American Fez

My Theological Schism

The anceint Temple of Typo stood on a plateau overlooking the vast keyboard plain and the rolling printer hills beyond. During the Festival of Fat Fingers, throngs of wailing scribes would prostrate themselves before the colossal statue of Qwerty the Proofreader, begging forgiveness for their egregious errors. Each penitent scribe's forehead was marked with a cross by the Temple Editor, wielding a yellow highlighter pen as a symbol of his divine authority. "Strikethrough! Strikethrough!" the baying mobs outside the temple chanted. "Strikethrough!" 

Such passionate scenes of religious zeal were common only five years ago, as many apostates failed to read back what they had written before releasing their typo-laden documents into the world. Alas, today the Temple of Typo lies in silent ruins. Chants of Strikethrough have been silenced by the creeping advance of Artificial Intelligence. The Temple Editor's highlighter pen is broken in twain, abandoned by the heretical adherents of Chat GPT and auto spell-checking text bots.

Employing these tools of the Devil to create amusing images that illustrate your blogs posts, however, is pretty cool if you ask me.

NIMBY

The gentrification of Armpits continues apace with some exciting news. In addition to the biweekly trimming schedule initiated last month, a new block of luxury, designer deodorant has been applied to both underarm districts. It is not only Aluminium-free to address environmental concerns but also offers an attractive sandalwood scent, so is sure to become a welcome addition to our daily ablutions. 

Alas, some neighbors have complained that zoning regulations demand the new deodorant has antiperspirant properties also. While we understand the interest in reducing streams of sweat from contaminating the areas in question, we feel that such manipulation of the sudoriferous glands undermines the natural bacterial processes of our local biosphere.

If these gentrification proposals prove both popular and effective, frequent maintenance of the type described above will be extended to other regions of the body where age and apathy have taken their toll, notably East and West Nostril, Upper Lip, and the bailiwick of Scrotum, all of which are in much need of care and attention. Planning proposals have been posted in the bathroom.

The Other Wall Street

The buck has stopped here. Okay, fine, I can deal with whatever. I'm inured to it by now.  Honestly, if I had a dollar bill for every buck that stopped with me I could finance a pole dancer's college education. Such are the economic realities of office policy.

Apparently someone was very busy surreptitiously passing the buck from desk to desk until its long journey finally ended at mine, materializing out of thin air like forgotten money falling from an old jacket pocket. I guess I'll just save this buck with the others that came to rest in my purview this fiscal year.

So the buck slowly reveals itself, crawling out of a sealed manila envelope marked 'Immediate Attention Required' in block capitals so the handwriting cannot be identified. Not that I care who's responsible. All the usual buck-passing suspects are equally as worthless as each other. Consequently individual culpability is irrelevant since any buck passer caught red-handed is merely replaced by yet another buck passer. It's a vicious circulation, so to speak, apparently without HR regulation.

No doubt I'll be required to explain the buck's provenance at some point in the future. The current rate of exchange is fifteen emails per buck; inter-departmental memos having fallen three-eighths of a percent against the rising email in recent trading. Fortunately, I can afford to take the hit. I've been working here so long I've become to big to fail.

And my vague 'In God We Trust' excuses and justifications do keep the higher-ups happy whenever a stopped buck is questioned. I call these exculpatory presentations "Quantitive Pleasing.' I have become the Federal Reserve of Failure.

Text written by me. Image produced by AI, obviously.