Pimpgnosis

“Casual Friday” does not begin on Wednesday.  Even if it did, it would not include a dispensation to wear flip-flops. The only “business” environment in which it is acceptable for a man to wear open-toed shoes is REI.

Whining, loudly and at some length, to multiple people in the office about how you don’t have a gift for your wife on her birthday is unfortunate, but perhaps admissable.

Impersonating the tantrum your wife will throw when she finds out you don’t have a gift for her on her birthday would not be admissible, even if it were funny.  Which it wasn’t.

Publicly ascribing your wife’s temper to her ethnic background approaches the unforgivable.

Dismissing the (on the whole remarkable helpful) suggestion to go shopping for jewelry at a store on the corner of 18th and L with the line “I don’t know this area.  I always get lost” is, in the first instance, ungrateful. In the second instance, it is tantamount to admitting either (a) that you cannot count, (b) that you do not know your ABCs, or (c) both.

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When describing your recent jury duty service, please refrain from going into such graphic detail about your episode of apparently violent emesis.  I ask this as a courtesy to those of us trying to, you know, work.

More particularly, might I gently suggest that you make it a point not to ascribe, publicly at least, the cause of your illness to the diversity — socioeconomic or otherwise — present in the court.   Being allergic to poverty  (or was it people of color?  Your comments were puzzlingly imprecise in this regard) is not, in this day and age, what is sometimes called “politically correct.”  So far as I know, it went away with crinoline, smelling salts, starched collars, and other such examples of the superstructure of Victorian bourgeois hegemony.

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What follows is, as best as I recall, the text of a conversation I had after work.  There is no background info required, except to say that this person works in a different unit, and the conversation occurred while walking along a major urban thoroughfare.

Me: Hey, how’s it going?

Other guy: Oh hey, man.  Good to see you.

Me: So, got any fun plans for the summer?

OG: Nothing, what with all this furlough shit.

Me: Nothing at all? That’s a shame, man — it’s summer!  You should try and have some fun, at least.

OG: Well, I am turning 40 in August.  I’m thinking I might give myself a menagee, uh…what do call it when it’s three?

Me (not really getting the question): Dude, you’re 40?  I can’t believe you’re older than me.

OG: Sure.  How old did you think I was?

Me: I guess I assumed you were younger than me, but I’m not sure why.  Say, how’s your daughter?

OG: She’s good, thanks for asking.  Living with her mom at the moment.  She’s having her 16th birthday soon too — but she doesn’t want me there.

Me: Why not?

OG: Because, she said, that way she wouldn’t have any fun.

Me: Dude, she gave away the game there.  That’s sign A#1 that you have to be there as her dad.

OG: That’s what I’m saying!

Me: So what are you doing for your birthday?

OG: Man, I already told you!  I’m gonna find me three women to do at the same time. I already got two that are into it, I just need to find the third.

In what I can only hope is an unrelated development, this person later listed my work phone on some kind of application that required verification of employment.

And in answer to the original question, I don’t think one needs to get all technical and frenchified.  Once you’re up to four participants, and assuming there’s no partner-swapping or other complications, the term “orgy” almost certainly covers what this gent was looking to arrange.

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How do you sleep at night?

No, really, I’m actually sort of curious. 

I ask in part because your latest e-mail — sent not to me but to my funder, because you apparently really are  that bent on my destruction — was dated 12:15 a.m. 

Second question: when did you decide this was how you wanted to spend your retirement?  Was it something you contemplated while you were still employed, and so you’ve had years to dream up these schemes? Or was it something that came to you more recently, and so you’ve given up on other, presumably less diverting pursuits?

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In the Joel Chandler Harris piece “The Wonderful Tar Baby Story,” the character normally regarded as the hero (Brer Rabbit) gets his comeuppance through a piece of arrogance.  It is the only story, in fact, where Brer Rabbit gets caught. 

And why does this happen?  Because he picks a fight.  Unprompted, uncaused, for no possible reason other than an entirely imagined affront to his honor consisting of not being saluted and hallooed of a warm afternoon.  Because, in other words, he is an arrogant buffoon who believes that everyone should always defer to him.

For which pains he ends up covered in tar and turpentine, as he richly deserves.

The original version leaves it hanging as to whether the fox eats the rabbit for dinner.  I would leave our little discursis with a different, but equally postmodern twist, which is to ask the question: who is the enemy here?  And what does one possibly gain by picking a fight with me?

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I had to make do with generous dollop of ice cream and apricot crisp, plus an hour and a half of Meryl Streep warbling her way through the ABBA playbook in “Mamma Mia”; the combination was effective as a narcotic, but only for 90 minutes.

After which my poor head returned to the mad hamster in his madly spinning wheel.  Four things I will try to remember:

a.) As a co-worker once told me: It’s not your baby, so it doesn’t matter if it dies. 

b.) As Joel Chandler Harris has told generations of young people: Don’t punch the baby.  You’ll just end up covered in goo.

c.) As someone (perhaps George Moscone) once told my mother: Never wrestle with a pig.  The pig loves it, and you’ll just end up covered in shit.

d.) And as Rob Breszny told me when I opened up the News and Review this morning to read my astrology: when the shit starts flying, take cover.

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“I have my community service at 4 o’clock that morning, so I can’t make it.”

“I have literally run out of every conceivable password. I will have to google a good one.”

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#1: Posting a photograph of yourself throwing gang signs on the wall of your cubicle is probably within the generally accepted bounds of eccentricity. Throwing gang signs at the company photo shoot is not simply unprofessional, it’s plain not funny.

#2: Wearing a tie is a nice effort.  Wearing a tie and rolling up your sleeves is a little informal, but entirely within the generally accepted bounds of office decorum.  Wearing a tie with a short-sleeve shirt, and then not bothering to tuck the shirt in, makes you look like a busboy.

#4: “Borrowing” against your anticipated accrued vacation time while on probation, because you’ve used up all your sick leave, is unfortunate.  Doing so in order to make medical appointments halfway across the state, because apparently you’ve lived in this town for at least four years but haven’t found a doctor for your chronic neurological problems, suggests poor planning.  Doing so because of migraines that, in my entirely unprofessional opinion, are most likely induced by your wearing so much cologne you could stun a horse at 30 paces is just plain awful. 

#5: Introducing yourself upon first acquaintance as someone who has, and I quote, “a passion for psychometrics,” is wierd.  And if you don’t think it is, let me suggest to you that I know from wierd — I have a PhD from Harvard — and you’re just going to have to trust me on this. 

#6: Asking to see someone’s CV is totally fine.  It is, in fact, probably a good way to learn how to present oneself professionally, in written form.  It is also somewhat flattering to the person so asked.  However, upon reading a person’s CV, it is neither professional, nor particularly flattering, to shout so loudly that you can be heard by persons working in other units “OH MY GOD! YOU WENT TO HARVARD? YOU MUST BE A FREAKIN’ GENIUS!”

For those of you who have ever wondered what “cultural capital” is, these examples should provide you with some flavor of the concept.  For those of you who have ever wondered why I am often reluctant to trade upon my credentials, #6 should give you some idea.

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I found a way to insert Foucault into the lit review you demanded.  As well as a direct quote from someone saying that your request is literally “irrelevant.”  Not to mention a reference to a document produced by the OECD saying that you are wrong, and I am right.

So there, motherfucker. Bite me.

And yet still: if the baby dies?  I don’t care.  I get paid either way.

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I don’t actually give a rat’s ass.  I get paid either way, after all. 

In a not unrelated note: I find it absolutely hilarious to read “research” written by Jasper McCracker hisself.  It all but starts with the phrase “unfunded Washing mandate” and goes downhill from there.  It is, for the record, far more amusing than the crippingly boring research written by all these earnest Yankees.

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