I got

Two cans of scrubby bubbles; three boxes of kleenex; appropriately pH balanced desodorante; a laser printer/copier/scanner/fax; pink suede coat; egg cream; lip irritant; kitchen towels; bathroom towels; box of pots; paper cutter; cherry, strawberry, blueberry pop tarts; backpack; sandals, sandals, sandals, perforated ballet flats; placemat for cats; kitchen rug; brita filters; pillow; hypoallergenic faux featherbed; eyeliner; spatula; silicone pot holders; earl grey tea; headbands; child polo shirt with rhinestone flamingo; two electric toothbrushes; case of water.

Still to buy:  protective coat for cadaver part labs; watering can; apron; sandals; blueberries; another case of water.  Maybe a greyhound.

It Has Come

It really was a package.  Inside the package, there were two folders - one from MGM, and one from some firm that encourages you to immediately become a worker again.  On the outside of the firm's folder was a label with my name, followed by the letter B.  Everyone else in the room had an A.  It is because I am, or, I was, a secretary.  Secretary = B.  I don't really have a problem with that.  I sort of agree.  There are things that come with being a B, things like being able to play dumb and being able to be in lala land more often.

Inside the MGM folder was a sheet telling me to go to my work area to collect my personal things.  There was a check, but it was not "the" check.  The Check was downstairs.  Downstairs, there were small wicker baskets of vending machine/convenience store sized packages of Oreos and Ritz Crackers.  It didn't look like anyone had taken any.  The woman from the firm was standing in the area in front of the tables on which the baskets of treats were placed.

There was something disturbing about the food, something sickening about the way the artificial lights reflected off the semi-metallic wrappers.  I felt strongly that, if I touched those wrappers, my fingertips would come away dusty and grimy.  Where did the food come from?  An airplane?

I stayed until 6.  I was sent to buy alcohol for an office goodbye party.  I stood in the booze aisle of Smart & Final for twenty minutes, perplexed and profoundly mixed up inside.  It is the same, really, as sending a diabetic to buy an array of pastries for a morning meeting.  Or, more precisely, it is like sending a bulimic to buy all of the pastries.  I bought too much.  The workers hardly drank any.  The temps, though, they did some shots, and finished off one of the three bottles of tequila.  Bravo, temps.

I fixed the 3-hole punch before I left.  I wanted to take it with me, but I didn't want the guilt.  Plus, Steve, in the cubicle next to me, is also quite attached to it, and they are keeping him.  He will get his own office, though.  I wonder if he'll turn into an A.

R.I.P., My Mom's Gallbladder

Gallbladder, this is my blog.  Blog, this is my mom's gallbladder.

I put the gallbladder at work.  It's standing right outside my cubicle.  I guess that's fitting, as the gallbladder is history, and soon, my job will be history.

This is how I fill the last hours of secretarydom.  With my mother's dead gallbladder to keep me company.

I think it fits right in at the office.

My mom made me promise not to put any pictures of her liver online, since the doctor told her it is "very nice" and "in excellent condition," and she didn't want anyone getting any ideas.  I think most people could use more ideas.  I don't think they should steal my mom's liver, though.  They can have her gallbladder, if they can find it.

Here are some hints as to the gallbladder's location:

The gallbladder is not in my mom.

The gallbladder is not at the tower.

That's all I know.  O, yes - the gallbladder is probably in Illinois.  Probably.  Or, heaven.

O my god, will I be a new girl soon?  Tomorrow?  I have this fear that, at the meeting where they are supposed to give me my severance package (will there really be a package?  a packet?  an envelope?), people from the 80's in red jumpsuits will come and take me down to the basement of the tower.  They will be the aliens from "V," and they will take away my internet access and my shoes.

Perhaps I should take a sedative.

My doctor, he said that, when I feel panicked, I should try looking at something.  He said it could be a business card, or a photograph, or even my pill bottle.  Maybe I should carry around a tiny photo album of my mom's gallbladder, bopping around town, in lighthearted, recreational situations.  I seem to have clung to the gallbladder tonight, in my time of need.

Thank you for that, gallbladder.  I will always remember you, even though you stopped working.  I am going to stop working, too, in just a few hours now.

What if this isn't even her gallbladder that I'm so devoted to?  I'm not very good at anatomy, not yet.  Still, whatever it is, I like it, especially at the office.  If only it could come with me tomorrow.  In spirit, yes, it will be by my side.

If I brought the gallbladder, its presence might intimidate HR.  Maybe I'd get a bigger package.  The gallbladder could protect me from any Visitors in red jump-suits, and if it was not able to overpower the reptilian aliens, it could at least keep me company in the basement.

I think it is bedtime.  Goodnight, blog.  Goodnight, gallbladder.  We've got a big day tomorrow!

Cool Surf Gets Old, Has a Baby

I have tired of the man-deodorant.  Now, I feel sorry for men, being stuck with such tiresome deodorant.  Man-deodorant - it even sort of smells like an armpit.  What is that about?  At first, I thought, "Here we go again, even the man-deodorant does not work for me."  Upon closer inspection, I realized that the smell wasn't my smell - it was some alchemical meeting of my body and the man-deodorant.  Perhaps there is something to this man/woman pH balance.  I doubt it, though.  I think it's my special magic pH.  I can't even wear a watch without draining the battery.  I have powers.

If a child were to result from the alchemical meeting of my body pH and the man-deodorant, what then?  It is like something that happens in India, Ganesha-style.  Would the child be a god?  Would Gillette come to cut off its head?

Ah, maybe it would be a company.  I hope so, 'cause my company is, as I've mentioned a thousandtimesover, setting me loose in the next week or so.  I bet the company born of my pH and Cool Surf would be a much better fit.  I bet the benefits would be good.

Strong enough for a man, pH balanced for a man

I've decided to switch over to men's deodorant, following a serendipitous application early last week, when the heat came back out.  Do you think my use of men's deodorant will impact my ability to attract a mate?

Perhaps it will help, as potential suitors, upon sniffing me, may associate me with the term, "The Best a Man Can Get."  Perhaps corporate branding and I will work together.  If a child were to result from such collusion, would I owe something to the company?  Or, would it just be one in a series of events in the evolution of advertising-human hybridization?  Maybe it won't be the machines, like in The Terminator.  Maybe it will be the malls.

I wonder what R. Dawkins would have to say about me, my deodorant, and the mall.

Starvation by Rabbit

Eating beaver is perhaps the best way to avoid starvation in the wilds of North America.  Another fine idea is to steal food from a bear.  I am learning such things from a book.  You can see the book over there, on the right side of the screen, as a Thing currently feeding into my brain.

I'm not so sure about the bear thing, though.  My biology teacher told us pretty much every North American bear (and a large percentage of game meat) has Trichinella these days.  Bears also have big claws and fangs.  My biology teacher didn't tell me about the claws and fangs.  I already knew about that.

Whatever the bear was eating might be okay, but if I could murder beavers instead, I might do that.  The idea of eating something that's been slobbered over by some bear all loaded up with Trichinella is sorta sick.  Still, I would be proud if I stole a bear's food.

You can look for beavers under fallen trees, and, if you have a gun, you should shoot them.  The book suggests murdering game birds by strolling by, tangentially, until they think you're just on a casual walk.  Then, it says you should throw rocks and sticks at them.

You can just punch a porcupine in the head because they're stupid.

A person is a very good meal for a person.  Nutritionally speaking.

Spruce can stave off scurvy, and making yourself some spruce tea gives you a sense of well-being when times are tough.

Four tablespoons of blood equal the amount of iron found in ten eggs.  You can carry blood around with you, in a bag made from entrails.  You should carry blood around with you.

If all you have to eat is rabbit, the book says you would be better off eating nothing.  You can starve if all you ever eat is rabbit, because their meat is too lean.  I can't imagine how this is true, but the book says so.

The book also refers to beavers as amphibians.  The book came from Restoration Hardware.  Methinks the book is old-timey.

I thought having the book was a good idea, with me losing my job and all.  You never know.

If that rabbit thing is true, Los Angeles is probably not the best place to go around eating people, should the apocalypse happen.  Maybe, if the apocalypse happens, I'll head over to Vegas.

The Grapes of Kroger

What will happen to my typewriter when I am laid off?  Will it become obsolete?

I had an electric electric-blue typewriter in college.  It hummed.  It made my freshman-year roommate very angry, and it gave me carpal tunnel syndrome.  Is it rusting in a garbage dump somewhere?  Has anybody seen it?

My freshman year roommate was a nursing student named Lisa.  She folded her underwear, four folds per pair.  I woke up on weekends to phone conversations about what a disgusting animal the 80 year old man with the colostomy bag was.  She would laugh when she got to the part about how she told him so, when no one else was around.  Sometimes, I'd wake up and she'd be in the middle of a conversation about me.  She would say things like the carpet in our dorm room was matted with my hair, even though the carpet was really covered with hers - kinky-curly and black-brown.

Lisa had a boyfriend who worked at Kroger, and bragged about detaining customers as they tried to leave the store.  He would call the police if they didn't pay 33 cents for the malted milk balls they took from the bulk bins.  He was most proud when he made a scene, humiliating other men, older men.  Men who wore suits and had more than enough money, men who were caught on Kroger video, popping grapes or bits of dried apple into their mouths.

The Romance of Lisa and Kroger

A play in a paragraph or two.  Sorta.

Lights up on a dorm room at a small, private, liberal arts university in Central Illinois.  Let's call it "Harvard - Of the Midwest."  Conveniently located across the street from the dorm is a Walgreens drugstore with a good supply of antidepressant medications.  .4 miles down the road is one of the two Kroger Food Stores in town.

It is 4:30pm on Sunday.  Kroger, an aspiring EMT with a large overbite and perpetual, patchy, 5 o'clock shadow, sits on the extra-long twin bed of his girlfriend, Lisa.  His arm pits are wet, and they stink.  He is studying for a test.  Lisa's roommate, Kris, lies on her own bed, pretending to be asleep, waiting for Lisa and Kroger to leave.  She wants, desperately, to type on her electric electric-blue typewriter, in private.

Lisa is seated at her desk, folding her size eleven underwear.  She folds them four folds per pair.

Kroger:  Gosh, this test is gonna be hard.

Lisa:  Maybe I can help you.

Kroger:  Okay, this one's tough - what are the symptoms of a disease?

Lisa:  Which disease?

Kroger:  Any disease.  Symptoms of having one.  How you know someone has one.  He told us the answer, but I forgot to write it down.

Lisa:  It depends on the disease.  Some have different symptoms.

Kroger:  But this is just for a disease, in general.

Lisa:  Oh.

Kroger:  What are the symptoms?

Lisa stops folding her underwear.

Lisa:  Nausea.

Kroger:  That's right - nausea!  That was the main one.

Kroger becomes excited, banging his legs open and shut, over and over, as he sits on the bed, flipping through the EMT textbook in his lap.  The bed makes a creaking sound.  Kris pretends to stir, using the sound as her faux motivation.  Lisa moves from the desk and sits beside Kroger.

Kroger:  How about if I put fever down too?

Lisa:  That's good.  Fever and nausea.

Kroger's legs move faster, and his breathing becomes more rapid.  As Lisa lifts the textbook from his lap, Kris rolls her extra-long twin bed into the wall.  She grabs one of her many flannels and, looking back at Lisa and Kroger through the mirror on the door, drops her keys.  When she picks them up, they are tangled with strands of spiraled black-brown hair.

Lisa and Kroger embrace, as the lights fade out to...I dunno, The Cranberries, or maybe 4 Non Blondes.  Crash Test Dummies?  The Replacements?  I'm not really up on my 90's.

________________________

This post did not turn out to be about the future, did it?  Perhaps this is some coded prophecy, spun from within the depths of my subconscious self.

Everyone - watch out for fever and nausea.  And No Sampling at the grocery store.  Try to avoid needing emergency medical treatment in Central Illinois. 

Thank you.  Sorry if this post has disturbed you.  It certainly has disturbed me.  I hope that isn't one of the symptoms of a disease.

Does anyone know what the symptoms of "losing your office job" are?  If so, please drop me a line so I know what to expect.  I am hoping "time spent at yoga class" might be inversely correlated with "time spent in cubicle."