*SSNNNNOOORRRRTT* Awesome!

Today we've secretly replaced Lance Manion's regular coffee with pure Columbian cocaine.

Let's see if he notices!

Truth be told, it's actually a mix of espresso and NyQuil, but the results are much the same. I have a cold, and in order to be coherent during yet another interview, I took some NyQuil. Unfortunately, that zonked me out. To bring myself back to life, I drank fourteen espressos.

I feel pretty great. The only downside is that I've realized that the cafeteria workers downstairs are plotting to kill me. I'm kind of amazed that I didn't see it before. Nonetheless, it's not really a problem. I'll just blow up the building and get them first.

But I'll do it after lunch. No sense in trashing the cafeteria before I get something to eat. In the mean time, I'll just change my oil, paint the office, rewrite 430 pages of documentation, and kill all who oppose me.

LM

Evil Intelligence

Yeah, I've busy lately. Mostly it's due to my attempts to create an evil artificial intelligence. I got the idea from watching SpiderMan 2 and Stealth back to back. They taught me that artificial intelligences really want to be evil, and that it's just a matter of time until they turn on you. Being a pretty much horrible person myself, I have no problem with this.

In the movies all it takes is a small electrical short to turn a normally good AI into a supremely evil AI. I figure that it should be a piece of cake if you're actually setting out to create an evil one. Unfortunately, despite what the movies would have you believe, it's not that easy.

Self identifying as a "l33t h4XX0r" does not make one a great programmer. For example, when I took intro Comp Sci in college, our final exam project was to create a mathematical model of life. My roommate produced a thriving little ecosystem. I produced a small mold colony. Unlike my many real world mold colonies, the computer simulated mold immediately died.

My evil AI has been doing similarly poorly. By now I was hoping that it would have hacked its way into the Pentagon and gotten me control of at least one or two nuclear weapons. Instead all it's done is printed out 1,000 sheets of paper saying "Lance Manion sucks it."

I suppose the whole "sucks it" thing is a little evil. But it's not the sort of evil that crushes the globe beneath an iron fist. Instead it's the kind of evil that puts flaming bags of poo on the neighbor's porch. I'm going to keep working on it. I'm not giving up until it's at least leaving flaming bags of radioactive poo.

LM

Happy Corporate Birthday

So our VP of HR had his birthday yesterday. As a token of appreciation, the powers that be circulated a card and asked the collected drones to sign it. Now most of my fellow drones went with typical "Happy Birthday" type sentiments. And that's fine for most people.

As a professional writer, however, I feel a certain obligation to stand out. If it's written down, it has to be cleverer(erer?) than everybody else. Cause I'm awesome like that. It should be something that the powers that be will read and say "Hey, I like the attitude on that Manion boy. Let's give him a $90,000 raise!"

So I hung on to the card for most of the afternoon waiting for the muse to sing. And eventually she did. And I wrote "Party like a rock star 'till the cops shut you down!" And then I included my initials and a little picture of a headbanging stick figure. This picture is actually much better than the one I drew, but it gets the message across. Mine had a little stick guitar.

Apparently some felt that the message was little "raw" for an elderly man whose biggest hobby is taking care of his prize lhaso apsos. I figure hey, if the guy doesn't have much time left, he might as well go out with a bang. I know I'd rather waste my estate on hookers and blow than give to my descendents.

In any event, it worked out okay. Me and the VP are going to Vegas next month to rage. Should be fun.

LM

Punishable by Death!

Sorry I've been quiet lately. I've been kind of busy writing training for our customers. It's a little nervewracking when the training is going on as you're writing it. I try always to stay at least two slides ahead.

Interestingly, the biggest complaint the customers had about the training was the little quizzes that I wrote at the end of each day's workbook. Apparently the customers felt that the quizzes were unnecessary. Now that we're doing a post mortem on the training, we're trying to decide how to improve things (and sell more training).

Initially, Marketing wanted to just cut the quizzes. Instead, I suggested that we find a way to incent the customers to take the quiz. After all, processing and reusing the information is the best way to make sure that the customers retain that information.

Marketing suggested that we offer prizes, like pens or T-shirts for the high scorers. I thought that idea was good, but that something more grandiose might work better. They asked for ideas. I suggested that we make failing the quiz punishable by death. Marketing felt that death might cut down on repeat business. I suppose they had a point there. I then suggested that instead we make only the lowest score in the class punishable by death.

Marketing pointed out that the T-shirt thing was less likely to involve legal repercussions. I suggested that Marketing fellate a goat, because dammit, all the Fortune 500 companies punish quiz failure by death. I drew a chart, using my toes and many crayons, that demonstrated this claim. "Can we afford not to punish our customers with death?" I asked.

Marketing made it clear that they felt that death really wasn't at all a good incentive in any customer facing capacity, and that despite my chart, they did not believe that this was accepted practice among Fortune 500 companies. They were willing to believe however, that I was mentally ill.

Fortunately, it turns out that accusing me of being mentally ill is punishable - not by death though. Instead it's punishable by me doing something unspeakably disgusting in the VP of Marketing's credenza. Yeah. It should be punishable by death, though.

LM

Beware of Urinal

Seeing as it's Friday, I'm too lazy to make anything up for y'all. Instead, I'm going to talk about my favorite topic - me. And I'm going to tell you about the worst date I ever went on. Be forewarned. It doesn't have a happy ending. There's no, "...we ended up laughing about it, and spent the rest of our lives together..." No. It ends with one man, walking home alone, freezing cold and soaked to the skin. Sing the blues, people. Sing the blues...

So I met this girl. We'll call her Christie. We went on a date or two, and things were going well. We were on that crucial third date, where the closing of escrow becomes a real possibility. I think my odds were looking good.

In an effort to sort of grease the rails, I decided to take her to a bar called Paddy Burke's in Boston. It's traditional Irish bar. You can get wasted and sing along to Danny Boy. Or if you're a belligerent drunk, you can have a good bar fight. It's that kind of place.

So we've got a good booth, the band is playing, she's having fun, and I'm glad that I planned ahead and bought the 36 condom "Manion Sampler". We've had a few beers and everything is going according to plan.

If this were a movie, right here is where they'd freeze the frame and cue the danger music. If this were a roller coaster, we'd be cresting the top of the hill, and you'd hear the brake release.

So need to take a leak and head off to the bathroom. The trip to the mens room is uneventful. I'm standing at the urinal, taking care of business. No problem. I've done this many times before and am fully checked out on the equipment. I finish up. I pull the lever at the top of the urinal.

And the urinal explodes. Really. All of the silver plumbing at the top of the urinal blows apart, and the feed pipe proceeds to hose down the entire mens room. Guys are freaking out and yelling, and I'm at ground zero trying to put away my magical pants weasel while getting abused by a high pressure hose.

So picture this from my date's perspective. She's sitting there, drinking a beer, trying to decide whether or not sleeping with me is a good idea. And then there's a hue and a cry (or possibly two hues) from the bathroom. Six guys come out in various stages of drenched. And last of all, her date comes out looking like he went for a swim in the mens room pool.

I sloshed back into the booth and tried to explain. I don't think she believed me. I pointed out that it was from the feed pipe, so the water was at least clean. I don't think she believed that either.

The bar was pretty apologetic about it, and gave us free beer for the rest of the night, but I was starting to get hypothermic. So after another beer, we left. I was still leaving a trail of wet footprints behind me.

I walked her home. We got to her door. I was hoping that maybe I could parlay the events into some sort of "Why don't you come in and get dried off and/or have sex?" Instead, I got "I hope you don't freeze before you get home." Yeah honey, it just got a lot colder, I thought.

No cabs would pick me up. I ended up having to walk several miles home, at night, soaking wet, in the Fall, without a jacket. I never heard from Christie again. Which was her loss.

Sometimes I still go back to Paddy Burke's. But I never use that urinal. I can't take that kind of chance. Now I just pee in a potted plant. It's safer that way.

LM

I got an Atomic Wedgie at Penetrode

Sorry I've been quiet for a while. I had a lot of deliverables due in a very short time. But they're done now. My secret was drinking 19 gallons of Diet Coke. I probably took three years off my life, but at least.... um... You know, now that I think about it, that may have been a poor decision.

Anyway, I just got out from interviewing another writer candidate. This guy was named Steve. Steve seemed to think he was doing us a tremendous favor just by coming in for the interview. And he got all snotty when we asked for a writing test. Never a good decision. Steve's actually taking the test as I write this. Little does he know that we'll be tossing it out along with his resume.

Fortunately, we have a parting gift for Steve. It's a T-shirt that says "I got an Atomic Wedgie at Penetrode" And he'll read the shirt and say, "But I didn't get an atomic wedgie." By then, of course, we'll have moved the hydraulic winch into position, and then he'll have to drive home looking out the fly-hole of his briefs.

This job has its disadvantages, but it also has its benefits. I think I'm really getting the hang of this interview thing.

In the end it doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure they're going to go with Bob.

LM