• We need a judges ruling in the kitchen please

    “John, did you clean off the stove when you cleaned up after dinner?”
    (John is currently responsible for lots of domestic duties, not just because his wife is incapacitated with child, but because he is a swell guy.)

    “No.”

    “Why not. You know that this is part of the agreed upon dinner clean-up procedure.”

    “Well Cheryl, I’m an imperfect man living in an imperfect world.”

    If you recently heard a loud smacking sound, you now know why.

  • While I’ve got the time,

    I’m looking out the window that someone at my salary level has no right having. I’m looking at the sun peaking out from between the clouds, and it’s like being smacked in the face with a metaphor. This morning, unlike the mornings of the last three weeks, was a ’50s sitcom morning. The only missing image was me in a suit and tie. The only mismatched image was Cheryl’s Amazing Inflatable Womb. (Pregnant women suggest sexual intercourse, and the last thing the ’50s needed was a bunch of pregnant women running around corrupting the minds of America’s youths; that’s what the ’60s were for.)

    It was like someone plugged Beth into my hot-sync cradle and synchronized her with Miss Manners (my sincere apologies go out to the Miss Manners family). No one lost their temper (we recently found them under Beth’s bed next to the missing T.V. remote control). No one needed to be reminded of what had to be done (I remembered to take out the trash the night before). No one spilled anything that required the intervention of a noxious cleaning solution (I just knew that straight jacket would come in handy). No one needed to lay an offering of sacrifice at the altar of the ‘one God’ (sorry, wrong entry).

    Ah, John, don’t look now but the clouds are back.

    Maybe if I close my eyes I’ll be immune.

  • Be afraid. Be very afraid.

    Something very strange has happened to me this morning. I had settled down into what had been a pretty typical rainy workday morning. I was peacefully plugging away at my desk, quietly jamming to the output of my too cool iPod, when suddenly, and inexplicably, I find my desk eerily barren. My pile of emergencies is gone. My low priority problem pile has similarly vanished. My shelf of garden variety incoming work is empty. There are no flaming emails in my inbox. Most of my coworkers are out of the office, so there are few questions to be answered.

    So what the hell do I do now? Worse, this will end; and when it does, will it be three times as bad? Is someone, somewhere, saving up their work to be delivered en masse with vengeance upon my poor unsuspecting desk – now made unawares due to this unexpected lull in the action?