Tree Reflection in Ice

Tree reflection in ice, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Uh-Oh

I love love loved Google GChat. For those who don’t know, GChat is an IM chat feature that’s built into Google’s GMail application. It's pretty handy since you can stay in constant contact with your friends and family throughout the workday as long as you keep your GMail page up.

Like most IM applications, you can create a custom message on your status bar to make people aware of whatever you want them to be made aware of. Some examples of common custom messages that I’ve seen are “Out for lunch”, “In a meeting” and “White cream on my lips = Happy soul”.

My custom messages as of late, on the other hand, have been anything but common. Rather, my messages convey a sense of the different aspects of who I am:

Erwin the food critic:
“Used Kleenex from funeral homes taste good.”

Erwin the philosopher:
“Trees play with Mr. Potatohead in the puddle that is your toejam.”

Erwin the picky home cleaner:
“Please wash dishes with your hands no fingering allowed.”

Erwin the savvy internet surfer:
“Honey and cream we are in each other’s pockets.” (Taken from engrish.com)

Erwin the green earth conservationist:
“Fossil fuels in your anus add unnecessary energy to the dolphin show in Thailand.”

Erwin the simple man:
“Boobies!”

I love love loved Google GChat...up until I reviewed who my contacts were that could read my Erwin-enlightening status messages and discovered that my mother-in-law is on the list. Since she never logs on during the day, I felt a little relieved that there was a slight chance that she might not see these messages, but then I realized that even when I’m not on GMail, the Google Talk application has my messages up all day and all night. And since she checks her e-mail regularly, I’m pretty sure she’s noticed a few of my not-so-G-rated status messages. Doh!

Gay or Not Gay?

Office Job Confessions

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, Entirely Erwin, already in progress:

Complete silence.

Toilet paper rolling.

Wiping.

Flush.

Pants pulled up.

Work shirt tucked in.

Jangling belt tightened.

Stall door lock turning.

Those are the sounds that the guy in the stall next to me in the washroom at work is hearing. Bet he didn’t expect to hear this one coming:

BOOM!

That’s the sound of me giving the stall door a nice shoulder block. Mistakenly thinking that unlocking a door actually means that the door is not locked and therefore open, I ran into the immovable object that is the washroom stall door on the left. I'll never assume that again.

Then a brief moment of self-discovery – holy crap, when I’m stuck in a washroom stall, I get claustrophobic! I’m not sure if my anxiety was coming from turning that damn lock back and forth and shaking the walls of the stall as I think of Chris Jericho's entrance song "Break the Walls Down" in my head without anything happening or if it was the feeling that the guy next to me (who was completely silent throughout my whole ordeal) was like a time bomb literally waiting to explode with the biggest, stankiest, nastiest shit known to man.

I digress – is it me or does it seem like office washrooms are like church of scientology birthing rooms? I’m not sure how it is in other places of work, but in mine it seems like a requirement that there must be complete silence as guys do their business bringing some nice steaming turds into the world.