I Enjoy Making Stuff Up

In between trying to repair the paper folding machine, and deciding what real work I was going to do today, I followed up on a phone call from my boss that asked if I could explore where a customer's monthly mortgage statement went. I found the relevant information, and called our servicing department, who said they'd send another copy out to the customer ASAP. I then called the customer back, and had the following conversation:

Me: [After telling him how much he owed, etc.] Sorry for the confusion,
sir. You'll get your statements in a regular fashion from here on out.
Him: Well, what happened? How come I didn't get a statement?

Now, I could tell him what the rep on the phone thinks happened (his state wasn't listed - zip and everything else was valid), but that's not as interesting as:

Me: Well, you know how you live in [redacted], IL? Your statement was sent
to [redacted], LI. Which isn't a state.
Him: Oh! LI, the 51st state in the union!
Me: Indeed.

There was absolutely no need for me to make that up, especially because the
truth is nearly as weird and idiotic. I think there's something wrong with me.

Now, back to making the paper folding machine work, because I'm not folding all of these letters by hand. Even monkeying with the machine isn't necessarily appropriate. Fold them yourself, John. John [deleted - see note], whose name I will use in full, so that when you Google yourself like the insecure pervy wanker that you are, you will discover this: fold your own damn worthless letters, you miserable hack. You and your letters are a waste of otherwise useful carbon. Were I to receive one of your poorly-worded, 2-page form letters, obviously signed with a variation of Brush Script MT font, I would go back in time to intercept the mailperson at before he/she reached my home, and commit a federal offense by tipping his/her truck over and setting fire to it. That's how you commit mail fraud.

The best part is, I'm unlikely to be confronted about this, because I'll know that this post was discovered by the Googling of onesself, of which you should be embarrassed, you simpleton. So you can feel better: you're not the biggest clown in the office; you're just the most recent shiftless greed-driven coward to request that I do something stupid because you're lazy and don't want to do it yourself.

At least the phone call was fun.

[Note: While it was amusing to put his full name in, briefly, I realized that the consequences could actually be dire. So, forget it. Pretend it's in there - the rest of the post won't make sense otherwise.]

This is the Jump.

It Would Be Difficult to Be a Bigger Nerd

So. You can feel free to ignore this post, if you're some sort of connoisseur of quality writing, or in-depth analysis, because I'm just going to tell you that I wish I had been watching TV with someone, rather than by myself tonight, because I found myself to be very clever.

First, the only show I watched was Battlestar Galactica, which immediately limits my co-audience to people who aren't put off by the fact that the drama takes place in space, where there are robots-what-look-like-humans who are trying to kill our protagonists.
It's good drama, most of the time. Crisp writing. Plot twists. Good acting. So, get over yourself about the robots/space/future/imaginary-military stuff. You watch cop dramas, right? You watch 24? That's equally unbelievable - it's the story that's important.

But I digress. The two delightful things were as follows:

1) There's a guy who's on trial for being a bastard and letting a bunch of the robots-what-look-like-people kill a bunch of the people-who-are-in-fact-people-unless-they're-robot-sleepers-in-disguise. Bad crazy, president, bad! So, during this trial (in spaaaaaace), the prosecuting attorney lets us know that he, due to the allegations of genocide, must pay the Ultimate Price.

Clearly, Gaius Baltar will have to live with the Farrises[1]. And that's a television show I'd watch religiously. I'm going to pitch that as a television show, actually. As soon as I wrap my mind around it and can condense it into a sentence or two. Because right now it reads like this:

So, this genius scientist guy who's currently all scruffy and Jesus-looking has this megalomania thing going on, as genius scientists are wont to do, right? He's almost wiped out humanity twice, he found out his girlfriend was a robot, initially bent on the destruction of the human race, and he currently is hallucinating his sexy robot girlfriend and writing polemics on the rising aristocracy. He has to live with a college marching band director who's even weirder, and his wife, who is a total mystery, but briefly was thought to be a vampire. (This was later proven to be untrue. Or at least unlikely.) Hijinks ensue.

2) This is less involved. One character says, "I have a feeling about [something something]," leading the second character to say "Just a feeling?" Clearly, I must pause the TiVo, and sing Boston's "More Than a Feeling," briefly. I then un-pause the TiVo, to hear the character say "More than a feeling..."

I cheer.

[1]If you were never in NUMB, this was an actual conversation, once upon a time: "Then he'll have to pay the ultimate price." "He'll have to move in with Mr. Farris?" Of course, when he got married, it got amended to "the Farrises." I appreciate the correction to that quote, if it needs a correction.

This is the Jump.