Guy Who Is Cataclysmically Bad At His Job

Listen: there's this fellow, and I'd like to talk about him behind his back. Except--and here's the rub--there's a good chance it would end up being behind his front, if you see what I mean. He's one of those real no-matesers you get, the ones who sit at home all day scouring the Internet for references to themselves. Of course, being no-matesers, they never find any, except when someone is trying to bag on them behind their backs. At that point, they link back to the bag on their own blogs, and then their no-mateser friends* pick up the bag, and before you know where you are, you've got a big, bad, bollicksed billion-blog bag on your hands. One likes to avoid that sort of thing. So I've got to make this a--a very circumspect sort of bag, with lots of references to meeting G. at the N. café, and so forth.

Anyhow, me and my friend--er, Flora, let's say--me and Flora, we both know this guy (let's call him Roger). Wait, no. That'd just be cruel. Calling a virgin Roger....

No, just kidding. That's not why we laugh at him. It's because he's horrendously, cataclysmically bad at his job. I mean, he's just terrible. Awful! Pants with a capital P! Remember that episode of Blackadder, where Baldrick was trying to help Edmund rewrite the dictionary? Well, compared to this guy, Baldrick was indistinguishable from Samuel Johnson. And that's not even the worst part. No. It gets much, much worse. You see, Baldrick, he always knew he was Baldrick. Baldrick's fondest dream involved nothing more astounding than his own little turnip in the country. You didn't get Baldrick flouncing about claiming to be Lord Sidney Higgins Bawldrickbottom, or any such nonsense. He was content to be smelly ol' S. Baldrick (with the ess standing for "Sod off", of course).

This Roger, on the other hand, he's complete Balders, but thinks he's--

--wait, I've got to disguise this, so he doesn't know I'm talking about him. So, although he isn't, let's pretend he's a software engineer, okay?--

--he thinks he's Bill Gates. He writes condescending little blog posts about flub-ups made by other software engineers, but the blog he's posting 'em on is filled with...with Javascript parse errors**. He makes trenchant little observations on the software engineering industry, but when viewed by anyone who's so much as "10 PRINT PENIS! 20 GOTO 10"'d a computer-lab monitor, they make no sense at all. He borrows parts out of other people's code, too, but then he messes them all up. He's not a plagiarist, though. He always remembers to credit the original coder, who then gets to look like a complete idiot as well.

Last but not least, he occasionally has a quick go at an unfamiliar programming language, then disparages it in a timid, emasculated fashion. He tries to compare it to his own language of choice, but since he doesn't really understand that, either, his comparison falls flat. Then, he tries to fit the whole thing into a--

--my metaphor is flagging!--

--a broader social context (a mainframe?), but, never having been socialized (plugged into the Internet?), he falls flat on his face (gets a Trojan?), and is laughed at by everyone he knows/bluescreened by his C++ compiler. At this point, rather than defending his position/installing a virus scanner, he shrivels up like a naked mole rat in the sun/dissolves in a puddle of variables and arguments. No backbone/hard drive, that one.

No-one ever believes us, when we tell them about this guy. (There's more, too, infinitely more, but there's only so much one can fit into one little metaphor. One more word, and his real profession would be apparent, and from there...well, big, bad, bollicksed billion-blog bag, eh?) We always have to show off his website, as proof. Then, it's:

"Jesus H! Is this some kind of joke?"

"No."

"How do you two even KNOW this guy?"

"Well, Socar once--(pss, pss, pss, pss, pss)--"

"--and then Flora (pss, pss, pss, pss, pss)--"

"--and then we (pss, pss, pss)."

"Socar, you little weirdo. What were you thinking?"

"What am I ever thinking?"

"Riiiiight."

Anyhow, the reason I'm writing about this guy today, rather than any other day, is that he's just updated his site with something so ridiculous, so utterly abnormal, that it scared Rat A under the table, and Rat B into a plate of lasagna. Well, indirectly, at any rate. I was just having my lunch, when it occurred to me that I hadn't been Rogered in a while***. So I checked out his site, and there it was. I started choking and guffawing like a thing possessed, and in that very instant, the air was filled with rodents--whoosh! And before I'd even finished swabbing the mozzarella out of Rat B's earholes, I was on the gossip to Flora:

"Check out Roger's site. Oh...my...GAWD! Trust him to [insert derisive and revealing comment concerning the contents of his update here]!"

I got an equally derisive and revealing response back, of course, but I wasn't done gloating, so here I am. Look at me go. Am I not awful?

On another note entirely, I got something nice in the post today--a present from Gail. It was a shiny little picture-frame, with a photo of Stella in it:

I've always liked her in that photo. She looks less evil than usual, less lean and hungry, if you will. I put her up over my monitor, next to Snarling and Scratch, and in front of Giggerota's ashes. That's four dead rats over my monitor, now: Giggerota in her urn, the skeleton in its display case, the wee fetal rat in its bottle of preserving spirits, and Stella in her frame. It's a regular dead rat gallery, up there. A rat mausoleum****.

And with that, I think I'm off. Except to say that if you thought the first part of this entry was about you, you're probably wrong. (And if you're not, heaven help you, you sublime hoser!)

* Contradiction in terms? No. Even no-matesers have friends...after a fashion. "Friends," in this case, being defined as "folks who haven't yet blocked their numbers".

** I'm not a software engineer either, I'm afraid. Insert authentic-sounding coding error of choice in this space.

*** Rogered with a capital or small R, unfortunately. Maybe that's why I'm so mean.

**** Possibly the reason I never get rogered.