A Man Eating Chicken

Hello Wilson High School, the future of Tacoma, and welcome to Career Day 2021! I am your first Career Day speaker, Mr. Larry Johnson, and I’m here to talk to you about your exciting future. I know that most of you don’t know and aren’t even concerned about what you’ll be doing when you graduate. You’re probably more worried about who you are going to take on a date to the big homecoming game! Am I right? But the future sneaks up on you. Trust me I know. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting here like the rest of you, drunkenly bemoaning the stupid Career Day speakers. It’s funny how life works.

Anyway, enough with the pleasantries. Let’s get down to brass tacks: an exciting career in Office Stuff. I’m sure you have all heard Office Stuff. Most of your parents probably work in Office Stuff. If you parents are pale, have bad posture and a slightly glazed over look most of the time, they definitely work in Office Stuff. You are probably wondering: what does Office Stuff have to do with me? Well, statistically 90% of you will be working in Office Stuff. 6% of you will be in prison, 4% of you will be unemployed and between this school and all the other ones in Pierce County, one of you will be a minor league athlete and one tenth of one of you will be a major league athlete. Go Hawks!

So, now that I’ve got you interested, you want to know more about a career in Office Stuff! The first question most of you are asking is: what can I do to prepare for my inevitable career in Office Stuff? I’d say, the number one best thing you can do is to start taking a lot of shit from everyone, especially people who are in positions of power over you despite not being very well qualified. High school is pretty good practice for that, so you are actually all pretty well prepared. Most of you don’t have the power to make any real decisions right now, which is also great preparation. If you are cool now, you may want to start toning it down a little to prepare, as there is no way to be cool while doing Office Stuff and the transitioning may be jarring.

Office Stuff isn’t all fun and games, though. It has some difficulties that you may want to prepare for. One major difficulty that you aren’t used to is the grind. High school is 4 years, but Office Stuff is pretty much forever. You may want to consider getting left back a few times to simulate the hopelessness of Office Stuff. There’s also office politics, which is actually way less intense than high school politics, now that I think about it. The more I talk about it, Office Stuff is really just like high school, except instead of going on until you drop out, it goes on until you drop dead.

I guess if you want to do something additional to prepare, you may want to work on spreadsheets, since that’s an important part of Office Stuff. I don’t know if you guys have a spreadsheets class here or a computers class or something. It not, you can just say you know and how to do it and then Google it once you have a job in Office Stuff. In fact, if you can Google things and you will do just fine at Office Stuff.

Thank you for your time and “attention.” Let’s see, up next we have a corrections officer, an unemployment agent and a football scout. Enjoy!

Being stuck at home on quarantine, I haven’t been able to hang out with friends or go to my usual bar. Luckily, the bar set up one of those at home tastings, where they send you five little samples of scotch to try and write down your notes. Here are my notes from the tasting.

Glenlivet 12 year old:
Appearance: It looks like yellow or brown or something. It’s a liquid. It is definitely a yellowish-brownish liquid.
Nose: Strong hints of whiskey on the nose. They weren’t fooling.
Flavor: Extreme “whiskeyness”, with a faint taste of a father’s disappointment and neglect. The provided tasting notes say vanilla and oak, but I’m just getting whiskey and sad associations from my childhood.
Finish: I don’t understand what this category is for. I’m just putting “yes”, because I finished it. Go me!
Score: 4/10

Macallan 15 year old:
Appearance: This is looks the last one, it’s like a yellowish-brownish liquid. I think that’s how all whiskey looks.
Nose: This one smells like whiskey, too, but this time with a grassy scent. Did I mention I’m doing this out in the yard so I don’t wake the kids?
Flavor: This tastes like the night I lost my virginity. And the first time I went to jail. Man that was some night.
Finish: I just found the instructions and it looks like this is how it tastes after you drink it. Mainly boozy, with some burning.
Score: 4/10

Bunnahabhain 12 year old:
Appearance: This time it was a green cube! Just kidding, it looks like the other ones.
Nose: I think peaty? What is peat? I knew a guy named Pete in high school and he smelled real bad. This smells pretty rough, too, so we’ll go with peaty.
Flavor: Tastes completely unpronounceable. I’ve double checked to see if I’m just too drunk to read, but I think I’m not.
Finish: This had a finish like the last one. I may have honestly switched the glasses and taken another sip of Macallan again, I’m not sure.
Score: 6/10

Diet Coke (I needed a break, I was starting to get tipsy):
Appearance: This looks like a black bubbly concoction. It doesn’t look like it’s made for human consumption, but I know it is because they sold it in the grocery store and there’s nutritional information on the bottle.
Nose: I think there’s some canceriness on the nose, but that could just be flavor chemicals or the bubbles.
Flavor: This tastes much better than the whiskies. This has strong notes of actual enjoyment and no burning or booziness.
Finish: Kind of weird. It’s like metallic kind of, but I really, really want some more. I feel like I actually need it. I spent $75 on the whiskey, though, so I’m going back to that.
Score: 9/10

Bowmore Old:
Appearance: It “appears” as if I’m pretty drunk, lol
Nose: I knows I’m gonna drink this bad boy up, LOL!
Flavor: The provided tasting notes say “chewy”, I think that might be notes for something else. Maybe a jerky tasting? Or gum? I reused the glass from the diet coke and this one tastes a little better than the last few.
Finish: It tastes the same after I drank it as when I drank it. Is it supposed to be different?
Score: 6/10

Daughter’s Birthday Cake (All this booze has given me the munchies, and the only thing we’ve got in the fridge that doesn’t need to be cooked is this cake):
Appearance: Pink unicorn-ish, rainbow notes
Nose: Extreme sweetness on the nose
Flavor: Taste is just sugar. Is this a block of sugar? Kids shouldn’t be eating this. I’m taking a second piece.
Finish: The finish is slight guilt, overshadowed by the feeling that I provide for this family and bought the god damn cake, so I can eat it if I want.
Score: 8/10

Jura 10 year old
Appearance: This one appears slightly blurrier than the last four whiskeys.
Nose: Somehow it smells blurrier, too
Flavor: I think they usually save the best for last on these, right? I think that’s right, so I’m going to say that this taste better than the other whiskies, but not as good as the cake or the Diet Coke.
Finish: I’m done now right?
Score: 7/10

Bud Light (Man I’m feeling it now, gotta keep riding the wave):
Appearance: This comes in an American flag bottle. You can’t see what’s inside of it, but the bottle is awesome.
Nose: Smells like freedom.
Flavor: Compared to all that whiskey, this tastes like drinking air.
Finish: AMERICA!
Score: 11/10

Covid, you have shaped our lives, nay, our world, for these past thirtyfour nights. Thirty fortnights I mean, damnit! Covid, you have shaped our world for these past thirty fortnights. Man, woman and child-person all tremble in fear of you. You make us wear masks, but yet you reveal so much about us. Our fears, our doubts, our dreams. Our deepest desires! Our desire to be rid of you, our desire to be free, our desire to once again sneeze without having it disgustingly cling to the inside of our masks like a spider’s web. A web of desire indeed.

We also desire to know you! Covid, too small, too silent to be known. COVID WHAT ARE YOU?!1 While we do not know you in your true form, we have all met you in some way. Man, woman, and child-creature all innately try to bring familiar form to the unknown. To death: the grim reaper. To the peanut: Mr. Peanut.

So Covid, my dear rival, my tormentor, I present this treatise on you and your true form, which you surely cannot read (you being but a germ or a snot or something,) but is perhaps a shout into the void of hopelessness and despair. For while you are surely a microscopic snot disease that cannot understand human emotion, to us you have been so much more.

Covid is a swarm of bees, stinging the honey that is our sweet souls. Wait, no bees make honey. Shit. Ok. Covid is the honey, made by bees, which are whatever Covid came from, and it provides us with sweet, sweet sadness. Fuck, that one is even worse. Ok, I gotta get away from the bee thing. Hard restart.

Covid is an April Fool’s prank gone horribly wrong. Ok, this is going better already. Covid is an April Fool’s prank, and the prank is a bag of bugs, but after everyone laughs about the bugs, the bugs are still everywhere. Bug City USA. Yes, Covid is Bug City USA. But also it’s really bad in China first, then Italy, then Brazil. Covid is a big bag of bugs moving around the world in what is undoubtedly the world’s worst April Fool’s prank ever played by none other than God himself. The joke is on all of us and the only solution is pest control or some cats to eat the bugs. And the cats are the vaccine? No, that was better than the bee ones, but I think it’s not quite there. It is too silly, Covid is definitely not light-hearted. Maybe I should stay away from bugs all together. I need a human emotional connection for this to work and people don’t have that with bugs. I need a more relatable animal.

Ok, I think I’ve got it. Covid is a stray dog, a sad looking stray dog that you invite in and give some table scraps because it looks hungry. Now that it knows that you have food, it won’t leave. It bites you and your family and now you have Covid and are also sad looking stray dogs. Zombie dogs! Covid is a stray zombie dog.

No, that isn’t right. Maybe it’s a pack of dogs? A pack of wild dogs! That’s good, it evokes a lot more emotion.Too furry, though. Covid is a hairless beast for certain. Ok, here goes: Covid is a man with alopecia. An uninvited dinner guest, with alopecia and a wig, so you think he’s just any other man. Maybe you think he’s someone’s date they’ve brought to the dinner party, until you realize he doesn’t know who to sit next to. Then he takes his wig off and it’s too late. While you were feasting on deviled eggs, he was feasting on your naivete and licked all the forks, and now your harmless dinner party is a super spreader event. Yes, that is Covid!

No, that one doesn’t seem right either. I think that Covid is less tangible than that. It isn’t really a man at all. Perhaps, more of a feeling. Yes, that’s better! Covid is the feeling you get, the feeling inside all of us. Yes, Covid is like the feeling you have when you are coughing and have a high fever and difficulty breathing. You have all of this because of a deadly virus that has entered your body. That is definitely Covid.

My whole life I was told that being a bully would get me nowhere. That I’d never amount to anything. That my lifestyle of giving swirlies and stealing lunch money would lead to nothing but juvie. Well, I’ve proven them all wrong. I noogied my way to the top and now I’m the boss here. 

First off, there are going to be some changes. I am getting rid of the employee of the month program and replacing it with the loser of the month program. And you have all won it. That’s right dweebs, the world isn’t fair and neither is this workplace. Those important reports that you’ve been working on for months? I shredded them and turned them into spitballs, to spit at you.

You may be wondering why they put a bully like me, who can barely do math, in charge of this accounting office. Well, that’s a tough question. You know what else is a tough question? WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF?! Another tough question is: what are the basic rules of accounting? Like the previous questions, some things are better left a mystery.

All you poindexters studied hard for your degrees and your CPAs and whatever other nerd shit you do thinking it would all pay off. Well it didn’t. You should’ve been practicing your wet willies, like I did. I know what you’re thinking: isn’t it just as gross to give someone a wet willy as it is to get one? Well we’re all about to find out. After that, you’ll have to excuse me as I have a meeting with HR.