occasionally we get letters asking: how in america can i rise to the top of the pops? how can i be a next-gen digital warrior, a practitioner of the lost arts of email zen, a tremendous achiever? how can i grow? why am i so short? my mother was eight feet tall and used to be an australian man - why won't my hands and feet grow?
america, we hear you, we're embarrassed, we're going to help.
today's email brought us to tears:
hi -i love your website! i am a temp worker currently assigned to a major corporation in downtown houston. my boss keeps giving me these odd tasks to do, like getting him bagels at 5:30 in the morning, or cleaning out his bible, or filing receipts for moon rocks that he's purchased on the company card. he suggests that i do all these things in a tracksuit. i don't of course - i went to yale for god's sake, i know my rights - but i am starting to wonder: is he in love with me?
plus: he hasn't said anything but between the bagels and the tracksuit i think he's secretly jewish. in texas that's uncommon. i only mention it for full disclosure so you can help me with my problem, but please don't tell anyone. the bible thing is a smokescreen.
your friend,
darren
well darren, we'd love to help you get shit straight. darren, it looks like you're going to have to assert yourself a little bit here. we can't tell whether your boss is in love with you - we're not fucking psychic, you might have confused us with some other website, that's actually very common on the internet - but we can tell you this: tracksuit or no, there's a reckoning coming. you have rights, as you alluded to. america is a land where tremendous liberty and poise are gifts from an omnipotent benevolent patriotic force - now you take some liberties. now you show some poise. the mormons didn't found this country so you could feel shame at your temp job.
time to throw the corporate elbow, darren.
wear the tracksuit to work next monday. YES. it will throw your boss off his game. the more confusion you can sow, the more magical perfection you will reap at 4:45pm when you throw the corporate elbow. because it will be monday, moishe - may we call him moishe? - moishe's going to be hungover, barely functional. angry about some things. did his sweet bitch drink tequila out of his belly button on friday night? did he watch saturday morning cartoons snorting a mountain of what he thought was coke, but turned out to be oregano? what kind of asshole sells you oregano when you want to buy coke? and on the SABBATH. what kind of country is this sometimes? how?
in your tracksuit no one will suspect your cunning and wit. maneuver things such that moishe is in his office at 4:44pm. get in there with him. shut and lock the door. moishe clutches his head and weeps quietly in his chair. the chair costs more than your genetically-engineered miracle dog, harrison. (did you remember to feed your miracle dog? why don't you care what we give you anymore? we sent you to yale you ungrateful little bastard!)
(we paid all that money so you could study WHAT?)
moishe snores a little bit. he's asleep? wake him up. you want this to be sporting. you're a patriot. he looks up bleary-eyed. say something pithy.
pithier than that.
NOW THROW THE CORPORATE MOTHERFUCKING ELBOW, DARREN.
you know how that goes. windup, delivery, follow-through. it's like driving your motorcycle over a line of foreign cars: as you hurtle to earth you swear you can see all the way to the moon. there's a little cash register there. with terrible clarity you look into the cash register and the receipt says 'backorder - Moishe - $4.99 - Rocks.' but no one's going to fill that backorder now, darren.
not now.
not after you get done throwing the corporate elbow.
you wait 'til 4:45pm so that when moishe's bodyguards come to escort you to the city limits, you'll only minimally upset the flow of the workday, american commerce, wellbeing. in your tracksuit, looking back with mingled longing and terror at houston your adopted home, you'll say to yourself, 'darren, you've come a long way.' but there's a long road ahead still.
luckily in that tracksuit you'll have no trouble hitching rides from people.
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