that?
He has to head out to the airport by 5:30. At 5:20 we can hear him trying to leave a suitable outgoing message. Ten minutes seems like a lot of time, but everyone thinks he’s cutting it close.
Hi, this is Laars. I’m out of the office. Until the twenty-first. So. Please leave a message, or actually
don’t
leave a message—I’ll—CRAP.
This is Laars I’ll be on vacation from the seventeenth till the twenty-first and so I’ll be out of the office on vacation aaarggg.
It’s a Tourette’s convention in there. Laars buries his head in his arms. Slivers of sweat darken his going-on-vacation shirt, the blue country-and-western-style shirt with the white piping.
I’m out of, I’m on—No, no.
This is—Laa—Fuck me,
fuck.
The backlog
It doesn’t matter what you say on your outgoing message. Having listened to you, people feel the need to comment. When Laars gets back from vacation, his voice mail is clogged anyway.
Hope you had a great time,
everyone says, even people he’s never spoken to before.
Welcome back.
He knows from the display screen whether the message was from someone important or not. For long stretches he plows through the backlog, pressing 1 to hear a new message, then 9 to erase the call without even letting the robot-phone voice tell him who it was.
Message received from 2-1-2—Message deleted.
There are long stretches in which he hits 1 and then 9 so fast, 1-9-1-9-1-9, that all the robot voice can say is
Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess.
Later, he worries that he erased something important, like a message from a random low-maintenance billionaire asking if he’d like to spearhead a new project, a combination art gallery–Web empire–environmental magazine–snowboarding camp–counterculture festival.
< 10 >
The confession
I can’t help it,
Jack II is saying to Lizzie as he microwaves something with a high cheese content.
I’m in love with Half Asian British Accent Woman.
He tries to get her to swear she won’t tell Crease.
He’ll kick the crap out of me,
he says, always ready to add unnecessary drama to his life. Instead she tells Pru, who tells Crease.
One if by land
Lizzie has this whole mini-rant about how British sitcoms and movies and books are overrated. In fact the whole country and all the people in it are given a free ride in the U.S. It was sort of zany-charming at first, but she needs to find a way to freshen her delivery. For starters, she could stop invoking the Boston Tea Party.
She goes on this tear again, set off by an ad for a film involving the Isle of Wight and the whimsical codgers who start a nudist colony. But we suspect it has something to do with Crease’s new obsession with HABAW, Jack II’s even newer infatuation, and the possibility that all the men in the office will follow suit.
Can’t undo
Pru’s résumé has taken on a life of its own. She thinks she’s finally solved the double-line-space problem by turning everything into a font called Lemuria, then copy-pasting it into another document. It looks like hieroglyphics, but you can see that the double line space has miraculously resolved into a single line space.
Let’s party,
she e-mails us.
Then she selects all the text to change the font to Bookman Old Style. She releases the mouse too quickly and it becomes Braggadocio, which is appropriate only for menus at restaurants that have an old-timey, organ grinder theme to the decor.
Now I can get a job with a barbershop quartet.
I hear the telegraph company is hiring,
says Crease.
She’s stuck. The dialogue box gives her a
Can’t undo.
It’s a double negative,
says Jenny helpfully.
When Pru selects the text and tries to change the font to something normal, the double line space reappears.
What goes around comes around,
says Pru, quoting Jobmilla.
Two words
Pru walks by the Sprout’s office. He’s just dialed a number and is waiting for a beep to leave a message. He says two words:
Veal stew.
Then he hangs
He has to head out to the airport by 5:30. At 5:20 we can hear him trying to leave a suitable outgoing message. Ten minutes seems like a lot of time, but everyone thinks he’s cutting it close.
Hi, this is Laars. I’m out of the office. Until the twenty-first. So. Please leave a message, or actually
don’t
leave a message—I’ll—CRAP.
This is Laars I’ll be on vacation from the seventeenth till the twenty-first and so I’ll be out of the office on vacation aaarggg.
It’s a Tourette’s convention in there. Laars buries his head in his arms. Slivers of sweat darken his going-on-vacation shirt, the blue country-and-western-style shirt with the white piping.
I’m out of, I’m on—No, no.
This is—Laa—Fuck me,
fuck.
The backlog
It doesn’t matter what you say on your outgoing message. Having listened to you, people feel the need to comment. When Laars gets back from vacation, his voice mail is clogged anyway.
Hope you had a great time,
everyone says, even people he’s never spoken to before.
Welcome back.
He knows from the display screen whether the message was from someone important or not. For long stretches he plows through the backlog, pressing 1 to hear a new message, then 9 to erase the call without even letting the robot-phone voice tell him who it was.
Message received from 2-1-2—Message deleted.
There are long stretches in which he hits 1 and then 9 so fast, 1-9-1-9-1-9, that all the robot voice can say is
Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess—Mess.
Later, he worries that he erased something important, like a message from a random low-maintenance billionaire asking if he’d like to spearhead a new project, a combination art gallery–Web empire–environmental magazine–snowboarding camp–counterculture festival.
< 10 >
The confession
I can’t help it,
Jack II is saying to Lizzie as he microwaves something with a high cheese content.
I’m in love with Half Asian British Accent Woman.
He tries to get her to swear she won’t tell Crease.
He’ll kick the crap out of me,
he says, always ready to add unnecessary drama to his life. Instead she tells Pru, who tells Crease.
One if by land
Lizzie has this whole mini-rant about how British sitcoms and movies and books are overrated. In fact the whole country and all the people in it are given a free ride in the U.S. It was sort of zany-charming at first, but she needs to find a way to freshen her delivery. For starters, she could stop invoking the Boston Tea Party.
She goes on this tear again, set off by an ad for a film involving the Isle of Wight and the whimsical codgers who start a nudist colony. But we suspect it has something to do with Crease’s new obsession with HABAW, Jack II’s even newer infatuation, and the possibility that all the men in the office will follow suit.
Can’t undo
Pru’s résumé has taken on a life of its own. She thinks she’s finally solved the double-line-space problem by turning everything into a font called Lemuria, then copy-pasting it into another document. It looks like hieroglyphics, but you can see that the double line space has miraculously resolved into a single line space.
Let’s party,
she e-mails us.
Then she selects all the text to change the font to Bookman Old Style. She releases the mouse too quickly and it becomes Braggadocio, which is appropriate only for menus at restaurants that have an old-timey, organ grinder theme to the decor.
Now I can get a job with a barbershop quartet.
I hear the telegraph company is hiring,
says Crease.
She’s stuck. The dialogue box gives her a
Can’t undo.
It’s a double negative,
says Jenny helpfully.
When Pru selects the text and tries to change the font to something normal, the double line space reappears.
What goes around comes around,
says Pru, quoting Jobmilla.
Two words
Pru walks by the Sprout’s office. He’s just dialed a number and is waiting for a beep to leave a message. He says two words:
Veal stew.
Then he hangs
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