Friday, July 20, 2007

...A Petite Fictionalized Non-fiction...

"Cancel my subscription. I'm tired of your issues!" Trina shouted at everyone.

"Enough of this diatribe, I'm moving to Canada to live in a tree house. All the fucking crazy people in the world can leave me the hell alone" she continued.

....And other emphatically howled expressions of anger, frustration, and deepest disgust.....

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Snakes in Pain.

God help anyone that would preface a blog this way, but...

When "Snakes on a Plane" was released, there were all these hilarious knock-off shirts with little cartoon snakes performing various actions. "Snakes in the Rain" portrayed a tiny 'S' squiggle with a miniature umbrella, for example. There were also "Snakes in Spain," and my favorites, "Snakes Insane" and "Snakes in Pain" (!). Here was a bitty squiggle with a bandage wrapped around his wee tail.

All this to say, we had a fucking copperhead in our building at work. Yup. There was a poisonous snake hissing and striking at a co-worker in the hallway day before yesterday. Not long before that, we'd had the mother of all rats (which we finally caught in the women's bathroom). This thing was this size of, I don't know, like, a chihuahua, or something.

Right, back to the snake. My rant here is this: I present this copperhead as evidence of the cracked nature of the world I inhabit. How is it that deadly snakes just traipse in and out of here unchecked, and no one thinks it's weird? Certainly it gives me something to think about. Yet I know that if a snake had gotten in to the main office, everyone would've flipped out. But it's okay, here, for everything to be ghetto.

Conditions of my extracirricular activies / employments have always been relatively shanty. In high school we were "The Little Speech Team That Could." In college, we were the undervalued, underappreciated, underfunded (though completely stellar) "Drama Productions Produced Out of Thin Air." And now there are snakes....

I cut out a paper snake and we hung it on the door, a warning to all those who enter, "Beware! Snakes on Premises."

But there is a deadly ending to this serpentine tale of ickiness. The copperhead in question got its head cut off by a snow shovel and is now being eaten by ants. Snakes in Pain indeed....

Friday, July 6, 2007

Random acts of Humor.

I'm about died over this one, promise.

Now listen, the hilarity of this situation simply does not register at the appropriate notch on the "Fun-O-Meter" unless you hear the voice that accompanies the story, but we'll make do for the moment. There's a lady who's been calling into the trading post show we produce for the past several days. And when I say- well, just listen to what she's selling:

"AAAAA --- YYEEEESSSS! (she speaks loudly - and you can tell, even on the phone, that she's speaking in ALL CAPS) - I've got a UNICORRRRNNNNN fer saaaaale. It's got, AAAAA, one horn."

This is not a prank call. It's an older lady. Dead serious.

I'm sitting at my desk, doing my daily updates. I turn to the TV to find the host, live, on-air, hunched over his clipboard, absolutely shaking with laughter. I nearly fall in the floor.

Truly, at this point, my hopes are in the air. A Unicorn! If I was four I would have danced around the room. But being the distinguished twenty-three year old that I am, I remain cautiously optimistic that, indeed, a local personage has gone into the mythical beast wrangling business...

Yet, it was all for naught. As an afterthought, after a moment, I suspect, to reflect on what she has just professed to selling, the lady adds:

"It's, aaaaaa, ceramic, aaaaa, a ceraaamicccc unicoooorrrnn."

Nuts. My dreams are shattered. But again, I try to contain my grief behind a mask of passivity. Perhaps tomorrow.... Now around the office, some say it was that the woman explained that the unicorn only had one horn that made this situation so funny. Others say it was the woman's voice that cinched the humor of it. *I* say it was because this lady called in and said she had a frickin' UNICORN FOR SALE! However, I'll let you decide.

(As a side note, I'll mention that my mother said I should call in to the show the next morning and say that I want to BUY a unicorn, but that I can't take it if it's only got one horn.... :)

Oh! Maybe I've mentioned it. What about the woman who called in and announced to all the viewers out there in TV land that she had, not kidding here folks, "a hairy weiner for sale."

You can't make this up. My life simply CANNOT be this funny. I love it.

Again, I turn from my computer toward the television set in my office to find the show's host barely, *BARELY* supressing laughter. And again, it's only as an afterthought, that this woman adds, "You know, one of those Dachshunds?" Now, invariably, the lady couldn't find the words to express that she had "a long-haired dachshund for sale." Yet, it's the eloquence and beauty (and ambiguity) with which she expressed her desires that made the whole situation so exquisite.

Freud, I believe, would have something to say about this one....