Category — Rants

I mainly entitled this post “Beserk” because it rhymed with my original title: “A Day at Work.” And it is truly one of those rhymes that rests well with the soul because it is a synonorhyme. Haven’t heard of that word? Go look it up. Can’t find it? Come work a day at my job and you will.

Disclaimer: I am thankful for my job. But in my dictionary, the entry

thankful: a state of not complaining 

was misprinted into

thankful: often a complaining state

So, I drive to work, and as I park in front of the big dreary building wanting to leadbrake my head into the steering wheel, my oxygen supply gets carbon monoxonized by the six-hours-in-a-cubicle-monster. Short, clipped breathing begins.

I trudge up the stairs to work. There’s probably 25 total, but no matter how in shape I am, it always seems to add additional shortage to my breath. But maybe that’s the monoxonized air and not the stairs. Sometimes, I’m right along there with *Mildred,* the eighty-year-old whose antiquated voice and mundane comments have come to taste like a cool and refreshing ice cream treat amongst the dry tasteless quiet of the office, particulary chocolate ice milk, which, to my detriment, I have not tasted for numerous years due to my lac of lactose digesters. (K omitted intentionally all you Type A’s.) Mildred moves up the stairs as if each one was a sparse surfaced stone pathing a waist-deep river.

As I open the door into the actual office, I greet the stacks. Large stacks of journals whose articles never get read by me, only glanced at, mourn the attentiveness of my eyes as I trek past them toward by cubbie hole. Oh no, wait. Cubbie holes were fun little spaces filled by my imagination as a kid. So let’s call it instead my cube in hell. Much better and much more imaginationless.

I spend my first 15 minutes at work preparing my coffee and breakfast. I count this as work. Perhaps I shouldn’t count my breakfast, but I do since I make it while the coffee grinds steep in the French press. And making my coffee is justified as working time since work does not provide edible coffee. It should be a necessity, like clean water.

I go to the bathroom.

I take my yumyum gluten free cereal with berries and almonds and rice milk back to my cube in hell, along with my aromatic, enticing cup of Major Dickason’s, grind #12. At this point I usually suppose that I should actually start working, so I grab a batch of abstracts to proof. 

The next thirty minutes I think about my coffee while I proof the abstracts.

When I’m done proofing the abstracts, I realize I should probably reproof all of them. But I don’t. Fortunately, they go to Editor *Dakota*, who lets out a loud groan of misery whenever I pass them onto him for checking queries. He surely won’t mind the lack of pen marks.

I go to the bathroom.

Next, I try to find some computer task I can do so I can start chatting on G-chat. And looking at food blogs. I capitalize, I delete, I change “essay” to “article,” I put articles in the abstracts from Chinese journals, and I say to myself, “Next time they should pay someone who speaks English to do the English translation. But why would you, when you could pay someone who doesn’t speak English a lot less to do it?”

I ponder how my degree of analyzing Tolstoy, Poe, and Tony Morrison flew me to such ambitious heights of capitalizing letters that should be capitalized and were not. 

I go back to proofing abstracts on paper since the fuzz of my old monitor screen has grown mold in my brain. However, this time I have no coffee to think about, so halfway through page 2 of 26, my green proofing manual binder knots a plastic bag over my head, and I start suffocating. He likes to do that to me early in the day so that my day seems longer.

The clock moves like a slug.

I go to the bathroom.

(To be continued…)

So, I don’t know HOW it came to this, but somehow I became affiliated with the Lingerie Football League. My affiliation does not mean that:

a). I have transformed into a sexy athlete who wishes to discover her “primate” side by joining the “Atlantic Steam” or the “San Diego Seduction” and prancing around and wrestling other women while we’re all clad in ruffles that cover an extremely minute proportion of the body as sparsely as authentic meat in a McDonald’s hamburger.

b). I will watch women prancing around and tackling other women while they’re clad in ruffles that cover an extremely minute proportion of the body as sparsely as authentic meat in a McDonald’s hamburger.

c). I will market the image of women while they’re clad in ruffles that cover an extremely minute proportion of the body as sparsely as authentic meat in a McDonald’s hamburger to the begging, hornthirsty hormones of the male species.

So one of these could potentially become a lie. Which one is it?

If a movie were to be made about this, it could be entitled: A League of Their Own 2: Postfeminist Panty Pride.

Dippety-doo-da, dippety-dey,

My oh my what a fuckin’ concave.

Plenty of backpain headin’ my way.

Si-esta mattress, I hate you today!

This pleasant little diddly is a product of my wrath. My wrath is a product of a dimwitted letter. The dimwitted letter saying “No, we will not honor the warranty you paid for. Rather, we would like to royally screw you over,” is a product of a greedy, pissant bastard from the warranty department of Siesta Mattress Company. 

For some reason, the grand canyon splitting through our two-year-old, $1,700 mattress does not meet the qualifications for “manufacturing defects.” Apparently, we have to sear our asses on volcanic lava before the caverns in our mattress are considered deep enough to meet the qualifications for warranty coverage. 

Additionally, the rage-inducing letter states, “A stain found on the mattress nullifies the warranty for health and safety reasons.” Unfortunately, a minor stain on the mattress from moving prohibits Siesta from the potential profit of reselling the defunct p.o.s. to some poor cheapass fellow, who will soon after fork over his life savings to the chiropractor. The health and safety of the company is put into jeopardy when they resell a mattress with a dirt stain, but one with a giant abyss passes A-ok.

Life lesson learned: Never buy a mattress from Siesta or you’ll find yourself gorged with vexation.

Without pointing a finger, no one knows who the hell’s business it is!!

Some days it just makes me irate that English does not differentiate its morphemes for the second person singular and plural and their possessive. There are just VITAL times in which these pronoun twins desperately need a distinguishing birthmark. For example, when someone says, “You’re gonna die,” the other people in the room perk up, asking each other, “uh, hold on! did he mean singular or plural possessive?” because if they are included in the “You’re,” that gets his/her/their ass/es shot! In a room with only one other person, no biggie. In a room full of hundreds, the pronoun becomes utterly impotent. USELESS! This must be why the majority of the time “you’re gonna die” is followed by “bitch!” or “motherf****er!” Sometimes these nasties can cause tremendous relief. The other people in the room look at each other thinking, “ah, motherf****er’s gonna die, not me!” 

Down with the pronoun. Save the expletives!