Thursday, April 29, 2004

I’m looking over our conversation yesterday, gentle reader, and what seemed hearty at the time–five whole words with a link thrown in–now seems pitifully lacking. After all, do we not gather here to rant? Are we here to trade links and swap the stories of others or, dare I make the suggestion, are we here to complain? We doth protest not enough, and I can only conclude that I was either puffing the oregano yesterday or hitting the parsley. Hard.

The silence stops now. A bird shat on one of my co-workers yesterday as we wended our way to lunch, which perfectly illustrates the point I’m about to unfold. I mean really, at the end of the day, isn’t injustice simply the Pigeon of Evil taking to the skies and dropping big, steamy globs of wrongdoing on your person? Let me tell you what’s on my mind. You can speak afterward, though I can’t guarantee I’ll listen to you.

The chair I’m sitting on right this moment? I feel like it’s sitting on me. It’s one of those leather “executive” chairs, and sometime last week I spent a glorious two hours assembling the stupid thing. Since when did people start imposing hierarchies on chairs, I wonder? Whether your chair costs a thousand dollars or thirty-five dollars, it shoulders the same noble burden in the end: to serve as a receptacle for your ass.

This particular ass receptacle, however, also received a modest amount of blood, sweat, and tears. The instructions clearly told me assembly would involve only an allen wrench and a few screws, but it sure as heck didn’t tell me about cursing over stripped screws or wrestling the chair to the ground. It’s like someone from Ikea handed me an allen wrench and said, “Here, this is all you need. To stab yourself.”

Now that all the dust has cleared, I can look forward to months of bad posture and skanky leather smell. Apparently you can take injustice sitting down, and I weep for the cow that gave its life to make my chair.