THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Underemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 39 February 8, 1997

 

 

 

Whatever happened to that Seasonal Affective Disorder thing? A couple of years ago, I used to always hear people whining this time of year about how the sun wasn’t shining and that was the cause of their depression. “I’m so sad when the sun doesn’t shine enough,” they’d say as they were busy not making any plans to move somewhere else where the sun shines more. Could it be that they finally realized that our species has been living in northern climates for thousand of years and just might be used to the darkness by now?

 

WORK

 

There’s this guy who sits by me at work who claims he went to UND and majored in accounting. I say “claims” because he’s never said the words “Gino Gasparini” or “Whitey’s” or “The Red Pepper.” All he talks about are bonds, investments, and the stock market. I’m sorry, I want to say, but money bores the shit out of me. Earlier this week, he was talking to the gal in the cubicle next to his about some “Wall Street Week” show that he watches on PBS on Friday nights and was going on and on about how cool the host of the show is. The gal finally shut him up by saying “you’re pathetic.” I cracked up and couldn’t stop laughing. Then she started laughing, which made me laugh more, which made her laugh more, etc. So now she’s not mad at me. As a Gopher fan, she got a little miffed on Monday when she threw a piece of candy to me, and I grabbed at it and missed. “I look like Steve DeBus.” I said. It’s tough to make those saves when you have to do all the work yourself.

 

One thing I truly dislike about working in finance departments is that people expect that you know about all the financial crapola that’s in the Wall Street Journal. Sorry, but Wyman doesn’t traffic in any newspaper that doesn’t have a sports page or record reviews. This fake Sioux guy will go on and on about the stock market and I’ll bluff my way through my part of the conversation by saying “the stock market will outproduce everything over thirty years.” I say this because I heard it somewhere, and don’t expect me to be able to prove it. But there is hope at this place I work at. On the other side of the office is someone who went to UND and knows about what really goes on up there in Grand Forks. She’s a brown-eyed blonde with the name of (deleted). ‘Nuff said.

 

SORRY

 

Alright, this bit is for those of you out there who have to work with spreadsheet applications during your workday. Three of the six people in my department use Lotus instead of Excel. I’m an Excel guy, which started way back when I was in school and was the only business major in my era to not take the Lotus 1-2-3 class. I was considering taking it, when a couple of people told me I had to take it if I was going to get anywhere in the business world. So, of course, I took The History of Economic Thought 401 instead. (Where I went to meet the professor about my theme paper and I said I wanted to write it about Marxist economics. He said something about China being Marxist and then asked if I had ever had Chinese beer. We ended up talking for half an hour about how Schmidt ruled and Corona sucked.) Then when I got into the working world, I ended up at a company where they had Excel. I had to teach it to myself (imagine that), but found it to be a pretty useful tool. Now that I’m temping, I always turn down any jobs that involve Lotus just for the principle of the thing. What that principle is, I’m not quite sure, but at work last week the Lotus fans were talking their software up pretty big and I said “Lotus? It’s so eighties.”

 

NEW SONG

 

Veruca Salt / “Volcano Girls”: As this one reminds me of the best stuff by Def Leppard and Cinderella, I’m gonna call it a late-eighties hair band throwback. And one of the Veruca girls got a new ‘do, so it all makes sense. Can’t say that I can make too much sense of the words on this one, except for the chorus. But this song is great to scream along with while in your car (just like “Seether”, which when you got sick of singing straight you would change the chorus to “sounds like the Breeders”) and when you think the song is going to end, they start playing their only other hit (so far) and then they throw in a clever lyrical nod to the Beatles.

 

SWEEP

 

Way back - a year ago, to be specific - in the inaugural issue of The Wyman Weekly (only five copies were ever distributed, so don’t go looking) I was talking about the Grain Belt I was drinking in celebration of the University of North Dakota hockey team’s sweep of the hated University of Minnesota. I compared their victories to the rebel forces blowing up the Death Star in Star Wars. One year later, and I find myself drinking Grain Belt and celebrating a Sioux dismantling of the Evil Empire. Fitting then, that Star Wars was re-released the same weekend that Dean Blais’ boys showed the rodents what it’s like.

 

Don’t count Minnesota out for the season, though. You will recall two seasons ago, when Colorado College was running away from the pack in the WCHA regular season race. The Gophers had a team meeting and decided that second place would become their goal. Their captain stood up and starting yelling that settling for second place was no way to play the game and that the team should fight for first place. The Gophers, inspired by their captain, rallied around his words and finished fourth.

 

BEER

 

Speaking of Grain Belt (and I’m talking the real Belt here in the brown bottles), the price for a case of returnables down at the Liquor Depot went up to $7.99 a case. When I moved to the ‘hood just over two years ago, the price was $6.99. I think this 14% increase is because of their higher advertising costs incurred due to the “Wanna Be Like Wyman” campaign. But I figure if demand goes down, the price will also. (There’s that college degree at work.) So please, all you folks out there, go back to Grain Belt Premium. You’ll get used to the too-sweet taste and if you drink them fast enough in the sunshine they won’t get skunky.

 

A tremendously tasty brew is Black Dog Ale, whose label says “No Whiners.” Another good Jimmy Page beer is James Page, which is brewed locally. But Yardbirds Ale out of Kansas City is way too carbonated, so we’ll blame that one on Clapton.

 

(Thanks to Hammer for his help on the stats.)