Arcane stuff

To understand this material you sort of have to have worked in certain companies or industries at certain times. That's why it's arcane. One hopes that the nervously brilliant style might give it some merit even among non-ex-colleagues. Certain names and details have been changed or obscured to protect the seriously guilty.

Old Seth

Mister Loud

The Icarus Institute

The Icarus Institute is dedicated to the pursuit of pro-active lifestyle enhancement and personal evolutionary strategies in a continually changing developmental paradigm.

The president, chairman, chief executive officer and, in fact, the entire executive board of the institute is Paul F E Danon, BA (Hons.), who is a writer, speaker, presenter, author, editor, orator, wit, raconteur, bon viveur, gourmet, connoisseur, empathist, counsellor, listener, sage, father-figure, mentor, role-model, born leader, convenor, motivator, inspirer, animator, co-ordinator, organiser, intellectual, polymath, linguist, irrepressible tease, wag, prankster, beau, fashion-victim, poseur, horticulturalist, part-time lifeguard, keen railway-modeller, monocyclist, ventriloquist, female impersonator, leading freemason, Nobel prize-winning scoutmaster and undischarged bankrupt.

The institute is allied to the First Church of the Multi-Storey Carpark Inc. and holds meetings every weekday on the top deck of the NCP, Brick Lane, E1, from 5.30 pm till well after midnight. At this evening's meeting Dr Evadne Intray will speak on "Self-Actualisation For The Busy Traffic Warden" and the sermon will be preached by Professor Jerome Webwhacker on the subject of "Why I Don't Like Liquid Soap".

Paradigm Lost

Of man's (or woman's—let us be correct
Politically) first fall from grace we tell.
That moment when we get called in to have
The Meeting Without Coffee—means you're sacked—
We make our humble homage unto Bob,
The Muller from whose island granary
Pours forth a stream of wholesome nourishment
And projects that may take the rest of time
To do—but let us get back to the point.
Our subject here is shifts of paradigm,
The transitory nature of our jobs,
The fact that nothing seems to be the same,
That climbing stairs now leaves us out of breath,
That boy-scouts help us get across the road,
And people give their seats up on the tube.
But who is here to soothe the pain of shift?
Bereft of peer-support, we find ourselves
Without that wholesome camaraderie
Which makes the office workplace such a joy.
We can no longer talk behind the backs
Of colleagues who, as soon as they appear,
We treat as though they were our dearest friends
(Despite the just-concluded slagging-off).
Is it enough to make mild fun of Bob,
Or write sarcastic emails after dark?
I reckon not, but help is near at hand.
I see their shining cohorts coming near—
Their battered Ford Mondeos getting clamped—
While, grouped around the breakout flipchart-stands,
The wide-eyed, keen associates gasp in awe
As words like "nexus", "shift" and "paradigm"
Fall effortlessly from the knighted lips
Of stripey-shirted middle-aged consultants
Who've never done a day's work in their lives.
"Relax", they soothe, "it's just a fact of life.
We'll have to get accustomed pretty soon
To working in a very different way.
So trust me. I know just what we must do.
I read a book about it yesterday.
It seems that all the firms are getting rid
Of all their staff—then taking back again
The people they just fired—but here's the rub—
They're all contractors doing their old jobs.
Now this is where the folks like me come in.
You see, we knew it all along, that we
Could never run a piss-up in a pub
(Or brewery for that matter but you must
Be very understanding of the prob
Lems of the poet who is trying hard
To write this bloody thing so that it scans.)"
Where was I? Ah, the shifting paradigm,
And all the other crap you get to hear.
You want to say: "Oi, baldy, what's your game?
You mean we're paying you to tell us this?
I could have made it up me bleedin' self.
What sort of rates d'you charge for all this crap?"
But then you look around the room and see
The penny's dropped, and people's eyes are glazed,
Though not because they're bored by what they've heard,
But, rather, as they've caught the distant sound
Of rattling wheels and other railway-noise
That heralds the arrival in their minds
Of that most welcome harbinger of joy
Which brings a life of leisure and much gain—
I speak of the consultants' gravy-train!

Holmes Out for the Count

Sherlock Holmes stuffed a pungent wad of Mother Gladstone's Finest Ready-Rubbed Opiate Mix into his curled Meercats pipe and mused out of the window upon the snow-driven yuletide-shoppers hurrying home along Baker Street two storeys below.

"Please try and concentrate, Holmes," urged Dr Watson, his stethoscoped accomplice and biographer. "This is a most mysterious and complicated case and requires total attention, unencumbered, if I may be so bold as to suggest, by even the mildest of narcotic stupors."

But Holmes was already admiring the green polar bears who, azure Christmas-trees under each of their three arms, were trying vainly to hail the gingerbread Hansoms so skilfully driven by bespectacled king prawns in pale crimson woolly mufflers and luminous ultramarine spats.

"I am concentrating, Watson, and I am also elucidating. The case subsists, if I may capitulate, in the mysterious disappearance overnight of an entire laboratorial establishment housed not 300 yards from this very abode and presided over by an ostensibly deranged inventorious hirsute person of diminished capitular growth and distended financial accumulations.

"Furthermore, the former inhabitants of said establishment appear to have barricaded themselves in an elegant town-house whose august frontage is clearly visible from the albeit restricted view afforded by the ventilation-outlet in the wall of the external latrinious facility of this precise dwelling.

"Moreover, these hapless individuals are driven, half-crazed, to threaten the most grievous retalibutionalistic electro-mechanical revengifications upon hereinaforementioned repositorial entrepreneur, should the latter not acceed to their uncompromising claims for guarantees of lifelong employment upon the most swingeingly exorbitant, usurious and unreasonable of contractual terms. Have I not the very gist, Watson?"

"Oh, Holmes, you have it in a nutshell," the open-mouthed physician marvelled, "but what to do?"

"Watson, I sense here the wizened grasping hand of our arch-rival ..."

"... you cannot mean ..."

"... I can and I do, Watson—our arch-rival Count Upp da Silva. But there is no time to lose," Holmes said as he scribbled several lines on a writing-pad while flinging himself on a chaise-longue.

"Tell the boot-boy to run and place this advertisement in all the evening newspapers, and to book ourselves a twin berth on tonight's boat-train to the remote Swiss hamlet of Scheißhausen, where I believe we shall track down our loathsome quarry in his tawdry alpine lair.

"I see in the street below a moustachioed pilchard piloting a rhino-drawn landau with its flag up. Hail him Watson and bid him speed us to that rail-terminus which proudly bears the name of our sovereign lady. We shall be on the continent by daybreak." So saying, Holmes rammed his Johnstalker hat on his head and swept down the stairway into the swirling snow-flurries of the wintry London dusk.

Holmes and Watson balanced their precarious way along the narrow ledge, below which a sleet-ridden gale howled down an unfathomable Helvetic gorge. "Courage, Watson," Holmes called above the shrieking wind. "Our goal is in sight."

The driving snow momentarily abated to reveal across the deep ravine a breathtaking gilt-domed castle, hewn, it would seem, from the very rock and ice of that lofty terrain. From inside could be heard the rhythmical chink of money being counted, the quaffing of exotic Italianate cordials, the unbidden changing of compacted musical discs, and the long, low chortling of pecuniary satisfaction. "It's mine, all mine, do you hear?" came the rhetorical interrogation of a strangely-elocuted but all-too familiar voice.

"But that's where you are mistaken, Count," cried Holmes, as he slid down a tasseled bellrope into the marbled treasury of his arch-foe's mountain eyrie. "Much of those gains are ill-gotten and belong, rather, to assorted humble computationists who even now menace your commercial empire with hitherto undreamt-of dictionarial corruptions."

"Curses. It's you, Holmes," shouted the alarmed da Silva as he seized as many bags of money as his bulging wheeled suitcase could contain, "but you'll never take me alive". The count pressed a hidden button on an ormulu facsimile-transmitter and, to Watson's horror, disappeared from view.

Holmes' pupils dilated wildly as he drew deeply on a freshly-lit pipeful of Old Disraeli's Finest Hallucinogenic Shag. "See that brightly-painted steam-barge floating along the top of yonder glacier?" he asked an incredulous Watson. "Pray purloin the attention of the moleskin-breeked whelk who manipulates its tiller and vouchsafe from him a free passage for us to the noble Dutch city of Amstel-Damm, where I believe our decrepit malefactor will have gone to earth. Also, place this advertisement in the country editions of tomorrow's Scheißhäuslicher Allgemeine Nachrichtblatt. Then furnish us both with a stout pair of tulip-crimpers, and obtain for me the disguise of a cheese-waxing widow-woman. Is all that clear, Watson?"

There being no reply, Holmes lowered his manic gaze until his eyes fell on the bowed figure of his weary accomplice, his head buried in his hands, sobbing quietly. "Come now, hitherto faithful supporter," Holmes soothed. "Here - feast upon this alpine pomegranate which a passing elf has given me." But Watson was beyond consoling. All he could see in his mind's eye were banks of Tyrolean-style computational screens with nothing on them but the grim Teutonic salutation: GUTEN ABEND.

The Programmer's Tale

Whenne PHOEBUS hath his daily arch yrunne
Thenne WRITERS like to have a bit of funne
(Especially if the week is at an ende)
So to ye ROYALE OAKE their waye they wende.
This nite, amid the many writers naughtie,
Stood GB's latest leaver, fair-haired DORTIE.
The goal of all that nite was very cleer -
To drink as much as possible of beer.
Quite early on WICO the Oak did flee
(No doubt to tell his tale to the DG).
Despite his absence, though, they bravely tried
To maintain their enjoyment, ere it died.
Against the bar, a XXXX in his hand,
Leant bluff, brave, senior writer GRAHAM BLAND.
Enticed away from WICO and the fyre
By XXXX was his colleague, MCINTYRE.
Then suddenly all drinkers turned to stare
As into Ye Royal Oake strode DOCUWARE.
The Count was fear'd by all the folk he mette
For he (in ladies' loos) played clarinette.
He often, late at nite whenne it was darke,
Described his training-course at Roffey Park.
Yet Bland, by now well XXXXed, felt no fear.
Instead, he said to Docu, loud and clear:
"Of software thou know'st only just a bitte
And that bitte that thou knowest is but shitte."
Count DocuWare, his nostrils flared out wide,
Said: "Kindly say those words once more outside."
But McIntyre, that writer brave of heart,
Forced both the XXXXed combatants apart.
And so the evening, once more peaceful, ended.
At 1 am the writers homeward wended.
Asked how he might get home to go to bed,
Count DocuWare, now smiling, bravely said:
"Although my house in Primrose Hill's not farre
I'd really rather sleep inside the carre."
(When XYZ's about to take awaye
Your chariot, you use it nite and daye.)

To the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"

Oh, the symbols in the manual are stretched and squashed and bent,
And the numbers on the contents-list are not the ones we meant,
And the pages aren't quite regular - it's plain for all to see,
So guess who's doing a reprint? Yes - you've got it - MCP.

FagPacket 

+-------------------+
³        20         ³
³                   ³
³-------------------³
³                   ³
³  FagPacket (TM)   ³
³                   ³
³  the highly-      ³
³  structured       ³
³  rigorous plan-   ³
³  ning and design  ³
³  tool for laid-   ³
³  back people      ³
³                   ³
+-------------------+