Dear Guru: Offended
Dear Guru,
I feel offended.
Signed,
Offended
That’s not much of a question but I’ll take what I can get. -Ed.
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Dear Guru: The Gift of Stolen Moments
Welcome to a new semi-regular feature here in the sludge mines. I’m calling it “Dear Guru.” This is where you get to ask me, the self-proclaimed Guru of Negativity, advice questions and I respond by insulting you and/or your intelligence. Why would anyone sign up for this kind of treatment? Perhaps that should be your first question. The questions are flooding in so get on yours quickly if you want some attention. I imagine this column will repeat about every five years or so depending on how many questions are received. Now on to our first victims. -Ed.
Q.
Hey, hey, guru. I want to marry you.
A.
Fool! That wasn’t phrased in the form of a question!
A prawn is like five or six shrimp!
—
Q.
Dear Guru,
I have a dilemma I hope you can help me with. I have a best friend of 40+ years. This friend gives me gifts for birthdays and holidays. I know for a fact that this friend has shoplifted these gifts as this friend confessed to me several years ago. I do not feel right accepting these gifts. Even with her shortcomings she is very dear to me and I don’t want to hurt her. What should I do?
Signed,
Fanny from Fort Fear
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Bye Bye Bitches
From time to time here in the Abyss we receive unsolicited manuscripts. I want to assure the loyal reader that Mrs. Abyss was not coached in any way, shape or form by yours truly and came up with the following missive completely on her own. She did steal my cow orker bit, though. -Ed.
This is a true account of one girl’s departure from the fiery pit of Hell known as… work. She had the courage to claw her way out but not before facing four long years of pain, suffering, under-appreciation, long hours, criticisms, crawling from under the bus, anger, hatred, hysterical laughter and gut-wrenching tears.
But alas she escaped, bloodied and with broken fingernails, scars across her back, evil images burned in her mind, clothes dirty and torn… but with a smile on her face. A smile of freedom.
The Notice
I gave a three-week notice. I’m a sicko.
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My Olympic Movement
Image Source: Poop The World Blog
Always eager in my quest to be a furry little lemming, I’ve decided to microblog the Olympics. I have my microbeer in hand. I am microready! (That sounds suspiciously like popcorn. Oh well, such is my fate.) Grab your butter flavoring. It’s go time.
This is my Olympic movement. Or, as I sometimes like to call it, a Movement for the Common Man.
I’m sure most of my reader have evacuated by now. Looks like it’s just gonna be you and me.
So, what is/are the Olympics? Perhaps the simplest definition (and the one found in the Demotivational Dictionary) is: an average throng observing and celebrating the spectacle of their own outliers.
Wikipedia says, “In statistics, an outlier is an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data. Grubbs defined an outlier as: An outlying observation, or outlier, is one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs.”
In other words, the Olympics are the sporting version of the universe telling you, “On the bell curve you’re the dingle dangle that hangs down on the bottom. The cling clang thingie that gives the bell it’s special sound.”
Yes, without the average, the outliers would have nothing to outlie from to set themselves apart. Think about it. That’s perhaps the deepest thing I’ve ever said. It’s an outlier of thought.
In other other words, the Olympics are all about watching the select few who have won something known as the DNA Lotto.
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The gift of giving can be free
Image source: Wikipedia
Today’s fortune cookie reads:
“Don’t worry about money.
The best things in life are free.”
Negative powers, activate!
Alas, this one is far too easy. What’s the universe trying to tell me? Obviously that I’m never going to have money so I need to avoid the Christmas rush and start preparing for it now. The last line is merely a lame attempt to make me feel better about the whole thing.
Thanks for rubbing it in, universe.
Ever see the sort of person who steps outside and breathes deeply and says, “At least I have fresh air in my lungs! And the feel of the warmth of the sun on my face!”
BAH!!!
I’d rather have the damn money, thank you very much.
The universe obviously feels differently and thus shoved that fortune in my face. So, in the spirit of that message, I’ve been thinking about Christmas gifts that don’t cost a penny.
A lot of people like to say, “Make your own gifts.” Screw that. All you end up with is a piece of crap that no one wants. “Look! Here’s an Eiffel Tower I made for you out of paper clips.” I think a better idea is to give the gift of service. And that’s something you can always do even if you are a tightwad (like most people I know) or just plain broke as hell (like me).
Before Christmas I had given my wife two service gift ideas. One was finding my leather gloves that have been missing since last winter. (I can’t stand the feeling of a cold steering wheel on my dainty little fingers. The heater in my car is broken.) The other idea was to find my missing Smothers Brothers CD because I want to upload a song to YouTube and share it with y’all.
Well, she didn’t do either. Instead she bought me gifts that I really enjoyed like a remote control helicopter. (It’s nice to have at least one practical gift each Christmas.) She also gave me a flashlight after I stormed around the house many, many times during the last few months bitching, “I can’t believe I live in a house without at least one goddamn flashlight!” I love that thing and it even fits in my coat pocket, right next to my skinning knife, so I can take it everywhere I go.
Yesterday I was bitching and moaning about the lack of effort on her part to come through on either of my “service gift” ideas. Suddenly she was determined. She went out to my car convinced she’d find the missing gloves there, but I had already looked there, too. I was convinced they were gone, and I was right.
Finally she gave up on the quest and came to my office to report the bad news. As she was standing there, she happened to glance at my bookcase. There, on one of the lower shelves, she spotted the gloves, laying out in the open plain as day. Oh yeah, that’s where they went! I’m still smarting from how hard she punched me after that one.
The Smothers Brothers CD is still MIA.
For our son, the gerbil, I had two other service gift ideas. Since he’s so poor (not counting his food stamps) and still without a job of any kind I figured he’d really appreciate a way to give his mom some inexpensive gifts. But he found solution completely on his own, though, also known as “absolutely nothing.” A clever and audacious move.
I have to give him credit. On Christmas Eve while opening his gifts he lamely tried to have a guilty look on his face. You still got a long way to go, son.
My ideas for him were simple. One was to arrange a pickup truck, provide the manual labor, and unload our storage unit stuff into our garage. Since that damn thing costs us $50 a month that would be a yearly gift of $600 of savings, and that’s pretty good! The other idea was he could fix her walk-in closet and hang up all her clothes. (Yeah, I ain’t got a round to it yet.)
Time will tell if he’ll come through on either idea, but I won’t hold my breath…
Abyss Presents: 2010 Gift Giving Guide Part 1
More fun and exciting unique gift ideas coming soon…
Good news for those having a bad day
Thanks for hanging on to that for us. We'll just be taking that back now.
Just when you thought your worries and troubles couldn’t get any worse, suddenly the Good News Fairy shows up to brighten your day.
You think you’ve got problems? Bill collectors calling all the time? Unable to see the dentist about your painful cavities? Need expensive medical tests but the answer is “no” because you have absolutely no medical insurance even though you work full time? Your job sucks and you see no way out?
Forget all that happy crappy! Don’t let a frowny cloud show up and rain on your day! There are people with much more serious problems out there.
South Koren pole vaulter Lim Eun-ji tested positive for a banned substance during an event in May and has been suspended for three months from competition. In June the 21-year-old Lim told a hearing that she didn’t “intentionally” take the banned substance.
ESPN: Lim suspended three months
Man oh man, am I glad I’m not in her shoes. Can you even imagine how horrible that must be for her?
Another athlete is also in the news. Lee Kyong-jae had just won a “gold medal” in May in the “men’s 5,000-meter event” and also tested positive for some banned stuff. He has been suspended two years and will have to return his gold medal.
So don’t feel too sorry for yourself. Your problems might seem bad but they are magnificently dwarfed by what brave athletes like these have to go through every single day for you and me. They are the standard bearers of the sum of our hopes and dreams.
If I can stop being so damn selfish and feeling sorry for myself I’m going to try to set aside some time every single day to remember and honor their shining examples. I know they appreciate their gifts and blessings way more than I could ever appreciate mine.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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