Do you need a B.S. to describe the S?

Not a lot of terribly interesting things happen to me at work. I count. Seriously. All day long I count. Imagine my horror when, upon being told that the site I currently work at is moving 30 miles away from where I currently live to a proper facility (and yes, you read that correctly. A top-notch facility is, in fact, needed for counting), the worker that plays Mr. Smithers to my manager put it bluntly with the following:

You have to make a decision and if it’ll help, just ask yourself if this is a job or a career. If it’s a job, you might want to start looking elsewhere.

Counting as a career? Was she serious? It’s not as if I wear a monocle and my skin is made of purple felt.

Does she ever stay awake at night wondering why she has never been made a manager? Actually, she was an assistant-manager at one point but they took that title away. To be fair, she does do a lot of work and is quite good at it, but with people skills that drove 3 out of 4 people in the department to choose in the negative, managerial she most certainly is not. Enough griping (I’m writing a blog here, not a novel).

Friday afternoon, I opened box after box of product to count like I did the Monday through Thursday before it. If you’ve ever wondered why I float towards authors such as Kafka, pepper my everyday speech with the word “bureaucracy,” or use socialist imagery whenever I see fit, you now have a better understanding of the influences that gave birth to something like this.

Kafka once said, “Real hell is there in the office, no other can hold any terror for me.” At least he was probably allowed to drink coffee or water at his desk. I digress.

I opened up a box and found a business card mixed in with the product (how very Kafkaesque of me, not identifying anything in order to convey its true sense of tedium and, by proxy, the sheer horror of dull repetition. And if I didn’t already, I think I made it pretty clear just now (and that’s the last Kafka reference, I promise)). But the real treat was on the other side of the card.


It’s for real. See.

That’s according to Wikipedia and anyone who has ever written a paper knows just how reliable a source Wikipedia actually is (now if only the academia would give it props, it’d make researching said papers so much easier).

So, anyway, after seeing this card, I wondered why it was made in the first place not to mention what the poor kid at the print shop thought when the initial order was placed.

“I’ll be requiring a 500 count and could you possibly make it a satin matte finish. And this is important, it must, I repeat, must be water resistant.”

Something about the seriousness and style of the little poo paintings looked like they would be more at home in an issue of Highlights Magazine or National Geographic circa 1958 and not on the back of a business card. I’d hate to be the doctor who pulled the wrong card for a drug rep. Or, on second thought, maybe I’d love to be that doctor.

I thought that maybe it was a chart for patients who didn’t speak English and it would act as an aide in helping to tell the doctor exactly what was wrong. Or maybe that very same chart was for people who did speak English but weren’t capable stringing a few adjectives together to describe what made them see a doctor in the first place. I also wondered if anyone has a poster of this in a dorm room somewhere, complete with black light and lava lamp. Or if it was equivalent to those cards the deaf carry with them made specifically for the incontinent. 8 hours of counting, one found poo chart, and this is what my imagination ran with.

What is shocking about the find, or rather the card, is that it was made for doctors. And it was first published in 1997. 1997?! Had doctors known what each different turd stood for prior to the late 90’s, maybe the obesity epidemic could have been avoided.

“Timmy, you made a number 28. That’s one through seven added together. Lay off the Doritos, doctor’s orders.”

Or do combinations of different types get multiplied? This is a Pandora’s box I’m afraid I just don’t (or don’t want to) know about. Thanks to recent scatological findings we can now easily identify “rabbit pellets” and the “runs.” I mean, if you can number food combinations at McDonald’s it seems fair to me that you can also number the results.

I was sad, I was glad . . .

Earlier this week, I had a typical consumerist reaction to a void unaddressed. That’s right . . . I just really wanted to get something. Anything. And in particular Radiohead’s newest album “In Rainbows.” I had heard it in its entirety a few weeks back and made a mental note that I wanted it for my Radiohead collection. Said collection consists of 4 albums and the rest that my friend uploaded to my iTunes- essentially everything except for “In Rainbows.” Oh well, that’s neither here nor there and for me to go on about it feels like bragging to other kids on the playground about having toys they may or may not have. Such is the way of collectors and their collections.

I decided to get it where I get the majority of my albums and, as it turns out, where I’ve purchased all of my Radiohead albums: marsRed Music in Haddonfield, NJ. The owner, Scott, has a great wealth of knowledge about music, as well as movies, in all forms of various genres. He’s an all around great guy as opposed to the usually snotty “gatekeeper of all things cool” attitudes CD shop employees and/ or owners tend to have. I feel bad that I swiped the swell picture from his store’s web site, since marsRed is now closing thanks to that post-Industrial mentality of entitled swiping and/or not supporting.

How often have you heard people bragging about what they got from Limewire? About seeing a current theatrical release movie on DVD that “looks crystal clear?” Anymore, it’s like a badge of honor to be shoplifting.

That’s right. Closing. Score one for the big box chain stores. Let’s root for the rich kid to get that full scholarship because their parents have powerful ties. Didn’t we do that in 2000 and 2004? Sure, lots of people are employed at BestBuy, Target, and WalMart. Right now, during this recession, that’s actually a great thing (until the corporate bigwigs have that desire to make themselves even more money by cutting whatever benefits they pay out to those very same employees). And, really, who buys music from WalMart? Apparently it’s a lot more common than I’d ever want to think about. Isn’t that like an child of the early 80’s proudly admitting that the clothes they’re wearing came from K-Mart? Have we no shame supporting those who don’t need that support? Trickle down economics doesn’t really work. In theory, it sure as hell makes sense, but all it takes is one Gordon Gekko to mess it up for the rest of us. And there will always be more than one Gordon Gekko.

To paraphrase Lord Acton “Power corrupt[s], and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He summed it up pretty succinctly.

Anyway, it felt like I was sucker punched as I walked by the shop on Tuesday and when I walked in again on Friday, I talked to Scott for a bit. He was visibly saddened that he was forced to close up his dream. I definitely saw it in his face as I talked to him and it killed me. I’ll miss swinging by to pick up a new CD by a band I heard on WPRB, WXPN, or glowing word of mouth review (including Scott's). I wish Scott great luck in whatever he chooses as the next path he’ll pursue.

Maybe we're all doomed to see our dreams die off in the name of getting things on the cheap. We kind of are, already. China and India have taken the reigns because we, as a people, feel entitled to get paid more than we are willing to work for. We work for "stuff" and for "money." How many people work to do a job well done?

This entry, which no one ever reads on their own, is all over the place. I’ll try and tighten and edit it later.

Oh, the "glad" part of this entry's title refers to the really great date I had last night which included umbrella sharing. That made the loss of marsRed not mar my week completely. I’ll write more about it later.