윤

I moved the number a Chinese restaurant once offered me a thousand dollars for when I called in an order and got the owner to that Pink 8110 (seriously, no one seems able to do the Henna print justice) for 老婆 to use, but she doesn’t have the sentimental attachment to the Pearl I do …only the majority of the thousand e-mails I sent to you during our courtship came from one! Well, I’ve offered her the “GY” iPhone instead—though I’m so totally reneging if I find this case:

Even early on 老婆 made this insight into my character, and the 豬頭 in me meant I wasn’t about to change, either. (And still she married me. But that’s a subject for another day.) My reason is this: the alternative is worse. Those of you with short tempers act irresponsibly upon your anger, then emerge from behind your slammed door and assume your victims will just accept your smiling face. I don’t. And I think those of you that do are only contributing to these babies’ stunted emotional growth. They won’t ever learn that there are real consequences to their tantrums, that is, people are hurt, and the stupid jokes that they try and make their comebacks with, which only pours salt on all our wounds. I can clot, too, but not on someone else’s schedule.

(My apologies to my 弟婦. It’s a great name. I love the Blue Hearts song.) USA says “Characters Welcome” when referring to their lineup, and if I were ever to do like Andy Millman and write a sitcom of my own, I might consider basing one on her for an episode. She’d be let go by the end of it, too, because it’d be implausible to keep her on: meeting with the department for the first time her hair was unwashed, her enthusiasm for a job in this economic climate she expressed by telling us how bored she was waiting on her eBay transactions, and I wasn’t alone in noticing an unusual propensity for the terms “man” and “dude”. Her “hell, no” response to an inquiry was almost an “aw hell no” moment in itself.

By her second day Jeannie and I were having a count-off between all the mans and dudes; I won Wednesday 17-10. You’d think it wasn’t possible both to start and end a sentence with “man”, but she managed. With, of course, a “dude” in there. And not just when those were the only words.

And yet her verbal idiosyncrasy was the only one of hers she didn’t get around to discussing. The loud burps, which I let Jeannie add to her score when I had an insurmountable lead, she decided it was easier to acclimate her neighbors to by commenting upon first, and then not so much with a request for pardon but rather as a conversation starter. I was told that once informed of her termination less than a week later—she walked into the boss’s office asking, you guessed it, “What’s up, dude”—she hinted at a Title VII claim by blaming her disability, which, she shared at a lunch, was some sort of metal poisoning. House writers might make it a case out of her thinning hair, gastrointestinal complaints and even her impatience with work, her co-workers, potential clients… much less the English language, but whatever sympathy they could create for her situation, helped along by such an asshole of a doctor, certainly doesn’t earn her a spot in the front line of any company. Except maybe ShamWow. What a shitty ending. Man.

I liked that they didn’t go with the original’s ending (which I actually haven’t seen yet, though the box set is on the shelf; I considered bringing it back from London, but I correctly predicted the shipping from Amazon wouldn’t exceed the 40-quid price at HMV), teased it, then went with one that reminded me of Red Dwarf’s “Back to Reality”. But a “gene hunt” on Mars? Too bad I didn’t think as much of the rest of the re-make.