I will admit that as this new year begins, my nerves are more frazzled than Gary Busey trying to program a VCR.  The reason for my significant apprehensive trepidation is that I’m pretty sure I’m about to lose my job, which will significantly reduce the opportunities I have to drink free coffee and/or surf the net.  This deduction stems from a couple of recent hard-hitting news stories that lead me to believe I have enough strikes against me to be mistaken for a public school system.

Strike 1:  A formal reprimand was issued to a Baltimore Social Security Administration worker last month complaining that his excessive flatulence was creating an “intolerable” and “hostile” workplace.  While one might assume from personal DMV experience that federal employees are in fact paid to fart around, this is apparently not the case.  In May, the 38-year old man was warned by his supervisor that the recurrent tooting of his own horn was the reason his co-workers were “not willing to assist him” with his work.  A second verbal warning was presented in July, the summary of which my journalistic integrity requires me to quote at length:

“On July 17, 2012, I spoke with you in regards of your releasing of bodily gas in the module during work hours.  I asked if you could make it to the rest room before releasing the awful and unpleasant odor.  I informed you that the smell from your being flatulent disturbed your coworkers and disrupted the work environment.  Several of your coworkers complained about your flatulence.  You said that you would try not to pass gas and that you would turn your fan on when it happens.  I explained to you that turning on the fan would cause the smell to spread and worsen the air quality in the module.”

A third warning was presented in August before the worker was finally formally charged with “Conduct Unbecoming of a Federal Employee,” and presented a five-page letter detailing the dates and times over a three-month period that he was in blatant violation of the Kyoto Protocol, an excerpt of which is depicted below.

From thesmokinggun.com

My response to this report was much like any freedom-loving American male in that I exclaimed, “Only five pages?!”   If this is all it takes to obtain an official reprimand, then I suddenly have reason to fear the Transitive Property for, as The Queen Mother can attest, I regularly feel the need to fuel up the Hindenburg and do in fact tune the tuba so often that my colonic calliope has received a Tony nomination for Best Musical Revival.  I can only hope my employers do not catch wind of this story.

Strike 2:  The Iowa Supreme Court recently unanimously ruled that it is perfectly legal to fire someone for no other reason than that s/he presents an “irresistible attraction” to the employer.   Evidently a Fort Dodge dentist (i.e., male) fired his assistant (i.e., female) because she was the total package (i.e., first-class male) and so preposterously beautiful he couldn’t trust himself to not destroy his marriage with her (i.e., over-night male), even though such attraction was not mutual (i.e., lost in the male).  The written opinion claimed that this case does not violate civil rights laws because the firing was not based on discrimination, but “feeling and emotion”—not to mention the fact that skinny, good-looking women are a documented source of two-faced catty behavior, a societal bane that combines a number of obscure Batman villain references.

The upside of this ruling is that Aerosmith just got a bump in job security.

But what concerns me is this: What is to keep my boss from becoming uncontrollably attracted to me since my providential outrageously good looks are surpassed only by my tremendously virile and enviable humility?  Is it my fault that I am so very very very very very good-looking that random gay men try to pick me up on the beaches of St. Petersburg (true story)?

So you see my dilemma.  I am teetering on the tottered teeter-totter between consummate desirability and revolting repulsiveness; my pleasing and chiseled masculine form is precariously counterpoised by my proclivity toward curried trouser coughs (which are named Legion, by the way, for they are many).

I need help.  One more strike and I’m out.  Should I go to a plastic surgeon and ask for the Steve Buscemi?  Or do I become a poster boy for the politically-charged constitutionality issue of Bun Control?  Perhaps it is time to consult Dr. conTIMplating Methuselah Fillmore.