Friday, January 23, 2009

the ghost of employment past

The company that employed me when I first came to Prague has long been a source of comedic gold for those of us (and we were legion) who worked there.

I left many years ago, after I'd been rudely deprived of the opportunity to quit, but my understanding is that subsequently, wearied by the demands of dealing with adult employees, they switched first to part-time students, then later to one of the less-uppity breeds of monkey to staff their enterprise.

I've always been vaguely aware they were still out there, doing that thang they do, but today I found them listed as a sponsor of a seemingly presitigious world alternative energy summit, and their company "bio" is worth reproducing.

[NAME EXCISED TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE, THESE PEOPLE ARE LITIGIOUS] is a digital news provider and media monitoring service scanning more than 50,000 news sections from over 5,000 newspapers and online publications and indexing nearly 80,000 new articles every 24 hours. [NAME EXCISED] is hand edited providing the most comprehensive and up-to-the-minute information available in various delivery formats regarding world affairs including the latest developments in every country's economy, business, industries, politics, international relations as well as human rights, religion, terrorism, and much more.

Hand edited. Did you catch that? None of that funky foot editing we were all up to in the early years, or that brief, glorious period when Stepan introduced his 'editing machine' (bulky and coal-fired, but surprisingly accurate nonetheless).

And I have been searching high and low for a source monitoring the "latest developments" in terrorism! Bravo, old company of mine! Most news sources refuse to acknowledge terrorism as a sector with a future.

I also like how emphatic they are about covering every aspect of "every country." The evil ex-employee in me wants to write and ask why they don't have any coverage of Freedonia, or Aftakislamastan, or Shangriladida Valley because, I can assure you, if they didn't immediately launch such a service, they would certainly consider it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. canniversary

A year from the date on which you were fired from a job.
"Next week is my canniversary from Enron!"

this is from urban dictionary. i cant remember if you got canned or just left.
jesus, there is a really odd german goth epic music video on tv that is kind of like a 3 minute porn. with teeth

maire said...

i got canned! i have a canniversary! i wonder what one gives oneself for an eighth canniversary?