Do I have a great job or what?

I get to play with scissors, stickers, and glue. I get to practice my alphabetical skills. I get to wear jeans to work (yes!). I have a great office chair. I get to listen to… The Goon Show.

Every so often as I’m typing up library of congress labels and pasting them onto book spines, my employer walks in and says, “I think it’s time for a Goon Show. What do you think? Is it that time of day?” Then he’ll select a reel of tape from off a shelf and ask something like, “How about ‘Climbing Mt. Everest from the Inside’?” before walking into the studio and cuing it up on one of the reel to reel players. Then the room is filled with an announcer with a crisp British accent announcing, “This is the BBC.”

That’s as sane as it gets. From there, Peter Sellers and his cohorts delve into madness as Neddy Seagoon, Eckles, Bluebottle, Major Denis Bloodlock, Count Mariotti, and others in this radio comedy from the 50’s.

Today, the spirit of adventure spoke to Neddy. He decided to climb Mt. Everest, but seeing as that had already been done, went on to attempt it from the inside. The “story” is punctuated by musical interludes from a cheesy combo.

“Is it any wonder,” Ken mused the other day, “that John Cleese and the rest of the guys in Monty Python ended up as warped as they did after growing up listening to this sort of thing?”

“When you’re done listening to all the Goon Shows,” Ken told me, “You can hear ‘My Word’.” Ken used to work for NPR and taped all these shows on old tape they were throwing out.

My first day on the job, Ken took me into a room full of books. “This is the Great Task,” he said, “All these books need to be labeled.”

Well, today I completed the Great Task. I went into Ken’s area and told him. “Congratulations!” he said, “But I didn’t tell you. There’s a secret cache. See this bookcase right here? All these need not only to be labeled but inserted into the catalog as well. But for now, you need a break. Why don’t you go watch MST3K?”
So I spent the rest of my time watching _War Against the Colossal Man_ on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the studio. I’m afraid I camehome, sat down in front of an ESPN special on past Olympics, and started shooting off snide comments. I apologized to my hosts as soon as I realized what I was doing.

In other news, I was relaxing on my way home from work tonight, listening to White Zombie at full blast, when I saw a faint green light approach my car. It was a lightning bug. Then it went SPLAT against my windshield. And suddenly there as another smear on my window, just like all the other bugs that were as unfortunate to get in my car’s way. Except this smudge was glowing. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’m the type that will go out and try to catch fireflies, but I just stuck them in jars, never smushed them to see what was inside. And here there was a squashed bug, lighting up my windshield, glowing softly into the glass. It was just… cool.