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.