A charged atmosphere

Part of my workday was spent discussing how to negotiate billing issues with customers, and we, quite hilariously, were given a sheet of steps to follow. The final, most comical step was this: "delight with options." Now that I have an mandate to delight our customers, I can't wait to help people out again. This is how I anticipate my next interaction to shake out:

Customer (angry): I have a problem with my bill. You guys overcharged me for my service last month.

Andy (seductive, with Barry White's "I'm qualified to satisfy you" playing in background): Ooooh baby, you get me overcharged with your passionate voice. Do you have any of that spicy Latino blood in you?

Customer (taken aback): What?

Andy: Aw, come on now...don't play so coy. You're the one who called me up, remember? I knew you couldn't stay away for long, I knew my number was hidden away in your nightstand...haunting you, beckoning you with its siren song. You can say what you want, but we both know why you're calling me at 1 in the afternoon while you're hubbie is away at work...a little afternoon delight on your mind, perchance? Just cool out honeybunny, I'll justify your love.

Customer (regaining composure and anger in equal measure): You need to give me your supervisor right now.

Andy: So you want the boss man, yeah? Into the master/servant stuff, it seems. Don't fret pretty mama, I can get kinky like that if that is what it takes to satisfy; I'll dominate your pleasure zones and supervise your climax. Just relax and let Andy give you a few things to think about, because I'm about to make your account blow up with the awesomeness that only I can bring. How about this...I can set you up with butterfly kisses. How about foot massage? I've got some sensual oils I can bring by later, would that delight you? Hmm? Are these options delighting you yet, or should I tease on?

Customer: click

Andy: Honey, you there? Can you hear me now? Did I delight you with options and catapult you into the exalted realm of sheer ecstasy?

The mirror has two faces

You can now create your Simpson's clone online. These are my own ham-fisted attempts at duplicating myself; quite clearly, whatever else I am, I'm certainly no police sketch artist.

Chris Nalley: Renaissance Man

Not only is my friend Chris Nalley a fast-food mogul, but he is also a man known for generating new and stirring ways of punctuating victorious hands at the poker table. One of his early moments of inspiration was to christen me "The Crane", a nickname derived from the relatively classless manner in which I conduct myself after winning a big hand. Rather than being a good sport and allowing a vanquished opponent a moment of repose before collecting my winnings, I instead tend to throw out my cards and scoop up my winnings without the faintest trace of hesitation. This has happened more than once, and with such startling rapidity that it is not uncommon for my opponent's chips to be taken from them while their cards were still in mid-air, en route to the table top.

His latest stroke of brilliance is a remote controlled construction vehicle, with which he could drive across the table and haul off his winnings. For the cherry on top of this assholish sunday, I suggested we add a horn that blares out "Zap yo dumb-ass!" every times it takes in some chips.

For no reason at all, here's Aimee Mann

Okay, that's not quite true. Here are two good reasons: Aimee Mann is a fantastic musician. Aimee Mann is sexy. I'll let the public decide which had more to do with me posting these clips.

Remora

Tricksy. That is the only way to describe the horror that has for years lurked, invisible, in my gym shirts, all the while scheming and waiting. Apparently some parasitic organism has, over time, attached itself to my workout t-shirts like a remora on a shark. Oh, it blends in well enough, never giving you even the courtesy of a "how do you do?" when you first sniff around for it. Do not be fooled. It is only waiting to spring its trap. And spring it does.

The problem is that my shirts, whether fresh out of the wash or in the drawer, smell perfectly fine. But once I put one on and go to the gym, the foul stench of hundreds of workouts long forgotten comes out of hibernation and is released on an unwitting world.
Imagine, if you will, that Satan himself, the Crown Prince of Darkness and Bane of Humanity, created some version of evil Degree: my body heat turns it on. As much as I like these tattered old clothes, a time comes when a man must bid a fond adieu to clothing that has turned on him, and so it was with great reluctance that I purchased some new gym shirts last week. May these shirts, and me, never know the foulness that cursed their predecessors.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man

This weekend a friend of mine paid me a fantastic compliment, saying that in a time of need, he would place absolute trust in me. Then, in glorious fashion, he promptly suggested I should go home with his wife. I love my friends.

When a patrician facade lets slip

This clip is 5000% awesome. You know what I blame this kind of stuff on? Rap music and Marilyn Manson. Oh, some might say it is harmless fun to listen to this kind of stuff, but I can't tell you how nervous I get every time a senior citizen pulls up next to me at a stop light, bumping some Three Six Mafia or Nas. I know this might not be what the "politically correct" crowd wants to hear, but just look at the kind of culture these old people are exposed to every day. Everyone knows that it is this kind of garbage that pushes these blue-bloods to roll up and clap someone.


Still don't believe me? Just look at these thugs in their native environment, trying to play hard to impress dem bitches in the hood:

So just...give up

This is one of those songs that hurts just to listen to.

Which is it?

So I'm attending a potluck this Saturday afternoon, and there were spots on the food sign up sheet for different categories. Are Jello shots considered a beverage or a dessert?

Make em say uhhhh!!!

Today different work groups had to give brief powerpoint presentations, and one team inexplicably added a tank graphic that slowly moved into the screen from the lower right hand corner. I immediately thought of Master P and the No-Limit Soliders when I saw the tank creepin', so I had to make a public reference and give an "uhhhhhhh" to those around me. I wish I would have known that was in the powerpoint program, I totally would have changed the color scheme to pure gold and emblazoned No-Limit on the tank. If you don't love a video that has a gold plated tank in a gymnasium, one that even features a man in a gorilla costume performing trampoline-assisted dunks, then you truly have no soul.

Training follies

Yesterday our trainer was showing us a new system at work, and he said to see if there was a "click in the box" on a certain screen. I narrowly averted a work-inappropriate moment when I bit my tongue instead of singing out loud this song:

Late pass

Okay, this has been out for a while, but everyone owes it to themselves to see this at least once. Behold the majestic sweep of R. Kelly's epic, "Trapped in the Closet." There are quite a few chapters, but here are the first two. Unvarnished gold.

The power cosmic

I've yet to see the new Fantastic Four movie, but I imagine I'll catch it on DVD. One of the most glorious plot devices in Fantastic Four/Marvel Comics history is the Ultimate Nullifier, which does precisely what it says on the tin: it is the pinnacle of nullification technology. Entire races, entire galaxies, even the universe itself, can be made non-extant with this device. You'll see it below used to stave off Galactus and his planet-devouring hunger when he came for Earth.

At my new job I have to speak to customers over the phone all day. I've discovered my own version of the Ultimate Nullifier: the disconnect button. I've gone so far as to develop my own comic book-style catchphrase to punctuate hang ups: "Verily, thou hast been nullified!"

Life in literalism

There was a classmate of mine named Kenny, and we used to play together while both growing up in Omaha. The most robust memory I have of him consists of his bizarre "house rules" while playing with He-Man figures; the primary rule was that we couldn't make our characters "hop" along the ground, which was the otherwise universally accepted shorthand for making our figures "walk" in the imaginary world. Instead, we had to hold each leg, and make the action figures take one step at a time. I cannot fathom what would make a child so pedantic as to want to recreate, as fully as possible, the gait of character he saw on a cartoon, but demanded exactly such a thing. Many painful seconds were passed trying to get Stinkor or Beast-Man to slowly mosey their way across the carpet as accurately as possible.

I hated playing with that kid. Much laughter ensued when I found out a few months later he burnt most of the contents of his room when he started a house fire by playing with matches under his bed. I genuinely hope he tried to rescue his He-Man figures by trying to walk them out of his burning room one step at a time, and that the pitiable cries of those plastic souls left behind still haunt him to this day.

More lazy video blogging

Lovely songs from the great Kate Bush.

I predict you'll anger me

Does anyone here love predictive text on their phone? I used to, until my new phone turned out to be the Miss Cleo of presaging. Sure, it will get things right once in a while, perhaps even enough to give you the sense it may have some powers of clairvoyance, but you know deep down it is just random chance. And like the vaguely-esteemable mystical Miss Cleo, my phone veers unexpectedly into heavily accented gibberish that I can't quite understand. Take my recent attempt to text someone the following message: "Did u get tickets for the game?" The outcome: "Did u 438 tickets dos vié gané?"

My phone, bless his little soul, is steadfast in his conviction that I never use the word "get"; instead, it is his opinion that I really intend to write 438. The errors are seemingly endless. Wal-mart comes out as Y2K Mast. Ugh. Sprint or Samsung need divination upgrades for their products.

The Fabulist

The best part of my new job is the company gym; not only is it only $15 per month-with the first month and a half free (steroids not included), it is also staffed by two trainers and an sports nutrition/rehab intern. I'm generally in there from about 8:45 to 10 each morning, and during that time there is generally only one other person in the gym, the net result being that the people who work in the gym get quite bored and like to talk while I work out. On Friday I mentioned that I once saw a football player at ISU working out with a reverse grip bench press at a tremendously high weight, and the intern expressed some confusion at this claim. Reverse grip bench press? I explained that it is when you flip your hands around so your wrists face you while you bench. She asked the full time trainer if she had heard of such a thing. Negative.

At this point I myself began to wonder about my own claim. It had been years since I saw this, and if a personal trainer and a sports medicine student (who is also on the track team at University of Utah) had never heard of this style, it occurred to me that I may have once again mistaken dreams for reality. You see, I sometimes have these intensely vivid, starkly potent dreams; when coupled with my own poor memory and rather cavalier attitude towards reality, the result is that I periodically have difficulty separating the realm of the fantastic from the tangible reality around us. I must caution you that I don't go around thinking the absurd is real--I don't genuinely believe in unicorns, fairies, or a corruption-free White House. Instead, it is small things that confound me...did I genuinely see those cherries on sale at the store the other day? Like I said, minor things blend together in my mind. Was this one of them?

Normally my confusion is internal, and therefore not much of an issue for other people. But in this case, I began to fear that I would be publicly labeled a prevaricator, and calumnies would cascade about me in whispers as I wandered the halls of both gym and work. Spending the rest of the day fretting, I immediately went to the fount of all wisdom in the modern era, Google. It was true, there genuinely is a reverse grip bench press (though it appears to be highly dangerous and now banned in competitions). Thus spake the oracle.

The only issue now is how to slip this nugget of truth into a conversation next week, thereby salvaging my sterling reputation as a purveyor of all things truthful?