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

Part 11 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Trick Or Treat!

Okay… So you got me to admit that E K did not actually stomp on the little groom guy from the cake topper… I suppose y’all are real proud of yourselves now, eh? Well, here’s the thing: I’m willing to bet you she thought about it,  really, really hard. As a matter of fact, I’m sure she did.

How can I say that, you ask? Easy, she’s evil. (E K … Evil Kat… Get it? Of course you do…)

So, there you go, case closed, she’s just plain inherently evil. However, if that isn’t enough  to convince you there is also the fact that I happen to know she  really likes to stomp on things… I mean, you should see this woman with an aluminum can that’s destined for the recycle bin… she gets all giggly and stuff… Then all of a sudden it’s just flat out metal carnage, I tell you! (Get it, flat out… Yeah… Okay… Well, I thought it was funny…)

Yeah, yeah, I know… I’ve said all manner of wonderful things in this blog series to purposely dispel any myths and/or rumors about the evil redhead, but I have to do that. It’s all in the script she wrote for me and if I don’t say all these nice things about her then she’ll beat me and lock me in a closet. Really… Seriously…  She will…

I’ve just lost all credibility with you folks, haven’t I?

Well… Maybe I can get some of it back.

How, you ask? (You know, y’all ask a lot of questions)… Well, I’ll tell you. It  just so happens that I have photographic evidence of E Kay’s evilness, complete with full color depictions of cruelty, betrayal, calculated deception, and no inkling whatsoever of remorse for her actions. Yes, for real. Undoctored, unfettered, pure photographic evidence that E K is as evil as they come…

Allow me to set the stage for you…

Among those time honored traditions that go hand in hand with weddings and wedding receptions, is the bride and groom feeding the cake to one another, all cutesy woodja-woodja and the like. In that same vein there is also the “smear the cake all over your new spouse’s face” collateral tradition. I have no idea who started that particular subset of the cake thing, but he or she needs to be shot. Just my opinion, but hey…my blog, my opinion. Kinda works…

Anyway, E K and I had ourselves a talk about this. In fact, E K is the very one who brought it up. (I should have known right then and there that something was amiss)… At any rate, one day as we were working on the wedding plans she looked at me imploringly with those big blue eyes and said, “Look, Murv, let’s make a deal with one another right here and now — When it comes time to cut the cake and all that, I promise I won’t smear you in the face with it, if you promise you won’t smear me in the face. Deal?”

Well, how could I resist? She was just so damned cute and convincing and all that jazz. Besides, I really and truly wasn’t all that skippy about the prospect of having cake plastered throughout my beard for several hours, so this seemed like  the perfect solution to me. Therefore, I did the only thing I could possibly do under the circumstances. I responded in earnest, “Yeah, honey.  No problem at all. I’d say you’ve got yourself a deal. I promise to not smear any cake on your face.”

Now, being from the south I knew better. And, I knew I knew better.  In keeping with the theme of things I knew, I also knew in my heart, and in my head, that I should have spit in my palm, made her spit in hers, and had a handshake on the deal right then and there, but I didn’t. Instead, I trusted my soon-to-be-wife without hesitation. Of course, even the handshake probably wouldn’t have mattered, what with her being a Yankee and all… It stands to reason with all that northern blood she wouldn’t have honored a spit promise anyway, so that would have only made the situation worse. I mean, if  she had broken a spit promise of all things, then she just would have gone from being a Yankee to being a Damn Yankee… Obviously this would have presented a major problem, because while it’s a forgivable offense to be married to a Yankee, (after all, they can’t help it they were born in a foreign country,) marrying a Damn Yankee… Well, that’ll just get you hanged.

However, I promised you evidence and so here it is. I give you Exhibit A. (left)… Notice how I am placing the cake carefully into her mouth. However, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to see that her aim is way off. My mouth has never been on the side of my face and she knows that.  No… she was purposely assaulting me with the “cake smear”. If you look closely at my expression, posture, and the position of my other hand, you can also plainly see that the photo caught me right in the middle of a serious, “WTF?! You promised!” moment.

Now, had it merely been a case of poor aim on her part, she wouldn’t have continued to grind the icing into my beard, as evidenced in the next photo, which we shall label Exhibit B.

Unfortunately, what you are unable to see from this particular photo, is her satisfied grin. There were witnesses… But, I think she might have paid them off… Now I ask you… Evil or no?

What? Sheesh… I really don’t see why everyone is taking her side in all of this… I mean, yeah, I do get that she was merely establishing dominance in the relationship so that I would know who was really in control,  but hey, she promised… (One of these days I’m going to find out exactly what it was she had crossed when she made that promise, because I’m pretty sure her hands were in plain sight at the time…)

So, back to the title of this entry. “Where’s everybody going?” refers back to what I mentioned in the Fool For Your Stockings chapter of this series,  (Feb 22, 2009), when I spoke briefly about us hitting the sack in the evening as opposed to the very late night, or wee hours of the morning. I told you we’d get to it, and now here we are.

You see, soon after the smearing of the cake, someone must have mistaken the purely evil gesture as playfulness and then passed the word that E K was feeling frisky or something. I surmised this because it wasn’t long before a mass exodus began. People started patting us on the back, congratulating us just one more time, hugging and kissing us, then winking as they said their goodbyes. A couple of them even flat out mentioned to us that they were clearing out so E K and I could have… Ahem… “Alone time”…

WTF? E K and I had already been living together “in sin” for a year. Yeah, we’d been sinning left and right. So, it’s not like we had gone through this whole process in order to get a “free bedroom pass” or something. Truth is we already had ourselves a “big ol’ bag o’ tokens” for adult activities and we’d been spending them whenever we had a chance. Now, please understand, it’s not that we weren’t interested in visiting the “grown up amusement park” on a regular basis, or even having a go at some of the “rides” we hadn’t yet enjoyed, but on that particular night we wanted to have a party. We had spent every bit of money we could scrape together on food, a keg of beer, and fixing the place up enough to be able to have a shindig. We had worked hard to make this happen. We wanted to share and enjoy it with our friends. We could jump on the “tilt-a-whirl” tomorrow… Hell, two or three times if we felt like it.

However, no matter what we said, folks would just give us the “wink wink nudge nudge” and be on their way. By 10:30 PM, my hot and sexy bride and I were standing in the middle of our living room, just us, the cats, and no one else, surrounded by empty chairs and a whole mountain of food. Now, I know 10:30 PM sounds like night and not evening as I had said… These days, at my somewhat more advanced age, yeah, I’d call it night too. But, back then at the wet behind the ears twenty-something stage, when we were immortal and could drink a hell of a lot more, 10:30 PM was merely evening… Night was still on its way and wouldn’t be arriving for at least another half hour or so…

But, yeah, I know, that’s all just a matter of semantics… You say tomato, I say roundish red thing that goes on my sammich… Still, 10:30 PM? That’s just too damn early to pack it in when you have the youth combined with the level of party fixin’s available that we did…

So… We took one last look around and proceeded to do the only thing we could do. We put everything away, filling the refrigerator to the gills in the process, locked the doors, closed the windows, slipped out of our Sunday go to meetin’ clothes, went into the bedroom and… Passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Yeah. Sleep. That was it. No roller coaster, log flume, bumper cars, scrambler, or even a quick spin on the merry-go-round… Nothing… But, it was all good… If were weren’t going to have anyone staying to party with us, then what the hell… We’d just catch up on those 287 1/2 hours of sleep we’d managed to miss getting ready for this whole affair.

E K could tie me up and beat me later when we’d both be awake enough to enjo… Er… Uhm… Never mind.

But, honestly, in retrospect we both desperately needed the rest. Besides, if you recall, E K had lost the feeling in her legs and we needed to get her out of those rubber bands…

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the serendipitous, (depending on your perspective,) benefits of everyone bugging out so early… And, I’m not just talking about the sleep.

We ended up with almost an entire keg of beer to ourselves… Not a quarter barrel, mind you, we had ordered a half-barrel. And it was the good stuff… Well, as good as commercial big-brewery beer can be and this was in the days before Microbreweries became truly popular. Still, before everything was said and done, I was filling gallon jugs 3/4 full and putting them in the chest freezer downstairs so I could use the flat brew to cook with at a later date, while at the same time I was staying tanked the whole day. We washed our hair with it. We gave it to the neighbors. We invited folks in off the street to have a beer. All I knew was that we’d paid for it, so that metal barrel wasn’t going back until it was floating…

I was never so glad to return a keg in all my life… Really.

On top of the beer-en-dipity there was also food-en-dipity… I didn’t have to cook for a week and a half. We just took stuff out of the freezer and ran it through the microwave. Ham sandwiches, apple-rice curry, veal parmigiana… Good thing too, because with all that extra beer I was sucking down, I was just too damn drunk to cook.

And so we had a relatively anti-climactic end to one of the truly climactic points in our lives… We spent our honeymoon here in town, shopping for furniture with the money we’d earned for getting married, (what a racket… I’d be willing to do it once or twice a year if I thought folks would keep forking over the cash), and just generally hanging out.

But, before I can formally end this proverbial stroll along memory lane, we still have one more little pothole to investigate… And, to do that, we have to get back to the subject of food…

More to come…

Murv

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