Barnes Burning

"Swine Flu" Provides Convenient Cover For "Wine Flu"

Millions of Americans who suffer each and every day from what they euphemistically call the "wine flu" have found refuge in identifying their affliction as the "swine flu" to family, friends, and co-workers.

The swine flu, which originated in Mexico, is a respiratory illness affecting pigs that recently began infecting humans and has caused panic across the globe. "Really, it's just a matter of adding an "s" to the beginning of "wine flu" and that doesn't feel so deceitful. For me, it works," said Serena Miller an aspiring Broadway songstress who has been frittering away her time in New York City (and Daddy's credit limit) by drinking fancy bottles of Cabernet at hipster dinner parties in SoHo. "When I wake up to find I've missed yet another audition because I was arguing in a wine-soaked haze about Hegelian dialectic until three in the morning, saying I'm suffering from the swine flu goes over a lot easier. It makes the calls with Mom and Dad a piece of cake. The swine flu is a global pandemic, whereas the wine flu is only contracted by entitled, upper-middle-class blowhards who think they have a touch of genius about them. It's not a hard choice."

Frank Catellenti agrees. The hard charging Wall Street securities broker has spent the last three years plagued by daily bouts of the wine flu after his affair with a 24-year old co-worker was exposed and his wife and three children moved out. "It used to be, I'd nervously snicker about "a case of the wine flu" to my boss when he found me slumped at my desk with that glazed, hungover look. But this morning I sent my secretary an email saying I was staying home with the swine flu and I've been inundated with cards and flowers all morning. I've never been better!" he chimed as he cracked into a bottle of Clos du Val 2004 Reserve even though the clock read 10:35 AM. "This descent into mid-life alcoholic stupor is going to be painful and wrenching, but it's going to be a hell of a lot more pleasant passing it off as the swine flu."

Those referring to their wine flu as swine flu have two basic tips. Keep your communications about your illness short and don't make yourself available for discussion. Miles Flemming, a handbag designer and general bon vivant recently "tweeted" that he had swine flu to his Twitter network and wouldn't be available for 2-3 days, or more accurately, until The Sex and The City marathon on TBS concluded. Almost instantly, he was deluged with sympathetic responses and questions about the symptoms. "It was like 'ease off everyone!!' If I really had an exotic, highly transmissible disease would I chat about it online for hours on end? All I said was that I had the swine flu, let's just leave it at that." Flemming admitted that he can understand his friends' curiosity and prying questions however. "Everyone's spooked that they might have the swine flu themselves...and if you put back a magnum of rosé before dinner at Morimoto like I did last night, the answer might just be "yes."

This Is My Cash Position, Cover Letter Attached

To The Hiring Committee:

I am writing to express my extreme interest (one could even call it a progressive, increasingly relentless monomania) in the positions listed on your corporate website. Note that I'm not confining the auspices of this communication to a single position. I want, and adore, them all. Associate Manger. Junior Analyst. Senior Vice President of What Have You. According to an authoritative source, as a fully developed bipedal primate in the family Hominidae, I have "a highly developed brain capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving." This combined with an "erect body carriage that frees the forelimbs for manipulating objects" makes me well qualified for any role the folks in HR could dream up. Indeed, I'm willing to manipulate objects, clients, or co-workers. Whatever you need. Just let me know. I can build tools, synergies, management efficiencies...or petty office rivalries that will ultimately allow me to covertly advance the agenda of your choosing.

Before we go any further, let's get something out of the way. Felony conviction. There, I said it. I know that expert HR professionals like yourself employ sophisticated keyword scanning software to sort through resumes and cover letters, so while the words "felony conviction" are highlighted in yellow on your computer screen, let me get out in front of this one and apologize once and for all for that unfortunate night on the riverboat casino in Shreveport. Neither I nor Tootsie (I believe that was her name) had any idea that Bacardi 151 was combustible to the extent that I, a quiet white boy from the suburbs of Connecticut, could actually breathe fire after a handful (okay...an armload) of cocktails. In truth, if you'd been there you would have been laughing your off ass off right aside Tootsie as I carried out an amazing David Copperfield impression at the high limit blackjack table. "Limit" is an appropriate word here, because now I have one when it comes to quaffing grain liquor, playing with fire, losing my 401K in card rooms, and hanging out with drug-addicted showgirls. Lesson(s) learned, right?

Anyhow, here’s the gist of why I'm writing to some faceless corporate recruiter on a sunny afternoon instead of rollerblading or flirting with the Mommies at my neighborhood pool: I can make cash spit out of a computer like a snowmaking gun. Really, I can. Believe it brother/sister. But heed this warning: if taken on as employee, I cannot be held responsible for any physical injuries or mental twistups that may occur to you or your staff as a result of millions of dollars in newly minted bills streaming around your headquarters at a high rate of speed. Paper cuts, whiplash, asphyxiation, and wanton delirium are just a few of the potential outcomes once I start the magic process, known only to me, of spontaneously creating bucketloads of money out of thin air. Perhaps you’re curious about my exact methods for effecting this “cash craze,” perhaps you want more details, or even a single detail, before committing to my 7-8 figure salary demands (meant to tell you that…my salary needs are in the 7-8 figure range)? Well fellow/lady, I can’t release any more information on the Q3 Cash Out of Nowhere Project until we’re meeting face to face in your office and the ink is dry on my 5-year guaranteed contract with a employee option for the 6^th year. Naturally, as your newly contracted employee, I’ll be more than willing to share the bounty of cold hard currency that follows me wherever I roam like a groupie tagging along behind Lenny Kravitz, but I do suggest that your procure five or six heavy duty lawn rakes and/or steel reinforced pitchforks so we can clear a path between the piles of money and the lunchroom. Lunch is important to me. Please note: I cannot make money shoot out of my computer if I'm even a little bit hungry or if the vending machine runs out of Diet Dr. Pepper.

The potential partnership I’m describing here is the paragon of what some corporate gobblyspeak blowhard might call a “mutually beneficial winback cycle” whereby my magical bottom-line strategy of turning a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop into a funhouse ATM machine results in a year-over-year spike in ecstasy and good tidings. I’m not sure if we’ll need to leverage anything, but I’ll be sure to show up with a crowbar on my starting date, they're always useful for shoveling cash around if one of the rakes snaps in half.

Admittedly, there are a lot of talented candidates out there…but quick question: do any of them have the means to generate revenue from their fingertips like a mother f-ing wizard? I am not just a rising star, I am an acknowledged Spirit Being with mystical powers and a tenderhearted soul. And it’s about time somebody started treating me likewise. I’m thinking your company would be a good place to start.

I look forward to hearing from you...right now. Now. Email me with an offer right now. Do it!

Email me or else!

Sincerely,

The Spirit Being

P.S. I mean it! N-O-W!!

In These Economic Times, May You Find The Strength To Weather "These Economic Times"

In these economic times, do you find yourself using the phrase "in these economic times" approximately 1,597 times a day? Do you find yourself chirping "...in these economic times, in these economic times, in these economic times..." like a drunken and deranged parrot who deserves a firm smack across the bill from his master? In these economic times, do you sometimes think that your wife is having a Grand Mal seizure only to discover that she, yet again, is starting a sentence with "In these economic times..." as if a teleprompter-dependent local news anchor from Omaha has snatched the very soul of your life partner? Kids, are you about to Google "how to make Daddy sleep forever" if he says "in these economic times" even one more time while shaking his jowls like Larry Summers?

Alas, these kinds of economic times demand that we talk about the current economic times like economically depressed and stressed people have never talked about economic times before. While practically nobody knows just what the hell they're talking about, many experts submit that the best way to make it through economic times like these economic times, is to, in any conversation, hearken back to whatever economic experience you may possess, no matter how feeble or fleeting. Perhaps you were an Economics minor, the Treasurer of a school bake sale, or once scared strangers into dropping spare change into a plastic Taco Bell cup by lumbering into their personal space on the sidewalk. Maybe you were the CFO of a small neighborhood lemonade stand. Think hard...did you once save receipts in your wallet and then throw them out in a single bunch every few months? Have you smoothed out a dollar bill before feeding it into a vending machine or tucked one gingerly into a stripper's thong? Filled out an $5 NCAA office pool? Tens of thousands of dollars in debt? Have you tossed a penny into a water fountain? Opened up your daughter's piggy bank on the kitchen table in desperation or photocopied $20 bills on your laser printer in moments of extreme panic and disillusion?

Point is, we're all qualified to talk about these economic times like a blowhard professor with a booming voice and a raging ego because we all have some experience with obtaining and spending money. Really! You might as well buy a tweed jacket, horn-rim glasses, and a silver wig, because you've been approved to pontificate! We all have something to say about the flow of global wealth and the steps we're taking to personally deleverage and recapitalize our ING Orange Savings account equity stakes. And the way we talk about money in these economic times is to start off conversations with a declarative sentences that show how wise and frugal we actually are. For instance, "in these economic times, instead of buying replacement razor heads so expensive CVS assigns a Hells Angel to guard them, I've taken to shaving by scraping a pair of children's scissors across my face." True? Technically, nyet. Evocative of the humility and hardship I'd like to project in these economic times? Absolutely! And don't say, "I'm only filling my gas tank halfway because I can't afford a full one." Try... "these economic times demand that we demonstrate courage, fortitude and down-home American moxie and as such, to reduce our dependence on dirty fuels imported from the Middle East and to shore up my cash position, I now cut my engine when entering the garage at work and coast into my parking spot...an act that's necessitated, quite frankly, and quite, quite, really, truly and very, very honestly by these kinds of economic times (that is to say, the kind of economic times we're experiencing right now)."

Now you're talking!

While talking about these economic times with such bedeviling insincerity will probably cause you to pee your pants once or twice in shame, I urge you to take these economic times head on. Keep talking about them in the kind of vague, cliché-ridden, phony business-speak that got us into these economic times in the first place. Because there is nothing to fear in these economic times except the cessation of blabbing about these economic times ad infinitum to fill the uncomfortable, seeping silence that indicates just how hollow the depths of our souls really are. But don't despair. In these economic times that "nothing" that's firmly lodged in the core of your being and your bank account can always be filled with something. In these economic times, for example...