The Main Issue (tm)
So we've been having a little trouble with our horoscope writer recently, as you may have noted. We decided to hire a French Existentialist named Jean-Bertrand Aristide (no relation to the Haitian President, or former... or ousted... well, look at it this way: he was, at one point in time, and may still be, the Haitian President, he assured us that this wasn't him). He was a charming little kid. Sartrean existentialist, if it matters.
So the receptionist let him in, and, being our Californian receptionist she asked him how he was while forming an opinion in her own mind, in advance, of how he was, just in case he either took too long or wasn't quite sure. Our Californian employees are helpful that way. Always willing to do your thinking for you.
Well, to a point. But I digress.
So he came in, got a cup of herbal tea handed to him by our standby receptionist, should the other one not be able to perform her duties. The tea is actually made with grubs and worms from the forests of the Santa Cruz mountains, but when they called it grub tea the marketing response was so dire that they changed the name to herbal because everyone already associated what it was the manufacturers of the tea wanted to people to associate with their tea, so they saw no reason to try and create a whole new niche when they didn't have to. What it boiled down to is that we got a whole lot of boxes of tea marked with "Grub Herbal Tea" marked on them. They had even re-marked each tea bag, which was dedication.
You might ask how this is relevant to our promise to bring you wholesome fictional snippets, weekly. Well, implicit promise, I suppose. We've never actually come out and said this. Not in print, not even vocally. And we've all said a lot of stuff. If you took a load of the words any given number of us have said in the office and mixed them up they may combine to say something along those lines. Then again, there's also a good chance you'll get something like "Hey! My foot! Tie me down, kangaroo sport!" We do a lot of exclamating around the office. You'll see, should you ever visit.
Well, it's about the production, Jim!
It's how we craft stuff here... not that the horoscopes are fiction. They're real. They're astrological. But still, I was speaking metaphorically.
The craft is the journey is the adventure is the reward... and all that good stuff.
So this kid, sitting in the lobby, cup of grub tea in hand, unbeknownst to him that my sandwich had leaked an unreal quantity of its mustard and mayo on to the very same cushion of the very same couch he's sitting on. His suit slowly turning a brown-y sort of colour on the back, where the tails meet mustard and mayo.
And so we hired him. To ruin the suspense (which may, indeed, already have been ruined along the way -- this time is advertent). We sat down with him and gave him some of our most grueling questions, brain teasers, logical problems, a quick astrological test that the Astrological Board says we have to give applicants, a physical exam, and then we threw darts. Not at any thing in particular, we just threw them. Like throwing down the gauntlet, only no one had to duel anyone at the end of it all. And, as he was picking up one of his darts from the toe of one of his shoes (we made him leave them by the door, and it was his idea to boast "I bet I can hit my shoe!" to which, of course, we concurred, as there's nothing quite like the thrill of dart hitting shoe... especially when they're not your shoes), we noticed the stain. And the rest was history. Hired.
Of course, this may not work out for long. We shall see. As shall you. Lucky, lucky you.
disclaimer:
So you may be asking yourself... "what the hell? Where's the fiction, Bub?"
Even though we sort of answered the question above.
Regardless, I might still reply, "Listen, I've told you before, I don't like being called Bub. Or maybe I haven't. In which case, let the record show, I, personally, don't like being called Bub. And the fiction, well, this is fictional. Sort of. If you think of everyone's life and the events therein telling some sort of story, and the transposition of those events to paper (electronic or otherwise), somewhere along the line, to some degree or another, become fictionalised. You start out giving yourself blond hair. Or big muscles. Or a pidgin Hawai'ian dialect. And then the secretary becomes this gorgeous Irish woman from, say, Clare. Somewhere near Dysert O'Dea. Maybe lived, as a kid, on land where a guy (maybe a guy named Synge) was killed behind a rock. And she speaks... French! And Hawai'ian pidgin, too! The same kind as you! And then, I don't know, you take it from there. You can go pretty wild. You see what I mean, at any rate."
Does that answer your question?