At Last, Five Weird Things

Five weird habits.  Sherri wants five weird habits.  Of mine.  Actually, it’s five more weird habits, because, evidently, in Sherri’s mind, the ten weird habits I already wrote about aren’t enough.  (But I think she owed me a tag, anyway, so she’s forgiven.) (Not that she needed to be.  I’m just saying, is all.)

So here goes.

1.  I obsess about things…just not for very long.

Dennis Miller refers to this as ADDOCD: I keep changing the things I obsess about.  Work projects will do it for me.  I’ll get focused on a problem at work, then bring it home with me (in my mind, not on paper), and lay awake that night working on a solution.  The next morning, with or without a solution, I will find something else to be concerned about.  I have been known to go from losing sleep about a satellite communications issue to ranting for half a day about finding the coffee pot empty even though I was the third coffee drinker to arrive that morning.  The vast amount of energy I poured into online dating some months ago is now almost entirely devoted to flight simulation.  If I lose focus on one thing, I have to compensate by giving far too much of my attention somewhere else, as though my freaky little world is defined by some Newtonian Law of Conservation of Obsessions.

2.  I am insanely defensive about my computer.

This one has two parts, one for work and one for home.  At work, I have a system of placing files that makes sense to me and I don’t give a Yugo mechanic’s expletive whether anyone else can find one of my PowerPoint presentations or not.  If someone adds an icon to my desktop or changes the content of a database, my customary reaction is to unleash a passionate string of colorful and highly original invective.  At home, keep your grubby dick skinners off my machine.  I built it from parts, and it is unique.  No, you do not know how to fix the problem, so shut up and go back to watching TV.  That whole thing in Chaos Theory about a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon and the weather changing somewhere else?  Absolutely true.  Hurricane Katrina began shortly after I vented my…er…opinion…to the atmosphere because a friend “just checking e-mail” tried to replace my unresponsive wireless mouse with a standard PS2 mouse instead of telling me so that I could change the wireless mouse’s batteries.  Seriously, the IAEA could rid themselves of a huge problem if they quietly suggested to Iran that it should surprise me by up-clocking my motherboard.

3.  I am often stunningly creative in my expletives.

Granted, sometimes I resort to whatever fricative comes immediately to mind, but there are moments of sublime inspiration when I should really stop in mid-rant and write some of this shit down.  Anything less than fifteen syllables and I’m just doing it for laughs.  I am not at all unlike the Old Man in A Christmas Story, who, as we know, worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay.  And thanks to Erica, I have a colorful new addition to my arsenal – er – repertoire: corn-speckled dog turd.  Which leads me to the fact that…

4.  I collect colorful phrases.

I discovered a long time ago that if you’ve got an unexpectedly descriptive phrase at the ready (and these are not necessarily profane), people might actually remember a point you’re trying to make.  For example, gathering a large number of minute details for a particular project might be referred to as sweeping the marbles.  Any project that is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own ineptitude is a self-licking ice cream cone. That idiot over there doesn’t need to pull his head out of his ass, he needs a rectal craniotomy.  If I’ve just said something terminally embarrassing in a crowded and noisy room, it is inevitable that I time it so that the room will be as quiet as a mouse pissing on a Q-tip.

I actually write some of these down.

5.  I flush the toilet while I’m still peeing.

Yes.  I know.  I have no idea why I do this, but I catch myself at it at least once a day, and the mental conversation goes something like this:

No-no! No!  Awwww!
Why did I just do that?
I don’t know.  To mask the sound of my urinating?
But no one is home.  
To save time?
Yes.  That’s it.  I’m saving time by flushing twice.
Thank you.  It’s nice to know my efforts are understood.