Have you noticed that people who are least deserving of occupying positions of authority are almost always the ones who occupy those positions?  Many people have bosses who fit into that definition.  At the moment, I have a boss like that (I probably won’t if she ever finds her way here – and any tattlers out there will get quite a pinch if they squeal on me).

I work at a third-tier publishing company that creates newsletters that few people read. And we charge people $700 a year to read these newsletters – not surprisingly, each year brings fewer and fewer renewals and even fewer new subscriptions.  Really, if you have $700 to flush, what would do with it?  Subscribe to a newsletter filled with information you can get for free off the Net? 

How the company stays in operations is a mystery, though I suspect the board of directors is made up entirely of magicians (no other profession could levitate inert bodies without the aid of visible wires). 

In this scheme of things, my boss thinks she is very, very important.  Well, she thinks she is – the opinion is shared primarily with a small network of sycophants and snitches feed her ego.  These sad folks seem unaware that none of my boss’s publications come within the neighborhood of commercial viability.  Hell, these publications don’t even come within the suburbs of commercial viability.  Where the money comes, who knows?  But it may explain our lower-than-industry-average salaries.  (Can you tell that I am not a happy employee?)

But so what?  My boss likes to strut around imagining she is control of everything and that the world must genuflect to her wisdom and thought leadership.  If she has a weakness, it comes in being introduced to reality.  I did that once (not by accident) when she was berating me for some inanity regarding perceived problems with my job performance.  I reminded her that under her leadership, the publication where I now labor has crashed to a point where more than 40% of our subscribers cancel their subscriptions when the opportunity arises.  I asked her, with complete politeness, how it was she was able to achieve such results. 

Her response?  She sat straight up, flared her nostrils, tightened her jaws to the point that her chins wobbled, and expanded her eyes into a gaze that was probably identical to the gaze flashed by Jack the Ripper the moment his switchblade opened in his fingers.

I didn’t get cut, nor did I get an answer – my boss somehow kept her composure and blurted out through Nancy Reagan lips: “I don’t have to answer that.”  Oddly, I also didn’t get fired.  Not yet, anyway (the day is still young).  Though I should get back to work and complete what they are barely paying me to do.

So how is life mistreating you?

One night during a romantic tryst, my cutie du jour paused to gaze upon me and then exclaimed: “You know, you look just like Bob Saget.”

Needless to say, my cutie didn’t seem so cute anymore.  Which is not meant as a slur against Bob Saget (I am sure he is the object of panting desire among a devoted audience of admirers).  But being told I resemble Bob Saget, especially during the attack of Cupid’s arrows, isn’t quite the same thing as “you are so handsome” or “you are soooooo sexy” or “you look just like Matthew McConaughey” (which would confirm that I would be in the midst of pleasuring someone who is either visually impaired or hasn’t seen Matthew McCounaughey lately).

I am rarely told I look like anyone famous.  One person swore I was a dead ringer for "Today Show" talker Matt Lauer, which I couldn’t understand.  Aside from the fact we are both white male bipeds, Matt Lauer and I have nothing in common – certainly not in regard to our exteriors (Matt's not better or worse...he's just not me).

In fact, during the course of my life I’ve only twice been seriously mistaken for other people.  The first time was outside of a liquor store in Yonkers, NY, where a woman came out and started yelling “Tony!” at me.  After looking at her dumbly for a few seconds, she stopped and looked at me dumbly.  Then she conceded her error by proclaiming: “My God, you look just like a travel agent who works near here.”

Okay, I look like Tony the travel agent in Yonkers, NY.  I should’ve asked where Tony worked – I could’ve walked into his agency and pulled a lost-twin routine on him.  Or maybe the woman was enjoying the merchandise of the liquor store when she made that observation.  After a couple of gins, every guy could look like Tony!

The second time was outside of an ice cream parlor in Meriden, CT.  (I tend to circulate in second-tier Northeastern cities, in case you are wondering.)  A large woman who might be mistaken for the comic strip witch Broom Hilda came bouncing out of the store, stopped, did a double take, and announced: “Oh, my, you look just like my son!”

The notion that someone like me could resemble the offspring of this creature from the wrong side of the gene pool did little to boost my self-esteem.  And to make matters worse, I didn’t even get a free ice cream cone for being the dead ringer for her son.

Perhaps being mistaken in a half-naked and dimly lit setting for Bob Saget was more flattering?

In many offices, there are birthday parties.  In many large offices, there are multiple birthday parties.  Needless to say, the excess of birthday parties comes with an excess of birthday cakes.  And if one actively participates in a year’s worth of office-related birthday parties (with their rich and gooey cakes), one can begin to resemble a late-life Marlon Brando.

Now I like birthday cake just like the next slob.  And I also like ice cream.  But I don’t like ice cream cakes.  They are not easy to enjoy, especially if you are standing around a conference room table trying to slice the ice cream cake with one hand while balancing a wobbly paper plate in the other.

One office birthday party some time back, I was given a solid slice of chocolate ice cream cake and a plastic fork.  The fork did not survive its encounter with the ice cream cake.  I obtained a second fork, waited a couple of minutes for the ice cream cake to defrost somewhat, and I did a second attack.  At this point I was back at my desk, where I could do battle from the comfort of a chair – this was not a conflict that could easily be accomplished while standing.

The fork penetrated the slice of ice cream cake and made some progress.  I emphasize the word “some,” as the fork became lodged about a quarter-inch into its target and could neither go forward nor retreat.  And, not surprisingly, this occurred when a telephone call came in.

Thus, I am sitting at my desk with a telephone balanced in one hand while I am enduring an Arthurian struggle in the other hand – but rather than extract a sword from a stone, I was extracting a plastic fork from an ice cream cake.  Or at least that was the idea – for the most part, I was waving the fork-impaled ice cream cake like a gavel, dripping bits of too-slowly-melting chocolate ice cream across the blanket of paperwork atop my desk.

Clearly the person on the far end of my phone call is realizing there is a problem at my end.  “What’s going on there?” he asks.

“I am trying to eat Three Stooges cake,” I reply.

“It sounds like you should be hitting Curly-Joe on the head with it,” he answers.

Since Curly-Joe was not available for cranium crashing, I found myself continuing the unhappy task of having my cake and eating it, too.  The fork was eventually, after several minutes of polite struggle, liberated with a bite-sized chunk.  Upon contact with my teeth, however, I felt as if I was French kissing Mr. Freeze. 

Both the ice cream cake and the valiant little fork found its way into the nearest trashcan.  Whether the ice cream cake ever melted is something I cannot answer – though I suspect even with global warming it is still sitting in a solid block in some distant rubbish dump, confounding the seagulls and rats that try to peck away at it.

I am reminded, for no particular reason except for the need to kill space and time, of a man who was very much in love with his pet duck.  He would take the duck everywhere he went.  One day, the man sought to take his duck to the movies – but the ticket cashier would not allow the duck to be brought into the theater.  So the man went around the corner, hid the duck down his pants, came back and bought himself a ticket for the movies.

However, the duck eventually found it uncomfortable inside the man’s pants.  After the movie started, the man unzipped his fly and the duck was able to stick its head out to breathe comfortably.

Next to the man sat a woman and her husband.  In the darkness of the theater, the woman saw the duck’s head protruding from the man’s open fly and naturally assumed it was something else.  She nudged her husband and said: “Ralph, the man next to me has his penis hanging out of his fly.”

The husband asked: “Is he bothering you?” She said no.  So the husband said: “Just ignore it and watch the movie.”

A few minutes later, the woman elbowed her husband again.  “Ralph, the man’s penis...”

“I told you to ignore it,” said her husband.

“I can’t,” said the woman.  “It’s eating my popcorn!”