Once upon a time there was a lamp that smelled of sheit

Because I have expensive habits that I refuse to give up, such as eating and accumulating belongings, I have taken a job in a shop by the town square. I sell lamps. Big lamps, small lamps, round lamps, square lamps, tall lamps, short lamps… I sell them all, I’m not half bad at it, if I must say so myself.

And you know I must.

However, I’ve been handed a bit of a challenge. It’s a perversion of a lamp. Sure, it looked pretty enough when it was still inside the box. On the picture it looked great. All tall and elegant and whatnot.

So we started putting the pieces together. It’s a big, fancy lamp with swirly-looking bits on it. It was a job for two people. But it didn’t take long before realisation struck that what we were building wasn’t quiiite the same thing as in the picture on the box. For one thing, OUR lamp was crooked. Actually, that’s an understatement worthy of a government cover-up. The more we built on it, the more crooked it became.

It was worse than the annual ‘is the christmas tree straight’ dialogue. Only there was no earthly way to straighten this particular Christmas tree.

There was also another odd thing about the lamp. It smelled bad. To be blunt, it smelled like…well…like something that came out of someone’s colon. That’s right, it smelled like shit. And after we’d touched it, WE smelled like shit. Not only that but after we then touched the counter, IT smelled like shit.

It had to be scrubbed down. The counter, that is. The lamp was beyond help.

Every once in a while, a customer will ask us if we have any merchandise other then what is displayed in the store. This has always struck me as a very silly question. As if we’d have a secret lamp-room hidden away in the back, the way that some bars have secret rooms for high-stake poker games. At times I have played with the idea of asking “do you know the secret handshake?” when someone offered that particular question.

Now we have the Sheit Lamp. The frightening monstrosity of glass and warped metal, hidden away in the darkest corner of the storage room. So the next time someone asks me for secret merchandise, I’ll show them that. No doubt their screams will be heard all the way across the town square.

Trials, tribulations and Santa Claus

And so the madness begins… How the content of a red nose can make you doubt your own sanity:

Yesterday I had two hours free before work, so I decided to run some errands. When I say errands, I of course mean ‘mad shopping frenzy’. It started off as a perfectly respectable errand, though. I was simply going to do some Christmas shopping. But then I remembered that I could do with a pair of slippers and the snowball started rolling. Snowballs’ll do that. It’s snowball nature.

Amongst the things I bought, were a pair of very silly slippers, made to look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Aren’t they purdy?

After work I sat down and made a playlist of sugary sweet Christmas songs, all while wearing my new slippers. I was right in the middle of a scary Christmas-spirit attack. They usually start around 1/3^rd into December. At that point, I will turn into the Franz Mesmer of Xmas spirit.

There I was, slipping into a Bing Crosby induced holiday-trance, when something happened. I heard a voice. It was male and robotic and I was pretty sure it wasn’t coming from inside my head. “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!” The Voice said.

I sat straight in my chair, eyes wide, convinced that it had finally happened – at long last I had lost my grasp on reality.

Then my friend suddenly said “maybe it’s the shoes.”

“Nah,” I said. “They’re not that advanced.” Still, I did a quick examination of the Rudolph’s noses and surely enough, inside one of them, I found a hard knob. I gave it a little squease and it shouted “Ho, ho, ho! Meeeerry Christmas!”

It was quite a relief, let me tell you. I honestly thought I’d gone bonkers there, for a second. I was all ready to run straight to the local hospital and have them stick my head in the MRI machine. But now I can just stay in. Yay me.

Yeah, I should be too good for this. But I'm not.

So have a horribly inappropriate joke:

So I'm at work yesterday and the mailclerk starts handing out letters from upper management. At this point, I'm thinking "Oh crap, how am I gonna tell my family I got laid off?" Fortunately, I'm only 30 years old. You'll understand when you read the letter.

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown of economy,Management has decided to implement a scheme to put workers of 40 years of age and above on early retirement. This scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).

Persons selected to be RAPED can apply to management to be eligible for theSHAFT scheme (Special Help After Forced Termination). Persons who have been RAPED and SHAFTED will be reviewed under the SCREW programme (Scheme Covering Retired Early Workers). A person may be RAPED once, SHAFTED twice and SCREWED as many times as Management deems appropriate.

Persons who have been RAPED can only get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependants & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).
Obviously persons who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTED or SCREWED any further by Management.

Persons who are not RAPED and are staying on will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Management has always prided itself on the amount of SHIT it gives employees. Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring to the attention of your Manager. They have been trained to give you all the SHIT you can get.

Great, as if I didn't get enough shit already....

And last, but not least, here's my new favorite song (although it's likely been replaced by something else by the time you get here):