Jul 3, 2010

my dad is bigger than your dad, infinity

How something as innocent as a post about living in one's freezer could become something about (even if only for a few minutes) living in the gutter - or one's own death, is frankly, beyond me.

Furthermore, how this could be purely be a product of my own machinations is, though not completely surprising, shocking, none the less.

To put it plainly, people have been let go from this organization.

Rest assured, it was in the most ugly and abrupt of ways possible. So that the humiliation never be forgotten (as with any successful lay-off, the goal being utter, crippling humiliation - along with job loss, so that the person learns never to trust themselves ever again; that building something is silly; that paychecks are merely fleeting, etc, etc).

They were given pink-slips. Not merely pink, but perfectly pink. We took weeks to pick out just the right shade of pink for our pink-slips.

Meetings were had. The kind with bagels, omelet stations, and, at one point, an oh-so-quiet yet classically entertaining mime.

The kind of meetings where the finest of coffees is catered in (this a result of a polite, nearly whispered request over the phone that is then confirmed over and over to the point of tears via email) in one of those silver-urns-and-white-cloths deals that is dead serious and includes, somehow, miraculously, a cocoa station (the cocoa station that nobody wants to admit that they want). The kind of cocoa station that provides a real-life whipped-cream maker who wears a big puffy chefs hat and does nothing but makes whipped-cream all day long. And is happily at the disposal of any cocoa wanter, if only one would come forward (yet none ever does).

The kind of meeting where everyone is suddenly dressed for recognition: heels, cuff links, shaven and/or naturally unfair-life-bald heads (it doesn't matter) buffed to mirror like shines, nails neatly shaped and now the color of egg-plant, and all wayward threads and lint banished with utter contempt to elsewhere (an unidentified place), with hems absolutely straight, and buttons on so tight that they themselves threaten to save the planet (wholly independent of anything this meeting is meant to address).

And with brainstorming sessions that are nothing, if not hatefully, transparently self-promoting.

The kind where everyone gets at least a few poorly rehearsed words in. Even (and maybe especially) the guy on the speaker phone who (though in Japan, though on vacation) goes on and on more than anyone else.

So, that when the pink of the pink-slip is finally decided upon, everyone applauds and cheers.

So, that when the pink of the pink-slip is finally decided upon, a wheel-cart of cocktails is finally rolled in.

No. I never saw happier people in business.

No, I never did.

Oh, and they're scented, too. Did I tell you that part? The pink-slips are scented.

Ever so subtly like garbage.

The kind that rots in the Chicago sun over the scope of a long irregular summer holiday weekends, such as this one.

Where one's ill-timed garbage might lie in state over the course of more than two (2) days.

It's an ugly stench, to be sure. But, being as we are a corrupt city to begin with, this stench, my friend, is nothing.

That's, nothin', for those who speak only the native language.

That's nothin', jaggoff.

or:

Have another beef samich and shudup, once, jag!

As well:

My dad is bigger than yer dad.

End of story.

And that is the end of almost every story, here in Chicago. Hate to say it.

The thing is, my dad was probably bigger than almost of all of your dads.

And whatever he may have lacked in height or weight (laughs) he more than made up for in sheer, outright incredible meanness.

I promise you, this.

I dreamt about my dead-dad for the first time since he died, the other day.

(alliterative)

I'd been waiting for this.

It had been 3.5 years and nothin'.

What was he doin'?

He was building me a ceiling fixture to hold not only my wine glasses, but also my pots and pans. And there was some overhead lighting affixed to it as well.

It was my dad being all like my dad.

And he was pretty big in this dream, too.

So, there.

[infinity]

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