ANALOG BLOG by Wyatt Tremblay

Jules is a decent enough person.

She is a tall, hefty Nova Scotian from Halifax who is gregarious and generous to a fault, often supplying Tim Horton’s donuts or home-baked fare to her fellow cubicle dwellers. As a graphic designer, she has a quick and creative mind, tackling difficult deadlines like a hulking linebacker. All this employability, however, is marred by one frustrating flaw. No, let’s call it what it is; a maddening quirk, an aberration of character: she is excessively garrulous. I'm not exaggerating; she quite literally never stops talking. From the time she breezes into the office, to the final merciful second when she punches out, there is not one minute where I, or any of my fellow office workers, are able to enjoy a meaningful, reflective moment of silence. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inappropriate with chatting it up at the office, but there comes a point where one more excruciating tale about explosive diarrhea or the outrageous antics of Fritz, her Siamese cat, and I tend to tip alarmingly into the red zone of my personal insane-o-metre.

She voluminously occupies the cubicle next to mine along with two other designers whose deliberate monosyllabic responses unfortunately only serve to provide her with a continuous opportunity to further pollute the atmosphere with a never-ending and mind-numbing monologue. As a result, I know more about the life of Jules Olivia Manson, and her cat, her mother, her twin sister (and also what a superb graphic designer her twin is), her mailman, her grocer, her mechanic friend, Steve, and Willie, the guy she spends most Saturday nights with, and her hair dresser, her personal trainer and esthetician, and all sixteen of the neighbours in her apartment block, than I do about my own life. Manson? Hmm, I wonder if she’s related?

There are, thank god, fifteen splendidly peaceful hours between the time when I lurch out of the office in the evening to when I reluctantly sign in the next morning. Precious hours where I do not have to waste one second of the best years of my life being forced by the sheer volume of her voice, to listen to her prattle. Unfortunately, this does mean these are also hours of which Jules has lived — and according to her, she does it quite largely — where she feels compelled to play mother of the nest and share those fifteen hours by way of regurgitating the putrid dross of her existence upon her ensnared co-workers. Let me clarify the extent of my daily suffering; that translates into fifty-four thousand seconds worth of the most gratuitous drivel anyone could wish to inflict upon an enemy.

“Jerry,” Alf interrupted my rant while nodding with sincere sympathy, “It’s obvious, you are dealing with an analog blogger.”

Alf works on the floor above mine in the television and web-ad design department. He used to occupy a station in my cubicle, until he was promoted. There is a position opening in his department and, as if you hadn’t already guessed, I’ve applied (done everything but fall to my knees and beg) for the job. He and I are office friends. We meet for lunch in the cafeteria across the street and vent all our working-woes upon each other. It’s therapeutic, though it hasn’t really been much help to me as of late. We used to mix office-talk with discourses on golf, and the Senators, and whatever action flick was exploding across the silver screen. Then, like some primordial leviathan, Jules rose from the murky depths. Three months earlier, she joined the magazine ad-design team, herself promoted from the floor beneath mine where she worked, quite effectively she has informed all within listening range on numerous occasions, designing retail flyers and ad banners for print media.

“Analog blogger?” I repeated.

Alf nodded in reply, and tapped his lips with his fork, “It’s like a blog, only instead of being digital, like on the internet, it’s right there in front of you, streaming from her mouth. She’s an analog blog.”

I chuckled. Jules Manson was a three-dimensional, non-virtual blog, heaving the routine details of her dull, ordinary life upon her office mates like a dog vomiting after gorging itself.

“Jerry, I can see the dark circles forming under your eyes. You are stressed out, man. Any ideas on what you’re going to do?”

“I applied for that position,” I mumbled hopefully.

Alf slowly shook his head and exhaled noisily, “Not good enough, my friend. It’ll be at least three months. Do you think you can last that long?”

I stared at him and suddenly felt like leaping off the CN Tower — without a parachute. Three months? Oh, God.

I taped the printout to Jules’ monitor before she clocked in Monday morning. It read: Miss Manson, we are happy to have you as part of the magazine ad design team of Foster and Pickles. You have shown great proficiency in your field. The design and layout you provided for the Wiggles Toy Store account was creative and refreshing in it originality. It is a pleasure to work with you. However, would it be possible for you to refrain from talking so often as some of us have found it difficult to remain focused on projects of our own? Thank you for your consideration in this matter, your fellow employees.

Of course, there were no “fellow employees”; I acted alone, for the good of the whole. Pump her up, then, let her down. That’s what Alf had instructed me to do. The note was polite, wasn’t it? Gentle, yet firm, without being offensive, right? Wouldn’t any reasonably sane human being have grasped the import of my carefully scripted words?

The blast of fiery disapproval could be heard from the coffee room three cubicles away and one could immediately feel the pall of tension descend upon the office as if the angel of Death had suddenly made an appearance.

“Hah.” She grunted.

“Hah!” She lobbed her verbal bomb again, the blast radius reaching explosively to consume the entire floor, “Which one of you neophytes wasted perfectly good and expensive printer paper on this ridiculous note?”

I cringed in my cubicle, the breath of the dragon bearing down upon my neck. I could only imagine the terror my co-workers were facing behind the fabric and plastic partition that separated us. Someone mumbled from behind the wall. It might have been Millie, she doesn’t say much. Well, she never needed to; Jules does all the talking.

“Well?” she bellowed, annoyance thick in her voice. Another mumble.

“Ah, well, prob’ly a joke, eh? Is it April first, or something? I don’t talk too much, eh Millie? What’s that? Speak up, honey. You gotta use those lips the good Lord gave you, huh? No? Not too loud? Didn’t think so. Steve, now that guy talks like a freight train rumbling across a trestle bridge. Sweet merciful Minerva, he can talk nineteen to the dozen, that boy. Let me tell you, just last night the phone rings, my cell phone, eh — jingles the Charlie’s Angels theme, eh — and I, like, answer it and it’s Steve. Says he’s bootin’ a truck load of Chevy parts up to Windsor…”

And Jules was off like a thoroughbred ripping up the track in pursuit of the Triple Crown. It was unbelievable. I sagged in my chair and cried, sobbing bitterly in my cubicle. How could any living, breathing person be so completely thick?

“Oh, jeeze. That sucks,” Alf offered by way of sympathy at lunch.

“Tell me about it, I nearly wet myself.”

“And she’s still barking up a storm?”

“My ears are still ringing.” I sighed and took a deep swig of my black, triple-shot coffee, “I can’t go on. I don’t want to know anything more about her bowel movements or, dear god, her sex life.”

“Well, there’s always the promotion to look forward to,” he glanced at his watch, “Only ninety-three days… if you get it.”

“Yeah, thanks. What? What do mean ‘if’?”

Alf shrugged, “Has anyone referred you, yet?”

“Referred me?”

He nodded, “Yeah. You can apply for the job, but you have to get at least three referrals from co-workers. It lets upper-management know you’re a team-player and are qualified to do the job.”

“Oh…?" Then, the idea hit me, "oh!”

I collected eight signatures in eight minutes. The hope seen in my fellow victims eyes made me feel like a hero, like I was Homer’s Odysseus blinding the monstrous Cyclops. OK, perhaps I’m being a tad melodramatic, but for the first time in three months, there was the faintest glimmer of hope, of a light at the end of the black, jabber-choked tunnel that had become our work lives.

I filled out an application for the job — the one I had so wanted, on the floor above in television and web-ad design. I expertly forged Jules signature and hand-delivered the package to the personnel department. All I had to do, all we had to do, was sit it out for three months, like a hijacked airplane full of hostages on the hot tarmac of life waiting to be rescued. Ninety days and our analog blogger could blog somewhere else.

“You idiot. How could you do that to me?” Alf sputtered when I smugly informed him of what I had done.

“Oh,” I mumbled, the glowing warmth of my self-satisfaction rapidly cooling. “I hadn’t thought of you.”

Getting rid of Jules had become an obsession for me. Well, no one ever said that madness was girded in logic or common sense.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Alf slapped his forehead, “You’ve gotta undo this, Jerry.”

“I don’t think I can. She’s already received a letter of confirmation.”

“Oh, god. Oh, no.”

“She blathered on about it for hours…”

“Oh, god…”

“She says it’s some kind of Mary, Jesus and Joseph miracle…”

“Oh, god… how could you do this?”

“I’m sorry. I was desperate.”

“I’m doomed.”

Three months can feel like quite a long time — like an eternity to be exact. Dante was having a cheery, Sunday afternoon picnic in the raging fires of Hell in the Inferno, by comparison. It felt that way. Over the following painful weeks, Jules talked, and talked, and talked enough to fill several football stadiums with her pointless ramblings. I am now privy to her bra size, her waist and shoe sizes, and how many hairs she removes from her eyebrows and upper lip on Sunday mornings, and what an all-inclusive cell phone package she has, and what her favourite episode of American Idol was, and who she hated the most on Survivor: Alaska, and, dear god, how much gas she can pass and for how long after an evening of "packing it in" at McNabbs Bar and Grill flaming hot chili night.

I have stained a dozen shirtsleeves with my tears. I have downed more Super-Strength Tylenol then I’m sure it is safe to consume. I have cracked more knuckles and beat my aching head more often then was wise to do, but, thank god, time passes.

The sun rose, and the day arrived. Jules was given official notice that she was the successful candidate. We stifled our cheers and bought her a gift of semi-expensive chocolates and a humorous card that we all signed with sweets lies about how we would miss her, and she, chatting ceaselessly until the end, packed up her personal effects, and moved upstairs. As the elevator doors slid shut, heads began to pop up from behind cubicle walls like gophers peeking from their holes after a coyote had passed. The danger was gone. The blessed merciful sound of silence descended upon us all, and I could feel a collective sigh of relief.

Of course, as the laws of the Universe must dictate, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Jules’ promotion left a vacancy in our department and the cruelest of all cosmic jokes was played upon us. She has a twin sister, identical in every way. I‘m serious. Her twin, Jennifer, is a carbon copy of every tragic and disturbing and noisy idiosyncrasy of her sister. Oddly enough, though Jules had nattered incessantly about "Jen", she had never once mentioned that the graphic design company that employed her sister, was indeed the very same one we all worked at.

Sadly, the ludicrous irony of my situation caused Alf to break down into such spastic convulsions of laughter, that he choked on a mouthful of his cheeseburger at lunch, jamming a clump of meat, lettuce and pickles thoroughly in his esophagus. He suffocated to death despite numerous Heimlich maneuver attempts by a teenage waiter and an overwrought dental assistant who, unfortunately for her I felt, happened to be sitting next to us in the cafe.

In a fortuitous but bizarre twist of fate, the tragic passing of my friend has created a position in his department. I am not applying for it. Instead, I am forging another signature on an application: Jennifer Manson.

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