Soft Tissue Much Softer

While watching Die Hard with a Vengeance, the Gallup Poll called. Right in the middle of it, right when Jeremy Irons is shooting SLJ in the foot with a gun that he somehow couldn’t understand the safety mechanism of (and then Jeremy Irons bites an egg in half!). And if you live in a Bright house, you know, that this call means interruptions to BW’s usual murderous poetry. Awful interruptions. Bad craziness. Things you can’t ignore. So I didn’t, and I picked up the phone and answered their questions.

They varied. Some where stocked (“Does Ron Paul’s form of Americana give you an erection? My answer: Depends on the weather), some were sound bites and others were personal. I didn’t like the personal ones. I answered them with flak; I wanted to bring down their questions, crash them into my own dirty enemy territory where I could fight them on my terms as opposed to the beautiful Beltway Tower from which I was being assaulted from.

”Does the oil spill effect you personally?” they asked. I gave them 4 seconds of silence and then in tone that wasn’t quite menace, but wasn’t quite my own, said: “Let the bullshit blow over for a while so I can run the casino, anything goes wrong the casino it’s my ass, its not your ass, it’s my ass”.

And then they hung up. But when you see Casino you should quote Casino. I guess the Gallop maestro assumed I was a loon, and I am. But that wasn’t a bullshit answer. And they didn’t let me expound. The fact was I had no idea what I was talking about, but when you’ve had three bottles of Merlot from some Serbian country the synapses will fire when they wish and not when you want them to.

Here’s the thing: I’m soon to roam. I haven’t posted here in a while because I’m hopeless. I.E., I have no hope. I’m marginally good at a good amount of things but not great at anything. Time to start taking pot-shots.

At my job this week the head’s of the company have come in to teach us about aspects of the new line of products. All good people, all fairly thorough, and all possessing something that I’m sure I don't want no matter how much it would benefit me professionally. At the same time, I could tell I was as generally as smart as they were. And it hurt me in a really strange way that I’ve never felt before.

And I’ve never been one to Brandon Fraser my ego (actually I’ve proven quite good at downplaying any ability I’ve ever had), but it was clear that I was a wasp sting. For twelve hours yesterday I was talked down to about new pieces of furniture from a bunch of people who I’d laugh at during Double Jeopardy. And each person that talked to us it became quite clear that although I may not have gone to as good of a school as they, but that I was working on a similar level. Long story short, we named one of our furniture lines the Louis the XVI collection, and so I raised my hand and asked why. As in why had we named that collection after that particular king. Our Senior Head of management said: “Well he was the Sun King, so I guess that is what we were going for”.

Sigh. So I said, sadly, and beaten as someone who is only slightly beaten can say, “Louis the XVI was simply opulent, Louis the XIV was the Sun King”. And in my interior I thought: "And I'm high right now".

But nobody in the class I was in heard the exchange; they were all sleeping. And the manager just ignored me (he said he couldn’t hear my mumbles, although I was spitting on him as I said it). And I’m only telling you this story in the middle of the night, drunk, and in the top an oak tree. I have no doubt the world will start spinning soon. But I'm getting close to telling what lines it will cross. And what was the point of all this:

Speed kills but beauty lives forever. Res ipsa loquitur.