The drinking will continue until morale improves

Yesterday my employer threw a baseball-themed summer picnic as part of their morale project. They already had some sort of mock game show a couple of weeks ago. (Obviously, someone in Human Resources has been taking corporate team building techniques from past seasons of The Office.) Next week the consulting group they hired - to gauge the corporate atmosphere to determine how "accepting" and "inclusive" and "diverse" it is - will deliver their (presumably scathing) report. There will be a new batch of employee benefits and perks instituted, including an employee of the month program. I suppose these kinds of things appeal to some people...the kind of people who are easily pacified by snacks and door prizes, while the real issues of salary inequity, disproportionate workload, and managerial deficiencies go unresolved. Myself, I don't put a lot of stock in insincere attempts at reparations through offerings of cake and hollow platitudes. Someone else is more than welcome to my piece of cake; while they're busy giving themselves diabetes I'll be scheming to figure out how to justify and execute a way to spend the monies earmarked for their pay increase.


What does excite me is the e-mail I recently got from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased Harry Potter products from Amazon.com, you might be happy to hear that The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling's book of fairy tales written to supplement the Harry Potter series, will be published in two new editions on December 4, 2008.

The Standard Edition features all five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard, an introduction and illustrations by J.K. Rowling, and commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore.

Amazon is also thrilled to offer a luxuriously packaged Collector's Edition (available exclusively at Amazon) designed to evoke the spirit of the handcrafted original purchased at auction last December. Housed in its own slipcase--made to resemble a wizarding textbook found in the Hogwarts library--this Collector's Edition includes metal corners, clasp, and skull; a reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction; commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore; and 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition (or the original).

I knew there was no way they weren't actually going to release this for sale. After all of the interest in the handwritten version she did for charity, I figured this would have to get published. And as of today there are 111 days until the premier of Half Blood Prince.

I've been sitting here sort-of watching Emma and realizing how much I really don't care for Gwyneth Paltrow and her ridiculously fake British accent. And her stupid cow face that she uses to convey emotion. There has got to be something else on that is more tolerable. Or I could just watch Batman Begins for the third time this week - it is firmly established on my DVR.