Time For Potted Meat

No, it's not easy.
Working full-time, being a husband, dad, and comedian equates to a lot of time management. If I had my druthers I would be able to sleep about 4 hours a night and be fully powered to work out every morning, get my son up and play a bit before work, work, come home and play with him more until bath time, put him down for sleepytime, go do comedy, and at least twice a week, have a civil conversation with my wife about how Reality Television is the #1 cause of divorce in this nation... so stop watching it.

But I have to make the most of what time I have. My wife started her own business this year so there are duties for her work, also, on top of being a Full Time Mom!, which is not easy. I've spent days with our son while she's out of town, and it's exhausting. On the days he won't nap, forget it, don't even call me, let alone wonder why I haven't responded to your text about what I did/did not see on the news last night. Thankfully, we have some help with the love of Grandmas (Mimi and Granny-H nearby) and some great friends to watch The Guy when we need a break/drink. But even that requires juggling schedules and attitudes. A friend offered to watch him one weekend, then said "Between 3 and 4."

No thanks, I said, but maybe next time. Honestly, I appreciate the offer and the thought, but the time constraint was too narrow for us to do anything that weekend and...And frankly, I shouldn't have to f*cking explain it. I responded with a "Gosh, I think we're elsewhere at that time, we won't even be home. Maybe next time, but really, thank you for offering." 3pm is not 7pm, and never will be, in the same place at the same time, check your Swatch.

Her feelings were hurt like I'd said "you're a rotten person and you can wrap your hour in a latex sleeve covered in broken glass. And SHOVE IT HOLE-WARDS." Some people can't stomach potted meat. Some folks love it. If you offer it, you can't expect EVERYONE to love it, try it, or be okay with its presence at the potluck. Don't expect an apology if your best effort doesn't meet the standards. You offered, didn't get accepted, move on. (I wish somebody would've laid that on me while I was dating)

What's up with all these analogies and metaphors?
Just tired of the bullshit, that's all. Getting red-assed over the shunning of your potted meat is as mature as being upset that you didn't get a compliment from a stranger on your new haircut. While your efforts should be appreciated, by yourself at the very least, needing constant approval is the sign of a well-developed, oversized lack of self worth. I hope it appreciates, but I can't invest right now.


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Mission: Control

Before I begin, I have to tell you that one of the most-annoying laughs of all time is the "Double-Gasp." A guy at work here does the short inhale-wheezing exhale-sans guffaw. From what I can tell, he thinks WAY too many things are funny. They aren't. He's not laughing-laughing, mind you, it's a nervous laugh to let ya know, hey... he just acted like an asshole!

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The need For and To Control is a familiar, annoying concept to me. It's that 'weeeee' of mosquito I can sense in the area but can't touch until it burrows into me and leaves an itch behind. I have seen it manifested many ways throughout my life, from Mind Control to Bladder Control. The control over the daily running of a household. The control over every second of another person's schedule. Most folks who truly desire Control shouldn't have it. They crave it like a drug to calm their anxiety over something being out of their grasp, wasting their time and GASP... stirring up an unresolved issue with their past.

We call them "Busy Bodies," "Anal Retentive," "Uptight," "MicroManagers," and "Assholes."

They call themselves, if self-actualized, "Control Freaks," with a giggle. I work with a number of these people. It's annoying. They love meetings. They love knowing all there is to know, instead of what they probably really need to know. And they have to guide, influence, allude-to, re-calibrate, re-direct, and lay the groundrules for whatever activity they are causing delays in by not allowing The Flow to take over.

This usually is a sign of Fear. Fear is a real bastard. Fear Itself, as has been said, is the only thing to be afraid of. And for good reason. It stymies people. Fear punches a hole in the gut of Comfort which can only be filled by Control, and madness begins. Look at Hoarders, for example. There are many kinds of Hoarders.

• Love Hoarders; can't be alone, can't really make relationships work, abandonment issues, sex addicts possibly, in need of attention and validation.


• Food Hoarders; afraid there may not be enough, they store and store and over-run their homes with food. Or they over-run their bodies to exert control of it.


• Item Hoarders; the TV show "Hoarders" sums it up awfully and bleakly - people are burying themselves in their own CONTROL, wherein, actually, it is a lack of Impulse Control. Again... madness has begun.

The Need to Control comes from that little voice in the back of a person's head that remains quiet, until they FEAR they are in a position to be hurt or bothered. They overplan. They micromanage. They dig their fingers into places that don't need digging. It's an issue from childhood that they need to throw a lasso around before, you know... they feel the judgment of a non-present parental figure lay across their shoulders. Somebody MUST step up and HELP these other folks...

If they don't, well, people may not have any idea what to do on the trip to the resort and could end up just spending too much of their time at the pool or playing golf or riding the bike trails and if that happens then they won't see what a fantastic trip planner they are and how they thought of everything, everything except RELAXING which is really just SITTING THERE and how could you SIT THERE and do NOTHING when there's so much to do can't you see that really REALLY... I am only TRYING TO HELP YOU DO WHAT I THINK YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO?!!?!?!!
Madness

This could be a new "NiceHole," the "ContrHole."
The emotional leash that ContrHoles throw on other people is only as short and restrictive as those who are lasso'ed allow it to be. Often times it's a matter of keeping the peace. Sometimes you're on your way to Put The Cheese In The Fridge while being told to Put The Cheese In The Fridge, and the Control Lasso falls away. Whatever the cheese, whereever the fridge, don't forget that the only real control we have is over our own actions and reactions. Any infringement on that should be met with a kind word, an empathetic smile, and handful of fart slapped onto their nose.

This would have been better if somebody had forced me to outline it first.

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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT

NiceHoles: The Candyland Edition

A new NiceHole has been uncovered:

The SweetHole.

DO NOT GOOGLE THAT AT WORK, you will be put back on that list you had to work to get removed from.

The SweetHole is a NiceHole who provides some sort of confection as a way of saying "Aren't I wonderful?" Really, their intent is not to bring candy to co-workers and share some joy, it's just to get rid of stuff they aren't going to eat at home. Nice, but come on...
The road to this blog is paved with the good intentions of people who are retarded in a way you can't test for.

I've noted this before in THIS BLOG about good intentions. Candy in the workplace should be familiar, individually wrapped, and portable. You wanna sandbag 40 packages of Coconut M&Ms near the printer, GREAT, you should be canonized.

But you want to leave a box of "Orchard Fruits" (the smelly 3rd-cousin version of Fartlets&Craplets) along with those wax bottles filled with colored syrup out by the garbage cans?

What kind of skidwagon raised you?

Work candy should be, if NOT chocolate, close to it.

Everything else falls short and you should just stop trying to be nice to people. If you're not willing to fess-up that you shop for groceries at a drug store, then you aren't good with work candy. Stick with collecting Faerie Tale Cat Figurines.

NICEHOLES. They're everywhere.


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NiceHoles

NICEHOLE: Any person who, while "just being themselves," and not necessarily being rude or mean, still manages to bother the living shit out of you.

For example:
The Feeder: Any NiceHole demanding that you 'have a bite, just a bite, take some, take some food, EAT SOMETHING!" even if you are hunched over in front of their toilet, throwing up after a frosting binge. Should you deny their culinary advances, YOU are the rude one.

The Knowblivious ("no-bli-vee-us"): This NiceHole knows something about everything, and will start a pointless conversation merely to tell you something about it.

WhistHoler: This person whistles indoors. Like a gigantic asshole. Because there's no music. And there's no music indoors for a reason. And they're a gigantic asshole and have to make noise. And when you blow, you suck.

The TimeJacker: Often starting in Knowblivion, the TimeJacker is a master of the circuitous route to NoWhereberg.
While the topic may start with something you didn't want to talk about, the trip from "A good place to eat" winds through "the time he ate BBQ in Tulsa" to "the best place to buy a banjo" to "streetracing in the 1970's" to "the Coast Guard has a boat with a gun that shoots lasers" to "why he makes his own cheese" and ends with tips on "owning your own alpaca farm." Everyone works with this pile.

NiceHoles is now ALL MINE!

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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT

Jeepers, Am I Busy Or WHAT? Huh?

I'm like REEEEALLY busy lately, between homelife, comedy, and full-timing it.
That's why this blog isn't really meeting all your needs. But that should change soon. Next week I fully promise you more content, the kind you've come to expect and be disappointed in.

In the meantime, a TimeJacker at work called a meeting that I cannot go to for 2pm, and he's still at his desk at 2:10pm. TimeJackers are those who take conversations from Point A to Point B to Point ME ME ME ME ME! and then suck time off your life/work/Bocce! ball tournament with irrelevant stories. Not even a meeting I need to be at, seeing as how somebody else will take better notes than I will...

Okay, more later.

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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT, NPO

Two New Niceholes

NICEHOLE; n. A person who, in their own mind, is being jovial, funny, well-meaning, or polite, by being themselves, while annoying whomever they are around, speaking-to, or working with.

ElderHole
This old-ass hole is usually off the mark with comments ranging from race relations to politics to gang rivalries. Recently while on a walk with my son, we were Bjorn To Rock!, as I had him strapped to the front of my bodular personage on a sunny, cool day. I was wearing a cap with a large purple "W" on it as I am proud of the university from which I graduated, Go Dawgs.

Walking across a parking lot, a lady in her mid-60's (by the looks of things) was getting into her Buick LeSabre, and says to us:
"Oh what a cute baby. Did you know your daddy is a Husky? I'm sorry about that."
So apparently whichever school was allowing women to attend it when she was of child-bearing age and looks was/is a rival of the University of Washington. I'm assuming in Athletics. Nobody talks trash about the UW Medical Center.
So I respond with, "Yep, it's a great school for medicine, manners, and courtesy. Have a nice day."
ElderHole: Old people can be a pain in the ass.

SarcastHole
This is a very common 'Hole. This person is one who knows you were plagued by a recent "issue." While they could offer anything from Help to Silence in talking to you about it, even if it's none of their business, they go for Sarcasm.
Case in Pleats: The team I am working on had to come in over the past weekend to test a new system. I did not have to come in because I'm a Contractor and still green to the team, and wouldn't lend more than an upbeat attitude (outwardly) and a looooooooooong siiiiigh from time to time.
SarcastHole on the team sees me on Monday morning, and rarely ever speaks to me. Again, new guy-contractor-moderately ignorant... why WOULD he talk to me? I'm nothing to him. BUT... Monday morning he stops me, with a sly/dumb smile on his face so that he can ask...
'Hole: "Heh-heh... how was your weekend?"
Me!: (confused at the ask) "Uh, good, just enjoyed the weather. What about you?" (so now I've asked him how HIS boring weekend was like I give a fartwhiff.
'Hole: "Oh, you... uh... did you not have to come in?"
Me!: "What? Oh, no, I didn't have to test this weekend."

He just kind of nodded and walked off.
BAM, right there... PROOF that he was hoping to drive-further the knife of disappointment into my rippling man-body. Why not find somebody going through a divorce and ask them if they like having a big bed to stretch out in? Like living the weekend of work wouldn't have been enough to push the edge, this bag of farts on feet tried to make light of it by bringing it back up in a way that was neither witty nor gregarious. Just dumb. Hardy-har.

ElderHole
SarcastHole

Be on the lookout for these holes, people.

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Do Me A Flavor

The past year of living in Los Angeles has been weird. I've grown a lot as a person. I've had to learn to ask, persevere, promote, and deliver comedy in weirder situations than I've ever been in. That includes the time I did comedy in a cut-out of a wall over a bar, standing on a 12-inch ledge. And everything I've done in Tukwila.

I read a book earlier this year called "The Go Giver." My friend & helper-angel Ann turned me on to it. The premise of the story is that when you can, Help. It greatly changed the way I look at helping, being helped, and the entire WHAT Helping Is. A subtext that I picked up on is that there's a BIG BIG BIG OPRAH EGO-HUGE difference between Helping, and Imposing Your Will With Best Intentions.

Somebody offering to swing a hammer to erect your weekend bone-shed, that's a Helper. They are there to help you get Your thing done.

Somebody bringing a set of blue-prints and one shovel and asking you "Why are you doing it that way? Shouldn't the drain be in the middle of the floor? Are these walls sound-proof? What grade are the leather restraints?" That's a NiceHole. They are coming to help you get things done the way they would like them to be done.

And if you question their intention, up their own ass they go, pursing their lips and saying "Well...
I WAS ONLY TRYING TO HELP."

Would you let somebody pay for your groceries for a month?
If it meant they got to do all the shopping, also?

Would you let somebody buy you a car?
If it meant they chose it, but you had to gas and insure it?

Would you let somebody get you a job that paid pretty well?
If it meant you didn't know what the job entailed?

I believe deeply in helping somebody when you can, simply because you can. It just MIGHT put you out, but you can handle it. Not talkin' kidney-donation, or even any kind of organ trade.
But never, ever helping somebody "on your terms." There is help, then there is Politicking.

Nobody elected you to be a Friend.

Give. Or Get. Graciously.

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NiceHoles

I created this term, "NiceHole," about a year ago in a conversation with my wife. We were talking about somebody I had worked with who, though very, very sweet in their intention, was also a full-grown minotaur-sized pain near, if not in, my ass.

NiceHoles are people who annoy you, but do it in a way that they will always be able to hide behind. This particular NiceHole would hear a conversation, hover near it, then impart their similar tale of woe... that's it. Nothing in the way of helpful advice, cheerful outlook, or even a decent recipe for a pot brownie. "Oh yeah, my sister had a problem like that. The doctor had to remove about 60% of her (I blocked this part out, trying to numb my psyche to that family's "parts") and she lived, but yeah... that can be tough."

Fuck.
Off.

NiceHoles hole it out in soooo many ways. SO many 'Hole variations.
* Volunteering to pass around a sign-up for the office "pot luck," then they bring plates. HOLE
* Standing and starting a conversation near a restroom, when you are obviously going TO that restroom so that you don't, you know, talk to somebody for too long outside of it and self-shit the inside of your skinny jeans. (your jeans are shit, BEE TEE DUB)
* Stopping you to converse while you are holding something heavy. They'll talk with their dumb mouth hole while their eyes go blandering off into the ether as if THIS is the conversation they know will change both of your lives.
* Not getting to the fucking point of a story. Hello? Here's a quote from a convo I had with a NiceHole a few months ago.
NH: "So you're a comedian, huh?"
GL: "I am, yes."
NH: "What kind of, uh, what's you're uh... like, what kind of uh... what's your routine?"
GL: "As in, what kind of material do I work with, or ?"
NH: "I used to really like that guy, oh gosh, he was, ah... uh... white guy... really, you know, uh... He would talk about the airplane and how it was unsafe and, what was his name? I'm so bad with names." (to nobody in particular)

Now, he's just trying to make conversation. But this isn't a Supreme Court vetting, we're talking about a stand-up comic. I'm thinking it's probably George Carlin, judging from this guy's age, but when I said "George Carlin?" He replied with...
"Who? George? No... not... what was the last name?"

REMEMBER???? THAT GUY YOU REALLY LIKED?

See, here's a perfectly nice guy who cannot hold a neural connection long enough to converse, to draw names out of his self-admittedly shallow namebank.

Here's another way to NiceHole into the Hole Of Fame.
Keep talking,
TALK TALK TALK TALK, comment on everything you see, just mindlessly make as much noise at a normal volume as possible...

Fill the gaps with a blathering boatload of blithering blabber. Butt hole.

The thing about the NiceHole is this...
They never do anything that you can point out as Mean or Rude. Just annoying. And if you say anything, the Hole will or can quickly retort with "Well, I was only (insert annoying behavior)."

Yeah, but during the entire first act of "X-Men: The Final Stand"? SHIT-CAN YOUR CAKEHOLE AND go silent...

We have to stop this... this horrible Adult Onset Self-Ignorant Idiocy.

NiceHoles... your time has come. You will now be made fun of, chastised, and called out for your behavior.
If we can sue and imprison snooty white guys for raiding pension funds, I can sure-as-our-national-debt-is-a-nightmare tell somebody to SHUT
THE.
FUCK.
UP.

Video to follow, when possible.


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