Friday Night- Monty Python night. Guadalupe hadn't seen 'em, and Singular had only seen them with the unbearably annoying type of person who says the lines along with the movies. I tried not to be this person. I watched all the movies incessantly when I was a teenager, grew avoided the people who wouldn't shut up about them in college*, and haven't seen 'em in about ten years. Even though I know what an unforgivable faux pas it was, I found myself blurting, "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farsical aquatic ceremony!"

I have failed you, Guadalupe.

Saturday night- Lun's b-day. Our reservation of twenty netted us the back room at Sangko, some sushi bar. It had a little hut built into it with the teeny-short table, and of course the karaoke laserdisc Happy Birthday song. They also played the song "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,"** which is a really nasty tribute to pederasty if you have the lyrics bouncing on the screen for you. Then a party at an apartment that was actually next door to one of the crappy dives we looked at when we moved here. Compared to that one, this apartment was quite nice. They had a stove rather than a hot-plate spattered with crusty beans, no hippy wallpaper (in fact, no pictures of mushrooms anywhere), and no Ray's Music Exchange poster, which I was quite surprised to see. They're a pretty good jam band from Cinci, and friends-of-friends at my alma mater, but don't see 'em sober! They actually opened for the Jazz Mandolin Project at the House of Blues last month. Go see the Jazz Mandolin Project, if you can get a ticket. Stunning.
This apartment also seemed to be suspiciously sparsely decorated. There were no decorations below shoulder height. I found out why- a big, giant, Great-Dane-lookin' beast hiding in the bedroom. He couldn't come out, though, not with all the people there. Too bad- sometimes it's nice to get some good ol' fashioned dog-lovin' (on a temporary basis, of course, just like it's nice to hold a baby but not to have one) after being ignored by the cats so much. Even though a dog like that would probably bite my head***.

Oh yeah, and they fired the Dot-Bomb CEO from work on Friday. Y'see, my company doesn't usually hire schmoozes. But last year, when they fired the one that they did have, they replaced him with another schmooze! This guy was the former CEO of a dot-bomb, and he had the same Sales Hair as the guy he replaced, and I think they only hired him because he was a member of some club for Primaries with our President, who he was all buddy-buddy with.

Now, being a hip entrepreneureal Fast Company, the office is in a converted warehouse. We've got the big exposed timbers (heck, exposed everything), the all-glass conference room, the whole shpeil. A result of this is that the offices lining the walls are for the VPs, and the middle is where everybody else sits. Well, Dot-Bomb CEO was hired as a sales guy, and he got a cubicle like the rest of this. This wasn't enough for him, so he just sort of moved in to an office that was empty awaiting a VP of Sales for one of the two companies. Just moved his stuff into the window office, and even started locking the door.

There are people who have been at our company since its conception 10 years ago who sit at cubicles. They don't care where they sit. They're there to do their job, not to act important. So you can imagine this guy, waltzing in with a big rainmaker rep, and settling into the VP of Sales's office with his slick hair. And not generating any business.

They tried to fire him around Xmas, but he ran to the President and begged. At that point, they kicked him out of his "office" and back into a cubicle. Well, at some point, he must have pissed off the Prez, cuz that was the last thread keeping him there. He tried to argue for his job. How pitiful. If it's come to the point where you go into your boss's office and the HR manager is there, it's too late. You're fired.

I administrate the database that the Sales and Marketing departments use, so I always know ahead of time when the axe is about to fall. Gotta lock 'em out of the system and all that. Usually it sucks to know before they do. This time it was fun. The Schmooze would always rub my fucking belly in that buddy-buddy way that guys in the office are supposed to clap each other on the backs. My BELLY!?! Get your hands off my belly, take that Shellac out of your hair, get your ass out of the window office, and HIT THE ROAD, suckaaaaa!





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*This seems to be a common trend in college, where the inbound freshman sees the Society for Creative Anachronism on the list of school clubs, thinks it sounds fun, attends a meeting, and leaves the meeting pale and very, very scared.
**click on Neil Sedaka for lyrics from his very own AOL website.
***When I was little, I was attacked by a dog that bit my head. He dug his lower teeth into my cheek, where I still have scars, and his upper teeth into the back of my head. Then he did that dog-shaky thing they do when they have something limp in their mouth. Since then, my first instinct whenever I see a big dog is that it wants to bite my head.