Photograph

Last Friday I went to the opthamologist. The waiting room was hilarious. I sat down amidst a bunch of old folks with dark sunglasses on (to help with the pupil dilation part) waiting for their name to be called. I'm hardly ever the youngest person in a crowd anymore, but I certainly wasn't in the majority there.

The beauty about the elderly is that they don't have to sit around fiddling with their gizmos and talking on phones all the time. They don't mind sitting and chatting with each other or looking around, looking out the window, sitting in the waiting room listening to the repeated slow pounding of the pile driver breaking ground on a new wing of the hospital next door. Besides, there was a brown placard on the desk that said NO CELL PHONES with a picture of a cell phone and the international NO symbol (circle with a slash through it) on top.

The waiting room became sort of lively when a 70s-ish couple came in to drop some records off. The husband wore a tan jacket and matching fedora/safari hat and he held a stack of his files in his hand. His wife hobbled in on a cane and told him to drop them off on the counter. The man held them above the counter like he was about drop them off, but the staff were running around not noticing him. The wife told him again to drop them off . He looked around and told his wife nobody would see the records. She assured him they would be seen at some point. He turned away from her and stood patiently waiting for the staff to notice him.

A blond boy who was probably 9 years old wearing glasses with coke-bottle lenses came running into the room followed by his mother and father. She was decked out in brown camouflage pants or shorts (I couldn't tell because they seemed too long for shorts and too short for pants) and brown Chuck Taylors, and she had a hairstyle like Bon Jovi from the early Bon Jovi days. She yapped on her pink cell phone while her son jumped around her asking for money. The kid wore a t-shirt that said I'M ONLY PRETENDING TO LISTEN. His dad's t-shirt read OLD GUYS RULE.

Kid: "Can I have a dollar? Can I have a quarter?"
Mom: "What happened to your cell phone?"

The father had a cane that looked like one a blind person would use (he definitely wasn't blind), but the cane wasn't as long and it had a rounded end that the dad repeatedly prodded the back of the kid's knees with.

The kid ran out and back into the waiting room.
Kid: "Can I have a quarter?"

The old man in the fedora handed him a quarter and said "Here's a quarter."
Mom: "He just gave you a quarter, what do you say?"
Kid: "Thank you"

The kid ran off again.

After many minutes, the waiting room cleared one by one until I was the last one there. The woman working behind the counter finally asked me for my health insurance card. I handed it to her and noticed that she looked like she could be a superhero in her green jumpsuit and ridiculously long black boots. She told me she'd see what was taking so long. I took my seat again, 60 minutes after I had first taken my seat.

20 minutes later I would experience what it probably feels like to have a searing cattle prod burnt into the back of my eyeballs as they took photographs. Pupil dilation is only good when you're on drugs. Thankfully I had remembered to bring my sunglasses.

Journey

My apologies for not posting last week and not even having the decency to leave a note that I wouldn't be posting. I had this really elaborate plan in mind that probably would have been the best blog ever, but well... shit happens.

We went to Spain last week, which included a stop in London for a day. Really nice. I won't bore you with details of sunny days by the pool and the beach, or experiencing historically important places, or anything of the sort. But I must say that the Europeans can teach us stupid Americans a thing or two about livin. Here's a few:

- taking a siesta
- throwing the standard architectural city plans out the window and building areas with winding streets meant only for foot traffic
- making the standard driving test far more difficult thereby taking at least half the morons off the road
- 2 dollar coins
- topless beaches
- allowing the purchase of Cuban cigars

Here's a few things they could learn from us:
- coffee to go
- putting more cupholders in cars
- there are sports other than "proper football" and cricket, and they should be shown on television 24 hours a day
- automatic transmission

Funny how most of the things they could learn from us kinda revolve around living on the go. Maybe they know something we don't.

Fake Tales of San Francisco

This week I'm in San Francisco. One of the things I miss about this city is the ability to take a taxicab to wherever you want to go. Not that you couldn't take a cab in LA, but that would be ridiculous and expensive.

Each day I walk out of the hotel and cross the street to the taxi stand. Twice now I've walked up to the driver and said "you available?" And they've replied "where are you going?" Usually, the "where are you going" question happens AFTER they've replied "yes, I'm available."

The first time I got the question, I replied "11th & Folsom". And the driver said something like "I'm not going in that direction". Funny, I thought taxicabs were ALWAYS going in your direction. That's because their main function is to drive you in whatever direction you're going. Not whatever direction they're going in, unless they happen to be going to pick up a fare, and they really oughta be more concerned with picking up that fare than wasting their time stopping for random people who just might be going to where their future passenger is waiting.

So the next time I go up to the taxi driver and ask "you available?" And the driver asks "where you going?" And I reply "you available?" The driver says "yes" and I get in the cab and tell him "11th and Folsom."

I think they'd rather hear me say "wherever the hell you want to drive so's to get a huge fare and relative tip. So let's just drive around until you're tired and I'll get the fuck out." Right. That would be like me asking a potential client how much editing they want to do before I decide to take the job. Please.

TV Party

I'm gonna bring a TV set to work and watch it. (If you know me or if you know what I do for a living, then you know that there's always a TV at work. But just go with it.) Yes, I've decided that it's time for me to be able to sit in my work chair and just kick back and watch the tube.

I could watch some home videos, or maybe tune in and watch some music videos. Perhaps an episode of a classic television show I used to enjoy as a kid. Right there on my personal TV at work. Sounds fun right? Nothing wrong with watching a little TV at work, right?

But wait, I don't need to lug a big ole TV to work at all. I've got YouTube to do my TV viewing already. And all my co-workers are doing it too! No more guilt about watching TV at work at all. In fact, several of my co-workers regularly send me links to watch videos on YouTube. And they're not just 2 minutes vids or whatever. Last week I recieved a link to a video that's over 20 minutes of a guy playing Super Mario Brothers and swearing a lot whenever Mario gets killed. If co-workers are watching over 20 minutes of a guy playing Super Mario Brothers and swearing a lot whenever Mario gets killed then it must be okay for me to watch a little TV at work, right?