monster sarcasm rally

[sigh]

Busy.

Annoyed. Amused. Exhausted.

And busy.

Scenes from an accounting class

Alternate title: sailing the wide accountant seas

Our accounting professor, Manny, disproves all stereotypes about accountants. You would think accountants would be up-tight, anal-retentive, hyper-organised. You'd think they would speak in a monotone. Well, I would have thought that...

Not Manny, no. He's a really good teacher, but he's not what you'd expect.

He scribbles illegible notes onto the overhead, while standing in front of the screen. He's prone to digression. At one point tonight he was rambling along about GAAP, and somebody asked a question. He paused and said he hadn't heard it.

I think I'm losing hearing in one of my ears, which reminds me of a man I used to know. He was deaf in his left ear, and he'd always stand to the one side of me, and he could never hear anything I said. I think it might have been a personal statement. But then he won the lottery, but he wasn't the sort of person who would quit his job just because he won the lottery, so he kept working at the bank. But after that nobody at the bank would take him seriously because he'd won the lottery, and he ended up having to quit, which is really too bad.

I remember one time he bought a house for a dollar. Ya. It was funny. This was in Ottawa. He saw this ad in the paper really early in the morning, and so he called the guy up and ended up buying the house for a dollar, and just assuming the mortgage payments. It was funny. He was a such a stumpy little guy, but his son... He was short and, you know, not thin, and really plain looking, but his son was a male model. I always thought that was really strange. Anyways, he was deaf in one ear. Where was I?

Then we had more accounting class. Loser kept putting up his hand and asking the most stupid, long-winded, asinine questions. I was thinking of hurling my cup of coffee across the room at him. Just then Cathy leaned in close and whispered I heard a rumour that he was dead. I guess it was just wishful thinking.

Right now I'm eating scrambled eggs. From a shoe. With a comb.

Well, no. I'm not. Not at all, but it had to be said.

I love TV

Jim said you could order a gaydar on the internet.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We're socially retarded.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My father would love it if he could have a grandson named Mongo.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

SHORT STORY
Ill-fated attempt to litter box train a large dog leads to free giant bag of Yesterday's News kitty litter, yours for the asking.

LONG STORY
Valentine is terminally ill. She's also a complete pothead, but that's beside the point. Because of her illness, she's unable to make it through the whole workday without needing to go to the toilet. It's not a training problem, just a fact of life. She's been using potty pads (big flat diapers you put on the floor), but they're expensive and seem like such a waste.

I had this brilliant idea to train her to use a litter box instead. I read about it on the internet, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The problem is that, while she kind of gets it, she really doesn't. She goes downstairs, and stands with her front paws (but not her back paws) in the litter box, peeing on the floor. I have this idea that she walks away from it thinking I am the stupidest person alive. Like I make her go to all the effort of using the box, and the pee still ends up on the floor.

Sigh... She just doesn't quite get it. Almost. But not quite.

So... if you're in the Toronto area and you want the big bag of kitty litter, it's yours.

Mocking the elderly

I've no idea what prompted this conversation. Actually, it's not so much a conversation as an imaginary monologue performed by two people.

Child 1: You know, I remember during the war when the price of gold reached fourteen hundred American dollars.
Child 2: As I recollect, zoot suits were in style at the time.
Child 1: Of course, I wasn't in the war.
Child 2: On account of my webbed feet and all...
Child 1: I can't remember why I'm calling anymore.
Child 2: Hello? Is this Meals on Wheels?

Episode four hundred and whatever

The Ferengi's phone rang. She answered it, said 'yes' a few times, then hung up. She turned to me and asked if I kept a list of all publications that fit a certain description.

Erm, no, I don't. She did not like this answer. She made with the disappointment and told me that the boss had specifically asked someone to keep a list of them.

What I didn't say in response was: Someone? Someone? Oh, no, no, no. Sweetie, he didn't ask someone to do it. He asked you to.

Ya. So, um... She stopped maintaining that list at the end of March. And he wants to see it now. Sure, I can make her do it. It will take her all afternoon, and cause her to do much griping and grumbling about how New Chick or I should have done it. And the boss would have been mad at all of us.

So I put the list together. It took me about 15 minutes. I printed it out to give to the boss. The Ferengi grabbed it out of the printer before I could get to it. I offered to take it to the boss. No, no, she said. She would do it.

But sometimes there is justice in the world.

She handed him the list and he stared at it for a second. What? It's not hand-written!

Oh, that's because Sars did it.

Ha, I tell you. Ha!

Conversations

Scene: Early morning. The Sarcastrix is standing at the streetcar stop. Sleepily. A man approaches. He appears to be in his mid-forties, but the look in his eyes belies this. It suggests someone much younger, perhaps four or five.

Man: Have you got any Kleenex?
Sars: Sorry, no.
Man: Oh. Well, have you got a handkerchief?
Sars: Er... No.
Man: You don't have a handkerchief?
Sars: Sorry, I don't.
Man: And no Kleenex?
Sars: No.
Man: But my nose is running...
Sars: Sorry.
Man: Okay. Can you bring me one tomorrow?

Pouting

Dear New Chick,

You're so mean to me. It hurts my feelings. If you don't stop, I'm going to go to the boss and complain.

Poutily,
Sars

Is it just me, or is it cold in here?

Brrr... New Chick's decided to play the ice queen.

To punish me for not getting fired, she's decided not to speak to me.

First day of class

Walked into the school tonight. The programme co-ordinator was standing out front with a list of the groups. I chatted with her for a moment, then glanced down at her paper.

We were originally known as Group Six. When they split us up, they said Glory and her two minions would be Six, and the three of us would become Group Ten.

Oh, I thought we were supposed to be Group Ten, I asked. The picture of innocence, I am.

No, you're Group Six. The other three are Group Ten. Except... Well, one girl withdrew, so the two of them are all on their own now.

Really? Well, we certainly don't want them back. Oh, me, such a silly jester I am.

She seemed perfectly serious in her response, though. No, I don't blame you. Not at all.

Ha! Take that you insanesuperpsychobitch!

Name that character*

I'm not a slacker. Well, not usually anyways... But I get slackerness. I understand it.

And I can get the people who work really hard because they need to. You do what you've got to do, right?

What I don't get are the people who do more than they need to. I don't mean going above and beyond. I mean people who just make everything way more complicated than it needs to be.

We have this one guy, ___, who took over Jade's old job. He's like that. I ask him to do one thing, he does 16. But he doesn't just do extra work himself, he manages to do it in such a way that it creates extra work for the people around him.

So, let's say I need him to tell me one number. I ask him for that one number. He could just look it up, and send me an e-mail telling me it's 7.86. But noooooooo. ____ spends two hours putting together a spreadsheet of every number ever created. And somehow, at the end of it, I have to replace 92 pieces of data I already had with his new pieces just in case there's any difference. If there is a difference between my numbers and his, it means his are newer, so I have to use them.

He's a really nice guy. He just, you know, doesn't speak much English. You think you're phrasing your request in No Uncertain Terms, and yet somehow he misunderstands and creates hours of extra work for himself and for you.

I wrote this this morning. A little while later, I saw him do the same to New Chick. She asked him for one thing. He spent hours doing something else, thus creating extra work for her.

I commented on it to her. She told me a story.

The day of the Big Thing, one of the guys in another department sent an e-mail to our department. At five to five, he requested about nine gazillion things that he wanted done before seven the next morning.

It was a joke. The guy who sent the message knew we were all out on the piss, and so he decided to take the piss, if you get what I'm after. One of the newer guys thought he was serious and had a brief panic attack at the dinner table. The other guys quickly set him straight and everybody had a good laugh.

____, of course, didn't get that it was a joke. He also didn't think to say anything to anybody. You know, like maybe the executive he works for... But no... He didn't say anything. He just blindly, obediently, got up from the dinner table and went back to the office. He worked until midnight to get everything done.

You can't not like him. And you've got to feel bad for him. But sometimes, just sometimes, you want to slap him upside the head.

*No, really. What the hell do you call a guy like that?

Contempt and conjecture

Dear Gilderoy,

I am obligated to use the numbers you provide me. The fact that I don't have them doesn't mean you caught me screwing up; it means you never sent them to me. Wipe that smug grin off your stupid face, you arsy git.

Pissily,
Sars

_____________________________

In weakly related news, a few weeks back New Chick saw Gilderoy and Jade at a bar. Ever since then, Gilderoy's been sickeningly nice to her. Mrs Troi assumes the reason for his behaviour is that he has a thing for her.

I suspect he may have a different motive... Maybe this is about Jade. Maybe Gilderoy thinks she saw more than she did.

Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

What the hell?

Numfar, perform the dance of disbelief.

Strike three

On Thursday New Chick was working on a project for the Bossman. At the end of the day, she asked me what I thought of it. I glanced at it for a split second. Oh, I hate it. I was joking. Okay, I should know better than to think that she would get a joke like that, but really... If I were really criticising her work, I would have pointed things out and made suggestions. Even I have enough people skills for that.

After I left the Bossman went down to check on her progress. He said he liked what she'd done. Really? Sarcastrix hates it.

She didn't get it was a joke. He got only her side of it and that on a day when he'd had no sleep. He not only didn't get that it was a joke, he thought it was a slam against him and his direction to her on the project.

He just wrote me an official warning letter. One more of my 'nasty' remarks about him and the way he does things, and he's going to fire me.

Of course, when I got the letter I didn't even know what he was talking about. I called New Chick to find out if she knew why he was so angry. That's when she told me the story above.

I've apologised to him. I've apologised to her. None of that changes anything. Nothing I can say can undo what's been done.

This is the third time she's done this to me. About a year ago she spent about 45 minutes crying and blubbering in his office, telling him all about how mean I was. He told her to talk to me. She hauled me outside and attacked me with a list of everything I'd ever said/done/not said/not done/implied that had hurt her feelings. She went through the items one at a time, and then waited for me to give a satisfactory account of each item before proceeding to the next.

Several months later she misunderstood something I said, and so she went to talk the boss about it. That's when I got a verbal warning that my attitude would not be tolerated.

And now there's this.

I'm not good at not talking to people, but I need to try. Anything I say can be used against me in a court of law.

I've also started applying for other jobs. We'll see what happens.