The U.O.G.

what's the U.O.G.? it stands for Universal Office Greeting. i've been giving and recieving the U.O.G. for some time now, and it's symbolic signifigance only just hit me. when you walk the halls of your office building and you see someone else who works there, you:

1) make eye contact
2) close your mouth
3) half-smile/half-grimmace
4) lower your head
5) go about your business

this silent acknowlegment of your (and their) mediocrity casts a gleeful pall on the state of your (and their) life. you smile as if to say, "hey, we're all in this together", and you grimmace as if to say, "not that that makes this any better", then you bow to each other (at least as close to bowing as western society seems comfortable with), and sludge on.

this piece of graceful social interaction reminds me of my days at carnegie-mellon, where the academic competition was fierce, and the most accepted way to interact was to lock your eyes straight ahead and not deviate from the nothing you were looking at/walking towards. contrast this with my "other" "career", that of a sketch comedian, where we hug and sometimes make out with eachother the four of five times we see each other a year.

maybe i should inject a bit of sketch-love to my office complex. maybe it's on my shoulders to lift this place from the depths of corporate disenchantment. maybe a little bit of hugging would reinvigorate this despondant bastion of captialist excess. unfortunately, that would mean hugging a lot of ugly, ugly people, and no ammount of goodwill or positive thought can make shit taste like steak.

that's why tomorrow when i come to work and someone flashes the U.O.G. at me, i'm going to do a jazz square, and smile wide, yelping out "Business!!" in a quasi-musical tone. like mel brooks said, humor is our only defense against the universe.