Wheel! Of! FISH!

Bah.

2003-09-17 - 3:22 p.m.

Soundtrack: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana and "Smells Like Nirvana" by Weird Al Yankovic played simultaneously.

Threat for the Day: "Sir, put down the frappucino and back away from the magazines. I am carrying a copy of Gore Vidal's Empire and I know how to use it."

If there's one thing I hate, it's being seen as useful. A screwdriver is useful.

Je n'est suis un screwdriver!

I've devoted most of my life to AVOIDING utility. I read extensively but I never touch a how-to book. I wear outdated sneakers and unnecessary overclothes and watch trashy television and offer informed opinions on splatter films. I refuse to get a car. I drink cheap fizzy red wine. Nothing I do is utilitarian. I'm not, practically speaking, a useful person.

And yet I have the job security I now ... for lack of a better word, "enjoy" ... because my new managers have found me to be a useful employee. I can take directions and follow them without needing to go back for clarification several times an hour. I can alphabetize without checking my crib notes ("Oh, crap! J first, THEN K."). I can talk to a customer for more than five minutes at a stretch without breaking into a cold sweat and fleeing, or panicking and bludgeoning them to death with a stack of 10 Minute Italian workbooks. I can work on the decrepit Windows '95 boxes running our grandiose BookMaster program without making them burst into flames, and I can figure out how to count out $17.69 in change without counting on my fingers too blatantly.

This seemingly harmless combination of class G superpowers has made me an effectively "useful" employee for Barnes and Noble, Inc. I get my 40 hours a week, I'm trusted with highly prestigious assignments like maintaining the Pets section, and they go into a paralytic terror if I don't show up.

Yeah, it's a lame thing to complain about, but ... frankly, what the hell else am I going to complain about? I've got a job that has effectively removed me from the schedule enjoyed by normal humans, including my wife. Heph is usually awake when I get home, but when he gets work as a teacher, he's going to have to sack out even earlier than Julieclipse. I'll only have Kiff to talk to, and he's at the stage of kittenhood where he communicates primarily by lunging for your calf from the shadows and then running around in circles.

I go to bed in the morning and wake up in the afternoon, bike through the blazing cityscape and then shuffle with the other nightfolk through the endless shelves of sacred tomes, like a lost monastic order, maintaining the words of the dead. I ride home through the dead of night and exchange friendly screamed curses with the occasional driver, irate over missing his chance to kill me after I jumped the curb to avoid his barreling Mustang.

I subsist on peanut butter, jelly, bread and pretzels. I haven't cooked in weeks. I'd kill someone for the chance to make biscuits, soup ... rice and beans, anything.

I'm glad Heph and Kiff are here, because otherwise I'd go quietly insane.

Now I can go conversationally insane.

Damn. I really had a point here. I was going to go onto something else after a brief gloss about how much I don't like being a valued employee. Dilbert is entirely too funny while languishing in this state of pseudo-existence.

Nuts.

Well, you don't care any more than I do. Bah.

Didn't you hear me? I said "Bah!"

Get lost!

Bah.