’s just the latest example of why my bank rocks and rolls.
Egad… this sounds like a commercial, don’t it? But, honestly, I can’t think of anything cynical to say about this promotion.
Do other banks have similar programs? I’m curious. This is the first I’ve heard of something like this.
You have to watch out for those shifty llamas.
First rule of men’s rooms: men don’t talk to each other, or acknowledge each other, unless they’re on equal footing. And even then, the topics of conversation are quite limited. And really, only at a urinal. If someone’s in a stall they might as well not be there.
I’m at the gym, in a stall (see above), and a guy gets in the stall next to me. Loudly calls out something that just doesn’t register with me. Because I’m in a stall. I’m invisible, or should be.
He repeats it, and I make out his words: “Hey, do you know when the Notre Dame game is on tonight?”
It takes me several minutes to process, as I wait for his buddy or whoever to respond. When no one does, it dawns on me that HE’S TALKING TO ME.
“No, sorry. I have no idea.” Is this appropriate conversation for strangers that are supposed to be invisible to each other? Is this guy crazy? Wait, sorry, all humans are crazy, so of course the answer is yes, but it’s the wrong question. Is he one of the obviously crazy people? Evidence is collecting, and signs are starting to point to “yes, yes he is, get out now.”
“That is going to be the game” he continues. I fall silent, because, well, there’s really no response to this, for all the reasons I stated above, plus the fact that I simply don’t care about college football.
We both fall silent for a bit. Then I hear ringtones, ringtones that are playing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.
And the guy answers the phone.
More evidence.
He chats with the caller, while sitting on the pot. I’m even more stunned, but also… I’m thinking I should flush the toilet or make some noises in an effort to call attention to the guy’s location. Y’know, to alert whoever is stupid enough to chat with this obviously crazy person that he’s obviously crazy.
The guy tries again to find out when this Notre Dame game is, and from the one side of the conversation that I can’t avoid hearing it’s clear that this game is not taking place tonight, or at least the person on the other end believes that adamantly. The guy is not entirely convinced, but then tries to get the person he’s talking to to go to Montana with him next week. The dangers of being alone in the vast open spaces of Montana with this insanely unsocialized man are apparent, though, and the other person declines. The conversation ends.
My services in noisemaking turned out not to be needed. The other person is safe for the moment. I am still in inadvertent contact with this guy. And the final piece of evidence is revealed.
Because the guy starts muttering under his breath.
It’s a Popeye kind of muttering, where I can’t make out all the words. It’s practically Tourette’s Syndrome muttering (Tourette’s is not always curse words; sometimes it’s just pre-verbal sounds, or even tics and gestures, at least that’s my understanding), but one word in about 5 or 6 floats out; I make out “dingbat” and “dickhead” mixed in with the inarticulate grunts and chuckles. I see that he stands up, all the while muttering, and finally he breaks into a bit of sing-song muttering, with a rhythm, or at least a cadence. And then, he’s gone.
I wanted to add this to my previous post but I forgot.
After my run last night, I decided to make use of the sauna. I just wanted to relax in the steam-y heat, let it open up my sinuses and lungs and permeate my sore muscles. Just a nice quiet time after my run. Ahh.
When I got there, some guy (tattooed, bleach blonde hair, fake tan, toenails painted hot pink) had gotten the temperature and steam up really high. It felt great. It’s usually not very warm in there. I was going to ask him what he did (open the door until the steam came on? Pour water over the sensors?) but then I remembered that I didn’t want to talk to anyone and went back to ignoring him.
The guy (I’ll call him Blondie) had a bottle of what looked like flavored water and he kept dousing himself with it, and rubbing it through his hair. It had a faint lotion-y smell, but that could have been my imagination.
Then a girl came in, brown hair, thin but she had a receding chin, wearing a red bikini, having just left the other sauna, the one with no steam (I’ve just realized that I don’t remember what it’s called; is it the sauna, and the one with steam is the steam room?). She and Blondie talked about the sauna, and how it wasn’t very warm, cool, in fact. I kept ignoring them. Then Blondie left.
The girl pointed up to the ceiling, covered in droplets of water just waiting to, um, drop, and asked me if I thought that that was human sweat. I was mildly disturbed to think of it like that, not to mention being all ignore-y, so I mumbled some response about it being just condensation. She started to describe a micro-climate of clouds of human sweat, a cycle that just repeats.
Then another guy came in, dark hair and shorter than me (which makes him pretty short) and he climbed up to the area where Blondie had been sitting.
“Ugh” he said (he actually pronounced the word), “This is awful!” He looked down at his feet, and slowly shifted from one foot to the other. “Someone had been putting lotion on here. Can you smell it?” The girl and I shook our heads. “That’s… that’s so… ugh.”
“Maybe it’s just sweat,” the girl said, with a faint tint of hope to her voice.
“No.” The guy (I’ll call him “Ugh”) was adamant. “It’s not. It’s lotion. I’ve seen it all the time. Not only is it disgusting, it’s a safety hazard.” He slid his feet around. “See? It’s slick right here.”
I mentioned Blondie, who had been dousing himself, but I suggested it was probably water. Oops. I was getting pulled in to the conversation again. I scooted over to make room, and the girl scooted over closer to me. “You can sit here,” the girl said. But Ugh didn’t take us up on the offer. He sat near but not in the puddle of lotion/sweat/water.
After a brief, blissful moment of silence, the girl (I want to call her Sweat but it just doesn’t seem right) started up again. She asked Ugh if he’d been in the sauna. They chatted about how it wasn’t very warm for a moment, and Ugh, cynical Ugh, complained about the maintenance staff and how the facilities guy wasn’t fixing it.
Then Sweat (see, it just doesn’t fit) said, “I wonder if, because the other room has all that wood, that it absorbs all the sweat, and then the heat causes it to get, um, deposited all over the room, making a cycle…” She trailed off, lost in wonder. Then she sniffed and shook her head. “Because,” she said ruefully, “I know I just get drenched when I’m in there.”
Again, I was getting pulled in. I didn’t know what this girl’s deal was but for some reason I felt compelled to counter her mental image. “I don’t know if this is the same thing, but I know that when buying a cutting board,” and here I framed a flat square in front of me, “they say that a wood one is cleaner,” and here Ugh and Sweat started nodding in agreement with me, “because it absorbs the food particles and bacteria and locks it in. Where a plastic one, the bacteria just stays on the surface until you clean it off. Maybe it’s harder for the sweat in the other room to get pulled out of the wood in there.”
Sweat looked around. “But it’s the same in here. This tile is hard; the sweat just lays on the surface…”
Ugh and I looked at each other. “Oh, I’m sure they clean this room out” I said.
“They have to!” Ugh agreed.
Ugh looked up, and we could make out the shape of Blondie standing at the door. Ugh immediately began talking as though continuing a sentence from before, as Blondie walked in: “…as I was saying, what I really hate is when people put lotion on in here, it gets all over, makes things slick, and, well, disgusting. You know?”
Blondie looked sheepish. I smiled at Ugh’s tactic but felt embarrassed for Blondie, being the target of Ugh’s passive-aggressive tactic. The four of us lapsed into silence. There was now a tension in the room.
Dammit, I came in here to relax. Before anything could escalate, I got up and left. There was no relaxation in there to be had.
A dream I had:
Everyone needs a place to live. I had spent a long time wandering around, not having any particular spot to call my own. One day, shuffling to the bus, I found what seemed to be a nice suburban house, apparently available.
I checked the house out, but I wasn’t cautious enough. I ignored small signs of damage; an electrical outlet that didn’t work, for instance. I moved the couch to cover up a black mark on the wall. I learned not to enter one room that emitted a strange brackish odor.
And, all too quickly, I moved in. But the house was not just damaged, but dangerous, unsafe. The owner lied about what was going on. I felt a false sense of safety and warmth. I added small touches that made it seem as though the house was mine, in spite of my renting. A picture here, a coat of paint there. Replaced a ratty chair with a new cool chair. I fooled myself into thinking that the changes I made were somehow repairs.
Small accidents sometimes caused me to reconsider living there. But I always moved back in. I figured I could repair it.
But, again, the owner of the property misled me, in ways subtle and overt, and undermined my efforts at repair. Threw parties there when I wasn’t around and to which I was not invited.
Finally, one night, I awoke – the house was on fire. Too much damage, ignored for too long, finally erupted. I was surrounded by roaring flames, could feel the heat on my face and hands.
I had to get out… but I had invested so much in repair and convincing myself (aided by the lies of the owner) that at first I couldn’t leave, and even when I did, I kept trying to go back in. Friends and the firefighters warned me, even tried to physically prevent me, but I returned, hoping to save something, anything, from the flames.
The memory of the safe, comfortable home, a home I thought I could fix, going up in smoke and angry red fire, still haunts me. I couldn’t save anything from the inferno. Nothing but me and the clothes on my back.
When they finally dragged me out, I was burned. The scars weren’t too bad, but because of my complicity in getting them, I blamed myself harshly.
The scars healed slowly, slower than I would have liked. Again, I had no home, no place of safety. When I would notice a new place for rent, all I could see was the possibility that this place, too, harbored hidden dangers. My wounds reminded me of what I had tried, and what I had lost, and what I had given away cheaply.
And yet, lurking in the back of my mind was the thought that if I had an opportunity to rebuild that original house, I would take it, even knowing that the property owner lied, cheated and misled me, I would consider helping to clear the lot and put up a new, safer structure. Friends tried to point out that, if I’m going to rebuild, surely I could find better locations and better business partners, someone who wouldn’t betray me and my efforts.
Just as I reached the point where I would consider rebuilding somewhere else, and had gone on some weekend jaunts looking for new lots or properties, I recieved a startling notice. A phone call from the old property owner, ranting about some imagined slight that I had supposedly done to the place. I protested, surprised at this re-kindling of our past battles, but the owner didn’t acknowledge my comments, and hung up.
My curiosity got the better of me. I took a trip to visit the old lot. I wanted to see what had been done with it. I was motivated by the feelings of nostalgia.
What I found was worse than I imagined. The property owner had rebuilt, all right, but had not cleared away the debris from the fire. The new structure rose from the ground where burnt timbers and ashes still lay, a scorched lawn, an empty hulk of a tree.
And worse than that, the new property was a facade, just a false front hiding the fire-damaged skeleton of the old house. As I peered at it from the street, I could just make out bits and pieces of the place that once held such warm and safe memories. A shard of plaster with my paint still showing. A cushion from the chair I once sat in. I was stricken with grief and pain; these were my memories, swept aside and left in place at the same time. These scraps were the things that I had burned myself trying to recover.
My wounds ached, and for a moment it seemed that I would go back into that pile of debris to once again attempt to recover something of positive value from the experience. But then I remembered awakening to flames, and the searing of my flesh, and I realized that I already had everything I needed from that old house.
Time to walk away. Hopefully, this time, for good.
Warning to my non-texting friends.
For the longest time, T-Mobile (my cell phone provider) didn’t offer unlimited texting. Top option was 1000 texts/month (for $6.99), not a bad deal but since I’m a text-aholic I tend to go over. In fact, last month I went over to the tune of an extra $48. Owie.
I just checked it out and I’m not sure when they added it but now they offer unlimited messaging… of all kinds; text, IM, email, pictures, video, you name it. And since that only costs $14.99/month, that’s still cheaper than what I paid extra last month.
So… get ready for me to go even more text-crazy than I have been. Just sayin’.
Ahoy, lubbers and bilge rats alike! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!
And here be some information on Portland’s “Piratecore” culture, from the worthy blog CulturePulp.
Arrr.
I’m at the gym tonight, on the treadmill warming up for a run, and in the next row up and to my left is a tallish blonde in black tank top and black tights, on the elliptical trainer, working pretty hard. Her tank top only partially covers a large word in Gothic lettering tattooed across her back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and her tights mostly cover another butt-hat tattoo of a red heart with some vines or something.
I’m trying to read the word but it’s kinda hard ’cause she’s moving and at an angle to me, and it comes to me in a flash. The word is “L O V E R”.
Geeze, that sounds familiar, I think… where have I seen that before? The seconds tick by and when several have accumulated they payoff because I realize that I’m looking at Storm Large (minus her Balls) in the flesh.
I try to get a better look at her face but I’m not sure. Her face seems… I don’t know… plain. And even though it’s difficult to judge height because she’s up on the machine, she doesn’t really look six foot tall. In heels, sure, but in her New Balance trainers? No.
Of course, I’ve only seen pictures of her on stage or made up for the stage, which might account for the difference. But honestly, there can’t be many tallish blondes with “L O V E R” tattooed across their backs in Portland. It’s a small town, you know?
All I know is, I’ve got an excuse now to talk to her. Wouldn’t it be funny if it’s not her? I finish warming up, I go stretch out, and then walk by her machine. I stop. “Excuse me…”
“Yeah?” She’s all sweaty and her face is puffy from working out. I’m still not sure it’s her.
“Are you…?” and I point at her, vaguely. My confidence in her identity is draining away.
She shakes some sweat out of her eyes and looks at me expectantly.
“Are you… Storm?”
She breaks into a big smile and nods. “Yes!” She suddenly seems pleased to be recognized.
“OK.” My courage is draining away. “I didn’t want to interrupt your workout…”
“It’s OK!” Now she seems interested in what I have to say next. I realize that I’ve got nothin’.
“Uh, I, uh, I recognized you by your tattoos.”
“Yeah,” she nods and agrees.
I give her a thumb’s-up, and, overcome by late-blooming shyness, head outside for my run, leaving her probably perplexed about the abrupt ending to the conversation.
