The Official Rick Bell Blog

Unorthodox Pagan - Excerpt #1

The first drink of the morning is a risky proposition—especially after a night of when the demons needed a little more sedation than usual.

But this morning I am ready. On the passenger-side car seat next to me a striped beach towel lays in wait in case there was a post-swig upchuck. In the cup holder, an open can of Red Bull is ready to do its chasing.

I slide down in my seat. Though I had parked my car a good distance from the gaggle of cars nestled closer to the beach I want to keep as low of a profile as possible. I unscrew the cap from my half pint of SKYY vodka and brace myself.

It’s best not to sip room temperature vodka. Just take a breath and go. The good thing about half pints is that, with practice, you don’t have to come up for air before the bottle is emptied.

I drink quickly. Beads of sweat form on my brow before the last gulp does down. The warmth spreads through my body. Before my stomach can react I grab the can of Red Bull and take a pull. Now is the moment of truth. Would last night come back up or would my liquid friend settle in just so?

As my guts began to burble I hit it with another ice-cold sip of liquid energy—the only nourishment I’ll take today. Good thing the chaser is cold. That’s my only shot at quelling the violence before the alcohol is absorbed and my body shifts gears from rejection to acceptance to craving.

Today the battle is easy. One mini burp—bile free—and I settle in and enjoy the oncoming buzz. The fog of morning lifts and I gain the clarity I so desperately need.

Where had the tape stopped? Oh yeah, sheeple. That’s what we're becoming, sheeple. Maybe you can’t make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But a flock of sheep and a conference room of full people has more in common than we care to admit.

Vocal minorities rule the day. The apathetic masses follow vocal shepherds blindly—bleating as they go and calling it opinions. Bill Gates and Michael Dell telling us it is all about the Information Age. Manufacturing has no place in our modern society—outsource that nonsense to the emerging Third World economies. We are enlightened Information Engineers. The computer is god.

What a load. I bought into to that story and look where I am. My business card says I’m a software engineer—champion of the information-driven economy. In practice I am impotent little cubicle troll.

My big accomplishment for the week? Coding a report to calculate the absence factor for the folks up in HR. Total days absent divided by headcount multiplied by total work days. A little extra code and the report drills down from business unit to division to department. Which department proportionately has the most absences? That’s the story my coding tells.

The red-flagged departments get a call from HR. A manager’s bonus drops from 2.78 percent to 2.76 percent because Sally Jo had the sniffles one day too many. My work is done. Maybe I’ll etch it on my tombstone: Here lies Val Benson, never met a metric he couldn’t code.

That’s a marketable skill? I’m guessing after the terrorists finally get a hold of a few nukes my ability to calculate Key Performance Indicators isn’t going to be worth much in the resulting barter economy. The people with the ability to make things from scratch are going to rule the day. When the electromagnetic pulses wipe out our information-based economy I won’t have a pot to piss in. What am I talking about? I won’t even know how to make a pot.

My dad built the last three homes he lived in from the ground up. What have I ever built? I can’t even fix my toaster oven. It breaks and I run to Walmart—problem solved.

I’m one of the sheeple. Herd me into my eight by eight cube, buy me a Starbuck’s and watch me code. Gates and Dell are billionaires. I aspire to one day occupy the eight by twelve “manager’s cube.” Four extra feet and an extra chair—that’s what I aspire to.

Please tell me I have another half pint ready to go. Ahhh, there it is. Under my seat. Away from the prying eyes of cops, truckers and passengers.

I drink it down fast. No need for a chaser this time, my stomach is settled, waiting, demanding. The warmth spreads again. Then black. Now I’m back.

A ghost of a thought… Bill Gates… a product of the hate factory I call my mind. Forget Gates, it’s that “because-I-have-the-MBA” wiener roaster from the second floor that I can’t stand. Tom, that pathetic little suck up.  I’m sorry my thesaurus isn’t as over used as yours. You might have the MBA but I’ve got the ideas. Real ideas, not Key Performance Indicators copied from some grad-level text book.

I know it was Tom that had me dropped from the strategy sessions. Tom, oh I’m sorry, you prefer Thomas. Sorry that I have the ability to make people think. Sorry that I don’t follow you blindly. Sorry that my Dockers aren’t as neatly pressed as yours.

Screw you Tommy. At least I’m not an inspirational quote regurgitating corporate clone. At least I…

“Daddy?”

What was that?

“Daddy, when are we going to walk down to the beach?”

The voice comes from outside of my driver side window. It’s my daughter. I forgot about my daughter… again.

Tool

I am a “tool.” I use the term, not as in, “I am an instrument in the hands of the Lord, working to carry forth His great work.” But rather, I use it in the more modern sense. For example: “I’m a complete tool.”

Not clear? How does one convey the syntactic and semantic changes in the usage of a word to readers who are less than hip? Hmmm… On the one hand, I might ask you to hang outside a Hot Topic at you local mall and immerse yourself in teen speak. But it might be simpler if I craft my own definition. In the modern sense a tool is a clueless, mouth breathing dweeb who mindlessly follows others. Got it? Good.

“But Rick!” you say, “You have always marched naked to the beat of your own erratically-pounded drum.” “Surely you don’t follow others mindlessly?”

Oh, if that were true. For years I trod my own path. Meandering though cities, byways, woods, and the occasional men’s bathhouse. The world zigged and I zagged. But then I started working in downtown Phoenix, awash as it is with the homeless, the indigent and the poor—you know, stinky little scumbags.

But let me back up. A dozen years back, I looked at my alcohol-soaked, bipolarish rollercoaster of a life and made a simple decision. Who was I to ever judge a person who petitioned me for alms? The way my scriptures read, I should never judge others, but give freely as I have been freely given.

Or to quote from the source:

And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—

But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?

Well that simplistic spiritual bullpocky is just fine when you are working in the suburbs. On any given week I might encounter one or two freeway off ramp beggars promising me that they would work for food, though they preferred cold hard cash. A couple of bucks a week and I was set. I was petitioned, I gave, all was good.

Then I started working downtown.

No longer could my interaction with the indigent limited be characterized as occasional. Now I was literally facing streets lined with grubby-faced bums shaking their cups, making their pitches and tugging at my pants leg. Worse yet, none of them were hot Asian women. I have not issue throwing money at hot Asian women. But I digress…

Each day, a plethora of hobos stand between my office and any restaurant I chose to walk to. There is even one particularly pathetic looking guy in wheelchair who sets up shop between my office and the parking garage I am required to use. As one who uses the backseat of my car like others use a briefcase, I often find myself running back and forth to my car several times a day. At a dollar a pop, I was looking at some serious change just to access my own briefcase on wheels.

My “give freely when petitioned” approach to life was starting to cost me some change. Almost, I dare say, as much as I spend daily on Diet Pepsi and Lottery tickets. How dare they?

So I looked to the example of my fellow urban workers. They seemed to care naught for those that beseeched them. They walk the streets with purpose. Eyes straight ahead, expressionless and unapproachable. Ain’t no beggar laying a hold of their pocket change.

I was impressed. My mind said “more lottery tickets for me.” I mimicked my peers.

Within a few short months I had dropped that nonsense of loving others and gotten to the point where I had real disdain for those less fortunate than me.

This new attitude towards the poor was in full force this past week as I was gorging myself at the local food court. As I was finishing my gyro and fries I happened to look out though the glass doors to the outside seating. It’s June. It’s Arizona. Ain’t no one sitting outside.

But one unwashed fellow was working his way through the tables, peering in trash cans, and looking expectantly at anyone who exited the glass doors.

Though 30 feet away and separated by those glass doors. I could see his filth. I could smell his stink. I was ready to charge out the door and blow past him as if he didn’t exist. Lousy, begging bum.

As I judge him, as I projected how I would ignore his little pathetic pleas as I rushed by him. But before I could finish my food and pass him by, amost unsettling thing occurred. A man two tables up from me, closest to the door, wrapped up a half a sandwich and exited out the door. I thought, poor sap, he’s going to be accosted for sure. But the bum said nothing. Instead, when he saw someone approaching him he shied away from peering in the trash cans and started to move on.

But my lunch mate beckoned him before he could move out of range. He made eye contact with the bum. He spoke to him. He handed him his sandwich.

Oh boy, he’s asking for it. This guy doesn’t want food, he wants the green, I thought. They spoke for awhile. The bum smiled. My lunch mate never reached for his pocket.

The bum walked away. Eagerly he unwrapped the sandwich. He ate with obvious joy.

My lunch mate went his way. Did I mention that he walked away with a cane? Did I mention that his foot, deformed from birth, twisted unnaturally to the outside? Did I mention that he taught me what it means to be human again? Yeah, I though I’d better mention that.