The Lurker is a Person in your Neighborhood
I slipped out of my home and blended into the urban landscape. Nothing to notice here. Just another lost soul looking miserable and drifting along with the tides of refuse dotted across the city. For good measure I even added a limp which wasn’t that much of a stretch since my ankle was still smarting from being smashed on a rock during our last whitewater rafting trip. (A story that has yet to be told.)
No fedora, tattoos, Nike footwear, North Face jacket or 1890’s neckbeards for me. I was projecting identity that screamed, “Leave me the fuck alone.” It helps a lot to be ugly and look as grim as possible.
And so it was I moved silently through the city. Which is rather odd for me since I seldom leave the house. We’re the quintessential Portland family. We have less automobiles than residents in our home. My wife was gone so that meant I had to make other arrangements.
Arriving at the bus stop I leaned against the sign. I must have just missed it since it took many spawns to arrive. I climbed aboard and asked the driver, “Is it okay if I don’t have exact change?” He said it was so I stuck in three one dollar bills for the $2.50 fare. My transfer printed and I couldn’t help but notice no change was offered. So that’s how that shit works. I paused for a reflective moment of gratitude that I hadn’t tried a one hundred dollar bill.
Coffee Tabled
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway. Give me what I want, and I’ll consider it.
My wife and I were driving around the big city on a Sunday morning. It was almost lunchtime. We had skipped breakfast.
“I could go for some kibble,” I said.
“Actually,” she replied. “Me, too.”
I was a little surprised but excited, too. We were going to eat out. But where? We took out our daggers and prodded each other, as we are often wont to do.
“Wherever you want,” I said.
“No,” she replied menacingly. “Wherever you want.”
Clink. Clink. Clink. The cold steel of our daggers danced their elegant dance.
“Let’s go to the bar you wanted to try. The one with the fried chicken.”
“The hell you say!” I turned the car around. “We’re going to that coffee shop you mentioned the other day.”
“All they got is coffee and baked goods.”
“Excellent,” I emoted, channeling Commander Kruge, the asshole Klingon from Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. “Perfect. Then that’s the way it shall be.”
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Like A Boss: The negotiations never took place
Ha ha ha! I’m the boss of you!
I recently completed my first year of working at home as a contractor. Although not as good as my dream of doing nothing, the year was still pretty good and … I had no complaints.
What’s good about working from home? No phones. No walk-in customers leaping in your office. No floor sales. No public toilet across the hall. No attending awkward pizza-only lunches on every employee’s birthday. You don’t spend your day using company-owned equipment. (A previous boss liked to joke he was logging my keystrokes. That was a real damper on my twitter activity.) You get your very own chair. No boogers from other employees on your stuff. There’s an ottoman where two cats sleep and the view out the window is squirrels playing.
When my one-year contract expired, of course I wanted more. It was a no-brainer.
These are the actual and verbatim excerpts of the official transcripts of the negotiation process. I’m sharing them because I don’t mind being humiliated in public.
From: Shouts
Subject: ContractI am ready to keep things simple and renew the same deal, no changes needed on my end, with all the same terms (another 12 months) excepting a modest increase of only $x.xx to the hourly rate for COLA. That’s $xx.xx/hour up from $xx.xx. Other than that I can’t think of anything else.
It’s official. You all know my salary now. I literally make $X amount. Note my colorful use of marketing terms like “modest” and “only.” Ha ha ha! Player at work! Also, thinking I was being clever, I provided dollar amounts and not percentages. This was a deliberate attempt to confuse and astound. -Ed
Make the jump to read additional communiques from the “negotiation” process and the surprising twist at the end.
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Poundhog Day – Just Lucky I Guess
We now read from the Great Book:
“Oh man, I can’t fucking believe this. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”
–John McClane, The Book of Die Hard, Chapter Two
In other words, I took a day off from work.
I like to keep notes of blog ideas. Voluminous notes. A veritable plethora of tiny chicken scratch scribbles that are only discernable by me, and sometimes not even then.
Then I go out in the world and live my life. This is also known as to fodder. Then the same shit happens to the same guy twice. Suddenly all blog ideas are out the window.
So, in the vast majority of cases, this blog is merely a depiction of “What happened yesterday?” That’s about as intellectual as it gets around here.
In that vein, guess what happened yesterday? Smooth segue, eh?
FOX Spews: There’s Something About Pope
FOX SPEWS ALERT! BREAKING NEWS!
Holy white smoke, Fatman!
We now bring you a LIVE shot of someplace on planet Earth where surging throngs of Pope nerds have assembled to hear about the selection of some guy in some religion.
But first, some pharmaceutical ads. Don’t worry! We’ll do the multiple window thing so the LIVE shot of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City will continue while we run the commercials. It’s our commitment to you to bring you continuous coverage of these people milling around a square.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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