1) “Since the beginning of time…”
2) “I’m not exactly sure why you made this assignment but I’m going to do the best I can, I guess.”
3) “Imagine you are a beautiful woman, with two big breasts.”
4) “This book was a novel.”
5) “No matter what, you should never give up you’re dreams!”
yes you should at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: The Enormous Brilliance of Professor Ellis
Last week we accidentally got a document meant for another agency at the Department of Government Governmenting. I savaged the envelope open in my usual wolverine manner, only to find THE WHITE HOUSE at the top of the paper and a handwritten “Barack Obama” at the bottom. It was a proclamation concerning one of the -stans or another.
This was immediately paraded about the department under the guise of seeking advice on what to do with it. “Look, look!” I said excitedly to one co-worker, who waggled both hands in the manner of a very weary magician and said, “Ooooooh!”
There was better satisfaction when I tucked the document safely away and took it on a field trip to its proper department. Presidential documents are supposed to issue directly from the Oval Office to the intended destination, and the fact that this one went wayward was apparently cause to change the nuke codes.
The cubes were silent, each person bent over his particular form of Governmenting. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I think this belongs in your department.” I held the Sharpied Barack aloft.
People flew out of cubicles within an eighty-cube radius. “WHEN DID IT COME IN?!” “WHAT IS IT DOING HERE??!!!” “IS THIS THE WHOLE DOCUMENT?!” “WHERE’S THE ENVELOPE!” “YOU DIDN’T TOUCH IT, DID YOU?” The -stan proclamation was borne away by anxious courtiers to its proper place in history, and I was left without my eBay item for the week.
I had more fun when the Hillary Clinton document came through. It was the first State Department communication we’d had from her, and I took great pleasure in sneaking up behind a co-worker who is, quite loudly, unfond of the lady. I brandished her signature directly in front of his face. He reacted as a person suddenly doused with flaming Clorox.
But everybody enjoyed the posh Maritime Administration notice which was entitled, with great seriousness, “WET DREAMS.” I dropped the disk with a clatter as soon as I saw that it, too, was marked as such.
“I ain’t touching this. I can’t afford the sexual harassment lawsuit,” I said, passing the whole bundle to a male co-worker, who verified that the document was, in fact, about a boat so christened. When the Presidential proclamation about the good ship WET DREAMS crosses my desk, I shall alert you in all due haste.
doesn’t even want to know what words the boat-related documents used during the Clinton administration at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
UPDATE: Link, unlike everything else in the government, fixed.
Categories: Your Tax Dollars At Work
Even as a person who is quite fond of forests, but even fonder of the SuperTarget that clearing one makes room for, I am staggered at the sheer volume of paper waste the Department of Government Governmenting produces. When I am posted at Coffee Obtainment Position One, I hold sway over two wastebaskets– not the useless dainty powder-room kind, mind you, these are tall, lined, and ready for action–and they are invariably overflowing at the end of the day.
The most taxpayer-sickening aspect of all this is that we beg those who contract with us to communicate via email. We offer discounts, and sometimes also lap dances. But no: Towers of documents in triplicate, bound, clipped, and Fed-Exed.
The worst offender? The agency most dedicated to creating as much paper as humanly possible, without resource to this newfangled thingiedo known as an “electronic file?”
The Forest Service.
You’d think they’d at least want to invest in some job security.
origami boulders at: mb@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Your Tax Dollars At Work
I do not know from whence you came– the pre-dawn mists of the Potomac, perhaps, or the verdant woods beyond.
What most drew my weary notice? Was it the fedora precisely tipped so as to achieve rakish affect? Was it the long black case beneath your arm which bore a bumper sticker reading “I HAVE A BANJO”?
You vanished from sight once we reached the bustling metropolis, and I knew not your destiny. And yet, when I had despaired of the chance to gaze upon you in wonder once more, I beheld you on a returning train, weeks and weeks later… had you crossed the vast gulf of the nation, you and said banjo? What adventures met you upon yon dale and mountaintop? Do you and your banjo enjoy a daily commute complete with federal transportation benefits?
Ah, and now, there you were– hat tipped, all body parts girded, and walking past my seat. For lo, I gathered to me the knowledge that the other half of your “I HAVE A BANJO” sticker read, “AND I’M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT.”
You stepped lightly off the train, you entered the gathering twilight of the darkening day. And still, I knew you not. What was your mission, your quest, your great assignment from the gods? Alas, the answers echo down the tracks with the disconsolate wail of the train whistle.
I commissioned you to the universe and the night as you climbed into your mother’s minivan.
chordophone at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Dude.
I was typing all about my fun new day job life to Friendboy Andy, and enjoyed the opportunity to dip into my fun new federal employee vocabulary, which includes such terms as “FERS” and “consent agenda” and “sucks.” I mentioned that I’d noticed my daily hits have taken a hit themselves, and wondered if he thought the culprit was merely that I wasn’t posting as often, seeing that, no offense, The Readers, when it’s a choice between gaily typing up an accounting of my wonderfully madcap day amidst the FERS and the consent agendas or sinking into a vat-sized glass of alcohol to make the day go away, the vat’s going to win. Every. Time.
And Andy, who knows about these things, very gently confirmed a suspicion I’ve been harboring relating to the executive decision to forward the blondechampagne.com domain to morningworksmedia.com. He used web-savvy vocabulary like “end-user confusion” and “URL familitarity” and “sucks.”
So I could throw reader-friendly, renewed-energy confetti on the fact that I’ve just reset blondechampagne.com to actually point here at Blonde Champagne, or I could also admit that the only reason it’s been forwarding to the Morning Works page so long is because I totally thought I reset it about four months ago and… totally did not.
Um, enjoy.
reset button! at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: For I Am Nothing Without You · Reining In The Masses
Here’s what you want to hear about your nephews:
“How was the zoo today?” I asked Country The Brother-In-Law.
“Oh, well, you know. Will assaulted an alligator.”
I used to live in Florida. I knew alligators. Alligators and I were not friends. Will The Smaller Child Nephew had assaulted no alligator. He tried to, apparently; at his Toddlers Meet Wild Rabid Effin’ Beast class, or whatever the program is called, the aide removed a baby alligator from his enclosure, Will removed himself from his mother’s grasp, and went for the tail. He was thwarted, I am told.
‘Tis well. I’ve got enough crap within crap within other crap without having to come to you people for funds to send my nephew to the One Leg and a Few Chomp Marks Day Camp For Children.
el lagarto at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Aunt Beth
This week, I was preparing a document for publication when I was told to hold everything because The President had something very very important to include. So I waited an hour’s worth of deadline time until I was given the go-ahead. ‘Twas a blessing to have waited, because the immediate-file, emergency-process document concerned… National Poison Prevention Week. Good thing, too, because publication went forward just in time to stop me from chugging Clorox to wash down the air freshener throat spray.
I fear, however, that the vital national interest served by National Poison Prevention Week may have been overshadowed by the news of the National Bed Bug Summit. The hotels have been booked for months.
tourist capital at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Your Tax Dollars At Work
At the Department of Government Governmenting, I sometimes put my Master’s degree to work at the receiving desk. Here, I find myself precisely where I was six years of resume-bankable experience ago: Temping. I answer the phone. I remove binder clips from one stack of paper in order to place them on another stack of paper. I autograph thousands and thousands of delivery receipts (current worth on eBay: -47 cents). I also put my extensive background check and security clearance to work by divulging the code to the lock on the bathroom door across from the elevator.
There’s one for the women’s bathroom, and one for the men’s bathroom. I am extremely useful for the female couriers; not so much for the men. The men have to use the toilet in the outrageously overpriced café on the first floor, because I was told what the code was once, during my orientation, it was in the midst of 1.1 billion other piece of numbers-intensive information. It’s something terrifically complicated and state-secure, I’m sure, but still: If you are a visiting male and you need to pee while I’m working the desk, it will take you less time to receive complex hormone therapy and negotiate a sex change operation before I remember the mens’ room bathroom code.
By investing my time in such vital activities, it stands to reason that when a visiting cortège from the State Department showed up, and one member, noticing the office coffeepot across the hall from the waiting room, produced his travel mug and demanded decaf. I responded as my temp training dictated: “Of course. Just a moment.”
I high-heeled my way to the nearest cubicle and quietly explained to the occupant, in my best professional manner, that I know precisely eff-all about making coffee, for in my world, coffee descends from the clouds, is blended with ice and four pounds of caramel in a clear plastic Starbuck’s cup, and then proceeds directly to my right and left buttocks. Could he show me how to use the machine?
He was first shocked, then offended, then offended some more.
“They… asked you for coffee?”
The answer, of course, was OF COURSE. They asked me for coffee. I’m flourishing my name on delivery slips like Congress signs checks for whores, I command an obedient army of paper clips, I answer the phone in vocal inflictions couched somewhere between Slightly Pissed-Off TransAtlantic Stewardess and Automatic Female Voice Announcing That Para Español Oprima Numero Dos, and I’m wearing a suit jacket with little bows at the sleeves. I’m the person who gets the coffee.
“We don’t… do that,” he said. “You’re a GS-7. Go back and tell them they can get their own damn coffee.”
I went back and told them the machine was broken and out of beans and also festering with eColi, then suggested that he step into the convenient café in the lobby to purchase twelve ounces for the special post-Inauguration price of $14,790. Because while I am required to organize rubber bands according to thickness, tear apart envelops addressed to The Honorable Secretary to the Undersecretary’s Assistant Associate, and exchange banter with the FedEx guy who is apparently dropping off a package between panty sniffing sessions and killing sprees, it seems that coffee is beneath me.
Perhaps it\’s just as well, because in the immediate moments after after he finished the coffee, he\’d have only his travel mug to turn to when it came time for an Exit Strategy.
four hours of leave every two weeks at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Your Tax Dollars At Work
Things I’m perhaps better off not knowing the context of:
1) “It was a giant marshmallow. And she ate it.”
2) “So my wife and I decided that is the last time we store weed in the microwave while staying at a hotel.”
3) “I don’t have the nerve to tell her about the pretzels. You have to do it.”
4) “…And so I said, ‘You know, I have a right to do the PowerPoint slides. I have a right!’ And then he laughed at me, can you believe it’?”
5) “She doesn’t know that I know, but I do know that he was there, and he knows it.” (grave pause) “I hope I haven’t burdened you.”
sitting alone and liking it at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Enter the Anti-Depressants
It was Girl Scout Sunday at my parish, and they dotted the pews in their hideous polyester vests and Daisy smocks. It was a refreshing sight, even if they bore patches reading RECYCLING ROCKS! and I HAD A BIRTHDAY; achievement, it seems, just isn’t the same in 2009 as it was in 1985, when, in order to earn the “Computer World” badge, I was required to “visit a business that had a computer” and “learn binary code.”
I mean the patches in and of themselves were refreshing, not merely the knowledge that our participation-trophy culture has degenerated to the point at which small children now receive commendation for inhaling and exhaling on a regular basis. It was good to see the polyester color vomit, because last month, when I succumbed to Official Boring Grown-Up Officedom and filled out co-worker’s Girl Scout cookie order form, I learned that the Scouts don’t do patches anymore. They do… charm bracelets.
This would make 4evah ‘n’ evah storage somewhat less burdensome than a clothing item manufactured of unfoldable materials, I imagine, but that wasn’t my first reaction. My first reaction was: “My mother is going to be PISSED.” The woman has no feeling in the tips of her index fingers, the nerve endings worn away by a good decade of uniting tiny bobbin threads and synthesized polymers with a size 10 leather needle. And now she learns… there could have been charm bracelets.
Well, maybe they’re the incredibly tiny, entirely unlatchable spring-ring kind.
dangling at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Categories: Concerning Truly Major World Events
