Work is Weird

Yeah, like everybody doesn't know that.

My (relatively) new job is a real treat.
It's a humongous stereotype. It's laughable. And I like it a lot.

The first thing you notice is the Cube Farm.  They are particularly nice cubes, with more storage than a woman needs for shoes (as if there's any such thing).  The walls are high, so you can't see your neighbors.  This gives the false impression that you cannot hear your neighbors. Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, I have one neighbor who routinely coughs up a lung, another who talks very loudly and constantly to her neighbors and one who snores. I am not kidding.  Today I was serenaded by a speakerphone conference call on ligostics and purposes of pillow puffing on the executive enterprise level. It was difficult to decide whether to kill him or fall asleep.  Circumstances forced the latter.

There's another lady who sits across the large room and talks in paragraphs without breathing. This reminds me of my wife and consequently drives me MAD. Although my wife must have planted her there because she's actually worse, so I don't mind when my wife does it so much.

The organization is not particularly streamlined. Or fast. In fact, it took five weeks to get me a computer and a cube of my very own.  This is in spite of everything being ordered weeks before my start date.  One of the things that slowed operations down was my inability to fill out my forms before my start date. I am not kidding. If I had filled out the paperwork before I got hired, I would have had my computer weeks earlier. Maybe.

We're also slow.  Crawlingly, monolithically, organizationally slow.  The circus I recently left was a veritable speedway by comparison.  Even the doors are slow: I wave my I.D. badge in front of the reader, then wait a bit for it to beep at me. What seems like five minutes transpire before the door starts opening.  S-l-o-w-l-y.

Did I say I have an I.D. card?  Well, I have a temporary I.D. card.  The process to obtain a permanent I.D. card began (again) several weeks before my start date.  One coworker told me it took six months to get his. One poor soul has been there for a year and still doesn't have his paperwork in order.

I have a permanent computer too, as opposed to the temporary computer in the temporary cube.  The company takes security very seriously, as they should. They lock down the computers for safety's sake.  I am most impressed by this, right up until I discover that the only browser allowed is Internet Exploder!  Apparently security is somewhat overrated.  The other problem is that we cannot install other software. The irony here is that my software is safer than the existing stuff.  We can't even surf to many sites, which I'm ok with too. Unfortunately the fellow next to me seems oblivious to this, as he has a monitor dedicated exclusively to YouTube. Today he's been watching sneaker videos (no, really). The other day it was talk show bits (his monitor is in full view). This reminds me of the old place, where the campaign for dual monitors resulted in one being permanently assigned to Faceyspaces.

There is no cell phone signal whatsoever.  This leads to people wandering around aimlessly, staring that their phones and randomly walking into walls.  It also leads to people wandering in the general direction of the stairways, looking for that one signal bar with which to call their brokers. Or bookies.

If you're hungry, there's a cafeteria.  I'd suspect they hire people from my old job but this is different. The first time someone showed me the place, I purchased a soda (at the bargain price of two bucks). My guide let me know to stand in a certain place, let the cashier know what I purchased and how much I was handing over, as he was blind.  Ok, a blind cashier... why not?  He certainly made change a lot faster than most sighted cashiers, so good on him. I was prepared the next time but he wasn't at his post. Instead there was a lady. And saints be praised, she seemed to be looking off to nowhere also.  Ah, another blind cashier, I figured.  By the way, that was the first time that phrase has ever been spoken - I got a prize for it.  I can't wait to find out that the paraplegics are manning the loading dock and the clinically depressed are cleaning the outside windows.


As suggested by a friend, my short-term goal, aside from getting paid to do my work, is to be The Guy.  You know, The Guy.  The Guy who has been there for a while but nobody knows exactly what he does. They've all seen him walking around, but no one has the slightest idea what his job function is.  He's really popular, too. But if he tells you, he'll have to kill you.  They all go home and tell work stories, including The Guy whose job nobody knows. Apparently he's pretty good at whatever he does, because he's still employed and just received a raise and a bonus.  Everyone congratulated him because they have given up trying to figure out what he does.

My boss works in a different city. This results in a lot of streaking up and down the aisles, as well as Wet T-Shirt Nights and Open Guitar Jams. I asked about a dress code and was told no t-shirts with rude settings, which wiped out about ninety-five percent of my wardrobe. I'm teaching them sarcasm now.  It will take a while but the effort will be worth it.


Unfortunately the toilet doesn't like me. I have my choice of three stalls, one of which apparently has something against me. This particular unit is equipped with Automatic Flush.  The first time I noticed this, I was waiting for the toilet to automatically flush. It occurred to me that if I waited any longer, it would be time to clock out. You know that ubiquitous handle? The one on every toilet? This one didn't have one.  In fact, it didn't have much of anything but a sensor (that apparently didn't work) and a tiny blue button.  Hazarding a guess, I pushed the tiny blue button, stepping back and hoping the firemen didn't show up too quickly. Little did I know that a tiny blue button is the international sign for FLUSH.

It was the second time I visited this particular stall that I begun to suspect something was up.  While sitting I sneezed, causing the toilet to auto-flush.  I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to sit upon a flushing toilet but suffice it to say that it's not particularly pleasant.  When I moved to check my phone, the toilet autoflushed once again, like a puppy, perhaps excited to please his human. Let me stop, at this moment, to let you know that I hadn't actually used the toilet for its intended purpose - it's just that the toilet flushed itself a lot.

When I was finished, the toilet again autoflushed, but this time I escaped its wrath.  Or so I thought. When I pulled up my pants, they stuck to me a bit.  Is this how the French do it?

Some Stuff About Some Stuff

The pope is causing a bit of a stir, after saying that it's ok to spank children, provided they maintain their dignity.

Exactly which part of pulling down your pants and getting your ass slapped is dignified?

What he meant to say was that spanking little boys is ok, but only as foreplay.

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HANDY TIP: If you're having trouble opening a jar, use an unlubricated condom

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There's this odd intersection in the neighborhood. It's kind of an offset four-way with a steep incline (isn't that a pretty, well-illustrated picture?).  Apparently someone decided that this intersection was not safe enough, therefore it required four-way stop signs.  Mind you, the truly dangerous intersection is one block away and already had four-way stop signs.

Here's the good part: everyone ignored the stop signs. It got so bad that they installed blinking red lights on top of the stop signs so people would pay attention to them.  

If that fails, I suppose they'll put pictures of a Kardashian on top of the blinking lights.

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Something is different. I'm working on a theory - perhaps you can help me out.

In the past few days, I have been food shopping with my wife twice.  Both times in the store, a woman smiled at me.  I kept looking around for the person at whom she was smiling. Failing to find anyone else, I was forced to think that perhaps she was smiling at me.

Usually women don't smile at me until I pull down my pants, at which point they're hysterical.

This is unprecedented.  I'm not exactly a warm, cuddly or attractive person and people don't smile at me.  I know I certainly haven't changed, so it must be something else.

And then it hit me: my wife is a chick-magnet.  Ok, technically having a wife is a chick magnet.  You single guys should beg, borrow or rent a female to hang around you in public, if you want to attract other women.

I know there's nothing like standing there with a puppy to attract women.  Now it turns out that having a wife or girlfriend works too.  My theory here is that with a wife, I become the element known as Unobtainium.  There is nothing more attractive in a man than a man who's unavailable. Women who would not look at me on the street start smiling at me in the store. 

Turns out this is true in both directions. Guys won't notice a woman if she's by herself but when someone else wants her, she becomes popular.

Feel free to support or take a whack at my theory.

Perfume. There?

It was a good morning. Both of us (and the pets) were almost awake, getting ready to go to work and other places. Lunch was packed and I was suddenly face-to-face with my wife and her beautiful new purple shirt. What made it more beautiful than other shirts, purple aside, was that it showed more chest than normal (no naughty bits, in spite of this blog's theme). So I gave her a nice, romantic kiss in that general area. We were impressed but the pets went about their business, non-plussed; one appearing starved and the other waiting for the starving one's food.

Fortunately it was time to go to work. When I say fortunately, I am fortunate to have a job. I am, however, still allowed to bitch about being up in the morning. When in the car, the wife ordered me to scrape the windshield. Of course I had to scrape the windshield.. I was already in the car.  This is a metaphor for our relationship.  It's also a direct statement about the weather here.  As we know, Pennsylvania's state bird is the cloud, and this lovely display of weather did nothing to dispel that fact: it was miserable, gray, and had frozen drops all over the car.  We know the sun exists, it's just that we wonder why it doesn't come round to visit now and again.  Anyone following the news will know that the Northeast has been threatened with snow for the past month. Lucky for us the weather forecasters are always wrong and we've barely gotten any snow.  Instead we've gotten frigid temperatures and bits of precipitation, almost constantly.  Last weekend we hit forty degrees and the bikinis were out all around.  Brian Williams saw his shadow and won't be on tv for six weeks.

So as I was finishing up the windshield, I detected a really horrible taste developing in my mouth.  It got worse and worse until I finally realized where it came from: my wife's chest.  Apparently women put perfume there. And I inadvertently ate some of it.  Off we went to Dunkin Donuts, for some coffee to get the taste out of my mouth. Other candidates were soda, windshield cleaner and lye.

I know I'm late to the party but I was/am so sick of the Stupidbowl that I almost can't describe it. But I shall anyway. In an unearthly first, I was invited to attend a party. In an even stranger first, I accepted, largely as this was my best friend and there were likely to be football-free zones.

There were, indeed, football-free zones, sorta, but there were still too many televisions (defined as more than zero or one).  I'm kinda like Charlie Brown and Lucy (or Homer Simpson) with televisions: I look at the motion, realize it's sports, look away, then see the motion again and look....

I don't care who Brady Bellechek is and don't want to hear his name anymore as long as I live.  It's not enough that there is a game.. I have to hear about it until I'm blue in the ears. I hear about it on the news station. I hear about it on the rock station.  I even hear about it on the public radio station, which I had hoped would be free of sports, at least after the first day.  The only thing worse than this is the item, and I use the term loosely, about deflated balls. I have no real idea what's going on here but I have been bombarded by it every moment of every day, no matter whether it's television, radio or the web.  The first time I heard anything of this, it came up on my alarm in the morning. I can be excused from incredulity (and sense) when something starts talking at me before seven in the morning.  As I grew further awake, I heard something about deflated balls and just assumed this was some kind of comedy routine. It became a really popular comedy routine when I noticed that the evening news and even Sunday's edition of Shoot the Press mentioned it.  If they have so much damn trouble with their balls, why don't they ask the cheerleaders to blow them back up and get on with the event? The politicians must be up to something when this is the lead story for days. You'd think that there was a Kardashian involved, for all the press coverage.

Yesterday in England was the first Visit the Mosque day.  This was a hastily conceived bit of press, thrown together after the Charlie Hello attacks, designed to invite outsiders into mosques to prove that Muslims are not all terrorists.  One Muslim lady complained about having to apologize all the time for the actions of the terrorists.  I suspect she should be having that conference with the terrorists, not the press.  The theme of the day was We'll Blow Up that Bridge When We Come to it. Seminars were offered too: Be Nice to Christians Day, Not Murdering Your Neighbors, and Improvised Explosive Devices.  All of the usual British suspects, with all of their comical British accents, ventured out from their quaint little towns to inspect the mosques. They were declared fit and now life can continue in England (at least until something blows up there).

NOTE: be careful reading this blog, as it may be booby-trapped. And boobie-trapped. Furthermore, it may explode.

Whats All This I Hear About Moose Limbs?

I just got an email from my good friends at Live Nation Concerts. I got an email because I spent way too much money on a pair of their tickets at some point in my life. Things sure have changed while I've been going to concerts.

It was about 1974. You could not turn on a radio without hearing something from Frampton Comes Alive.  This worked out well because he was quickly becoming a hero to me.  I even got a talkbox (talking guitar effect) because of him.  All of the sudden a huge concert was announced with Frampton as the headliner. It took place at Kennedy Stadium in Philthydelphia (since demolished to make way for more taxpayer bailouts of very rich sports teams).  My mind wanders so the rest of the folks on the bill escape me, except perhaps for Steve Miller and J Geils. A whole bunch of my friends went and the tickets were about twelve dollars.  Let me say that again: twelve dollars for an all day concert featuring the hottest artist with the best-selling live album of all time and three other hit groups.

So what does Live Nation want to tell me?  They want me to know about some upcoming concerts:

• Brit Floyd: a Pink Floyd cover band. I distinctly remember specialty cover bands playing in shitty little bars. There are also Led Zeppelin and Genesis cover acts playing medium sized theaters for Big Buck ticket prices. If I'm not there by showtime, hold your breath.
• Marilyn Manson: looks a little like a cross-dressing Hitler.
• Lisa Lampanelli: Lisa is one of the funniest women I have ever performed with. We played at some little dive bar in Cover Your Ass, PA. We were in hysterics. Unfortunately she doesn't do that routine anymore and isn't near as funny.
• Nickelback:  Give 'em back.
• Foreigner: on tour without Lou Gramm, the singer on all of their hits. This actually worked out well for Judas Priest and Journey. No idea about Foreigner.
• Artie Lange: a funny guy. Catch him before he OD's.

Nowhere on the list is there a single ticket price or city in which the venue is located.  That's ok - I don't need another mortgage to see subpar acts.

In other news, I work in a pretty cool place. When I say cool, I mean it in its figurative sense. In fact, it's so hot in there, it serves as a Germ Incubator. I'm terrified of getting typhoid due to the temperature and the seven people around me hacking up a lung.

I fear they got me, though. Between screaming at recent events and a new cough (that makes my underarms itch), I sound like a cross between Clint Eastwood and a toad.

Do ya feel lucky, punk?