The Joe Randazzo Association

Dear TJRA team,

As many of you know, the Joe Randazzo Association has recently extended its strong line of consumer goods and services into the insect apparel market, and the results have been extraordinary! Insects, the most popular form of life on planet earth, has been an untapped market for hundreds of years. They are smart, they are organized, and they represent some $66 billion in annual spending power if you include mucous and mucous byproducts. TJRA saw that, and we acted: In the first quarter of 2009 alone, we researched, developed, and manufactured more than 1.5 trillion pairs of UV-Protection sunglasses for moths; 575 million Classy Ties for the Discerning Caterpillar; and nearly 6 billion condoms for Asian slut beetles. Next month, we’ll be unveiling our new line of L’il Larva insect baby clothes, and by early January, we’ll have completed prototypes for portable MP3 players, pocket books, prescription monocles, guns, long underwear, skateboards, thorax warmers, and bicycles, all aimed at this incredibly diverse demographic, the insect.

One new product, however, has been a colossal disappointment: Shoes for bees. Our research seemed to indicate that the world’s bee population would be hungry to spend its hard-earned honey on sensible but stylish and affordable footwear. Despite the fact that bees—widely considered by scientists* to be the most fashion-conscious of insects—have six feet, sales have been moribund at best.

We have sold zero pairs of shoes to bees.

So I come to you today to ask for your help. Do you know any bees? Do you think they’d be interested in some shoes? If so, why not make a personal plea for them to consider our extensive line of boots, high heels, and loafers? Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising (yes, even for bees!) so an endorsement coming from someone the bees know and trust will mean that much more. If you have any hesitation, you’re all invited to come on down to our bee shoe showroom to try them on for yourself. You’ll immediately see that their comfort, reliability, and flight performance is second to none in the bee-shoe industry. Heck, you might bring home a few pairs for yourself!

So take a minute this week to write an email to some of your bee friends or invite them over for drinks and let them know that the new TJRA shoes for bees might be for them, if they are a bee. Better yet, invite them to our special open house for bees next Friday, in which we’ll gather as many bees as we can in one very small room in hopes of reducing this inventory of bee shoes. I’ve already arranged for 10,000 Apis mallifera scutellata from Lesotho to be there, and we’ll have music, dancing, face painting, lots of randomly flashing lights and abrupt sounds, and a raffle. It’s sure to be a success!

Thanks in advance for your help. Remember, the shoes come in sizes 0.00000004 – 0.0000012. Together, we can sell a fucking shit-ton of shoes to some bees.

Yours,

Jim

*people who professionally do science

admin Official TJRA Communications

To: all@therandazzo.com
From: Samantha in HR
RE: Message From the CEO!!!!

Guys! Please read this very brief, very special announcement from TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo. We hope to make this a regular feature, as Mr. Randazzo provides news, wisdom, and wit for all of you! Please read it. Please.
-Samantha

All,

I’ve been thinking a lot about a certain question lately, a certain eternal question: What does it mean to be a man? It’s a question I must ask myself every six years or so, just to make sure I’m being true to the power within me. The inner-power that rumbles like a boxful of thunder, shaking with the intensity of 1 million Corvettes—the power that makes everything around me possible. The power of Me.

I’m no stranger to adversity. Not even close. Adversity and me are like twin brothers on a road trip who get kidnapped by Mexicans and thrown in prison just because one of them had a little bit of marijuana and the Mexicans thought that their parents were affluent. And, through the horrors of a Mexican prison, one of the twin brothers dies, and that twin brother is Adversity. It doesn’t end there, though: The other brother, me, goes on with his life but, because of the incredible bond between twins that only twins can understand, he wanders through each day feeling as though fate had torn a massive gash in his midsection—just a huge, gaping, bloody hole—and that some part of him would remain forever empty. Like a zombie, I carry on listlessly, calling out to a voice that does not answer. And just when it seems like all is lost, and I’m standing on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge, I hear that voice; I hear the voice of my twin brother Adversity talking to me. And he is a ghost that only I can see. But he’s been to the future and knows many things that will help me get rich, and so we travel the country getting into adventures and looking for opportunities to use his incredible power to make me incredibly wealthy. But, lo, as a ghost, he relies on the unconditional love from his twin brother to maintain his existence on the Living Plane, and, because I cannot provide that, he dematerializes in a most-depressing fashion one day as we both stand in the rain outside Chicago.

And here we are today.

Of course, I’m only using this famous parable to make a broader point: Sometimes the man you become is not the man you meant to be. Sometimes, being a man means making tough decisions. Decisions that will have unforeseen repercussions for an estimated 850 years to come. Potentially dangerous repercussions. But do you know what? It takes a real man to make the tough decisions, and nothing is a greater test of whether or not one is a man than that man-to-be making those very same tough decisions, and then rating himself as a man or not based upon his ability to make decisions no matter the outcome. Understand?

After all, 850 years is a long time. And the children—all those deformed children and their pathetically skinny dogs, dear God, the way those dogs’ eyes just seem to stare right through you! But no one said it would be easy. And those who did are no longer employed at TJRA. They are no longer employed anywhere, if you catch my drift.

(They are having a very difficult time finding employment in this moribund job market.)

So, what does it mean to be a man? For me, it means believing in yourself, even if you consistently make decisions that result in mass kidnappings, two floods, the complete eradication of an indigenous language, and other horrible outcomes that would make a man of less fortitude succumb to self-doubt or a more thorough reading of the CIA World Factbook. To me, being a man means doing what’s right, even if everyone else is trying to tell you that it’s too “controversial” or “morally contemptible” or “against several local statutes” or “the equivalent of a small-scale holocaust on otherwise-helpless lab rats.” To me, being a man means helping old ladies across the street just for the sake of doing a kind deed, and not because you crave some sick sexual gratification. To me, being a man means having the strength to lay off the entire national sales team, effective Monday, in a subtle clause buried in a company-wide message of inspiration. To me, being a man means having big muscles just like my dad used to have. To me, being a man means propelling your company into the 22nd century with new technologies such as high-speed holograms and edible plastics. To me, being a man means eating lots of delicious meat and enjoying laughter, drinks, and discussions about sports around a picnic table and grill.

Therefore, you’re all invited to the 10th Annual TJRA Cookoutaganza this Saturday at 1 p.m. for some summer fun in the sun! Bring some kind of side and a great anecdote to share. See you there!

-Mr. Randazzo

admin Message From The CEO

Hello all. It’s Samantha in HR’s time of the month to update us on the comings, goings, ups, downs, slips, falls, failures, triumphs, jokes, jibes, and happenings here at TJRA.

To: all@therandazzo.com
From: Samantha in HR
Re: Monthly TJRA Newsletter!!!

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well. Well! If another month hasn’t come and gone! Seems like just yesterday it was May, and here we are at the END OF JULY! It’s like, “Hello? Where did June and July go?” Makes you think about how incredibly impermanent all of life is, and that the very perception of time can determine its shape, thus determining reality itself! But enough blabbering on: Let’s get to the meat (of the newsletter)!

• July was a big month for big life events here at TJRA. David Grossman from Acquisitions acquired himself a bride in the form of Deb Lee (oops, I mean, Grossman!) from the Couch Department. Congratulations, David and Deb! You couldn’t make a better pair. And I think all our hearts are warmed to see two mildly autistic people overcome their chunky complexions and weirdo counting habits to find love in the strangest of places. Deb and David are honeymooning in Cancun, where I’m sure the consummation ceremony will be lovely in its own way!

• Batter up! Remember Jim O’Connell in Accounting? Well, his son, Jesse, paid his father’s memory the ultimate tribute by striking out 11 batters at the state little league championships last week! I’m sure Jim (Dad!) is up there smiling, despite Jesse’s own poor base-running skills, which ultimately cost his team the title. (They lost 8-7.)

• Jim O’Connell passed away on July 12th or 13th.

• There’s a new Asian employee working in Human Resources! Let’s all help welcome him in usual TJRA style. And, please, no slurs, even in a joking way. At TJRA, we pride ourselves on fostering an environment of safety and comfort, and I won’t have my new assistant feeling ill at ease.

• The winner of our annual TJRA Jelly Bean Counting Contest is… (drum roll… drum roll… PAUSE! drum roll… drum roll… drum roll…) … TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo! He may not have gotten the number exactly right (1,231) but he was close enough (39)! This is Mr. Randazzo’s third straight year as Jelly Bean King. (I smell something fishy—I mean, watermellony!!!)

• It’s a boooooy! Florencio Barton from the Executive Cafeteria is pleased to announce the birth of his sixth son, Climax. The bouncing baby boy came in at 18 lbs 2 oz and 31 inches. I’ve seen the photos and they are so precious: full head of hair, beautiful spiraling fingernails, and a working set of tooth-like structures. Good job, Florencio. Now get back behind that salad bar!

• A “little birdie told me” that the feral hawks that have been flying around the office these past couple months have almost completely stopped “poking their beaks” in the Maternity Ward! It seems they’ve migrated on over to the Accounts Receivable office, where they’ve established quite the viciously guarded nest and revamped the department’s entire cost structure, saving TJRA more than $430,000 in Q2-09. That’s a number you can’t “flap your wings at!”

• You asked for it, you got it: The results of TJRA’s Favorite Numbers poll are in! 3, 43, 4, 987, 1/2, 3.6, 5, 7, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 632, 0, .01, B, 17, 41, 8, 3 again, and 3 again. Happy counting! Stay tuned next month for TJRA’s Favorite Letters poll!

• Congratulations to Mr. Kur-Laang (Hawk 3), who was promoted to Vice President of Accounts Receivable!

WELP, that about wraps it all up in a nice little bow for this month’s Monthly TJRA Newsletter! I have nothing else to say, bye.

admin From the Human Resources Dept.

Last month, we put the call out to you all to send in your best odes to TJRA, and the response was overwhelming! Literally thousands* of you dug deep inside your hearts, found your “inner-Shakespeares” and sent in your own personal odes to the greatness of TJRA.

Unfortunately, of the literally thousands** of entries, there could be only one winner—an entry that embodies everything great and true about TJRA: greatness, truth, raw sexuality, goods, services, telekinesis, stain-resistent alloys, profit, and innovation. Join us in congratulating Mr. Burt Clive of Fort Tryon, NY for his winning entry, “Untitled.” Bravo, Mr. Clive! You were the best of literally thousands*** of entries!

“Untitled”

T is for ‘The’, a steadfast article without,
TJRA would lack a handle for its spout.

J is for ‘Joe’, TJRA’s President and founder
Without whose guidance this ship of commerce would flounder.

R is for ‘Randazzo’ which seperates TJRA’s Joe
From coffee, Mantegna, Biden and DiMaggio.

A is for ‘Association’ ‘an organization of people with a
Common purpose and having a formal structure.’ Go TJRA!

–Burt Clive
Fort Tryon, NY

Breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking, Burt. For your prize, you get a free lunch with TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo in the VIP section of the TJRA Cafeteria! Congratulations, again!

*one (1)

**one (1)

***one (1)

admin Official TJRA Communications

Well, it’s that time of year again: mid-to-late June. Yes, the one time of year when TJRA’s closet scribes and “famed men of letters” alike take out their trusty pens, sharpen their trusty nibs, dip the pens in inky ink, and set pencil to paper to compose their “coups de grace“: That’s right, the 10th annual TJRA poetry contest!

This year’s theme is ‘TJRA GREATNESS IN GOODS AND SERVICES.”

"Greatness In the Afternoon (Ode to TJRA)"

The rules are simple: Just capture the greatness of TJRA, Inc. in a beautiful, heartfelt, spirit-altering poem of 500 words or less. You can write about anything regarding the greatness of TJRA’s goods and services, provided it’s poetic and true! The competition is open to all employees, and submissions are due Monday June 22 at 6:00 pm Eastern.

Just send your “masterpieces” to joe@therandazzo.com. TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo will be judging them himself!

Come on, show us what you got (poetry-wise)!

To get your “creative juices” flowing, here’s last year’s winning entry, “Greatness In the Afternoon (Ode To TJRA)”

The Joe Randazzo Association
Is known for excellent goods and services across the nation,
Be they products that serve an important need
Or services, thou dost know, that are very good indeed.

What would America do without
This major corporation whose employees are devout?
So dedicated are they all to the TJRA mission statement
That nary wouldst thou find dissatisfaction without abatement.

TJRA, TJRA, standing large and metallic and tall
You embody this good, and that great, and wonderful all.
How I wish I could touch you, so pure and well-suited to today’s business environment!
O, how thine art shining, TJRA, with grace, profit, and refinement!

Yes, TJRA is a business like no other,
Bringing much joy and laughter, and throwing dissatisfaction asunder.
TJRA, you beautiful cloven beast,
Tear out mine eyes, heart, ears—and feast!

—Joe Randazzo, June, 2008

admin From the Human Resources Dept.

As you all know, Tuesday is a mandatory personal-enrichment day, filled with outstanding seminars. Here’s the schedule of events:

9:00 AM: Meet-and-Greet with our seminar facilitator, George Grangely, the 249th richest man in the world, founder of Hot Dog City, author of the bestselling 66 Highly Effective Electro-Efficiency Techniques for the Cluttered, Impure Brain, and acclaimed singer-songwriter. Complimentary coffee and TJRA Zam Bars will be served.

9:10 AM: Meet-and-greet promptly ends. (Those who do not get to shake Mr. Grangely’s hand will be mailed a photo of his hand.)

9:15 AM: The day’s first seminar, “Unlocking the Hot Dog Within,” will equip you with powerful tools for your day-to-day life and career. Grangely and his assistant, Hot Dog Dave, will teach you how to deal effectively with adversity and stress, how to make bold, powerful choices without regret, and how to tap into the deep wellspring of creative energy inherent to all of us. Unlock your inner hot dog with “Unlocking the Hot Dog Within.”

11:00 AM: “Sector Destination Marketing European Client/Supplier Business Workshop“—Mainly centering around sector destinations, this seminar will also probably delve into marketing, Europe, and business, all in a workshop form.

12:30 PM: Lunch. Everyone is encouraged to eat lunch. Especially Leslie in Semiotics. She is looking very thin. Is it just me? Leslie, if you’re reading this: You are all skin and bones, girl, and we’re worried about you. You don’t have to do this to yourself. You’re a beautiful woman on the inside and outside, Leslie. So please, come back to us. Ellen in Accounting, however, would probably be wise to stay away from the buffet. Just stick to the celery, honey. “Wide load coming through!” right, everyone?

1:30 PM: “Dealing With Paralysis & Minor Brain Damage Resulting From A Gas Leak On the 17th Floor“—This timely, informative workshop will take you step by step through what one would need to do in the extremely unlikely event of a noxious gas leak on the 17th floor of one’s workplace. How can one detect the gas if it is largely odorless and one’s office ventilation system is severely outdated? If coworkers slowly begin disappearing and one can’t get any answers from HR besides “personal leave,” should one worry? When paralysis does set in, is there anything one can do to retain some semblance of a normal life? Wouldn’t it just be a good idea to deal with the symptoms until the logic and reasoning portions of one’s brain are so damaged that one won’t ever consider suing one’s employer even if one learned they had knowledge of the problem for six months? Aren’t you being a disloyal hypochondriac, anyway? Learn the answers in this powerful seminar, conducted in the basement.

3:30 PM: Break. Take this time to stretch your legs, get some fresh air, and read the remaining 14 chapters of notes in preparation for the day’s final seminars.

4:00 PM: “Living Up To Leadership“—Are you a born leader? Are you headed for greatness? Well, this once-in-a-lifetime seminar is designed to prepare TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo for the responsibility of even more leadership. Through clear, concise Joe Randazzo-based techniques, “Living Up To Leadership” will help ensure that every TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo can become the TJRA CEO Joe Randazzo Joe Randazzo is meant to be. (Attendance mandatory for everyone.)

5:00 PM: The last seminar, “Learning To Fly,” will literally teach every single attendee how to fly. This is not a joke! Imagine the freedom the power of flight will afford you. I happen to be a certified man-flyer and will personally show those present how to spread their wings and actually fly! Seminar takes place on the roof of TJRA HQ, where everyone will get a chance to jump from the 44th floor and try their new skill. Dare to fly! (Attendance is limited to Barry in Marketing, Jim in Marketing, Charles in Marketing, Han in Marketing, my personal assistant and great disappointment Tina, and Caroline in Marketing. Everyone else will be asked to immediately vacate the premises.)

Rest up and get ready for what I’m sure will be a huge success on Tuesday!

admin Official TJRA Communications

Greetings TJRA staff and Rita, the lady who sleeps in the lobby.

As many of you know, TJRA has entered an exciting phase of myopic and overindulgent expansion in recent months, so I wanted to take this time to update all of you on some of our latest moves, all of which are very, very exciting.

Thanks to the selfless work of everyone in Acquisitions—and especially chief acquisitions officer Gorlag the Younger—we have acquired some major acquisitions in the very important market sectors of dried goods, financial services, vice, robotics, and Burger King sciences, among others. Here’s a partial listing of the companies we’ve acquired in the first quarter of 2009.

Typeface International
For over 480 years, Typeface International has been a global leader in fonts and font-based activities. From the ever-dependable Courier New to the whimsical Wingdings, Typeface International has mined, processed, and refined more fonts than any other exploratory font processor in the world. The company boasts more than 300 factories on five continents, and just opened a cutting-edge font-cloning facility in the south of France. Typeface International recently announced plans to put the first Garamond Bold into orbit, and signed an exclusive deal with Warner Bros. last month to produce an all caps version of  Harry Potter. Typeface International is also the world’s leading distributor of amateur pornography.

Fonts R Us
Fonts R Us is a subsidiary of Typeface International.

e-People
Everyone knows the Internet is the future, and e-People believes the future is now. That’s why since 2003 they’ve been replicating every known human into amalgamated XML versions of our very selves to serve as information-slaves to the Knowing One after the coming e-volution. The process is simple and the results speak for themselves: digital ghosts of the human lives that once were, perfect for whatever excruciating labor our new leaders, praise be the New Way, may require. Progress is change and change is information, so embrace the new reality—embrace the New Way—with e-People! You won’t have a choice anyway.

The Sandwich Depot
The Sandwich Depot has been serving up mouth-watering sandwiches, sinful desserts, and our world-famous Kooky Fries to Concord New Hampshire’s hungriest residents since 1993. Stop on by for friendly faces and delicious snacks—with complementary smiles! And don’t forget our out-of-this-world lunch specials, free for corporate CEOs who really like Chicken Caesar wraps.

The United Nations
This deal is still pending.

Pet Rocks
Are you into the “latest thing?” Do you want to be “hip?” Well, look no further than Pet Rocks. We are on the cutting edge of everything modern. Whether you want a stone dog or a cat that’s a rock or just a piece of granite that all your friends will be jealous of, Pet Rocks can help. Check out our cool “very 2009” products: hamster rocks, gerbil rocks, chinchilla rocks, Vietnamese potbellied pig rocks, grey parrot rocks, AK-47s, praying mantis rocks, ferret rocks, rain stick rocks, Simpsons T-Shirt rocks, hula hoop rocks, ant farm rocks, The Rock rocks, and more. Stay “cool” with Pet Rocks. We’re not a hilariously outmoded fad from the 1950s anymore!

1 Foto 4 Life
How many precious memories take place in a life? It’s impossible to put a number on it, but at 1 Foto 4 Life, you won’t have to. Using state-of-the-art photographic techniques, we ensure that one photo is all you’ll ever need. Just bring your newborn boy or girl into our modern studio, make sure they’re very comfortable and upright, and let us do the rest. Using our patented Extremely Long Exposure technology, we’ll make sure that every precious moment is captured in vivid color as your child sits perfectly still for 18 years. From the terrible twos to the age at which they would normally have graduated from high school, it will all be there. Guaranteed. One stop. One exposure. 1 Foto 4 Life.

Everyone should be very, very excited by this extremely exciting news! We’ll be announcing new acquisitions in the weeks to come, including a number of charming European hospice-care facilities that we’ll convert into charming B&Bs and Brian Pedersen’s lemonade stand outside his parents’ house on Norwalk Street. That’s all for now.

admin Official TJRA Communications

Behold. The most important corporate logo design of all-time, the TJRA, Inc. corporate logo.

Stare at it. Stare at our new corporate logo. What does it communicate to you? Strength? Power? Modernity? Excellent goods and services? Strength? Yes. Yes! All of that and much more: The subtle curve of the J provides a graceful, almost erotic sense of stability. Look at the T. What could be more indicative of “excellent products” and “reliable customer service” than a large, brushed-steel T? The subliminal loyalty-inducing properties of the R and the A go without saying, and yet: The letters R and A have been clinically demonstrated to hold a Mesmer-like suggestive power over all who envisage them to put the needs of the corporate entity represented therein above those of their families and themselves. Above the needs of their own children.

This is what TJRA, Inc. is all about.

The new logo—nine years and $2.2 billion in the making—also represents the completion of Stage 16. And we all know what happens at Stage 17!

So sit back, relax, and become subsumed by the awesome visual powers of the new TJRA logo: the logo for TJRA.

Special thanks are due to Mark Heinz at Mark Heinz Productions for designing the logo. We recommend that if you plan to seek his services you do so within the next 14 days, as the intimate knowledge he accumulated about TJRA strategies and analytics has, unfortunately, put him at the top of our security threats list, and his biologic and/or memory functionality may have to be augmented or forcibly expired in that timeframe.

admin Official TJRA Communications

The information contained in this memo is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the shadow officers named herein who secretly control TJRA, Inc, its subsidiaries and branches. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited under the laws of Satan and of the United States of America.

[Begin minutes, Convocation of the Board of TJRA Shadow Directors, 29 April 2009]

JR: Thank you all for coming, and thank you especially to Lord Hadron for bringing his famous lemon bars. Scrumptuous, to be sure. If there be no objection, I hereby call this meeting to order and on to the first matter of business. Yes, Lord Perris, do you wish to say something?

LP: I, too, wish to personally thank Lord Hadron for his generous gift of lemon bars, and let me say that so long as I’ve known him—from those heady days in Kuala Lumpur to the desecration of Beirut in 1962—he has been a masterful cook and baker.

JR: Thank you, Lord Perris, I am sure we all agree on that point. Now to the first matter of business, an update on prototype A, the metasonic device. Initial testing in Mumbai and Cleveland has been extremely successful with localized vestibular bleeding and a trance ratio of nine. Nearly all subjects were compliant. This, of course, bests even our most liberal projections, and it’s fair to say that the device will be deployed in limited markets in time to correspond with—

LH: Sea salt.

JR: Lord Hadron, you may take the floor.

LH: Secret ingredient is sea salt. Brings out the tanginess. Fifty years and I’ve never told anyone that, but there you are. Sea salt.

JR: Lord Hadron, what a generous admission. Now, as to deployment and calibration of the metasonic device, our Schematics Department believes that children will be most susceptible—

LP: I could eat them all day. They are a delight, Lord Hadron. An absolute delight. I could really eat them all day.

JR: —to the aural zombification which, if implemented carefully, will assure a market share of—

LH: And may I say the same about your blondies! With the walnuts and honey? Forget it. Out of this world, Lord Perris.

JR: —upwards of 28 percent in the first quarter alone. Gentlemen, would anyone else like to come up and get some of these lemon bars before we continue?

LP: I also brought blondies, but, I must admit, I was too nervous to put them out. Shall I put them out now?

JR: Please, yes. Fine.

[Approx. 49 minutes elapse]

LH: … of course, I didn’t even know they made left-handed whisks back then. You can imagine how it opened my whole world.

JR: Attention. Attention, please. Let’s call the meeting back to order. Attention. Settle down everyone.

LP: Well, I think you’re a natural. You should start your own website. Put up recipes, photos, the whole thing

LH: Oh, oh, well (laughing) I could never. No, no. Very kind of you.

LP: I’m serious!

LH. Psssh.

JR: Gentlemen, please! We have 19 more items on the agenda and we’ve not even gotten to the leveraging of Belgium. Now, if you please. Let us move on to the matter of the small uprising among those assembly line workers outside Caracas.

LH: Murder them all.

LP: Firebomb the entire outfit. Like in Luchan.

LH: Slit the children’s throats and throw them in the river.

LP: Do not stop until the land belches death and sulfur.

LH: Let a few live and cut off their hands and tongues. Carve the sign of the beast in their chests.

LP: Their scars a constant reminder of those who control them.

LH: The nightmare of memory must be burned into them across the generations.

JR: All in favor, say aye. And opposed?

[The vote is 21 - 1]

JR: The motion passes with one against. Madame Draconis, did you not get a lemon bar?

MD: No.

LH: Oh, Madame, I’m so sorry. You should have said something!

JR: Please see to it that Madam Draconis gets a lemon bar.

LP: Here, here, take one of mine. They’re absolutely to die for!

LH: Goodness me, speak up next time. Of course you may have a lemon bar.

MD: Thank you. It’s quite good.

JR: Meeting adjourned.

[End of minutes]

admin CONFIDENTIAL

Hello TJRAers! Check out this email from Lance in Metrics. He’s organizing a trip to TGIFridays tonight!

—

I was thinking that today is Friday, and I was thinking Thank God It’s Friday, or TGIF, and then I was thinking about the restaurant TGIFriday’s which is a play on the term and I thought that maybe we could all go out for some dinner and maybe a couple of drinks tonight to unwind and everything after a very long week, and what place would be better to THANK GOD IT IS FRIDAY then AT TGIFriday’s, was my basic thinking, and the next thing you know I’m writing this email. We can carpool if we need to, Brian has a van that can fit about nine people if he cleans out all the old newspapers and knives and takes the naked-lady photos off the walls, so that’s nine right there and I can fit probably three in my Tercel, so that’s already 12 RIGHT THERE, not counting me and Brian so 14. Do you think anyone would want to come, I’m getting the guys from Metrics to come: Brian, as I mentioned and Bill wants to come and Brien can’t come and Beverly is staying late but says if we go she’ll come by later so the more people we can get to come the more likely Beverly will be to come, ultimately, though the decision is up to her and we can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do, TGIFRiday’s has drink specials on Friday night which are pretty good deals actually, I know, and because of the economy a lot of people are tightening their belts, so this seems like a pretty good way to spend some time with coworkers at a price that’s not going to break the bank. I think they actually make some quality burgers and sandwiches though I’ve never been impressed with their fries, but people don’t even HAVE TO EAT, they can just drink. And so 14, and then if you add Lou, if we can get him to come, he has a car and so does Mandy, though I guess hers is actually a Jeep, and it’s not weird for a woman to drive a Jeep, like my father used to think (Army guy, very strict) but is actually pretty sexy, I think, but again we’re skirting a weird line here where I would never want to make Mandy uncomfortable even though she has magnificent breasts and seems to actually enjoy it when people stare at her, and if we get there by 5:30 we’ll beat the dinner rush for sure, except that I know the high school kids go there sometimes in big groups, as Brian told me, they usually get there sometime after school, usually around 4:30, and they stay for approximately 135 minutes and then drive up Rancho Drive onto Washington Street before getting on I-44 toward the Laksehore Drive Exit and then Brian usually wimps out and doesn’t follow them any longer. Alison Robb is the high school student’s name but the bigger issue is then how do we get everyone hoe afterward because I intend to get pretty drunk (TGIF!) and drive anyway, but I live very close by to TGIFriday’s and wouldn’t want anyone else in the car with me if I’m going to be driving while intoxicatd so maybe we have to pick out a designated driver or maybe we can just call cabs or maybe people can just drink responsibly and figure out their own way home and maybe Mandy’s breasts or perhaps people could just all walk together or maybe the whole idea is a bad idea in the first place.

Just let me know what you think.

Lance

admin From the Human Resources Dept.