Playing Catch Up

What does it, blogosphere? Sir Marcus here. It's been almost two whole weeks since we last spoke, which, compared to the infrequency with which we usually get together, means I'm basically smothering you guys at this point. I do it because I care, people.

As you might imagine, the embarrassing amount of free time I've recently found myself with lends itself to all kinds of shenanigans and half-baked ideas for how to remedy this issue. I fancy myself as something of a whimsical vagabond; a roving beatnik with the freedom to come and go as I please, but my somewhat limited resources have hamstrung me from fully exploiting said liberties. It's hard in these streets, I do declare. Fortunately for me, the hubbub of my social universe - the Mizzou Student Center - is easily accessible, giving me ample opportunity to sit around people of my age, drink them in, and collect delightful little scraps to share with you all. The following are apart of the aggregation of developments over the past few weeks:

Billy Rays Cyrus gets you, Taz.

- I spent the last few weeks on the #WorkStruggle watching my coworker - we'll call him Taz - in his uphill battle for the attention from a certain girl that was, more or less, completely oblivious to his charms. Seeing him strive largely unnoticed, week in and week out, for this girl's affections brought about in me a tinge of familiarity that made me shudder and laugh as only one who had been there could. I'm usually that guy, so I knew exactly what he was experiencing - the uncertainty of whether or not his effort would be reciprocated or even noticed, and the muted sense of excitement over even the most benign shows of acknowledgment. It was like looking into a slightly shorter, fairer-skinned mirror. He's admitted to being willing to play the waiting game with her, which is good because whether she eventually comes around or she lets him down easily, both are good for the achy breaky heart.

- One place besides the MU Student Center that I happen to frequent is the Plasma Center downtown. I spoke recently of how bizarre a place it can be, and nothing about that has changed. Make no mistake about it, blogomaniacs - you WILL stare the depths of society right in the eye at your local plasma donation center. You haven't regretted meeting this many people since that time your "old-fashioned" grandfather took you along to his lodge clubhouse that doubled as his KKK meeting place.

In a Venn Diagram, the two subsets would be "normal college-aged students" and "weird Columbia townies who bug the shit out of normal, college-aged students," with their intersection being "people who go to the plasma center." Unfortunately, putting up with said weirdos is a necessary evil in our volunteering for free money. My biggest concern, besides the fact that one of these townies might try to talk to me, is that to the naked untrained eye, we would all look the same to someone who just saw us in passing. The fact that someone would even mistakenly associate me with a grown-ass man in his 40's wearing a wife beater as a regular shirt and with his hair in braids is a truly harrowing thought to me. Grown men wearing cornrows is one of those things that one shouldn't need to be told is wrong, much like beastiality or one clicking the "like" option ON THEIR OWN DAMN FACEBOOK STATUS (seriously, my crusade against brazen acts of self-indulgence like this will never end).

A good ex-husband is neither seen nor heard. 

- One good thing about frequenting the Plasma Center however is that it allows me to see and catch up with Miss Frizzle, who works there. As one might imagine, we don't talk nearly as much now as we did when we lived together, so twice a week, we re-convene and get to be pretentious with one another as we express our disappointment in the world of dimwits around us. This past week, she was telling me about how her ex-husband seems to be popping up around her much more often these days. This man has this awful, unbelievably rude habit of still talking to her, and he's recently complemented that with sketchy, borderline stalker behavior. It's always a joy to hear a "mysterious ex-husband" story from her, because I'm detached enough from the situation where I don't know him, but I'm close enough to get her firsthand account of his tomfoolery. Sometimes, he'll just show up and give plasma like a normal person, but other times, he'll step up his game. We're talking about a fella that isn't above to running up behind you outside your place of work and throwing a bag of gifts at your feet and scurrying away like a squirrel. She says that she recently went on a date with a guy and over the course of the evening, saw Mr. Ex-Husband at THREE SEPARATE PLACES. Classic mixup. Who amongst us hasn't had this conversation: "Oh HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY there! What a coincidence! I didn't see you come in when I followed you - er, got hungry for the exact same dessert that you did after we ate the same dinner. What's that? You're going back to your place tonight? Weird, so was I..."

- You guys know those tennis shoes with the skate wheels built into them? I believe they're called "Heelys?" I shit thee not, I saw a grown man cruising around the Student Center in them. I staunchly believe that, much like one-piece bathing suits, there are a select few people that should be wearing these, a subset that "Adult Male" is decidedly NOT apart of. I will not argue this point. At least not until a dong pocket is installed in the bathing suit.

Why love your kids when you can just get them Heelys?

But adults, much less men, shouldn't wear Heelys either, and this guy violated the hell out of that law. You've never seen a law so violated. But to see him that day, you wouldn't know that he was committing an egregious crime against fashion and humanity. He looked so easy and carefree, like the world was his skating rink. He was practically gliding across the floor, which stands to reason, as I imagine people are much lighter without all of that pesky dignity weighing them down.

- Speaking of law violations, one of the most widely-known tenets of Man Law is that guys don't crowd the space of other guys in public places. This applies, first and foremost, to the urinals in a public restroom - girls hate it when you touch them with hands stained with someone else's pee - but that doesn't mean that something as simple as sitting in a lobby gets a free pass. Naw buddy. Whenever I'm out and I sit down somewhere, there never fails to be some McAsshole who unabashedly disregards Man Law and parks his behind right next to me, regardless of open seats being available all around us. This has been happening to me with startling frequency lately, and I need to understand why and when these guys feel that they are above Man Law. Certain things should be coded into our DNA, and for guys, some aspects of Man Law should be included. Come on, fellas; IS NOTHING SACRED? If you had miles of open road ahead of you on a freeway, would you drive side by side with the car in the next lane? Get your heads out of your asses; we're trying to have a decent society here.

Oh, the agility. Came THISCLOSE to not catching the butterfly.

- I have tentatively decided to try out for the Columbia Falcons semi-pro football team because honestly, I miss it more every time I watch football. Having not played organized football since high school (and the term "played" is stretched to pretty generous limits even there), I figured that 23 was the perfect time to make my long-awaited (by no one) comeback. Consequently, I will begin training and whipping this body into shape in the next few weeks in preparation for February's tryouts. By the time those roll around, I should be in good enough shape to resume my idling around the house again for the day after tryouts. Can't wait to be a former football player again.

*******

Well kids, that's enough for now. I can't tell you how fun that was. Get used to hearing from me a little more often as I try to not to be inundated with all of this free time. So let's not wait so long to get together again, mmmmmmmmmmkay? Anyways, until next time, this is Sir Marcus T. Williams, signing off...

Yall take care and stay classy out there. 

The Work Struggle

Salutations, blogosphere! Sir Marcus again here with the latest entry in the clouded stream-of-consciousness that is my blogspot. It's been almost two months since my last offering and the only real excuse I have is that my kid was sick. But don't fret there, children, as I suddenly find myself STUPID with free time, which means that I'll have plenty of time to never write here.

So why do I have oodles of noodles and free time? Well, on the noodles front, everyone knows that Ramen Noodles is the #1 import of college students the whole country over. As for time, now that I am "graduated," I don't have any classes to take. I also just wrapped up my 5th stint as a textbook temp. this past week, a 5 month period in my life that I came to know as the "Work Struggle." Why was it a struggle, you ask? It sounds like an easy job (which it mostly is), but that place was also a veritable breeding ground for contempt. How so, you ask? Oh kids, let me count the ways...

1) As a temp, you're just a statistic

Make no mistake about it, there are certainly far worse things to get paid for than shelving books, but the job is far from glamorous. In fact, it's the simplicity of the job that strips you of most of your feeling of individual significance. Yes, short of being a prostitute, hitman, or drug dealer - three things that are lucrative, but also come with the concern of being allegedly "illegal" and you being "arrested" - it's tough to find paid work. But as a textbook temp, you should harbor no illusions - you're not invaluable. You're doing a job that any person on campus could probably do, and while you should be proud that you somehow coerced someone into paying you to do it, showing your friends the empty space that you have saved for that potential "Employee of the Month" plaque makes you look like a real McAsshole.

2) Mind-numbing tedium and monotony

Hard to stay motivated to scan and shelve the same books for roughly the 3,000th time, but hey, that George Orwell "1984" isn't going to walk its damn self back over to the English section. What's worse is that there are actually times when we run out of stuff to do. Those are the days that you watch the clock, swearing that the hands are moving backwards. But we all know that nothing makes that work day fly by faster than taking that 5-hour lunch break. Though to be fair, it was a REALLY moderately-sized lunch. 

3) Overwhelming sexual tension

It will never cease to amaze me that the cute foreign chick who worked in the technology department next door to us didn't start greeting me at the door everyday, bosoms first. I figured that was the logical next step after she teased me for so long by helping all of those customers and generally not knowing I existed. Nothing tests your resolve and B.S. abilities like having to explain why you're caught putting your scrotum back into your pants every morning. Those are the last times I make that mistake....

4) Soul-crushing incompetence of students/customers around you
Everyday, you get to meet college students who have no concept of what numerical or alphabetical order is. These kids clearly never learned their AB3's, relying on mommy and daddy to pay someone to make all of the big words and numbers go away. It was baffling how many students wouldn't even bother looking for their books first, opting instead to show up with a schedule in hand and come up to us saying "I need someone to get my books for me." Generally, I couldn't get on it right away because I'd be too busy looking for the question mark that surely got lost in transit on their way in, so I'd try to pass it on to someone who wasn't disgusted by such wanton disregard of politeness.

I often fielded questions about books and their respective sections that were within spitting distance of the person asking me the question. While it's understandable that one may, albeit incorrectly, think that their "Statistics 2500" class may located in the math section, chances are that your "Agricultural Economics 1042" will NOT be. Also, it will probably be located in the "A" section of the store, hobnobbing with the "Agriculture" and "Agricultural Education" books. And yes, if you get to the "Journalism 4201" shelf tag, you'll know you've gone too far. 

5) Some Coworkers. They're the worst.
A couple of years ago, when I first started working at the store, I spoke of this heffalump that I worked with that bugged me to death. In the interest of sparing her dignity, I won't name her again, but a short jaunt back to Textbook Temps will quickly jog your memory of whom I am speaking. She's a round, overly sensitive, less-than-hygienic, chatterbox of a girl, and unfortunately, those are the 3 qualities I appreciate the least in a coworker. She's one of those people who has a chronic issue of over-sharing information, especially if said information is tough to believe or inappropriate for the workplace. Wearing a scarf on the first day of September is odd, but we would have let it slide if we knew you were going to say "because my boyfriend gave me a hickey." Okay, first of all: EWWWWW. Secondly, no one's buying that, and you shouldn't be selling it. But whatever you say, middle school.

Before I left, I'd taken to just not speaking to this person at all if I could help it. I did this for two reasons: number one was because I have a VERY limited capacity to suffer fools. I'm not good at coddling people who are clearly fishing for attention, and it would have resulted in tears being shed. Secondly, she had this habit of explaining every single thing she did as if it were a mission handed down from God Himself. I hated that so much that I felt like even acknowledging it would validate her. How could I sleep at night knowing that I encouraged such behavior? Case in point, she brought cookies one day during our last week there. Upon my arrival that day, I was sarcastically talking to someone about how much I would miss the job when this girl interrupts our conversation to alert me that she had made and brought cookies. I was hungry that day, but knew that if I ate any cookies, she'd win, so I contemplated not eating any at all. But that's unbelievably petty. The much more mature thing to do was to eat them behind her back, making sure she never saw me and got that validation. Deception tastes DELICIOUS.

Unfortunately, not only has she ratcheted up her insistence on unknowingly irritating me, but she's been joined by occasional fellow temps that are equally annoying in their own ways. For instance, there are those people who talk too much, not in the sense of constant yapping, but in the sense of talking out of turn. Two hints that we don't want to hear what you have to say: one, no one directly addressed you in the conversation, and two, we've gone out of our way to close the conversational circle with you comfortably on the outside. No, we don't need your anecdote about how your sister just adopted a new puppy; not because it's not a cute story, but because it doesn't fit naturally into our "what's for lunch?" conversation.

Don't worry about my damn TPS Reports, wench. 

But you know what's worse than coworkers of your own age? Older coworkers that are nothing more than patsies who do everything they can to exercise any little bit of power they've been given. Specifically, this female linebacker who worked in the department next to ours had this awful habit of watching us and either directing us to go do work or going to our supervisor and snitching on us. We're grown-ass men and women - we don't need someone coming through our section and keeping tabs on us because it gets her rocks off. We're not in your jurisdiction, so just stay in your lane, chickenhead.

6) Because I'm melodramatic. 

All told, my experiences working as a textbook temp have been far sweeter than they have been bitter. I'm just a bit dramatic. If I weren't providing "color" commentary on it constantly, then how would you all know how real my struggle was?

*******

Well guys, this was fun. Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I'm glad I did. Let's not wait so long before we get together again, okay? Until next time, this is Sir Marcus T. Williams signing off...

Yall take care, and stay classy out there.