Carson as Carnac the Magnificent, one of his most well known routines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Since this is the time of year for top ten lists, here’s mine, with my respects to the late Johnny Carson.
In reverse order, here are the top ten signs that you’re living with a narcissist:
10. While driving, he constantly looks at himself in the rear view mirror. This has resulted in a lot of rear ends.
9. His “bragging wall” now covers the entire house.
8. He’s always singing “I’m too Sexy for My Shirt,” even though there’s a picture of himself on his shirt.
7. You’ve taken to using an oxygen tank as he sucks up all the air in the room.
6. He’s in the Guinness World Book for the greatest number of cosmetic procedures ever performed on a single human.
5. He’s looking into starting his own country and you’re helping him to find an abandoned, isolated island for the purpose.
4. All the mirrors in your house have greasy spots from his nose and lips.
3. He admires the evil queen from Snow White and wants to steal her looking-glass.
2. He believes that Christopher Hitchens is much too mild-mannered for debate and that really, he could beat him in ten minutes, if Hitch was still alive, that is.
And the number one sign that you’re living with a narcissist:
1. Donald Trump is his hero but really, if he were “The Donald,” he would have been much better at it and would have made more money.
And that’s it, dear readers. I wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for 2013!
David Prowse as Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well, it could have been worse, I suppose. I could have been lying on a cold, rock-strewn slope, the victim of an avalanche with two broken legs, gangrene setting in, wolves gathering in the closing twilight and no coffee left. On the other hand, it could have been a lot better. I could have been lying on a beach in the Dominican Republic, gin and tonic in hand, with nothing to do but crisp in the sun. Or I could have been sitting in a little Montreal bistro with a nice glass of wine while waiting for some beautifully prepared boeuf bourguignon. But nooo.
I think it’s probably apropos for me to spare some of you the gruesome details, but if only one person is saved by what I have to say here then it will have been worthwhile for me to have re-lived this horrific experience.
I was not lacking in gear, preparation or organization. I had plenty of re-usable, environmentally friendly cloth bags. I had a list. I even remembered to bring the list along. I arrived early, budget firmly in place. I was well-rested and fed. I had comfortable shoes, a water bottle and a thermos of coffee. I was ready!
Yes, dear reader. I was tackling the – cue the theme from Jaws – Christmas shopping list. I finally gave in. It had to be done. There was no way around it.
I entered the mall at nine thirty in the morning and noted that at that hour, the place was quiet and almost deserted. A lone security guard strolled nonchalantly, occasionally glancing in the windows, yawning and taking sips from his coffee cup. It was the perfect time to get the dreaded operation done. Yes!! I congratulated myself and patted myself on the back and grinning and chuckling to myself I started poking about, mentally comparing the wares on display with the requirements of my list. I hummed some old tunes and loafed along, secure in the knowledge that soon I would be safely back home, mission accomplished and feeling a certain degree of superiority over the lesser types who wait too long or are too late or both. I was, of course, tempting fate, Murphy’s Law and all manner of biblical imprecations about pride going before a fall and all that.
I arrived at “Santa’s Workshop,” famous in song and story as the scene of many family breakdowns while parents force their bawling and terrified offspring to sit on the Bearded One’s lap and have a photo taken. I don’t blame them. Who wants to sit on some weird-looking stranger’s lap while he booms ho ho ho at you in a thunderous voice that could scare the crap out of you and often does? What makes parents think that this is cute? The poor kid may as well be sitting on Darth Vader’s lap. Afraid that I might start having flashbacks, I nipped past as quickly as I could, even though all was quiet and Santa and the elves were hiding somewhere and sleeping it off.
As I turned a corner, I ran into an old friend who invited me to join her and her husband in a cup of Christmas cheer. They were so gracious and kind that I couldn’t refuse. We wound up sharing the cheer much later than I had anticipated, but I declined their kind offers of a lift home. If one is going shopping then one is going shopping, and no joking about it. I assured them that I would take a taxi home and wandered out of the restaurant and into the now crowded and noisy mall. Since I was all mellow, this ceased to bother me and I fished my trusty list out of my pocket for further perusal.
I was meandering down a perfume aisle, lost in the contentment of my mellow mood when I both heard and smelled a small boy who was bawling and roaring for his mother. He was either so scared that he had pooped his pants or he had been forced to sit on Santa’s lap. I tried looking around for his mom but couldn’t spot anyone nearby except for a rather large security guard one aisle over who was energetically chastising two adolescent boys for slinging hockey pucks at each other.
I tried to get the guard’s attention while hanging on to the small child so that he wouldn’t wander any farther, but this was proving to be difficult as he screamed even louder and tried to squirm out of my grasp. I was becoming less mellow by the second. Suddenly the guard turned toward me and impaled me with a look that would freeze mercury. He came striding over and demanded to know what I was doing. I was somewhat mesmerized and distracted by his unibrow which hung over his face like a kind of awning. What Period is this guy supposed to be, anyway? Triassic? Jurassic? He had lots of stuff all over his uniform – about four different kinds of radios, mace, handcuffs – have you noticed lately how the police and security types have about 50 pieces of crap dangling from their persons? It must take two hours to get ready to go to work, and especially this guy, who would also have to spray-paint his eyebrow into place.
He had a mean look about him. A frustrated look. The kind of look that says, “I may have flunked out of police school but this mall is mine and I’m going to get you whether you did anything or not.”
I tried to organize my thoughts enough to explain that the little boy had lost his mom but I was cut off in mid-babble with, “Have you been drinking?” Visions of spending a night in a concrete room with alien roommates danced through my head, but didn’t impart any sense of caution, or sugar plums, either.
I didn’t know that the Temperance League was out and about and chasing down malefactors. In fact, I didn’t even know that they still existed. I was about to make a sophisticated and sarcastic retort along the lines of “fuck off”, but was interrupted by the return of the boy’s mother, who when she saw him also started bawling. The two of them kicked up a racket that could be heard on Easter Island. I backed slowly and carefully away – I saw my chance to escape and took it. Stumbling out to the main entrance I flagged down the first taxi I could find and headed home.
I count myself as lucky. Like people who escape a cult consider themselves lucky. I got the message, and it’s one I’m happy to receive. Avoiding Christmas shopping is like avoiding narcissists – may the force be with you and protect you from yourself.
people breeding or how rats view us? (Photo credit: Willie Lunchmeat)
I had been troubled for some time with rats. Not those cuddly, disease-free, pink-eyed ones with the delicate whiskers and digits that you find in the pet store.
Oh no.
Mine were some sort of mutant beings, probably from the planet Xenon and likely an advance team come to reconnoitre our planet’s value as a source of fuel.
Let me tell you, dear reader, how it all started, which was with a garbage strike. Now, given the amount of legislated recycling that takes place around here, I wouldn’t have thought this possible, especially the speed with which it happened, but it did. However, the people thusly employed knew that it would, and had decided that the entire populace would exert tremendous pressure on city hall after only a few days of exposure to the most eye-watering, pungent odour the second you stepped out your front door and tried to negotiate your way down the public thoroughfares. The shimmer from the mounds of refuse lead to such mirages that the citizenry had to double-check with each other just to make sure that they were going in the right direction.
Drastic it was, and gag-inducing, but highly effective.
The mayor had to hire an armoured car just to go for groceries and in order to protect himself from the angry crowds encamped in front of his office. He eventually succumbed and dragged his weakened carcass in front of the press cameras and announced his defeat. He may have expended a lot of hot air getting into office, but it was the methane that finally did him in.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Did I mention that this occurred during the height of summer? There was a run on gas masks from the military surplus stores. Birds were keeling over, well, songbirds were, but not the crows and gulls, who in huge numbers and voice announced their immediate ownership of this nirvana, although that didn’t stop the infighting. And flies! Bluebottles that I’m sure escaped from Jurassic Park and should have been asking for clearance to land.
Trying to cook a steak at the old back yard barbecue meant suiting up in a hazmat outfit to avoid all manner of airborne assaults, especially from those aforementioned crows and gulls, but if the heat in there didn’t get you, the raccoons surely would. Brazen, and in great crowds and mobs, they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with any living thing that dared to enter their domain. The neighbours’ rottweiler entered a state of anxious fear and needed therapy just to go outside for a pee and a poo after the whole ordeal was over. Some people see raccoons as cute, with their little bandit faces and ringed tails. I do not. I have a lot of respect for raccoons. Bandits?? That’s like saying that George Clooney has nice features. They’re smarter than the average politician and with a little more training, could tell Tony Soprano exactly where to go and what to do with himself when he got there.
Just when I thought that the whole thing couldn’t get any worse, it did. As the old saying goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn. I had my feet up after a long day at work and an even longer day of battling to get home through the corvids, raccoons, flies, surly populace and olfactory assaults. I was done in. I was getting all mellow from a nice glass of wine when I heard it – a distinctive rustling sound emanating from the basement.
Now, having been raised on Hollywood movies, I decided that instead of immediately calling the constabulary and leaving the premises, I should grab a kitchen knife and decend slowly into the basement, with blade raised and lights off. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, there it was again – that rustling sound! Actually, it was very much like the crinkling sound a garbage bag makes when it’s being moved around. Hah! I clicked on the light, hoping to surprise the intruder, and was startled to see the equivalent of a small beaver nonchalantly poking his head out of one of the garbage bags that I’d stored in the basement for safe-keeping. Rats!
Now, at this point I should probably explain why my garbage was in the basement. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time – keep it inside in the cool basement instead of letting it percolate in the hot garage. Do my bit to keep down the raccoons, gulls, crows and flies, and all that. What I didn’t count on was the wily prowess of the rodent squad, which up until that moment hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Now what was I going to do? I stared at the rat and the rat stared back. Then he was joined by his buddy – his much larger buddy, and it dawned on me that these two were probably father and son. Another sound, like air leaking from a tire, and I realized that the daddy rat was hissing at me through his big yellow teeth. Hissing? Rats hiss? And then I thought, what do you know about rats other than that you might get the bubonic plague?
That was enough. In a state of panic and revulsion, I leapt at the bag and quickly turned it upsidedown so that pa and son were trapped inside and I ran that bag up the stairs and dumped it on the back lawn. Let them fight it out with the raccoons, I thought; they’re certainly big enough to stand up for themselves. Then I stuck the rest of the garbage in the garage, went to a hardware store and got a couple of the biggest humane traps that I could find – I think the guy behind the counter thought I was on crack when I tried, through my shuddering and quaking, to explain how big these rats were – and set them up in the basement in case some family members were left behind.
Then there was the clean-up – bleach was my best friend. Those rats had been down there for a while and I hadn’t realized it, and I’d had a nasty experience, but I was on the mend.
Like narcissists, wild rats belong outside with the crows and raccoons, not in your home. Too bad the narcissists are not as recognizable.
Carson as Carnac the Magnificent, one of his most well known routines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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