A Most Unwelcome Emission

Ladies and germs, if I may: this post is devoted to another in my ongoing, albeit seemingly random, public service announcements but I heard something today that absolutely has COMPELLED me to write. As you know I have been, for some time now, a purveyor of information that some may dismiss as nothing more than bathroom humor. Literally. To that I say: go fuck yourselves; this shit is fo real, yo! There's folks out there getting bombarded with the most heinous of offenses and frankly someone has to speak up and in some small way, alert the world that perps of this grotesque magnitude exist, indeed, walk amongst us.

Today a coworker came to me extremely distraught (understandably as you will learn) and proceeded to unload (pun intended) a most disturbing story. Said coworker (for what it's worth, a guy...since I've dissed the dirty ladies twice I figured I'd go ahead and spread the shame around) had just come from the men's room where he had encountered, no ENDURED, a horrific event that will most probably leave a permanent mental scar on this poor fellow.

There he was, standing at one of the urinals...doing your typically urinal kind of thing, when out of nowhere comes a very high-ranking MANAGER with whom this employee has extensive dealings. To put it bluntly, it's critical that my coworker maintain the proper sucking-up posture with this miscreant at all times. So, MANAGER saunters to the next urinal, whips out his dick and also begins to do a typically urinal kind of thing. Likewise he begins to engage my unwitting coworker in a conversation. Now, how many times do I have to repeat that TALKING IN THE STALL IS DISGUSTING!!! Unless you find yourself sliding irretrievably into a comatose puddle, it is NEVER APPROPRIATE TO ENGAGE FELLOW CRAPPERS OR PEE-ERS IN CONVERSATION OF ANY KIND!!! For one thing, there are times when breath is a precious commodity, such as when one is squeezing the equivalent of a ripe watermelon out of of one's ass, one needs to reserve ALL one's breath for that very arduous activity. The rare exception is again: help me, I think I'm dying in here or can you spare some toilet paper I'm completely out? And that's only if you're also out of those toilet seat covers, which, by the way, double nicely as toilet paper in a pinch. HAH! Pun intended. But seriously, THAT'S IT!!

Well, apparently this management moron was raised on another planet (as, sadly, so many of them seem to have been) because as soon as his golden stream began it's liquid descent he engaged my coworker in a very hearty conversation whose topic(s) demanded responses. My coworker, being a decent fellow, was understandably completely unnerved by the turn of events but, being the good, upwardly mobile young professional that he is, stammered out some appropriate answers and tried to finish up as quickly as possible. Everything was moving toward as decent a conclusion as could be expected when, like a thunderclap from Hades itself, and, without losing a syllable of his surely inane conversation, MANAGER lets out what has been described to me as the biggest, loudest, LONGEST fart you can imagine. Coworker went so far as to say "he really had to work to get it all out."

Shocking doesn't cover it. Appalled, deeply offended, intimidated and downright terrified begin to address how my poor, unwitting coworker felt. Where to turn? What to say? How to successfully hold one's breath while still trying to maintain the conversation that ABSURDLY was still ongoing once the ass trumpet had concluded it's horrific symphony.

I'm exhausted just writing this, so I can only imagine the trauma that my fellow laborer-in-arms felt, surely must STILL be feeling, to have been exposed to such an inhuman experience. Bewildered by how to proceed he simply finished as quickly as possible, zipped up and excused himself with some mumbled reference to being late for a meeting. He didn't even WASH HIS HANDS properly, so disoriented was he by what had just transpired.

Well, I offered him some Advil and what was left of my Diet Coke, after having given him full use of my Purell hand sanitizer. (Hey, I'm sympathetic, not a fucking saint, he DID say he didn't wash properly, Jeez). He accepted my ministrations and I told him he should seriously consider heading home early which I hope he did; an event like that needs longer than just an evening from which to recover.

To conclude and please spread the word: BATHROOMS ARE FOR ELIMINATING BODILY WASTES, they are NOT CHATROOMS! Do your fucking business and get the fuck out!! Nobody wants to fucking "catch up" with you in there; it's a godamn, fucking bathroom for crying out loud. And please, please, please, if you think that there's even a REMOTE chance that you're going to crack one off, get your sorry, lame, ignorant ass into a STALL!!! This is a civil society we're trying to live in here, either participate in good faith or log off the grid, motherfucker! (Log! HAH!)

Get A Clue Lame Ass

OK, so The ABIB is driving to work yesterday doing what she always does in the car on that route, listening to the DC all news radio channel. Yes, yes, I know it's probably not the best choice for such an angry bitch, and I know I should be listening to some nerve-soothing classical music but truthfully it puts me directly to sleep.

So here I am, not a morning person, and it's the morning, and here I am when I'd rather still be in bed, and I'm on my way to my insipid job, and it's October 31 in a presidential election year and I'm listening to an all-news radio station. I think you know where this is going. Already looking forward to my Pinky-provided DunkyDoo morning libations I hear this shit coming out of the car's squawk box:

"Polls show that a full 14% of American voters still say they are undecided four days before the election."

It's a miracle I didn't wreck the car into the nearest shabby Woodlawn, MD telephone pole. Or bus-waiting person. And in Woodlawn, MD there are many, many bus-waiters to choose from. The saying "I saw red" literally and quite suddenly made sense to me. ONE IN SEVEN AMERICAN VOTERS STILL SAY THEY'RE UNDECIDED ABOUT WHO TO VOTE FOR!! Motherfuckers can I get a witness!? What kind of a lame-ass, fucked-up, wishy-washy, pansy-ass R-FUCKING-TARD do you have to be to still be "undecided"? These two men (well, one's a man, anyway, the other is, I'm pretty sure, a reanimated corpse of a former man who died in an apparent horrible Jawbreaker accident of some kind) have been stating their political case in the public eye for close to TWO YEARS. PICK ONE, ASSHOLE!! It's not hard; you listen, you think, and you choose. Jesus Christ, I mean, five-year-olds at last night's Halloween candy fest in my neighborhood were able to make fucking choices among way more than two delectable options. Normally in five to ten seconds or fewer.

What a sorry life these losers must lead. I mean, how do they get through the day?

OMG, should I wear the brown pants or the black ones?
OMG, should I have the cereal or the hot oatmeal?
OMG, should I take the Beltway or the back roads?
OMG, should I bring my umbrella or my raincoat?

Holy Crap! Life has to be one, unending horror fest of indecision from the moment they wake:

OMG, should I crap in the upstairs or downstairs bathroom?

to the moment they close their eyes again at bedtime:

OMG, should I sleep on my back or my stomach?

But I feel zero pity for these fucking whack-jobs because I've met them, I wait behind them in everything from Pinky's DunkyDoo, drive-"thru" line to the local Walgreen's. They are infuriating and they are everywhere. Waiting in line, my lower back already starting to give me grief, arms juggling the 15 or fewer (unlike other shoppers I DO FUCKING READ SIGNS) items because I erroneously did NOT get a cart upon entering the store thinking - HAH! - that it would be a quick trip, I get up to one person more before I can check out and...and...OH HAPPY DAY...it's one of those 14% undecided motherfuckers who can barely make it out of bed in the morning without worrying about which foot to put on the ground first.

Oh, NO!! I didn't know there would be TWO kinds of micro-point ink pens available, I thought there was only one! Do you know which one is better because I did not expect to have to make a choice!

This is addressed to the barely-awake, gum-chewing, minimum wage slave who is running the register and who literally looks like she could drop dead at any second. This is the person that "Ms 14%" is asking to help in this terrible, terrible decision. Minium wage slave could clearly not give a rat's ass and just shrugs. I'm doomed and I know it. My back, by now screaming at me to "SIT THE FUCK DOWN, BITCH!", is joined by my arms in the cacophany of ache that has become my lot in life at this moment. Killing this person in front of me becomes a real possibility in my mind but instead I offer, in as pleasant a voice as I can muster at this moment:

My husband buys the Rollerpoint ones and he really likes them.

I realize that the fake brightness in my voice is not fooling anyone. I feel murderous and I sound it. "Ms 14%" belies a certain shock at my tone and looks querulous:

Really? Because I was leaning toward the Bics. Hmmmm....has he bought many of them?

The rest is a blessed haze in my memory because, like when you break your arm or experience childbirth, the pain part kind of fades away. Suffice it to say that I've been up close and personal with this 14% of our fellow Americans and let me tell you, it's not a pretty picture. But I did get my petty revenge in a small, small way. As I finally lowered my big ass into the car and sighed a gush of relief that my back could finally shut up, I watched as 14%, Rollerpoints safely in the bag, spent a few seconds deciding if said bag should go into the front seat or the back and I had to smile to myself. Those Rollerpoints suck; shoulda gone with the Bics. Hope it won't come back as bad karma to bite me on Election Day. ON NOVEMBER 4th GET OUT AND VOTE!! GO OBAMA!!!!

And Layla, Too

Laylaaaaaaaa......you got my on my knees!

Every Now And Then

ABIB is overhearing "Dream On" from Aerosmith and every now and then the Angry Ass Bitch gets her good 'ol karaoke sing-along ass going!!!

DREAM ON!!
DREAM ON!!
DREAM ON!!
DREAM UNTIL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!!

Truly, peeps, truly.

A First For The ABIB

OK, the ABIB, by nature, is a largely apolitical creature. It's not that I don't have my political point of view it's just that I normally don't make a habit of foisting it on others. Today, since I'm posting, is clearly somehow different. The New Yorker magazine has made what the ABIB considers to be one of the hugest miscalculations of judgment in publishing since the Dewey Beats Truman newspaper headline of a few years ago.

The cover of the latest New Yorker, as many of you have certainly read, will be composed of an illustration of Barack and Michelle Obamba dressed as a Muslim and an armed terrorist, in a traditional head scarf and giant-ass 'fro respectively. Now the ABIB is not one to normally cast aspersions on most any kind of humor but she has to draw the line at this one, only because she has so little faith in the intelligence of the American voting public. I mean, folks, if someone as fucking innocuous as Rachael Ray is raked over the coals by her sponsor Dunkin' Donuts for wearing such a scarf around HER NECK for Christ sake, don't you think MAYBE that a political figure cartooned with it AROUND HIS HEAD might be so scrutinized??

Barack and Michelle are fist-bumping in front of a fireplace wherein Old Glory is ablaze and above this kindling is a picture of Osama Bin Laden. Now, the ABIB is aware of political irony and she's able to grasp the whole concept of the New Yorker putting out there an image meant to be so ridiculously preposterous as to be "funny". The ABIB gets it. The ABIB's problem is that for the last eight years the American voting public has proven not once, but twice, that it's ability to judge right from wrong and ridiculous from sane and everything in between to be seriously, if not irreparably, broken.

The American voting public, let the ABIB remind you, has TWICE voted in the current administration. What a joy! What a trip! What a nation of IRRATIONAL NUDNICKS!!! Having said that, Dear New Yorker magazine, what makes you think that these same retards will "get" your smarmy little joke of a cover about Barack and Michelle? How irresponsible does American journalism need to get before we finally react and say: DUMB ASSES!!! THE AMERICAN VOTER GETS HIS/HER VISION/OPINION/WORLD VIEW FROM FOX TV!!!! They're probably looking at your fucking dumbass cover and thinking: "AHA!!!! JUST LIKE RUSH TOLD US!!!! HIS MIDDLE NAME AIN'T HUSSEIN FOR NOTHING, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!"

New Yorker magazine if you're listening, which in your summerinthehamptonsormarthasvineyardorgodforbidcapecode world you're most likely NOT, WAKE THE FUCK UP AND TAKE STOCK OF YOUR JOB AS JOURNALISTS!!! The Fox-informed world of voters don't need any help to be stone cold idiots so STOP IT!!!!

Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down...Or Ever Shut Up

I've mentioned in another post that I work in a typical cubicle farm whose bureaucratic culture supports a caste system the currency of which is privacy. All offices are inhabited by managers or quasi-managers who are sometimes called team leads, which itself laughably implies the whole "We're all in this together, right TEAM? Except of course that I get an office and get to CLOSE MY DOOR!" Well, as if constructed to add insult to injury, some of these prized oases of sanctuary from the teeming masses are located mere feet away from some poor sap's open-air hovel. I am, as you probably have guessed by now, one of those poor saps. My little home away from home from which I can hear, see and smell just about every human experience save perhaps a gangrenous limb, is a cube as they are affectionately known. Somehow cube is even worse than cubicle; it really brings home the whole notion of tiny confinement, like something out of an old episode of Star Trek where the crew were captured by a vastly more intelligent species with giant, pulsing heads to prove how smart they were, and held in a zoo where they all lived in their own, little clear plastic cube of imprisonment for the bemused public to view at their leisure. At least we aren't made to procreate. Well, at least not ALL of us, but that's another post.

Anyway, here I am, day after day, sitting and "working" and waiting for lunch to begin in my cube when right across the aisle, so close I can almost reach out touch the cheap doorjamb, is an office occupied by one of those quasi-managers. Decent enough guy, keeps to himself, bad jokes are present but blessedly few. So far so good, right? WRONG! On any given day this joker has a steady stream of VISITORS that do NOT share his penchant for quiet obscurity. They talk, they laugh, they "banter" (hateful word) and they basically DRIVE ME FUCKING CRAZY!!! One sap comes by at least four times a day to check in on "the market", as in "how's the market doin' BIG GUY?" And then proceeds to blather forth as if he's some kind of Harvard business school grad hedge fund manager and it's all I can do to keep myself from grabbing the ubiquitous coffee cup out of his hand and smashing it into his stupid little skull.

"How's the market doing now, DICKWEED? You see any answers to your investment questions floating around your head with all the little stars and birdies? How about this for an answer: SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The ABIB is not the ABIB for nothing, folks. I am one Angry Ass Bitch and depending on the day of the month, the position of the planets and the general functionality of my digestion I can be downright eeevul. Anyway, this post did not promise to be about a coffee-cup toting, self-deluded dabbler in the market, but about WEEBLES!

So, of all the visitors that "Team Leader With Office" gets, the one who inspires the most outrageous combination of hatred, bewilderment and downright freak show curiousity level of interest has got to be, hands-down, the one I call The Weeble. I've described him to others a million times but just like you can't tell a man who's cold what it feels like to be warm, this freak of nature is just, plain undescribable. I will begin the the physical facts as I observe them:

Dude stands about 5'7" tall
Waist circumference: roughly 75 inches
Pants size worn: probably a 42" waist

Wait, ABIB, you cry out with dismay! How can this be? A waist of 75 inches and pants with a waistband of 42 inches! Even you, with your math phobia must see the mistake there! Not so, Doubting Thomases, not so. The Weeble wears his pants around his 42" ASS!!!!! The 75" belly is hanging out there like some kind of freakish, giant sandbar. I mean it is HUGE!!! The only way he doesn't fucking fall forward is by leaning way back when he walks and then waddling from side-to-side. Is it coming to you? Weebles WOBBLE, BUT THEY DON'T FALL DOWN!!!

I've tried to surreptitiously take pictures with my cell phone camera but I've never been able to catch the absolute ridiculous view that is afforded by an in-person peep at this moron. The most amazing power that he seems to possess is that he can somehow defy gravity with his belt. Those pants are literally, LITERALLY, fastened at the crack of his ass, if he has an ass, that is because what appears below the belt line is totally flat. I can't believe I admit that I actually looked! But again, it's like a car wreck YOU CAN'T NOT LOOK! So, how do his pants stay up? The ass is flat, the belly is of an otherworldly proportion and that single, little belt keeps those fucking khakis from just dropping down around his (almost surely) hairless little ankles.

I've told coworkers that for $100 I'd run up behind him one day (he's a real slow mover) and just give those pants a good yank and down they'd come. One good yank, that's all it would take. Probably not even a good yank; maybe even just a fucking strong tug would do it. So far no takers. Did I say that he's somewhere between 55 and death in age that he's sports a rockin' comb-over and wears Mr. Magoo glasses? I'm totally not making any of this up, not one iota of it. I work for the Federal government; unemployable wierdos of all types are our specialty. And frankly, they don't come much wierder than The Weeble.

He's married, recently in fact and I get to hear all about THAT TOO. Oh joy, I think as The Weeble finally wobbles out of the office inches from my chair, now I get to spend the afternoon alternating between mental pictures of Weeble and his Wife trying to find his surely tiny dick underneath all that belly (maybe after awhile with no light or air they just fall off?) and my own sick imaginings of how exactly that freak of nature wipes his ass. I mean, for sure he can't possibly reach it around that 75 inch hot air balloon encircling his waist. Unless, wait a minute, maybe, in addition to the anti-gravity belt The Weeble's found a way, like Marvel Comic's Mr. Fantastic, to stretch his arms waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy around to the back and take care of business. The Weeble is a mystery, for sure, and as soon as I get a taker, those pants are coming off!

The Courtesy Flush – An Update (Risking Life and Limb)

Dear Reader, or on my more upbeat days: Readers, as the title of this post suggests, today I had an experience that serves to update one of my seminal blog posts: The Courtesy Flush. You may recall that the subject of that post was the decidedly unfriendly habit among many of my co-crappers here at work to continue to sit amid the fetid air of their business, allowing it waft poisonously into the air of everyone else in the bathroom, until they are totally and completely finished. Then and only then do they flush that horrific mess down. Unfortunately their stench remains for quite some time, almost like the hint of a perfume that lingers in the air after someone has walked by. ALMOST. Because, of course, in this case it lingers like a curse in the air, sometimes for nearly AN HOUR after the perp has left. Absolutely no hyperbole in that last statement. Almost an hour.

OK, so what I didn’t tell you back when I originally posted about the CF, is that, although many of my co-crappers fall guilty of this terrible sin, there is ONE among the many who truly inspired me to blog the original post. I call her “Mother Earth” (for reasons that will go unrevealed) and there is seriously something wrong with her bowels. I have never known Mother Earth to enter the restroom and not unleash the lower GI tract version of World War III. I have learned, through hard, hard experience, that once Mother Earth enters the bathroom, lose all hope ye who enter behind her. No pun intended. HAH! Anyway, not only does she go for a really, really, really long time, her movements are ALWAYS accompanied by unreal volumes of gas. Now I don’t have to tell you what happens to gas: IT RISES!! AND SPREADS!!!

Mother Earth ALWAYS fouls the bathroom for AT LEAST 45 minutes after she leaves. UNSPEAKABLE! I don’t dare to conjecture what kind of food (or not food) a person has to eat to create that DEFCON Level 4 of havoc inside their body. I’ve been trapped in there more times than I care to admit, finding myself the unwitting victim of that hellish expulsion, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but finish as quickly as possible and pray that the uncontrollable gags don’t reach the point of retching.

I feel like I’ve painted a picture for you. Good. Fast forward to this morning. A regular workday, not unlike any other, in the anonymous, grey federal building in which I work. For no discernable reason, word begins to spread among the workers on my floor, that security is evacuating the building. Pish Posh, I think, having heard no official announcement broadcast by the disembodied, flat voice of a barely literate GS3, over the tinny public address system: “Hello? May I have your attention please? There will be a presentation in honor of Huspanish Heritage Month this morning at 10:00 in the Auditorium. Please join us for an hour dedicated to celebrating the Huspanish life. Olee! Thank you.” None of that so I figure this is all just a bunch of bored employees trying to inject a glimmer of drama into their otherwise drab day. I continue “working”.

But the rumor won’t die and eventually the chorus of worker voices is joined by a few managers who intone in the self-important way that only managers can: “We should go”. Okey dokey! You don’t have to tell federal workers twice that it’s time to vacate the building. People begin streaming out in hordes, keys jangling (you never know when its going to stretch into an early lunch or, even better: a whole day). Unfortunately I had finished 24 ounces of coffee five minutes prior and really had to pee. I gathered my things and began to sullenly make my way against the tide of humanity headed for the stairwell, in the general direction of the bathroom.

“You’re going in the wrong direction!” a chorus of voices gaily reminds me. As if I’ve forgotten how to get out of the building.

“Yes, well, I have to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right down.” BUZZ OFF YOU NOSEY ASSHOLES WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM SOME KIND OF RETARD? is what I really want to say (I am the ABIB, after all) but refrain.

I’m almost to the corner, beyond which by a few feet is the bathroom, when a woman’s voice rings out directly behind me:

“I REALLY have to go to the bathroom!”

A cold chill runs down my spine and, as if in slo-mo, I pivot on one foot and look behind me directly into the face of MOTHER EARTH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

What kind of luck do I have to have to be trying to beat this human crap bag into the bathroom so that I can take a fucking PISS and leave the building along with every other living thing? Right then I realize it: I’ll never make it. I’ll rush into the stall, sit down and start to go, but I’ve 24 ounces of coffee to get rid of along with the orange juice I drank at home before work, but MOTHER EARTH will already have her huge ass spread across one of the toilet seats groaning for its life and within a nanosecond will be eliminating what I can only guess (from the smell) is partially digested roadkill.

At that moment I turned on my heel and retraced my steps, barely registering her startled expression as I bump into her to rush past, heading to the next closest bathroom, at the other end of the building’s hallway. What if we’re being evacuated due to a noxious gas spewing through the vents? What if it’s a fire alarm that’s announcing the fast spread of an electrical fire through the walls? I don’t fucking care if it’s RADIOACTIVE KRYPTONITE, I ain’t going anywhere NEAR the evil domain now claimed by Mother Earth.

I made it to the other bathroom and did my business. By the time I came out the “emergency” was already over and my coworkers had begun to file back into the building with all the enthusiasm of a chain gang.

Yes, I took a risk. Yes it could have turned out badly. But I know for one thing: if I had gone where I was originally headed I may not have made it out at all. If you look at it that way, I took no risk at all.