Wacky Accents

ARIES (March 21-April 19): It'll be a bumper car kind of week, Aries. As long as you stick to the designated course, you can expect lots of thuds, jolts, and caroms that won't hurt a bit. In fact, most of them will actually be fun even as they knock some sense into you. That's why you have cosmic permission to raise your normal quotas of raucous laughter, boisterous horseplay, and madcap adventures. For extra credit, sprinkle wacky accents and silly voices into your conversations.

You hit the nail on the head, Rob Brezny. I am sticking to the designated course, thuds, jolts and all. I can’t say the technological breakdown yesterday was fun. In fact my typing/mouse hand is still numb from all the backtracking and repeated repetition. Today’s remedy: said raucous laughter and Smurf dialect. If I can really pull this off, I will really be put some place special and white, where I will be overmedicated into utter dullitude.

Dear Dr. Lyons,

Enclosed you will find our smurfin’ letter requesting revision to your smurfy manuscript, along with the smurfy comments of both smurfy reviewers. Please let me smurf if you have any smurficulty opening any of these smurfiles.

Smurfy regards,

Sara S.
Smurfy Assistant, Smurf Medicine

Smurfiles? Another nail hit on the head. Smurfile: One who admires Smurfs and their culture. [Editor's note: Possibly it should be Smurphile, but anything Smurf needs an f in it.] Probably this is nothing new, like everything else everyone comes up with. O dull, overmedicated drudgery: life reproduced into dissolution. This will be the name of my first intellectual death metal album. And this will be my first criminal offense as a death metal icon: I will gnaw the head off of Vanity Smurf--on stage.

You were right, Rob Brezny. Already, despite thuds and jolts, I feel knocked up by sense. My breasts are enormous with milk.

* * * * *

Appendix: I just got the fucking runaround again. Please pardon my hot air. heart palpitations I called the help desk because I need a program installed on my computer for some work I need to do for The Good Doctor. I waited and waited through terrible music and a computerized voice. Finally, an answer.

He says: You need to fill out an Action Item Request form on our home page.

Ok, thanks, I say brightly.

I go to fill out the form. A message tells me to change my pin number, then a message tells me not to change my pin number. Then a message tells me to fill in my employee number, but I can't by way of an error page. With slightly pursing lips, I call the help desk again. I wait longer this time. More music, more computerized voice. I get the same guy and tell him what happened.

Well, you need a supervisor to fill out that page. Are you a supervisor? he says.

I could have said, "Why didn’t you fucking tell me that when I called before?" But of what good? Instead: No, I'm not. Click.

So I have now sent an e-mail to the supervisor of the department, who isn’t here right now, who has little to do with me anyway because my job here thankfully involves only me and The Good Doctor. To get this fucking program installed on my computer, which—raucous laughter—I could have fucking done myself except that the computer requires a password from the help desk to do it, I have to go through her to go through the help desk to come back to me. Inanity! Fucking inanity!

Smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf

Deep, deep breaths and Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation train me through this smurfing morning. For smurfing real. All is well the end.