Dear Friends,
If you love intrigue, but hate reggae, you'll have mixed feelings about the new Hard Taco song, "Bioluminescent Bear." Also, if you don't speak patua (Jamaican slang) you may want to contact Ziggy Marley and have him translate it for you. Of course, if I know Ziggy, he'll probably just yammer on about brotherhood, sexuality, and some inevitable uprising. I should warn you that these topics are only peripherally addressed by this song.
So I went to my college reunion last weekend. For 48 hours I smiled and nodded my way through a maze of awkward interactions with ugly old people who insisted that I looked familiar. I decided that if my classmates and I were able to obtain a few basic sound bites about each other (job, current home town, spouse, children, weight gain, level of alcohol consumption) there would be no reason to have reunions at all.
Thus, for the 1300 folks in the class of '97 who didn't come to the reunion, I think we should fill each other in on our career paths. I'll go first. Here are some of the things I told some of your classmates about myself last weekend:
1. I do software development. My product scans personalized license plate requests for dirty words and alternate spellings of dirty words. After five years of revisions, we have implemented version 1.0, which can identify and reject over 2000 permutations of the word ASS. If our funding holds up, we hope to completely eradicate CRAP and BULLCRAP by the end of 2008.
2. I am the vice president of decals for Over The Hill party supplies. We make chattering false teeth for people turning 30, fake urine-soaked underpants for people turning 40, bibs that say "Got Sagging Boobs?" for people turning 50, and for 60-year-olds, customized hearing aides that repeat the phrase "my wife's back is hairier than my head." Remember to ask for genuine Over the Hill products (NOT "Old Fart" products. That's the company my freshman roommate works for.)
3. I'm a toy designer for Tyco. Right now I'm working on the newest version of Torture-me-Elmo. When you touch it, it rolls back and forth on its back and shrieks, "Ahhh! You torture Elmo! Stop! Stop!"
4. I am a staff writer for Cosmopolitan. You probably have read either or both of my two monthly columns, "15 Try-Right-Now Sex Acts" and "Real Men: Top Three Naughtiest Rural Fantasies."
5. I am working on the vaccine for mule pox.
6. I am fat, bald, single, childless, unemployed and drunk, but at least I live in New York. Thank God.
7. Have you ever seen that pop-up ad where you are a kangaroo with boxing gloves, and if you punch out Osama Bin Laden, you win a free ring tone? I designed those gloves.
8. I do fund-raising for "Don't Go There", a non-profit aimed at fighting the battle against colon cancer research.
9. I work at the MIT optics lab. We use optics to see around corners (using prisms) or see through women's clothing. We only use these powers to help clients, and only clients who mean well. Furthermore, when our firm does see through women's clothing, we always acknowledge optics, rather than taking all the credit for ourselves.
10. I am a French consultant for shampoo companies. My first big break was in 2001, when I convinced Garnier Fructis to replace the English word "Shampoo" with the French word "Shampooing" on all of their bottles. Things have gone well, and I just signed a $12 million dollar contract with L'Oreal for the phrase "crème micro nutritifs d'enrichissement, avec le éclat et lisse des vitamines E et K," which means "fortifying nutritive microcreams, with the sheen/sleek of vitamins E and K."
Anyway, I would love to hear from the rest of you! Class of '97 rules! (Also: Class of '98 drools.)
With Warmest Regards,
Zach
