One for the Coughers

A friend at work has a cold and the other day she coughed but it sounded sort of like a sneeze. I said "I'm not sure if that was a sneeze or a cough so I'll give you a 'bless you' just in case."

It got me to thinking, why do we say 'God bless you' when someone sneezes but if they cough we're more like "Will you please shut your pie hole, I'm trying to work." If the coughing continues throughout the day it accelerates to "I swear to God if you give me your cold I am going to lose my mind."

As soon as you sneeze, "Bless you."

Cough again, “Will you just go home!”

Sneeze. “God bless you.”

Cough cough cough. “I can’t take this. I’m working in the conference room.”

Achoo! “Gesundheit.”

Cough! “I don’t hate you, but I will kill you.”

I think we need a blessing for the coughers in our offices other than “shut up”. Something that says “I’m sorry you’re a germ-infested bowl of bacteria and I hope you feel better.”

How about we combine ‘bless you’ and ‘gesundheit’?

Blessundheitges!
Blegesssheitund!
Bless your undheit!
You gesund!

Ok, I’m still working on it, but I think it’s a good idea. The one exception? If you have a wet, phlegmy cough, you’re on your own. Get out and go home before you make us all puke. I mean it. No ‘GesBlessUnd’ for you.

The Wonder Woman Protection Agency

This picture sits on a shelf above my desk at work. It's Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman from the 70s. I have a male friend/co-worker the same age as me and one day we were discussing TV shows we used to watch as kids. We both agreed that we didn't watch Wonder Woman because of any interest in the comic book character but because Lynda Carter is, well, Lynda Carter, and she looked like this and we were 12 and you get the point. I got my picture from a female friend who made them up for all the men in department at the time as a "Fun Friday" gift.

The photo has been sitting on my desk for about 3 years now, although I don't notice it very often anymore. Sure, I might lean back to stretch and it enters my line of sight, those long legs speaking to me in a way . . . hmmm . . . I'm sorry, what was I saying?

Yes, I look at the picture occasionally but not every day. Usually it's someone who has never been at my desk before who sees it and with a quizzical expression asks "So, what's up with the picture of Wonder Woman?" My shelf is filled with little tchotchkes of my favorite sports teams or there's my pen shaped like a rocket or my plastic steam train engine I got at a yard sale for 25 cents.

They all sit on my shelf, a part of my personality, creating a comfortable pocket for me to exist in while at work. Even though I don't look at all of them every day they instill in me a sense of home. I am one of those people who like to be surrounded by my stuff. There is no minimalism when it comes to the areas I exist in every day. My walls at home are covered with photos of family and friends, paintings, posters, banners, anything that can be hung up and displayed. At work I have photos from vacations, pictures of co-workers when we were doing something silly rather than working. Oh, and a picture of the cast of The Loveboat. That's a story for another time.

I admit when I see someone's work area that is devoid of any pictures or memorabilia, that is simply a box for work, I view it as a prison. If it works for that person that's great but I can't make it through the day in a cold, antiseptic cubicle. If I have to be confined to a desk surrounded by three walls I need my Woodstock figurine, shells from the beach, and my sign proclaiming me a fan of the New York Jets so people can feel sad for me.

Wonder Woman watches over all of my things, a protector as well as a boyhood crush. If I could get her to ride the plastic toy tiger I'd have a Frank Frezetta painting come to life.

Under Pressure

The stress ball had a smiley face painted on it. While I worked it stared down at me from a shelf. I didn’t even remember it was there until I would reach up for a pen or lean back in my chair to stretch and catch a glimpse of the wide, grinning mouth. It was a benign presence in my life until the morning it started talking to me:

I cut off a guy’s foot once with the wheels of a rickshaw when I lived in Hong Kong.

Have you ever eaten Ritz crackers with dried squid on top? It’s not good but can come in handy when you need quick appetizers for a party.

I’ve never been kayaking. Always wanted to.

Dollar to donuts is a strange expression. All things being equal I’d rather have a bagel and buffalo head nickel.

This world will bleed from its eyes when the acid rain of the gods falls from the sky to burn away the unrighteous and the feral and if you don’t want to be one of the unholy undead then bow down before me in unrepentant supplication

Uh . . . what? I’ll admit when the ball first spoke to me it was a little weird, but since it wasn’t saying anything important, I learned to live with it. One day it recited a great recipe for chicken and sautéed mushrooms in a white wine reduction. Another day it did a complete play-by-play of the previous night’s Phillies game. I tuned it in when I wanted to and out when I needed to. And then it said this one afternoon:

You will be judged not by gods or demons, myths or facts, illusions or reality, but by the lightning strikes that scar the earth

Yeaaaahhh. When I looked at the ball it stared back at me with the same expression it always had. I picked it up, threw it against the wall and the smile stayed. As an experiment I put it away in a drawer but I could still hear it.

Falafel is a funny word. Falafel falafel falafel falafel falafel falafel falafel

I was parasailing once in Cabo and the rope broke. I floated away, smashed into a building and broke like six bones. I spent a year in the hospital, and then sued Jungle Jim’s Ocean o’ Thrills for a nice settlement. Blew the money on Turtlewax, leather shoes and a hooker named Patti. True story.

Is there anything better than reruns of T.J. Hooker? I think not.

The reign of man endeth when the alpha and omega become one to rule this planet with a bloodbath of the unsound, a symphony of wails for the children of dirt and a self-righteous uncoupling of the serpent and the priestess

I was baffled at this point. There were less and less knock-knock jokes and more apocalyptic warnings. But when I looked out my window the Sun was still shining, the Earth was still turning and the rabbits were still eating my portulaca from the garden. I decided to talk back to the ball . . . which turned out to be a mistake as well.

Me: Soooo . . . what’s with all the threats lately?

Stress Ball: Oh, now you want to talk? I’ve only been trying to hold a conversation with you for almost a year.

Me: Well . . .

Stress Ball: I knew you could hear me. You think I didn’t see the looks or hear the laughs when I told a Bruce Jenner joke?

Me: Look . . .

Stress Ball: I know my mile-wide smile is creepy. Yeah, my purpose is for you to squeeze me as hard as you can to relieve your stress, but what about mine? Compressing my foam like that is dangerous. The doctors tell me I may have internal damage but I can’t do anything about it because I don’t have insurance. Obamacare doesn’t cover rubber balls. The inanimate object lobby in Washington isn’t a strong one, it’s hard to get a senator on your side when you try and talk with him but he thinks he’s hearing voices from all the cocaine he’s been smoking and the girl who’s with him doesn’t want to get involved because she’s married to a foreign diplomat and could be deported. The other girl, the one hiding in the bathroom, she’s so paranoid she thinks the voice she hears is coming from her own belly button and she sticks her finger in there to shut it up. She screams in pain which makes the first girl scream and now the senator is naked with pillows over his ears yelling “turn it off, turn it off” right before he leaps into the door and knocks himself out cold. The married girl grabs the rest of the coke and tries to leave only to find her husband at the door berating her in Portuguese and it’s now that the other girl runs from the bathroom with a bloody finger, crying about the millipedes crawling from her navel. Cut to the senator’s body guard who’s been getting oral sex from the front desk clerk and just now realizes things have gone very wrong . . .

I threw the ball out into the street and watched a dog come by and take it. I feel a lot less stress already.

One of Them

It was rainy that day. Cold drizzle fell from an indifferent sky onto sour faces attached to sagging shoulders. I walked through the parking lot to the door to my office building already dreaming about my mid-morning break. The thought of an over-sweet snack from the vending machine was still dancing a jig in my skull when I entered the lobby and was greeted by the first clown. He was my height but with his baggy suit was twice as wide. His meaty hands deftly tied off a balloon animal and handed it to me.

“Uh . . . thanks . . . for the dog,” I stammered.

“It’s not a dog silly. It’s a capybara.”

“A what?”

“The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, it’s indigenous to the Amazon rain forest.”

“Ok. Well, thank you.” I started to walk away and then turned back but he was gone. I looked down at the balloon in my hand and it exploded into a mist of confetti.

“What the hell?” I mumbled, shaking my head. Only on a Tuesday I thought.

I walked down a corridor toward my desk, sneaking glances into cubicles along the way. In each, instead of my usual co-workers, I found a clown. Some were tall, others were squat. Some had red hair, others green or blue. Red ball noses bulged from the middle of their faces as they sat in $700 office chairs making balloon animals and beeping annoying horns.

The trip to my corner of cube farm hell left me shaken. Where were all of my fellow office drones pouring bitter coffee into their bodies to jumpstart another day of blankly staring at a computer screen? Why were there clowns everywhere? And why did my capybara explode? I had a place on my shelf all picked out for it.

I dropped into my seat. A tall, thick clown with multi-colored hair appeared at my shoulder.

“Hey there! Do you have your project report completed?” he said in a shrill sing-song voice. Then he tooted his horn twice with a belly laugh that shook the wall of my cubicle. I saw he had a name tag over his heart. Scrawled in black Sharpie was “Mr. Flippo, manager”.

“Uh,” I started, both fearful and confused. “I have . . . a little more work to do on it.”

“Get it done mister!” Toot! Toot! Then he walked away, his over-sized shows knocking down a plant in the corner.

At 10:15 balloons dropped from the ceiling while calliope music blared over the loudspeaker throughout the building.

Noon brought the “parade of clowns” through the office where I was given the nickname “Frowny” and a balloon gazelle to replace my lost capybara.

I tried to work but the infernal horn tooting and singing “Happy Birthday” to everyone who called on the phone were driving me mad. The break room was chaos with battling games of pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs. I went to the men’s room to find make-up smeared paper towels lying everywhere. When I got back to my desk someone had left a red rubber nose on my computer keyboard. As the afternoon wore on I felt eyes upon me. They were trying to draw me in, to make me one of them. Usually I stayed late to catch up on emails I hadn’t had time to answer but on this night I actually snuck out early with one last horn blast from Mr. Flippo.

I walked briskly to my car needing to be away from work as quickly as possible. The indoctrination, however, wasn’t over. My Honda CR-V had been painted a miasma of psychedelic colors. There was a squirting flower stuck to the top of the antenna and an over-sized bow tie attached to the car’s grill. I pulled a note from under the windshield wipers. It told me I was driving car pool tomorrow morning and included a list of 27 co-workers I needed to pick up on the way.

I got into my car, banging the steering wheel in frustration. When I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror I cried out. My face was covered in white make-up.

I’m becoming one of them.

16 Tons

8:30 a.m.

I arrive at work with heady enthusiasm ready to take on another day. Carpe diem.

8:31 a.m.

I’m bored.

8:33 a.m.

The soul-crushing thought of another 8 hours trapped in the cubicle farm has sapped my will to live.

8:39 a.m.

I have turned my computer on, hoping the light from the monitor will brighten my mood and allow me to go on.

8:43 a.m.

Our morning meeting has begun. My mind is wandering to my days as tugboat captain in New York harbor: Me and Tony “The Big Toe” Canoli pulling the cargo freighters into port during the day and prowling the streets at night for an underground tetherball club. We had . . . wait, did someone just ask me a question? Shit, I have to answer . . .

“Yeah, I took care of that yesterday.”

Wow, that was close. I have to pay more attention in these meetings. Hmm. Everyone else is back at their desks. The meeting must have ended.

9:50 a.m.

I have a request open in front of me, but instead of working it I’m staring out the window. There’s something in the middle of the alley that I can’t make out. What is that? I stand up and press close to the glass. Yep, I was right. It’s an ear.

11:08 a.m.

I did some work for the last hour. I feel a small sense of accomplishment, but not enough to energize me to do more.

11:17 a.m.

Curiosity got the better of me. I went out into the alley for a closer look at the ear. It’s human with a three gold hoop earrings in it. I was trying to decide what to do with it when a dog came out of nowhere and snatched it away. The last I saw he was trotting down Queen Street chewing on it like a rawhide toy.

12:04 p.m.

Lunch!

12:35 p.m.

Lunch is over. Back to work. Not much going on outside.

2:14 p.m.

There is so much dirt under my nails. Was I sleep coal mining again? Was I buried alive and had to dig my way out of the grave? Where did all this dirt come from?

3:45 p.m.

I took apart my watch because there must be something wrong with it: It can’t not be quitting time. I was only supposed to be here 8 hours; I must be going on a hundred and six.

I put the watch back together again but I did something wrong. It says the time is 3A76 Greenwich Mean Time. I don’t know what that means.

4:23 p.m.

The dog is back. He’s dropped the ear at the base of my window as some sort of gift. He’s eaten about half of it, the rest looks like regurgitated cheap ground beef. I thank the pup anyway. It’s the thought that counts.

5:00 p.m.

Oh sweet merciful God it’s finally time to go home. I don’t know how one day can feel like a century but it managed.

Huh. My watch says it’s next Tuesday.

Feng Shui Falderal

I was trying to do a little feng shui on my cubicle at work. I have a shelf with a bunch of personal items on it to make it feel a little more like home than a day time prison cell. One of the toys is a 4 inch high Viking warrior complete with sword raised in battle-readiness and a shield in the other hand.  Another item is a framed picture of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, a gift from a female co-worker to all the men in the department after we mooned over Linda one day. Today I made the mistake of moving Wonder Woman and the Viking too close together.

I heard WW say to the Viking sarcastically, “Nice sword. What are you compensating for?”

I wasn’t sure he even knew what she meant but he replied, “Shut your dragon mouth woman or I’ll put out your fire.”

The next thing I know WW’s golden lasso is out and she’s trying to hog tie the Viking. He countered with some nice sword cuts and took her legs out with his shield. As I’m trying to separate the two of them all hell breaks loose in my booth.

I have a wooden pencil holder that was made in India with a golden elephant on the side of it. The elephant charges, trunk high in the air trumpeting loudly. I’m a fan of the North Carolina basketball team and their mascot is a ram so I have a wooden tchotchke of the mascot. He sees the elephant coming and goes into his own charge. They crash together shaking the walls of my cubicle. Meanwhile WW has gotten in to her invisible plane and is flying above my head with the Viking hanging on to the tail slicing at the wings with his sword.

Another toy I have is an old style steam train engine. After getting buzzed by WW he takes off doing laps around the shelf, blowing his whistle and shouting, “Tommy the train doesn’t like fighting! Tommy doesn’t like fighting! All aboard the 10 a.m. shuttle from Santa Fe to San Diego. ALL ABOOOOOARD! TOOT TOOT! TOOT TOOT!

The train took out the ram but the elephant jumped on board. He’s trumpeting, the train whistle is blowing and WW crashed her plane into my notebooks. She has the Viking in a headlock and he’s smacking her ass with the flat if his sword. The plane debris was laying over the train tracks and as Tommy rounded the bend . . .

TOOT! TOOT! The 3 p.m. from Tuscaloosa to Talladega is now leaving from gate 4. ALL ABOOOOOARD! LOOK OUT! TOMMY THE TRAIN DOESN’T LIKE CRASHING!!!!!

This was the result:

I don’t think I’m ready for feng shui.

Gray Day

It was a gray day. It was the kind of day that Lorenzo De St. Germain auf Flugelhorn used as a model when he invented the color gray in 1835 (he later invented grey for Britain, Australia and Canada). I had just parked my car at work, gotten out to take the “walk of not exactly death but certainly not joy sort of like blah blah blah” into the building when I noticed one of my tires was flat. Flat as a pita pocket. Flatter than my singing voice. As flat as Wile E. Coyote when he’s run over by his own road grader that he bought from the Acme Company. My tire was so flat members of the Flat Earth Society had gathered around it for their monthly meeting. One of them handed me a corn muffin during the president’s opening remarks.

I went to my desk and fumed. Why God? Why did you let this happen to me on this day of all days: Monday February 4, 2013, a day that has absolutely no special meaning to me whatsoever. Why? With no answer forthcoming I started working, but with every request I filled or question I answered I felt more and more empty inside. Just as my tire was devoid of air, I was lacking the will to work.

On my lunch break, 30 minutes that I usually use to write strongly worded letters to the editor of Dishtowel Quarterly (Really? Green is the color of the year for dish rags and tea towels? I think not), I instead was forced to go outside in the Arctic temperature of 26 degrees and change my tire. With my fingers turning black from hypothermia and the air blue from my swearing I got my spare tire on. And when I lowered the car back down to the ground . . . it was flat as well.

Good one God. Pure comedy gold.

Annnnyyyyyway, I went back inside to call my sister to see if she could bring her air pump out and get the spare filled enough so I could drive home. I tapped the number into my cell phone  . . . and it had been deactivated.

Oh, I get it. I’m still asleep and having a dream. I went along with it and danced in my cubicle to a medley of Bee Gees songs then slammed my hand in my filing cabinet drawer.

After bandaging my hand and signing the paperwork for my written warning about playing disco music in a confined space I called my sister from my work phone. With the remaining minutes of my lunch break I went online to reactivate my cell phone and for the first time all day something went well. A few clicks of the mouse and I had my service back. Shortly after that my sister called. She had gotten my spare tire filled enough that the car was drivable.

It was still a gray day, like a concrete slab had been poured into the sky by travelers who took our money and never came back to finish the work. But I wouldn’t be stranded and forced to sleep under my desk with cheese doodle crumbs and pebbles that get caught in the sole of my shoe. My phone worked again . . . now that I didn’t need it.

Yes, it all turned out ok. Of course, I had to spend over $20 to put time on my Tracphone to get it reactivated and then today another $16 to get the tire plugged. Hmm.

It was a black day. The kind of day that St. Cuthbert of Ufnagel om Doom used as a model when he invented the color black in the 4^th century . . .

3 Random Things

I don’t like the term “sweat equity”. I find it to be obnoxious. It’s the elitist version of “hard work”.

This project has taken months to pull together. I’ve got a lot of sweat equity invested so it needs to pay off.

Translation: I’ve spent weeks sitting on my ass in meetings, making phone calls and schmoozing with everyone I thought could do me a favor. I’d better get stock options or they’ll repossess my Lexus.

Meanwhile there’s the guy who helped construct the building all this business was conducted in.

Man this is hard work. I’m sweating my balls off.

Translation: Holy shit I’m tired. And it’s so hot my balls have literally fallen off and will need surgically reattached.

We all have different skill sets and do varied jobs. I sit in front of a computer all day. Sometimes I make phone calls or sit in a meeting. But I never say I’ve invested “sweat equity” because the only reason I’m sweating is the AC isn’t turned high enough.

****

I got an email this week which had the subject: Did your surgery require a vaginal mesh patch?

I was stunned. I didn’t even know I had had surgery, much less that I apparently needed a vaginal mesh patch. I went to my doctor and he promptly threw me out of his office. Turns out I didn’t have surgery after all and I don’t even have a vagina, which is a prerequisite for needing a mesh patch.

Actually I’m starting a band called Vaginal Mesh Patch. Our sound will be a mixture of Carol King, Judas Priest and a church choir. I’m calling the new style Gothic a cappella Pop.

*****

Another email I received this week is from a web site called eBusiness. I have repeatedly unsubscribed from this site and in fact don’t recall ever subscribing but the emails keep coming. In this one the subject read: A better Sarch Engine for Cosmic Overdrive.

I cannot tell you . . . how long I have looked for . . . a better . . . sarch engine. Sorry, I’m getting emotional, it’s just that it’s been years, YEARS, that I’ve turned over every rock to find a better sarch engine. When I typed it into Google it asked me “did you mean search engine?” NO! I need a SARCH engine!

Finally, in my darkest hour, eBusiness, has provided me with an engine that will run my Sarch. Now if I could just find where I put it.