When Your Evil Opposite Calls

My phone rang, showing a phone number just one digit different from mine, so I thought, "Hey, this person will say she gets my calls sometimes," or something like that. Instead, she was just complaining that the giant clock in Chesterfield Village had the wrong time.

"Is this the Chesterfield Village Association?" the lady asked.

"Well, this is Chesterfield Maintenance," I said.

"Okay, I live in an apartment facing the clock tower, and that clock is an hour off, and it's also not lighting up at night."

"Oh, okay, I'll check it out." I knew the time was off, because the day before it reset itself back to standard time, a month too soon. I always just figure I'll leave it till Halloween, at which point it will be right again, but I'd just seen it lit up two nights earlier, so that part was news to me.

"So whose responsibility is it to take care of the clock?" she asked in an accusatory tone.

"Oh, it's mine," I said, "I'll take care of it."

"Well, I just want it taken care of, because it's not lighting up, and now it doesn't even keep the right time anymore," as if I'd just pulled a bottle of wine out of my pants, belched, and wiped my face with greasy pages of kiddie porn. I should have said, "Who do you think has fixed that clock for the last nine years? I've changed the motor and the gears, unjammed one of the hour hands FROM THE OUTSIDE (45 feet off the ground), pulled Christmas lights off of it after ice storms, not to mention adjusting the time every spring and fall AND changing the lights when they burn out."

Then she wanted to know my name, I suppose so she could "get me in trouble" if I failed to fix the clock. I told her my name, then I went over, climbed up into the clock, set it one hour ahead, found all the lights to be working fine, and said, "God, bitch."

Triple Bitch-time

Problem: Lately people have been wasting my time by standing me up. They say they’ll call or come over. Last Friday two people said they would probably come by where I work to help me move furniture, and both said they would take some stuff off my hands, stuff I’ve been saving for them. I stayed at work until almost 8pm until I gave up. No one came or called. Solution 1: Don’t let someone think you’re coming, or that you’re going to call, if you’re not going to. This is what is known as a big fucking waste of everybody’s time. Solution 2: I should just throw all this shit in the fucking dumpster. If somebody shows up wanting it, I’ll just say, “It’s in the fucking trash if you want it.”

Problem: The TV screens in restaurants and bars always show sports, usually football. What if some of us don’t like fucking football? When did sports become the default thing we all have to look at? I’d rather see the fucking weather channel, bastards. Solution 1: Just turn the damn thing off. Solution 2: Bugs Bunny cartoons. Everybody likes them. Solution 3: My new intro for Monday Night Football, “Always too much,” Instead of Hank Williams Junior or Faith Hill singing while American flags, fireworks and shit fly, we’ll see monster trucks riding massive bombs down to the city, blasting out a huge crater which is now the stadium, and the players crawl from the rubble belching fire and shitting grenades, which they throw as footballs, blasting the shit out of fans who catch them--their skulls pile up and the players eat the skulls like popcorn.

Problem: Lots of people are complaining about being broke, and whining that food is expensive.
Solution: Broke? Eat some oatmeal, fucker. Ramen, baked potatoes, macaroni and cheese…. Lipton noodle pack come in about ten flavors. Fla-vor-aid is like ten packs for a dollar, and tapwater is like a penny per gallon. For most of my life I made less than ten grand a year, and I never went hungry. I mean, if you’re starving, you gotta go to the food bank; otherwise, shut the fuck up and eat cheap stuff.

This Fellow

Hozo arose from a stain on a filthy bathroom floor, distantly channeling Soy Sauce Man, primordial proto-buddy. Moving rapidly to the civilized outskirts, he promptly built a reputation for scatological humor and clever lawn care. Birds and lizards appreciate his fertile environmental tinkering; he subsidizes their livelihoods with small gifts and pleasantries. However, he secretly harbors a niggardly resentment for their carefree days.

His knuckleheaded outlook will eventually wither into a dreary form of defeat, but in the meantime he extends cheerful hospitality to even the lowliest of lunkers.