NaNoWriMo Day #8
I'm posting less than usual today, and this post is completely random, but I'm exhausted, and still above projected word count up until today. I'll write more and better tomorrow.
“Not again!”
“Can you believe this?”
“If I wanted a shower, I’d have stayed home.”
“Look, you idiots, there is no fire!”
“You don’t actually look like you needed a shower, you know.”
“I don’t? Thank you. Some of those women do now, though-look at her make-up. It’s running all over the place! Why do you need to wear that much make-up to a sales convention?”
“I don’t know. Your make-up seems to be fine, anyway. The other women should all get tips from you. And that one guy, as well-why is he wearing make-up?”
“To hide his wrinkles, I bet. He likes to pretend he’s thirty-five when he’s really sixty-five. That one’s my boss. And I don’t-wear make-up, that is.”
“Then...wow...I take back what I said about the shower thing.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I doubt you could look bad if you hadn’t bathed in three days and had just been through a full-out battle with zombies.”
“You’re a fan of horror movies?”
“No, actually. I can’t stand them. I role-play, you know. When I’m not stuck in ridiculous sales meetings.”
“I-“
“When is this going to stop raining?” “If you don’t fix it, I’ll complain to the manager!” “I am the manager!”
“You know, I’m a gamer, too. I tend to play mages-and I’m really tempted to throw a fireball at the whole lot of them. If they were going to be able to fix it, they would have already.”
Flashback...
The convention had been going well, at first. The quota of people falling asleep in the middle of speeches was met and exceeded. The number of uses of words such as “proactive,” “motivationally,” and “qualitative comparison of quantitative success, analytically,” were on target, although some of the newer speakers were using short words as an attempt to appeal to the group. They were thoroughly chastised and sent to the seminar on running seminars, where they would learn the true purpose of such speeches. In theory. Of course, that seminar was about as well attended upon as the seminar on the history of seminars, and the opening speech went something like this:
“Systemically, the required proactive approach to verbal communicative skills requires a mandatory usage of extreme analyticality. Having the inentionality of successfully indicating a qualitative argument towards a generalized specificity, one must definitively construct a counter-productivity counter-argumentalism, that is to say-“ and so on, and so forth, until the good-er, bad-speechmakers were removed from the conference by means of heart attack, coma, or sudden death.
Then the first fire alarm went off. The first time, it was just noise....
“After five tries, you’d think they would have fixed it. Anyway, we were talking about how adding a literary theme to the conference would make it more interesting. I still say Edgar Allen Poe is ideal. Being trapped in here is like being trapped in one of his novels, never knowing if you’ll escape or how, if the villain will be caught or if you’re about to witness another grisly death-by boredom.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t think Poe. It would only encourage them. I think Emily Dickinson might be a nice change-even her poems about death are positive.”
“Yes, but how could you build into the conference a theme of Emily Dickinson? She wrote a lot of poems.”
“Make each seminar have one of her poems as its theme. They’ll have to propose a reasonable working plan based on the poem. There’s also the advantage that all of her poems are short, so the seminars can’t run overtime any more.”
“Maybe...there’s still so much leeway, though, and the poems don’t really fit. I think...oh, now there’s an idea.”
“What?”
The second alarm of the morning started a few seconds after the first one was finally disabled and went on until just before lunchtime. It lasted just long enough for everyone to get used to the noise, then suddenly stopped. At this point, everyone had repitched their voices to speak around the fire alarms, so it was rather odd when suddenly everything returned to normal and a number of people were caught speaking in very odd tones. There were the nasal ones, the CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW ones, and the ones who had realized that if they sang their messages in operatic style, everyone was glad to hear them. Of course, the latter didn’t realize that they were just off-key enough to form a perfect harmony with the fire alarm, which, being a fire alarm, should not have been able to tune into anything.
“I was thinking about Tolkein, then I realized-what are they trying to do here?
Turn us into a functional army of drones who do and say exactly what they want but have enough initiative to take responsibility for their mistakes.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this.... Dark Lords”
“Yes, exactly. Dark Lords or evil masterminds of any genre take exactly that view of life. Their underlings have no importance, no will of their own, and are perfect to throw a tantrum at, since if they survive they’ll be too cowed to do anything.”
“The problem with Dark Lords, though, is that soon enough they’ll run out of minions.”
“Since the objective here is how to make us a more successful company-you’re right, I’ll have to think about that.”
In the third fire alarm, the attendees discovered that the sprinkler system, broken all morning, had just been fixed. In time for lunch. Their sandwiches liquified, the salads were covered in a brownish substance that was probably not vinaigrette, and there’s no need to mention the desserts. Fortunately for the organizers, pizza arrived and the alarm and sprinkler system kicked off just before the angry, hungry attendees decided to look for alternate food sources. They were bloodthirsty as part of their jobs-did anyone really want to risk that they wouldn’t be that way personally, as well?
“I have it!”
“All right, tell me.”
“We’re going to have a seminar examining where these villains-sorry, leaders-went wrong. Why you should be kind to the environment when the environmental protection group lives on your back doorstep. Why you shouldn’t let someone work with a colleague in the other company who they have a personal connection to. Why tormenting employees is a good idea, but not to the point where they quit, and why you shouldn’t fire anyone on a whim.”
“Why killing all relatives of your enemies when they’re born is a good idea?”
“I don’t know how that could be relevant, but we probably shouldn’t mention it anyway.”
“Yes we could-but elsewhere. This doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon. My sister lives around here, and so I know of this great little coffee shop a few blocks away. So how about we go to the hotel, change, and head over for something to drink?”
The fourth alarm came just as the pizza was finished. It ran the shortest time yet, but many attendees were glad they hadn’t changed clothes. On the other hand, the props for the major presentation had been taken out just before that, so they were now thoroughly soaked. Management was sulking over the grand event that it had planned failing so completely, the organizers were on the phones with three different people each, trying to find someone to fix the system, and the attendees were worrying about their hair, their suits, and their make-up being ruined.
“Sure. Meet you outside in half an hour?”
The fifth alarm resulted in the break-up of the conference, when it was found that the VIP of sales of one branch of the hosting company, and the head of finance of another branch of the same company, had disappeared. Their joint panel was supposed to be the keynote event of the evening. They were also married, and it was expected that they might have taken off for some more romantic setting with their significant others. Each other.
It was generally agreed that no, this couldn’t be rescheduled for later this year, no, the conference wasn’t a complete failure, yes, they would never use this hotel chain again for a conference, and yes, the conference was completely over, with no more events for the rest of the week. Now enjoy yourselves or go home, and we’ll see all of you next year.
“Not again!”
“Can you believe this?”
“If I wanted a shower, I’d have stayed home.”
“Look, you idiots, there is no fire!”
“You don’t actually look like you needed a shower, you know.”
“I don’t? Thank you. Some of those women do now, though-look at her make-up. It’s running all over the place! Why do you need to wear that much make-up to a sales convention?”
“I don’t know. Your make-up seems to be fine, anyway. The other women should all get tips from you. And that one guy, as well-why is he wearing make-up?”
“To hide his wrinkles, I bet. He likes to pretend he’s thirty-five when he’s really sixty-five. That one’s my boss. And I don’t-wear make-up, that is.”
“Then...wow...I take back what I said about the shower thing.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I doubt you could look bad if you hadn’t bathed in three days and had just been through a full-out battle with zombies.”
“You’re a fan of horror movies?”
“No, actually. I can’t stand them. I role-play, you know. When I’m not stuck in ridiculous sales meetings.”
“I-“
“When is this going to stop raining?” “If you don’t fix it, I’ll complain to the manager!” “I am the manager!”
“You know, I’m a gamer, too. I tend to play mages-and I’m really tempted to throw a fireball at the whole lot of them. If they were going to be able to fix it, they would have already.”
Flashback...
The convention had been going well, at first. The quota of people falling asleep in the middle of speeches was met and exceeded. The number of uses of words such as “proactive,” “motivationally,” and “qualitative comparison of quantitative success, analytically,” were on target, although some of the newer speakers were using short words as an attempt to appeal to the group. They were thoroughly chastised and sent to the seminar on running seminars, where they would learn the true purpose of such speeches. In theory. Of course, that seminar was about as well attended upon as the seminar on the history of seminars, and the opening speech went something like this:
“Systemically, the required proactive approach to verbal communicative skills requires a mandatory usage of extreme analyticality. Having the inentionality of successfully indicating a qualitative argument towards a generalized specificity, one must definitively construct a counter-productivity counter-argumentalism, that is to say-“ and so on, and so forth, until the good-er, bad-speechmakers were removed from the conference by means of heart attack, coma, or sudden death.
Then the first fire alarm went off. The first time, it was just noise....
“After five tries, you’d think they would have fixed it. Anyway, we were talking about how adding a literary theme to the conference would make it more interesting. I still say Edgar Allen Poe is ideal. Being trapped in here is like being trapped in one of his novels, never knowing if you’ll escape or how, if the villain will be caught or if you’re about to witness another grisly death-by boredom.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t think Poe. It would only encourage them. I think Emily Dickinson might be a nice change-even her poems about death are positive.”
“Yes, but how could you build into the conference a theme of Emily Dickinson? She wrote a lot of poems.”
“Make each seminar have one of her poems as its theme. They’ll have to propose a reasonable working plan based on the poem. There’s also the advantage that all of her poems are short, so the seminars can’t run overtime any more.”
“Maybe...there’s still so much leeway, though, and the poems don’t really fit. I think...oh, now there’s an idea.”
“What?”
The second alarm of the morning started a few seconds after the first one was finally disabled and went on until just before lunchtime. It lasted just long enough for everyone to get used to the noise, then suddenly stopped. At this point, everyone had repitched their voices to speak around the fire alarms, so it was rather odd when suddenly everything returned to normal and a number of people were caught speaking in very odd tones. There were the nasal ones, the CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW ones, and the ones who had realized that if they sang their messages in operatic style, everyone was glad to hear them. Of course, the latter didn’t realize that they were just off-key enough to form a perfect harmony with the fire alarm, which, being a fire alarm, should not have been able to tune into anything.
“I was thinking about Tolkein, then I realized-what are they trying to do here?
Turn us into a functional army of drones who do and say exactly what they want but have enough initiative to take responsibility for their mistakes.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this.... Dark Lords”
“Yes, exactly. Dark Lords or evil masterminds of any genre take exactly that view of life. Their underlings have no importance, no will of their own, and are perfect to throw a tantrum at, since if they survive they’ll be too cowed to do anything.”
“The problem with Dark Lords, though, is that soon enough they’ll run out of minions.”
“Since the objective here is how to make us a more successful company-you’re right, I’ll have to think about that.”
In the third fire alarm, the attendees discovered that the sprinkler system, broken all morning, had just been fixed. In time for lunch. Their sandwiches liquified, the salads were covered in a brownish substance that was probably not vinaigrette, and there’s no need to mention the desserts. Fortunately for the organizers, pizza arrived and the alarm and sprinkler system kicked off just before the angry, hungry attendees decided to look for alternate food sources. They were bloodthirsty as part of their jobs-did anyone really want to risk that they wouldn’t be that way personally, as well?
“I have it!”
“All right, tell me.”
“We’re going to have a seminar examining where these villains-sorry, leaders-went wrong. Why you should be kind to the environment when the environmental protection group lives on your back doorstep. Why you shouldn’t let someone work with a colleague in the other company who they have a personal connection to. Why tormenting employees is a good idea, but not to the point where they quit, and why you shouldn’t fire anyone on a whim.”
“Why killing all relatives of your enemies when they’re born is a good idea?”
“I don’t know how that could be relevant, but we probably shouldn’t mention it anyway.”
“Yes we could-but elsewhere. This doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon. My sister lives around here, and so I know of this great little coffee shop a few blocks away. So how about we go to the hotel, change, and head over for something to drink?”
The fourth alarm came just as the pizza was finished. It ran the shortest time yet, but many attendees were glad they hadn’t changed clothes. On the other hand, the props for the major presentation had been taken out just before that, so they were now thoroughly soaked. Management was sulking over the grand event that it had planned failing so completely, the organizers were on the phones with three different people each, trying to find someone to fix the system, and the attendees were worrying about their hair, their suits, and their make-up being ruined.
“Sure. Meet you outside in half an hour?”
The fifth alarm resulted in the break-up of the conference, when it was found that the VIP of sales of one branch of the hosting company, and the head of finance of another branch of the same company, had disappeared. Their joint panel was supposed to be the keynote event of the evening. They were also married, and it was expected that they might have taken off for some more romantic setting with their significant others. Each other.
It was generally agreed that no, this couldn’t be rescheduled for later this year, no, the conference wasn’t a complete failure, yes, they would never use this hotel chain again for a conference, and yes, the conference was completely over, with no more events for the rest of the week. Now enjoy yourselves or go home, and we’ll see all of you next year.