#RepressedAnger #Lyrics

Thank you, so much, for causing me pain.
Thank you, so much, for hurting me again.

Your bad design decisions fall upon me like cold rain.

Thank you, for all the pain.

Could you fix your data, by chance?

I never wanted to join in this dance

Of the Masochism Tango that you constantly advance.

Please fix your {bleep}, perchance?

Conversations While Married

Frage: "I may have missed it while I was ranting."

UIM: (fake-innocent) "But you never rant."

Frage: "Yes, yes."

UIM: (fake-innocent) "My wife is sweet and demure and obedient, and never has an unkind word to say about anyone."

Frage: "You really ought start wearing a cup if you insist on talking $#!+ like this."

UIM: (too busy cackling to respond.)

Frage: "I may only have one good knee left, but I'm pretty sure I can knee you with it."

UIM: (still cackling)

Frage: "Obedient, my @$$..."

Conversations While Married

(Frage is a Shark Week enthusiast.)

(Frage also had to have a quiet day on Sunday because of a migraine.)

UIM: "Still watching Shark Week recordings?"

Frage: "Well, yeah, I am catching up from Migraine Sunday."

UIM: "Least popular holiday on the calendar."

(Pause)

UIM: "I don’t recall the vestment colors, but instead of flagellating your back, you have to smack yourself in the face."

Frage: "Wait, with a fish?"

UIM: "No, Fish-Slapping Dance is a Monty Python gag.  So that would be Church of England."

Some Say Waffles, They are a Razor....

Last Saturday, Frage and I were eating breakfast in an hourly-rental car before grocery shopping.

Frage misheard the word 'love' as 'waffles'.

(My fault for talking while eating.)

So of course, the Lyric Word Replacement gag came out of mothballs.

In this case, replace the word 'love' in a lyric with 'waffles'.

As examples: The Beatles are now singing "Can't Buy Me Waffles"; and Tina Turner is now asking "What's Waffles Got to Do with It?"

(Yes, it blows the scansion to hell, but I decided to run with it anyway)

So, the top 11 that I thought up today....

11."Crazy in Waffles" - Beyonce

10."Sunshine of Your Waffles" - Cream

9. "You Give Waffles a Bad Name" - Bon Jovi

8. "And in the end, the waffles you take/ Are equal to the waffles you make." - The Beatles, "The End"

7. "Shake Your Waffles" - Debbie Gibson

6. "Making Waffles Out of Nothing at All" - Air Supply

5. "You pull the trigger on my/ Waffle Gun." - Kiss

4. "The Greatest Waffle of All" - Whitney Houston

3. "How Deep is Your Waffle" - Bee Gees

2. "Tainted Waffles" originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964, covered in the 1981 by Soft Cell.

1. "Some people call me the Space Cowboy./ Some call me the Gangster of Waffles." - Steve Miller, "The Joker".

Married Conversations: I need a little room to operate, here.

Frage: "Have fun.  Make good choices.  Don't cry in meetings."

UIM: "Why do you want to limit my options?"

Married Conversations

UIM: "I have to call in to an all-hands that they declared last week. I hope it's more 'here's how we're dealing with COVID' and not 'we're selling you for medical experiments'."

Frage: "Could be both."

UIM: "You're right. Those aren't mutually exclusive."

Married Conversations: pillaging just like everybody else does.

Frage: "Somehow I keep startling this one co-worker.  I think they are going to want me to wear a bell."

UIM: "Well, you are descended from the rare Nordic Ninjas.  The small strain of introverted Vikings - they were okay with pillaging and plundering, but they didn't want to make a lot of noise about it, and they needed some quiet time to recharge afterward."

(Pause.)

(UIM snickers.)

Frage: (resigned to it) "Okay, what of your own jokes are you laughing at now."

UIM: "Just imagining a panning camera shot down the longboat, all the other Vikings are singing and drinking as they return home with booty, and there's just this one morose Viking in the middle.  Soundtrack is playing "How Soon is Now" by the Smiths."

Conversations while Married

(Walking home after running errands with an hourly-rental van.)

Frage: "Look at that one guy, no headlights on at 9 at night!"

UIM: "I refer you back to our earlier conversation: there's a$$#0le drivers everywhere; no sense getting offended by them."

Frage: "Look: I point out dogs when I see them; I point out a$$#0les when I see them.  This is who I am."

UIM: "As long as you don't point out dog's a$$#0les, I guess I can -"

Frage: (shocked by what she thought she heard) "What about putting on tassels?"

(UIM starts cackling and gasping for air - stops and cackles very loudly, slapping his knee, for most of a minute.)

(UIM looks up at Frage, solemnly staring at him, and he cackles some more.)

UIM: "No, I said - As long as you don't point out dog's a$$#0les -"

(Frage starts cackling, as they start walking again.)

(A few minutes later, Frage and UIM pass a woman carrying a tiny dog.)

Frage: (smiling at woman) "He's so tiny and cute."

(A moment passes.)

UIM: (leaning in to Frage) "Now, please do not point out the dog's a$$#ole."

(Frage surprise laughs, then regards UIM worriedly.)

Frage: "Go on, say 'a$$#0le' a little louder. People will -"

UIM: (louder) 'A$$#0le A Little Louder."

Frage: "Seriously, in public?  People get offended by that.  This time it was an innocent woman carrying a chihuahua, but what if a gang member thought you were -"

UIM: (cop voice) "Against the wall, please, I need to search you for chihuahuas."

Frage: "What?"

UIM: "Hey, you're the one who said gang members would be carrying chihuahuas..."

Frage: "No!"

UIM: (cop voice) "We believe there's gang involvement smuggling unlicensed chihuahuas from Indiana, where chihuahua ownership is less regulated."

Repressed Anger - Long Distance Banking Edition.

"Wow, I can actually feel my Dad's  spirit rising out of me now -"
(Switches to Aggrieved Dad voice)
"I don't know why I gotta ask the same question five times to get one answer.  I don't know why I gotta ask the same question ten times to get an ACCURATE answer.  But if THAT'S the way you want to run this clown car, all right."
(Back to normal voice.)
"Of course, that was not an accurate Dad quote.  There was nowhere near enough profanity.  F-bombs would have been falling like spring raindrops."

I wish I had thought of this line 20 years ago.

You can test any case you want
At analysis restaurant.

from the back files: data gnomes

An e-mail chain from Oct 2009.

UIM: Well, the morning full symbol database load should be happening soon, so maybe some magic will happen, and the suspiciously-merry data gnomes will carry the symbol into the editing interface.

Developer: Didn't anyone tell you? The IBDG Local 334 is on strike. We've been trying to hire scabs, but the gnomes hired bridge trolls to keep anyone from breaking the picket line.

UIM: I had wondered why a wav file of “Joe Hill” launched when I opened the editing interface this morning.  Apparently, we never loaded the reagan32.dll to prevent this sort of thing.

from the back files: sharing one's emotions at work.

From: UIM
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:06 PM
Subject: sharing one's emotions at work.
"If only we can modulate the waves of depression that UIM emanates, so that we can encode information.  Expect to be used as an inbound NIC when the devs are ready to test the TCP/BLAH protocol. "


(Current note: writing it today, I might name it the TCP/BPD protocol.)

When that doctor asked me, 'Son, how'd you get in this condition?'

Last summer, while at a cousin's wedding weekend, I was talking with my brother, Shell, and quoted myself, "I accept that we come from the 'hold my beer and watch this' demographic."
Shell: "F**k that, I'll do it one-handed. I'm not letting anyone touch my beer."
UIM: "Hm.  Yeah.  That is more accurate to our family traditions."

Bears and popes and such

Two different conversations within the last year.

---

(Sitting at home, while my wife, Frage, points out I may have gone too far with my humor.)
Frage: “But you just had to poke the bear with a short stick.”
Frage: (UIM voice) “Well, why did you bring a bear here to begin with?”
Frage: (different voice) “Well, there’s no sign saying bears aren’t allowed.”
(UIM cackles.)
UIM: “See?  Isn’t fun to do both sides of the argument?”
Frage: “When I do it, yes.  Not so much when you do it.”

---

(Riding in the car on the way up to the suburbs.)
Frage: “You’re wrong.”
UIM: “Wait? Am I in a forest?”
Frage: “I don’t know.  Do you see a pope sh*tting?”
UIM: “I see a bear in a pope hat.”



Note: The "If a man speaks in the forest" joke is one of the first jokes my wife told me after we started dating.  Hence, it's more "couple shorthand" and less "UIM really believes that crap."

Truths and useful phrases from a previous boss.

"Thank you for your two cents, but I'm afraid you've got change coming back."

"Go sell that crazy somewhere else."

"If the high point is the tree catching on fire, then I just won't bother with Christmas."

"Yeah, that's it - we smoked the pooch right there."


"I don't want anyone horizontal on those couches.  When people go horizontal, stuff starts coming out of them."

This happens two or three times a day at work...

... as I make mistakes.

Me: "What are you doing, UIM?"
Me: "F**king up."
Me: "Okay, as long as you know what you're doing."

(Yes, it's kind of a Heathers reference.)

Coining words at work

Other Team's Lead: “You coined the word ‘suckage’ today.”
UIM: “I did?”
(pause)
UIM: “Was this when I blanked out while talking to {The Head of the Development Group here}?”
Other Team's Lead: “I do that all the time.”
UIM: “No, I mean, literally, I have no recollection of that five minute slice of time.”
Other Team's Lead: “You said, ‘Everything sucks!  The suckage is everywhere!’ “
UIM: “Thank you.”

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.”