A Bald Dissatisfaction

May 6, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

I’ve been duped. Tricked. Lied to. Taken for a ride to disappointmentville by a fancy I’ve held for years. In reality no one told me a falsehood. Like most times I find myself disillusioned, I did it to myself. A starry-eyed dreamer, I tend to put things onto such a pedestal that once attained, they can’t measure up to expectations.

Who can forget the Chia Pet of the 70’s that I saved and saved for. Don’t even get me started on sea monkeys. I had such high aspirations for them after seeing them on the back page of Mad Magazine. The promise of joy died quickly because the only time they moved was when I shook them out of the bag into their simulated habitat. Ant farms, the bass guitar, a shiny pastel jacket that I thought would be an absolute chick magnet. I was amazed when I found that on the discount rack and wore it proudly to school with my sleeves pushed up, only to find that the world had moved past Crockett, Tubbs, Miami Vice, and the style I flaunted. That first new car I had to have post-college before I understood the stranglehold sixty easy payments could be. I won’t even mention women of my youth, like Hilda* the friendly barkeep. For a foolish lad, women are the most dangerous sort of thing to deify.

I could go on. There have been a litany of things I prized – nah, idolized – right up until I got my grubby mitts on them.

And so, now, I am disappointed with baldness. I have always wanted to shave my head but been dissuaded by my lovely wife, who likes hair on my head, but not on my chin. If you recall my rant about Tom Selleck, I have never truly been satisfied with my hair. Current circumstances gained me quick approval to remove it and I did so excitedly.

I don’t like it and here are my grievances:

1. I always assumed it would be low maintenance. It is not. To my dismay, the hair on my head grows as fast as the hair on my chin. Who knew?

2. I thought it would save money – no shampoo, conditioner, or gel. See complaint number one, razors aren’t cheap and every shave seems to chew through one.

3. Who knew the skin under my hair was even pastier than the rest of me? I’m told paint stores can mix approximately 140 shades of white, welcome to Pure White.

4. When I was twelve, my football team had to get me an adult helmet, then pad the sides because my cranium was so long. Any time I hit someone, the thing wobbled side to side. Head shapes don’t change, they just expand. Let’s play a little game, shall we? I like to call it:

“Which one is Mark’s head?”

♦

Surprisingly difficult, is it?

So you can see why I’m disappointed. Like most broken things in my life, I have no one to blame but myself. I lifted baldness onto a throne it simply cannot occupy. Fortunately, I can grow my hair out to fix this monstrosity…but not quite yet. Part of me feels a little like a rebel since this has been against the marital rules for so long. And that, I like.

*Name changed to protect my stupidity

The Muppet Factory

May 1, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

My day job is in the world of high-tech. No, I’m not a brilliant engineer who designs all kinds of innovative, life-changing products. I only sell to them. For a fairly normal bloke, trying to relate to such people can lead to all kinds of challenges.

You have to understand, these are people who don’t see the light of day very often. Most of their time is spent on computers, whiteboards, and in dark laboratories concocting the next bit of technology that we normal folk can’t live without. They often spend sixteen hour days in their precious lab and forget to eat, sleep, shower, or have any useful form of human interaction. These people are completely devoid of emotion, but can chart its theoretical development in sixty-three different types of graphs. I am talking about the type who can build his own robot to maintain his house yet can’t waste enough mental energy to hit more than three of his seven belt-loops.

Now you know the kind of people I deal with on a daily basis. It can be fun. They look down on my intellect, but can’t understand even the most basic joke I throw out. When I rattle off something witty, I typically get a blank stare or an uncomfortable chuckle.

We have a small office in this world of technology. Ours is in the back corner of the building and on my trips to the lavatory, I frequently run into these geniuses – sometimes quite literally as they are too preoccupied with vast equations to look up when they walk. There is a door I walk past that leads to what I call, The Muppet Factory.

I don’t know what goes on behind that door because it has one of those coded locks with a scanner on it. I’ve tried punching all kinds of numbers on it, but it is probably some precise code that average people don’t have enough memory to retain. All I know is that the people who come in and out of it resemble cartoon characters come to life. The first one I saw was a dead ringer for Beaker. A Keystone Cop emerged one day followed by Animal. Several other characters have been spotted lately. Olive Oil works there, but we have yet to see Popeye. It is simply fascinating.

Now, when I walk down that hall, I go very slowly and sing things like, It Ain’t Easy Being Green, and Mahna Mahna to see if I can lure one of them out. No dice, thus far. They stay in their lab building more Muppets or stealing people for their evil machine that does it.

In this world of High Tech, I wonder what the goal of their Muppet Factory could be. Is this fandom run amok? Or is it a demented project to design a more colorful and aesthetically pleasing exterior for engineers and programmers? It is beyond my intellect to know, but I remain curious. So if you see people walking around who look suspiciously like cartoon characters, be wary. They my just be plotting something that we won’t understand until we are all subject to the vain whims of our new dictator, Miss Piggy.