American Fez

Chez Omega Man

Considering the serious health scares and other assorted scrapes with death I have survived over the years, I'm sure that like the proverbial cockroach I will emerge intact from the rubble of a nuclear holocaust, merely shaking the dust of civilization from my clothes as the eviscerated remains of my neighbors disappear into mushroom cloudy nothingness. 

Alas, I am not the ideal rebuilder of a devastated society. I'm more likely to reinvent the espresso machine before getting around to the wheel. In fact, as a bona fide homebody I probably wouldn't bother with the wheel. I'd be quite happy to simply loaf about in whatever ash-strewn ruin I'd be calling home. What's more, I'd spend more time cultivating my vineyard than tending my vegetable patch. As for animal husbandry, I don't see that happening. I'm certainly not slaughtering anything and unless my wife volunteers to do the milking there's going to be no dairy in the post-apocalyptic future. If you're going to survive also I hope you're more responsible than I am, for both our sakes.

Mother Nature's fury, on the other hand, would definitely assure personal my destruction. Even the feeblest of waves is enough to knock me into the undertow when I'm paddling at the beach, so I'm not waving but drowning if there's a tsunami while I'm sprawled on a sunlounger at the water's edge. I couldn't outrun the lava flow if Vesuvius erupted as I was touring Pompeii and an earthquake is going to swallow me whole and spit out the crushed bones afterward. 

So for selfish reasons, I hope the end of the world is manmade. I can see myself as owner-operator of Omega Man Coffee and Wine Bar: a little taste of Armageddon in the desolate wasteland under where the sun used to be. Management reserves the right to refuse admittance. No bare feet, no weeping sores, no mutated heads or eyeballs hanging out of sockets. Service with an ironic smile.

This. Means. War

Today I'm wearing office camouflage: a charcoal suit with a light blue shirt instead of the jungle motley worn by soldiers in combat. There will be no policy of appeasement practiced by me this week. 

I shall conceal myself in the conference room, invisible to my foes, then leap out and ambush their new business ideas. Then machine gun the last pockets of resistance with a highlighted bullet list on a PowerPoint chart.

Perhaps I'll even paint my face in corporate beige to blend in with the furniture and walls.

Honestly, I wanted to avoid such guerrilla warfare with interdepartmental memorandum diplomacy and new server password sanctions. Alas, that tinpot Kim Jong-un in the enemy cubicle continues to pursue with his dangerous workflow program.

Whatever happened to tenth-floor hegemony? I can already hear the fife and drums of a pinstriped army echoing through the inter-office paging system. The shadow of war has fallen across the water cooler. But don't worry, it will all be over by rush hour.

Three Day Weekend

This week I've been busier than a frantic bee with an eleventh-hour honey collection deadline to meet. Suffice it to say, after all that effort my honeycomb remains threadbare and uninspiring.

Everything always happens at once, for some reason, requiring my presence in two places at the same time, juggling multiple tasks while seated on a unicycle with a flat tire. Clown makeup is mandatory, of course. A simple pie in the face is the best outcome I can hope for; to be bereft of a completed to-do list beneath the Big Top, slowly wiping clotted cream and smashed crust from my weary eyes. The alternative is being the naive fool who sticks his head in the lion's mouth.

But that's modern life in the workplace, I suppose.  To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge yet again: the business of America is pointing an accusatory finger at another business when your own business can't deliver.

At least there's a three day weekend on the horizon here in Massachusetts. It's Patriot's Day, which commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. 

Perhaps one day there will be a Project Manager day, celebrating the completion of confusing and ill-scheduled work modules, for that is a battle also, albeit one that kills with heart attacks instead of cannon fire.

Only Connect

A phone call at work inviting me to attend an all-day "Digital Marketing Strategy" seminar. I explained that my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy: would the seminar address digi-anal issues for those of us who are so inclined?

A reasonable question considering the sum being charged to doze off in the basement of a Marriot while "industry leaders" regurgitated cliches and platitudes at a podium for eight hours. 

But my query was met with awkward silence as the agent on the phone audibly searched for an appropriate bullet point from the seminar promotional brochure with which to restart their sales pitch, eventually settling upon reading potted biographies of the key speakers, none of whom boasted any qualifications or experience valued by me. 

When the agent concluded this recitation of profoundly uninteresting information, I pointed out how ironic it was that such an ancient instrument as the telephone was being used to sell a seminar about digital marketing. Could it be, by any chance, because all the spam emails the seminar's organizers previously bombarded me with had all been simply and swiftly deleted? 

No doubt it could. Which is why my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy. Only connect, as E. M. Forster advised, even if you need to use two plastic cups attached to each other by a length of old string.

Easter Fool's Day

If I were Donald Trump's agent, after his Presidential term is complete, I would direct him towards performance in the theater of Samuel Beckett, rather than a revival of his reality television career. He would be excellent, I think, in a male version of Not I, redefining the drama for a new age. Krapp's Last Tape would be another killer role for the former President if you ask me. And perhaps Trump an Kim Jong Un could even stage a triumphant Broadway production of Waiting For Godot when their days of nuclear brinkmanship are behind them.

Today happens to be April Fool's Day. In the past, a news report of eminent politicians engaged in the sort of theatrical shenanigans outlined above would have made an amusing front-page prank. But it's almost believable in today's world; a world "beyond parody" as they say; a world in which Goerge Orwell would need to retitle Animal Farm as CCTV Recording Of Cloned Meat Distribution Center On Mars and 1984 could be simply retitled Enter Password.

But today also happens to be Easter Sunday, a time of renewal, although mostly a time when the prefix 'ex' is replaced by its dissonant homophone 'egg,' as in 'eggceedingly tedious.' Nevertheless, we must cling to Easter's message of hope; Spring's promise that things will get better as soon as the supermarkets denude themselves of pastel bunnies and oval-shaped chocolate. Meanwhile, I await President Trump's imminent guest cameo on the new Roseanne TV show reboot because such a 'beyond parody' event will surely come to pass.