Spooks - Righteous and Otherwise

Today we have yet another chapter in the story of Bob.  I promise not to turn this into a Bob Blog, but I have to share this tidbit of dumbfuckery and the nefarious plot it has spawned. 

Bob (bitter old bitch, for those who haven't read my previous blogs) is a liar.  She lies a lot.  Her problem is that she doesn't have a good memory, which is something a liar really does need.  Years ago, when I first started working at this firm, she told me that the wierdo I replaced had done extensive research on the property on which our building is located, and it was a slave burial ground.  My first thought is why in the hell would she do research on this land?  We're not in the historic district, and the building isn't old.  In fact, my boss had it built.  WTF-ever.  I just blew it off as Bob nattering.  She seems to forget that she's a transplant and I'm a native.  I was also a bit of a museum rat when I was younger and pretty well educated on Little Rock history.  Well, 7 or 8 years go by (or however long Bob was gone - not long enough to make me happy, but long enough that I enjoyed the peace), and Bob's back.  Now, the story is that a lawyer who worked at the firm did research on the land and it was a slave hospital.  WHAT THE FUCK??!!  First, I have a damned good memory.  I might not be able to remember what I walked into a room to get, but I can remember details of a conversation that happened 20 years ago.  Next, slave hospital??????  There was no such thing as a slave hospital.  Slaves either got better or died in the slave quarters.  Now, considering that we're close to the river and to railway access, I would not be surprised to learn that slave labor was utilized for shipping King Cotton.  Nor would I be surprised to learn that slaves died in the area and were possibly buried nearby.  However, the rest of the story should set off every rectal smoke dector within a 5 mile radius. 

The importance of the whole slave burial ground / slave hospital is that Bob is convinced the building is haunted.  The spirits of the slaves inhabit our building.  She hears them, and she smells them.  I'll give to her that sometimes the building has an unpleasant odor, but it has nothing to do with slaves.  Little Rock Municipal Water Works occasionally flushes out the sewer lines in this area and it causes a toilety odor.  Considering they're sewer lines, I would expect such a smell.  A little Febreze goes a long way to solve that problem.  Even seeing the Water Works trucks outside doesn't convince Bob.  She's convinced it's "spirits."  She even told me that she's done an exorcism on the building.  She is truly convinced the place is haunted.  Either that or she thinks I'm as stupid as she looks. 

Now, next delimma.  Bob was supposed to be part-time, temporary help, just helping one of the guys catch up on the filing and paperwork.  When Partner in Crime asked Bob's supervisor when Bob is leaving, supervisor rolls her eyes and says Bob has decided to stay "until God tells her it's time to leave."  Balls Mahoney!  You mean Partner in Crime and I (along with the rest of us poor slobs) have to put up with Bob until skydaddy tells her to give it a rest?  God damn.  Or maybe not.  Being the wicked types, Partner and I cooked up a scheme.  The "executive washroom" that my boss and Bob's boss share has a door from each of their respective offices into the foyer of the bathroom, and then another door to the bathroom itself.  If one of the foyer doors is opened and then closed, it creates a vacuum that pulls the other door closed and makes a loud noise.  Around about 3 every afternoon, everyone on that side of the building is gone except for Bob and me.  Do you see where this is going? 

Partner in Crime and I have decided that every day at around 3, about the time that the ghost of Robert Goulet is messing with my stuff, I'm going to sneak into the bathroom and mess with the doors, then sneak back into my office.  Partner will make some comment to the effects of "did y'all hear a door close" or something.  I feign ignorance, but say it sounded like the bathroom door.  Maybe every now and then strike a match and get that good ol' sulphur smell going, and maybe put a few dead bugs in her office.  Six dead bugs a day for three days.  666.  I wonder if she'll take it to mean that skydaddy is telling her to haul ass?  Or, dog forbid, this could backfire and she'll stick around forever because skydaddy told her we need her to ward off evil spirits. 

Here's Why Your Life is Difficult

Send money and skydaddy will fulfill all your needs.

A few days ago, my niece posted the following as her Facebook status:  "I sometimes wonder why my life is so difficult. I sometimes don't understand this world. I wonder..."  Since I don't think I could say something nice to that, I opted to say nothing at all.  This is one of those situations where it's probably not the time or place.  This particular niece is going through a bad depression, as her mother died approximately six months ago (see my previous blog Eulogy for my Sister-in-Law), and she has a host of other problems.  She was born with physical handicaps - one side of her body is notably smaller that the other.  She has a heart of gold, but mentally, she's a bit slow - not retarded, but a bit slow.  The combination of the good heart and being mentally slow, along with self-esteem issues because of her physical appearance, have rendered her easy prey for the pray.

Like her mother and her grandmother before her, she's horribly infected with the god virus.  I look at these three women and I daresay the god virus is a terminal illness.  I watched my mother-in-law and then my sister-in-law put all their eggs into the skydaddy basket to their own detriment.  Waiting on skydaddy to heal breast cancer shaved years off both their lives.  They both thought all they had to do was pray and believe skydaddy would heal them and they were healed.  It's that whole faith the size of a mustard seed bullshit.  While that faith the size of a mustard seed didn't do jack shit, those tumors the size of a mustard seed grew and becamer something much larger and took on a life of their own until they took the life of their host.  While arguably there is an element of malpractice where my sister-in-law is concerned, had she dealt with the cancer years earlier when it was first detected instead of waiting on skydaddy to do something, the malpractice wouldn't have been an issue because she wouldn't have been in the position for it to happen.  No, I'm not blaming her for what happened, but I'm having trouble getting past that anger stage of grief.  But for the god virus, she would more than likely still be here.  I'm angry with those who spread the god virus.  I'm angry with those who use fear and greed to proliferate the god virus.  I fucking hate those who have profited from infecting others with the god virus. 

This particular niece has possibly one of the worst doses of god virus I've ever seen.  There have been times that but for moving in with relatives, she would have been homeless because of the god virus.  She literally gives ALL of her money to TV preachers.  They talk about how skydaddy will reward you one hundredfold for all you give to him, so she gives all and then gets nothing in return.  She is what the fuckers who profit from spreading the god virus look to find.  Not too smart, self-esteem issues, and people who occupy a significant place in her life who not also fit that bill, but are also ate up with the god virus.  She'd actually gone for quite a while that she was doing alright.  She still believed in skydaddy and all that good stuff, but not to her own detriment.  Since the death of her mother, she's had a bad relapse and is once again starting to reach the point of causing herself harm.  Bear in mind, harm isn't always physical.  She has lost the roof over her head and as I understand is couch surfing, and I note that every day on Facebook she posts some praise skydaddy something as her status.  I hold my tounge for a variety of reasons.  My biggest reason is that if thinking that her mother is in heaven where everything is all that the preachers say it is gives her some comfort in grieving, let her have it.  My other reason is that anything anti-skydaddy I might say would create hard feelings and ill will where it's best to not have those things.  In another time and place, however, I'd probably scream:  "Your life is a clusterfuck because you've given up, sat on your ass, and expect your imaginary skydaddy to provide all your needs for your entire existence.  The fucker isn't there.  He doesn't exist, and if he did exist, he's a bastard and he would touch himself at the thought of telling you no every time you ask for something.  He'd flat out beat his meat watching you suffer because of his no answer.  Don't believe me?  Read the fucking bible.  No, really, read it.  Don't tell me what your pastor said about it.  Read it.  Look at how he gets off on hurting people.  The sooner you realize that the bible is nothing more than man's account of war and natural disaster and using a made-up deity and a made-up demon as a scapegoat for it all, the better off you'll be.  Snap the fuck out of it."

All factors considered, that conversation won't take place.  In the alternative, I'd like to kick every living preacher square in the nuts...repeatedly.  They do this kind of harm to people with no remorse.  It doesn't bother them to take from someone who doesn't have it to give and simply tell the poor soul skydaddy will bless them. 

The Story of Bob

As promised in my last bark, today I will give you the story of the Bitter Old Bitch I not so affectionately refer to as Bob.  Maybe I should take it easy on her, because if I was her, I'd be bitter and bitchy, too.  She's about five-foot-nothing, weighs around 200 pounds, and wears ugly, orange foundation makeup - a thick, heavy coat spackled on.  She looks like a goddamned oompa loompa.  Bear in mind that I'm not a superficial person and tend to look for the inner beauty; however, there is none to be found here. 

Bob is from New York City.  She is the living embodiment and epitome of each and every stereotype that anyone from the south ever had about folks from the north.  Prior to the internet and social networks, most of us from the southern US didn't have a lot of contact with people north of the Mason-Dixon line.  We tend to not travel much, and when we do, we either go to California or stay south of the Mason-Dixon.  Our contact with people from north of the Mason-Dixon line - yankees, if you will - was when they moved here.  We called them goddamned yankees.  The reason for this is that as a general rule, the minute their feet hit southern soil, they immediately proceeded to start bossing us around, tell us all about what we have wrong with us, what's wrong with our culture, our ways of life, our weather (as if mere mortal man controls that), and our speech.  Their voices all sound like Kyle's mother from Southpark.  Social networks, starting with the old MSN groups, has been a breath of fresh air to those of us with an open mind, as we can see first-hand that not everyone from the north is a rude asshole.

Now that you've had a bit of a background on why we southerners had a stereotype of what northerners are all about, let's get back to Bob.  Bob moved here at the age of 50-something.  She said she had to because her parents moved here.  What the fuck?  It would have been different if she'd been 15 and her parents moved here, but 50?  Her voice does indeed sound like Kyle's mom from Southpark.  In fact, every time she opense her mouth I want to sing the Kyle's mom is a bitch song.  She is bossy, nosey, sneaky and two-faced, and those are her good qualities.  If her lips are moving, she's either lying about something or complaining about something, or putting someone down.  She makes fun of the way I talk, oblivious to the fact that in this area, I don't "talk funny," she does.  I wish the oompa loompa bitch would get a boil directly on her asshole.  Then she could have a pain in the ass in addition to being a pain in the ass.  Partner in crime and I have almost decided to each pee in a cup and then pour it into the carpet under Bob's desk.  That'd give her something to bitch about. 

Now that I've vented my spleen about how bad I hate Bob, I'll move on to something interesting.  I've said before that Arkansas is not the buckle of the bible belt; we're the name tooled on the back of the belt.  However, the southern US doesn't have the market cornered on religious nut jobs.  Bob is a more whacked-out fundy than my grandmother.  That there is a mighty powerful statement.  The thing is, it's a brand of whacked-out fundamentalism that I've never seen.  She's xtian, but she's heavy-duty into all things Jewish.  It would be understandable if she was a Jewish person who converted to xtianity but held onto the Jewish customs, but she's not Jewish/Semitic.  Granted, my knowledge of Judaism is very limited.  I know that it is the father of the Abrahamic beliefs and it's two bastard children (xtianity and islam) are little motherfuckers.   I know there are dietary rules, but I don't know what they are.  Bob wears all sorts of jewelry with xtian and Jewish emblems, has nattered something about prayer shawls, and her bumper is polluted with jebus fish and all sorts of stickers about the buybull says support Israel.  I wouldn't give two hoots in hell what she believes except for the fact that she wants to convert everyone.  She believes Benny Hinn.  She agrees with Fred Phelps about America being "doomed" because we're becoming tolerant of gay people.  And she's convinced our building is haunted.  She says she can smell the spirits.  I think she's just trying to blame after she let out a silent but deadly. 

Whenever I comment that the bad behavior of fundies amazes me, I have to stop and ask myself why it amazes me.  After all, skydaddy is one sorry fucker and apples don't fall far from the tree.  Bob is no exception.  The golden rule is a one-way street to her.  She believes others should treat her as they would want to be treated, but she is under no obligation to reciprocate.  And that is what started the shennanigans with me and Partner in Crime.  Bob just couldn't leave it alone.  She just couldn't mind her fucking business and do her fucking job.  Nope.  She had to mouth off about the collection box for cans to be recycled, the fact that we've had the same fax number for as long as we've been in business, bitched about the coffee pot, follows partner in crime around just staring at her (very weird), and then, the last straw, squawking about my chair AFTER hearing me mention that I needed a can of WD-40 to fix the squeeky wheel.  I've about decided that Bob is a squeeky wheel, and a hunk of limburger cheese dropped down behind her filing cabinet might be good grease.