Life in the Office
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that when I’ve gone into the bathroom at work there’s always a guy in the toilet stall. In the last few days I’ve come to realize that it’s always the same guy.

There’s always a certain amount of intrigue involved in the stall in the bathroom. You never know who it is when you first walk in but try to take a sideways glance to see if you recognize their shoes or pants but it’s only a quick glance since you don’t want them to catch you peeking through the crack at them, you sick silly! “Why do you want to know?” you may ask. I want to know because if I happen to know the person it’s a chance to make some collegial small talk about sports, or weather, or whatever.

“Hey there Sanders from Accounting, how’s it goin today?”

“Not bad Wakefield, not bad. You see the game last night?”

“Yeah, what did you think?” [I of course haven’t watched any games and don’t know what he’s talking about]

“I think if they’d can [coach’s name] they’d be a helluva lot better.”

“I hear ya. Take ’er easy Sanders.”

“Seeya Wakefield.”

There you go, connection is made, networks blossom, my corporate career is one tick closer to lift off! Whatever.

As a side note, there are three urinals in the bathroom I use at work, two talls on either side and a short in the middle. It seems that hardly anyone uses the middle stall, it’s practically spotless. The reasons are fairly obvious. I hate to spill bathroom secrets but here goes: When a guy walks into a bathroom and there are three urinals he will never go to the middle one. He will go to either of the side ones because then if someone walks in he knows that they will go to the farthest one themselves and if they don’t they are probably out to check him out and ask him out for a drink after work. Imagine my delight to find a pristine urinal with a fresh cake, ready for use. Now it’s all I use…unless someone else is there of course.

So back to the guy in the stall.

I have yet to figure out who he is. I never see him go in or leave while I am in there and I can’t exactly stand around and wait. I’ve got things to do, customers to help! I ask other people and they don’t seem to notice. I only know it’s him because of his shoes and the fact that he’s always reading a newspaper. One time I swear I could smell coffee brewing…I’ll keep you posted.

Short Notes About Various Items
Now Playing: Starved
Topic: Life in the village
It’s raining. I hate the rain. My roof leaks when it really pours and I can’t get a roofer to come look at my roof. I can barely even get one to call me back! I tell them that it’s residential and they sigh. Then I tell them that I just need a patch job and not the whole roof and they sigh again. The last one told me almost a week ago that he’d come by and take a look and give me a call with an estimate. Nothing.

There was a column in the Wakefield paper last week that drew some parallels between the big tornado that came through many years ago and hurricane Katrina. That was humorous.

Speaking of humorous, I have a good line for any African-American comedian who is passing through the Wakefield area, or any other mostly white community; the general idea is that since there are so few black people around here, when you see one it’s a bit of a surprise so now with all the relocation going on, every time a Wakefieldian sees a black person in town they figure it must be someone from the hurricane!

“Everybody keeps askin me if I came from New Orleans.” The comic could say. Then:

“I say ‘no I’m from Detroit‘.”
“Then they say ’Oh.’ And frown, sad, like they disappointed they can’t like adopt me and take me to church and give me food and shelter and feel like Harriet Tubman savin the slaves. It’s like he says to his wife “When am I gonna get a black person, Martha!? I don’t even want a whole family, just one!”


Just tryin’ to have a little fun folks, that’s all.

I was listening to This American Life on NPR today or yesterday and for the first time either on television or radio, I witnessed a journalist actually talking to children. Now I haven’t been glued to CNN since this happened and I only listen to the radio on the way to and from work, but I doubt many people have talked to the children and it was so refreshing. They sounded great, they were sisters just being sisters, being silly around a microphone. They were being relocated to Colorado with their mother. They talk a lot about the children on the news, but they haven’t talked much to them.

Seasons are changing. I hate the heat of summer so I am very glad that fall is on the way.

Again I am going to plug a new diversion,

A Cubeside View

So please go there and leave a comment. Thank you.


Would all of you people and your friends stop buying houses and let the prices come down so I can get a decent new house without working six jobs to pay for it?!?! Then, once you all do that and I buy the new house, I’ll let you know so you can all start buying again and bring up my price. I’m sick of this. Thanks again.

I could ramble on, but that’s what this entire entry has consisted of so I will leave you. Have a lovely week. Sorry I don’t write enough.

Life At Home
Mood:  a-ok
CONVERSATION WITH MY WIFE [best if read aloud…with feeling] :

MRS. WAKEFIELD: On Oprah today they had hoarders on and you are a hoarder.

WAKEFIELD: What do I hoard, Mrs. Wakefield?

MRS. WAKEFIELD: Laundry, papers- look at your desk! Trash in your car. You should have seen this lady, it was nasty, she had dog poopy on the floor, her kitchen was terrible, they lifted the lid off a pan and the pan was filled with maggots, it was disgusting.

WAKEFIELD: I think that you, both you and Oprah are using the term “Hoarder” way too broadly. Hoarding is like collecting things, not throwing things away, like newspapers, nail clippings, magazines, animals, but just being dirty doesn’t make you a hoarder. Some hoarders can have a lot of stuff but be very clean and organized.

MRS. WAKEFIELD: Well this lady was a hoarder, she refused to throw anything away, she did keep things!

WAKEFIELD: Well then I guess she was a hoarder.

MRS.WAKEFIELD: She’s just the dirty kind; she’s a dirty hoarder.

Good night folks!

I ain't got time to terrorize!
Topic: Observe if you will....
I guess they are closing some U.S. diplomatic offices in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Tuesday because there has been “specific information” about a terrorist threat to those locations/employees. However they are only closing the places for those two days. I don’t understand how this works, I didn’t think it was like the weather where if you missed you’re window the whole thing was shot. I imagine the conversation at the IHOT (Iraqi House of Terrorists) would be something like this:

AZEEM: Hey Habib, did you hear they’re closing down the place Monday and Tuesday?

HABIB: Yes! I’m so pissed!

AHMED: I know, this screws up my whole week.

HABIB: What the heck are we going to do?!

AHMED: Maybe we can reschedule. How does the 28th sound?

HABIB: [pulls out PDA] Can’t do it, I’ve got a three o’clock and it’s going to take the rest of the afternoon.

AHMED: How about before three? Is eleven too early?

HABIB: I’ve got racquetball at ten, and with the checkpoints I may not even get back home until two or so.

AZEEM: [PDA in hand] Shoot! I can’t either. I’ve got the kids that week so I’m completely out, we'll be out of town.

HABIB: Curse the Great Satan Junior Bush and his USA! It’s going to take at least six months for us to get everyone’s schedules open again! Who knows if that damn Toyota will even be running in six months!

Good Summer Fun
Topic: Life in the village


Wakefield may be in the middle of nowhere and we may be too far north to be truly "Country" but we do like to have our stupid fun from time to time. I love this picture.

Hey, did anyone know that there wasn't a hockey season last year?? We need to get hockey back folks, pronto! Write or call your local congressman/woman, or MP, or whatever, and tell them your kids need to see that Wayne Gretzky get a goal! Do it!

Evan Hunter died this month, one of my favorite authors. I encourage you all to go out and find one of his books and read it, they call them police procedurals but they're really just books about cops, as he liked to say; thrillers, suspense, etc. Usually the cop books are under the name Ed McBain. He wrote the screenplay for The Birds as well as other novels which are all good.

Jack Nicklaus retired from golf this week. I got to see him play once in Denver and he was great fun to follow around, he was joking with the gallery and the referees [whatever they call them in golf] anf he seemed to just enjoy himself and what he was doing, no matter how good or bad a shot he hit. Not so overdramatic as these guys now, pounding their clubs, scowling all the time, for God's sake, you make a living in a "sport" that you don't even have to be in shape for, that you can play almost until you die, and has a very low risk of injury...Smile Tiger, it's just a ball and a stick and a hole!

My last paragraph is about these damn counters. Tripod has counters that tell me that I got like 89 page views yesterday (that's awesome for me, where did you all come from?) and my stupid free counter is now up to 8 for the month so as usual I have no idea how many of you are out there. You know, I've had this blog for over a year and I've had one single comment left (besides the ones from my wife pretending to be somebody else, which I don't post) and it's a bit frustrating. Let me just ask you to do this favor for me, if you're reading this blog, leave a comment; it can be a number, a letter, a word or even a whole sentence, just let me know you're out there please. I hope you all have a great weekend and I hope to hear from you soon.

-Wakefield

Road Hawgs
Now Playing: Nothing, can't afford it.
Topic: Life in the village
I guess Walt is trying to tell us he doesn't like our driving; here's a want ad from this weeks paper:

WANTED:
A young go getter who might like to start up
their own business putting jogging trails through
groves so we don't get exercise walking on roads
and get run over.
Walt Schuk, Wakefield Area

Bring May Flowers
Topic: Life in the village
I would have bet $100 of real money that I was going to get fired today. I was that sure. I even took down most of the pictures in my cube and stashed some office supplies in my briefcase before my meeting with the boss. The meeting was scheduled to end at the end of my shift, another sign.

I didn’t get fired. I got in trouble, but I didn’t get fired. It was a totally separate issue from the other issues that I have been close to getting fired over. I came back from the meeting on the verge of laughter it was so stupid. On top of that, he actually said I have been doing well lately in terms of my performance statistics.

Winter is over in Wakefield. It’s been April showers all over the place. Our money pit city swimming pool is still not going to be usable for the third out of four years of its existence, and more people in town are learning my name, which disturbs me. I often miss the anonymity of the big city. Yesterday even the girl at the grocery checkout knew my name. I don’t know her name. If she knows my name she also knows what I buy. There are times that I don’t want someone who remembers my name also remembering what I buy. It’s really only at bars or restaurants that I find this kind of recognition to be a positive thing.

Here I am
I'm still here. Just too busy to blog it seems. There isn't much to report here in the middle of nowhere. We've had a weak winter by Wakefield standards and hopefully we'll be coming out of it in the next few weeks. Jamie Foxx won the Oscar, I'm glad. I didn't even see Ray (yet) but I'm glad for him, especially since his name isn't Leonardo Di Caprio, at least I don't think it is.

Gotta run. Hope you all are well out there. Drop me a line some time.

-Wakefield

I was home alone. I was watching Cheers so it must have been about 10:30pm. BANG! I jumped in my chair. I looked up at the ceiling. It sounded like a big pot had dropped, or someone had tripped and fallen. I chuckled to myself as I imagined my upstairs neighbor Mark doing a pratfall with a geranium pot. We hard a lot of bumps and thumps up there from time to time and "Oops, Mark tripped again." was the running joke when we heard them. I had only really talked to him once in the laundry room of the building. All I remember of the conversation is that he had been in the army at some point in his life. He looked to be in his late 30's, skinny, about 6'2 and had a few days growth of beard on his face. I never saw him clean shaven. It was only a little 4-plex so I saw the people in the building pretty often.
Time passed. Cheers ended and Johnny Carson was doing his monologue. I heard the key in the lock being turned quickly. The door opened and my mother stuck her head through the doorway, eyes searching. She saw me and a wave of relief washed over her face. Red and blue light was bouncing against the door behind her as she opened it.
"I thought it was you." She said with an expulsion of relieved breath.
"What's going on?" I said.
"Something happened upstairs, the police and an ambulance are out there. I pulled onto the street and saw them and thought something had happened to you."
"I didn't even hear any sirens." I said.
We lived on the first floor of the building, which was actually partially underground so our living room windows looked out at ground level. I walked to the window and pushed aside one of the thick drapes. I saw the squad car and the ambulance, and policemen and paramedics walking in and out of my building. I saw a police officer walk out holding a pistol behind his back; he was looking from side to side like he didn't want anyone to see him. I got the sense that this was not his weapon. It looked like a Berretta, one of the few pistols I could actually recognize. After sitting for a few minutes, my mother got up and went to the door. She turned to me.
"I want you to stay in here, I'm going to go talk to the police and see what's going on."
"Okay." I replied.
I walked to the door as she was walking out and held it open after she walked up the steps and out the front door. I heard voices upstairs, feet walking, commotion. A minute passed and I heard the metallic clangs of a gurney being wheeled out of the apartment. They slowly brought it down the steps. I couldn't see much with the paramedics and the sheet and all the tubes and the mask but I knew that it was Mark. I closed the door, picked up the remote and turned off the TV.
It turns out that Mark's girlfriend had borrowed his truck, an old beat up Ford, and had gotten into a minor fender bender when someone had pulled out in front of her. Mark was furious. Not only was she late getting home, she had dented his truck. She tried to explain that she was late because of the accident but he wouldn't have any of it. He pulled out his pistol and started waving it around, threatening her with it. The gun went off. No pratfall, no geranium; he didn't trip.

Mark lived. I found out from a friend who was a nurse's assistant at the local hospital and had seen Mark after he had come in and was stabilized. He had survived but was "a vegetable". It turns out that Mark had shot the right lobe of his brain almost completely out of his skull.

That's the last I heard of Mark. A dent in a lousy truck full of dents.

CATS! And Reggie
Now Playing: Rodney Dangerfield
When I was a young boy I used to love tormenting cats. This wasn't a future serial killer type of tormenting, but it was tormenting nonetheless. Now before all you cat lovers pounce on me (pun intended) let it be known that I too am a cat lover. My wonderful cat was my first companion in the big lonely city when I got my first apartment and she is hands down the best cat I have ever known. I've always liked cats. I only tormented the ones that didn't like me. Boy it was fun!
First there was "Kitty". My aunt and uncle had an overweight orange cat named "Kitty" that did not enjoy being petted too much. I wanted to pet the cat. After a while the cat would start swatting at me to quit. I wanted to pet the cat. I kept petting the cat very nicely while still avoiding its pathetic declawed paws. Eventually the cat would get up and move to a different spot. I would follow. It would keep going like this until the cat would hide in some spot that I couldn't follow. I would then wait until dinner. The thing is, this cat was so obese it couldn't clean itself...there. So while I was petting it and it was heaving itself up to swat at me I was probably giving it the only exercise it got, I probably prolonged the life of that bastard cat!

Then there was "Buddha". Buddha was a hideous Himalayan that would run and hide whenever company came over to my cousins house. What made Buddha more hideous was the fact that he had gotten lice or something so they had to shave Buddha, so there's this big headed, flat faced cat, whose big head and flat face were now more accentuated by the fact that the rest of it was practically hairless! What would I do to torment Buddha? Why, chase him all over the house, of course.

I just thought of this today while petting my dear cat and thought I would throw it out there. I don't torment cats anymore. Therapy works.




Here's some of what beloved former Green Bay Packer Reggie White had to say to the Wisconsin State Legislature on March 25, 1998.

White said he has thought about why God created different races. Each race has certain gifts, he said.
Blacks are gifted at worship and celebration, White said.
"If you go to a black church, you see people jumping up and down because they really get into it," he said.
Whites are good at organization, White said.
"You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature, and you know how to tap into money," he said.
"Hispanics were gifted in family structure, and you can see a Hispanic person, and they can put 20, 30 people in one home."
THE JAPANESE AND other Asians are inventive, and "can turn a television into a watch," White said. Indians are gifted in spirituality, he said.
"When you put all of that together, guess what it makes: It forms a complete image of God," White said.
White said later that his comments were about coming together as a society and were not meant to stereotype the races.

Reggie White 1961-2004


I had something else I was going to write about but I forgot. Have a great week.

The snarling tableau
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Rant
Do you ever have those moments where you look around, maybe at the grocery store, and everyone you see looks very disturbed and/or disturbing? I was in the checkout today and took a slow pan around the place and saw a guy with a couple of teeth grown in OVER his other teeth, he was in line behind his dad who was wearing a suit which looked like he also wears it to clean out the barn. There was a mullet guy with his 12 year old looking son, asking him if he had just spit in the aisle and after his answer in the affirmative I could hear the dad saying "That's not cool. Very not cool. Don`t do that." I think I saw a woman who disturbed me as well but I can't think of her to describe her. It was really the whole scene that started to weird me out. All those people together in one place. Don't forget about me, the disturbing guy with the Pinky and the Brain baseball cap and three days beard growth. I fully admit to my scruffiness.

I'm afraid that I don't have a lot to be enraged about in town at the moment. Probably because I'm a bit broke at the moment and that always steals the focus. Another thing I noticed, when you're at the grocery store (which I seem to be on a daily basis for some reason) and all you're getting is toilet paper, just watching the person in front of you checkout can make you bitter, no matter how few items they may have. "Damn Ritz chips, damn grapefruit juice, why not just buy a whole orchard miss moneybags! Stuff your gluttonistic face with those...those...radishes! Must be nice!"

Just let it
Topic: Life in the village
Sometime early this morning we got our first snow of the season. It may melt, in fact it probably will but that will not negate the fact that it has arrived. Just a dusting though, nothing serious. My wife isn't happy, she doesn't like snow. I don't really like snow anymore either. Not since I became the one who has to shovel it and since I have to drive on country roads a half hour to get to and from work every day.

We have rented every comedy that the gas station has in its video library. I'm going to have to start getting them from the town I work in. They have a video "store" there where all they do is rent movies to people! No gas, no lottery tickets, just movies. I don't know how they do it. This is not to say that they are a full service shop by any means. I called them once and asked them if they have any old movies:

WAKEFIELD: Do you have any old movies?

VIDEO BOY: Like, what do you mean?

WAKEFIELD: You know, old movies, classics!

VIDEO BOY: Yeah, we got old movies, like from the 70`s and 80's. We got lots of them.

End of call

I've got some company coming over tomorrow so I need to get some cleaning done. Take care.

-Wakefield

Works sucks. I know
Topic: Rant
We are down to only three people in my department at work who were here when it started almost a year ago. In fact it's gotten so bad that we even hired three new people and one of them transferred to a different department her SECOND WEEK! Eventually I'm going to run the place by default. We've already got one supervisor who got the job because nobody wanted to work evenings, even with a raise. It's ridiculous. If I had cared enough to show up on time I would have been a supervisor myself, but in this little corporate world timeliness is more important than talent, intelligence and experience all rolled into one. Thus, we continue to promote near illiterate nineteen year olds who happen to be good looking and female and to boot they show up on time. Forget the fact that they usually quit after a month on the job. I guess a short term on time employee is better than a dedicated erratic one. I'm done now.

I can't believe I didn't mention this when it happened but about three months ago there was a rash of dog assassinations. Dogs were being killed by snipers in the park just outside of town, with their owners right with them, walking them or whatever. Can you believe that? I think that's terrible.


It's barely midnight and I'm nearly falling asleep at the computer. That's pathetic. I'm getting too old. I should go and wait for my second wind. Goodnight.

-Wakefield

They call him Mr.Touchdown
Now Playing: Van Helsing-I know, shut up
Topic: Life in the village
I'm trying to puzzle this out and maybe you folks can help me or at least bear with me as I brainstorm a little on the following: Why are small town people so obsessed with high school sports?? I think in Wakefield it's because we're so far from any professional sports team that people latch onto the high schoolers and don't let go. They have games on the radio for crying out loud...in high school! Blah blah blah. Last week they actually dismissed the entire school early just so everyone could ride a "fan bus" or drive themselves 5 hours away to a playoff game. This happens anytime there's a big game.

Due to the dying of all rural small towns, local public schools can't all afford (and don't have enough students) to have their own athletic teams so they pool together with surrounding towns. This does not lend itself well to team names. The Wakefield Warriors of my youth are now the Wakefield-Inverness-Pikeville-Elmerton Warriors, or as the sweatshirts read, the "W-I-P-E Warriors". Strikes some serious fear, don`t it? The cheer goes "W-I-P-E! Let's wipe them to victory go Warriors!". The sports section in the weekly paper consists of about two thirds of the entire paper during the school year.


LOCAL: Yeah that Johnson kid's got quite an arm, I remember when his dad used to play, he was really something.

WAKEFIELD: What does his dad do now?

LOCAL: Oh he tends bar sometimes, does handyman type of work.

WAKEFIELD: Wow. That's great.

LOCAL: But that boy a his is even better than his dad was. He might get'em all the way to state this year. Maybe next year too.

WAKEFIELD: I thought he was a senior.

LOCAL: Well, he's not the brightest of the bunch, not nearly as smart as his dad.

WAKEFIELD: [raises eyebrows] Well have fun at the game.

LOCAL: Sure will.


I love to watch and play football myself, but I don't give two hoots about the WIPES this year or any year for that matter. It's pathetic; be a star athlete in the middle of nowhere and then find out that you're really not all that talented and end up going to the VoTech for diesel mechanics and spend the rest of your life talking about how you were such a great athlete. I'm sick of it.

Hey, did everybody know there was an election last week? I hate to gloat but I did call this one. I wouldn't of course be gloating over who gets to live in the White House, I'm simply gloating about the fact that I called it.

I haven't been writing much lately, I seem to be in another slump. I've been looking at those of you who have more than one blog and I've started a second one myself but I haven't written anything yet. I just don't know what to write about. I write about everything here. Also, I'll be honest, I get a little discouraged that no one ever comments. I'm not even sure more than three or four people are reading this blog so why should I start another one?

We watched the movie Van Helsing tonight because we've seen everything else at the gas station. This is not a good film. Even when we decided to think of it as a comedy it still wasn't very good. The first thing that really bothered my wife and I was this: Mr.Hyde of the book was not some giant muscle-bound monster! In fact he was a bit hunched and small and didn't move well. He certainly wasn't eight feet tall, and he didn't climb walls and hole up in abandoned cathedrals. He had his own apartment for crying out loud. The same gross exaggeration of Hyde was made in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I figure since about 1% of the people who go see these movies have actually read any of the books the characters come from nobody cares.

Last week felt really long and I'm not looking forward to this one. I'll try to find more interesting things to write. I hope you all have a great week!

-Wakefield

Heat wave
Topic: Life in the village
The weather doesn't know what it's doing around here. Hot one day cold the next. It's the end of October, things should be consistently cold by now. I don't mind a heat wave for a day or two but since it's been coupled with thunderstorms it's hard to enjoy it. I'm not looking forward to winter. I haven't liked winter since I was single, years ago, and living in an apartment. Now that I have to mow grass, shovel snow, and pay for the heat, I'm not too keen on it anymore.