And Your Pilot Today is Horseface Steve

Control:  To exercise authority over; direct; command.

There's a great scene in the movie "Saving Private Ryan" that surfaces in my mind often.  Tom Hanks' character is pinned down on the beach right after a bloody landing.  Bullets are whistling by, bombs are exploding, people are being cut to shreds, all is total chaos.  He grabs a portable radio, cranks the handle to energize the device, and starts screaming for immediate assistance from the fleet standing off shore.

"Hello?  Hello??" No response.  He looks down at the phone.  There is a short section of chord dangling from the handset, going nowhere.  He throws it on the ground in disgust and gets to work.

That's me.  That's me screaming instructions that are going nowhere.  Nobody is on the other end of the line.  That's not me, too.  That's not me getting to work.  I prefer to scream into the useless handset.  Maybe if I scream louder it will start to work.

I also like the image of a subway car that is controlled remotely.  The thing works perfectly.  Quiet, efficient, on time.  I'm the guy who climbs into the child's safety seat installed for idiots like me and starts turning the little plastic steering wheel furiously, beeping the little red horn, hurling obscenities at the other passengers.  None of the controls I'm trying to operate are connected to anything.  An unseen force, a Higher Power, is in charge and doesn't need any instructions from me.

When I'm agitated I have a posse of Go To Guys.  I was talking to Baldweenie yesterday about the house angst.  He was spending a lot of time laughing; at me, I assume.  Normally I laugh along with him.  Yesterday I failed to see the humor.

"You know, you're really starting to piss me off," I said, in all seriousness.
That got him laughing harder.  I think he actually started choking.
"Don't get mad at me because you can't accept the fact that YOU'RE NOT IN CONTROL!"

I hate these guys sometimes.