State Og Update: 03.27.04

State Og

Thanks this week go to Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (the Pink Power Ranger), Brett "Nimmo" Hurban (the Purple Teletubby), and Jason "Vengeance Otter" Johnson (the green Ninja Turtle).

GroundOg Day

It was around midnight at State Og's offices one Friday evening when suddenly, without warning, it became early Saturday morning. As the office workers cautiously looked around at one another, a sense of unease set in. The daily calendars on their desks still said it was Friday. How could it possibly be Saturday? What sort of supernatural power was at work here, and what did it have up its sleeve next? In order to further understand the situation, our brightest scientists were brought in and attempted to recreate the events of the previous night.

Employees were instructed to wear the same clothes they had the night before, to abstain from showering, and to sit in the exact same spots they had been when the fateful moment had arrived nearly twenty four hours earlier. Then, incredibly, it happened again. At the stroke of midnight it was suddenly Sunday.

Ooter Guterson, the lead scientist in charge of the investigative team, scratched his beard with a ferocity that spoke volumes of the dire situation and the scratchiness of his beard. All eyes fell upon him as he undoubtedly ran calculations and assessed the situation. For the office workers, the silence was like butter; completely impossible to cut through. After seven minutes, Ooter glanced around, the entire room breathlessly awaiting an explanation to the phenomenon they had experienced.

"My beard was pretty itchy", he proclaimed.

"But sir, what about the problem?", asked his assistant.

"Oh, that! Just uh, repeat the process we went through tonight. No one leaves, no one bathes, no one moves. We observe the event until we figure it out."

This was thirty years ago. We're confident they'll figure it out eventually.

Og-Funded Schools

Due to the sorry state of our nation's schools, State Og has decided to start our own learning institutions of learning. State Og Schools will be the finest in the nation, and have the most advanced learning tools and lab devices available. For example, each school will have a smelter. After all, children need to learn how the steel skylines that they inhabit are created. State Og Schools also have the latest available versions of long distance learning labs, computer systems, and hungry untamed dogs.

We excel at sports. Your children can compete in the sport of javelin throwing, catfish hunting, horseback jousting, or any other sport where we can put all of our extra spears to use.

We also do not charge parents for their child to attend our school. All we ask is that you do not visit, and do not mind if your child does not come home every night. It is important that your child not be taken away from his studies just because it is 2:30 PM. Also, if he leaves at 2:30 the person relying on him to hold the pulley rope will probably get hurt pretty badly.

Fond Memories Of a New State Og Employee

My first day as an employee for State Og was the happiest day of my life. My second day, after I sobered up and actually showed up to work, was one of my worst. There were many reasons why that second day sucked compared to the first (too much work and too few hookers), but despite my new prostitute–deprived work environment, I intended to make a good impression.

I arrived that day wearing my best suit, still bearing all the fancy price tags and a sticker with the words “Made from SPACE AGE materials! Almost indistinguishable from real polyester!” Truly, I looked sharp in my new finery and not just because of the razor blades I sewed to my jacket to remind people I don’t like to be touched.

After kicking the office's front door open, I was expecting to hear a round of applause, but was instead greeted with the sound of a deafening silence. I looked around, and found the source of the deafening silence: several people who were just lying about motionless in the lobby. Excellent, I thought, I might not be the best employee in the world, but I most certainly looked like an outstanding worker compared to these lazy bastards.

I moved closer so more people could see the contrast between myself and my idle coworkers, and to my delight I realized the situation was better than I thought: these people were dead and surely I must have looked even better in comparison. Sweet, I thought. Despite it only being my first five minutes in the office and the fact that I was over a full day late, I was already thinking of demanding a substantial raise. When I found out who my boss was, he would have no choice but to quadruple my salary if he wanted to keep a live employee working for him.

I started exploring the building and to my pleasant surprise, everyone I came upon was extremely dead, and in many cases horribly so. I noticed a pattern: a few appeared to have been blown up, but most were intact and all of those people had a coffee cup in their hand or nearby. One horrendously mutilated man appeared to have written a message on a wall in his own blood stating, “Save yourself! Get out!” Hmm, I thought that was my boss.

Just then, I heard a familiar laugh emanating from a nearby room. I quickly ran to the source of the hysterical chuckle. It was Dennis “Corin Tucker’s Stalker” Farrell, who was hired on the same day as I did as the new mail room clerk. He was standing on top of a pile of corpses, each with a coffee mug clinched in one hand. In Farrell’s own hands, he clutched a coffee pot and a bottle labeled “cyanide”. At his side was a mail cart filled with numerous explosive devices and what looked suspiciously like mail.

“Hey Jason,” he happily chirped in his sing-songy voice, “Want a cup of coffee?” He held the coffee pot out towards me and held the bottle of cyanide over it, as if he was hoping I would dare him to pour its contents into the pot.

“I don't have time for coffee,” I replied, “I've got to find the person in charge of this enchilada stand, so I can warn him that there is a murderer on the loose... if he gives me a raise, that is.”

“Murderer?!”, exclaimed Farrell, still standing on the corpse pile. “I don't understand what you mean. Nothing out of the ordinary happened here today and I can guarantee that none of these people were poisoned or blown up due to the explosives in my magical cart o' bombs.” He then let out some more insane laughter.

I wasn't sure why he was laughing, but maybe it was his way of dealing with things. No matter the reason, I didn't have time for it, so I interrupted him. “Yeah, when I first noticed this building was filled with dead people I was skeptical of murder at first too, but then I noticed something: most of the cadavers had coffee cups in their hands. Obviously, someone killed these people somehow and then later placed the filled cups in their hands to gratify some sick need of his to see dead people holding mugs of rich Columbian brew.”

Farrell now looked somewhat annoyed. “Bullshit,” he replied, “I don't see anything here that can't be explained away with one word: coincidence.”

“Ha!” I laughed. A year ago I might have believed “coincidence” was a possible explanation for all of these people dying at once, but since then I had failed out of the FBI academy and an Amway recruitment meeting. I was a much wiser person now and, no, I didn't believe in things like coincidence or baboons anymore. “I know one one thing for sure, and you can take it to the bank, we're dealing with a serial killer. I know because I had to take FBI class on the subject twice, after failing it because in all my reports and essay test I kept on spelling it as 'cereal killers'. By the way, I think I will have that coffee after all.”

I swiped the pot of coffee out of Farrell's hand and he cried, “Hey, I didn't but my special ingredient in that yet!”

“No problem,” I said. “I like my coffee black, just like my bananas.” After drinking directly out of the pot, I asked, “Any idea who's in charge here?”

“Yeah, I am. Um... we all voted this morning to see who would be the new boss and I won.”

That doesn't make sense, I thought. He didn't strike me as the management type and slowly the more I thought about it, he did strike me as the poisoning and letter-bombing type. I had to resolve this mystery and I quickly thought of a question to trick him into revealing his true self!

“Hey, Farrell. Can I get my salary quintupled?”

“Hell yeah, you can.” he replied. “You just have to help me hire a new crew.”

“Done and Done. As far as I'm concerned the death of all of these people is an omen from God to show me I should work for you.”

“Great!” screamed Farrell, who now seemed to be yelling at his bottle of cyanide, which I later learned he had named Mickey. “Let's get to work!”

The day was shaping up to be really great, until God started smote me for grossly misinterpreting his omens for monetary gain.