cutting the cheese

I don't know why, but I seem to be bringing out the most immature side of my team. Even Ireland, after sitting in a car with three of my team members, listening to us laughing about fart jokes, said I'm a bad influence. The fart joke, as told by Texas Kid: Two saudi guys wanted to get drunk but obviously there's no alcohol in the kingdom. One of them reads on the internet that drinking jet fuel causes a buzz. So the two guys drink jet fuel and go home. The next day one calls the other and says "How are you feeling after drinking jet fuel?" and the other says "I'm fine, but don't fart". "Why not?" the first guy inquires. "Because I'm 200 km away" the other responds.

The joke is funny at 5 o'clock in the morning when you've only gotten a few hours of sleep.

Anyway, the other day I was sitting in the office and someone had once again switched out my chair. I tried to lower it to fit under my desk, turned a screw, and the bottom side of the chair fell apart. Hm, I thought, and continued on with my work. When I went to turn around the chair tilted precariously to the right side. I almost fell out of it.

I tried to fix it, but couldn't. So I switched my chair out with Texas Kid's chair. He sat in it a few minutes later and almost fell out of it as well. We started laughing and calling it the fart chair because he would tilt the chair over in my direction and pretend to fart, especially when I was asking him the status of his tasks to update the project plan.

Texas Kid had also brought in some swiss cheese. Many jokes about cutting the cheese ensued. The bouncer came in at one point while we were making these jokes, but he didn't say anything. At some point, as always happens, I started to get pissed about something and went off on a little tirade. Bouncer said "Uh oh, Franki's cutting the cheese!"

Texas Kid and I looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. It turns out, the bouncer thought the expression meant getting angry and yelling at people. He asked me the origin of the expression but I have no idea where it came from. Texas Kid got a lot of mileage out of that one. Every time I tried to talk to him he would say "Franki, are you about to start cutting the cheese?"

I introduced them to the expressions "going postal" and "I love me jacket" (a straitjacket, that courtesy of Jeffy). I also explained to them "stove piped organizations" and "pulling off the kid gloves".

I guess Ireland is right. I am a bad influence.

Another totally inappropriate joke going around the office among the pakis: A paki guy is really depressed so he calls a suicide hot line. The person answers and the guy says "I'm so depressed I want to die." The hot line guy responds "Well, do you know how to drive a truck?"

I bet my dad is going to yell at me for putting that joke out here...