Dateline: Thursday, returning from my morning walk. A black van slowly drives by my house, then pulls up in my driveway just as moiself punches in the code to open the garage door. The car is unmarked; I figure it for a delivery vehicle, and indeed, the driver leaves the motor running as he exits the vehicle and approaches me, carrying a white, pizza-delivery-shaped box and three other items in his arms. He likely cannot discern my confused expression that slowly crosses my face (I am masked) when I see that the “packages” he’s toting all bear the Krispy Kreme logo.
“Excuse me,” I say, “I think you have the wrong address.” His eyes and forehead denote that he is smiling beneath his mask, but I’m not sure he understands me. “Do you have the correct house number?” I ask again. “We didn’t order….uh, we don’t eat…” I gesture toward his armful. “…any of that.”
He says MH’s name, in heavily accented (Russian?) English, and points to the top of the box, where MH’s first name and last initial are written in black ink. Seeing that I have my hands full (hat and gloves in one hand and walking poles in the other) he leaves the items on the front porch and waves to me as he scampers back to his van.
I enter the house via the garage and tell MH, who is in the kitchen, about the delivery. He fetches the items from the porch, and tells me that yesterday afternoon someone from work messaged him with the news that there would be a “sweet treat” delivered to him tomorrow, in honor of his 30 years with the company.
“I was hoping,” MH shakes his head, “for chocolates.”
Here is what MH got: a donut assortment and a bucket of coffee and eight cups and enough creamer to drown a possum (*eight* coffee cups? Whom do they think he’ll be having over during these COVID social isolation times?).
MH does not drink coffee (thirty years, and they don’t know this?), and doesn’t eat donuts.
Yeah, team! Way to know and value your employees!
Even as I type this MH is receiving “very nice” calls and messages from people he works with, regarding his 30 years with the company, and I can tell he is touched by their individual expressions of congratulations. “The company” as such does have an interesting history of less-than-stellar acknowledgements of significant anniversaries, as moiself noted in this space, five years ago. What the heck; it all makes for a better story than a gold watch.
* * *
Department Of What Have I Ever Done To Deserve This?
Thursday was quite the day. I awoke Thursday morning at 3:30 AM – a good five hours before the surprise KK delivery – and, as always when I awaken in mid-eve/early am, an earworm was infecting my brain.
This time, the song was a particularly odious one. I’m not talking Osmond Family odious, but almost.
“Oh, did you say something insulting? We’re too busy urging agents of the Mormon church to buy controlling percentages of Proctor & Gamble stock – the makers of the Crest Whitening Strips ® we heartily endorse! – to pay attention to your gentile gibes. ” [1]
It was a Bobby Goldsboro song: The Straight Life.
* * *
Department Of The Stranger’s Post I’m Responding To.
Sub Department Of Why. Do. I. Do. This.
A friend posted the following on Facebook (passing it on, I’m guessing, from someone else’s’ post). Underneath a faded photo of a baby girl and her adorable sisters (all of whom appeared to be under age three), was this entreaty (I removed the names; other than that, the post is as originally written and punctuated.):
PLEASE HELP!!
51 years ago our mother _ _ ___ (nee ____). Walked out of these 3 little girls lives ___ & ___ & ___ (last name) Castle . For what reason were really not sure, we have had several failed attempts to find her this is now our last chance of any hope of finding her. she could have moved abroad Australia or Canada. She will be 74 now born 9th December 1942. Social media seems to help with good things, life can never be complete when you don’t know who or where your mother is. We need this to go WORLD WIDE….. PLEASE HELP ….
I kept second guessing moiself as I typed my comment. I don’t know these people; they aren’t asking for my advice….except that they *are,* in that internet way. By asking for their post to go WORLD WIDE they are seeking a worldwide reaction.
As a citizen of this world, I still feel a keen loyalty to a part of the world with which I have a significant history: working in women’s reproductive health care clinics. Some of the women and girls I served were mired in the myriad of situations which might cause a woman to “walk out” of her children’s lives and resist any attempts to be found. Also, I cringed to read the post’s – unintentional, I assume, yet inherently presumptuous – dis of the lives of adoptees and orphans, and others who may not know their biological mothers but who nonetheless live lives filled with love, fulfillment, and purpose.
So yeah, moiself had to dive in:
“For what reason were really not sure, we have had several failed attempts to find her….” Do you really think it is wise to pursue this? There are probably reasons your “failed attempts to find her” have in fact failed….can you accept that there are likely reasons she may have, that have to do with her not wanting to be found, reasons that might be painful for you to know and impossible (in her mind, at least) for you to truly understand?
I worked in women’s reproductive health care for years, and the stories I heard and was witness to….would take years to describe. Are you prepared for where this might lead?
I’m sorry for your pain; even as I can’t let a statement like “life can never be complete when you don’t know who or where your mother is…” stand uncontradicted, as it is patently false, given the fact that people all over the world have lived fulfilling lives, having to deal with far more in terms of pain and uncertainty.
I wish you and your sisters – and your biological mother, be she alive or dead – all the best, including peace in this matter.
* * *
Department Of Calling All Math Nerds
Help me out on this one. Dateline: Tuesday, circa 7 am, listening to a podcast while doing The Morning Walk Thing ® . The podcast (the name of which escapes me now) [2] featured an interview with a guest who was a mathematician. Mr. Math Man was talking about the “perfect number,” a mathematics concept wherein the divisors of said number add up to the number itself. For example, 6 is a perfect number because 3 + 2 + 1 = 6.
But wait one darn minute. Just prior to revealing this Perfect Number equation, Math Man said that the divisors of 6 are the numbers 3 and 2 (3 x 2 = 6), *AND* 6 and 1 (6 x 1 =6). If you add all of those together you get 12, not 6. Why was he leaving out 6 when he’d just said it was a divisor – as is 1, and he included the 1 in the “perfect number” equation?
No doubt there is some, because-we-define-it-this-way-that’s-why explanation that makes the less-than-perfect (IMO) definition of the perfect number more perfect – an explanation that would have to involve the divisors of the number but not the number itself being included in the “perfect” addition equation.
But wait, there’s more!
Too late.
Since every whole number is divisible by itself and one, that leaves the number one as a partnerless divisor in those perfect number equations…and you could never have a perfect number, using the definition of perfect number which the guest presented, unless the number itself was excluded from its divisors addition – again, which leaves the number one missing its divisor partner. Which seems kinda lonely, to me. Can any number even be considered a divisor without the action of another number?
Yeah, I could google this. I’d just rather throw out to the universe this silly rumination of arcane concepts question of burning importance to the very nature of our existence.
Make that, the divisor stands alone.
* * *
Department Of Momentarily Missing The Point
Moiself has been using a new meditation app. One recent morning in a guided meditation, the narrator instructed me to “…make a mental note in my mind…”
Well…yeah…that is where I would make a *mental* note.
The note I was advised to make had to do about breathing, but instead and immediately moiself started making mental notes about the delightful redundancy of the suggestion.
Yes, my mind is where I make my mental notes,
as opposed to my elbow or my spleen…
Wow! Am I so ahead of the practice, or what?!?!?
That went on for…way longer than it should have.
Although my investigation of the phenomenon assures me that it is common to all humanity, I’ve always thought that the dictionary definition of monkey mind should include a picture of moiself .
* * *
Department Of Silver Linings
The Presidential Inauguration.
As much as I was thrilled for the new Prez and Veep to be sworn in, moiself girded my loins for the inevitable yet no-less-offensive-just-because-they-all-do-it invocation. Of all the things that should *not* be heard in a secular democracy’s inauguration ceremony, religious rhetoric of any kind tops my list. It turned my stomach for a variety of reasons.
I don’t care about Biden’s personal religion – that’s the point, it should be *his* personal business. A nation based on a deliberately crafted, god-free constitution does not need to hear anything resembling advice or entreaties from a minister when we are installing our head of state – in particular, we don’t need the nonsense from a priest who quotes the head of state of the worldwide cabal of celibate (ha!) sexists and altar boy buggerers. [3]
I was saved from my disgust when I realized what was to follow the putrid proselytizing invocation. The Inauguration announcer, who used his Solemn And Important ® voice to announce the Supreme Court Justices, and Harris and Biden, and then the invocation speaker, was also going to use that same voice to introduce she-who-was-to-sing-our-national-anthem.
Mere words cannot describe the petty thrill that tickled moiself from eyebrows to tootsie-toes when I heard those stentorian tones used for the words I never expected would be part of an inaugural ceremony:
“Please welcome Lady Gaga.”
If only Her Ladyship could have worn her meat dress….
* * *
Department Of If I Had My Life To Live Over Again…
…I just might choose a multidisciplinary field of study which would have qualified me to be an “expert” on the recent Freakonomics podcast I found so entertaining. “The Downside of Disgust” (Ep. 448, 1-20-21) dealt with the human biological response and reflex known as disgust.
I imagine teaching an undergraduate course in the science and sociology of disgust. I would call moiself , Professor Eeeeeewwwwwwwwww. [4]
* * *
Department Of Blast From The Past
Typing the previous section about disgust led me to trip down the Memory Lane staircase, where I landed spread-eagle on the floor of a recollection I posted about, way back on 10-19-12 (yikes – moiself has been blogging for that many years?):
October 19, 1945, is the birthdate of Harris Glenn Milstead. Better known as his stage name, “Divine,” the flamboyant transvestite starred in ten John Waters films, [5] and would have been 67 today had he not died 25 years ago from an enlarged heart.
Divine holds a special place in my normal-sized heart ever since we shared an elevator ride in our nation’s capital. I was in town on a business trip, installing a computer system at WWDC. [6] The groundbreaking radio station [7] was located in a high-rise office building in downtown D.C. One morning after returning from our daily get-away-from-these-crazy-radio-people fresh air break, my installation partner R and I boarded an empty elevator in the building’s lobby. The elevator stopped at the next floor, and Divine and his PR agent (or so I guessed, from what I heard of their conversation) got on.
Although he lacked his customary stage attire and fright wig, the bald, 300 lb, self-proclaimed “Drag Queen of the Century” was (for me, at least) immediately recognizable. He was in full, eyebrow-elevating makeup, and looked petty much like the picture (below), despite his oddly conservative attire of a Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants and brown loafers.
R and I observed proper Elevator Etiquette and rode in silence, me using the elevator doors as a focal point as I tried to suppress my shit-eating grin. R stole several furtive/suspicious, OMG glances at Divine, who chatted with his agent about an upcoming promo appearance.
The men exited the elevator two floors before our stop. As soon as the elevator doors closed I turned to R and gushed,
“That was Divine!
R’s cheeks nearly exploded with the force of her sputtered retort:
“That was disgusting!”
Turns out R had no idea who Divine was.
I explained. It didn’t help.
* * *
Pun For The Day
With great flourish, the Spanish magician exclaimed,
“On the count of three, I shall make myself disappear!
Uno! Dos!” …and then he vanished, without a tres.
* * *
May you discover the cheap thrill of using your lowest, most somber voice to say, over and over again, “Lady Gaga;”
May you honor longtime colleagues with appropriate gifts – better yet, just tell them something you like about them;
May your favorite memories be Divine (or at least never disgusting);
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Mormons (usually privately) use the term “gentiles” to refer to anyone – yes, even Jews – outside of their LDS faith.
[2] Gasp – ’tis a podcast host’s worst nightmare, to have the name of their show less memorable than a listener’s random memory of it!
[3] Yes, that would be The Pope. A fucking pope, the most anti-democratic kind of “leader” there is…
[4] And on the first day of class, I’d ask Lady Gaga if I could borrow her meat dress….
[5] Most notably in “Pink Flamingoes,” as Babs Johnson, the film’s “Filthiest Person Alive,” dog-excrement eating heroine (just imagine what the film’s villains had to do).
[6] A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I worked for a company that designed computerized “traffic” systems for radio and television stations.
[7] “DC-101” was the first American radio station to play a Beatles song: “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” in December 1963. DC-101 was where DJ Howard Stern was paired with news anchor Robin Quivers and honed his “shock jock” persona.
