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Over the past couple of years I've been known to dabble in a rather unique form of literaturethe technical humormystery genre. Here is a sample. |
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I don't get much entertainment business. Frankly, my office is on the wrong side of the tracks. No, it's not the bloodstains on the cracked windowpane, although that might be enough to turn away many of the beautiful people. And it's not just that I work out of Silicon Valley, which is an hour's flight from Hollywood. It's simply that I don't do meetings. You know what I meanI don't carry a cell phone, and my pager battery is perpetually dead. Not that it matters; I don't give anyone my pager number anyway. Sure, I occasionally have lunch with friends, but I don't do meetings. |
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My friend DT, on the other hand, does meetings all the time. She usually hangs out at the nearby Juice Club, the kind of place where teenagers work for minimum wage mixing random fruits and vegetables along with mysterious nutritional powders that don't quite promise eternal youth, vigor, and health. I did a job once for the Food and Drug Administrationthey needed an investigator to examine their systems to see if they are year 2000compliant. I can't tell you the results, but I'll say this: I'm sterilizing all my food starting January 2000. And the only juice I'll be drinking is from fruit I pick myself or from cans dating back to 1998. |
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Today was slow. My only client was some guy from the DOD who wanted a complete analysis of their case against Microsoft. I photocopied the Starr report and gave the copy to him gratis. Who can tell the difference between the two anyway? The afternoon was dragging, so I decided to stroll down to the strip mall and see what DT was up to. |
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I found her on the phone, taking a call. I could tell even from the tail end of the conversation that it must be someone in the entertainment biz: |
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"Yo, babe. Good deal. Right. I'll have my computer call your computer. Ciao. We'll do lunch." Click. |
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I couldn't help but smile. DT was the only person in the valley who had a cell phone that actually went "click" when it hung up. |
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The fake smile she had been wearing faded faster than an Internet stock with a bad earnings announcement. |
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"I hate the act, but they sure pay well," she said with a real smile. |
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"Interestingbut didn't they used to have their people call your people? What's this stuff with computers calling each other?" |
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