Dear Readers,
I am greateful to you for indulging my reports from my desk. Thank you for your clever comments and your hilarious emails. I have been sick lately and have not been to work as often as I had initially agreed. This bothers me.
When I am at work, I pray that the Taliban confuses this place for a center of Korean Missionaries, just so I can get out of doing things that I get paid to do. But when I am home sick, I find myself deeply bored. I put a moratorium on my magazine reading because I end up just feeling like shit about not having that Corvette, the six pack abs, the modern, pre-fab dwelling, Bose noise cancelling headphones, GAP anything, the career of the superstar waif, an ass you can build a bridge on, and all that other shine-o-la that will complete me.
Laying in bed sweating to the sound of my own wheezing is great coneptual art, maybe for Yoko, but not for me. And although it is fun, shopping on line does get extremely boring as well, especially when I discover that once again, I have amassed a pile of things, clothes, and gadgets that don't bring me any closer to Nirvana, or Courtney Love, in fact, I'm more resentful because I have to keep finding places to put them, keep having to wash them, keep having to keep them charged, keep having to upgrade.
I am in-between netflix DVDs, which means I have to suckle on Baby Boom one more time, or maybe Lebowski.
And another thing, Fuck all this soup bullshit. Where is my therapeutic corn dog?
I have nothing to report other than the dust bunnies near my bed that remind me of the Mayflower - the moving van, not the boat. I'm sorry.
I am willing myself to wellness. Please bear with me.
I will file more reports from the office shortly.
Your Grateful Worker Bee,
Employee835
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Reach Out
As I exited the restaurant with Sam and two others, a man dialed a number on the payphone just outside. He had a shopping cart with him.
This is what he said verbatim, I memorized it:
Hey baby what’s up?
Here, there and everywhere…
Where the fuck I’ve been?
What do you mean where the fuck I been?
What’s she got to do with anything?
No, what’s she got to do with that?
Nooo, I haven’t BEEN to fucking Linda’s
No, I HAVE NOT SEEEEN Linda.
What the fuck would I be doing there?
Why the fuck would I be at Linda’s?
You just better shut the hell up you fucking cunt.
Angry hang up.
Sam suggested that somewhere across town, at another phone booth, is a woman. She is also with a cart and mad as hell.
This is what he said verbatim, I memorized it:
Hey baby what’s up?
Here, there and everywhere…
Where the fuck I’ve been?
What do you mean where the fuck I been?
What’s she got to do with anything?
No, what’s she got to do with that?
Nooo, I haven’t BEEN to fucking Linda’s
No, I HAVE NOT SEEEEN Linda.
What the fuck would I be doing there?
Why the fuck would I be at Linda’s?
You just better shut the hell up you fucking cunt.
Angry hang up.
Sam suggested that somewhere across town, at another phone booth, is a woman. She is also with a cart and mad as hell.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Ever Get That Not So Fresh Feeling?
I drove as though I was whipping a team of 150 blazing horses on the freeway today. I should not be here, but I got tired of answering work questions from bed.
One question is fine, but a series of questions just winds up my mind and catapults me into worry about the things that I am not doing while I recuperate. I've had vertigo and vertigo- like symptoms for the last few days and yesterday was the perfect senior ditch day. I stayed in bed almost until noon, went to lunch with the partner and a friend, then to the friend's to lounge by the pool, capping the day off with the perfect senior ditch day massage. The only thing missing was the convertible Ferrari and some ex-cons at the parking garage to harsh my end of day mellow.
Someone noted that these blog entries make my job seem like a fun place to work. This is partly true, and what is also partly true is, if this place suddenly imploded into a whirling vortex to the center of hell, I'd be right there on the sidelines, throwing Molotov cocktails to lube up hell's sphincter.
I spent the morning in my own post Katrina flood of toxic anxiety dreams, all of which aggressively pointed to suicide. I could not lift my head, nor could I tell if I was sleeping on the bed or on the wall. I was spinning counterclockwise like a drunk, and every time I closed my eyes the spinning accelerated. I thought sleep would help, but you know how sleep goes during these times, it is one horror scenario after another, based on all of your own life’s glorious banality. This morning’s terror dreams were based primarily on the whereabouts of the digital camera I thought I had lost.
Each time the phone rang this morning, I was required to answer very specific questions requiring concise technical back story. I felt mired in my own sluggish, stuttering, speechless, stupidity; and I felt angry at the caller for posing any question at all during a time when I just wanted to enjoy my dizzy high. I felt partly like a) a drunken air traffic controller, but more accurately, b) the President at press conferences.
I just knew that it was going to go like this for most of the day so I thrust myself into vertical and livid mode and barked, “fuck it. Just fuck it. I’ll be right over. Just let me tame my hair and I’ll be there in an hour. You keep asking the same question.” I realize now that it’s probably because I wasn’t answering any question.
That person flaccidly disagreed with my resolve, and then asked me when I would be in. Immediately Sam, my favorite co-worker/surgeon, called begging me to stay home.
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured. “I found out yesterday that if I drink a lot of coffee and I take ibuprofen, it dulls the spinning sensation enough that I can drive and talk at the same time.”
“Oh, is that what they taught you in medical school, Doctor 835?” he chided.
“What about your fucking med school, Doctor? You’re the bastard who thinks its okay to cut people open with X-acto knives. My med school is way less riskier than yours.”
“Oh, so you’re going to be cranky, wired and woozy?”
“I think I’ll be fine. It’s technically not a DUI if it’s just vertigo.”
*****
I do love earning, but right now my shit is tired and I don't have the energy to relocate to another place of employment. Let's face it, workplaces are for and by douche bags. It's especially the case when you have men running a ship of mostly men – in other words, most work places. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to update the adage to, “Well you know what they say, it’s a douche bag’s world.” You can argue with me all you want about female douche bags, who do exist, but they don't occur in loud, proud, shock-jock worshipping hoards, as do men.
As I write this, one of the main Douche Bags is on the other side of my screen, douching around over a bowl of mixed nuts.
I'm in the office because some minutiae spanning ten years has to be prepared in such a way that some important person, the hands down, Grand Duke of all Douche Bags, can understand it better. He is the principal reason that this thing has gone on for way too long, and it's my job to make a bulleted list of the events and hold ups caused by the Grand Duke, without making it seem like his Dukiness had anything to do with it. And I have to have it done by yesterday.
Ultimately I'm happy to do it, because it is helpful, but I want everyone reading this to know, I NEED TO BE ADOPTED BY OPRAH. I rarely clean up after myself, but I can TRAIN any housekeeper to do it.
Work can be such bullshit, not because of anything in particular, but because humans – frail, self-seeking, overly complicated, lazy, shit-faced, burned out, shop-a-holic, missing-link humans – no different from myself are at the heart of it. We make work suck. I make work suck. So sitting in the office of the main requestor today, I tried not to be the suck-making one, just answering questions, pointing out key details, etc, but what I really wanted to do was my impression of an air raid siren.
Let me be straight with you. My work is pretty much A-OK. If you told me in college that this is the job I’d have and the life I’d lead, I would have very little complaints. But I’m not in college, and I’m a sucker for more and better and I have serious authority issues that I generally pat on the head and soothe like rabid dogs, with the help of thousands of dollars bulldozed to my therapist’s office. I have not enjoyed work lately, and that’s one of the reasons I started this blog. I needed a way to report to an outside world of innocent understanders, the kookiness that I witness and participate in every day. Some days are better than others, but for the most part, I’m ready for adoption.
*****
I don’t like waking up before dawn for any reason, not even for a vanpool of barely legal teens on ecstasy. I have shown that I do really well in rat-race environments, especially in train stations, escalators, crowded streets, tall buildings, taxis, and other urban crap-o-la that you see in time-lapse movie sequences designed to indicate the unending rhythm of modernity. For today, I’ve had it, but here is the rub – I’m not big on sleeping in cardboard boxes. Here is the other rub, if adopted by Oprah, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Maybe after a few dozen years, I would stop shooting up, and all of my toys that other people have been putting away for me would get boring, and I MIGHT start thinking about giving to the community. I’m not sure.
For now, I keep showing up to the A-OK job that I’ve grown weary of and am now blogging about. And I keep asking myself, is this what it comes down to? I’m drained, therefore I blog?
It took me a few hours to condense all the facts as requested. I had to make several phone calls to people who hadn’t heard from us in years just to get some facts straight. Even though I wanted to nose dive into my keyboard, I was able to prop my head up with a lot of coffee and sheer force of will. Words on my screen and on the pages looked like horses on a carousel, just whooshing past me again and again. But I did it as promised. I sent it to the requestor, a complete, factual, accurate, and concise record of the minutiae. By the time that person left for the day, he hadn’t even looked at what I sent.
Douche bag.
One question is fine, but a series of questions just winds up my mind and catapults me into worry about the things that I am not doing while I recuperate. I've had vertigo and vertigo- like symptoms for the last few days and yesterday was the perfect senior ditch day. I stayed in bed almost until noon, went to lunch with the partner and a friend, then to the friend's to lounge by the pool, capping the day off with the perfect senior ditch day massage. The only thing missing was the convertible Ferrari and some ex-cons at the parking garage to harsh my end of day mellow.
Someone noted that these blog entries make my job seem like a fun place to work. This is partly true, and what is also partly true is, if this place suddenly imploded into a whirling vortex to the center of hell, I'd be right there on the sidelines, throwing Molotov cocktails to lube up hell's sphincter.
I spent the morning in my own post Katrina flood of toxic anxiety dreams, all of which aggressively pointed to suicide. I could not lift my head, nor could I tell if I was sleeping on the bed or on the wall. I was spinning counterclockwise like a drunk, and every time I closed my eyes the spinning accelerated. I thought sleep would help, but you know how sleep goes during these times, it is one horror scenario after another, based on all of your own life’s glorious banality. This morning’s terror dreams were based primarily on the whereabouts of the digital camera I thought I had lost.
Each time the phone rang this morning, I was required to answer very specific questions requiring concise technical back story. I felt mired in my own sluggish, stuttering, speechless, stupidity; and I felt angry at the caller for posing any question at all during a time when I just wanted to enjoy my dizzy high. I felt partly like a) a drunken air traffic controller, but more accurately, b) the President at press conferences.
I just knew that it was going to go like this for most of the day so I thrust myself into vertical and livid mode and barked, “fuck it. Just fuck it. I’ll be right over. Just let me tame my hair and I’ll be there in an hour. You keep asking the same question.” I realize now that it’s probably because I wasn’t answering any question.
That person flaccidly disagreed with my resolve, and then asked me when I would be in. Immediately Sam, my favorite co-worker/surgeon, called begging me to stay home.
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured. “I found out yesterday that if I drink a lot of coffee and I take ibuprofen, it dulls the spinning sensation enough that I can drive and talk at the same time.”
“Oh, is that what they taught you in medical school, Doctor 835?” he chided.
“What about your fucking med school, Doctor? You’re the bastard who thinks its okay to cut people open with X-acto knives. My med school is way less riskier than yours.”
“Oh, so you’re going to be cranky, wired and woozy?”
“I think I’ll be fine. It’s technically not a DUI if it’s just vertigo.”
*****
I do love earning, but right now my shit is tired and I don't have the energy to relocate to another place of employment. Let's face it, workplaces are for and by douche bags. It's especially the case when you have men running a ship of mostly men – in other words, most work places. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to update the adage to, “Well you know what they say, it’s a douche bag’s world.” You can argue with me all you want about female douche bags, who do exist, but they don't occur in loud, proud, shock-jock worshipping hoards, as do men.
As I write this, one of the main Douche Bags is on the other side of my screen, douching around over a bowl of mixed nuts.
I'm in the office because some minutiae spanning ten years has to be prepared in such a way that some important person, the hands down, Grand Duke of all Douche Bags, can understand it better. He is the principal reason that this thing has gone on for way too long, and it's my job to make a bulleted list of the events and hold ups caused by the Grand Duke, without making it seem like his Dukiness had anything to do with it. And I have to have it done by yesterday.
Ultimately I'm happy to do it, because it is helpful, but I want everyone reading this to know, I NEED TO BE ADOPTED BY OPRAH. I rarely clean up after myself, but I can TRAIN any housekeeper to do it.
Work can be such bullshit, not because of anything in particular, but because humans – frail, self-seeking, overly complicated, lazy, shit-faced, burned out, shop-a-holic, missing-link humans – no different from myself are at the heart of it. We make work suck. I make work suck. So sitting in the office of the main requestor today, I tried not to be the suck-making one, just answering questions, pointing out key details, etc, but what I really wanted to do was my impression of an air raid siren.
Let me be straight with you. My work is pretty much A-OK. If you told me in college that this is the job I’d have and the life I’d lead, I would have very little complaints. But I’m not in college, and I’m a sucker for more and better and I have serious authority issues that I generally pat on the head and soothe like rabid dogs, with the help of thousands of dollars bulldozed to my therapist’s office. I have not enjoyed work lately, and that’s one of the reasons I started this blog. I needed a way to report to an outside world of innocent understanders, the kookiness that I witness and participate in every day. Some days are better than others, but for the most part, I’m ready for adoption.
*****
I don’t like waking up before dawn for any reason, not even for a vanpool of barely legal teens on ecstasy. I have shown that I do really well in rat-race environments, especially in train stations, escalators, crowded streets, tall buildings, taxis, and other urban crap-o-la that you see in time-lapse movie sequences designed to indicate the unending rhythm of modernity. For today, I’ve had it, but here is the rub – I’m not big on sleeping in cardboard boxes. Here is the other rub, if adopted by Oprah, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Maybe after a few dozen years, I would stop shooting up, and all of my toys that other people have been putting away for me would get boring, and I MIGHT start thinking about giving to the community. I’m not sure.
For now, I keep showing up to the A-OK job that I’ve grown weary of and am now blogging about. And I keep asking myself, is this what it comes down to? I’m drained, therefore I blog?
It took me a few hours to condense all the facts as requested. I had to make several phone calls to people who hadn’t heard from us in years just to get some facts straight. Even though I wanted to nose dive into my keyboard, I was able to prop my head up with a lot of coffee and sheer force of will. Words on my screen and on the pages looked like horses on a carousel, just whooshing past me again and again. But I did it as promised. I sent it to the requestor, a complete, factual, accurate, and concise record of the minutiae. By the time that person left for the day, he hadn’t even looked at what I sent.
Douche bag.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
BIO CUBICLES
BIO CUBICLES
This post is inspired by the idea of our little community that we live in at the office actually being a diverse ecosystem comprising separate habitats that all come together to form the office environment. Recently I have been noticing the range of different cubicles that are just in my particular office. I actually work in a very lax office environment so we can basically do whatever we want in our cubicles. When I first started working here I was given a book to borrow that was all about making your cubicle into your own little paradise. This was kind of a joke because the cubicles in the book ranged from a Tiki bar theme to a hip hop cubicle with a boom box and 20 inch rim. But, there was some truth behind this book. Inside each of us is a different personality and we usually express ourselves in the clothes we wear, cars we drive or don’t drive, and kinds of coffee we drink. So it’s natural to see your personality over the months and years seep into cubicle. Below are some cubicle types that I and Employee 835 have noted in our own environments.
RAT’S NEST
An explanation of what this cubicle represents almost needs no description. Imagine that really spooky house in your neighborhood that has Christmas and Halloween decorations up year round. It seems like nobody is ever home. And when you finally have that sleepover when everyone sneaks out of your parent’s basement you dare each other to go up and peak in the windows of the spooky house. When looking inside you and your coca cola classic strung out friends jaws drop as you see piles and piles and piles of junk. Almost completely covering the window it’s just a sea of maelstrom that you can barely make sense out of. It’s different than a dump because, a dump is supposed to be a dump. This is someone’s house and it has that eerie quality that you just can’t understand how so much paper, trinkets, nick knacks, newspapers, dishes, books, kitchen utensils, yard sale crap, clothes, shoes, and anything else that looks like it was stuck in the bottom of a dumpster found its way into this place. Also noted in this cubicle are live animals usually found and rescued such as a baby opossum from a roadside and a chameleon form a trip to Bolivia.
UBER COOL ART Q’B
A rare cube, Uber Cool Art Q’b primarily contains posters of key, obscure art events past and present, post cards and other invitations to similar events, and posters with foreign words. This is the most boring cube of all, primarily because you can’t really understand the text and images contained within it. You might recognize some aspects of Dwell Magazine, or if you’re lucky, you may have heard of one of the bands, but it’s ultimately way too fucking cool for your own good. It is designed to remind you that you are not in the know, that you may as well stop looking up flavorpill because you are too late to the party. Go back to your sad, unfocused cube.
CBGB BATHROOM
You might be asking yourself, “What did CBGB's bathroom look like?” Let me refresh your memory. Let’s start with the walls, covering almost every square inch are flyers, posters, stickers, phone numbers, post-its, random rants, bits of poetry torn from a book, graffiti, etc. What makes the CBGB BATHROOM so interesting is that while the walls are almost beyond recognition as being a surface that separates you from other rooms and the outdoors the floor is remarkably clean (at least upon first glance) and the space is rather neutral and clear of clutter. The bathroom stall with the door torn off, reminiscent of a cubicle entry way and almost the same size as a cubicle, fascinating, contains no toilet paper like a desk without a tissue box, just a commode and it screams, “You’re here to pee, so pee already, god dam it!” It’s a place to get the job done but, along the way you can take stock at all of the collective consciousness that gets stored on this privy’s walls.
MONK CELL
This cubicle invokes the medieval image of a solitary figure sitting in a dimly lit room hands clasped and staring at a crack in a wall and a beam of light is reaching through and touching their consciousness. But, did you notice the room they’re in? It’s empty. Totally idea for being more in your mind instead of this stupid materialistic world. The monk only needs basic elements when searching for and contemplating the incredible magnitude and infinity which is God. They have a small bed (office chair), a small wooden desk (same), the bible (computer), a window (phone). That’s it, all they need in order to perform their duties.
MY LITTLE PONY BIO-CUBICLE OF HORROR
This cubicle is hands down one of the scariest and perplexing of all cubicle styles. It’s treading on looking at the inside of an insane person’s world a lot like that scene in SE7EN when they find the killers apartment and it’s a creepy, crazy maze containing an unknown secret agenda and world view of the creator. So the MY LITTLE PONY BIO-CUBICLE OF HORROR contains a few elements that can be seen in offices around the world. The first is memos and company announcements all printed on the same colored paper. You might be wondering what this means. Well you know all that junk you have like, department phone lists, birthday lists, procedures for safety in the work place, holiday schedules, and pay schedules. Take all that stuff put it on the walls of your cubicle really nice and neat and every month reprint them on a different uniform color of paper. I’m getting excited because, October is coming up so they’re going to be all Orange! Fun! Speaking of holidays this cubicle is always decorated for all the major holidays: July 4th, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. If you have the pleasure of gaining full access to the cubicle meaning your either a boss or a busy body you will now that one draw of the desk is always stocked with dove chocalate, twix, skittles, and other assorted snacks. Hhhmmm it’s like that fat kids locker in middle school and you just wonder how they can never have enough junk food. Another strange phenomenon with this person is keeping their cubicle always at 98.6 degrees. Why this occurs still puzzles me. The temperature in the office in the summer might be a little chiller because; the AC is kicking and its 107 degrees outside so it could be rather shocking at first. But, instead of putting a sweater on this cubicle comes with its very own personal heater that is placed at foot level and blasts heat all morning. The drone of the fan and the seeping warmness of the cubicle seem to permeate through all the other cubicles creating an almost global warming effect on the entire office environment.
LEARNING ANNEX CUBICLE
Learning Annex cubicle is marked by its own clock as well as a motivational poster of a man crawling and scratcing his way up a cliff, titled ACHIEVEMENT. Fuck you.
This cube is orderly, with charts, binders, and smart seeming bullshit. It is dedicated to personal and career growth as evidenced by the books titled, Managing Fear, Presenting You, Lean Manufacturing, etc. There are guns in this cube, this is clear.
MY WONDERFUL FIANCE CUBICLE
This does not require much explaining. It is the satellite office of BRIDES magazine. Lots of pictures of her with her fiancé in VEGAS, at the Grand Canyon, Scuba Diving, Girls night out, cut outs of roses and inspirational snippets from Oprah Magazine. She is really good at her job, you really like her, and you can count on her, but you avoid this cubicle because it will convert rapidly into Breeder Pride Cubicle.
BREEDER PRIDE CUBICLE
This cubicle is dedicated to the worker’s family and all of the cute shit the family is up to. You must watch your language when you are in this cubicle because all of the precious little children in the photos and drawings will simultaneously scream and cry blood when they hear you. I don’t care what you do in your bedroom, but don’t go around parading it in public, especially in the workplace. If you had it in mind to kidnap a kid for some small ransom, this is the place to start. In less than one minute, you can know how many kids this person has, their birth order, each of their names, as well as their schools, age, grade level, and extracurricular activities. You could easily swing by the school at the end of the day and say, “Carlie! Hey, your dad sent me here to take you and Jeremy to soccer practice because he’ll be working late tonight. He told me to give you this picture that he keeps in his cubicle so you’d trust me enough to jump in my car. Never mind the duct tape and Chloroform. Get in!”
This cubicle is also the source of a great deal of emails containing links to another great, interminable flickr.com photo stream of what happened with the kids over the weekend. Hey look at us! 180 shots later and we’re still picking pumpkins!
FANATI-CUBE
As with the inhabitant of My Wonderful Fiancé Cubicle, the Fanatic requires little explanation, and years of therapy. This cubicle is an altar to all things South Park, Smurfs, NASCAR, Stanley Kubric films, James Dean, Star Trek, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, Tweety Bird, Dolls of the Revolutionary War, ABBA, Snowboarding, Horses, Corelle, Hot Wheels, you name it. If you can google it, there is a Fanati-Cube for it. Its inhabitant may or may not live with the parental unit, and you regularly wonder what kind of partner they have. It’s fun, and depending on the subject, it reminds you of a time when you didn’t obsess about your future, your bills, or your gut. It can be a marvelous escape for about three minutes. Fanati-Cube does not bear any design focus, it’s just a big collection of one kind of crap, and it represents only a small fraction of the inhabitant’s total collection. It’s as impressive as it is retarded. On one hand, you feel impressed by the depth and extent of the person’s addiction, as well as the thousands of dollars of merchandise represented in the cube, including all the special edition crap, complete with signatures; and on the other, you just know that when Armageddon comes, they will have nothing useful to offer you in trade.
LOU GRANT CUBE – also known as Drinking Alone Cube
This cube is dedicated to my friend Anna Haase-Reed. There seems to be a lot of brown in this cube, for no reason. It feels like a rat’s nest, but it possesses a certain order and timelessness. If you look around, you may find a teletype machine or an old car phone. There’s booze in this cube, you just have to know where to look. There’s also a briefcase with locked latches that lives underneath the old mimeograph. It’s not dusty, but you’ve never seen anyone touch it. The old, dirty coffee mug that’s only been rinsed, never washed in its entire service life has a crust thick enough from which to make core samples. You might find data in that sample that goes back to the moon landing, perhaps to JFK’s assassination, or even the Korean War. Lou Grant Cube is the company history preserved, and this cube will definitely go down with the ship. CEOs will come and go, but Lou Grant Cube will always be there, in the same spot, soldiering on, year after year.
MYCUBE
What we have provided is a simplified framework for understanding the bio-cubicle. We know that you are not going to be “boxed-in” so to speak, so we now invite you, if you are so inclined, to send us your own reports of bio-cubicles you have made contact with, as well as your own.
This post is inspired by the idea of our little community that we live in at the office actually being a diverse ecosystem comprising separate habitats that all come together to form the office environment. Recently I have been noticing the range of different cubicles that are just in my particular office. I actually work in a very lax office environment so we can basically do whatever we want in our cubicles. When I first started working here I was given a book to borrow that was all about making your cubicle into your own little paradise. This was kind of a joke because the cubicles in the book ranged from a Tiki bar theme to a hip hop cubicle with a boom box and 20 inch rim. But, there was some truth behind this book. Inside each of us is a different personality and we usually express ourselves in the clothes we wear, cars we drive or don’t drive, and kinds of coffee we drink. So it’s natural to see your personality over the months and years seep into cubicle. Below are some cubicle types that I and Employee 835 have noted in our own environments.
RAT’S NEST
An explanation of what this cubicle represents almost needs no description. Imagine that really spooky house in your neighborhood that has Christmas and Halloween decorations up year round. It seems like nobody is ever home. And when you finally have that sleepover when everyone sneaks out of your parent’s basement you dare each other to go up and peak in the windows of the spooky house. When looking inside you and your coca cola classic strung out friends jaws drop as you see piles and piles and piles of junk. Almost completely covering the window it’s just a sea of maelstrom that you can barely make sense out of. It’s different than a dump because, a dump is supposed to be a dump. This is someone’s house and it has that eerie quality that you just can’t understand how so much paper, trinkets, nick knacks, newspapers, dishes, books, kitchen utensils, yard sale crap, clothes, shoes, and anything else that looks like it was stuck in the bottom of a dumpster found its way into this place. Also noted in this cubicle are live animals usually found and rescued such as a baby opossum from a roadside and a chameleon form a trip to Bolivia.
UBER COOL ART Q’B
A rare cube, Uber Cool Art Q’b primarily contains posters of key, obscure art events past and present, post cards and other invitations to similar events, and posters with foreign words. This is the most boring cube of all, primarily because you can’t really understand the text and images contained within it. You might recognize some aspects of Dwell Magazine, or if you’re lucky, you may have heard of one of the bands, but it’s ultimately way too fucking cool for your own good. It is designed to remind you that you are not in the know, that you may as well stop looking up flavorpill because you are too late to the party. Go back to your sad, unfocused cube.
You might be asking yourself, “What did CBGB's bathroom look like?” Let me refresh your memory. Let’s start with the walls, covering almost every square inch are flyers, posters, stickers, phone numbers, post-its, random rants, bits of poetry torn from a book, graffiti, etc. What makes the CBGB BATHROOM so interesting is that while the walls are almost beyond recognition as being a surface that separates you from other rooms and the outdoors the floor is remarkably clean (at least upon first glance) and the space is rather neutral and clear of clutter. The bathroom stall with the door torn off, reminiscent of a cubicle entry way and almost the same size as a cubicle, fascinating, contains no toilet paper like a desk without a tissue box, just a commode and it screams, “You’re here to pee, so pee already, god dam it!” It’s a place to get the job done but, along the way you can take stock at all of the collective consciousness that gets stored on this privy’s walls.
MONK CELL
This cubicle invokes the medieval image of a solitary figure sitting in a dimly lit room hands clasped and staring at a crack in a wall and a beam of light is reaching through and touching their consciousness. But, did you notice the room they’re in? It’s empty. Totally idea for being more in your mind instead of this stupid materialistic world. The monk only needs basic elements when searching for and contemplating the incredible magnitude and infinity which is God. They have a small bed (office chair), a small wooden desk (same), the bible (computer), a window (phone). That’s it, all they need in order to perform their duties.
MY LITTLE PONY BIO-CUBICLE OF HORROR
This cubicle is hands down one of the scariest and perplexing of all cubicle styles. It’s treading on looking at the inside of an insane person’s world a lot like that scene in SE7EN when they find the killers apartment and it’s a creepy, crazy maze containing an unknown secret agenda and world view of the creator. So the MY LITTLE PONY BIO-CUBICLE OF HORROR contains a few elements that can be seen in offices around the world. The first is memos and company announcements all printed on the same colored paper. You might be wondering what this means. Well you know all that junk you have like, department phone lists, birthday lists, procedures for safety in the work place, holiday schedules, and pay schedules. Take all that stuff put it on the walls of your cubicle really nice and neat and every month reprint them on a different uniform color of paper. I’m getting excited because, October is coming up so they’re going to be all Orange! Fun! Speaking of holidays this cubicle is always decorated for all the major holidays: July 4th, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. If you have the pleasure of gaining full access to the cubicle meaning your either a boss or a busy body you will now that one draw of the desk is always stocked with dove chocalate, twix, skittles, and other assorted snacks. Hhhmmm it’s like that fat kids locker in middle school and you just wonder how they can never have enough junk food. Another strange phenomenon with this person is keeping their cubicle always at 98.6 degrees. Why this occurs still puzzles me. The temperature in the office in the summer might be a little chiller because; the AC is kicking and its 107 degrees outside so it could be rather shocking at first. But, instead of putting a sweater on this cubicle comes with its very own personal heater that is placed at foot level and blasts heat all morning. The drone of the fan and the seeping warmness of the cubicle seem to permeate through all the other cubicles creating an almost global warming effect on the entire office environment.
LEARNING ANNEX CUBICLE
Learning Annex cubicle is marked by its own clock as well as a motivational poster of a man crawling and scratcing his way up a cliff, titled ACHIEVEMENT. Fuck you.
This cube is orderly, with charts, binders, and smart seeming bullshit. It is dedicated to personal and career growth as evidenced by the books titled, Managing Fear, Presenting You, Lean Manufacturing, etc. There are guns in this cube, this is clear.
MY WONDERFUL FIANCE CUBICLE
This does not require much explaining. It is the satellite office of BRIDES magazine. Lots of pictures of her with her fiancé in VEGAS, at the Grand Canyon, Scuba Diving, Girls night out, cut outs of roses and inspirational snippets from Oprah Magazine. She is really good at her job, you really like her, and you can count on her, but you avoid this cubicle because it will convert rapidly into Breeder Pride Cubicle.
BREEDER PRIDE CUBICLE
This cubicle is dedicated to the worker’s family and all of the cute shit the family is up to. You must watch your language when you are in this cubicle because all of the precious little children in the photos and drawings will simultaneously scream and cry blood when they hear you. I don’t care what you do in your bedroom, but don’t go around parading it in public, especially in the workplace. If you had it in mind to kidnap a kid for some small ransom, this is the place to start. In less than one minute, you can know how many kids this person has, their birth order, each of their names, as well as their schools, age, grade level, and extracurricular activities. You could easily swing by the school at the end of the day and say, “Carlie! Hey, your dad sent me here to take you and Jeremy to soccer practice because he’ll be working late tonight. He told me to give you this picture that he keeps in his cubicle so you’d trust me enough to jump in my car. Never mind the duct tape and Chloroform. Get in!”
This cubicle is also the source of a great deal of emails containing links to another great, interminable flickr.com photo stream of what happened with the kids over the weekend. Hey look at us! 180 shots later and we’re still picking pumpkins!
FANATI-CUBE
As with the inhabitant of My Wonderful Fiancé Cubicle, the Fanatic requires little explanation, and years of therapy. This cubicle is an altar to all things South Park, Smurfs, NASCAR, Stanley Kubric films, James Dean, Star Trek, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, Tweety Bird, Dolls of the Revolutionary War, ABBA, Snowboarding, Horses, Corelle, Hot Wheels, you name it. If you can google it, there is a Fanati-Cube for it. Its inhabitant may or may not live with the parental unit, and you regularly wonder what kind of partner they have. It’s fun, and depending on the subject, it reminds you of a time when you didn’t obsess about your future, your bills, or your gut. It can be a marvelous escape for about three minutes. Fanati-Cube does not bear any design focus, it’s just a big collection of one kind of crap, and it represents only a small fraction of the inhabitant’s total collection. It’s as impressive as it is retarded. On one hand, you feel impressed by the depth and extent of the person’s addiction, as well as the thousands of dollars of merchandise represented in the cube, including all the special edition crap, complete with signatures; and on the other, you just know that when Armageddon comes, they will have nothing useful to offer you in trade.
LOU GRANT CUBE – also known as Drinking Alone Cube
This cube is dedicated to my friend Anna Haase-Reed. There seems to be a lot of brown in this cube, for no reason. It feels like a rat’s nest, but it possesses a certain order and timelessness. If you look around, you may find a teletype machine or an old car phone. There’s booze in this cube, you just have to know where to look. There’s also a briefcase with locked latches that lives underneath the old mimeograph. It’s not dusty, but you’ve never seen anyone touch it. The old, dirty coffee mug that’s only been rinsed, never washed in its entire service life has a crust thick enough from which to make core samples. You might find data in that sample that goes back to the moon landing, perhaps to JFK’s assassination, or even the Korean War. Lou Grant Cube is the company history preserved, and this cube will definitely go down with the ship. CEOs will come and go, but Lou Grant Cube will always be there, in the same spot, soldiering on, year after year.
MYCUBE
What we have provided is a simplified framework for understanding the bio-cubicle. We know that you are not going to be “boxed-in” so to speak, so we now invite you, if you are so inclined, to send us your own reports of bio-cubicles you have made contact with, as well as your own.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Gasping, Dying, but Somehow Still Alive
It’s the end of the day super stretch and I should just throw in the towel. I’ve been cruising on coffee and a positive attitude all day, clenching my jaw as in my rave days, but without the ecstacy or the Dr. Seuss hat, under which I would have snuck my water bottles. Time to slump over the steering wheel of my car.
I have been as efficient and as engaged as I could possibly be considering my three hours of sleep. News of the day: Someone just reported that the Target in my neighborhood has sold out of fans. Just a note, it’s been going hot like this for a while, so why do we wait so long and then all panic at the same time, as if the nukes are headed straight for our heat-softened glutes? I just know that somewhere in the southland, a news crew is reporting on a run of fans at the Santa Fe Springs Wal-Mart, complete with B-roll footage of business men in fountains, dogs and kids shaking their tails at the beach, and crowds stewing and marinating in piss-filled public pools.
Carrie earlier started a discussion about the size and age of the universe, which ultimately led Dawn and I toward contemplating suicide.
“After a while, when you consider how big the whole thing is, you begin to realize that nothing we do matters. Why have cereal for breakfast when you’re just going to be dead and forgotten anyway?” reflected Carrie.
“Yeah, it’s like the existential guys had it right all along, and even the Nihilists. Man. Why am I even here? Are we here?” piggy-backed Dawn.
And the answer is no, no one passed out brownies earlier. It’s the heat. When you are already sweating and it’s only dawn, by lunch you are just begging for a tractor-trailer load of Grim Reaper guys to slay you where you stand.
I’m not yet ready to die. I have a night picnic to attend. Just me and my man, provided I don’t spontaneously combust.
I have been as efficient and as engaged as I could possibly be considering my three hours of sleep. News of the day: Someone just reported that the Target in my neighborhood has sold out of fans. Just a note, it’s been going hot like this for a while, so why do we wait so long and then all panic at the same time, as if the nukes are headed straight for our heat-softened glutes? I just know that somewhere in the southland, a news crew is reporting on a run of fans at the Santa Fe Springs Wal-Mart, complete with B-roll footage of business men in fountains, dogs and kids shaking their tails at the beach, and crowds stewing and marinating in piss-filled public pools.
Carrie earlier started a discussion about the size and age of the universe, which ultimately led Dawn and I toward contemplating suicide.
“After a while, when you consider how big the whole thing is, you begin to realize that nothing we do matters. Why have cereal for breakfast when you’re just going to be dead and forgotten anyway?” reflected Carrie.
“Yeah, it’s like the existential guys had it right all along, and even the Nihilists. Man. Why am I even here? Are we here?” piggy-backed Dawn.
And the answer is no, no one passed out brownies earlier. It’s the heat. When you are already sweating and it’s only dawn, by lunch you are just begging for a tractor-trailer load of Grim Reaper guys to slay you where you stand.
I’m not yet ready to die. I have a night picnic to attend. Just me and my man, provided I don’t spontaneously combust.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Hot Hot Hot
Fuck the daytime, LA Summers can only be done at night, and best if you don’t have to work at all.
I have to work tomorrow which means that just as this day is finally becoming perfect, I now have to battle the supercharged wrestling midget inside of me who just loves to stay out late, and this midget will go with or without the mask. It’s a shame really.
All in all, I had one of the better summers on record, and this was the perfect summer weekend. Kept it indoors in the daytime, rolled out the intrigue and uber-socializing at night, way late at night, eating well the whole time. This is what summers in this town are for.
Today, on the last day of the long weekend, I, along with my boyfriend and my closest friend laid low for most of the day, trying not to make too many unnecessary movements, but we waited too long to act, so by the time two of the three of us were sufficiently overheated, our trip to the Beverly Center didn’t provide the cooling relief that we sought. I do some of my worst thinking in the heat.
On Labor Day, every Monday thru Friday working fucker has the same bright idea as you, particularly if you live here. You have only a few choices, the ocean, the mall, or the movies, and there is no escaping traffic. We tried to languish in the one bedroom with AC, but it was pointless as well as awkward, so at near 6pm, not wanting to face holiday beach traffic, nor see another movie, we opted for the mall, where it was proven once again that we are just lemmings. LEMMINGS. We do as the rest, hoping that our own nose-dive will somehow turn out differently.
The parking garage was a cluster fuck, you couldn’t get onto an elevator, and it was warm inside. Shops were beginning to close, save for Bloomingdale’s so we tried on jeans, but everyone knows that jean shopping is more depressing than getting bad news from your mechanic. It is nature’s AND society’s way of reminding you that you are uglier than you thought. Your derriere is bizarre, your thighs are a pair of baby manatees. Forget about pocket placement, that won't help your sad, hopeless ass, you should bank your hard earned $200 and get thee to the nearest euthanasia center. This and similar thoughts raced through my mind. My companions, if they were similarly struck, did not seem to show it.
After jeans, we gorged ourselves at the food court. No big deal. We had a healthy lunch at Urth Café earlier.
Getting out was misery. The cars generated more heat from blasting AC, all beaded together in string clusters, clogging and penetrating the exits, making the trek to our car feel like a stroll through Hell’s softer side. It just sucked.
Now it’s night and I’m looking to party, but I’m your standard issue M thru F sonofabitch, which means that I have to find a way to stay cool enough to get sleep for the shortened work week. I have to try not to think about budgets, the gigantic slabs that may have fallen through the cracks, the emails awaiting me with fangs and venom, the phone calls I have to make. I can forget about sleep, I'm already in the future. This day is a bullshit, anti-climactic end to one of the best summers ever. I say it every year, Fuck Labor Day.
I have to work tomorrow which means that just as this day is finally becoming perfect, I now have to battle the supercharged wrestling midget inside of me who just loves to stay out late, and this midget will go with or without the mask. It’s a shame really.
All in all, I had one of the better summers on record, and this was the perfect summer weekend. Kept it indoors in the daytime, rolled out the intrigue and uber-socializing at night, way late at night, eating well the whole time. This is what summers in this town are for.
Today, on the last day of the long weekend, I, along with my boyfriend and my closest friend laid low for most of the day, trying not to make too many unnecessary movements, but we waited too long to act, so by the time two of the three of us were sufficiently overheated, our trip to the Beverly Center didn’t provide the cooling relief that we sought. I do some of my worst thinking in the heat.
On Labor Day, every Monday thru Friday working fucker has the same bright idea as you, particularly if you live here. You have only a few choices, the ocean, the mall, or the movies, and there is no escaping traffic. We tried to languish in the one bedroom with AC, but it was pointless as well as awkward, so at near 6pm, not wanting to face holiday beach traffic, nor see another movie, we opted for the mall, where it was proven once again that we are just lemmings. LEMMINGS. We do as the rest, hoping that our own nose-dive will somehow turn out differently.
The parking garage was a cluster fuck, you couldn’t get onto an elevator, and it was warm inside. Shops were beginning to close, save for Bloomingdale’s so we tried on jeans, but everyone knows that jean shopping is more depressing than getting bad news from your mechanic. It is nature’s AND society’s way of reminding you that you are uglier than you thought. Your derriere is bizarre, your thighs are a pair of baby manatees. Forget about pocket placement, that won't help your sad, hopeless ass, you should bank your hard earned $200 and get thee to the nearest euthanasia center. This and similar thoughts raced through my mind. My companions, if they were similarly struck, did not seem to show it.
After jeans, we gorged ourselves at the food court. No big deal. We had a healthy lunch at Urth Café earlier.
Getting out was misery. The cars generated more heat from blasting AC, all beaded together in string clusters, clogging and penetrating the exits, making the trek to our car feel like a stroll through Hell’s softer side. It just sucked.
Now it’s night and I’m looking to party, but I’m your standard issue M thru F sonofabitch, which means that I have to find a way to stay cool enough to get sleep for the shortened work week. I have to try not to think about budgets, the gigantic slabs that may have fallen through the cracks, the emails awaiting me with fangs and venom, the phone calls I have to make. I can forget about sleep, I'm already in the future. This day is a bullshit, anti-climactic end to one of the best summers ever. I say it every year, Fuck Labor Day.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Spare Us the Cutter, Part 2
Continued from Part 1
Sam is among the clearest thinking individuals I know so I found myself teetering on the edge of disbelief that I was actually rounding up X-acto blades, rubbing alcohol, and a sense of trust in the god that makes fingers stay on hands.
I’ve seen this before - people wrongly putting their fate in someone they trust, just because they trust them with things like secrets, or sewing buttons on blouses, when it’s clear they should not trust that person because that person is no more trustworthy than the shysters on the street who tackle you into buying home theater speakers from a van. I’m thinking in particular of the many sorry ass brides whose codependent loyalty, whose hopes for the impossible, allowed them to agree with their trusted aunts, who eagerly volunteered to make their dress, knowing full well that they would look like a side of beef wrapped in a mound of lace doilies.
This little skirt steak was about to be flayed open by his coworker, better known for his ability to keep commitments and secrets, his math skills, and depth of Star Wars trivia, not for simple out patient procedures.
Sam scrubbed the blade and the handle with a menacing vigor. We agreed that the shop latex gloves would be too dirty to begin with, so he was going to bare-hand this one. Dawn offered me a wallet to bite on. He positioned my hand on a stack of paper towels. “This is going to bleed, we don’t want it on your desk or your keyboard.” And he began to slice my skin.
I am so glad for pain receptors. All the little lambs in the slaugterhouse screeched at full velocity down Agent Starling's throat before anymore blood could be drawn.
“FUCK YOU! What the hell am I thinking letting you do that?” I grabbed my hand back. “Holy fucking shit. I’m driving to the hospital. This is not the dark ages, they are right up the street.”
He looked at me as if I had just tortured and killed Christmas.
I was happy to be far from Sam, and happy to have regained my late-showing common sense, but I quickly came to understand at the urgent care unit why I even allowed Sam a chance. He had the right spirit, just not the right tools. The place felt like a way station for tortured souls. Names were called every five years, the beings associated with those names groaned and shuffled to the little portal that beckoned them. Wailing, crying, and pleading provided the accompanying din. It was about as clean, efficient, and confidence inspiring as the DMV.
After sucking the marrow of my magazine’s bone, I heard my own name and raced to the portal. They weighed me, looked at me, looked at my hand, took X-rays, and gave me a tetanus shot in the left arm.
Doctor One was given the wrong tools, but tried to make it work anyway since she knew that it would be almost impossible to find what she actually needed. Although it was fruitless from the beginning, the lidocaine allowed me to play along and continue rereading my magazine so I wouldn’t have to watch her personal version of The Old Man and the Sea.
After 45 minutes of repeated lidocaine injections and a great deal of frustration, Doctor Two was summoned. She wore yellow crocks. Unorthodox.
The two of them worked together, Doctor One held the skin open, while the un-gloved Doctor Two, poked, jabbed, dug, and picked at the lead. They left the room often, returning with a different tool, but never the right one. At one point, I asked them if I could just be allowed to live with the lead particle and just trust that my body would eject it, and even though they agreed that sure, it would work its way out eventually, I could see that they weren’t going to let this one go.
We all get the look. The I’m-going-to-get-you-you-little-bastard look. And we pick at that little ingrown hair, that loose wire, that tick, whatever your little bastard is. We love the challenge of getting that little bastard and we each make our own special face. Sam had this look, and they had Sam’s look too, only they had the advantage of lidocaine but nothing more. Dr. Two, the one in charge now, worked barehanded, using only a scalpel blade, because someone had stolen all the handles. They also used paper towels, and were equally baffled by this seemingly simple procedure.
I was getting bored. I read every printed word in my Automobile Magazine, even the ads for male enhancement pills. I didn't want to look at what they were doing, but it just seemed wrong, and I actually wished so badly that I had brought Sam's sketch with me to illustrate the better approach. Finally, when I could no longer take it, and after a great deal of struggling while sporting the look, they whittled the particle down to a cracked pepper and worked it out. They high-fived each other with their eyes. It took two hours. Someone else dressed the wound, and shot me in the left butt cheek with something else. I limped to the front desk and I filled out paperwork.
I was so eager to get out of there, that I didn’t notice how spacey I was, nor did I realize I could not move my left arm. My pinky didn’t hurt nearly as much as my entire left side. I don’t regret going, but I regret the shots. I couldn’t think straight when I returned, and now, days later, my butt and arm remain sore. They just love to give shots at hospitals.
So here I am, still not at full range of motion in my left arm, and Sam still believes that this all could have been done here at my desk. I see that he is proud of his part and disappointed in me for wussing out. Once you get the look, you need to satisfy the look. So I think for his upcoming birthday, I’m going to get him a sterile scalpel with a handle, a really nice pair of tweezers, some lidocaine from Tijuana, and I’m going to slide sideways on an old wooden bench.
Sam is among the clearest thinking individuals I know so I found myself teetering on the edge of disbelief that I was actually rounding up X-acto blades, rubbing alcohol, and a sense of trust in the god that makes fingers stay on hands.
I’ve seen this before - people wrongly putting their fate in someone they trust, just because they trust them with things like secrets, or sewing buttons on blouses, when it’s clear they should not trust that person because that person is no more trustworthy than the shysters on the street who tackle you into buying home theater speakers from a van. I’m thinking in particular of the many sorry ass brides whose codependent loyalty, whose hopes for the impossible, allowed them to agree with their trusted aunts, who eagerly volunteered to make their dress, knowing full well that they would look like a side of beef wrapped in a mound of lace doilies.
This little skirt steak was about to be flayed open by his coworker, better known for his ability to keep commitments and secrets, his math skills, and depth of Star Wars trivia, not for simple out patient procedures.
Sam scrubbed the blade and the handle with a menacing vigor. We agreed that the shop latex gloves would be too dirty to begin with, so he was going to bare-hand this one. Dawn offered me a wallet to bite on. He positioned my hand on a stack of paper towels. “This is going to bleed, we don’t want it on your desk or your keyboard.” And he began to slice my skin.
I am so glad for pain receptors. All the little lambs in the slaugterhouse screeched at full velocity down Agent Starling's throat before anymore blood could be drawn.
“FUCK YOU! What the hell am I thinking letting you do that?” I grabbed my hand back. “Holy fucking shit. I’m driving to the hospital. This is not the dark ages, they are right up the street.”
He looked at me as if I had just tortured and killed Christmas.
I was happy to be far from Sam, and happy to have regained my late-showing common sense, but I quickly came to understand at the urgent care unit why I even allowed Sam a chance. He had the right spirit, just not the right tools. The place felt like a way station for tortured souls. Names were called every five years, the beings associated with those names groaned and shuffled to the little portal that beckoned them. Wailing, crying, and pleading provided the accompanying din. It was about as clean, efficient, and confidence inspiring as the DMV.
After sucking the marrow of my magazine’s bone, I heard my own name and raced to the portal. They weighed me, looked at me, looked at my hand, took X-rays, and gave me a tetanus shot in the left arm.
Doctor One was given the wrong tools, but tried to make it work anyway since she knew that it would be almost impossible to find what she actually needed. Although it was fruitless from the beginning, the lidocaine allowed me to play along and continue rereading my magazine so I wouldn’t have to watch her personal version of The Old Man and the Sea.
After 45 minutes of repeated lidocaine injections and a great deal of frustration, Doctor Two was summoned. She wore yellow crocks. Unorthodox.
The two of them worked together, Doctor One held the skin open, while the un-gloved Doctor Two, poked, jabbed, dug, and picked at the lead. They left the room often, returning with a different tool, but never the right one. At one point, I asked them if I could just be allowed to live with the lead particle and just trust that my body would eject it, and even though they agreed that sure, it would work its way out eventually, I could see that they weren’t going to let this one go.
We all get the look. The I’m-going-to-get-you-you-little-bastard look. And we pick at that little ingrown hair, that loose wire, that tick, whatever your little bastard is. We love the challenge of getting that little bastard and we each make our own special face. Sam had this look, and they had Sam’s look too, only they had the advantage of lidocaine but nothing more. Dr. Two, the one in charge now, worked barehanded, using only a scalpel blade, because someone had stolen all the handles. They also used paper towels, and were equally baffled by this seemingly simple procedure.
I was getting bored. I read every printed word in my Automobile Magazine, even the ads for male enhancement pills. I didn't want to look at what they were doing, but it just seemed wrong, and I actually wished so badly that I had brought Sam's sketch with me to illustrate the better approach. Finally, when I could no longer take it, and after a great deal of struggling while sporting the look, they whittled the particle down to a cracked pepper and worked it out. They high-fived each other with their eyes. It took two hours. Someone else dressed the wound, and shot me in the left butt cheek with something else. I limped to the front desk and I filled out paperwork.
I was so eager to get out of there, that I didn’t notice how spacey I was, nor did I realize I could not move my left arm. My pinky didn’t hurt nearly as much as my entire left side. I don’t regret going, but I regret the shots. I couldn’t think straight when I returned, and now, days later, my butt and arm remain sore. They just love to give shots at hospitals.
So here I am, still not at full range of motion in my left arm, and Sam still believes that this all could have been done here at my desk. I see that he is proud of his part and disappointed in me for wussing out. Once you get the look, you need to satisfy the look. So I think for his upcoming birthday, I’m going to get him a sterile scalpel with a handle, a really nice pair of tweezers, some lidocaine from Tijuana, and I’m going to slide sideways on an old wooden bench.
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