ker-razy

Having finally finished Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (approximately one billion times better than the movie), and beginning to question the artistic validity of Ulrich Haarburste's Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm, the next book in my queue, I went back to Patricia Highsmith's Wikipedia entry to get suggestions for other novels to read.

Meh ...

Enh ...

WHAT?!

Highsmith included homosexual overtones in many of her novels and addressed the theme directly in The Price of Salt and the posthumously published Small g: a Summer Idyll. The former novel is known for its happy ending, the first of its kind in homosexual/lesbian fiction. Published in 1953 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, it sold almost a million copies. The inspiration for the book's main character, Carol, was a woman Highsmith saw in Bloomingdales, where she worked at the time. Highsmith found out her address from the credit card details, and on two occasions after the book was written (in June 1950 and January 1951) spied on the woman without the latter's knowledge.

Price of Salt it is, then.

The most daring prison break ever recorded!

Fig. 1: My new favorite thing

It's totally casual. If you can get out, just grab a couple whatever things, no big deal. Cream, freezer bags, and propane for the grill for chicken tonight! Don't forget the propane which we need ... for tonight! Y'know, if you can get out. No biggie.

"If" you can get out? "If"? It sounds like Ortho Biotech has a pretty tight attendance policy. It's almost like prison. Maybe that's why they need freezer bags and cream: to ferment their own piña coladas. No? I don't know. White Russians, those are creamy cocktails, right? Could be. I gotta read up on my prison fermentation techniques, because if I could make prison piña coladas I'd be worth a ton of cigarettes when we celebrate Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day (March 26th, duh).

It also sounds like Ortho Biotech has one too many MBA's running the joint; whatever happened to "Customer Relations"? Now it's "Customer Relationship Management." Everyone's a manager now! Let's give ourselves raises! (This paragraph has been brought to you by my desire to be head of Production Layout Artist Management at work.)

Maybe Ortho Biotech isn't a real company at all. The name itself is suspect. "Ortho Biotech" – not one of those is a real word. "Biotech" has wormed its way into our dictionaries, but it's just a double-roots-of-other-words word. "Ortho" is a single root-of-other-words word...

OK, I googled it, and Ortho Biotech is indeed a real company. They're a division of Johnson & Johnson and make the popular anemia medication Procrit. From Drugs.com:

This medicine can increase your risk of life-threatening heart or circulation problems, including heart attack or stroke. This risk will increase the longer you use Procrit. ... Before using Procrit, tell your doctor if you have epilepsy or a history of seizures. Procrit may cause seizures.

I think that last line would be waaaay funnier if they put it in parentheses, but what do I know? I'm not in Laffs Management.

Ortho Biotech's careers page is pretty sweet, if a little horrifying:

Our business teams are comprised of individuals with diverse skill sets who devise solutions that effectively address unique business needs and health care challenges. These include employees in the business disciplines you would expect in our industry, such as sales and marketing, medicine, nursing & pharmacy. But our employees also include psychologists, philosophers, nutritionists, exercise physiologists, public health specialists & sociologists even anthropologists, horticulturists and zoologists.

OK, first of all you're missing at least one comma in there. Second ... psychologists and philosopers? Why would you need psychologists and philosophers at a pharmaceutical company? Would they be involved in helping the zoologists justify whetever zoologists do at a pharmaceutical company, oh I dunno, like animal testing? Can they even test anemia medication on non-humans if the medication is made with human plasma? That's a real question; I literally have no idea how blood works.

Do you suppose Customer Relationship Management is asking for freezer bags because it'd look suspicious if the request came from Animal Testing & Disposal Management instead? That's what I suppose; I always suppose other workplaces are more villainous than my own. The banality of evil depresses me. Maybe I'll stop by Animal Testing & Disposal Management's chicken barbecue tonight and see what the psychologists and philosophers think. I'd ask the anthropologists in Human Specimen Acquisition Management, but I don't think they'll be attend; they tend to work the graveyard shift.

Pop quiz!

Where do I work?

A) a newspaper
B) a pre-school

For the past few months I would have answered A, but this morning's memo was written in a tone that would suggest B.

Fig. 1: Highlighting (and Gaussian blur at 9.1 pixels) mine

In case people, entertainment, food, cameraderie, two concerts, a great line-up, and "a [blank] to cap off the evening" (an orgy? Maybe) do not entice you, surely you are lured by the chance to meet people you talk to on the phone but have never met in person.

Is that even a thing? I could see if you were three and you were told that maybe Santa would be there, and wouldn't you want to meet Santa because you write him all those letters? But you're not three years old, you're a grown-up; you wouldn't get a parking spot otherwise. Does anyone have such scintillating business conversations over the phone that they need to meet the people they speak with? They don't, but even if they did they don't *need* to meet the people; it's just "very pleasant" is all.

No, I won't be attending the festival. The last thing I need is to get caught as I drunkenly slash the executives' tires. Besides, the only person I talk to on the phone at work is the ads manager, and the only "very pleasant" interaction I could imagine having with her would be when I tell her that there's no room for her in my lifeboat as an oceanliner sinks in the background. (Don't tell her, but there's actually lots of room in my lifeboat.)

So maybe the executives are idiots who think their employees are even bigger idiots than they are (that's some sort of philosophical Möbius strip I'm wary of unravelling) but they're also poets. Check out this haiku I got via email yesterday:

Fig. 2: It's a haiku if you include her name

What I love is that in the first image I went to great pains to blur (Gaussian blur) out any identifying details of where I work, but in the second image I leave in this woman's probably unique, definitely google-able name. Duh, if I blurred out her name you wouldn't know it was a haiku, and everybody knows that art is more important than everything ever, especially when we're talking about the magic of spontaneous haiku.

Suck it, geezer

I almost got into a fight with an older gentleman at the Denver airport because I insisted he cut in front of me in line at the newsstand.

Me: Please, go ahead of me.
Guy: No, that's ok. I didn't see where the line was.
Me: I saw you looking for the line before I found it. It's only fair for you to go ahead of me.
Guy: It's my fault for not thinking more sharply.
Me: You've probably been stuck in airports all day, so you can't be faulted for not thinking sharply.
Guy: ... Thank you.

That's right, you don't fuck with me when I'm feeling charitable.*

* Calling this act "charitable" is itself charitable.

Do not go gently into that Italian deli

Moment of Truth, you are a bad show.

Host: "Did you ever drink while pregnant?"
Morally Suspect Contestant: "Yes."
Voiceover: "That answer is ... [wait thirty seconds] ... true."
Host: "Are your kids ok?"
Morally Suspect Contestant: "Yeah, I'm surprised!"

Way to go, Mother of the Year!

Maybe I'd be in a more forgiving mood if I hadn't had the Hot Spicy Italian Sub for lunch: "prosciuttini, imported hot cappicola, salami, pepperoni, and provolone with lettuce, tomato, onion, hot peppers, oregano, and Italian dressing." I also had them put mayonnaise on it because I thought mayo would add some cool creaminess to it, but I don't think the mayo made a difference. I don't think crushed valium would have made a difference. I finished the sandwich 30 minutes ago and all I want to do now is lie down, rub my belly, and feel the cool breeze of the Adriatic on my cheeks. Also I want to cry. Oh sandwich, how could you betray me with gastric troubles?

"Did you not notice 'hot' was used twice in the description, three times if you count the name of the sandwich?"

My stomach is such a dick.

Maybe milk would help. Let's see the customer reviews on Amazon:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately dairy-house decree ...

"Out of stock"?! Bah.