A fun new game!

So a dear colleague of mine at the Ranch come up with a great new game to play. He suggested it as a great way to kill time at those pesky monthly staff meetings we have here. And I have to agree with him, it sounds like great fun. Here's how it works:

Think Bingo. You know, that great game enjoyed by geriatrics, shut-ins and backwoods religious zealots throughout this fair land. You've got your score card with the letter-number combos laid out in a neat and tidy grid pattern, an absolute testament to the beauty of organization and order. You've got your score markers, whether they are plastic, wood or metal; round or square, it doesn't matter. Just so long as you have a sufficient supply to play however many score cards you happen to be playing without having to get up mid-game to collect more in order to keep playing. A bingo novice makes the mistake of not gathering enough score markers once, and once only. And finally, you've got your MC, or barker, whatever you want to call him. He's (I'm using this pronoun in a gender-neutral, non-judgmental sort of way, ladies) the guy (c.f. prev. note) who stands on the stage in front of the assembled Depends-wearing, White trash/Christ loving, welfare/SSI drawing throng, calling out "B-10", "G-32", "N-5" and the like off the dirty, finger grease smeared ping-pong balls which he pulls out of the... what the hell do they call that machine that bounces those balls around like a carnival ride for tiny plastic planets? Anyway, he's up there for hours on end, usually drinking a bottomless cup of coffee and smoking and endless supply of shitty, second rate smokes while the wheezing, burping and bawling crowd happily while away their Thursday nights trying to win back their "pin money" so they can buy more formula for the latest baby, beer for the husband, or prescription drugs which aren't covered by Medicare.

You get the picture. Bingo.

Now that you've got that image firmly implanted in your mental picture show, shift gears to the board room with its shiny glass topped soccer field of a conference table, the comfy leather upholstered ergonomically correct chairs and replete with bookshelves full of important looking tomes, 3-D anatomical models of organs, bones and joints and the sleek computer terminal in the corner. Seated around this table are important looking men and not-so important looking women (sorry gals, in cyberspace, I'm an even bigger dick than I am in real life, but that's another story...), all with important looking papers and various office-type supplies and tools close at hand.

Now for those of you who have actually worked a real job (one job that requires you bathe BEFORE arriving to the "job site", a job whose dress code requires a pressed collar and pants in good condition) for longer than the two days it took to steal all the pens and legal pad you could pilfer from the supply room in your shitty little backpack, then you will be intimately familiar with the pithy words, slogans and catch phrases that dominate the corporate workplace. You know the one's:

- Thinking outside of the box
- Win/Win solution
- paradigm change
- begin with the end in mind
- Awareness wheel

Anyway, you get the idea.

So here's how the game works:

The next time you're stuck in a boring staff meeting, listening to your peers and superiors drone on and on about things the sound important, but really aren't. You're sitting there either thinking about what a waste of time this whole exercise is, and how much REAL work you could be doing if you weren't stuck in this meeting. Or thinking about the dynamic sex you had with that cute (and drunk) blonde the previous night (how DID she get her legs to do that?!?!). Or more likely, you're struggling through the third hangover of the week, and it's only Monday. Whatever the case, take out a piece of paper and, acting like you're taking notes about the important new "process improvement" that is being discussed in detail, draw out your very own Bingo score card. Instead of filling in the squares with "B-13", or "O-7", you complete the card with all of those new age-y corporate slogans designed to get you motivated and jazzed about your crappy job.

Now once you've got your score card, you can't ask the two clowns sitting next to you for their paper clips and sticky notes without raising suspicion, so what do you do about the score counters? Well, since you're playing by yourself, you can simply cross out the appropriate box whenever a given term or phrase is uttered aloud. So whenever that incompetent monkey across the table from you whose mastery of the English language would make Thai whore blush from embarrassment, says something along the lines of "I think we need to rethink our 'action plan' and revise our whole 'customer service paradigm',"; well that's when you cross off the appropriate box.

Now hear comes the really fun part. When you've finally got complete line on your score card crossed out, vertically, horizontally, diagonally, whatever. Well once you've drawn a line through that last box, and you've taken a moment to double check you card to be sure you've got that "bingo", you jump to your feet, draw in a full breathe of air, and shout at the top of your lungs:

"BULLSHIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!"


And before anyone can actually recover from your unexpected intrusion into the stuporous banality of the proceedings, you decisively turn on your heel, and quickly exit the room.

While you're up, you may as well go clean out your desk, because you're going to be out on the streets looking for a job quicker than Courtney Love will have her next fix when she leaves rehab (again).

I'm sure Parker Bros. will want a piece of this action.