Is it an earthquake, or merely a shock? Am I experiencing bad PMS, or should I go buy a Glock?

I am feeling close to the edge of screaming, "Shut UP!!!" at coworker Melvin. In general, I like Melvin, but on a day like today, where something as slight as a dust particle settling on my arm can set me off into a tremor of neurosis, every word he speaks feels like a straight pin being dragged across my scalp.

I can hear him, several cubes away, morosely explaining that if the group lottery ticket that we bought wins the jackpot tonight, we will each get "only" $580,000. Or some amount. I don't know what the amount is, but it's a lot more than I have on hand at the moment, so why complain? Complaining is for blogs. "Start a blog, Melvin!" That's what I should yell, over the cube walls.

Maybe I'll yell it in a minute. He's quiet, at the present moment, so yelling "Get a blog!" into the void would be gratuitous, and possibly result in my having to explain first, what a blog is, and second, why I think he should get one. Then there would be the dragged-out monologue (his) about his lack of general computer literacy, and the fact that every time he calls tech support, he gets someone in India saying, "Don't worry, we're here to HELP you!" Melvin is very vocal on the subjects of racism and homophobia, frequently making the point to me that I, unlike him, have never been a victim of either. Nonetheless, whenever Melvin tells me his tech-support story, he uses a startling, sing-song accent to portray the voice of the tech help.

So, you see, yelling anything over the wall is likely to open up a whole can of worms. Plus, being agitated to begin with, it's possible that I might launch into an explanation of why he should say "we would each get only" instead of what he did say, which was, "we would each only get."

Still quiet.

The quiet is actually making me more edgy than his morose, ungrammatical lottery complaints.

And speaking of complaints, which I was and which I generally am, does anyone out there know of a word that means "pretending to complain while actually bragging"? Because I could use that word in describing several recent encounters with my most silly coworker, whom I'll call Pollydoodle. She came over today to ask if I had the newspaper, which I always do, so I gestured toward it. "I have to look at it, because I'm quoted today," she... brag-plained, pretending to be upset about it. Coyly. Coy brag-plaining. There must be some kind of appropriate word here, because this is ridiculous.

Ridiculous!

I'm going to yell that over the cube walls, and damn the torpedoes.

Star of the day. . .Sir Percy Blakeney