The Compleat Billy Chronicles (thanks to Zenpatista)

[LMNO]

 

The punchline gets me, every time.

[Doktor Howl]

The punchline gets me, every time.

What nobody seems to get is that "normal" does not mean "good" or "nice" or even "sane".  This is not the era to worry about whether or not your boss is all fucked up on tiny yellow pills.  No.  This is the era to GET SHIT DONE and then GRIN at the resulting devastation.

[Doktor Howl]

Also, LMNO, I may have to ask a favor.  I am being asked to "craft" a response to a situation between the board of the town I work for and the next one over.  I feel that it is crucial that this response be both utterly incomprehensible and also totally lacking any actual information, yet still seem to address the question.  So I turn to you and your known expertise in killing 1000 years of the development of the English language via corporate-speak.

When I know what it is they want, I'll post it.

[LMNO]

:fingers at the ready:

[Doktor Howl]

I'm in a meeting using a tablet.  People think I'm taking notes.

This is all horribly familiar.

[Doktor Howl]

What's funny is that I AM taking notes, thanks to voice-to-text, which leads me to believe my time could be more productively spent than, say, sitting through a meeting by a "finance" committee formed by people with commercial and/or industrial finance background to advise a non-profit organization.

Seriously, these fuckers have managed to institutionalize "Back in MY day..."

[Doktor Howl]

I am just sitting here watching aggressive stupidity automagically fill a Word document.

Do we even need people at all anymore?  I'll have my machine insult your machine, we'll do lunch.

[LMNO]

[Doktor Howl]

So, Denise caught fire today.  One of those tragic conference room things, LMNO can tell you about them.  One minute, you're fine, the next minute everyone's hollering and trying to find the fire extinguisher, and you're like "WHAT?"

In this case, the cause was obvious.  I had asked to borrow Denise from marketing to help enter some truly bizarre alkalinity results, based on some ideas I got from Zenpatista at our last periodic Geeks Night Out."  She's a nice young lady, and was glad to help.  Then she got interested in the problem itself.  She and I and my pool specialist spent two days beating our heads against the wall, when suddenly her eyes lit up.  You could almost see smoke coming out of them.

"You guys said that metal could 'flocc' with the extra base, right?"

"Yes."

"Your algaecide is mostly zinc."

Anthony and I look at each other. I look at Denise.  "I'm buying you lunch.  Its salmon today."  I also notice that she was bitten by the bug.  You can tell.  She just spent days working with her brain and  solved a very difficult problem by going over data until her eyes hurt, but SHE solved it, and we're all about giving her credit for it.  So far, so good.

But today she's at her regular job, and she is telling all of us in the meeting that she has negotiated a Cher tribute singer AND a Journey tribute band for the old fogeys in the richer facility...And that fire in her eyes from yesterday came out and caught her hair on fire.  She ignores this, and mentions that the citizens are unhappy that we can't get the REAL Neil Sedaka for next month, but that the guy they CAN get looks and sounds just like him.  That's when she exploded.

There were no survivors.   

[Doktor Howl]

I sympathize with her, of course, since I have been ON FIRE since 2007.  The part of your brain that you used as a kid, before we beat all the answers into you, is on full blast.  When you don't have a "gotcha" problem, you go find one.  It is the state of mind in which "because it always worked that way" becomes "Why does this stupid shit function at all, and how can we make it function BETTER, MORE AUTOMATED, AND REPORTING ITS CONDITION AT ALL TIMES?  We breathe PLC code and speak in SQL captures.  I want to see a new breed of technician, for whom NOTHING is "good enough" or "Put to bed", with blazing eyes and overheating junk in their steaming pants. A bright new future, all blowing itself to pieces every night, to be built FASTER BETTER SEXIER at 8 AM.

There is horrible science in everything, and if YOU knew what *I* know, you'd never get in a public swimming pool again, and you'd side-eye the toilet.  It's not on your side.

[Doktor Howl]

Billy and I had brunch today (a sign of how far I have fallen is that *brunch* is an acceptable term), to discuss how our various jobs are going and catching up on a few things that affect both of our companies:

Me:  "...And that's why the handicapped entrance doors sometimes close on people repeatedly."

Billy:  "How are you going to fix it?"

Me:  *blank stare*

Billy: "Oh, right.  Hang on, I have to go to the bathroom."

Me:  "You're only making more work for yourself."

Billy:  *blank stare*

[Doktor Howl]

Kevin:  "The water at the bar at the main clubhouse tastes like ass."

Me:  "Like literal ass or just like ass?"

Kevin:  "Just ass."

Me:  "The soda machine has lost it's supply check valve and you're blowing CO2 back into the waterline.  Call the vendor, have them fix their shit."

Kevin:  "Okay.  What if I said literal ass?"

Me:  "Then you'd be calling Billy.  He isn't above that sort of thing, you know."

Kevin:  "That's fucked.  I know you both, and you are definitely the bad guy."

Me:  "You know us both?  Did you know Billy backed a 5 ton truck over somebody's tiny home back in 2016?"

Kevin:  "I heard something about that."

Me:  "Did you know Billy once smoked 'a few rats' out of an access tunnel and caused ratpocalypse at <Corporation name> during their 4th of July employee party?"

Kevin:  "I didn't hear about that one."

Me:  "Yes, it was like a reverse pied piper.  All the rats came up into the main hall and lobby of the engineering building, right in the middle of their party.  It was like The Masque of the Red Death."

Kevin:  "He didn't get fired?"

Me:  "No, I blamed it on the assholes over on the interior facilities side and erased all the footage from the accessway.  Not because I felt loyal to Billy, but because the idea of a building full of engineers being potentially exposed to bubonic plague amuses me and I feel it should be encouraged.  And since this is Arizona, that IS possible."

Kevin:  "SEE?"  *points at me*  "BAD GUY."

Me:  "This is how I get my happy thoughts, Kevin.  Everyone should have their happy thoughts.  That's what this great nation is all about."

[Doktor Howl]

Things I said at work today:

"We do not hold chlorine tablets in our teeth while we work.  Why do I even have to say this?"

"There are no rats in the admin building.  We killed them all.  You have ghost rats."

"I don't worry about budgets, which is why my numbers are in the black.  You do everything on the cheap, which means you have to do it twice, which is why it's only June and you have no money.  So no, you can't have any of my money, because you obviously can't be trusted to spend it fast enough.  Now get out of my office, you penurious little mendicant, you're lowering my property values."

"No, boss, I won't be reasonable about this.  He's far too fiscally-responsible for me to feel charitable.  Now, if he'd blown his budget on new ranges or fryers or maybe some proper Goddamn air conditioning for his kitchen staff, I'd be willing to give up some of my capital expenditures budget, but he didn't...So he can just go ask Baby Jesus for more money.  Or the board.  He's probably better off with Jesus, because the board is pissed off just on account of the weather."

"The world of accounting is terrible and mysterious, Kevin, and it sometimes makes people cry."

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

There is an artist I’m friends with who could probably do some kickass ghost rats

[Doktor Howl]

Kevin:  "My heroes have always been cowboys."

Me:  "MY heroes have always been BIG GAY COWBOYS."

Kevin:  "wat"

Me:  "Cowboys.  Like Steve Mcqueen or Jimmy Stuart or the Cisco Kid, only BIG and GAY."

Kevin:  "Why Gay?"

Me:  "Nobody ever asks me 'why big?'."

Kevin:  …

Me:  "The horse doesn't care if you're Gay, but it really cares if you're 6'5" and 310 pounds.  That would be a pain in the ass.  It would be like a Shriner cowboy."

Kevin:  "Stop."

Me:  "Your spurs would keep sticking in the dirt, so it would be like someone tagging the brakes every step and a half."

Nick:  "He's right you should stop."

Me:  "So, yeah, the horse is tired and the cowboy needs new boots and the whole time he's givin' you the hairy eyeball.  Which is like the regular eyeball, only he's got hair in places you didn't know you HAD places."

Kevin:  "JESUS FUCK BOSS STOP."

Nick:  "Wait.  Why are horse-abusing hairy eyeball people your heroes?"

Me:  "Because they save the children of Montana from great white sharks."

Kevin:  "Montana is land-locked."

Me:  "And so?  No coast guard, you GOTTA have BIG GAY COWBOYS."

Nick:  "THERE ARE NO SHARKS IN MONTANA."

Me:  "Well, not ANYMORE."