BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Sorry to steal one of your catch phrases, Emeril, but let’s be honest. That one  has been around a long time…

But let’s not get into the BAM thing… Let’s talk about something else. You see, there are all manner of old legends about vampires. Things like they can’t come into a home unless invited… No reflections in mirrors… Garlic repels them… Etc… One of my favorites is that they are afflicted with debilitating Vampire O C D – as in, if you are about to be attacked by one all you need do is empty a box of matches on the floor in front of them and they will be compelled to stop, pick them up and count them before they do anything else, leaving you plenty of time to escape… In my mind, that’s kind of handy to know.

But, what does this have to do with rocket science? Well, nothing much really. But, you know how I am… We’ll be getting back around to the idea of Bloodsucker O C D eventually…

We just have to take a detour first… i.e. Follow that chicken!

So, let’s talk about rocket science, or more specifically, paperclips… Yeah, those twisty little pieces of wire that come in boxes and that made someone very, very wealthy.

Paperclips, as a rule, aren’t particularly hard to operate. In fact, they are probably one of the simplest devices known to man. A bent piece of wire with just enough spring to it in order to hold pieces of paper, or even all manner of other stuff together in one place. A box of them is relatively cheap, and they come in many shapes (the picture at top left being the classic standard, of course), sizes, coatings, and even a huge variety of eye-catching colors.

If for some odd reason you run out of toothpicks, you can even unbend one of these little beauties and use it thus – although, I suspect every dentist, hygienist, and dental assistant out there is cringing at that suggestion. Therefore, I do NOT suggest that you do so. I will merely state that, in a pinch, I have done this with a modicum of success, but admit that I have been lucky not to damage my teeth or gums in the process. So, the long and short of it is: Don’t imitate the Murv. (There… that’s my disclaimer.)

But, let’s face it, the paperclip has almost limitless uses. Give it a quick twist and you now have a rigid metal stick to use for mixing two part epoxy adhesive. The mixing device will even double as an applicator. How cool is that?

Years ago – maybe more like eons ago – I personally used a piece clipped from a paperclip to make an impromptu jumper strap for a circuit board. I even used pieces of paperclips to repair traces on a power supply PCB. What amazing versatility that little wire pretzel has up its proverbial sleeve.

And, if you go all MacGyver, well hey, the paperclip suddenly gains even more uses. Lock pick, impromptu fuse pin for a grenade, poison dart, miniature marshmallow roasting stick for a mouse…

I mean, let’s face it, the uses are simply too many to recount here in a single blog entry.

But, let’s get back to the originally intended use of the humble paperclip, that being, of course, keeping a bundle of papers, documents, or what have you, together in an organized fashion. This is exactly what I use them for on a regular basis.

Regular as in, for instance, a recent trip I made to the local licensing office…

You see, Missouri, in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and in accordance with the, IMHO, horribly misnamed “Patriot Act”, now requires a bit of a “Prove Who You Are” song and dance whenever you are renewing your license. Never mind the fact that licensing offices here are privately owned and contracted, and that the person behind the counter is under no obligation whatsoever to prove to us who THEY are prior to us handing over our sensitive personal documents for their inspection and cockeyed scrutiny… But, I digress… I do understand the why’s and wherefore’s behind proving who you are, but sometimes it can get just a bit extreme – especially when you are renewing a license and they can look in the database and easily see that you have done so 10 times before… But, I’m still on the digressing train aren’t I?

You see, I did my duty. I went to the licensing office on the particular morning in question to have my Driver’s License renewed. Trying to be organized and on top of things, I went over the renewal notice with a fine toothed comb, and saw to it that I had gathered together all of the forms of ID, Proof of Residence, Bodily Fluid Samples, Household Paperwork, and what all that they insisted I have… Well, not really bodily fluid samples… But, a healthy stack of paperwork nonetheless… Voter ID card, Current License, Birth Certificate, and on, and on… In keeping with my desire to be organized and an easy person to work with, I paper clipped all of these documents together and headed out for the local license office which is about a mile from my house.

Now, being the early bird that I am, I arrived 5 minutes before they opened. But, obviously I wasn’t alone in this because I was number 2 in line, and before they every got around to opening the doors, there were several more folks queued up behind me. A couple of minutes after nine they opened up. I’m not going to complain about this because their clock may have been off. I can live with that. Had it been 10 or 15 minutes after the hour, well, that would have been a different story, but hey, I know how clocks can be and a couple of minutes one way or the other isn’t a huge deal…

But, now it gets fun…

We were more or less “ordered” in the door by one of the employees, who treated us as if we were cattle off to the slaughter – This was nothing new to me. Anything involving government bureaucracy, be it local, state, or federal, ends up labeling the general populous as “sheeple” and those working for the government seem to think they are above it all. What they don’t  seem to be able to get through their thick skulls is that they are even bigger sheeple than the folks they are ordering around. I’d love to be standing there when this dawns upon them, because I’m sure the ensuing brain meltdown will be pretty spectacular to watch.

Yes, as insensitive as it may seem,  I admit that I actually take great solace in the fact that I realize a good number of these jackasses are nothing more than mindless drones wading through an utterly meaningless existence as the life is sucked out of them by their jobs; and that the only way they can feel in control of their own destiny is to act self-important. The evidence of this phenomenon is provided by their increasingly nasty demeanors, lack of manners, and in some cases even  overt displays of horribly sub-par intelligence due to brain atrophy.

But again, I digress… Well sorta… You’ll see in a minute…

Still, I am certain you are wondering from whence do I draw my conclusion, even with the preponderance of evidence listed above… Why, the humble and pure paperclip, of course…

On this particular day I followed the barked instructions of the door drone and seated myself in the waiting area to the left. The frowning young female – I have absolutely no intention of using the honorific “lady” in conjunction with this bag of negativity – behind the counter watched as I took my seat, waited for me to lean back and get as comfortable as I possibly could on the hard plastic, then immediately called me to the counter. I wasn’t pleased that she didn’t bother to just tell me to come on over before I sat down, but I’m not a lazy person so it isn’t like the added motion hurt me at all… But, still…Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to call me over before I sat down?

I got up from my seat, electing to keep my mouth shut and not to point out to her the overall rudeness of what she had just done. I went over to the counter and handed her my paperwork as I withdrew my checkbook from my pocket.

She looked at the paper clipped bundle, rolled her eyes, snorted, then spat the angry demand, “Where’s your ID?” At least, I think that is what she said. It actually came out of her mouth as something on the order of “Wheb’snerdee!”

She didn’t really sound at all like she had a longstanding speech impediment, nor was she displaying any other symptoms of a stroke in progress. Therefore, I could only assume the foreign language she was speaking was due to the fact that either she 1) had her mouth full of chewing gum, 2)  had consumed shellfish for breakfast and was going into anaphylactic shock, therefore her tongue was swelling, or maybe even 3) her tongue was  simply getting stuck to her teeth and preventing entire syllables from exiting her mouth in synchronization with her frown. Hell, for all I knew it could be all of the above. Unfortunately, it fell to me to translate on my own because even though my towel was in the truck, my Babel Fish was still at home.

However, having been through this process more than once in my lifetime, I knew she most likely wanted my ID, so I replied, “It’s right there with the paperwork.”

She looked at the bundle in her hand, but apparently became immensely confused the moment she set eyes upon the brightly colored paperclip holding it all together at the top edge. Therefore, she did the only thing she could think of to do, she sat staring at it. Then, after a moment in a violent display of her intense lack of manners she threw the bundle across the counter at me.

I sighed, picked it up, and slid the paperclip from the neatly organized stack of documentation. In that moment I considered giving her a lesson in how to accomplish this herself so that perhaps she could become enlightened as to the ways of the paperclip, and moreover so the next person would have an easier go of it. However, I had way too much to do on this particular day, and I simply didn’t have the necessary free time to school her in the finer points of paperclip removal, what with it being such a complicated process and all. Besides, why should I have all the fun? Let someone else try to educate her.

After slipping the paperclip off the bundle I extracted my soon to expire driver’s license – AKA the much sought after “nerdee” – and placed it on the counter before her, then laid the pile of required documents next to it.

She didn’t move. She simply looked at the ID, then looked at the pile of documentation, then looked at me.

I stared back at her.

Again she looked at the pile of documentation, then looked back at me.

Apparently, I had given her far too much credit. You see, not only was she incapable of operating a paperclip, it seemed also that the very notion of a folded piece of paper was light years beyond her grasp.

I sighed again, snatched up the pile of documents, then unfolded my birth certificate and laid it next to the ID… Then I placed the renewal form next to my ID… Then my voter ID card next to, you guessed it, my ID… Then the next bit of required info. And on, and on, until I had them all neatly laid out for her.

“There you go,” I said. “Just like it asks for on the renewal form.”

The rest of my time was spent watching her move in slow motion as she picked up various pieces of documentation and stared at them as if they were objects left behind by alien visitors. Every now and then she would open her mouth and say something like, “Theppidelookintlsee,” or “Zeefashion?”, or “Betebbydlr.”

Even without the aid of a Babel Fish, I managed to figure out what she wanted. I’m sure this was largely because, as I said earlier, I’d strolled this path more than once in my lifetime.

Eventually, after a bit of a wait, I walked out of the office with a brand spankin’ new Missouri Driver’s License, complete with the most god-awful photograph of all time sitting in one corner – just like it’s supposed to be.

In retrospect I suppose I could have become upset, or even irate over the poor treatment I received, but as I was leaving I took notice of the fact that I had not been singled out. She was being brainless and excessively rude to everyone else in line too. Besides, at the end of the day I like to treat everything I can as  a learning experience. An opportunity to expand my personal knowledge, if you will…

So, what did I learn in this particular instance?

Simple – License office workers are kind of like Vampires with O C D – If I’m ever attacked by one, all I have to do is throw a box of paperclips at “it”. He/she will be so confused by the ultra-high tech alien technology that I’ll have more than enough time to make my escape…

More to come…

Murv

So there I was, just minding my own business. (Those of you who know me are already aware that I do that quite a bit... But, then, you are also well aware that I have a tendency to entertain myself a lot too…)

Seriously. I really was minding my own business. I wouldn’t lie about something like that…

In fact, as I recall it was around 4:45 PM and I was fixing dinner. You see, if I don’t have dinner on the table at precisely 5:30 PM when E K arrives home, well then she does horrible and terrible things to me, then sells tapes of it on the internet. But, that’s another blog, and probably really isn’t one that would be age appropriate for the younger readers. (Oh, and I’m just kidding about the tapes on the internet part. Really… I am… It was a joke…)

You know… Come to think of it, none of my blogs are really age appropriate are they? No matter what the age…

Hmm…

Be that as it may, I’ve already started so there really isn’t much I can do.  Once I begin a story I have to tell it to its conclusion or my medulla oblongata seizes up… And, as you well know if your medulla oblongata freezes up on you things can get a bit messy since it controls all those autonomic functions and such.

So anyway… There I was, minding my own business and fixing dinner, while at the same time keeping an eye on the clock and an ear out for the sound of a car in the driveway. Why? So that I would be sure to meet E K at the door with her Tall Vodka-Tonic of course. (The E K Vodka-Tonic: Five ice cubes, 1/8 of a fresh lime – squeezed over said cubes – followed by three fingers of Premium to Average Vodka, [whatever we have at the time] – straight from the freezer – And topped with Vess tonic to fill the glass within 1/4 inch of the rim. Never shaken. NEVER… Stirred only, and it must only be stirred 3 1/2 revolutions counter-clockwise with a red plastic chopstick. She’s very specific about her drinks… Or else… Well, you know…)

So… I was fixing dinner, keeping an eye on the clock, listening for a car, and preparing to slice a fresh lime just at the last moment so that it wouldn’t have too much time to oxidize and all that jazz… Like I said in the beginning, just minding my own business, and that’s when it happened.

“What happened?” you ask… I’m glad you did. If you hadn’t I might have seen another “chicken” as one of my readers says, and we’d be off down a different trail yet again… (I love that whole “chicken” reference, by the way…)

So, anyway, what happened is that the phone rang.

I realize this probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to some of you, but you see, I despise the telephone. It is there for emergencies and that’s pretty much it in my opinion. But, E K insists that we have one so we do. Hey, what can I do about it? I’m just the chef / bartender / waiter / doormat guy…

Well, since you can never be exactly sure what you might end up dealing with on the phone I put the paring knife aside and abandoned the citrus surgery for the moment, then went over to the clamoring device. The caller I D box hanging on the wall beside it read, “NOT AVAILABLE”…

Uh-huh. Yeah… Right.

It’s been my personal experience that if the number is “NOT AVAILABLE” the person at the other end is most likely a telemarketer and they have the Caller I D blocked. However, I have to admit that isn’t always the case… In something like .01% of the unavailable number type calls there’s been a malfunction of sorts and the ID box simply cannot decipher the signal. When that happens you have no idea who is at the other end. It could be a telemarketer as one would suspect… It could be Ed McMahon calling to tell you that you’ve won some kind of sweepstakes… It could be your Great Aunt Gertrude wanting to hit you up to bail her out jail after she got into a brawl at no limit Bingo… Or, it could even be E K. And, well, you don’t ignore The E K when she calls, if you know what I’m saying… I mean, after all, she could be feeling magnanimous and might be calling to let me know she’s running early, in which case I would need to hop to making that drink right away. Or, maybe that she’s running late, in which case I’d need to adjust my timing on that drink so that the ice wouldn’t be too melty… If her drink is watered down, well… You know. Last time I let that happen I was in the hospital for a week…

Therefore, all of the above was rushing through my brain as I stared at the caller I D. As you can imagine, having that much to think about all at once hurt quite a bit. But, truth be told it really didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that I needed to answer the damn thing just to be sure.

So, I did.

“Hello?” I said as I put the handset up against my ear.

The phone went click… Click… Then I heard a female voice say, “Good evening, Mister Kat?“

“Ummm, no,” I replied. “Mister Sellars.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I was trying to reach Miz Evil Kat.”

“This is her husband, can I help you?”

“Oh, good evening sir. Is your name on her [insert fancy department store name here] charge account?”

“Nope. I can’t say that it is.”

“Then I would really need to speak with her.”

“Well, I’m afraid she’s not here right now,” I replied.

At this point I really had to give this young lady an E for effort, because  this is when most telemarketers just hang up in my ear. Instead, she persevered with, “No problem. Is there a particular time that would be good to reach your wife?”

Now, I need to give you some background. You see, E K is no bigger a fan of talking on the phone than I am, which is one of the reasons I find it so perplexing that she insist we have one of the silly things. But, be that as it may, I knew damn well she wasn’t going to want to speak to this young lady about Ginseng Tea, Credit Protection that guarantees you absolutely nothing other than you have to pay for it monthly, or even a special VIP invite to  the Flying Polish Grandmothers for Pagan Babies Day sale. By the same token,  however, I certainly understood that the poor little gal on the other end of the talkie-talkie thingy was just doing her job, so I couldn’t find it in my heart to be overtly rude to her. I mean, after all, it’s not like she called during dinner, or during an episode of N C I S or something else equally unforgivable…

Still, y’all know how I am. I certainly couldn’t pass up an opportunity to entertain myself…

“Well, I’m not exactly sure,” I said cryptically, paused for effect, then added, “You see, she’s out of the country right now.”

This bubbly young telemarketer had to be new on the job because she was just too damned cheerful for her own good. Upon hearing my reply she exclaimed, “Oh, how nice! Is she on vacation?”

“Nope,” I replied. “It’s work related. At least, I think it is.”

She fell silent for a second. Now I really had her curiosity piqued, “Uhm… Uh… You think it is?” she finally ventured.

“Yeah,” I replied with an audible shrug in my voice. “She really isn’t allowed to tell me anything about what she’s doing until after the fact. And sometimes not even then. It all just depends on how classified it is.”

“Classified?” she repeated, her voice brimming over with confusion.

“Well yeah, it’s all kind of hush hush you know,” I said, lining up the sights so I could move in for the kill. “For instance, sometimes it’s just something simple like stealing sensitive documents from a hostile country and  bringing them back to the United States, and other times it’s a little more involved… Like assassinating some whacked out dictator who’s trying to get his hands on a nuclear missile or something… I never really know what she’s been up to until she turns up back here at home.”

“I’m sorry…” she said, her voice taking on an incredulous tone. “I thought I just heard you say, assassinate?”

“You did,” I answered in earnest. “Killing people is her specialty. In fact, I once saw her  take out 11 really bad ass guys in a biker bar with nothing but her high heels, a piece of chewing gum, and a used cocktail napkin – and she did it all by herself… No help at all… Took her less than a minute… Of course, I had to buy her a new pair of shoes afterward because she couldn’t get the blood stains out of the leather… But, I’m here to tell you it was just plain amazing to watch. She’s like the female MacGyver of assassination or something. Around the office they just call her MacBitchver. The funny thing is, she actually does carry a Swiss Army Knife in her purse. Is that ironic or what?”

A stunned silence filled the earpiece. The only thing that surprised me about it was that the young woman hadn’t yet hung up in my ear.

Since I still had an audience, I continued. “Oh, please don’t misunderstand. She doesn’t just go around killing people without permission. She’s a deep cover operative for the N S A and it’s her job. She actually has a license to kill and a permit to torture. It even has her picture on it so she can use it as a government issued I D in the security line at the airport, which is kinda cool because they rush her right through and all. Of course, ever since nine-eleven they’ve kept her pretty busy doing… Well… You know… Whatever needs to be done to keep the country safe, if you get my meaning.”

I could still hear the young woman breathing at the other end of the phone, but a quick glance at the clock told me it was getting close to time for me to pull the vodka out of the freezer in preparation for the Femme Fatale in question’s arrival.

In a bid to wrap things up I added, “But, you know, if I happen to hear from her in between ops or something, I’ll be glad to let her know you called…”

“Uhm,” the girl finally said. “So, you don’t know when she’s going to be back in the country?”

Obviously, I had a live one on the other end and I had to stifle a laugh. Adopting as serious a tone as I could manage I replied, “Nope… I really never know until she just shows up here at home. But as long as I haven’t received one of those letters telling me she’s been disavowed and all that jazz,  I just make sure I don’t give away any of her stuff and we’re all good.”

I’m fairly certain we’ve never had another call from that particular outfit… If we eventually do, I’ll be sure to let double naught E Kay loose on them.  I’ll just make sure I have a drink waiting for her when she gets back from her secret mission… Of course, after she’s had to go all Jack (Jacquelyn?) Bauer on folks, she usually wants a Cranberry Martini instead of the old standby Vodka-Tonic…

…But she absolutely insists that those be shaken, not stirred…

More to come…

Murv

(… PS. In case you didn’t notice the scrolling info on the embedded player, and you are wracking your brain trying to place the origin of the Secret Agent Evil Kat Theme Song, it’s the main title music from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E*… [Composed by the late Jerry Goldsmith and arranged by Dave Grusin]… Of course, if you’re an old fart like me, you probably already knew that. Or knew it, forgot it, and needed a memory jog. Either way, there you have it.)

* U.N.C.L.E. – United Network Command for Law and Enforcement

(Yeah… I’m a geek. Wanna make something of it? Just remember, I’ll tell E K and you really don’t want me to have to take her shoe shopping again… )