2003-01-23 - 12:05 a.m.

What The Dog Thinks

Today I was sitting in the kitchen washing off a few plates for the dishwasher when I noticed that the dog, Petey, was looking at me.  He was standing there, looking up at me, his tail slowly wagging back and forth.  His eyes bright, and the two white marks above his eyes makes it look like he has his eyebrows raised.

"Is there something you want?" I asked him. Usually he indicates some sort of answer with his body language.  He will either lick his chops and move his eyes from his food bowl and back to me and then back to his food bowl.  Or he will start turning in circles and heading to the door meaning he wants to go outside.  But this time he just stood there, watching me.

It dawned on me that he just likes to look at me.  I do the same thing to him.  When he is lying on the floor with his from paws crossed and his head down and he looks like the cutest thing in the world.  In those moments he reminds me of one of those cartoon dogs that does something bad and then tries to act all innocent.  The cartoon dog will have big, open eyes and a halo floating over his head.

I wonder if when Petey looks at me he is thinking the same thing about me?  Is he thinking, Look at Jimmy, standing there on his hind legs.  He's so cute!  Where does he get that food he is always eating?

So he stood there and looked at me for a moment.  Then he sat down and started chewing on his ass.  Whatever does go through his head just keeps on going I think.  He does not have a long attention span. I guess that suits him pretty well.  I mean, right now he is just lying on the floor at me feet staring.  His eyes are blinking, his eyelids getting heavier and heavier.  And that is pretty much it for the evening for him.

I watched some of American Idol tonight on television.  It is very funny and very hard to watch.  American Idol, for those of you not in American, is a show that auditions people who can't sing, narrows it down to a few who can sort of sing and then gives them a venue.  It is the sort of singing where the notes go up and down and there is a lot of warbling.  Not my cup of tea, but there are some very funny moments.  One of the judges, Simon, says that every single one of the 9000 people who show up to audition literally and truly believe that they are good.

They show the poor saps before they stand before the judges and they all say the same thing, that they are going to try their best and believe in their dream and trust that God will give them the power to prevail.

Then they sing. And it is horrible.  Most are way off key, many are way out of their vocal range and some do not know all of the words to the songs they are oversinging.  The judges tell them all that they have no talent and they must stop singing immediately.  And if I had heard the story without seeing the actual performance I would have thought it was mean. But it is not mean.  It is the truth.  They need to stop singing.  But even after the undeniable truth has been presented to the auditioners they don't believe it. When they are interviewed afterwards some say that the judges were intimidated and jealous of them.

!

It is incredible.  One man auditioned and was told to go away. He showed up the next day and told the staff that the judges told him to pick another song and come back after he had practiced it.  They told him that the judges never said any such thing and told him to go.  He hung around a little longer and they had a security guard escort him out, explaining to him that he is banned from the building.

America is populated by people who are out of touch with reality.  Talentless people who assume they can sing, I guess because on one has ever told them specifically that they cannot.  It explains so much.

Man, I have been watching a lot of television.  It is a mental break that I am enjoying a lot.  I have made no progress whatsoever this week on anything that I wanted to do.  And I am fine with that.  Everything moves aside when it I need rest.  And I do need rest.  Just big fat, non-productive blobs of quiet time.  It makes me so happy.  I could go on like this for months before I get antsy and want to do something.

Being here at home with all of my stuff, going out and eating lunch, sitting and flipping channels, going to bed without setting the alarm for the next day, this is what I would like to do with my life.  For example, it dawned on me that I needed to cover the outside faucets so they will not freeze and burst the pipes tonight when the hard, hard freeze hits.  So I headed over to Home Depot to buy a couple of those Styrofoam faucet covers that just hook over the faucet and keep it from being exposed to the elements.

Home Depot was out of them.  I went into Target, since it is right across the street.  They had no such thing.  I went down the street to K-Mart, figuring it was just the sort of white trash thing they would have.  You know what I mean, these things are just so cheap.  They look like Styrofoam breasts hooked on the side of the house.

I looked around and could not find the damn thing.  So I asked the only sales associate there, a young Moby looking kid, if he knew where they were.  He did not know, but he walked me across the store to the hardware department to show me that they did not have them.   He is obligated to take me to the section on the off chance that I am a mystery shopper.

In my previous life in retail I was the victim of mystery shoppers.  It usually worked out pretty well for me, but one time I got "a bad shop" as we used to say in "the biz."  Mystery shoppers are hired by the company to come into the stores pretending to be a customer, see how long it takes to get waited on, see if we offer to help, offer to order an out of stock book, and stuff like that.  Our store would be warned that the mystery shoppers were out.  When one store got the report back they quickly called all the other stores in the chain to tell them what the shopper looked like and what books they asked for.  It was all a big cat and mouse game and my stores usually won.

But there was one time when I was very busy and we had a lot of work to do and were understaffed and I was the poor jackass that got the mystery shopper.  I was totally distracted and got one of the lowest scores in our district.   I was redeemed on the very next visit.  That was about the time I was leaving the retail business.

So the young Moby at K-Mart was no help, but he covered all the bases so technically he did a good job.  I went across the street to Lowes Home Improvement Store.  Thank God for Lowes.  That is what I said to the guy at the register when I bought the faucet covers.  "Thank God for Lowes," I said to the guy.  He said they had been selling them all day long.  I told him the other stores were out.  Then I stopped talking because I did not want to be "that guy."  And by that I mean the customer who goes on and on about something that the guy behind the counter couldn't care less about.  He had made an innocent remark about how well this item was selling and I was ready to tell him my entire ordeal.  To my credit, I was going to try to make it funny. But I couldn't come up with anything.  I can't help but think it would have been different if he had been a cute, flirty girl.

All right!  That's it.  I'm out of here.  Dave is on now.  Gotta go.

Jimmy
 

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