The floggings will continue until morale improves!

Am I too cynical, or does this rightly belong in grade school?

Below, I present to you an e-mail that arrived this morning from our personnel department:

Hello!

Beginning today you will have the opportunity to share a little sunshine with your co workers. This afternoon we will initiate a short term peer recognition program, the Sunshine Campaign. The campaign is designed to provide encouragement through these last few days of winter and will continue for one month, ending April 10.

This afternoon through tomorrow your supervisors will be distributing yellow 'You Brightened My Day By....' forms. We encourage you to use these bright forms to tell your coworkers how much you appreciate their efforts. There is no limit to the number of sunshine greetings you may send. Please consider the contributions of our students and our colleagues in NTS and IT as you spread sunshine.

Watch for the bright yellow cookies, too!

That last sentence sounds like a warning, and it should. They really mean bright forms. As in Astrobrights Sunshine Yellow cardstock. I don't care much for yellow in the first place, and this is in-your-face, help-my-eyeballs-are-on-fire, makes-me-irritated-just-looking-at-it yellow. Ack.

It was followed by another e-mail from my departments uber-supervisor that stated:
I hope everyone considers participating in the Sunshine Campaign. This of course is mid-western supervisor speak for "I require full participation from everyone in this office. And you'd better smile while you're at it."

I am not currently a gruntled employee.

Books, Sharks and Showgirls

The teenager had a baby-sitting gig on the other side of town last night, so we went out to dinner before dropping her off, then Gareth and I stopped downtown on the way home to buy comics and books. The newest collection of "Fables" came out this week, and since I had just devoured the previous two over the weekend, I obviously needed it. Yes it's good. Yes, I read it last night in one sitting. I'm a junkie.

I also picked up "Big Chief Elizabeth : The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America" by Giles Milton, and a copy of "Laura" with Gene Tierney and Vincent Price. And then I saw IT.

"Micah", Laurel K. Hamilton's latest Anita Blake novel. Released in paperback instead of hardback, which makes me wonder if her last book didn't sell so well in hardback. But since I preferred the paperback versions anyway, that was okay. The writing, not so much. I started reading it after I finished "Fables:Homelands", and read a passage that was so bad it made me laugh out loud. Not in a good way. It made me think of the sex? scenes from Showgirls, it was just that bad. Anita Blake, having what reads like a seizure. So NOT good. Ms. Hamilton, I liked you so much better when you knew you were cheesy. This is just sad. I now present you the golden shark jumping award.