Editorial

In the office I work at, the programming department has a new face every day. I take it the working environment in there is pure shit because they are only happy during the last two weeks, when they've handed in their resignations. People come and go so fast I don't even bother getting to know them anymore. I just start theorizing how long it will take for so-and-so to turn from happy (I have a job!) to pissed off (this job sucks!) to eventually that happy (I'm quitting!) stage again.

Occasionally there is some new guy that walks into the office and you don't even bother to acknowledge his presence. Mostly because by tomorrow he's probably gone, and besides, from where I am sitting I can't even see them, much less hear them.

But there is this one guy that for some reason, the moment I saw him, I developed strong feelings of hate for him. It's not just I don't like him because he's done something wrong. No, nothing silly like that. He's done nothing wrong. He's always well dressed. He's educated. He speaks with manners and is never rude. Yet I hate this guy's fucking guts.

At first I kept hearing that little inner voice inside of me that reminds me that I'm doing something bad. You know, you say to yourself how nice your fist would look on this guy's face, and that little voice says something your mother or your teacher would say: "That's horrible. How could you think that?" I don't know. How could I? Am I the only one with homicidal urges? Besides, I hate that little voice in my head. Some of the voices in my head I really like to listen to because they pump up both me and my ego, but that little voice, the voice of sanity as I like to call it, always reminds me that in our society certain things just can't be done. I listen to it mostly because I like to keep the paycheque coming to support my habits.

Unfortunately for me at the moment, and eventually for him, I keep bumping into buddy. He's always around. I always see that grin of his. Sometimes I see his face and I can see a little bit of myself in him, and I wonder, thanks to my great previous schooling as a psychologist, if that's the reason I hate him. Maybe, I think, it's that snotty grin on his face I want to wipe off with a 12 gauge. Or maybe it's because he sort of remotely looks like me.

But I think I'm slowly starting to figure out why I hate him. Every time I go to the lunch room, he's there. He is sitting in front of the TV playing a game on the Dreamcast. Every time. I could get up right now and go check, and I'm sure buddy would be there playing the game.

"Is this a valuable reason for me to shove that controller up his arse?" I ask, and I often hear all the little voices but one say "yes".

Out of random curiosity I asked a few other people that work here (and haven't quit yet), what they thought of the guy. Well, they hate him too. They don't know why. I felt much better about this, because it meant that I wasn't the only one with homicidal impulses screaming through my brain waiting for that one little last drop to go wild and take half of the office with me before the cops shoot me down like a rabid dog.

Me and my newly discovered friend in hate started questioning other people. To our surprise three more people reported their hate for him. Our group grew quite large. We happily determined that the guy must just have no charisma. Maybe he was Hitler in his previous life. Maybe we should do a support group for others that feel the same about him. Either way, he won't know what hit him when the time to strike arrives.

Akido responds to my editorial:

To Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro

Ha, you think you have troubles. I started divorse in 1972. Later same year, X goes to Social Security and tells them that I am dead and files a claim before the divorse was final, collects from them, collects from me. They collect from me (happily for years without a whimper @ last a productive corpse). They neglect to tell me that I am dead, just take the tax money and credit the account. All is well until I move to overseas for 15 years and then make the mistake of coming home. They still take my tax money (joyous again), they even issue me a new card for the one I lost in the move back, but any time I try to open up a bank account anywhere I turn up dead again on their (and the bank's) computers. It goes on and on to even siller side streams and creeks of hilarity but I am sure you get the picture. Basically a corpse since '72 is still paying taxes, can get new cards, fill out their stupid forms to correct it multi times, father and raise a child as a single father, she can get her card though she gets it and her citizenship through me (neat trick that one), but I am dead anytime I try to open a bank account. Gottcha.

Samantha Craggs retorts:

Upon reading Jeff Wright's review of Titus, I just wanted to say that the man rocks. Titus was the most underrated movie of the year. I drove two hours to see it, saw it and then drove two hours home again, and I didn't regret a minute of it. My only beef is that Jeff didn't mention Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who I am currently stalking, in addition to the owner of the Scriba.org domain. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Chiron and there is a small scene where he and his brother Demetrius frolick on the bed. The guy sitting next to me got up and walked out. Titus comes out on video in August, so everyone rent it.

I also thought it was interesting that Leandro sits on washing machines for fun. What a coincidence! That is exactly how I like to spend a Friday night. Other things I do for fun are:

1. Practice making fax and modem noises. 2. Dressing up as Madonna in different phases of her career and dancing for the cat. 3. Dressing up the cat as Madonna in different phases of her career. 4. Sitting very close to the fan and saying into it "Luke, I am your father." 5. Making lists of animals I would like to some day have as pets. 6. Four words: Al Waxman Film Festival! 7. Devising ways to get my hands on Leonadro DiCaprio's e-mail address. 8. Writing "Justin Timberlake is a knobjockey" on fan-based N'Sync message boards.