Mr. Panty-Waist Creates a Black Hole of Suck

Mr. Panty-Waist had more annoying habits than a fat nun. Somewhere, in the dictionary, under "irritant" is a large, beaming photo of Mr. Panty-Waist, probably dressed in those terrifying khaki manpris and boat shoes he showed up in one summer Friday, bringing the whole of corporate America to a grinding halt and causing the Dow to drop two hundred points.

One of his more obvious deficiencies occurred every time he opened his mouth. Not only did he have a monotone that made David Duchovny sound like a perky cheerleader, but he liked to repeat himself over and over again until you could no longer suppress the enticing fantasy of battering him repeatedly on his unusually large noggin with a ball-peen hammer while screaming "DIE STINKING SHIT-MEISTER", until his blood covered him, you, the walls and the whole of America.

One thing he liked a lot was to mention the name of the person he was talking to, approximately seventy times per ten minute conversation. I'm not sure if it was to remind himself who he was talking to since most of his thoughts concerned his own giant ego and he lost track easily, or if it was the teachings of some "Get the Best Out of Your Discussions" seminar, but whatever the reason, it was annoying as all hell.

He had phrases he would regurgitate ad nauseum, his most common being "In other words....", "Am I making myself clear?" and "What I'm saying is...". You could expect to hear those several trillion times during a conversation on the phone, sprinkled around liberally like pepper. He also liked to drop in official PR jargon in a manner that made you want to jump through the phone, clutch him by the throat and threaten to pull his entrails out of his nose.

This is the sort of conversation he would have. Try to strap your arms down to the chair before reading it because the urge to pound on something till it breaks will be unbearable.

Mr. Panty-Waist: So what I'm saying, Steve, is...we have to give this article some color, some color do you know what I'm saying? Am I making myself clear? What I'm saying is color is the feature we need to concentrate most on here Steve. In other words, Steve, there isn't enough color and we need more of it, am I being clear? And if we are going to appeal to those stay-at-home-moms we need a new strategy Steve, because, quite frankly, the current strategy is...what I'm saying is...well it's inadequate Steve and we need color, am I making myself clear on this point? A colorful strategy will make this whole campaign shine, am I making myself clear? In other words color? It's what we need most. Steve, color will bring this alive. What I'm saying is without color, this strategy is just another strategy Steve, am I being clear on this?"

I always had visions of the party on the other end of the phone putting him on mute and shooting things as he spoke. Smack mainly. Maybe themselves in the kneecaps just to prove to themselves that they are still alive.