12.19.2009

December 2005 (I): War On Brains

Soon after my arrival in this office, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant forwards me a pantyhose coupon—"I hope you can use this! I send them to all my friends!"

She has "friends"? When the other workplace fundies try avoiding her, because she creeps out even them?

Of course, it may only have been meant to suggest that pantyhose are something I should be wearing...

Jesus' BAA does take sartorial improvement as one of her Rapture™ preparation duties.

Once, as I'm looking through the Chair's Office drive for a file, I come upon a Word doc of hers: "How to choose the right purse for your personality," copied from a cheesy site by one "Crystal Coons." I can't find the document or that site (if it still exists)—too bad I didn't save Jesus' BAA's extracurricular work at the time.

In over a year of having to brace myself to go to this environment every week day, listening to "Morning Sedition" until 8:00 was a sanity preserver. Something no longer there, since Air America yanked the show this month.

Considering how much we, the peons, have our lives ruled by executive decisions over which we have no say, this is a small thing. Yet it reaches some classic level of executive stupidity, connected as it is to the media climate we live in.

After the cancellation was announced last month, the network was deluged with support for the hosts and pleas to continue the show. But the program was deemed "not funny" by an audience of one: the CEO who wanted the show axed. Air America may not have much of a reach, but its management proves,unsurprisingly, that those who control media are those who shouldn't.

It's true that the show often made me late getting into the shower. And—a geezer on a rush hour bus full of sullen, half-asleep undergrads—I often had stretches of laughing uncontrollably.

There are audio archives here, thanks to a fan. This has selections for entire shows and individual segments, including the Jim Earl bits that had me hopelessly cracked up on the bus. "Rapture Watch" and "The War on Brains"—what could have been more appropriate, just before my daily in-person encounter with such things.

Jesus' BAA has been out since having shoulder surgery at the beginning of the month. This was supposed to have happened next March, but the hospital suddenly re-scheduled a few weeks ago.

Cruella was livid that Jesus' BAA "just ups and leaves when she feels like it!" She has spent the whole month bitching about Jesus' BAA, to everyone in earshot.

That even includes me—when I have to ask Cruella about something, I get a tirade on the lines of, "it's here, though it should have been done this way, but Jesus' BAA is incapable of that."

There already was a temp working on this floor; she has since been planted at the empty desk in our office, where she can listen daily as Cruella and Ghengis attack the missing one.

Whenever Jesus' BAA is not around, Red State Girl can be counted on to step in and keep up the annoyance level. She's another character I might feel a little sympathy for, if she weren't so obnoxious about trying to bully the other women into her schemes as would-be social director. And she always comes across like she's taking names of the gals who don't fall in line.

RSG is forever bringing in fund-raising projects on behalf of nieces and nephews, and I often hear her talk about how much time she spends with them. Judging from how officious she is with the female employees, I assume that she hijacks the kids to have people small enough to dominate. And I also assume that she uses them as a public shield, to look as if she were really a married lady with kids.

RSG's current project: selling plastic baggies of "Reindeer Food"—
Make a wish and close your eyes tight,
Then sprinkle on your lawn at night.
As Santa's reindeer fly and roam
This food will guide them to your home.
For your gift to the reindeer and Rudolph
Your wish may be real,
Your dreams may come true.
A pome so bad, I was sure she wrote it herself. Until I found it all over the Web—along with the recipe for oats mixed with glitter. Schools all over the Murkan Heartland must be making the kids raise funds with this. So there must also be mass wildlife poisonings from glitter ingestion.

I have no idea what blend of horror at the thought of idleness plus need for martyrdom motivates her. But on the 23rd Jesus' BAA drags herself from her sickbed, stopping by to distribute "gifts"—bags of homemade cookies and candies.

I didn't see her (or what kind of condition she was in)—just came back from lunch to find the bag left on my chair. Sugar cookies, three kinds of fudge, chocolate-coated peanuts, and peanut butter balls. I unloaded nearly all of it in the lunch room, but kept some of the peanut things, thinking my choc-aholic brother-in-law might like them.

He wasn't home when I got there, but Clever Sister tried a chocolate. And immediately spat it out, with an outraged—"Is she trying to poison you?!" The peanuts tasted rotten, the coating was dollar store quality fake flavor... of course I should have known better than to think anything from Jesus' BAA could be edible.

This is Jesus' BAA in a [rancid] nutshell: she believes she's doing a wonderful good deed and goes to so much work over the gastronomic equivalent of her "camp crafts."

Jesus' BAA will return to work early in the new year. When she will sit happily at her keyboard, and say, "It's amazing how much your shoulder hurts after surgery!...eh HEH eh HEH eh HEH..."

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