Sharkboy

Everyone has a Nosey Knowzitall #11 in their life. Lucky for me, mine seem to always pop up in the workplace and not in my homelife.

The one that pops up nowadays is a gem. I don’t hate or love her, she is always helpful if I have a question, and I’m helpful back if she needs assistance, I’m really indifferent to her as a person, but when it comes to her personality, it’s a total 180.

The thing you notice right away upon watching her is how she involves herself in every stories, she posesses a radar for such event, as a real Nosey Knowzitall should of course; you’ll also notice how people seem attracted to confide their work or home troubles in her; or you’ll notice how she can absorb entire situations developing around her and recount them with her own flair. This Nosey Knowzitall is good, she’s is by far the best I’ve seen in action, and I’ve seen my share.

Her best quality though, what makes her superior to all the others I’ve met in the past, is her ability to totally “re-imagine” a story adding her own extra spices. See, this Nosey Knowzitall is a huge Drama Queen as well, never before had I seen the mix of both together. It’s spectacularly entertaining as she is also afflicted with two other major defects, the girl cannot shut up nor does she know the meaning of “discretion”, she doesn’t care who hears her, even if it’s the person she’s going on about.

One morning, I witnessed her hearing a tiny little anecdote and intensify it everytime she told it again. Let’s say for example if someone says they have a bit of a cough at 9am, the story will go that by 4pm, they have almost died of tuberculosis. That’s the kind of shit she’s capable of. She is masterful.

Whenever I see her coming our way, I love to announce her impending arrival to my cubemate by whispering: “draaaaaammmmaaaa” and always steal a look in her direction to see a smile creeping up her face as she knows exactly what / who I mean.

Nosey Knowzitall is not all bad, at least I suspect she likes me even if she doesn’t get my jokes, otherwise I’d hear her talk behind my back… to my face.

Finally, it’s Friday. It’s casual day at work.

I’m wearing my jeans, running shoes, navy blue t-shirt with a Brooklyn logo. As per usual, I’m wearing a baseball cap which I usually removes once at work, but it’s casual Friday, so I decide to keep it on today. It’s navy blue and totally goes with what I’m wearing.

I start work at 8:30 am and my first 15 minute break is at 10:45. There are just two of us today in our 4 person cube, 2 other guys have booked the day off. It’s normally a quiet cube, it’s going to be even quieter today. Let’s work.

Around 8:45, some guy stopping at the photocopier looks in my direction and says: “Hey Michel, nice chapeau!”. I nod and go back to work. A minute later, the man who hardly ever speaks to me except to reply to my good morning salutations, or to wish me an insincere good evening when he leaves, turns to me and says: “You’re baseball hat matches your t-shirt”. I nod and go back to work.

At approximately 9:15, he turns to me again and out of nowhere says: “I’m giggling because baseball hats are not permitted” #25. I look up, not having heard any giggling, and say: “Oh well, I’ll take it off when I go to break”. He then continues: “Yeah, we had a meeting at the beginning of the summer to talk about dress codes and that was one of the items on the list”. I smile, roll my eyes a tad to the right and go back to my computer.

Closer to 10:00, I’m still typing at my computer, my back turned to everyone else in my cube when all of a sudden I hear his voice… right behind me. A bit startled I turn around: “jeez, I didn’t know you were standing there”. He says: “I just wanted wanted to show you this”. He hands me a memo dated from June 2007 with a list of do’s and don’ts regarding dress code at the office. I take it from him and say I’d read it in a bit. He goes back to his desk. A few minutes later, as if he’s choosing his words very carefully, he then goes: “Yeah, there this other guy who always wears a baseball cap too”. I don’t even turn around to look at him, I’m so bored with this already, but too stubborn to give into him yet, I keep the hat on.

Maybe 15 more minutes pass when he goes: “The funny thing too is the day they had us all in a meeting to talk about these dress codes, the person in charge going through each items on the list also pointed out that flip-flops weren’t permitted. That same day she was wearing a pair herself”. “Did you point it out to her?” I ask not really interestd. “No, I was too astounded” he replied with a hint of shock in his voice. I’m already back at typing.

2 minutes before my break, I finally take a look at this mystical memo, and see that baseball cap is the last item on the “forbidden” clothes for casual Friday. I hand him back the memo on my way out of the cube for break and thank him. I come back 15 minutes later without my hat on. He turns to me and says: “Oh, you’ve taken your baseball hat off!”. I just look at him a bit surprised and say: “I read the memo, I guess now I know it’s against the rules”. He then goes: “Personally I don’t care, people can do what they want”. Oh really….
I wanted my computer to leave my desk and shoot straight at his bald spot on the back of his head. Inside my head I screamed while staring at my computer: “Wingardium Leviosa!!!”.

Nothing happened.

We didn’t say a word again until the insincere good evening salutations at his 4:00pm departure.

This year, my resolution is to be finished buying Christmas gifts before the end of November. In the past I have found it too hard to be caught in the rush of holiday shopping #70, people are mental and ugly.

Anyway, somehow we found ourselves inside HMV this past Saturday evening, looking at Wii games, seeing what’s new, when DR found the ultimate new Katamari game… FOR XBOX ONLY!!! I then spotted DeadRising… FOR XBOX ONLY!!! And I saw DR drooling over Bioshock… FOR XBOX ONLY!!! We went back to the Wii section, then to the Xbox section, went to talk to the guy at the counter, went back to the Xbox section, looked straight at the direction of the Wii section, giggled like schoolgirls in the Xbox section. Our minds were made up, we knew it, we needed it… So, with my resolution to get our Christmas shopping done before the end of November in mind, we decided to buy our own gift right away. So we did. Along with DeadRising, who can resist smashing zombies?!?

We arrived home at 7:30, Xbox was in full mode by 8:00. We had our players profile done in no time and the zombie attack started. It had been a long day, we were tired and went to bed fairly early on Saturday, say 11ish. Happy.

On Sunday morning, tradition is we get up, go to Tim Hortons (I know, I know.. but it’s the only thing close by) and watch Coronation Street in bed while having bagels and tea. But this Sunday, we were treated to drunk neighbours coming home at 4:59 am. Loud drunk neighbours. So what’s a boy to do but get up and play Xbox. We did, I played for one hour and pshhhttttt, Xbox died. Fatal Error 79. It’s 6am. Their webiste wasn’t at all informative on our problem, except for the letter from Peter Moore, some big wig at Xbox, saying that people had spoken and they had heard them, but not offering any solutions. We knew we weren’t the first ones though… It said to call their customer service at 7am Pacific Time… that was 4 hours wait time… HMV opens at 11am, that was 5 hours wait time… Immediate Xbox withdrawal symptoms were starting to show up. I swear my right eye started to twitch. We couldn’t even enjoy Coronation Street when it started at 7:30.

Finally 9:59am. DR is already dialing California. The gentleman was absolutely nice and professional, heard what DR had to say and told him that all we needed to do was go back where we purchased it and do a straight exchange as the purchase was less than 7 days ago. He even gave him a code in case there was any issue.

I was the first customer in the store at 11am, straight down the stairs to the video game section. After inspecting 2 different boxes, opening them and making sure they didn’t look beaten up, we chose one. By 11:10 we had our brand new Xbox in hand and were walking home… The End… for now! I swear I saw it make that face at me this morning:

There was something very charming about the first 3 novels of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. Life in San Francisco in the late 70′s seemed fun and energetic and THE place to be. Mary Ann Singleton was the little naive girl moving to the big city from the Midwest. Michael Tolliver was the young gay man discovering himself and all the city had to offer. Brian was the womanizer having a field day with the single ladies in a town known for its gay revolution. Mysterious Mrs. Madrigal was the hen-mother to them all, nursing their pain, being the “confidant”, guiding them through the lessons of life. Then the next 3 novels of the series got bitter #86, I guess as a sign of the times with the arrival of AIDS and the devastation it had in that particular city as well as around the world.

And now, 20 years later, Mr. Maupin has decided to bring us back to his turf again. I was excited when I heard the book was on it’s way to the press at the beginning of the summer, but when I picked up a copy at the bookstore, I wasn’t as much. This was more of a stand-alone book than a continuation of the series: it was following only one character, instead of taking us through the lives of 5 or 6. It looked like it was going to be a bitter look at an older gay man’s life instead, so I didn’t buy it right away, I put it on the back burner and just picked it up a couple of weeks ago.

My fears were realized when it became clear that the story was going to be more about Tails than Tales. There were some situations that didn’t need such explicit details when it came to Michael’s escapades, but once I got to the thick of it, it turned out a bit more exciting, and the ending of it was fantastic. It turns out that all the main characters make appearances and I was happy that he resolved the whole Mary Ann Singleton storyline. I never liked how he made her a bitch at the end of the original series, for no real reasons why. It felt like he wanted to stop writing about the girl character and concentrate on the gay one. Don’t get me wrong I liked Michael too, but I didn’t want it to be all about him. I liked the formula of many different storylines, all the many different characters having their chance at shining.

Kudos. The author made me forget the bad times, he ended the last novel with all the loose ends tied up perfectly. It truly made-up for books 4, 5 & 6. (although book 5 was somewhat fun to read).

It was hard reading the book and not imagining Armistead Maupin as Michael Tolliver, both of them have seemed to have such a similar life…