I say, BAH to the whole damned thing.

So tomorrow I return to work. I say this with the notion than when tomorrow morning comes, I will in fact crawl out of my bed and do the things asssociated with getting my ass to work. I don't really want to, and there's actually a fairly decent chance that it might not happen at all.

Why?

Let's point out the obvious first, just to get it out of the way. No one wants to work. Nobody. If you gave a random number of people the option of going to work at a job they didn't like, to work with people weirder than they were, for money that was more insult than anything and not doing the above, I'm pretty sure most people would choose to sit on their asses and contemplate why exactly Demi Moore is starting to look like a man. (Seriously. Watch her 'run down the beach' scene in Charlie's Angels 2 and you will see what I mean.) Of the people who say they'd rather go to work than sit at home, oh, I don't know, having fun, a clear percentage are lying or holding on to some noblesse oblige crapola OR, and this is worse, are doing the whole martyr thing (never mind, dear, I'll go to work and slave over an open grease fire ...). Those people are should be given over to the doctors for evaluations involving lubes and shiny, sparky prods. The remaining few who say they'd rather work are, for lack of a better phrase, the miserable cunts whose lives are dedicated to making everyone else's lives miserable. They do enjoy their jobs. So yeah, I don't want to work, big deal, wanna fight about it? If I could marry someone who'd pay me money to sit around and think the weighty thoughts of the world, I for damned sure would. And they'd be the most awesomely weighty, deeply thunk thoughts this world has seen. I'd out Nietzsche Nietzsche and prove that Aristotle was a prat in a dress. That's what I'd do.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, and with only a modicum of backpatting and auto-eroticism, let's move on.

I know, that no matter how much I beg and plead, how much I hope and dream, has changed since I've left. Everything will either be exactly the same, or worse, which doesn't really count as count, because going further down the slippery slope is way, waaaaay easier than climbing back up. Just look at Kevin Costner's career. (HEY, Kevin! Try and make a movie that's not so long and you might make some money for once, you reprobate American wannabe cowboy hippy).

Blenderman, if not already married to his mail-order, Islamically pre-arranged bride, will no doubt be completely mental over the subject.

Bewoop will still be bewoopin' his ass off. If I am sincerely lucky, he'll have added a few other sounds like 'Krang' or 'Boiiiiiiing' to the mix so we can have ourselves a good old Commodore 64 video game soundtrack goin' on. I plan on bringing a recorder to work so I can eventually mail the sound bytes to Carl Cox and make myself some fat money. (Apparently some people still do listen to techno.)

Smurfette ... ahhh Smurfette. I never really talked about her. She's ... well, she's crazy. Kind of like me crazy but without the self control. When I left, dear old Smurfette (so named because one day at work she was asked to do the powdered colors and wound up, well, colored, head to toe, in deep blue. It was quite fetching in a bizarrely Smurf-rotic way), was seriously on her way to an addiction to diet control pills. Here's our last conversation :

Me: Seriously, though, that shit you're taking is full of amphetimines.
Her: Really?
Me: Howfuck else you think you lose weight without exercising and eating right? The uppers raise your metabolic rate through the roof.
Her: Is that why I can't sleep at night, d'you think?
Me: What the fuck is wrong with you? Says right here on the box, don't take every day, it might be habit forming. How many of these do you take?
Her: 2 or 3 a day?
Me: Are you asking me or telling me?
Her: I take about two or 3.
Me: Shit on a stick, woman. You're all hopped up on goofballs. Get your frickin' head straight. That shit is poison. Bah.
Her: I have to lose weight.
Me: You don't have to do nothin' except get your ass to work on time and do your job. If you think you gotta lose weight like this, you're fucked in the noodle. Tell your boyfriend he's a cockgobbler. (It is because of her boyfriend that she's doing this in the first placez.)
Her: ...
Me: Now excuse me, I see someone that needs to be run over with the forklift before lunchtime.

So she'll undoubtedly be much skinner by now, but inarguably psychotic. Yay.

RodgerDodger will still be there. That in itself is a horrid thing, much worse than a visit from Cthulu and Nyarlhotep combined. HP Lovecraft wasn't insane, he just knew someone like the Dodger.

AGH. The list continues. It's endless. MeepMeep and his chainsmoking nicotine stained toothless mouth working ceaselessly on a piece of turkey jerky, the various gomers and nutbars wandering their way through the serpentine confusion of tying their shoes the right way on, the minions who can barely gabble their way through the English language when you need to explain something to them but become Masters of the Spoken Tongue when you short them fifteen seconds on their time sheets, the irate truckdrivers who don't know how to work a simple door, misplaced purchased orders, unprinted purchase orders, purchase orders that don't exist anywhere but inside the head of the man who thought he ordered the product, exploding forklifts (happened twice), malfunctioning brains, short-circuited hydraulic systems, Lippy the Cancerous "it's a fine job you're doing" Douchebag, Creepy Airduct Mike, surprise last minute orders, last minute cancellations, erroneous recipes that result in the loss of a thousand pounds of sugar, weird visits from Rabbi Whatever (in order to be kosher, we need to be blessed, if you can believe that frickin shit), getting hassled because I leave my fork to one side of the table, shoes that smell for no good reason like cat piss and sweat, hairnets that remind me also for no good reason of used condoms (picking up used hair nets is revolting), the drain trap that smells like the end of the world (I'm thinking of selling it as bile beer at the next rock show), and on and on and on.

The thing that worries me the most, though, is this question;

So. What did you do on your vacation.

Variations include: Did you have fun on your time off, did you go anywhere while you were gone, Was that you outside my window last night, Why does someone claiming to be your parole officer keep calling here looking for you?

I will also hear : We missed you, did you miss us? We are so glad you're back. Than GOD you're back. It's been so quiet without you.

When I tell the people I work with that I did nothing, they won't believe me. I know they won't because they never believe me. No one does. I did nothing of import this whole entire time I was off. I drank coffee and talked with people. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't do anything that could be remotely considered as large amounts of fun. I didn't eat out, I didn't go on any dates, I didn't hang out with friends. I didn't invent anything nor did I intend to. I did nothing. That was the entire purpose. I sat there, for an entire week, and did nothing. I relaxed. I removed from myself the pressures of having to do anything. I had no set time table, other than the one that comes naturally from choosing to do A, B, and C, in that, through the natural progression from one to the other, all things got done. And when I tell them this, they will listen politely enough, and then, out of their gaping pie holes, they will ask:

No, really, what did you do?

And then I will kill them.

And as to the other statement, wherein I find that it seems all they did while I was gone was pine for my return, well, that doesn't make any fucking sense at all. The entire time leading up to my vacation I was a miserable bastard. Everyone was afraid to talk to me. People who needed to get their jobs done, and who needed me to help them get it done, came up to me like I was going to bite their heads off. I would have, but shit, that's just who I am.

Why in the fuck would anyone miss someone who was so easily irritated by someone else? I know that I am pretty funny, and unfailingly nice, even to those I don't like, but when the control slips and I come out through the cracks, the person I am is pretty nasty. Combine that with a terribly literal and analytical mind and a complete and utter lack of concern for sugarcoating anything that comes out of my mouth, and you've got yourself someone who people shouldn't be missing at all.

If I was them, I'd move the plant before I got there tomorrow morning. Maybe leave a sign on the grass saying 'Gone Fishin' or some shit like that.

At least, that's what I'd do.