Things I should probably not be doing at work.

• Making pushpin “art” on my cubicle wall.



• Checking my personal email every five seconds, even though it’s only filled with Gap ads and bookstore coupons, and I don’t check it anywhere near this obsessively when I’m at home.



• Playing Allister’s “Fraggle Rawk” on my iPod twelve times in a row and daring myself to head-bang.



• Binding my printed ad designs with matching colored paperclips, and placing them on my desk just at the edge of my peripheral vision in a carefully fanned-out manner, so that I can glance over at them occasionally and admire their matchingness, and then claim I'm not completely lost to OCD.



• Trying to rearrange the magnets on my metal bookshelf so that they don't look inappropriately suggestive, which is utterly impossible.



• Informing my coworker that she owes me a drink for every time she calls me “Michelle,” which is not my name, for crying out loud.



• Silently reading all my ridiculous interdepartmental memos with a really bad Serbian accent, just to pass the time: “Crrreating a high-poorformance ehnvironmehnt takes both time and conteeeenuous effort to eensure ze strrrong foundation foor a unified enterprrrise. Therefoor, we hev to be especially deeligent about the use of eenterdepartmental ehnvehlopes…”



• Perfecting the art of the “screen toggle” so that it doesn’t look like I’m earning my salary by writing meaningless and meta blog entries.

Late to the party. (By about 24 hours.)

I’m pretty pop-culturally savvy. My mother will vouch for my encyclopedic knowledge of television, movies, and music. (Of course, my mother thinks The Matrix was about mathematicians, so it’s possible that judgment may be relative.) I’m familiar with most of the popular films and TV shows, I know more than I should about the IMDB profiles of most working actors, and I am more likely to recognize a celebrity’s voice on a commercial than I am to recognize my own car in a parking lot.

Still, over the last five years, there was a huge cultural phenomenon to which I never paid much attention: the television show, 24.

I knew the show was good – smart people had told me so – but when it first started, I never had time to catch it. Its distinguishing gimmick is that every episode takes place in real time; each hour on my television is an hour out of Agent Jack Bauer’s day, and 24 episodes in a season constitutes one day in his life. Interesting. But by the time the show started gaining recognition and praise, it was far enough along that I didn’t feel I could catch up properly, and I hate feeling like I’ve missed something. I’m a little OCD that way. So I ignored it.

Well, until this week.

DVDs have been a technological godsend to television shows in general, especially the sequential ones, but never has a television show been more exquisitely suited to a technological format than this one. I get to start from the beginning! The very thing that kept me from 24 in the first place – the utterly dependent chronology and mythology, and its inaccessibility in network broadcast schedules – is now an enticing draw, a crack-like temptation to just watch one more episode, because I’m almost done with this disc anyway, and couldn’t I just round it out to an even episode number, and if I don’t find out what happens to Kiefer’s daughter in that van, I’m going to dream about it tonight.

Oh, have I not mentioned Kiefer Sutherland yet?

The Kief has been stealing scenes in movies since I was born, and has quite a following of devoted Brat Packers and Young Gunners fanning themselves with their copies of Lost Boys and Stand By Me. While I’ve always appreciated the guy’s acting chops, I’ve never really inducted him into my harem, because I just don’t see it, and his voice has always creeped me out.

Lately, though, as I’ve watched him tear around L.A. in various states of distress that never seem to muss his flawlessly frosted hair, perfecting his “I’m just a family man!” look of anguish that morphs into quiet rage that becomes bitter determination that evolves into a delicately brow-furrowing expression of ache, somehow managing to find a way to change clothes about 13 times in the space of 24 hours, it suddenly occurs to me: “Huh. What do you know? He’s a MUSILL.” So I think I’ll allow Kiefer onto my Boyfriend Bus, but he might have to sit in the back for awhile.

Watching an episode that takes place in real time is neat, but it makes me feel like the laziest sloth that ever sprawled out on her couch. In the space of fifteen minutes, Kiefer has managed to meet a guy, size him up, get suspicious, distract him with a well-presented bluff, find a tranquilizer gun, MacGyver himself a little tranquilizer gun carrying case out of a three-ring binder, weigh the consequences, shoot the hell out of this guy’s leg, and somehow conceal the unconscious body in an office made entirely of glass. Meanwhile, in exactly the same amount of time, I have managed to stare blankly at a glowing box for awhile, find the perfect fulcrum point for balancing my remote control on my hip, and develop a craving for Cheez-its.

By the time an entire episode is over, the Kief has usually managed to unearth four conspiracies, discover two secret identities, kill or maim a couple of people (which, of course, he feels just terrible about, because he’s kind of a swell guy), nearly die at least twice, give the batshit-crazy eyes to roughly half the population of L.A., and set a new record for the number of times one person can say, “If you touch my family, I will hunt you down and kill you,” and still sound like he’s so not kidding about that.

Honestly, I’m exhausted just watching him. I need more Cheez-its, just to sustain myself.

I am currently nearly halfway through Season One. This puts our characters at a point in their day just approaching lunchtime, and while they’ve had several conspiracies, at least three explosions, countless murders, one suicide, six kidnappings, and a terrorist coup, I have pretty much toasted a bagel and wondered about the molecular structure of bubble bath.

Luckily, my disinterest in the show before now has kept me from paying any attention to talk of significant plot points in any of the previous seasons, so I have no idea what’s going to happen, and my suspense is pretty genuine (although I totally called that twist about Alan York right from the beginning of Episode 1). Yes, I am aware that there are new episodes of the show airing every week, and no, I do not plan to watch any of them because weren’t you listening before when I talked about my OCD?

So, fellow 24ers, here I am, late to the party, but no less enthusiastic. Please do not talk to me about plot points from seasons past or present, because if you ruin this for me I will come over there and break all your pencil tips in a malicious manner. Now, if you don’t mind, I have an online rental queue to fill. I am so behind.

For Easter.

There are three bunnies playing together on the lawn outside my sliding glass door. And when I say "playing together," I don't mean that they're just milling around in the same general vicinity, because I know that humans often amuse themselves by anthropomorphizing any group of more than one member of a species as having some sort of endearingly playful societal relationship, and that's not what I'm doing here.

No, they are balls-out, gloves-off playing a game, and it has rules I don't fully understand. (Although my cat, GenV, really wants to get out there and referee.)

The bunnies set themselves up facing each other, about four feet apart, locked in a Jets-versus-Sharks-gangsta-stare-down. They are intensely still, save the occasional whisker twitch or narrowing of the eyes. Then, just when you wish they had opposable thumbs so that they could start slowly snapping their fingers and approach each other in dangerously rhythmic steps, one of them will suddenly run straight at the other, like a little bunny piledriver. And right at the point when you think Bunny #1 is going to totally take out Bunny #2 in what can only result in a situation that will require a little bunny stretcher, Bunny #2 jumps straight up into the air as Bunny #1 zooms right underneath him.

By the time Bunny #2 lands back in the same spot, Bunny #1 is drawing to a stop halfway across the lawn, all "whaaa?" as he looks around for his missed target. Then Bunny #2 becomes the charger and runs, hell-bent, at Bunny #3, who was kind of minding his own business over there, munching on a tasty piece of grass, when he looked up and saw crazy-ass Bunny #2 steamrolling toward him. So, of course, he jumps straight up in the air and lets Bunny #2 go flying by underneath him, and lands facing Bunny #1, who has wandered back over to watch and take notes. The three of them keep charging at each other, and popcorning into the air to avoid being hit, charging and hopping, charging and hopping.

It's exactly the kind of game I would play if I were a bunny.

As I looked away from their game to write this, something clearly went down. Somebody either fouled somebody else or took the trash-talking too far, because now there are only two bunnies, and they are sitting, stock-still, with their backs to each other. They look like really pissed-off bookends, and are obviously no longer speaking, except for the occasional “Oh, whatever, you knew I wasn’t ready.”

Alright, so I may have anthropomorphized a little bit.

A healthy appetite.

It’s nice that my gym has eight or ten televisions hanging from the ceiling. Each one is tuned to a different channel, with an audio box attached to every exercise machine where I can plug in my headphones and tune in to whatever channel I’m interested in. That’s convenient, and gives me one less reason to stay home and make a big Meldraw-shaped dent in my couch that too often fills up with pennies and rubber bands and stale kernels of popcorn that I never discover until I lose the TV remote.

I’m appreciative of the wide selection of television programming available to me while I’m on the StairMaster. (And I’m talking about the machine with the little pedals, not the giant half-of-a-down-escalator monstrosity that I refuse to climb because it makes me feel like I’m trapped in a freaky, acid-trippy M.C. Escher painting that I will never, ever get out of, so help me God. It also brings back my childhood fears of getting a shoelace caught in the escalator at the mall and being pulled to my death via the gears under the escalator belt while my mother yelled after me, “I told you not to run up the down escalator! See what you get?”) Anyway, I’ve noticed that such a wide programming selection means that at any given time, at least three televisions will be showing commercials, and chances are likely that one of those commercials is for food. Occasionally, one of the televisions is even tuned to the Food Network.

Which, come on. What punk puts the food channel on at the gym?

I can’t watch those food commercials when I’m working out because it makes me ravenous. All I want to do is stop and eat, and suddenly when I look over at the person on the machine next to me, they’ve turned into a giant taco in running shoes. But I also can’t close my eyes because my balance on that machine is precarious at best, and by the time I’ve climbed what equates to about 45,000 flights of steps, let’s be honest: I’m pretty much relying on visual cues to stay upright. So, at the first sign of that Applebee’s commercial with the Gilligan’s Island parody that I irrationally love, I avert my gaze and start counting the number of times I see people making mean faces at their personal trainers behind their backs.

By the time I get back to my apartment and retrieve my mail, finding two sheets of pizza place coupons and an ad for what promises to be the best barbecue in town, my self-restraint has taken an enormous beating.

On the days when I work with Leah, it is especially difficult to find the energy to argue with myself over dinner plans. I’m always tired and sore, because Leah has beaten me up and taken my lunch money again, and I sit down on my couch and realize that I can’t move. Not even a little bit. I’m usually too tired to even think about glancing in the general direction of the kitchen, which is probably empty anyway, because I go grocery shopping about as often as I get my oil changed.

Then I start to fantasize about delivery, because Pizza Hut could bring me my dinner, and I wouldn’t even have to get up off the couch. I could just yell for them to come in when they ring the bell, and they could set the pizza box down on my lap and pluck the money from my limp hand. And I bet if I tipped them well enough, I could even get them to turn on the television and place the remote beneath my fingers before they leave.

But then some small part of me remembers that I think I saw a pork chop in the fridge a few days ago, and I bet there was some rice in there, too, and I heard somewhere that having protein after you work out is a good idea. And even though I can practically taste the greasy pepperoni and melty, cheesy garlic bread that has already been delivered to my imagination, the logical part of my brain is offended by the idea of sabotaging my health habits after I just busted my ass at the gym.

Inevitably, I also realize that reheating the pork chop is faster, and impatience trumps laziness any day of the week.

Gesundheit.

I’ve got this coworker who looks eerily like Tim Robbins. (In fact, I’ve never seen the two of them in the same room together, so take that as you will.) He’s an extremely nice man, very even-tempered, and goes out of his way to speak kindly to everyone. But he sneezes like a damn grenade.

Seriously. It comes out of nowhere, and is so loud and forceful that you are momentarily thrown back against your cubicle wall as little bits of debris fall from the ceiling tiles and car alarms go off in the parking lot outside. It’s terrifying. It sounds kind of like “AHA!” as if he’s just discovered some life-changing revelation, and he’s so excited about it that an uncontainable exclamation bursts forth from his chest like so much Alien animatronics. Our department consists of four cubicles crammed into a room the size of a smallish walk-in closet, and Tim “Sneezey” Robbins has the cubicle next to mine. I wondered why I found shooting range style earmuffs in my desk drawer when I first started; now I know.

There’s never any preamble, like in cartoons where Bugs Bunny starts to take little gasping breaths just before he sneezes, which would totally give his location away to Elmer Fudd, and then Daffy Duck puts one finger under Bugs’ nose and the whole problem’s solved and everybody breathes a big sigh of relief before Bugs’ sneeze catches up with him and outs them anyway, and Fudd comes tearing around the corner, slipping and sliding as he fumbles with his shotgun and starts shooting holes in everything that moves, the very posterchild of PETA and the NRA all rolled into one, until eventually the wily animals lead him off a cliff, where he hovers in midair for a few minutes, all smug that he’s caught up with his defenseless prey and is about to blow their brains out in front of an impressionably young audience of children and twenty-something graphic designers, and then he suddenly realizes where he is, and he cautiously feels around with his toe for a minute to see if there’s something more substantial than air supporting his weight and then, and only then, is gravity allowed to snatch him from the scene, leaving nothing but a little white cloud and maybe a small sign that says “Oh, dwat,” depending on whether or not Chuck Jones directed this one.

My point here is that Tim Robbins doesn’t make those gaspy little breaths beforehand, so I have no opportunity to run over to his cubicle and hold one finger under his nose to thwart the oncoming sneeze. (I’d be afraid to do that anyway, because I’ve heard that under normal circumstances, it is unhealthy to hold in a sneeze, and in Tim Robbins’ case, it might cause an aneurism.) I pretty much live in fear every day, not knowing when the tranquil, headphoned, Jack Johnson-infused serenity of my cubicle will be shattered by what is clearly a mutation of that man’s lungs.

It keeps me on my toes, I guess, in what is an otherwise painfully dull atmosphere. Also, it helps me hit my target heart rate for the day, so I guess that’s a silver lining.

A Mind-Boggling Holiday (or Why Parker Brothers Products Should Have More Comprehensive Warning Labels)

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I am 12 years old. We have a couple of not-terribly-distant relatives in town for the holiday, and my mother is planning a feast. Today, however, she decides to make a simple meal of burgers and homemade fries. She breaks out the oil-fryer and goes to work making dinner.

Meanwhile, I have decided to play a board game with my rarely-in-town cousin. We settle on Boggle, which has the benefit of being both studiously quiet (during play) and uproariously loud (during the shake-up of letter die). We set up on the floor in the living room, which is attached openly to the kitchen, where Mama Meldraw is making dinner. My mother has an undiagnosed addiction to word games, and so when she hears the deafening tumble of letter die, followed by exclamations of “I don’t know how anyone finds any words with these letters!” she is drawn to it like an Olsen twin to a bathroom stall.

Mama Meldraw begins by simply peering over our shoulders during play, nonchalantly trying to point out words to her children. Soon she is on all fours, scribbling madly onto her own score sheet, now thoroughly involved in the game. She is winning, of course.

I look up during a particularly intense period of word-finding silence, and it is brought to my immediate attention that the oil in the fryer has caught fire, having been left unattended and gotten too hot.

“Mom!”

“Shh. We have ten seconds left.”

“Your kitchen is on fire.”

With surprising speed, Mama Meldraw springs to her feet and tries to remove the pan from the hot burner, which currently has smallish flames licking the lid of the pan. As she tries to move the pan to a cooler burner, the jostling of the oil causes it to ignite further, and she has to place it back down…very, very quickly. Now the pan is engulfed in large-ish flames.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are on our feet and starting to panic. My father is not home from work yet, so my sister and I turn to the only authority figure in the room that is not waving oven mitts around like a very strange air traffic controller: my cousin. He warns us not to pour water over the thing, and thinks he may have heard something about using salt to put out grease fires. My mother hilariously empties a very small salt shaker onto the lidded pot, to no avail.

My cousin has suddenly unearthed our ancient fire extinguisher and looks rather the hero as he tells my mother to step back. He takes aim with the extinguisher and dramatically pulls the lever, or the trigger, or whatever one pulls to make use of a fire extinguisher. Nothing happens. It would appear that the fire extinguisher has dried up, or expired, or ruptured, or evaporated, because it is older than I am.

At this point, I am convinced our house is burning down, and I am desperate to find my cats. My mother is yelling at us to all go out onto the front lawn, because the fire seems to be growing. I call the cats’ names over and over again, finally find one of them, grab her by the scruff, and am forced to run out the door as the fire department is called.

Suddenly, at the top of the stairs appears my 78-year old grandmother, whom everyone had forgotten was upstairs. She had been reading a book and looked up to find her room a little smoky, and wandered out to see what the commotion was. We holler at her to get herself outside before the house burns down and we all die, and she does so, though she will never, ever let us forget about the time we almost let her die while we tried to save our damn cats.

Once the lot of us are standing outside on our lawn, clutching at least one terrified feline, the fire trucks roll up and suited men with large hats go about trying to rescue our French fries. They easily extinguish the fire with some significant damage to the kitchen, but no structural harm. While we stand on our lawn, bathed in flashing lights and the curious looks of far too many neighbors, my father arrives home with impeccable timing. The sight that greets him makes him think seriously about turning around and checking that he’s on the right street.

And that, kids, is why Boggle is a fire hazard.