Campfyre Stories

I’m kind of getting tired of being accosted in the parking lot where I work.  Too many random things happen and every time, there’s no one else around to witness it.  This most recent one was actually the most disturbing.

Minding my own business, smoking a cigarette before a conference call.

This guy I’ve never spoken to before starts talking at me (yes, at, not to) and telling me something garbled about the moon and how the fact that it’s morning in Russia when it’s night over here is some kind of global conspiracy?  That’s what I got from it, anyway, the man wasn’t speaking very clearly and was speaking really FAST.

He goes on to tell me that all of the problems in Iraq could be solved if (I am not making this up), NASA would stop spending so much time in space and get involved in Iraq.  You see (he explained), they have these laser that go into your eye, which would stop all the terrorists.  They should use those lasers to cut off the tops of the tallest Iraqi buildings and, when the buildings started to fall without explosions, all the Iraqi people (the regular, non-combative people going about their lives - he clarified this) would be so scared, they would stop attacking the Americans who are minding their own business over there.  Um.

All of this isn’t going to happen, though, because, you see, NASA is all wrapped up in the whole space program.

But he continued.  And I still hadn’t said A WORD TO HIM.  He explained that if we really wanted to get the Iraqis to leave us alone, what we had to do was start attacking women and children.  (I am not making this up).  We should make targets of the schoolhouses and, once we killed off their babies (he said it!  their babies!), they would stop attacking us and not plant boobie traps anymore.  Because, you know, when you kill someone’s children, the LAST thing they’re going to want is, oh, I don’t know, revenge.

Now, frankly, I don’t care who you are or what your political stance is, if you agree that the best course of action is to kill babies so that the natives will *stop attacking* the foriegn "peacekeepers", then I wonder how up on global events you truly are.  If you think that the National Aeronautics and Space Association should stop spending so much time in space to start sending lasers into the eyes of ANYONE, then…  good grief, I just don’t know what to say.

This guy kept me trapped for over 10 minutes.  I was late for my conference call because I, literally, could not get away.  I’m still trying to figure out 1) why he picked me when I said NO WORDS AT ALL, 2) who thinks it’s a good idea to start spouting such hateful, ignorant rants AT WORK and 3) how the hell this guy got past the security clearances when he could very well be a security risk.

There was more to the conversation, but a combination of not wanting to hear another word, wanting very much to get away from this insane man and his slurred, rapid speech caused me to block it all our or, at least, forget it once it ended.

I think that was the first time I was actually SCARED by an encounter in the parking lot.  I hope it doesn’t happen again.

…but I play one at [my job].  (It’s funny, sort of, if you know where I actually work.  Blah.)

So, in the interest of NOT being unemployed 2 weeks before X-mas, I have accepted an account contract that is even more accounting and less technology than the position I’ve been working in for the past 5 months.

Really, this is not a happy situation, but at least it buys me some time to find a real job.

It’s probably as painful a cliche as there is in small talk, but when you talk to strangers as frequently as I do, it’s a topic that comes up time and again.

The thing is, though, I really enjoy talking about the weather.  It’s newsier than sports (in the sense of the number of people affected by it) and it’s something, generally, everyone is aware of.  Being of the "I want to know all things" mindset, it means that I also have a decent bit of useless trivia about weather phenomena, dates, etc.  Being a news junkie, I keep up on national weather events (and major international ones as well).

I think that, in most cases, when people talk about the weather in the cliched fashion, it’s meant as "Nice day, isn’t it?"  "It is, but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow."  "Oh, really?  I’ll remember to bring my umbrella, then."  Those are rarely the conversations I have.  In fact, those are the ones I try to avoid.

If we’re talking about rain, then I may start talking about standing across the street, bone dry, while I watch the rain slowly approach (something I saw many times in Oregon).  If we’re talking about pretty weather, I’ll talk about the early-morning, just before dawn rainbow I saw, where you could only see the band of red against a purple sky or seeing, when I was really young, ball lightning bounce across the mesas in Arizona as we passed through the state.

I understand the logistic consequences of a good bit of weather shifts, so imagine my surprise when, after a mild and snow-lacking winter last year we had massive flooding, rather than drought to the north.  I understand what "global warming" actually is, and how it doesn’t always mean that places are going to experience higher-than-normal temperatures.

Everyone is aware of the weather, regardless of who they are or where they hail from.  I enjoy discussing differences in types of weather with people who live exclusively in warm climates or who live in rain so much they sometimes forget what the sun feels like.

But when I do talk about the weather, whether with strangers or friends, it’s rarely a case of "Nice day, innit?"  There is actual substance to the conversation.  I bet there are a lot more people who have substantial weather conversations than not.  I think we need a new cliche.