Slowly Going Bald

"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Notes From My Department Meeting, 5.3.05

Kim, head of the department, again launches into a description of the color scheme of our new office, ending with the justification, "They did that at J.D. Power." I'm no stranger to pretentious statements; a girl in a philosophy class I took once ended an argument with, "And thus ended the Nietzchean cycle of circular time." But the whole J.D. Power thing is worse because this is the real world, and people shouldn't act like this.

Denise shall henceforth be known as Crazy F***ing Denise, or simply CFD.

I found a much better picture of Joyce. Enjoy. The laugh is too similar to be coincidence.

After making a small joke to the person sitting next to me, Scott, one of the bosses, leans over and tells me to keep it down. I stand up on the table and take my shirt off. "What do you want to do?" I ask him. "What do you want to do?" He backs down quick enough. He's all talk.

CFD regales us with tales of the convention she was recently sent to, and her story includes a Top 15 list of things she learned about our company, herself, the universe, etc. She says this is in honor of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy being released in theaters. Words cannot be found to describe the horror and pity I felt at seeing someone so gleefully cast aside any attempt to make themselves socially palatable at the office and use the minutes she's been allotted to speak to trap me and my coworkers in a hellish dimension of pain, embarrassment, and more suicidal urges than most high schoolers. I hate CFD.

Joyce lets loose her cackle but quickly sputters into a bout of emphysemic hacking. Maybe you shouldn't take 9 smoke breaks a day, you walking black lung.

The girl sitting across from me keeps accidentally kicking my ankle. But there are no accidents in Dan's World of Fantasy and Psychosis.

I don't know how these people get excited about being here. They wake up in the morning thinking, "Man, I'm glad I don't have to be creative today. Good thing I'm just one step above the spell-check in Word. I like any ideas I have to die, quickly and unused."

8 Comments:

I always want to say that to my scottboss, but I never can muster the courage. It's not that I'm afraid he's going to fight me. It's just that he's an eight-foot-tall monkey, and I'm afraid he's going to bite me while we're fighting.

Fighting I can handle, but I have a problem with biting.

By Matthew, at 1:23 PM, May 03, 2005

Dan, can you send me a resume? I want to see if I can get you a job with me. Your sarcasm would fit nicely if they would let Brian and me work together.

If we added you, I would actually enjoy work. Sigh... Office Space, I thought you were a movie and not a lifestyle.

By Master Baron Von Tuckenstein the First Esquire, at 1:48 PM, May 03, 2005

I don't know who Brian is, but I bet you guys can easily pay me more than I'm making right now.

By Dan Carlson, at 2:00 PM, May 03, 2005

I can only wonder what obscenities Mel unleashed in her comment that made her delete it.

By Dan Carlson, at 4:15 PM, May 03, 2005

How much do boring office jobs pay? Is it worth trading in not having to deal with stupid kids for doing something that doesn't fulfill you? Probably not. At least I don't care whether the admin approves of my classroom skills. I wow them with my afterschool sponsoring abilities and play directing/set designing.

Dan, you should have poured your beer over Scott's head.

By Kyle, at 6:21 PM, May 03, 2005

Dan,

I like your blog. It tastes like saltwater taffy.

Thanks for your post referencing my post (above).

To answer your question, I don't think we've met. My sis referred me to your blog once upon a time, and recently referred me again. I do know the guy who stole your Dave shirt, though.

I suggest that you associate my posts with the mental image of some vaguely-remembered cool person you once met. Preferably a person with massive deltoids.

By Matthew, at 1:02 PM, May 04, 2005

Oddly enough, I was already picturing some massively ripped delts. Is that normal?

If you know Kyle, there's a chance I met/offended you on one of the occasions I visited his house. If it's the latter, sorry about that.

Who's your sister, then?

By Dan Carlson, at 1:48 PM, May 04, 2005

Dave shirt theif here. Who is this Matthew. My interest is piqued now. I geuss I could go check out your blog and see who you are.....Okay, I checked it out but still can't figure out who you are. I do know Jeff Wilhite, though. Red head guy from ACU. Nicer than all get-out.

Give a last name.

And you are my new favorite person. I liked your blog

By Kyle, at 2:45 PM, May 04, 2005

: Name: Dan Carlson; Location: Houston, Texas, United States

View my complete profile

...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

--Look Homeward, Angel

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

--John Stuart Mill

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

--G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.

--August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.

Film lovers are sick people.

--Francois Truffaut