This morning I received this totally random email in my inbox. It was sent to my website's email adress.

SUBJECT: hi there!?!?!?!?

0Hi there, how's it going?
Well for starters I must confess that this is indeed pretty awkward. I onoticed your profile online and figured I'd drop ya a line....I bet that doesn't happen to you everyday! I never really even thought about it until someone saw mine and got in touch a little while back.
ANYWAY! My name is Karan, I'm 23, and I'm a sale repo for a mid-sized pharmaceutical company. Goodness I can't get over how strange this is! I'm sure you're probably thinking the same thing! hehe. Oh well, I really don't want to go on too faor. Especially since I'm not sure whether or not you have any2 intrest. But if you would like to get to know more about me, please drop me a line. I'll be more than happy to include some pics as well. Anything aobout you would be greatly apreciated as well :-) o Well I hope to hear from you soon! Take care.

xoxo,
Karan ..........

P.S. Do you use any messenger services, maybe we can chat on there sometime? My email address is flowers_graves_6@hotmail.com

Best regards,


This was my reply:

SUBJECT: Re: hi there!?!?!?!?

Wow that's so crazy and awesome that you sent me an email! Don't worry about sounding awkward, any human contact is most welcome on this end. Besides, you sound really cool Karan. Being a pharmaceutical sales rep must be a great job. I'm just curious, what was it in my "online profile" that inspired you to write? I don't know if I mentioned this in my "online profile", but I'm wheelchair-bound and almost totally paralyzed. (Funny story -- my helper monkey Giggles is typing this for me. He's really wonderful, but thank Heaven for Spell Check Ha Ha!)

Please write back and tell me even more about yourself Karan and include lots of pictures. It will help me take my mind off things.


[ Editor's Note: Does this make me a bad person?]

I always said if I ever got married underwater I would make sure it was a tasteful affair. The underwater weddings I had read about in magazines or seen on TV always came off like cheap publicity stunts.

Phyllis was pissed off. Her mother, a notorious cheapskate, refused to spend a dime more than she had to on Phyllis' new hearing aid. You would think she'd spring for the top-of-the-line model, considering it was her fault in the first place that Phyllis was now deaf as a tree stump. But not Mrs. Giordano. She could pinch a penny until Lincoln cried like a bitch.

It all happened about two weeks earlier. Phyllis had just won "Most Improved" at her Junior Weight Watchers meeting. Not bad for a girl of seven, she thought. Her binge eating was mostly a bid for attention anyway, and she had it under control. She was slimming down, and her hearing was so sharp her pals at J.W.W. called her "The Bionic Woman". As Alanis Morisette used to say all those years ago, isn't it ironic? It sure as hell is.

Mrs. Giordano (Kitty to her friends) was experimenting with high-frequency soundwaves, like she did every Tuesday, following a few cups of generic brand coffee and watching her stories on her neighbor's TV with a telescope. The lady was a tightwad.

The sad part of this whole mess is that if only Kitty had spent the money on decent equipment, Phyllis would be a normal kid today, out playing and hearing with her friends. But no, Kitty had to build a lab on the cheap. She had to buy used Soviet junk from some lady who lived around the corner. So instead of replicating a bat's sonar for her luncheon guests, she produced a searing blast of sound that blew Phyllis' middle ear to smithereens. Why did she have to skip in at that very moment? And why didn't she remember to wear her earplugs? She knew her mother was an amateur scientist and a professional skinflint, and that's one dangerous combo. Maybe she was distracted by her weight-loss award; maybe she didn't want to hear what people said about her miser of a mom. Maybe she was just being seven.

So now Phyllis walks around with a hearing aid the size of a shower radio. Knowing her mother, it might even be one. Sometimes the kids laugh when Phyllis' head veers to one side, but she can't hear them. But it wouldn't matter if she could. Phyllis Giordano is a strong girl.

Especially in the neck area.

If you find yourself stuck in a Monday morning status meeting, here are a few tips to keep things running smoothly.

1. Bring a bull whip to the meeting. After each item on the status report has been covered, make that cool WAH-KSHH! sound with the whip. If the meeting leader is too low-energy for your liking, whip him in the fuckin' face.

2. Suggest a "trust-building" exercise to make people more at ease. Convince a co-worker to fall backwards into your arms, then don't catch him. Everyone will laugh, especially if the person who falls is an older woman.

3. If anyone raises any questions or concerns about anything on the status report, repeat what they say in that great retard voice you do. Try to remember to make your hands look all palsy.

4. If someone is calling in to the meeting, expose your balls to the speaker phone. If you're a woman, expose your vagina.

5. Sigh loudly and often and roll your eyes like there's no tomorrow. After all, you're above all this petty shit and you're quitting this stupid job as soon as the economy shapes up.

6. Look around the room and try to imagine how each of your co-workers lives. How they look sleeping, having sex, moving their bowels, beating their spouses and children. God, they make me sick.

7. Crank up the speed metal.

8. Meetings define the team. Those present belong to the team, those absent do not. Suggest a pogrom against absent team members, then make it happen. This is known as "follow-through".

9. Boring, poorly conducted meetings lead to reduced morale. Use this as an opportunity to gain new members for your suicide cult.

10. Catch someone's eye and run your index finger across your throat, just under your jawline, then point at them. Then close your eyes, revealing YOU'RE DEAD written on your eyelids.

I don't want to sound like a crybaby, but I hate hiding in this barrel. The barrel itself is no picnic, but it's the pickle brine that really gets to me. I guess I only have myself to blame; nobody forced me to pick this location for the company-wide Hide and Seek contest. This whole event was the consultant's idea, something about creative problem solving in an ever-changing corporate environment, I think the flyer said. On the arrow that pinned the flyer to my cubicle wall were the words "attendance is mandatory". I can take a hint.

There's something soothing about watching people I've worked with for years scurry around, looking for places to hide. At first the concept made me nervous, but as it turns out, it has a calming effect. Maybe it's because when you're trying not to be found, it doesn't really matter what your title is, or how much you have in 401K. A Senior VP is just as vulnerable as the mailroom guy with the withered leg. Maybe the consultant is on to something.

Speaking of Raoul, we all had a feeling he'd be one of the first to be found. I told him to take off his Walkman so he could concentrate on hiding. With his leg and that built-up shoe he wears, he needed to hide well and quickly. So Raoul found a spot, a pretty good one at that, but it didn't much matter. He had his Dixie Chicks tape cranked up to 10. He was practically waving a flag for Pete's sake.

Mr. Selig, our CEO, heard the tinny music blaring from Raoul's taped-up headphones and zeroed in on him like a shark going after a fat lady. He kicked aside the crate Raoul was hiding under and laughed so hard he farted a little. Raoul got up and made a break for it. (Oh I forgot to mention: the consultant told us that if we were found, we could run towards Base, which was a large pink circle painted in the middle of the re-created Old West town where the contest was being held.) As Raoul "ran", I noticed a dark stain form in the crotch area of his Dockers. The poor guy was scared, and we all knew why: as he was yelling "Hide!", the consultant had handed Mr. S a tranquilizer gun, like the ones the cops use to subdue pit bulls. But Raoul was no pitbull. He was a 43-year-old developmentally disabled Puerto Rican with a fondness for country music and calculator watches. And he deserved better.

So here I am, in my pickle barrel, breathing through a mailing tube and praying they don't find me. Talk about Deja Vu.

She came at me like a runaway train. Seven feet tall at least, and sweating like 10 men. I barely had time to swing my nunchucks before she was everywhere; a tornado of fists and elbows. All I remember were flashes of freckles and blinding pain. God only knows how I managed to aim the flare gun and blow her sorry ass out the 15th floor window.

All I came to do was change the water cooler bottle. What I did was kill a monster in knee-highs.

Today was a typical day at the office. I work in the Invoicing department iof InvoiceCo, a company that manufactures invoices for the invoicing trade. For some reason, we get our invoices from an outside vendor. I asked about this at "Question Time", our bi-weekly employee talking forum. I wanted to know why we, the nation's third-largest producer of Invoices and Invoice supplies, buy our internal invoice forms from BillingBuddies, the nation's second largest producer of Invoices and Invoice supplies. For my insolence I was slapped across the mouth, and I fell while running to the break room to cry. Sometimes I hate my job, but then I love it again.