Greycleaner N (is for needs, relative/subjective and changing)

Anger: Sins of Omission
November 23rd, 2009
Current Mood:screaming at luggage
Brother P didn't want the unabridged version of Why I Left the Catholic Church, so I didn't bother to explain it further, but... dangit, it isn't just that Bishop M said something I disagreed with. It's that, when the Church needs money for feeding poor people, comforting cancer victims, helping beaten wives and unwed mothers, and (wedged in on the same bill) buying the nuns new rulers to hit kids with...in that case, they pass the hat. An ornate, large hat, but still a pledge drive. Kidding aside, I don't have a problem with funding Catholic schools, so I wrote them a check back in May, for a goodly amount, lump sum, up front, no waiting months to get it in small chunks. ... but when a Hot Button Political Issue rolls into town, suddenly Bishop M has Big National Funders and Money is No Object. (Was this whole Marriage Equality law just a scam by the Legislature to get people to pour money into the state from richer regions and deeper pockets?)
I'm supposed to be packing. Brother P just called to tell me what to pack. It includes shaving cream. First time in years I'll be somewhere where I need to shave, but can't just use...well, some of Dad's shaving cream. Why doesn't P have shaving cream? (I don't want him to feel bad, so I don't ask.) I just want to hit myself in the face with a rock. I read somewhere that the time we spend is pieces of our lives. We fritter it all away on worthless nonsense because we can't tell what's important, what we're going to need later on. I don't know what to put in Dad's casket. I don't even remember what I put in Mom's. Cram everything into a suitcase and run, and hope that it turns out in the end.

Greycleaner 0 (is for Overworked and Overwhelmed)

Thank God It's Black Friday No Longer
November 28th, 2009
They are cutting hours at work, my dept of three men, anyway. during the holiday season. This evening, I spent 45 minutes trying to find merchandise that various customers wanted to buy that wasn't on the shelves, because at 8pm on Black Friday, we had _no one_ working in Grocery. I'm not even in Sales or Stocking. I'm a janitor...but I've got a work ethic that says that if someone needs powdered sugar to leave the store happy, I should see if it's within my power to make that happen. (Less luck with Danactive Strawberry Yogurt Drink that we apparently really were out of...I think. The Dairy Cooler was packed, and there was only so much I could dig through without making a mess of the place. )
Amazed how quickly(?) 'Black Friday' has become the publicly known/accepted name of the day after Thanksgiving, as if it were its own holiday, like Fat Tuesday or Easter Sunday. Are there holidays that don't stand for anything? Are there holidays that stand for bad things like greed and gluttony? Are there rules for what can be a holiday, or just whatever you can sucker the majority into celebrating?

Greycleaner P (is for Protectors, Punishment, and Powerlessness)

Anger: Frontier Justice in the Modern Age
December 4th, 2009
Current Location:Cheyenne, Wyoming
I get my temper from my Dad. That sounds like a paradox. He almost never got mad, but when he did... yikes. The sheer rarity of it was a shock, but it wasn't at all halfway or pansy. It was full strength. There is a tendency to assume that those you admire are somehow more perfect than you, less subject to the murky undercurrents of human nature. Living the life I have these last five years, holding down a job in the real world, dealing with the public, I frequently feel these flares of anger at people who just don't seem to get it... the shoplifting, vandalizing punks who think they're smarter than the rest of us because they don't care about anyone else; the ones who spray invisible lubricant on the floor in the middle of the store, apparently just for fun; the ones who think they shouldn't have to follow the rules; the people who want to shame me into not doing what I don't have any choice but to do because the rules I need to follow don't make any sense and don't really work. I get angry. often. more than I have since I was a teenager. After a few minutes, I get a grip on myself and don't really do any of the things I thought about doing. Did Dad feel flares like these, and simply didn't express them? I don't know. It wasn't something I was comfortable talking to him about. After all he did, how hard he tried, to keep his children safe from corrupting influences... how could I ever let him see what a monster I really was? Maybe he got angry. maybe. Either way, the sentiment behind my fantasies of beating up shoplifters is very much what he taught me, his John Wayne sense of morality, that some are innocents that need to be protected, but some people are scum, that need to be punished, or they'll never stop exploiting everyone else. Rationally, abstractly, I'm more liberal and forgiving than that. Maybe vigilante fantasies come naturally to those who are relatively powerless in a given circumstance, a natural psychological imperative. Maybe there's just something about getting your hands dirty that makes you want to curl them into fists.

Greycleaner Q (is for Quiet, unjustly applied and not applied)

Hey LJ, Maybe I shouldn't expect much wisdom from a 10-year old, but..
December 4th, 2009
this blog, the one where I rant about the stupidity of the retail sector, has a pop-up commercial for Best Buy. Yes, there is fully functional Close button. Yes, I'm a freeloader on this site, a prosumer who provides only the content that gives anyone a reason to come to this particular blog, and not a very productive prosumer, really. Still, banner ads are one thing. When we progress to pop-ups, you're actively wasting my time. Keep that close button fully functional, bean-counters. I'm not just typing to hear myself think; certainly not to hear Madison Avenue think. You, LJ, are still superior to the newspaper that charged ~$70 to run Dad's obituary on a Monday. That's advertising rates. Sister was mad, too. I assured her the Internet is killing the newspapers. In my naivete, I'd assumed all these years that the part of the paper that 40% of readers turn to first was... y'know, news people wanted to know, info provided as a public service, meaningful primary content. and if obits are advertising, ours didn't get much bang for our buck. Numerous wake-goers told us they almost didn't see it, didn't realize it was him, almost missed the Wake (and probably others actually did miss it). Insert swear words here.

Greycleaner R (is for Real Life)

not every post has a title
December 5th, 2009
Current Music:Be Not Afraid (Catholic hymn)
silver linings? the Circle of Life? a rededication to my vow to fight crime? *shakes head* My life is the same as it was three weeks ago, except my father's dead. My sister seems to be taking it a bit worse than I am. Most days, I need to rip open the scabs to feel something. I do it anyway, of course. I come here and I hurt myself because that's the only way I can think of to honor my father. doesn't make any sense, I know. Sometimes, the things that make life make sense are hidden from us. everything just happens, and you don't know how it all fits together.

Greycleaner S (is for Sailor Scouts, Sweets, and Scripts)

Meanwhile, on Earth-8... (in honor of Sweetnfat's birthday tomorrow)
February 20th, 2010
Current Location:Metropolis, Kansas
Exterior. a sunny Late afternoon in Naoko Park. Five ninjas in traditional black garb are surrounding and menacing a small girl in a Girl Scout-like uniform, who bears a shoulder satchel filled with rectangular boxes.

Ninja 1: Look, girl, just hand over the Girl Scout Cookies, and we'll let you go.

Girl: ...but these aren't girl scout cookies. They're sailor scout cookies!

Ninja 1: Like I give a fig what brand they are. Cookies are cookies.

Girl (outstretched right hand, spreading fingers) Red... Star... Power !!!

Suddenly, the girl is an archetypal humanoid shape, floating in mid-air, surrounded in a corona of mottled multi-colored light. Background music: ooooOOMwhaOOM

Ninja 1: Aah!! Naked middleschooler! Avert your eyes!
Ninja 1: (to Ninja 2, staring in shock) ... Earl, so help me, if you don't avert your eyes, I'll freaking stab you.

The Girl poses dramatically, her transformation complete, she now wears a red, blue, and gold costume with a headband/tiara, a ruffled miniskirt, and a stylized 's' medallion.

Girl: Thieves of cookies promised to paying customers, beware, for I am Sailor Krypton, protected by the shattered planet Krypton, and in the name of its red sun, Rao, I will punish you!!

Ninja 3: Did you say, 'shattered planet'?

Girl: Yes, but I possess all the power and knowledge of its civilization at its height!

Ninja 3: cheerleaders for dead worlds don't impress me. C'mon, guys, we can still beat her!
Other Ninjas (brandishing nunchaku) : Yeah!

Girl: I warned you. Krypton...Phantom Zone...Exportation! (Her hands are extended towards them, inner wrists touching, palms spread, and a wide angle beam of strange light shines from between her hands. Everything it shines on is rendered in photographic negative, and as she sweeps it around and over each ninja, he fades away. )

Exterior (?) a negative universe of swirling nothingness. and five puzzled ninjas.
Ninja 2: uh, Carl, where are we?
Ninja 3: ... I don't know, Earl. I don't know.

Greycleaner T (for Today was Terrible)

Today was a cascade of saving throws.
March 5th, 2010
Current Mood:frustrated frustrated
Forgot to set alarm. Late for work. Crowded place. managed to finish last week's paperwork in time to copy off next week's paperwork. fairly few spills but one of them was in the middle of trying to clean the front end ladies' room, and the 'spill' (in Toys) ...smelled like exactly what it was, to a much stronger degree than usual. (thought to myself: perhaps I really should look for a less disgusting line of work) quite hungry and tired by the time I managed my lunch break. broke the breakroom coffee pot accidentally, just as 10 cups of fresh hot coffee began pouring out of the machine. fortunately, there were other people who helped me contain the flow. 15 minutes late going back to work because the breakroom clock does not reflect the actual time, perhaps due to last week's repeated brownouts. On my way out for the evening, I checked my schedule to discover I'm either off tomorrow, or I'm due in at 8am to cover for a coworker, as per vague oral discussions conducted separately amongst me & him, and each of us and our supervisor, who did not reflect this change on the official Schedule Master Printout. so...yeah. (Hey, Deadcat, if they tell me to go home, should I grab my dice and head up your way, or is this overly short notice?)

Archival Note: As I recall, I showed up the next day early to cover for my co-worker and the manager who had to fix things on the computer to let me in (when they didn't expect me there at all)said, "you both did this the exact wrong way." but they changed things to let me work since I was there and the co-worker was not.

Greycleaner U (is for Undeserved Praise)

A word from Mal on Celebrity Hype
July 26th, 2010
and don't get me started on John Blade, the 'Vampire Hunter', Mr. I-was-drawn-by-Gene-Colan, Mr. 'Wesley-Snipes-played-me-in-the-movie'; Mr. 'I'm not a vampire, I'm a 'daywalker'." He sucks blood, just like the rest of us. If it looks like a bat, and flaps like a bat, it just might be a vampire shapeshifted into a bat. Give a guy immunity to sunlight, and suddenly he thinks he's better than the rest of us. If you ask me, he's a traitor to his own kind, going around killing other vampires all the time.
I hear he's a cannibal, too. Most vampire hunters will corner a vampire in his coffin during the day and drive a wooden stake through his heart. That ratfink uses a straw. and all his hangers-on-- Drake, KIng, Kris Kristofferson or whoever-- just stand there, looking the other way, whistling a merry tune while he drains the poor bastard dry. No skin off their nose if another bloodsucker bites the dust. It happened to a guy a friend of my insurance agent used to know.

Greycleaner V (is for the Vanishing Veneer of Vitality, lost to vermin and vapidity)

(no subject)
August 30th, 2010
I haven't posted much to this emo blog lately, because I've been trying so hard to see the good side, count my blessings... but my workplace becomes more and more abusive. The mass skullf# that was Inventory slid almost seamlessly into the mass skull# that is Remodel, and then it'll be time for our endless Xmas shopping season, hard as it is to believe as I sweat like a pig in the equatorial heat that somehow does so little to prove Global Warming, the way a cold day in f#ing January so easily disproves it in the common mind. I feel like work (and/or the unseen bugs in my bed; and/or the heat and/or unknown factors) are sucking the vitality from me, leaving little gumption with which to deal with the rest of my life, which consequently, is falling apart at the edges. I've been sleeping on a sleeping bag on the floor because my mattress makes me itch... except now, even the floor is making me itch, so soon I'll need a Plan C. My apartment is a mess. I still haven't put away most of the precious junk I grabbed from camp several months back. My car needs work done to pass inspection, my dental crown on my back leftmost tooth is falling apart, piece by piece. I'm preparing my games for Con, the final Con of its type, and already Frifts is so complicated I doubt any of my regular players will play it... and I might not even get those days off from work, at this rate. My church will be bankrupt in two years unless they double their attendance. The girl I love says we should just be friends. ...and I say, sure, baby, I'm good at that. I'm the ultimate Friend Man. What else can I say?

Greycleaner X (is for Exiles and Exits... the final chapter of the Greycleaner Archives)

(no subject) Convention Report for the Eastern Avenue (Shadowfox-memorial) Game Festival
October 10th, 2010
Current Mood:sad sad
First day of convention. I wore a grey pinstriped 3-piece suit (that I bought, once upon a time, in a thrift store, and never wear.) I was late getting there (partly because I had extra layers to put on but mostly because I missed an exit and wound up having to drive to the next town and turn around.) Didn't matter. I had no players. but that didn't matter- I played Marvel Heroscape with friends and that was fun.
Ran Mutants & Masterminds for three people, although I had to ask two of them if they wanted to so the first could have something to play. borrowed a sourcebook from one of them to use npc stats from. Still, it went well. beginning, middle, and end and everything.
CF and CW bought me dinner at the diner down the street from the Veterans Memorial Hall. nice of them. good meal. No players for Fudge Rifts. I played in Thymewind's Gamma World game (the new, just-out version of the rules, which aren't bad, actually. ditto Heroscape.) and that was fun.
Of the various people that I invited, recruited, or told about convention, none of them showed today, and only one is coming tomorrow. Even the coworker who was scheduled to run a game flaked out with one day's notice, telling me yesterday that he couldn't think of a storyline for a game. (Among seasoned GMs, this is known as a 'lame-ass excuse'. Thymewind and I had a story idea he could've used before sundown that day. Maybe he wouldn't care for "The Antichrist tricks/coerces virtuous characters like Francis Mulcahey into bringing him the Holy Grail so he can drink out of it to attain messianic powers." but the point is, less than 24 hours. )
Things were wrapping up for the day from 9:30 on, and the organizers were counting the till to see if they were going to make enough money to cover the cost of renting the space (unlikely). The Tall Man handed them two twenties as a donation to help out. The Tall Man had shown up in an actual suit, not as a costume. Shortly thereafter, MA jokingly asked if I was working for the Tall Man, since we were dressed the same. This apparently bruised Tall's ego, because he proceeded to make a bunch of comments about how shabby my clothing was, how my shoes were falling apart instead of shiny and polished (his were gleaming, as I only noticed once the topic came up), and how my suit was too small, and 'did I mug a midget on the way in here' and so on. MA and the other macho-male geek toy-using-soldiers teased along playfully. Then, immediately thereafter, it was time for everyone to go home. ...and I'm left, feeling lousy and unlovely even in a suit, feeling like even in a place theoretically full of only freaks and mostly old friends... even among freaks, I'm less cool than the other freaks. like I had a delicious, expensive meal, but desert was manure; like junior high never really ends; and wondering why I worried for months and sweated getting all this ready when all that really matters is the attitude of the people involved.