Off Keynote

I just subscribed to the McSweeney's iPhone app, which beams over its daily "Internet Tendency" stories. A recent one that should be required reading is the very Robert Benchley-esque "A Literal-Minded Corporate Executive Gives the Opening Address at His Company's Sales Conference." An excerpt:

The past year has been a challenging one. Many of our clients went out of business. Many of our friends lost their jobs. Many of you who hate working here had to continue working here because no one else was hiring and you couldn't move back home because your parents rented out your room to avoid foreclosure.

However, the year ahead looks brighter, or at least not nearly as apocalyptic. The economy seems to have turned a corner, and we have emerged from the worst recession in a generation stronger than before, thanks in large part to nothing in particular that we did so much as crippling failures on the part of our competitors. While your hard work during this difficult time has been commendable, now is the time to return to doing what we do best: disinterestedly selling software that will eventually render us professionally irrelevant.