I'm like totally freaking out

I'm totally freaking out because I'm getting ready to go meet Poor George in Chicago so that I can drive with him back here to San Diego. My excitement and anticipation of my road-trip vacation was interrupted this morning when I got pulled into a conference call with the VP of my division and Human Resources so that they could tell us my boss is being laid off.

My boss just lost his job. This is not good.

Then when the VP doing the call said "are there any questions?" I asked about the proverbial elephant-in-the-room: "Are you anticipating any reduction in his current staff?"

"No, we are not," the VP replied. Then came the sounds of muffled voices and a lot of paper shuffling and other related noises. Followed by the voice of the HR rep who was in the room with him:

"Well, no one can ever promise there won't be staffing changes. None of us has a guaranteed job in this environment."

Ugh.

But anyway, I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here right now at the request of Melinda June, who told her readers to ask me to blog about a book we both just read. You can click over to her post to see what book she's referring to; I don't want to be Googled and then found by the people I'm about to malign.

The book is a fascinating read, so I won't give away too much of it in case you want to "enjoy" it yourself. I'll just tell you it's about a particularly insidious form of child abuse, and that two of the offenders (the parents of the author) are going to rot in hell. At least if I have anything to say about it.

Of course, simply thinking these people are evil was not enough for a mildly retarded and often crusty Punchman. I decided to put my cyberstalking skills to good use by hunting down the address and phone number of said parents.

And then I called them.

I got their answering machine, upon which I left the following message:

"If this is Dr. and Mrs. Beers, I just wanted to let you know you should be asking God's forgiveness every single day for what you have done to your children." And then I hung up.

Mindy thinks this is one of the funniest things she has ever heard, although she also says she is glad I did it.

Next, I went to the author's website, got her email address and wrote her, asking about her current relationship with her parents. Not surprisingly, the author wrote back and said she doesn't speak to them any more.

(Well, maybe it's surprising that she wrote me back, but not surprising that she has cut her parents off. Well, actually, they probably cut her off. She didn't say.)

If you decide to read this book (whose title rhymes with the words "Beezus Hand") let me know what you think.

CP