"And this is my insignificant other," I said, pushing Debbie forward.
Frank, my boss, shook her hand as she shot me a dirty look.
"What? It was a joke! Now go get us some punch, stupid."
The room got real quiet then as the rest of the guests strained to hear my banter. Debbie's chin started to do that annoying quiver thing.
"You bastard," she whispered.
Frank coughed and sort of looked away, clearly embarrassed by her oversensitivity. She always made scenes like this in front of my friends, playing for attention or whatever, but I sure as hell wasn't about to let her ruin my business relationships.
"Don't worry, everyone," I announced, coming to the poor simp's rescue, "My wife's just pantybunched because I accidentally recycled her dumb shopping magazines! How's she gonna know what to spend my money on, right? Now come on, people, this is supposed to be a Christmas party!"
Date Written: December 2, 2004 Author:qualcomm Average Vote: 4.28125
Comments:
12/7/2004Will Disney (5):
12/7/2004Ewan Snow (5): 4.25, but not leaning skyward enough to round up. I didn't quite chuckle at this though it was kind of funny. Maybe I've been desensitized to the asshole narrator shtick. It was compact and efficient, though. I'll give it that.
12/7/2004Ewan Snow: Oops. Meant to give it 4. That's okay, though. No worries. Enjoy your extra star. Seriously. You practically deserve it.
12/7/2004The Rid (4):
12/7/2004Dick Vomit (4): I dare say I would have liked this even more had it ended at oversensitivity.
12/7/2004Mr. Pony (4): Solid. I thought it was a little easy, and a little regular, but solid.
12/7/2004Jimson S. Sorghum: But what about: "Frank, my boss, shook her hand as she shot me a dirty look." Is Frank a woman? Also: "Frank coughed...clearly embarrassed by her oversensitivity." I don't know. I think points have to be docked for this kind of thing. Normally I'm not such a stickler, but I really wasn't sure to whom these pronouns referred.
12/7/2004Litcube (5): I have to agree with what Will said.
12/7/2004scoop: who them pronouns refferred to.
12/7/2004anonymous: i can see your point for the first example, jimson, and i worried it a bit before deciding that readers would know frank was a dude, and therefore, that the "she" in the sentence could refer only to debbie. also, the sentence construction points to "she" being debbie; if i wanted to show that frank was shooting the dirty look, i would have written, "Frank, my boss, shook her hand and shot me a dirty look." as for the second example, see first half of my defense for the first example.
12/7/2004The Rid: And now my comment: Solid, evil shortness. Lovely. Shorts where people are unabashedly assholish and don't know they're assholish are great.
12/7/2004Streifenbeuteldachs (4):
12/7/2004TheBuyer (5): this kind of thing makes me cringe
12/7/2004Dylan Danko: This is a rip off of The Office. Charges should be filed.
12/7/2004John Slocum (3): This is a pony 3.
12/7/2004Ewan Snow: Author, yes, context makes the pronoun question clear, but I had to re-read the sentence. It's not so much incorrect as a little awkward. I did not deduct points for it, however, because I am not as much of a stickler as my very, very, very, very significant other.
12/7/2004John Slocum: I wonder if it's possible to harness that awkwardness with the pronoun for a purpose, I don't have a purpose in mind per se, but maybe there's a plausible scenario where that would be powerful. Maybe this isn't worth discussing.
12/7/2004Jimson S. Sorghum: The thing is, that's what I thought was going on. That's why I was confused. I thought the author was deliberately trying to create some kind of confusion about Frank's gender. It actually interfered with my ability to appreciate this short. That's why I've chosen to abstain from voting.
12/7/2004Jimson S. Sorghum: P.s. You're right about the sentence construction, but I mistakenly read "hand" as "head" the first time through. I guess she probably could have been shaking her own hand, too. Perhaps she was fresh from the ladies' room and all the hand towels were gone or something.
12/7/2004Jon Matza: Jimson: you'd have understood if you knew the first thing about gender studies.
12/7/2004anonymous: no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
12/7/2004cuntry (3): "stupid" coming so early kills it a bit for me. i also misread the pronoun but am myself grammatically challenged. 3/4 but 3 to account for earlier extra * by Mr Snow.
12/7/2004Mr. Joshua (5): Correctively, for the injustice the author has suffered.
12/7/2004scoop (5): Yeah. Totally KIRing it.
12/7/2004Dylan Danko: stop saying that
12/8/2004Mr. Joshua: You got a problem with keeping it real, Dylan?
12/11/2004Phony Millions (4):
12/11/2004hagit mizrachy: Cuntry,
Several things are amiss here.
Debbie is just the kind of stupid bitch that pisses me off.
Had stupid been used any later in the piece, the author would have been doing us all a disservice. But you refuse to see this and continue misguidedly believing that we live in a Democracy rather than G-d's great Constitutional Republic.
This is apparently why you feel it necessary to involve yourself in treacherous vote-rigging. As such, I feel a certain obligation to intententionally misunderstand you. Therefore,I presume your indicisive 3/4 means .75. Or does it mean 3.5?
DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT REDUCING YOUR VOTE BY .5 TO A 3 balances out a previously corrected error?
"Oh but I meant a 3 or a 4" you shreik. I do not want to know about your inability to make a solid decision.
Despite my anger, I really need to go now as my husband just cut a hole in a new sheet.
Hagit