Be Happy You Don’t Have These Jobs! (4/23/18)

OUR WORLD:

Welcome to what is quickly becoming everyone’s favorite Monday tradition: the jimmyschair “At Least I Don’t Have To Do That”-Job list.

Animal Control Officer:  

You ever read those stories where someone comes home to discover an anaconda coming up through their toilet?  There is a person whose job it is to just “take care of that.”  What if that was your first call on a Monday morning?  Like you, Roberta AnimalControl got after it a little too much on Saturday night and is still trying to shake off the cobwebs 2 days later.  She picked up a fatty Dunkin’ Donuts sandwich in the drive-thru on the way to work because “fuck it, I’ll work out later this week” and she hurried to her desk by 9:01, but it’s okay because their boss was in the bathroom.  Roberta opens up her bacon, egg and chee like it’s a very-depressing Christmas morning and just as she’s about to take the first bite….RING!  “Hey Roberta, there’s a king cobra in a toilet at 934 Winchester Boulevard.  Caller says it’s hissing.”

And that’s just one horrible, but very real possibility for the start of an Animal Control Officer’s day.  Can you imagine the amount of sad stuff they see?  I don’t even want to write about it.  In fact, I won’t–Mondays are depressing enough that I don’t need to wade into the animal cruelty-waters.  Just know that it’s someone’s JOB to look at a dog fighting ring up-close and get the dogs out of there, but you know there are times when they got there too late and….JESUS CHRIST, STOP IT JIMMY!

In Chicago, the city started this program a few years ago where they released wild coyotes into the city to help with the rat problem.  THAT WAS NOT A JOKE.  Well now, even though there have been no reported coyote attacks on humans in the past 30 years (but what about the unreported attacks?  Hard to call 911 after a coyote bites you in the neck…) I’m sure Animal Control Chicago gets inundated with calls about coyotes.  I know I’ve seen a coyote from inside my apartment that was running away and was like 2 blocks down when I asked The VP “should I call Animal Control?”  It’s about safety!  So Animal Control people HAVE to go and check out these coyote calls now on a regular basis, and if you’re an office you’ve got to be thinking “we’re due for a coyote attack; is it going to be me?”  Chicago just isn’t going to go FOREVER without one of these coyotes mauling someone, so who’s most likely to break the streak? An animal control officer responding to a call from some nerd 2 blocks away.  And spare me any talk about “well, they’re trained for this stuff.”  You can’t train to protect yourself from a WILD ANIMAL ATTACK because they are WILD. ANIMALS.

Used Car Salesman:

I just think it would really suck to have to tell people that you’re a “used car salesman” when they ask what you do for a living.  It has such brutal connotations.  I work in sales, and even that isn’t my favorite thing to say, but when I’m trying to explain my job sometimes I’ll say “I mean, it’s not like I’m a used car salesman.”  It’s like if a mouse met another animal and had to be like “yeah, I’m a mouse, but it’s not like I’m a rat.”  And the thing with used car salesmen is they’re not ALL the awful stereotype (“god Jimmy, you’re so brave to speak truth to power”-Used Car Salesman Union Leader)

Whenever someone goes to buy a used car, they also think that they’re going to have to negotiate like it’s a hostage situation (“IF YOU INCLUDE THE HEATED SEATS, NO ONE WILL GET HURT!”)  Which means that every person a used car salesman meets at work is coming in with an edge; pre-disposed to NOT be friendly.  Well isn’t that fun!  I know there are used car salesmen who are kinda’ slimy and need to be pushed back on, but there have to ones who are also just like “yeah, I’m just here to pay my bills and get home.”  Like, there have to be ones that offer the customer their actual lowest price first…right?  Then they just have to sit there and keep telling the customer “I’m not lying, that really is the lowest we can offer you” as the customer gets madder and madder and SO FUCKING MAD, COME ON!!!!

Finally, how about when a used car salesman has to go to his girlfriend’s parents for the first time?  You KNOW the dad immediately HATES that his daughter is dating a used car salesman.  Even if that first dinner goes well, the Dad will probably say something to his wife like, “yeah, he was nice, but what does that even mean? He is a used car salesman.”  They’ll NEVER trust him because of that job title.  I’d imagine that most used car salesman are married to daughters of other used car salesman then.  If there’s a Farmers Only dating app, shouldn’t there be a Used Car Sales Only one too?

Personal Chef for a Celebrity and their Kids:

This is mostly on account of having to cook for rich kids.  I see on the boob tube (cool guy slang for television) that a lot of athletes and celebrities have their own personal chefs.  And while I enjoy cooking, I can’t imagine cooking a gourmet meal for a rich kid who UNDOUBTEDLY will not appreciate it the way they should.  Whenever I cook a meal that’s a little more complicated than “dump packet contents into hot water,” I basically stare daggers through The VP of Ops until she takes a bite.  And if the doesn’t take a bite within the first 14 seconds of me handing her, her plate? I may or may not (but definitely do) yell at her to “take a bite before it gets cold!”  She’ll usually take a bite and tell me it’s great, but sometimes she doesn’t do it in a convincing enough way, so I’ll be all pouty like “oh, sorry you don’t like it.”

Now, if that was a 9 year old who never heard the word “no”, you think they’d overwhelm the chef with gratitude?  A chef, mind you, who probably went through like 7 years of schooling only to then be hired by a violent French Master Chef whose preferred “teaching” method is burning his sous chefs with the creme brulee blowtorch.  After 4 years of dodging Chef Blowtorch and his outbursts, you’d open up your own restaurant in a part of town that was dying to be turned into the next hipster-ville…But, you and your restaurant came about two years too early and you end up closing your dream restaurant 18 months after opening.  To avoid bankruptcy, you call back that investor guy who told you he “had something for you.”  And, that “something” was a job cooking for some Jay Cutler Wannabe (aka an asshole athlete) and his shitty kids.

Next think you know, you’re spending 8 hours making pasta by hand for your most popular burrata lasagna.  The celeb kids are running around and yelling about why it’s taking so long and probably snacking on pop tarts.  When you’re finally finished, they look at it and say it looks “gross” and they’d prefer pizza.  And where are the parents? DOESN’T MATTER CUZ THEY DON’T CARE ANYWAY!  So you try to sneak the uneaten gourmet lasagna out to your car when you leave that night, but the cousin who lives there for free catches you and reminds you that the lasagna is now “property of this house”…so you have to turn around and put it back into the Cutler’s fridge, where it will sit uneaten until you throw it out in 4 days.

MY WORLD:

I can’t believe I haven’t done this yet, but I have to put together a candy list.  I went on a big candy kick this weekend that my pants DID NOT APPRECIATE this morning.  I’m including chocolate and sweet and salty.  Here’s the jimmyschair Top 10 Candy List.  Disagreements are discouraged…SO SAVE ‘EM!

10-Crunch Bar

9-Chocolate Covered Almonds

8-Twix

7-Kit Kat

6-Gummy Fruit Slices

5-Gummy Bears

4-Crispy M&Ms

3-York Peppermint Patties

2-Peanut M&Ms

1-Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

*I will say the Top 3 rotate depending on mood and right now, Lil Jimmy loves some peanut butter and chocolate.

LETS LIKE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:

Make fun all you want, but Death Cab is my fave band and I feel myself gearing up for a BIG Death Cab kick starting with this….NOW!

 

LETS HATE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:

Getting your haircut for the first time in 5 months and having the hair washer lady mail in the scalp massage you’d been looking forward to.

MY BOVADA PICK OF THE DAY THAT I AM GENUINELY CONFIDENT IN BECAUSE I DESERVE GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN TO ME AFTER GETTING REAR-ENDED BY A GUY WITHOUT A LICENSE:

Let’s bang that OKC Moneyline (+175) together because we’re all friends and betting against an angry Russ Westbrook seems MUCHO STUPIDO!

(My account currently at $192.22)

K bye.

Easter and Being Inappropriate in Church

MY WORLD:

Happy Good Friday my sweet lil babies!!!  Who is excited for Easter this weekend?  For my siblings and I, Easter means going to church for one of the two times we go a year. (I legitimately thought about not writing this because I think there’s a chance we’re not going to church this year, and I don’t want to make my Mom feel bad about that…I may actually block my Mom from reading this post.) We’re an Irish Catholic bunch, but our Dad is JEW (saying that word aggressively is funny and not offensive because it’s my Dad) so he used to taunt us as we’d trudge our way out to church on Sunday mornings.  I specifically remember him sitting on the couch watching NFL Countdown when I was a kid.  He was the happiest he was ALL week and would wave excitedly at me saying “have fun at church!” as I contemplated suicide on my way to Sunday School and missing the first half of the Bears game.  If you’re a HUGE football fan, marrying someone of another religion, one that requires them being away for most of Sunday morning, is an absolutely genius move.  Well done, Dad.

As miserable as going to church and Sunday School was as a kid, going now with adult siblings is actually pretty fun because we get to make our Mom made and she can’t really do anything to us!  Making people mad is so much fun, guys.  As a kid, church was sitting in the pews and kneeling and being quiet and praying and standing for HOURS as the Priest drags on and on about how scary hell is and JESUS H CHRIST THIS IS BORING!  Now, though, as adults we get there purposefully late because my brothers and I get real quiet in the house as my Mom gets ready….like, “don’t say anything and maybe she won’t notice we’re gonna be late to church”-every time we go.  Thankfully, our Mom runs late.  She’ll normally burst out of her room saying good Catholic things like “SHIT!” as she rushes us all into the car.  My bros and sister and I share a “we did it!” glance on our way outside.

On the drive to church, my two brothers and I are probably making fun of our sister because she’s tougher than us but…ya know, a GIRL.  We pull up to the church and our Mom speed walks to the backdoor while we saunter behind cuz we bad y’all!  Who ‘dem bad boys?!?! WE ‘DEM BAD BOYS Y’ALL!!!  Our Mom will then look back and say something like “come on damnit” and we’ll get kinda scared for a second and hurry in.

When you arrive late to our church you have to stand in the WAY back, and my brothers and I love this because it means we can lean against a wall!  Walls!  Leaning!  This also means that we can whisper inappropriate jokes to each other the ENTIRE time.  These church services are easily our finest comedic hours.  It’s really like we save all our best material for these hours because A) Church is forever boring, sorry God but it’s true, and B) nothing is funnier than making your religious Mom laugh OR get mad at you for inappropriate jokes during church.  As Mass begins, our Mom and sister will move about 8 feet ahead of Brothers Pomerantz Limited (BPL) to prove that real Catholics don’t need walls to lean on.  Meanwhile, BPL will immediately begin getting inappropriate…normally, at the expense of some little kid dressed like a baby back bitch.

Some of the other targets of our deep, sick burns include:

-Teenage boys who tried WAY too hard trying too look like preppy stockbrokers.  I want to try to replicate the deep burns we’d nail these doofuses with, but you had to be there.  Trust me, they were deep and they were sick burns.

-Little kids doing dumb stuff is always an easy target.  We normally stand near the door to the bathroom door, so we get a real kick out of kids not understanding why a door is locked and then proceeding to BANG on it until it opens.  It’s also intensely funny whenever a kid budges a line of adults waiting for the bathroom, but none of the adults feel comfortable enough to say anything so they just let it happen.

-Hungover college kids with bed head and super wrinkled khakis.  Sometimes you can smell the fireball-sweats from across the room, but normally we’ll throw some “hang in there buddy” head nods his/her way.

-Girls who are dressed WILDLY inappropriate for church.  Like, the ones that wear their Friday-night-going-to-the-club-to-make-my-ex-jealous-dress.  You can feel all the adult women judging THE SHIT out of them, and the Dads are all like “what girl?” (use the side-eye dude).  Normally, one of my brothers will throw in a “yeah, but what if…” in the middle of our jokes because they’re contemplating hitting on a stranger in front of the Lord.  (Hitting on people in church is something that BPL has spoken about at length, and we just don’t think it’s really possible.  Does that mean we’ll stop talking about it?  Of course not.  But, it’s just not in our cards.)

-Angry dads; the ones with undiagnosed, but OBVIOUS anger issues.  Normally, their kids are really well-dressed and seemingly well behaved.  Then, one of the kids will do something awful like accidentally burp, and Daddy RageFit will burst into a clenched-teeth “KNOCK IT OFF DAMNIT!” full-on outburst with his eyes bulging and his wife moving another 6 inches away.  For comedy’s sake, BPL always fantasizes about trying to prod Daddy RageFit into an actual church-fight, but then we get ahold of ourselves and realize that getting our asses kicked in church would only be funny for like 2 seconds.

Of course, there are wild card targets that appear throughout the duration of the mass (people wearing jeans, smelly old ladies, the handshake guy who nobody knows) but these are the go-tos that we can expect at every mass.  This year, I’m hoping we don’t have to go cuz….ughhh, just like COME ON MOMMMMM!  But if we do, mark my words that BPL will make it VERY uncomfortable for anyone actually trying to impress the big man upstairs.

OUR WORLD:

It’s Good Friday and I have written many many words this week so my brain is fried….DON’T EAT MEAT TONIGHT GUYS!  (Yes, The VP and I have resos at a fancy steak place tonight, but we made these resos like 4 months ago and so our meat consumption doesn’t count.  ALSO!  We’re using a wedding gift card that’s about to expire, so doesn’t count times 2.  Suck it nerds.)

LETS LOVE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:

Salute to all the Church Daddy’s in jorts.

Jorts

LETS HATE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:

Huge fan of Easter candy but NOT the bunny circus peanut thingys.  Major Yucko Alert!

brachs_easter_marshmallow_chicks_and_rabbits_ff_130708.jpg

MY BOVADA PICK OF THE DAY THAT I AM GENUINELY CONFIDENT IN BECAUSE I DESERVE GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN TO ME AFTER GETTING REAR-ENDED BY A GUY WITHOUT A LICENSE:

Saved my many many dollars last night because this weekend is when Jimmy Gambles COMES FOR FUCKING BLOOD!!!

(My account currently at $73.12)

K bye.