Shut It!

I'm at work, but I may have to leave soon -- too much chatter from the goon box. I'm tellin' ya, I'm getting nothing but an earful of yackity-yack this morning. The last thing I want first thing in the morning, especially after a dreams-killing subway ride up from Brooklyn, is to have to listen to some goon and/or goons blabber. (Yes, yes, it's nearly 11am, so for normal people it's mid-day; for me, it's dawn's early light, at least psychologically -- the horror). The worst part is that there's only a few other jackasses in the office -- next week is an issue closing, so most people will skip today -- so you'd think the office would be calm and mostly quiet [mostly]. But these few jackasses are here and they're chattering like there's no tomorrow -- and let me tell you, they are not using their indoor voices. Or their AM voices -- they're full-on FM Stereo and my head may explode. Worse, these fools are sitting en masse in this makeshift "office" (think of a hockey rink's penalty box and you've got a good idea of what this goon box is like), which somehow causes their racket to be amplified to volume 11. I don't know anything about the science of plexiglass-wall acoustics, but I do know that I may need to get the hell out of here before I hear someone screech "YOU DA MAN!" Oh, it'll happen, it'll happen. And if they, and if they do....

This reminds me of my days working as a "reporter" at Reed Construction Data in Atlanta, GA. My cubemate was a gentle giant called Maynard. This was my first experience with anything called Maynard, except that horrible beatnik Maynard G. Krebs character played by the dude who later played Gilligan, and I'm not sure I'm over it. Anyway, I would almost always stay late, and so would Maynard. We'd be there late after a long day, half of which was generally spent whinging about how much we hated the job, and of course we'd be tired. Well, I'd be tired. Maynard somehow picked up this massive second wind about 6pmish, and it must have gone straight into his lungs -- the guy got loud. I mean, the office would be dead and I'm sitting only a few feet away from the dude, but he would start SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY. Normally he was capable of controlling his voice -- but he just went spastic in the evenings, when I was dead tired. And not particularly welcoming of noise. So I quit. Well, there were other reasons (example: there was also this likely retarded "girl" called Gareth on staff; she held the same position as me, and she was better at it than me. Well, she actually tried, which proves that even a monkey could do that work -- if it applied itself. More on Gareth later.), but Maynard's night bellowing had a lot to do with my taking that job and shoving it. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.