A Note On Winter Prep

I am sending this memo to remind everyone of few winter reminders. How we (and the landlord) operate the office park is unique. This isn't expecting any of you to change behavior necessarily more just an FYI.

First, snow is only shoveled when it is above 2 inches and then in 2 inch increments. So, Jimmy, the main super, he'll shovel at 2, then 4, then 6, etc. Never at three or five. That is just a no go.

Second, we don't use road salt. The owner's son was killed in a Morton Salt mining accident under Lake Erie two years ago and we changed. Actually, the owner uses very little salt. That kind of deep hurting. The owners blonde pressure is phenomenally goof beacuse of this. 

So, no salt. Instead we use sand for traction and a beet melting brine made from discarded pickling production. Hey, it works. But it makes the soles of your shoes pink. Still, be careful.

Third, some rooms are very hot and some are very cold. Not much in-between. Dress in layers. Someone once asked (I assume joked) if they could wear their swimsuit. And I answered, "If you are ok with that, sure. Would others be? I am not sure. I cant answer that. While on the clock at least." Then I made that "ba dum dsh" sound with my mouth. Like drums and cymbals at the comedy show.

Fourth, and finally, the copiers and computer monitors and lights all generate a certain amount of latent heat. And since we are now running two shifts we leave some of these idle and on to help keep just above freezing. Still don't make unnecessary copies. It is 0.00028 of a cent per page!

Oh, one last one! We deployed plastic stakes to identify what each parking space is for. 

Orange is just for parking

Yellow is for eating lunch while idling. Once done go to an orange space

Red spaces are for crying.

Purple spaces are for discrete meet ups. No, not that! Like selling an old Pyrex serving dish on FB marketplace and not trying to get murdered in the process. Just to go a purple space

Black spaces are like orange spaces but for VIPs.

Spaces with no markers are still being deducted by the parking committee.

Enjoy the winter!

Something Scary: The Poughkeepsie Tapes

 I heard about this movie on Twitter, in one of those like baiting posts from a seemingly random Internet big shot

"Tell me the last scary movie you saw. Answer with a gif"

And i recognized most of the scenes save for an odd one of this funny masked man rising up from behind a bounc woman. In that same chain someone responded "OMG Poughkeepsie Tapes" and I did some digging.

Sounded like an odd almost underground film. The kind of stuff you only heard about from friend of friends. How could this exist in the era of digitally addled cynicism?

The premise is interesting. A found footage mockumentary where a serial killer tapes everything (and I mean....everything) he does for 100s of murders over a decade long span. People said it was brutal. And its on Amazon Prime? Lets fucking go!

And its a dud. I try not to be too harsh because look at me. Look at this blog. How dare I challenge anyone who takes the time to create something? Be that brave and organized. I make posts about how I am in my feelings read by one, maybe two, if I am lucky, people on the Internet.

But this movie is a dud. For however unnerving the material (he kills a couple, beheads the husband and stuff it inside the wife!) it also is boring. Oh, yup, they are going to get killed. Got it. Imagine watching all the re-enactments on Unsolved Mysteries except without the tension or Robert Stack and you get this. At one point someone describes a brutal murder "He was gutted. Cut from his anus to his throat. Then his intestines were yanked out and wrapped around his neck. Then his genitals were removed and stuffed in a drawer."

WOW! THat would be something to see. In our movie. Which is supposedly so gory and over the top. But...nope! More lame Netflix style documentary interviews and torture porn. 

Not sure but there just seems to be no menace. Maybe because we "know" its a documentary? Its like watching a gory news clip in history class.  "Get on with it" is how I felt most of the time. Privelege check...maybe I would feel different if I were a woman or if lived alone or any other compounding factor that would emphasize the brutality of all this. There are rape/torture scenes that I feel are derivative of actual unnerving scenes (Some key Clockwork Orange scenes) so be warned but they are still dumb. The whole thing feels like a big bit on a Sega CD game. A movie version of Night Trap. 

Movie also has that "found footage" wonkiness. Who is filming all this? How can a guy run at full tilt while holding a camera and also stabbing/gutting someone? You ever have to upload all your photos from your SD card to your cloud drive? Has you ever had to muck around with VHS tapes, folks? What a pain.  This all takes place in the early 90s so its for sure a big old camcorder. And this guy some how fooled the police, had peak cardio/strength, time and resources to do all this? At one point the movie even says who odd it is he can choke out a person with one hand while holding a camera in front of them to get the shot. Isn't that something? Yeah...it is so tell us about it! 

Dud. Don't take me for being some gore fan but if it can't be good then make it juicy. 

One legitimately creepy scene around the one hour mark but it's 30 seconds in a plodding story.

This Story is Gross

I can't get the image of the college fitness center out of my head. The tall floor to ceiling wrap around class held by an arched steel awning. Then the grated metal floor that you had to walk over to enter. It was a hazard in the winter when all that held you on was the grit from the salt outside. The fading dawn orange lockers and then all the heather grey of both the upholstery and the people there. 

Why this lingers I am not 100% sure except I wrote an awful short story set there focused on a petty infatuation I had on a girl from two semesters ago. And in peer review someone said that "I can't NOT see the fitness center here and is that what you want?" That stuck with me, even 20 years later. Tiny cutting phrases and incidents. Ever see those memes where something awkward or dumb you did years ago still hovers in your head and eats away at your sleep? Moments like those. 

My first day at a new job when someone, one of the subordinates that you need to both serve and direct, told me "You are supposed to sit there" pointing to an empty office. 

These moments are also artful dodges when the universe aligned to SAVE you from embarrassment. Here is a nasty one. I apologize but once I spent the day at my girlfriend's place because my apartment was being repaired. She wasn't there. She was at her job waitressing but she had two roommates with whom I was civil but still terrified of interacting. I hid in her room, reading and binging DVDs, nursing a baby fever and knawing stomach ache. No clue what happened but the ache became a throbbing roil and I had to race to the bathroom to drop every toxic thing I had. One of those horrible situations where you shit and vomit in short succession and beg to die from the floor. 

Once done, I felt better and must have stumbled back to her room. This elapsed time felt infinite. The clock ticked backward and the sun slid at a pace so slow it could not be defined except with advanced trigonometry. I rehydrated myself from the multiple Nalgenes we kept idle around the room and then went again to the bathroom to discover it all still there.

I had not flushed.

Like a fucking kid.

Like a fucking drunk.

The physical discomfort left replaced by an inky swamp boil spiral of death. Had her roomamtes noticed? Maybe they didn't? That's why it is still there. or maybe they did and died of absolute horror so that when my girlfriend comes back there are the bodies of Maria and Carolyn on the floor?

This time I flushed and also reached under the sink to pry the scant cleaning chemicals stored there and quickly cleaned the scene. Scrubbing bubbled under the rim and into the bowl itself with fingernails digging into every surface. Fuck fuck fuck. 

And...I got away with it. A story no one knows until this blog. Thank you, universe for that cosmic coincidence. 

Returning Brief

 Its been almost a full year but we are finally politically clear to return to the office. I say politically because there is always that inherent risk. Nothing is guaranteed. These are risks minimized and further minimized until difficult to statistically measure. Until quantifying them becomes less about an amount and more about an explanation.

Not that I am afraid. I would lick all the men's room door handles to be back at work right now. In saying that I recognize my privilege but this is also my tiny blog so let me be so brazen. Honest enough to say I care about everyone's safety but mine is mine and lets go. 

Don't get me wrong. The return will be insane. Filled with second guessing and "Im just saying" statements. Trust in God, if you believe in one. Or trust in your peers and your gear. But, anyway hold on.

However, I am excited for a few things. Getting steps in. I don't think I have broken 10K steps a day since the fall and find myself awkwardly running in place during video game load screens. My main work crush (I have a few) has a new hair color which I have only seen in passing on Zoom calls. Rather be frank and awkward about it from six feet away. Look forward to no more juggling of schedules and needing to find tiny windows when my kids are busy to knock something out. Just that hum drum rat race pace absent for the last near year.