Sir, You Can't Poo There

I would like to talk a bit about expectations. Expectations are all around us. They help form the worldview that we all hold. Now obviously they are no constant. Two neighbors can have diametrically opposed sets of expectations. It depends on what you value and where you are in your life. Let me tell you about some of my expectations.

For Our World and Country:

• They will clone dinosaurs (read here), Jurassic Park will come true, and Michael Crichton will look like a fucking genius.

• Seals will one day become the dominant species on earth making Kurt Vonnegut look like a fucking genius.

• The Chicago Cubs (although I am a fan) will probably never win a World Series.

• One day we will find out the Vikings actually got to the moon first.

Awww shit!

• Public transportation is never enjoyable.

This is one example of the type of person you see on public transportation. 

• When aliens bother to stop here, they’ll pull an upper decker in the White House and flip the bird as they fly away from Earth screaming Good luck, assholes!

• When the USA goes bankrupt, I fully expect I’ll have to eat at least one ferret.

• Homeless people will be turned into food (it’s only a matter of time people) but Charlton Heston won’t be around to tell us the better.

Well, what did you think we were going to do with every dumbass who shot themselves because we let them have guns?

• Pat Flaherty will never pay me the money he owes me because he is an incompetent, cheap bastard.

So why are we talking about expectations? Please allow me to explicate my stimulus. In January I was given a job at the company I was temping for. The company has five offices. Two on the South Side of Chicago, one downtown, one in Springfield, Illinois, and one in the nation’s capitol.

I work at the one on the South Side in an area not considered to be the greatest neighborhood. I must say that my expectation working in the neighborhood has been completely torn down. It was probably my suburban upbringing that skewed my vantage point. I don’t know if I was expecting an active war zone, but it really has proven to be anything but that. I enjoy going to work everyday.

One of the aspects of my job, however, is that I need to move around the city to different locations. I spend a lot of time at the downtown office and I considered this to be a perk. When I go downtown, I feel like an actual member of society. The hustle bustle of the working world envelops me. Delivery trucks zoom goods from office to office and throughout the country and world. The city is an active machine; you can almost hear the gears turning below the streets.

If you have a moment, people watching is quite fun. One constant is that everyone is walking fast and talking on their cell phones because they are obviously very important. Personally, I like to walk obnoxiously slow for two reasons. First, I know I’m not important so I’m not going put up any facades. Second, I like to mess with the important people and get in their way a little bit. I figure it’s a good way to bring them back down to earth.

So with all of these upstanding citizens of great importance and class, you would understand my surprise when I walked into the bathroom at work and found a wonderful fecal gift. Someone defecated in the urinal.

Dramatization of the event

My first thought was Where is my phone? This needs to be documented. Unfortunately (or fortunately for you readers), I had left it in the office. So I did my business and returned to the office.

Now I must say this fecal vandal is obviously a professional. I’ve never entered that bathroom without being accompanied by three or four other men. It’s a busy shared washroom on a busy floor. How he got away with that is beyond me. Maybe he was prairie dogging and all the stalls were occupied. Maybe it was this guy’s last day and he is incredibly passive aggressive and talented with his sphincter. 

Either way my expectations were shattered that day. It became very apparent that even at the height of culture and civilization, we’re all just mildly well trained animals. And every now and again, the monkey rears its ugly head. 

A Case of the Mondays

I think I have a case of the Mondays. While I absolutely hate that expression, it is fitting today. I’m tired, bored, and there is currently a condescending bitch standing in front of me. She is treating my co-worker like a child. I really don’t like this lady. It’s taking all of my strength not to stand up, fill her mouth with formaldehyde, and send her to the Smithsonian with a caption reading ‘World’s Largest Cunt’. 

As I sit here with nothing to do but listen to these ladies go back and forth I thought of a few places/scenarios that I would rather be in than a Monday workday.

A Closet Full of Testy Monkeys

I’ve always admired Jane Goodall’s work on the social structure of monkey life. While I could not commit to living in the jungle with them for years, I would be willing to study what would happen if you locked thirteen unusually angry monkeys in a closet with me, an eager scientist.

My hypothesis: I would connect with the monkeys on a deeper level. The monkeys would gain respect for me as their intellectual superior and bow to my leadership. With the monkeys on my side, I would establish a pickpockting scheme in Las Vegas. The monkeys get bananas and top shelf whiskey, I get gambling money and strippers.  

My associates are never late with the cash.

Totally better than a Monday workday.

 Tom Cruise’s Basement

Unless you’re a scientologist, you are aware that Tom Cruise is one of the most delusional people to ever walk this Earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he saw himself as some sort of prophet. He thinks he is right about everything.  

Now mix in the fact that Mr. Cruise is extremely dim-witted. He is a practitioner of Scientology, I remind you. Among many other ridiculous things, this man actually believes that evil alien spirits are the cause of suffering in this world and his special instruments and saunas have the ability to cleanse the soul of the evil aliens. That’s not even smart by religion’s standards. 

If you’ve ever noticed in television interviews he gets really angry when he’s proven wrong. That’s part of his delusion. That’s also partly because most of the people that surround Cruise are scared to disagree with him. Those who have disagreed end up in his basement complex where they are forced to repeatedly listen to audio recordings of Dianetics followed by screenings of Battlefield Earth until their will is broken down. In a last tortuous swoop, prisoners of Tom Cruise’s basement are made to watch Knight and Day. This is the tragic end for the hundreds of people who disagree with Cruise each year. 

Cruise in his confused/angry stage. This precedes an explosion of anger in which you end up chained to the wall in his basement.

Still better than a Monday workday.   

The Elephant House

Elephants are the largest of the land creatures we find here on earth. In the wild they roam miles and miles through territorial and migratory lands. So what gave us the idea that it was alright to put them in a building for a good portion of the year? And when we did, why didn’t zoologists veto this absurd idea? This argument can be made for most wild animals, I know. 

If I were you I'd spray water at pregnant mothers with your trunk. Otherwise their babies will come back in a couple years and throw little hot wax elephants at you.

But have you seen the amount of feces an elephant makes? Yeah, let’s not keep that inside. Generally speaking I refuse to go in Pachyderm houses at the zoo because the smell is overwhelming. I’m not one of those prissy city people by any means. I enjoy nature and all of its odoriferous qualities. But concentrated animal shit is not something I willingly put up with the see a three ton animal stuffed into a ‘habitat’ the size of my apartment junior year of college.

Stay free, animal brother. And maybe deuce in that little car so they know what it's like to be in a small area with a large amount of feces.

But in this case, I’d rather smell fecal matter for eight hours than come to work.  

Church

I was born and raised Roman Catholic. I went to Catholic schools literally my entire life. This entailed Catholic grammar school, high school, and almost seven years and two degrees at the college level. This institution has been trying to indoctrinate me for over twenty years and can’t get me to show up for Sunday mass. It’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s just that I don’t believe in illogical bedtime stories. 

I wish Jesus had raves at my Church on Sundays. I'd even consider not watching football.

Every time I am in Church I feel like I’m part of a cult. Stand up, sit down, stand up, kneel, talk in unison, stand up, don’t worry eat this, drink the red stuff, talk in unison, shake hands, kneel, sing like you’re part of a zombie chorus, sit down, talk in unison. See you next week. Luckily up until now the wine hasn't been poisoned with arsenic or something of the like.

Taking everything into consideration, I’d rather take that chance and eat a little Jesus wafer instead of going to work Monday morning.