My Box

See, I shouldn't get pissed off all that much that I saw a box, a box that contained chocolates that I bought and had shipped online, was outside next to the recycling bag.  But that means that My Fucking Father went into my room, decided that I have too much of "my stuff," looked at the box, looked at the box next to it, took the contents out of the box that once had chocolates (and it contained a copy of The Handmaid's Tale and some other shit), put those in the box next to it, and took it outside.

The pettiness is coming from him.  He would take the time to take one small box out of my room ... one box that wasn't hurting anyone, including him.  There was no goddamn reason to take it out, but it triggered My Fucking Father so much that he drew a line in the sand and made a point to do so.

Pick your battles ... I broke it down and threw it into the recycling bag.

But oh, I shall remember.

My Day These Days:

• Wake up an hour before work.  Well, hit the snooze button a few times, get up, go to the bathroom, get dressed in a hurry, pick up the food My Father leaves for me, then leave.
• Maybe I go to McDonald's for coffee, maybe not.
• Park, usually in the back, which is a pain-in-the-ass because I have to walk around to a designated door I have to enter in because my supervisor has to ask me questions about my health and then check me in.
• Work.  Well, "work" for four hours, regardless of whether or not there is work.
• Might eat the food I brought from home during break, maybe not.
• Once I leave, where I go next depends on whether or not I'm spending money.  If I am spending money, a fast food drive-thru.  If not, a park or, maybe nowadays, a cemetery.
• If I get fast food, I find somewhere to eat.
• Once I reach the park or cemetery, I recline my driver's seat and look through my phone.  I'm listening to The Common Man Progrum the whole time.
• Walk if I have the time.
• Once a week I call my psychotherapist.
• Get home, usually around 3.
• Dunk the mask Mother made for me in a metal bowl in the bathroom.  I then add detergent.
• Eat, sometimes I duck My Father's insults and my parents bickering at each other.
• After that I iron the next homemade mask I will wear the next day.  Inbetween ironings I will wash the mask I used that day.
• After I leave the washed mask in the bowl, I climb into bed.  Usually I blog post when I have not done so for the day ... like I am doing now.
• Fall asleep.
• Wake up and I look through my phone.
• If there is TV I plan on watching, I watch it around this time.
• I finally pry my eyes off of my phone and shower.  Have to leave enough time for my big-ass hair to air dry.
• Surf the Internet some more.
• Maybe eat.
• Brush my teeth.
• Get into bed, but with my cellphone, looking through some guys I follow on Twitter.
• Finally go to bed, usually later than I want to.  I vow to go to bed earlier starting the next day.

Father's really pissing me off.  Today, while talking to my niece over the phone, Father started picking a fight with Mother over ... something not worthy of picking a fight over.  And he does this thing where Mother tries to talk back to him and he starts blabbing in that insulting voice where he's mimicking her, in a way to make him or her sound stupid -- you know, that sound?  Done it all his life.

Fuck this guy.  Seriously, fuck this guy.

I'm Starting To Get Used To Part-Time

Mondays such as today I work 9-1.  The other four days I work 8:30-12:30.  As I alluded to before, the work usually does not stretch even that long.  Nevertheless, we are told to stay and do ... something until we get to four hours.  And we get to keep our benefits if we "work" 20 hours each week.  Yes, for that I am thankful.  Still, I would like to work full-time.  I don't want to be on the dole, as generous as the benefits are during this economic shutdown.  (Don't appreciate the tax bill that will bite me in the ass next year, but maybe I need to worry about that next year.)  Maybe I should be grateful just to still have this, because it could be and/or get worse.

With that being said, now that we are on our ... third?  Fourth (man, the weeks run together now) week under this ... arrangement, I'm getting used to it.  I don't like losing half my pay each day.  But I love having half a day to do whatever the hell I want.  And I'm enjoying it; I'm eating fast food, I'm taking naps (at least until lately, when it's getting hot), I'm walking around (at least until lately; more on that in a future blog post), etc.  I feel good about looking forward to working only four hours instead of eight (even though I still have my disagreements with it; I'll also try and blog post about those disagreements).  And I don't have to wake up at 6 to report at 7.  The later start times help me get up at a more sane hour ... even though, to be fair, I take advantage of it by staying up later.

What I am saying is that I am inevitably looking at the bright side of this New Normal.  And so, as usual, if we get back to our Old Normal, I will look forward to some things, but I'll be upset that I have to adapt to change yet again and will thus miss some things I'm getting used to now.

And he did it again for dinner.  Tried to be polite and pick up his finished plate from him, but he saw that as an opportunity to ask me if I cleaned my room again.  Last goddamn time I volunteer to help you clean up, motherfucker.

Well, probably not.  And look at me -- I'm cleaning up my room now.  Sorta.  Well, not enough to placate My Fucking Father.  And as long as that's the only thing I can trigger him on, well, maybe I should continue to not do it.

He said it last week, but once again after dinner Father told me to clean up my room and this time around I am so fucking over it I want to kill that bastard.

My bedroom could use some tidying up, but fuck him.

Man, I need something to do on the weekend, like, immediately.

And I Got, Like, A Dozen Or Two More Of This Shitty Toilet Paper

Don't understand why there's a run on toilet paper, but that's just me.

I stocked up on toilet paper before the pandemic.  Many, many years ago, as my parents shut down The Store, they moved much of the unbought and unused merchandise home.  That included toilet paper, but the cheap, shitty, scratchy kind.  Nevertheless, for the past several years I have had a surplus of toilet paper in my bathroom closet, and because of that, I've felt this subconscious need to replenish that surplus.  I bought a bunch of toilet paper last winter, when my folks were gone, and I did so again shortly before they came home this time around.

But I wanted to make a point as to which kind I bought.  In liberal circles, buying the "right" brand of toilet paper has been low-hanging fruit to signal your allegiance to the Resistance because a couple of toilet paper brands are owned by companies that are owned by Koch Industries, and as you may know, the Koch Brothers (Charles and the now-dead David) are nihilistic libertarians who are among the oligarchs running the country these days.

To not fund our oppression, there are lists showing what consumer products are made by subsidiaries owned by Koch Industries.  When it comes to toilet paper, the Kochs own two: Quilted Northern and Angel Soft, made by Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific.  So, no Quilted Northern or Angel Soft for me.

But then, which one should I buy?  Believe it or not, there aren't too many webpages that pop up when you Google "best toilet paper."  What I did when I went to Target was to look at who owns the other brands of toilet paper and pick one.  I don't quite remember which one I bought -- it's the one with the swirly pattern on it -- but I think it's Charmin, and I think I bought it because it's made by Procter & Gamble and I hear they're a not-Republican company.

I think it sucks.  Charmin (if I'm right) sucks in one very particular way, a way which was brought about by the virus.  Ever since we were told that the coronavirus could last on stainless steel and other smooth surfaces for days, I have been paranoid not to touch any of said surfaces.  So when I wash my hands in my bathroom, I have been leaving the faucet open, drying my hands on my bath towel, then reaching down to get a square of toilet paper that I use to turn off both handles.

When I take a square of Charmin, I don't take a square. I rip off only a portion of that square, and it's usually around where I grip that square.  It rarely rips off at the perforation.  I have even tried to hold the square with both hands, my right one right around the perforation, and I still get only one goddamn piece of it.  It's so fucking flimsy as to be useless.  Toilet paper shouldn't be that soft.

Does it wipe my ass?  Yeah, sure.  But so does a leaf, and even though it may not be as scratchy, that sure as shit doesn't make me appreciate the Charmin any more.  Why can't it rip where it's supposed to rip?  I now have to be so fucking careful that I don't come into contact with the handle of the sink faucet because I'm holding a piece of toilet paper only an inch wide and long.  Fucking toilet paper.

Had A Streak Going For The Draft

I've talked about ESPN's Streak For The Cash, now known as Streak, before here on WAF, right?

My record win total is eight in a row.  I matched that last night while I was picking the network's scenarios for the NFL Draft's first round, and I was doin' good, real good!

They had seven, uh, situations in which you could choose one of two options.  For example, the first situation was, "Will Joe Burrow, Chase Young, and Jeff Okudah be selected 1-2-3 in the draft, yes or no?"  And you pick one and you hope you win.  Theoretically, the person with the longest streak for the month gets money.  The longest streak usually is in the low twenties, and so I've never been close, but that hasn't stopped me from trying.

Anyway, I had a two thing-of-a-bobber winning streak going into the first scenario.  They show percentages of how many people chose one choice or the other.  Despite most of the mock drafts I saw saying it would be Burrow/Young/Okudah first through third, only 39% of the people picking said yes.  That included me ... and I and that 39% was right!

I was more psyched about this NFL Draft than probably any one before it, probably because this is the first sports-related thing that was not postponed or cancelled because of the pandemic.  (These "e" sports don't count.)  Ratings were at an all-time high.  And since I had nothing else to watch -- no, I take that back; the series finale of Will & Grace and the season finale of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit were on, I was going to watch them, then I realized that I also wanted to listen to the draft and it was on at the same night, so I stuck with sports -- I thought I might as pick each scenario while listening to the draft.

And I was on a freakin' roll:

• Tua Tagovailoa did get drafted before Justin Herbert!
• At least two Wide Receivers did get picked in picks 12 through 15!  (This is where I thought I would lose, but as usual, I wasn't paying attention.  The now-Las Vegas Raiders picked up a WR at 12, as did Denver at 15.)
• The conference the 18th pick hails from was either the SEC or, as it turns out, the Pac-12!  (Austin Jackson, my alma mater.  Only 18.7% of those picking picked those two conferences over the field.)
• No Running Backs would be selected from the 21st through the 26th picks!
• The state of the college of the player picked 29th overall would not be Texas, Ohio or Alabama!  (Answer: Isaiah Wilson, Georgia.)

Could I run the table and go seven-for-seven for scenarios of the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft?  As I was racking up right answers the selections were going green, I was really getting into it.  But one final scenario loomed large, and it was a tough one: Would the player drafted 32nd/last be on the offensive side of the ball, or on defense/special teams?

Only twice did I buck conventional wisdom.  And looking at one mock draft (from Mel Kiper, Jr. on ESPN.com) and one "Big Board," ranking the best players without thinking which teams might draft them where (via The Athletic), it appeared as if there were more defensive players than offensive players who were most likely to be drafted.  Finally, the Kansas City Chiefs (the defending Super Bowl champion; that's why they were drafted 32nd) had the pick, and I thought they would be going defense, even though I was cognizant that the franchise certainly could trade out of the pick and swap it to a team that needed offense.  So, I went with the wisdom of the crowd and choose D/ST.

But just in case, I went on Twitter.  It is usually the case that a reporter, such as ESPN's Adam Schefter, would be tipped as to who would be picked.  I figured that a reporter on the Chiefs beat would know beforehand, too, so I searched for "Kansas City Chiefs."  And I found a reporter who tweeted that the Chiefs would not trade out of the pick and would select ... a Running Back.

I tried to cheat and change my answer, but it was locked in.  (Each scenario has a time stamp, after which your choice is locked in.  That time changes all the time, however, because you never know when, for example, that 18th pick will actually get picked.)  Kansas City chose an RB different from the one that Chiefs beat reporter tweeted would be selected, but it's still an offensive player.  And my streak went kerflooey.  And I am sad because everything is ruined and sucks.

I'm starting from the bottom.  Again.  I'm concentrating on the draft, again.  I'm choosing which of two conferences will have its players selected more in picks, like, 33 through 45.  But I just lost an eight-thingy winning streak.  Why should I care?

Self-Interviewing?

NFL Draft's tonight!  Finally, something sports-related where all involved can stay safe!  But it'll probably be Zoombombed by some anti-Semite!

I'm looking forward to it.  But two things.

First ... ESPN has traditionally broadcast the draft, but once the NFL Network got up and running, they have broadcast it concurrently and separately.  (Fox jumped in once too -- last year?  Two years ago?)  Probably because of the ad hoc way this draft has become online and tele- only, both networks have joined forces to broadcast a simulcast.  (I don't think Fox is doing anything this year.)

Like it has for the past year or two, ABC is doing its own broadcast, using some of the ESPN personnel.  But the coverage of the draft over free TV will be different from that of ESPN.  ABC has emphasized that they will talk about the, ugh, stories of the young men drafted.  I don't give too much of a shit about their backstories.  I want to know why they might be the next superstar in the NFL.  But it doesn't look like I'll get the nitty-gritty information that actually pertains to how these players will play in the pros.  Instead we're getting the "human interest" dimension.  Do you know how some sports die-hards complain that NBC wastes too much of their airtime delving into the stories of Olympians during Olympic coverage?  That sounds like what we're getting from ABC for the NFL Draft.  And since I can't afford cable, that shit is the only TV coverage I'll get.  Hard pass; I'll listen to ESPN Radio through SiriusXM.  Hopefully they'll broadcast the draft.

Second ... ESPN et al still wants to interview the college players who are going to get drafted, of course.  But how can they do that if they can't have cameramen and sound people come to draftees' houses?

You may have heard of the solution: ESPN sent prospective draftees these production kits that they can set up from home.  I went to journalism school two decades ago, so remotes like this were rare, and technology like this wasn't even a glint in someone's eye.  But take a look at the contents each NFL player-to-be was sent:

The kits sent to prospects include two Verizon phones, two light stands, a pair of tripods, a headset for interviews and a microphone. One of the phone cameras will be on the entire time until the player is selected while another will be used for interviews with ESPN/NFL Network, Commissioner Roger Goodell and with the teams that pick them.

The package also includes hats from all 32 teams, so the players can put on the right one after they’re selected.

So think about what's going on here.  Everybody is self-isolating, so ESPN has sent them what appears to be two boxes with all that shit plus, presumably, instructions.  If they do it right, it'll kind of look like the illustration in this story.  But they have to do it themselves.  Not cameramen, not TV journalists, not professionals, not anybody getting paid -- these draftees and their families and friends and anybody else who would violate any state stay-at-home order.

Why are you making the interviewees set up their own stand-up?  They're being interviewed, and now you're making these poor young men set up the lighting and the audio for the interview?  Like it's their fucking job?  Their only job, so to speak, is to be interviewed.

Do you know what this reminds me of?  Self-checkout.  Grocery stores and convenience stores now are making us do the work they once paid people to do.  I heard a comic say this once, and he's so right: If we're doing our own check-out, shouldn't we at least get paid for it?  Hey, maybe we can get a small discount on the stuff we bought?

This galls me to an extent I doubt other people would care about, but this self-doing creep is getting out of hand.  Yes, I understand these self-standups wouldn't happen if there wasn't this global pandemic.  But you know ESPN and other production companies are seeing this as a way to cut costs by cutting down on labor in the future.  If you make the interviewees now do the setting up for the interview, you don't need to pay a cameraman or an audio person.  So once there's a vaccine and we get back to normal, we may still see people being interviewed do their own stand-up because they're being asked to.

Oh yeah, there's the angle that college athletes aren't getting paid to play football, and now they're not getting paid to set up equipment for their own fucking interview.

The laziness and the cheapness. ...

My, My, My ... What. A. Mess.

Yesterday I'm coming home from the park where I was talking to my shrink.  I was late in starting the tele-session and thus late in finishing it.  That may have been a good thing.

When I was rolling up to my house, I saw a few cars stationed on the road, not moving.  It was very close to my house -- not blocking it, but close enough whereby I had to see what was going on.  Not only were there, like, three cars but a half-dozen people congregating around this area.

After I parked and approached, I saw what it was.  There is a T-intersection very close the house.  Right around there there was water.  A shit ton of water -- small but roiling.

It was very close to the neighbor kitty-corner to us.  So I, mask on, just had to sate my curiosity and mosey on over there and the people who were watching this gusher.  And what I saw even further was mesmerizing.  There was a fire hydrant that was there, and that was knocked over.  There was an intersection sign there; not only were the cross-signs on the ground, I couldn't tell where the pole was.  And since this was a T, there was a stop sign.  I couldn't see a stop sign.

The neighbors who were gawking, plus probably the driver of one car who just had to stop and see what the hell was going on, told me what happened; a few of them even saw it.  A truck took the turn in the intersection way too fast, taking out the stop sign, the intersection sign, and the fire hydrant.  Knocking over that hydrant caused the gushing of water.  I don't know if one of the people there called 911 or if a cop just happened to come by at the right time, but one of the cars stopped at the intersection was local police.

I just had to look closer.  The water was slowly continuing to rise.  I took a look at the fallen intersection sign and I was taken aback by the rumble of the flooding water underneath my feet.  I'm actually worried that the break allowed water to break through the basement of my neighbor.  I started to see the hydrant start jutting up and down from the pressure of the water below.  Soon, the mini-flood created about a six-foot-wide mini-sinkhole around where the hydrant and the signs were.  It wasn't that deep, but it was a hell of a lot deeper than I've ever seen a water main break around town.

Right around then I had a thought.  If I had taken my session on time, or if I went through on my Plan B decision and decided to talk for far less than an hour, I could have been on the street at the same time as this crazy motherfucker.  He could have ran me over.  Maybe I was lucky to avoid him.

Shortly after I got there, city water and the fire department got there.  It was getting cooler to watch our tax dollars at work, but I knew my parents were about to have dinner, so after ten minutes I excused myself.  I went in and we ate, but we were peeking through the window to see the city shut off the main valve (thereby leaving us without water for less than half a hour; Mother wanted to wash her hands but couldn't; I had wipes she could use; she got exasperated at how big a sheet was and tore it in half and stuffed the other half back into the pouch ... my God, she really was raised Third World) and then begin to patch the road at the intersection.

The clean-up looked, and sounded, awesome.  I didn't look out the window much after we got done eating, but I could actually feel the rumble of something out on the street.  I looked out and saw that there was some heavy machinery the city had to call in in order to fix the street -- a forklift, a backloader (maybe?), a hauler for the forklift, plus the cop cars, fire vehicles, and city works trucks.  For a while they had to tape off our part of the street.  I couldn't have gone anywhere anyway; a car locked the road right in front of our driveway to assist in the patch.

They got done a bit past dusk.  In the morning I looked over and I couldn't see anything over there but an erect hydrant and a hell of a lot of sand and dug-up dirt.  Oh, and no water.  They fixed it!

Two things I get from this.  The truck did run, but the witnesses say its front end is completely fucked up.  If they find him, by God, that asshole should pay for everything.  And second, this is why I pay taxes to the city: For clean-ups like this.  It took several hours, but a disaster caused by some prick was fixed, and we can go on with our sheltered-in-place lives.  Viva community!