Great. Just great. Another playoff game. Another two hour and fifty minute eye-glazing status meeting with my Canadian boss while the game was on.

Thanks, Boss.

And thanks Bud Selig, you fuckwit. Thanks for another year of daytime playoff games. I hope your car slides under a gas tanker and you taste your own blood before you slowly burn to death.

Sorry. That was over the line, wasn’t it? I’ll work on not actually meaning it so much. Just give me time. Aaaaany time now. Aaaaany time…

Well, today I got my ass kicked by the workload I’m paid to complete. And now I’m wasting your time telling you how I’m wasting your time with this half-assed Eff-around Friday effort.

In the spirit of the season I offer you a fake ghost video posing as a real ghost video.

http://topinfopost.com/2013/09/11/ghost-screaming-in-haunted-hotel-3-min-video

It’s bunk. As soon as the maintenance guy didn’t turn on the light, I called bullshit. Every other commenter on six sites where this is posted did the same.

I’ve had two ghost encounters that involved a corporal entity. Five or six years ago I posted a fake ghost story to one of my blogs about the old woman who owned my first house. Ergo, I will not even attempt to recount my actual ghost encounters that happened about two years ago in a retirement home where I was working the night shift.  You would not believe me. You should not believe me. I will not waste your time.

I will say this, though.

In the spirit of Stephen King’s rabbit with the number eight on its back, I ask you to visualize.

There is a table. On the table is a pumpkin scented candle packaged in a glass with a reflective silver label with black type. The label is mostly pointing to your left. The combination of the angle and the black font on silver label makes it difficult to read.

Now, there is only a table.

It is a very normal function of the human brain to accept that the candle was never there and immediately erase the memory of it ever having been there.

Both of my ghosts (or both instances of the same ghost, given the circumstances), I either turned, or looked up to see them as plain as day. Then they were gone and my brain immediately began reprogramming itself to assure me that I had never seen what I saw.

After the terror shock of suddenly seeing a man in a hallway that was supposed to be deserted on my 1 a.m. rounds washed through me… as soon as I stopped seeing him I felt my rational brain talking to me. “Nobody else saw that, Dude,” it said. “And neither did you.”

But I did. I did. I had to fight to accept that I saw it. I had to fight the natural reprogramming. I had to fight to keep the visual of the somewhat younger version of the man who had recently died on that floor (now dressed in a motorhead/farmer’s faded denim work pants, denim shirt, and denim jacket) loaded in my memory and not let it go ethereal on me.

Funny. In movies, things cannot just BE THERE/NOT BE THERE. In movies the ghost fades away. The ghost flashes and then disappears. Or Elizabeth Montgomery wrinkles her nose and that weird electronic “W-W-WRONKG!” sound effect signifys the THERE/NOT THERE transition.

Without that psychological transition of the THERE/NOT THERE, the brain instantly defaults to WAS NEVER THERE.

But it was. He was.

Love affairs are like that. They are so real at the time, but as soon as they end, the first thing our brain does is try to convince us that it never really happened. It was all in our head. “She never really loved me, did she? That was all an act. I was so fooled! I’m an idiot!”

No. She did. And then she didn’t. Past loves are ghosts, and ghosts are real.

I don’t know where the fuck that came from. Not the post I sat down to write.

Hey, happy Eff-around Friday to you! Hope you have a great weekend everybody.