Electric weasel
As a special Friday thank-you to my dear readers I’M GOING TO FRY YOUR RETINAS.
The woman who sits next to me was on vacation this week. She expected a delivery of CD’s for a trade show to arrive Thursday. I was supposed to open it, test one, keep five for our records, and overnight the box to the London office.
Gotcha. I’m supposed to blah blah blah blah. Good thing she sent me an email.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep last night, I had a HOLY SHIT THE CD’S DIDN’T COME moment. And then I had a HOLY SHIT I’M A BEAUTIFUL FAIRY PRINCESS moment, pulled the covers over my head and drifted away.
Between you and me, the woman who sits next to me scares me shitless. She was once legendary for her sweaty, screaming tirades (“it was the hormones they had me on,” she told me later). The conflicts between me and the woman who sits next to me were so frequent and so bitter that our mutual boss referred to us as sisters. Just to piss us off. We’ve mellowed a lot over the years, but I’d still rather eat sharp, rusty things than screw with TWWSNTM.
So I’ve spent all morning tracking down that package. It was delivered Wednesday, badly addressed, and found itself with no label at all in the cubicle of the office bing-bong (“how long do you think she’d’ve sat on it if we hadn’t come looking?” my boss wondered aloud). It looked like it had been drop-kicked by an earth elemental. Everything tested out okay, though, and I got it back in the mail.
I don’t care where you work, I guarantee the guy who works in your mailroom thinks his job is fascinating. That’s a good thing, or we’d be training a new one every six months after the old one dragged himself home and smoked a Buick. But damn I could’ve lived without True Wild West Tales of the Customs Declaration Forms this morning. Just mail the thing, Sunshine…don’t chant me a Norse Edda.
It won’t make deadline, but it won’t miss by much and they have some slack.
So, happy Friday! Join me in hoisting a tall frosty…glass of…vodka and tonic in honor of TWWSNTM and Boring Mailroom Guy. Where would we be without them?
Where indeed?
Posted: May 30th, 2008 under blogging, personal, work.
Comments: 40
Comments
Comment from Machinist
Time: May 30, 2008, 4:10 pm
That makes my brains itch.
Comment from Pupster
Time: May 30, 2008, 4:33 pm
Your ‘lectric mustelid would be better with this soundtrack.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 30, 2008, 4:44 pm
Hm. If you use IE, you can make it stop by hitting escape. I’ve just discovered that doesn’t work in Opera.
My own petard! How could you?
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:02 pm
Esc stops the little bastiche in Firefox too.
Comment from Allen
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:16 pm
When I stopped it, it resulted in a blurry weasel. Hmmm, Quantum Weasel, or the elusive Qweasel.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:30 pm
Refresh and stop it again, and you’ll likely get a different sort of weasel entirely. It’s a five or six frame .gif file, and it can stop on any frame.
Incidentally, I freaking HATE animations on any page where there’s text I have to read. Back when sidebars jumped and shivered in lime green and orange fluorescent animations (remember those? Jesus) I would stick post-it notes over the ads while I read the news. Somebody must have realized people were clicking away from pages with the most obnoxious ads, because you don’t see that style quite so much any more.
So why did I put one at the top of my blog today? Weasel.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:37 pm
Waaaaa! make it start again! Oh. Reloading does that.
I got it to stop where it’s half electric-y like the Predator when he’s turning off his invisibility thingamajig.
I’m happy now.
Weasel, that word looks like “twizz-en’-tum” – kinda like placenta, accent on the second syllable.
I bet she’s the Devil’s acolyte. Or a Liberal. You should slip some testosterone into her herbal tea for a few weeks to see what happens. Let me know, too, so I can laugh uproariously.
I can’t believe I actually tried to spell herbal “erbal”. Damned language.
Comment from Allen
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:39 pm
I figured that was the case, but I tried it several times and got the same frame every time, which was kind of spooky. I started thinking about probability, and decided I needed a G&T to make that thought go away. It worked, yay.
I remember those repulsive animations. Cruel, cruel, weaselish tactic.
Cheers
Comment from Dave in Texas
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:42 pm
Holy shit, for a minute there I thought the transporter was on the fritz again.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: May 30, 2008, 5:47 pm
Boulevard Wheat – kiss the world goodbye and say, “Hello esophagus!”
Now what have I to eat around here to chase it down the pipe? Maybe I should go see what the husband of the milf across the street is cookin’ on the grill. First I’ll hit the bathroom and practice my ingratiating smile.
Man! That Predator-Weasel makes me dizzy.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 30, 2008, 6:05 pm
Funny that, McGoo. TWWSNTM is a sort of jumped-up secretary. She came to the department from the General Office Pool (remember them?) a couple of years before I started working for the company. She got pressed into doing graphics because we were often terribly short-handed and eventually it became her job description. A lot of her hostility surely came from being out of her depth and scared.
But not all of it. She was a horrible, angry person, but extraordinarily loyal to my boss. As that is the quality he prizes above all others (and as she was careful never to pull a tantrum in front of anybody who mattered) she got away with some jaw-dropping behavior over the years. He also hates snitches and “ganging up” in a serious way, so there was really nothing anybody could do, even when she behaved outrageously. I did march into his office one day and announce, “your pet monkey bit somebody important today.”
Yeah. I should’ve been fired for insubordination a couple of times myself.
Anyhow, the embers or our enmity have cooled over the decades(!), but she’s only SNTM for a few months. I’m gobsmacked. She keeps saying stuff like, “I read Benazir Bhutto’s book last week.” And I’m like, “wait — you can read?“
Comment from Allen
Time: May 30, 2008, 6:10 pm
Good grief I feel like one of those animals at Knottsberry Farms I used to see as a kid. You know the ones that hit the button and then… ding! Run over and get the food pellet.
I finally got a different weasel graphic. I can now stop.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 30, 2008, 6:14 pm
Good thing, Allen. Next up would’ve been the hotplate under your feet, to make you dance.
Comment from Lokki
Time: May 30, 2008, 6:44 pm
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Lets think of the two thousand million
Lets think of the humble of birth
Comment from bmac
Time: May 30, 2008, 6:52 pm
I’m finding your anecdotes about TWWSNTM to be strangely fascinating. I would go as far as to request a weekly update on her.
Why? I don’t know.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: May 30, 2008, 7:06 pm
That was beautimous, Lokki. Is it Muse Night?
A weekly TWWSNTM report would be good. You could always make the graphic flash when a TWWSNTM is being presented – just to remind us all of the irritability factor.
The milf across the street got a new sun outfit today and was modeling it for her husband (and me)(and for all the rush-hour going-home guys driving past).
Comment from Allen
Time: May 30, 2008, 7:17 pm
It’s not Muse night, it’s the opening of the Drunks on Burro Racing Season. The objective is to drink, then ride yon neighbor’s burros head to head.
Ladies, hats are required with appropriate festoonery. Meanwhile drunken men on recalcitrant burros shall attempt to entertain.
My steed awaits… Cheers.
Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: May 30, 2008, 8:21 pm
Ohmigawdohmygawdohmygawd. I was “boring mail room guy” myself for a while. (Well, I was also sysadmin guy, repairman guy, parts department guy, field rep guy, and a few other things as well at the little company I worked for in the Pacific Northwest.) The little company was actually Canadian owned, and my office was in Seattle…so I got rather used to dealing with Customs and what not. (My last military assignment had been in Panamá, so I got to play with Customs there as well.)
So, I was quite unpreprared for the ferocity with which the shipping/receiving guy at a major University facility greeted my dropping off a package down at the dock and telling them that a truck was on its way to pick it up, and that I had already taken the 20 minutes necessary to get it precleared through Customs in to Canada, and had arranged for it to have the special handling from the carrier required to get it to my destination on time…all they had to do at our shipping dept was to log it out.
THREE F*CKING DAYS LATER the damn crate was still on the dock while mail guy has now browbeaten everybody involved EXCEPT the University President into acknowledging that MAIL GUY is the only one qualified to handle this extraordinary shipment, and that it’s only his supreme professionalism that has extorted the shipping company into meeting their terms of service by threatening to withhold future business!
Meantime, the Canadien Military has called me: the Combined Forces Duty Officer in the small town my shipment is destined for is no longer willing to delay his Saturday bicycle jaunt to wait for Orrie in the delivery truck while he covers for the Customs Officer who will be out of town that weekend. In fact, the shipping company’s manager for the Canadian Eastern seaboard has called me to let me know that she is thinking of reassigning Orrie to Alberta because she’s had several many calls from Mail Guy and is thinking that there may be liability issues in letting Orrie take the company truck and packages out from the area warehouse to make the trek over to the small town where my crate is destined in order to make Saturday deliveries and visit his cousin Mike at the same time.
Oh, and I am no longer welcome in Canada, and the Canadien Combined Forces have issued shoot on sight orders for Mail Guy if he should be so silly as to cross the border.
And he doesn’t understand why I think he’s a dickhead!
Me person’l like? I had to give up being Mail Guy because it just wasn’t boring enough.
/I LIKE boring. Considering some of the jobs I’ve had, there is something to be said for growing old and dying in bed.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 30, 2008, 8:31 pm
Oh. OH! Of all the countries we ship shit to, Canada is the ultimate WORST! Canadian Customs…Weights and Measures…Jesus, Canada is the most tight-ass, arrogant country on the PLANET.
They must have a really excellent PR firm, because nobody else seems to know what fascist jackasses they really are.
Comment from bmac
Time: May 30, 2008, 9:07 pm
Ok, let’s bitch about shipping to Canada!!!
I owned a business and did FedEx/UPS shipping, most of which was ebay sellers. Here’s an interesting thing, if you ship an ebay item to Canada, the recipient has to pay the Canadian sales tax on the item, which is like a crushing 19% or thereabouts, so they always ask the sellers to declare the item as a gift, which happens to be illegal.
Anyway, FedEx will deliver the package, and bill the recipient the sales tax,(they act as the broker)and the Canadian recipient can be counted on 100% of the time to never pay, which meant the bill got kicked back to me, until I figured this out, which unfortunately took awhile, as the customs depts. aren’t real helpful.
I paid a lot of asshole Canadians sales taxes. Plus, my heavy ebay customers always said Canadians were the biggest pains in the ass in the entire world, and many of them would not ship to Canada at all.
If you ever ship an item to Canada, use UPS, they collect the tax from the recipient before releasing the package.
Thanks, I feel better.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: May 30, 2008, 9:18 pm
Rats. I’ve never sent anything to Canada. I feel … negligent, somehow.
Comment from bad cat robot
Time: May 30, 2008, 11:49 pm
Ah, Canadian customs …
Hwaet! I sing of engineers, and the stalwart guardians of the border, unflinching in their duty. Please note none of these individuals are known for their imaginations. Party of the first part (my father, engineer) was working for a surface effect ship company. Surface effect ships are kinda like a motorized whoopee cushion that can travel on water, mud, quicksand, and probably jello. They do this by blowing a lot of air very fast through rubber ducty-things all around the edge. This rubbery thing is called a seal. (please stop snoring, it gets interesting). For reasons that remain unclear, it was necessary to take the seal materials from Tacoma (near Seattle) across the border to some Canukistan location where the material would be tested to an inch of its life to reveal its secrets. My father was told off to take the U-haul trailer with contents to the test facility. He drives up to the border guard shack, and when asked “what do you have in the trailer?” promptly and accurately answers “Seals!” So he spends the next three hours convincing the defenders of Canada he was not trying to smuggle pinnipeds. Like all evil Yanquis are constantly plotting to do …
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: May 31, 2008, 12:03 am
Hey, bad cat robot! Nice comment! I hope you stick around.
Hope to read more comments from you.
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: May 31, 2008, 12:16 am
If I wore political stuff, this is the shirt I’d get.
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: May 31, 2008, 12:18 am
Okay, that’s the last one tonight. Check out the rest. They’re funneh!
Comment from LemurKing
Time: May 31, 2008, 2:00 am
All right, as long as Mail Guy doesn’t morph into Postal Dude, I’m cool.
As far as TWWSNTM, at the moment, that would be Cruel Wife. We take turns and it is my night to be unstable (damned ACP guy punctured me in such a way as to make me feel like shit today).
And I agree with Muslihoon, bad cat robot, you win the story-of-the-night award. Well, there isn’t exactly a tangible award and you have to give it back tomorrow, but there you have it, you win. Keep a-postin’.
Oh yeah, Weas…. McGoo’s posting of the latest Teeth People representative has already fried my retinas. He beat you to the punch.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 31, 2008, 5:32 am
A penguin was driving through the desert when her car broke down. She waddled to the phone to call AAA. Her car was quickly towed to the nearest garage where the mechanic told her he would need a couple of hours to check things out. The penguin wandered off to the supermarket. She proceeded to the frozen foods section and hung out near the fish sticks. After a while she got into the freezer, next to the vanilla ice cream, and ate several gallons. Then she noticed the time and headed back to the garage, covered with ice cream.
The mechanic walked over to her, wiping his hands and shaking his head, and said, “It looks like you blew a seal.”
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 31, 2008, 5:37 am
TorsoPants sometimes has funny shirts. There are a few good ones in the current crop.
Pingback from NEWS ROUNDUP (31 MAY 2008) | Democrat=Socialist
Time: May 31, 2008, 1:01 pm
[…] apparently doesn’t like […]
Comment from Michael
Time: May 31, 2008, 9:17 pm
S. Weasel, I have made a proposal of marriage to you here.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 1, 2008, 10:11 am
I saw it on your site. I was too drunk to respond.
Can you pick ’em, or what?
Comment from cranky
Time: June 1, 2008, 9:54 pm
I followed your link to TorsoPants, Weasel. You must have burned up their server. I get to a page with clouds. I like clouds.
I like pants and shirts too. But only clouds through yonder web site do I see.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 2, 2008, 6:54 am
Hm. Works fine for me, even from work, where everything good is blocked. Perhaps TorsoPants is a magical place just for Weasels…
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: June 2, 2008, 8:25 am
It worked for me when I tested it yesterday after cranky commented.
Cranky – did you pay last month’s carbon credit bill and exhaled-breath tax?
Comment from cranky
Time: June 2, 2008, 10:58 am
I thought exhaling carbon dioxide was good for living things like trees. And they want to tax what I emit? Never!
Now, I’d be willing to sell the methane I emit for the right price.
Comment from cranky
Time: June 2, 2008, 11:02 am
I can see them now. I too support balloon animal rights.
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