Similes I Would Like to Use in Some Context

1. “He could tell he was appreciated but not exactly wanted, like Christmas lights the week before New Year’s.”

2. “Seeing her was both comforting and unsettling, like spotting an old teacher in the grocery store.”

3. “The meal tasted like a love letter.”

Last Minute Holiday E-Card

Hi all,

Sorry this is coming so late minute. Phil had his colonoscopy yesterday and I haven’t been able to peel myself away from the TV for some reason.

It’s been a crazy year for us between choosing a rug for our middle room and dealing with our darn kids who never seem to get back to us. Their adoptive parents keep saying our reaching out unprompted is “inappropriate” but we keep telling them bio parents are bio parents. Oh well.

Phil’s independent consultancy focused on restoring old horse equipment hit a stall (pun intended) once we moved away from all the farms. Downtown Harrisburg life is nice but I miss the animal smells. As for me I’m still plotting my rise as an internet celebrity or “influencer,” as I’m told they’re called. We need wifi in the house first, though, so I’m sure that will be our first pain in the you-know-what of 2024.

The world keeps getting worse and it’s frustrating knowing that we have all the answers. We happen to be spending Christmas alone again this year but still welcome anyone who wants us to teach them a thing or two about life. Spoiler alert: get a helmet!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here’s hoping next year brings us the President we all know this country needs.

Love and hugs,

Aunt Lyonah

Postcard from Park N’ Go

Dear Bolt,

My owners just dropped me off near O’Hare for a whole week, and I’ve already been moved twice for Suburbans, which I heard are “like Escalades but for the working class.” The RAV4s and Outbacks have been nice enough (very maternal), and the F150 mostly keeps to himself (very paternal). The Teslas have their own corner that’s almost big enough for their egos. Hoping I find a fellow Fit, or at least a Honda, who gets it.

Wishing I was on the flat, saltless roads of Florida with you. Hope you have a happy holiday.

Beepy

Opposite of Irish Exit

The sun peeked over the horizon as Kevin McCarthy took a sip of coffee in his D.C. rental.

“Wow. What a tumultuous world we’re in.” He thought. “Violence abroad, a foreboding presidential election, the busy season of holiday travel…” He took another sip. “Now is the time.”

He pulled out his iPhone 8 and texted the youngest member of his team whose only crime was believing that working for a house speaker would imply working for someone held in high regard.

“Erica, plz draft statement re: my exit from congress. The people must know. Thx. KM.”

Upon his arrival to Capitol Hill he found his staff weeping. Or at least he imagined them weeping, stifling their tears so the sad sounds couldn’t reach his office. The silence reassured him that they truly cared about him. He made his final edits.

He adjusted his tie as he sat down in the brightly lit meeting room, eyes pointed at the tiny red dot above the camera.

He took a big inhale. “This is going to be big,” he told himself.

As he read from the teleprompter, landscapers on the South Lawn were diligently tending to the shrubs. The toll booth attendant on the Beltway was approaching her seventh hour of work. Tax accountants in Bethesda were getting ahead on clients’ complicated returns, and a teacher in Virginia was starting a lesson on fractions. A recent graduate in Montana was soon to hear if he had landed an entry level sales position, a retiree in Seattle was getting settled in her new community, and a mother in Hawaii was holding her newborn baby.

A child on the other side of the world picked a flower and looked at it closely.

Kevin McCarthy announced his departure from Congress that day, and not a single living being on Earth gave a single shit.

Pizza Face

My ideal skincare routine would consist of two extremely intensive appointments per year, one in the winter and one in the summer. The general goal would be to fry, peel, exfoliate, or otherwise extinguish the entire outer layer of skin on my face, turning it into a pizza pie without the cheese, and leaning into non-addictive yet intoxicatingly soothing painkillers for two weeks of peaceful, cable television-fueled recovery. The result, in said dream scenario, would be a renewed layer of fresh, dewy skin that required no particular upkeep throughout the year. The benefits of this setup would be twofold. First, I would be free of the daily self-evaluation of the magnitude and composition of my nose pores based upon my current inconsistent skincare regimen and similarly inconsistent diet. Second, my recovery period would provide an extremely convenient excuse for disappearing for two weeks ahead of the year’s biggest events: the summer and winter holidays. I’m thinking May 10 through the 24th and December 1 through the 15th, or so. I could send my regrets to various pre-summer or pre-holiday pseudo-celebration invitations, citing an undisclosed medical concern. This is a surefire way to block further questioning while simultaneously increasing the likelihood of being talked about at said events. “Have you heard about Dan?” All this hullabaloo only for me to reappear on Memorial or Christmas Day proper, skin gleaming, ready to face the world.

The Morning After

Gluttony may be a deadly sin but decadence is a reason for living. I hope all the Tupperware and Saran Wrap did its job last night. Cheers to you and yours.

Put Off

Delaying a taxing task is one of the few relatively unchecked freedoms of adult life. The mechanisms that deliver consequences for incomplete or nonexistent action are either absent or so slow that the short-term elation of not doing the thing almost always feels better than the slow, tedious burn of consistent dedication and its presumed promise of achievement.

In most cases, the place you live remains the same, the food you eat is consistent, and the schedule to which you adhere is unchanged whether you complete said thing or not. This day-to-day sameness is the foundation of any good procrastinator’s longevity. Big things remain, and little things drift away with the passing day.

Someone I admire says that they stopped checking their mail years ago. If it is so important, they figure, someone will call. (They also neglect to answer the majority of their phone calls.) This is the level to which any amateur avoidant must aspire. To be so high, so elevated, that the demands on the ground become nothing but whispers in the wind.

Email Sign Offs Rated

1. Best,

2. Thanks,

3. All best,

4. Yours,

5. Sincerely,

6. Warmly,

7. Regards,

8. Warm regards,

9. Thank you in advance,

10. I didn’t even want to send this email, but you left me no other choice so here we are. I can not make it more clear for you. This is a sad dance we have got ourselves into and it is difficult to see a plausible escape. I suppose there’s not much in this life one can count on, let alone a sufficient reply from you, and so I will resign myself to find other things, other people, other places that fill my cup. May it runneth over like a wellspring of love, and may you find something, someone, somewhere, too,

Work Conference Schedule

Annual Office Personality Hires Conference

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

Las Vegas, Nevada

November 1-4, 2023

Wednesday

5pm: Early Registration ($200 slot machine credit to first 100 registrants)

Thursday

8am: Regular Registration (last person to register must present)

9am: Complimentary Hot Breakfast

10am: Session 1: Looking Busy: From Furrowed Brows to Hand-on-Chin Placement

11am: Session 2: Visibility: Maximizing Minimal Effort

12pm: Lunch

2pm: Session 3: Office Gays: Your Greatest Allies

3pm: Session 4: Learning from the Vets: How to Coast for Decades

4pm: Session 5: Loud Quitting: When (and How) to Burn It All Down

5pm: Cocktails

8pm: Dinner

Friday

10am: Yoga

12pm: Lunch/Cocktails

Afternoon: Free time

8pm: Adele LIVE!

11pm: Afterparty (Drag Adele LIVE!)

Saturday

9am: TBD (Last registrant to present)

10am: Complimentary Brunch & Farewell Drinks

What I Love About Maine

The land is beautiful, the air is clean, the people are real, and no matter how bad things get, we weather the storm.

How I Would Choose a House Speaker

Step 1

Immediately eliminate anyone who isn’t a mother, hasn’t worked in food service, and has never sat in a circle where someone holds “the talking stick.”

Step 2

Pick remaining names out of a hat.

Gently Used

On Wednesday I went to the university book sale, made possible by book donations from the community. The room was labeled thoughtfully by genre: History, Art, Travel, Cooking, and so on. Us patrons, however, were all of the same genre: Cheap. Paperbacks were $3 and hardcovers were $5.

The tension was thick as we competed to find the best of the worst. Scooting by others became a master class in passive aggression. The more time I spent there the more I started sweating, worrying I might miss something. I knew it was time to go when a woman next to me looked down at my box set of The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons and said, “nice find.”

(The set was $10 as it included two reference books, A-K and L-Z. My sense of civilivty precluded my urge to protest the obvious double charge.)

Sometimes community means scraping the bottom of the barrel together.

Comparative Suffering

There once was a mouse who was smaller than the others. He could jump, scurry, eat, and squeak, but always lower, slower, less, and softer. This inadequacy was the central conflict in his life, his original scar. He thought it impossible that anyone, mouse or otherwise, could live such a pitiful existence as he.

In a spiral of shame he wandered from the musty basement to one of the many posh offices above. Squeezing through centuries-old beams and around stately moulding, darting across firm navy carpets embroidered with official seals, he was considering returning home when he noticed a man sitting in the far corner. He seemed so full of sorrow yet empty inside, a fragile shell of a person who had given everything away with no dignity spared. The mouse felt embarrassed just looking at him.

Perhaps God sent this man to comfort the mouse. “Yes, things could always be worse,” he thought. The mouse sauntered over to the man, who didn’t so much as startle. “What’s you name?” The mouse uttered, and listened intently.

“Kevin McCarthy.”

Motivational Reminder

If a square is a rectangle and a whale is a mammal and a tomato is a fruit and a pine cone is a state flower, you can be whatever you want to be.

Sample Job Interview Questions

1. Tell me about a time when you experienced conflict and all the things the other person could have done to resolve it.

2. Who on LinkedIn do you most loathe and why?

3. Give me an example of a small detail you made into a big deal and the resources you mobilized to address it.

4. Are you able to effectively leverage procrastination to add a sense of urgency to otherwise banal projects?

5. In all of your workplaces, have you ever encountered a situation in which it was acceptable to choose a bathroom stall next to one ostensibly occupied by a colleague?

6. What is your style of exiting office parties?

7. From our short time together, what would you say is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness?

8. Our organization values transparency above all else. Can you tell us about a time when you had to find out information you weren’t supposed to know?

9. What day of the week are you and why?

10. What are three words your elementary school physical education teacher would use to describe you? What was his/her/their name? Why do you/do you not remember?

11. Should cream cheese have flavors?

12. Besides money and prestige among straight men, can you imagine any pros of working for Elon Musk?

13. What tactics do you use to transform question-and-answer interview structures to something resembling organic dialogue?

14. What is your salary requirement for this position?

15. [If time allows.] Do you have any questions for us?

10 Superpowers I Wish I Had

• Knowing who finds me attractive and how to exploit that for personal gain.

• Knowing how much big ticket items costs without having to ask.

• Knowing how others paid for big ticket items.

• The ability to make Chinese food appear.

• The ability to make a minibar appear.

• The ability to gracefully decline.

• Smelling good at all times.

• An effervescent attitude.

• Super strength.

• Flying.

Friday Night Lights

Elizabeth had never much cared for football, let alone troubled herself to learn the rules. When her boyfriend of four years insisted she attend his opening game against a neighboring high school, she acquiesced on the condition that he would take her to a nice dinner the following evening.

She was shocked at how many spectators filled the stands. Surely their school of modest enrollment and their only slightly larger rival weren’t capable of producing such a crowd. She had never seen an audience a quarter this size at the plays in which she would star.

She purchased a bottle of water for $3 and took her place near what she’d later learn was the five yard line, a bad seat for viewing but a perfectly good one for finishing her book.

The next night, just after the server placed a basket of warm bread with whipped butter, Elizabeth’s boyfriend erupted. “How come you never care about my games? I go to every single one of your plays, and you couldn’t tell me one thing about what happened last night.”

“I star in the plays, though…” Elizabeth mumbled.

“I am the quarterback!”

Years later, Elizabeth was scrolling in bed when the news broke that Tom was retiring from football. She had felt bad when he left her for Gisele, but now she felt worse. The sport, while clearly lucrative, seemed to cost him his life.

Maybe she should have taken more care. Would it have killed her to learn the point value of a field goal, ask him a question about first downs? Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that his only committed relationship would be with the lights. She put down her phone, nuzzled up to her philosophy professor husband, and quickly dozed off to sleep.

Labor Party

Subject: A Few Updates

Date: September 1, 2023, 6:00am

To Our Valued Employees,

We hope you and your families are preparing for a relaxing and rejuvenating Labor Day Weekend. We know this season can feel overwhelming for many with children going back to school, college move-ins, and of course the end of our trial Summer Friday Happy Hour program (as communicated previously, excessive intoxication in the office is never appropriate, and so we will be returning to our alcohol-free policy come next year).

And to Colleen, we all must say: Why did you do it? Our operations team’s diligent and careful work organizing tasteful gatherings for our entire organization will be forever marred by your decision to add Everclear to the punch bowl at the supposed encouragement of others (“basically everyone,” to use your words). We sincerely apologize to those employees asked to call their spouses or teenage children to transport them home, and especially those forced to sleep in the break room. While it was no doubt a night we will never forget, it is one us on the leadership team wish never happened at all.

Unfortunately, we must send our well wishes to the multiple employees who left us no choice but to terminate their employment. While suggestions about improving workplace conditions are always welcome, such feedback need be communicated through appropriate channels. This does not include shouting at direct supervisors and reports alike, particularly in a group setting.

And to Colleen, we do not wish you a happy Labor Day Weekend. We wish you a lifetime of dull, sober labor, forever.

All best,

Carl

A Late Summer Night’s Dream

It’s the season of beginnings and endings, planning and prepping, lasts and firsts, coming and going. It strikes me every year how the calendar marches on but its pace never seems the same. I get used to summer living and suddenly it’s fall, then holidays, then the doldrums of winter, and those cold days feel like they will never end until suddenly I see a green bud on a tree branch.

School in September is like the gym in January, though in adulthood I have taken great solace in the optional nature of the latter in contrast to the compulsory nature of the former. Still, there is something to a fresh pencil; a new shirt; a renewed sense that this year, this is going to be the one (really).

I hope this season brings you joy and peace, laughter and light, sun and air, rest and relaxation. These are things I wish you all the time, but especially in these final days of sweet, sweet summer.

No Questions Asked

This past Tuesday I was jogging along a path and encountered a stranded wallet. I returned it to a nearby address and later received a call from its owner thanking me profusely, along with an invitation to buy me a coffee. I graciously declined. However, I would have accepted:

1. An all-expense paid, three night, four day trip for two to a private villa in St. Barts

2. A dinner party with a private chef in a private home overlooking a large body of water for myself and my twelve closest friends (I may sit at the head if necessary)

3. A lifetime supply of cheap beer and/or table wine

4. A boat complete with insurance, maintenance staff, docking rights, and seasonal storage

5. A $1,000 Williams Sonoma gift card

6. A $500 Starbucks gift card

7. A $100 McDonalds gift card