My recent absence these past two weeks from Crassland, was not by choice…You see, I had to say good bye to an old friend. I’ve spent the last fortnight packing up and cleaning my way out of the place I lovingly transformed into and called home for the past ten years.
As I cleaned every nook and cranny for the excited new and imminent owners, I spent some time reflecting on the untold hours of sweat-equity I spent making this once antiseptic retirees’ domicile into an inviting destination for the spontaneous laughs of numerous dinner guests and party-goers, and memories worth cherishing, for me, for a lifetime. Continue reading →
You know, I remember it like it was this very morning – July 18th, almost ten years ago, came up like nobody’s business- all bright and full of promise – just has she had predicted. There was nothing to fear really, it was all so very well planned out by my bride-to-be. Every last detail…the appetizers, the perfectly matched bottles of wine on the table for our friends to enjoy, the music – certainly the music, the perfect dinner – oh it was grand. To this day, friends will tell me it was the best wedding they had ever attended (followed by the inevitable and obligatory, “sorry to hear about you and the Mrs”). Maybe that was the problem. Maybe, living up to the grandeur of the wedding – in happily ever after style – was too much to ask of anyone, really. Continue reading →
You know how sometimes when you are in your car and late for an appointment and some lazy, gallingly self-entitled, recently pubescent, fauxhemian saunters across the street in front of you, all sloth-like in his gait? Well, rather than throw away my home and good credit score by crushing his pork-pie sportin’ cranium into the back end of an idling UPS truck, I take this precious minute or two and sort things out in my vodka-addled brain. Here are ten such items.
Unless you’re a tragic figure, a la Andy Stitzer in The 40 Year-Old Virgin or committed to becoming a Nun, you’ve more than likely had a first sexual experience. Chances are, you are even less likely to have had it go smoothly. So without further adieu, I present my top five reasons why this first slice of paradise by the dashboard light, sucked. Continue reading →
Do you own your own business? Does your father speak like Mr. Bottomtooth on Family Guy, and let you draw a (no show) paycheck – from the company that amazingly bears the same last name as yours, while you spend the Summer banging chicks all across the European Continent as your Eurail pass hangs out of the back pocket of your Gap chinos? Well this post isn’t for you, Bunky. Move along. I’ll wait a sec….
Now, if the rest of the unwashed masses (me included) are ready, here are ten easy ways to see if you are toiling for a tool.
1. Does your micro-managing, vinyl-shoe wearing boss hover around your workspace and see if you are sending personal emails or taking personal calls and generally being unproductive? Tool.
2. Does your boss ask if you have finished Project X, as you are walking out to a much-needed, Wednesday liquid lunch? Tool.
3. If your boss likens your productivity to that of a sedated tree-sloth, during written review time, on letterhead, and makes you sign it. Tool.
4. If your boss mentions to you, in the break room – in front of the mouth-breathing HR Temp – that this is the fifth time this month you’ve been late, but never compliments you for taking the goddamn red-eye back from the mind-numbingly, soul-crushing conference she made you attend against your will, so that you don’t miss another workday? Tool.
5. When your boss is leaving at 11 a.m. on Thursday for a long weekend of cough syrup, TV Dinners, and masturbating until the sobbing starts and he dumps the vague outline of a Powerpoint he has to have for his ass-kissing meeting with Corporate at 9 a.m. Monday. Yes, he’s a tool.
6. Upon being reduced to throwing yourself under the warehouse forklift and jeopardizing “Slow Dave” the driver’s retirement in order to secure the afternoon off because your boss requires 946 hours prior notice. Tool.
7. When look forward to hunkering down in your basement and devoting every one of the precious few hours you have to yourself, at night, after work, searching the internet for: odorless, tasteless, easily purchased, fast acting, nervous system crippling, sphincter bleeding, sweet sweet poison for your boss – when you should be sleeping. Tool.
8. After enduring another closed-door conference call to your one and only new perspective client this month – in which you luckily closed some new business, no thanks to Mr. Has-No-Clue who insisted he “sit in” and now you can eat this month and by the skin of your teeth and sheer will, you barely survive the olfactory assaulting, gag-inducing aroma of those sense-stultifying, Sansabelt pants he’s worn for the third time this week and he has the nads to attempt a high-five and a “bro hug?” Tool.
9. If you refuse to talk about your personal, weekend business with your boss, which may or may not include: using your home-made trebuchet to hurl cat-eye marbles at Mitzy, your patient, but struggling goldfish; wearing neoprene; huffing modeling glue; abusing the On-Demand porn privilege with Comcast (to the point of a warning call), but she sees you as the perfect sounding board for an opinion of her newly e-bay purchased, Civil War Reenactment costume she is currently modeling before you. Tool.
10. If your boss waits until you are in the communal commode to take his “morning squirt,” which he does whilst humming the entire theme to Rocky, while you, once again, and hopefully this time successfully, evacuate the four pounds of government cheese you had to subsist on this past weekend and have been painfully carrying around in your lower intestine. Tool.
Hopefully, this will help you identify the tool you work for.
Completely fogged in. Visibility: Zero.
Chance of skull-pounding headache: 100%. Persistent dry-heaves thoughout the morning commute. Possibility of sunshine: .08%.
My recent absence these past two weeks from Crassland, was not by choice…You see, I had to say good bye to an old friend. I’ve spent the last fortnight packing up and cleaning my way out of the place I lovingly transformed into and called home for the past ten years.
