Tuesday, January 20, 2004

buried alive

Remember when work was fun? When you used to look forward to each new day with the excitement that can only come from being part of a wonderful creative team filled with ideas and motivation and hope?

Yeah, me neither.

I’ve been chasing my own ass at work lately, not unlike when the cat has taken a burning or otherwise painful dump and then flees the litterbox at high speed and sort of sideways. Finalizing the year-end inventory paperwork, enduring seemingly endless planning meetings, poring over merchandise catalogs for new product – deathly boring stuff.

I really don’t know how some of you do it. By “do it,” I’m not talking about making the beast with two backs (aka The Deed; The Nasty; The Backseat Mambo; Hide the Salam; [choose your own scrompy euphemism here]), of course, which hopefully I have at least halfway figured out after fourteen-odd years of practice. What I mean is, I can’t understand how you guys can manage to make the pedestrian mudanities of everyday life interesting enough to sustain a regular entry output. ‘Cause personally, I suck at it.

For example: see above work-related copy.

Coincidentally, has anyone else ever heard of a skort before? I keep running across them in the aforementioned merchandise catalogs. Looks like a skirt, but is actually a pair of shorts. Thus, “skort.”

Can you feel the excitement pouring off me in waves?

We spent the long weekend house-hunting. Much like last weekend (the shorter one). If I have to scan one more length of crown molding for gaps, I honestly fear my eyes will pop like grapes in a microwave.

Would anyone who is unemployed or homeless like to kick me hard in the stones for the preceding complaints?

Deservedly so.

Is any of this worthwhile enough to justify recounting? Much less posting publicly?

This is why I disappear for months at a time.



Here’s a joke my old man told me:

A teacher has decided to hold a taste test for the students of her second grade class. The first boy comes up to the front of the room, and the teacher blindfolds him. She then places an unwrapped Hershey’s kiss in his mouth.

“Do you know what it is?” she asks. The student shakes his head.

“I’ll give you a hint,” she says. “It’s what daddy wants mommy to give him before he leaves for work each day.”

From the back of the classroom, a little girl shouts, “Spit it out! Spit it out! It’s a piece of ass!”



A few days ago, I was driving home and found myself struck by all the miserable-looking livestock standing out in the freezing rain. How awful, I thought, to endure such living conditions, only to be slaughtered for consumption by the same creatures who maintain them. It seemed each soaking horse and cow was glaring directly at me with their dark, mournful, condemnatory eyes as I passed. I ended up feeling so guilty about the whole issue that I drove straight home, ate a burger, sniffed some glue, and went to bed.

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