The Dow Is Up!

Tonight The Wife forced me to go out and play with my friends. She realized (more than I did) that I hadn't really been hanging out with my friends much lately. I shouldn't say that I didn't realize it. It's more that when the weekend comes around, I'm just tired and I want to sit around doing nothing. But as it turned out, one of my friends knew somebody that was having a party tonight. It was a "guy" night, revolving around the two NFL playoff games tonight. And I had the best time I've had in a very long while.

In case you don't know, I'm very sarcastic. But it's more than just that. I like to fuck with people. And, really, there's no better way to put it. Generally, my targets have always been naive women. (Sadly, I turned my ability to spot naive women into having sex with them. Instead, I've made them hate me with every fiber of their being. And you wonder why I had to resort to the internet to find The Wife.) But tonight was different. I found a guy who was WAY too into football. And I realized that he'd be great to fuck with.

Dick (as I choose to call him, for obvious reasons) wasn't hard to spot. We were sitting around watching the football game and Dick came in, telling his friend about how his girlfriend's mother was hitting on him, rubbing his thigh. The story was lame, but what made it worse was that Dick told it IN FRONT OF THE TV. Thanks, asshole. When Dick's story was over, he took a seat. Dick's also a guy who clearly works out, and likes everyone to know it. And he also had his baseball hat turned to the side, which automatically annoys me. This guy just screamed that he was a jock who was way too cool for school, so to speak. At one point, someone made a comment about football and Dick belittled him, feeling the need to show how he knew more about footbal than the rest of us. And all I could think was "bullseye."

I forget exactly how it started, but somebody brought up Brett Favre. I hate Brett Favre. With a passion. I refuse to admit that he's one of the best quarterback's that ever played, solely because he spent most of his years with the Packers. So of course, I said that Brett Favre wouldn't be so good if it weren't for all the pain pills he was popping back in the day (which is a valid argument). So Dick told me that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, that I didn't know football. Part of me got angry. But part of me realized this guy was a tool, a tool that needed to be put in his place.

So I looked at him and said in a very belligerent and stone-faced way that Brett Favre wasn't half the quarterback that Bernie Kosar was. Now, if you know anything about Bernie Kosar, it's that he was NOT a great quarterback. He's best known for being a very immobile quarterback for the Cleveland Browns who might have cost them the chance at going to the Super Bowl. He was beloved in Cleveland (as I understand it), but everyone else thought he was a bit of a loser. He did win a national championship with Miami (the University, not the Dolphins) though. And so my argument was that Bernie Kosar was a better quarterback than Brett Favre because he won a national championship and Brett Favre didn't. Dick was apoplectic.

He kept yelling at me that I didn't know football, that I was an idiot. I couldn't argue against the idiot claim (since that's exactly what I was aiming for). So instead, I kept insisting that Bernie Kosar was better than Brett Favre. I pulled out statistics like the "fact" that Bernie Kosar had a better winning percentage. I don't know if it's actually true (because I made it up), but it doesn't matter. I was just trying to push Dick's buttons. And it worked like a charm. Dick ended up in an argument with someone who was arguing complete nonsense, but he couldn't resist pointing out that I was wrong. And that just made me argue more blatantly wrong points with false statistics. If Dick would have just shut up and ignored me, the whole thing would have blown over. But instead, he had to prove that he knew more about football than everyone else. And so he had to argue with the biggest "moron" at the party. And that's what I love about people like Dick. By arguing with people like me, instead of showing how "knowledgable" they are, they show what assholes they are.

What made the whole argument better was that I was surrounded by my friends, who all knew the shenanigans I was pulling. They were laughing their asses off, which made it very difficult (in fact impossible) for me to keep a straight face. And so after about 5 minutes of me trying to convince him that Bernie Kosar would have led the Packers to more Super Bowl wins that Brett Favre, Dick realized that I was just fucking with him. It probably didn't help that I was now trying to convince him that Billy Joe Hobert was better than Favre. Still, those 5 minutes of antagonizing this Dick made the whole night wonderful.

I’m so excited right now, I can hardly even explain it. No, not because it’s 3:45 on a Friday afternoon. And not because I’ve actually run out of work after an extremely hectic week. And not because The Wife and I are planning on going out on a date tonight (a seemingly rare occurrence for us). Nope, I’m excited because 24 is FINALLY coming back to TV.

24 might be my favorite show on TV right now. Given that I’ve cut my TV watching down to about 5 hours a week, this isn’t saying much. Quite simply, it’s the one show that I feel I have to watch LIVE, not on TiVo. There’s two reasons why. One is that our TiVo sucks (actually it’s a Comcast DVR and I hate Comcast), and it frequently doesn’t stop fast-forwarding when you tell it to. Sometimes this goes on for minutes. And I would HATE to accidentally see a crucial scene before I see it in its appropriate context.

The second reason is that, honestly, I need the commercial breaks so that I have a minute to breathe. 24 is the most fast-paced, amazing show I’ve ever seen. At virtually every commercial, you’re left gasping, in shock at what just happened. You need to take a couple minutes off to calm down again and get ready for the next part of the show.

Anyway, I’ve been really sucking at keeping up on my TV shows this fall. I’m going to make every effort to comment on 24 every week. If you’re a fan of the show, then you have a place to turn every Tuesday (or so) to see what I think. If not, then you have yet another reason to not read my blog.

One of the reasons I haven’t been writing much lately is that I’ve been wicked busy here at work. (Yes, I resurrected “wicked” from my old Boston days.) But it’s not really a bad thing. In fact, The Wife pointed out (much to my surprise) that I haven’t complained about my job at all. I haven’t even complaining about working late. It’s really rather amazing.

I do have one complaint though. And this isn’t even one of those fake complaints I wrote about a month or so ago. Though I think I did include it then. It’s since gone from a fake complaint to a legitimate “bring a gun to work” complaints.

I work in a cube. It’s not a glorious cube, but by cube standards it isn’t bad. Our cubes are generally arranged in packs of six with three on either side of a central aisle. (I’m in the middle of my six-pack, but I have a printer behind me. So it’s almost like I have a window cube, only without the view. And really, who wants a view of downtown Chicago from the 26th floor? Sigh.)

Anyway, the issue I have is with the person who resides in the six-pack next to us. Let’s call her Cunty McBitchenstein. We share a wall, but it’s one of those “big” cubicle walls, so I don’t actually see her. Instead, I get to hear her. A lot of her. Incessant her.

Cunty likes to talk on the phone. And it’s not just that she talks on the phone, it’s that she does it a lot. And it wouldn’t be so bad if she talked to one person, but she talks to several different people. And she tells the same story over and over and OVER.

When I told The Wife about this, she reminded me of a girl we affectionately called K-Bomb. Katie dated my then-roommate. Katie was also, um, “different.” She said a lot of odd things that you made you just stop what you were doing and look at her, like you don’t understand what just came out of her mouth. Imagine being at a zoo, walking past the monkey cage and getting hit by some feces. You stop. You look at the monkey. You think, “Did you really just hit me with your shit?” Then you think, “Do I get upset at the monkey? Or do I just ignore it.” And that’s how you felt with Katie. Her bombs (thus, the nickname K-Bomb) made you think, “Do I get upset with her or just ignore her.”

That brings us to Thanksgiving of (I think) 2002. I was dating The Wife. We spent the night out at her place in the suburbs because we’d be Thanksgiving-ing (it’s a word) not too far away. Sadly, this caused me to miss one of the funniest moments that ever happened in the apartment. Fortunately, Scott and his girlfriend (now wife), Cathy, were there to document the event.

It was mid-morning and everyone was still in bed after a night of getting sauced. K-Bomb got a call from home (Atlanta). Now, K-Bomb never really had what my mom calls an “inside voice.” And when she got on the phone, she turned her internal volume dial up to 11. So, there was no problem hearing her throughout the tiny apartment. And the conversation that ensued would enter apartment lore.

The first person K-Bomb talked to must have asked her what she had for breakfast. K-Bomb responded that they had “pancakes and some French toast.” Her relative then passed the phone and for some reason, THAT person asked what she had for breakfast. So K-Bomb repeated herself and said, “pancakes and some French toast.”

But now K-Bomb was getting emotional. I don’t know if she missed her family or the pancakes and French toast. But with each person she talked to, she got progressively worse. And so you would hear K-Bomb cry and say how much she missed the people at home. And then you would hear (through tears) “pancakes and some French toast.”

(That always made me wonder what it was like being the relative on the other end. Was it weird hearing K-Bomb cry? Did you run out of things to talk about? Is that why everyone asked about her breakfast? Was that their universal signal for “I’m passing the phone?”)

Anyway, listening to Cunty here at work is much like listening to K-Bomb because she repeats her stories SO much. And that’s why I know that Rob (her husband) just flew down to Memphis to pick up a 1986 BMW that he then drove back and now he’s going to fix it up and sell it and make a profit on it, and I don’t know, I don’t ask questions, because this is what he really wanted to do.

And I also know that they just bought a 1999 BMW and Rob did all his research and it’s a stick-shift, which I didn’t want, but Rob really did because it’s sportier and I don’t really know the difference, but apparently the stick-shifts are harder to find so Rob really had to search to find it and he really likes it, which is all that matters.

And I also know that they’re going to Nashville this weekend for Rob’s dad’s 83rd birthday, and I don’t know that I want to go, but they’re a nice family and I enjoy spending time with them but there’s a lot going on in town that I’d like to be here for, but it’s Rob’s family, so we have to go.

And I also know that her friend is dating someone who’s terrible for her because he doesn’t call her when he comes to town and if he doesn’t have the courtesy to make a phone call, how can he be worth dating, and no you should NOT go out with him if he calls right before he leaves town after he’s been here for a week because you deserve BETTER than him, but hey it’s your life and I don’t want to tell you what to do because I hate to pry.

All day long I hear this. It’s slowly driving me insane. And so a month ago and a few blocks away, when a man came into an office and starting shooting people, I thought, “He must be on the other end of Cunty’s phone calls.”