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mallorys_cameraFind myself wishing desperately this afternoon for some wise friend to whom I might turn for analysis and counsel...
###
Yesterday, l'il Jeremy and I were summarily herded into the inner sanctum that is Reverend Cal's personal office. No voodoo masks or shrunken heads in evidence, but the man himself in a lugubrious grey suit and shades more than made up for it.
Reverend Cal wanted to talk to us about the future of the VISTA project. This made me very nervous. Essentially there is no future of the VISTA project unless Albany signs off on it. And Reverend Cal had not yet spoken with Albany. Some might call this a mere procedural point, but I find that when I'm working in a professional capacity, procedure is very important to me.
First Reverend Cal wanted to brief us on the History of Developmental Disability.
This took about an hour.
Our VISTA project has nothing to do with developmental disability, incidently. We run -- or ran until approximately one week ago -- a youth group for kids from Poughkeepsie's urban ghetto.
Next Reverend Cal wanted to thank us for our contributions to the cause and tell us what amazingly productive and creative little worker bees we are.
This was amusing. Basically, I've spent the past six weeks perfecting my skills at Bejeweled on the office computer. Longtime readers may remember that I love playing Bejeweled so much that I actually incorporated it into my novel Saturday Night in the Sky as a plot point: Maximon, the Last of the Mayan gods, uses Bejeweled as a divination technique.
More recently, Bejeweled was the proximal source of a social faux pas when I suggested to a man I was dating that he might benefit from installing Bejeweled on his home computer.
The guy had informed me upfront that he suffered from OCD.
I had a hard time believing that. "But you seem so normal," I said. "Well, I mean -- not like normal normal. And not like there's anything wrong with being normal -- or with having OCD --"
He laughed. "Not to worry. I have it well under control."
Except that practically every night, he ended up at the Empire City Casino adjoining the Yonkers Racetrack playing video poker.
"There's a lot of skill involved in playing video poker," he told me earnestly, the second time he dragged me there. "People don't realize how much skill's involved."
Well, okay. Maybe I look like I want to invest in oceanside property in Arizona.
Thing that drove me nuts, though, was that he was dropping a lot of money on this game. At least several hundred dollars a night. That was several hundred dollars he could have spent buying me long-stemmed roses, expensive dinners and small, tasteful gifts of jewelry instead of fucking me, taking me to the $18 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and allowing me to watch him play video poker.
After the third time, I remarked idly on the drive home, "You know, what you really like about video poker? It evokes that perfect fugue state for you."
"What do you mean?"
"You like the perfect way that all those colored lights line up and those notes chime. But see, you could get exactly the same psychic charge if you installed one of those tile-swapping games on your home computer. They use that same basic strategy of escalating lights and chimes. And that way, you could placate your OCD urges but you wouldn't have to lose any money --"
"I do not play video poker because I have OCD!" he said. His teeth may have been clenched. I would have had to have been looking at him to make sure. "My OCD is under control! I play video poker because it's a highly skilled game that requires real strategy and attention to detail, and anyway last week, I won a pot worth four hundred dollars --"
"Right," I said. "But how many dollars did you feed into the machine before you won it? And how much did you lose tonight?"
This was the last time we went out.
But I digress. Back to Reverend Cal's office.
"So I looked over your business plan," he said. "Remarkable work. Well, okay. I didn't have time to read it. I scanned it. Thing is, Pollyanna doesn't have 20 Gs to throw into the startup pot for your smoothie carts --"
Of course, the business plan didn't say anything about getting 20 Gs from Pollyanna. Our plan was to do a Kickstarter campaign for the startup money.
I thought of pointing this out to Reverend Cal. Just to irritate him.
I didn't.
"So unfortunately that's not going to work. And unfortunately, we can't support the youth group anymore -- what was it called?"
"Shaping Empowered Teens," said l'il Jeremy. "SET."
"Like 'Ready, Set, Go!'" I pointed out helpfully. "Or as we liked to say, 'Ready, Set, Grow!'"
Reverend Cal ignored me. "But we understand we have a responsibility to you VISTA volunteers. You're living the truth of Brother Martin Luther King's call to giving through volunteering. And I am working on another project --"
Reverend Cal's other project turns out to be a healthful beverage packed with powerful phytochemical antioxidants and anthocyanins, and bottled by -- the developmentally disabled!!! No shit, Sherlock. Hey! You can pay them them even less than you have to pay those North Korean factory workers!
It was all I could do to keep myself from bursting into hysterical laughter.
Right! Because Dr. Cal's Digestive Snake Oil is totally in line with the VISTA mission to fight poverty in America.
In fact, you gotta wonder about a governmental agency that would give a grant to someone like Reverend Cal in the first place.
"What do you think?" asked Reverend Cal. His pupils couldn't really have turned into tiny bats rotating in vats of scab-colored jello, could they? No. Clearly I was hallucinating.
"Well! Uh. Sounds like a fascinating project," I said.
"Sure does!" said l'il Jeremy.
"Of course, you'll need to run it by the VISTA office in Albany --"
We each shook Reverend Cal's scaly hand, and then the meeting was officially over.
"Well," l'il Jeremy said. "That killed 45 minutes. Only another six hours to get through."
"Oh, I'm not sticking around here," I said. "I'm going home."
"You are?"
"Well, yeah. Reverend Cal just essentially reneged on the terms of the grant that's been funding us here. It's not in my best interests to stick around unless Albany clarifies our position --"
"Or doesn't clarify our position --"
"A girl can dream --"
"Plus, it's not exactly as though there's anything for us to do here --"
"What? Putting Reverend Cal's Joy Juice on 7-Eleven's refrigerated beverage rack right next to Pepsi Cola doesn't appeal?"
"Can't say that it does," said Jeremy.
"I mean, my kid wants me to help him with his law school application statement of purpose. But I can do that at home, right? And how long will that take me anyway? Five minutes? Dear Harvard Law School, As the oldest son of a Jewish mother, only three professions are open to me: medicine, accounting and the law. I don't want to be a doctor or an accountant. Please accept me --"
"What about Bejeweled?" Jeremy asked. He was grinning. "You are so close to breaking that 250,000 mark --"
"Fuck Bejeweled," I said. "Fuck Pollyanna. Fuck VISTA."
"Amen, sister," Jeremy said. "I'm leaving too. And you know what? I ain't coming back."
Yesterday, l'il Jeremy and I were summarily herded into the inner sanctum that is Reverend Cal's personal office. No voodoo masks or shrunken heads in evidence, but the man himself in a lugubrious grey suit and shades more than made up for it.
Reverend Cal wanted to talk to us about the future of the VISTA project. This made me very nervous. Essentially there is no future of the VISTA project unless Albany signs off on it. And Reverend Cal had not yet spoken with Albany. Some might call this a mere procedural point, but I find that when I'm working in a professional capacity, procedure is very important to me.
First Reverend Cal wanted to brief us on the History of Developmental Disability.
This took about an hour.
Our VISTA project has nothing to do with developmental disability, incidently. We run -- or ran until approximately one week ago -- a youth group for kids from Poughkeepsie's urban ghetto.
Next Reverend Cal wanted to thank us for our contributions to the cause and tell us what amazingly productive and creative little worker bees we are.
This was amusing. Basically, I've spent the past six weeks perfecting my skills at Bejeweled on the office computer. Longtime readers may remember that I love playing Bejeweled so much that I actually incorporated it into my novel Saturday Night in the Sky as a plot point: Maximon, the Last of the Mayan gods, uses Bejeweled as a divination technique.
More recently, Bejeweled was the proximal source of a social faux pas when I suggested to a man I was dating that he might benefit from installing Bejeweled on his home computer.
The guy had informed me upfront that he suffered from OCD.
I had a hard time believing that. "But you seem so normal," I said. "Well, I mean -- not like normal normal. And not like there's anything wrong with being normal -- or with having OCD --"
He laughed. "Not to worry. I have it well under control."
Except that practically every night, he ended up at the Empire City Casino adjoining the Yonkers Racetrack playing video poker.
"There's a lot of skill involved in playing video poker," he told me earnestly, the second time he dragged me there. "People don't realize how much skill's involved."
Well, okay. Maybe I look like I want to invest in oceanside property in Arizona.
Thing that drove me nuts, though, was that he was dropping a lot of money on this game. At least several hundred dollars a night. That was several hundred dollars he could have spent buying me long-stemmed roses, expensive dinners and small, tasteful gifts of jewelry instead of fucking me, taking me to the $18 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and allowing me to watch him play video poker.
After the third time, I remarked idly on the drive home, "You know, what you really like about video poker? It evokes that perfect fugue state for you."
"What do you mean?"
"You like the perfect way that all those colored lights line up and those notes chime. But see, you could get exactly the same psychic charge if you installed one of those tile-swapping games on your home computer. They use that same basic strategy of escalating lights and chimes. And that way, you could placate your OCD urges but you wouldn't have to lose any money --"
"I do not play video poker because I have OCD!" he said. His teeth may have been clenched. I would have had to have been looking at him to make sure. "My OCD is under control! I play video poker because it's a highly skilled game that requires real strategy and attention to detail, and anyway last week, I won a pot worth four hundred dollars --"
"Right," I said. "But how many dollars did you feed into the machine before you won it? And how much did you lose tonight?"
This was the last time we went out.
But I digress. Back to Reverend Cal's office.
"So I looked over your business plan," he said. "Remarkable work. Well, okay. I didn't have time to read it. I scanned it. Thing is, Pollyanna doesn't have 20 Gs to throw into the startup pot for your smoothie carts --"
Of course, the business plan didn't say anything about getting 20 Gs from Pollyanna. Our plan was to do a Kickstarter campaign for the startup money.
I thought of pointing this out to Reverend Cal. Just to irritate him.
I didn't.
"So unfortunately that's not going to work. And unfortunately, we can't support the youth group anymore -- what was it called?"
"Shaping Empowered Teens," said l'il Jeremy. "SET."
"Like 'Ready, Set, Go!'" I pointed out helpfully. "Or as we liked to say, 'Ready, Set, Grow!'"
Reverend Cal ignored me. "But we understand we have a responsibility to you VISTA volunteers. You're living the truth of Brother Martin Luther King's call to giving through volunteering. And I am working on another project --"
Reverend Cal's other project turns out to be a healthful beverage packed with powerful phytochemical antioxidants and anthocyanins, and bottled by -- the developmentally disabled!!! No shit, Sherlock. Hey! You can pay them them even less than you have to pay those North Korean factory workers!
It was all I could do to keep myself from bursting into hysterical laughter.
Right! Because Dr. Cal's Digestive Snake Oil is totally in line with the VISTA mission to fight poverty in America.
In fact, you gotta wonder about a governmental agency that would give a grant to someone like Reverend Cal in the first place.
"What do you think?" asked Reverend Cal. His pupils couldn't really have turned into tiny bats rotating in vats of scab-colored jello, could they? No. Clearly I was hallucinating.
"Well! Uh. Sounds like a fascinating project," I said.
"Sure does!" said l'il Jeremy.
"Of course, you'll need to run it by the VISTA office in Albany --"
We each shook Reverend Cal's scaly hand, and then the meeting was officially over.
"Well," l'il Jeremy said. "That killed 45 minutes. Only another six hours to get through."
"Oh, I'm not sticking around here," I said. "I'm going home."
"You are?"
"Well, yeah. Reverend Cal just essentially reneged on the terms of the grant that's been funding us here. It's not in my best interests to stick around unless Albany clarifies our position --"
"Or doesn't clarify our position --"
"A girl can dream --"
"Plus, it's not exactly as though there's anything for us to do here --"
"What? Putting Reverend Cal's Joy Juice on 7-Eleven's refrigerated beverage rack right next to Pepsi Cola doesn't appeal?"
"Can't say that it does," said Jeremy.
"I mean, my kid wants me to help him with his law school application statement of purpose. But I can do that at home, right? And how long will that take me anyway? Five minutes? Dear Harvard Law School, As the oldest son of a Jewish mother, only three professions are open to me: medicine, accounting and the law. I don't want to be a doctor or an accountant. Please accept me --"
"What about Bejeweled?" Jeremy asked. He was grinning. "You are so close to breaking that 250,000 mark --"
"Fuck Bejeweled," I said. "Fuck Pollyanna. Fuck VISTA."
"Amen, sister," Jeremy said. "I'm leaving too. And you know what? I ain't coming back."
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 12:55 pm (UTC)No, I definitely sense the unseen tentacles of the Universe at work. :-)
It's just... I'm tired of having a chaotic life, you know? It's my karma. I need to embrace it. But I'm fucking tired of it.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:01 pm (UTC)Your point is well-taken though. If I write this up as a short story, I'll throw in some dialogue where the heroine suggests to the OCD guy that he go to Las Vegas and gets rebuffed. (Why would I want to go to Las Vegas? All they do there is gamble. Words to that effect.)
Incidentally, in your comment-protected entry on philosophy above, I wanted to mention that there's a counterforce to deployment in establishing meaning, and that is dissociation.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-18 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-18 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-19 12:54 am (UTC)i would be interested to understand the mechanism of disassociation more... but simply not being part of a context doesn't mean it is disassociative.. as with the younger generation example. i know this isnt what you mean, but i am not being disassociative when i travel to a forgein country and simply am not part of the context. in order to be part of it, one has to be somehow psychically invested so that your subjectivity has a rooted interest, has the logic of the context has structured your subjectivity already... being in promixity isn't enough... i say this because teenagers are invested in at times, alternate contexts radically different from how their parents are made so that they speak different languages the way republicans and democrats can crosstalk. not saying you're wrong... i just am not sure how to apply disassociation or if it applies.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-14 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-15 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-15 04:48 pm (UTC)