Archive for the 'Glen Burnie' Category

For a title, see May 26, 2005. Yes, this is the second time I’ve done this.

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on April 15, 2008 @ 9:02 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, food, movies, people are idiots, potty humor, school and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 21 Comments

Let’s see, what else did I do this weekend? Oh yeah, I threw out some of my clothes. Sounds boring, right? Not the way I tell it.

Mrs. ACW and I live the life many people dream about. We get home at about 5pm on Friday, cook turkey burgers and asparagus, eat them, and then do homework. Yes, many people are out, spending heaps of disposable income on drinks, food, drugs, and whatever genitalia makes their upper lip sweat and quiver (hey, I’m not here to judge; whatever tickles your pickle or frosts your cookie is fine by me), but none of them have the wrist-slitting joy of staying home and doing homework for four hours at the start of the weekend while not drinking or seeing any genitalia or putting any coke up our noses.

And the cherry on top of all of it? Mrs. ACW is on a diet, so she’s not eating any sugar, and since we don’t have any sugar free candy in the house, we had to go out the grocery store to insert ourselves amongst the other social superstars that can be found wandering the grocery aisles at 9pm on a Friday; frozen pizza in one hand, pint of ice cream in the other, bunny slippers on the feet and a loosely tied robe that leaves so little to the imagination that I may as well have his lumpy, asymmetrical baby-maker tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

Less than thirty minutes later we’re home, have given up on homework, and are each a few pieces of sugar free candy deep into Hot Fuzz. An amusing hour and thirty minutes passes with nary to mar the occasion except a sudden onset of gas on my part that’s so violently offensive that I think I can feel hairs being singed off of my dangerous but exquisite backside.

After one particularly boisterous expulsion Mrs. ACW remarked that it sounded “hearty” or something along those lines. I had to agree. It was if I’d been grabbed around the torso and squeezed by the hand of a giant. It was as if I was completely out of control of my own body and it was venting pressure of its own accord. I learned a few seconds later what little control I actually had.

After a mad dash to the bathroom to learn that yes, I had in fact shat myself, I realized I was a twenty-seven year old man with no apparent control of his bowels. I immediately threw away my underwear and shorts, much to the bewilderment of everyone who has already heard this story.

“Why didn’t you just wash the clothes?” they ask, puzzlement clouding their faces.

Look, if I ever become so cavalier and casual with shit that I can look upon a beshatted object and think, “Hey, it’s just poop I guess,” please kill me, because I don’t want to live a life so well acquainted with the substance that our bodies forcibly eject on a daily basis.

I also jumped in the shower and gave the entire lower half of my body a complete surgical scrub down, because, once again, shit is gross.

Then I spent the rest of the weekend completely gun-shy because I didn’t want to fart and have to check and make sure my socks were still dry, so every time I felt a little pressure I had to get up, go to the bathroom, and make sure that the “football” didn’t make it into the “end zone” on a “quarterback sneak”, if you may allow me a football metaphor.

Lesson learned: not only does beef wreck me, but so does sugar free candy.

Of popped-collars and douchebags

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on March 31, 2008 @ 9:46 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, beer, bitches, devil cat, house, money, people are idiots and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 9 Comments

Saturday morning I woke at the crack of 11am to wrestle my cat to the ground before Mrs. ACW gave him his medicine. And by “medicine” I mean a savage beating. And by “a savage beating” I mean the anti-biotics that are supposed to be degunking his pee-maker.

Because I’m a cheapskate I opened the curtains rather than turning on the lights, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a car full of early-twenties popped-collar douchebags parking across the street from my house. The three of them got out of their late model E-class Mercedes featuring 18-inch z-rated tires and chrome rims. As would any rational person, I immediately hated them.

A few minutes later they returned to the car, opened the trunk, and got out a thirty-pack of Keystone Light and a white trash bag full of assorted swill. I wanted to burst out of my house, run into the street, and beat them to death with their canoe beer* and then take a dump on the hood of their car.

Given their beer choices, I was clearly witnessing the triumph of money over taste. I decided that life was too short to waste any more time on thinking about them, mentally wished them a happy afternoon pickling their livers, and went about my day.

Later that day Mrs. ACW and I left to go over my brother’s house to finish our taxes, and from there we went to see a play our friend is in.** After the play we went out for drinks with some of the cast, so we didn’t get home until about 2am.

As we were pulling into our driveway I noticed that someone had left the visor down in the Mercedes, and the lights on the visor were burning brightly, and looked like they would be doing so all night. And then next morning my theory proved to be correct. There was a tow-truck parked in front of the Mercedes, but alas, no popped-collar douchebag.

Eventually the tow truck left and the popped-collar douchebag emerged, and I have to admit that my level of schaudenfreude was so high that it was almost able to manifest itself physically. I was wandering around the house sneering at the thought of this douchebag having to pay out the nose to have his car towed just to be told that he had a dead battery and one of his idiot popped-collar douchebag friends could have given him a jump. The darkest part of my soul was giving birth to bitterness incarnate.

Then the better part of me thought, “It’s not his fault he’s a complete and utter douchebag with all the fashion sense of Meghan McCain. I’ll go give him a jump.”

Before I could go get him another tow truck came back, hauled his car up onto back of the truck, and drove away.

Oh well. At least I tried to do the right thing, even if it took a few hours. Also, I’m pretty sure he’s still a collar-popping douchebag that drinks shitty beer and has more money than taste, so maybe I’m still glad I didn’t help him.

*Drinking beer like Miller Lite, Bud Light, Keystone, Milwaukee’s Best Light, etc. is like making love in a canoe. Fucking close to water.

**Shameless plug. This play was hilarious, and our friend is in it, so if you’re looking for something to do, this is a cheap and highly-amusing way to fill your time.

I especially hate those ones with embroidered crests

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on February 19, 2008 @ 9:59 am
in Glen Burnie, family, people are idiots and work
. 12 Comments

Due to a conspiracy in coincidence, it looks like I’ll be spending the rest of this week in a suit. Which sucks because I hate wearing a suit, but even worse, because I only have two suits, and they’re probably going to be pretty nasty after 4 days of continuous use.

Today I have an event for work that has me in a suit, tomorrow I have another work event that calls for the old suit and tie, then on Thursday I’m going down to Annapolis to argue about my tax assessment for my house and afterwards have to head to the viewing for my aunt, and Friday is the funeral. I’m hoping that my suit isn’t walking around by itself by then.

I guess if one of the suits gets a bit too ripe I can try and stuff myself into a third suit that I own that’s grown just a bit too small. Though I’m not sure what day would be best to be stuffed into the cotton/poly sausage-casing, since all of them require a full day of being in the suit. Sure, if I was just hanging around Glen Burnie I could wear the jacket, shirt, and tie like normal, and just put on some sweatpants and tennis shoes on the bottom.

You think I’m kidding, but that’s how you can tell when someone is about to get married around here. The groomsmen wear suit tops and pajama bottoms, and the bride has had tulle stapled to her nicest oversized t-shirt. It’s like a white trash pageant and I have a front row seat.

I’ve always hated wearing ties, and by extension really hated wearing suits, ever since I was forced to wear a tie in high school. I think I’ve blogged about it before, but for my entire freshman and sophomore year I wore the same tie every day. And for my entire junior year, I wore a different tie than the first two years, but I also wore it every day for the entire year. By the time senior year rolled around I had a horrible bitch of a girlfriend, but she had bought me a few more ties, so I was able to at least wear a different tie every day. I also came into some hideously ugly hand-me-down ties that I delighted in wearing to freak out the pretty-boys who wouldn’t be caught dead in anything less than Tommy Hilfiger.

But worse than all of that, I hate wearing blazers or sport coats. I fucking hate them. It makes me feel like a child molester dressed me. I realize that not everybody has a need to wear a suit on a semi-regular basis like I do, and I realize that the blazer is the perfect answer for them, but for me, it’s my least favorite piece of clothing. I’d rather be stuck in a suit, or even a tux all day, rather than having to wear a goddamned blazer. I hate everything about them. I hate the stupid gold buttons. I hate feel of the material. I hate how they never seem to fit right, no matter how much they cost, or even if they’ve been tailored. They make me feel like I should be growing a porno mustache and selling used Trans Ams in the parking lot of an abandoned fast food restaurant.

I really don’t give a shit about what people think of me, or how they think I dress. If they don’t like the fact that I’m wearing corduroys, an old tshirt, an old hoodie, and wool clogs, that’s awesome, because they can go shove a badger up their asses. However, when I get dressed up, I want to feel good about the way I look. I still don’t give a shit about anyone else, but I’ll be damned if when I dress up I don’t go all the way. It’s important to me to not half-ass the way I look in a suit. I’ll be a donkey in Tijuana before you catch me in fucking blazer.

Voting, Schmoes, and Outback

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on February 12, 2008 @ 9:32 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, awesome, bitches, driving, food, people are idiots and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 21 Comments

1) So I voted this morning, and the whole time I’m feeling like I’m throwing my vote away because a) my candidate has already dropped out of the race, and b) I’m not so wild about these Diebold voting machines that we’re forced to use. I feel like I have just as much luck having my vote counted by writing it on a napkin and tossing it into the wind, crossing my fingers, and hoping it makes it to Annapolis. It’s kind of fucked up when I’m this cynical about the primary, ostensibly the only time when your vote actually counts.

2) I was so giddy about the back of this truck that I detoured from my normal commute home just to get a picture of it:

schmo

In case you can’t see it so clearly (I used my camera phone), the license plate reads “SCHMO” and he has a “W ‘04″ on the left, and a Jesus fish on the right (which is really hard to see in the picture). But yes, I agree with him, he is a schmo.

schmo or schmoe also shmo (shm)
n. pl. schmoes also shmoes Slang
A stupid or obnoxious person.
[From Yiddish shmok, penis, fool; see schmuck.]

Do you think he’s so dumb that he thinks “schmo” is a good thing? Or is he a subversive leftist performance artist? I can’t figure it out.

3) On Saturday Mrs. ACW and I were going out to eat before we had to head out to a party, so we opted to use one of the gift certificates we had gotten for Christmas. The particular certificate we had chosen was good for a number of restaurants, including Bonefish, Carrabas, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and Outback. So we opted for Cheeseburger having recently eaten at Bonefish, and having no interest in eating at a clone of the Olive Garden. However, when we got to Cheeseburger the line was so long that it was spilling out the door. So we instead opted to go to Outback, figuring that at 6:30 on a Saturday night the wait wouldn’t be too long. As we drove from Cheeseburger to Outback I made an attempt to call ahead, and upon speaking to the hostess found out that the wait was two hours.

Fuck you, Glen Burnie. Fuck you right in your stupid, lazy asshole. For chrissakes, it’s just Outback! The steaks are frozen! Everything they serve is over-salted! The food is terrible for you! And yet every time I’m inclined to punish my body there you people are lined up, ready to be slopped, like zombie pigs at the world’s least Australian restaurant. And you’re really going to wait two hours to eat at that stupid restaurant? Really? Are you just so enamored with the shitty food that you can’t tear yourself away, or are you too idiotic to realize that other restaurants exist? I hate you. I hope you fucking choke and die on your Bloomin’ fuckin’ Onion.

You’d think the food was deep fried in crack the way people start salivating just by driving by the place. I’m honestly shocked anytime I’m in there to find people NOT rubbing one out while stuffing their faces. I just don’t understand why people would wait that long for the food. And the curbside pickup! That’s even worse! A line of cars, 30 or 40 deep, waiting for two hours to pick up this shitty food to take home and eat it, as if gas didn’t cost 3 dollars per gallon, as if they couldn’t drive to an Outback in Pennsylvania or Virgina in that time. People are fucking idiots.

So Mrs. ACW and I ate at El Salto instead. It was awesome.

More likely a tarp, though. Fewer leaks.

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on January 14, 2008 @ 8:07 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, food, movies, nog and potty humor
. 10 Comments

What can be said about Stirring’s eggnog that hasn’t already been said about getting hit in the face with a warm sack of diarrhea?

eggnog

Actually, that’s a bad analogy. Stirring’s eggnog is like being told that you’re going to get the super-awesomest puppy that ever existed, when you instead end up with a dog that sexually assaults you.

Some back story: Mrs. ACW and I were doing some food shopping over the holidays and we opted to shop in a county with a higher-than-average tax bracket. The produce tends to be fresher, and the selection tends to be greater, and none of the cashiers are surly teenagers who lack the ability to add. The downside to all this is that the other shoppers have huge superiority complexes, entitlement issues, and feel that the world is owed to them, so they’ll frequently crash their carts into yours, fall down, and call triple A. Before you know what’s happening, you’ve been summoned to court to serve as a witness against yourself. Also, because these places tend to be whiter than a whitebread and mayonnaise sandwich, the “International Foods” aisle is typically Italian fare like spaghetti and pasta sauce. Occasionally you might find an old dusty box of taco shells that people keep buying to impress their house cleaner, and then returning the tacos after they fire the house cleaner. I imagine that most people in that area have owned those tacos for a day or two at least once. Suffice it to say, Mrs. ACW and I were not able to find the canned chipotle peppers on our list.

However, what they lack in diverse foods, they make up for in a new kind of eggnog. As we were wandering the aisles and gazing upon row after row of jarred peacock in truffle oil and ivory shavings, canned polar bear toes, and freeze-dried Irish babies, we came across the bottle of nog pictured above… and it cost $11. This makes it the most expensive nog purchase in my history of nogsumerism. Mrs. ACW looked at my joyful face, the price tag, and simply said, “That had better be some good fucking eggnog.” As you may have already surmised, it was not.

As soon as we got home I wanted to bust it open so I could try some, and since it was an eggnog cocktail concentrate, I would need to mix it with milk or liquor, sort of like the chai nog. So I mixed some up with some milk and took a sip… and it was weird. It tasted like the milk had gone bad or something. There was this weird biscotti-like taste to the nog. So I dumped in some bourbon… but that taste was still there. I dumped in even more bourbon and even more milk, but the horrible taste couldn’t be squelched. Mind you, the original recipe calls for 2 parts nog to 1 part milk OR liquor, and I was at about 4 parts milk AND bourbon to 1 part nog. It was like a party in my mouth and everybody had the trots.

For YOU people I went back and tried the filthy shit again before writing this post, and I was finally able to put my finger on what the taste was: licorice. It was like drinking eggnog through a straw made of black licorice. It’s absolutely repulsive, and I’m not sure what makes it taste that way, but when you can add so much booze and milk and the licorice flavor still comes through… well, I’d say we have a problem.

Then again, I also hate that shitty pre-liquored nog that you can buy, and I know lots of people who love it, so it might just be me in this case. Either way, I’ll never drink it again, and maybe it’ll save you about 11 bucks. And having to learn what it’s like to be hit in the face with a sack of warm diarrhea.

Until next year, thus ends the nog diaries. Like Sex in the City, but with less lactose intolerance.

The breath of the morning, I keep forgetting, the smell of the warm summer air

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on January 9, 2008 @ 8:36 am
in Glen Burnie and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 8 Comments

weather

Seriously, weather? That’s how you want to play it? Don’t make me break my foot off in your ass for some snow, bitch.

Putting the “ass” back in “assessment”

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on January 7, 2008 @ 11:40 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, house, money, people are idiots and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 13 Comments

Mrs. ACW and I got our housing assessment this weekend, and after reading about the ridiculosity surrounding other’s assessments, I was prepared for a mountainous raft of crap. Surprisingly, the value of my home did not go up by an umpity-hojillion percent, but instead increased at about the 33% rate detailed by the MD Dept. of Assessments and Taxation.

However, since we are talking about the guvmint, I’d be remiss to point out some of the things that they did get astronomically wrong.

The first thing they got wrong was deciding that we had a basement. Unless the MDDAT has been working tirelessly and silently digging out the crawlspace under our house and replacing gravel with complimented earth-tones and delightfully zany throw-pillows; or unless drainage-rocks and exposed beams with three feet of clearance between now counts as a basement, we do not have a basement. You’d think this would be easy to determine since we live in a duplex and share a roof, walls, and a foundation with our neighbors, and THEIR assessment (I looked it up online) properly indicates that they do not have a basement. However, I’m sure we can all agree that a simple double-check that would have been obvious to a fourth-grader is beyond the mental reasoning of a stadium full of bureaucrats. Hopefully, our magical basement will either appear at no cost to us, or be removed from the assessment soon.

The second thing that they got blitheringly, stupefyingly wrong, was the location of our house. Rather than placing our house on the tiny lot on which it belongs, we were placed about a block away, residing in the huge lot occupied by an apartment building. This stymies me for a number of reasons: first, they got our address right, and since we share the address with our neighbors (e.g. 123 Fake Street, Unit 1, and 123 Fake Street, Unit 2), and since they got our neighbor’s location correct, we should be located in the same lot; second, we share a roof, walls, and a foundation with our neighbors, SO HOW THE FUCK COULD OUR HOUSE POSSIBLY BE A BLOCK AWAY?

Jiminy fucking Christmas! You could fire pen-wielding monkeys scatter-shot out of cannons onto huge assessment forms and it appears they’d STILL get more right than the addle-pated drool-factories at the state.

Seems like I’ve been doing a lot of these lately

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on January 3, 2008 @ 10:03 am
in Glen Burnie, bitches, i am so fucking awesome, people are idiots and the worldwide information super-tubeterwebs
. 16 Comments

1) You like boobs, right? Admit it. We all like boobs. Nobody doesn’t like boobs. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that nobody doesn’t not unlike no boobs. For that reason ALONE you should go vote (relatively safe for work) for Dizzy von Damn for this year’s Viva Las Vegas rockabilly burlesque competition. Miss Dizzy is actually a close personal friend of mine, and I’m pretty sure that if you voted for her, she’d let you continue to read my blog as a reward.

“But” you begin to say as the hamster gets up off his ass and lazily saunters over to the rusty wheel inside your head, “why should I vote for a complete stranger?” Two reasons: 1) I’m telling you to, and 2) because the 40 other girls don’t deserve to win. So go vote. Scroll down to “Dizzy von Damn” (in the tenth row, on the left) and click vote.

Remember, it’s for the good of the boobies.

2) The Great Glen Burnie Annual Christmas Tree Throw-out has begun! All over Glen Burnie idiotic and inconsiderate families have begun pitching their Christmas trees out of moving automobiles onto the the side of the road.

“Well,” you say to yourself, hamster flopping wildly and kicking its legs like crazy in an attempt to get into the hamster wheel, “that’s probably because Glen Burnie hasn’t designated a specific day for the trash collectors to come around and pick up the trees.” In fact, they have. All the lazy idiots have to do is drag their tree to the curb, and in a few days, as if by magic, it will disappear. No more loading the tree into the ancient station wagon, reaching a top speed of 40 miles per hour, and pitching it out into the middle of the highway while simultaneously dodging the myriad other drivers doing exactly the same thing. No sir. Instead they can just sit home, stuffing their faces with pallet upon pallet of deep-fried corn-chip-stuffed Twinkies, waiting for the tree to be hauled away. And yet, on the way to work I dodged 5 trees that had been left in the middle of the road, and observed a dozen more that had rolled to the side by the curb.

3) For the umpteenth year in a row, I have made no new year’s resolutions. As many of you already know, I am so fucking awesome.

“Gruh,” you say to yourself, jiggling your head slightly in an attempt to get the now napping hamster to run on his wheel, “fuffer nubs hoo blah muko pahoodie.” Yes, well, be that as it may, I don’t really see any reason to make a big deal out of it being a new year. If you want to do something, just do it. Don’t set up a magical signifier attached to a specific date because it doesn’t make any sense to do so. Time is a construct created and adhered to by our world because we had to find some way to measure how fast our pizzas were delivered. Do you really want to apply the same constraints to your health? Or your ambitions? I certainly don’t. If you want to climb a mountain, go climb it. If you want to go back to school, go do it. If you want to lose some weight, go for a walk. Don’t make this year the year you do something, make today the day you do something. Take care of it right now. If you can’t do it right now, start making plans right now for when you can do it. I’m sorry to get all preachy and up on my high horse, but this is my blog and I’ll do whatever I want you you can just shut your stupid face-hole. I just get frustrated seeing people set lofty far-away goals based on a new year, rather than setting realistic achievable goals based on what they can do today. Sort of like, “I’m going to lose 200 pounds this year!” rather than, “Today I’m going to go for a 15 minute walk.” I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. Sorry to end on a downer. I guess you can always go back to the link up top and look at more boobies.

It’s three more things, but that third one is kind of weak

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on December 21, 2007 @ 8:49 am
in Glen Burnie, house, meta blogging, nerd stuff, potty humor, suhmuhmuh bitch, the worldwide information super-tubeterwebs, word nerd and work
. 14 Comments

1) I woke up this morning to a cacophony of noise. I’ll wait while you go look that up.

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your innovations
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else…

Oh, you’re back. Didn’t see you there. Anyway, when I woke up there was a helicopter hovering overhead; the apartment complex next door had the landscaping people out to mow the non-existent grass; my Roomba, Roombie, was vacuuming and caroming around the house; and Sherlock and Wookie were tear-assing around the house in a game I like to call, “I will punch you each in the goddamned cat-colon if you don’t settle the fuck down.”

The irony is, this is the first day of my winter vacation*, and my first chance to sleep in has already been ruined. I forsee cats chained to litter boxes in the near future.

2) A conversation recently had by my brothers and I about our new extended-family email list; a list created exclusively for news, planning, and information, and not idiotic email forwards. My uncle is the offender I’m referring to in this case.

Me: So which one of you guys is going to lay the smacketh down for this? I know you’re thinking, “Oh, it’s Christmas, it’ll be fine.” And I’m thinking the same thing. But by March our inboxes will be overflowing
with urban legends about email causing cancer, animated jpegs of the baby Jesus, and every other unfunny piece of nonsense that clogs up the ‘tubes.

Desk Job: [sends regulating email to entire family]

Desk Job: [to me and Mokie] Hope the whole family doesn’t hate me now.

Me: I think you’re fine. You did a pretty good job of putting it diplomatically. Plus, if they give you any trouble you can just shove (your two and a half week old son)** in their face and they’ll settle down.

Mokie: Alternatively, if you need to get some distance, just throw him like a football. I bet that little guy makes a pretty good spiral.

Me: Mokie! That is uncalled for! He is a baby. Do you have any sense? You don’t throw babies. You punt them.

Desk Job: You’re both a bunch of jerks. If you punt a baby he’ll get hurt. If you throw a baby, someone will probably catch him, and the spiral of baby vomit will hit lots of bystandards.

Mokie: I really hope your spelling of “bystandards” was an intentional mashing-together of “bystander” and “retard.” I nominate it for word of the year.

Desk Job: Uh, yeah, that’s it. Shut up.

3) Wookie just jumped in my lap and put her butt in my face, and it smelled like kibbles. Not like butt. Not like butt and kibbles. Just kibbles. Somehow, that was more horrifying.

*As such, blogging will be light from now to January 2, but I’ll be sure to pop in from time to time. If you had an RSS reader, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.

**Yeah, my older brother be-nephewed me a few weeks ago. No, I don’t tell you everything because it’s not necessarily any of your goddamned business.

We Three Things

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on December 18, 2007 @ 10:41 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, awesome, beer, food, house, i am so fucking awesome, meta blogging, money, nog, people are idiots, potty humor and sex
. 13 Comments

1) Last year Mrs. ACW gave me a container of powdered eggnog mix for Christmas and to be honest, I’m a little scared to even try it. I thought I would be able to get up enough gumption yesterday, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Especially considering that the third direction is to “allow mixture to sit for a few minutes and thicken” (that’s what she said! ha! I’m hilarious) I’ve been particularly apprehensive. Even after having already come up with similes and metaphors relating to foamy reindeer ejaculate and elf orgies I still couldn’t bring myself to try the stuff. Or maybe that was part of the problem. Regardless, I’m going to attempt to try it at some point in the near future, and believe me, you’ll hear about it.

2) Last night I finally bought our Christmas tree. Last year I paid $20 for a tree that cost about $27. I didn’t haggle. I didn’t bargain. I just pointed to the tree I wanted and said, “I’ll give you 20 bucks for that one.” This year my success is debatable. Because of the drought, tree prices were a bit higher this year than last year. And by “a bit” I mean “ridiculously more expensive”. I saw quite a few trees that looked like our tree last year, the shabbiest of which cost about $50, and the one most like last years was going for about $78, and it was still no prize compared to some of the other trees on the lot. The nicest tree I saw went for about $150 bucks, which I guess is like buying a disposable ivory back-scratcher; nice to look at, but really completely pointless. I found two trees on the lot that were less than $40, which I figured was the upper limit of my bargaining range, and set about comparing them. The $37 tree was taller, but it was missing huge sections of branches, so I went with the shorter, chode-ier tree, even though that meant we’d have to put it up on some sort of small table. I found the saleswoman and told her I’d give her $20 for the tree. It was priced at $31.

“Well, I’d love to but that’s a blahblahwhatthefuckeverblah kind of tree, and people rarely pay less than full price for those.”

“I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

“I’m not sure I can go that low, but I can probably let you have it for 28.”

“I have a twenty dollar bill. It’s twenty or nothing.”

“Okay. $22.50. It’s as low as I can go.”

“I’m not sure you understand. All I have is a twenty. I can’t pay you any more than that. No one else is going to buy this tree. Do you want to make twenty bucks off it?”

She didn’t look like she was going to relent, but just at that second a whole gaggle of wide-eyed suckers wandered onto the lot, so seeing her chance to sell a blahblahsomefuckinkindoftreeblah to them for a hundred bucks, she took my twenty and left.

A guy came over to cut off the bottom and bag it in that plastic netting, but I told him not to worry about it, rolled my passenger side window down, and had him stuff it in there. Voila: a Christmas tree.

3) Today is our Holiday Party at work. I say Holiday Party because our boss is Jewish and the co-chairs of the planning committee are Jewish, Musilm, and Hindu. In fact, now that I think about it, the other three people on the committee are Non-denominational Christian, agnostic, and a non-affiliated spiritual zen Buddhism-type guy. Weird. Anyway, an email went around a few weeks ago about the gift-exchange at the party this year. It’s one of those events where people buy $10 worth of crap and then pass it around for a while until everyone is unhappy. Every year people hound me to participate, and every year I demurely turn them down. Finally my colleague, the non-denominational Christian, asked me why I don’t participate, and I decided to be completely honest. Why would I pay between $10 and $20, and spend the time to pick out something nice that just about everyone could enjoy, when I’m guaranteed to get crap in return? The gift exchange is nothing more than complicated, protracted boondoggle for me to pay $20 for something I don’t even want. That’s money I could be spending on beernog.

Bad Behavior has blocked 780 access attempts in the last 7 days.