Category: weirdity

Ok, this is not funny….

…and yet it is.

ABQjournal reporting today about a peeping tom not only getting caught but getting whacked in the head by the angry father toting a baseball bat.

Apparently the jerko was looking in the window of a FOURTEEN year old girl in South Santa Fe. The girl’s brother spotted the creep and told his dad. They took up a broom handle and a bat went outside to catch the pervert. Dad whacked the loser upside the head. Police found him, fly open, “conscious but unresponsive”.

The eighteen year old was airlifted to hospital with a fractured skull.

Paid the cost for getting his freebie jollies off a child, he did.

Back in “the early years” after I’d graduated college and had my first apartment on my own, I was getting ready for work one day and out of the corner of my eye and between the venetian blinds saw something move on my patio. I looked closer to see a man walk up, bend down and start looking in my windows. I screamed, in a way I never knew I was capable of, and the guy took off.

I reported it to the managing office, and they couldn’t be less concerned. I. Was. Freaked. Out.

Later, I guess after a few more women reported a peeping Tom, they did get security guards. Never knew if they caught the guy.

What I wouldn’t give to have taken a Louisville Slugger to his cranium.

So it’s an evil black humor mirthful laugh I have at the expense of the injured lad. But truly, it’s not funny…none of it is….

Karma being what it is…I think his balance is paid in full.

Stress

It’s a gas, innit?

I mean, all the magazines tell you that it’s bad, bad, bad. Your doctor will say don’t have it. You know it’s not good. And yet, there it sits, on your chest, choking you in the middle of the night.

And stress brings all its friends to come play, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, achy joints, chronic back pain, illness, pain, suffering, blight, famine, hoards of locusts.

It’s one of those really cool biological things that helped us a ton when being chased by a saber toothed tiger or avoiding trampling from a woolly mammoth. It’s what got us through the rough, less industrial, times and into what we have today.

What do we have today?

Made up stress. Adrenaline pumps through my veins giving me that wild “flight or fight” rush. Really, I’m a flight kind of girl. That seems best for all. But nooooo, I have to stay and fight, which stresses me out more…ain’t that a fun twist?

And what am I fighting? Words on a piece of paper. I am not making this up.

Everything I am doing today, all these things that stress me out, give me heart palpitations, make me aspirate my own stomach acid in the middle of the night, cause me to lose sleep and be a terrible partner to the man I love more than anything is something that matters only in the four walls of this gray cubicled office where I earn my paycheck. Sure, all this agony and no ecstasy means I continue to get paid and am in line for a measly (and I do mean measly) raise this year. I should be thankful, right?

I’m not.

I’m angry. Perhaps being angry is just an acceptable way to mitigate what I’m really feeling. No wait, what I’m really feeling is anger. For a lot of reasons.

Mainly, I’m tired. Real tired. Perhaps a good night’s sleep (which probably won’t come for at least another week) might better my outlook. I don’t know.

Ok, back to it.

Hope you all are having a much less stressful day.

/rant

Sign of the times?

I am probably the wrong person to make comment on the current state of the economy. I don’t know much, I don’t watch enough TV or read enough newspapers. I know what I have seen in headline news suggests that people can’t pay mortgages on their homes (fall out of some questionable, maybe shady, lending practices and a rise in interest rates) and that rentals are on the rise, people duking it out over the good places (much like back in the dot.com days, I personally put up a good fight to get the first place I rented when I moved).

The Bay Area is an odd place to gauge wealth. I live amongst some of the wealthiest people in the world (hello, Silicon Valley). But given the cost of living around here, there are also a lot of people barely scraping by. From where I’m sitting, it would seem the middle class is evaporating. Seeing as how I’d call myself middle class, I often wonder on which end of the scale I’m going to end up when the water’s dried up and sides have been chosen.

Right now in the economy, I know there are plenty of jobs to be had. I know this because I am having a devil of a time finding candidates for the two jobs I’m personally hiring for. All the good people have good jobs. And the so-so people want too much money because they know the market is hot and they can ask for the outrageous. And usually they get it.

I see a lot of wealth around me. But this weekend gave me pause for thought. What am I missing?

Twice this weekend I was witness to shoplifting. Well, I guess neither could rightly be called shoplifting but maybe a form of, I suppose.

Saturday I saw a woman taking money from a tip jar at the coffee shop. I know the employees of the shop don’t rely solely on tips to make it work, it’s incidental, but at the end of the day, the woman was audaciously reaching in and stealing dollar bills that weren’t hers.

Sunday I saw a woman at the grocery eating food she clearly didn’t intend to pay for.

The first woman looked desperate, like she needed every bit she could get. The second lady looked like money wasn’t a problem…but looks can be deceiving, I know.

In neither case did I report on the so-called “victimless crimes”. I didn’t know what to do. I know that stores boost up their prices to pay for the inventory shrink. I know I ultimately pay for the theft out of my own pocketbook.

But both incidents got me to thinking about what heights or what lows would I resort to if I was desperate, hungry, out of work and out of money.

I can’t say that I wouldn’t be the one stealing a dollar from a jar if I got down to it.

But then I can’t say that I would either. I don’t know.

Both incidents made me sad. And made me wonder what is going on in our economy. I mean, it could be a random event. Or could it be a trend?

Guess today is a day about counting my blessings, in all forms.

End of days

Woke up this morning to a post-Apocalyptic looking sky. It’s creeping out the Bay Area.

Owing to some pretty bad fires down in San Jose, the Bay Area skies are filled with smoke. It makes for spectacular sunsets, but can’t be good for the lungs.

The sun this morning TOTALLY creeped me out.

Took a fast snap on my iPhone (below) which hardly does it justice. This photo in the SFGate doesn’t really get there either.

Imagine a blood run sun on a vaguely gray sky. : shudder :

One radio DJ this morning called it a Zombie Sun.

It is a sad comment that instead of commuting to work, battling zombies under a blood red sky sounded more fun. Get mah Buffy ON!

*sigh*

Back to battling paperwork and whining employees (upon which, by law, I’m not authorized to use a wooden stake….) instead.