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In Other News


Space Ghost

 

Why Space Ghost? He's my hero.

I watch his show whenever I can find it, which isn't often since Comedy Central usually runs it at like 4 in the morning opposite the can't-miss Ronco Food Dehydrator infomercials.

Ron Popeil. What a guy. Inventor of the Ronco Dial-O-Matic, the Popeil Bagel Cutter, Electric Egg Scrambler, Popeil Pasta Maker, the GLH #9 Hair System and that all-time classic, the Popeil Pocket Fisherman. A tireless font of dumb ideas. He may well be the brainiac who came up with the nondeposit deposit scheme over there on the right.

I bet Space Ghost could kick his butt.

     


Wednesday -- July 28, 1999
Hammerfall

I was teaching an Excel class at the regional office this afternoon when the hammer took a big ol' swing and just missed me. Unfortunately it hit my boss, so it's probably winged me too. Time will tell.

What the hell am I talking about? The unemployment line. My boss got laid off today and they're shifting the base of operations for the training program to a different office staffed by people I've never met or spoken to. I feel bad for my boss, of course, but I feel worse for me. My current schedule and contract runs through August, but what happens after that is up for grabs.

Come Friday I'll have a new boss, but I don't know who or where that person is. And they know the same about me. Will they continue the training program? Probably not. Will they stick to the schedule that's set through August? Who knows? Will they give me reasonable notice before they can my ass? Extremely doubtful.

Sigh. Time to dust off the old resume again. Anybody out there know of any jobs that involve training people to use software you could learn in your sleep, jobs that are ridiculously overpaid? I hate job-hunting. I almost hate it as much as actually working.

On the bright side, there's a kink in the house-selling endeavor. Of course.

If you'll recall, we've already been through one buyer on this house and it was an experience steeped in stupidity that fell apart all over the place. We exacted our measure of revenge by refusing to release the buyer's escrow deposit. Hey, she wasted our time and took our house off the market in the middle of peak buying season. We frown on rewarding that type of behavior. And so nearly a year later, her money is still tied up.

Well, the worm, he has turned. It seems we can't legally go into escrow with the new buyer until we clear the old buyer off the table. We need to either release her money or jump through the required hoops to keep it before her deal is officially closed. I vote for keeping her money, but there is a glitch to that plan.

Stand by for rant mode.

This glitch is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of in the history of stupid fucking things. It's a clause or rule or loophole or get-out-of-jail-free card or whatever the hell you want to call it, clearly conceived by a submoronic waterhead suffering from from what had to be considered, even by submoronic waterhead standards, incapacitating stu-fucking-pidity. All the other waterheads stood around laughing at the guy who came up with this. He had to wear a duncecap for the rest of the day, and they all get to call him Swifty for the rest of his life. Even his mom laughed at him. I can't emphasize enough just how stupid this thing is.

What is this stupid thing? In order for us -- or any seller -- to keep a buyer's deposit after the deal goes south because of something the buyer did: the buyer has to agree to forfeit the deposit. Like that's ever going to happen. It's so stupid it makes my head hurt.

So our choices are to fight it out with the buyer to keep her deposit and tie up the property until we win, which could take months or even years, or we can bite our tongues and smile and thank her for wasting out time and give her the money back without a fight so that we can go forward with the new buyer. Who has of course put down a deposit for, I now see, no apparent reason.

Clearly, we have no choice but to surrender the deposit. I'd kind of like to deliver the check personally and cram it down her dirtbag throat, but I don't think there are loopholes in that kind of action for the crammer. Probably best to send flowers with it instead. But hey, maybe I can make sure there are bees in them. Killer bees, from bad homes, in bad moods, with bad attitudes.

Don't mind me. I'm just a little cranky tonight. I get that way when I'm about to lose my job and I have to reward stupidity and duplicity.

 
             


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Copyright © 1999
Chuck Atkins