Categories
Whinging

I Am A Misanthrope With Certain Bathroom Anxieties

I work with a guy whom I’m going to call Caftan Guy. And the thing is, Caftan Guy is fundamentally intolerable. So I’m just going to get this off my chest. Oh, and if by chance he ever finds out about this post, somehow, let me just say right off the bat, so there’s no silly misunderstanding: I hate you, Caftan Guy, because you are so hideous.

He (obviously) wears caftans to work. And sandals. And kilts. And, probably, saris and obis and codpieces and feather boas and nipple clamps for all the fuck I know. I try not to be around Caftan Guy, not only because he looks like a twerp, but because he’s Deep, Man. He’s always wanting to talk about the latest New York Times story about . . . I don’t know, because this is where I always stop listening, because Caftan Guy is about as smart as a tennis racket. But with less utility.

Caftan Guy is very problematic, because he thinks he is very smart, but is in fact, very stupid. Now, I’m becoming more tolerant of stupid people as I come to realize that I can frequently be quite stupid, but Caftan Guy is way beyond the pale. Is the phrase, “Just right-click on the document and select ‘print’ ” a daunting intellectual puzzle to you? Caftan Guy regarded it as some mysterious Zen koan presented in an obscure Portuguese dialect. Have you ever asked anyone, ever, “What happens if I delete this document?” Caftan Guy has asked me that, and was satisfied when I answered him, “You’ll delete the document.” He walked away chuffing happily, and I sat in my chair pondering the cheerless notion that this person is responsible for actual medical data.

There’s another horrible reason I try not to be around Caftan Guy. And that is the bathroom . . . issue. Our company apparently pays this man to take endless, backbreaking dumps, because Caftan Guy is always in the bathroom. Constantly. And there’s not much guesswork involved in what’s going on, because he periodically cuts loose with bloodcurdling grunts, pops, and whistles. It sounds like the fucking Amazon in there; it freaks me out and makes me want to boil myself. Also, get out of the fucking bathroom, you goddamn bowel-mutant! I can barely bring myself to even shudderingly open the door any more. I’m too afraid I’m going to hear his terrible plorping and urfing and GRUUUUH!-ing.

One final thing about Caftan Guy. He writes haikus. Now, that’s cool. I’m down with people writing haikus, even maudlin, clumsy, florid ones. What I’m not down with is reading them. See, he emails them to our entire department when the mood strikes him. The death of a co-worker; the first day of spring; a random erection that he wants to announce: He’s going to write a haiku about it. I’ve decided I’m going to give it a shot.

Dearest Caftan Guy

You shit so audibly that

I pine for the grave

Categories
Audio Club

Less Obvious Ways to Die While Driving Around

Since the fiancee and I bought a (used, tired) car last June, things have been superb. She doesn’t have to take two buses to get to work and I . . . get to feel happy that she doesn’t have to take two buses to get to work. No, of course I’m being a doink; it’s very handy to have, and has spared our friends many ride-pleading phone calls.

One less salutary effect it has had on my life, however, is via the tape deck. Car radios are unpredictable and potentially life-threatening. One can be tooling along innocently only to be suddenly assaulted by the awful VOICE OF A DJ, and what happens? You burst into flames. Or worse, you could really fuck the dog and stumble onto a talk radio station. There you are, haplessly trying to avoid, say, Carly Simon, when this comes loping out of your speakers: “Liberals are all a bunch of Commie hand-wringing fairies!” (I may be paraphrasing.) What do you do then? There’s not much you can do: you pull over and quietly die.

And who needs that? You can’t just die whenever. How’s that going to play with the boss? “Where were you yesterday?” “I inadvertantly listened to talk radio and died.”

So hence the tape deck. But since all my tapes date to circa 1981-1989, the listening choices are thin. And horribly catastrophic: I stared down at my old collection with mounting horror a while back. Flesh for Lulu? The Screaming Blue Messiahs? Voivod? What the fuck? This was ghastlier than I had anticipated. The Woodentops? I fold. The idea of trying to listen to even a few songs, much less an entire tape, by any of these awful bands was inconceivable.

But then I hit on it: mixed tapes! I made many mix tapes while in college, and they are composed of a whole bunch of terrible songs by a revolving set of terrible bands! I can handle that. Or so I thought. Here’s a sampling of some songs off of a tape I was listening to recently. Notice how well they all hang together stylistically.

Clan of Xymox, “Phoenix of My Heart”

Nitzer Ebb, “Lightning Man”

Paul Simon, “The Coast”

Jesus Jones, “Lost in Space”

Revolting Cocks, “Attack Ships on Fire”

Danielle Dax, “Whistling for His Love”

The Smiths, “How Soon is Now?”

Lou Reed, “Fly Into The Sun”

Durutti Column, “Red Shoes”

What a depressing list. Not that there aren’t some good songs in there, but they should never share the same car. Fuck, they shouldn’t share the same freeway. Also, there are some fabulously awful songs in there: Jesus Jones? Better, a Jesus Jones song that nobody ever heard of? What’s wrong with me? Oh, and the Xymox song? It’s a terribly squishy synth-mope song that sounded dated about fifteen minutes after it was recorded in the studio, but it takes the Uncontrollable Crying and Vomiting Index sharply upwards at the end, where it segues, bafflingly and hideously, I shit you not, into a gooey, cooing cover of The Troggs’ “Wild Thing.” It really must be heard to be believed. And then never, ever heard again.

Much like talk radio.

Categories
Job, My Stupid

A Hearty “Fuck the World!” Can Be Heard From Within the Skinner Box

I understand the lame irony of being a smoker while working for a cancer research facility. How could I not? But the building management has just gone off its onion about this. I just can’t fucking stand it. Bear with me.

We used to be able to smoke downstairs–outside–kind of around the corner, where we were nicely out of sight, so nobody might get the terrible idea that some deranged people actually smoke in the outside world. This evidently wasn’t good enough, so the management, at God knows what dumb expense, built us a brand-new smoking gulag downstairs in the parking basement. I think their next step will be to put us all in a pit, and then while we’re nonchalantly puffing away, they will suddenly bury us with a bulldozer while children point and laugh.

But it gets better. Since my building was evidently designed by dribbling cretins, this now means I have to take three elevators to get down to smoke central. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Skot, you are a lying sack. Also, you smoke, so fuck you, you lying sack. You lying sack!” I understand. But hear me out. I work on the 20th floor. There are three banks of elevators in the lobby: one goes from the lobby down to the parking garage, one services floors 2-11, and the other services floors 12-19. See the tiny math problem? So, yes, I take the elevator up to 19, where I then take another elevator that is dedicated to traveling between floor 19 and floor 20. WHAT? Who designed this system, Rube Goldberg? I half-expect that there is an elaborate mouse/cannonball/ramp/pulley system underlying the whole fucking thing.

So now you see. When I get a break, I zip over to floor 20’s rickety-ass dedicated elevator and squeal with delight as I bonk down to 19. Then I listen to my cells die while I wait for the elevator to get up to 19 and ride it down to the lobby. Then I dejectedly plod over to the other set of depressavators for it to take me down to the parking garage, and I cross over the blind corner where I will almost certainly be mowed down one day by a blank-eyed commuter, and enter the roomlet with one chain-link fence wall that overlooks a grimy, howling freeway all so I can just smoke a fucking cigarette. The whole thing is like living in a Robbe-Grillet novel.

Say, Skot, now that you mention it, being way up there on the 20th floor, don’t they have a balcony? Why, yes. Yes they do. There is a beautiful balcony. There is fresh air. There is a commanding view. And there are many “NO SMOKING” signs.

Categories
Confess

My Dreamscape Is Neither Rich Nor Textured

The other day I was taking a nap before having to go to rehearsal, and I hit some serious REM sleep, because I started dreaming very, very hard. I don’t tend to remember very many dreams for some reason, but this one was a doozy; I remembered everything. It really was meticulously detailed, which was truly unfortunate. Not because it was a scary dream. Unless you find “hopeless banality” scary, because it was the most boring dream possible. Luxembourgian geopolitics are less boring than this dream, if Luxembourg has any geopolitics to speak of, and I’m already weak with boredom even thinking about that, but it’s still a flaming-hoop act, excitement-wise, compared to that damn dream. Anyway.

As it starts out, I’m in a plain white room with a brown carpet. (Good God, even that first sentence makes me want to put my head into a paint shaker. You already know you’re in for a thrilling Cavalcade of Boredom.) It is evening, around nine o’clock, but I only know that because of dream-logic; the room is too uninteresting to feature anything as pulse-quickening as a clock. The only other person in the room is a mildly pretty saleswoman standing by a table with about a dozen cell phones on it. She’s kind of packing stuff up, because it’s the end of the day. I guess. The oppressive boredom makes it difficult to ascribe reason to the situation.

All of a sudden, I realize I have a vast, consuming need to purchase a cell phone. So I start talking to her. She really just wants to go, but is stuck dealing with the weird dreaming guy who’s just way too into the minutae of cell phone plans, but she starts describing them anyway.

In lengthy, excruciating detail. X number of minutes for Z dollars a month; roaming costs; year-long plans vs. open-ended contracts, all kinds of stuff that my brain must have been manufacturing. And I was eating this stuff up, I simply couldn’t get enough of this brain-choking bullshit. All the while I’m picking up phones and excitedly examining them. Let me stress again how lame and prosaic this dream is. Because as I examined the phones, I didn’t find any with incredible features or doodads, like a concealed switchblade, or a rhino whistle, or a Jim Carrey proximity alarm or anything. They were just . . . phones. I heard myself saying terrible things: “What can you tell me about this red one?” “Wow, I don’t know how I’d use all those minutes! (Wild laughter)” “What about the ones with the flip-down mouthpiece?”

It went on like that for a while; in dream time it seemed like hours. Finally I guess my brain had simply had enough of this, because I’m pretty sure it got bored by itself. The reason I say this is because of the idiotic way it ended: I was jabbering away about some awful phone detail, and the salesgirl, without a word, simply turned away from me and walked out the door. I just stood there watching her leave, clutching one of the phones, feeling very plaintive that I was being treated so shabbily, and maybe she’ll come back? I’m still interested in many of these phones!

I woke up then. I kept still for a few minutes, reviewing the dream bit by bit, marveling at its detail, marveling at its startling vacuity, marveling at the cinematic scope of its breathtaking dumbness. It was like watching a Warhol film on IMAX or seeing a Grand Guignol play performed by catatonics.

I know now I will never, ever be able to buy a cell phone in my life because of this.

Categories
Riddles

Fond Recollections of Ingesting Terrible Things

As a kid, I would waste my allowance on the usual dumb things: comic books and candy. My parents hated this, of course, because I suppose they were following the “it’ll teach him fiscal responsibility” model, but naturally I learned nothing. Well, nothing except, “One day a week I can gorge myself on sweets while reading trash, and the other six I can spend desperately waiting for that one day.” Some favorites:

Good ‘N Plenty: These are of course neither. They look like circus medicine, come about nine and a half to the box, and taste vaguely licoricey. There was just one enormous batch made in 1933, and none since. It’s okay, there’s still a lot left. These however, did allow me to discover:

Good ‘N Fruity: Which are marginally less terrible than its cousin, but still a big lie all the same. These are to fruit flavor as Edie Brickell is to songcraft. There’s just no relationship. The name is also clearly a not-too-sly bit of agenda-pushing by the Homosexual Ruling Elite.

Spree: What the hell were these things? Spree? Packaged in a long silvery cylinder to boot, it looked like something John Travolta might have pulled from the front of his jeans. Were all the candy marketers trying to tell me something? These were horse-choking lozenge thingies that used the common dirty trick of coming in many colors yet all tasting identical. Which is to say: like lost, dusty dreams. They wanted to be good, but some flavor vampire had gotten to them first.

Necco Wafers: Paper-thin discs of varying wan colors dusted with what might have been dioxin, these Luddites of the candy world eschewed everything. Flavor, texture, appearance, a coherent reason for existence: Necco had none of these. More imaginative parents might have used them as punishment. “I’m sorry I broke the TV, Dad.” “You’re going to eat one whole roll of Necco Wafers, young man.” “I’m going to call Child Services.” “You want to try for two, buster?”

Wonka’s Bottle Caps: Roald Dahl should be proud of Wonka Candies, because they clearly have the same vicious streak of hilarious misanthropy that his writing does. Vaguely soda-flavored anthropomorphized bottle caps? Uh . . . yum. Or as my geek friends might put it, !yum.

Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper: Another fiendish Wonka creation, popular only with the most dysfunctional of children. Autistics probably dream of these things, and would probably explain a lot of their behavior. “Why doesn’t my child want me to touch or hold him? Why does he hurt himself?” Answer: he is not getting any Everlasting Gobstoppers. A fist-sized sphere that tastes like sweetened sadness, but the longer you suck on it, it changes colors. Seriously. Who gives a fuck? It’s in your mouth. So you have to take it out to get the effect. That’s adorable; something that encourages children to spit out their food and show it to others.

So the question is, why did I eat these terrible things? They all looked like something out of a Bosch painting, and their taste may be described as what you’d imagine a Vice President would taste like. It’s not like I tortured my other senses; comic books can be aesthetically pleasing, and I certainly wasn’t enjoying the rather Hadean reek of our cafeteria. So why was I putting these disgusting things in my mouth all the time? It’s a question I’m going to ponder over a cigarette.

Categories
Kritters

I Make Sweeping Generalizations About Many Things, But Today, Dogs

The fiancee and I, as yet, are dogless. We hate that we are dogless and wish to rectify the situation, but it’s not likely to happen until we move to a bigger place next year. I also have some daily-abandonment issues to work through, but that’s for later; I already have coping strategies that I can employ. For example, I have been ignoring my dry cleaning for five weeks now, and it isn’t complaining. It’s just sitting there placidly in a wrinkly, expensive pile. My dry cleaning is, if I may, doglike in its silent devotion. I’d pet my dry cleaning right now, but it’s developing a nice crust, and I don’t want to disturb it.

I have no interest in the whole cat vs. dog debate, except to just note that a lifelong allergy to the former totally precludes cat-ownership, and also to note that I hate the prissy little beastlets. Anyway, dogs! It will remain to be seen what kind of dog we want. It will certainly be a mutt, probably from the pound or a friend somewhere, as I am incapable of going into pet stores without thinking that I should have brought a cake with a file in the middle of it. “Here! You know what to do!” I’d hoarsely whisper to a languid iguana. Then I’d realize that iguanas generally really don’t know what to do. What the hell is the shelf life of a lizard anyway? “The iguana isn’t selling. That’s stale merchandise. Throw it in the dumpster.”

For space reasons, it will probably be a small dog. For example, pugs. Pugs make me laugh extremely hard, mainly by just sitting there existing. They all look like tiny, furry Martha Rayes. The main objection to a pug would be my ongoing feeling of dread that at any moment, his eyes could pop out of their sockets, causing me to run around madly, screaming like my asshole was on fire.

Of course, there is such a thing as too small. Chihuahuas, poodles: these are dogs for unserious people. People who own these dogs also do crafts like latch-hook or enter ping-pong tournaments. They own Hummel figurines or listen to Pizzicato Five. Unnatural things. People who own these dogs are, technically, psychotic. That’s all I’m saying. (If you are one of these people, I don’t mean you, of course; just people exactly like you. You, I like.)

If I could get me a bulldog, that would be outstanding, but I think you hit the fucking breeding problem. A bulldog’s main attraction is the fact that every living moment in his presence feels like an old Warner Brothers cartoon. I would spend hours and hours capering around him, twittering “Hey Spike! Whatcha doin’ Spike? You wanna get something to eat, Spike?” until the poor tortured bastard would bite my face off. So that’s probably out. I need my face.

There’s breeds like Terriers and Corgis and crap like that, but then you’re getting into the whole pedigree thing again, and I won’t have any of that. I’m insecure enough; I don’t need to get into a pissing match with someone over their pets’ credentials. “A fine animal you’ve got there! What’s his breeding?” “Jesus, mister, I don’t know. He drinks out of the toilet and sniffs his friends’ asses. So, Dartmouth?”

I’m sure we’ll end up with some anonymous little mutt, and that’s cool. I can teach him tricks, like rolling over or nipping at the testicles of hippies. I can take him for long walks, during which I suppose I will be required to collect his dogshit. But not for long. We’re going to go throw it at pet stores.

Categories
It's All About ME

Conversations In and Around My Body

Virus 1: What’s up?

Virus 2: Nothing.

Virus 1: Want to go fuck with Skot?

Virus 2: Yeah!

Skot’s Immune System: Hold it right there, you bastards!

Virus 1: Up yours.

Virus 2: Get lost!

Skot’s Immune System: Sorry to bother you. Go right in.

[The viruses throw a house party at which several million guests are in attendance. The viruses insist on playing “Cheeseburger in Paradise” at high volume.]

Brain: Jesus God. Jimmy Buffett attack! I must void stomach contents!

Stomach: We’ve got nothing down here but ramen noodles and whisky anyway.

Liver: Don’t even talk to me.

Viruses: HEAVEN ON EARTH WITH AN ONION SLICE!

Small bowel: They’re making me twitchy.

[The rectum does not say anything, but mewls softly in his dread.]

Esophagus: We’re all suffering, people. I’m getting gang-fucked by these lymph nodes up here. Jesus, back the fuck up!

Lymph nodes: We can’t help it! We’re just big-boned! Talk to brain!

Stomach: Brain? Yeah, he’s a help. ‘More beer and cigarettes!” That’s all that guy says.

Lungs: Great, more cigarettes. Just what me and heart need. What the hell is rectum crying about, anyway? We’re the ones who get nailed.

Rectum: Dude, do you have any idea what goes on down here?

Viruses: I’M JUST A CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE!

Brain: Oh, this is horrible. Hands! Beer and a cigarette! Now!

Categories
Home Improvement

Strangers Enjoy the Ambience of My Uninviting Back Yard

It seems that one of our neighbors has a stalker. Isn’t that fucking wonderful? There is a woman who apparently lives in the house next door to our apartment building, and her ex-boyfriend can be seen at pretty much any hour driving around the block in his van, parking in her driveway, or, if he’s feeling really frisky, sneaking into our back yard to spy on her window. This I love. Our building manager caught him pressed up against the wall the other night and called the cops, who promptly let him go. Thanks, guys! I had a conversation about this with Jason, the guy who called the cops.

“What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck? FUCK!”

“I know,” Jason calmly replied as I fitfully gnawed on my arm.

“Why didn’t you . . . I don’t know . . . hit him with a shovel a bunch of times?”

“See, you can’t. I have to lure him inside.”

“Are you kidding? That’s fucking stupid.”

“I know. But I have taken my guns out of the safe again.”

Well, now I feel better. So we have a crazed stalker diddling around in our back yard and an armed, bloodthirsty building manager. How can we add to this picture? I believe I’ll set up a combo crack lab/abortion clinic! It is imperative that I maximize the horrific danger quotient here. But there are some other anti-stalker methods I can take.

  1. I will stop recycling. Not only will this hasten the demise of the earth, and thus stalkers, it may also act as a psychologic depressive on intruders. They’ll sneak into the back yard, and will inevitably see the woefully underused recycling bins. “Jesus, that’s terrible,” they’ll think. “Recycling is important to the global community. I’m too depressed to murder my estranged girlfriend now. I’m going to go read some Carlos Castaneda instead.”
  2. I will litter the back yard with my famously inedible pot roasts. This is almost too cruel, but my safety is paramount to people like me. So the stalker will creep into the yard and spy a pot roast sitting there. “Pot roast!” he will think, “What a delicious surprise! I will eat this pot roast before I murder my estranged girlfriend! O happy day!” Then when he discovers that the pot roast is, in fact, horrible, he will become incredibly depressed. “Who can’t cook pot roast? This country is going into the toilet. I’m moving to Indonesia.”
  3. I can pay William Bennett to sit around in my back yard and intercept the wicked. Again, the stalker sneaks into my yard, and there’s William Bennett. The stalker panics. “Jesus Christ in New Jersey! A shrill, right-wing moralizer is back here!” And William Bennett will thunder, “This nation’s poor have only themselves to blame!” And the stalker will cringe and think, “What? Is he insane? Why won’t he let me murder my estranged girlfriend in peace?” William Bennett will be unperturbed. “Images on television are destroying our nation’s fiber,” he will dourly intone. The stalker is plunged into a paralyzing morass of confusion and terror. He gibbers fearfully while William Bennett continues his ruthless attack on his psyche. “White people are great! I am frightened by the young! I’m a quacking programmable mouthpiece for the Republican Party!” At which point the stalker, now terrorized beyond reason, chooses to die, and eats an entire pot roast. And William Bennett looks on approvingly; a criminal has died horribly, and recycling is on the wane. It’s morning in America.
Categories
Job, My Stupid

My Incompetence is Vast and Encompassing

Part of my job is doing software and applications testing. You may have noticed how I sling complicated computer jargon around with terrifying efficiency. Now of course I don’t know a damn thing about computers, or programming, or “environments,” or “anything,” which is, sadly, kind of the point. Since I work with people who, against all reason, actually know even less than I do about these things, I get to be the liaison between the compserv staff and the other pasteheads in my department. That’s a grand thing to realize: my office is full of fumbling morons, and I am their leader. I’m the Alpha Moron.

Anyway, since compserv is staffed by cruel, vicious Torquemadas, they immediately implemented a sweeping plan to break my spirit, which I must say was incredibly effective. The first thing they did was take away my PC.

WHAT? I need that! “No you don’t,” they cooed. “You can use this.” “This” is a fucking plastic do-funny that looks like a big Chiclet. It has one malevolent green eye next to a single power button. It says “Wyse Winterm.” I dolefully surveyed this . . . toy . . . while the compserv staff dumped my old PC into the garbage, which they then set ablaze. They stood around, warming themselves, while cracking open bottles of malt liquor.

“We got tired of dealing with you retards,” said one of them laconically. “So we’re not going to any more. That little guy connects you to a single server that runs all of your applications on something called Citrix.”

“Wha . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about. How does it work?”

“Basically, it means that we can just dump all the shit that used to live in your PC onto the server, and that’s that. Any changes or fixes are now done centrally on the server. And you access them all there as well.”

“Oh. Does that work all right?”

“Oh, no, it’s terrible. Christ, it’s a fucking debacle. For you, anyway.”

“What?”

“Some of these apps were built in-house, some were contracted out years ago, and frankly, there’s some we don’t even know how they run or what they do. Anyway, they all work terribly on Citrix from a user standpoint. Oh, and by the way, your monitor resolution is going to suffer a bit.”

“How much is ‘a bit’?”

“A lot.”

“Oh. Uh . . . why are you doing this to me?”

“We hate you and don’t want to see your ratlike faces any more. That’s actually how Citrix markets their product: TORTURE PARASITIC END USERS WITH CITRIX! So now we can sit around and drink beer and still get paid! Haw! Isn’t that a crotch-twister? Anyway, get cracking. You’re going to have to explain to your co-workers how miserable their lives are going to become!”

“I, uh, see. Okay. Listen . . . is there like . . . instructions . . . or a tutorial or anything? Don’t leave me totally ass-out here. Please?”

“Ooooh, of course. We wouldn’t leave you dry like that.” There were broad smiles all around. My old PC emitted noxious fumes as it burned. One of them leaned in close and leered. “There’s a tutorial. Just access it through the server.”

Categories
Fashion Victim

A Game of Jeopardy in Which the Category is My Unfortunate Life

A: All day.

Q: How long did I wear my sweater backwards at work today?

A: “Hey, I think your sweater is on backwards.”

Q: What was not said to me to inform me of this?

A: “Wow, your neck is all chafed!”

Q: What was actually said to me to alert me of this?

A: “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Q: What was my response to this realization?

A: My boss.

Q: Who was the person who heard me say this?

A: The head of the company.

Q: Who did my boss immediately tell of this incident to, while laughing loudly?

A: This guy right here.

Q: Who’s classier than a solid gold toilet seat?