I was trying to figure out what disgruntled character best matches my frame of mind today. I was originally thinking of that angry Boynton cat with the pissed-off-signifying squiggle over his head, but upon closer self-analysis, I think Loretta Lockhorn works better. The domestic strife is absent, but the heavy lidded reservedness with which she keeps her disdain for all around her barely in check pretty much sums up how I have felt for most of the day. It's just been one of those days where the apathy and philistinism that surround me have really worn me down.
I have had a nagging earache on and off for months now, which can generally be held at bay with Flonase and nasal saline spray. But thanks to a cold that the nasty little non-hand-washing cretins at my office where passing around like Kool-Aid at Jonestown last week, my ear now hurts pretty much constantly. The only thing that works is Affrin, which is more addicitve than crack if used for more than 3 days at a time, and I'm on day two. So I was already in NO MOOD for the atmosphere of idiocy at my workplace, manifested most pungently by the inability of around 25 educated attorneys to discuss anything other than sports (the men) or clothes (the women - see, we can't even defy fucking gender stereotypes). It did not help that there were a bunch of top secret meetings going on with some sort of expensive consultant. I have worked in enough firms to know that most of the time, a consultant could be really awesome, but the firm only hears what they want to hear, never asks for the input of the staff (who often have the best ideas about ways to imporve things - or at least I sure as hell do), and winds up with nothing improved and a bunch of disgruntled staff who know that the firm spent a shitload flying some choad in from Chicago while handing out paltry raises at review time.
It also did not help that the other focus of the day was an orgasmatron-looking single-cup coffee maker sent over for our sampling and potential purchase (again, money very well spent) by Starbucks, along with mini muffins and mini croissants and other modern mini forms of lotus and opium meant to lull us into sweet, sated corporate somnambulism. This may sound innocuous enough, but what really fucking pissed me off is that Starbucks also sent over roughly 350 million paper cups and corrugated sleeves for said cups, which the earth-raping dingbats at my firm dutifully assembled next to the machine. So now, in addition to the paper and plastic cups which everyone had begun filling with caffeine when the day first started, there were Starbucks cups and sleeves all over the place. Here's a solution to a hot cup - get a mug. It has a handle, and you're only going to your desk, you Oryx and Crake-inducing piece of shit. In no mood for such shenanigans, I snuck into the break room during a quiet moment and hid all the cups and sleeves and replaced them with china mugs. Ha. I'm sure people were so confused that they just gave up and held their open mouths under the single serving spout.
I forgot to mention that approximately five minutes after I arrived at work, I was made to assist and calm down a hysterical male divorce client who turned up unannounced in a horrible state trying to file a restraining order against his wife, who he knew for about a month, married, filed for divorce from approximately three months later, and has now spent more time than they were married going through this divorce. I really have no time for people who rush into marriage and are all boo hoo when their wife scratches their door up with her car keys and threatens to call the police making false allegations of rape. I mean, we have celebrities to show us that these premature weddings are a bad idea. Pay attention! Drew Barrymore didn't get married 73 times for herself, you know!
Things started to look up(ish) when I left work and saw two political bumper stickers which I have not seen yet down here. One was Bill Richardson (well, I've seen the Bill Richardson bumper stickers in my trash, but that's it until now) and the other was Mitt Romney. Although I have soured on Richardson since my initial drunken and misguided Romeo-esque window serenading, and would cheerfully shave Romney's head while he slept, for some reason these displays of support for what amount to unusual candidates down here kind of warmed my heart. There's something reassuring in knowing that there are people who have thought about the election enough to not just know about but actually endorse someone other than the Big 3 (Giuliani, Clinton, Obama - I know Romney is popular elsewhere but you don't hear a lot about him down here). After my day of hating all the unengaged fuckwads around me, this cheered me somewhat. Somewhat. Too bad I went to Blockbuster immedialy thereafter and could not find the Danish movie After the Wedding, but could find the place on the wall where 53 copies of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would have been had they not all been snatched up by people who apparently have either not a single lone brain cell in their heads or no sense of shame, or both. I would like to think that all 53 copies were at the homes of Queer Theory PhD candidates, serving as research for various theses on the representation of homosexuality in the mainstream media, but I doubt this is the case.
It is indeed a grey, Loretta Lockhorn day when the brightest patch of sunlight is a fucking Romney bumper sticker.
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