Sexing my Pussy Part 2

Spartacus snuck out a few days ago. After chasing him around the
apartment complex for 3 days, Mickey opened the door one night, and
Spartacus was sitting on the front step. Spartacus runs into the house,
heads right for the food bowl, and eats like there’s no tomorrow.

Me: “I think we need to talk.”
Beau: “…… About something serious?”
“Yeah. Um…… If Spartacus is a girl, he’ll prolly have babies.”
“Spartacus isn’t a girl.”
“…… Well, if he has baby Spartaci, I get to keep one, ok?”
“Ok, but Spartacus isn’t a girl, so there’s no problem then.”
“Well yeah, but if Spartacus is a girl, then there might be kittens.”
It goes on like this for about 5 minutes until Beau is getting kinda mad.
“Spartacus isn’t a girl! He doesn’t have a girl personality!”
“…..”
“Besides, he looks like a boy cat. See, he has a tufty ascot – it’s a chest full of chest hair.”
“……Yeah well, if Spartacus has baby Spartaci, I get to keep one then.”

The gestation period for cats is roughly 9 weeks, so we’ll see……

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Anyway, the “Answer” to the Tiger riddle is this: Imagine yourself out.

That riddle was given to me when I was in the psych ward. It’s sposed
to show you how powerful the human mind can be, how effective it is in
trapping itself in problems. Sometimes you can believe in something so
strongly, it manifests itself into physical obstacles.

Imagine you’re in an enclosed cement room. The dimensions are about the
same as a public bathroom, there are no doors, and the only window
there is has impenetrable bars. Three tigers have just woken up, and
you can tell from the way their skin clings to their ribs that they
haven’t been fed in a while. They catch your scent, and turn towards
you. Slowly, they advance, poised to pounce. You look around, but
there’s nothing else in the room except for their water bowls. The
tigers get closer, and you walk backwards to keep an eye on them until
your back is against the wall. They are so close now you can see them
salivating and you know you have very little time left. What do you do?

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If you know the answer, post it on your own blog. Don’t be an ass and ruin everyone else’s fun by posting it here.

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So the assistant manager of the store gives me a riddle, not the one I
just wrote, but a unicursal one. Even though I stated, warned, begged
him not to give me a riddle – they drive me nuts – he did it anyway. I
spent about an hour at work trying to figure it out. But he said that
if I gave him a solution to the riddle, he would take the whole staff
out for Outback Steakhouse. So I applied all my intellectual fortitude
towards the problem – he told me it had taken him 8 months to solve. I
told him to give me 24 hours. Yeah, I can be arrogant like that.

Of course I googled it when I got home. Took about 10 minutes to find
the specific one, and I got the proof to what I had suspected – that it
was a trick question. The next day, I run up to him.

Me: “We need to renegotiate the terms of the riddle.”
Him: “I don’t think there’s room for negotiations.”
“You gave me a trick question. That opens the door to negotiations.”
“……..”
“I’m just trying to make it easy on you. A steak lunch for 10 people is not gonna be cheap.”
“So solved it?”
“Yes and no, which is why I’m letting you renegotiate the prize. Instead of steak, why don’t you just buy us ice cream?”
“Tell me what the solution is first.”
“Ok……. The solution to the riddle is: There is no solution.”
“What? Nooooo, there’s a solution. Why don’t you just tell me you quit?”
“Because I know I’m right. The solution is there’s no solution.”
“Ah, but there IS a solution.”
“Bullshit.” – and anyone else would have been reprimanded for cussing at an assistant manager, but he just laughed.
It went on like this for about 5 minutes, me getting angrier that he
would renig on his word until our voices echoed off the warehouse
walls. The head manager of the store suddenly appeared.
“What’s going on here?”
“He gave me that riddle that I told you about and I told him the solution and now he won’t buy us steak,” I pout.
The head manager offers to mediate if the assistant manager tells him
the solution, and he’ll judge if my answer qualifies. I walk off in a
huff to get some work done, but half an hour later I run up to the
assistant manager.
“I don’t want this to ruin my day so I’m not gonna think about it
anymore. I know I’m right, and I can buy my own steak and ice cream.”
He gets a weird look on his face and says
“You got it half right before. But I was looking for a specific answer
to the riddle: The definition of Insanity. It took me 8 months of doing
the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It took
you less than 24 hours.”
“Well, you didn’t let me finish my solution to the riddle earlier so
here it is: The solution to that riddle is there’s no solution. But,
the solution is also this: Not every problem has a solution. Or, if it does, it might not be the solution you expect, or the solution that you want.” Checkmate.

I once heard that a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind.

Bullshit.

Ha! But I think it’s true for me. On my desk downstairs, besides this
PC, are coffee mugs with the dregs of weeks of the black mud I call
coffee. In those mugs are several cigarette butts standing in the
stagnant water like tombstones in a swamp. Crusts of stale peanut
butter sandwiches, half-eaten donuts, candy wrappers, unopened cable
bills, rechargeable batteries coated with the sticky residue of waffle
syrup, several cat treat bags, and enough empty cigarette boxes to fill
an oven. Random splotches of bird shit lead up to Luna’s cage door.

Would it be more appropriate to say that a cluttered desk leads to a cluttered mind?

So I’ve given myself one year to clean up. Not just the desk, but my
life in general. And as silly, as ridiculous as it may seem to people
who didn’t grow up in California, I shall try to apply the tenets of
Feng Shui to my environment. (That’s pronounce Fung Shway in case you
didn’t know.)

I mean, at their hearts, the basic principles of Feng Shui, Ergonomics,
all those catch phrases stupid people pay thousands for – at their
hearts, those philosophies of simplicity and purity can foster a
healthy mind. It is….. a focusing of energy into a few loci instead
of a chaotic jumble of an earthquake aftermath. It is…. a
conservation of power, a learned discipline of Knowing. It is an
understanding of the flow of movement, the harmonies of sight, the
balance between what is necessary and what is not.

I will apply this foreign discipline to my arrested development – to my
mind that cries out for chaos and selfish wants, my body that pretends
to be tired and weak, my soul that is ancient enough to be apathetic
towards most worldly things.

For a start, this week I will purge myself of objects which have no
meaning in my present and future life except to remind me of memories.
In short, those objects that I have carried in my heart as well as my
hands because of that great excuse Sentimentality.

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Purification Challenge for the day:

Clear out your email mailbox of all Spam, Bulk, Trash, Unecessary things. Organize your email address book..

Or: I would really appreciate an update on my life.

I think that one of the hardest things to be is New.

For example, every time – without fail – every time we get a new
assistant manager at the store, everyone treats them horribly. We speak
to them only out of necessity and then, only with our voices drenched
in contempt. We can’t forgive small mistakes – mistakes that should be
expected from a new member – mistakes that would be laughable under
different circumstances – mistakes that, examined under the magnifying
glass of newness and suspicion, are magnified into monsters. We see
flaws in every facet of their personality, of their actions. And a
weaker person could be driven to tears by our misuse.

I like to call it Trial by Fire.

It is cruel, I know, the abuse we heap on the unsuspecting; so let me
explain a little. I don’t know how it is with other jobs and careers -
I remember very little and what I remember comes and goes. But working
in the store with all its rules and regulations, being responsible not
only for our own lives and actions but the lives of those that cannot
speak for themselves – it is like a very, very small room. One must
become intimate, to a degree, with coworkers in order to build the
trust necessary to get things done. And for a stranger to come into
that room, into that family….. it is daunting. It is a small
malfunction in a well-calibrated machine.

So I confess that I am strict with certain aspects of my job. While I
have the well-earned reputation of forgetfulness, easygoing attitude,
hands loose on the reins, the crack of my whip surprises everyone.
Habitually, I respond to questions with “I don’t care [when you take
your break, which register you're on, how many bottles of shampoo you
order]” which naturally evolves into “I don’t care how you get it done,
or what you do afterwards, but get it done now.”

{{{Sometimes I wonder how people can tolerate me}}}

We are saying goodbye to some coworkers and taking on some new ones.
The Powers that Be have decided to designate our store as a “Training”
store. “Take it as a compliment,” they say.

On reflection, I know why we’re so hard on New people. It feels like a
betrayal, an infiltration, a penetration into our security. Our
instinct is to overpower and impose upon the trespasser our social
norms and habits in order to avoid Change. It is easy to forget, then,
that we should allow each experience to change ourselves.

---

Mickey, Beau keeps giving me crack. Every night, more crack. Then he wonders why I won’t go to sleep. Hehehe………..

I won’t say the word “everyone” as this is my journal, so I will say “I”.

I was born innocent. I was born trusting. I was born fragile, loving, and optimistic.

Thanks to my family and the sunny, tropical environments I grew up in,
I am still very much a child. I did not know what marijuana smelled and
looked like until 3 years ago. It still amazes me to hear about gangs,
or murder, or war.

---

I have a Prisoner.

She lives in a void, a black hole because her own gravity absorbs the
light. The absence of air makes sound impossible. And I wonder how long
it will take her to die.

I feed her, the rare times that I feed her, I feed her only small
yellow pills and tell her they’re candy. She eats them, and is
satisfied because she knows that’s all she’s getting.

Do you want to know her from before?

This Prisoner was wild and powerful. Her hands could shape mountains.
Her sword would cut down forests. The dawn would only come with her
permission.

So how on earth did I subdue her? How did I make her my Prisoner? Simple;

I turned her against herself.

---

Funny, Sheena.

awwww, baby swans….. how apropos that some are about fish.

I have been very, very busy with work. They’ve increased my hours. Not
to mention the crack from Beau and Mickey. Which is why I’ve not
written anything for a while. I shall try to do more.

1. “Second-Level” Thinking:
What I’m talking about is a person who perceives the problem, but won’t
do anything to change it. Whether they refrain from acting out of fear
or out of laziness, the result is the same: nothing.

2. Ego Inflating:
It is one thing to take pride in hard work and knowledge achieved
through it, it is quite another to build yourself up with carcasses of
people you’ve cut down.

3. Working Slowly:
Moving like molasses, this person gets the least amount of work done,
which, in and of itself is not so bad but the consequences of their
(lack of) actions makes more work for others. And not only that, it
breeds resentment towards the person, resentment that, left unchecked,
becomes malice.

4. Not Listening:
I will excuse people for not knowing the subtleties of social form and
etiquette. After all, this isn’t 19th century Paris. But when given
instructions, as a sign of respect for the one speaking, they should at
least focus and try to listen. {{{Personally, I hate to repeat
myself.}}}

5. Denying Responsibility:
This is a tricky one, as many successful people can pull it off; they
are clever enough to reconstruct a series of events which totally and
completely prove that they had nothing to do with whatever went wrong.
On the other hand, sometimes this backfires and they just look like a
jackass for not owning up to the mistake.

6. Dieting:
No matter what they call it, it is abstinence from some sort of
pleasure. I have observed that this abstinence almost inevitably leads
to a binge period in which the person spirals into a whirlpool of
hedonistic and gluttonous pleasure.

7. Holding on to Bad Thoughts:
Self-explanatory.

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We missed you last night, Mickey.

But boy is the house a mess. ….

This crack is addicting.

---

So at work, I’ve developed a few reputations. One of them is that I’ll
do anything on a dare. It started with freeze dried bloodworms. They’re
bland, and they give you cottonmouth. Dog biscuits – they taste like
diet, sugar-free human cookies. Swallow a goldfish whole – don’t chew
it, because it’s nasty, but it’s ok if you just take a big gulp and
swallow it whole. They call me Brave because I’ll put my hand in a cage
of toads, lizards, or snakes. Ironically, it’s the “cute” animals that
bite worse.

The second thing is that I’m smart. I can rattle off more scientific
names of plants than Hollywood stars. I can explain the differences
between South American cichlid water chemistry and Tanganyikan Lake
chemistry. I can look at a schematic for building something and
actually build it.

And the third thing is that I’m a bit of a prude. Yeah, I know. Me!
People stop telling dirty jokes mid sentence if they see me walking
their way. I can tell there’s a difference between how the boys talk to
me versus how they talk to the other girls or each other. And they ask
pardon if they cuss or say something Freudian. It’s…. flattering. And
I would say that it’s smart of them.

Because nowadays, the slightest slip of sentiment can be miscontrued as
Sexual Harrassment. Trust me, I’ve seen it in play. It switches the
dynamic of power from the men of the workplace to the women. Because it
is very, very hard to disprove.

So I’ll tell you now that we lost some people because of Scandals and
Accusations. People lie, and you can never tell what the absolute truth
is unless you yourself were involved, witnessed, acted. And then again,
there is the truth of someone who sees it from their subjective point
of view. And workplace romances are doomed to suffer, smother under a
blanket of stealths, allusions, secrets. And the passion that longs for
the air of revelation burns itself out, or else feeds on gossip and
gasps of those who wonder, who envy, who suspect. Something that could
have been beautiful elsewhere gets twisted in this forge and in the
instances I’ve seen, have led to accusations.

Which is why I keep my distance. I let them call me prudish, reserved,
conservative. I walk away if names and actions start to connect because
I don’t want to know. I have been in the middle before, and it is
terrifying for the naive and optimistic to see the horrific side of
people’s petty selfishness and angst, and the means with which they
achieve their awful goals.