NEW NEIGHBORHOOD GUIDELINES Congratulations, new tenant, and welcome to the company! You have been generously assigned exquisite modern housing by the management that will act not only as an enviable display of comfort for distinguished living, but an expertly calibrated engine of energy-efficient inspiration and production. Labor and leisure, together at last! Inclusion in the community of our verdant compound is no small honor, and for the assurance of a long and synergistic relationship, we ask only that you observe a handful of simple ground rules: 1. An RSVP is required for the enjoyment of our indoor delights: fine dining facilities, craft workshops, and prestige cinema. 2. Report any signals of bad hygiene to the Neighborhood Watch. 3. If approached by bad hygiene, brandish your company flashlight and dial it to blinding power. Assistance will rush to your aid. 4. Report traumatic memories to your superintendent for repair. 5. We will be cancelling any scheduled assemblies of your dark thoughts, and detaining any parties that continue to demand some respect for a change. 6. Your efforts may one day coax love out of hiding, but never look directly at love in its approach or it will run from you in fear and never return. Focus only on the work in front of you, and you will have outsmarted love. 7. For those unable to wait, we have innovated a weapon that will guide you to the most rational possible selection for a life partner at the cost of the fewest possible casualties, as per calculated risk. 8. In the event of diminished morale, report to the Department Of Clairvoyance for the administration of guided meditation programs, holistic nutritional packages, and other instruments of psychic decompression for workplace enhancement. The office can be reached at the hours listed in the guidebook, barring observance of federal holidays and, of course, the occurrences of illness in the staff. 9. At the sound of the afternoon alarm, everyone will meditate on the divine ecosystem of safety, prosperity, and cleanliness in lieu of eating lunch. 10. The company server has been positioned directly beneath a leak in the ceiling and will require regular maintenance. This will cost you money. 11. Everything is a camera, so continue having fun. 12. Volunteers for the installation of flora in the Zen garden will be awarded with two extra hours of sleep to be redeemed within 90 days. 13. Show nothing but love to sadists, for they too are made of stars. 14. You are free to terminate our working relationship at will, but management has misplaced the records on where outside the compound walls are buried active land mines. 15. Intermittently display your achievements and belongings for the edification and inspiration of the famished hunter-gatherers clamoring at our walls. Visibility is generosity. 16. Children are permitted in the staff’s cultivation of a family to love, but they must cleave to the listed parameters of gourmet cultural education, performance of benevolent values, and the wearing of knitted hats with animal ears. 17. For those unable to procure organic children, we will be providing workshops in which our experts demonstrate the least wasteful method with which to fashion walking, talking resin dolls by hand. 18. In gratitude for his writing that is quoted on the snack room refrigerator magnets, Lao Tzu has been kindly permitted on the company grounds, but you are categorically forbidden from letting him sleep in your condominium. 19. We always welcome civil criticism for your catharsis, but always remember that it is management that makes your garbage disappear for you. 20. Should at any point your interest decline in the indefinite sale of your labor, you are welcome to attend our seminars on ownership and thus become us. Otherwise, see item 14. 21. Let the past be buried. There is a brilliant future for you! Bio: Alex Rochinski is a Boston-born writer and musician currently based in New York. His work has appeared in Nat. Brut and Noncanon Press.
1 Comment
Vern Dernier ( D.P.W.)
3/2/2017 07:26:33 pm
where can I tap into the 240 volt service? I have an old electric chair from Sing Sing I want to try out!
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