What Colour is Your Hang Glider?

I recently took an online aptitude test. I've probably taken about six of these in my lifetime, starting at the age of 12 and the number one answer has always, always been the same:

Clergy / Nun / Pastor

What's funny is that these tests never ask you "Are you religious?" "Is your faith important to you?" or "How do you feel about being celebate?" – which I think would be just a bit of a factor for someone deciding if they want to work for THE Man.

Being agnostic pretty much rules the life in the clergy out unless I chose to go on to form the Church of Uncertainty or the Cynical But Cautiously Hopeful Of An Afterlife Temple.

It does make me wonder what about me seems so suitable for the clergy, despite that whole lack of religion thing, so I made a Pro-Con List:

Pros:
* Get to hear people's secrets (not just at confession, but I bet all those pews offer some good coverage for eavesdropping)
* Get to impart advice all the time (wee!)
* Instant respect without having to kill people
* Can make up silly rules like "no dancing to rock and roll music" and base it on something-or-other to do with the devil. Then get into a rumble with some new kid from the city that just wants to cut loose and kick off those Sunday shoes
* All stain-glass, all the time
* If you testify at a trial, everyone HAS to believe you (Mwahahaha)
* I could get people to call me "Father" and later joke "Who's your daddy now?"
* Finally could start identifying with the characters on 7th Heaven

Cons:
* Your friends would feel bad swearing or making sex jokes around you
* Old people would probably always be hovering around you
* Major dry-cleaning bill from all of those exorcisms
* Being lumped in the same pile with the "crazy" church types
* Your parish would be weirded out to see you at the grocery store in your low-rise jeans and clingy top.
* Lots of weekends would be wasted doing weddings and funerals, oh – and that mass thing on Sunday
* Having to keep kicking out those freeloading Mamas & Papas during the winter months
* Would start identifying with the characters on 7th Heaven

You know, that pro list is lookin' pretty sweet. Maybe I need to find me a religion that mostly fits and get those resumes out …

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Transference

I’m in a mood to rant about some work experiences, but because I’m committed to keeping my job, I won’t. What I will do is bitch about this Jim dude from the Martha Apprentice show because he exhibits some qualities that I can’t stand seeing in any corporate culture.

So this is just about Jim. From the show. Just him, got it?

Jim is an untalented, loud-mouth douche bag. I can accept that some people are full of crap and utterly useless in most regards, but what destroys me is that our society has a masochistic tendency to award these ego-inflated fools with jobs, money, promotions and camera-time on national television.

What gives?

This Jim guy needs to be punched in the throat. He thinks so much of himself that he’s actually delusional. His internal dialogue probably consists of his own booming voice saying things like "YOU. ARE. THE MAN!" while songs from the Top Gun soundtrack play in the background.

He’s one of these jackasses that can’t remember what it’s like to say something genuine, disagree with the boss to the boss’s face or actually listen to what someone else is saying without using that person's air-time as a chance to prepare what he wants to say.

On Martha, he’s picked Dawn as his arch-nemesis and literally talked/ranted/brown-nosed his voice hoarse over it. People like Jim try to create group-enemies so that everyone else is distracted from the fact that he sucks and offers nothing to the team. Jim is the type that will echo everything a boss says when the boss says it and act like he’s been saying those things all along. In reality, he’s never even thought anything close to what the boss said (let alone been expressing it to a team) and has only been filling the air with pointless, vague buzz-phrases like "synergy, people - let's see some synergy!" or "hey, don't just think outside the box - think as if there is no box to begin with" and punctuating these sentences with finger pistols and clicky mouth sounds.

I already liked Dawn (her favourite saying is “you can’t polish a turd” – how can you not like that?) but Jim's dislike for her makes me like her more. I’m thinking that Jim knows that Dawn, with all her turd knowledge, can see and smell a bullshitter when it’s before her and this threatens Jim. I want her to take Charles's gnawed, damp cigars and shove them up Jim's over-exposed nostrils. Faster dawnycat, kill kill!

And the clincher? The sign that this man is true evil? He wore a blazer with jeans in this episode. I bet you a vat of decoupage glue that he’s envisioning Dawn with brown nipples (just follow his snarkville gaze!):


I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! ARRRRHHRHHRHRHRHHRHRGGGH!!!!

Simmering. Down.

You see, TV just really riles me up.

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This Is What Pregnant People Look Like

On the walk home after my birthday, Patrick and I came across a Planned Parenthood centre. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to stand by its sign and do my ‘I’m pregnant’ pose. Patrick took a picture of it which is now gracing his website (and now mine). I get why I would stick my gut out, but what I don’t understand is the face that I’m making:

Apparently, in my mind, pregnant women glare at you while sucking in their cheeks, pushing out their lips and doing something really weird with their nose that is reminiscent of Michael Jackson (circa 1982? 1984? I don’t have my Face of Michael Jackson Flowchart with me) that make them look kinda unhuman. For some reason, that’s my impersonation of a pregnant woman and I don’t know why.

Maybe I'm pretending that I've been hired as a big warning sign to spook slutty teens: "Not using protection? THIS IS WHAT YOU'LL LOOK LIKE, TRAMPY!"

I don’t know. I’m a mystery to even myself.

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Things Overheard

If it wasn’t for the short lifespan and garbage eating, I think I would very much enjoy being a fly – just so that I could hang out on that proverbial wall and casually listen to other people’s conversations all day.

Rather than pray to Mother Teresa, Pappa Smurf or whoever it is that reincarnates people into creatures, I have found my eavesdropping salvation via iPod. All you need to do is sit somewhere in public, pop your headphones on, put a crossword puzzle in front of you and let the listening begin. The key is to put the iPod volume to nadda and tap your pencil or straw to a beat so that people think that you’re very consumed by your music. If you do this, the people around you will carry on with their ridiculous private conversations right in front of you, completely unaware of the fact that you are feverishly listening and noting every syllable for future blogging.

Once, two late-twenties/early-thirties guys plunked down at table near me one morning to enjoy coffee and fatty baked goods. The conversation started off normally enough and I was about to turn on my iPod for real when the guy wearing a blazer and jeans (that’s right – blazer – not a jacket – a blazer - with jeans. On a man. Not in 1984) started to bitch about a woman he was seeing.

Blazer Man: Yah, I guess I put her on too high a pedestal. She just seemed like the total package.

Non-Blazered Man: Sure.

Blazer Man: I’m at the point where I want something more serious, long-term – but things have to be just right, ya know?

Non-Blazered Man: *Grunt/Mumble Noise*

Blazer Man: It’s just that …

He looks around to see if it’s safe to talk. I remember again to tap my pen to a beat to comfort him and he looks satisfied with this and continues.

Blazer Man: It’s just that her nipples are really brown, man.

Non-Blazered Man: Ugh! That sucks.

Blazer Man: I know!

When I heard that, I had to try real hard not to twist my face and blow my cover. It would never occur to me that nipple colour would be a big concern to men, let alone a deal-breaker.

Blazer Man: You’d never guess it, eh? If she was black, yah, I could imagine it – prepare myself, but not her.

Non-Blazered Man: That sucks.

Blazer Man: I guess another one bites the dust, eh?

And they say there aren’t any good guys left.

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