UR magazine decided to publish pictures of their New Year’s bash on the Interweb, dear reader, and here is a shot of our merry band of miscreants.
Some of you know that I am a teetotaler–a fancy word for someone who exclusively drinks lemonade and the blood of newborn children, by which I mean Kool-Aid–and this is a rare chance to see your beloved CEO in an unequivocally blasted state.
I had a few sips of champagne, and those sips were enough to render me unconscious. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I would never dream of lying to you. What really happened, gentle reader, was those few sips threw me into a blind rage wherein I rendered other people unconscious.
So I’m standing at Guest Services, gentle reader, innocently filling out compliment cards when a very suburban woman storms up to the counter. She flashes the cashier an angry look.
“Young man, you are a liar,” she says, letting the accusation linger as if it were a Thursday evening theater in the round.
And with that scathing remark she launches into a five-minute screed on panini makers, receipts, return policies, and evil cashiers who jealously guard the TRUE availability of panini makers.
“My son gave me this for Christmas, and I trust my son more than you,” she concludes. “You’ve wasted twenty minutes of my time!”
While only the good Lord and Emeril know what this woman would’ve done with twenty minutes, I’d like to theorize a bit. She would’ve spent those twenty minutes making twenty-five panini to stuff down her grotesquely pasty throat, and you know I’m right.
In the immortal words of co-worker Hooper, “Go back to Schaumburg, bitch!” (Apologies to any gentle readers who hail from Schaumburg, unless you’re a tactless and over-the-hill woman who’s packing away panini after pissing and moaning for twenty-five wasted minutes at a frickin’ Target.)
A Secondhand hats off to beleaguered retail workers the world over–even Thursdays can seem like Mondays sometimes, no?
First off, gentle reader, I’d like to bring in the New Year with a fantastic excuse crafted by co-worker Andrew. Readers toiling under the cruel whiplash of higher education will appreciate this even more.
Professor: “Why is your paper late?“
“Well, Professor, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“Yes?“
“The good news is my paper’s 128 pages long.”
“And the bad news?“
“The bad news is that the last 125 pages are all letter A’s.”
Brilliant, don’t you think? Equally brilliant was yesterday’s New Year’s outing, wherein six of us hauled ass to the downtown Mariott for some partying. The brouhaha, hosted by–gasp–UR magazine and some other too-hip-for-words patron, lasted well into the early morning. Perhaps I’m too pedestrian, but do these parties always include trash-lined dance floors, bathrooms filled with misguided human waste and fornication, and a flashing contingent of police cars and ambulances?
Understand, however, that these hitches only detracted somewhat from the overall experience. The dance floor was a verifiably sweaty cauldron of invention and insight. The Ticket Booth Dance, the Cell Phone Waltz, and the Middle Finger Fandango–these three were Secondhand exclusives, the last of which was born from unwittingly participating in a few drunken couples’ feverish grinding.
Did I have fun? You bet. Will you ever see the Cell Phone Waltz? Don’t count on it.