Life just gets worse and worse

Date: Jun 26 1994

The last you heard, our hero (that's me) was stuck in a Typing Pool trying to recover his former state of glory using deception and everything he had learned about evil office politics from his buddy 'Ralph'. To cut a long story short, I was soon back to my former job of fooling my boss into signing blank purchase-request forms. Since it's wasteful to not use perfectly good pre-signed purchase-request forms, I put them to good use, largely as an excuse to meet the most fabulous babe Bertha, one of the Butt sisters (anybody old enough to remember the song Troglodyte?) who works in the shipping/receiving department. So I ended up buying a million bucks of junk to meet her over and over again just to find out she's a married smoker.

Ever try to stick a million bucks of stuff in a small 3x4 meter office? I tried to buy the most expensive per square foot hardware but I still don't have the room to hide the stuff. So I stuck alot of it up in the overhead false ceiling, just to have workmen find it and report it to my boss. Yeh, right - go ahead and take it outta my pay - I don't make enough!

So I got de-moted to Test-Tube Mover. It was an ok job. I picked up test-tubes from desk A and moved them to desk B in this lab where they do genetic experiments. Things were going ok till I fumbled one day. They tried to blame me for all the lab technicians coming down with some minor rash which started eating away faces and arms and legs. I say it's from eating too much chocolate. Anyway, after the press got hold of the story and claimed that my opening the window to air the place out caused a wide-spread evil virus to get out, I got de-moted again. I still say it's from eating too much chocolate. Ever notice that the words streptococcus and chocolate have several common characters? Its all a scam.

So now I'm out digging the big hole that will be the new building for our institute. I point out my contract says I have to have a computery related job, and I'm told where I'm digging will one day be the Computer Room. Why does God keep picking on me...?

As part punishment, I was sent to New York, during a heat wave. Luckily I knew someone there, so I looked up my old buddy and ex-colleague Mr Dermot. He almost killed me before he recognized me. I guess you don't walk up to people in New York and say 'hey Man...' We had a most excellent adventure.

One morning, about a 1 minute walk from his place, in a place called Father Demos Place, we were assaulted by 6 police cars, a police wagon, 3 ambulances, a fire-wagon, and a large fire-truck, to rescue this one guy on a park bench with blood all down his chest. It looks like maybe someone slit his throat. Apparently, ambulances are often privateers who fight over victims. One ambulance we saw on a separate adventure had 'Over 1 million patients transported' on its side. I don't know why the fire-trucks showed up. Anyway, the cops stood around for awhile, and after they finished their donuts, they put on latex gloves before touching the guy so they wouldn't get AIDS. So this guy was only wearing a belt and shoes. Possibly with his pants down around his ankles. Anyway, they hauled him away and we continued on our quest for breakfast.

We later went on a most excellent quest to discover whether a rumor Dermot had heard about one of the mens wash-rooms in a large Finance company was true or not. So while most of the cops were elsewhere preparing for any trouble during the Gay Games, and using Dermots immense knowledge of both physical and electronic security of said Finance Company, we made our way up to the 38th floor - one of the Trading Floors. It was amazing! There were rows and rows of contiguous desks, each with several workstations, PC's and monitors piled up high, with all monitors showing neat weirdo information. Dermot explained the concept that anything can be traded, and what we were looking at was volatility numbers of derivatives. So he scribbled down some figures to make another million or two using this info.

There were large clocks around the walls showing times around the world. A large LED strip along the walls showing share prices scrolling along. There were these physical telephone-switch looking things on peoples desks that I thought looked like they were from radio-shack, but I was told they cost between $50G to $100G each. Desks had directional telephones so you could turn the mouthpiece a few degrees away so traders could yell at someone else and the person on the other end won't hear them.

So we finally checked out the wash-rooms, and the rumor was true. In one of the mens wash-rooms, there was a large, evidently very used, punching bag. There was a tear in it from so much use.

We ended up in the basement of some bar owned by some drug-lord. I figured out later that Dermot was always scared to go into the basement alone previously, so he used me as a guinea-pig to go down first and be ready to run if I got blown away. So we ended up sitting on comfy-couches around a large coffee-table, with everything falling apart, while babes offered us free drugs while Dermot and I yelled at each other over the music. I suppose the very large cover charge we paid at the door covered all this attention.

My memory is kinda fuzzy after that, but I do remember that I had a most excellent adventure on what was supposed to be my punishment for blowing so much money. I'm back in jolly old England digging the foundation for a Computer Room making peanuts again. There isn't that much office politics among construction workers, but I'm confident that I'll sleaze my way outta this.

be seeing you,