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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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About 12 or 14 years ago, when I worked at the HP building in downtown Calgary - Tech Support, I had a manager. She was a big woman, maybe 400 pounds big, she was dating a thin, small bearded guy, they had met on the job a week before I started, he was already moved in. Her desk was covered in pictures of her kids, she had a few, various exes, she would start to explain but then taper off after a minute or so, it was confusing even for her. They were fucking weird. But that whole job was weird, and people that work in Tech Support - well, they're pretty fucking weird too, so all in all with all the weirdness she only stood out for a moment or two then fell into the background noise that was the idiocy of the blind and the stupid trying to lead the disinterested through the rudiments of troubleshooting and fixing their own computers.
Anyways, the company was shit, and every 6 months or so we'd find ourselves taken over by another company, new handbooks and rules, new staff, and on one of the later takeovers the manager and her lover found themselves redundant. They had a couple of weeks left to work - and so my manager, she let out her little plan. She wasn't going to do IT or tech support anymore, no, she was going to follow her passion and become a "Life Coach". She went around the cubicles of all the employees ("Team Members") and handed out her business card. It said "Life Coach" on it, and if you visited her website you were treated to daily inspirational quotes and ways that she thought that you - as a human being - could be more productive.
It was completely fucked up. I mean, really really fucked up. I mean, you'd look at this person for a minute and hire a life coach just to change the dire circumstances that had somehow landed you in a room with her, the thought of going to her to in any way try and gain life skills or motivation was preposterous.
When finally she was made redundant she'd drop 'round the call center every few weeks to check on us, she was a lousy manager but since leaving she'd decided to take us all under her wing, give us the benefit of her life skills and mentorship, and you'd look up from the desk with that "WTF" glint in your eye and you'd catch somebody else's eye that got it as well - nobody would speak it out loud, we were all very corporate, and a lot of them plain and simple didn't get how fucked up it was, they probably checked her website every day, they probably thought she had her shit together and wanted to be like her. It was that fucked up a work environment. And it makes me laugh now, 'cause out here, well, there's a big market for "Life Coaches" and they're always the same sort of people, it'd be like choosing a Schizophrenic Psychiatrist or Terminally Ill nutritionist who balanced their diet at McDonald's...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He forwards me a few screenshots as to what he's been up to...finding me a date for Xmas, apparently...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He'd been hanging around all day, since 1:00, I took him to see the Balfour Xmas craft fair, he'd stung me for half my cigarettes, he poked around, got me to buy him a small jar of honey, rummaged through the baked goods, grabbed at cookies and stuffed them in his mouth, when the vendors offered to help him he just points at me, "he's got the money" - a relief for them, as clearly, obviously he won't be paying... After which we head down to the beach, we're going to do some filming, get some footage, we go down behind the BBI, he wants me to go call on a friend of his that lives there, "Sir Lancelot", I ask him, does he have another name...? His mouth filled with cookie he looks at me insolently "I don't know. I always call him Sir Lancelot". I check the apartment, an older tweaker nervously pokes her head out the window, she's probably looking for Sir Lancelot as well, sure enough, she doesn't know him...
Down to the beach, film him, ask him the questions he wants me to ask him, the afternoon is growing long and this approach to the documentary, it's not going to work, his stories are long, tortured, winding, convoluted...maybe I can use some, or a bit of them, but overall it's not gonna work. That's OK, I've got other ideas...Walking back to the jeep he spots Sir Lancelot going into another apartment, tells me to go up and see him, get some cigarettes from him, he rolls his own, and I decline, I'll give BatSh*t the last of mine, buy some more, but I'm not going to be his designated moocher...
I drop him off at the Ferry, home, open the package he dropped off at the Ferry landing for me: 1/2 bottle of Baileys. A quarter bag of rolled oats cereal. A quarter bag of (mercifully) unground coffee. Sammy Davis Jr's belt. An old mitten, or something close, that he swears was Marilyn's favorite cup holder. A couple of scones in a zip-lock bag with jam and a peanut butter thing that he's licked out. And there are the scrolls. These I'll look at in a separate post... Back to work, he's hanging out, waiting me to come back, didn't catch his Ferry, he's waiting on a ride back to Riondel, say, would I mind, I mean, would it be all right if he had some of that cake, he doesn't remember it's name, it's the one that looks like Barbara Streisand's nose... I guess correctly, the night's slow, but it's been an expensive day, what with the honey, cookies, cigarettes, cake, but he's not done, he's just getting started... Sniffing the air..."Mmmmm...what's that smell? I bet it must really lure in the customers..."...and he's smelling the BBQ ribs, today I'm on his side, OK, sure, why not, and I order him an order of the ribs. Smacking his lips he's loving it, top up his coffee, enjoying his ribs, eating them with his mitts still on: "I'll be dreaming about these for weeks to come...".
I remembered, in with an earlier batch of scrolls there was a prediction, "Batsh*t Predicts...Total Grey Cup Score: 49 Points", I give him $5.00 and tell him to make the bet. I mean, I'll split any winnings if he's right, and he thinks about it, not sure what to do, there's gotta be a sport select or something but he has an even better solution, he knows a midget in London, he calls her "Doc", she's perfectly proportioned though, and she lives in Charles Dicken's old house on the Thames only everything in it has been perfectly miniaturized, made just to her height, so to speak, and she had the floor raked towards the river so she could just sluice water through and it would clean it all out...anyways, Doc has a real head for numbers and so he'll talk to her, get her to make a 5 pound bet at Ladbrokes for him...I'm getting documentary fatigue, that syndrome that every documentary maker must get, starting to loathe my subject, you can have too much of a good thing, he's been hanging around far too much, all the time he's telling me all this, I'm not even laughing... *** The next day, he's in again, I give him $15.00 to go over and watch the game across the way, buy a couple of beers there, but he goes off, comes back in an hour, he's spent the money on cigarettes instead, and maybe, maybe, I mean, he's hungry, could I give him $5.00 worth of ribs? And now it's exhausted, my tit of the infinite cigarettes, coffee, food and money, there are paying customers in the restaurant, not the ones I pay to come in, and I hiss at him: "You're like having a 70 year old child..." and he laughs, he gets it, "I've been called a lot worse..."
...after the Grey Cup he's back, Doc pulled it off, the midget living in Dicken's old place in London, his prediction was off by 2 points (total score was 51), but she hedged his bet, covered a 2 point spread just in case, we're in that money, that 5 quid just became £5000, it'll be here soon, but in the meantime, while it's being wired, maybe I'd buy him some more of those ribs?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The below polaroid depicts a treasure map where Batsh*t and Lauren Bacall buried a treasure...enough there for a good down payment on the Taj Mahal...if only we can find the place in the photo...he can't rightly remember exactly where but it's somewhere in the Sahara...
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Dido the Author in again, little photocopied copies of his book for sale, a "hand-colored" black and white bad illustration of a mountain, sea, and sun on the cover, he's colored it in with highlighter, the whole collection of 3 short stories runs maybe 28 half pages, he's typed the text but hand-numbered the pages, so 15 8X11 pages all told and he's charging $12.50. He'd been in before, I'd expressed interest, he's calling me out on it, now is not the time, there's not a dime to spare, I've been half-supporting BatSh*t, not him now as well, but he's only got the single book (a half-dozen copies), and so he waits and writes and reads books and plays on his laptop while I work the 3 hours it takes to afford it, buy a copy...
The whole time he's only drunk a glass of tap water, he's squatting our cyberspace, he's pleased I bought the book, in two years this makes almost a dozen he's sold, and now he's telling me about the other books he's going to write, a book about how to write books, a book on how to be a waiter (and he wants my advice, and I want so badly to tell him he'll find service improves greatly when he starts becoming a customer, but I don't...), so many books to write, he's low maintenance, conversations are short, I have other customers and I pretend to be busy with them...
...finally, the last hour he's had the place to himself, he gets the hint, we should get together, hang out, we could collaborate on a book, I could help him with his webpage, I've got my own creative projects I tell him, don't need this collaboration, "like what...?" he asks, then guesses writing, and - now, being a published author these past 2 years, he lords it over me..."Let me give you some advice...3 pieces...the second is...um..." and he's thinking, confused..."...um...just write whatever you want...and don't feel you have to start at the beginning, anywhere will do...and...well, I'll think about the rest..."
He wants to write a book on how to write a book, remember.
***
I read the book when I get home, it's about his kayaking adventures off the Haida Gwaii, Queen Charlottes', only there isn't any adventure, it's more about how he felt, about how he talked with the Sea Lions "Arrr Arrr Arrr" and there's a lot of that and then there's the telepathy with the whales, and there's the feelings of wonder, of loneliness, of man's place in the universe, it's like an even worse version of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", if you can imagine, imagine it written by a lonely middle aged guy in a Kayak with the mental age of a developmentally delayed 12 year old and you have the idea. He paid an editor, 6 weeks it took them, not very well, proper editing would have had it tossed into a fireplace and one's hands warmed in front of it for the 30 or 40 BTU's it would have been worth...it'll be a fine Xmas gift for someone I haven't met yet I'm sure...That said, he's a "published author" and I gotta get off my ass while there's still time...