Creepy Feeling Again

I was at work last week, I don't remember if it was Tuesday or Wednesday (or early Wednesday or Thursday morning, whichever you prefer). I left the casino & went into the hallway that leads to the express food service/freight elevators & all of a sudden it was like I was in 'The Shining'.

I didn't want to walk down that hallway, but I did because I had to make my deliveries before the Troll Women of Non-Gaming Audit come in... Now that I think about it, it must've been Tuesday night/Wednesday morning because we had early dateroll, so I was making my deliveries around 3am... but anyway, I walked past a bread cart that was covered in that slightly opaque garbage-bag type plastic - the plastic billowed out towards me & a warmish gust of air came up the hallway. It was discomforting.

I went around the corner to where the freight elevators were, & there's a door that leads to the 3rd Floor hallway of the Tower 1 rooms. The door was ajar, & it clapped on its frame & sort of bounced. It bothered me & I was hoping that the elevator farthest away from the door opened first, which of course, being as it was one of those kind of scenarios, it was the elevator directly opposite the door that landed. I sort of rushed past the door, not looking into the gap between the door & frame, expecting a short, dark shadow to be on the other side. With my back to said door, the elevator door opened & it really didn't seem like such a hot escape route. It gusted another warmish poof of air my way, & to be honest, I wanted to just run back up the hallway to the casino.

I felt very alone at that moment, as if I had walked into another version of the Excalibur, the one should have been in an episode of 'The Twilight Zone', basically. I felt like the last person left on earth for those minutes.

But I got on the elevator - paperwork, yanno. Can't let the imagination get in the way of paperwork being delivered.

So the elevator takes me to the 7th floor executive offices, and everything seemed normal again. Hallway door to the hotel closed, garbage & random office furniture stacked in the entry way... and as I walked up the ramp & down the hall towards Surveillance, I was feeling kind of stupid for bringing up images of 'The Shining' to myself. Until I turned the corner & saw the office chairs neatly lined up down the center of the non-gaming-audit office hallway. A whole row of nondescript rolling office chairs.

They've been doing some remodeling & repainting up there. It all has some logical explanation, really, but considering my weird creepy feelings, it startled me to be faced by a platoon of office chairs. There is no other way to get to non-gaming audit's drop box, and the wrath of Mike is far more terrible than anything office chairs could conceive of doing to me. I didn't want to accidentally touch any of them, though, and for once I found myself wishing I was somewhat skinnier. I know how to compress my bulk into small spaces, though, and I went around the corner to Managerial Auditing's door to be confronted with more lined-up office chairs.

Managerial Auditing has a strange legacy for me & Alea. It's always about 20 degrees cooler on the other side of that door's mail slot, and I constantly think of that one Lovecraft story about the old scientist who's air conditioning broke down, & then he ran out of ice before more could be delivered... I think about some old auditor living in a perpetual state of suspended animation on the other side of that mail slot, and I've passed this bit of imagination on to Alea & various relief auditors. So I go around the bend & my mind really starts to gibber because the entire hallway from the network room to the door of the executive office is lined with more office chairs. I was wondering why, or who, had so many chairs that they could fill that hallway from end to end. And Room Reservations was still closed, the lights out, the doors shut, not even a lone Eye-in-the-Sky in the breakroom. So I carefully sidled past all those chairs, lurking there ominously, slipped Room Res' report under their door & booked for the executive elevator. Which was also creepy.

Once the doors opened & I was back in casino-land, everything went back to being perfectly normal.

I have to go in early again this coming Tuesday. I'm talking someone into making deliveries with me, tho.

People Who've Died

I don't know if enough people read my journal for me to receive any criticism for what I'm about to type, but I want to remember this day. And maybe people doing a search on the name will run across the rant I'm about to launch.

I don't normally jubilate when people die. I mean, it's a common, everyday occurrence, it's the only guarantee we have in life, and everytime someone dies they leave the living behind, saddened and mourning and lost. I do feel empathy for the families that are left behind.

Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin has been killed by a stingray.

I'm so fucking relieved it isn't even funny. It's about freaking time that maniac met his just rewards. I'd watch him flipping poisonous, dangerous and endangered snakes around like jumpropes, watched him tease crocodiles with lawn mowers & his kids, watched him act like some big macho Beastmaster or some shit, pissed off at how disrespectful of his zoo's inmates he was, and wish that one of those bushmasters would just nail him right in the damned face.

I think a quote from the Bloomberg article sums it up:
"Stingrays aren't aggressive and sting only when threatened" said Bryan Fry, deputy director of the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne. ``It didn't sting out of aggression, it stung out of fear.''

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin Killed by Stingray (Update3)

Everyone around would say, "Oh, he's probably not really like that when he's running his zoo. He's just a showman on t.v.". Yeah, about as much of a showman as the Jackass crew.

I've been handling snakes a looong time, since I was very little. I have slept with my snakes (or they slept with me, more like). I took the time to speak with herpetologists and snake owners and herpephiles to learn the proper care & feeding of reptiles. I watched Ed go from being malnourished, dehydrated, too skinny, his skin tearing like paper from his wretched owners, kept in squalid conditions & actually survive & thrive in my care. Ed is sooo fat & so content and so loving...

People like Irwin make it look like any ape with opposable thumbs can pick up a wild reptile & keep it as a pet, or worse yet, sling it around like so much tinsel. My only wish is that it had been a snake that killed him, but having a stingray impale him is almost as just a death... I wrote protest letters to Animal Planet about keeping him on the air, but I'm not paying for their shows, dig? People like Steve Irwin are why there is a need for shows like "Animal Cops: Miami" & "Animal Cops: Houston". Not to mention the one about the venom clinic.