Get Me Donna Chang!

Just for point of reference from yesterday, that’s my dog. I tried to clip his nails yesterday, and only succeeded in pissing myself off. Let’s do the math… thirty minutes of effort, five claws of eighteen actually clipped. I need to sedate my dog.

Do you think when your company’s corporate communications department is instructed to produce a photo showing workers doing whatever it is workers are doing in your company, that they consult some sort of strategy guide to make sure they’re showing images that reflect “diversity?” I mean, is there some sort of formula that has become the generally accepted standard in imagery to communicate diversity?

(White lady + Black guy + Hispanic guy + Asian lady + young White guy) * Business Attire = Appropriate

(50ish White guy) * 4 * Business Attire + Board Room + (Asian man + lunch delivery) + (sex-kitten secretary on someone’s lap) = Inappropriate

Do they hand out cheat sheets for this stuff in B-School?

I didn’t take many classes in corporate communications, but even I know you’ve gotta have the Asian lady. ”Where’s Chang? Donna Chang! We need Donna Chang! Someone get her out of Accounts Receivable and have her borrow a sport coat from someone, we need her in the picture!”

You know where we’re going to end up in a few years, right? The young White guy in the picture is going to be replaced by a wispy young White guy wearing a pastel scarf tied neatly around his neck while making love to the camera. You’ll also be seeing Indian I.T. guy, and some woman whose ethnicity you just can’t really quite peg. And I’m surprised more of these pictures don’t trot out Wheelchair Dude at this point. He’ll soon get his turn in the sun. TIMMY!

What I find highly amusing is that although Rich Fiftyish White Guy is still running most every company in the country, Rich Fiftyish White Guy only gets trotted out in commercials that illustrate how fat bloated bankers can’t compete with Ditech dot com. I worked in a bank. That guy doesn’t exist.

And don’t get me started on the whole bullshit thing about “banker’s hours.”

Seen on a resume this week from a welder/skilled tradesman:

OBJECTIVE: I want to lead a Fortune 500 Company.

Aim high my friend, aim high.

Me? I just want to get through these next thirty years and retire so I can have more time to respond to all those emails that obviously need me to update my banking information or help some Nigerian royalty get a few million dollars out of the country effectively.

Why are old people so gullible? I mean, I generally trust people, and I’m generally starved enough for conversation that I’m willing to listen when a fantastic offer is thrown my way. That being said, who can’t see these things coming from a mile away?

My favorite scammers are The Travelers. I really admire their work. The Travelers are a roving band of Irish gypsies who go from town to town defrauding and sometimes robbing people while engaging in bogus home repair jobs.

I could be a Traveler. For one, I love a good road trip. Second, I really have very little in the way of a conscience. Third, I’m incapable of doing a decent job when it comes to home repair. If you paid me $10 right now to mow your lawn (okay, maybe not right now), I guarantee you that you’d want $8 back at the end of the day.

I’m the guy who spent twenty minutes fighting with a screw while assembling some IKEA furniture before the ex discovered I had the drill turned on “reverse.” I’m the guy who was paid by a big, imposing FBI agent neighbor to mow his lawn and half assed it so bad that I think he wanted to do me physical harm. Don’t ask me to help you build an entertainment center or assist you in your move. You’re just going to end up mad at me by the end of the day. I don’t even do “just hold this for a second” very well.

I’d make a great Traveler. If I did a knowingly poor job fixing your roof, and still took a couple hundred dollars from you, trust me… I’d still be able to sleep at night.

Plus, I like Irish beer. So I’ve got that going for me.

Maybe the lack of conscience thing has grown since becoming a poker player. I mean, don’t we all have a little bit of that I BUST CHUMPS mentality waiting for an outlet? I’m glad I get that (on the rare occasions I get cards) on PartyPoker, because I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad taking buggy wheels from an Amish minister if he bet me his clan could get that barn up by sundown. The second that sunset became official, I’d be jacking my Buick up on those big boys and riding home in style on wooden rims. It’d take that motherfucker a long time to whittle himself some new wheels, and I’d be laughing my ass off all the way home.

Take that Pennsylvania Dutch!

I don’t know exactly what it is I have against the Amish, but there’s definitely something bubbling up under the surface. Maybe it’s the way they’re rocking those Brigham Young beards.

I seem to get a lot of searches coming around these parts because of a post I did a long time ago listing some famous Mormons. Today, for example, someone has already landed on my site searching for “Jimmy Superfly Snuka and Mormon.” Glad I could confirm that for you. I also think Sergeant Slaughter was a Baptist, Andre the Giant a Catholic, and Koko B. Ware a fully functional retard.

The very first day upon moving into a house with my then-fiancee, we were visited by one of our two neighbors. His name was Jimmy. Jimmy, like Koko B. Ware, was a functional retard.

Now, I’m a pretty liberal guy. I’m accommodating, reasonably pleasant, and am not one to get all worked up and uptight about much. But when I see some old guy doing the Marty Feldman hunchback shuffle across my front lawn to come by and squawk out his “welcome to the neighborhood” greeting in a six minute, eleven word symphony of unintelligible stammering grunts and wheezes, I tend to get a little unnerved.

Jimmy just wanted to bring me the mail and say hello. BG just wanted Jimmy off his porch.

Jimmy wasn’t alone in the neighbor house though. It was a “Group Home.” Jimmy’s roommate was Michael, an autistic black guy the size of Michael Clarke Duncan. I mean just huge. Now, Michael never said a word. He would just take a toy outside and pace up and down the property line for a few hours before retreating back inside the house. But one night I was driven almost to the point of murder.

Actually, it would have been ruled “Justifiable Homicide” or maybe even self-defense. One night in the dead of summer, I’m awakened at 2AM by this horribly loud and grating scratching noise. It sounded like someone was taking a metal rake to a cement slab over and over and over again.

I got out of bed, and you know what? That’s exactly what was happening. Michael was on the slab in his backyard fulfilling his uncontrollable need to rake. I opened the window and yelled, “Michael! Go to bed!” No dice. He kept raking. And raking. And raking. I thought maybe he’d grow tired, but it wasn’t happening. An hour passed. Ninety minutes.

I finally called the cops.

You know, I would have called their case worker (or whoever was over there during days), but that person was never kind enough to introduce themselves. Probably in anticipation of a 3AM “Michael is raking the cement and you’ve got to make him stop” phone call.

It wasn’t the last time I had to call the cops on Michael.

The other time, and I’m chuckling as I write this, big huge Michael was jogging around the back yard of the house (fenced in) in just his drawers with one hand down the front side. Yeah, that’s what he was doing, but he was doing it “on the move.” Must be part of some new age exercise program, may have to give that a try. I really didn’t know whether to laugh my balls off or be horrified.

Seeing as we had an uber-religious family on the other side of our yard, I had to opt for the latter. Cops came, Michael freaked out, and his case worker got an earful from the officer.

Man, I’m going to hell.

The third time we had to alert the authorities came one night when we were sitting on the porch having a drink. We heard a POP come from inside their house, and all of a sudden Jimmy comes ambling out at (his) top speed, waving his arms so frantically I thought he might throw his balance off mid stride and catapult himself into traffic. The “conversation” went a little something like this:

EX: What’s wrong Jimmy?

Jimmy: Gah! Bah! Pbbffftt! Pow!

EX: Slow down, slow down… Do you need help?

Jimmy: (while nodding) Bah! Dah! Furrrrr…

EX: What?

Jimmy: Fur! Fur! Bah!

EX: Fur? Fire? Is there a fire?

Jimmy: Gah! Yah! Fur! Fur!

And then he took a dead legged lap around the yard yelling “Gah! Fur!”

Apparently, a light bulb had popped and had scorched the wall, so there was no fire to extinguish, but we knew we had saved the day for one crazy old bastard.

Oh my god am I ever going to burn…