master tropes vs. Master Shake
2005-09-22

Today is many people's birthday all over the world. But today is also the birthday of bottom-of-public-toilet quality television purveyor ITV. This is important, because apparently when it is ITV's birthday (according to one who works there), all the employees sit round, drink and (this is what is what makes the day different, I guess, apart from the booze being free) get free t-shirts and sit around watching tapings of celebrity game shows. When I worked for a major media company, there was no birthday. Not even individual birthdays. It was treated not so much as an opportunity to socialize and eat sugary food as, I don't know, one more milestone on the road of life, the goal being the blessed release of death.

Anyway, this did give me a new understanding of religious fundamentalism, as in if somebody told me that beating the various members of a celebrity game show with a stick was not just the manifestation of my jealous desire to sit around and be paid for drinking and being on TV, but also a holy mission from God, I would definitely hear them out. Add in a bunch of other angry stick-wielding folk and it would really be very hard to resist.

After we were done, we could make all the unbelievers stand at the xerox machine for hours as it continually broke, while we sat around and threw bottles of cheap beer at them (I assume the beer would be cheap, no company buys its employees expensive beer, either that or we could squirt wine-from-a-box on them, THE STAINS NEVER COME OUT!, although that's not especially frightening except for people with small wardrobes).

So now I have unraveled the origins of religious fundamentalism. Take that, four master tropes!

Everybody is running towards Austin. Because it looked so cool on "Real World" and also because otherwise they would drown. Is all of Houston going to go upstate? I wonder if C.'s dad is back from New Orleans yet or if that's all jammed up too.

Houston turns out to be east of Austin, not south of it. Nacogdoches is north of Houston, and is spelled nothing like it sounds (the "cog" part is the spelling surprise!). Thus ends my history of Texas.