Is it Plagarism to Steal Creative Excuses From a Friend?
Last week I had one of those days that comics make jokes about and that turn you paranoid…or worse. I’ve always been my harshest critic, my best friend, and my most tenacious enemy, but I seem to constantly prove my mother’s wisdom in not making my middle name Grace.
For a relatively bright person, most of my mishaps are caused by perennial stupidity or blatant clumsiness. Several years ago, because I was too lazy to go downstairs for a ladder, I managed to mangle my left knee while standing on an unmade bed with about 30 yards of fabric in my hands and a couple cats at my feet. Yeah, I know…dumb. And no sooner did the injury improve enough for me to walk upright, than I stepped down wrong and re-injured the injury. It’s only given me twinges in the last couple years, usually when the weather is bad, but rushing around last Tuesday, I did it again!!
This is a long way around to say I ended up spending most of the evening hours last week sprawled on the sofa alternating ice packs and heat, an unwilling captive of the television age. While feeling sorry for myself and keeping an eye on the continual weather updates (tornado warnings in the area again), I kept ruminating on my flaws, pretty much assured they were too ingrained to change. I won’t list them all here – my pc hasn’t enough memory for that long a list – but a few will always occupy the marquee of my life – a flash of neon flubs. They’re my own little entourage.
One of those flaws is that I’m easily bored. That’s a nerve wracking flaw simply because the general rule is that easily bored people are boring. I don’t need people or props to enjoy myself (and my ex summed it up when he said I could have fun all alone in a closet), but when you’re having a pity party, a shoulder to cry on would be nice.
Anyway, the tornado threat passed and I started flipping channels, finding this masochistic show called, “So you think you can dance.” It had the American Idol format, but with dancers, some trained and some not, all vying for a shot at dancing in Vegas. The viewing public is being inundated with these newly minted ‘talent’ game shows, all built on that 3-judge panel format of quasi experts who pride themselves on conciliation or nastiness or simple idiocy. One of the dance judges was appalled at the number of untrained and barely mobile hip hop dancers who had all the enthusiasm of a slug on sheet ice, and the same level of talent as blank typing paper. And, each one professed to be professionals, teaching dance at some studio in Podunk. His major horrified comment as he said ‘get lost’ to each one, was “What is American coming to?” Hmmm. Did he really expect an answer, this man so enthralled with himself at producing a cloned TV extravaganza using dancers?
See, all that exposes another of my flaws – going off on tangents, or to use the pop-psysch label, flowing along down the stream of consciousness. Somehow, my disdain for television, my preference for contact with only interesting individuals, regardless of age, combined with my clumsiness, my pain, tornadoes, and one cat throwing up a hairball and other unmentionable things on top of a solid Mahogany end table made me reflect on exactly why it is I hate housework and so am not adverse to ignoring it to my peril. With my level of unfailing grace, someday soon I will stumble over the booby trap of an abandoned cat toy or a baseball sized dust bunny to splat indecorously amid discarded magazines and newspapers and when inhaling to shout my disdain with vivid blasphemy and curses, I’ll inhale a bushel of cat hair and promptly succumb to asphyxiation.
There’s another of my major flaws. Somehow I only get the cleaning bug when I’m incapacitated enough to be sprawling in pain, and that’s because I’ve slowed down sufficiently to look around and realize just how long I’ve let mundane chores build up, and now am in no physical condition to do anything positive about it. Then it becomes mentally frustrating and overwhelming and what’s left of my morale is demolished by the vision of deadly embarrassment should someone wearing white gloves and a caustic eye ring my door bell expecting entry. The only way such a predicament can be eased is with a healthy application of imagination to come up with excuses for such slobbery, like putting get well cards on the mantle, a pained expression on the face, and voicing a story about terminal illness. I’m also fortunate to have a friend with the same aversion to housework who is even better at creative excuse building than I am and if I can figure out how to acquire a temporary live-in boy friend or an easily discarded significant other to leave behind while I travel – after having called in a cleaning service – then he can tell those wielders of mops, brooms and disinfectant that the horror of the house exists because his wife recently died and he had been too despondent during the last year to clean. Is it really plagiarism if you steal an excuse from a friend?
For a relatively bright person, most of my mishaps are caused by perennial stupidity or blatant clumsiness. Several years ago, because I was too lazy to go downstairs for a ladder, I managed to mangle my left knee while standing on an unmade bed with about 30 yards of fabric in my hands and a couple cats at my feet. Yeah, I know…dumb. And no sooner did the injury improve enough for me to walk upright, than I stepped down wrong and re-injured the injury. It’s only given me twinges in the last couple years, usually when the weather is bad, but rushing around last Tuesday, I did it again!!
This is a long way around to say I ended up spending most of the evening hours last week sprawled on the sofa alternating ice packs and heat, an unwilling captive of the television age. While feeling sorry for myself and keeping an eye on the continual weather updates (tornado warnings in the area again), I kept ruminating on my flaws, pretty much assured they were too ingrained to change. I won’t list them all here – my pc hasn’t enough memory for that long a list – but a few will always occupy the marquee of my life – a flash of neon flubs. They’re my own little entourage.
One of those flaws is that I’m easily bored. That’s a nerve wracking flaw simply because the general rule is that easily bored people are boring. I don’t need people or props to enjoy myself (and my ex summed it up when he said I could have fun all alone in a closet), but when you’re having a pity party, a shoulder to cry on would be nice.
Anyway, the tornado threat passed and I started flipping channels, finding this masochistic show called, “So you think you can dance.” It had the American Idol format, but with dancers, some trained and some not, all vying for a shot at dancing in Vegas. The viewing public is being inundated with these newly minted ‘talent’ game shows, all built on that 3-judge panel format of quasi experts who pride themselves on conciliation or nastiness or simple idiocy. One of the dance judges was appalled at the number of untrained and barely mobile hip hop dancers who had all the enthusiasm of a slug on sheet ice, and the same level of talent as blank typing paper. And, each one professed to be professionals, teaching dance at some studio in Podunk. His major horrified comment as he said ‘get lost’ to each one, was “What is American coming to?” Hmmm. Did he really expect an answer, this man so enthralled with himself at producing a cloned TV extravaganza using dancers?
See, all that exposes another of my flaws – going off on tangents, or to use the pop-psysch label, flowing along down the stream of consciousness. Somehow, my disdain for television, my preference for contact with only interesting individuals, regardless of age, combined with my clumsiness, my pain, tornadoes, and one cat throwing up a hairball and other unmentionable things on top of a solid Mahogany end table made me reflect on exactly why it is I hate housework and so am not adverse to ignoring it to my peril. With my level of unfailing grace, someday soon I will stumble over the booby trap of an abandoned cat toy or a baseball sized dust bunny to splat indecorously amid discarded magazines and newspapers and when inhaling to shout my disdain with vivid blasphemy and curses, I’ll inhale a bushel of cat hair and promptly succumb to asphyxiation.
There’s another of my major flaws. Somehow I only get the cleaning bug when I’m incapacitated enough to be sprawling in pain, and that’s because I’ve slowed down sufficiently to look around and realize just how long I’ve let mundane chores build up, and now am in no physical condition to do anything positive about it. Then it becomes mentally frustrating and overwhelming and what’s left of my morale is demolished by the vision of deadly embarrassment should someone wearing white gloves and a caustic eye ring my door bell expecting entry. The only way such a predicament can be eased is with a healthy application of imagination to come up with excuses for such slobbery, like putting get well cards on the mantle, a pained expression on the face, and voicing a story about terminal illness. I’m also fortunate to have a friend with the same aversion to housework who is even better at creative excuse building than I am and if I can figure out how to acquire a temporary live-in boy friend or an easily discarded significant other to leave behind while I travel – after having called in a cleaning service – then he can tell those wielders of mops, brooms and disinfectant that the horror of the house exists because his wife recently died and he had been too despondent during the last year to clean. Is it really plagiarism if you steal an excuse from a friend?
posted by kaz at 1:51 PM
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