rules for the corporate bureaucrat

There are RULES every fledgeling corporate bureaucrat must recognize and obey. The RULES are never spoken of (see the FIGHT CLUB RULE, which is hereby broken), yet every youngster with a steaming fresh economics degree looking for a position in any corporation are expected to know them by heart, by genetics, as must anyone with a high school diploma (most likely averaging C-) applying for lower positions such as customer service jobs, janiting or general ass-sucking. The RULES are simple in their specificness, yet complex in their inconsistency. Here follows the rules, so that you may know them, alas without the proper meter and rhyme.

There is the FIGHT CLUB RULE; you shall not speak of the RULES. If you defy this RULE, people will pretend they do not understand you or worse; agree with you and establish that the world is shit and injustice is everywhere but wacha gonna do?

There is the RULE OF THE INTELLECT; you shall not use your intellect to read anything but e-mail, TV guides or subtitles (IKEA assembly manuals are excepted, since they contain no text). Similarly, you shall not write anything that is not directly associated with the read part of the RULE OF THE INTELLECT; crossword puzzles and semi-funny e-mails to coworkers are accepted but not subtitles. Most of your intellectual power should be spent on television (see the RULE OF TELEVISION) and to find ways up the corporate ladder (see the RULE OF SOLIDARITY).

There is the RULE OF THE LIBIDO; you shall make constant jokes about sex - the sleazier the better - yet never imply that you are actually having sex. You shall at all cost act like purity embodied, regardless of how many one-night stands you have during the weekends. You shall act like children are concieved by parthogenesis (either in the biological or the religious sense, depending on your personal taste). If you should get pregnant (and you must live with the father/mother, everything else is unthinkable - see the RULE OF THE SPOUSE), you shall be revered as holy and beautiful until about two weeks after you have given birth, on which point you and your offspring becomes old news. Also, homosexuality does not exist.

There is the RULE OF THE SPOUSE; you shall have one, or your status in the group will suffer greatly. If the majority of your coworkers are of the same sex as you, you shall constantly bad-mouth your spouse, calli him/her the most terrible names behind him/her back and constantly have loud arguments with him/her in the company telephone. If the opposite is true; if the majority of the coworkers are of the opposite sex, you shall speak of the great love of your life that is your spouse and almost break out in tears over his/her eternal beauty, no matter if you cheat on, abuse, hate and/or cares nothing for him/her. The RULE OF THE SPOUSE is very flexible and would require many, many, many pages to describe. A thumb rule is if it is hypocritical, then it is probably true. Also, and it cannot be stressed enough; homosexuality does not exist.

There is the RULE OF TELEVISION; you shall consume enormous amounts of televised junk. Almost everything is allowed; movies, soap operas, news broadcasts and documentaries but absolutely not pornography or cultural programmes. Besides those things, there can be as much fucking or cultural thingamagogs you like. Genre is everything; content is not. Also, here homosexuality can exist and can actually be quite thrilling, especially when it's someone like Brad Bitt having sex with someone like George Clooney, or even better; someone like Britney Spears having sex with someone like Angelina Jolie.

There is the RULE OF APPEARANCE; you shall be sexy. The more beautiful you are, the more recognition you will get. If you are ugly, you have to make fun of your or, even better, other people's flaws. If you are fat (which is the same as ugly, only worse), you need to be on constant diets. Fat people are disgusting. Fat people eating nutricious food is revolting. Expensive and fashionable clothes can greatly enhance your beauty, especially if they are revealing, as can make-up and a pretty spouse.

There is the RULE OF LAUGHTER; you shall be funny. What counts as funny is very specific; making remarks about ugly people who are not in the room is funny. Quoting humor sites such as tjuvlyssnat.se is very funny. Doing imitations (however badly) of Family Guy or The Simpsons characters is hilarious. If you are funny and sexy (see the RULE OF APPEARANCE), you become a total stud/babe and everyone of the opposite sex (because homosexuality does not exist) will start to rub you with their genitals, not because they want to have sex with you (because one does not have sex; see the RULE OF THE LIBIDO), but because you are a stud/babe and that is what one does with studs/babes. If you are a stud/babe, you can get away with any mistake and still get a raise. Also, anyone not rubbing their genitals on the nearest stud/babe or who does not laugh at their imitations and quotes is a bad person, a sourball and gets a little bit uglier.

There is the RULE OF SOLIDARITY; you shall be solidaric to the corporation you work for. The corporation is what brings everyone together to the laughing, sexy, beautiful, rubbing family that is your workplace. The corporation signs your paycheck. The corporation is serious and important and nothing else is - at least not during office hours. Therefore it is okay to step on your coworkers, use them as doormats, to wipe of your semi-expensive shoes on them and then use them as steps in the corporate ladder. There is a reward up there somewhere, above those dark yet shiny stairs. It is unclear what the reward is because people say things like "money does not matter". There are great names up there among the stars; names such as Bill Gates and Donald Trump and people named Wallenberg. They are successful, beautiful and mysterious, and the all started from being very poor, creating their own happiness with their great minds. This is solidarity. However, you shall join a union because then you get free home insurance.

There is the RULE OF CONVICTION; you shall believe things without any evidence, simply because belief is good. Opinions are sacred and one must have opinions about everything, regardless of how much knowledge you have of the subject. Science, religion, politics; nothing shall be too high or too low for your narrow little mind. You shall believe in "alternative" methods, since they are marketed as ancient chinese medicine (if someone says ancient chinese medicine is good, and claims knocking on your muscles is ancient chinese medicine, then knocking on your muscles must be good since ancient chinese medicine is good). You shall be slightly right-wing, since money is good and right-wing politics is all about money. Establish common opinions with your coworkers. Anyone challenging this, can be punished (see the RULE OF PUNISHMENT). You may never change your opinions, regardless of how much evidence contradicts them.

There is the RULE OF THE SIMPLE; you shall only attempt understand simple things that require little energy and cognitive capacity. Everything else is bad.

There is the RULE OF THE WEIRD; you shall not be strange. However, you can have charming quirks, as long as they are not strange. You shall know instinctively what strange is and what strange is not. As for interests and opinions, something that can not be explained in ten words or less is considered strange (see the RULE OF THE SIMPLE). It is best if personal things need not to be explained at all, for example; "I like to play video games" or "I think cats are sweet". There is a gray-area in this rule. If you are not quite strange but not quite un-strange either, you can be considered a "deep one". "Deep ones" can be funny, since they speak of funny things that cannot be understood quickly. Since such things cannot be worth anything (see the RULE OF THE SIMPLE), it must be funny (allthough not in the RULE OF LAUGHTER sense), provided that it is not scary or too true. Then it is strange, which is bad.

There is the NICE RULE; you shall be nice and friendly toward your coworkers, even when you are mean.

There is the RULE OF GROUP MENTALITY; you shall be social and spend time with your coworkers. It is not acceptable to eat lunch, drink coffee or do anything else alone at work. All breaks must be spent with your coworkers. Every deviation from this rule increases your weirdness (see the RULE OF THE WEIRD) and decreases your general
status within the group.

There is the RULE OF PUNISHMENT; you shall receive punishment if you break any of the RULES. Punishment can include anything from subtle remarks to expulsion from the group, as long as the NICE RULE is not broken. The strongest punishment is having you fired, which can be accomplished by manipulating you and your boss, making you look bad by not informing you of vital information, causing you to make mistakes. This is not av violation of the NICE RULE if the punishment is given 1) with your best interests in mind and 2) not entirely consciously.


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my vacation photograph

I went to Venus, took a picture with my mobile phone camera, it turned out okay but the acid rain and the heat and the immense pressure got to my nerves so I stepped into my rocket ship again and went home where the crust at least have decency to relieve its internal pressure more often than every 500 million years, so that the entire surface is not cataclysmically changed but more gentle and local, providing a safe habitat for me, my friends and all of my fellow human beings and ants and plants and bees and trees, hell even crabs even though I don't like them - I mean, who can blame me, with their nasty little claws and way too many legs to be reliable and anything with eyes on tentacles simply is nasty but still they got a right to live even though I'd give anything to not having to feel them crawling on my skin, ripping up my chin, touching my eyes with their sharp feet, yeah, I guess I owe the greenhouse effect something if it kills 'em all but no, I don't really believe in killing animals I don't like, I'd never encourage something like that so stop killing off those spanish slugs, you all's such evil thugs, they've done nothing wrong, they're just following their little insticts saying that your garden plants are food, no, I'm not in the mood to see innocent animals getting tortured and killed, and that counts for you too Chinese bastards, keeping those bears in cages like that, they shouldn't suffer just because you can't get it up and that doesn't mean all Chinese people kills bears, sorry if I offended you, I'm such a nut, can't keep my mouth shut, gotta learn how to think things through before I speak but then again - this text wouldn't be, getting hypnotized by words and combinations of such, can't stop even though it's too much, the world is too beautiful not to touch with my eyes and my soul and my voice and my hands, they all want their share of the wondrous things that exist out there - if I only had a million dollars I'd pack my things and just fuck it all, ask my girlfriend "hey come with me - we've got so much to see, you know what lies on the other side of the sea" but that I don't have so I'll just stick to what I've got and even though it's not worth shit on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, my heart's got a lock and the key is on a chain and that key she have turned, locking herself in for all time, for all space, for all existance in more continuums Star Trek writers could ever imagine, not that their imagination is so special, no they stick to pseudoscience and hypotheses when all they really need to do is look closely enough at anything, even a piece of dirt, to see that everything, even a piece of dirt contains such marvels, oh such beautiful things; crystallized minerals, proteins, fats and all manner of things connected in vastly complex networks, filling no specific purpose other than just existing, reflecting light and other radiation, and if you look even closer they'd see even stranger thing, little tiny molecules, like any molecules except, yes, look, it splits in half, it's ripping apart, but it's not dying, it's not being destroyed, no, the halfs heal themself, creating two identical - or at least almost identical - copies of itself, can you answer why that happens well can you, no I didn't think so, no you stick with your empty Borg and Klingon empires that mean nothing, has no beauty, no thought, no profound meaning, that tiny little spiral-shaped molecule says so much more during it's relatively short life-span you wouldn't understand a billionth of it, neither would I but at least I have the honesty to acknowledge it, and no, I am not talking about trekkies anymore, I'm talking of all of you (except maybe some miniscule minority) who just carry on with your pathetic lives as that wonderful great beautiful mystery doesn't exist and instead you invent mysteries that actually is no mysteries, simply because what comes out of your little minds (because it would be an insult to the word "create" to call what you're doing that) are so unnecessary and so destructive and really just a ugly coat of paint over the things that are really there, the real beauty, the real mystery, the real universe with everything spinning, acting, reacting, colliding, constantly creating uncountable waves of events affecting everything in existance and each effect creating uncountable more, creating this vibrating Universe, impossible to observe in its full glory but I wish, oh I wish I could and I wish I could make you understand - it cannot be that you all are stupid, it simply cannot be because then why do I exist, and can we ever communicate or will we simply continue to spin around eachother, having to keep going in circles around eachother, never connecting, always separate, again, what would be the point of such existence, always outside, always distant, always ignored? Even so, I keep writing. I have to. Because beauty has no end.

(Okay, I haven't been to Venus. I took picture of Venus' surface with my phone, though. The original image belongs to Don Mitchell, an extremely talented scientist I admire too much not to credit)

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