Crazy on the Outside

So I'm walking to work today, cold, bleary eyed and grumpy, and remain standing only by tightly gripping the promise of caffeinated sanity in my right hand. I take a swig from my o-so-tasty Clover coffee bucket (today is another fancy, non-pronounceable brew from Kenya), breathe in deeply and begin the treacherous trek across Market. I "deftly" maneuver through hordes of groggy commuters, dodge several old ladies running for the 30, and arrive safely on the opposite of the main thoroughfare. I breathe a sigh of relief; another morning passed with the inevitable bus-to-face smash incident avoided. (Seriously, walk with me to work sometime... you'll see.)

The sounds of a raised voice off to my left somehow manage to penetrate the fog that is my morning brain, and I swing my eyes ever so slightly off their straight ahead "I'll stab you if you run into me course". While I'm not yet capable of translating the gibberish speak, my eyebrows just about raise up off of my forehead at the sight just next to me. An incredibly grubby man, shouting something utterly unintelligible to no one in particular, RUNS into the middle of rush hour traffic (I'm talking oncoming, green-light here), JUMPS into the air ninja-style, and does a flying kick-leap into the side of a cab. Upon landing he kicks the cab door a few more times before walking ever so calmly back to the sidewalk. The cab drives on, the world returns to normal-speed and I head into work, shaking my head.

...Let's pause for a minute to note: You can't walk more than ten feet in San Francisco without encountering a person who either IS homeless, or appears to be. I'm not sure why. Maybe all those biz-school folks that founded sites like www.tradeairgetrich.com in '00 never found another job when their company went belly up. Perhaps the mild NorCal climate holds a high level attractiveness when one is outside constantly. Maybe its beggar-chic season and no one told me. Seriously - no clue. Maybe a topic for another blog post... back to the point

To my knowledge... the perpetrator of the kicking was never in the cab. I never saw a door open or shut (granted, I wasn't really paying attention), and the gibberish didn't seem to be about money or cab drivers. The man was clearly NOT in the middle of the street the whole time... I saw him run into traffic. As such, I'm pretty sure the cab didn't hit the man just before I started paying attention. Heck, I'd ninja-kick a cab if it ran into me. So, what gives?

Now, there are all sorts of vaguely plausible explanations for this behavior - the most likely of which is the man, who probably lives on the street, has a mental disorder that somehow compels him to shout, kick cars, and perform any other number of socially unacceptable acts. Sad, but true. But setting the "oh that's sad" factor aside for a moment, I couldn't help but be thankful, even if just for a second, that at least one person wore their crazy on the outside... right where I could see (and therefore avoid) it.

Granted, I assume everyone I meet has some degree of crazy. In my head, sanity is more like a sliding scale than a binary function; we're all constantly moving up and down the line, and the definitions along the line vary by individual interpretation. Yet even with that working theory, I'm constantly shocked/horrified/saddened/confused when someone I've known for years slides waaaaaaaaay farther toward the nutty side than I'd ever imagined possible (and my tolerance is pretty darn high). The emotional drains from such a situation are typically huge, unavoidable, and always manage to occur when you least expect it.

*Shrug* As callow as it may sound, some part of me appreciates the blatant (if unintentional) honesty of shouting in the streets. At least then I can walk around.

Note: No particularly crazy family or friend situation was in mind when writing this post. Its just one of those things you think about when walking to work, half-asleep, and see someone kicking a cab in the middle of the street. All hail pre-caffeinated revelations.

Music: Good for the Soul

Picture, if you can, a vaguely sickly Jamie leaving the office on a Thursday afternoon. She's in normal work attire (probably jeans and a hopefully nice-ish shirt), messenger bag slung over one shoulder and is walking purposefully to the bus stop ready to be home. Her "I'm reading and ignoring the public at large" book is on the passenger seat of her car 20 or so miles south, making snuffling and coughing repeatedly the best please-keep-the-crazies-away tactic at her disposal. Got it? I can send a picture if needed... I'm pretty much still in this exact state. Good.

Look closer. What...is...she doing?! I she....skipping?? To Caltrain?? Who SKIPS to public transportation? Surely she is drugged! Insane! Delusional! Haven't we heard her rant endlessly as to the numerous horrors of traveling with the largely unwashed masses?

Zoom in. Around the ears. Aha! White headphones. The counterculture-maybe-hipster-turned-mainstream presence of Apple products has been detected! How, you ask, is this relevant? What about the proposed mandatory drug testing? Hold off on the urine sampling folks! Disappointed? It seems this Jamie-folk has just discovered or, more accurately, re-remembered the pleasures of music. No really!!

Its not like I forgot the iPhone plays music. Seriously. My little phone accompanies my just about everywhere. I rock out to my classic rock tunes on a daily basis in the imaginary bubble that surrounds my half-cube at work. (How else can you explain my dancing in my chair in full view of co-workers? But that's another story for another post.) In desperate times of poor satellite radio programming, I have even been known to listen to my music via the iPhone's speakerphone in my car (headphones while driving are illegal, damnit!). But, somewhere in between checking email on the go, texting friends, chatting up my mom and beating my all-time high score on Bejeweled, I lost sight of the function on which the i-products really gained popularity... music! Your songs! When you want them!

So last week, book-less and bitter, I boarded the bus and discovered my headphones had somehow happened into my pocket. Listlessly, I plugged in and hit shuffle; shoulders slouched with anticipation of the uncomfortably jostling ride ahead. And then it happened. I can't tell you what song came on (because I don't remember, not out of shame or anything), but it just fit. And in an instant, the world changed. My mood lifted. I sat up a little straighter. My head and neck afflicted that weird bob and peck thing that comes from wanting to sing aloud or dance along, but social norms of the location require you to be quiet and sit still. My foot started tapping. For those few minutes that the song was playing, I was, at some basal level, happy.

Maybe the music didn't really change anything substantial. Work is still work, and, really, don't get me started on all the craziness there. I still have name-change paperwork to do. The house is still a mess. Heck, I was (and am) still sick! There are still starving children just about everywhere, too many wars to track, and an upcoming election season that instills a level of dread in me that I can't really vocalize. But one song... the right song, at the right moment... when everything just melts away and you get into this groove... changes your perspective. Something in the tones, beat, words connects with your subconscious and your whole being dances along. Takes you out of the humdrum, beat down stresses of everyday life and reminds you that its not that bad... in fact, its kinda good to be alive.

Sometimes I wonder if other people get that. For their sake, I hope so - its a pretty cool thing. Actually, anything that makes me skip to Caltrain has to be something near amazing.

And dude - iPhone plays music! Whodathunkit?! But you can bet I'll remember it now.

Never Fear, I'm Still Here!

Hmmm...that seems appropriately rhymy and annoying. I actually don't have much to say today other than to assume my fans (which I'm told by Google Analytics number in the TENS. Yeah, that's right TENS.) that I am, in fact alive and still capable of typing. The last couple months have been a whirlwind of work, wedding and travel and I, not yet owning an awesome ultra-portable laptop (where IS my Macbook Air sponsorship?) have been too overwhelmed to blog. Yep, you heard right. Too busy to type here even though I type everywhere else all day for literally months on end. Shocking, I know. I'll pause for a minute here to let you recover from that...

Anyway, I've still got lots of blog ideas - some old that I never posted, and some entirely new! With the wedding done, honeymoon over and the name change well underway, its about time I got back to work here. Look for some freakishly long, excruciatingly rambly, often ranty posts coming hot and heavy soon! You know you missed me. All of you. All 12-25 of you.

Cart Ladies

There is something about grocery shopping that basically gives me hives. Its not the utter impossibility of getting in and out in under 10 minutes because everything you need is on directly opposing sides of the store. I'm pretty sure that its not the old people who spend insane amounts of time sorting coupons when they get to the register and then bitch and moan when they turn out to have expired 2 weeks ago. I can, for the most part, even deal with the kids screeching at the top of their lungs that they NEED FROZEN CRUSTLESS PBJ SANDWICHES!!! (Who invented and then marketed those by the way? I've personally witnessed at least two incidents of near filicide over something that is, let's be reasonable here, utterly ridiculous.)

No, all of those thing contribute to my general shunning of grocery runs except in dire emergencies, but they aren't the root cause. Now, what could possibly be worse than screaming children and penny-pinching old people? Cart ladies. Yes, really. Cart ladies are oblivious to anything that doesn't directly involve themselves or their weight increasing foodstuffs (actually, much the same could be said for recent generations of Americans...but that's a whole other blog post). They stand directly in the center of all aisles, increasing your time spent on any given store trip by a minimum of 20 minutes. Get two of them on the same aisle - which is so common I'm not sure why I called it out separately - and you're basically looking at an hour long cart pileup. No amount of throat clearing, impatient fidgeting or even loudly spoken "EXCUSE ME"s is going to budge a cart lady.

Even more awesome? These same ladies will turn around and ram you in the ankle repeatedly with their carts should you be blocking their access to the donut aisle. (I know, I'm making them seem all giant and indulgent... The former is mostly for dramatic effect, but it should be noted that these pileups never happen on the vegetable aisle. My blog, I'll be mean if I wanna.) Seriously though. Unless your parallel cart parking skills are finely tuned to the point of 1" maximum clearance from the aisle walls, be prepared for full on contact. I think they consider it a sport. Or their god-given right to snacks. Whatever. I considered wearing freakin' hiking boots to the grocery store and then remembered... I don't hike. And I'm certainly not going to start, just for grocery shopping extremities protection. Oh well.

The worst part is, they are everywhere (except aforementioned veggie aisle exception) at all times of day. I have been thwarted by cart ladies grocery shopping at 2am! It is absurd, annoying, and sometimes painful. When weighed against potential permanent ankle damage, the $9.95 Safeway delivery fee seems to me a brilliant move. And now, with shopping carts popping up in stores from Target to Old Navy, these women have even more opportunity to inflict pain. Its only a matter of time before cart ladies take over my local Nordstroms or Bloomies, and I'll be stuck doing all my shopping from the comfort of my couch. Because I needed a reason to be even more antisocial...

The Lamest Treasure Hunt EVER

Just in case I haven't mentioned it, moving sucks. You take everything you own, which was (theoretically) laid out in logical places - well, not necessarily logical, but places that YOU put it and could find in a pinch to two hours tops - and pack it all into nondescript and often non-labeled boxes. Said boxes are then put through the "carry them out and load them onto a truck in no particular order" process, followed in quick succession by the "unload them ignoring all attempts at labeling and placing wherever convenient" step. At the end of a long, painful day all your worldly possessions are stacked/haphazardly thrown around an entirely new environment and you get the privilege of rearranging them for ...well let's go with the foreseeable future (which in my case is looking to even out to about 2 years).

And then comes the act of unpacking. As if finding places for everything in the new locale isn't bad enough - because, face it, you probably threw away/sold half of your furniture and storage with the ever popular "we need to replace X anyway" argument - you are forced to re-wash or re-launder all of it as appropriate before putting it away to be forgotten all over again. The sole exception being stuff the movers broke (which is a whole other rant) and books, which in my case my "helpful" fiance took care of all on his own. No. Book boxes do NOT count in your unpacking quota. That shit is cheating.

The only bright spot in the whole moving ordeal is finding stuff your forgot you owned. There is a certain pleasure in unrolling that newspaper clad shape and discovering, all over again, how awesome you are for having say... a "Mike Mussina practice ball back from when he was on the Orioles before he went to the Yankees and got all lame" ....or maybe ....handmade flutes from 6 different countries ...or even that sweet candle holder shaped like a deformed duck that you made for your mom in third grade. (Note that I am avowed anti-crafter and do not actually possess Item 3.)

Oh the elation! Look at that cool stuff you found!! Possibly you take said tchotchke and show it to spouse so that he can share in just how freakin' great you are for owning such an item. There's a happy place that builds in your tummy and you begin to think "WOW! Maybe this moving thing isn't so bad! Look at all this stuff I forgot I had!!" You rummage through the remaining boxes in search of additional testaments to what a cool person you are... for the next 10-15 minutes. Then it starts to sink in. Wait, I haven't needed or wanted this stuff for what? Two years? And where am I going to put it?

And wait... did I PAY someone to pack and move this? Holy crap! Is SuperCoolItemB worth $20 worth of packing materials and box? Hold on here... I'm excited about finding junk that I already own!!! Junk I already own and possibly don't want! The happy place is replaced by a sinking feeling of disappointment, possibly amplified by anger at yourself for being tricked into this false joy. You remember why you hated moving in the first place, maybe kick around some (hopefully now empty) packing paper in frustration and think to yourself ...moving sucks! Lamest. Treasure hunt. ever.

Proximity Blame

Think back... You're five. You're standing around (or being five, likely bouncing around), looking at your Mom's ceramic figurines. You know better than to touch them, but its tempting. They're shiny. They look expensive. The kind of thing Mom will get mad if you break. You consider picking one up, and your hand moves forward without you consciously telling it to. Two seconds before you take the plunge, the family cat/dog/little brother FLINGS themselves into the display.

CRASH! SMASH!

Even at five, you know what that means. Ruuuuuuuuuun! No way in hell are you going to be caught next to the now broken figurine even thought you know you didn't touch it. So why flee? You aren't guilty! You didn't do anything wrong! Simple answer - proximity blame. Anyone in the general vicinity of the scene of the crime is suspect and will likely judged guilty without fair trial.

We've all been there. Or considered the possibility of being there. But it may be shocking for you to learn that this phenomenon survives through childhood, through puberty and into the adult workplace! I know, I know...I thought we'd gotten beyond this. I was wrong. WAY wrong. (That makes two for those of you counting.)

So last week an email goes out to the 'all-team' at my company, subject line in caps, font in about 24 point size, berating "THE CHILD" who exploded his/her mess in the microwave for being immature, messy, and a generally lame coworker. They were admonished basically to clean up after themselves and...well...grow up.

Now, I don't disagree with the premise. I can't clean my own kitchen at home, so I certainly won't be voluntarily cleaning up after coworkers in the shared space. If I were a neat-freak (or ever used the kitchen...I am the queen of bought lunches), I'd probably be upset. But I knew it wasn't me, and wasn't worried. In fact, I was struck with this sort of morbid curiosity to go "see" the mess. Not to clean it mind you, but to gawk and stare at whatever caused the fuss. I mean, it would have to be pretty bad to generate a 24 point font email, right? Visions of green goop spattering the walls, covering countertops, and dripping onto the floor flew to mind. The allure of kitchen carnage was strong... yet I stayed in my seat.

What held me back? Fear of proximity blame. Seriously. Maybe it was a holdover from a childhood with a clumsy (and lying, blaming) younger brother. Memories of a yelling Mom with too many breakables in the house flooded back. I got this mental image of person who sent the email secretly stalking the kitchen, waiting to pop out of the cabinet and accuse the first on scene. So I sat, glued to the chair, twitching with desire to get up and check it out. And I wasn't the only one! A quick comparison of notes (via AIM so as not to be overheard and possible cause another angry email) showed my work friends terrified to get up and get water for fear of being found guilty by proximity to the scene. Crazy!

I don't know if the perpetrator was ever found or if they quickly cleaned up their mess in silent and unobserved shame. Disappointingly, there was no followup note; no "KITCHEN'S MOST WANTED" polaroid tacked to the wall. Eventually I snuck into the kitchen (under the guise of making tea) to find a few scattered rice grains on the counter...which I assumed could NOT have been the cause of all the fuss. But just to be on the safe side, I scooted back to my cube quickly and avoided the kitchen for at least 48 hours. Better to be on the safe side, no?

Can You Change the Default Song?

The Default Song is a phenomenon that I'm pretty sure doesn't apply strictly to me. Its that song that you just sing. All the time. Whenever you aren't actively thinking about a song on the radio, or something you just heard on your iPod, the default song pops to the forefront. I have brought this up to other people (who are as-or-slightly-more sane than me and therefore a good test), and most of them admit to having a default song of some sort...although not everyone was willing to own up to what theirs was. A quick Google search would indicate that the default song is well-known and documented - at least on the interwebs (see this article for instance).

Now, for as long as I can remember, I've had a pretty respectable default song. Note I said pretty. Respectable for the Beatles, the "pretty" thrown in for it being "Yellow Submarine." Its catchy. Its changeable. And its great while unpacking to walk around singing

...We all live in a yellow submarine (a what?)
...a bubble gum machine (a where?)
...a giant tambourine *weird face and imagined cackling*

Thank two years of working in a dueling piano club for that little gem. But seriously. Its easy to remember and peppy enough to bring you out of most any funk. And its followed me for years. Until now.

My default song has been invaded. Replaced. Usurped. In a bad way. My happy peppy place (which I assume exists as a counterbalance to my generally evil nature) is gone and displaced by what can only be called torture. For the last two weeks, anytime I am not actively trying not to, my brain spouts off the horror of horrors..."Picture to Burn".

If you've never listened to country radio (as I assume is the case for most of you) grab a clip of that hotness here. Its basically everything that people think is wrong with country music, pop music, teenage music and breathy talking pretending to BE music all in one. And it won't get out of my head. Even as I type this, my brain is chanting "I really really hate that stupid old pickup truck" in a crappy country twang (not to be confused with the awesome Texas drawl that I used to sport). I am spiraling into insanity faster than I ever thought possible. Not that ever I thought wouldn't get there, just not this fast.

So I beg you, if you are aware of the default song and have any idea how to reset it, please tell me! The voice in my head is driving me crazy(er than expected!)! I've always heard that if you pass on the song, you go back to default...so here's hoping one of you poor bastages picked it up from this post and are, at best, fixing my problem, at worst, suffering along with me. Tole ya I was evil.