Does This Stress Make Me Look Fat? (Chapter Seven: The Book of Job)

More from Anthony Rhody’s book serial: “Does This Stress Make Me Look Fat?”

I have had a wide variety of jobs because I’m so good at so many things.

I get bored after just a few months.

I come from a long line of people who don’t have careers to speak of…

Although my Father was out standing in his field.

Often.

Even in the pouring rain.

I flirted for a while with the idea of becoming a methadone actor but decided it would get in the way of my cocaine habit.

Then I worked briefly for a magazine called VAGUE.

Never did figure out what it was for.

I was a narrator in a novel once but got fired for being unreliable.

Like any good entrepreneur, when I see a need I like to fill it.

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before I started my own plumbing business specializing in unclogging toilets that women giving themselves abortions tried to flush their embryos down.

I charged $100.00 for every month along that the unborn had been allowed to gestate.

An extra fee of $25.00 if there was an umbilical cord.

But business plunged when the environmental people convinced these women to put their “mistakes” in bio-bags and toss them into the green bin for trash pick-up.

Stupid environment!

What else was there…?

Oh, I once owned an origami business but it folded.

Then I managed a funeral home but drove that into the ground.

Funny thing about my favorite employee:

Our undertaker had a sign attached to the ceiling over his slab that said:

IF YOU ARE READING
THIS THEN YOU’RE
ALREADY DEAD.

After that I pretended to be a real estate agent just for the irony.

I was a fake real estate agent.

Had print ads with me standing in front of my house saying, “I’m not just a homo; I’m a home owner!”

Then I got found out.

I was arrested and they did a thorough cavity search but didn’t find a single cavity.

That’s because I brush and floss regularly.

Then I worked as a 9-1-1 operator, where I loved to correct callers on their grammar and usage before agreeing to send the help they allegedly needed.

Once, a distraught woman claimed that she came home and found her child unconscious on the living-room floor.

“He’s just laying there!” the woman cried.

“What is he laying,” I asked, “a blanket, a rug, what?”

“Huh?” the Mother asked.

“He’s on the floor and not moving! Please send help!”

This went on for some time.

I don’t know what the outcome was.

My break came up and I passed the call off to someone else.

God people, learn some damn grammar. It may be a matter of life and death.

My business ideas are plentiful and solid like the dump I took this morning and they also come to me while I’m taking one.

For example, I want to open a brothel that serves clear soup.

Then, when I get out of jail, I want to open a pie shop named TT.

I was in the process of opening a daycare center for both children and pets called Dingo’s Got My Baby.

But someone beat me to it.

The only word that rhymes with entrepreneur is “manure.”

Now I fucking know why.

My last serious job interview went like this:

Would-be employer: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Me: Uhm…in a mirror?

Right after that I was able to go on permanent disability because there was obviously something not quite right with me.

Author: Anthony Rhody

My name is Anthony Rhody. I was born in a small midwestern town when I was very young. I am a recovering Catholic and lapsed homosexual. Henceforth I spend a lot less time on my knees. I was a film major at Columbia in Chicago after my career in high school ended in scandal and must-deserved notoriety, plus a diploma. After two years of life in a seventeen-story dorm I was told I should go to the west coast (true story). Since then I have been a screenwriter primarily and a playwright on rare occasion. When I realized a couple years ago I had too many notes on humor and funny schtick to ever use in screenplays I decided to try to see how many of them I could throw together as a book of humor. "Does This Stress Make Me Look Fat?" is that book, not a medical journal on over-eating. I don't have any children and as far as I know, no sexual partners. I have lived in San Francisco since before there was a homeless problem - sorry, before so many folks were home free.

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