Busted Bracket + Sadomasochism At The Library

A man came into the library. He was having problems charging his electric car at the station just outside the building.

"Can you tell me how to use that thing?" He seemed annoyed. "I can't get the charger to work..."

"Well, it's not really the library's..."

He had his library card in his hand.

"Wait, are you trying to use your library card?"

"Yes! Isn't it the library that...?"

"No. Just, no."

As the man muttered and walked away with his stupid, useless library card, Karen called me into the office.

"What's this?" she said.

She pointed at the schedule on the monitor. I had given Ed an extra hour to do whatever it is he does (read: nap).

"He asked for it. I think he--"

Karen charged at the screen, as if a big punchable image of Ed was on it.

"That stupid fffffffffff....."

"The word is fucker, I believe."

"He's just a fffffff-- Oh, wait." Karen looked over the assignments. "I asked him to do the programming for summer reading. Never mind."

Karen leaned back and laughed.

"Ah... ha... ha... ha...!"

She sounded like a doll winding down, each ha forced out with waning mechanical force. Because of her MS, she'd had Botox injected into her throat to tighten up her vocal cords. But it wasn't working since she still sounded like a cross between Marlo Thomas and Christopher Walken, on crack.

"Ha... ha... ha... ha..."

"Yeah. Heh."

"Greg, I want you to slap me."

"Uh. What?"

"Slap me. Hard!" Karen held out her hand. "SLAP ME."

I smacked her hand.

"Harder!"

Smack.

"HARDER!"

SMACK.

"Ha... ha... ha... ha..."

"I'm sure this is going to sound a bit strange on the other side of the door..."

SMACK!

"Ha... ha... ha...!"

Someone knocked.

"See!"

It was Sheryl, and she was irritated.

"Karen? Can you handle this person? She calls me every day and wants me to help her with her crossword. She wants to know what the ancient capital of Japan is, and I when told her Kyoto she said it had to be four letters. Now she's asking for someone who 'knows something.' I don't have time for this shit!"

Karen smiled at me on her way out to the desk. I knew what she was thinking: Someone is GRUMPY.

Meanwhile someone came to me with a problem.

"There's two gentlemen fighting upstairs. I think you should boot both of them!"

I put on my tough-guy face and marched upstairs. As I went up, a young man was going down. The man who had summoned me whispered,

"That's one of them!"

The other combatant was an elderly man with a red face and white hair. Everyone sitting on computers looked at me. I really wanted to just go back downstairs and slap Karen around some more, but I felt I had to do something official. Sigh.

"Uh, sir? Was there a problem?"

"Yeah, I told that guy to stop snapping his fingers, it's not a concert! Then he told me he had a medical condition and asked if I wanted to go outside."

Others sitting nearby confirmed the story. The young guy was a weirdo and a jerk, etc. Satisfied, I went back downstairs. Out of breath, I glanced at the clock. Still two hours left in the day. Maybe if I could get Karen to slap me instead, slap me HARD...


BRACKET UPDATE:

Upsets galore! Who knew Fluffy Paper would pull off the upset? Not to mention Todd's Gas and Fetus Punching getting first round upsets. But can they hold off Yaroslav and Michelle laughing in the second round?? STAY TUNED. OR DIE.