I once saw a poster where Garfield the cat was sitting next to a gigantic pink hippopotamus, sporting a caption to the effect of, "If you want to look thinner, hang out with people fatter than you are." While failing to be funny to anybody outside of one single grade school nutrition teacher in Wisconsin, the poster did contain a valid sentiment that can be applied not only to obesity, but to any physical or psychological condition that ails you. "If you want to look happier, hang out with people more miserable than you are," or "If you want to look like you didn't lose a limb in the war, hang out with people who lost more limbs in the war than you did."
In fact, I believe the only cohesive glue that holds the misinformants together is the fact that secretly each one of these freaks thinks the combined madness of the rest of the group makes their own neuroses pale in comparison. To prove my theory, I've abused my powers as the resident Techie, and confiscated several emails from misinformer's outgoing mail server. Enjoy, you naughty naughty voyeur.
misinformer.com Christmas Party
As confiscated by Gary
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 08:47 PST From: Melinda Ann Roundabout To: Cynthia Roundabout Subject: Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas Mom!
I hope Dad and everybody there are having a good Christmas too. Don't let Dad eat too much ham this year! :-)
Last night we had our Christmas party here at misinformer. It was so much fun! I got there really early, because it was my job to decorate the office and get everything ready. An assistant's work is never done you know! :-P I'm just kidding, it was fun.
I got a lot of really pretty decorations, but I had to pay for it all myself because Marcus told me that he had already spent all of the Christmas budget on gifts for us! How exciting! He has been looking kind of run-down lately. He's probably just got so many Christmas secrets that he's nervous about saying something he shouldn't. :-)
The party started at about six o' clock. I was wearing that red sweater with the snowman on it that you sent me, and a Santa Claus hat, and I looked pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself (and I do!) :-) Actually, it was just me and Ray there at six, everybody else showed up late, as usual. Ray's kind of weird, but I think he's just shy. He helped me put up some more decorations. The office was so beautiful!
I mixed up a big bowl of egg nog using your recipe. Extra cinnamon, no rum! Just like you always say, people don't need to drink to have fun, and there's enough crazies out there this time of year already! It took people a little while to warm up to it, but once they did, they couldn't get enough of it! But you know how that is, right, Mrs. Master Chef? :-)
Right about the time that people started showing up, one of my strings of lights went out. Darn! Isn't that always the way though? It drives me nuts. I tried to fix it a little bit, but I couldn't get it to come on again. Oh well, there was plenty of Christmas magic to light up the party without it. :-)
Once everybody showed up, we gave each other the gifts from the office "Secret Santa" exchange that I set up. You'll never guess who my "Santa" turned out to be! No. Guess again! He he, just kidding. It was Timb! (The "B" is silent, like "limb".)
He's so thoughtful. I'm always complaining about how there's a draft under the door of my office, so he bought me one of those things that you stick under the crack to keep the cold out. It's a really nice one too. You know how the ones that you have are all made of calico bean bags? Well this one is black and made of heavy-duty weatherproof rubber. It's gonna take me a while to wear this one out, not like the ones that you have at home with the little wiener dog heads on them. Those are so funny! :-)
I didn't know that he ever paid any attention to me when I talked about how cold my office is. Well I sure feel warm inside now. :-) He's such a sweetheart! I was so full of Christmas joy that I went and put up some more lights. That one string still wouldn't light though. Oh well.
If you're wondering, the name I drew was Ray. He's easy to shop for, because everybody knows how much he loves science fiction. I went to that collector toy store in the mall (the one next to the Cinnabon on the second floor) and I got him a figure from that Star Wars movie called "Grand Moff Tarkin." I haven't seen the movie, but he sounded like he was probably a really important character, because he's called "Grand." I don't know what a "moff" is, but a grand one has GOT to be the hero of the whole movie!
I think he liked it, but he's so shy it's always kind of hard to read his emotions. I really hope he did like it. I'd be pretty upset if he didn't, because I don't want people to think I'm a GRINCH or anything. ;-) Just for good measure, I hung up some more Christmas lights, just to help brighten the mood. :-)
Well, I suppose that's about enough from me today, we all need to get to bed so that Santa can come!!! :-)
I love you, and I miss you, and tell dad that I love him too!
Merry Christmas!
Love,
Mindy
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 13:32 PST From: Marcus Alexander Hart To: Oscar Rosen Subject: I'm gonna get lit up like a menorah...
Hey Oscar dude,
How the hell is your Hanukkah going, man? Damn, it's been too long. Next year I've really got to get my sorry ass up there to the frozen white north and spend another 8 nights soaked to the gills in Manishevitz with you guys again. You Jews really know how to party!
Speaking of parties, I just got back from the misinformer Christmas party. Jesus, er... Buddha, or whoever the hell's name you people take in vain... I swear this mother f'ing web site is going to put me in the grave. To think of the opportunities that I gave up to found this fund-sucking piece of crap... Do you have any idea how far in debt we are right now? Let's just say that if our finances were a dog, somebody would take it to a nice farm to "run free"... then shoot it four times in the face, run it over with a lawnmower, spray it with battery acid, set it on fire, piss on it, and then send a legal team after its beneficiaries to try to settle up its debt.
After I worked through the receipts for the year and figured this all out, needless to say I spent the rest of the night down at Dimples drowning my sorrows in Pina Coladas and bad karaoke. Then when I come into the office the next day, Mindy (the office assistant) is all "Hey Mr. Boss Man! Could I have a teensy bit of petty cash to buy decorations for our Christmas party?"
Had it been Caster asking, I probably would have just punched him in the neck for interrupting me on the way to the bottle of Jack Daniels in my top desk drawer, but Mindy... sigh. She's such a sweet girl. When you talk to her, you always get the impression that you're talking to a bright-eyed six year old who somehow got her brain swapped into a criminally voluptuous twenty-four year old's body. It's just wrong. I always feel like some kind of pedophile pervert whenever I catch myself staring at her.
Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to tell her that there wasn't any money, so I got all It's a Wonderful Life and I told her that I spent the money on Christmas gifts. I felt kind of bad, but at least that shut her up for a while.
Plus in a way I did spend it on Christmas gifts, considering the eleven dollars in the petty cash box actually went into a bottle of butterscotch schnapps to spike her stupid virgin egg nog. I think everybody appreciated that more than they would have another dumb misinformer letterhead mug anyway.
That girl just went freakin' insane with the Christmas lights too. I swear she had every square inch of every piece of furniture twinkling in time to an obnoxious electronic rendition of "Silver Bells." I don't know how she could afford it on what we pay her. Anyway, that'll put a nice spike on our already-past-due electric bill. Jerk.
Do you remember my friend Caster? The guy who you locked in the closet that time you came to visit, when he wouldn't shut up about how Voyager's engines fold up when it goes into warp, and no other Federation ship's do? Well he turned out to be my Secret Santa at our little Christmas party. Joy. You know what he got me? The Star Wars Christmas Album. On vinyl. No shit. Thanks man, you shouldn't have. No really.
He just kept going on and on about how hard it was to find, and how much it had cost him. He was so proud. It was like he had just found me a new liver or something. He claims that this was the first studio recording featuring Jon Bon Jovi, as if for some reason I should care. When he started scratching the needle around trying to find the right track ("R2 D2, We wish you a Merry Christmas"), I finally had to lock him in the closet. I know it's Christmas and all, but hey, you know the drill.
Luckily for me, I drew Timb's name for this thing. One trip to Ralphs and I was done. A six pack of SURGE, a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, a package of rubber gloves and a tub of Vaseline and he's on cloud nine. Lord knows what he does with all of that shit, but I know what makes him happy, and hey, to each his own.
I'm out of here. Send me money. I'm not kidding.
-- m
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 05:11 PST From: Raymond S. Caster To: CyberSquirrel Subject: I'm back online, and with news!
Howdy, hi, hello!
Sorry I've been logged off the MUD for so long, I was at the misinformer Christmas party and I got detained. It kicked some serious ass this year. Remember that girl I was telling you about? Okay, listen to this:
She sent out an email to all of us that said that she was going to start the Christmas party at 6 PM. I was going to show up early, but then I thought that it would just be me and her there, and it would be kind of awkward. I thought I would show up at exactly 6:12, because that would be fashionably late, but not exactly 15 minutes late so that it would look like I planned it that way. Also that would give everybody else a chance to get there so that we wouldn't be all alone. At least not yet, if you get my drift. Oh yeah...
When I got there, much to my surprise, there was nobody there but me and Mindy anyway. Damn she looked hot. Well, rather, she looked like she would have been hot if she wasn't dressed like my mom. It's really kind of frustrating. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that she's a full throttle, four tissue, Winona Ryder in Alien 4 hottie, but the thing is, she can be kind of an asexual freak.
At the party, she was wearing this really manky looking oversized red sweater with this glittery snowman-ish shaped mass with plastic buttons for the eyes. It's the kind of thing that the Salvation Army would have turned away, yet this inch-and-a-half thick burlap monstrosity spent the evening draped over and fully obscuring misinformer's finest pair of golden bozos. The only place that shirt would have looked good is crumpled up on my bedroom floor. BOOM, baby! Swish!
We didn't really know what to do, so Mindy suggested that we hang up some more Christmas lights. Like there wasn't enough up already. The office looked like the Dunes, and from the outside looking in the window, you would swear the place was on fire. With her standing on the chair taping the lights to the ceiling, I did get a chance to be inconspicuously close to those tight Levis clad buttocks and not look like a pathetic freak. Still my palms were sweating so much that I think I shorted out the little fuse in one of the light strings I was feeding her. She seemed pretty upset about it, but I don't think she knew it was my fault, so it was okay.
But this is where the evening took a turn for the worse. We did this secret santa thing, and I was pretty bummed that I didn't draw her name. I could have gotten her something awesome that would have made her swoon. Oh well. However, as luck would have it, SHE drew MY name! Whoa!
This is the heartbreaking part. You know what she got me? An action figure of Grand Moff Tarkin. Grand freaking Moff TARKIN! I was crushed. What was she trying to say? Come on! He's not only the Imperial commander of the Death Star, but he's also the bastard who blew up Alderaan. Don't you see what she's trying to say? She sees me as some kind of troll that destroys beautiful things. For such a hot girl, she's really cunning in her subtlety when she kicks you in the crotch.
"I could smell your foul stench when I was brought on board." - Leia to Tarkin
'Nuff said.
And it didn't get any better when I gave Marcus his present either. When I drew his name in the secret santa pool, I knew exactly the thing. I scoured eBay and paid, well, let's just say "way too much" for a mint, original press copy of the "Star Wars Christmas Album". Man, it was beautiful. It still smelled of fresh cardboard.
You see, I know how much Marcus loves Bon Jovi, because I can always hear him in his office on the phone talking about how "we're going down in a blaze of glory." I happened to know that the SWCA was one of young Jon's first records. No kidding. Plus there's so many other good songs on there, like "What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas (When He Already Has a Comb?)".
I figured he would tear it open (bringing it's "mint" condition down to "excellent", but that's okay) and slap that baby right on the turntable. Instead that asshole, reeking of liquor, I might add, grabbed me and shoved me into the closet. He's a crafty one too, because I had the lock removed the last time I got stuck in there, but he still managed to wedge a chair under the door handle before I could get out again.
I was like "Okay good one, now let me out," but nobody came. I suppose I could have tried yelling, but I knew nobody would have been able to hear me over Marcus going all DJ Jazzy Jeff with his new record on the turntable. With each "wikki-wikki-wikki" I heard through the door, in my head I could see the condition going from "excellent" to "good" to "fair" to "poor" to "shit." Some people just can't appreciate collectables.
Well, I spent the rest of the night in the closet until Mindy finally let me out a few hours later. She noticed the misplaced chair when she was cleaning up after the party. Damn it, damn it! If I had been rescuing her from the closet, we could have had a moment, but no...
I mean, dude, even I know when the pathetic-o-meter is too far into the red for any sort of salvage, so I just grabbed my coat (which was now full of tiny pieces of maroon confetti that had previously been the pristine Star Wars record jacket) and went home.
Anyway, you have yourself a Merry Christmas with your Canadian internet girlfriend. I hope she doesn't cancel on you again.
------ 8< --------
Raymond S. Caster
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 23:52 PST From: Timb the Enchanter To: Dawnamatrix Subject: let's groove tonight
hey sexxy,
i'll be home in a half hour. get the pump primed on the latex prison bed, 'cause tonight, i'm your little ho ho ho.
btw, you were so wrong about that double-ended 22 inch dildo that I got for mindy. not only was she not all pissed off, but she gave me this big sloppy hug after she opened it and says "it'll take me a while to wear this out". goddamn! and you thought she wouldn't even know what it was. that chick is wack, but nobody's that naive. she knows how to get her freak on.
i don't know if anybody else has noticed it, but she's got a decisive light fetish. i'm serious. all night long, everytime caster tried to put a move on her, BAM, another string of lights goes up. that big retard didn't even realize it either. fuck, I'd be surprised if she realizes it herself. she's such a goody goody. there was this one string that wouldn't light, and you could tell that it was fully harshing her electric buzz. she just sat there and stared at it with those sad glistening anime eyes for like an hour.
anyways, marcus loaded me up with some SURGE, PBR, gloves and lube, so you know what that means. better take the phone off the hook. ^_^
