Rapture of the deeps

On my very first day at my very latest job, people were doing the cubicle shuffle -- you know, that frantic repositioning dance that every cube-farm denizen goes through when new people come into the mix, where any open cubicles get reapportioned in such a way among the people who are already there so as to guarantee that the newbies get all the crappy ones.

It is an invariable law among cube-farms, of course, that newbies have to start in the crappiest cubicles, and only through experience and attrition gradually work their way to the desirable window or corner cubicles, where hardly anyone can see what's on your monitor so you can web surf a lot more than you're supposed to.

Anyway, first day, this woman who sits across from me and one station back noticed how other people were shuffling around to get at the cool cubicles, and apparently, she felt vulnerable, as she was sitting at not only a window cubicle, but a corner window cubicle, and she's a temporary contractor, and temporary contractors are always the lowest of the low in any office pecking order. So she got up on her cracker barrel legs and stared around truculently with her big watery flounder eyes and then announced rather stridently that she HAD to sit by a window, she didn't know WHY, but she just HAD to sit by a window, something about sitting by a window, it just soothed her somehow, she HAD to sit by a window, if she got MOVED away from a window, then we were going to have ONE VERY UNHAPPY PERSON on our hands.

Maybe nobody else would have found that aggravating or exasperating.

Maybe I'm just not patient enough with my co-workers.

Maybe it's just me.

No, I'm sure it is.

So anyway, yesterday is Monday, and I come in, and Flounder Eyes asks me, all solicitous-like, how was my weekend? And I advise that it was, y'know, too short. And she agrees that weekends are always too short, and then she sighs in a rather exaggerated fashion, and allows as to how she is just EXHAUSTED from HER weekend. And I'd like to sit down and ignore her, because, you know, I'm just that kind of guy, plus, if you go around zotzing your co-workers with a taser it causes talk and management takes a dim view of the whole activity, but it's a new office situation and I need to keep this job for a while so I dasn't be notably anti-social right now, I just dasn't.

So, hating myself for doing exactly what Cracker Barrel Legs erroneously thinks she is oh-so-subtly manipulating me into doing, I chirp brightly, "So what were you doing this weekend that was so exhausting?"

Sez her: "Oh well at church I had this total immersion experience in the Holy Spirit. And it was just, like... WHOOOOOA."

And she quavered.

All -- OVER.

It's mean, I know, to ridicule other people for their physicality. And it's not like too many random strangers have come up to me on the street lately and said "OmyGod, Harrison Ford circa 1983, I love your work, can you please sign my RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK souvenir fedora for me? Make it out to Joe. Your Biggest Fan. And please sign it 'love'. Okay?"

So I have little room to be cracking on how other people look, and I know that. I do.

So suffice to say, watching this woman QUAVER all over was not a sublimely pleasurable experience.

In fact, it was just, like... WHOOOOOOA.

And then later on that day she was talking about how her daughter thought everyone at that church was weird because they like, spoke in tongues and rolled on the ground and SHE told her daughter HEY just OBEY THE SPIRIT when the Holy Spirit comes over you you just LET IT TAKE CONTROL and DO GOD'S WILL.

I'm not inclined to worship theoretical supernatural entities I can see no real material evidence as to the existence of; I think, if some critter out there wishes me to conform my behavior towards its expectations, much less adulate it as some kind of spiritual mentor, it can at least offer to cut me a check for said services, and I wouldn't mind a health care plan and a retirement package either, if you got one or two back there somewhere you aren't otherwise using. Having said that, though, even if I were drawn to abase myself before some concept of divinity, I think I would be very wary of any such myth-figure whose WILL and SPIRIT involved me shrieking incomprehensible gibberish while writhing uncontrollably on the ground ANYwhere, much less, in front of a few hundred other people, at least one of whom was, my child.

Also... and here's where you discover very nearly the worst of me... I'm of the opinion that abjuring your young daughter to just OBEY THE SPIRIT just let it TAKE CONTROL and DO GOD'S WILL is, y'know, what's that thing, what do they call it -- oh, yeah -- child abuse.

There should be an island somewhere and all these people should go live on that island and they could babble at each other in made up languages and flail around like a bunch of spazzes on the beach right next to all those big giant stone heads that I'm sure would be on that island with them and then those people would be happy, and they wouldn't stand around outside theaters trying to keep me from going inside to see LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, so I'd be happy too, and their kids should be adopted by, you know, smart people who aren't insane who don't live on that island, so THEY'd be happy.

And then those people on the island could vote for, like, President of the Island, but not for anyone who would make any laws that would have any effect on MY life, and that would be really cool, too.

Or, the Rapture could occur, like, NOW. And as these Chosen Lambs of God ascend heavenwards in a brilliant golden beam of holy grace, I will wave, and laugh, and dance, and shout "Farewell, O Beloved Lambs of God, and please, please, please don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way outta here!"

Because I'm really just that uncool.