.SOMETIMES RAW.

*but we still need to have the important “Executive-Bored” meeting.

9:34 a.m.

Good morning, everyone!

First of all, there is no “I” in team. It’s Jay from upper management, aka your boss, with a quick update about today’s executive meeting. Did I mention that there is no “I” in team? In the latest twist of our work-from-home adventure and since everybody has Omicron now, we’ve been having issues with our usual video conferencing Zoom software.

So we’ll instead be hosting this meeting using the popular online role-playing game Middle Earth: Shadow of Insanity

Feel free to drop a message in the chat if you have any questions!

9:38 a.m.

WOW. Okay, there were a lot of questions! Lol!

To enter the meeting, first, create a character by selecting a gender (several available), race and class. We strongly believe in championing workplace diversity, so rest assured that elves, centaurs, orcs, dwarves, pink unicorns, minotaurs, and gnomes are all equals in the eyes of management.

9:42 a.m.

Good question, Michael! There are eighteen playable classes including Sorcerer and Warlock. If you’re in hazard mangagement, just select Barbarian.

9:45 a.m.

Okay, next steps! Once you’ve created your avatar, it’s time to log into the game world for our meeting. I’ve set up a conference room on the ground floor of the Pigbelly Canteen, which is conveniently located on the edge of the Whispering Wastes just past the Witchblood Forest. Ask a peasant for directions if you can’t find it.

Please come directly to the meeting at 3 p.m. and don’t stop on the way to fight goat people or collect golden coins and weapons.

9:52 a.m.

I’ve been getting some concerning messages, so I want to circle back and resolve a few pain points.

While Middle Earth is a player vs. player game, we don’t want to foster a coworker vs. coworker environment. However, we all know that stray fireballs and unintentional discharge of crossbow bolts can happen. So if your avatar IS killed and looted by a team member—say, Daniel from the first-kral-tribe—the issue will be handled in a private message mediation session with HR.

11:24 a.m.

Creative colleagues, I’m seeing a lot of confusion about certain aspects of this, honestly, very minor venue changes for our meeting, so here are just a few more best practices to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

11:26 a.m.

NO side quests! I can’t stress this enough. We should be able to resolve all of our agenda items in the scheduled three hours, but that won’t be the case if the “Coaching Department” decides to run off looking for the Great Axe of Narnia. Don’t be selfish and make everyone stay late because of your own lust for powerful magic items.

11:29 a.m.

Also, no killing interns. This meeting is all-hands, so Christine and Bernie will have avatars like everyone else but their characters will remain at level zero to realistically reflect their post-pandemic job prospects. Please make them feel welcome and remember that our interns are unpaid and are doing this for the experience points. That’s all from me. See you this afternoon!

2:27 p.m.

Okay, guys the meeting is in a few minutes, and I’m seeing a lot of messages in the chat to the effect of “Why are we doing this?” and “Zoom isn’t down!” and “What the (bleep!) are you talking about!?” So just a quick note:

You’re right. Zoom is working “fine” but I honestly can’t keep looking at you guys all day on Zoom as if I didn’t have important item crafting to do. When we were in the office, I played Middle Earth from 9:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day and ate at my desk while the interns did the work. But since we’ve been working remotely, not five minutes goes by that I don’t get annoying emails, help requests, or complaints from someone who doesn’t know how to unmute himself. I’m lucky if I can fit in forty minutes of dungeon-crawling during my lunch hour. My minotaur is barely levelling up anymore. Do you guys get that????

This is all to say that I’ve decided that all future meetings will take place via Middle Earth until further notice or until I reach level 75.

For any further questions, see above.

2:35 p.m.

See. Above.

Ultimately, do I think movie characters shaped me as a human? No, not entirely. That honour belongs to my parents, siblings, teachers, boyfriends, and tons of reading. But I do think that what we see on-screen shows as possibilities. Movies give us the lesson of what life might look like if you were like someone if you acted as they did. I took a hard look at some movies that shaped my teens and movies that I watched over and over again. There are way more than three, obviously. To me, anything Woody Allen is classic, for example. You either love or hate him. And my all time favourite Howl, a movie about Allen Ginsberg and his famous poem Howl. So, here are my three picks for this article.

You’ve got Mail.

Anything Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are in together rocks. Anything! In this movie, Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is trying to run the children’s bookstore she inherited from her mother while dating the world’s most boring man alive when she starts up an internet flirtationship with Joe Fox (Tom Hanks). Just- Call- Me- Joe is a very New York piece of shit who owns a book “superstore”. Unbeknownst to Joe and Kathleen, they are rivals in real life even as they’re falling in love online! Can you believe it? I can! The writing is, as per usual in a Nora Ephron movie flawless, but Kathleen is a bit of a sweet dope. Perhaps the best part of her character is that Joe Fox brings out the worst in her instead of the best, which is very fun to watch, if problematic in real life. Of course, as they spend more time together, Joe becomes a better, kinder person (the journey seemingly every single man ever must go on because they all suck before a woman helps them realize they need to not suck) and Kathleen stops having to be biting and mean; she submits to the grief of losing her business and tries to make a full life for herself, which weirdly includes a friendship with Joe before she finds out that she’s been cyber-dating him. Verdict: Supringsingly harmful? A lot has been said about this, much of it by my boyfriend every time (I force him to watch it with me) I try to watch this lovely, perfect film, but Joe Fox is less than ideal. He is a multimillionaire, first of all, and a dick to her. Plus, this movie gave me the idea that you could viably own a bookstore in New York and afford to live. She should have ended up with Patricia Eden. Or just single with Birdie.

Notting Hill.

This movie was groundbreaking because it featured an unlikable female lead! I have multiple friends who don’t like this movie because Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is kind of a bitch and I am like… that is the point of the movie! Do you know how many unlikable male leads there have been? Come on. This woman gets to mess up and be powerful and be harmful and end up with a bangin’-hot bookstore owner who lives in Notting Hill? Are you joking me? Verdict: I want to say helpful because I am in love with a movie having an unlikable lead woman, but ultimately this was harmful because I am not a famous actress, I don’t have sex with 1999 Hugh Grant, and I am not getting to be a little bit of a bitch about it. Unrealistic expectations: set. And, obviously I identify mostly with a female Spike because I love eating my cereal with a diving suit and goggles on while smoking a cigarette.

When Harry met Sally

Nora Ephron said that this was her favourite movie and that she watched if fifteen thousand times and guess what? Nora Ephron is never wrong. I mean, she wrote the script!!!! This is obviously the big daddy of movies; the apotheosis. And it could never get made today. Why? Well, because it is mostly a movie of people sitting around talking. Very little “happens” in the way that Hollywood people want things to “happen”. (As sleeping with your best friend is not a thing happening). Regardless, the movie is perfect; there are some lines that are so brilliant they make me want to scoop out my eyes with a spoon. Anyway, this film brought to the mainstream the question of whether straight women and straight men can be friends. Most people think that the answer the movie gives is no, straight men and straight women cannot be friends, because sex always gets in the way (as it eventually, delightfully did for Harry [Billy Crystal] and Sally [Meg Ryan]). This is nonsense! The two are friends for years. They are excellent friends to one another. Anyway, one of the most key moments of Sally’s characters is when she is crying about an ex, Joe, whom she thought she was over, and she cry-yells, “I am difficult!” It’s hilarious and raw and real and every woman I know can relate to feeling like you are simply too much work to love. Verdict: Sally Albright is a gem. Helpful depiction of a “difficult” woman being loved. Altough if you think Sally Albright is difficult, God help you.

Just hang out with me for a while.

In light of the recent school changes with the Omicron mutation I have compiled a list of questions from concerned parents. Please submit your questions below. Maybe our school board (bored?) team will read and answer them.

“If I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, will my newborn receive any immunity to Omicron while breastfeeding, and will she be able to meet her grandparents before she turns five?” 
— Sarah, new mother

“When I take my kids to the indoor Playground and there is a sign next to an empty hand sanitiser that says, LEAVE THE GERMS OUTSIDE, but fifty people are gathering indoors without masks, should I laugh or cry? Or do they mean to leave the kids outside?”
— Christian, father of three

“If an unmasked person does not adhere to two meters of distance in the supermarket near my unvaccinated children, do I invite them home to spend time alone with my kids for the approximate one million hours that exist between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.?” 
— Kirsten, mother of three children under five
.
“When I am at the drugstore with my infant and a masked costumer ridicules me for not maintaining distance while fake-coughing in my direction, can I punch her in the face or would that put me at risk for Omicron?”  
— Claudia, first-time mom

“If my unvaccinated child has to attend preschool so I can work to pay for said preschool and to add to the crippling debt of my never-ending student loans, when will the Equal Rights Amendment be ratified by all fifty states in America?”
— Johanna, mother of two

“With Omicron being the most contagious variant yet and my baby too young to wear a mask for supermarket trips, should I splurge on online delivery services for groceries or begin hunting wild game in my backyard and building a complicated gutter system to capture rainwater?” 
— Cal, first-time dad

“If my kids go to a school where everyone will be send home if a sister of a student who is not even in the school tested positive five days ago but wasn’t even in school for the last ten weeks and we are forced to stay at home quarantined in eighteen-degree rainy weather, is drinking alone still a red flag for alcoholism?” 
— Klara, mother of four

“Since we’ve been quarantining to protect our child for nearly two years while anti-vax, anti-mask people populate our playground, is there a God and does she believe in chaos theory?” 
— Kayla, mother of two

“If I keep my unvaccinated children home from school to protect them from the latest COVID surge, who will be more developmentally delayed—the twins because they missed preschool or me because I had to leave my career at forty?” 
— Ellen, mother of twins

“Why does God hate me? Is it something I did? Did I have too many sexual thoughts as a teen? Is this because I bent that car’s fender while pulling out of the parking garage and didn’t leave a note on the other car’s windshield?” 
— Daniela, parent of an eight-year-old

“Day after day, I dream of driving my head through a wall and watching the small pieces of plaster and dust gather at my feet while the pain slowly builds in my forehead and spreads behind my eyes. Is this an Omicron thing?” 
— Roman, father of four

“As a high-risk pregnancy, I’m concerned about contracting Omicron. With no support for parents navigating the unassailable reality of raising children during a pandemic while struggling to afford childcare, nannies, groceries, I’m just wondering… will people give a shit about my children once they are born or do people only care about them while they are still in the womb?” 
— Julie, expectant mother

Thank you for your questions. We look forward to answering them during our Friday briefing at noon which will be cancelled on a short notice due to Covid.