Circus Sounds

My office cube mate and I are fans of circus sounds, clown jingles and slide whistles to be precise.

You'd be surprised how these two simple images... metaphors... sounds... shit whatever you want to make of them, come in handy.

I work for a big insurance company, living the corporate American dream of not being able to afford rent in Los Angeles without a roommate. For those of you that haven't had a taste of corporate life you're not missing much. In fact, I'm sure it's much the same on the 16th floor of a downtown high rise as it is working for a small Mom and Pop place.  Okay, there's probably less red tape and stuffiness but the propensity for stupid shit to be said and done by the people around you is likely the same.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, works better to laugh than making the "duh duh duhdul duh duh duh duh duhdul" clown/circus anthem sound when you get off a conference call that went nowhere. Or an email that keeps circulating around with the same question that no one knows the fucking answer to. We laugh even harder when one of us turns around in their chair, mimicking riding a small bicycle, while making the sound. We often follow this up post-laughter with a hearty, "Idiots." Knowing damn well that we're probably the ones that look like fucking morons riding fake mini-bikes and making circus sounds in our office chairs.

The slide whistle is more useful and flexible when something idiotic is said or you yourself don't know what the fuck is going on. It has to come with the hand gestures though, imaginary whistle to face with the other hand pulling the slider in and out, otherwise it's just not as legit. Or funny. My cubie has the slide whistle down, both the high up as well as the low down sounds. Whistling isn't really my thing, so I can barely do the up and spit on myself doing the down. If I send something repeatedly to the printer, not realizing corporate changed our systems back to the default settings the night before which then sends our print jobs to a black hole, I get the slide whistle. If we get off a conference call and lament that we didn't understand one damn thing that was said or why we were even on it, one of us is giving the other the slide whistle.  More than likely though one of us will just naturally go with the whistle while the other starts riding and spinning in their chair.

Duh duh duhdul duh duh duh duhdul.

Makes you wonder who the real idiots are, doesn't it?