Chula Vista

Ladies and Gentlemen. We have Sherlock Holmes in our midst.

Charles, step away from burgers and look into a career in psychology. You're a ****ing natural!

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Chula Vista

Frowny, maybe it's time you step away. Your coherence level is plummeting into the red with each new post.

Substance > knee jerk reaction meant to stoke.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Frownland

There's substance there, so maybe it's time to step away. Your coherence and dignity levels are plummeting into the red with each post.

Substance > blaming other people for you not understanding their posts because they're not presented in sales pamphlet form

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

The Batlord

That is interesting, but it's also apparently a new phenomenon that I imagine may or may not have even applied to your company before it got shitcanned. I certainly imagine it didn't apply throughout your business' history, making this probably a pointless and manipulative ploy.

__________________

Frownland

Anyway, a high school friend of mine that I started jamming with again recently with mentioned me to a few of his other friends who want to form a punk band with me now. Gonna meet them tomorrow, hopefully they're into no wave or can be easily converted. Depends on the chemistry and what they mean by punk I guess.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

I'll wager a ton that the laptop and/or cell phone you're using right now was manufactured in China and sold by one of the top dogs of the industry. Apple, Samsung, ASUS, AVID, etc. These are companies that move millions of units a month and usually have a no-questions-asked money back, or replacement guarantee.

These devices all utilize micro-technology. Ever wondered what's involved in mass-producing this kind of technology in high volumes, while insuring extreme levels of quality and reliability?

Sweatshops? Don't be a stupid ****ing dullard.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Frownland

Pay attention to Chula, batman. Everything's going to be just fine so don't think about it and just shut up.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

It's been in the works for decades. Read my last post. It's mind blowing to see in person. Some of those factories have tighter environmental control against contamination than Ebola wards.

The majority of product I've designed and developed is for commercial spaces and used for not only sound re-production, but safety purposes. Look up UL1480 and UL2043.

Our factories don't have to get into cell-phone type quality, but have to endure rigorous audits and quarterly UL inspections.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

Wait, how did all this start? Oh yeah, ****ting on minimum wage employees in fast food and how they should just get better jobs. Like my co-workers. The predominantly southern black folk with the history of wealth disparity and discrimination. I don't know what it's like in Cali but I guess it must be a bunch of lazy middle class white kids.

__________________

Frownland

The Bees

Gene's son Frankie wakes up screaming. It has become frequent,
two or three times a week, at random times: midnight-three
A.M.-five in the morning. Here is a high, empty wail that severs
Gene from his unconsciousness like sharp teeth. It is the worst
sound that Gene can imagine, the sound of a young child dying
violently-falling from a building, or caught in some machinery
that is tearing an arm off, or being mauled by a predatory animal.
No matter how many times he hears it he jolts up with such images
playing in his mind, and he always runs, thumping into the
child's bedroom to find Frankie sitting up in bed, his eyes closed,
his mouth open in an oval like a Christmas caroler. If someone
took a picture of him, he would appear to be in a kind of peaceful
trance, as if he were waiting to receive a spoonful of ice cream,
rather than emitting that horrific sound.
"Frankie!" Gene will shout, and claps his hands hard in the
child's face. The clapping works well. At this, the scream always
stops abruptly, and Frankie opens his eyes, blinking at Gene with
vague awareness before settling back down into his pillow, nuzzling
a little before growing still. He is sound asleep, he is always
sound asleep, though even after months Gene can't help leaning
down and pressing his ear to the child's chest, to make sure he's
breathing, his heart is still going. It always is.
There is no explanation that they can find. In the morning,
Frankie doesn't remember anything, and on the few occasions
that they have managed to wake him in the midst of one of his
screaming attacks, he is merely sleepy and irritable. Once, Gene's
wife, Karen, shook him and shook him, until finally he opened his
eyes groggily. "Honey?" she said. "Honey? Did you have a bad
dream?" But Frankie only moaned a little. "No," he said, puzzled
and unhappy at being awakened, but nothing more.
They can find no pattern to it. It can happen any day of the
week, any time of the night. It doesn't seem to be associated with
diet, or with his activities during the day, and it doesn't stem, as
far as they can tell, from any sort of psychological unease. During
the day, he seems perfectly normal and happy.
They have taken him several times to the pediatrician, but the
doctor seems to have little of use to say. There is nothing wrong
with the child physically, Dr. Banerjee says. She advises that such
things were not uncommon for children of Frankie's age grouphe
is five-and that more often than not, the disturbance simply
passes away.
"He hasn't experienced any kind of emotional trauma, has
he?" the doctor says. "Nothing out of the ordinary at home?"
"No, no," they both murmur, together. They shake their
heads, and Dr. Banerjee shrugs. "Parents," she says. "It's probably
nothing to worry about." She gives them a brief smile. "As
difficult as it is, I'd say that you may just have to weather
out."
But the doctor has never heard those screams. In the mornings
after the "nightmares," as Karen calls them, Gene feels unnerved,
edgy. He works as a driver for the United Parcel Service, and as
he moves through the day after a screaming attack, there is a
barely perceptible hum at the edge of his hearing, an intent, deliberate
static sliding along behind him as he wanders
streets and streets in his van. He stops along the side of the road
and listens. The shadows of summer leaves tremble murmurously
against the windshield, and cars are accelerating on a
nearby road. In the treetops, a cicada makes its trembly, pressurecooker
hiss.
Something bad has been looking for for a long time, he
thinks, and now, at last, it is growing near.
When he comes home at night everything is normal. They live in
an old house in the suburbs of Cleveland, and sometimes after
dinner they work together in the small patch of garden out in back
of the house-tomatoes, zucchini, string beans, cucumbers*
while Frankie plays with Legos in the dirt. Or they take walks
around the neighborhood, Frankie riding his bike in front of
them, his training wheels squeaking. They gather on the couch
and watch cartoons together, or play board games, or draw pictures
with crayons. After Frankie is asleep, Karen will sit at the
kitchen table and study-she is in nursing school-and Gene will
sit outside on the porch, flipping through a newsmagazine or a
novel, smoking the cigarettes that he has promised Karen he will
give up when he turns thirty-five. He is thirty-four now, and
Karen is twenty-seven, and he is aware, more and more frequently,
that this is not the life that he deserves. He has been incredibly
lucky, he thinks. Blessed, as Gene's favorite cashier at the supermarket
always says. "Have a blessed day," she says, when Gene
pays the money and she hands him his receipt, and he feels as if
she has sprinkled him with her ordinary, gentle beatitude. It reminds
him of long ago, when an old nurse had held his hand in the
hospital and said that she was praying for him.
Sitting out in his lawn chair, drawing smoke out of his cigarette,
he thinks about that nurse, even though he doesn't want to.
He thinks of the way she'd leaned over him and brushed his hair
as he stared at her, imprisoned in a full body cast, sweating his
way through withdrawal and DTs.
He had been a different person, back then. A drunk, a monster.
At eighteen, he married the girl he'd gotten pregnant, and
then had set about slowly, steadily, ruining all their lives. When
he'd abandoned them, his wife and son, back in Nebraska, he had
been twenty-four, a danger to himself and others. He'd done
them a favor by leaving, he thought, though he still feels guilty
when he looks back on it. Years later, when he was sober, he even
tried to contact them. He wanted to own up to his behavior, to
pay the back child support, to apologize. But they were nowhere
to be found. Mandy was no longer living in the small Nebraska
town where they'd met and married, and there was no forwarding
address. Her parents were dead. No one seemed to know
where she'd gone.
Karen didn't know the full story. She had been, to his relief,
uncurious about his previous life, though she knew he had some
drinking days, some bad times. She knew that he'd been married
before, too, though she didn't know the extent of it, didn't know
that he had another son, for example, didn't know that he had left
them one night, without even packing a bag, just driving off in
the car, a flask tucked between his legs, driving east as far as he
could go. She didn't know about the car crash, the wreck he
should have died in. She didn't know what a bad person he'd
been.
She was a nice lady, Karen. Maybe a little sheltered. And truth
to tell, he was ashamed-and even scared-to imagine how she
would react to the truth about his past. He didn't know if she
would have ever really trusted him if she'd known the full story,
and the longer they have known each other the less inclined he
has been to reveal it. He'd escaped his old self, he thought, and
when Karen got pregnant, shortly before they were married, he
told himself that now he had a chance to do things over, to do it
better. They had bought the house together, he and Karen, and
now Frankie will be in kindergarten in the fall. He has come full
circle, has come exactly to the point when his former life with
Mandy and his son, DJ, completely fell apart. He looks up as
Karen comes to the back door and speaks to him through the
screen. "I think: it's time for bed, sweetheart," she says, and he
shudders off these thoughts, these memories. He smiles.
He's been in a strange frame of mind lately. The months of regular
awakenings have been getting to him, and he has a hard time
going back to sleep after an episode with Frankie. When Karen
wakes him in the morning, he often feels muffled, sluggish-as if
he's hungover. He doesn't hear the alarm clock. When he stumbles
out of bed, he finds he has a hard time keeping his moodiness
in check. He can feel his temper coiling up inside him.
He isn't that type of person anymore, and hasn't been for a
long while. Still, he can't help but worry. They say that there is a
second stretch of craving, which sets in after several years of
smooth sailing; five or seven years will pass, and then it will come
back without warning. He has been thinking of going to AA
meetings again, though he hasn't in some time-not since he met
Karen.
It's not as if he gets trembly every time he passes a liquor
store, or even as if he has a problem when he goes out with buddies
and spends the evening drinking soda and nonalcoholic
beer. No. The trouble comes at night, when he's asleep.
He has begun to dream of his first son. DJ. Perhaps it is related
to his worries about Frankie, but for several nights in a row
the image of DJ-age about five-has appeared to him. In the
dream, Gene is drunk, and playing hide-and-seek with D J in the
yard behind the Cleveland house where he is now living. There is
the thick weeping willow out there, and Gene watches the child
appear from behind it and run across the grass, happy, unafraid,
the way Frankie would. DJ turns to look over his shoulder and
laughs, and Gene stumbles after him, at least a six-pack's worth
of good mood, a goofy, drunken dad. It's so real that when he
wakes, he still feels intoxicated. It takes him a few minutes to
shake it.
One morning after a particularly vivid version of this dream,
Frankie wakes and complains of a funny feeling-"right here"*
he says, and points to his forehead. It isn't a headache, he says.
"It's like bees!" he says. "Buzzing bees!" He rubs his hand against
his brow. "Inside my head." He considers for a moment. "You
know how the bees bump against the window when they get in
the house and want to get out?" This description pleases him, and
he taps his forehead lightly with his fingers, humming, "Zt{t{{t,"
to demonstrate.
"Does it hurt?" Karen says.
"No," Frankie says. "It tickles."
Karen gives Gene a concerned look. She makes Frankie lie
down on the couch, and tells him to close his eyes for a while.
After a few minutes, he raises up, smiling, and says that the feeling
has gone.
"Honey, are you sure?" Karen says. She pushes his hair back
and slides her palm across his forehead. "He's not hot," she says,
and Frankie sits up impatiently, suddenly more interested in
something that is happening on the Furor Fieldmouse show, which
is playing on the TV in the living room.
Karen gets out one of her nursing books, and Gene watches her
face tighten with concern as she flips slowly through the pages.
She is looking at Chapter 3: Neurological System, and Gene
ob*serves as she pauses here and there, skimming down a list of
symptoms. "We should probably take him back to Dr. Banerjee
again," she says. Gene nods, recalling what the doctor said about
"emotional trauma."
"Are you scared of bees?" he asks Frankie. "Is that something
that's bothering you?"
"No," Frankie says. "Not really."
When Frankie was three, a bee stung him above his left eyebrow.
They had been out hiking together, and they hadn't yet
learned that Frankie was "moderately allergic" to bee stings.
Within minutes of the sting, Frankie's face had begun to distort,
to puff up, his eye welling shut. He looked deformed. Gene didn't
know if he'd ever been more frightened in his entire life, running
down the trail with Frankie's head pressed against his heart, trying
to get to the car and drive him to the doctor, terrified that the
child was dying. Frankie himself was calm.
Gene clears his throat. He knows the feeling that Frankie is
talking about-he has felt it himself, that odd, feathery vibration
inside his head. And in fact he feels it again, now. He presses the
pads of his fingertips against his brow. Emotional trauma, his
mind murmurs, but he is thinking of D], not Frankie.
"What are you scared of?" Gene asks Frankie, after a moment.
"Anything?"
"You know what the scariest thing is?" Frankie says, and widens
his eyes, miming a frightened look. "There's a lady with no
head, and she went walking through the woods, looking for it.
'Give ... me ... back ... my ... head... .' "
"Where on earth did you hear a story like Karen says.
"Daddy told me," Frankie says. "When we were camping."
Gene blushes, even before Karen gives him a sharp look. "Oh,
great," she says. "Wonderful."
He doesn't meet her "We were just telling ghost stories,"
he says, softly. "I thought he would think the story was
"
"My God, Gene," she says. "With him having nightmares like
this? What were you thinking?"
It's a bad flashback, the kind of thing he's usually able to avoid.
He thinks abruptly of Mandy, his former wife. He sees in Karen's
face that look Mandy would give him when he screwed up. "What
are you, some kind of idiot?" Mandy used to say. "Are you
crazy?" Back then, Gene couldn't do anything right, it seemed,
and when Mandy yelled at him it made his stomach clench with
shame and inarticulate rage. 1 was trying, he would think, 1 was
trying, damn it, and it was as if no matter what he did, it wouldn't
turn out right. That feeling would sit heavily in his chest, and
eventually, when things got worse, he hit her once. "Why do you
want me to feel like ****," he said through clenched teeth. "I'm
not an *******," he said, and when she rolled her eyes at him he
slapped her hard enough to knock her out of her chair.
That was the time he'd taken D] to the carnival. It was a Saturday,
and he'd been drinking a little, so Mandy didn't like it, but
after all-he thought-D] was his son, too, he had a right to
spend some time with his own son, Mandy wasn't his boss even if
she might think she was. She liked to make him hate himself.
What she was mad about was that he'd taken D] on the Velo*
cerator. It was a mistake, he'd realized afterward. But D J himself
had begged to go on. He was just recently four years old, and
Gene had just turned twenty-three, which made him feel inexplicably
old. He wanted to have a little fun.
Besides, nobody told him he couldn't take DJ on the thing.
When he led D J through the gate, the ticket taker even smiled, as
if to say, "Here is a young guy showing his kid a good time."
Gene winked at DJ and grinned, taking a nip from a flask of peppermint
schnapps. He felt like a good dad. He wished his own
father had taken him on rides at the carnival!
The door to the Velocerator opened like a hatch in a big silver
flying saucer. Disco music was blaring from the entrance and became
louder as they went inside. I t was a circular room with soft,
padded walls, and one of the workers had Gene and D J stand
with their backs to the wall, strapping them in side by side. Gene
felt warm and expansive from the schnapps. He took DJ's hand,
and he almost felt as if he were glowing with love. "Get ready,
kiddo," Gene whispered. "This is going to be wild."
The hatch door of the Velocerator sealed closed with a pressurized
sigh. And then, slowly, the walls they were strapped to
began to turn. Gene tightened his grip on D J's hand as they
began to rotate, gathering speed. After a moment the wall pads
they were strapped to slid up, and the force of velocity pushed
them back, held to the surface of the spinning wall like iron to a
magnet. Gene's cheeks and lips seemed to pull back, and the sensation
of helplessness made him laugh.
At that moment, DJ began to scream. "No! No! Stop! Make it
stop!" They were terrible shrieks, and Gene held the child's hand
more tightly. "It's all right," he yelled jovially over the thump of
the music. "It's okay! I'm right here!" But the child's wailing
only got louder in response. The scream seemed to whip past
Gene in a circle, tumbling around and around the circumference
of the ride like a spirit, trailing echoes as it flew. When the machine
finally stopped, DJ was heaving with sobs, and the man at
the control panel glared. Gene could feel the other passengers
staring grimly and judgmentally at him.
Gene felt horrible. He had been so happy-thinking that they
were finally having themselves a memorable father-and-son
moment-and he could feel his heart plunging into darkness. D J
kept on weeping, even as they left the ride and walked along the
midway, even as Gene tried to distract him with promises of cotton
candy and stuffed animals. "I want to go home," DJ cried,
and, "1 want my moml I want my mom!" And it had wounded
Gene to hear that. He gritted his teeth.
"Fine!" he hissed. "Let's go home to your mommy, you little
crybaby. 1 swear to God, I'm never taking you with me anywhere
again." And he gave DJ a little shake. "Jesus, what's wrong with
you? Lookit, people are laughing at you. See? They're saying,
'Look at that big boy, bawling like a girl.' "
This memory comes to him out of the blue. He had forgotten all
about it, but now it comes to him over and over. Those screams
were not unlike the sounds Frankie makes in the middle of the
night, and they pass repeatedly through the membrane of his
thoughts, without warning. The next day, he finds himself recalling
it again, the memory of the scream impressing on his mind
with such force that he actually has to pull his UPS truck off to
the side of the road and put his face in his hands: Awful! Awful!
He must have seemed like a monster to the child.
Sitting there in his van, he wishes he could find a way to contact
them-Mandy and DJ. He wishes that he could tell them
how sorry he is, and send them money. He puts his fingertips
against his forehead, as cars drive past on the street, as an old man
parts the curtains and peers out of the house Gene is parked in
front of, hopeful that Gene might have a package for him.
Where are they? Gene wonders. He tries to picture a town, a
house, but there is only a blank. Surely, Mandy being Mandy,
she would have hunted him down by now to demand child support.
She would have relished treating him like a deadbeat dad,
she would have hired some company who would garnish his
wages.
Now, sitting at the roadside, it occurs to him suddenly that
they are dead. He recalls the car wreck that he was in, just outside
Des Moines, and if he had been killed they would have never
known. He recalls waking up in the hospital, and the elderly
nurse who had said, "You're very lucky, young man. You should
be dead."
Maybe they are dead, he thinks. Mandy and DJ. The idea
strikes him a glancing blow, because of course it would make
sense. The reason they've never contacted him. of course.
He doesn't know what to do with such anxieties. They are ridiculous,
they are self-pitying, they are paranoid, but especially now,
with the concerns about Frankie, he is at the mercy of his fears.
He comes home from work and Karen stares at him heavily.
"What's the matter?" she says, and he shrugs. "You look terrible,"
she says.
"It's nothing," he says, but she continues to look at him skeptically.
She shakes her head.
"I took Frankie to the doctor again today," she says after a
moment, and Gene sits down at the table with her, where she is
spread out with her textbooks and notepaper.
"I suppose you'll think I'm being a neurotic mom," she says.
"I think I'm too immersed in disease-that's the problem."
Gene shakes his head. "No, no," he says. His throat feels dry.
"You're right. Better safe than sorry."
"Mmm," she says thoughtfully. "I think Dr. Banerjee is starting
to hate me."
"Naw," Gene says. "No one could hate you." With effort, he
smiles gently. A good husband, he kisses her palm, her wrist.
"Try not to worry," he says, though his own nerves are fluttering.
He can hear Frankie in the backyard, shouting orders to someone.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.