It's just like eating the eyeball out of a deer's face

Every holiday season brings with it the warm, simmering sense of dread and panic here at the office (sometimes, I call it the "Orifice," and we all sit around and laugh a little. Then we put the mailman's clothes back on and send him on his sobbing way, covered in our seed). A lot of this peace on hell and ill will toward men stems from the fact that every yuletide reminds my boss that he is very much old and alone. This realization manifests itself in him as irrational anger and seething cruelty (i.e. creating a load of unnecessary "busy work" to keep slaves tethered to their desks, making little to no sense, smelling like Jackie Joyner Kersee's camel toe...I suppose that one is independent of the season). Needless to say, there are a lot of tense situations all centered around trying to remedy perfectly innocuous problems with a sad, delusional old lunatic. Regardless of how much this time of year makes me want to choke him to death with the plastic needles from a singing, animatronic Christmas tree, a good deal of the holiday loathing is dissipated when a certain coworker invariably brings in a giant batch of buckeyes.



Buckeyes are spectacular in that not only are they very simple (chocolate and peanut butter), but apparently, I can eat three hundred of them due to the fact that they are delicious. They are so unbelievably good that, while I was sucking down my fifteenth of the day, a coworker mentioned that he doesn't like peanut butter with his chocolate and I almost punched him in his fucking skull. You don't like peanut butter with your chocolate? Go fuck yourself, Commie. If you don't like buckeyes, you don't like life. What kind of international terrorist doesn't like to welcome, into his mouth hole, a delightful ball of slightly fleshy chocobutter? STOP PRETENDING YOU DON'T LIKE THEM.

And speaking of stopping things, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THIS LAWYER BEHIND ME FROM SINGING? I used to love Garageband. I thought to myself, what a wonderful world we live in, that there exists a music production program that makes creating li'l ditties fun and accessible. However beautiful that idea is, in the hands of someone whose voice is reminiscent of a platypus getting raped up its bill, it gets a little tiresome after the eighth or ninth warbling rendition of Galileo, king of night vision, king of insight. All I think about doing is cracking her Macbook over her head WWE-style. "He hit her with a laptop, Mean Gene!"

In closing, Merry Christmas one and everyone. I'm not sure if the rules of capitalization were thoroughly employed there, but you get my drift. GET OFF MY BACK!

Three Vignettes

I. As I began to finally regain feeling in my right hand, the blood gingerly creeping back into its veins after having made a hasty retreat from the arctic winter air, I could finally focus my attention on the ridiculous page of copy sitting on my lap.

"WRITER: CONVERSATIONAL IN TONE"

Conversational? When has anyone in the history of humankind ever attempted an at least half-serious conversation entirely in disclaimers?

"You want another cigarette, Fred? Oh, and by the way, cigarettes increase your chances of getting cancer."

"Hey, sorry I shot my load directly into your eyeball. Use as directed."

"I'd love to go to the Dane Cook concert! Possible side effects include nausea and intense hemorrhaging."

It was at this moment in my amusing myself that the attractive woman next to me asked, "excuse me, how long have you been waiting?"

"Oh, I don't know. About ten minutes. Then again, I have a poor sense of time and space."

The weak smile that had had the audacity to appear on my lips met her blank stare with the awkwardness of two incestuous brothers offering each other hot dogs at the family reunion.

"Do you want mustard...?"

"No...no thanks..."

It reminds me why I don't often attempt to be charming and personable. And that reminds me:

II. Coming home from Germany, I caused a slight stir at the airport with my hastily packaged bundle of souvenirs. However one is supposed to prepare his trinkets, I neglected to follow suit, opting instead for the crisp, studied packing technique of a half-asleep stroke victim. As a punishment, British Airways condemned my gifts to a giant plastic bag with a zipper and floral print, the colors of which would make a gay man slap that cock right out of his mouth and never pick another one up again. This bag looked like it belonged on the floor next to P.T. Barnum while he was getting blown by a clown. Needless to say, it was designed to be ostentatious so that the Heathrow's finest could keep an eye on you.

Imagine my surprise when, waiting in the Customs line, a fellow strolled up behind me with the same bag. I was so pleased that I wasn't the only fool to be burdened with this bulky atrocity that I eschewed my normal paranoid contempt for a genuine stab at solidarity. After turning around and lifting the hideous bag in the air, I said with a laughing smirk:

"Huh?"

The gentleman, who turned out to be German, stared into my eyes with piercing condescension and let out a curt, "yeah." After assessing that I was no better than a pile of shit, ol' Happy German Face made a big deal of ignoring me.

This, in short, is why I dislike small talk.

III. Two short conversations with my increasingly senile boss:

HIM: Cammy told me about the Xonax boxes that need to be integrated into that shipment we're sending out.

ME: Xonax? No, you're talking about that other collection we looked at. Not Xonax.

HIM: (as if this whole mistake came from me) Xonax?! Of course not!

**********

HIM: I identified those boxes and put them in order. I'm going to ask Timmy to do the labels.

ME: So Timmy's doing the labels?

HIM: No. No no no. And someone needs to put those boxes in order.

ME: I pray that you will die in your sleep.