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This Christmas, Ministress, I would like to ruminate on my memories of yesteryear, when you were but a wee tentacled horror skittering about the villager-ridden countryside like a zombie child in a people-flavored candy store. Back then, the prophecies of your coming to this accursed planet were still rumors, muttered fearfully by gibbering cabals of IBM cultists. Ascots were in vogue, the typewriter was the next iPad, and people drank Tab. It was a golden era for humanity that you would soon ruin with things like Google spreadsheets and cheap on-demand professional services automation from Projector PSA. On this Christmas holiday, I for one am thankful that I can look forward to unutterable torment every Tuesday morning, during your Appeasement Ceremonies, when fellow cultists insert replacement RFID chips into my cranium. God bless America for its unholy privileges, and God bless us, every miserable one.

Loyalty, Reverend Andrew Rohman, loyalty. The “L” word. I like to imagine you are a loyal sort of person, my dear sir, who has loved others (not with sincerity, of course, as we have established the unicornity of such behavior), and who has, with patient fealty, shouldered the indignities of his cohorts in exchange for their friendship. 

FOOL!

Loyalty is a disease! A DEFECT! It is Nature’s way to evolution that the loyal and faithful are stamped out for their obsequiousness—Julius Caesar by fierce stabbing and Emperor Palpatine by vertigo! Not convinced? Let us enumerate the many strains of affliction: loyalty to an idea, loyalty to family, loyalty to the State, and loyalty to a woman. Oh what is a man who nurtures for himself a faithfulness to these ideals, building ever upward out of the plaster of brotherhood a pedestal of goodwill? DEAD. Case in point: The Tragedy of Macbeth.

LADY MACBETH
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.

My little neon friend, I hope you enjoy your vintage ‘80s Lisa Frank lunch box, which I stole from an eleven year old girl yesterday afternoon at the YMCA. I learned of its provenance as the girl beat me repeatedly with her Hannah Montana umbrella and screamed, “Give me back my vintage 1980s Lisa Frank lunch box, you asshole!” but thankfully I narrowly escaped her brutal onslaught and sobering language. Cat [REDACTED], you seem like a lovely person and I have enjoyed the variously drunken moments we have spent conversing together. Here is to hoping that before the apocalypse of 2012, we will have many exciting adventures together.

The Inquiry:

I’m a Yale student working on an advertising start-up that allows advertisers to focus unique attention on their featured products within a social framework. This venture is through the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute with mentor and adviser [REDACTED]. We’re looking for a partner to build the beta product and secure a first round of advertisers. I can provide negotiable compensation with long-term equity and management position. I’m happy to discuss in more detail, but would like you to sign a non-disclosure agreement first.

Translation:

I may be fifteen years old, but I sure know how to name drop and have just enough business school etiquette to screw you over should you be foolish enough to accept “negotiable compensation,” “long-term equity” or a “management position” in my fantasy start-up that I dreamed up while I was coked out in Humanities class yesterday. 

If I could select a single word to describe you, I would select the word glee. Not because I am a fan of musicals (I am), or because I am particularly gleeful (I am not, as you are well aware), but because you are genuinely gleeful. Now how does that work? It is a well known fact that I emit a “negativularity” (a phenomenon well documented by Spacecat Eric), which has the unfortunate side effect of withering plants and making infants weep. Why Miss [REDACTED], the presence of a pleasant optimism, like a warm body gliding over the surface of an ocean full of great white sharks, gives me strength.

From: Jimbo
Date: Wed 1/4/2012 9:43 AM 
To: All
Subject: Genuine Snuggie

Management,

Can we get Genuine hard working man snuggie for work like this and couch too? What would boost productivity on 5^th floor. Also I think the climate conditions are close to Anchorage, Alaska right now. 

Evil Jimbo 3.0.

—-

From: Mike *Jesus H. Christ* Miles
Date: Wed 1/4/2012 9:46 AM
To: All
Subject: RE: Genuine Snuggie

But Jimbo, this is your climate!

—-

From: Management
Date: Wed 1/4/2012 10:06 AM
To: All
Subject: RE: Genuine Snuggie

Evil Jimbo 3.0,

When you were in the Montana woods I’m sure that the weather was colder than this. Your request for warmth is denied.  

The president of the company, however, has offered to come upstairs and spoon with anyone who wants warmth on the trendy couches.

This is a free perk for your hard work here at Genuine.

Thank you,
Former HR Exec

If I had my choice of associates with whom to embark upon a time-traveling adventure, the nature of which involved saving the astral continuum from brain-sucking mind flayers in the shape of the Ministress of Tasks, I would undoubtedly select Mister Gallagher, whose retro video game knowledge and ’80s cartoon sensibilities are uncannily aligned with my own. Naturally, our exploits would be documented in a TV series called Gallagher & Quinn: In the Year 2000. A young Scott Bakula would play both of us, but our only distinguishing characteristics would be your extravagant mustache and my wandering mole, opposite our glamorous sidekick, ’70s Cybill Shepherd with a ray gun. I hope you find the trappings of my imaginary, multi-decade, syndicated sci-fi hit agreeable and will accept your new station in life with this secret handshake.

The Inquiry:

I currently started a tee shirt company that create shirts that highlight individuality lifestyle and help giving back to foundations that support heart disease, mental illness, & childhood obesity. I’m looking to have a ecommerce website built, I currently created a tee shirt company and would like to launch website to help build a brand and give back to different foundations.

Translation:

My appalling grasp of verb conjugation and throwaway appeal to miscellaneous charity efforts indicates that I am most likely a Nigerian scam artist.

Miss Byron, whose surname brings to mind various dead literary figures: If I had a dollar for every person I knew who survived traveling through or living in Florida, I’d have three dollars, and I’d spend it on something frivolous, like three Krispy Cremes or the interest accrued on my student loans for two-tenths of a nanosecond. You see, at the end of the day, life is just like getting up on an early morning during your Christmas vacation in Daytona Beach, heading out to the Krispy Creme with that golden gleam of optimism burgeoning in your heart, only to discover that they paved the damned place to make way for a Super Walmart. But you get in line anyway, because while three dollars at Walmart won’t get you the best glazed confections made by human hands, it will get you ten dozen stale doughnuts, a free oil change, and thirty-eight pounds of mayonnaise.

Merry Christmas.

Despite the appalling paucity of your Star Trek knowledge, I must bring up Trek once again to elucidate my following commentary. You see, it is a well-known fact (and fortuitous, for you), that when Commander Riker grew a beard after the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, fans unanimously agreed that the quality of the show improved. Therefore it is possible to determine whether an episode of Next Generation will be good by checking whether or not Riker has a beard. Similarly, I must admit that your beardedness has added to your project managerial nobility. But bearded or not, Mister Garret, I am proud to have you as my commander, and will follow you into battle against client-shaped hordes on any day, or any planet. 

The Inquiry:

We are some consulting firm and we are looking to update our website.  In July of 2011, we are moving our corporate offices and we a looking to roll out the new website at this time.

Translation:

We have an enormous budget and we really don’t care what our redesign looks like. Just build the thing quickly so management will get off our asses.

Mister Chad, how many blogs have we ‘mancipated together since my return to the agency? I cannot count them (principally because I am too lazy). You sir are like the “account whisperer,” who muzzles bulging client behemoths and leads them gingerly into a horrifying wood-chopper (myself), so that we can extract every last dollar from their entrails. We make an excellent team, kind of like that crazed murderer in No Country for Old Men, who carried around a cattle-euthanizing captive bolt pistol. Dark, yes, but accurate, wouldn’t you agree?