Microserfs

My magnetic card kegs fucked upa nd I couldn’t get into the building and I gfelt like I’d stopped existing

FRIDAY

Todd burst in this morning: “I’m a Maoist now!”

The rest of us are so numb from politics now we couldn’t even muster up the will to shoot him a yawn.

“You do know the three forms of Communism, don’t you?”

“No, Todd. But I’m sure you’ll let us know.”

“Oh good …

“First, there’s Marxist Leninism.

“Second, there’s Stalinism — well, actually, Stalinism is an application, not an operating system. I mean, if you want to wipe out 40 million people, you install Stalinism on your hard drive. It’s like a political ebola virus.”

Susan likened the Stalinist purges to those at IBM.

“Finally, there’s Maoism. Maoism is about the total elimination of all culture. Anything that smacks of culture is bad. Everything from cocktail umbrellas up to Mozart. It all has to go.”

I said, “That’s dreadful, Todd — culture is everything. Without culture we’re nothing. You’re telling me you’d have all existing Bob Newhart reruns destroyed?”

“Bob Newhart romanticizes decadent, self-absorbed bourgeois liberal therapeutic culture. It is redeemable only in that therapy repudiates the Church.”

“Sounds like a pretty chuckle-free universe to me,” said Karla.

“More to life than chuckles, Kar,” said Todd, frappeing a can of Del Monte pineapple and some form of protein powder in the office blender. “It’s obvious — culture must perish.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Just that it must. I’m working on that one. Oh look — there’s Dusty down on the street — we’re off to our posing seminar. Gold’s just had new daises delivered. Ciao, comrades.”

Glurp. Guzzle. Chug. Slam.

“Be sure and flex one for me.”

“Can’t those two just code?” moaned Michael in a rare show of feeling.

So now the Gang of Two (Boris and Natasha no more) are onto their next political kick.

Abe:

Went into Microsoft. Spent most of the morning entereing my old uynyl records into a database lv’e built. Filemaker Prod by Claris gets to Track my CHS tape collection..

Questions: Can you gusess what this is by the ingeredients?

SD Alcobol

Water

Tween 20

Glycerine

Flavor

Sodium Sacchharine

FD&C Blue No1

“Made in USA”

Keep guessing. I’ll give you the answer later. [Answer: Ice Drops icy-mint breath freshener.]

Dusty was telling us later on all of this cool body stuff: about an aerobic drug, RPO, that enhances the body’s ability to metabolize oxygen. Rumor has it a French bicycling team all died of heart attacks using it. And she discussed how too many steroids make women grow hair and can make users “acromegliac”—their craniums distort.

Oh — Dusty barfed up whole Lake Superiors of muck all morning. I wonder what’s up with that.

Some new diet regime, doubtless.

Ethan says Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share, and the transmission vector for these diseases is the DOOR CLOSE button on elevators that only get pushed by impatient, Type-A people. Ethan pushes these buttons with his elbow, now. I’m starting to worry about all of us.

In the spirit of Ethan’s neurosis, we made a dry wall list of keyboard buttons we would like to see:

PLEASE

THANK YOU

FUCK OFF

DIE

OOPS … MY MISTAKE

DO SOMETHING COOL AND SURPRISE ME

Later, everyone got in a debate over whether or not Fisher Price’s minifigs were cooler than Lego’s. The debate went onto the drywall:

FISHER PRICE minifigs versus LEGO minifigs

Fisher Price Minifigs: Plus:limbless figures give children a feeling of helplessness Minus:faces resemble those of beloved but unfunny cartoon characters in FamilyCircus Plus:generic, Gap-like outfits Minus:height/weight-disproportionate bodies imply eating disorders: bad role model for millennial youth yearning to be functional

Lego Minifigs: Plus:interchangeable, unisex hairdos Minus:clawlike hands are scary and potentially traumatizing Plus:bodies can be incorporated into architecture Minus:bad fashions

Dad hates his boss, “the 32-year-old prick.” “He’s a humorless Total Quality Management freak who uses Anthony Robbins pep talks to motivate me into learning humiliatingly simple input codes. Hell, I’m younger than him in everything but body.”

Dad’s only one-third the way up the food chain in his division at Delta, and it must be really degrading for him. Mom said, “I know your father wanted a job badly, but maybe this isn’t his cup of tea. Can’t you people teach him C++ a bit faster?” We had to tell her that learning doesn’t scale. But the idea of Dad being a hip and with-it coder is one that appeals to all of us in the office. Who knows where this will lead.

FRIDAY (one week later)

Dad quit his job. He showed up at the office around two in the afternoon to tell me. Michael promptly gave him some C++ manuals and put him in an empty chair in the corner and said, “Time to learn for real, Mr. Underhill.”

Mom was P-I-S-S-E-D off. But even still, she knew the Delta thing was going nowhere. She figures Dad’s just caught in this weird demographic glitch: too young to retire; too old to learn new tricks. She figures Dad’s around for the long haul, so she told Dad two new rules she’s made up for day-to-day living:

1) I’m never making you lunch.

2) You’re never allowed to come shopping with me.

Other changes: the Gang of Two traipsed in this morning. “We have ceased being Maoists. We are now