The plane is slowing down somewhere over Kansas - that must mean that somewhere about 37,000 feet in the middle of nowhere, there are a few cows undisturbed in their feedlots, a few farmers emptying out their dryers from the summer, and the last of the rainstorms coming through before it gets cold enough to make popsicles on the farm house porch - when you look out the window this far up at those isolated places (yes, I hate to admit this, but most of Kansas is isolated) - it gets fun to wonder what part of American Gothic is taking place - whether Grandpa is using the pitchfork and the daughter is just wondering when she can get the fuck out of Kansas. I am sure that still happens more often than not - instead now, it is American MethLab, and Grandpa is hopped up on Budweiser and drugs from the VA, and the daughter is wondering when Billy is going to fix the truck so they can drive into KCK (Kansas City, Kansas) and get away from the corn rows...not quite the same place - unless of course you are the Duggar family - they seem to have preserved some simplicity in their lives, hell, they even have a blog - their blog offers very little consolation to me, but apparently, based on the comments - there sure are a gaggle of folks who want to know how much they make for parading their clean cut army around television handling chores such as cleaning out the RV shitter, or watching the boys enter into courtship...(what the hell is courtship anyway - it seems a bit midevil to me, but I suppose if that is the rules in the Duggar family, then those are the rules that you follow...)
I did learn this week that the best way for me to not think in a sexual manner is to think of the Duggar family. I don't think it has anything to do with the number of kids - I know at least two folks who have learned how to use birth control, and I don't think it has anything to do with being chaste or pure or even clean for my partner, because I know that I can buy soap, and if I feel really dirty, find a counselor or self help group that will smoke lodge my ass into blissful ignorance and meditation. (I think they call that self-actualization - sort of the Stumbling on Happiness book direction of how to make things better without making things worse even though our brains are designed to create enough distance between the bad things)...I am guessing the worst things you can do at the Duggar house consist of lying, sleeping through church, saying God without saying a prayer or Amen after it - you know the stuff that gets folks throwed into purgatory and shit....
Anyway - try it sometime, when you find yourself completely turned on by some internet smut - think of the Duggars. That will totally work. If it does, let me know, I am sure I can find a way to bill your insurance for curing your sickness and debauchery. If the thought of them actually gets you off - then please, don't read my blog anymore, I don't think I want to be connected to your sick sick mind.
Left turns - that's what life is a series of (no segue just straight into it) - I was given some advice by some guy I was probably gambling with, or drinking with, or whatever - and he pretty much said - "People, they are good at adapting - they are not good at changing. In fact, most of the time, they just don't change, they just get used to dealing with the new bullshit, and eventually forget about the old bullshit." - Now I am sure that this is not going to make it into the annals of behavioral psychology or team dynamics or sociological interactions of adult workers - but I am pretty sure, that once you get to the bottom of most of the Harvard Business Review Articles and those wonderful networking articles that McKinsey pumps out, that somewhere - this is going to be pretty much the bottom line. Why do I think large ERP systems and mega-mainframes and databases work? I think they work because they completely ignore that people actually give a shit about the weather - and tell you to fill in the blanks. Then, when enough folks are taught how to fill in the blanks in an 80% correct manner, someone in the "data warehouse", goes out and runs a bunch of queries and voila! They have the information on how the business is behaving - not how the organization is behaving, reacting, working. There is no real feedback on where the organization is going - (I would like to visit the data warehouse - and no, I am not that stupid, but if I ever open a bar, I am going to call it the Data Warehouse, just so all of the burned out linear thinking IT programmers have a place to drink large quantities of strong drink...)
You see right now, I am a policy writer. Just a guy who is taking an existing policy, and putting it into another policy and determining what procedures need to be taken out of a policy and moved to a procedure and then flowcharted to make sure that we have pictures so everyone can understand the decision tree and how things are supposed to go. I forgot how to wipe my ass until I looked at the flowchart on the back of the Charmin wrapper - and thank god for that, otherwise I would have choked on the cardboard roll in the center trying to get the freshest paper out of the middle of the roll. So that is my angst about left turns. Everything in life is pretty much a bigger and bigger left turn. Let me go a little further with that, and maybe, it will all start to make sense...
Go stand outside a playground, and watch the little kids spin themselves around in circle after cirle - those tight left turns and spinning until they get dizzy...then go to an amusement park, and watch the ten year olds on the carousel, larger left turns, but left turns none the less, bigger left turns, as you get older - watching the kids run track, then the left turns get larger as you sit on the outer loop stuck in traffic...slower, bigger left turns, but left turns...
So you start the spiral as a kid - tight fast left turns, then as you get a little older the left turns get a little wider...then you end up where you are - a series of larger and larger left turns - granted they do move slower when you start talking about making good money and having a career and having a family - but really - draw a straight line back to the center, and pretty much, you have not changed all too much - you are just alot of years away, have made several spirals outward - and continue to make left turns. I don't know why I am fascinated by that right now - maybe it is the economy, maybe it is the circular nature of having to deal with policy, maybe it is the reality that the farther we get away from a point, the closer we really are - no one really heads straight anywhere - we all get caught up in the dizziness of the left turns - and then, occassionally, we do get the chance to drink half a bottle of eighteen year old scotch, and either slow the spinning down enough to watch the rest of the world spin around us - or we just keep walking in left turns.
I know that is batshit crazy. But hell, I just figure it gave me something to write about for a few hours - other than policy and procedure. My new policy and procedure - keep turning left.
George
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