In Search of the "Seaticus Odorous Inhalus"

I have recently been alerted to the possible existance of a new mythical breed of office degenerate that may already be walking among us; existing only in our hushed whispers like a unique form of an urban office place legend similar to that of vampires, unicorns, sasquatches, yeti, Ogopogo, or people who actually enjoy their jobs – only more sinister and ghastly.

This neo-mythical office creature is only known as “The Seat Sniffer” - or ‘Seaticus Odorous Inhalus’.

I have only once happened to catch a glimpse of such a beast, the likes of which wasn’t known to me at the time, but it was only a fleeting glimpse from a distance as they were stooped over an office desk chair as if they were attempting to vacuum up the entire chair into their nostrils. It was akin to having spotted a mysterious shadowy figure dart across the road in your headlights ahead of you as you round a bend late at night. One moment it’s there – and the next it’s gone leaving you wondering what the fuck it was exactly that you just witnessed. You could barely make out its form, but yet you were very aware of its presence nonetheless. It’s like being in a reenactment scene right out of ‘Unsolved Mysteries’.

Apparently, I am not the only one who has had the unfortunate experience of spotting this peculiar office place entity, and we are growing in numbers to rival those victims of alien abduction gang probings. Soon we’ll all be able to have our regularly scheduled support group meetings for those of us still traumatized by our sightings.

“First, there was a bright light, and then a shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere and I couldn’t make out his face. It knelt down carefully over an available desk chair and proceeded to sniff the seat cushion before disappearing again as quickly as it had appeared.”

What motivates this kind of bizarre character? I’ve heard of some pretty sick shit going down at the office place in my tenure here at Corporate Hell – but this takes the fucking urinal cake! What possible satisfaction could one gain from sniffing the seat cushions of fellow employees? Shit, I can even better understand the office bathroom masturbator or the diabolical Demon Lady than I can of the kind of person who enjoys getting their rocks off indulging in the stale fecal stink left behind by their fellow co-workers. That’s a bouquet that I can fucking do without, thank you very much!

Considering some of the massive spatial ass girths that inhabit the desk chairs of this particular place of business, and what must pass through them from time to time – sniffing these trapped bodily vapors must be like inhaling a lungful of deadly Zyklon-B gas.

I can only imagine that the mysterious seat sniffer is achieving some sort of ultimate buzz by sniffing the trapped farts and fecal stains left behind in the cushions of empty desk chairs of co-workers who are away from their desks on coffee breaks - it just screams "junkie". Perhaps they are getting so high that they are hallucinating falling through their computer monitors into the magical land of Narnia where they spend the rest of their shift having tea with fawns and chowing down on enchanted Turkish Delight instead of the usual gamut of daily office paperwork.

I wonder if they are sustaining any permanent brain damage from indulging in this bizarre office place perversity? I can’t imagine that sniffing seats would be too healthy a practice – they must resemble strung out hobo’s in a back alley reeling after inhaling too many fumes from a tube of contact cement. By the time they manage to return back to their desks after secretly partaking in their uber-kinky seat sniffing fetish, their eyes would be glazed over like boiled eggs and they would be mumbling to themselves something about "that being good shit".

If sightings of ‘Seaticus Odorous Inhalus’ continue to be reported, there will soon be profile sketches to follow, being handed out as office memo’s by management, warning employees to the possible presence of this office place pervert lurking among us incognito.

Imagine the waves that would be caused in the field of Corporate Zoology if one of these elusive seat sniffers were ever to be captured and exposed to the rest of the office? Human Resources would have a field day! Imagine the statements from co-workers during the feedback portions of Team Meetings:

“Michael was a shy, quiet employee who always minded his own business. He was great at his job and never complained – but sometimes he had that far away look in his eyes and had a peculiar habit of referring to his computer as “Mr. Tumnus”. Still, he never bothered anyone and I liked him well enough. I just can’t believe that he was sniffing my seat whn my back was turned. You hear about these kinds of people, but you never expect them to be sitting beside you!”

Self Checkout Aisle Pulse Check

While doing my usual round of grocery shopping this past weekend, I decided to try the “Self Checkout” aisle and ring up my own groceries in an effort to avoid the inevitable two hour delay in line at any of the other regular check out aisles.

There is nothing worse on a weekend afternoon than waiting at the Check Out at the supermarket with your boxes of Presidents Choice prepared meals, while ahead of you, Grandma Moses is having the poor basic like-skilled minimum wage checkout clerk calculate complex finite math with all her cut-out coupons and penny-sale discount items. Heaven help you if you arn't quick enough on the draw with the dividing bar and should ever allow your grocery items to accidently intermingle with hers - it'll be anarchy!

I just don’t have that kind of patience. Fuck, a dead person doesn’t have that kind of patience!

How hard can checking out your own groceries be anyways? Scan the product code and place in the bag – simple. I've seen the process performed a million times before and I’ve even worked in retail and sales before. In fact, I have operated dozens of normal retail store cash registers on three different continents – so why am I so scared about checking out my own groceries? It should be easy.

I was wrong. And what a terrible wrong it was. It was right on par in wrongness as Phil collins covering Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time' and boxed wine.

What started out as a simple exercise in applying learned retail skills; quickly turned into the Philadelphia Experiment. It was like I was suddenly taking orders from an evil KITT from Knight Rider.

“Please key in your produce items first” – and then I couldn’t help but think that I had also heard this particular demon register add “or else” to the end of that statement as well. But I can’t confirm or deny that just yet. Regardless, it was disconcerting to say the least. It’s like I was suddenly sucked into the plotline of Maximum Overdrive and I was waiting for the register to decide that it was time to turn on its human master and blind me by shooting its red scanning laser into my eyes.

Maybe some things are best left to the basic life-skilled minimum wage donkeys. In light of this recent failure, I for one, will wait in line until those ahead of me have either finished checking out, or have dropped from sheer exhaustion before I attempt to use another one of these personal “Self Checkout” lanes again.

Thanks - but no thanks.

Call me old fashioned, but your groceries should be scanned by a humorless woman in a hairnet while being bagged by a seventy year old man named Chester who has just been released from prison and continually refers to you as “Boss Man”.

Easter-n Philosophy

Well, another ridiculously lost-in-translation holiday is upon us – Easter.

Easter is another holiday whose religious significance has evolved into something so banal that its very ridiculousness can knock you over the head with all the weight of a four-ton Cadbury’s Cream Egg. It has become just another meaningless excuse to string up enough brightly colored paper streamers to trap wild game, and display stupid cardboard decorations in store windows.

It becomes obvious that any actual historical or religious significance has completely gone to the wayside as you wander through supermarkets and public malls while running your usual weekend errands. Easter isn’t about colorful eggs and bunnies – it’s about betrayal, spiritual penitence and resurrection, and not-to-mention nailing Christians to 2x4s. So where did it veer off course exactly?

The symbol of rabbit during the Easter holiday originated with the pagan festival of Eastre, goddess of offspring and springtime. The Festival of Eastre celebrated the return of spring and utilized the rabbit as the earthly symbol of the Anglo-Saxon goddess. Likewise, the egg was already a popular non-sequitor symbol associated with rebirth that predated Christianity itself. Who can be very surprised considering that it was also these same people who put great deal of stock in what a furry, underground dwelling rodent thought as well?

In the second century, Christian missionaries began to weave their own pious agenda into the pagan practices and ceremonies so as to avoid being instantly boiled alive into missionary soup by their pagan converts. So it was in this clandestine manner that Christianity attached itself to another pagan ceremony which also happened to coincide with it’s own celebration for the Resurrection of Christ. Later, it was the Germans who brought these Easter traditions to the New World along with their precious amazing meteorological prophesying rat. What a floating party that voyage must have turned into once entering International waters!

When it comes down to it - why do we celebrate Easter in the first place? Put yourself in Jesus’ sandals for a moment: if you were to be turned into the local Roman militia by your traitorous best friend just after you’ve cooked him a nice candlelight dinner, to be publicly tried and beaten to a pulp in the streets before your peers, and all just prior to having your body nailed to a wooden cross to ride out the rest of the beautiful sub-zero dessert Easter evening - you’d probably just want to chalk it up to being a particularly bad day and just forget the whole miserable thing ever happened at all, much less create a world-wide day of remembrance for it! And why do they call it "Good Friday"? Considering how this day would turn out, isn't that a bit of an understatement? What's so fucking good about being tortured to death? "Shitty Friday" would have been a much more apt name for this whole nasty business. That’s like naming every August 24th* “Lucky Wednesday”!

More than likely, Jesus would have risen from the grave, returned straight home to his mud hut and taken out his frustrations at the temple by pissing in the potted cactus and drowning his sorrows with sacrificial wine. It’s just not something you brag about with the lepers down at the temple.

So it was here in North America where yet another perfectly good traditional religious holiday, wrapped in pious ceremony and spirituality, was turned into another market-based juggernaught unleashed upon the consumers of the world in an effort to promote and capitalize on more useless holiday schmaltz-value propaganda. Basically, Easter has become the Jan Brady of the yearly holidays.

“…it’s always Christmas! CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS!!!”

Easter is the holiday that has been hanging out in the shadow of the Christmas Yuletide tradition for centuries, just waiting for the opportunity to gets its due proper recognition and leap into the holiday spotlight. It’s got all the making of a great corporate inspired holiday – a fanciful fictitious character capable of breaking all the laws of natural physics in order to further spoil the children of the world. Need I remind you that Christmas involves a fat man dressed in red being pulled in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer to miraculously deliver toys to children all over the world in a single night?

Nevertheless, not to be outdone, Easter has sparked off it’s own unique designated consumer folklore to increase its market value to the common public; complete with oily dye-kits that require the equivalent of an Engineer’s degree to use, squishy plush toys, and foiled-wrapped chocolates and candies that would give Godzilla hypoglycemia. For weeks afterwards, children will be awakening from diabetic comas and suffering withdrawal symptoms like patients at a Vancouver methadone clinic while their blood sugar levels return to normal

But something still manages to keep Easter out of the holiday limelight.

Perhaps it’s the fact that Easter is just too fucking all doom and gloom. Treachery, flailings, piercings, crowns of thorns, hammering, and crucifixions – shit, this may have given Mel Gibson a woody, but I bet the normal public still finds this a bit too morose. It’s surely no cute winged baby in a loincloth spreading love by shooting arrows into peoples hearts – now is it? The whole ceremonial and religious significance has never quite measured up to the ever popular Christmas hype in the eyes of the kiddies, and more importantly, in the eyes of the Consumer General.

Unfortunately, the public is not about to go too consumer crazy purchasing ‘Judas Iscariot Dinner Mats’, and milk chocolate Christ-brand Crowns of Thorns. It’s not likely going to spark the same kind of frenzied holiday shopping melees that Christmas does. In fact, if it was not for the whole freak bunny delivering decorated eggs aspect to Easter, it would be about as much fun as being gangbanged by a herd of wildebeest. Its just too ghastly an event to get a buzz on over isn’t it?

Personally, I see this as a good thing since I am not prepared to handle another pre-season mass consumer meltdown beginning months before the holiday itself. At least I don’t have to suffer listening to seasonal muzac carols like the ‘Twelve Days of Chocolate Bunnies’, or ‘Good King Pontius Pilot’ as I wait for the sour check-out clerk in fuzzy pink bunny ears to price check the ’Twelve Disciples Marshmallow Peeps’ for the blue-haired biddy ahead of you in line. I would rather crucify myself on a clothing rack in the aisles at Walmart, than have to wait out another grim counter queue marathon like one of Lt. Col. Nicholson’s officers in ‘Bridge On the River Kwai’.

Another good point that separates Easter from the usual monotony of other holidays is that you are practically GUARANTEED to get your fix of chocolate and Easter treats – every year! There is no making of lists, and there is no checking of them twice. In fact, nobody knows ANYTHING! You can fuck around all year! In fact, you could show complete disrespect for Charlton Heston and masturbate the entire way through the Good Friday broadcast of the ‘Ten Commandments’, and still be sure to get your holiday booty and token false chocolate idol reward the next day. There is no fat man in a red suit with peppermint schnapps on his breath to kiss ass to – the Easter Bunny apparently doesn’t give a shit what you do.

“Okay, kid. You’ve been a little shit this entire year and deserve a pussy infection. But what do I care? Here’s your candy – rot your teeth out!”

How awesome is that?

Still another positive angle to Easter, is that there is no inevitable “Boxing Day” madness to put up with afterwards. You don’t have to worry about braving any ‘Return Sales’ and ‘Market Blow-Outs’. that more closely resemble the fall of Saigon than they do of common people simply returning ‘one-size-too-small’ consumer tokenisms, and taking advantage of all the local discounted commerce. There is no need to make sure you keep that receipt for your Nestles ‘Easter Chick Crunch’ so that you can return it for one with walnuts later instead. Nobody in his or her right mind would ever consider returning chocolate for fuck sakes!

Likewise, there will be no worrying about having to fake looking all enthusiastic about the six-pack of navy blue socks you get every year from Grandma (I alone, donate enough Navy Blue “MED” socks to the Salvation Army each year to keep an entire regiment of Arctic soldiers feet warm), or having to suffer through wearing your new ‘John the Baptist Fuzzy Head’ bathroom slippers during Easter Dinner just to please your Aunt Ruth.

All in all, Easter isn’t a bad holiday. It’s just “misunderstood”. It allows us to casually forget the seriousness of the brutal Easter sequence of events, and to lose ourselves in the innocent whimsy of the commonly accepted Easter traditions of bunnys and eggs. We are pretty much given three days to run the gamut of sugar rushes until we pass out mid-week in a deep diabetic coma. Are you reborn? Are you forgiven? Who knows? But the guy who invented Easter sure knows how to party! I suppose it was during one of these sweet cocoa binges, that the very concept of an Easter bunny that delivers chocolate eggs to children around the world was first conceptualized. Perhaps the whole biblical scenario itself was the result of one large mass sugarcane hallucination on the Mount of Olives, and we are all actually being played for suckers by our Biblical Corporate forefathers, in a master plot to ensure Church prosperity through the sale of ‘alternate ceremonial icons’ in the name of religious tradition. Shit, simony is alive and well and thriving in your local ‘Laura Secord’ outlet!

* Anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that laid waste to the city of ancient Pompei.

Wendy's 'Chili Macabre'

Remember those urbane legends growing up that involved somebody getting a foot long pube in their 'Fillet O’Fish' or a crispy fried insect in their 'Biggie Fries'? Well, Wendy’s has gone and out done them all! They have assumed the rightful triumphant position on the grand ‘Crème de la Gross’ scale of crowning achievements in the area of Fast Food hygiene – a human finger was discovered in a bowl of their chili!

Pardon me while I yack up my stomach lining. How fucking disgusting is that?

A woman’s meal at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, CA redefined the term “finger food” when she bit into the remains of what would turn out to be a severed human finger. Good God! That’s enough to traumatize anybody enough to never be able to fucking eat again! I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer is salivating at the prosper of this grizzly devil’s delight, but I assure you – I will never step foot in a fucking Wendy’s restaurant EVER again!

Officials said the fingertip was approximately 1 3-8-inches long and a half-inch piece of fingernail was also found. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured nail.

There’s that unpleasant tingling sensation in my scrotum again.

Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Martin Fenstersheib said that, luckily, the finger had been cooked at a high enough temperature to kill any viruses. Well say, that is good news! And I’m sure that will be of great comfort to the poor unfortunate Wendy’s customer who chowed down on this Hannibal Lecture delicacy that the finger was properly prepared and cooked to perfection according to only the highest of State Health regulations. Thank God it wasn't an ill-prepared finger - that could have been dangerous!

Health investigators seized all of the ingredients at the restaurant and are concluding that the finger must have gotten into the chili at an earlier stage and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, based on the fact that all employees were required to show proof of having 10 fingers at the time of the incident. Wow! Has the State of California enlisted the aid of Scotland Yard now to or what?

“We have no evidence of any accident within the employee’s of the facility itself.”

Umm - hello? HOW ABOUT THE HUMAN FUCKING FINGER? That seems like pretty good fucking evidence to me!

Similarly asinine is the released statement from Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond in regards to the incident:

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us. We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers.”

This makes me want to charbroil some bureaucrat ass. If by “cooperating” you mean checking to see that employees are leaving with the same number of appendages that they started with, then sure - otherwise it just sounds a lot like damage control to me.

And what "conclusions" could I be unfairly jumping to anyways? Is there a good side to chomping down on somebody’s mutilated body part in your chili? We’re not talking about allegations of two teenagers wacking off in the special sauce, we’re talking about a whole severed human finger here! Heaven’s forbid we should ever judge too fucking hastily!

And if Wendy’s really does want to “do right by it’s customers”, then I hope Dave Thomas plans on working a lot of overtime slaving over the grills in order to pay off the years of intense psychological therapy that this poor woman is going to need.

And as for this poor woman, all that has been said at this point is that:

“Initially she was a bit grossed out and vomited a number of times.”

Like that isn’t the understatement of the century! I bet this woman would have been drawn to attempt to cut out her own tongue with her plastic cutlery following this horrific discovery in her mouth. I also bet that a “number of times” is more likely in the ballpark of six, maybe seven, dozen times. I know if I ever found a human finger in my chili I’d be Rolfing streams of pure nastiness, non-stop, for entire fucking weeks on end!

Dear Readers:

I have writers block – and it blows chunks.

This doesn’t mean that there is no lack of things to bitch about, mind you, my journal pages continue to expand exponentially as the world continues to play out in front of me, day after day, like a Mel Brooks movie after a few bad sausages. If I ever have to hear the words “feeding tube” one more time, I’m going to go all ape shit and then the neighborhood will be curiously short a few more squirrels.

As stated in a recent compliment:

“It’s like your brain processing your entire surrounding, and then shooting it out of a cannon of cynism projected directly at the things you despite. Just raging against all things common sense when stuck in a pit of pop-stupidity, and self-centered assholism.”

Wow, thanks! Now if you can only bake a nice raspberry torte too – I’d consider switching teams. Unfortunately, that cynic cannon of mine has only been working with all the generated explosive force of a wet fart this past week.

WHERE'S MY MOTIVATION GONE?!

In fact, there is a lot to tell. Most of which, I’m sure, will inevitably make it into these blog pages sometime in the future. Such interesting personal downward spirals into total madness like my recent disastrous foray into the realms of Adult Entertainment, or my being victim to a recent random “internet smutting”, the aging pot-bellied Bo Gritz attempting yet another one of his “citizen’s arrests”, the fact that I am now practically required to fill out forms in triplicate and provide specimen samples just in order to leave my desk at work to go to the bathroom, and that Ugandans are marching in protest against Bob Geldof of all people (what the fuck do you have to do to exactly to have an entire nation march against you?). Oh, and of course, the “feeding tube” – the Holy Grail buzzword of all broadcast news media clips lately.

It’s all so fucking ridiculous and post-worthy!

But since last weekend, I have no actual motivation to translate my journals when I get home (as is my routine) into these lovingly crafted episodes of neurotic assholishness that lay spread-eagled on this humble web page that lays before you now.

It’s like St. Patrick’s Day has bleached my inspiration - fuckin’ Irish.

I’ve never experienced writers block before. Actually, I’ve only ever experienced one “block” before in my life – and that sure didn’t turn out pretty. So I’m becoming a bit anxious about this recent episode.

Each night I return weary from my toils within the ranks of Corporate Hell and the only thing I can bring myself to do is assume the position on the couch and proceed to watch the world implode in on itself like a neutron star – hosted by Paula Zahn.

It’s becoming maddening.

My apologies, oh faithful readers.

St. Patrick's Day Shenanigans

Whoopee-fucking-o'who.

It has taken me almost an entire 24 hours to really absorb and lament about this whole St. Patrick’s Day hoopla. Being a former bartender of almost 10 years – I have this intense loathing for St. Patrick’s Day. The one day of the year when every yutz in the free world, and even some in the not-so-free world, for some reason or other develops a shit-ass Irish accent and feels the need to don whatever scraps of green clothing that they’ve had hiding in the back of their closets for the past 364 days that they can still stretch over their fat bloated torsos.

I hate St. Patrick’s Day – and even more so, I hate people who celebrate St. Patrick’s Day! Just having to witness anybody particpating in some stupid St. Patrick's Day shenanigans makes me more irritable than a Minotaur with a toothache. I want to club them all with a sack of pennies, kick them in their Blarney Stones, and shove their penny whistles up their asses.

From the moment I walk out my front door on the morning of – it’s like I'm stepping into some bizarre mutant Kermit the Frog family reunion picnic. It’s just infuriating! The first person that mistakenly pinches me because “that’s what you get when you don’t wear green” inevitably is greeted with a knuckle sandwich that would make George Foreman throw in the towel.

“That’s what you get for being such an ass, there, Bono.”

I just don’t get it. Green is ugly. It's the color of mold, weeds*, swamp creatures, and alien blood cells. It was not intended to be worn in public with such bold frankness. The color green signals that a body limb may soon need to be sawed off, or that some left out food stuffs have gone a little funky. I'd be a little leary of celebrating any culture or nationality that embraces this color as being fashionable.

I particularly don’t understand the phenomena of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in the office place. It’s bad enough that I have stay away from all bars, restaurants, clubs, cafes, and other social public establishments in order to avoid the drunken mobs of slang-talking Irish moolyaks sloshing their green beverages on my hushpuppies and taking leaks on my parked car at the side of the road – but now I have to find a way to deal with the schmucks that I work with as well.

If we really wanted to emulate the true spirit of the Irish for the day we should be show up for work loaded at 8:00AM, pick fights with our customers, piss in our neighbors cubicle and storm the managers office and pound the Lucky Charms out of him with Hurley bats – before passing out under his desk in a puddle of our own green vomit.

Where some of these yobs come up with their deluded expressions of “Irishness” I’ll never know. One co-worker even showed up in a neon orange shirt with green shamrock suspenders, beads, hat, and heeled shoes. How is that being Irish exactly? I’ve never met an Irishman who would ever even dare leave the house looking like a gay pumpkin.

If I were Irish – I’d dread St. Patrick’s Day. I’d probably board myself up inside my apartment for an entire 24 hours with a keg of Guiness until the madness had passed completely. Honestly – this blasphemous mockery of the culture would be enough to have St. Patrick himself drive all the snakes back into Ireland!

“Top o’ the morning to ya’s, ya fookin’ eejit’s!”

* Yes - you got it. Even the traditional lucky four leafed variety.

Working Beside the Demon Lady

(Posted in a rare moment where my anger was not misdirected or unintentional. Yeah – it happens sometimes.)

Is there anything more infuriating as somebody with an instant bad attitude? Somebody who will not only automatically see the cup as half empty – but who will actually to try to hunt the motherfucker down who emptied it in the first place!

These people are the true veritable buzzkills in life – and I had the misfortune of sitting beside one today at work.

Usually when I arrive to work - I like to pass through the ‘On-the-Job Training’ department, or the “Bull Pen” as I call it, before settling into the darkest, remotest corner of the building I can find within my own regular departmental work area. I like to gaze over the new rookie employees in all their dedicated focus as they stare fixatedly at the computer monitors in front of them as they work what they have learned in the classroom.

They are smiling and courteous and eager to please. They are still naive and enthusiastic in their work performance like they are actually making a difference – that is, until the inevitable darkness of doubt, disillusionment and bitterness engulfs them like a shroud later on in their work tenure inside Corporate Hell.

But here they are still pure for the moment– like a winters morning. It’s like looking at an artist’s blank canvas. They are still unjaded by extreme levels of office place stress and frustration. They are innocent inexperienced virgins in white satin lingerie on their wedding nights – getting ready to have the shit fucked out of them by the huge barbed cock that is Corporate America.

But perhaps I go too far...

For whatever reason, passing through the new recruits each day gives me a sense of all-powerful superiority. I need this motivational jump-start to my day like I need my first coffee, or that one yellow packet of non-calorie ‘Sugar Twin’, as well as my seventh-inning shit in the upstairs bathroom later on in the day.

So, I wasn’t too upset or uncomfortable at all that a new employee, fresh from the ranks of the “OJT” department, had decided to sit down and work beside me. I could see the job literally paint it’s mural of experience on this fresh canvas over the course of the work day. It struck me as a pleasant and interesting way to spend the next 8 ½ hours anyways.

What sat down beside me instead I figured must have just been laid off from it’s previous job of guarding the gates to Hell. Never had I experienced such intense loathing, hatred, and anger. Where I otherwise may have asked her to be my bride – being this early into my shift, I was genuinely repulsed and recoiled like a vampire from sunlight. She was the kind of person that immediately brought the Book of Revelations to mind!

This new employee was unrelenting. For the next ten minutes, she spewed forth with a venomous tirade on the exact level of shitty that our current job equated to. She went through an entire list of grievances that must have been drafted out well in advance to her being employed with the company - and nobody was safe or exempt! Our management, the “OJT Coach”, the team managers, the fellow employees around us, the security guard, the cleaning lady, her mother, the slow old woman crossing the road on the way to work. You name it – this bitch ripped it a new asshole.

“And good morning to you too!”

Was there something stamped on my forehead that says “I Give a Shit”? Hey man, I hate my job as much as the next minimum wage terminal donkey – but she'd only been here for ten minutes! Usually I need at least 7 ½ hours, a blocked irritable bowel, and maybe a quart of Jack Daniels before I get that testy!

And then it dawned on me completely – this was only her FIRST ten minutes working as an actual gainfully-employed member of this company! Wow! Where did all that instant hatred come from? Embittered employees have studied for centuries in order to draw on that kind of focused corporate aggression – a distinct martial art was even created known as “Yoo Pay Mee!” This girl was apparently a black belt*.

I became more and more agitated with her antics as she continued on her with her endless ranting. Now I’m never one to outright wish for more work – but anything to shut this bitch up! She’s been working here for a whole fucking ten minutes and she feels that she has earned the right to bond with me, a veteran of this corporate madness for three-fucking-years, over how much we hate our job?

Not a chance - you have to earn that right!

Eventually, I just moved away to another quiet corner all stealthy-like when she went off to the bathroom to powder her horns. Obviously, she was beginning the day off on the wrong hoof and I sensed quickly that I wanted no part of that pending disaster when she finally decided to meltdown completely!

The following is what was drafted in response, but for which I was too chickenshit to actually deliver:

“Pardon me there, frolein Maria, how long have you been working here? Ten-fucking-minutes? Whoopee shit, sweetheart! You think you have the right to bitch and complain about your job? Well take a fucking number and move to the back of the ‘Complain Train’, bitch! I don’t give a shit about your grievances, and all I want out of you right now is a little more honest effort and maybe little beads of sweat breaking from your furrowed brow! You have to pitch before you can bitch, sweetheart! And you’re currently talking to the Roger Clements of bitching about work – so fuck off, and 'less talkie – more workie'! Got it?”

* Either that, or she was a nth degree master in Tai Kwon Ho.

"Scentstories"

I saw a most peculiar TV commercial on the weekend for a mysterious new product called “Febreeze Scentstories”. As I understand it, this “Scentstories” player doesn’t actually play music, it teams with other special Scentstories theme discs to work much like a CD player. The player will then rotate through five specific scents on each disc, one by one with a new scent every 30 minutes – before shutting off when finished.

As the commercial promised: “the Scentstories player and disc create a new-to-the-world experience of the senses” - all, except, common sense that is! Furthermore, “since the discs are reusable, you can experience your favorite theme again and again. Breezy, fresh, inviting.” How about they just save themselves the time and money and just step outside their fucking door once and a while and go for a nice walk? Would that not make for the better “new-to-the-world experience of the senses”?

I think this is taking the whole aromatherapy thing a little too fucking far! Consider the options available for these lazy, unmotivated, cooped up schmucks to vicariously live out through their $34.99 mechanical world of senses: ‘Explore a Mountain Trail’, ‘Wandering Barefoot on the Shore’, ‘Following the Winding Path’, and even ‘Shania’s Wishes for Spring’ (does Shania’s Spring smell differently than anyone else’s? I guess being a millionaire would automatically make the ordinary thawing dog poop and decaying leaves outside smell a little more pleasing).

This all sounds pretty uber-gay to me.

Most men would rather dig a hole and bury this contraption I'm certain. Surely this is a product that is primarily marketed at the more open, softer, keener sensed females of the human species. Men just don’t give a shit about such nice smelling things. We’d likely be lynched and hung from the rafters of our local boozer by our drinking buddies should we ever skip a Friday night to stay in to experience ‘Relaxing in a Hammock’ for 2 ½ hours on our "Scentstories" player – and taking a meditative journey by experiencing “soothing tea, dew drops on petals, comforted with lavender, meditating with incense, and tranquil vanilla.”

Good merciful God – just drive the spike into my temple now!

That is of course, until they can design something a little more masculine for us guys that we may be also interested in experiencing through the powerful sense of smell. As it happens I have two such suggestions:

1) Rebuilding a Model-T Carburetor – greasy workshop by the morning dawn, stale instant decaf coffee, Big Stu’s gaseous fart, shop managers skanky breath, and cleansing with turpentine.

Or,

2) Superbowl Sunday Spectacular – Buffalo wings and blue cheese, sweat socks and beer farts, spicy salsa burp, nagging girlfriend wants to go home, and post-game bathroom meltdown.

Now THOSE are some “Scentstories” that we men may be able to pass 2 ½ hours enjoying! These are true journeys that we can appreciate as proud members of the swinging penis brigade.

Terror Level: Pink to Medium Rare

There has been a recent update announced by the all-mighty Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently over the weekend, to aid in bettering the security on all National and International flights. This new mandate now stipulates that all raw and lightly cooked hamburger meat will be prohibited from all sterile areas of airports and onboard aircraft – along with other such diabolical instruments of terror as lighters, knitting and darning needles, metal pointed umbrellas, plastic butter knives, and box cutters.

Who the fuck are they expecting an attack from - Mary-fucking-Poppins?

This action is in response to a provision in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004, which was signed into law by the Current idiot-President on December 17th, 2004, and requires that “rotten”, raw or lightly cooked hamburger be added to the TSA’s Prohibited Items List.

After carefully evaluating the security threat, TSA determined that passengers should be prohibited from carrying all raw or lightly cooked hamburger, which is classified as a hazardous material, either on their person or in carry-on luggage in the sterile areas of airports or onboard an airport. The policy will be fully enforced beginning April 14th, 2005. Rear Adm. David M. Stone, USN (Ret.), Assistant Secretary for TSA even goes so far as to state:

“By creating policy to add raw or lightly cooked hamburger to the Prohibited Item List we are closing a potential vulnerability in air travel security”.

Whew! The world lets out a collective sigh of relief.

To this, I have but one question: who the fuck would ever pack raw meat into their baggage or carry-on luggage in the first place? I didn’t realize that this was a common thing to pack and transport when going on a trip – I know I’ve never included it on any of my “Remember to Pack” lists before departing on any extended journies by airplane.

“Hey Ethel! Did you remember to pack the raw hamburger along with my lucky cabana shirt and UV-sunblock?”

Resulting from this new security precaution – all raw or lightly cooked hamburger will be banned from sale in sterile areas beyond security checkpoints at airports. This includes, for example, tartare, sashimi, and novelty raw or lightly cooked hamburger*. It would seem to me that it would be more prudent to prevent the sale of raw or lightly cooked hamburger PRIOR to passing through airport security, lest any of this hazardous material should leak out from the bowels of any engorged passenger afterwards and thereby creating a much more threatening breach of security! THAT would be more befitting of an immediate security threat!

Furthermore, TSA’s mission includes preventing air piracy and the use of an airplane as a weapon. TSA prohibits items that may be used to that end from being carried aboard. The raw or lightly cooked hamburger ban will fulfill Congress’ intent as expressed in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act and reduce security vulnerabilities, providing one more layer of security for the nation’s travelers.

Pardon me?

Did they just try to indicate that raw or lightly cooked hamburger poses a serious threat to the safety of the passengers? Who the fuck would ever decide to hijack an airplane with an undercooked Whopper w/ Cheese purchased in the airport lobby? Wouldn’t that be a little bit of an unlikely weapon of choice for your average anarchist-slash-terrorist to choose from in order to ultimately seize control of an aircraft in the name of whoever or whatever it is that they are carrying out their Holy Jihad injustices for?

“Hmmm. A gun maybe – no. Explosives perhaps – no. An undetectable porcelain knife – no. Or how about a rare Quarterpounder – YES! That’s it!”

I just don’t see it.

Heavens forbid if they should ever get their pre-flight order Biggie-sized - imagine the carnage!

Wouldn’t you love to see the FBI profiles for what is to be considered as a possible terrorist: Red nose and hair, pale complexion, yellow jumpsuit with striped sleeves, and red oversized shoes. Shit, it sounds like Homeland Security may have just declared Ronald McDonald as public enemy #1!

Imagine being a fly on the cockpit wall during one of these airplane hijackings.

“Nobody move! This is a lightly cooked hamburger – and I’m not afraid to use it! I am now taking control of this airplane in the name of mighty Allah!"

While we’re at it, why all the concern over just raw and lightly cooked hamburger anyways? Is cooked hamburger not considered such an important security threat? Well, if I’m not particularly intimidated by an undercooked Whopper w/ Cheese as it is – I doubt a properly cooked one is going to strike fear into the hearts of men either!

As I see it, this new proposed security legislature seems to be a bit unnecessary. Why not make airplane cockpits inaccessible, or increase the number of present airline marshals on board the flights? I doubt controlling and restricting the transport of raw meat will improve the state of National Security any.

Has the world gone insane?

* How the fuck is raw meat considered a “novelty”? I don’t remember that being for sale down at the ‘Party Depot’ store.

Bowled Away by Cleaning Toilets

I hate doing housework. I particularly don’t like scrubbing the toilet.

It’s not proper man’s work. I’m not saying that it’s women’s work either – but if they happen to conveniently fill the void, I’m not going to complain either. She can scrub the shitter; I’ll kill the spiders. Sounds like a perfect mutually beneficial arrangement to me!

I can tolerate he dishes, dusting, vacuuming, laundry, and even cleaning the gunk out of the shower drain – but I simply cannot find the motivating drive to clean the toilet. I know what evils have been committed in there, as I expect everyone else does, so who would ever want to go willingly back to the scene of the crime afterwards?

Not this cowpoke - that’s for sure!

When I know the time has come, and it’s not possible to hold off the inevitable any longer – I don the extra-strength industrial gloves and protective goggles, and arm myself with trusty toilet brush and sanitizer, and advance on the demon toilet like a medieval knight preparing to joust.

You have to hit it hard, and hit it fast - hit it with everything you have! Scrub, squirt the toilet duck; work that toilet brush! For really stubborn speckle marks - attack it with a Brill-o Pad and a good old-fashioned dedicated focus that would make Lady MacBeth look unsanitary by comparison.

Really make that toilet feel your wrath until it’s accumulated stains and fecal foulness peel back from the bowl like an exotic porcelain orchid unfolding its petals in a tropical shower.

If nothing else, it is my goal in life to be able to maintain a standard of living that ensures that I will never, EVER, have to clean my own toilet again. Every few weeks, I could just hire and fly in a team of chemical and industrial waste specialists to assess the damage, device an emergency reaction plan, and return the toxicity levels in my bathroom back to those of acceptable environmental requirements.

I am environmentally conscious if nothing else!

Mother's Lending Hand

My mother gave up being a teacher in order to bring me into this world and raise me properly. She was always very instrumental with my learning at school and had a very hands-on approach in assisting with my studies. She’s the reason why I was bringing entire to-scale reconstructions of Mayan ruins and working models of the human ear to school as science projects instead of a shitty lop-sided volcano made of Popsicle sticks that burped red goo.

It’s not like I ever really learned anything so much as I just followed the prompts as laid out for me. My entire grade school tenure was marred with memories of “cross that ‘t’”, “carry that denominator”, and “use a ruler”! It was like living with the offspring of Anne Sullivan and Adolph Hitler! But I got good marks and won some cool ribbons, so life was good. Later in my adult life, of course, I wouldn’t be able to so much as complete a task even as simple as spreading peanut butter without somebody else’s assistance or a Task Master of some sort; but I digress…

Usually, whatever it was that I was under command to do was not being done correctly to her high standards and would therefore need to be done again, and again, and again, and then she would just completely take over and do it for me “the right way”, completely exasperated that her idiot child could not handle even the most simple of tasks.

What can I say?

Duh.

It’s not like she was ever disappointed in me per se, or just a cruel disciplinarian to rival any Victorian middle school teacher. She just genuinely wanted the best for her son - to succeed and achieve higher levels of education. I just wanted Jell-o pudding cups instead of celery stalks and multiplication flash cards in my lunch.

I remember at times when she would become so consumed in my school assignments, on my behalf of course, that she would just eventually assume total control of the project altogether and I could go back to watching Bugs Bunny.

“No, no, no, not at all! It has to be done like this! And just look at this, I’ll have to do that over again for you. Look you’re doing that wrong too! And could you please…nevermind, here – let me do it!”

No topic was too trivial or simple for me to fuck up. At the time, it always seemed like nothing I ever did was good enough to warrant standing on it’s own merit. She either had to fix it, tinker with it, tweek it, or just specifically personalize it in some small way before I trudged it off to school for my A+.

It was learning through observation and repetition mostly. After you’ve spent weekends tracing out the raised temples of Chichen Itza, things will just begin to stick in your brain. You may never in your lifetime ever have an opportunity to divulge that the Pyramid of Kukulcan has 365 steps, one of each day of the year, and that it was actually two structures superimposed on one another, but somehow you’ll be better for having just known it.

Even for more serious lessons in life, I seemed to lack the necessary skill and wit to accomplish anything successfully to her liking.

“You’re not brushing your teeth correctly! Go up and down, up and down! Like this! Here, give me the brush – let me do it!”

No topic was too personal or ever to be left for my own self-discovery. Once, she walked into my room while I teaching myself about the delicate art of masturbation. I hadn’t really had a good grasp on what I was doing yet, being so inexperienced in the ways of the world, so it was more of an awkward exploratory procedure of random jerking and tugging motions, generating sounds that resonated off the bedroom walls that resembled the slapping of a wet ham. Of course, the moment my mother walked in to discover me in all my naked humility, the tutorial automatically began with familiar earnestness…

“Oh! You’re not doing that right! You have to go faster – and use your wrist more! No, no, no, like this! Faster, see? More wrist - more wrist! Oh you’ll never do it right like that – here, let me do it!”

Some memories are best left repressed.

Hiring Time at the Corporate Ranch

(I'm not sure what inspired this post exactly, as I have no real axes to grind at all these days. I suppose then that this was simply composed as an unconscious means by which to work out some long overdue officeplace PMS.)

It’s hiring time at the Corporate Ranch once again!

Yes, it’s time again for all the eager-beaver over-achievers to don their Sunday best and strut up and down the office work aisles like horny peacocks in the spring, in anticipation of either a job interview that day, or just in order to be recognized by the superior Corporate powers-that-be as the consummate qualified professional worthy of leading others into battle each day.

Let them leap into the foray, dance the dance, and willingly sell their souls to the Corporate Devil for all I care! As long as they keep 15 feet from my work area at all times and don't try to "Career Path" me, everything will be just fine.

For an unprofessional, unaspiring, wage donkey like myself, this is just too much fun to watch as all the promotion-hopefuls begin to plot, conspire, maneuver and attempt to one-up each other in a bid to be noticed by management.

It’s like watching monkeys fuck a coconut.

I’m pleased with myself for being just the lowly unassuming jack-of-all-trades, yet master-of –nothing employee. The employee who can easily slip from cubicle to cubicle and adapt to whatever skill is required at the time in order to maintain a steady paycheck. I find a quiet dignity in performing my humble duties simply to the best of my abilities, unhindered by the extra higher-up expectations and restrictions, apart from that of common sense of course, and in allowing others to think that they in fact, are the more qualified and management worthy.

Let them run themselves ragged at no extra pay until they collapse from exhaustion and corporate frustration. They’re welcome to it. Shit, have a coronary on me! My sanity is more important to me these days. I’m happy to sit on my ass with the other schleps with six toes and buckteeth, most of which, probably wouldn’t even qualify to manage the cafeteria at K-Mart. No problems at all! At least I'm keeping in with the minions of little "real" people, without whom, the business would fail to prosper. There is safety in numbers.

I look at it this way: I come, I sit, I get paid, I go home.

I can take pride in the fact that I can still feel free to express myself and truly be myself, not some carbon copy personality as detailed by the latest Human Resource mandate. And if being a whiney Corporate Jackass is what gets me through the day unscathed, then so be it. Why fuck with a winning formula? As long as I can leave the moment my shift is over, collect my pay to the minute, and nobody is banging down my office door five minutes before I’m getting ready to go home with a stack of manuals and computer-generated flow charts that need to be rechecked and resubmitted for circulation in the next 30 minutes - I’m a happy fucking employee!

I may not be laughing all the to the bank, but I’ll sure as shit be giggling all the way to the Dollar Store when my newly promoted manager suffers a brain aneurysm after they realize that they haven bitten off more responsibility than they can chew and I’m not going to be there afterhours to help straighten out their empty promises and corporate clusterfucks.

The Devil's DVD

I now suspect that there is an evil presence dwelling in my once happy bachelor pad these days. I’m not sure why it came here exactly, nor at what juncture in time that it began to seize control of my appliances exactly; but it is most definitely here!

Just after Christmas, I decided to breach my usual contempt for all things modern by purchasing one of them new-fangled DVD player thingees* so that I could watch something besides my old worn VHS copy of 'Heat'. With thoughts of new releases (it should be noted that anything released to stores within the last five years I consider to be a “new release”) dancing through my head, I dove headfirst into the waters of technological Verboten.

What a fucking mistake! It was like inviting Lucifer himself over to watch movies.

At first, when I had managed to wrestle the contraption from its packaging and successfully untangle myself from the miles of connecting cables that washed out from the box onto the floor like a big spilled plate of spaghetti, I was delighted to be greeted with a warm, welcome “HELLO” being invitingly displayed across the front of this new mechanical Chicklet sitting atop my television.

Success!

Now only three short months later, this Devil’s DVD player has only brought pure evil into my previously undisturbed kingdom. The first clue should have been the fact that my cat launched himself under the bed when I first brought it through the door; and perhaps that it had no reflection in the hallway mirror either. But hey, hindsight is 20-20.

Now, I’m almost scared to turn it on! When I do manage to build up the courage (usually after hours of prayer and chanting like a Gregorian monk), instead of it’s once innocent greeting now reads “HELL” and flashes like a digital doomsday device before going on to further display me a whole multitude of complicated user options that I neither understand nor use beyond “Play” and “Stop”.

Eek!

I am near the point of contacting a Catholic priest to exorcize the demons that have apparently assumed control of my DVD player before they conspire with the microwave to take control of the entire apartment and beam it directly into the ninth level of Dante’s Inferno! I am afraid that if I allow this evil to continue growing unchecked, it will soon take control of me as well!

Before you know it, it’ll be sending me further, more sinister, instructions on its digital display to “KILL”, “MAIM”, “DESTROY”, or “SNACKING AFTER MIDNIGHT IS GOOD FOR YOU”. I’ll be under its total control! My landlord will burst in the door one day after not seeing or hearing from me for months on end and find me rolling on the floor in a pool of ketchup and watching ‘The Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”.

But then again, there is no denying that part of me already says: “GO FOR IT!” Light some fires, trace the Pentagram on the living room floor, hump the cat, don some horns, and totally get your Satanic freak on!

* Previously, I had assumed that DVD stood for "Damn Vacuous Device!" Now, I just plain have no fucking idea.

The Ongoing Saga of Michael "Freakshow" Jackson

A warrant has been issued this morning for the arrest of Michael “Freakshow” Jackson, after he failed to show up for the scheduled 8:30AM resumption of this child abuse trial. Jackson’s lawyer told Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville, who is presiding over the case, that his client had been admitted to a local hospital with a serious back problem.

Pardon?

Horseshit! What the fuck kind of strenuous exercise does Michael Jackson ever perform that he would suddenly be stricken with serious back pain? The guy hasn’t so much as lifted a finger (apart from the finger that allegedly diddled a few prepubescent penises in recent years of course) his entire fucking life! Shit, the guy probably has a team of Finnish dwarves just to simply carry around his Diamond status credit card on any of his legendary spending sprees! Has the flesh on his face been stretched forward so unnaturally tight over the years that it's beginning to cause injury to his spinal column?

I just don’t buy it.

Could it be instead, that perhaps poor frail Michael has slipped a disc in his lower lumbar while throwing his freak streamlined bleached penis into poor fifteen year old Gavin Arvizo after a few of his patented Mai-tai and roofie cocktails? That would seem more likely and believable to me.

Considering the Freakshow’s recent track record of stalling court proceedings with lame ass afflictions that wouldn’t even concern an eighty year old grandmother with chronic heart disease, why don’t we just move the entire court proceedings to the waiting room of the San Bernardino Hospital? That way, the trial could continue uninterrupted when next he complains of itchy balls or something. Jackson’s private staff of medical gurus and health specialists could just continue to cater to him and administer his treatments while the case simply continued on against him without delay. Heaven’s forbid if a young boy’s lost innocence should ever get in the way of preventing the mighty King of Pop from ever recieving only the finest, most advanced and swift medical treatment known on the planet for every drip, sniffle, ache or itch that he should ever happen to experience!

In retaliation to Jackson’s tardiness this morning, Judge Melville ruled that if Jackson was not able to arrive within an hour that he would automatically forfeit his $3 million dollar bail bond. Well, whoopee-shit! Isn’t that like what he spends in an hour on a daily basis anyways? Why not make a real impact on Jackson and issue him one day of hard labor at any maximum security prison, and let him experience what it’s like to be violated by a larger, more dominant male first hand. I bet that will have him sprinting to the courtroom each day like Carl Lewis; as if they were offering free Botox treatments for the first dozen arrivals.

Personally, I don't see what's so complicated about the case as a whole in the first place. What it comes down to for me is this: did he touch penis or did he not touch penis. That is the question.

You know what? It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Grown men should not be sleeping or sharing their bed with other people's children - PERIOD!

What's so hard to grasp about that? Maybe it was totally innocent; during the night, being a little restless in his sleep, he casually rolls over and his hand happens to lightly and innocently brush up against the boys peepee. What he "molesting" the boy? Of course not. So is he guilty? Abso-fucking-lutely!

I say, throw him to the wolves! Or even worse, undo all his cosmetic surgury and restore his facial features back to their original form. Surely that would be a fate worse than death for him and more befitting of a billionaire pervert who uses his position and status in life to boff pre-pubescent boys while their parents are off riding the rollercoaster on the Neverland Ranch grounds.

Injecting Muffins on the Assembly of Line of Life

While choosing my daily snack indulgence from the cafeteria vending machine today, I managed to stumble upon a most wicked sin of nature currently existing in the catering and vending world.

I had decided, in moment of rare weakness, that I would treat myself to something that could be considered somewhat healthy when I happened upon a package of buttered bran muffin staring out invitingly at me from it’s cubby slot behind the clear display window.

How bad could they be? Surely you can’t fuck something up as simple as a bran muffin with butter! How wrong I was.

To my surprise, upon unwrapping the two bran muffins I discovered that neither muffin were sliced in halves and buttered in the way that you would expect them to be traditionally. Instead, both bran muffins were intact and uncut.

“That’s curious”, I thought. “Where’s the butter?”

Low and behold, the butter lay inside the muffins already in a blob of fatty yellow goo. Considering that it would have been impossible to bake the muffins with the butter already inside; how the fuck did they get it in the centers without cutting the muffins in half? What kind of devil’s trickery is this?

I wonder if there some billionaire walking the earth right now fat on the riches from the patents on his incredible muffin buttering technology? I wonder if any of my hard-earned taxpayer’s dollars are going into the funding for this state-of-the-art research into the buttering of vending machine bran muffins without the need for cutting them?

How are they doing it exactly? Do they have a forced labor chain gang of Oompa-Loompa’s working on an assembly line, injecting pats of butter into bran muffins with a syringe somewhere in the basement of the Niagara Caterers food production factory? I hope so, because to consider any other possible method of muffin buttering makes blood squirt out of my ears and leaves me feeling light-headed.

“OOMPA LOOMPA DOOMPADEE DOO
I'VE GOT A PERFECT MUFFIN PUZZLE FOR YOU
OOMPA LOOMPA, DOOMPADAH DEE
IF YOU ARE WISE YOU'LL TAKE THE ‘OH, HENRY!’ AND FLEE”

What a sad metaphor for the state of the world today when you don't even have to cut your bran muffin in half in order to have butter on it. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my bran muffins sliced so that it can be spread over each side of the muffin evenly. It's just cheating to do otherwise. If I wanted some mutant demon muffin with shit injected into it, I'd hang out in the back alley behind the bakery, thank you very much!

Worst - Job - Ever!

Stop the presses!

While browsing some other blogs over the weekend, I happened to stumble upon a post advertising for an available position for hire that might just be more infinitely miserable and loathsome than that of my own current employment. This job listing was for that of an “STD Intake Claim Analyst”.

How icky is that?

If given the choice, I think I’d rather take my chances and apply for the available position of “Tour Fluffer” on the new Judas Priest reunion tour! I wonder who would consider applying for a grizzly job such as this? I’d have to be situated pretty far down the evolutionary ladder and have gone quite a long time between meals before I would even be moved to submit my resume for consideration for a position such as this.

The job responsibilities, as detailed by this posting, are to:

“Provide excellent customer service to employee’s and employer’s who are initiating new disability claims via telephone and imaging”.

Pardon? Apart from the obvious extreme gag-value of knowing, in intimate detail, which of your co-workers and clients are currently suffering from crotch rot, crusty cooch, or drippy dick, would be the fact that you would be further required to detail their submitted claim with “imaging”. Wouldn't it be bad enough already that you would have to listen to all the gory details on what kind discharges that a particular client’s genitals are emitting, much less have to document this same uber-nastiness in a photo as well? FUCKING GROSS! Those are details that I would be much fucking happier NOT witnessing thank you very fucking much. Imagine the creepy-crawlies you’d experience after retrieving that fax!

The position also requires applicants to have prior “skill or experience requirements”. Huh? What kind of “skill or experience” would a “STD Intake Claims Analyst” need exactly? I would think that one does no necessarily have had to suffer from syphilis or herpes simplex-B in order to fill out a claims form, would they?

Other requirements detailed for this job posting includes:

“Effective verbal and written communication skills. Projection of a positive, willing attitude and the ability to be an active listener. Ability to be a team player and work cooperatively with others.”

Now considering the nature of the position indicated, I can understand the need for effective communication skills of course, as I can for the relaying of a positive attitude (they are suffering from a STD after all, I think a little positivity and understanding would be very much appreciated), but I’m not so fucking sure that I’m going to want to work too closely or cooperatively with other team members, or anyone fucking else for that matter lest I should contract something contagious and my dick suddenly begins to erode and falls off! No-fucking-thanks!

Also, applicants should be able to:

“Adapt at handling multiple assignments and responsibilities simultaneously, while meeting tight deadlines. Works cooperatively and effectively in a team setting and establishes positive cross-functional relationships. ”

Umm, pardon my ignorance, but considering that these are reported STD claims specifically, wouldn’t “multiple assignments” be more discouraged instead? After all, perhaps if the clients were focusing on one task at a time in the first place, they probably would have remembered to wrap their meat and wouldn’t be in the predicament that they find themselves in now. I would think that, maybe, these are the types of simpletons you really don't want to confuse matters with; they need Dr. Ruth, not a multi-tasking claims analyst! Likewise, I'm not going to be too overly enthusiastic about establishing a positive, negative, or any other kind of relationship whatso-fucking-ever unless they have either an immediate blood test, or are encased in an air-tight contamination suit before I even begin to assist them.

Call me crazy!

Martha Stewart Leaving

I have spent the last 45mins watching the live CNN updates on Martha Stewart being released from “Camp Cupcake”. Greenbrier Valley Airport in West Virginia was a hive of activity, even at 12:30AM, as reporters and journalists all expectantly buzzed around with television cameras and microphones furiously speculating on Martha’s condition and what the future may have in store for her now.

Some twelve minutes later, and about double that amount in up-to-the-minute "Update Reports" as to the progress of her prison caravan* to and inside the airport, Martha immerges for the first time publicly since being released from her minimum security hell where she served her six month sentence for Insider Trading. The cameras begin to flash with explosions of light, shutters clicking like angry crickets, and finally the chance to answer the big question that CNN feels all us intelligent world conscious media hounds at home are wondering about:

“I wonder what she will be wearing?”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Has CNN gone completely off the fucking wall? Was it such a slow day in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial that they had to waste my time with a half hours coverage of a lone private jet idling on an airport runway in the middle of the night? I thought there was going to be something that would at least be considered somewhat newsworthy! Somehow a favorable review of the blue knitted shawl that the famous arbiter of domestic style wore for the two fucking nano-seconds that she appeared for the cameras and onlookers before boarding into her luxury sky chariot. Shit, she's leaving after her sentance from Alderson Federal Prison "richer, more likeable, and a hotter commodity than when she went in."

My heart just fucking bleeds.

Not a single mention that since being convicted she has managed to reinvent herself as well as profiting handsomely from the experience (her net worth has quadrupled since last summer). Where is the justice exactly? She scrubbed a few floors? Cleaned a few toilets? Shit, maybe if this is just the kind of career move that I should be considering! Now, how does one go about getting arrested? Hmmm....

The more I watched, the angrier I became.

Has the world gone completely fucking mad? Does anybody really care what Martha's ensemble was upon being released from jail?

Surely *I* should have better things to be staying up into the wee hours of the morning for than just to see some fallen celebrity being released from a minimum security prison and speculate over what she might be wearing, or what she was carrying in the box, or perhaps what she has prepared for her onboard snack? Why do we give a shit?

Note to Self: GET A FUCKING LIFE!

Although, you just know Martha wasn’t eating no fucking Spinzell’s!

* You know you have it made, when you have a "caravan" to take you away after being released from prison.

Zen and the Male Art of Bathroom Maintenance

Why do women tease and chastise us men about the personal time that we like to spend in the bathroom sitting on the toilet? What’s the big fucking deal anyways? Don’t women spend eons in the bathroom just getting gussied up in order to run quickly down to the local corner store for a Snickers bar? So why shouldn’t us gentlemen be granted the same luxury bathroom time as well?

Apart from the obvious, pre-generated response that we are just in the bathroom to hide out from our significant others, spend some time alone, spank one out over the new Victoria’s Secret catalogue, or just simply stare complacently at the bathroom tiles on the floor, we men are actually able to achieve a certain state of Zen while emptying our bowels. We achieve total enlightenment and clarity of mind while we’re safely locked in the bathroom; we’re in “The Zone”, so to speak. This is why we reserve this bathroom time for most of our dedicated reading, personal finances, politics, and various philosophical conundrums. That’s not really straining grunts and groans of constipation that women hear from behind that bathroom door; it’s meditative chanting. Isn’t that right guys?

“OHHHHHHHHHHHHHmmmm…!”

I think there has to be some cosmic connection with the bathrooms porcelain fixtures that we experience once our bare ass comes in contact with that toilet seat. Suddenly, things just make more sense, or maybe it’s just that our focus and judgment is more acute without some nagging shrew constantly barking in our ear about spending more time together, whether or not her ass looks fat or not, and whose going to take out the garbage again.

What women don’t realize, and therefore fail to give us men credit for is exactly how many monumental deep thoughts and enlightened theories have been conceived and devised while taking a dump within the safe confines of our bathroom. I’d say that the majority of all significant, life-altering concepts that ever helped to shape our Enlightened age were given birth to while taking advantage of this “quiet time” in the shitter.

It’s a little known fact that Albert Einstein devised theory of relatively while skimming through a copy of Popular Mechanics and squeezing out a healthy deuce and half into his toilet. Sir Isaac Newton stumbled across his theories for the ‘Laws of Gravity’ after noting the time it took for his turd to splashdown in the water beneath his ass. Voltaire scrawled the majority of Candide* on sheets of single-ply toilet paper during a bout of the ‘Taco Shits’. And where else do you think Sigmund Freud conducted most of his phallic psychology experiments?

Shit, I’d bet that if women would only just allow us guys to have more of our undisturbed personal bathroom time with no banging on the door, we would probably be living in a better world. Think what undiscovered concepts, theories, and marvels of science that were on the verge of being hatched before the line of concentration was broken by some annoying woman knocking on the bathroom door and inquiring about what was “going on in there”. There is not a doubt in my mind that we would have had cheaper alternative sources of fuel, improved means of transport, world peace, a solution to end world hunger, and more astute global environmental programs by now! We could have fucking colonized Saturn by now!

Ladies, JUST FUCKING DEAL WITH IT!

Wouldn’t you rather have a more satisfied, happy, and spiritually refreshed man to be with once he has had the opportunity to enjoy and relish in his beloved personal bathroom time? Besides, think how much better in bed we're going to be later on for you once we've worked out that boxed meatloaf from our intestinal tract. Unless I've had the chance to indulge in my mandatory uninterrupted "Me Time" in the bathroom, I would have to insist that all my sexual partners were fully covered with life insurance before we even got down to our birthday suits!

* Which would later become my preferred reading material of choice for those particularly difficult times of constipation. How’s that for “philosophical speculation”?

Cutting Below the Belt

Holy shit, there is another reported case of some embittered woman lopping off her mans wee wee in the night. Is this becoming all the rage or something among neurotic and unbalanced women?

This time, in Anchorage, AL, a woman upset about an impending breakup with her boyfriend cut off the man’s penis and flushed it down the toilet. Utility workers were able to recover the severed member, and surgeons reattached it. Pardon? Hold the presses! They did WHAT? Man, that’s sure going to leave some serious repressed memories, eh? What guy wouldn’t be a little self-conscious about his bruised manhood afterwards once it had been snipped off, flushed, and recovered from a cesspool of human waste deep in the city’s sewer system? Shit, I wouldn’t be reattached anything knowing that’s where it came from! I’d rather have a kitchen spatula surgically attached in lieu of my old recovered stinky dinky. Imagine coming to after that surgery:

“Congratulations, Mr. Nash! You’re very lucky. We were able to find your severed penis floating in a pool of toxic waste and shit, and once we wrestled it away from the sewer rats, we were able to reattach it for you.”

Fuck me! Just give the prostheses, Doc!

Kim Tran, 35, was charged with first-degree assault, domestic violence, and tampering with evidence. “Tampering with evidence”? Is that what the courts are calling being a psychotic bitch these days in Alaska?

I really only have other question regarding this matter: How ever do these poor unfortunate men allow their women to cut off their schlongs so unawares anyways? I know if ANYTHING, or ANYONE, even passes within two feet of my penis, especially those of the female gender, I’m going to instantly know about it! If a squirrel even so much as twitches outside, I'm going to know about it. Even if a small draft managed to blow across my crotch in the middle of the night, I’m going to know about it! If some crazy fucking psycho bitch swinging a machete tries to chop off Mr. Happy, I'm sure as fuck going to know about it! All the bells and whistles would go off inside my penis like the tripped security alarm system during a botched burglary attempt. There is NO WAY any woman would ever be able to get anywhere near my beloved manhood without me knowing; much less with a pair of gardening shears. Even if I was half looped up on half a bottle of sleeping pills, I think I’d still manage to be consciously alerted to the presence of any dangerously disturbed women yielding any butchers knives!

Call it “Male Intuition”.

What kind of a complete coma patient would ever allow his johnson to be severed unwittingly while he sleeps or watches Bay Watch on TV or something anyways? This oblivious dumbass is the kind of person who must deserve to loose his pecker in the first place! It’d only be nature’s way of weeding out the weakest and stupidest of the male species by preventing them from ever successfully procreating. Its Darwinism at it’s most freakishly finest!

I’m not going to feel so sorry for any man who allows his girlfriend (or wife, or whatever) to hack through his knob successfully before they he is even able to put up anything of a fight. I'd think it would pretty hard (no pun intended) NOT to wake a guy up when you’re trying to saw through his penis with a bread knife, wouldn’t you say?

“Good riddance, Eunuch Boy!” I say! Good luck with singing soprano for the Vienna Boy’s Choir.