Hey, happy Halloween! And by that I mean, fuck this Halloween, right in the feet, or some other unfuckable place. (Please don't send me footjob links.) Halloween on a Monday? Sucko, man. Halloween on a completely intolerable Monday, replete with various (boring) work-related nonsense to test my limited amount of mettle? With lots of phone calls, and people wandering around at work dressed as a school crossing? (Yeah.) It's enough to make a guy . . . not go to the office party and instead sit in his office in a snit, trading venemous IMs with distant friends! Because that's how I know I am All Man.

The weekend didn't start this way. This weekend was the wife's BIRTHDAY WEEKEND! And I had to--it's a condition of our exhaustive pre-nup--show her a good time. On Saturday, then, I romantically keyed in the "unlock" code on her electronic restraints, massaged the feeling back into her atrophied legs, and wheeled the old gal to the cheapest ginmill in town! (They make their own gin, right in the urinals! If anyone goes blind, hey, free round.)

It was a cool night, really--lots of pals showed up, and we had a grand time, after I threw the wife into the coat closet for excessive mewling. GIN THIS! and BLIND THAT! I don't even know. People did bring presents, though! Our friend V. got the wife a really lovely pair of pinking shears, which the wife clutched happily amongst all those coats. She loves to pink. And she went to town on those coats! She pinked the hell out of them, and by the time the evening was through and we pulled her out of the closet, she was thoroughly covered in bits of wool and mohair, and was distractedly singing that Liz Phair song, "Mohair Bride."

On Sunday I don't really remember what happened. I just woke up in the tub, naked, with a bunch of blood and bone in my hair--I should get a drain trap. Those bone fragments are going to really fuck up the pipes. (And can I just say? L'Oreal is just hopeless with this shit.) I eventually wandered out to watch some football games, and at one point spotted Ray Lewis on the Ravens' sidelines. He gave me a wink and a covert thumbs-up. Fuckin' A, Ray! I raised my bottle of cough syrup at him as a salute.

The sink garbage disposal has been grinding for three days. I'm not gonna look. It's freaking me out.

Anyway, that gets us to the lousy fucking Halloween.

You know, I tried to get into the spirit. It's for the kids, after all. Even after such a lousy day. I stopped at the store and got a big fucking four-pound bag of candy. Four pounds! I figured I was going to get raided by these little animals--better be prepared! I also got an X-Acto knife and a shitload of bug spray, and spent a really long fucking time carefully opening all the little fucking candy wrappers and liberally dousing everything with the bug spray. It was a real project! I carefully re-wrapped all the candy, except for a few boxes of Dots, which I used to devour as a kid. Those fuckers really stick to your teeth!

And I waited. I clapped my hands gleefully in anticipation. I mean, not "my" hands, technically--I have an extensive collection of hands. I clapped some of the really meaty ones, and got a nice rhythm out of some of them, kind of a Bobby Brown sort of feel. I put on my "I [HEART] CHOLINESTERASE INHIBITORS!" t-shirt and borrowed the pinking shears from the wife, who didn't seem to mind once I snapped the fuckers viciously at her eyes a few times.

Boy, did I wait. And wouldn't you know it? Not ONE FUCKING KID showed up to knock at the door. Not one! I can't get over it. It's a little sickening, really, how some faint rumors about things like "pending indictments" and "horrible snipping noises" can poison one's neighbors against you. It's . . . disappointing. Not one kid.

It really bummed me out. The worst end to the worst Halloween ever. I listlessly dug into the candy bowl eventually, grabbing for some Dots to cheer me up, and gnawed on them with an absent kind of hunger. They tasted funny, but I ate three boxes of the fuckers. Now I'm sort of vibrating, and my pores feel full of liquid, somehow. My asshole is doing funny things. It feels like fucking George Carlin routine down there. Shut up, crazy asshole!

Oh, son of a bitch. The bug spray. That's right! How embarrassing. The bug spray. Man, these Dots sure get all the fuck up into your gums. I can barely claw this stuff out, even if I go through my face! I didn't even realize how easy it was to tear through cheek meat! Flimsy. Especially if you have a nice new set of pinking shears. Snip snip! Smile wide! No problem!

I just wanted to have fun. With the children. What a lousy Halloween this turned out to be.

I hope this candy doesn't go to waste.

Tomorrow morning at work, I have on my schedule a two-hour meeting to address "harrassment and discrimination" issues in the workplace. There's been a lot of grumbling about this by my co-workers--it's mandatory for everyone, and another is being held on Thursday for those who cannot attend tomorrow--but I think it's great.

Because I suck at these things. Really. I'm just terrible. I seriously have a lot to learn.

You should just see my try to harrass--it's pretty embarrassing. Take the other day, when one of the broads came into my office to ask me something . . . I don't know what. To be honest, I was checking out her gams. Then I realized she had stopped talking and was waiting for an answer. I stammered, "Hey, uh, boy, those go all the way up, huh?" She stared at me. "Your legs. I mean. Hey, are those nude hose you're wearing?" I mean, I was nervous, but I was trying. This harrassment stuff isn't as easy as TV makes it look. She didn't say anything, so I took another stab. "You're the kind of gal that I'd like to bang like a trailer door, is all I'm saying." Which I thought was pretty good! But wouldn't you know it, next thing I know, I'm screwing her in the room where we keep extra pens. I can't do anything right.

I'm no better with the guys, which is kind of weird too, since they're pretty stupid around here anyway. I told this one dude the other day, "Pretty gay shoes you've got there, Warren, but at least they distract from your weird beanie." Warren laughed and explained that the beanie was a yarmulke, and that made me laugh--I said, "Dude, you're confused. Yamaha makes bikes and lawnmowers." Well, he gave me chapter and verse on the whole beanie thing, and explained about the crazy holy holidays and stuff, and I was all like, "Holy Holidays? Holy cow!" Which I thought was pretty funny--funnier than that weird thing he talked about called "Overpass" or whatever . . . I guess those people really enjoy their transportation engineering.

Anyway, the whole point is, I was trying to discriminate like hell during the conversation, and it just wouldn't take. Later on after work he bought me some beers and we had a pretty good conversation about the immigrant hordes who want our American janitorial jobs and stuff, and wouldn't you know it? I ended up fucking that guy too. Jeez! I must have been pretty drunk . . . I didn't really remember much anyway, and I told him I'd never do that normally, and made him swear on his magic beanie that he wouldn't tell anyone.

Boy, that's all I need is for big-tit Luskaya to hear about that one. She'd broadcast it to the whole office! I think she's kind of possessive. A couple weeks ago, after I had tacked up a "Girls of the PBA" nudie bowling calendar in my office, she knobbed me but good in the bathroom that got boarded up in '87 for health reasons (you can totally still get in there, and the rats aren't that big). I told her afterwards that I couldn't ever be down with a lazy Russian broad, but she just slapped my cheeks lightly and exclaimed, "You silly, you! You are all mine, like discount bread from GUM." And I didn't say anything, because, man, those boobs. I told her, "Man . . . those boobs." And she just smiled.

You see? I try. And I just suck at this. I'm really hoping for some advice tomorrow. I could obviously use it.

And again with the rehearsals, every night this week, which isn't surprising, since we open next week, but JESUS CHRIST MAKE IT STOP. I know I shouldn't bitch about a situation that I knew full well what I was getting into, but then again, if I can't bitch here, where can I bitch, apart from my home, my work, the theater, and various other nooks and crannies on the Web? Nowhere!

Feeling stressed out as well, our lunatic Teutonic director has become alarmingly ticcy. We were rehearsing some of the manic little musical ditties that are part of the show, and the actor playing Fourth Leper hit a sour note. S. (the director) flinched in a violent and disturbing manner, writhing like a salted slug, and in his wracking misery, he inadvertantly flung a sharpened pencil away from his body. It flew like a missile and sank with a dispiriting PLURT right into the eyeball of our Second Attendant, who screamed miserably and clawed his ruined face before falling down dead on the grass. The rest of the cast nervously stopped singing gradually, winding down like a tired Gramophone.

After a silence, someone said, "Shit, man, there goes Leper Four. Now what?"

S. stalked the fringe of the "stage" menacingly. "FUCK ZEE LEPER! Louzy zinger, the fuckink leper! I replace him with anybody!" He noticed a dog running in the park. "HUND!" he screamed. "I get zee dog to play zee leper!" He was becoming more and more crazed as he cast about for more insulting choices to replace our fallen, pencil-pierced comrade. S. picked up a small stick. "Stick! Stick plays Leper Four! Stick has just as much stage presence! Vee do not need terrible fucking dead actor with poor reaction times!"

We stared at him uncertainly for a moment as he madly capered with his stick, until presently the actress playing Papal Attendant said insinuatingly, "I hope Mr. Stick there can sing alto." S. froze for a moment, anxiously caressing his beloved stick, and then collapsed to the ground in a boneless heap, and then began lowing miserably into the turf. "AAAAOOOHH-HOOOOOO!" he moaned horribly. "Ziss show, she is up zo many butts!" The cast stood around uncomfortably. It really was a horrible noise he made; it sounded utterly hopeless and damned, like someone being forced to watch Tom Green.

To make things worse, night was encroaching on us, and this brought a fresh horror: mosquitoes. Waves and waves of ravenous mosquitoes. They attacked the cast like an Egyptian plague. As you might imagine, it is difficult to remain "in the moment"--as we bullshit artists like to say--when you are being assailed by millions of tiny pitchforks; we howled like coyotes. "I say, Father Frapper--AAAAHHHHH!" I yelled at one point, as a buzzard-sized mosquito landed on my chest and promptly speared my heart with its proboscis. Within seconds, the beast had expanded to the size of a basketball, filled with tomato-colored arterial blood; I batted at the thing feebly, and it finally fell off my chest and lay on the ground, waving its horrid legs in a happy expression of blood-gorge.

Another chilling scream erupted from the actor playing Third Melon-Eater as he was borne off into the night by a horde of the winged horrors. We saw his frantically waving limbs framed against the bright moon as the vicious insects carried him off to certain death, and heard his dismal cries for help, which we were unable to answer. It was all we could do to beat back the remaining insectile waves. S. thrashed at the air in furious self-defense and howled imprecations at the bugs, the terrible show, his miserable lot in life, and at the loss of precious human life.

"FUCK!" he bellowed, "Ziss iss all fucked to fuck! Anozzer actor gone!" He sounded desolate. "I need anozzer dog, zen. Or anozzer stick. I do not care." He wept with despair, and crumpled again.

The actress playing Angry Mob murmured in my ear. "I hope stick number two can sing tenor."

To: AllStaff
From: Skot

Subject: Goodbye Creul World

i can't take it anymore. i can't take it. i'm going to end it all now.

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To: Skot
From: Diana

Subject: Out Of Office Notice RE: Goodbye Creul World

Sorry I missed you! I will be on vacation from June 9 through June 16. Have a great day!

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To: AllStaff
Cc: Skot
From: Kelly

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

What are you closing down? Do we need to exit any applications?

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To: Skot
From: Laura

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

I think you mean "cruel," right? :D Just so you know, there is a spellcheck function in Outlook. I can help you out with that if you don't know where it is! :D

"How may goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!"
--Shakespeare

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To: AllStaff
From: Skot

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

you don't have to do anything i'm going to kill myself

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To: Skot
From: Diana

Subject: Out Of Office Notice RE: Goodbye Creul World

Sorry I missed you! I will be on vacation from June 9 through June 16. Have a great day!

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To: AllStaff
From: Christine

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

A polite reminder that hitting "reply to all" spams everyone. Please consider using "reply" when appropriate. I get tired of deleting messages I don't need to see. Thank you.

And can we shut off Diana's autoreplier?

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To: AllStaff
From: Skot

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

sorry

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To: Skot
From: Diana

Subject: Out Of Office Notice RE: Goodbye Creul World

Sorry I missed you! I will be on vacation from June 9 through June 16. Have a great day!

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To: Skot
From: Remi

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

awwww we all get like that sometime.s i hate work too. {{{{{{{{skot}}}}}}}} hope you feel better soon

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To: AllStaff
From: Skot

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

NO NO NO stop emailing me you freaks i have a gun in my mouth RIGHT NOW shut UP

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To: Skot
From: Diana

Subject: Out Of Office Notice RE: Goodbye Creul World

Sorry I missed you! I will be on vacation from June 9 through June 16. Have a great day!

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To: AllStaff
From: Skot

Subject: RE: Goodbye Creul World

GOD DAMN IT

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To: Skot
From: Diana

Subject: Out Of Office Notice RE: Goodbye Creul World

Sorry I missed you! I will be on vacation from June 9 through June 16. Have a great day!

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To: Skot
From: Lori

Subject: Error message

Hi Skot. The Chart Manager program is being really weird and I can't commit any changes. Can you come down and help me?

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To: Lori
From: Skot

Subject: RE: Error message

ok. i'll be right down.

Snarkout

This guy is crazy smart and more than a little crazy himself. I liked his Feb. 2 post on hot chicks in planes. I can only imagine having sex with Loise Thaden, but Snark helps me imagine. He can kind of get out of control though, like when he calls John Gruden a "butt pirate." That's just not cool, Snark, but shine on you crazy diamond! Overall his site is, as Beerbohm Tree remarked, "Funny without being vulgar."

Calamondin

Before you ask, "calamondin" is Nepalese for "eat shit." This wacky gal is quite the misanthrope, and sometimes it's hard to read her crazed paranoid ramblings, but I love this woman, so I just usually get really drunk before surfing there. She runs some nutty-ass project called "20 Inch Thingies" and the less said about that, the better. You dirty girl!

Brad

For a manic-depressive, agoraphobic Christian hog butcher, Brad is pretty funny. He can kind of get a little one-note with the whole abstinence thing, but he tries to stay happy-go-lucky between court appearances. Once a year, Brad goes off his meds and runs around in a killing frenzy; his pet name for it is "Breaking Heads with Brad." But you're the best, Brad! I'm pulling for you on the extradition thing!

John 13

What can you say about John 13? He's a story. It couldn't have been easy being Manitoba's first test-tube baby (the other 12 were tragically lost thanks to an errant hungry dog), but John persevered and now of course is Professor of Transgender Issues at Brown college. His weblog is kind of a sprawl, but the whimsical animated flower .gifs and hippie art can be childishly endearing. A movie was made about Johnny once called "The Boy in the Hilarious Canadian Bubble," but he doesn't like to talk about it, I think because the kid who played him was Ben Affleck, and how gay is that? (Whoops! Sorry Perfesser! You know I loves ya!)