Fire Makes People Stupid

My friend "Lana" works on the 32nd floor of an office building. Recently, there was a fire on the 26th floor and everyone had to evacuate.

Lana is in the marketing division of a large cosmetics company, and according to her, the majority of her co-workers are stylish women and gay men. No one reacted well when they realized they had to walk down 32 flights of stairs.

The women who wore stilettos to work moaned all the way down to the ground floor. When I asked Lana, "Why didn't you just take off your shoes?" she said it was because the floor was dirty.

It's a freakin' fire! Who cares if your pantyhose get ruined? Toss your damn Manolos and get the hell out of the building!

One of Lana's male co-workers whined, "Oh my god! Why aren't the elevators working? I keep pressing the buttons and nothing happens!" Someone had to explain to him that the elevators shut down when the fire alarm goes off.

However, the biggest idiot award goes to Lana's boss. He decided that since the fire was on the 26th floor, he would be safe as long as he made it to the 25th floor. (He didn't consider the possibility of the floor above collapsing).

Lana's boss went down to the 25th floor and refused to walk any further. He met up with some other morons and had dim sum while the building was evacuated.

Most Efficient Bride Ever

On Saturday I helped a friend pick out a wedding dress. I expected her to spend lots of time trying many, many dresses, going to lots of stores, and being indecisive, as is her right as a bride.

She found her dress in the first store we went to. We were in and out within an hour.

Seriously.

All the dresses in the store were made to order. There were lots of samples to try on, but you could also say "I want the top part of this dress, the bottom part of that one, the straps like so, the fabric on this dress, and the color from that one."

Even with all the choices, my friend knew what she wanted. She tried on about a half-dozen dresses in the general design she wanted, took photos, picked out colors, had her measurements taken by the consultant, placed her order, and received fabric swatches for the florist, all in less than one hour.

Hooray for decisiveness!

Afterwards we went out for cake.

Toxic Roommate

Although my old roommate was selfish, drunk and annoying, at least she didn't try to kill me. One of my co-workers "Jane" related a story about a past roommate that makes mine seem like a blessing.

Jane used to live with a group of 4 girls in a house. One of the girls was the only child of older parents, and had been coddled all her life. When she moved in, her father built a replica of her childhood bedroom for her, in the new house.

Jane remarked, "Wow, that's nice. My dad wouldn't do that." Miss Coddled replied, with wide-eyed innocence, "It must be so sad to have parents that don't love you."

This was Jane's first inkling that Miss Coddled was not drawing with a full box of crayons.

Miss Coddled did not cook or wash dishes. Every weekend she went to her parents' house with a tub full of dirty tupperware, and returned with food her mother prepared for her.

She only ate two things: chicken cassserole and beef casserole. Despite it being clear those containers belonged to her, every single week she put a note on them that said, "Please don't eat me."

She had a habit of leaving similar notes. If the toilet was backed up, instead of writing "Clogged; called plumber" or "Out of order" like a regular person, she wrote, "Please don't use me. I'm broken."

One day, Miss Coddled was going home and told Jane there was an extra casserole in the fridge that she could eat. After Miss Coddled left, Jane thought, "Why waste food?" and ate it.

Ten minutes later, Jane was doubled up on the floor, with horrible abdominal pains, thinking "Bitch tried to poison me!"

The scary thing is, Jane had never argued with Miss Coddled or stolen her food. Miss Coddled apparently simply invented a justification for poisoning her in her twisted mind.

The really scary thing is, Jane found out that Miss Coddled is a kindergarten teacher now.

Wedding Brawl

I have 3 weddings to go to this summer, and the first one is in about 3 weeks. Two weddings will bracket my final exams. This weekend, I'm helping a friend pick out a wedding dress. The madness is about to begin.

Bridal season is starting, and I hope it is a lot less drama-free than a wedding my co-worker told me about. I hope this doesn't happen to any of you.

At my co-worker's cousin's wedding, the wedding party had too much to drink at the reception. Fueled by alcohol, the groom became convinced that the bride was fooling around with the best man. The two men began arguing, and decided to settle their differences in the parking lot.

The bride tried to intervene in the flurry of fists, and was accidentally punched. The bride's stepmother, enraged that someone beat her daughter, ran as fast as she could across the parking lot, while her bra struggled valiantly, but failed, to hold in her ample bosom.

Upon seeing his wife in the altercation, the bride's father joined in, resulting in a bride/groom/best man/mother and father of the bride fistfight.

By this time, all the wedding guests had left the reception to watch the effects of too much hard liquor. At least one guest was on her cell phone narrating the fight to someone not present, saying "You won't believe what I'm seeing right now . . ."

Not Everyone Can Win a Pulitzer

I am part of an online community where people post their creative endeavors (such as drawings, photographs and crafts).

Recently, an aspiring novelist posted that she wrote a book, and was looking for an illustrator. She planned to select an artist by running a contest where entrants submitted drawings of her characters based on rather bare descriptions such as "boy, 14, kinda short." Everyone was allowed 6 short days to draw 4 characters and to provide sample storyboards.

The "prize" for the contest was the privilege of illustrating the writer's book, and "publication" in a magazine no one had ever heard of.

Understandably, the artists were miffed that she was asking for someone to give away a substantial amount of work for free. They were even more annoyed when it was revealed that the "magazine" was really a personal webpage desperately trying to be a webzine. Furthermore, someone pointed out the the webpage was soliciting donations for upkeep costs, even though it was hosted on a free server like Geocities.

What really took the cake was that she posted a sample of her story that can only be described as incredibly atrocious. It made little sense, was misspelled and mis-punctuated, had cavernous gaps in logic and displayed a parade of characters that could only be differentiated because they had different names. She obviously didn't bother using spell-check at all. One of the moderators even asked the poster if this was a joke, since it looked like it was written by an illiterate monkey on crack.

The nice people told her to collaborate with a friend if she couldn't afford an artist, while everyone else told her to take her contest and shove it. The post was deleted and we all proceeded along our merry way.

However, rather than slinking away quietly, she insured the community would not forget her. Several days later she made a new post that I've paraphrased (made coherent) here:

"I apologize to the community! A couple days ago my friend played a cruel joke on me and posted an awful script that I didn't write! And also, all of you making fun of my site and saying I'm begging for money, it's hard work making scans of manga! But my friend hacked into my account and made that post! It wasn't me! I wouldn't write like that! See, to prove it wasn't me, here's a sample of my real writing!"

It was followed by a paragraph a bit better than her last endeavor:

"T'was at last striking midnight, the fourth night of Izumi's ceasing paitence. She lived here, in Japan all her life. Daughter of a fine a foriegn woman and an aristocrat. Yet not even a drop of the delicous warm liquid she desired. Red as pure wine and yet tastier than ever be imagine. Because it is the liquid the run through every mortal's body. No matter what species, making every mortal prey. Blood, sweet Blood."

No one believed her back-pedaling, and told her this post wasn't doing her any favors. They advised her to shut up and lay low. She then started insisting, "I showed my teacher and she was like oh my god this is the best story ever and she was going to call a bunch of publishers until I told her not to but because of this story I got extra credit in my class and I have the top score now and you really have to believe me and I need strangers on the internet to validate my existence and make me feel better because it turns out I'm only 13 but I really believe all dreams come true and I'm going to be really famous!"

Kid, you need a dose of reality. The fact that you're 13 explains some things, but is no excuse. I found a story my sister wrote when she was 8, and it showed much better character development, plot, grammar and spelling than yours.

1940s Hygiene

While discussing banned pesticides, my professor said that as a schoolchild in the 40s, he and his classmates were sprayed with DDT.

Yes, I did say DDT.

A truck with DDT arrived at his school after a breakout of head lice, and everyone lined up for a dose of poison that can't even be sprayed on crops today.

He seems remarkably blithe about the whole thing. "Nothing happen to me . . . It was a good experiment."

Yes, this is the same professor who used to wash his hands in benzene.

97% New!

Today I saw an item for sale online. It was advertised as "97% new - used only 3 times."

Um, I don't think it works that way.

At least it wasn't underwear.

Yes, indeed, I have seen stained underwear for sale. :: shudder ::

My Internet Returns!

On Wednesday morning I woke up to find my internet was dead. I kept getting "connection refused" and "permission denied" messages, although I was getting a very strong wireless signal.

When I noticed it was the last day of the month I became suspicious about whether my roommate remembered to pay the bill. She was staying at her parents, so I called her that day and left a message.

I called her again Thursday morning when I didn't hear from her, telling her I really needed to use the internet for homework assignments. I talked to my other roommate (who wasn't in charge of the internet bill), who told me, "Gee this has happened before. Remember in March, when our power got turned off, but back on the same day when I called her?" (That was news to me since I wasn't home that day, but it certainly made me even more sure my internet withdrawal was her fault).

My suspicions were confirmed Thursday afternoon the mailman delivered a "PAST DUE" notice from our internet company that said "Your internet is scheduled to be disconnected. Disconnection may have already occurred."

I called my roommate again, with no reply.

Late Thursday night my internet came back on, but automatically disconnected every 2 minutes.

As of Saturday, it's stabilized somewhat, and I get disconnected only every 10-15 minutes. I wonder if this is the company's way of punishing us for late payment.

Oh yes, and my roommate never called back.