This Shit is Sabotage (and I love my vulgarity, love it)
Where was I at 8:05 this morning? Still on the damn road! At 8:07? Tearing along 235. At 8:09? Stuffing a soda—not CVDDP—into the cooler in the cafeteria.
Is anyone else consistently late for work? No matter what time I leave home some new piece of road is ripped up, or some new jackass in a Taurus (Garrett: Tore Ass) has rear-ended a delivery van, or some confused hospital patient is tottering from lane to lane, trying to bearhug someone’s headlights. And the really remarkable thing is that I still make it to work at the same time, always between 8:04 and 8:09. I can leave home at 7:20, crawl through gravel and holes in the road, and pull into the IVRS parking lot at 8:05. If I swear, smack my alarm clock, and leave at 7:34, the construction is a little less bad and I pull in at 8:04. If I leave at 7:25 I arrive at 8:03.
Today it was 1st Street. Down to one lane. And of course there were the jackasses, the 2 or 3 [insert expletive worthy of their vileness] who decide to rush past the 30 or 50 cars that have been calmly waiting in line, the long string of people who are late, too—yes, we’re all late, all so fucking late—these people who rush past us all, going through closed lanes and turning lanes, and then will nose back in at the front of the line, just before the freeway ramp. And the best part—the absolutely best part—is how angry they look if you don’t let them in. They’ve just rammed to the front of a quarter mile of cars, have essentially ramped over all our trunks and smashed down over our hoods, and now they’re nosing they want politeness, want social manners. Sometimes they’ll just jam back in there and hope for the best. If this ever happens in front of me there will be a collision, because when there’s some fuckface waiting for a spot to cut into line I follow within bare micrometers of the next bumper up. But always there’s some grandpa or mother or pudgy office boy ready to slow down the line, fuck us all over a little more, to let the new car in. Fuck!
And all this is because of construction. I’ve noticed that wherever I move construction follows: in Cedar Falls I had one blissful year of college and then sidewalks started disappearing, parking lots sank into the earth and were replaced with bulldozer pits, building walls were toppled. Signs were erected telling us how beautiful the campus would be, and how handicapped accessible, and how free of broken pavement and inefficient walking paths. And all this would happen by 2006, or 2008, or some other time long after I and most everyone else on that campus were gone. By the time I was a senior the entire east section was cordoned off by green tarp and a plastic netting that looked like it should hold giant strawberries. The union was all fucked up, was basically inaccessible. Getting to the library was like questing to Mount Doom. And when I went to visit Alyssa the next year most of that was gone, the sidewalks were back, you could actually walk somewhere. Amazing, amazing.
Then to south Des Moines with 14th Street all ripped up, and the intersection with Army Post regularly marked by orange barrels. And in Ankeny—when A and I moved in the streets were long but quick shots to Target, the coffee shop, the booze store. Now they are offroad tracks. I drive the perimeter of the city to avoid driving straight to the places I want to be.
And this is why I’m always late in the mornings. No one says anything to me, but when we used to talk about it—my partner and I always complained together—the people who said anything would just tell us to leave for work earlier. These are secretaries, okay? The people who make 8 bucks an hour basically to take shit all day. They’d give us a stoic but proud look, the sort of look that says “you fucking whiner,” and would say, well, I leave home at 7. So it isn’t a problem.The oldest of them, this old lady who never, ever stops complaining, actually said “I’m here every day by 7:30” and then stared at us as if to say, Duh. Aim to be here a half hour early and you’ll never be late. And at these times we say no way, too tired, etc., when really I should say What the hell is wrong with you? Is your life so void of meaning that you can go to bed thirty minutes early and be here before anyone else arrives? And better: I want to point out that didn’t they just get reprimanded the other day for leaving at 4:28, two minutes early? Obviously their 30-minute headstart is appreciated around here.
. . .
The coffee house/movie/Amish mockery Saturday was excellent. I was so wired that after driving home at 4 in the morning, finally willing myself to sleep a half hour later, and waking up at 9 I felt great, felt like I could vault out the window, run to Goathead’s, and scale his balcony. I have this visual: the little guys running the show in my body tore a sheet off the calendar:
“Shit, it’s Saturday.”
“Prepare for booze.”
But instead of booze it was coffee, and an absurd amount of it: 2 monstro cups with Carol for lunch and then three hours and a game of Settlers worth later. And it all washed over everything, and my body expected booze but got caffeine and I was so hyper, I could have burst, could have exploded in a mess of limbs and looked drawn and quartered without horse or rope.
Andy, you should post about K. Klopfenstein and the Adventure of the Angry Husband.
That is all.
Is anyone else consistently late for work? No matter what time I leave home some new piece of road is ripped up, or some new jackass in a Taurus (Garrett: Tore Ass) has rear-ended a delivery van, or some confused hospital patient is tottering from lane to lane, trying to bearhug someone’s headlights. And the really remarkable thing is that I still make it to work at the same time, always between 8:04 and 8:09. I can leave home at 7:20, crawl through gravel and holes in the road, and pull into the IVRS parking lot at 8:05. If I swear, smack my alarm clock, and leave at 7:34, the construction is a little less bad and I pull in at 8:04. If I leave at 7:25 I arrive at 8:03.
Today it was 1st Street. Down to one lane. And of course there were the jackasses, the 2 or 3 [insert expletive worthy of their vileness] who decide to rush past the 30 or 50 cars that have been calmly waiting in line, the long string of people who are late, too—yes, we’re all late, all so fucking late—these people who rush past us all, going through closed lanes and turning lanes, and then will nose back in at the front of the line, just before the freeway ramp. And the best part—the absolutely best part—is how angry they look if you don’t let them in. They’ve just rammed to the front of a quarter mile of cars, have essentially ramped over all our trunks and smashed down over our hoods, and now they’re nosing they want politeness, want social manners. Sometimes they’ll just jam back in there and hope for the best. If this ever happens in front of me there will be a collision, because when there’s some fuckface waiting for a spot to cut into line I follow within bare micrometers of the next bumper up. But always there’s some grandpa or mother or pudgy office boy ready to slow down the line, fuck us all over a little more, to let the new car in. Fuck!
And all this is because of construction. I’ve noticed that wherever I move construction follows: in Cedar Falls I had one blissful year of college and then sidewalks started disappearing, parking lots sank into the earth and were replaced with bulldozer pits, building walls were toppled. Signs were erected telling us how beautiful the campus would be, and how handicapped accessible, and how free of broken pavement and inefficient walking paths. And all this would happen by 2006, or 2008, or some other time long after I and most everyone else on that campus were gone. By the time I was a senior the entire east section was cordoned off by green tarp and a plastic netting that looked like it should hold giant strawberries. The union was all fucked up, was basically inaccessible. Getting to the library was like questing to Mount Doom. And when I went to visit Alyssa the next year most of that was gone, the sidewalks were back, you could actually walk somewhere. Amazing, amazing.
Then to south Des Moines with 14th Street all ripped up, and the intersection with Army Post regularly marked by orange barrels. And in Ankeny—when A and I moved in the streets were long but quick shots to Target, the coffee shop, the booze store. Now they are offroad tracks. I drive the perimeter of the city to avoid driving straight to the places I want to be.
And this is why I’m always late in the mornings. No one says anything to me, but when we used to talk about it—my partner and I always complained together—the people who said anything would just tell us to leave for work earlier. These are secretaries, okay? The people who make 8 bucks an hour basically to take shit all day. They’d give us a stoic but proud look, the sort of look that says “you fucking whiner,” and would say, well, I leave home at 7. So it isn’t a problem.The oldest of them, this old lady who never, ever stops complaining, actually said “I’m here every day by 7:30” and then stared at us as if to say, Duh. Aim to be here a half hour early and you’ll never be late. And at these times we say no way, too tired, etc., when really I should say What the hell is wrong with you? Is your life so void of meaning that you can go to bed thirty minutes early and be here before anyone else arrives? And better: I want to point out that didn’t they just get reprimanded the other day for leaving at 4:28, two minutes early? Obviously their 30-minute headstart is appreciated around here.
. . .
The coffee house/movie/Amish mockery Saturday was excellent. I was so wired that after driving home at 4 in the morning, finally willing myself to sleep a half hour later, and waking up at 9 I felt great, felt like I could vault out the window, run to Goathead’s, and scale his balcony. I have this visual: the little guys running the show in my body tore a sheet off the calendar:
“Shit, it’s Saturday.”
“Prepare for booze.”
But instead of booze it was coffee, and an absurd amount of it: 2 monstro cups with Carol for lunch and then three hours and a game of Settlers worth later. And it all washed over everything, and my body expected booze but got caffeine and I was so hyper, I could have burst, could have exploded in a mess of limbs and looked drawn and quartered without horse or rope.
Andy, you should post about K. Klopfenstein and the Adventure of the Angry Husband.
That is all.
0 Replies:
Post a Comment
<< Home