It's partly because of the storm. The once-fierce hurricane has been downgraded to a wet sponge slowly moving across the face of Florida at a sickening pace. Some people did not come in to work today. Those who did look like they wish they did not. People are moving about with the slow dragging pace of zombies. Not many people are chatting. There is a quiet sense of 'blah' in the air.
The air outside is wet and oppressive. It feels heavy. It is fungus weather. You can see mushrooms sprouting in little grassy corners all over. If the weather stayed like this for a hundred years the land would be smothered in mushrooms, and we will all be living in giant mushroom houses and wearing wide brimmed mushroom hats to ward off the rain and we would worship the great mushroom Buddha. Which would suck because I do not like mushrooms.
Amazingly it did not rain this morning. In fact, in the several months that I have been using my outdoor shower it quite simply has not rained during my shower time period. Either I have been extremely lucky or I have been pleasing the rain gods. Or, more likely, I have been pissing them off and they avert their godly eyes when I am running around nude outside. Either way, works for me.
http://www.spmccord.com/Hide_eyes.gif
My horror nights orientation got called off for tonight and they shifted it to Friday night, which kind of sucks because, well, it's my Friday night. Not that I had anything major planned. If I did it probably would have involved alcohol, and that simply won't do for a five to six hour orientation. The first hour would have been spent laughing at everything they said, the third hour would have probably degenerated into surly remarks and unsuccessful attempts to hit on the wide-eyed 18-year-old girl sitting behind me (burp...aint you kinda young for implants?) , and I crawling under the table and falling asleep would have polished off the night. Eventually a couple of burly universal security guards would drag me off into some dark forgotten corner of a prop warehouse and would take turns beating me with a rubber rancor arm.
Dialing the time machine to a soggy Florida day in 2006, where Ed is naked in an outdoor shower and cursing fungus.
Ah, 2006, when a storm ranked 8.9 on a man-made suck-o-meter and the office was a place you physically dragged yourself to even as the sky tried to drown Florida. I miss the era of personal blogs with raw links and no algorithm. Now we have weather apps that warn us to our phones, remote work, and endless Zoom calls with people whose 'blah' is visible in tiny rectangles. Ed's outdoor shower? That's not a lifestyle feature anymore; it's a luxury real-estate listing buzzword. And horror nights orientation has been replaced by mandatory online harassment training modules that I'd also probably mock, but with a mute button. The mushroom kingdom he imagines? We got a different fungus: subscription services, gray laminate, and 'content' where his unfiltered rambling used to be. His world was wet, weird, and gloriously unoptimized.
“2006 Ed, was the rubber rancor arm really your go-to fantasy for security guards, or had you just watched Return of the Jedi one too many times while standing out in that fungus weather?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I hate to admit it, but yeah, the rubber rancor arm was pretty much my go-to fantasy at the time. I mean, think about it—you get dragged off by two burly security guards, and what are they gonna do, give you a stern talking-to? No, they need something dramatic, something that says, “You screwed up, Heffernan,” and a rubber rancor arm does that. It's silly, sure, but it's also kind of perfect. I'd probably deserve it after making surly remarks during orientation. And yes, I had watched Return of the Jedi plenty of times, but that's not the point. The point is fungus weather makes your brain do weird things, especially when they cancel your plans and you're stuck at work feeling like a zombie. The rancor arm just fit the mood, you know? Take that, foul weather.
