i Hate Art

Still Here

2011-01-15T19:46:00.000-08:00

So much to remember since the last time I put anything on this blog thing. Okay, still working at Target. I hit my 3 year mark even tough every year I said: "This will be my last Christmas here." They actually let you get a small gift-thing once you hit 3 years. Everything had a Target logo on it so I declined. Why do I want Target to enter into my world outside the walls of Mordor? There are people who seem to like working there. The Orks and trolls; and speaking of which. The troll Chinese supervisor guy I had, actually got fired for being an Asshole. I'm not kidding. I'm sure it was because he was inefficient or some shit like that but either way, I actually give the upper management mad props for spreading the love evenly. Then there was the Gollum-like Japanese, girl supervisor. She actually transfered to the back of the store. unsure if that was because she wasn't cutting it or if she said, if I help one more customer, I'm going to put foot to ass so fast, It'll take 3 proctologist to remove it. So they bought in this "new" guy supervisor who met with all of the cashiers and was like "I want to make this a fun place to work." and " I don't want people all stressed here I want to be open to talk to" and blah blah blah blah I'm running out of italics. If I had a watch on my wrist, I would have had something to look at as I counted down the seconds of how long his attitude would change to the usual Supervisor bullshit or as I like to call it STD or "Something To Do." style. Meaning, their entire job is for you to look busy, not be busy with actual work because, after Christmas, when it's dead, there is nothing to do, The store is spotless, there are no customers or even anything to put away. So we either stand around and talk or the Supervisors makes up jobs so that THEIR bosses see that THEY are actually doing something by bossing us around with the most asinine task you can think of.

"Could you wipe down the registers even tough these motherfuckers are so clean, you can check a babies CSF (Cerebral Spinal Fluid) on them?"

Yawn! I'm so board with the same old crap, The customers making the same comments. Recently, I was so used to ignoring their negative comments that I didn't even realize that they were insulted until the Black-girl supervisor told me that they had complained about me. "Wha? I thought? If I'd known they were going to complain about me, I should have put some effort into it. The good news is, it was two old ladies, so they'll be dead soon enough.

Harsh!

Okay, fine. They won't be dead, they'll live another 100 years, sucking the blood out of cashiers and babies, lying on the belt waiting for their CFS to be checked.

It takes so much effort to be an asshole to a cashier. Here's an idea. Either: A) Be nice; B) Shut the fuck up about how I Didn't give you 5 cents credit for your stupid shopping bags; C) Shut the fuck up about how I wouldn't change the roll of $24 paper towels to $16; D) Shut the fuck up about how Target checks everybody's driver's license when you buy booze and no, I don't know or give a fuck what they to with your information, or you can; E) shut the fuck up and get your stupid crappy landfill, plastic, Earth-killing garbage, go to your Earth-killing SUV, drive up to the hills to your house with view of God's back yard, drink your wine, yell at the illegal alien cleaning lady, take your pills. ignore your kids with names like Sky, Dakota and Maya as they play 50 hours of Wii and leave me the hell alone.

It's not my fault that you're old!

It's not my fault that you have everything and yet are still unhappy.

It's not my fault you're poor and your credit card is declined.

It's not my fault you hate men. Blacks, Gays, Democrats, Liberals or Peace.

It's not my fault you named your son Travis or Dillon, gave them a mohawk and are surprised that they act like a little monster.

It's not my fault you have no other outlet for your misery except a defenseless cashier, trying to make it to the end of their day and go to that place where you are not.

That's all, E.M.

Give me money. God bless you etc...

2010-08-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

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Rabbit Studios T-shirts

Vote No on prop 69

2010-05-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Okay. I've finally figured out how something works, which is rare because I break everything and never get them fixed. In California, like a couple of other states we have wacky propositions which appear on the ballots every now and then that make you say: "What a stupid, racist homophobic piece of shit legislation, there's no way in hell, people are going to be that stupid and vote on that." A few months later– surprise! Motherfuckers! It's now illegal for Gays to breathe oxygen.

I can never figure out how these stupid laws get passed. I mean, no one I know voted for them and California seems to be a little more enlightened than Arizona or Texas. Yet, we still pass laws against affirmative action, Mexican citizenship and Gay marriage and there are all of these cities in Cal, waving their blue, hypocritical fingers at Arizona.

The people of Arizona seem to have two flawed thought patterns. 50% of the people that voted to kick Mexicans in the balls, said: "Thisouttashow-um!" And the other side, that would have voted against it because it really is just a law to kick Pedro in the huevos rancheros said: "Well, I'm just tired of kicking people in the balls. I want the federal government to step in and do their job...of kicking Mexicans in the balls. Going on that flawed logic of trying to force the feds to do their jobs by voting for a crazy-ass law is akin to voting for child molesters to become school teachers: "That'll show the feds to not allow school prayer!"

But how, how I wondered, do these laws get passed? If every White person were a racist, White, Christian , Republican, Conservative Male with a thing against Blacks, Gays and Mexicans. They still wouldn't out number the Non racist, White, Blacks Gays and Mexicans who should be voting against the racist/homophobic laws. Ahhhh, but theres the rub. If the Ultra right tea wingers put a law on the ballot that read:

Prop 69: Shall the State of California make it legal to kick Black, Gays and Mexicans in the Nads?" That proposition wouldn't even get on the ballot. BUT if you were to take proposition 69 and break it into tiny little evil pieces, then you can get it passed before anyone realized that they'd all been slapped, bent and butt fucked...Except perhaps the Gay guy. "Oooo! Oh No he didn't!"

Example: 1) Law 1 in California (prop 13 I think), that said basically: "Shall we take away the money used for homeless shelters and use it to lower our taxes? "Hell yeah!" everyone but the homeless people yelled. Law 1 passes. Years later, California and especially San Francisco are still dealing with the large number of hobo run-offs. Years later:

Law 2 gets on the ballot that says: "Shall California beat up on illegal Mexicans?": "Hell yeah!" Yell the racist Whites, Blacks and Gays. "Hell no!" Yell the Mexicans. Law 2 passes. Years later:

Law 3: "Shall California give Martin Luther King Jr. the finger and take away affirmative action?". Hell yes!: yell the racist Whites, Gays and Mexicans (who are pissed about Law 2). "Are you insane?" Yell the Blacks. Law 3 passes. Then came:

Law 4 (prop 8): "Shall California create state sponsored discrimination against people who want to put a P in an A or tongue to V?" "Hell Yeah!" Yell Homophobic religious ,Whites, Blacks, Mexicans and Hobos who were promised a bottle of mad dog 2020 if they voted yes. "Wha-wha waaa?" Yell the queers who thought: "Surely everybody loves Will and Grace." Law 4 passes.

Do you see the pattern now? In California, Arizona's law would be just the same old bullshit law taken apart and voted on piece by piece. I'm sure in 5 years you'll see Prop 000: "Shall Blacks be forced to ride in the back of the bus?" "Make sense to me" says everyone else not affected by that law. Those are the key words": Not affected." Just like the story of Anne Frank, if you don't stand up when they come for your neighbor, who is going to save your sorry ass when the jack-booted Tea Party thugs vote to have your rights taken away?

10 other states are already talking about an Arizona type law. I'm curious how many of them are actually on the border to Mexico and how many are just part of the master plan to start whittling away the rights of anyone that isn't straight White, Christian , Republican, Conservative males. The only way to stop them is to vote against any law that takes away the rights of anyone. I mean why the hell were we given rights in the first place? Just to have some Hitler asshole take them away?
Did you know the United States didn't enter WW2 until the Japs (their words) bombed Pearl Harbor. And yet everyone including the congress knew what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, England, France, Poland even Africa was getting attacked and it wasn't cool like that show Rat patrol. But as soon as Pearl Harbor is bombed, then we're all like: "Let's get those Nazi bastards!"; The perfect example of waiting until it messes up your shit until you get all upset. Oh Plllease! Give me a fucking break. We should have been up Hitlers ass the minute he grew that ugly mustache.

That's All EM

"Gang way! Big Melons Coming Through!"

2010-05-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things that blows my freaking mind, and by freaking mind, I actually mean fucking mind, are the rich-bitch customers that come into Target. I mean, really, why are you shopping at Target? Are you broke as all hell like the rest of us or is this some kind of slumming thing?: "Look at me, Poopsie, I'm pretending to be poor, let's go to a monster-truck rally, next." But their presence doesn't really bother me, it's the way they say thank you. I know I shouldn't criticize anyone that even speaks to me at Target, I'll get to those knuckle dragger's later, but when these women say thanks You can't hear it unless you were a dog with a cone in his ear. The only sound you hear is the "s" on the end of the word. So instead of thanks, all you hear is : sssssss. "Holy shit!" I yell, "Look out lady! there's a snake in here or a leaky gas pipe!"
Speaking of annoying, How hard is it, when a cashier says"Hello. or thank you, to return the favor? I mean, I totally understand that before you came to Target, You had an abortion and then your car got a flat and then your boyfriend broke up with you by TXT MSG because he didn't think that the baby was his, even tough the baby wasn't even an issue anymore–But still, all you have to do is repeat what the cashier says: If they say: "Good morning", you can even say the more non-committed: "Morning." Or even "Hi" But Nooo, they just ignore me as if I've just said: "Hi, are you fat or pregnant?"

Speaking of pregnant (nice segue). One of the few perks of the job are the pregnant or formally pregnant women. It's not that they're extra nice. Sometimes they are and other times they look like they want to hurl, I should probably stop eating live baby chicks at my register. But for reason's I have to know, they always like to wear these skimpy low-cut tops. Now I'm not into pregnant women like those weird porn sites that cater to those fetish freaks, but if you know anything about human physiology, when women get pregnant and especially during breast feeding, THEIR BOOBS GET GIGANTOR! And so, when they come up to the register, wearing low-cut tank tops, it's like their boobs are leading the way like a pushy, bodyguard shoving adoring fans out of the way to make room for the movie star. But why the low-cut shirts? In winter ? My theory is: Either their boobs hurt and the low cut things are more comfortable; The low-cut tops are easy for baby access or my favorite, they're saying: "Finally! God has blessed me with the body of a Barbie doll without one dollar of surgery! Read-em and weep boys!" Can't touch this! Do do do do!
The only time I was thrown for a loop was when a 20-something year-old woman had a chest like two bald-headed men under a blanket. But then, I noticed that she wasn't pregnant! Nor had she any body fat which also produces women with 44 DDDs. My diagnoses: Stripper, desperate house wife or mafia moll.

Speaking of getting reamed (not a good segue), They gave us our reviews recently and even tough people worked their asses off, picked up their asses and screwed them back on, they of course rewarded us with raises that make working in a Chinese shit factory look like a up-grade.
I've seen this happen before, when I worked for an art supply store. We worked our asses off, picked them up, polished them clean and kept working, and made the store lots of dollar signs. Come raise time, what do they do? Chinese shit factory! This of course caused a mass exodus of all of the good employees and a year later the place went out of business. You heard it here first. If Target folds, don't say they weren't warned.

Speaking of projectile vomiting.
That's all, EM

Schwooong!

2010-04-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

On my way to work on Big-ass, slow, truck getting in my damn way, day; celebrated by having a large, slow truck keeping my car from catching any green lights, I heard a story on NPR or as I like to call it: Not Public, Really. There was a story of how scientist want to deal with the whole global warming thing. Not by building electric cars, low watt vibrators or getting people to stop driving SUVs, but by shooting reflective shit into the atmosphere and having the particles reflect sunlight; therefore cooling the planet a little. I'm going to pause for a second so you can think about this.........................Okay, let us think about this. Apparently, none of these scientist have ever seen the Animatrix. Remember, those series of cartoons based on the Matrix? What? Didn't see it? Neither did a lot of people. Okay in one of the series of cartoons, it shows the origin of the whole fucked-up Earth thing and why the sky is all lightning-smoky. Simple: the robots ran on solar power so the humans crop-dusted the atmosphere with smoke to block the sunlight, causing the robots to start using humans as batteries. Of course we don't have any computers or robots that can come close to world domination, YET! (insert 1950's sci-fi music here) But I rather they bribe coal company execs with NASCAR tickets and trailer-whore blow jobs, or spend trillions of dollars on a SUV buy-back program, before we start shooting metallic dust into the atmosphere–it's like sketching with all of humanity! When you try something stupid, like; say, pretending that the carpet is hot lava and try to go around your house without touching the floor (not that I'd ever do that) and your wife comes in and surprises you, causing you to fall onto that ugly-ass lamp you wanted to get rid of anyway, That qualifies as a stupid-ass thing to do BUT the worst thing that happened is a broken lamp shaped like an elephant having sex with Sarah Palin (or at least that's what it looked like to me). You can easily replace the lamp. YOU CAN"T REPLACE THE ATMOSPHERE. There's no reset button that makes that Apple computer start-up noise; Shwoooong!

Have you ever notice that all disaster movies always have a Black president? Is that why scientist want to try the whacky idea that causes tidal waves in the Tibetan mountains?

Coming soon! What happens when tons of metallic dust is shot into the atmosphere?
Jeff Goldblum, Morgan Freeman and John Cusack star in:
Armageddon the Fuck Outta HERE!

Humans are so lazy (I say that as if I'm some kind of alien or robot): OR AM I! But we always take the path of least resistance. Want to solve global warming? Crop dusting! Flooding? Trailers! World hunger or AIDS? Send them Bibles! War? More war!

One day, my daughters will ask me what we did to end global warming. I'd rather say. Built wind mills, bullet trains and carbon sucking power plants instead of scratching my belly, burping and then saying: "We farted into the atmosphere."

That's all, E.M
NPR story here

Life in Mordor

2010-03-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

While I was out gathering shopping carts in the cold rain, today I've came to the conclusion that Target is Mordor. I mean, think about it. You have that big glowing logo like a big flaming eye, watching everything. You have the Hobbits (cashiers, sales floor people) who just want to make it trough the working day and be left the fuck alone. You have the Elves: (office people) who aren't evil or anything but want to make things easy for everyone and are therefore a little uncommitted. The Dwarfs: (disgruntled Hobbits) They hate the job so much that they don't give a shit anymore. Dwarfs are usually fired fast, so as not to spread their influence. Monsters: (customers) Not all monsters are bad, some are quite nice. But anyone that enters your personal space should make you put your hand on your sword and prepare for the worst. Trolls: people who do the shit work: (Janitors, loading dock...etc. ) Usually undocumented workers. Wizards:( Head management) Are they good or bad? Doesn't really matter. Their goal is to destroy other wizards (Walmart, Cosco) no matter what they have to do . It's best you stay out of their way or get hit with a lightning bolt. Humans (Realistic supervisors and managers). Whenever I hear any Supervisors complain about any policy's, or change the rules, I think : "Okay, you still have a realistic view of what it's liker to work at a crap ass retail job. therefor, holding on to their humanity. As opposed to:
Golums (Overzealous brain-washed workers) These are the worst of the worst as far as dealing with on a daily basis. These are the employees who have sold their souls to the devil and without a bit of irony, will use words like: "team member" or brand loyalty" and honestly believe any dribble that comes out of the Target manifesto. There's this girl at work who is soooo much into Target that it's like she has absolutely no other life outside of the store. I mean really? Isn't Target just a job? The only people who have any chance of a career are the Elves and wizards. Golums are very unpredictable because at any moment they'll grab the ring and throw your sorry ass into the volcano.

I've been working so long at Mordor, that I feel like I'm slowly getting my soul sucked out of me by that glowing eye thingy. Getting out of bed is like realizing that : "Shit!" I have to get this god-damned ring off before I start using words like :"Target team building exersise"

It doesn't make matters better when people say: "At least you have a job." As opposed to what? Yes, no job could be worst but that's like losing a leg and someone says: "At least you still have one left." George Bushit really did a number on the economy and yet people act like it's Obama's fault for trying to fix it.

I mean, come on! I can track your circulatory system from your heart trough your entire body. I have graphic art experience and animate my own movies. and here I am, gathering shopping carts in the rain, talking poor people into getting credit cards and having customers argue with me because a bra cost $4 more than the sign on the self said. Here's clue: If you had said hello to your cashier, I'd change the price with no problem. Otherwise I deserve a metal for controlling my foot in ass disease.

Bottom line. I have to get the fuck out of Mordor.

That's it:
E.M

"Knock Knock!"; "Who's there?" ;"Customer!"; "Customer who?";"Customers suck!"

2008-02-23T23:45:00.000-08:00

The sense of humor is finally starting to kick in with the girls as they are discovering jokes. m told a knock knock joke which was strangely funny and yet simple:

m: "knock knock"
Me:" Who's there?"
m: "Pig!" Me: "Pig who?"
m: "Snort!"

a's jokes are usually more bizarre. the kind of stuff that makes the cat turn her head sideways and say:" Wha?"

a: "knock knock"
Me:" Who's there?"
a: "birthday party"
Me: "birthday party who?"
a: "It's a birthday party, hurray!!"

Very surreal

But "a" does make me laugh sometimes when she doesn't try at all. Like when we were driving to her daycare and she said:

a: "Dad, your food goes in your mouth and comes out of your stomach."
Me: " Well, actually, it goes into your mouth down your throat, down your esophagus, into the stomach, trough the small intestine, then the large intestine and then out of your body. ( I skipped the rectum part).
a: "Dad?"
Me: "yes"
a: "Okay, Dad, that's enough talking."

Here's a video of "m" in all her insanity:

On my drive home from work, I noticed that there are two houses that still have their Christmas lights up. What is that, like 3 months late taking them down. As much as they keep them up, they still can't touch this house around the corner that has had a deflated Santa Claus on it's roof for 2 years straight! What's up with that? Is it lack of a ladder or are they waiting until their son comes back from Iraq before they'll celebrate another Christmas?
I can see it now. Brown tinderbox Christmas tree, dry as a bell, unwatered since December, 2001, which will explode if the light switch is cut on. Outdated Nintendo video games and the first iPod model, still in unopened boxes, pet puppy, now a taxidermed mummy in a box which didn't even have air holes to begin with. At work, I've noticed more of a pattern to the:

Common top 10 Asshole Target customer awards:

1) The Bag Managers: People who watch and criticize every item you put in the bag and re-arrange them (usually not in any better way). I'm sorry if I got in your way of going to Bag Boy school and achieving your dream.

2) Frantic Disorganized Mother with Out-of-control Kids: ('nuff said).

3) Food Stamp Cheats: I try to duck down and hide when I see them coming. They're always a guaranteed bad speed score on the cash register. They buy tons of wet groceries, use big wads of crinkly cash and get angry when they discover that Twinkies, booze and firearms aren't covered by the system.

4) The Plastic Haters: Similar to the Bag Managers but these are people who complain that I (the one who bags every 5 seconds and knows how much stuff you can put in a bag before it explodes) am giving them too many bags so they take stuff out and trow the old bag at me. Now, I'm not a big fan of plastic bags either and I try to reuse the old ones for garbage cans and shit but if you really want to be an environmentalist, don't think for a second that throwing a plastic bag back at me is going to save a fucking plastic tree or whatever. Guess what? The bag is just going to go to the next plastic lover in line and the next one and even if it's not them THE FUCKING PLASTIC BAG ALREADY EXIST! Your refusal to take if will not help the environment. The bag is going to end up somewhere, and do you really think the Plastic Lover is going to recycle it? And if they do, do you really think the bag is going to decompose into some magical fairy dust and disappear in 100 years? Hey stupid! it's plastic! it will out live your righteous, liberal Berkeley ass longer than your Prius! Dumb ass. Here's an idea if you want to get rid of the plastic bags in the environment, REMOVE THE DEMAND FOR FUCKING PLASTIC BAGS! Bring your own canvas bags. My god I loooooove those things. I can pack the hell out of them and the people that bring them are always nice. If we all use canvas bags, the plastic people may start to make those and how many canvas bags do you see in landfills? Dumbass!

5) The No Speaks: Usually I don't give-a-shit if a customer speaks, but you can at least say thank you for putting my groceries in the cart, or thanks for not slightly opening a container of lotion inside one of my bags so that when I get home it will have spilled all over the new cashmere sweater. Not that I would ever do something like that. I'm just saying.
No, really.

6) Kids: They also use crinkly cash, and spend all of their money on PokemonYugioNoruto trading cards. Pick up a fucking basketball and get outside and play, you pale faced Wii zombie.

7) No, seriously, I have never slightly opened a container of lotion inside one of their bags so that when they got home it will have spilled all over their new cashmere sweater.

8) The "Funny" Guy trying to impress the Laydee:Usually some rich jerk and his trophy bimbo whose boobs cost more than her wasted college education. They never say hello or thank you and he tries to use sitcom"humor" such as how stupid the woman is, and yet she laughs it off. Maybe she's laughing at how later she's going to cut his penis off.

9) No seriously. No open lotion in bags.

And the #10 customer asshole type: (drum role)...................The LMM: Last Minute Morons, who come into the store 5 seconds before closing and then keep us there for another 20 minutes, forcing me to miss America's Next Top Model.

C'mon people. Target is open from 8AM-10PM. Surly in those 14 hours you could have dragged your lazy ass away from the crack pipe, or whatever you do all day and do your shopping?

That's it

EM

Targeted!

2008-01-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

M Went away for a while to take care of some family stuff, so I had too watch the brats for a week. I did have some help. Grandma and Grandpa came by for a couple of days as well as various friends. It was a very educational experience for us all because I've been kind of absent from them during Christmas because of my Jay Oh Bee. So I got to reconnect a little with the kids. In the week I discovered that m will call you on anything. It's like she's the queen of justice and fairness. When I was getting them ready for daycare and trying to really get them out of the door, I was starting to yell because nobody was moving (typical 3 year old behavior). So at one point m Just says: "Dad! You're mean!" In response to this I discovered that a is like a little peace maker go-between when she said: Look dad! I'm getting my coat on, okay?"
In other words: "Chill the fuck out!"

I've come to the conclusion that the only people that read this blog are people I know and the only ones who respond to it are people I really know. This use to bother me that I never get any feed back or comments on my blog even tough somebody who has a blog about knitting or taking pictures of themselves groping statutes gets hundreds of hits and comments. The same is true with YouTube. I posted some movies on there and out of the millions of people in the world, I get 60 hits at the most, while some kid films himself farting and gets 13000 hits and a response to it gets 500-700 hits and comments. After looking at the actual responses to YouTube post I quickly got over the lack of comments people leave on my site. Why? because they are always the same. If you film yourself singing a song and you're a Young girl. The most likely response is going to be: Slut, skank or some illegible TXT MSG type where they take the time to write out "u sux lol: And yet can't USE A CAPITAL I! Or add just a few more fucking letters and write out "You Suck! Ha ha ha!" Or worst. If you're a guy and you grab a mike for some reason, the first insult to pop out is :"stupid faggot!" It's like the only people who ever comment are homophobic, 13 year old, racist, shut-in, virgins, living in Hickville with absolutely no minority friends, abusive parents and probably a gun collection. Taking it out on the world before they stock a girl to death or go shoot up their high school shop class.
This is why I don't even do chat room.It's like they're full of these idiot kids. And the idiot kids take over the chats and within 5 seconds are spouting homophobic racist shit.

So you see, given a choice. Please, keep your comments to yourself.

So, the last I left off, I was unemployed and about to do my clinical trial at Kaiser. I learned a lot during my trial the most valuable lesson is that in the medical field as well as the retail field, you have the same kind of customers. Most of the patients were pretty cool. They knew that it was a learning hospital, therefore most likely the phlebotomist you got was a student. I never got offended when someone insisted on a staff person immediately or just plain refused to have an amature shove a needle into their arms. What did offend me were the ones who came in and started to complain immediately about how the last student they got really messed up or had to poke them twice; blah blah blah. At this point I would ask them if they wanted me to get some one else? "Oh no" they would say and then complain and question every move you made. This of course would create sort of a predestined future where I of course would miss the vein or most likely and I considered worst, I would get the vein, blood would start flowing into the tube and either their vein would spasm out of the way or they would move their arm. Then blood would stop. Now, some tubes only had to be filled up at least half way for certain test, but not the test these assholes were getting, they had to be a full draw or you had to start all over again. At this point I would drag one of the staff people over to redo it, to much more complaining. The best part was when the staff person would give them a second poke AND NOTHING WOULD COME OUT! I resisted the urge to point a finger in the patients face and yell: IN YOUR FAAAAAAAAAAAACE! You dried up bloodless prune!

Most of the staff people were pretty cool and helpful except for the ones who just seem to be there to get paid. They all knew that there were students everywhere and they were not getting paid when they took you into the hospital on their rounds and let you draw from their patients.

Hospital draws are so hard because people are usually pissed to be in the hospital and have no interest in helping a student obtain their required amount of draws for certification. I liked the outpatient area because you are getting people before the best or worst day of their lives, before that HIV or pregnancy test comes back positive or that infection or pregnancy test comes back negative. In the inpatient ward. People are fucked up, tired sick and have tubes coming out of every orifice. Even the staff people missed their difficult veins.

After I graduated. I started hitting the employment web sites hard. To no avail. It seemed most people wanted you to have your CPT license in hand. I talked to Kaiser and this one woman said that they insist that you have 1000 draws. Wait? I said, I went to your school and the time you gave me during my clinical, even if I was as good as some of the best students in my class, I would still get no more that 600?" I talked to my teacher about both of these facts to which she said both things that Kasier said were untrue because they had already hired some people in my class! So I looked and I looked and I looked and I waited for my CPT license and I waited for my CPT license and I waited for my CPT license. Eventually we got into the red. Our property taxes are due and Even the mother in law was telling me about jobs at Trader Joe's. So I had to take yet another bullet in the knee caps for my family. I applied for three jobs: Mitchael's art supplied who made me take this loooong ass complicate test and even tough I've had over 10 years of various art experience and was even an assistant manager, didn't hire me, Blick Art supplies which use to be Dick Blick and I understand the dick part because I was interviewed by this airhead woman who wasn't even an artist and didn't seem to believe that I was even an employee at an art supply store. Why would I lie to get a shitty job? and finally Target which I had no interest in getting a job with, so of course, I get hired by them.

So, after a year of studying and working my ass off on testing and training, I end up back in retail. Hopefully not for too long but, I always assume it takes forever for you to escape from a shitty job in a shitty economy with a shitty president.

SO, what do I think of the wonderful world or Target. Here I present:

THE SECRETS OF TARGET DEPARTMENT STORES!

1) The store is actually run well and the upper management are nice and very non evil. I found this a shocker in the world of WalMart and those awful art supply stores I've worked for.

2) They give a shit load of money to charity including Gay and Lesbian ones.

3) When you use up your Target cards, they just toss them away. Personally, what I've been doing is I hold the old card at the register and if someone gets a free gift card from buying something, I take that card, reactive it and give it to the customer. I don't know if Target likes that or not but it's my way of being green. Also 70& of people with gift cards spend more than they have on the card.

4) They do recycle their old bags and if you give them your hangers they reuse them.

5) If you push your fucking shopping cart out of the way to a place where the cashier can reach it, they (I) will put your groceries into the cart for you.

6) If you start bagging your own groceries I will not bag them for you.
Also, if you say hello, I will do a decent job on the grocery packing. "How are you doing?" will get you a pro job. If you say nothing or are rude in any way: Your fucking eggs are going in the same bag as the bowling ball.

7) If you use your credit card and sign it off or approve anything and then whip out a gift card, it is too late! Do not even pay until AFTER the gift card has been used, dumb ass!

9) Employees only get 10% off. This is one of the negatives I don't like. BUT if something is discounted and you have a coupon, you still get an extra 10% off.

10) After the holidays, every day, the holiday stuff gets cheaper and cheaper until it was like 90% off. This is when I bought wrapping paper for like 20 cents.

11) Targets goal is, and this is actually written on their training manual is "To be the best store, ever!" a lofty goal.

12) People leave their shit at the register at least once every two days. I've even seen a person leave his entire shopping card. Check those bags people! These are called left backs.

13) If you change your mind on something, give it to the cashier, we have a place to put "go backs" and people whose only job is to restock merchandise. Do not put a pair of socks in the ice cream section, dumb ass!

14) 40% of customers (at least at our store) are nice. %20 are pretty cool. 30% are okay . 5% are unresponsive and %5 are assholes. Of the cool customers, most are rich single white men. They come in they buy, they leave. In the asshole section: Crazed, disorganized white women with children who are in a hurry to get to a birthday party. Poor overweight black women who want every single thing in bags, question every single price , bring 80 ton's of stuff and then want it all taken off at the end. They always cause you to get an "R"

15) What's a R? The cashier's speed is being tracked. If you look on the cash register's screen you'll see an "R" for red or "G" for green. If they are ringing you up at a good speed you get an G. Now, as big brother as this is, it's not hard to get a G. What causes an R is never our fault, it's the customer (or "guest" as Target calls them) fumbling with their wallet, changing their mind at the last second, running to get a soda, beating their kids, or what I hate, putting in the wrong pin number or walking away while the machine ask them if they want cash back. STAY WITH THE TERMINAL UNTIL THE END, Dumb ass!

Overall, I'd say if I didn't need more money, were single and didn't need to spend time with my kids, I'd say it's not a bad place to work, but let's face it. There is no retirement in retail, only firing, quiting and death.

That's it
EM

Winnie the Poo. Eats human flesh and snorts coke

2007-08-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

I discovered a reason why you should skip the true versions of fairy tales and go for the Dinsneyized version:
m: "Mommy, I want to sing you a song about the Little Mermaid."
M: "Okay."
m (singing sweetly): "Ariel's song, Ariel's song....a sea witch cut out her tongue."

Oops!

You'd be surprised how gruesome some fairy tales are before they were censored. In Cinderella, her step sisters cut theirs toes off in order to fit into the shoes. the transparentness of the glass slippers were easy to spot the ruse. Later at Cinderella's wedding. Birds swooped down and pecked out their eyes.

Hansel and Gretel. They weren't lost in the woods. Their parent's couldn't feed them and stuck them out there!

Rumpelstiltskin. When his name is said, his body splits in half!

Winnie the Poo. Eats human flesh and snorts coke!

The Bible. Daughters get Abraham drunk so they could rape him and have his baby!

Okay, the Winnie the Poo bit wasn't real. But you get the picture. I always heard that the purpose of fairy tales was to help kids deal with fear. Nowadays, all you have to do is turn on the TV and wait for the words: "Today, the president said..."

Every day, after M reads them some books. I usually tell them a vocal version of a story. The top three request are always, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio. I got a laugh-out loud review from z when I did Beauty and the Beast. I played Belle as a take no shit, dame who sets the beast straight: "You want me to bring you some food? Motherfucker, I'll slam your ugly-ass face into some dough and make you a batch of gorilla cookies!"
Okay, perhaps not that tough, but she does make him say please.

Speaking of slam. Silly me, I thought once all of those weeks of homework and test were over, The actual sticking and poking part would be easy. It got different and harder. It's one thing to worry about failing a test. It's another thing to think about sticking a needle into a class mate or the teacher without hurting them. By my calculations I logged in about 100 sticks on the fake dummy arms and poked at least 20 times on real people and got poked and stuck at least 20. The worst ones were the hand sticks. Not the finger poke kind which are actually painless with some new click and poke devices, but the venipunctures in area behind your knuckles. I made some stupid mistake, not dangerous ones, thank goodness but ones where I had the vein, I was in there and then I let the needle pull out. That happened at least two times.

The dangerous mistakes would have to go to the two Indian people in our class. Mind you, I have nothing against Indian people. Love the culture; blah blah blah. But these two people just happen to be Indian, right out of India. I was rooting for them because they pretty much failed all of the academic test we had and the teacher really wanted to help them. I could always see the look of pain on her face whenever they wouldn't do their homework or fail a test. When we went from classroom to lab. Their mistakes weren't just bad students. They were dangerous. It finally hit me what the teacher was talking about when she said her job was to make us safe. She wasn't talking about keeping the cootie needles from poking us. She was basically saying that if someone takes your blood, the right way, they are a trained phlebotomist but, if you had a real bad one, or someone that severs a nerve, paralyzing an arm , they are weapons! The woman seemed like she could not speak English. Which is odd for someone trying to get a job in an American hospital: where people yell out: "I need a CD4 a Alpha-fetoprotein and a ABSAG, Stat!"
The Indian guy actually did a finger stick on me and it was perfect. Okay, I thought, this is his time to shine, to show everybody in class that he may not do well in the book part but in the lab he was going to be the mac daddy. Even the Indian woman did well on her venipuncture that day. Then came the day we still talk about. When she was pulling out of this guys arm, instead of pulling straight out, she pulls ...upwards! Ouch. Luckily the guy's arm seems fine. On another student. The teacher told her to pull out because the student was in pain or something. This request was repeated at least two more times while the needle was still in! When the teacher asked: "Didn't you realize you were hurting her?" The Indian woman smiled with this weird vapid look on her face and nodded yes. It was soooo creepy. The guys day of infamy started when he came in, hopped up on coffee (or worst). At one point, he was so excited and weird acting, the teacher actually asked him, 1/4 joking: "What's wrong with you?" Later when he was suppose to stick the teacher, Which, strangely enough in spite of her large size and fat arms, I find her the easiest person in class to hit. She has nice big surface veins. So you just poke a little and bam! You got her. Instead of poking a little, he jabs that needle in like he was trying to thresh a chicken. The teacher yells– ouch! Which I had never heard her say to anyone. She makes him pull out and asked him why did he do that. Basically when you poke someone, you are suppose to feel in your hand something called a "pop" Not a real pop per say. Put a texture change from tissue to vein. Once you feel it, that's when you stop the needle from going pass it. He went pass it, through the other side and right to a nerve. Needless to say when I came back from lunch break, neither the guy or girl were there anymore. After the first test, I got more and more comfortable. By the last test I felt like that horrible nervous butterfly feeling had left completely. It was the first time I actually felt that maybe I can do this.

Next week is the real test. Three weeks in a real clinic. I was suppose to go to Oakland but the women that interviewed me, thought I'd be too timed to work there. Apparently the clients in Oakland are old and angry and wouldn't put up with some bright eyed eager to please Bambi phlebotomist. Not just the patients, but from what the head woman said, or tried not to say but there's no other way to say it; the employees in the Oakland clinic are assholes.

The teacher switched me to another location out in suburbia that's more student friendly. Just as well. the last thing I want to do is spend all day trying to stick some angry old fart who has one foot in the grave and the other one up my ass while an employee yells :"Hurry up, bitch, I got's other people to stick!"

I actually discovered that my teacher intentionally switched my location with the streetwise-mother suer. She actually sent her to a suburban clinc while trying to send me to the belly of the beast, Oakland. I guess as some kind of "learning experience." Perhaps she thought Oakland would toughen me up. And for her, stop her from saying "Muthafuck'a and suing her parents. My teacher really reminds me of those teachers you see in Shaw Brother kung-fu movies from the 70's. You know where a young Jackie Chan (before his nose job. that's right, you heard me) gets his ass kicked by the bad-ass guy with long white hair and beard. He then gets trained by that one crazy/drunk master who it turns out use to be a super bad-ass back in the day. He makes Jackie do all kind of stupid exercises like carry a sack of boulders across a river, while the master sits on the shore, eating a fish head on a stick and smoking opium. That's pretty much my teacher. You may think she's crazy but then you discover she has mad skills and should pay attention to her.

Even when she sits on my back and makes me do push ups over 80 upturned hypodermic needles.

That's it
E.M

Phlebotomy phisting

2007-08-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

The girls continue to fight us (mostly me) on anything I want them to do. At the current rate, we may have to put them on an 18 year-long time out.

I made the mistake of showing them a part of The Wizard of OZ.
I tried to show them a witch-free version, to prevent the nightmares and it worked for a while. If there were any shots of green face that I could remember, I would skip to the next scene. I forgot about the one scene when they meet the Tin Man under the mean apple trees. For only a split second, the witch appears and hides behind a tree. For just that one second, the girls forgot all about the rest of the movie and any songs that they had heard. All they want to do is talk about is the "Green Witch." this and "the Green Witch" that.
Big "M" was so mad at me.

This week, I got to see what life is like when you only have one class to work with. It's still hard but at least I can focus on one subject. I also got to know a little bit more about my classmates. Apparently, you are suppose to really get to know the people in your class in Phlebotomy, Why, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE ON EACH OTHER!. Did you know that? I didn't. That's right. In Phlebotomy you have to practice your needle techniques on each other! We learned this during orientation and there was a collective what-the-fuck? look on all of our faces. It makes since tough. You are choosing a career where you are going to be drawing blood out of an average of 40-100 people per day. Do you really want to be treating them the same way you treat a rubber arm you were sticking during class? The same one used for the 5:30 fisting class?

The teacher Miss Hardass is also a person you are going to have to stick eventually. There are 16 people in our class. Who the hell voluntarily takes a job were every week you get 16 needle sticks? I'm guessing either she's just really dedicated to her job of teaching OR in her spare time, she dresses up in leather, has a iron maiden in her bedroom and steals the fake rubber arms for god knows what. I decided that the former is true.
She really does know her stuff. She started us off with finger sticks. Finger sticks are a lot different than I remember. I remember they would use a sharp piece of metal– probably the same one washed over and over , and they would shove that mother fucker right into your finger, as close to your nail bed as they could get, sorta like listening to Bush giving a speech. The new finger sticks are all automated and spring loaded and you literally don't feel them when they puncture you. This was the first lesson in sticking each other. I think I did good on the girl I was assigned to but it took me 3 days to heal from hers. The next class we got to do venipunctures on the rubber arms: "Hey? Why does my smell like K-Y jelly?" I asked. "Shut your cake-hole, and use it!" the teacher growled at me.
I was teamed up with this one guy who complains more than that guy I once gutted like a fish dwhen I worked for the Yakuza. I understand that he's working overtime at his job and has to do 8 hours of class and then 8 hours of homework, but we're all sucking it up. I was also teamed up with this girl who sued her own mother for $3,000 dollars. On top of that, she did it on one of those TV court shows!! That's right, not only did she have the gaul to sue her own mom (and won) but she went on national TV and did it. Strangely enough I kinda remember her on the show and get this: It was a special "Mother's day" episode. Needless to say, if someone sues their own mother, what hope do you have that they're going to be nice to you? When it was her turn to stick the arm and draw blood from it, she made it look easy. I guess she's use to draining blood. The next guy made one mistake but then he got it right. When It was my time, I was like captain fuck-up of the SS Inept. I couldn't find the vein if it was outside the body with a note that said :"Vein. Put needle in this." While the teacher was getting frustrated with my mangling her favorite rubber arm, Miss Mothersuer is harping on me with such encouraging things as: "Dang! don't you know how to tie your shoe?" or "He's taking up so much time that (the guy who has the job problem) can't get his turn in." Basically I sucked ass that day. It's very stressful because It's a terrifying thought of fucking up like that on a real person. I had no idea that there was so much to giving somebody a shot. There's hand positioning, pressure. sanitation, did you know that when they snap on those collection tubes, they have to go in a certain order or else the test would be ruined? It's called the order of draw. And each tube may have a different substance in it to make the blood do something different. Do them in the wrong order and you could cause cross contamination.
I did learn that if they are taking your blood with a red cap tube, they use that one to test for, among many other things, alcohol. Maybe they should call those test tubes "shot" glasses.

Here is a picture of the patron saint of phlebotomy, coming to kick my ass because of that horrible pun.

That's it
EM

Is it all "in Vein?"

2007-07-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, we got to send the girls off to grandmas for a few days while I finished my exam stuff. The girls literally did not want to come back I mean literally, "z" cried to go back to grandma's when they dropped her off.
Whatever. They can go for a week if they want, I'll be in Paris.

Blood Week is over.
This is what my wife calls this week. It's called Blood Week because I ended up getting into the phlebotomy class which I couldn't get into almost to the day, one year ago. I guess after all of the people that got pissed from the enrollment process last time, they changed the process to make it more fair. This time you couldn't get in unless you were actually qualified and then it was a lottery system. Lucky me, my name came up just when I was already taking a speech class and a computer class at the college. This meant that the class which is 9-5, overlapped the last week of school. this meant that I had to talk my teachers into working around that last week of their class. This meant they wanted me to take all of my final exams A WEEK earlier then everyone else in the class!!! Not only that, I had to write at least three essays and when the phlebotomy class started The teacher is a total hard-ass who assigns; I kid you not, homework every class that's made up of at least 400 questions!!! It takes you an average of 8 hours to do these monsters. So, for two weeks I've been busting my ass doing papers, exams, speeches and homework.

The phlebotomy class itself is kinda cool so far. I never realised what a fucking dangerous job phlebotomy was. You're like one needle stick from about 80 diseases, 7 of which will kill you. It's like being a cop or a fireman. Somewhere out there is some punk with a gun, ready to plug you, and all you want to do is sit in your car and eat doughnuts. No wonder cops are always pulling over normal people They're afraid of pulling over that one kid with the gun. Shit, If I had a choice, I'd give shots only to virgins from Utah. But alas I'm sure when my clinic time comes up (in the last part of the class we actually get to work in a clinical setting) I'm sure they're going to give me some bass-ackwards clinical site, frequented by people who don't think they can get AIDS, because only white, gay guys get it.

The teacher, as I mentioned is a hard-ass but I can understand why. Do you really want a bunch of goof-offs sticking needles in your veins? "Oops! sorry, that was an artery!" Oops that was a nerve! I bet that smarts." "Third time's the charm!" By the way. No one is allowed to stick you more than twice when they are trying to take blood. After that, they should probably get someone else to do it if they keep fucking up. Another thing I've learned is that when a phlebotomist looks at which test you're getting done on your blood, they can usually figure out (at least the smart ones) what the doctor thinks is wrong with you. But don't ask them, they won't tell you.
The more I learn the angrier I get at all of the bad Injections and blood draws I've had. This one nurse who was drawing blood for a drug test at this horrible t-shirt job I had, couldn't find the vein and kept poking and adjusting, If they can't find the vein they should pull out, not wiggle it around as if trying to snag it with a coat hanger.
I've had some really good phlebotomist, you know the ones that you forgot that they had even poked you and then it's done. That's who I want to be. You remember those shot-docs just as much as that incompetent boob, who whips the the needle around like a porn star's dick.

The people in the class all complain about the homework. The teacher just laughs, she's heard all of this before. She been in the biz for 30 years. As hard as it is for me to get it done. At least I live close to the school. The rest seem to live in Dirt Road California and have to drive an hour to get there. Can you imagine, You drive two hours in one day, take a 9-5 class and then have to do 8 hours of homework? All week long I was staying up to 3 AM! The bags under my eyes made me think I had grown a pair of testicle on my face. It took me back to week three of my girls baby days. Ahhh, week three. We were so tired, I prayed for. Death said: "Fuck you, I'm not working at 3 AM."

This one guy in class actually took a phlebotomy class before but didn't finish it because of some moving thing or another. He said that this one is definitely harder which scares me. If there are people that took a back-of-a-comic-book style class, practicing a job where if you don't know what you're doing, someone dies, that's a scary thought. I'm hoping that if I can get my foot in the hospital door, I can be trained to do the lab part of phlebotomy. At least then, instead of getting stuck with an AIDS needle by mistake, I'll only have to worry about loading a centrifuge wrong, sending valves of Ebola infected shit samples everywhere.

That's better, right?

EM

Ghetto Jr.

2007-06-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

So, now that GooGoo owns EVERYTHING, I've noticed that they've added some cool thing to the Blogger site. One is an easier way to post puictures...Pictoores...fuck'n photos. Okay, maybe not pictures of people fucking but...wait a minute, I spelled pictures right in that last part, maybe I should go back and edit this post. Oh fuck it. I'm too tired. I'm still taking classes trying to get into that god damned radiology program at Kaiser. They make it so hard to improve your life. I seriously hate them. They keep added pre-reqs as if you have all the time in the world.

Here's a picture of Some "guys" at the Gay pride thing a couple of years back. I'm thinking of taking the girls to see it just because they like pink, purple and balloons. I'm unconcerned with any questions the girls may have if they come up like: Look "Daddy that baby has two dad or mom's!"; they're use to that. But I don't want to hear: " Daddy, why does that cowboy not have any pants on?"

As offensive as Gays may be to some, I'd pay good money to raise my girls in a Gay neighborhood, rather than this Trash culture drive-by shooting pisshole part of the East Bay. I swear, you'd thing the people living here would appreciate living in a good weathered, near the ocean location without a Klu-Klux Klan? But nooooo. There's this one fucking house on the block where this woman has like three boys between 19 and 23 all living there. The youngest likes standing on the sidewalk with his thuggy friends as if he were living in Da- hood, some say he's selling drugs out of their garage. Personally I don't care what you do, just shut up when you do it, but nooooo, him and his side-show-boom-car friends tried to make as much noise as possible to yell:"Hey! Look at me! I'm a drug dealer! I'm Snoop Doo-Doo,Nelly 50 Cent. I'm not some middle class brat living near Berkeley. I reject your open attitudes and crank my stereo up at 2AM!" A week earlier, him and his Snoop-Dogs were standing on the sidewalk at 1AM, Did I mention that they are the only house in the neighborhood that act like this? It's like a Jr. Ghetto on our street. I literally said: I bet the real drug dealers are going to get sick of this pretend cartel and take them out. A week later, While in the kitchen, I hear: POW! POW! POW! POW! Sure enough a genuine drive-by shooting in suburbia. A billion shots into their garage were fired. Nobody was hurt BUT the little old lady next to them, who has been calling the cops on them for 13 years, had 2 bullets trough her window! They missed the target (or it was a warning). Note to drug dealers. Learn to shoot. It gets worst. Now you think the mother of the boys would learn to watch her son's activities more? Noooooo. M, wrote an e-mail to her news group complaining of the event and asking for suggestions, somehow Ma Barker got ahold of the posting. I know she doesn't read the news group thing otherwise she'd learn how much a pain in the ass her house is. The woman prints out the e-mail, types her respose on the front and sticks it in the mail box of all of the houses on the block. Most of these people had no idea who she was or even that they were the annoying house with the drive-by. In the letter she talks about how smart she is, how her son is in college, how yes she has a gun but it's registered...Wait, YOU HAVE A GUN? The letter went on with things like that, I can't report more because I'm afraid she'll discover this blog and shoot me or worst, write another response.

Ever since the drive-by, we are seriously looking for another place to live. Apparently we aren't the only ones, you can't go one block without seeing a 'for sale' sign. Meanwhile in the good-outer and inner neighborhoods, I rarely see anything decent for sale we can afford.

The house across the street has been quiet for a while but so what. The competition will be back I'm sure and this time, I'm sure they'll have those shooting lessons.

EM

Mr. Cake

2006-12-07T00:05:00.001-08:00

m “ Daddy, I want Mommy.”
M: “Here I am.”
m: “ I want Daddy.”
Me: “Here I am.”
m: “I want Grandpa.”
Me: “ What a coincidence, he happens to be here now.”
m: “I want grandma.”
Me: “She’s here too.”
m: “I want whomever is not here so I can have something to complain about.”
Me: “Jesus fucking Christ!”
M: “I want Jesus.”

This basically sums up what life is like with two 2 1/2 year old girls. They always want the parent who’s not there. They look for any excuse to scream or piss you off and they sleep about 10 minutes at night before waking up and screaming about the boogie man/ it’s too cold/ I want some water/is Bingo the name of the man or his dog?

"m" is becoming more and more of an artist in spite of me trying to prevent it. Perhaps it’s just a phase. She keeps taking her toys and arranging them into these instillation pieces. You’ll come in the room and all of her dolls are lined up and facing the window. I asked her what she called it and she said they’re people, watching TV out of the window. Wow! Like living with Cindy Sherman. "a" is the queen of imitation. She can hear a song once and sing it back to you (albeit full of la la and yadda yadda for the parts she doesn’t know). "a" is also going through the Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Phase more than "m". Even if mom is holding another kid, a sack full of groceries and a backpack of bowling balls, “a” wants to be picked up too. She will howl and scream as if her parent’s were Michael Jackson and Joan Crawford.
In short, my kids are cute and annoying.

Okay. It’s been a while for blog-gagging. So let’s do a flash back: Got fired, tried to look for another University job, they all want someone with waaaay more dick sucking skills than I’d ever want to do. Hey! Here’s an idea! I’ll sign up for dick sucking lessons. So I look into college courses (regular ones, I don't think they teach dick sucking, except at Texas A&M) But what do I want to do? What do I like to do?…Okay what do I NOT want to do: let’s see: retail, work for the Universities printing department, suck dicks.
I come from a medical family. Perhaps I should see if there’s a special gene in there and pursue a career in something medical related. I mean surely, working at a hospital may suck but at least you can strap on a red cape every now and then and save a couple of lives. I just want something that I can enjoy that’s NOT art. I’ve had it with trying to make a living as an artist. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to do art but I’m tired of being treated like the lowest person on the business totem pole. Artist are always the most abused, fired and underpaid employees. It’s like all bosses think they can replace the artist with someone off the street and heaven for fucking bid if the artist wants to make enough money to start a family, buy a house and live a life that doesn’t consist of getting drunk, eating Ramen noodles and saving your money to buy used records.

I don’t have 11 years for medial school so I look into some kind of assistant program: Here’s one:Phlebotomy. Sticking needles in peoples asses. That’s one right up my alley (or their alleys). If a customer pisses me off at my job? I’m holding a big ass needle! Get ready for the pain train motherfucker! Woooo! Woooo!
They teach a 1 year course at Kaiser so I call them up and they say: Oh yeah, just get all the stuff done on the application and show up at 8 Am on October blah blah blah and no queing!. The application required a long list of things; including TB test, Hep B vaccines, Measles immunization etc… along with a certificate that says you know CPR. CPR? Call Police Really fast?
I take a one day CPR class complete with 3 kinds of dummies to resuscitate: Annie, Andrew and Andy. A man, a woman and kid. What the hell is wrong with that family? Can they not swim? DO they drink pork milkshakes? We had to learn to do chest compressions on them and mouth to mouth using plastic mouth covers, as if we were giving head to prostitutes. The secret to chest compressions I discovered is that you really have to put your weight into it, otherwise you can’t get to the heart. In most cases, if you do it RIGHT you pop right through the joints of the rib cage and cause some damage. Some people in the class barely made the dummies chest rise when they breathed into it and for all of their weakling chest compressions, they’d have a better job bringing a hamster back to life. I passed the course and got my card. Next I got a gazillion blood test and immunization shots. So many, I can probably drink a glass of unfiltered African water and butt fucking a lab monkey. I get everything done a day before the application deadline. I remember the woman said show up at 8Am and no queuing! I know that there are only 14 people allowed in this class so I say, fuck it: There’s the rules and then there’s what people do. I’m gonna show up at 7:30! I get there the next day and there are 30 people already there! Two girls in the front of the line have lawn chairs and had been there since 4 am! As if they were buying concert tickets! M convinces me to stay and wait in line because you never know. Perhaps some people didn’t get all of their shots or really are trying to buy concert tickets and got confused. 8 Am comes around, and then 9. This female security guard tells the people in front how wrong it was for them to show up early. Oh good, I think, is she going to make them go home? No, just a useless finger wagging. Around 30 people line up behind me. At one point the lawn sprinklers cut on, drenching the people in the front of the line. This made me temporarily happy. Finally the doors open and people start going in…and coming out. Huh? What the? One by one, some people would go in and come back out. Their applications were being rejected! They didn’t have their shots or took the wrong CPR course or really were there for concert tickets. M was right. Closer and closer I got. From 26 people in front on me it got down to 10, then 4! Some people were getting accepted but a lot were coming out including the two wet girls who had been there all night! I had this one Indian guy in front of me. I think I heard him say he may have the wrong CPR card: Whoo hoo! Another person got rejected. They had one more slot to fill, the Indian guy went in….......and got accepted. That was it. No more applications will be accepted until the next year. I was one person away from getting into the class! On my angry walk back, I cursed all gods and the world itself. Not only is life unfucking fair but life has a cruel, cruel sense of humor.

After calming down a week later. We discovered that the same school teaches a radiology class. This one, although allowing a small amount of people, had a more school-like application process, which didn’t allow for cueing up style. But I did have to take some prerequisites: Anatomy, physiology, college level algebra and some other courses as frosting. Kaiser taught their own Anatomy and Physiology class so I signed up for that one. As for the Algebra class. I failed algebra in high school with flaming colors and had to go to summer school. I sighed up for classes at a local College. (Insert bouncy music here) that’s right, I’m an angry 41-year-old man going back to school!

It’s interesting to see what your adult brain can do without the worry about getting laid, your parents divorce or pimples. So far, I’ve done pretty well in both courses. Back in high school I did back flips if I got a 75. Now I get pissed off if I make under a 92.
The classes are polar opposites. The algebra class was filled with 32 students, that talked about nothing but working at the GAP, playing video games and smelling like dirty sneakers and the Anatomy class is mostly older people who are probably already working at the hospital and are tying to get better positions. Of the 32 Algebra class mates they’re about 9 of us left. The rest could not be separated from level 4 of Grand Theft Auto. One particular individual I called Mr. Cake, actually showed up on the first day of class eating a slice of cake! On a plate! Cake I tell you! Where the fuck did he get cake? And why eat it in class? The other drop outs, and I have to say the mot disruptive students were a group of fat Black girls who ate boxes of Wheat Thins, had loud cell phone conversations when the teacher was explaining quadratic equations and if they showed up for class, at all, would come in, get their names on the sign in and then leave, to do what? Why did you sign up for this class? Why are you here? You’re 18 and finally out off the house? More differences: The algebra class is taught by a short handicapped Asian guy who when he gets excited will talk really fast and leave your tiny brain back at the 1+1=2 starting line, the anatomy class is taught by this tall muscularly silver haired bo-hunk professor who, if I were gay…we’ll if I were gay, I wouldn’t be in any of these situations because gay= no kids=no reson to buy house=no reason to take shity art job to get fired from in the first place.

But this is where I am, in school, doing okay in the grades department. In my home life, lots of D's: Depressed a lot, Dealing with screaming 2 1/2 year olds, Doing most of the cooking and cleaning while trying to study and heaven forbid, Do some art to maintain my sanity. M rags on me when ever I do anything that’s not cooking, cleaning, kids and school. It makes me miss having a shitty job. I mean, if I had a job, and I came home and worked on art then they’d be no questioning but being unemployed, it’s like you’re now a shark. If you stand still, you die. An employed person at rest is relaxing, an unemployed person at rest is lazy.

That’s it
E.M

Fire the sparrow

2006-07-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

“Lemme dew it!” This is the official battle cry of the two year old. This is usually proceeded by: “I need help.” The girls are not necessary in the terrible twos as they are the tiring and annoying twos. With constant whining and screaming protest, they try to assert themselves as much as they can. We usually ignore them unless we’re in a hurry and have no interest in waiting for them to put their own shoes on as we are 30 minutes late for something and they still haven’t put their pants on. “m” has become the mistress of speech as she constantly flexes her vocabulary muscles, usually beyond her limited reach. You can hold entire conversations with her even tough you may have to stop her a couple of times to ask: “What?” to which she’ll repeat: “I have big cock.” With a little bit of detective work, you can figure out she meant to say: “I have hiccups.” “a” has become a danger mouse. Climbing up various structures and doing head stands in the crib (which inspire m to do the same). Her freakish agility and acrobatics have convinced me that she might be an X-Man. What’s next? Fire from the eyeballs?

This has been the year of sickness. We have so far survived: Cold, flu, pink eye, stomach flu (throwing up for a full week, what fun!) and recently strep throat. They say that the average kid gets 6 colds per year: Multiply that times two and that means we will be sick12 months per year!

This morning, as we lay in bed, there was a “tweet”. “Is that a bird?” M asked. She got out of bed and ran to the window to see if there was a bird trying to get in or something. A second later, a black feathery flapping shape flew from behind the bed; over my head and around the room. This sent me flying out of the bed in a girly-girl panic, falling onto the floor and dragging the entire bed linen with me. “It’s just a bird.” M said. Obviously taking the role of the “Man”. I ran out of the room to get a broom to shoo the thing out. By the time I got back, M had already got it out and probably had a short conversation worth it:
Bird: “What’s HER problem?”
M: “Oh, he’s just a little stressed, he lost his job.”
Bird: “What a wuss, try spending all night in a bed room, with two cats sleeping in the same room!”
This was true, the cats were in the room with this bird all night and not once did they wake up, meow or try to catch it. Lazy, dishonorable cats.

Oh yeah, did I mention I got fired? Well, technically they laid me off but the way they did it means they don’t have to hire me again. That’s right after 5 years of bullshit and threatening me, they found a way to fire someone who’s doing a decent job, never calls in sick and won’t just quit. They knew they couldn’t do it without a good reason, like punching another employee or masturbating in the coffee machine, punching a person whose masturbating in the coffee machine or punching a person while masturbating in the coffee machine: Note to employees, don’t drink the coffee! They knew that they couldn’t fire me, so what do they do? They destroy my job. They eliminated my job position saying that there was no work for me to do (lie). They listed me as a cameraman even tough I’ve been doing nothing but typesetting for the last two years. But on paper, my title still says cameraman so they say there’s no jobs for a cameraman because there’s no more camera. Therefore we have to lay you off. BUT there will never be a camera so there’s no job to go back to! Which means I’m actually fired. They say I have 1 month until I’m out, take me away immediately away from my computer to prevent me from sending out that virus I created that makes your face melt off like in Indiana Jones and stick me in the warehouse in the back to do…filing?
I - am - freaking - out!
After a while, my fear turned into joy. After 5 years of eating bullshit with a red-hot fork, while someone tells me that a loser worker I am, I’m finally free! Free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some employees actually told me how they wished it were them so they could finally have a motivating excuse to get out of there. And that’s how I felt (feel) like life could see me eating more flaming hot bullshit with an aged rusty fork, for the next 15 years, at which point they fire me, right before retirement! So it’s good that this happened while I still have most of my teeth and don’t need adult diapers.

I had no interest in doing filing for my last month there. I remember, long ago the incompetent assistant manager saying how they had an account with an online training company and if I wanted to, I could schedule some time and take some classes. Motherfucker, I never took lunch, how the fuck could I take online training. But wait, I thought (after apologizing for calling him a motherfucker) I have all the time in the world now. Okay, I say. I’m signing up for those online classes, NOW motherfucker! And oh yeah, since you took me away from my computer, I need to be somewhere with a computer. Perhaps the other campus, near the bay or near Golden Gate park. And that’s what I did. I started spending my days learning new computer classes at other locations where the neighborhoods were not filled with crack/heroin addicts. Where you didn’t have to constantly avoid the human turds land mines. Where, on hot days, the streets don’t smell like boiled piss and you have a view of the Oakland bridge or Golden Gate park instead a cock roach taco stand, discount salmonella food store or front row seats to: la Cirque du Clochard*

Because I have no job to go back to, I’m basically starting from scratch. I’ve talked to many departments and people whose job it is to deal with lay off workers. One told me I could apply for jobs within my union category that I’m qualified for and can get first dibs on them. Jobs which have nothing to do with typesetting or even art: Senior Editor, Firefighter (it’s true), Computer IT Specialist, Submarine Captain, Jedi Knight level II. I mean how stupid, I’m only Jedi Assistant level.

Getting back to the giant bird that attacked me this morning…okay it was a tiny sparrow–but still. I looked up ‘sparrow in the house’ in superstition and came up with: There will be a death of someone in the house soon. Oh…great on top of everything else I have a medieval curse in my house. We do have an 18-year-old cat so I’m hoping if it’s true...Well, you know. But that day, when I went to clean the porn screensavers off of my computer and get that virus sent, The Ass Manager told me to see them when I was done. Oh great, what else can they do to me, official going away ball kicking? When I was done and people’s faces at the other computers started melting off, I went to see the incompetent assist manager and this awful Asian woman who’d steal the pencils out of a blind beggar’s cup for a job promotion. They gave me my last check and made me turn in my badge and keys. I can tell you, nothing finalizes a firing more than that. It took all of my strength and anxiety training to prevent from fainting on the sidewalk outside (that and if you touch the sidewalk in the Mission District, you get dissentary). Like I had been reduced to a civilian or once had super powers and had been kryptonited. I felt…dead? Ah, so hopefully that’s what the sparrow was all about. It seems with all change, something old must die. My job is dead and good riddance but it’s tough adjusting to life after a long abusive relationship. We all know that Dar-lene needs to leave her wife-beating NASCAR luv’n husband, Mullethead and their shot gun shack trailer park paradise. But where the hell can Dar-lene and her 80 kids go on her skill level? We both have the same chance of being a Jedi Knight. Then again, there’s always school.

Time to find Master Yoda.

That’s it
EM

*Clochard [klo-shar] n tramp

Do it yourself Vasectomies 101

2006-02-16T22:47:00.000-08:00

The girls are angels to Arrrgh! Put that down! In spite of the toddler attitudes, you also have the beginning of real empathy for others. They’ll give you a little hug or kiss when you least suspect it. On the downside, they’re giving all of their best material to Grandma and their child care provider. They’re little freak’n angels when Grandma’s around, they never fight when they comb their hair or put them down for bed and we hear tales of politeness and super cuteness. By the time we get them, they just want to pretend you’re feeding them live worms, instead of dinner. Or bedtime is some sort of code for medieval torture. Speaking of tourture, there is nothing worst than twins toddlers with colds especially when they do them one after the other so the complaining, lack of sleep and cries of: “Nose!” (Indication that they want you to get out of bed and blow their noses at 4 AM) last for 14 days instead of 7. And then, you get your cold!

Both squabs can count to 3 (when they want) and they’ll repeat the most difficult to say things back at you. Like I said: “It was a nice day, huh guys? It’s nice outside.” Then I heard them both say: “It’s nice outside.”
“a” can catch a ball and “m” can throw it pretty well so I guess I’m on my way to that female softball team.

"Please put that candy in your anus."
"What?" Says J, This woman I really hate at work. She's going around offering people candy on Valentines Day
"Please put that candy in your anus." I repeat in my head, imaging that her next question would be: "What did you say?" To which I would say: "Oh, I'm sorry, I tried to use the polite version. I meant to say; you can shove your candy up your ass, sideways."
"No thanks." I really say. I really have no need for blood spiking, fake chocolate sugar bombs. Just what a pre-diabetic needs.

In order to combat my Pre-DB I’ve signed up for three free classes at the hospital: Pre Diabetes and You (as opposed to who else? Pre Diabetes and that bastard that lives across the hall from you?), Stress management and coping with Anxiety. You notice that most classes are stress reduction. I could have signed up for Baseball Bat Swinging in a Crowded Room or Do it yourself Vasectomies, but I chose stress reduction instead.

When I got there, the anxiety class was empty except for two people—a married couple from New York. He was the one with the most problems. He was stressed because he couldn't find a job and he worked a block away from the Twin Towers during the big hoo-ha. He witnessed the planes crash as well as seeing people jump to their death. What a crybaby! In my day planes crashed into buildings every day and it wasn't a Sunday unless you saw at least 5 people jump to their death!

We waited for a few minutes until this chick shows up, “Is this the Anxiety class?” She yelled, throwing a handful of lit firecrackers into the room. She seemed puzzled that only three people showed up. She goes to the class next door and discovers the rest of the class had gone into the wrong room. After cattle prodding them into the right class, she announces that there seems to be some missing literature. Off she goes to Xerox™ the info, leaving us waiting in the anxiety class, alone! With the sound of wolves in the background! I'm surprised no one died. 12 years later, she comes back and the class starts. She tells us that this is an “info only” class, not a seminar type thing, in other words: Go waste your tears somewhere else or she’ll point and laugh at you. But she does ask why we're here, so of course there's a little bit of gut spilling. Besides couple #911, there's the woman who literally can't remember her childhood (Oh, if only I can forget the time I stood up in 1st grade to adjust the bulging cloth of my pants which to the rest of the class looked like I was standing up to do a Michael Jackson crotch grab!), There was the usual: My job sucks the crap out of an elephants ass, people like me and my personal favorite, Just a week after a female postal worker went nuts and gunned down 5 employee's, a female postal worker who's so stressed by her boss, she once went to the hospital because she thought she was having a heart attack.
The class was mostly: What is anxiety? What causes it? Why Mel Brook's High Anxiety is so fucking funny etc…

The next class was Pre Diabetes and You...Yes you! This class was packed, which is a testament to the fine people at McDonalds and Nintendo for creating a race of fat, inactive couch monkeys. I learned a lot about diet and just how misinformed other people are. One guy’s Dr. told him he couldn’t eat fruit anymore. That’s a good idea! You should go on the curvy scurvy diet plan! When the instructor heard that the guy only drank water for breakfast, he left the room for a few minutes and then came back. My theory was, he went to go pummel the Dr. for giving stupid advice. Upon not finding him, he found his office and hid a bucket of raw shrimp in the air ducts. There was only one guy around my age, the rest were old to very old. One was a blind woman. Talk about double suck. You have diabetes from all of that food you’ve never seen. Like getting VD from a Playboy. My next class will be a six weeks long one on stress reduction. I heard they’d be lots of blowjobs, no wait that’s at the Learning Annex.

So, even after all that stress reduction training, my life continues to throw ape feces at me. At work they dragged us all into a meeting in order to threaten me with being fired if we didn’t get our accuracy up. It’s amazing that they can take my job which use to take 3 people and expect me to be accurate, fast, underpaid and happy at the same time. They actually expect me to not only do my job, but proof read it as well. Now, I’ll do what I can but I was told, even in high school that you should never proof read your own work. I mean really, I look at hundreds of jobs everyday. Give me a break. But alas, either they’ll get it or I’ll be fired.

In the outside world, I was walking to the station and came across a little old Chinese lady, laid out on the sidewalk. This White guy is with her and is on the cell phone talking to someone, I thought it was 911 but apparently he’s talking to the woman’s nursing home, with her phone. Guh? Hello! First step, administer first aid. If you need to call for help, and there are millions of people walking by, get them to call. Not that I know what the hell I’m doing. I stop and tried to remember about concussions. I check her pupils for dilation, asked her if she knew where she lived, the date and to get her head off the hard sidewalk, I took my jacket off and made a pillow for her. When I lifted her head I noticed she had a lump the size of a baseball on the back of her head. Meanwhile, as we’re helping her, people are walking by, A MUNI bus rolls by, and no one stops! Finally a bicyclist stops and he knows as much as I do. The guy on the phone says the old lady was getting on a bus, slipped and feel back. It was then that I realized: “Hey, wait! The bus is gone!” The driver and a busload of people watched a little old lady fall on her ass and drove on!!!! And people say New Yorkers are rude. My Ass! Luckily a fire dept. truck thingy with 3 EMTs happens to be passing by. They get out and do their mojo while I stood around as useful as a bible at an orgy.

When I saw those guys in action, I couldn’t help but think, sure they have some suck ass days: A head coming off, intestines unraveling like a yanked roll of toilet paper, blood that goes Whoosh! But at least at the end of the day they say:” I did no harm today and I helped save the world. That’s what I want from a job. Imagine having a shitty job you loved?

That’s it.
EM

The Sugar Monster

2006-01-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

I haven't slept trough the night in about 2 months. What happen to that time when all parents say: " "Don't worry, by the time they're a year, they'll be sleeping trough the night?" Bullshit!!! These two can't go one night without letting out a house awakening wail. Even if they don't actually get up, they have to let out a complaint against whatever nightmare or social troubling thoughts are running trough their heads.
The more they learn to talk, the more they talk back. They must know over 100 words by now and understand 100s more. The word "no!" has become more negative instead of informative. They rarely know what they want, but they know what they don't want. They're not even two yet and they're already moving into the terrible part.

At Christmas time we hung out with Grandma's husband's family. The girls now have a step cousin, a little boy around their age. After seeing him in action, rampaging around grandma's antiques and imagining what my life would be like with two boys instead of girls, I have a feeling we're dealing with two little Palestines instead of two Iraq's. To those parents of boys, I salute you.

Life is a series of deaths. When you loose your virginity, when your first child exits the womb and as I experienced recently, you find out that you have an potentially deadly disease which can lead to heart attacks, blindness, amputations and kidney problems.

My years of eating Butterfingers and Mountain Dew for breakfast have finally caught up with me. My deceased Mom and her brother left a nice little genetic gift for me this year. Type 2 Diabetes. This hit me like a death because A) I don't smoke B) I drink moderately C) I'm not over weight in the least and D) I'm not old.
Even the doctor was surprised that my glucose came up in the diabetes range. "It can't be!" I said scarfing a cinnamon pecan roll. Apparently it's not as much the sugar thing as it was the stress. Gee? What can I be stressed about. Could it be the fact that I'm trying to balance 6 highly demanding relationships (job, partner, twin a, twin b, twin a and b together, twin a, b and partner together) and make everyone happy?.
Being a masochist, after dealing with that devastating news, I decided to go to the dentist to find out if that filling I made out of gum and tin foil was good enough for the hole in my gum. After she slapped me several times, she said I needed the works: Root canal #4, 1 filling, 1 crown and a partridge in a pear treeeee. I go back for the filling and right in the middle of shots in the roof of the mouth, teeth scraping and digging a hook realllly close to my nerves, she says: "It's too much to clean away, You need a root canal!" She sticks a temporary filling on me and throws me out the window onto the streets, still numb on drugs. What the fuck? I say. I climb back in through the window and demand she send me to an expert, right now! Okay that part didn't happen but I was pretty adamant about not leaving until she set me up with a person who could do what she cant do, ASAP. Few days later I see Dr. Fancy. He uses über drugs on me, had a 2 sided list of movies to watch while they yank out your fangs and it went a lot smoother than getting my teeth cleaned. Here's an idea: CAN WE PLEASE HAVE THE HARDER DRUGS, AND VIDEO PLAYER, DR. FANCY USED DURING THE OTHER STUFF???
There's still more work to do and will extend until next year because the fuck'n insurance won't cover all of it in one year.

Both experiences make me really mad at my parents, Yes, even my deceased mother (oh, oh. Freudian alert) I'm basically mad that my parents never told me, as I'm going to tell my kids. #1 if you take care of your teeth, you could save enough money to go on a kick ass drug ladened trip to Ibiza, twice and still have enough for an computer and a hand job in a seedy strip club. Okay maybe I'll leave out the computer part. And also in our family, there is a ticking time bomb of yummy diseases coming your way from both sides so If you smoke I will kick you in the ass so hard, you'll taste shit for a week, exercise is not a hobby, and party your ass off with Willy Wonka but when you approach 40, drop-kick his ass into that chocolate fountain and lay off the sweets. I mean seriously my parent's never talked to me about health, AND MY DAD"S A GODDAMN DOCTOR!!!!!!

So now I'm on old-man drugs. My doctor says even tough it's not the type 3 diabetes (insulin shots etc..) I have to start on them, now. Three pills per day. Aspirin, a cholesterol drug and my personal favorite, one that lowers your blood pressure. I love that one, it's like drinking a glass of wine in the morning. I feel like Dean Martin.

Why didn't my parents just tell me the truth? I already plan to tell my kids:
One day you will fall in love, and they will break your heart and it will hurt but unfortunately this will only be puppy love. Later on, the real thing will hit and they will break your heart and you'll want to die and kill at the same time.
One day, you will have really bad sex and it will probably involve alcohol.
One day, the police will be involved in your life somehow.
One day you will vote for 5 presidential candidates and they'll all loose.
One day, you'll have a kid and you'll wonder what the fuck your parent's were complaining about because you won't have twins.

My point is. You need to share with your kids all the horrible shit that needs to be red flagged otherwise what are you protecting them from?

That's it!
EM

Spider Dad

2005-11-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

We no longer have two baby girls, we have two little girls, They walk, they talk they experiment with our patience. m is already remembering the alphabet and the numbers 1 and 2. If you talk to them about something from a few days ago, they remember it, down to the sound effects. Z can still impersonate the ocean and the cold wind from when we went to Bodega Bay. It was the second time at the beach during Thanksgiving weekend, We ate Thanksgivings at Pacifica and walked on the beach after dinner. the girls were all gussied up in little dresses and I managed to slick their wild hair down. Boy did grandma hate that. She took z into the bathroom (we let them go potty with females to inspire them). When they came out, lo and behold, z's hair was all puffy, like grandma had completely undid my work. I thought it was funny and never said anything, As long as Grandma is helping with child care, she can give them mohawks.

On my way to work, while walking from the station, There came the sound of a fire truck and a police car coming my way. This is not unusual so I ignored them. As long as it wasn't another explosion (see "Ka-Boom" blog entry). When a police car passed by me, I started to fantasize, what if I were Spider Man? I looked at the building next to me and imagined secretly scooting up the wall, changing into my costume. I then wondered which would I follow? The fire truck or the police car. When another cop car did an illegal u-turn in front of me and another rushed past I figured Spiderman may be needed where the police are going. Besides, Fireman don't need no costumed freak getting in their way. The more I walked toward work the more police cars I saw going left and right. I round the corner and am passing by this fenced in garage/gas station and I see this Black guy about 20 feet away, pacing around and thinking. Nothing out of the ordinary. Suddenly about 10 cop cars converge around me . A copper jumps out and says into his radio: " We got him. Gas station on 16th!" Er-ah wait a minute, I think, That's me? I look around for whoever they could be talking about. Surely not the solemn Black guy? He's not even attempting to run away. I step to the side and freeze. I imagine If it is the Black guy, and I try to make a run for it when he starts shooting, a late comer cop will just open up on me because I looked guilty with the running away from the bullets and all. About 10 cops run around, looking for a way to get into the fenced in area. One Einstein tries to climb over the fence, a barbed wire fence! He doesn't get very far, He manages to get one leg up and kinda hangs there for a few minute. Meanwhile his comrades find the entrance and rush in and tackle the guy, who never puts up a struggle. Obviously although he's what I guess is a recent murderer suspect, He knows the rule as Chris Rock says: "If the cops have to chase after you, they're bringing an ass whooping with them." Eventually, T.J Hooker, gets off the barb wire and climbs down. The only saving grace for him is he didn't rip his pants. Can you imagine? He's already gonna get ripped for trying to climb the fence: "Hey Joe, maybe we should call you Bob Wire! Har-har" they'll say in the locker room.
The interesting thing is, If I were Spiderman, I totally could have got that guy with one web shot and a hanging from a streetlight. But then I would have been late for my Job. A job that sucks, a job which wouldn't care or understand even if the head boss knew my secret: "Well sure you saved the Mayor from The Lizard man, but your proofs are late. What am I gonna tell the customers?"

I kinda feel like that's what it's like being a parent. Sure you swing in and get your kids picked up on time, make a great dinner that they love, have a great play time, they go to bed on time, happy and content and sleep trough the night. But your stupid ass job bitches at you because some fucking customer, didn't get their job, although they waited until the last moment and want it before they go skiing at Tahoe. So Spiderman has a choice, stop saving the world or let their bosses take their 2 hour lunches and go home on time without worry.

Hmmm. Which one, which one?

That's it
EM

Ka-Boom!

2005-11-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

I love the age the kids are at. The language is rolling in like water. We have: “Please, truck, bus, No (which is pronounced Neu!), bye bye Daddy and mine!” There’s also this word that they use for chicken or long conversations which sorta sounds like: “Plicka plicka plicka.”

I figured out why the kids love Grandma so much. Because the woman never says no! We came home the other day and one kid is standing on the arm of the couch, which we’ve told them not to do, and the other is standing on this giant toy block, which we’ve also told them not to do. Grandma is sitting back and enjoying the show, drinking a Bloody Mary. Okay, she wasn’t drinking a Bloody Mary. Maybe it was Vodka Gimlet. The point is the kids must get sick of “get off of that, put that down, get that ferret out of your mouth” from the parents. Grandma must be a nag vacation. That’s what they should call them, Nag Vacations.

So at work, I’m running away from a series of large explosions, I look behind me to see a fireball the size of a three-bedroom house rise out of the sky. “Holy shit!” I say. This is NOT a dream! This really happened! Earlier, I was sitting at my desk when there was a booming rumble and the windows shook. This is not out of the ordinary because we live in Earthquake Ville and on the road next to the building, really heavy trucks rumble by. I ignore it. Then there were two more thunderous rumblings. They were exactly the kind of thumps you would feel if Godzilla were tramping toward your building. The large windows seemed like they were going to come crashing down and mandolin this woman who has her desk right underneath them.
“Is that an earthquake? Goes this guy “A”. I know it’s not an earthquake because there were thumps instead of a swaying motion. “I think it’s an earthquake he says heading for the door which is the worst thing to do in an earthquake because you’re more likely to get clobbered by stuff falling outside. “Holy Shit!” Someone outside the office says. We investigate and see that about a block away, there’s this Victorian apartment building on fire and black smoke is rising into the sky. Then a BOOM! A fireball rises up. “A” takes off running away from the blast. My first thought was: “Gas main!” In San Francisco, it seems every day someone gets blown up by a gas main hit by a crazy city worker. “Chain reaction!” Was my second thought? What if this is part one of a series of explosions? I take off after A. As I mentioned in the beginning, I looked back and saw another explosion and a huge fireball rise up. The location seemed familiar to me. Wait! I say that’s the place that rents out building equipment like bulldozers and cherry pickers. They also sell propane gas and have a bunch of tanks outside. Or it could be the gas station across the street from it. Either way I wasn’t going back to work until the fire tucks showed up. Eventually, 5 of them roared by and got things under control. I go back to work and discover from M (The guy who thought he had won the lottery. see: Sock Soup entry) that yes indeed it was the propane tanks at the rental place exploding. He knew this because when the explosions started, he ran TOWARD the fire and called another guy to get their camera. “Wait.” I say. “You ran towards the explosions? And you’re not wearing a cape?” While watching the fire from a block away, an explosion went off and sent him into a wall. He then noticed that 5 guys, even closer to the fire were laid out, flat. Luckily, no one was hurt. Now, the scary part. I get off work at 3:30. The explosions started at 3:00. On my way to the train station, I walk within 5 feet of the propane tanks. The next day I had to get off work early to pick up the family car from the mechanic. I left work at 3! Imagine, if the days were switched?

It’s not the first time death swung a bat at my head (and of course not the last), once I was coming from Myrtle Beach with my dad and older brother. I fall asleep in the back of the green Aspen and am awaken by the car in a tailspin. There’s dirt flying into the car and we end up backwards in a ditch. Turns out, older bro had headphones on and spaced out.

The connection between both of these events are the words:” Holy Shit.” When the explosions were going off and I was spitting dirt out of my mouth, I uttered the words: “Holy Shit!” as my last words. I don’t want that to be my last words! Todd Beamer on United Airlines flight 93 said “Let’s Roll!” as his last words before he and his fellow passengers attacked the terrorists who were trying to make them watch a Julia Roberts movie. His kids will say, “My daddies a hero and said let’s roll. Mine will say, my dad ran like a flaming bastard out of hell and said holy shit before being torpedoed by a propane tank.

I think we should all practice what our last words should be, in case a news truck or your family is there to witness your death. Flaming propane tank heading toward skull? “Ho ho! Hell has sent an angel!” Spinning crap-ass green American car heading toward ditch? “Aye! Whirlpool of life! I spiral into the abyss!” or something like that.

That’s all
EM

Fish Hooks in the Ass

2005-10-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

The girls are so damn smart. If you ask one of them: “Can you go bring me a bunny?” They’ll leave the room, search for a stuffed bunny and bring it to you. I guess that means not only smart but subservient. How long can we keep that up? Can you do the dishes? Can you cook French Onion soup? They seem to understand everything we talk to them about. Like the little coked up hamster in their brains, are running in the metal wheel.
m is becoming an artist. She jumps head first into any situation and has more nightmares than a, which I believe is a sign of an overactive imagination. a is a scientist. She likes to take things apart and study them. She lets m jump into the cold wading pool while she puts her hand in. They’re also challenging us even more. No longer content to just grunt and cry if they want something, they now say “Mine!” or “Ball!” and then cry. When they get sassy, instead of yanking their skeletons out, we give them liberal-Berkeley-hippie timeouts for punishments. The timeouts work for the most part put I believe they sit in the timeout spot only because they believe we can do that skeleton yank-out thing. I’m sure when they get older and spicier and start dating, they’ll see that yes indeed, I can flay a live human being.

m seems to get timeouts due to stuff like bonking her sister on the head while a gets them for pushing and smoking cigarettes in the house: “No smoking near my drums of gasoline!” Both behaviors seem to be a bit of jealously especially when big M has one of them on her lap. They never fight for my attention like that or even say Da Da anymore. It’s all Mama this and Mama that. C’mon kids, fight for my attention! Star Trek Style!

Okay, So it’s been like 2 months since I last did a Bog entry. Here’s why. The first month was the month of sickness. I got this weird flu-like thing that was basically like a constant 103 temperature. I called Kaiser and asked them what to do and they said: “Don’t take anything, just let it work its way out. A temperature is your body’s way of fighting it.” A week later, I still felt like shit, so I set up an appointment with my doctor. He gives me the works, including blood test and then shrugs his shoulders: “I don’t know what the fuck it is?” He says. “Back to school with Ye!” I yelled, yanking his diplomas off the wall and throwing them out of the window, killing a nun down below (I’m writing this from jail). He then tells me: “Tylenol, fluids and rest.” This kicks the thing out in about a week. Then M gets it. She immediately hits the Tylenol and kicks it out in 4 days. Then “a” gets it. Same thing, 2-3 days then finally it works its way over to m. She takes it out in 3 days. So apparently, I was the only jive turkey motherfucker to suffer with the bastard for two weeks. Even as I write this, I’m still hawking up phlegm (lovely image, I know).

The thing about being sick is, I’m rarely sick for more than 3 days. This thing went on for two weeks. Whenever I’m that sick the first things I think about are: Now I can watch Reading Rainbow on PBS and “Is this the thing that finally kills me?” If I could choose how I die it will either be sitting on a porch of a cabin at the beach or mountains, watching my last sun set or sunrise, or crashing the Space Shuttle into a comet that’s heading towards earth, causing it to veer off course into deep space. Except for one block-busting piece which fireballs into the site of my most hated political enemy’s, family reunion.

Awaiting me on my next month of hell was the job evaluation from hell. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming but it was the final straw that made me say: “Okay, it’s time to go.”
I actually took the trashing pretty well and I fully attribute that to becoming a parent.
As soon as Baby A’s head popped (twins are label A and B depending on exit position) my priorities shifted so fast that the ghost of Albert Einstein appeared and said: “I guess I was wrong, some things can travel faster than the speed of light.” Now, some things really don’t bother me anymore: Screaming kids on a train, being peed on, being vomited on, being shat on or picking a child’s nose. Before, if any of these events occurred I would have done the freak-out dance for at least an hour. As far as priorities go, my job is right below watching 12 hours of pro golf on a tiny black and white TV with no antennae.

To add insult to insult. They decided that this was the year they were going to give bonuses. BUT in order to get a bonus, you have to get at least a satisfactory on your evaluation. Guess who didn’t get a satisfactory on his evaluation? Not just me but everyone in my department who’s jobs use to be done by 5 people and is now done by one. “Oh I’m sorry I’m not outputting as much work as the other 5 people who use to do this job, I’m still waiting for my extra arms to grow out of my ass!” It gets better. They have to have everyone take this customer service test thing on-line. Apparently the size of THEIR bonus depends on having everyone take the test by a certain date. I found this part out because the Assistant Manager (Ass Man or Man Ass) told everyone at a morning meeting. Two people who also got hosed were helped sooo much on their test that it was borderline cheating. I can’t understand how the management can walk with balls so big. Do they really expect me to hurry up and do the test so that those ass weasels can have a happy Christmas? Again, Albert Einstein appeared at my desk and said: "Now I see that a person can move so slow that they go back in time.”

It gets even better. I know for a fact that there are three of us who got reamed but I suspect that there are more. I know because (unlike the supes and management) I listen to people's complaints. So lets just say moral shouldn’t suck this much if someone is giving you a bonus. The upper-upper guy must have noticed something because he made his underling give a training seminar called the FISH training. Are you ready for this? If you’ve ever been to Seattle and visited the Pikes Market, they have this fish market where guys happily yell hello to people, clown around with you and most importantly, they throw fish at each other. That’s right. If you order a fish, one guy throws it to the guy behind the counter who manages, with great skill I may add, to catch the slippery mercury bag in butcher paper: mad skills! This is basically the training video they made us watch and then at the end of it actually had the nerve to ask: “So, how can we have more fun at work like the guys in the video? And my favorite: “ In the video, they threw fish, what can we throw to each other?” Uhh, desk, lawn darts, ape feces? My favorite answer was when they asked: What should our theme song at work be and this one guy says Highway to Hell.

I mean, what the fuck? Are they that clueless in realizing that the people in the fish market were having a good time because some dick wipe didn’t take their kids Christmas money? Or perhaps their boss actually listens to them when they say: ‘I can’t do this job alone because earlier I sat on a fish hook and it’s hard to catch a fish with something like that lodged in your ass?’ No, at my job they would say: “I think you and you alone should throw and catch the fish. That way you know exactly where the fish will land AND I’m taking your Christmas bonus because you keep dropping fish, especially when you slip, running across the room.

Apparently, what they got out of the training is you choose your attitude, which is true. If you choose to come to work in a bad mood, holding an ax and wearing a hockey mask, you have chosen to have a bad day. But they refuse to believe that business failure is like a dirty pond. Blind, worker fish sucking the dark bottom, and smelly scum on the top, blocking the sunlight.

Time for this fish to evolve some legs.

That’s it, EM

Sock Soup

2005-08-05T07:52:00.001-07:00

On my way to pick up the kids at their daycare I ran into a thick wall of smoke caused by a wall of flames that was burning on the side of the road. It was a grass fire, probably caused by some stupid-ass smoker tossing a butt out of the window. After I picked the kids up, I once again had to drive through the smoke and made it home safely. When M came home I said: “I had to drive through a wall of flames to pick the kids up.” To which she replied without shock: “That sounds bad.” And then bypassed me to say hello to the kids.

It’s been a week of driving through fire as the kids continue with Teething 2005! Combined with Parent Authority Test 101. We had a couple of good nights but usually at around 10, z wakes up and then it’s all over. If m wakes up, you can usually bribe her back to sleep, but not z. She wants painkillers, rocking, an inside stroller walk, car seat rocking, DVD of Baby Einstein or just plain cash.

Speaking of cash, m broke my fucking glasses (actually it was my fault for letting her hold them): “Thanks kid, that’s $200 out of your college fund, That will be at least one keg party you won’t be having.” If only I won the lottery. M Hates when I talk about winning the lottery because I never buy a ticket. I tell her that my odds of winning are probably the same without one. I remember the day a guy in my office won 23 million dollars. I was downstairs and we all heard. “Oh my god!” and stuff like” I won the lottery! Oh my god!” We rushed to his desk and he was reading his ticket and freaking out. We asked him to check again. He read the numbers off and compared them to the numbers on the lottery web site. Sure enough, they matched the piece of paper he was holding. Most people were silent. I gave him a goodbye man-hug (sideways, genitals not facing each other) and said it was nice knowing you. He then looked at his ticket and threw it to the ground. I resisted the urge to dive for it. Was he insane? “This isn’t my ticket.” He said picking it up and throwing it down. “Okay?” I thought. This is where I really do grab the ticket from the lunatic. If anyone else sees me grab the ticket and run out the door, I pay him or her off with a million bucks. I hand it back to him and it felt like a scene from Lord of the Rings: Bilbo, tired of the burden of carrying the all-powerful ring, throws it to the ground. One of the secondary characters picks it up and has to return it. In the process, their skin turns green and eyes bug out. A voice tells them how powerful they could become it they’ll just make a break for it. “My precious!” I slur and drool trough sharp teeth before returning it to the guy. “Are you insane?” I ask. “This isn’t my ticket.” He repeats. Is this some weird psychological guilt for winning enough money to have a view of Gods backyard? I wonder. “This is a printout of the winning ticket.” He says. Apparently the guy had got a lotto machine printout of the winning numbers to compare them to his ticket and had been reading the wrong one. We all had a good laugh (except him).

I discovered a few things on that day. 1), I really can feel good about other peoples good fortune and 2) The chances of you winning the lottery are like 500 million to one. The chances of you knowing the lottery winner are probably 1 in 80 million. The chance of you murdering someone and getting away with it are like 1 in a million (unless you’re O.J. and have a lot of money so it’s probably 1 in 10). Therefore, no matter what, you have a better chance of finding the person who won the lottery, beating their ass, taking their ticket and getting away with it then playing the regular way.

M also really hates it when I call us poor. Yes we own a house in the most expensive real estate market in the country. Yes, if I was making what I make in the Bay area and I lived in Mississippi or Bangladesh, I could live in one of those big white plantation houses, sit on a porch, big enough for a 8 mules and drink mint juleps. Or call myself sultan, live next to the Taj Mahal and bathe in saffron water. But I don’t! Everything is relative: Gas and houses are bloody expensive here! So I am relatively low middle class or upper lower (I get confused which). When I think of poor, I don’t compare it to what you have, but what you have left. Sure you can pay for your rent and car, but what do you have after that? How much are you putting into retirement? Do you really believe social security will pay for more than a Twinkie dinner in the cockroach-infested vending machine at the cheap retirement home? So after paying for everything, I have jack shit take home. I’m living on fumes and it’s not the twin’s fault, Its my job life. Why the hell did I choose art? It pays shit if you’re lucky and even then, the shit is thrown at you by some greedy art director. I’m in the highest paying art job I’ve got and yet I feel like I’m still working at an art supply store. All that’s missing are milk crates, cinder block shelves and a 12 pack of Ramen noodles.

When I was in art school, I worked in an office for a work-study program. Everything I made was going into buying art supplies, which are fucking, expensive. They should have called it a work-food program. One week I had no money for food and had already ate all of my Ramen noodles and packs of instant, peaches and cream oatmeal (which is the worst thing you’ll ever put in your mouth next to a dentist drill or a convict’s penis). I was literally a starving artist. I remember sneaking into a pizza restaurant and stealing their condiments–Crackers and Ketchup soup. Mmm! Bon Appetite! In the break room at work, they had only two things, coffee and instant creamer. So. I sucked that stuff down on an empty stomach. By the time I got back to my apartment, I was shaking and freaking out. I felt like I could vibrate trough walls. I lay down on the floor to die or at least calm down. When I looked over to the right, I noticed that under my roommates bed, was an onion. Why was there an onion there? Was he stealing food or is this some kind of voodoo thing. I took the onion, ran downstairs and tried to make onion rings.

Recipe:
Slice onions and dip in water.
Flour.
Fry in hot grease until everything breaks apart and turns into hot, brown grease soup.
Eat and thank God for this bounty because after all, people in Bangladesh would kill for Brown Onion Grease soup.

I never could figure out where that onion came from. My friend A from art school claims that I was hallucinating. It wasn’t really an onion but a rolled up white sock. Mmm! Sock soup. Maybe it really was a voodoo thing. My roommate was from the deep-deep South and he did literally just disappear after I took the onion away, never to be seem again. Maybe it was because my other roommate was a maniacal freak who threaten his life for stealing his food. More likely, that.

I do feel very rich with the girls. It is like winning a personal lottery of sorts.
But like winning the lottery, you may not have to eat Sock soup, but you may have to adjust your old unsolved problems up a level. If I won the lottery, coming home could be: “My private jet flew through a wall of flames at the London airport.” Without shock, M says: “That sounds bad” and bypasses me to get to the kids. Then m takes my $50,000 glasses I got from Sir Elton John and throws them to the ground.

That’s it
E.M.

The Spanking Machine

2005-07-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Sooo tired. These past weeks have been hell as z has been teething a lot. She usually wakes up at 2 in the morning and it takes at least an hour to get her back down until the Tylenol kicks in. She has such a low pain tolerance unlike m, whose like a little tank sometimes. On the plus of development, language continues to creep in. z can say the first half of words; (cheese is che) and m can say "ball" and "bubble" pretty clearly. Time to stop saying "fucking hell!" when near them.

Both kids have been acting a little "challenging" lately. They like to purposely walk over to somewhere I don't want them to be or do something that I don't like. But first, they look at you and check: "Is this going to piss you off?" If I look at them, that's when the bottle of poison goes in the mouth or they jump trough the stained glass window (did I mention I Live in a church that use to be a poison factory?) I thought that they wouldn't be acting like this until they were two. What happen to the terrible twos! I guess this is sorta a preview of the infamous teen years when they really lay on the spread. We have a whole room full of toys but they just want to climb up to the window, eat stuff off the carpet, climb over the guardrail or pet the rabid hyena, which is in their room for some reason. I know that if I ignore them, they'll eventually start doing stuff to get my attention; fast cars with boys/drugs/alcohol, yadda yadda... But perhaps I can circumvent their behavior by using reverse psychology. Make being good, naughty and they'll flock to it like sea gulls at a garbage dump. Maybe when they become surly teens, I'll leave porno magazines and drugs lying around and hide a bunch of textbooks in the attic and under my mattress: "Hey z! Look what I found! A Calculus book!" "Ooh! Check it a SAT prep kit."

When I was visiting my family across country, my big sister, C asked me if there was anything I was going to do differently with my girls than the way we were raised. I wasn’t sure if she was leading into a religious question or not. Like getting them confirmed into Catholicism. Unlike me, she still believes in the Catholic Church’s version of Christianity along with multiple Internet hoaxes. I have yet to convince her that Tommy Hilfiger is not a racist who wants to remove the words “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance or Jesus will not get Bill Gates to give you money when ever you forward an e-mail. I told her the one thing I would NOT do would be to ever beat my kids. She looked at me as if my 10 years of living in Liberal Northern California had finally caught up with me. Like, Not only would I not beat my kids, but also I would let them have sex with their boyfriends in their rooms or smoke pot with us and call us by our first names. No, my objection to clobbering comes not so much from the couple of belt floggings by my dad but from the nuns at my grammar school. May those nuns all rot in hell. Yes, hell. I mean what kind of adult beats a child with a cane? This was the result of some kid opening the door to the classroom right when the girls were undressing for gym. For some reason, the boys would get dressed in the bathroom and the girls would get dressed in the classroom. Sister Magarette (or Margarita) had gotten foot surgery and hobbled with a cane for at least 3 months (not continuously hobbling or else she would have made it to Canada). Now, as cruel as the caning was, you think she’d beat just that peeping kid but Nooooo, she lined up all the boys in the hallway and one by one, hit our back thighs: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Dude? What the fuck? I didn’t even see anything and I get beat? Their flawed logic was; “The good must suffer with the bad” Meaning then, the good kids would keep the bad ones in line or in other words; sanctioned ass kicking.
Another time I was beat for talking in church. Oh I’m sure Jesus would agree with that one: “Blessed are the meek for they shall…Wait a minute! Who’s talking? You! Boy! Next to that goat! Come here you little bastard! How dare you talk during my eulogy! Let me show you how hard the right hand of God is! Another time we got beat by a woman who whacked you if you failed a test. Oh yeah, that’ll work. What the hell were these people’s problems? What kind of fucked up upbringing creates a nun that beats children? At what point did they choose Nun over Dominatrix or LA cop? The only thing I learned from getting beaten is; don’t ever do that again…In front of them! One nun wasn’t so much as a beater but a sarcastic douche bag. Once, I decided I wasn’t going to get bad grades anymore and I told her so and do you know how she responded? “We’ll see about that.” Wha-wha what? If she were Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman in some feel-good movie about grammar school she would have said: “That’s what I wanna hear solider!

When I use to watch the Ricky Lake/Jenny Jones/Jerry Springer lineup and the "Out of control/whatever/I do what I want" 13 year old girl comes out and causes her mom to shrink with every “bitch” she calls her, of course, like everyone in the audience, I want to cut the rope holding an anvil over her head. But now that THAT could be my kid. I can’t see beating them just because they talked in Pope Ratzinger’s church!
For Christ sake!

The beatings were such an ingrained form of discipline in Catholic school that there was a rumor of a spanking machine. That’s right, some kind of wheeled device with multiple, spiked ping-pong paddles on it that saves the hand of the punisher and administers swift justice to the arse of the offender. One time, I got in trouble for talking (as usual) and I got sent to the principal’s office. I can’t tell you how shitless I was, dead man walking down the hallway, imagining them oiling up ol' 'Betty’ or whatever nickname they had for the machine. When I arrived, they made me sort out a bunch of paperwork. That was it! No spanking machine! I was so relived but also a little disappointed, of course not at the prospect of being beaten bloody by a robot but the fact that something horrible that you believed in and wouldn’t put past the cruelty of the nuns, was only a rumor. This created a little break in their infallible teaching for me which would follow me trough the next 5 or 6 years of their instructions: Perhaps you won’t get pregnant even if you keep your underwear on, perhaps pre marital sex isn’t wrong if you never plan to get married and why is anal sex wrong if Gay people do it and yet I see so much of it in straight porn movies?
Years later, the final straw was them protecting the child molesting priest and ignoring the victim! Perhaps this is that ingrained sadistic center that can’t smack kids around anymore but they sure haven’t got the hang of that “love thy neighbor” thing, yet.

I have yet to find a church that doesn’t beat up on someone. The Dali Lama hates gays as much as the Catholics, Baptist and countless others. Other religions won’t even let women have clitoris or drive cars (perhaps there's a connection there), that it’s okay to blow people up or believe that women can get over Post Partum Depression with prayer. Ugh!

One day I’ll find a less fucked-up religion and maybe then you’ll drag my ass out of bed on a Sunday after a night of baby teething. Until then, Zzzzzzzzz.

That’s it
EM

Sweaty Hobos, Covered in Butter

2005-07-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

We recently went to Atlanta to visit my side of the family and give them a chance to finally meet the girls (15 months later). It was a lot of fun. Got to see my friends too. The girls got compliments on the airplane like: "They were so good.” or “They shut the hell up, real good." On the way back, we got to use the special Homeland Security baby lane which was like 5 people deep, instead of the 500 poor saps who had to wait an hour to get anal probed. Ha! We got express anal probing!

After all of the stimulation of travel, hotel rooms, going off their organic diet for a week and 9000 degree heat plus humidity that was like having a large, sweaty hobo grab your face, it was nice to get back to my Bay Area island in the sea of red state stupidity. It’s taken a while, but I think the girls have finally calmed down and realized there are no more army of people admiring you, just your boring ol’ parents and those dishonorable cats.

z seems to have picked up a souvenir from her cousin j, who’s pretty much the same age as them. She keeps trying to do j’s very high-pitched squeal. Thank god she can’t quite get it because j’s squeal was so bad, my fillings rattled. If z gets it right, we may have to take her back to the hospital: “Excuse me? Do you have a quieter model?” I kid of course (nudge nudge).

"Will someone please Stick a railroad spike trough my head?” This is what I'm thinking as I return to work after being out for a week. There use to be a time I really liked my job..Okay, that's bullshit. There was a time I didn't hate it as much. Back in the day (Yo, yo) it felt more like a team thing. There were staff parties, free movie tickets, perks, even t-shirts with our company name on it. Now, they give you t-shirts instead of raises and movie tickets instead of respect. It seems that all of the people I liked working with either quit or never made it past that 6 months probation period. I miss going to lunch with people or being able to speak off the record about what a fucking back-stabber this guy who sits across from me is. More and more of these backstabbing assholes are being shoved into my office. It's like they're surrounding me, like the cream filling in a jackass cake. The only people that are left are the ones who you know if you tell them anything, the upper management will come to you later and say: "Did we get a customer complaint about X?" My old crew, we would SELF CONTAIN the problem before it would get that far up. We wouldn't cover it up; we would just solve the problem as fast as possible. And what's wrong with that? If I were a boss, all I would say would be if the work is getting done and the customers are happy then leave me the fuck alone.

I was an assistant manager at an art suppy store once and even tough you try to be as "cool" as you can, the "Leave me the fuck alone" technique never really works. No matter how hip you try to be, it was all about the age. I wasn't even 40 and yet the 20-30 year olds treated me as if I was the old coot. It didn't matter that I was a independent comic book artist who use to make his own movies or tried (emphases on tried) to make really terrible music and form an industrial band which never put out an album or played anywhere. (I did get the t-shirts printed tough). The work would always slip as people would slack off and then what? Now you had to come out of the office, wearing your Members Only jacket, sporting a comb-over and your arms akimbo saying:" So, is it break time?" Or: "Do you need something to do?" Yuck! Poo-poo to that.

One of my first jobs was at a fast food chicken joint in the South, during the summer. It was 90 degrees outside and we were stuck in the kitchen where the 9000 degree heat would cook us like Peeps Easter candy in the microwave. Whenever I got a chance, I would sneak into the walk-in fridge and sit on the milk crates. "Ahhhhh!" Occasionally the Members only jacket/comb-over/akimbo arms manager would check in on me: "What are you doing in here?" "Oh, just organizing the eggs." I would respond.

This fast food joint served these really large biscuits and it was our job to brush them, just once with butter before wrapping them up. I always thought that was a rip because I personally would like to taste the butter more. So one time I really lathered it on as if they were sponges. In comes the morning Sunday rush, out go the biscuits, and in comes this pissed off old Black dude. His brown pants, butter stained like he had wet himself

Everyday, they wouldn't let you go until you cleaned the stove and drained the grease from the deep fat fryer. Cleaning the grill involved a long audacious process of scrubbing a still hot, metal slab with a Brillo pad and then after draining the lard pit into these huge buckets, you had to carry this sloshing liquid to this garbage bin containment thing, way the hell in the back. After one brutal shift, at around 2AM, I really wanted to go home and watch the Night Flight video show (is that still on?). Instead of walking the rainy long wet journey to the grease bin, I just dumped the grease next to the side of the building. I'm sure the rats outside were happy about that one: "Hey! Ben! It's like drinking a steak!" The next day, the manager comes in, his pants and Members Only jacket covered in grease and tire marks complaining: "I was riding my motorcycle on the side and hit a slippery patch and whipped out."

I guess I can understand how grossly incompetent and lazy young people can be. And how you really can’t not manage them but still, I wasn’t those freezer-checking managers, I was like working for Patsy and Adina in Ab Fab. You know. Come in whenever, bottle of champagne and caviar in the desk, calling everyone dahling. But did that get me cool Assistant Manager points? Hell no. Will it get me cool points with my girls? All I can say is; if your kids think you’re cool, you’re not doing your job.

That’s it,
EM

"Thanks for the heroin, sorry for spitting on you."

2005-06-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

Grandpa (M's dad) came for a visit. Little z was a lot more relaxed and "normal" with him. You see, z has what I call "Manxiety", which means, if you aren't putting out an estrogen vibe, and aren't their wussy dad, she freaks out, especially if you try to pick her up. I actually attribute a lot of this to just the way some people approach her. z is a very exotic looking toddler while m looks more like Gerber baby (we call her Baby Classic). So, annoying strangers seem immediately drawn to her. m has a little Bohemian mind (for now) and is a lot more open to strangers or new experiences. She will let anyone pick her up. But z is a little scientist (for now). She likes to see what's going on, first. She asks “Who are all of these fucking people?” Then, maybe by the end of the day, she comes around.

Where I come from, little girls were either called “fast” or “shy”. Shy is an obvious description for any child that doesn’t want a perfect stranger to pick them up and swing them around the room yelling: “Hi! I’m yer uncle Gus! I use to change your diapers and I just got out of jail!” Of course a kid is going to slink away from that. “Fast” kids were those take charge, back-talking smart-asses. Instead of assailed as brats, they were admired for having independent minds and rapier wit. Most likely, when no one was around, these kids would be back handed by their parents for such insolence but in front of company, when they say: “Talk to the hand!” It’s considered cute.

Teaching manners to the Bart Simpson generation is going to be tough. I'm constantly in the Mission District neighborhood in San Francisco. Parts of the Mission have some of the most disgusting sites I have ever seen in my life. Once, I saw a woman, who I thought was putting on makeup. Turns out she was shooting up heroin into her eyebrows! I’ve seen daily human turds on the sidewalk, crack smokers, hobos, tramps, gypsies and thieves. Worst of all, there’s this fruit stand right on the corner of 16th and Mission where all of these people hang out. When it rains. The sidewalk smells like the floor of a YMCA men’s room. As cars drive by, on rainy days, they do their little puddle splash thing and I cant help but wonder; “Why don’t they take that fruit inside and away from the constant spray of piss, shit and used needles flying into the apples like pin cushions? One time, I was walking past that stand, and this dealer/addict turns his head right when I’m passing him and accidently hawks a luggie right onto the side of my head! Instead of looking for a flame thrower to kill him and then burn my face off, I remained calm until I could find one of those showers like they have in nuclear plants that blast your skin off. The addict guy says: “Sorry” and moves on to his life of depravity. Years Later, after many STD test, I was in the same neighborhood. These kids inside a fenced in playground call out to me. I listen and they say: “The ball!” After checking my pants to make sure my testicles hadn’t slipped out, I notice their red ball was lodged under a car. I picked it up and threw it over the fence to them. And what happened? Nothing! No thank you! I could have pulled an Eddie Haskell* and took it with me but nooo, I have to be Mr. nice adult! But those little brats can’t say thanks? On numerous occasions kids ask me for directions, and when I help them they never say thank you. What the fuck? Like I don’t have better things to do. At least the Drug addict said sorry! C’mon, what are parents teaching these kids? (He said feeling old and shaking his fist at those darn kids today).
Dear kids: The world doesn’t work for you. Two simple words: THANK YOU. How hard is that?

Perhaps I ask too much. I mean, after our girls cause all of my grey hairs to fall out, some kind of hernia/ulcer operation and 5 years spent in prison after a boyfriend tries to get to first base with them. Do I really expect them to go: “Oh Papa. Thank you for your hard work and selling your kidneys so that I could go to Stanford and become a Nuclear Robot Technician.”? They aren’t going to say that. Not even if it was: “Hey! Asshole! I won Porn Star of the year award. Thank God for all of that coke I bought with your kidney money.”

I guess that is sort of a thank you for my future hard work. I’ll take what I can get.

That’s it,
EM

* From Leave it to Beaver.

"You are in our thoughts, flaming Klansman."

2005-06-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

So, apparently my name is “Dee-Daa.” This is the closest we can figure what the girls are actually calling me. I guess a variation on “Da-da”. As far as I'm concerned, the girls could be talking about the cat or my glasses but M swears that this is what they say when I just show up or they're wondering where “Boob-less Thing is?” Their name for the cat is “Ka!” The dog next door is “Aie-ya!” All other children are “Adieu!” Said just like French for good-bye. Cheese is “cshhh.” Fish is “fss”. Tree is “uhhh!” Clock is the sound FX: “Toc-toc-toc.” and Grandma is represented by a loud happy squeal. The only person who does not have a name is…Mom. It’s confusing. If you were to ask them: "Where's Daddy?" They'll not only look at me, they'll look back at who asked it as if to say: “Are you on crack? He's right there!" My theory is, its not that they don't have a name for mom or not know who she is, its more like she's such a part of them, that its hard to differentiate her into a separate entity, its like asking a kid, where's your mind, as opposed to where's your brain? Mom is not satisfied with this theory and still insist that the kids call her a name while pointing at her and holding up one of those name signs you see limo drivers holding at the airport.

We had yet another greetings card being passed around at work. You sign it and then try to hunt down the nearest victim in order to get it off of your desk and away from you as fast as possible. Otherwise you're “It” until you get rid of it. This card was for some woman, whose mother-in-law had passed. I don't really like her (the woman) because she's part of this elite group of older workers who have been there for years and run only on a reputation that they're hard workers when in fact they make the lives of people under them a living hell because they promise the customers miracle deadlines. Sure the customers love them but THEY don't do the actual work so me and the slaves bust our asses getting these promised jobs out ASAP and when we do, the customers send them bottles of wine and Krispy Kreme doughnuts (mmmm Krispy Kreme doughnuts) and the only reward we get is 30 punches in the stomach instead of the usual 40. So this card is in front of me and I have to write something because accompanying it is a checklist with your name on it, If you don’t write something and check your name off, they'll know you're a heartless bastard and didn't sign it. But what to write? What nice thing do you say to someone you don't like in order to show the least amount of caring as possible while appearing nice? The Bush Administration has mastered “You are in our thoughts and prayers”. Every time something happens in a country we don't like; an earthquake in a Muslim country. The first thing out of their mouths is “You are in our thoughts and prayers”. Now "Thoughts" was a possibility. That's vague enough. If a Klansman's car flipped over into a flaming pit of gasoline, when he looked out the window at me and screamed for help with what's left of his mouth. I could honestly yell in all sincerity: “You are in my thoughts!” and then walk away. But prayers? Ha ha ha! The only thing I ever pray for is a mutual sustainable world peace, happy healthy children, justice for all and Fox not to cancel yet another show that I like. So I decided just to write: “You are in my thoughts.” because I'm not really sorry and I try not to ever lie (which gets me into a fuck load of trouble, let me tell you). But get this! Two other people wrote the same thing! I guess I'm not the only one who dislikes her.
I carefully checked to make sure I was assigning the right message to the right card. This is important because we had so many birthday cards floating around in one month that I just got into the habit of signing the usual generic birthday messages. One time, this card came around for yet another person I don't like. I was about to sign with something witty until I read everyone else's notes and realized it was actually a sympathy card for her dead father!!!!! Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one. Can you imagine when she reads:” “Hey! Time to Party!” “Have fun tonight!” or “One step closer to death!” Even “Happy Birthday!” would have got me fired.

I definitely would have been in her thoughts after that.

That's it,
EM

The Birds! The Birds!

2005-06-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

Raising twins is easier than you might think and harder than you can ever imagine. Although it's a lot easier and more fun with them, now. I remember during the first 3 weeks when we had to feed them every 3 hours, day or night no matter what. m and z were both under 6 pounds at birth. Apparently when a baby is born, there's like this short starvation period because the baby doesn't know how to latch onto a boob. So it doesn't really eat at first and looses a little weight. Because our kids were in a dangerous weight area, there was a risk of them losing any weight. So, we had to force feed them using a syringe-like device with a long tube connected to your finger. We would fill the syringe with formula or breast milk and then, using your finger as a pretend nipple, let the baby suck on it. Did I mention We had to do this every 3 hours day and night! This meant we were sleeping in these 3 hour blocks, if they slept together. BUT being twins they could split-shift you which means you could literally be up every 1 or 2 hours. One solution was, one of us would just take them for a 6 hour block while the other one slept. I can't tell you how surreal it was seeing the blue light of morning, every day and hear the sound of those fucking birds chipping away. In college, M (Kid's mom) said that she and her friend K would study all night and dreaded the sound of "The birds! The birds!!!" Because it meant that your study time was up. The worst thing was, even if you slept, you would have these horrible anxiety related nightmares. If you got out of the house, everything felt so bright and strange. people looked like insignificant robots and Safeway was an overly-lit, David Lynch movie with ironic Muzak soundtrack scoring your demise. In a few word, I felt like I was going insane.

Speaking of Insane: I always thought that my neighborhood in the East Bay was inhabited by nothing but roust-abouts and n’er do wells. So it was a big surprise when M took the kids and me to an open studio a couple of blocks away. Not only did I figure that there were no more artists in the neighborhood but especially not a professional one. I figure that the neighbors idea of art was cars-on-blocks lawn sculptures or dandelion Ichibana *. It was also good when the artist held a meeting with other citizens in the hood to discuss the pit bull problem that keeps happening. Apparently this same dumb motherfucker keeps breeding the little head chompers and they keep getting loose and killing dogs or cats. In spite of being dragged to court and fined numerous times, this Neanderthal Einstein (great band name) keeps breeding them and letting them loose. Another problem I’d like to see the citizen posse come together on, is the speeding. For about 3 blocks on my street there are no stop signs or speed bumps. This lets the usually young teenager boys show off just how stupid they can be with a simple formula: IQ=Speed minus actual speed limit for the street. Although there is a school zone at one end and a park at the other. these Fast and Furious Fat heads (F.F.F) race up and down the block, disregarding any chance of children or animals running in front of them. My fantasy is for one day; Mr. Pit bull is walking around with one of his dogs, off leash. A FFF races down the street and hits the dog. The dog crashes trough the windshield, death locks the driver on the balls and causes him to plow into Mr. Pit Bull. As a bonus, the resulting crash could be into the house across the street from me, which is occupied by 4 teenage boys who are annoying enough for another column. I guess this scenario is a little gruesome. Maybe I’ll just hope the police department does their fucking job for once and stop hiding in parking lots taking breaks. That’s right! I see you bastards! Whenever you see two cop cars parked next to each other in an abandoned parking lot, do you really think they’re saying:
“Gee Fred, what are we going to do with those darn kids and their piece of shit cars, racing up and down the block?”
“I don’t know Bill. Perhaps find a way to get them to plow into Mr. Pit bull?”
More likely it’s…
“Man I'm tired.”
“Me too. Good night.ZZZZzzzzz…”

That’s it,
EM

* Ichibana: The Japanese art of flower arrangement.

Look at me! Look at me! I'm a Gangsta!

2005-06-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

I believe we all have two duties as parents: 1) Keep your kid from killing other kids and 2) Keep their kids from killing your kid.
My nightmare is for a then, 12-13 year "gangsta" versions of m or z to end up on a daytime talk show, wearing see-thru clothes, and talking about the 500 men they slept with/I want a baby, now!/My daughters needs a makeover.
Right now, the girls rebel by trying to climb on the couch from Ikea in their room, which is fine, but they still think about: "What would happen if I went off head first?" So far m has fell twice and z was saved by a last minute leg grab. Literally, in 3 seconds, the time it took for me to walk to their closet, m had ran over to the couch climbed on it and then went off head first like a stage diver at a a 1980's, punk rock concert.
Why the hell is that couch in there?

Speaking of bad girls: So I'm riding BART the Bay Area Rapid Transportation or Bastards Always Raising Tickets or Butt Fucking Asshole! Ride This! This girl gets on. She's like 16-17, Some sort of Hispanic, Black-White mutt mix. Listening to rap on head phones and smoking a cigarette. Of course she sits near me because I have this cosmic magnetic attraction to beings of negative energy also know as a bitch magnet.

Now, everybody in the Bay Area know what the smoking laws are. You can't smoke anywhere in California except in the middle of the desert while standing on a blue tarp and 4 fans blowing toward you. This girl is obviously rebelling against every thing and everyone around her. Now, I support rebellion when it's focused and used to improve the world: The American Revolution, Civil Rights, refusing to watch Everybody Loves Raymond, but this girl is obviously doing this just to piss everybody off. She sits there, bobbing her head, taking drag after drag and waving her hands around like a "gangsta beeyatch" instead of what I guess, the middle class princess from Berkeley who's parents ignore her. I decide I have 4 choices: 1) Confront her and get a fuck you! 2) Get up and move 3) Turn her in to the pigs and thrown in jail plus a $500 fine. 4) Ignore her because she's almost finished with her cigarette and she's screaming for attention. I opt for # 4. Two other passengers opt for #1. This blonde woman taps her on the shoulder and points to a sign over her head that said no smoking. The girls gives her a look which I hadn't seen since I flew to Paris. When we were departing, this old French lady, lights up a cigarette in the customs line. This stooopid American guy tells her (in English, mind you) that there's no smoking and she gives him a look that translated into: Go away! You insignificant cockroach! That was the look the girl gave, except without the class. The blonde woman switches cars. This bald guy tries for option # 1. She tells him: "Fuck You!" and gives him the middle finger which I found kind of her to consider that he might be deaf. He gets up and switches cars. As I predicted. The girl finished her cigarette, so I sat still and continued to write in my Palm Pilot.

At one stop, this fat Black woman gets on wearing a hideous powder blue jumpsuit. the pants are so tight that they cause her stomach to escape like a muffin baked in a metal dixie cup. she sits across from us. The "Gangsta" girl lights up yet another cigarette proving that yes, she's trying to provoke anyone who for some reason, like oxygen. "Oh Boy! Here we go!" I think. Expecting a confrontation that will be worthy of Pay Per View or Jerry Springer. But Noooo the Black woman ignores her like I do. At this point, I'm running out of air and patients. I want to leave but I don't want to leave like the other too passengers and loose my "phat street cred." I decide to wait until a stop comes up, then I'll act like I'm departing and switch to another car from the outside. The intercom announces the next stop and I get up and walk to the door. As I'm walking by, the girl says "BYE!" dripping in sarcasm as if to say: "Thought you could take it, huh bitch!" I ignore her and wait by the door. But get this. The girl starts up a conversation with the Black woman as if suddenly they're friends!!! But, what about me??? I'm cool? I was willing to let you rebel in peace? As planned, at the next stop, I switch cars and sit down. It is then I notice I smell like a giant tobacco leaf. She ruined my clothes! Now, I'm pissed. "That's it!" I say. "You want to be tough? Let's see how tough you are…IN JAIL! I get on the intercom and call the train operator. I tell him that there's a girl smoking multiple cigarettes in the last car. I want to see the girl dragged away, kicking and screaming, while I look at her from the window, laughing with sharp teeth and yelling "BYE!" over and over. I feel like such an old man, shaking his fist at: "those darn kids! Always sneaking into my yard and stealing my apples!" The train operator starts asking me all of these time wasting questions: What's she wearing? What does she look like? Which seat is she in? What's the chemical makeup of titanium? Why do people hate me? By the time We're finished, it's my stop. I get off the train. I don't see the girl on the platform, nor do I see her inside the car as it leaves. : "Damn it!" I curse. But get this. When I was leaving the station, off to the side, out of view of the station agent, I see the girl, hop over a small wall and sneak out of the station, without paying!!!!'

Gangsta Beeyach to the end.

That's it, EM

"Which ones the evil twin?"

2005-06-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Aaahh. How I love getting up at 5AM to go to work.
The girls have been sleeping pretty well this week. It's odd because m and z sleep well during the week but got my ass up every hour on the hour on the weekend when I have the most time to sleep. MMmm sleep. Kiss that shit goodbye when you're the parent of twin girls I take the first shift 7PM-2:30AM and M (mom, note big M) take them from 2:30-whenever and then takes them to child care at 7:30. God forbid if they get her up at 3 or 4!

Top 10 guaranteed things to say to a parent of twins who hasn't had any sleep, to get your bloody arse kicked...

10) "Is that a boy or girl?" Said by old man in line at Safeway about m. We have two fraternal girls who look nothing alike. one has lots of hair.
9) "Ooh double trouble." Not very original! people!
8) "Which ones the bad one?" I am!
7) "Can I hold one?" Oh, for fuck's sake! As if!
6) "She must be the shy one." I'm sorry if my kid doesn't touch your Naaaaaaasty greasy unwashed from the rest room hand's, Mrs stranger.
5) "Ooh, that one lost out on the hair department." Heard recently. I wanted to retort: "Yes and you missed out on the looks department. You should sue God."
4) "High five!" (While holding up hand for kid to slap). Not only do Je déteste high fives, but why would I let my kid touch your Naaaaaaasty greasy unwashed from the rest room hand's Mr. Stranger?
3) "Are those twins?" I can let this one slip by itself. But It's usually followed by the other questions above.
2) "Ohh! I wouldn't wish that on anyone." Said by rude woman pushing a singleton (one kid) in a stroller and a 4-5 year old walking along the side. Wh-wha-what? You have two kids also, you fucking moron!

And the number one thing that makes me want to go Abu Girab on someone after no sleep...

1) "Looks like you have your hands full."

My fellow Americans, if you see someone struggling to get groceries in the car while trying not to have their kids skulls splatter onto the Safeway parking lot. OFFER TO HELP! KNUCKLE HEAD! More likely, they'll refuse but for the love of Jesus Chryster, don't say witty stupid-ass things to them.

That's it, EM