Google “biggest US evacuation since Hurricane Katrina” and you’ll get stories from every news agency in the world about the California wildfires that have forced the evacuation of a measly half million people. Does anyone remember the Hurricane Rita evacuation that took place a month after Katrina? Three million people evacuated Southeast Texas and Louisiana when Rita was a huge category five in the largest exodus of Americans since the Dust Bowl. I wrote the BBC yesterday because I saw the error there first, but I received no response and it doesn’t look like anyone else cares to make the correction. So I’m angry and indignant. Bah!
During my two hours of “break time” at work the other day I found this article that says that swearing in the workplace builds morale and solidarity. Inspired, I wrote this cold opening for The Office. Enjoy!
INT. RECEPTION AREA - DAY
PAM is on the phone with a client. The sound of shuffling papers, typing, and phone conversations fills the office. MICHAEL enters.
MICHAEL
(”Good morning!”)
What the fuck is going on, you bunch of assholes?
Pam is shocked.
JIM looks at the camera.
Even DWIGHT’s eyes are wide.
ANGELA puts her hands over her ears and gasps.
PAM
(to client)
I’m sorry, can I call you back?
JIM
Last week everyone was talking about this article on the
internet about a study saying that swearing boosts morale
and solidarity in the workplace. So I immediately
forwarded it Michael.
JIM fakes a cringe: “Whoops.”
INT. RECEPTION AREA - DAY
Michael smiles, holding up his arms. He finishes with…
MICHAEL
Eh, go fuck yourselves.
…and walks into his office.
It must have been around the time of the X Files final episode that the hip train left the station without any UFO buffs on board. Hell, there was once a day when you were nothing if you couldn’t drop a name like “the Cigarette Smoking Man” into a pick-up line. But somewhere along the way increasingly complex paranoid delusions became passé. Let’s face it, once the G-Men packed up their antimatter and left Groom Lake we all should have known there and then that the days of The Lone Gunmen spin-off were numbered.
But this week, in a typically out-of-touch move the French government attempted to inject some much needed UFO buzz into mainstream news by releasing all their files (apparently they don’t call them dossiers) on the subject. If you’re like me, the story sparked a long-forgotten chunk of the imagination; unfortunately, mine must have atrophied, because there doesn’t seem to be anything really exciting in these files. The great majority of the 100,000 cases were explained away as swamp gas or bad quiche, and the still unsolved cases are on par with a bad Fox special, only without the creepy soundtrack and the gripping narration of Jonathan Frakes to hold my attention.
I must admit though that I was a little intrigued by the really cool photo of mysterious purple streaking lights in the sky. But instead of being filled with thoughts of other-worldly wonder, my grown-up mind forced on me a much more plausible, down-to-earth explanation for the otherwise resplendent phenomenon: Prince had obviously played an amazing solo on his uber-phallic guitar and spewed forth a purple plasma that scarred the sky.