Please Fire Me
By Deborah Garrison
Here comes another alpha male,
and all the other alphas
are snorting and pawing,
kicking up puffs of acrid dust
while the silly little hens
clatter back and forth
on quivering claws and raise
a titter about the fuss.
Here comes another alpha male--
a man's man, a dealmaker,
holds tanks of liquor,
charms them pantsless at lunch:
I've never been sicker.
Do I have to stare into his eyes
and sympathize? If I want my job
I do. Well I think I'm through
with the working world,
through with warming eggs
and being Zenlike in my detachment
from all things Ego.
I'd like to go
somewhere else entirely,
and I don't mean
Europe.
--------
Had a day that was frustrating in several ways not worth reiterating. Plus it was Code Orange, headache weather, and my neck is still driving me nuts...at what point is it time to get a second opinion on something as stupid as a small dermatological annoyance? Ah well, it's the kids' last Friday of the school year -- younger son's last Friday ever of elementary school, older son's last Friday ever of middle school -- and they both came home fried, older son because it was the last time the chorus will rehearse before graduation and everyone is sad about the chorus teacher retiring, younger son because it was the fifth grade picnic and while his class won the team competition, they were outdoors in the heat and he got a headache.
1. Are you attracted to the naughty or the nice? Mostly nice with a touch of naughty. Sometimes the reverse. But never all-naughty.
2. Do you let your dirty laundry pile up? Depends on what you mean by "pile" -- not my own, but I don't do my kids' every day, so there are often piles.
3. What's the last excuse you made? Getting out of one social event to go to another.
4. Do you play it safe or do you take risks? Mostly safe, except in fiction.
5. Friday fill-in: Let's go to ____ and ____. Let's go to Mount Kailas and circumnambulate.
1. Remember the scene with Molly Ringwald putting lipstick on by holding it in her cleavage? Name one really bizarre thing you know how to do. No matter how small. I can recite about 2/3 of the Periodic Table of Elements. It used to be the whole thing, but it's been a long time since seventh grade.
2. What's your favourite way to pass the time? If I cannot be sightseeing in some exotic locale, I will settle for visiting some neat local place.
3. What's your favourite restaurant and why? The restaurant at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which has extraordinarily good seafood and wonderful tea. I went there with my parents when I was in my teens, then I went back on my honeymoon and it was as good as I remembered.
4. Which TV/Radio show did you like that's not aired any more? If I have to pick one, I will settle for The Love Boat, because it has never come out on DVD and it isn't syndicated. Most of the others I liked better are now available somewhere.
5. If you had a choice of learning another new language, what would you choose? What do you think that reflects about you? Spanish, because I know many people who can speak it (I took French in high school and can make myself understood, though ma grammaire est mal.) No clue what it reflects except that I didn't say Yiddish, which will soon be a dead language because people of my generation aren't learning it.
1. The original Ray Bradbury butterfly effect story, "A Sound of Thunder" (step on a butterfly and change the course of history).
2. That giant save-the-whales fable, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. ("The City on the Edge of Forever" comes in a close second, and Spock having to save his own life in "Yesteryear" comes in third.)
3. Voyager's "Year of Hell" -- not a very good episode in terms of the characters, but I love the story of an obsessed man continually tampering with time and rewriting history to try to bring his dead wife back.
4. The Terminator series. Yes, even the last one.
5. Harry Potter (well, Hermione Granger)'s Time Turner and the salvation of Sirius and Buckbeak. I have never understood the laws that govern time travel in the Harry Potter universe -- if Sirius could be saved then, why not before he fell through the Veil? -- but it's a really neat plot device.
For each pairing, chose who you think would win in a fight. If you'd like, explain how you chose the victor.
1. Fred and George Weasley vs. Crabbe and Goyle The Weasleys are vastly more clever than Draco's goons; no contest.
2. Luna Lovegood vs. Sybill Trelawney Luna seems much more together than Sybill, who cries under adversity rather than fighting back.
3. Fenrir Greyback vs. Bill Weasley and Remus Lupin This is by far the closest one. Depends on how dirty Bill and Remus are willing to fight. I've no doubt they COULD beat Fenrir, but whether they WOULD is a different question.
4. The Fat Lady vs. Mrs. Black Mrs. Black, unfortunately, is unlikely to be dislodged from her painting by rabid dogs or anything else.
5. Colin and Dennis Creevey vs. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia I have to go with the Creeveys because they're wizards and they know it, which intimidates Vernon and Petunia.
Had power flickers several times as huge thunderstorms with hail passed over us, but managed to write and post a review of TNG's "11001001", which would be a true classic were it not for the Riker/Minuet/Picard inanity that I keep thinking shouldn't annoy me so much, yet it irritates me more the more I think about it. Am delighted the space shuttle took off, couldn't care less about Paris Hilton (though I was kind of expecting Bush to invade Iran today or something while the entire country's media was apparently in California waiting for the all-important judge's decision), glad Surf's Up got good reviews as I will certainly be required to see that this weekend.
And another. Last time we were there, we saw blue lizards...do we think they're the same lizards in different seasons?
Younger son's favorite animal on the plantation, the sheep...
...and, hiding from the sun, the steer.
We all watched My Daddy the Crocodile Hunter. Bindi Irwin is very cute and articulate, but I can't help feeling like she's a bit too coached, like some of those little girls you see at dinner theater Annie auditions...I've no doubt that her passion for snakes is real and she's entirely comfortable in front of a camera, but I wish they'd drop the cutesy song and dance about her father who's only been dead a few months and let her talk like a girl instead of a mini-celebrity. And I wish they'd let her acknowledge for all the kids in the audience who know her story that in addition to loving animals, it's okay and sometimes healthy to be scared of them or not to want to get too close if your parents aren't experts like hers.
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