The Halloween List: Office (Korean), Calibre, & Unfriended: Dark Web

Previously: Ghoul and Erased

Office (2015)

From now on whenever someone asks me whether I prefer the British or American Office, I’ll answer, “The Korean.”

Hong Won-chan’s Office is a movie holding a massive beef with corporate culture. Before the title card we get a deliberate pairing of scenes: a mentally shattered office manager going home for the evening and murdering his family, followed by a temp worker breathlessly sprinting to work the next morning to check in on time. That’s Office’s thesis statement: fear for your job is stronger than fear for your life.

Bathroom Monologue: Character Sheet for Nigel Poshington

Name: Nigel Poshington

Character portrait: "I'm not consenting to this photograph, I'll sue you if it shows up on the web."

Occupation: C.E.O.

Religion: DOWism

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Gender: "Do you have anything bolder than 'Male'? Something that pops?"

Hit Points: "Touch me and I'll sue for every farthing in that stupid dragon hoard."

STATS
Str: 2
Con: 2
Dex: 2
Int: 4
Wis: 3
Char: 14

Inventory: Cane, briefcase, Blackberry (can summon Short Stocks three times per day), bills for commodities x5.

Class Perks: Plausible Deniability, Golden Parachute, Insider Trading (always has Initiative).

Special Abilities: Inspirational speech that none of the employees actually find inspirational; once per day can call his "friends" in the government to bail him out.

Bathroom Monologue: Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. You're not even a nice person – you're nice relative to other social climbers in the company, but you've stepped on my forehead at least three times climbing the ladder. Nicer guys are rungs in a ladder that you are ascending effortlessly, and I might say, often callously. An even remotely nicer could not cut pensions that way. The stuff you've put on the company expense account? These charges suggest an absence of moral compass that, if possessed, would make your series of promotions wholly implausible. I can only hope that you are a nice enough guy to not destroy the blue collar level of the company now that you've escaped it. The workforce is worried. Many have been jilted before. It's happened to nicer guys."

Bathroom Monologue: The Produceds

"My partner and I began our careers with a plan destined for failure. We would hire the worst playwright, to write about the most offensive material, performed by the least competent singers and dancers on Broadway. It was a bombastic production for which everyone in town presumed we had to have a good reason, and so everyone in town bought shares. I believe we sold over two thousand and five hundred percent of the holding interest in our production. When it flopped, we'd keep all the money they gave us, that we'd spent almost none of on the awful show, and walk away rich. Maybe go see Turn Out the Night.

"The calamity was that we hit it big. A musical comedy about Hitler was exactly what the scene wanted – the avant-garde, the nouveau richesse, and the pre-hipsters all ate it up. Our box-office overflowed such that we wound up owing ungodly amounts of money to ungodly amounts of investors.

"My partner tried to blow up the theatre. I wasn't part of that, no matter what he says. I was upset, but upset to misdemeanors, not felonies. My spirits lifted after I got a call from New York.

"Actually, I got nineteen calls before nine in the A-M. See, when you get the single biggest hit in the musical world, everyone wants to work with you. By Thursday I was co-producer on three projects for which I'd never have to visit a building. I was signing my name in exchange for checks, and my new friends wouldn't let me go to jail because they needed me. They squeezed out fat checks, and bags of money as door prizes, and some sums coming pre-laundered.

"You see, I thought bankruptcy was the only option. But there's another option. There's not returning investors' calls, and when people corner you on the street, saying another investor they hate took too deep a slice and needs to be consulted, and forwarding people to lawyers who only tenuously exist, until you've got another play out. And another. And another, until something you didn't really help build is a smashing success that will forever have your name in the playbill.

"According to the blogs, I'm a genius. They're begging me to direct next year. I had a producer burn me a smoke signal using hundred dollar bills. It's a play about Native Americans. It's about as tasteful as broken glass.

"So I'm thinking about directing. I'm also thinking about how many shares I'll sell."

Bathroom Monologue: Regarding Submissions

Dear Expurgated Press,

I am finding your detailed submissions guidelines very helpful. Your "What We Don't Want" section lasting a screen and a half showed your devotion to craft, and I am picking up from other sections all the time.

For instance, had I not scrutinized the eighteen bullet points on "What Your Format Must Be," I would have had my submission immediately rejected for not applying the mandatory 0.6" margins. I have printed the guidelines page (it actually comes to five pages in your formatting choice) to carry with me at all times, to refer to as an e-zine bible. I am still working through your "Common Mistakes" opus.

Yet as meticulous as your Submissions Page is, and though I cannot admit to having read all five printed pages of your guidelines yet, I cannot help feeling something is missing.

Where is the "Payment" section?

Yours in adoration,

John Wiswell

Bathroom Monologue: Do Not Hug the Golem

A golem is the best friend you could have. Forget sexy succubae. Forget conniving imps. Just because they're your species, or have blood in their veins, or hopes and dreams, does not make them good friends or reliable business partners. In fact, all those features make them distinctly bad business partners on any important business.

One reason you want the golem as a best friend is that it'll never hog the seats during travel. If there's only room for one on the carriage, it'll let you sit. If you only have one steer, it'll let you ride it. It will walk. It will pull the carriage.

Another reason you want the golem as your best friend is that when you're stranded in the middle of The Frontier, it won't kill the carriage’s steer for food. It doesn't eat except when it's confused, and then it'll usually eat you by mistake. Succubae eat you out of boredom.

Once the steer has been cooked and gone rotten, your golem best friend won't turn on you. It won't try to cannibalize your left arm under the rationalization that you're a righty. Unlike imps, the golem best friend also won't run off in the middle of the night, abandoning you once it's obvious that it can't eat you in your sleep.

The golem is a better friend because it will actually carry you back to civilization. You’ll be sick from hunger, utterly useless to it, and it’ll cradle you to its craggy flank until chimneys are in sight. Even when the villagers run at it with pitchforks and torches, it'll stay with you until you get a hot meal.

Now after that, it will run away. It will run like a sissy. To be fair though, all best friends will run away once you're safe and people are stabbing them with farm equipment.

However, very few best friends will then loiter on the city outskirts, hiding behind the biggest tree available, until you're healthy and ready to disembark.

The only downside to the golem best friend is that it'll break your ribs when it hugs you upon seeing you again.

Do not hug the golem.

Bathroom Monologue: Comfort is a Tricky Thing

Chishee wasn't comfortable with the staff's scheme. She hired succubae because of the cultural biases against them, not so they could eat the hotel's clientele for tips. The only reason she hid their covert buffet of debauchery was that, if exposed, she'd go to prison with them. The succubae rationalized to Chishee that they only took on suicidal clients, giving them the happy endings they all craved. They let her keep all the room fees, and when she still deliberated on turning them in, offered her a cut of their blood money. That, she flatly refused. Attendance rose from its prior flatness, though, so that she could barely keep rooms open, or the dumpsters out back empty. It was a moral quagmire for the intrepid hotel owner. Her reservations had truly grown.

Bathroom Monologue: Don't Smile

"Quite often now I hear that people who smile too much are hiding something. They are likely stupid or unable to handle reality, and are thus untrustworthy. I wonder on this, because it strikes me that folk who frown too much aren’t hiding enough. Your marriage sucks? Your job sucks? Man, if you can’t handle that, then you aren’t trustworthy. A reasonable person can suppress mundane struggles and go around smiling to strangers. It’s that facial whiner who frowns because his train is ten minutes late that I won’t trust with an account. I expect every employee hates some aspect of his or her life. Smiling despite it is a sign you can handle your load."

Bathroom Monologue: Naked Crowds

"Just imagine the crowd naked."

"Who... who... who is comforted by imagining thousands of naked people staring at him? Who? And why would you let those perverts in front of crowds? Why would you think that would comfort me? I’m comforted by going home early on Friday, microwaving some Hot Pockets, and not facing a thousand exposed crotches. And a thousand naked people who I’ve got to explain are about to be laid off. The economy tough – now so tough, no one can afford pants. There is something keenly worse about potential downsizees who are naked. Something might… tense. Ugh. Now it’s worse. Now I’m definitely worse. If I have a stroke, it’s because of this. Let’s just get it over with."