Saturday, October 15, 2005

Lord of all things that shiver uncontrollably

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and filled it up with so much water that it became a pool-pisser's wet dream, everyone blamed God for it. In fact, many of us raised our voices against God. What the fuck God, we argued in an elevated tone, what's with all the rage directed against poor old mankind who never did anyone any harm? In fact, I myself, did quite a bit of voice raising and God blaming, going so far as to challenge the Big Guy to a no-holds barred duel, no face-hitting allowed. Even Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, in his impeccably succinct way inquired, "God, dude, which part of 'God Bless America' don't you understand?"

But after all that yelling and cursing and table-thumping, this is what probably happened. We woke God up. And boy, is the Old Man cranky when you deprive him of his 8 solid hours. He looked down from his balcony, saw us tiny little humans all amped up and raring for a fight, and God bellowed, "Shut the fuck up you little turds. Jesus Christ, can't a God get some sleep around here? And take THAT for waking me up." And God took a big-ass bucket, filled it to the brim with water and emptied the entire fucking thing onto the Great Northeast. And no, he didn't quit once he was done, it's not like God to quit when he's having a ball, he kept on doing it. 'Cause, see, that's where most of the yelling, cursing crowds were. And so it began, the Great Deluge of October 2005.

It's been raining continuously for the past 2 weeks. It's been a cold, wet, windy, shitty rain. Maybe it's been raining 2 weeks, maybe a month, perhaps a year, who the fuck remembers when it began. 'Cause when it's raining non-stop, days turn into nights, nights turn into days, and it's the same dank dreary depressing dusky time of the day all day long, and you don't know whether it's night or day, all you know is goddamn, if you don't see the sun today, you are gonna have mushrooms sprouting from your armpits.

And you know what happens when it rains? It's time for all the shitty drivers in the world to come scurrying out of their homes and hit the road. All of them, no exceptions. In their red Dodge minivans, 1972 Ford Broncos, farm tractors, horse buggies, heck, slower the vehicle, greater is the possibility that it will be on the road in front of you in the rain, doing a comfortable 20 miles an hour, while you are jumping out of your seat-belt in impatience, wishing you could just drive through the bastard. And because they are shitty drivers, they don't drive on the slower lane. No sir, 'cause they know they don't really have a good judgement for the far side of the vehicle. So they stick to the faster lane, creating long fucking sprawls of traffic behind them. Oh yeah, that is time well spent.

My office building. The less I talk about it, the better. After it was erected in 1776 after the American revolution using cardboard, glue and animal hides (which probably account for the smell), it has seen many things, good and bad. Mostly bad. It has seen floods, it has seen construction, reconstruction, deconstruction, things have fallen off it, things have fallen on to it, causing other things to fall off it, heck, if there were anything disastrous that could have happened to it, it's probably happened already. So I don't really blame it for leaking. In fact, I almost welcome the leaking. See, the fact of the matter is, I share a room with another colleague. The room's divided into two separate cubicles, and only one with a window. And he owns the one with the window. And by God, was it biting into my very soul to see him enjoy sunshine and trees and water and birds laying eggs which other birds would come and devour and traffic on the expressway, when all I could do was stare in front of me at a hole in the wall, which I had to drill myself so I could have something to stare at.

But now, the tables had turned. The building was leaking. And water had seeped through the window, making my colleague's cubicle positively uninhabitable, thus forcing him to move to a different one, without a window I might add. And I was fine with it. Fine, I tell ya. And it was at that happy moment in my life that the building supervisor felt that he had to step in to make matters right. He decided unilaterally that the cubicle had started to smell because of all the moisture that had leaked inside. And thus began Operation Stink Kill. The Super began to throw all kinds of home made powders, sprays, voodoo curses and what-not at the moist patch in the cubicle in some kind of demented hope that it would stop the leaking. And this combination of powders and sprays now has stunk up the place so much that it is now worse than it was when the place used to simply smell like a couple of rats had died in the midst of passionate intercourse. Ah how I miss that smell.

But as of now, the rain continues. It still falls outside in the steady drip drip drip of an old man urinating with a swollen prostate. It will continue to rain throughout the weekend. And it will probably rain through all of next week as well. And the week after that. And the building will continue to leak, and shitty drivers will continue to drive and life will go on as usual for everyone, except me. I, on the other hand, will be harvesting mushrooms from my armpits.

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