State Og Update: 11.20.04

State Og

Concerned customer Henry Franks writes, "When I was younger I knew a kid who had to go to a school for the deaf. He explained that while he was there he got visual aids, and after that the rest of us were afraid to make eye contact with him." I really wish you people would just stop writing. Special thanks this week go to: Don "Roadrunner" Jolly, Nick "Loden Taylor" McDermott, and John "Clitch" MacBean .

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your purchase of State Og’s “Haitian Prostitute” strength genital wart removal cream. We regret to inform you that several errors on the package snuck their way onto the last shipment before our award winning quality control department could be loosed from the great tar pits in which they rest their greasy, disfigured forms. We just thought we would take the time to mail you personally with this soulless form letter to inform you of the corrections instead of letting one of those investigative news shows do it for us.

On the front of the bottle, where the words “Genital Wart Remover” are, the words “Genital Wart Aggravation Cream” should appear.

In the nutrition facts on the back of the bottle, replace the ingredient “soothing aloe” with “genital warts.” The ingredient “peppermint” should also be changed to “scorpions.”

On the front of the package, the bolded word “discreet” should be replaced with a block of text reading : “New ‘informo-cap’ scans your fingerprints as you open the bottle and sends the information to us – where thousands of highly trained operatives are waiting to call your mother and tell her about your condition, 24 hours a day!”

In the paragraph on the back of the bottle, the sentence reading “there is no definite cure for genital warts” should read “suicide is the only cure for genital warts.” The sentence reading “talk to your doctor about further treatment” should be replaced with “C’mon. Pick up the gun. They all talk about you behind your back. Even your best friend thinks your tiny, warty privates are a disgrace.” The remainder of the text should be replaced with maniacal laughter.

The expiration date on the side of the bottle should be ignored, since we at State Og have instituted a strict “anti-linear time” policy.

We hope that these changes have caused you no inconvenience, and apologize for the misprinting.

Have a super day!

- State Og Department of Corrections

Memorandum

To: All Lower Quadrant, Cell F Sub 5 Workers
From: Director 11035
Date/Time: 11/20/04 10:32 a.m. GMT
Re: Project Eater Failure

I am sad to announce that, as of today, Project Eater has been terminated. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we've been forced to cancel development on the "Phantom" Garbage Disposal Unit.

As you know, the Phantom was meant to be a revolutionary in-sink garbage disposal unit. As opposed to regular garbage disposals, which merely grind organic trash into a sludge that can be washed away, the Phantom sent any and all garbage into another dimension. This dimension, dubbed Coljth, remains largely unexplored and, at the time of its discovery, was assumed to be uninhabited.

It seems that assumption was wrong. Coljth is, in fact, inhabited. It also appears that the inhabitants of Coljth do not enjoy having trash dumped in their home dimension. Shortly after the prototype Phantom unit finished its operational trials, garbage from Coljth began appearing in the lower quadrant labs. After a few weeks, the lower quadrant labs were completely filled with alien refuse.

It was then that the prototype Phantom unit was put into use to dispose of this rubbish. By linking the Phantom input to the alien portal, we were able to successfully clean the labs of trash, as well as divert all incoming garbage to a second dimension, named Ythngtl.

We, of course, assumed that Ythngtl was uninhabited. Once again, we were wrong. Also, as before, the inhabitants of Ythngtl were not happy about having trash appear at random in their plane of existence. Fortunately, since the garbage appearing was Coljthian in origin, the Ythngtl went to war with Coljth, leaving Earth in peace.

Until recently, that is. After months of bloody war, peace talks began, and facts came to light that caused both the Coljth and the Ythngtl to ally under a common banner and prepare for an all-out assault on Earth. Just last week, the two races issued a joint statement, asserting that "wretched trash propagators torn from flesh shall be," and that "immolation of souls of unholy ones screaming in us you become, you become soon." The two races have also called for those humans wishing to avoid pains worse than death to "fall prostrate before hive-mother with all shrieking of mouth-parts worship, worship as consumed to feed brood, worship abhorrent flesh worms you are."

For these reasons, State Og has had no choice but to terminate Project Eater, and to detonate a quantum-waveform destabilizing bomb in the lower quadrant labs to permanently scramble the probability tunnels that lead from Coljth and Ythngtl to Earth. Those employees not wishing to lose actualization and become infinitely probable are advised to evacuate the lower quadrant today before 11:15 a.m.

Internal Memo

From: CEO-X
To: All Personel Managers
Subject: Recent Advances in Worker Productivity Techniques

I wanted to alert you to an interesting story I've been following over the past few days. After being informed that the internet was capable of producing something other than pornography(Yeah. I didn't believe it either.), I assigned one of the technical weirdos down in IT to pore over the web for anything I might find of use. He was instructed to give this job his undivided attention. Three days later, looking more greasy and disheveled than usual, he produced his first report. After sorting through some provocative sketches of an anthropomorphic nature(*see attachment*), I happened upon an account of the experiences of one of our competitors' employees(*also attached*). Here's an excerpt.

"Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.

The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.

And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment Enterprise Anonymous salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, Enterprise Anonymous recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but Enterprise Anonymous as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment."

Can you believe this? These guys are visionaries! Imaginary crises, mandatory overtime, 6 day work weeks, and then NO COMP TIME OR OVERTIME COMPENSATION! This isn't just abuse, it's freaking art! This is your new goal, gentlemen. I won't be happy until you can whip our employees into shape. We're obviously falling behind the curve here! We've been so blind. I like to think of this company as an old fashioned family business. We've always relied on the traditional motivation techniques like medieval torture, forced ritual suicide, and threatening harm to family and pets. It seems that due to our stubborn adherance to these classics of capitalism, we've failed to keep ourselves up to date on the latest advances. We've squandered years by ignoring the erosion of employee rights, and focusing on their ever-tenuous physical well-being. Arbitrary deadlines, unreasonable goals, manipulation of broadly written labor laws, abuse of the exempt status. These are the new tricks of the trade. It's just so damned ambiguous! Even the public can't tell the difference between outright slave labor and creative productivity measures. It's a win-win, guys. Go get'em.

P.S. We'll keep the torture and stuff around, of course.