flamingo files

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  Warrior's husband?
  There is so much interest in creating virtual realities when it appears that if we all just live long enough and  wait for senility to arrive we will all have our own virtual reality. Some days I already feel as though I am living in another dimension at least.
• When I was very small we used to live next door to family with two sons who liked to wander the street naked at night and peer into windows. They both joined the navy. Did they think that on a ship or submarine they would have less area to wander? Less women to startle too! Maybe they are the poster boys for the Village People’s “In the Navy”!
• One of the very first customers I ever served as a bookseller was a intellectually challenged young man.  Have you ever noticed how when you are the newbie and the challenging or difficult customer/client comes in,  all the resident staff disappear and you are the only one left to help them? Anyway, this young man came to me and in a very high voice, like he had sucked helium, said he wanted “Sex and Love with Pictures”. He said he and his girlfriend were going to have sex and so he needed “Sex and Love with Pictures”. I am sorry, but when he said it in that high voice I did so have to restrain the laughter. I am evil I know but it was all so comical. I walked him over to the sex ed section but it  was obvious that none of the books there were going to suit him, and very few had the types of pictures he appeared to desire. Eventually he wandered away frustrated with me and the rest of the staff returned as he left the shop.

Twice more he came in and we went through the same routine. In the end I advised him to go to another bookshop in the next street! That was some 15 years ago. Today I heard a radio discussion about a sex aid catalogue someone had from 1975 and they were laughing about all the funny ways we wrote about such things in 1975. It turns out that “Sex and Love with Pictures” was actually a porn magazine! More smut than porn by today’s standard they said. Poor man, he certainly got the wrong woman for that one!

• Anthony Hopkins and I were an item last night. Frightened me too. Anthony was the star of my dream. It appeared to be a younger version of me. I am always me in my dreams but not the real me, if you know what I mean. This time I was a younger me and I went to dinner with Anthony Hopkins. Even if I was the real me I should still be much younger than Anthony Hopkins! We had dinner, and then next thing I knew Mr Hopkins and I were driving in his car. For no apparent reason,  I snuggled my face into his shoulder as he drove. I hesitate to think I was attracted to him.  We got out of the car and I was walking a couple of steps behind him, as one obviously does with the rich and famous, and it was only then that I noticed his coat was emerald green velvet. As I walked behind him thinking Anthony Hopkins is wearing a green blazer two large tears opened up in his coat over the area of each shoulder blade. End of dream. I am very traumatized today. If I have to romance with an older guy couldn’t it have been Bruce Springsteen? Even my dreams are cruel to me.
• Speaking of rude - I had very negative computer karma today. Well it was organisational wide and actually started yesterday, but it hit me the most and for the longest. I really get annoyed with IT MEN who don't communicate with you. Our IT MAN who looks like a huge side of beef, a man mountain, always thinks he has things fixed but a. he never notifies anyone that they can use their computer again and it is usually up to some brave soul to start up and discover things are fine again and we all could have been working for the past hour. His other fault, the man mountain,  is that he runs away as soon as he does think it is fixed. He is a consultant and is always on the run somewhere else. Hey, Man Mountain we are your client too. Anyway I continued to have severe problems after others seemed to be back online. I caught Man Mountain running from the building and chased him - me, neck collar and all! I actually yelled at his retreating back. I marched him back into the building and stood over him until he fixed my computer. My section makes the major money, I need my computer, my team needs the tools to do the job. I am not sure which list to put Man Mountain on - the list of People to Hit with a Stick on My Last Day at Work, or the list of Irritants who will be Hung Upsidedown from the Hills Hoist Clothesline and Spun on a Regualr Basis. Right now he is shaping up for both lists.
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  Computing dramas