The Adventures of Captain Bored Room

Imagine yourself at this great marketing & merchandising meeting. Word on the street is they're gonna be some BIG changes. "Ohhhhhh"... "Ahhhhhhhhh"... the herd mumbles. This meeting is clouded in mystery and the heads gather, sit down together (behind closed doors) and crumple bottles of water while scrolling their Blackberries. Posterboard is unveiled, efficiencies exploited, technologies justified... "Everyone please welcome to the family, our newest member...."





Claps! Cheers! Hoorah! How 'bout that band, whoa!

Everyone is relieved, excited, some dumb-founded trying to process it, except you, who stands and says,

"Everyone sit the fuck down." You smile on the inside and the slumber party screeches to a halt, awkward at an all time high.

"And keep your tits in your shirt Missy," you jab at the last straggling laugher who happens to be 'high-pitched then snort' laugh lady.

"I asked myself last night to imagine the most ridiculous idea this meeting could be about and it's unfortunate that my wildest dreams won't be coming true..." A grimace at the dashed hopes of being able to comp your strip club outings. You spit on the conference table. No one gasps.

"What you've just explained to me, and more depressingly, convinced yourselves of, flies in the face of the best piece of ass we've mistakenly and quite cleverly cultivated in the lucky life of this near monopoly. Let me make this very clear, and I'll borrow a phrase from Mike Love: don't fuck with the formula." Everyone's bewildered, but not at your Beach Boys reference.

"This tasty piece of ass I'm referring to is our secret handshake, the shake rattle n roll than happens every time someone grabs our cock. And the grin they wield on the inside knowing they're 'in the know.' The notion that we need to change our bottle is absurd..." Your speech begins to fall on hard times, crumbling into the ordinary corporate speak that is so unavoidable. "...that technology should even be relied upon beyond manufacturing plant efficiencies is absurd." You mangle the word efficiencies as if you were chewing a mouthful of orange peels and the accent of your suspicious Asian landlord comes to mind when you shared an efficiency with some friends 10 or 12 summers ago. You regroup in the silence.

"You've just told me that it gets better than glass bottles dispensing liquid? That gravity is not enough? It's a real problem and you've been on the case? I guess the dividends did get you a summer house," you add with a snarl.

"You've just told me there's no more routine to condimenting my consumption. You've just silenced the lambs... shushed them from tapping... ol' 57 gets no more happy ending to his massage. You've just ruined our world..." and you point two fingers from the same hand, an index at the technology guy, and a middle at the culture lady, who happened to be sitting next to each other and are oddly still holding hands in a gesture of now stale jubilee and sexual repression.

You mimic a young boy who's traded cowboys and indians for a prefab red plastic bottle, "Hey mom, look at me, point and squeeze..."

"The bottle is upside down for Chrissake..." yet your rant is off the hinges now and so is any semblance of respect your coworkers pretended to have for you... not entirely for the rant thought, probably for using the word Christ.

"I'm filing this under 'ideas I heard once about useless things that have become plastic for a completely unnecessary reason,'" and you flip your briefcase open flashing the 'BAD ASS CRACKER' applique to three quarters of the table. You pull an imaginary file from it and mimic crumpling a piece of paper. Something catches your eye. You look down, now wishing the imaginary file was real so you could cover the Russian Luger that's reflecting light onto your Tweedy Bird tie.

You pull out your pager. "Oh, wait, Dr. Cynicism just paged me. Got some good news and ideas he says... this very well could lead to a TV special, one of them 'How Things Are Made' docs on Discovery. Have someone in Media take care of that. Hey, maybe we could get a shout out at the next Global Warming Summit... put us in the commission report for damaging some eco system... any press is good press, eh?" Your dramatic mockery falls hardly on deaf ears. You've slipped on ice, but it's no sidewalk that's bruised you, it's other people's time. You lean on the table with your left arm.

"I can't wait to tell the press their suspicions of Corporate Imagination are correct... I'll tell them we're producing a Broadway piece culled from an email chain with the Subject line... Fwd: [Re: Corporate Perspective and Outlook of It's Core and Widening Consumer]. It'll be called "The Exploitation of Idiocy"... Act One, Humans and Robotic Movement.'" And you use two fingers to outline this as if it were a plaque.

You pause. The near-sited gaze you've transfixed is disrupted by the realization that most everyone's look of shock has changed to a very distinct disgust, and some pity. You remove the Luger from your briefcase and slam it shut in one motion.

You mimic in a whiny baby voice, "It's always been an issue to get the best ketchup bottle." And continue as you exit..."We believe this is probably the biggest idea in ketchup since the invention of the bottle." You can't help but laugh in the middle of this one, "And this is the highest research testing we've ever gotten."

For an even more outlandish take on this ridiculous, see HERE.