Discordia Drops By: An Anecdote

This is just a MOMENT OF REALIZATION I had at my last job. It happened just about six months ago now. I had just been laid off for the first time in my life, in terror and weeping, at a time when my home state was DEAD LAST in the entire nation for job openings. 100 people a day were leaving for places like Arizona and Colorado, abandoning their homes for the banks to foreclose upon, because in other states they could get jobs in coffee shops and live in their cars.

My keester was saved at the last moment when the bosses miraculously routed me into another position that I could keep for ALL ETERNITY if I wanted. The benefits were just as good even though the pay was a little lower. It was even in the town where I was born. Incredible!

Sure, there was a catch: it was a nightmare position I had vowed all my professional life NEVER TO TAKE.

Sure, there was ANOTHER catch: the commute home included a stretch of congested highway they had just closed down to one lane, meaning that I had a choice of sitting still for two hours in an idling car on a freeway that should have gotten me home in 15 minutes, with gas going for three dollars a gallon, OR I could bash my tiny car into a TWISTED HEAP OF METAL on an hour-long, slithering, jolting funhouse ride on the rutted back roads of the county. In icy February conditions. Yeah, baby. Life was starting to suck again.

But I was surprised to find that I really liked the people. I'd been warned all my life that they were the cruellest minions of bureaucratic evil on earth, laying waste human lives and chuckling at the suffering of the innocent, in the quest to get all their state forms filled out correctly. They weren't like that at all. I was impressed with their professionalism and skill, their good judgement, their good humor in the face of adversity. The office space they gave me was a little grubby, but the color scheme was nice. I had a view of the trees growing up the center of the atrium. Everyone fell all over themselves helping me. I have never learned so much in such a short time at any job.

And the bosses were good, too. Incredibly good. Wow. How often do you stumble into a job where you like all the supervisors? These were kindly, positive people who explained things so you understood them the first time; they seemed to understand that I was in a light state of shellshock after having been laid off; and they told me over and over to take it slow, that I was doing fine. WOW, how did these people get into positions of responsibility? This kind of talent would have been ruthlessly fired before getting past probation at ANY OTHER JOB I'd ever worked.

I was starting to see that I could do this job, if I had to, and I could be good at it too.

The MOMENT OF REALIZATION came after something had been niggling at me for weeks. My own supervisor was off saving the world from evil or something, and the other department supervisor had taken me under his wing, helping me along at every step. There was just something about him. He kept reminding me of something I could...almost...think of....but not quite. I knew I'd never met him before. Had my boss at the other job mentioned him? They appeared to know each other. What was it about him that seemed so familiar?

After about four weeks of this, I was saved from the miserable commute and the specter of working a job I dreaded. My dream job opened up nearby, and they interviewed me for it. I even got hired. It involved a $7,000+ pay raise and was only 10 minutes from my place. It actually matched my training and abilities.

It was only afterwards, when I was starting to get seriously freaked out by the stress of being thrown into a new job, (un)trained by the usual type of useless supervisor, that I opened The Principia Discordia to seek spiritual comfort and I finally got the message.

The oddly familiar supervisor at the previous job was named Greg Hill. Greg Hill, a guy with the same name as one of the original living prophets of Eris in our times, co-author of the Principia. My other supervisor had to GET OUT OF THE WAY so I could spend several hours a day getting help from this particular man and no other.

I like to think this means that all this happened as part of the entirely random, planless, grenade-throwing machinations of Our Lady Of Chaos. When I think about it, I see that if I had not been canned when I was and frantically looking for a job to replace the one Discordia had tossed in my lap, I NEVER WOULD HAVE NOTICED THE OPENING FOR MY DREAM JOB, THE ONE I'VE WISHED FOR DAILY FOR MORE THAN FIVE YEARS.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

Today's Bureaucracy Moment

Okay, today I was at this training at work, right, and people were really starting to droop because we'd been sitting there for hours and hours getting lectured about a bunch of boring horseapples and it was all starting to blur together, you know?

And then it happened. My very own supervisor from my very own department spake, and speaking, made this pronouncement:

CURRENT REGULATIONS DICTATE THAT WHEN WE COLLECT A CERTAIN TYPE OF INFORMATION FROM A CLIENT IN ORDER TO ASSIST THEM, WE CANNOT DISCUSS IT WITH OUR OWN STAFF PEOPLE WITHOUT OBTAINING A WRITTEN RELEASE OF INFORMATION FROM THE CLIENT TO DO SO.

THIS IS TRUE IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT SAID INFORMATION IS ENTERED, AS WE COLLECT IT, ON A MULTI-USER COMPUTER SYSTEM WHERE ANYONE AND HIS HAMSTER IN FOUR COUNTIES CAN CALL IT UP AND READ IT AT THE TOUCH OF A BUTTON.

You should have seen the faces light up all over the room. Sometimes you just want to fall on your knees and thank Discordia for the great bounty of her comic relief.

True Terror, Just In Time For Halloween...

Isn't this a pretty picture? I thought so, too, once I cropped out the SCARY PARTS. This is a small section of one of the most frightening images I have ever seen. I would have included the whole thing, but I just didn't dare. Copyright considerations aside, I was pretty sure Our Lady of Chaos would STRIKE ME DEAD if I did so.

WHY, you ask? It's hard to even type about. Let me collect myself a minute here.

I tell you this because the uncropped version of this photo, brought in by our clipping service, was snapped by Craig Cutler for the Halloween edition of Martha Stewart Holiday. Do you see what I'm driving at here? Can you picture it yet?

Yes, people -- Martha appears inside the back cover of the magazine (available now on newsstands everywhere) tricked out as none other than Eris/Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion, with a golden laurel wreath in her hair, swathed in white and posed with the bucket of Holy Projectiles shown above, poised and ready to lob them at unsuspecting passersby. OK, OK, a lot of them are golden POMEGRANATES but this only underlines what I've been saying all along about the link between Persephone, the Maiden Goddess From Hell, and Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion. The fruits of temptation come in many colors, my friend. And some of them splatter better than others.

To think that this smirking blonde individual, who has dedicated her life to imposing method on madness and leaving nothing but color-coordinated, home-baked, tidily-gift-wrapped ORDER in her wake could ever entertain the idea of dressing up as Eris...Sort of the same principle as the most experienced streetwalker on the block going to a Halloween party dressed as Mother Superior. But MUCH, MUCH SCARIER. I've been thinking for years that there's not a Halloween trick left that can really scare me. Was I ever wrong.

This is the very essence of the Erisian experience. Just when you thought you'd FINALLY LEARNED TO DUCK, she shows up WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT HER and gets you right between the eyes with that damned apple. Then she vanishes, with a hearty cry of "PSYCH!"

Is there any faith more sublime than this?