Peace Will Never Find You.

Barely holding it together this morning. I can look past the inane Seahawks blather because at this point I've decided it is nothing less than a survival mechanism. I even looked past the co-temp offering me helpful 'instructions' in a bland almost incomprehensible manner before returning to his inane Seahawks blather. Again, I kind of lump that in with a basic survival skill I will simply have to learn to develop or perish. What I simply can not come to grips with was when the same staid office lackey brought up the workflow monitor and began expounding on people's pace and progress. As if it were a race. A race to what I wonder? What could we be hoping to be best at? Are we trying to see who can become unemployed the fastest? Because when it comes to applying for that shit I have it down to a science and no one is going to get there before me because I. am. waiting. for. the day. Longingly.

Feeling Like It's Nowhere.

So yesterday's trip to Chipotle could be seen as both a success and also a sad defeat. I successfully acquired lunch and a coupon for one free burrito/bowl/whatever else it is they serve, but my faith in humanity, what little of it remained, has been all but extinguished.

First, the corner of Third and Pike was a miasma of meth addiction and broken humanity. No fewer than 26 homeless people not possessing more than seven teeth among them tottered about the corner, holding signs, vaguely making eye contact, and yes the 'fat Christian piece of shit' much maligned in last weeks I Anonymous was representing along with his signs in re Jesus.

Inside the establishment things improved very little. I arrived at 11:03 AM at an establishment purporting to open at 11:00 AM and found myself at the back of a line containing no fewer than 40 business casual clad people hankering for free Mission style burritos. Or so I thought. As I got closer to the order line I observed that most of the poly-blend panted mofos were ordering chicken or carnitas. It suddenly hit me. They weren't here for the promotion. This is their ordinary lunch. And as I actually got sucked into the ordering process I realized they were professionals at it. Myself, not having been to a Chipotle since November, 2013 required complete sentences and fully articulated syllables from the staff to create my wrapped concoction. Others in line were seemingly on auto-pilot and one in particular appeared to using some freaky type of mental telepathy to communicate his desires to the Chipotle Ninjas.

Burrito and receipt good for one free burrito in hand ensconced in a brown paper bag with an Amy Tan quotation I will never take the time read I went back to the office and devoured the thing with a ferocity scarcely witnessed by my office mate. The sofritos were good, a nice accompaniment to the hot sauce, the brown rice was under cooked which is so easy to do if you are in a rush.

I brought my own lunch today.

Pictures Of Anything Else.

I'm still trying to digest my lunch from a week back wherein Nut Rage (Type A Korean lady) was bemoaning her career fate in the lunch room while I was trying to down some extra spicy Kee Mao Noodle in peace. The long and short of it is that she is just too smarty pants for her own good. People constantly disappoint her for not living up to her level of awesomeness, and she gets bored with things too easily because, you know, she's so brilliant and everything. I managed to finish most of the noodle despite my mouth being almost on the floor.

And another co-temp, the moody one as I like to call her, has given up carbs which I don't think is going to do anything for her disposition. She does get particularly animated about football, however, and proves the point, I mean circles downtown Seattle in public transportation to merely make the point, that if Americans paid half as much attention to shit that matters as they do to football we would have cured cancer, solved global warming, and probably discovered the secret behind nuclear fusion.

Having rebounded from last weeks 'People are not living up to my expectations' lunchtime screed I'm going to have to hit Chipotle today. I guess if you order the tofu sofritos burrito today your receipt then becomes a voucher for a free burrito for any day in the month of February. Dope. I'm all down with free shit, and I'm still stinging from grabbing the wrong coupon and paying full price for Princesses' bag of kibble.

A Most Natural Pose.

There's no use denying that I am an unrepentant Murdoch Mysteries junkie. I leave work every day promptly at the same time and whether my work is done or not, whether there is a late afternoon meeting or not (only the foul hold meetings after 1:00) I could care less. My stories are about to start and I'm about to enjoy them come rain, shine or unemployment.

The 'thumpa thumpa be still my beating heart' Yannick Bisson is the undeniable lure of the show. His chiseled square jaw, and staid monotone delivery make me melt into my rocking chair every single weeknight. Even fluffy princess has a hard time breaking me out of my trance. Last night she spent somewhere between four to seventy six minutes hurling her jingly jangly ball about the apartment and the most it could illicit from me was a 'If you lose that under the bureau you better not come crying to me', eyes never leaving the screen except for the commercial interruptions which I absolutely despise with an ugly hatred I find hard to disguise from my nearest neighbors.

I'm definitely into my mysteries. Miss Marple is frankly who I try to model my life around. Not that I go butting my nose into other people's business or misfortune, but I have been teaching myself petit point, and developed an unnatural affinity for chunky over-sized cardigans. I've almost gone so far as to demand from an ophthalmologist a diagnosis of slightly imperfect vision just so I can have an excuse to wear glasses which I can then peer over knowingly whenever I feel 'something is amiss.'  It would be delicious.

Yes. The weather may be imperfect, it may be wet and windy and the people may be unreasonably disturbed. There may be a breathtaking paucity of decent Mexican food, but as long as I have nightly access to Canadian TV I really don't see myself returning to the 'delights' of Los Angeles any time soon

Positioning Yourself Against The Tide.

Matt Banahan and Sam Burgess. Crashing into one another's arms. Quite right. Two of my favoritest rugby players playing together for Bath. Tearing it up. It all seems to make perfect sense even if I had to sit through American football for what seemed like all day yesterday.

I ran to the store to get kibble for my precious princess. I grabbed the wrong coupon on my way out of the house so I had to pay full price. Puddles! It was an hour before kick-off so everyone in the store was jamming about like mad, trying to get their booze home before the game started, and let's face it, it really is a dull sport that requires copious amounts of booze before one can even pretend to be interested. My check-out karma is still in the gutter and I found myself behind a woman who decided to put all her fruit in one bag so the checker had to take each piece out and weigh it separately while I just sat there and watched, waited, and wished sincerely that I was anywhere but there.

During the game I was entirely scandalized when I developed a full bore crush on the Packer's quaterback Aaron Rodgers. He doesn't play for the Seahawks so I felt just slightly disloyal. After the game when I went back to the store to buy more beer to wash the taste of dispassionate victory out of my mouth the drunk teezed out red-neck girls screaming on the streets made me feel all the less guilty. Like I knew deep down I was doing the right thing not rooting for the Seahawks.

Whipped up a potato salad, finished the crossword, called the parents and nestled into another installment of Downton. Except for the American football it was still a remarkably nice Sunday.

For Fuck's Sake Just Turn Your Head.

People in Seattle are really bitter. I mean really, really embittered. And I don’t really want to generalize and luckily I don’t have to because the local weekly has this, and this isn't alone. There is a corollary in the daily paper. A forum where people can anonymously write in and bitch about whatever it is they feel needs to be bitched about. Anonymously, of course. Then there is a comments section where readers of the diatribe can chime in and overly misuse the term ‘passive aggressive’ and bitch about the anonymous person doing the bitching.. Hint: It isn’t passive aggressive if it is outwardly dick-ballish. Just saying.

What exactly they have to be bitter about is entirely beyond me. It’s beautiful here, the weather is mild, of course some say shite, but it isn't like the people in this city have had to endure a 20^th consecutive day of 90 + degree weather coupled with gridlock and cockroaches and coyotes that force you to veer off the road to your untimely death. The food is great, the music scene is superb, and yes the tourists can be a little bit of a drag, but they are localized to areas easy to avoid and just think about it. At least you live in a city that tourists actually want to visit. This isn't Topeka or Cleveland for fuck’s sake so pull out your thumbs and smile you dowdy, pouty, charcoal gray North Face wearing downers.

Sidewalk hegemons notwithstanding of course. I really only mention it because I work with a woman who is the most dour depressed woman I think I have ever had the displeasure to work with. Every word that comes out of her mouth is imbued with a world weary drawl one rarely hears from a 25 year old. It seems like she's seen everything, done everything and couldn't possibly care less. This despite the fact that she laconically recites everything everybody read on Buzzfeed yesterday, today. It has grown wearisome to say the least. But I'm not going to let it get me down too much. I mean in the land of the amazing lunch and bomb thrift stores (I've scored Balmain and Lanvin since my arrival) how can I possibly get too down about anything for too long?

A More Favourable Brand Of Decline.

The sidewalk hegemon is in many ways far more baffling than your garden variety homicidal motorist. Since I slept in this morning and didn’t have to go to work in utter and impenetrable darkness I decided to walk the 20 or 22 odd blocks to work. This gave me ample opportunity to observe another specimen on Seattle denizen up close and within their native habitat.

The homeless hegemon gets a free pass since basically everything in their life is in some way attached to themselves or whatever it is they are carrying, pushing or pulling. The need to park it directly in front of one when it is abundantly clear you are attempting get somewhere is, of course,  another flavor in inbred American entitlement. Even the homeless in America feel entitled, and given the strict homeless protection statutes in this city in particular our homeless are actually a discreet, insular and oddly privileged class. In Los Angeles the LAPD just take them out into the desert and leave them to die. Not so here. Sadly.

The coffee carrying and street eating sidewalk hegemon is almost another breed entirely.  They have so many places to go, countless people to see, they move, they shake, they get their hustle on. So much so they can’t possibly be bothered to sit down and imbibe or masticate their luncheon.  They just can’t be bothered to wait for anybody. That is of course except for me whenever one of them encounters me on the sidewalk because, Jesus, I just don’t play that game.  I’ll knock someone’s bagel clean across the street just to see them pounce after it like a spastic dog. Pathway is clear.

Breeder hegemon. What could be more beneficial to the propagation of our species and the inevitable ecological meltdown than the breeder hegemon. Even though dogs do it, cats do it, every fucking farm animal known to exist does it, whenever a human being manages to squeeze a copy of themselves from between their legs at least 1 in 3 of them thinks it bestows on them some mythical Godlike state that entitles them to the road, the sidewalk, your attention, your sympathy, and eventually, the world itself. They make the homeless variety of hegemony look like North Korea on a bad day. Note: Whoever invented the double stroller needs to be erased from existence

The hipster hegemon. Their carefully curated outfit and personality take up far more space than their actual physical frame. Whether it’s the lanky coat, the clunky shoes, the over styled hair, the designer dog or God forbid the two designer dogs their baggage is not just their baggage, it is inevitably your problem.

The I’ve got so much shit to take to work I need an honest to God piece of rolling luggage to get there hegemon. This is like a far less self-conscious hipster hegemon. Still self-important and self-obsessed and self-centered, but their crushing sense of smug self-importance emanates from their work rather than their bangs.

             I could go on I really could, but I can remember only recently I bitched about how the internet was regressing into a collection of lists of this and lists of that and I just realized that this is exactly what this is becoming.  

File Size Exceeds Framework Parameters.

Riding the bus in Seattle is like clubbing it in West Hollywood in the 90’s. Everyone dresses to impress, vies for an uncomfortable level of attention and predictably gets really, and I mean really huffy if they don’t get the attention they feel their distressed selvage denim merits.

Every day is a little bit of the same. Pursed lips, tortured gazes, crossing and uncrossing of legs, sometimes people come quite near to actually waving their inexplicably inappropriate for an urban setting work-boots in one’s face. Digital devices come out later, and it isn't the device that is being conspicuously removed from one's bag and placed back inside for no apparent reason, but the case which sheaths it. Could it be Want? Brenthaven? Who gives a fuck? I could be wrong. Maybe people are just really nervous every single morning and I just notice to much.

Taking the same bus every morning one would think one would happen upon a few regulars, but that scarcely seems to be the case. It always seems to be a new bunch. I suppose some are running late trying to pair the right silhouette with the on fleek coloring. Who knows. I do my best not to notice and since I unfailingly have a book with me (an actual book as Kindles are for the intellectually ashamed) and I bury my head in it occasionally raising it just enough to block the view of a fellow riders all too appreciated Timberlands.

In any case I was certainly killing it yesterday, and I don't have to say that myself because some gentleman on 3rd and Seneca did it for me. He liked my jacket, scarf, shoes, and finally he just decided that I just looked damn good. I told him thank you, and that is something everyone likes to hear. A small smile did creep across my face since I knew he wasn't getting the full impression as the YvesSaintLaurent underwear I was rocking rarely comes out of the drawer, and by rarely I mean when and only when I have nothing else clean.

Props to me.

Wondering If It Is Tasteful.

A healthy number of my most traumatic experiences have occurred in crosswalks. Yesterday was no exception. There is one particular intersection at 15th and Harrison which as a motorist I avoid like an icy mountain pass and in this instance it quite nearly did me in. I had two bags of groceries, or rather one bag of groceries and another tote filled with my workday accouterments. I was walking briskly, and the westbound Subaru on Harrison had already yielded, two of the northbound Subarus had already signaled their intention to yield so I took their cue and darted across the crosswalk. The pedestrian behind me hesitated which upon reflection I should have done. The eastbound Toyota making a left onto 15th is where the trouble lie.

Looking as though she had just been blinded by some 'doctor' purporting to carry out lasix procedures  in a strip mall she blinked uncontrollably in the haze that was covering Capitol Hill that evening, then the dingbat neither stopped nor yielded, but rather sped up towards me. I took a few brisk steps to get out of her way, but once she realized that even if she successfully flattened me she would nonetheless collide with one of the three Subarus that were good enough to yield she then and only then decided to stop.

I froze completely in the crosswalk, turned my head and looked at this creature who had undeniably just tried to murder me with a furious look of unmitigated contempt. She was incapable of meeting my gaze. I contemplated for a moment putting my years of martial arts training to use and kicking out her side mirror, sending shards of glass into her already obviously molested eyeballs, but soon I grabbed hold of myself and satisfied myself with a few choice expletives centering primarily on her tortuously curled hair and oozing puffy cheeks. I then turned around and completed my haranguing journey through the crosswalk only pausing for a moment to take in some people who were just sitting down at one of Ethan Stowell's newest greasy spoons and could only barely manage a sigh of sympathy for their unfailingly bad taste.

I have no idea if or when I'm going to be taken out in one of these Seattle crosswalks, but it can't be far off. In Los Angeles the drivers seem to understand that vehicular homicide is a crime which sends you to prison for an undisclosed number of ass rapings and face slashings. The good people of Seattle have seemingly not been made aware of this statute.

I have no problem generalizing because a similar thing happened to me this morning. The Indian fellow in a car I could not make out, but wouldn't be surprised if it were a make of Subaru I'm unfamiliar with, was not so much trying to murder me, but hurry me along by inching his car closer and closer to me while I was string to cross Pike. Well. I was having none of it. I raised my hands in protest, and the mental defective just signaled back that it was OK, but I wasn't satisfied. The speed in which I traverse a crosswalk is entirely up to me, and is not dictated by some fuck-wit motorist running late for something of unfathomable non-importance. So I continued my hand gestures for an uncomfortably protracted period. I'm always early for work and I have all the time in the world to make dizzy motorists behave themselves.

Unbelievable.      

The Selfless Solitude.

Is it just me or has the internet regressed into an amalgamation of silly stupid lists and only an amalgamation of silly stupid lists? 13 Things you have to do in ( insert city) you have to do in ( insert Month), 15 things to not put on your resume, 55 things only Danielle Radcliffe fan-boys understand and the like. 

Buzzfeed, Thrillist, and then eventually Yahoo picks up on a few of these and regurgitates them on their homepage a few weeks later. It has really started to bring me down as the internet has become a more vital aspect of my day.

There is the cannibalistic element to it, the creative bankruptcy of reformatting someone else's content and fobbing it off as your own work. In non-internet industries it is called plagiarism or S-T-E-A-L-I-N-G, but in silicon valley speak it is just "aggregating". Most programmers and techies don't really know what that word means. It's like one of humanities great linguistic fogs. Like calling something ironic when in fact it is merely coincidental or labeling someone as passive aggressive when they are just merely being blandly rude or perhaps gently forceful. I'm surrounded by people utterly incapable of using language correctly, and short of drop kicking the lot of them straight into the pages of a thesaurus I've given up any hope of this changing.

Just to give you an idea, one of the 'techies' I work with called me a 'mathematical genius' simply because I did some pretty basic math in my head. I really don't think she was kidding. I'm pretty sure most people like that move their mouths when they read, and several of those probably never learned how to read. And these are the people we are entrusting with our data and our futures. Look out. The future is a crushing mind fuck where the internet will tell you what you had for lunch last Tuesday, but in no way can help people formulate a complete and comprehensible sentence..

And I Left It At That.

It's a good mother fucking thing this city has decent scenery. On the days you can see 6 feet in front of you in any case. Monday is already a mess and the denizens of this hateful burg are entirely to blame.

Some lumbering douche fuck in a stupid hat couldn't manage to walk in a mother fucking straight line this morning. This, despite the fact that we were in a crosswalk and there were in fact actual visual aids painted on the asphalt to assist the poor touched dip shit navigate said straight line.  Assuming that I was either completely intangible or that I would move out of his way he collided with me. He of course immediately started saying something vicious to me, but my headphones were on, and I was listening to something decent (Taylor Deupree) so I missed his little fiery meltdown entirely. It was probably a good thing.

Then I arrived at work too early to activate the stupid elevator so I jammed across the street and bought some things at the drug store. Andre, the perpetually depressed cashier couldn't be cheered by my sunny disposition or my bright orange Helmut Lang jacket so I slinked away wondering if the SAD would ever effect me like it has so obviously gripped Andre.

I still had time to waste and a few extra dollars in my pocket so I decided to blow them at Starbucks. Blow them in fact I really did. I ordered a triple espresso, pudgy and pallid 'barista' reads the drink order off the side of my cup as though he can't remember what he had just made and hands me what looks undeniably like a double espresso. I was inches away from saying something, but the line had become massive and I could see this descending into a second rate viral YouTube video culminating in my throwing iced espresso in PPB's face. Also, something I have quickly learned since moving up here is that the customer is ALWAYS wrong so I bailed vowing under my breath never to return.

Made it to the office, hung out in reception for about 10 minutes until someone unlocked the door to the hallway leading to my pointless desk. I was still pissed about my espresso and life in general so I began to draft a complaint to Starbucks. Whilst in the middle of my diatribe some officious oik sidles up to me and asks if I'm having 'trouble logging into the system. I fixed him with a glare that was scarcely human and quietly said, 'I'm not really there yet, but I will let you know if and when I have any problems I think you could assist me with.'

Not a good start to the official first full week of 2015,

Possessions Leaving You Corrupted.

Dowdy unshapely lesbian really swung for the fences on Wednesday. She was here for a total of 2 hours, but still required someone with a limited understanding of technology to help sync her iMac keyboard to her iMac proper. This lead to a robust if bankrupt storm of mac bashing. I mean what could you possibly need a computer for if not for building, maintaining and fixing perpetually corrupted spreadsheets? Nothing?

This meandering spectacle lasted until it was time for her to leave (thankfully with her tragic waistcoat) and help some hapless victim of employment discrimination and soon to be complete ass bitch of bad lawyering. Gays like to hire the Gays even if they are incompetent and pointless. The struggle is so real we just have to. And still haven't learned any better.

Listening to The Fall.

In the office and someone had their Kindle stolen or lost it on the bus or something. She asked me about it and I just stared at her as though she were talking about White Rhinos fucking in the twilight. No, never seen anything like it. Why would I have?