Really, I should have been writing more but there is so little to say. Does anyone really want to know that I have been cleaning my house, weeding our many gardens and flower beds, working out and desperately trying to find time to prepare for the next school year. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed when I think of everything that needs to be done and I'm really only okay when I take a deep breath and keep doing a little at a time. Sometimes, I find myself improving at letting things go; I mean at not trying to do everything. I get up in the morning and pretty much work until bed time with few breaks; this is normal, I suppose. Does anyone else feel that if they stop doing "stuff" they will get so behind that they will never catch up. I feel more calm when I am accomplishing a task on my list than I do if I take a break because I know that everything will be there for me later. Crazy, I know!
Anyway, back to The Office and back to Michael, the best/worst boss in the world. If I was doing this properly, I would cite quotations from the show but really that is something that I do not have time to do (see above)! Consequently, I will just roughly summarize situations that I remember from the show. I was considering the hyperbolized personalities from The Office the other day and I realized that some of the personalities are directly due to Michael's treatment of them: Oscar, and Stanley, Ryan and Toby to some extent. Then there are the others Angela, the conservative lady; Phyllis, the sometimes gutsy, sometimes meek "chubby" salesperson, Kevin, the underqualified, larger than his IQ personality; Andy, the classic artsy singer, somewhat akin to some people I knew from my days in the music hallway; Kelly, the girl whose maturity level never progressed passed grade eight, Meredith, the office alcoholic with "loose morals shall we say"; and Creed, oh-my-gosh I can't believe he just said that. Though I am leaving out many other minor characters, I think that covers all of the major characters, excepting of course my all-time favourite funny-guy: Dwight.
Contrary to my training in the English Language Arts, I am going to begin with Creed instead of the first person on the above list because Creed cracks me up and I'll forget what I was going to say if I don't write it quickly. I love the episode where Ryan is explaining how he set up a blog (ooh, meta-blogical; I'm writing about a blog in a blog!) for Creed. Really what he did was open a word-processing document that Creed thinks is on line. Ryan comments that what he read of the material would be questionable, even for the internet. And, from his other "I can't believe he said that without laughing" comments about his "cultish" and wacky activities from his life previous to working at Dunder Mifflin, I believe Ryan. Creed is the token creepy guy: Creed --> creepy! Interesting.
Anyway, Oscar, the token homosexual with a much mentioned Mexican heritage gives Michael multiple ways to be unknowingly rude. Michael goes out of his way to explain to everyone that Oscar is gay, trying to be helpful and un-homophobic when really it is quite the opposite. Really, Oscar is one of the most normal guys in the office but Michael's treatment of him as the only one in the office with a different sexual preference makes him stand out as different from the others.
Stanley, because of Michael, stands out as the token African American. I find it quite hilarious how Michael assumes that Stanley spent part or most of his childhood on the streets. Stanley, whether out of exhaustion or hilarity goes along with this, answering Michael's questions and comments as if he, Stanley, had been part of some sort of street gang. This similar stereotype of black people occurs again when another employee is found to have a previous criminal record. He is African-American and Michael assumes he his felon, hardened by his life behind bars when really he did some easy time for a white-collar crime. The funniest part of the episode is when Michael is trying to convince the other office employees that prison is horrible by becoming "Prison Mike." If you haven't seen the episode, you should.
With that I must go and speak of the others later. Really, my posts on this subject are not quite as interesting as they seem when I mull them through in my head. So what. Don't read them if they are boring!
Bedtime for the kids. See you!
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