Archive for the 'money' Category

BGE Peak Time Rebate Program

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Anonymous Coworker
on March 7, 2008 @ 9:33 am
in Mrs. ACW, awesome, devil cat, horror, money and nerd stuff
. 9 Comments

So Mrs. ACW and I have been selected to participate in an energy-saving experiment with Baltimore Gas and Electric this summer. BGE selected about 1000 homes at random to participate in what they call the “Peak Time Rebate program”, and we were lucky enough to be one of them.

Basically, it works like this: BGE will run the program for 12 days between June 1 and Sept 30. Essentially, they’ll let us know by phone, email, or even text a few days in advance when a “peak day” is coming. (Can you believe that? Text? I’m shocked at their acceptance of modern technology.) Then, when the peak day rolls around all we have to do is reduce our energy usage between 2pm and 7pm.

“Ha ha, sucker,” I can hear you saying now, “They’re just duping you and some other suckers into reducing your energy so that they don’t have to brown-out the state for a few days this summer.”

Yeah, I was skeptical too, but they’re providing incentives out the ass. First of all, just by calling to see if I qualified to participate in the program they gave me $15. Not bad for 5 minutes worth of work.

Next, they’re going to refund me for every kilowatt hour I reduce off my average usage. So if they measure that I normally use 1000 kWh per month and on a peak day I use 5 or 10 kWh less, they’ll pay me about $1.16 for every kWh reduced. That means $5.80 or $11.60 (or more) for doing nothing! Even better, there’s no penalty if I don’t reduce my usage during peak days. At this point my plan is to flip all the breakers on everything except the refrigerator on “peak” days. I don’t care if the cats suffer for my cash.

Once the experiment ends in September, and if I don’t bail out, which I won’t, they’ll pay me another $100 just for participating. This is on top of whatever I earn through reduced usage and the $15 they paid me initially.

Finally, the coolest part of the experiment are the tools they’re giving me to help reduce energy usage. They’re installing a device on my air conditioner/heat pump that will cycle on and off while the air conditioning is on. The air conditioning will stop, but the fan will keep running for a few minutes to blow around the already cold air, then the AC will kick on again, then off again while the fan stays on, etc. So they’ll be saving money FOR me. How can I lose?

The other cool thing that we get is an Orb! When I read about these in Wired a few months ago I thought, “Man, I’ve GOT to get one of those.” It keeps track of any number of things, but in this case, it’ll be our energy usage. So we can see if we’re using more energy than we need to be using and I can yell to Mrs. ACW, “Hey, the orb is red. Stop doing whatever you’re doing! Jerkass.”

I know I’m totally nerding out here, but I’m totally psyched about this, and can’t wait to see how it goes. And there’s really nothing nicer than getting paid a fat wad of cash for having a lower energy bill.

More from the funeral home

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on March 4, 2008 @ 9:39 am
in bitches, family, money and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 23 Comments

One would hope, at this point, that the anger would have diminished somewhat, and I guess it has, but not quite as much as I would have liked, due primarily to the ineptitude of the staff at the funeral home.

On Thursday my family prepared for two 2-hour viewings of my grandfather from 3-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. Our family was invited to show up early because my aunt was having a really hard time with the whole thing, and wanted extra time to personally spend with my grandfather without a bunch of other people around. Upon arrival at two o’clock we were happy to see that the lights in the funeral home were on. There had been some power outages in the area, so we were worried about the lights at the funeral home. Before we arrived the funeral home assured my family that they had candles placed around the room and that it would be “dim”.

While my aunt drifted over to be with my grandfather, the rest of us gathered around a television to watch a slide show I had created from old pictures that my brother had scanned in. I had used iMovie and applied a liberal usage of the Ken Burns effect, and everybody seemed pretty happy with the result. Then, at 2:10 p.m., the lights went out.

“Dim” does not begin to describe the situation. Like many funeral homes, this one did not have any windows in the actual viewing room, so our room was lit by indirect ambient light from the front doors, two battery powered emergency lights, and about 6 or 7 small candles.

At 2:30 the emergency lights went out, so all we had were candles and the ambient light. If you think funeral homes are creepy, you should try hanging out in one with all the lights out. Finally the good will of my family broke, and one of my other aunts approached the funeral director.

“The lights have been out for 20 minutes. What is you back-up plan?”
“Well, the power is out in the area, and we can’t really control that.”
“That’s not what I asked you. Do you have a back-up plan for this type of situation?”
“No.”

Having just lost her father, my aunt didn’t have the energy to fight, so she found my brothers and me. My older brother and I approached the funeral director and asked what he was going to do. It took all I had to not punch him when he said there was nothing he could do. My older brother said, “No, that is not acceptable. You need to go buy a generator and get the lights on in this room. Now.” He said he would have to ask his manager, and while he disappeared we conferred about what we would do depending on when the lights came back on. We agreed that we’d ask for $1200 if the lights weren’t back on by the end of the first viewing, $2400 if they weren’t back on by the beginning of the second viewing, and $3200 if they were still off by the end of the second viewing. The price was based on what we paid for the viewing, and then we doubled it, that way even if we only got 50% of what we asked, we’d still get a full refund. We suspected they were keeping their fingers crossed that the power would come back on and wouldn’t have to shell out for a generator.

While we were waiting they lit a friggin’ oil lamp and placed it by the casket. Aside from the horrible odor, we had nothing to worry about except for the oil lamp tipping over and setting the whole room on fire. When the oil lamp started to fade they balanced a flashlight on the same table and pointed it at my grandfather. I can’t even begin to find the words to describe how infuriated I was to see my grandfather like that. Also, please keep in mind that the rest of the room was still dark, still lit only by a few flickering candles.

Finally at 3:41 p.m. a generator was connected to lights by the casket. At least anyone who wanted to see my grandfather wouldn’t feel like they were in a third-rate haunted house. The odd thing is, though, that lights in the hallway and in the other viewing rooms were on. As far as I could tell, ours was the only room in the whole place that was still dark. I’m not sure what that was about, but it didn’t help matter to see other rooms brightly lit when ours was still dark.

At 4:23 p.m. full power was restored to the building. Our room was completely lit, and for the next 35 minutes we were able view the slide show and have conversations with our family and friends without having to use candle light or a flash light.

The way I figure it, we were without power for 143 minutes out of a possible 180 minutes, amounting to almost 80% of the time we were there. I think were entitled to at least 80% of a refund for the viewings, if not more. It’s not like we can have another viewing next week. That was it. That was the only time we had. The stress and discomfort of spending so much of that time in the dark physically manifested itself in my relatives.

I’m not quite ready to say exactly where this happened, depending on how the bill is settled, but I’ll let you know what happens. Also, to prove I shouldn’t play the lottery any time soon, my dad’s uncle died on Sunday. I wasn’t close to him at all, and am not really sure if I ever even met him, but I’m pretty sure that my dad is beyond exhausted. A sister, father-in-law, and uncle within three weeks is un-fucking-real and I’m not sure that anyone should ever have to deal with that.

I’m as tired of writing about it as you are of reading it

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on February 26, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
in atheism!, bitches, family, money and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 27 Comments

So yesterday I went to the funeral home with my brothers, my cousin, my mom, and all my aunts and uncles. If you know anything about funeral arrangements, you know it’s the worst parts of buying a car wrapped up with all the fun and excitement of the death of a loved one. It is every bit as sleazy, scammy, and manipulative as you would imagine it could be.*

I’m glad my brothers and I were there, because had we not been, I think my mom and her siblings could have been suckered into a whole bunch of unnecessary expenses, some of which they were suckered into regardless.

It all started when the funeral home started pressuring us into getting my grandfather embalmed. Actually, it started way before that. The death industry has managed to subtly spread the myth that not only is embalming necessary for a body to be presentable, but that it may even be required by law. In Maryland, it’s not the law. There is a stipulation that “extended viewing” would allow the funeral home to require embalming, but nowhere is “extended viewing” defined. When my family sat down to have a discussion about whether or not embalming was necessary, the misinformation was coming out of the mouths of my relatives. “If he’s not embalmed we can’t have an open casket,” or “If he’s not embalmed he’ll start to stink,” or “If he’s not embalmed we won’t be able to bury him.” From what I can tell, all of these are inaccurate. Embalming is expensive ($1600 in our case), unnecessary where cold storage is available, unnatural, and bad for the environment. Does anyone has experience with a viewing and an non-embalmed body? I’d love to hear it.

The next big ticket item that can be ignored, one that we managed to keep our family from purchasing unnecessarily, is a vault. In Maryland a vault is not required, but a graveliner is (I think). A graveliner essentially keeps the ground from collapsing as the coffin degrades, and it keeps some moisture out of the grave, as well as keeping any degrading material of the body or the coffin out of the ground. It’s essentially a box in the ground that the coffin goes into. A vault is a box that goes inside the graveliner, and then the coffin goes in the vault. They start at about $3000 bucks for plain concrete and then go as high as $20,000 for fancy stuff with copper or bronze linings and embellishments. They try and sell you on the vault by saying that without it “weather” could get into the coffin sooner, essentially forcing you to visualize the deceased rotting in the ground. In our case it would have been an especially bad decision to buy a vault because our grandfather won’t even be buried with us at the graveside. The cemetery only does burials once or twice a month, and all the bodies delivered to the cemetery before that day are buried then, no visitors allowed. We wouldn’t have ever seen the vault even if we purchased it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if numerous families had purchased vaults, only for that money to go into the pockets of funeral salesmen. Don’t let a funeral director tell you that a vault is required unless you’ve read the law and know he’s right. In Maryland, he wouldn’t be.

Eventually we got to the coffins themselves, and that was a horrible process in and of itself. They try to sell you on all this fancy, polished, filigreed nonsense, when all you want is something simple and respectful. My older brother asked for a book of cheaper options once we reached the end of the first book and the cheapest option was $3000. We were told that the book we were looking at was the only book available. Then my mom told a story about when my grandfather was making arrangements for his sister and the funeral director then told him that the option he had picked for his sister was “nice”. “No,” he barked in reply, “Not nice. A necessity.” After that story the funeral director magically found a book of cheaper options. My family eventually settled on something for about $1,400 that looked remarkably like a similar option available for $700, but my mom and her siblings took a vote and opted for the more expensive one. I’m still not sure why. It’s not like you can go to a funeral and remember what the casket looked like, or that you could (or even should) look at a casket and guess how much it cost. Just build me one out of plywood. It’ll be good enough.

But that’s the thing about coffins, everybody wants to think that with a nice enough vault, graveliner, and coffin, the body will stay perfect forever. In fact, the funeral director kept talking about how some coffins had gaskets and how others did not. He was really pushing the gasket thing pretty hard, I think for the same reason as the vault: to scare people into thinking of their loved one decomposing. Well guess what? We all decompose. There’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You’re going to be rotting in the ground regardless, and all this bullshit they try and sell you does nothing but prevent the former husk of your loved one from doing what it does naturally. You’ll never see them like that, so why do you even give a fuck? Are you concerned that they’ll check out the digs you bought for them if they come back in spirit form? Why the fuck would they do that? They could haunt themselves up season tickets for the Ravens and the Orioles. They could haunt themselves up a nice little spot in a strip club. They could haunt themselves up a seat in a movie theater. Why would they want to bother seeing the nonsensical shit you bought for them? They are dead! It doesn’t matter what they liked, or what they hated. They’ll never see any of it.

Finally we came to all the small details nonsense that still managed to cost an arm and a leg. A bouquet to go on top of the coffin? $200. A book for people to sign with their name and address? $40. Prayer cards? $80 for 200. And while I’m on the topic of prayer cards, what the hell are they all about? They’re like funeral trading cards. I really don’t understand why people take these things, and I REALLY don’t understand why they take 3 or 4 at a time. It’s just a card with a name, two dates, and a prayer on it. You can make your own for free, AND you can pick your own prayer! I tried to push for only getting 100, but my uncle insisted we get at least 200. I’m glad they only went that high. I can just imagine a box of 500.

My grandmother is still learning of the loss of her husband, hundreds of times every day. Fuck anyone who would dare spin that into a good thing. Comments are back on.

*Here’s Penn and Teller’s evaluation of the death industry on Bullshit. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The cats don’t sit still long enough to keep my toes warm

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Anonymous Coworker
on February 20, 2008 @ 9:40 am
in Mrs. ACW, bitches, devil cat, house, money, nerd stuff and sex
. 22 Comments

For the last few weeks the temperature inside our house has been nut-shrinkingly cold. In an attempt to save a little money, and because we desire to open the electric bill and not see, “You owe us assrape dollars and non-consensual-fisting cents.” Our electric bill has never been too crazy, really, because I’m that guy who walks through the house and turns off all lights and unplugs items that aren’t being used, but still the bills were more than we wanted to pay. So we’ve set the thermostat for a steady 62 and dealt with it.

Before I go on and eventually reach the uninteresting point of this story, I’m going to preemptively defend myself from those of you who live in the arctic tundra north of the temperate zone better known as the mid-Atlantic seaboard of the United States. Yes, 62 is cold for us. Yes, the temperature in the winter usually only hovers around 20-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, we know you are buried in snow for all but two weeks in the middle of the summer. Yes, we realize that Kelvin is just a guy on your street who stands on his porch in his underwear when it’s -273.15 degrees Celsius outside.* Yes, we realize that you set your thermostats at 2 degrees and you just throw on another sweater. That’s awesome. You’re awesome. We’re all glad that you’re so awesome that you can live in such unforgiving climates. Really, no one at all is tired of hearing you scoff, “27 degrees? Heh, that’s warm for us!” That never, ever gets tired, especially when we grew up in the reasonable climate we grew up in, and you grew up in a snowman’s armpit. So, yes, to conclude this diatribe, our house is kept at 62 degrees and that’s cold for us. Shut it.

Anyway, we’ve been getting by with hoodies, sweaters, and blankets on the couches. That generally keeps us from being so cold that we’re uncomfortable. But I’m 6′2″ and though I’ve got some padding around the middle, my fingers, and especially my toes, get cold fast. It’s not uncommon for my toes to go completely numb, even if I’m wearing socks and slippers. I’m tall and blood doesn’t circulate well to far-away places like my toes. No big deal. I can make do. For example, instead of wearing regular socks, I might throw on some wool socks or thick Xmas socks. Or I’ll sit cross legged and try to keep my toes warm with my hands. Or I might tuck the bottoms of my pants into the top of my socks, and my sweater into the top of my pants. This makes me look like an utter goon, but I don’t care, because it keeps me warm.

Every time Mrs. ACW sees me with my sweater tucked in, or with my pant legs tucked in to my socks she just shakes her head and says, “I can’t believe I’m married to you.” And I guess I could be offended, but the fact is that I really don’t care. She’s stuck with me, and my feet are cold, so until the weather gets a little warmer I’m going to look like the gooniest goon that ever gooned an automatic gooning machine. Also, I retort by saying, “Not only are you married to me, but we also have sex,” which usually just leaves her shaking her head and wondering where she went wrong.

*I so love nerd jokes.

A message to superman_adonis@yahoo.com

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on February 4, 2008 @ 10:23 am
in awesome, i am so fucking awesome, money, people are idiots, potty humor, sex and the worldwide information super-tubeterwebs
. 30 Comments

I was GOING to write a post about the superbowl (a terrible game with 2 exciting drives bookended by boring, unfunny commercials) but the internet has provided the bounty, once again.

Here is the comment I got on Saturday from Man Enough to have fun at any club:

WOW,

This has nothing to do with you current post but one that had popped up from a few years ago about your experience at Baja Beach Club. Wow…………..you are a BITCH, lol. Most “real men” can handle themselves in a club full of screaming horny women but this seems not to be the case for you. As far as a tip goes, when you buy a bottles beer for 25 cents you fucking tip asshole. I don’t care if that beer came staright out of your boyfriends asshole it’s 25 cents for God’s sake, you tip. I have ran club after club after club and there are always wallflower, no game, losers like yourself who get bent when they get blownoff for being the cheapskate piece of shit that you are. It’s ok though, after reading your comments and opinions about Baja of Baltimore your scene would be best suited to the library you waste of space faggot, stay the fuck out of a crazy, exciting club where everyone but you has a great time. The funny thing is I was probably there that night and fucked both of the girls you came with, and they probably paid me to do it causing your little tantrem, that happens alot. Have a great day and enjoy the Science Center faggot. :) Next time bring monery when you go into any club and rememeber 25 cents bottles equal a tip…..reguardless of the service!!!!!!! now FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!

Did you read it all? If you didn’t, I suggest you go back and really soak in the idiocy of it all. Judging from the complete lack of spelling ability, poor grammar use, extremely low reading comprehension, child-like logic, and general dumbfuckery, I’d say we have a comment from your average, run of the mill club-rat: the poster-child for eugenics. For purposes of visualization, this is who I’m picturing:

spikeyhair

I’m not even sure where to start with this one, so I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

Dear Idiot,

Were you able to count higher than 4, I might begin to compare your lack of intelligence to that of a bag of hammers, or a bucket of rocks, but because you’re a mouth-breathing semi-functional illiterate, I’ll try to use as few words as possible, and make those words small ones whenever I can. Do you have your dictionary ready, or maybe a friend who passed the third grade? Great. Here we go.

If you had any reading comprehension skills whatsoever (and no, having your mommy read you the jokes in Maxim doesn’t count) you would have read that I was going to tip FOUR TIMES (sorry, I guess you’ll need a calculator too) the amount the bartender expected to be tipped, but because the bartender was a whiny little crybaby, I decided not to tip him at all. I figured the less money he had to spend on Drakkar Noir, the better. Somehow, though, you missed that part of my post, and I can only assume it’s because you could only understand one out of every 18 words that I typed. Don’t beat yourself up over it, though, lots of people have trouble reading. However, it would probably be in your best interest to stopping drinking gallon upon gallon of lead paint. Despite what you and your friends tell yourselves, it’s not making you smarter.

Now, on to the other issues to which you alluded. You appear to have quite a bit of aggression towards gay people. I’m not sure where this stems from, since I don’t know you, but I think it might be good for you to look up a term called, “projection”. Basically it means that you see something in other people that you don’t want to acknowledge in yourself. For example, you suggested I was gay about a half-dozen times, but I can see that you looked at the “About” section of my blog, and thus know that I’m happily married to a woman. But I have a surprise for you! You were able to see through the facade and find out that, yes, I’m really gay. I love having sex with men. In fact, I was just banging your dad, and he was really enjoying himself as well. Your mom was video-taping the whole thing, so you can borrow the tape from her if you want to check it out.

Also, it seems like you hate intelligence. This isn’t just something that I picked up from the barely legible missive you left in my comments, but also because you denigrated the Science Center and the library. Are you really so simple that intelligence is an affront to you? Your life must be incredibly difficult, not being able to figure out why it takes you so long to put your diaper on every morning.

Finally, no, you didn’t have sex with the two women I came in with. In fact, I’d say you probably never have sex with anyone. You go to a shitty club, swill shitty beer for a few hours, grind your way through the Baja Beach Club nightly sausage-party, ogle the few slutty white-trash trailer-bunnies that do show up, go home with an empty wallet and a tiny little erection, and masturbate furiously to scrambled porn in your parent’s basement. Doesn’t it make you even a little bit sad that your life peaked in high school, you prickless manchild?

I hope you continue to waste your money, life, and time at the Baja Beach Club, because the odds are in my favor that you’ll eventually contract Hepatitis C and die. In fact, I’d be surprised if you weren’t already riddled with a cocktail of chlamydia, herpes, and genital warts from rubbing your laughably small penis all over the other troglodytes in that den of idiocy.

Please sterilize yourself,

ACW

P.S. Here are the words you misspelled, now spelled correctly:

tantrum
blown off
straight
a lot
money
remember
regardless

You should probably write these down for the next time you try to make fun of somebody but instead end up looking like a moron.

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.

Happy Birthday J-Shizzle! Lap dances all around!

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on December 25, 2007 @ 8:00 am
in Mrs. ACW, awesome, devil cat, family, jesus is fo' shizzle, money, nog and sex
. 11 Comments

May your belly be full of nog, your day be full of cheer, and your wallet be full of singles for stuffing into g-strings and banana-hammocks.

Merry Christmas from ACW, Mrs. ACW, Wookie, and Sherlock

fully nogged

The secret ingredient is love. (Love = 12 grams of fat per serving)

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on December 20, 2007 @ 9:53 am
in food, money, people are idiots and work
. 16 Comments

Every year for work I make cookies for people. It’s a cheap and easy way of saying, “I recognize my societal requirement to give you a gift at this time of year, but I don’t like you enough to get you anything different than I got for the other twenty people in this office, and I also don’t care about you enough to pay more than a few cents for a gift, so here is a plastic bag with some cookies in it.” The best part is that people go wild over these fucking cookies. I give them cookies and they’re like, “Cookies? COOKIES!!!!” It’s bizarre.

Part of this might be due to a small misconception fostered by me at some point a few years ago when I originally distributed these cookies. Someone was eating the cookies while most of the office was sitting around chatting and that person said, “I know you like to be healthy, are these cookies low fat?” And I laughed a little and said, “Oh, yeah. They’re totally fat free.” which is probably one of the worst lies I’ve ever told because the cookies have visible chocolates chips in them and an extremely buttery flavor. Then I realized they were being serious, and I’ve never taken the opportunity to correct their misunderstanding.

These cookies are made with butter flavored Crisco. Pure lard. Fat. These cookies are made with fat. They’re not even as healthy as cookies made with huge globs of fresh creamery butter. Any idiot can look at these cookies and see that they are crammed with fat. By touching these cookies it becomes clear that the primary ingredient is artery-clogging deliciousness. One bite of these cookies and your guts go, “Holy shit, these cookies are fattier than a baby pool full of bacon grease.” And yet people continue to praise the deliciousness of my fat free cookies. They keep asking for the recipe, but I refuse to tell them under the guise of it being a secret family recipe. A secret family recipe that you can find on the side of the Crisco container. I’m thinking maybe I should sell these cookies and call them, “Cookies for people who want to eat cookies and think they’re eating healthy because they’re too stupid to realize that cookies are never good for you and should probably be consumed in moderation rather than strapped to your face like a holiday feedbag.” The printing costs would be killer though.

People continue to think they’re fat free, and I’m not going to say anything about it, so they can indulge without feeling guilty, and I only make enough cookies for everybody to get 7 or 8 so it’s not exactly like I’m spooning Crisco directly into their faces. Though I would if I could convince them it was fat free.

We Three Things

Published
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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.

I’ve been scolded

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on December 10, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
in Mrs. ACW, food, money, nog and sex
. 23 Comments

Let’s see, it’s December 10th and I haven’t nog-blogged a single time yet this month. Sure, I have four posts about nog so far this fall, including one post in October about pumpkin nog. And sure, even when not blogging about nog I’m still pretty much the greatest blog on the internet, so you’ve got that going for you. But Supa reminded me that all of that doesn’t matter when nog is on the line.

In a comment on the last post that I’m sure wasn’t intended to crush my soul and completely take the wind out of my sails, but did anyway, she upbraided me thusly:

Anyway. Came for nog, was disappointed.

I kind of just looked at the screen and went, “But… but… oh. Okay.” and then resolved to post about nog today in some sort of conciliatory gesture to correct past nog-related wrongs. So here you go, Supa, a nog post. I hope it does not disappoint.

During one of our frequent and unnecessary trips to Target to cram every cranny and nook of our home with cheap, plastic, disposable crap, I wandered away from Mrs. ACW (who was jabbering incessantly about how I tune her out or something like that), into the dairy section, as one is wont to do when one wanders aimlessly.

I came upon a dairy case that housed abortion after vile abortion of the unholiest products. Things that should never be mixed with something that comes out of a teat. Cherry-flavored milk? Pardon me while I vomit on the small child standing next to me. I would rather eat the Devil’s underpants. But, as luck would have it, at the end of that row of edible death was exactly what I was looking for: eggnog.

I was a little excited to see that it was Archer Farms branded eggnog because I’m pretty much in love with Archer Farms snack foods. I’d willfully stab a man to death for some of their flavored potato chips, and if it were legal in any state besides Wyoming, I’d quickly divorce Mrs. ACW and marry a bag of chips instead. But there’s no way I’m moving way the hell out to Wyoming just for some potato chips. Are we clear? Murder- enthusiastic yes. Moving- lethargic no.

So we get home and before Mrs. ACW can open the door I push her down on the ground, take the eggnog, and go inside. I think she came inside after that. Or not. Whatever, I don’t care. I had eggnog to drink. I poured myself a glass of the stuff (and have you noticed that when you’re pouring eggnog it’s impossible to pour it any way but silently? Eggnog doesn’t make the vulgar sloshing sounds so typical of other beverages. Oh no. Eggnog is like an outfit made of pure velor while drinks such as soda are all corduroys-and-vinyl-windbreaker-obscene. Eggnog is the ninja of beverages, and it will stab your taste buds with it’s nutmeg katana and you will be lucky if the ONLY thing you do is have an orgasm and relax your bowels.) and took a sip.

“That’s odd,” I thought, “this tastes… like Target.”

Now, I’ve never “tasted” Target. I’ve never gotten down on my hands and knees and licked the red and white linoleum tile. I’ve never tongue-kissed the endless displays of movies that cost $5.50. I’ve never orally ingested… well, that’s probably enough. That smell, though. You know that smell? The smell of row upon row of cheap plastic crap, industrial cleaning solutions, heavily recycled air, 75-pound dog-food bags, and those distinct-but-subtle notes of vacuum cleaner bags? That’s what Target nog tasted like.

Don’t get me wrong, the primary and overwhelming taste was of nog, but there was a background which tasted like Target itself, and that didn’t make me happy. No, that did not make me happy one bit. I finished the glass (it was nog, after all) and put the carton in the back of the fridge. I hoped to go back to it after a few days to find that it had mellowed somewhat and the undeniable taste of big-box commerce had dissipated. Alas, it was not to be.

Drinking Target nog is like drinking capitalism, distilled. For the most part it’s okay, but every now and then you get hints that what you’re consuming is the lowest common denominator of what it could possibly be without it being something totally different altogether. Get it? No? Let me put it simply:

Target nog almost tastes like Communism.

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