Paranormal Investigations – Gerbil Edition #video

There are two great mysteries in the life that one must unravel before traveling to the Great Beyond. One is the nature of the Bermuda Triangle. The other is, of course, how gerbils cause household items to go missing from the space-time continuum.

Today we uncover a disturbing piece of evidence that goes a long way towards explaining what really happens. I took the following raw footage at great risk of life and limb.

If you’re not willing to invest one minute and 44 seconds of your precious existence in the following ode to cinema, then I guess you really do hate my guts.

Hang on tight and be prepared for the twist at the end. “I see gerbil people!!!”

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Keep the change, ya filthy animal.

Change of Address

I live on the surface of a rotating planetoid. The speed of rotation is approx. 1,000 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, the planet itself is moving about 67,000 miles per hour around the sun.

The sun is the center of our solar system, which is also moving around the center of our galaxy at approx. 490,000 miles per hour.

The galaxy is moving towards something called the Great Attractor, appox. 150 million light years away, at a rate of 1,000 kilometers per second.

In other words, I just want it to be known my physical location on this planetoid is changing by about 2.5 degrees of latitude. That’s a lot!

Moving Paradoxes

A pending move means boxes. Packing lots and lots of boxes.

The more you pack the more exhausted you get.

The more exhausted you get the more you require peaceful, restful sleep.

The more you require sleep the more the more you lie in bed with your eyes open.

Can’t sleep. Might as well get up and pack some more boxes and make myself more tired.

Time to mortar a brick

I’ve been hearing a lot of hubbub of late about online retail sales overtaking traditional “brick and mortar” businesses.

Boo freakin’ hoo. To my way of thinking that’s like worrying about one turd shitting on another.

Still, I thought it might be a good idea to reminisce a few moments about the proverbial good times of ye olde mom and pop. The good old days and the “little man” of Alan Jackson lore.

Brick and mortar? Mom and pop? Who the hell is in charge of naming this shit? Dr. Seuss? Family jewels are found in aisle 42. Bait and tackle in aisle 69. That reminds me: “Clean up on aisle 69!”

I’ve already written quite a bit about Mr. Online Entrepreneur. He’s slippery, slimy and makes jackals and amebas seem like highly evolved life forms. He lies about everything including – most especially – that the product you want is “in stock.” Then he gets your money and you wait weeks to find out if you’ll ever get the product he just totally lied about or if you’ll ever get your money back. Good times.

How about Mr. Brick Mortar? How does he compare? And who is this guy?

Does the plethora of dings on the side of your car give you any kind of freakin’ clue?

Morning

A rare shot of my hand. I bet this was taken in the morning.

When I was younger I had a supervisor who was fairly cool. I thought I remembered him pretty well but I just tried to recall things about him and came up with a pitiful total of three factoids.

1. His first and last name.
2. He was a heavy smoker, drank craploads of coffee, and was a close-talker. M-O-O-N. That spells “bad breath,” laws, yes! I imagine it was what the world of the DOOM video game smelled like. That breath would stop a Mack truck. But that’s another story.
3. He would never say, “Good morning.”

I’m a little sad that’s all I can remember about him. He was a pretty good guy. But, to this day, to honor him, I never say “Good morning,” either.

If you’re around when I stroll into work, a few things are certain. Well, perhaps “stroll” is too strong of a word. It’s more like Dead Man Walking. It goes without saying that the last hour of my life has not been pleasant, unless one enjoys running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I’m also running a few minutes late, I’m likely hella pissed from bullshit that happened to me on the three-mile commute, I just realized I forgot my lunch at home, and there may be a little foam and spittle.

I may even be clutching my chest and veering to the left.

It is, I think, decidedly the wrong moment to turn to me and cheerfully say, “Good morning!”

There And Back Again

Being a grumpy old hermit means every time you leave the house it's a grand adventure. I call last Saturday night, "There And Back Again."—
Tom B. Taker (@shoutabyss) April 23, 2012

I’m sorry if the title is misleading. There be no Hobbits here. Except maybe my hairy feet. This is actually a story about me leaving the house.

Recently my wife has been getting her eyes opened courtesy of the Universe and spending some quality time with me. I have to say I’m happy. I do like to be understood.

Proximo has got to go

Wow. I can see my office from here.

Imagine, if you will, a workplace that is roughly the size of a shipping container.

Oh yes, oh yes. Another good time work post is upon us now.

I previously reported on my discovery, the 666 equilateral triangle. It’s a place where dreams go to die. In short, it works like this. I sit six feet away from cow orker. Cow orker sits six feet away from the boss. The boss sits six feet away from me.

Technicolor? Bah! Imagine Fart-O-Vision where you get to experience the subtle nuance of every biological function of your neighbor. Good times, indeed!

It’s enough to make one go barking mad, but I, of course, resist that with all my might. That’s why I’m still completely sane.

So, in honor of Friday, the most deceitful day of the week, I merely have a quick question to ask.

In this post I’m going to refer to my boss as Proximo, mainly because, as he interfaces with my existence, he is so proximous.

The first part of the agony is a function of time. I spend more time at work than doing anything else in my life. (Source: This nifty little graph.)

That only communicates part of the story, though. The other half of the misery equation is one of proximity.

I’ve thought about this and realized that my current situation is truly unique. At some jobs the boss didn’t even work in the building. It would be a big deal when the boss stopped by (almost always by “surprise!”). All the employees were like, “Oh shit. The boss.” It changed the feel of the environment. My last asshole boss lived a mile away from the office, worked from home, but liked to jaunt over unexpectedly quite often, even though he didn’t like being there very much. I guess the necessary evil of fucking with the employees outweighed his distaste for being in the shithole. He’d usually flee as fast as possible after he had made his point.

At one place where I worked for 16 years and over 1,000 employees, the CEO liked to stroll around as part of tactic to be seen as accessible to employees and interested in every part of the operation. I knew the guy because we’d been on some committees together and had worked on a few projects. He’d stroll by and say, “Hi, Tom.” I knew I wasn’t about to get fired but it still somehow felt like it. The CEO walking by and saying your name wasn’t something that happened all the time.

Or the boss worked out of sight in an office around the corner or across the floor. The boss would occasionally stop by from time to time but certainly wouldn’t stay there all day long, day after day, every single day of your life.

I literally spend 40 hours a week six feet away from the boss. He seldom, if ever, leaves that space. It’s his clubhouse, his sanctuary, his home away from home. It is where he goes to escape his wife. It is the one part of his existence where he is the boss. His word is law. (Unlike his home life.) So he just loves and adores being there.

His wife will call him and try to make plans. It’s pathetic to listen to him tell her how busy he is (he’s not) and how he has to work late. He loves to work on Saturdays, too, and bitches when a holiday comes along and forces him to spend more time with his family.

Me? All I think about is escaping that fucked up place and spending every other precious moment of my life with my wife. Another thing I realized lately was that I would never trade places with my boss. (Is that like a positive thought?)

Our workstations are L-shaped so that I can’t see him unless I turn around (thank God) but he can view me and my computer screen without me being aware. My computer is in his line of sight. I know that arrangement is no coincidence. Six feet from my office chair is his office chair.

A great decorating idea for the office restroom.

Here’s a nice little bonus. When he gets up off his ass and goes to the restroom and sits on the toilet, he’s still exactly six feet away. You see, my workstation shares a wall (decidedly not a soundproofed one) with the office bathroom. But I think I’ve already expounded about that enough in the past. (For the curious, research my posting history if you want to know more about what the boss in the restroom is like. Bring a strong stomach.)

So yeah, I’m within six feet of the boss for just about 40 hours a week, every week. It’s like clockwork. I don’t even get a break from him when he goes to the bathroom. And I realized that sort of boss proximity is completely unprecedented in my experience. Does anyone out there have anything even remotely like this?

Whorege Stores

Unit Dreams

I think I wanna die
And come back as four-digit code
My life would have purpose
Gatekeeper to the mother lode

So there I was trying to explain a few simple concepts to my friend who lived in the dirt and owned* only a bush. (By owned I mean that his family had lived there for generations longer than anyone could remember, but any day now the government would show up and confiscate the land for sale to a multinational corporation of which my friend would see zero compensation.)

I was telling him about what was new in my life. “After dinner I’m going to have to swing by the storage unit to drop off some more of my stuff.”

He looked confused. “What is this dinner of which you speak? That is a strange word to me.”