I think I can go ahead and call this another entry in the âLong Cons That Didnât Pay Offâ file.
A few months ago, I put this post it note on my office computer.
Whenever anyone asked about it Iâd say âDonât worry about itâ or âItâs personalâ or âOh, thatâs right, cats, I almost forgot, thank you.â
Then Iâd draw a picture of a cat, write a date on itâŠ
âŠand place it in our officeâs Suggestion Box. I did this every single day I was in the office. Here are some of the cats I made.
Itâs important to have fun with your hobbies, so I made sure I varied my style and even embraced some weird impulses.
Hey, look at this cool fella!
Uh huh. I think I was sad that day.
I did this because I (and you) deserve to have as much fun as I (and you!) want, and because long cons lead to some of my favorite jokes. The ultimate end goal of this long con was an email. I was going to put a picture of a cat in our suggestion box every single day until some frustrated administrative employee of the company sent out a company-wide email that said âWhoever keeps putting pictures of cats in the suggestion box, PLEASE STOP.â I wanted that for two major reasons, but first hey do you want to see this cat I made?
That. Cat. Fucks.
Anyway, reason number one was Magic. There are about 400 people in this office (Cracked is owned by a larger media company). Those people come to work and go about their day, and one day theyâd see an email about a very dedicated, insane, mystery person who has evidently been filling the suggestion box with dozens of hand-drawn cat pictures, one every single day. That email (the âPlease stop putting pictures of cats in the suggestion box; this is a businessâ email), would serve as a reminder; life is weird and funny and stupid and sometimes stuff like this happens, and isnât that wacky and fun? You live in a world where some goofball could get bored and draw forty cats with seemingly no end game or motive. Isnât the world a wacky and fun place to live? Look at this fat piece of shit.
Reason number two was just make Soren and my other immediate coworkers laugh. The joke would be simple. We all get an email that says âWhoever keeps putting pictures of cats in the suggestion box, PLEASE STOP.â And then I would nervously crumble up the post-it note that says âCATSâ and reassure the rest of the team that it probably isnât worth looking into, and I wouldnât draw any connections between that email and my behavior over the last two months. Then all of my coworkers would see what Iâve been up to and marvel at my dedication to the joke, because weâre all good joke-makers here, and Game respects Game.
But that email never came. Iâve been drawing pictures of cats since June, since fucking June, you guys, hereâs another cat.
No oneâs said anything. No oneâs said a god damned word. And I know what youâre thinking: âThe suggestion box is obviously just for show, they have it to placate the employees, no one ever checks it, and now itâs full of cats.â But youâre wrong. Dead wrong. I can see into the box, I KNOW someone has been emptying it. We even had an all-hands meeting where our CEO addressed the suggestion box specifically to call out the most popular suggestion (it was something about not pictures of cats so who even gives a shit).
Someone has been going through that box, at least at the end of every week. This person has been stoically ignoring what at this point is an obvious cat problem that someone at this company has. This person wants to go on pretending theyâre NOT looking at pictures of cats every day, this person wants to pretend that the world isnât like it is. You fucking rat. You fucking rat in a maze.
But you know what? This person (who again is choosing to REJECT THE TRUTH THAT IS ALL AROUND THEM), this person is stronger and more dedicated than me. I canât keep making cats. I canât keep making cats for this joke thatâs never going to pay off. I had a lot of fun, I feel like I have a better understanding of what a cat nose looks like and I had an excuse every day to get up and move my legs a little bit, but I donât want to do this anymore, so Iâm stopping, so I lost, so Iâm a loser.
But the REAL loser, I think youâll agree, is everyone else who ISNâT me. They lost because theyâll never be party to the EXPERIENCE that I wanted to provide them with (completely free of charge, I forgot to mention). They wonât have the memory of that weird day at the office when suddenly everyone was talking about the mystery cat guy, and like wondering âIs he single he sounds cool,â or like âWhat if the mystery cat person is a girl, Janet, did you even fucking think of that itâs 2015.â Janet and Grimace wonât have the memory of that conversation, because that conversation wonât happen, because someone in this office refuses to do his or her part in what this voter is calling âThe Con of the Centuryâ by sending a simple god damn email. He or she robbed this entire building of a Moment and that, friends and ex-lovers, is the real #tragedy.
Fun Story: My director kept telling me and my tenor sax buddy to play softer. No matter what we did, it wasnât soft enough for him. So getting frustrated, I told my buddy âDont play this time. Just fake itâÂ
Our Band Director then informed us we sounded perfect.Â
To my readers: âpâ means quiet, âppâ means really quiet. Iâve never seen âppppâ before haha.
On the contrast, âfâ means loud, and âffffâ probably means so loud you go unconscious.
I had ffff in a piece once and my conductor told me to play as loudly as physically possible without falling off my chairâŠ
Me and my trombone buddies had âffffâ and he sat next to me and played so hard that he fell out of his chair.
The lengths we go for music.
Okay yeah so I play the bass clarinet and the amount of air you have to move and the stiffness of the reed means it only has two settings and that is loud and louder, with an optional LOUDEST that includes a 50% probability of HORRIBLE CROAKING NOISE which is the bass equivalent of the ubiquitous clarinet shriek.
One day, when I was in concert band in high school, we got a new piece handed out for the first time, and there was a strange little commotion back in the tuba section â whispering, and pointing at something in the music, and swatting at each otherâs hands all shhh donât call attention to it. And although they did attract the attention of basically everyone else in the band, they managed to avoid being noticed by the band director, who gave us a few minutes to look over our parts and then said, âAll right, letâs run through it up to section A.â
And here we are, cheerfully playing along, sounding reasonably competent â but everyone, when they have the attention to spare, is keeping an eye on the tuba players. They donât come in for the first eight measures or so, and then when they do come in, what we see is:
[stifled giggling]
[reeeeeeally deep breath]
[COLOSSAL FOGHORN NOISE]
The entire band stops dead, in the cacophonous kind of way that a band stops when it hasnât actually been cued to stop. The band director doesnât even say anything, just looks straight back at the tubas and makes a helpless sort of why gesture.
In unison, the tuba players defend themselves: âTHERE WERE FOUR FâS.â
FFFF is not really a rational dynamic marking for any instrument, but for the love of all that is holy why would you put it in a tuba part.
This is the best band postÂ
Everyone else go home
Oh man, so I play trombone, and we got this piece called Florentiner Marsch by Julius Fucik, and we saw this
which is 8 fortes. We were shocked until,
that is 24 fortes who the fuck does that
Who does that?
This guy. Take a good look – that is the moustache of a man with nothing to lose.
Julius IdontgivaFucik
More like Julius Fuckit
Pyrozodâs tags for this were too hilarious not to share
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: âTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: âMy name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!â Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.â
