Nothing says Good Times like a talking disembodied doll head

THE GAME IS WATCHING YOU

So I'm watching this documentary about pinball machines, and it reminded me of my one and only pinball love affair: Funhouse.

About 8-9 years ago, I was managing a hip neighborhood coffeeshop. Down the street there was "arcade guy", who warehoused a lot of antique games in a little sad looking storefront which was only open by appointment or chance. He offered to put a pinball machine in the coffeeshop and he'd split the revenue with the shop. Sure, why not.

The game he rolled down the street into my coffeeshop was Funhouse. It features a creepy talking doll head, "Rudy", and it yells at you throughout the game. The point of the game is to advance the clock to midnight, at which point Rudy would fall asleep, and leave his mouth hanging open. If you could get the ball in his mouth, he would wake up, spit it back out, and then the game would go absolutely batshit and spit out like 7 balls at once and every light would be flashing. Rudy said odd things, like "You big sausage!" and creepy things like "I'm watching you." When he wasn't being played, sometimes he would randomly say something over in the corner, which was a bit unnerving when you're working alone. He had several phrase that he would say over and over, of course, but I swear, once in a great while, he would blurt out something that I had never ever heard before, which was also freaky.

I had never really played pinball before, so I wasn't that great at it, but I became obsessed with Funhouse. I would pick all the quarters out of my tip jar and play whenever the shop was slow, and when my shifts ended, and when the coffeeshop closed. I didn't have the key to the quarter slot so I couldn't just recycle quarters, I was actually spending my own money to play. Given that I was really, really poor at that time, spending two dollars a day, or five dollars a day, or more, on a pinball game wasn't really very responsible, but it had a hold over me.

Sometimes some of my employees or friends would stick around at closing time, and we'd turn off all the lights in the place for maximum effect, and play Funhouse. I got better at it, and I could get to midnight consistently. When that happened, I might as well have been skydiving, or having sex. It was THAT exciting.

The game required maintenance. "Arcade Guy" had to come over regularly to open it up and work on it. This first-hand experience is what made me realize that even if I ever was lucky enough to have the money to buy a pinball machine of my own, you'd better have an "arcade guy" of your own to call upon.

This documentary keeps mentioning how pinball is becoming a lost art, how there's only one pinball manufacturer left standing, how "kids today" don't get it. I don't buy that. I didn't grow up with pinball and I immediately "got it".

Earlier this year, I visited Canobie Lake Park for the first time, and was thrilled to see an arcade FULL of pinball machines.

I'm no natural. It took me a lot of time and a lot of precious quarters to master Funhouse. But I totally get it. You're never going to get anything like that from an iPad or Xbox game. It has that great taste of nostalgia, that whiff of seedy carnival atmosphere. The tactical feedback, the shaking and the vibrations, the clunks and clacks, the pull of the spring handle: those things can't be successfully digitized.

When I was a kid for some reason one of my dreams for future-adult-me was that I would have a treehouse with an espresso machine inside (I had a cool fort, but never a treehouse; I'm not sure where I got the espresso craving since I'd never had one). Now, a treehouse with an espresso machine and a Funhouse pinball would be the ultimate. If I ever make it rich....

See Rudy from Funhouse in action here.

I just don't care. It might be the cashews.

I read somewhere that a handful of cashews delivers about the same dose of serotonin as a Prozac.

Of course, I had to try this.

Last week I snacked on cashews every day at work, and strangely, I did have a surprisingly sunny outlook on things. I did not have cashews at home, and I was feeling pretty depressed over the weekend.

Coincidence?

Could the secret to happiness be... cashews? If it is, it figures it would be something as stupidly simple as nuts. I really don't like cashews, either. To me, they leave an aftertaste that is somewhat like stale vomit from the night before.

So far my attitude towards everything at work this week has been "I don't care." When my coworkers told me my boss was poking through my desk while I was on break, I just shrugged. When people have tried to give me a hard time on the phone, my lackluster tone of voice seems to have clearly sent the message "This person doesn't give a fuck, I'm not going to get anywhere with this automaton" and they give up trying to be a jerk.

It's totally working. I feel much less stressed. I've been able to focus on things that are important to me, instead of worrying about every little nuanced detail of my existence.

For a person whose main difficulty in life is anxiety, adopting an "I don't care" attitude is surprisingly liberating. I mean, you can't take it too far. You have to still care that your bills are paid and your pets are fed, stuff like that. But in dealing with others, or thinking about abstract life issues, or screwing up the courage to try something new, going in thinking "I just don't give a shit" is super helpful. It alleviates a lot of worry. It's sort of like "Just Do It" for perfectionists.

Expectations vs. Reality

I just looked through some old posts and found one from early June in which I outlined all the goals I had for this summer. I'm going to take a moment and measure how I did:

1. Ride (the horse I am leasing)

Yeah pretty much did that, although he tried to kill me a couple of times. Realized I am too old to be riding crazy horses, cause if they throw me, I'm not gonna bounce like I used to.

2. Get really fit (running every day) and lose 15 lbs.

Um, not quite. Turns out, running is hard on your joints and I kinda gave up on that. But I have been doing better with exercising lately, and have lost the 5 lbs I gained earlier this year.

3. Make money and actually save it (by being frugal and selling junk, of which I have a lot)

Again, not quite. I did sell a couple things on Ebay and bought a wireless printer with the proceeds.

4. Finish my writing project

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

5. Do some fun stuff, like visiting some new amusements parks, hiking trails, maybe even start a band with the girls

Visit new amusement park? Check. Hiking trails? Well I've been to the same old dog park a lot, and finally visited the Summit House in South Hadley, MA. Start a band? Yeah... no. That one was just... wildly optimistic.

Part of the problem is just how fast time goes by. I feel like summer just started, and suddenly it's fall. I think I need to change my future-perception of time. A month sounds like a long time to me... I need to start realizing a month is nothing, and if I give myself a deadline, it's going to be upon me very soon so I'd better not procrastinate.

Just One Day

*picture of brain exploding here, if I wasn't too lazy to go find one*

Just a few things that stuck out at me today at work. Our office manages apartment rentals as well as self-storage units. Note that this is a very SLOW day, hence my ability to take the time to record some of our encounters. A normal day is like this, except times ten:

1. Guy calls. Wants to pay us electronically. He wants us to walk him through his bank’s website. If you need assistance with your banking, shouldn’t you call YOUR BANK?

2. Guy calls and says he used to live in our apartments and moved out four years ago. He asks “Do you have my cat?” He says that way back when he used to live here, at some point his cat ran away. He wants to know if anyone has since “returned” it to us. Why, yes, sir, in fact we have had a cat living in our lost-and-found box for the last five years... oh wait, sorry, that cat doesn’t meet your description. Not yours. Bummer.

3. Woman is in to sign her new apartment lease and is sneering at me the whole time, pointing at every sentence and huffing about every little thing. “Well this is a weird one!”, she exclaims, pointing to the line that says ‘No Public Drinking of Alcohol’. Is that going to be a problem for you, ma’am?

4. Person calls and asks a million questions about our apartments. Ten minutes into the conversation, she says “Do you allow dogs?” Absolutely not. She’s very disappointed: “Aw. It’s SOOO hard to find rentals around here that allow dogs!” Very true. So shouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you ask?

5. Person calls looking for directions. Our office is in one place, and the storage unit are down the street. She insists this is not true, that the office and storage units are at the same location. She argues this up and down. “There MUST be some storage units where you are! It says so on the website!” No, that is our OFFICE address you see on the website. The place you need to go before you can get into the storage units. She states “No, you’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m pretty sure I am more familiar with my workplace than you are, random stranger who has never been here before.

6. Same person calls back like 10 times an hour. Apparently she is 68, and will somehow be bringing her things to storage by bus every day. !?! We explain that the bus stop is like a mile away. She asks, “Will it be safe if I’m walking down there at night?” Um, we can’t guarantee your safety if you choose to walk down a dark street at night. This did not sound like a practical idea, so I ended up telling her we had just rented our last storage unit to get her to buzz off.

7. A crazy-eyed young storage tenant comes in to give notice she’s moving out. She fills out the vacating notice, and says matter-of-factly, “I corrected a grammatical error on your form.” Okay then. When she leaves, I examine it. I cannot find any error, nor did she make any kind of correction.

8. A trashy looking woman with orange hair and drawn-on eyebrows came in to rent a storage unit. When my coworker tells her the price, the customer says “God, you’re a rip-off artist!” And then mutters to herself, “White bastards”. (Note that she herself is white.)

Just because

You're WELCOME

So, you say I don't have an eye for detail, eh???

Here's a little story about a recent trip a friend an I took to a local bar. Us "librarians" struck again. (That's what they used to call us at another local bar we frequented. For the record, we are not actual librarians. Although we may look like librarians, we prefer to think of ourselves as the "hot librarians" that could toss aside our spectacles and let down our hair at any second.)

So my friend and I decided to go to this local bar, the World War II Club in Northampton, MA. It is well known, but we had never been there ourselves. It was a Sunday night and we were restless.

The place seems to have no windows, and therefore hard to tell from the outside if it's open. We walk up to the door and take a look at the posted hours:

It was currently about 10:05 when we arrived. According to the door, they're closing. But then we noticed the faint sound of music from inside. So we decided to be bold and try going in, meanwhile bracing ourselves in case someone shouts at us "WE'RE CLOSED, CAN'T YOU READ THE SIGN?"

As we enter timidly, no one shouts at us. There's live music going on, and people sitting and drinking. Looks open enough, but perhaps we'd missed last call. We walk up to the bar and my friend asks the bartender "are you closing soon?"

He seems confused.

Bartender: No... we're open until 1 am.

Friend: Oh, good! We thought you were closing soon. The door says 10 pm.

Bartender: WHAT? What are you talking about? It's always been 1 am. WHERE does it say that?

Friend: On the door! *I'm nodding to concur*

Bartender: WHAT?!?!

*Bartender runs away at light speed for the front door. We giggle. Bartender comes back.

Bartender: It doesn't say 10 pm on the door. It says 1 am. Gosh, you had me scared for a moment there, I thought we were turning away business!

My friend and I look at each other, confused. Could it be possible that we BOTH read it wrong?

I went outside to look at the door. Yup, my eyes aren't lying, it says 10 pm. I take out my camera to take a picture to prove to the bartender what we're talking about. At that point he comes out, my friend in tow.

We are ALL looking at the door at this point. And he says, "See? It says 1 am" as he's pointing at the piece of paper that says "no entry after 1 am".

I point at the lettering painted onto the door. RIGHT HERE. It clearly says

Sunday: 1 - 10 pm

He finally sees it. "OH MY GOD! I have worked here for THREE YEARS and have never noticed that! NO ONE has ever noticed that before! I wonder how much business I've lost on Sunday nights because of that!"

So we all got a good laugh. The bartender decides to fix the problem by scraping off the zero in the "ten" so that it now says 1:

He was happy that it was resolved and went back inside to tend to his customers. We didn't have the heart to tell him at the time that it now appeared that the bar was not open at all on Sundays, or appeared to be open for perhaps a nanosecond before closing again. 1-1pm doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either.

So we took matters into our own hands and scraped off the "PM":

Still not perfect, but definitely a step closer to accuracy.

I know from experience at my job that 99.9% of people DO NOT EVER look at the business hours posted in front of their face as they walk into an establishment, they just try the door and if it opens, they're in business. But still. Seriously, NO ONE ever noticed that?

I can only wonder how many people with "an eye for detail" the bar has turned away over the years. Probably not many. You're welcome anyway.

Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

I'm not a meanie. I'm just MISUNDERSTOOD.

So yesterday I vented about this email "misunderstanding" I had.

I explained the exchange to my fiance, and he totally sided with the Other Guy.

WHHHAAAAATTTT?????

Shit.

My argument fell apart. I trust him, and I trust his logic. My fiance gets along great with EVERYBODY. Everyone loves him. Frankly, it's kind of annoying. If someone doesn't like him or trust him, it's a pretty clear sign that they have some pretty serious personal issues. So I trust his opinion completely when it comes to interpersonal exchanges, and therefore I had to simply accept the fact that *I* was in the wrong. !!!

My fiance says to me, "Not everyone thinks like you. That's a good thing. You're unique."

I said, "Well, no, it's not a good thing, apparently. Because it causes a lot of misunderstandings, strife, trauma, anger, and lost opportunities."

I am a special and unique snowflake. Oh goody.

I explained the whole thing to my female coworker, and she was very surprised also. She had completely understood my frustration with the email exchange. She concluded "it must be a guy thing." Well, yeah, it was a guy I was emailing. Perhaps that's true. Women and men certainly do seem to look at things differently sometimes, in surprising ways.

It made me step back and wonder how other people perceive me. But at the same time... I can't help who I am, or how I think. Obsessing over it is not going to help whatsoever. I guess I just have to try to remember that people are different, they think differently, and try to be more tolerant of others - ? Ugh that sounds so touchy-feeling. No thanks, warm fuzzies.

I know I have a bit of an..... anger issue. I personally think my anger problem is funny, and endearing in its own way. But other people just seem to think it's scary. Huh.