Workplace environmental variables

For whatever reason, during a discussion with the team's project manager:

Project Manager: "Just don't do the Time Warp dance."
UIM: "But, {name}, it's just a jump to the left."

Within a minute, he IMs me the lyrics.

Prompting my response via IM:
"Yeah, I know the lyrics.  Strangely enough, I was not going to utter the phrase 'pelvic thrust' at work until I was forced to do so by circumstances outside my control."

She does have to remind herself that she chose me out of the herd...

During a conversation:
Frage: "You're missing the point, yet again."
UIM : "I prefer to think of it as, avoiding the point, with the skill of a matador."

#ThisDidn'tActuallyHappen

A: “We tried instituting a talking stick for the daily outage meeting.”
B: “Well, that method doesn’t work for every group meeting.”
A: “Yeah, the problem was that Ops viewed it more as a ‘talking bo-staff’ or ‘talking quarter-stave’, depending whether they were watching more Asian martial arts movies or Robin-Hood-type movies recently.”
B: “So, management took the stick away.”
A: “Well, more that Ops insisted on upgrading to a ‘talking machete’, so, at that point we just went back to the standard outage meeting format of sitting at a table with groups sullenly glaring at each other.”

#RepressedAnger

"Have you outsourced the data correction to particularly slow and decrepit mules?"

#RepressedAnger

"Are there any other similar enhancements to the datafeed which you've been planning, such as catapults full of pigeon guano aimed at our homes?"

#RepressedAnger

"There are not enough animated-gifs-of-Darth-Vader-force-choking-an-incompetent on the entire internet to express how enraging this is."

from the back files: glass

From: UIM
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 9:59 AM
"You're not a glass-half-full person, really."
"I'm not even a glass-half-empty person.  The glass is chipped, and cracked, and has contaminated sea water, and someone is trying to pour it in my nose."

Another typical home conversation.

(As UIM rises from the couch, he knocks a pillow off onto the floor.)
UIM: (singing) "F**k you, pillow; f**k yoooooou."
Frage: (from the bedroom) "What are you cursing now?"
UIM: "Everything.  I am launching imprecations at the totality of existence."
Frage: (tired) "Awesome."

People Should Not Ask UIM for Explanations.

(After UIM makes a passing mention in a work e-mail.)
Colleague: "Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead?"
UIM: "Once while bored on Chicago mass transit,I tried to imagine a cheesy horror movie set in the area where I grew up.  Riverhead is the county seat.  It was easy for me to imagine mutant lobsters (caused by the Navy testing something odd out at Calverton) rampaging up the Peconic River and leveling Riverhead, before swerving south to crush the Hamptons in their buttery oversized claws."

Let's face it, folks, she's tired.

(UIM and Frage driving around, doing errands.)
(Frage is audibly irritated by a couple different pedestrians stepping thoughtlessly into the road in front of her.)
UIM : “You have to remember: These are simple people.”
(Frage chuckles.)
UIM: “The common clay of the new West.”
Frage: “What?”
UIM: “You know: morons.”
(Silence.)
UIM: “Look, I either answer that, or, ‘Mongo only pawn in game of life.’  Quotes from Blazing Saddles are all I’ve got right now.”
Frage: “Thank you so much.”
UIM: “I certainly don’t think I can respond with ‘I think he said the sheriff’s near’ relevantly.”