My place of current employment is in the process of laying off people. It’s a business decision because we’re not making enough profit the way we’re doing things right now and so a bunch of my co-workers have to go.
I’m not crazy. I don’t like this, since I’m also in the “You Are Eligible To Get The Hell Out Before We Throw You Out — IF We Throw You Out And Really You Won’t Know When It’s Gonna Happen - Ever - Like, Even If You Survive This Layoff Period” group, but I do understand the economics of the move. Capitalism isn’t pretty. It often isn’t fair. But it works a lot better than the rest of the economic systems the world’s great thinkers and societies have thought up so I’m in favor of it. I’m also in favor of ice cream three meals a day but I’m not in favor of ballooning up to the size where you have to be wedged out of your home with a crowbar. So yeah, I’m often torn between seeing the reality of things and wishing things were happy for everyone.
When we were all summoned to hear this news, my colleagues appeared stunned and had that “Whatever will I do? Where ever shall I go?” look. Thankfully, nobody slapped the back of their hand to their forehead and swooned outright. I mean, none of us had fans to bring them “to” so they’d have been out of luck. Plus we were all on deadline and really needed to get back to the work we still had until we were told to pack it in. But I thought to myself that, while we were hearing the harsh, harsh reality of it all, many people were acting as if The End Was Nigh.
Newsflash: It isn’t. You’ll just have to find another job.
Americans have been finding another job since… well, since before there were Americans. When Merrie Olde Mother England kicked out all the citizenry who weren’t down with the king, those folks hit the high seas for The New World. They had been fired from England and found new, rewarding work at America, the hip, funky, cool new country on the block. And they thrived. England pulled a Starbucks and tried to keep on expanding its franchise all over the world but they eventually ended up closing most of those stores. Even France copied America’s business model and started its own little boutique, “Libertie, Egalite, Fraternitie,” which has been pretty successful except when it was overtaken by German management for a short time.
When in America, prepare to work. And don’t get comfortable doing what you do because times change and with that shift comes an alteration in how many jobs are needed in which industries. This country’s expansion westward was a product of the “manifest destiny” idea and for my colleagues and me, our manifest destiny now is to be ready to expand our own horizons. That means you’ll either find work elsewhere to earn a living or, if that’s too tough and you can’t make ends meet, you could just kick off and never have to worry about paying that ginormous Visa bill.
Personally, I’m totally in favor of living and I hope my colleagues are too. Which is why we’d all better start looking into what, for most of us, will be at least our second career. My own manifest destiny appears to be “X-Ray Technician,” since it doesn’t involve many math skills and I am absolutely OK with that if it ever comes to pass. Perhaps the pursuit of happiness involves wearing scrubs to work each day and if that’s the case, I say Westward Ho.
We here at Chrisco Spins are not only dedicated to intelligent debate among our own bloggers, but are absolutely committed to providing a public forum for those in society who seek an outlet for opinions classified as “gibberish” or “unintelligible” or “obviously written by TV ad people who were high at the time.”
In this installment of our occasional “Let’s Ask…” segment, celebrity guest blogger Hamburglar, noted McDonald’s hamburger thief, ’70s TV pitchman and prison fashion icon, answers a question from a select Chrisco Spins reader.
Dear Hamburglar,
My lying, cheating himbo of a so-called “husband” has abandoned me for another woman. In fact, he has left me for Madonna. The singer, not the Blessed Mother. But I wouldn’t put it past the man-whore to go after HER, too! This man WHO HAS NEVER WON A WORLD SERIES RING, I REMIND YOU is doing it with an old hag who is HERSELF married and has children and HAS NOT HAD A BIG RADIO HIT SINCE “LIKE A PRAYER” and she’s SO gonna need one when I rip out all her hair WHICH I AM SURE IS A BIG FAT FAKE WIG and, just so all you girls who think my lying, cheating himbo of a husband is so HOT or whatever, let me just say right here and now before God, my babies, the gossip writers at Page Six of the NY Post and this divorce court judge that I must now weep in front of while saying the Prayer For Alimony Mejor, that he may have a great batting average on the baseball field at Yankee Stadium and all that but in el dormitorio he can barely make it around third and when it comes to sliding into home the lying, cheating himbo is, like the No. 13 he wears on his pinstriped jersey, CURSED!
I am the one who can bench press 250 easy in a Victoria’s Secret bikini, not HER. Ay Dios Mio, why must I suffer so at the hands of a lying, cheating scumbag and his slutty OLD pointy-bra wearing PUTA?!!!! YOU MAY SING “LIKE A VIRGIN,” YOU CARA DE CONA, BUT OH YOU ARE MOST CERTAINLY NOT A VIRGIN!!!!!!!!! PUNTA POR FAVOR!!!!!!! YOU ARE MORE LIKE A PINCHE PUTA! DO YOU HEAR ME, AMERICA? AND HE IS A MAMAHUEVO WHO CANNOT HIT A CLUTCH HOMER WHEN IT IS MOST NEEDED AND I AM NOT JUST TALKING ABOUT BEISBOL!!!!!!!!!! OJALA QUE MUERAS, ALEX RODRIGUEZ!!!!!! CAGO EN TU LECHE!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey Hamburglar, you made a lot of money from those McDonald’s ads, right? I like a man in stripes, mi guapo, if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink*
Gracias and… are you single? - The Future FORMER Mrs. A-Rod
Join us for the next installment of “Let’s Ask…,” when former U.S. President and Playa In Chief William Jefferson “You can call me Bill, baby, just make sure you call me — but only when SHE’S not home” Clinton answers your questions about livin’ fast, lovin’ hard and proper cigar etiquette for gentlemen.
From Lacey Peterson, to the pregnant Marine, to this new lady who got burned up in her apartment… murdered pregnant ladies are being murdered at an astounding rate. According to all appearances in the news media, the easiest way for a woman to become a murder victim is to get knocked up. Police spend thousands of man hours on these cases, when as we’ve all seen over the past few years, everyone always knows exactly who did it. Below, please find an easy to follow guide to who is killing all the murdered pregnant ladies of the world:
1) If a murdered pregnant lady was single then the baby’s daddy did it 99.9999998% of the time
2) except in cases where the baby’s daddy was married himself in which case he or his wife have an equal chance of being the crazed pregnant lady killer.
3) If a murdered pregnant lady was married at the time of her brutal demise, then her husband did it 99.999997% of the time, regardless of whether or not the baby was actually his.
4) But if the murdered pregnant lady was married and her husband didn’t do it AND she was a minority AND she was involved in an interracial relationship, then her father-in-law did it 99.695% of the time
5) and her mother-in-law did it the rest.
6) If a murdered pregnant lady was in a hospital when she disappeared/was found cut open sans baby/etc., then a crazy barren nurse did it 95.436% of the time
7) and the aforementioned crazy barren nurse is caught on camera leaving the hospital with the baby in her purse 100% of the time.
*Source: “What the Hell is with all the Murdered Pregnant Ladies”: a joint FBI/Justice Department study commissioned in June 2008
**unless they see this in which case I made it all up
***and please don’t be mad and/or arrest, deport, or water-board me. It was all Nat’s idea.
***For all my black and brown folks, this particular post is going to be concerned with making fun of white women. So either skip it or laugh along.***
So I’m reading through my morning papers (yeah, I do that, I’m getting old… but I do it on the computer, so maybe I’m still young) and I see an article in the Washington Post that says skin cancer rates are up 50 percent in young women since 1980. Now I don’t want to kick a lady when she’s down and dying from melanoma, but come on! Dying from skin cancer brought on by tanning is the equivalent of becoming a crackhead.
I’m not saying that everyone who gets skin cancer is an idiot. Just the ones who bring it on by laying out in the sun with cooking oil spread all over their bodies. I mean really, didn’t all those old ladies with skin like leather handbags teach you anything? I learned not to smoke crack after Pookie got blown up in “New Jack City” and Larenz Tate shot the crackhead in “Menace to Society”. Simple lessons, simple takeaway. So why aren’t women learning that tanning will kill you?
Let me break this down for you. Increased exposure to the sun leads to an increase in your risk of skin cancer. Skin cancer in even the smallest doses can prove fatal to humans. Therefore, increasing your exposure to the sun can kill you. So, by extension, tanning is a bad thing.
I can hear all my white sisters screaming now, “But we look better when we have a tan”, “I like to have a little color”, or “How am I going to compete as a pale skin girl in a world with an ethnic fetish?” I’ll take these concerns one-by-one:
1) No you don’t look better with a tan. You look exactly the same, only browner. If you are at all attractive, every man in your general neighborhood will still want to sleep with you. If you aren’t, then all the tanning in the world isn’t going to help and you’d be better served working on your sense of humor. Any man who didn’t want you before the tan and does after is a freak and you should steer well clear.
2) If you simply must be a darker shade, try that spray-on stuff. All the color, none of the dead. If you’re extra desperate then head for one of those Mystic Tan places. (Why in the world do I know what that is? I’m so disappointed in myself.)
3) You can’t compete. Guys with Asian fetishes will still chase tiny Asian girls. Guys with black girl fetishes will still go that way. But just like light-skinned R&B singers, these things go in phases. You’ll make a comeback, just wait and see.
So to conclude, tanning equals crack. Both bad, both will make you very dead. In the meantime, you will itch a lot, develop an extremely dry mouth, suck a lot of dick, and rob a convenience store. Maybe not so much the last couple, but who knows. I’d hate to limit your possibilities.
George Carlin died yesterday. I always loved him because he made me laugh at the same time he was making me uncomfortable. If you haven’t heard him riff on religion and felt just a bit of unease then you’ve missed a real measure of your faith. Everyone knows about his 7 words routine. But here is one of my favorites that’s not quite as famous.
The post office is raising rates on stamps again. I hate when they do that because I have to buy a whole bunch of 2 or 3 cent stamps to make my old stamps useable again. Then I spend a month sending regular envelopes of mail with two separate stamps affixed. It offends my delicate artistic sensibilities. Not to mention I hate when the price of anything goes up. My regular egg and cheese Croissanwich at Burger King costs $0.20 more damn near every time I go. And now that I’ve written the name down for the first time, I might have to change my regular order. “Croissanwich”? Really?
But back to stamps. I think the price of a stamp was $0.25 for my entire childhood. Or maybe it was $0.32. But whatever it was, I don’t remember it ever changing. Now the price of stamps changes like they’re pumped out of Middle Eastern soil and manufactured by adhesive refineries operating at artificially lowered capacities. Next time I go to the post office they’re going to have one of those big sign towers and one of the incredibly miserable USPS employees will be out front with the long pole/suction cup sticking up the day’s prices.
Of course, a friend of mine says we shouldn’t complain about the price of stamps because odds are we can’t hand our letter to anyone else on the street and expect them to deliver it to LA or Philly or Miami for $0.41 or whatever the rate bumps up to next. To which I reply, 1) I like to complain, and 2) you can get a crackhead to do anything for $0.41.
“The next time I see that ‘bleachy-haired honkey bitch‘ I’m going to wring her scrawny little neck!” Ced didn’t even look up from the notebook where he was working on a Sudoku puzzle. By now he was used to me bursting into rooms and hurling insane declarations. I call it starting a story “in medias res”. I learned that term in my 12th grade AP English class while studying epic poetry. Epic poems start in medias res (in the middle of things) so that the reader is thrust into the action of the story. The details of the past are filled in later, like poetic flashbacks. It’s more dramatic that way. As soon as Mrs. Stevenson wrote it on the board, it became less of a literary term and more of a credo for me. Ced understands, so now it doesn’t phase him at all. That and he really really likes Sudoku.
“Who are we murdering now?” He asks, taking a sip of coffee. “I just want to make sure I have the right size trash bags.”
“Hollis FUCKING Gillespie! Who else?” I then had to explain to him how Chrisco has been prodding me to compile my columns into a book for years, because, according to him, I’m like the rap Hollis Gillespie. I had shrugged it off at the time because I knew the book wasn’t really selling. What’s the point, I thought. Who wants to read about one odd chick’s quirky observations about life? Then I find out that she’s touring to promote her third book and her - get this - TELEVISION DEAL! What the hell? “What’s she got that I don’t have??” I demanded.
Ced furrowed his brow, then rotated his pencil to erase a misplaced 6. I would not have reacted, except that Ced never messes up on a sudoku puzzle. He’s sort of a savant. I had struck a nerve. The last time I asked that question, we were sitting in a coffee shop just like this one. I had just left my 7-year-old daughter at a play date with my friend’s son who is in love with her. When I left, they were planning the menu for the “cat wedding”, a touching union of his new Siamese kitten and my 16-year-old spayed calico. The little boy wasn’t that interested in the feline nuptials, but he liked to get practice in, since, according to him, he and my daughter would be planning their own wedding one day. The theme, he said, would be Spiderman.
It was stupid, of course, but it made me tear up anyway. My 7-year-old had found true love, even though she was oblivious to it at the moment. Even my old-ass cat could manage a May-December romance of sorts. I, on the other hand, was doomed to spend my days roaming the earth alone, unwanted, unloved. I panicked and begged Ced to meet me at our usual coffee shop, where I later stormed into the place, and right in middle of everything, demanded that he stop dicking around with his chickenhead girlfriend and marry me already.
He didn’t appreciate it then, either, and he told me so, the first and only time I have ever heard him raise his voice to me. The other coffee shop patrons, of course, didn’t know why. They were just coming in on a dramatic scene. They didn’t understand how us heroes of epic poetry get down. See, epic heroes are extraordinary figures, usually with superhuman qualities. They can accomplish amazing feats, but in every epic poem the hero is eventually brought down by the classic fatal flaw, hubris. I knew Ced had always had a little crush on me. I taught him things, I made him laugh, I could read his mind, and my smile is like angels fucking. Yet, I had failed to consider that no matter how superhuman our friendship was, expecting him to forget that he loved his girlfriend was the arrogant blow that mortally wounded his respect for me. She was a sweet girl with a good heart. She had stood by him faithfully to make their relationship work. Failing to respect that only showed why I was alone.
It took us a long time to find another coffee shop after my outburst got us ejected that day, but here we were again. I lowered my voice and calmed down. He looked up at me, finally, but he didn’t have to say anything. As usual, I read his mind. Yes, Nat Porter’s got an extraordinary pen game, and her insights are downright heroic, but banking on her talent so much that she doesn’t see she needs to respect hard work, that just might kill her career.
“I know. I’m being stupid. I know I’m a decent writer, but Hollis Gillespie actually put in the work and made it happen for herself. Of course she deserves everything she has.” I sighed and sank back into my chair. Ced leaned over the table and kissed me on the forehead. “You’ll get there. I know you will.” He handed me his pencil and notebook.
Next time I see Hollis Gillespie, I’ll probably hug her. I won’t even introduce myself or explain why or anything. Sure, she will probably be confused being thrust into the middle of some stranger’s professional epiphany, but that’s how we epic heroes do. It’s more dramatic that way.
We here at Chrisco Spins are not only dedicated to intelligent debate among our own bloggers, but are absolutely committed to providing a public forum for those in society who seek an outlet for opinions classified as “untraditional” or “non-mainstream” or “certifiably insane.”
In this initial installment of our occasional “Let’s Ask…” segment, celebrity guest blogger Tom Cruise, noted film star, Scientology expert and couch-jumper, answers a question from a select Chrisco Spins reader.
Dear Crazy Tom,
Y’all. OK, so I was kind of like married to this dude - let’s call him “Hay-Fed” because he’s got a face like a horse, ha ha HA - and like it was all crazy and sexy and shopping for trucker hats at Wal-Mart late at night all barefooted and a WHOLE lot of eating hot wings with champagne three meals a day from room service and, I mean, it was real classy at first, y’all, but then he knocked me up and I popped out a kid and then he was all up on me like some humpy dog and THEN I had another baby like all right away and I couldn’t sing no more because of all the peeing and pooing and burping — and the babies were just as bad, y’all. So I dropped his sad skinny ass and got all bald, which I thought was a good idea at the time but kind of sucked because I found out you sunburn real bad on your head unless you wear pink wigs. Anyway, people have been saying I’m crazy and I can’t sing and dance and I’m a bad mother to my babies because I maybe HAVE been known to let them play with my cigarette packs. Oh, and I kind of was rushed to the hospital once. Or twice. Or like a few times. For rehab and stuff. Ask my mom. She’d know. She knows it ALL, y’all, and she will TELL you that just like she tells ME that ALL THE $&*@ING TIME OH MY GAWD!!!!!
Thanks, y’all - “Crazy” Brit Brit
Crazy Tom says…
Wow. OK. HA HA HA HA HA!!! You’re… you’re… you’re… you’re GLIB, Brit Brit! YOU’RE GLIB! I’ve done RESEARCH on psychiatric drugs and THEY DON’T WORK! HA HA HA HA HA!!! ARE YOU LISTENING?!!! Only WEAK-MINDED PEOPLE take them and a simple AUDIT from my friends at the Hollywood Hills First Church of Scientology Savings & Loan would work WONDERS for you! KATIE, THE LOVE OF MY LIFE HA HA HA HA HA, and I just sent our good friend BROOKE SHIELDS a coupon for a free mind audit (bring a friend - HA HA HA HA HA!!!) and she LOVED IT!!! Her exact words afterwards were “Xenu loves me, this I know… L. Ron Hubbard tells me so…” YEAH, BROOKE!!! HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THIS WOMAN?!!! NOT AS MUCH AS I LOVE YOU, KATIE!!! AND YOU, SURI!!! YEAH!!! YEAH!!! YEAH!!! I AM IN LOVE, AMERICA, IN LOVE I TELL YOU!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Yours in the joy of jumping on random couches - Crazy Tom
Coming soon: In the next installment of “Let’s Ask …” celebrity songstress Beyonce Knowles discusses her love of ultra-diva Tina Turner, except for La Tina’s unfortunate ’80s hair period.
I’ve been having an argument for the past decade or so. I had it again this weekend after Barack Obama was called elitist. I sat down to write about it, but I also had The Daily Show on and Jon Stewart made my point beautifully. So, since he’s funnier than I am, I yield my podium to the honorable comedian from New York. (p.s. Cue it in 7:15 or so to get to the part I’m talking about. The rest is just background)
We here at Chrisco Spins are not only dedicated to intelligent debate among our own bloggers, but are absolutely committed to providing a public forum for those in society who seek an outlet for opinions classified as “gibberish” or “unintelligible” or “obviously written by TV ad people who were high at the time.”
