BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that sometime early Thursday morning 4/2, I lamented the fact that according to the national weather service, a blizzard is supposed to hit Wayne, NE this weekend. Why would I worry about a blizzard in Wayne, NE? Well, because as I write this I am sitting on the floor outside my gate at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, on my way to Wayne… Now, I won’t be able to actually post this until I arrive at my destination (via Sioux City, IA BTW – Airport code SUX… yeah, no kidding.) I can’t post this yet because it seems that airports have done away with free wi-fi and are now charging 8 bucks for a couple of hours. I don’t need it that bad… What I need is a Crackberry….

Either way, I had intended to tweet along, letting y’all know what was going on as I embarked on this odyssey to be Guest of Honor at WillyCon XI, the Wayne State College SF/Fantasy convention. However, I have obviously been thwarted in that respect.

So…This first leg of my journey will be compressed here as a randomly entered journal of pseudo tweets… My personal hashtag for this will be #fuckme… I will also be adding psuedo tweets from others who had a direct influence on my trip, but didn’t even know they were tweeting:

@mrsellars – Fuck me. Lambert airport is charging for Wi-Fi. No tweets till I make it to Minneapolis.

@mrsellars – Why is the turbine on the left engine going whocka-whocka-whocka-thumpa-whap?

@mrsellars – How many hamsters does it take to make that turbine turn so fast?

@flight_attendant – We use guinea pigs on this plane.

@mrsellars – Okay, I’ll bite. How many guinea pigs?

@flight_attendant – Fasten your seatbelt sir.

@flight_attendant_#2 – Wah wah wah, nah wahm nah wah…nom.

@mrsellars – Damn… She sounds like the adults on a Charlie Brown cartoon.

@flight_attendant – Coffee?

@mrsellars – Yes, please.

@mrsellars – Roller coaster turbulence over Iowa. My theory? Rising gases from a cloud of cow farts.

@mrsellars – May I have some more coffee?

@flight_attendant – I think you’ve had quite enough sir.

@mrsellars – On ground in Minneapolis. Texted E K. Now sitting and waiting for gate to be free.

@mrsellars – Damn! The universe apparently knows I missed my morning walk. Arrived gate F12 – connection at gate A11. Walkies!

@mrsellars – Still 3 hours before I can board egg beater express bound for Sioux City. ½ cup of Fiber One at 6AM now wearing off. Need food.

@mrsellars – Nothing here. Food court ½ mile back the way I came. Walkies!

@mrsellars – Quizno’s line around block. Employees moving in slow motion. Stomach not happy.

@mrsellars – Caribou coffee across the way. Going there.

@mrsellars – Consumed not so stellar 2 dollar roast turkey wrap with 1 dollar 11 oz beverage that had blue green algae in it. Total cost $11.05.

@mrsellars – Floor show during lunch. Captain Important paced back and forth in front of me yelling into his bluetooth headset. Impressive.

@mrsellars – Walkies! Now back at gate. No seats available. Crap. I’ll sit over here on the floor.

@mrsellars – Okay. Now I’ll tweet for a bit.

@mrsellars – FUCK ME! Minneapolis charges for Wi-Fi too!

@mrsellars – Fuggit. I’ll write it on word and post it as a blog later.

@mrsellars – Damn! How far up do her legs go? Interesting view from down here on the floor.

@mrsellars – Shit (or :poopie: for the Bitten by Books chatroom crowd.) My foot fell asleep.

@mrsellars – Aha! People going to Ohio are boarding. Now’s my chance for a seat in the waiting area.

@mrsellars – Missing my desk chair. It’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than this one.

@Gate_Attendant – Sir… Sir! Are you on this flight to Ohio?

@mrsellars – no ma’am.

@Gate_Attendant – Are you sure?

@mrsellars – Well, no, I don’t guess I am. I just told your ticket agent to give me a boarding pass for a random flight. Maybe I should look.

@Gate_Attendant – Why are you wearing shorts? It’s 30 degrees outside.

@mrsellars – It’s complicated. You see, I have a condition.

@Blond_Gate_Agent – Yah…Yah…I doo, don’tcha know…Yah…

@Original_Gate_Agent – Yah, yah… I doo too, yah’know… Yew betcha…

@mrsellars – Yep. I’m definitely in Minnesota.

@mrsellars – Holy crap… I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much “A Prairie Home Companion” hair all in one place my entire life.

@mrsellars – I didn’t even know they could still do those hairstyles. I wonder how many curlers they used on that one…

@mrsellars – They just started up one of the egg beaters. I can still identify individual blades on the prop even though the engine is screaming like a banshee.

@mrsellars – Wait… I can see the pilot through the windscreen…

@mrsellars – Reading the pilot’s lips – I think I can, I think I can…

@mrsellars – Might need to go back for coffee. Another ½ mile. Getting workout today.

@mrsellars – I haz a headache. Battery on notebook running low. Might need to find an outlet.

@mrsellars – Went about ¼ mile. Came across machine that sells coffee for a dollar. Decided to give it a try.

@mrsellars – Punched in 1 F 3 for what was supposed to be a Butterfinger Latte.

@mrsellars – Got 6 F 6 instead – year old pencil shavings strained through one of E Kay’s stockings with lukewarm water and a hint of rancid honey.

@mrsellars – Don’t ask me how I know what E Kay’s stockings taste like. I won’t tell you.

@mrsellars – How far is it from F12 to A11?

@Another_Gate_Agent – A little over two miles.

@mrsellars – Srsly?

@Another_Gate_Agent – Yah.

@mrsellars – Yep. Got my exercise.

@cellphone – Boopee Doopee Doopee Dooooo Ahhhh Boopee…

@mrsellars – Hello?

@EK – Hi.

[Rest of conversation censored due to graphic depictions of @mrsellars imagination along with sappy woodja-woodja lovey stuff…]

@mrsellars – Still have headache. Took aspirin. Noticed that people in Minnesota have apparently never seen a man wearing shorts before.

@mrsellars – Another hour plus left before the egg beater express flits me off to Sioux City. Hear they have Fly SUX T-shirts for sale. MUST have one…

@mrsellars – Srsly. It’s a moral imperative.

@mrsellars – Gate change. Oh joy… Not.

@mrsellars – Apparently Minnesotans are also AFRAID to SPEAK to a man wearing shorts.

@mrsellars – Thought I just saw Maurice Minnifield from Northern Exposure…

@mrsellars – No, not the actor. The REAL Maurice Minnifield…

@mrsellars – Damn! Rest of the passengers caught on to the gate change, and followed me over here. So much for a peaceful flight.

@mrsellars – Imagining E K wearing [CENSORED]

@mrsellars – {Bored Sigh}

@mrsellars – Wondering if @PaulCooked ever got that badger off his head…

@mrsellars – Pretty sure I just saw Kenny Rogers working on the ground crew. Must be paying off “Gambler” debts. (Ha! I kill me!)

@mrsellars – Guy with HUGE ASS headphones staring at me. Kinda freaky.

@mrsellars – Egg beater express got upgraded. Now flying on Estes model rocket. Hope the nose cone doesn’t suddenly fall off. Don’t wanna land using a plastic parachute.

@passenger – I’m supposed to sit in that seat next to you.

@mrsellars – Okay, but the flight is only half full and the flight attendant said sit anywhere you want.

@passenger – My ticket says I’m supposed to sit in that seat next to you.

@mrsellars – Are you just dying to sit next to me or something?

@passenger – But… But… My ticket says I’m supposed to sit in that seat next to you.

@mrsellars – Okay, “Sheldon”, how about if I move and let you have that seat.

@passenger – But, but… Doesn’t your ticket say you are supposed to sit here?

@mrsellars – No, “Sheldon”… My ticket says general seating. It’ll be okay…

@Flight_Attendant – Coffee?

@mrsellars – Yes, please.

@Flight_Attendant – Cream and sugar?

@mrsellars – Is the coffee really THAT bad?

@Flight_Attendant – Fasten your seatbelt sir.

And, now I’m here, and life is getting back to normal. Well, as normal as it can be for an old guy on a college campus, anyway…

More to come…

Murv

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