"The time has
come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Too many things.
Isn't it intuitively obvious to the
most casual observer that pigs have wings? How else do
they fly?
I keep starting a long entry and
deleting it. Which of the many things do I write about?
Flying pigs? My new job? My new glasses? The
non-Auntmobile's defective headlight? The weather? The
Red Sox?
OK, the Red Sox. I stayed up too
late last night listening to the Red Sox finally come
back and defeat the pinstriped ones in New York after
rain delays. Alas today I am very tired, too tired to
cope with the sudden intrusion of an 800-lb. gorilla in
the living room let alone an epidemic of flying pigs. I
think the 800-lb. gorilla and the flying pigs may be
related. But I'll get to that in a minute after I mention
that the Red Sox lost big time this afternoon and Derek
Lowe got knocked out of the game in the second inning
with a comebacker to his ankle. The Fox TV announcers
ever so helpfully nattered on and on about somebody with
an undiagnosed hairline fracture who kept playing on it
with disastrous results. So, being a victim of Red Sox
mood disorder, especially when it's raining wildebeestes
and loraxes out there, I'm feeling kind of
grumpy.
The weather is even worse in Rhode
Island. Hence, Nancy is not joining me for the Strut for
the Strays. And it will be next week before she gets to
see my new glasses, for which I have waited a month.
People keep telling me I look good so the glasses must be
having the subtle effect I desired: to look younger,
hipper, less depressed, less workaholic. Also they are
having the less subtle effect of reducing both the number
of times my lenses pop out while I'm driving and the
number of times I cut myself on the unraveling strands of
picture wire holding the frames together. Yes, folks I
have had these glasses for two whole days and they have
not ended
up in a tree by the Tisza River
or behind
a radiator in my bedroom.
Will wonders never cease?
This astounding purchase of new
glasses, which I have been needing for well over a year,
has been brought about by my equally astounding return to
gainful employment. It's weird getting used to being in a
cubicle, but it's easy getting used to a regular
paycheck. I haven't thought up a code name for the new
employer yet, but when I do it will somehow encompass the
fact that this job meets two very important requirements:
it's not a startup and I'm not the boss of anyone. Film
at 11:00.
Needless to say, I slept in today.
Sometime shortly before I woke up I dreamt that Stacy (of
cat shelter fame) had accidentally let out a huge gorilla
that was staying in her house and I had gotten it to come
back in and sit on the couch. The living room in the
dream was neither Stacy's nor mine nor that of anyone I
know. So the gorilla was sitting there on the couch
looking serious and someone was interviewing Stacy about
what it was like interviewing the gorilla on the couch.
Stacy sounded more and more like Terry
Gross with each answer. I
was awake quite some time before I realized that I was
hearing Terry Gross being interviewed on Weekend
Edition Saturday.
Strange that metaphor should show
up in my dream. As I was making my morning pot of coffee
I had a phone call from a friend for whom the time had
come to talk of something akin to admitting there has
been an 800-lb. gorilla in his living room for the past
year.
Years ago at Cosmodemonic Telecomm,
I was dealing with a company whose status reports were
sometimes less than credible. I used to pass them on to
my boss incorporated in my status report rollup with one
more item at the end: "All pigs fed and ready to fly."
Just so my boss knew I was not being taken in by them.
Somehow over the years I've lost a little of my edge in
being alert and skeptical, especially when it's messy
human frailty and not business. I guess I needed to be
reminded not to take things at face value.
