Peer of the Flies in Normal entries

It’s early, not the kind of early where I think I shouldn’t be up, the kind of early where I don’t play with dusty keyboards. I used to be able to work up a head of foam over skipping a few days, not a day-old frat party head of foam, but not a warm Guinness head either. I can’t really call it guilt or anxiety, so I’m calling it a head of foam and whoever disagrees will just have to deal or complain to management.

My management is ready to retire, has reached the age of descent into the peter principle. For most of yesterday afternoon my head felt like it was full of flies. Hmmm, that isn’t a great analogy, it conjures up more extreme images. Buzzing, there was a thin buzzing, sort of like what I’ve been told is tinnitus by apathetic doctors, but all over my head. I’m still convinced my childhood explanation of the alleged tinnitus is closer to the mark; I either can pick up radio signals in their raw form or the home planet is trying to contact me. It’s never been in quadrophonic sound, like the internal speakers when all around my skull. Um, just speaking to the unreliability of management, no need for alarm.

Little slice of life things happen to me all the time. Given the current state of Facebook, for example, I wonder if I’m the only one to whom daily funny events occur or if there is a cultural shift towards ignoring the genuine humor all around for the banal or reposting of other peoples broad sweeping politics. I even fall in that line, often using Facebook as a dumping ground for earworms via youtube. Huh. Spell check wants happen in the first sentence to be happens. Little slice of life is the subject not things, things is plural to imply multiple slices of life, but they don’t happen concurrently. In that last sentence it’s fine with happen.

Spell check is elitist, doesn’t take common usage into account. Just about everyone accepts ‘Where you at?’, for instance, but will look at you crossways if you ask them their current location, like you work for the cops. Of course, if they can look at you crossways y’all know where each other’s at. Whereas appearing to be a cop is a quick way to clear out a room, nobody likes a grammar Nazi, not even other grammar Nazis, especially not other grammar Nazis. Nazi is almost too quaint a word for anal retentive, unless you put it into cultural context. Funny how in the new P.C. wave of P.C. cultural sensitivity Nazis that no one is concerned that Jewish Americans might be offended by the casual use of the Germanic political party that attempted Hebraic genocide.

Heh a few years back a very dear friend of mine said after I said something about Jews “I understand you use that word among yourselves but it’s offensive to me”. I think I kept a straight face, though I was thinking of all the racial slurs for Jew, Jew not being among them. It almost led to a profound thought but something else came up.

It’s damn hard to put two thoughts together when your head feels like a radio tower or a swarm of flies. My slice of life from the other would take a lot of typing for very little reward, more of a character sketch than a story. It was funny but it wouldn’t be by the time I got through typing it out. The highlight is more of a recommendation than a slice of life; Popeyes ghost pepper wings, you need ‘em. Just avoid the one in south Lansing, or, wait near the back of the line and watch the staff. Wear goggles and for gods sake don’t let them see you are amused or ask about the music.

Ok, I guess I can do that part. My simple question, almost rhetorical, got kicked up the clown chain of command, until the manager, who obviously needed a moment to visine an eye or two and bolt down coffee, stumbled out and said ‘What? Um, what, sir?’

Again, I pointed to the ceiling and asked if that were local or Popeyes controlled.
The buck-stops-here-clown had the same initial response as the hierarchy of clowns preceding him; ‘The TV?’

For the third time I looked over my shoulder and still didn’t see a TV. “No, the music.”

He had the same puzzled look but was determined to be the buck-stops-here guy. “It’s satellite sir.”
I snorted, probably just to myself, thanked him and he wandered back to his hangover. No place on earth accidentally plays Sonny Stitt, even consumer satellite radio. Perhaps the biggest clown was me, I had honestly hoped to talk to someone in a Popeyes uniform in south Lansing about a great bebop Tenor man that died before most of them were born, likely to the sound of butt rock or what passed for R&B in the nineties. I had, however, hoped to find that station. In Louisiana, where, perhaps, the noises at Popeyes are programmed, I think I could have had that conversation.