The BlameFinder

Never let a fact go blameless. Anything that is, has a causer who did it. It’s always someone’s fault for the BlameFinder. Is the water too cold? Who turned off the heater? Is the water too warm? Who turned it on? Who opened the door? Who closed it? Who turned on the light? Who turned it off?

As soon as there’s a hint of anything occurring, the BlameFinder wants to know who might be the one who would do it. The BlameFinder is hunched over and ready to pounce. He is always double-checking. There is no pause button on the BlameFinder. The struggle to nail it down is constant and always in motion.

The BlameFinder does not want to solve any problems. He only wants to report them. Once the source of the trouble has been located and assigned, the Blamer rests easy in the knowledge. Until then, everyone’s suspicious.

The BlameFinder sizes you up on contact, deciding the possible events of which you might become the source. You may be the kind who drops a glass and shatters it, or the kind who rearranges napkins. You could be just the one to sample the hors d’ouvre before returning it to the plate. Are you the kind who folds things the wrong way, or the kind who places the toilet paper roll facing the wrong direction? The BlameFinder can tell. He can sense the kind of trouble you’ll cause.

Cold eyes are the hallmark of the BlameFinder . Cold eyes and a slight squint on impact. You can almost hear the gavel coming down, followed by the icy stare, the mental note, the black book opening and closing. You! You’re the one! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

It’s enough for the BlameFinder to know. He then moves on. Something else is bound to happen any moment, and when it does, someone needs to disover the culprit and file the claim. You can count on the BlameFinder. It will never be his fault.

Blind Date Girl

Hot summer Saturday, several years ago. I have a massive headache and am lying around wondering how this is not going to be the longest most horrible hot Summer Saturday ever, The phone rings and it’s this blind date girl I had forgotten all about. We were going to set something up once and never got around to it. Now apparently she has a time slot avaialable and it’s now. I tell myself, don’t do it. You have a massive headache and you really don’t feel like it. I tell her, ok, and agree to meet about thiry miles away in half an hour. Now I have to go right away, so I do.

Of course I hurry and of course I’m early and it’s much much hotter over there on the other side of the mountains than it was in my relatively shady cool redwood-surrounded home. First thing I do, since we’re meeting a coffee shop, is get a cup of coffee. This will help my headache, I think, but it only makes me hotter. The headache gets worse and she of course is late. I wait. I wait and wait. I wait and wait and wait. I don’t know this girl. I don’t know what she looks like. I only know that she’s Chinese so that narrows it down to everyone in that town except the cops.

I am feeling sick, kind of woozy, nauseous. I realize I actually am ill, I’ve got some kind of summer flu thing and really should be home in bed. It’s not just that it’s 105 degrees and I’m drinking coffee in the sun. I think I also have a fever. This is really working out well.

She shows up. She finally does, and she’s brought with her a pot full of dim sum. This was nice of her. She sits down and offers me some. I feel like I am going to puke and I say no, no really, thanks, but no. I am not being very nice. I got up to shake hands but kind of staggered a bit and sat back down. My head is pounding. I really do have a fever, I tell myself.

We make a little small talk, all about her. I begin to notice a pattern. She sees I’m drinking coffee on a hot day and says, that’s so weird. When I gently refused a dim sum for the seventeenth time she mutters, that’s so strange. She points out some old guys playing chess on the patio and mentions, that’s so bizarre. Now she begins to cycle through these little utterances on a regular schedule. The fact that it’s a hot day – that’s so weird. The shoes some passerby is wearing – that’s so strange. I tell her I have a headache and get the expected response – that’s so bizarre.

It now becomes a game. I try to prompt these expressions in their proper order. She never falters, and I never manage to bring up any subject that doesn’t evoke a that’s so weird or strange or bizarre. It dawns on me this girl has nothing else to say. Either that, or every little thing in the world actually does strike her as weird or strange or bizarre. It is difficult to think of anything else to say, considering I am only getting these lame and, dare I say it, odd responses. I feel like I am feeding a machine. What do you expect? If I didn’t have such a headache and a fever, maybe I could think of something that would pry some other terminology from her mouth.

She asks, so, what do you want to do now? I was thinking of going to the city, she continues. I hear myself saying, actually, I just want to go home. What? she is startled. I want to go home, I repeat, and in fact, I get up and say goodbye. She’s left sitting there, mouth open, oh my god. This is our blind date? As I walk away I can still hear her, almost whispering to herself.

That’s so weird. That’s so strange. That’s so bizarre.

Self. Important.

I’d been on the job about six months. Since there were a few hundred people in the company, and we were all quite busy – “heads-down”, as they say – it was natural that I didn’t know everyone yet. Far from it. I knew only those I worked directly with, plus a few others with whom I came in contact professionally. Each morning I would come in and make a cup of coffee in the general kitchen area, and sleepily nod at anyone else who might also happen to be there. Occasionally someone would eye me suspiciously, as if I had snuck into the building with the sole intent of stealing their coffee cups, if not the company’s most closely guarded secrets. On one of those occasions, a man looked me up and down from across the room, and then approached. “I don’t believe we’ve met”, he said, and told me his name. I told him mine, and we shook hands. He repeated my first name out loud, wished me a good day and left the room. I assumed that he was someone high up, someone who made it his business to look out for the good of the company and guard against intruders. I never found out, though. I immediately forgot his name, and never once saw him again. I wondered why it was so important to him that he should discover my name. It never bothered me that I did not know his.

The Meeting Maker

She’s always in meetings, and she’s always talking.
She’s always talking in meetings.

Go ahead, she says, make my day.
Call another meeting.
Just give me a heads up and
I’ll be there, pronto.

She’ll talk about the agenda,
She’ll go down a rat-hole or two.
She’s the first one with a comment
and the last one with a clue.

And I know what you’re thinking.
Did she assign six action items, or only five?
Truth is, in all the boredom I kind of lost count.
So you have to ask yourself one question.
What the hell is she talking about now?

She’s got a game plan moving forward.
She’s got seamless visibility.
The enterprise channels are all lined up.
It’s time to tackle the pipeline.

It’s all part of the process.
She’s got traction, she’s got focus.
The only thing that’s missing … is the point.

It’ll be the same tomorrow,
and tomorrow and tomorrow,
She’ll be in another meeting
and she’ll talk and talk and talk.

Everyday Superheroes

today’s additions to the list:
Ven-Dor (You WILL buy the popcorn)
Flag Man (able to stop all traffic with a single wave)
The Obfuscator (able to endlessly prolong pointless meetings single-handedly)

The Greeter

Sitting on the steps of the factory outlet store, this old man smokes a cigarette and studies the parking lot in front of him. It just goes on and on. He wonders how in the hell he got here. He knows he is old because his knees hurt a lot. The sun is out, the day is cold and the glare in his eyes makes him feel like going back in, but it’s only the job in there. The work. He’s a greeter. He stands by the door and says hello to anyone who comes in, “welcome to our store”. His name tag would introduce him, but no one notices it. Even if they did, they’d have a hard time pronouncing it. Looks like there’s way too many letters in that name. Where he comes from, they don’t know. He says hello as they walk by ignoring him. He wonders how in the hell he got there. Of course he remembers the airplane, and the airports, and the trains and the bus from the hills past the desert and back to the lake a billion and seventy one miles from here. It was cold and sunny that day too. His grandson brought him over, and just plopped him here, right in the middle of could-be-anywhere. From there to here, the differences are too great to even talk about. The language is the least of it. The cars don’t even smell the same. He won’t say that he is homesick. He won’t say that he is lonely. He just might as well be anywhere. Anywhere at all.

One of these days, he’s going to make a friend. Someone will notice him and he will smile and say an even nicer hello than usual. That person, who will remind him of his cousin, perhaps, that person will return his smile, extend their hand, shake his hand, and offer him a greeting in a language he will understand, and on that day, and at that time, he will be happy for awhile.

The Babbler

He comes at you at the speed of light, when you’re already trapped in a corner or otherwise stuck. He starts in right off, jabbering at you like a blue jay at dawn. You cannot believe how fast this guy talks. Do you know the origin of the Baby Ruth candy bar? It’s got nothing to do with the Babe. Did you know? It was named for a president’s baby. Her name was Ruth. Did you know it came without wrappers at first? Thta’s how they did it, I know, this guy told me, it’s true.

And so it begins. a deluge of inane insipid chatter. He covers a lot of ground in a very short time. He tells you about the outrage of street-cleaning no-parking zones and the tickets they give, do you know how much it adds up to? Fifty dollars every other week that would be like a lot over time. He discusses the horror of the mess created by the fall of autumn leaves. If that was my tree, I’d cut it down so fast it would make your head swim. If I only had a chainsaw. You want me to cut that down? I could do it. You know how they sell those things? By weight. What do I want with a heavy one. Give me the lightest model I say. I hate those leaves. What a mess. And why Lincoln’s on the left of the penny. And the ink never dries on the dollar. And nostalgia, you can never forget about Elvis.

And movies in general, you remember that guy? The one who was in that movie one time, you know the one. The guy with the face and the hair. He had that thing that he did, remember? 1941 I think, or maybe it was ’52.

This bent over little old man with the eyes bugging out of his head and the stream of pure crap pouring out of his mouth, do you know what he said? Do you want to know what he told me? It’s true.

Everything he knows he learned from standing in lines and pestering the other people there.

You feel you can’t breathe. Is this how you wanted to spend your day off? You’re not even waiting in line. It was supposed to be some kind of party. Then you think, wait a minute, I could just walk away, and this guy would not even notice. You do, and he doesn’t. You look back and you see he just turned and attacked the next body around. It goes on.

For seventy years it goes on.

Parking Lot Cowboy Bouncer

He sits there on the tailgate of his pickup truck, daring you to park. Got official bank business? You’d better. This here parkin’ lot’s just fer bankin’, he growls. Just fer Western bankin’, that is.

He’s got his cowboy hat tilted just so. Is that tobacco he’s chewing? Holy shit, somebody still does that! Day in, day out, this here parkin’s just fer bankin’.

There’s other parkin’ roun’ the corner. Yeah, so why can’t the friggin’ bank customers park over there?

This here parkin’ lot’s re-served.

If you ain’t bankin’, they gonna tow yo’ ass.

Damn straight.

Okay, so I went into the bank and snuck out the side door where the bouncer couldn’t see me. Came back twenty minutes later.

Fine day for bankin’, I told him.

Reckon so, he replied.

Parking Lot Cowboy Bouncer (the video)

Little Miss Cleavage

Have you seen her? She is always wearing a low-cut top, and her breasts are always escaping, but at the same time she’s engaged in an eternal struggle to cover them up, with a jacket or a sweatshirt or just her arms across her chest. She could avoid this battle by wearing something different, but apparently can’t help herself. She only buys one kind of top, as if her breasts do all the shopping.

It’s the activity that draws your eye; the boobs themselves are not enough. Look! See? Now you see ‘em, now you don’t. Check ‘em out! What are you looking at? Hide and Seek. Peek-a-boo. Open, close, open, close. Tug, and release.

Hello? Could you please stop playing with them for a moment? Someone might actually want to talk to you, not to them. Thank you very much.

People Like That

There are some people you don’t even want to start talking about. Just thinking of them brings bad clouds over the ridge. You want to make fun of them, but don’t even dare let them cross over onto the page, because there they’ll sit, looking up at you, gloating that they won. You’re the loser (they say), yes you’re the loser (quoting Curve), you think you’re above God, and beyond reach … you stupid narrator you.

These characters must not be sketched. Put them back in the drawer and lock it up tight. And when you hear that knocking in the middle of the night, just close your eyes and go back to sleep, if you can.