Late in the afternoon yesterday, I was out in my little room off the carport...The King of Paintings Throne Room...where I produce masterpieces and whatever. It was rainin' and gettin' bumpier by the minute. It's actually nice sittin out there listening to the rain and thunder...at a distance anyway.
I'd been out there just long enough to light a cigarette and settle down when there was a tight, sharp, metallic bang...LOUD! like somebody had fired a 44 magnum inside the little metal trash can next to my desk. I could feel the air pressure change and my mouth tasted like I had a penny under my tongue.
I thought it struck the house but, it was about 100 ft. from where I was sitting in the neighbors yard.
My actual job, how I spend my days, is a blast. Despite their initial concerns that I was over-qualified or whatever and that I'd get bored...I love it. All I've heard is what a bang up job I've been doing...more evidence of my embarrassing, slobbering love for what I do.
Well we can't have that....
Evidently I'm supposed to be filling out a weekly pre-report. A report that lists all the stops I'll be making the next week. Then on the following Friday, I amend that report to show what I actually did and do the next weeks pre-report.
Understand that I only have the most general control over where I'm going. I make arrangements to ride with sales reps...I go where they go. That means that I have to request a list of all the stops we'll be making...so I can fill out my weekly pre-report.
"Well ________ didn't have any problem getting the reps to do it."
Good point. Why don't I go ask him how he did it? Only I can't....because he QUIT.
As it turns out, despite the procedural proficiency of the fella before me...the reps don't seem to know the drill. When I requested a list of stops from the fella I'll be riding with on Tuesday...he sent me a list of ten place names. No address, no phone number...not even a city name.
That's an issue because I'm not simply making a list of where I'll be stopping. I have to enter each stop into a piece of software that they got on the black market when the Soviet Union collapsed. You can't enter anything without an address and a phone number.
I spent an hour on Friday afternoon looking up addresses and phone numbers...for places I WILL BE IN ON TUESDAY. An hour of the most precious and finite resource in the Universe...looking for something that I don't need until Friday and which will be right in front of my face on Tuesday.
Of course it's no surprise that the rep doesn't know the procedure. Why would he considering that the number of folks I've ridden with who have even the foggiest ******* of who _______ is could be counted on one hand. I guess he was too busy filing out paper work to get out and do his job. Maybe I could do like the fella before him and just make it all up and go play golf.
At this point you may be asking yourself...and you would be right to...how did they know he was just making it up? After all he wrote it down, entered into The Software...therefore it must have happened. The Software doesn't lie.
Heretical as it may sound, it is possible to use The Software as a tool for lying. They get reports everyday on what product is and isn't moving. Cases, numbers...M-O-N-E-Y..money. People who love to fill out reports...they're the same people that can't be shut up during meetings...are usually people that don't do any actual work.
Every office, every job, has it's stupidities. First thing Monday morning I have to go pick up some product. It takes these jokers two hours to get my samples together...even though the request was made three days in advance. That's what it takes to get the product though...product I sell so I can make them money and they can pay me. It's stupid but it's necessary if we want the samples.
I've done things that were even less necessary than these pre-reports..imaginary things. During basic training when the Drill Sergeants would get a case of the red-*** they'd march us to a freshly mowed clearing and tell us to pick daisies. Of course, I had signed on for that...singed on to have my will subsumed.
This isn't the Army...we don't have that kinda deal. This is stupid and unnecessary...it's a leash. It's a cavalier attitude toward my time and efforts and it's got me on the verge of a depersonalizing rage.
This is being touted as an elitist member of the Liberal media getting her foot stuck in her mouth while being snarky to a Conservative ...and it is that to an extent. When's the last time you heard a news reader stop an interview to ask the academic credentials of a Liberal before moving on to their next point?
What this really is though...is a familiar scene, an example of a condescending new england yankee having her assumptions neatly folded up by a Southerner and politely shoved back up her bigoted a**!
Contessa's from new england, holds all the right views and is a member of the progressive establishment...Mo's just a back slappin, good ole boy politician from Alabama for ***'s sake.
Stoopid yankee cow...that's Highest Honors at Duke.
I have a story due on Friday (cough:Sundayafternoonmaybefirstthingmondaymorning:cough).
I haven't talked to the first person I'm supposed to interview...well, that's not entirely true. I talked to one fella who was gonna text me a contact number for another person that would arrange for me to talk with the people I'm supposed to be interviewing.
It's not uncommon for folks to be under the mistaken impression that this is my job...that it pays that kinda bread. They'll invite me to "come on by Tuesdee mornin'...we'll talk."
"Are we gonna talk about you hiring me because the only way I can come see you on Tuesday morning is if I quit my actual job?"
Maybe it's flattering for people to think that the magazines bigger than it actually is. Don't get me wrong I love the magazine and I'm compensated fairly for my time but, it's not Sports Illustrated.
Never mind that while I can breath through my nose again...I still feel like I've got a horrible hangover...a screaming dehydration headache hangover...a Subway Lounge hangover.
Anyway...same as last time...7:05 pm (Central Time Zone), 0 words.
5:15pm (CTZ), 0 words.
What? I'm strugglin' a little bit. It's not like I just wasted the last 15 minutes watching Tanya Tucker videos on the youtube...
or whatever.
I've got a plan and I'm workin' it.
5:36pm (CTZ), 8 words.
And yes I did just follow a link to a site called the scientific psychic...they promised figures on annual sports injuries. What?
5:50pm (CTZ), 8 words.
There were more words in the text I just sent Martha demanding that she try the bread pudding I brought home today than there are in my article.
I love bread pudding...to an extent that would be embarrassing if I had the capacity to be embarrassed.
6:36pm (CTZ), 45 words.
The subject of the last sentence I wrote is a Martian...we'll see if it stays.
7:09 (CTZ), 51 words.
The fact that Freebird has become a kinda punchline in rocknroll is an injustice.
7:25 (CTZ), June 15, 86 words...
and 10 minutes wasted on Jay Z videos. Jigga WHAAAAT?
8:36 (CTZ), 89 words.
This is what I should be writing about anyway...
I hope our readers understand that there is a time coming in the near future, after a series of team previews, when you will have to choose an SEC team to root for in the Fall...it's mandatory.
9:25 (CTZ), June 16th, 95 words.
Watching the Open Championship online (I could be watching it on the couch if not for this blasted chore...could be playing at my own club too. That's right resolution watchers...you read right). The announcer just made a reference to Are-Kansas...and was quickly corrected by his colleague. Though I don't think that pronunciation is completely unheard of. Lucas Glover's a good'n by the way...he will dominate.
CSA! CSA! CSA!
9:32 (CTZ), 93 words.
Y'all need to watch out for Bubba too.
10:05 (CTZ), 95 words.
They've just discussed Ricky Fowler as a potential rival for Rory...unless it's a contest for the most ridiculous looking person in sports, I don't think Ricky ready for all that.
11:08 (CTZ), 210 words.
Progress but, there's a tv hanging on the wall in this coffee shop and it is now airing an old Tarzan movie. Turn out the lights..the parties over. This whole enterprise is doomed.
11:18 (CTZ, 245 words.
Now Seergay's [sic] here. This is hopeless. Seergay is a professor at a local university and he's from Russia. Great fella...friendly and cheerful. He's busy talking up the young lady behind the counter right now...so his distraction for me is not deliberate. It's his freakin outfit! I've gone cross-eyed. He's wearing a sweat stained orange T-shirt (heat index hasn't been below 100 for days), red and black plaid shorts, an elaborate fanny pack and argyle socks...d*** it MAN WHY?.....Why?
6:03 (CTZ), 314 words.
Took a break...who is it that could maintain this level of intense focus without a break?
6:46 (CTZ), 316 words.
How am I supposed to work when I've miraculously found a good Gator video on the youtube (great football team, awful youtube fans). I don't own the audio by the way ...but I'm interested if it's for sale.
9:16 (CTZ), June 17th, 435 words.
Moving along but with Phil moving up the leader board...it's touch and go at best.
Just heard the unmistakable non-accent accent of a midwesterner yelling..."IN THE HOLE." Cretin.
1:00 (CTZ), 688.
I guess the intensity of my struggles have proved to be too much for some readers...blog activity has come to a screeching halt.
Good for Clarke. Good dood.
7:48pm (CTZ), DONE.
It's out of my hands now. Thank cupcakes. That was the most tedious writing chore I've had since I took a Human Evolution course in my last semester at Millsaps.
A little late for that. This joker sees a person he hears a dinner bell and makes a bee line. That's the problem with feedin' 'em.
When I was a kid we spent a lot of weekends at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge in Florida.
We would use these tiny little brine shrimp as bait for fishing. Scoop 'em up with hand nets from the pool where that picture was taken. It didn't take long for the gators to appear. You'd dip your net in the water and a head would pop up as you pulled it out...Some bigger and more disturbing than others.
I wonder how much of this The Sister remembers. I know she remembers the time that a bull gator growled at us. I bet she remembers me riding all the way back to Tallahassee with a three inch splinter in my big toe picked up during our frantic run across a wooden bridge to get as far away from that sound as possible.
What? Yeah. We were barefoot...of course we were.
Anyway, like I said I never could catch any fish at that place...so, I crabbed. Tie a chicken neck to the end of a string, throw in the water, give it a minute, pull it out...crabs. The problem is gators like chicken necks too. It doesn't take 'em long to associate people with food...humans cause hunger pangs. That's when an otherwise disinterested creature becomes an eater of dogs and small children...so don't feed the gators! Last time we were there, crabbing had been banned.
Don't worry about feeding the snakes...
They seem to be managing.
Satan's hand-puppet there is no bigger round than your index finger. He's devouring a frog...at an excruciating pace. The frog was starting to balloon. We looked for something long enough to catch and fling the snake over to the gator...to snuff out that little devil and put the poor frog out of his misery but we couldn't. Beastly.
Nature's a &*^&^%%%(**&^^! You won't find any more passionate conservationists than you will in The South...hunting and fishing are so deeply engrained in the culture...but, you won't find a lot of support for abstract, misty eyed concerns about the "environment."
When your towns aren't being erased by hurricanes...you're dodging tornadoes, gators, and snakes. The Sister knows two little boys that have been bitten by Cotton Mouths, one in the backyard, the other in his own garage, this year...terrible. Sometimes around here it seems like a fight...and not a fair one (ask the folks in Tuscaloosa).
Don't wanna be overly dramatic about it...we aren't struggling to survive...at least not most of the time :).
For 38 years I've been coming to the Gulf Coast and I'd never seen one in the water til my brush with an attack this morning. I was watching some mullet jump around when I noticed him...about 10 - 15 in front of me. He slid by as smoothly and effortlessly as the shadow of a gliding bird...then he was gone.
He wasn't quite as big as the one in the picture...maybe 2 1/2 - 3 ft long, but menacing...very menacing.
