MENTAL THUMBS

Several years ago I had a coworker down the peninsula who would leave work related voicemails on people's answering machines all weekend. Which, of course, we learned to ignore. Odd thoughts would come upon her in the middle of the night. Procedure-related thoughts. Fax machine placement thoughts. She couldn't write work emails from home, and the cell-phone had not been invented yet. Seeing as my paging device was the number I had let work know about, which displayed the number from which a call came, I learned to simply delete without listening. We all thought she was heading off the deep end. She ended up working for a law office and I hear she was very happy there.

Which shows that law offices are unhealthy work environments.

Last night at around two thirty in the morning I almost became her. There are several devices at work that are controlled by remotes. Press the right buttons and everything is fine with the world. Don't press them and things are wrong, out of whack, off somehow, and subtly disturbing in a way that you couldn't quite put your finger on.

I remembered that I had put one of those clickers temporarily somewhere where that clicker doesn't go and no one will find it unless I mention it. So I suppose I should call them -- I'm off today with no intention of going in -- but doing so in the mide of the night, or even leaving a voicemail at any time regarding the crucially, earthshakingly important on-off button device, would mark me as berserk and possibly losing my marbles.

Which might actually be the case, but I don't want them to know that.

Besides, one thing I've noticed is that after two or three days at work, because of the nature of the job and the vast amounts of tea which I've drunk to stay hydrated, my body chemistry is somewhat off kilter and I think differently. It takes at least a morning -- several hours -- of sitting around in my jammies and twiddling mental thumbs, for my head to be stable again.


Being a sane balanced individual is dependent on chemistry, environment, and perspective. To put it differently, a starving person in a burning dumpster filled with recently discarded pastries in a shopping area which is rapidly flooding because of a levee-breach may not make the most rational decisions ever. Neither will the raccoons and the grizzly bear that are in there with her. None of them did before, that's how they all ended up in there.
Stuffing themselves with black forest cake.

Someone ought to design a new type of dumpster which can float and is steerable.
The world is crying out for that.


I am temporarily charmed by the image of the Sacramento River Delta studded by a fleet of styrofoam dumpsters crewed by wildlife and stoned party blondes fleeing burning shopping malls. It's sort of Gilligan's Island Meets Mad Max.
All gorging on cake.

The most important individual is a sugar-crazed grizzly bear.
That's almost a metaphor for life.



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