Two Gentlemen on Veronica
The stalwart employees venture to yon coffee room.
Unseen (and presumably gay) Announcer:
In days of yore, when tech stocks
Rode the winds of good fortune,
Their solid blueprint for dot com sales
Shielded their weaknesses from assault.
Why, just to say that you had dot
Within your company name
Was akin to saying
Your uncle was Charles Foster Kane.
But now butts are in slings, and
Those salad days are behind them,
As layoffs wend their way down yon corridors
Like the whiff of bowels laden with greens.
Where steady comrades do lay down their briefcases
To fall upon their printouts for the good of all;
As they're repaid now with pink slips of despair
While their families tofu turkey for the solstice.
We join two now in solemn lair
From whence they thought they would retire.
Helmut
A great leap for mankind
Is foremost in my mind.
A leap from Floor Nineteen
Into the grate of steam.
Nerdquo
"Esteem," I mock thy leisure.
Play no more with my pleasure.
Helmut
This company with which I once invested
Doth now have my head firmly rested
Upon the block where chickens lie,
No longer on the wing to fly.
Nerdquo
No longer trusting as I am;
My e-mail box is filled with spam.
The profit margins that I sought
Have now been bought and sold . . . and bought.
Helmut
My mortgage is held by the HMO.
My superiors' heads are filled with blow.
This Christmas as I drive my Beemer
Home to rice cooked in the steamer.
The children'll get but one small serving.
(Into a bridge abutment I'll be swerving.)
A grain for Jules; a grain for Buck.
(As I head for the viaduct.)
Nerdquo
Behold the majesty of a game gone wrong;
A former tapestry now had for song.
Who screwed us thus, we ask ourselves?
Was it Santa and his Merry Elves?
Helmut
I doubt the blame could e'er be laid
At hands so nimble as those were paid
By Postal Servants in their prime
Who fuck us every Christmastime.
It's so much deeper and so entwined
That lawyers must now hack their find.
Nerdquo
We'll say we did not notice this
Until our paychecks went to shit?
Helmut
Yes, be you in, or be you out,
But let there not remain a doubt
Of who has screwed both me and you;
It's no one's fault but Dot.Com.Jew.
Probostickus walks into coffee room. Employees turn to face him.
Helmut
Hath it been determined
That our options are at nil?
Probostickus
Perchance I leave you now
And swallow the blue pill.
The swagger of industry com dotus
Doth enchant me still;
But fortune be a rabid cow
And NASDAQ's fearsome chill...
Helmut
Doth thou forecast a buyout?
Probostickus
A buyout?
The only buy-out we may see
Is the buy-back of our
Holiday coupons from
The Outback.
Probostickus leaves the room, head hung.
Nerdquo
He mocks us with his lack of meter.
I hope that crabs infest his peter.
Helmut
I cannot think in festive ways
As we do now act like the slaves;
Indentured to the tethered boards
With keys and ports and mangled cords.
Nerdquo
I fear our foreskins are at risk
With this new mediocritist.
Veronica's not what she seems,
(Even tho' I'll dampen in my dreams
From seeing her walk shapely by).
There's danger in that piece of pie.
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