Worst Fear
March 15, 2011
I used to work with an idiot. This girl, this “coworker,” I hated her with a passion I cannot describe in words. Everything was more difficult when she was around. She wasn’t stupid, just consistently and infuriatingly incompetent. The job in question was retail, so it wasn’t as though we were building rockets to the moon, but she couldn’t seem to grasp the most basic details: enter the correct price into the cash register, make sure the customer signs the credit card receipt, when the phone makes the ringy-ringy noise that means you’re supposed to pick it up.
The strange thing was that this young woman was actually quite intelligent. She was in her early twenties, about ready to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, and her next step was med school.
And that is what frightened me most. I had never given much thought to hospital staff, but it must be like any other field: there are a few bright ones, a few apathetic ones, and plenty of people who can memorize every bone in the human body but can’t figure out how to turn on the vacuum cleaner. (Hint: There’s a big red button on the top that says ON).
One of my greatest fears is that one day I will be in a horrible automobile accident. (This would involve a bus, of course, since I don’t drive.) The paramedics come with their flashy lights and woo-woo siren. They put me on a stretcher and hoist me into the back of their vehicle. They say things like, “Stay with us, son,” and, “This guy’s a fighter. I can see it in his eyes.”
When I get to the hospital, they rush me to the emergency room, where I am hooked up to a variety of beeping and blipping machines. “It doesn’t look good,” someone says. “We have to perform emergency exploratory surgery. STAT!” (You know they mean business when they say stat.) I stare at the bright lights on the ceiling as they put me under. And just before I drift off to sleep, my former coworker sticks her bulbous head in front of my face and says, “Oh, my God! Dale! Is that you? Totally cool. I haven’t seen you in years. Don’t worry, I’m totally going to be your doctor today. For the reals! You’re in good hands… Now how do you turn on this defibrillator? I have to restart that gross red thingy in your chest.”
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Where The Buffalo Roams (part deux)
January 10, 2011
So unfortunately the last time I was drunk and writing this blawg, apparently I said something ridiculous about posting one every week and the two people that read it got all pissy with me for not meeting my intoxicated-induced deadline, and that is why you are being forced to suffer through another one of these narcissistic stories about my life. If you don’t like it, take it up with Michelle Crouse and Nate Cook. Bastards.
ANYHOW, it’s another episode of “Where The Buffalo Roams” brought to you by Hungry-Man dinners. If you’re lazy and don’t care that your body looks like a bloated bovine carcass that has been rotting in the sun for a few days, try Hungry-Man. Huzzah! Let’s hear it for American ingenuity and obesity!
Speaking of food, as Michelle so graciously pointed out, I forgot to mention in my last blawg that The Buffalo regularly brings me canned food from the Food Bank here in town. Specifically, black beans and pears. You might be asking yourself: Well, Dale, are black beans and pears your two favorite ingestible items? Perhaps you have a mouth-watering recipe for black-beans-and-pear pie. Nope. Pears creep me out because of their grainy texture (it feels like I’m eating fruit-flavored dirt) and as for black beans, well, I’m just an old-fashioned racist at heart who doesn’t like anything with the word “black” in it.
(Boulderites, before you call the NAACP, that was a joke. I love black people… Now Jews on the other hand!)
(Haha, also a joke. Zay moykhl.)
I have no idea why The Buffalo brings me black beans and pears, but I currently have…
(pause while I count the jars in my solitary-confinement-like apartment)
…seven cans of pears and…
(pause for a second count because I’m not very good at math and didn’t think I could remember the first number while I was counting to figure out the second number)
…twelve cans of black beans. That’s right, I said TWELVE. That is a ridiculous number of beans for one person to have, I don’t care what color they happen to be.
Yesterday, The Buffalo showed up with two more cans of black beans and said, “Could you use some more beans?” Which is always his question. I said, “No.” Which is always my response. And then he stood in my doorway awkwardly until I took them.
When I was a kid, we used to have this Siamese tomcat named Leroy who would go out hunting all night long and the next morning he’d leave a dead mouse at the front door. I would be headed off to school, tra-la-la, and then, oh, a dead rodent on our Welcome mat, how nice. And I would pick it up by the tail and chase my sisters with it all the way to Yuma Elementary School, Home of the Little Indians!
I kind of think that’s what The Buffalo is doing. It’s some sort of offering he makes, although I’m not sure what exactly it is for. It’s his strange way of saying that we’re friends. Which is completely cool but also weird and unnecessary.
Michelle asked me why I keep taking these pears and beans, and I honestly don’t know, except that it seems like I would be breaking some sort of code if I refused them. I guess my logic is that if The Buffalo ever decides to go all John Wayne Gacy on the world, I want to be on his good side. One day he might freak out about quality of the janitorial services in the building and start chopping up all my neighbors. If that happens, I’ll barricade myself in my room and blawg about it while surviving off of my endless supply of black beans and pears.
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Communicating with Nature
December 23, 2010
Sometimes I like to communicate with Nature. For instance, it was gray and cloudy today, but it hadn’t begun to snow yet, so I decided to brave the elements and walk to the library at 2:15 p.m. Ten minutes after I left my apartment—the exact amount of time it takes for me to be far enough from home not to want to turn back but not close enough to my destination to make the trip worth catching pneumonia—it began to drizzle. It was one of those slushy, disgusting meteorological events that feels like Frosty the Snowman is peeing on your face, and I said, “I hate you, Nature! You are an asshole, Nature!”
And Nature just laaaaaaaughed and laughed.
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Chuck Norris seeks lover on Craigslist
June 16, 2010
HIYAH! That was my totally awesome roundhouse kick. HIYAH! That was my totally killer kidney punch. HIYAH! HIYAH! That was me beating the crap out of a dinosaur.
Hello, I am a single, white male in excellent (EXCELLENT!) physical condition. I work out sixty-two times a day. On the weekends, I thumb-wrestle grizzly bears and participate in beard competitions all over the world. Did I mention I have a beard? Well, I do, and it’s totally awesome. In fact, it’s probably the awesomest beard in the whole dadgum world and I love it and I can cut down trees with it. Seriously. Just give me five minutes with a redwood and BZZZZZZZZ…TIMBER!!!
But enough about my beard. I also have a cowboy hat. Yeah, it’s large and black and it totally smells like my sweat. Which smells like the manliest sweat in the world, kinda like a the sweat on a lion’s ballsack—if that ballsack could kill a man with a paperclip. HIYAH!
So, yeah, I have a beard that can cut down trees and a cowboy hat that smells like a homicidal lion’s genitalia… What else? Oh, right, I also have these sweet-ass cowboy boots that could totally kill a small hippo even if my feet weren’t in them. If my feet ARE in them, my boots can kill twenty-three full-grown hippos carrying bazookas. HIYAH!
You also might have guessed that I’m a huge movie star and I once had a totally awesome show called “Walker, Texas Ranger” (and no, it’s not like “Matlock” with karate, a-holes, so shut up) and I also made like a bajillion dollars selling exercise equipment. So there! HIYAH!
Please send an email with a recent photo or I will roundhouse you in the face. HIYAH!
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