Just a titty-fucker in a titless universe.

“You were late every Friday for the past two months.”

My boss said those words, but I could not believe they were springing forth from his mouth. I knew he was wrong. He knew what he was saying was bull shit. But there it was, nice and neat on a spreadsheet. Days and times of late editions in orange. And every single, god damn Friday night deadline, my name was beside a page in orange.

I’d fought for a little bit more time on Friday nights after three weeks of the football season and us -- a supposed newspaper -- having late next to 83 percent of the scores during that time.

“This is futile,” I made my case to the managing editor. “Why bother holding for the extra hour and a half if this is what we get? If you hold for 15 more minutes, we’ll get in almost every single game. It’s that simple.”

I laid out my case. Logically. Factually. Calmly.

Two days later, I was given the proverbial “thumps up” in an e-mail to go ahead and tack on 15 more minutes. But don’t “ever” push that any further.

So, for the past two months, I’d been sending pages after the original deadline, but never coming any later than 11 minutes past it. Which meant, to me, I was early by at least four minutes each day. Until today. When I was shown a piece of paper that pretty much said “you, Randy, have been late every fucking Friday and cost you and your co-workers lots of bonus money. … Muuah-ah-ah…”

The evil laughter really wasn’t on the piece of fucking paper, but it was there in my head. And certainly in the bosses’ heads as they crunched the numbers and pocketed the money ear-marked for our bonus into their evil billfolds. And yes, I believe they would call them that, just to piss me off.

“Is this fucking real?” I said to my boss, loud enough for his boss, just a pane of glass separating us, to head.

“Yes it is. Look at the numbers.”

“Well, I was given permission to exceed the deadline on Friday. I think if you look at every other night of the week, where I make deadline, they’d see this and know I’m doing a good job.”

“They don’t.”

“But the managing editor (I’ve not used his name, or a close approximation because he’ll cry about it in his dodge-ball loving girlfriend’s arms), said I had 15 extra minutes.”

“Well, Randy, my man, that was bull shit.”

“Well, you can tell them to take their spreadsheet and shove it up their mother fucking asses!” once again, loud enough for the office next to us to hear, and for the entire room to hear. “I’m sick and tired of being fucked over by people in this office. Especially talentless fucks and members of the lucky sperm club.”

Now, these tirades -- especially the out loud ones -- are the real reason I haven’t done too well with my career. Well, pretty well, until the layoff, but who’s counting other than me?

For no reason whatsoever, the Black Oak Arkansas song “Jim Dandy” popped into my head. And, I started singing it out fucking loud.

“Jim Dandy to the rescue … Jim Dandy to the rescue…Jim Dandy to the rescue…

But no one took up the hot-as-hell redhead’s part for me…

“Go Jim Dandy! Goooooooooooooo!”

So, I slumped back into my cubicle and stared at my computer screen, which 15 minutes after my arrival was still booting up its almost a decade old version of Windows. That, and the Adobe CS2 that we are still using -- two behind my fucking bootlegged copy -- just makes my fucking day. Every day.

“Hey man, you OK?” my co-worker Mitchell says with a laugh. He knows full well that if I even thought for a second that he was serious in asking me that, he’d be without a hand by now.

“Dude, this place, it’s not worth getting mad over. I try to tell you that every day, spare you the decade and a half of angst, but every now and again, it fucking tit-fucks me. And, seriously, I like tit-fucking, but I don’t like being titty-fucked.”

“Righteous, man. Righteous. You should fucking write that down.”

Little did he know, I was already thinking about doing exactly that.

The only woman in the place that I think is really attractive, and not just office-hot, walks by right after my titty-fuck tirade. I wonder if she heard it, then I realize how stupid it is to wonder that since I know damn well she heard it. But, she’s married anyway, so it doesn’t freaking matter.

Speaking of titty-fucking, I start to wonder why the fuck I’m still at this job. One that I hate a little more every day. Especially that weasely fuck that I hired my first time around. But, that’s for another time. I don’t want to waste thought seconds on him. You can never get them back, you know.

Why am I not in New Orleans? I should be freelancing my ass off down there, drinking booze when I’m not and enjoying the Mississippi River and streetcar rides. I almost did it twice. But my life is a whole serious of almosts. And that gets me down. So I stop thinking about it, and go back into daydreaming mode. Hell, I could probably titty-fuck someone in New Orleans without really trying. Just tell ‘em I’m a writer.

Ha. Writer. I haven’t written anything that got published since January 24th of 2009. That’s almost two fucking years. Well, except for some briefs and re-writes that I did early on in my current gig of employment. Then I stopped doing that. Why? No one cared to ever even just say “hey, thanks for doing that.” That’s if they even noticed.