When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork EmpireOffice copier folklore that regularly circulate in office buildings everywhere--is the subject of this innovative study. Office copier folklore--those tattered sheets of cartoons, mottoes, zany poems, defiant sayings, parodies, and crude jokes that regularly circulate in office buildings everywhere--is the subject of this innovative study. this type of folklore represents a major form of tradition in modern America, and the authors have compiled this raw data for scholarship--and entertainment. These creations of the Paperwork Empire comment on topics and problems that concern all urban Americans. No one and nothing escapes their raunchy wit and sarcasm. Bosses, ethnic groups, minorities, the sexes, alternative lifestyles, politics, welfare, government workers, the law, bureaucracy, and even "The Night Before Christmas" all come under fire to form a biting, and hilarious, commentary on modern American society. |
Contents
Preface | 11 |
Abbreviations | 19 |
Wild Cards | 45 |
The Three Most Overrated Things in the World | 56 |
How Do You Keep a Polack Occupied for a Year? | 63 |
Notices Mottoes and Awards | 90 |
Getting Things Done around Here | 103 |
If You Cant Dazzle Them | 104 |
How to Tell Republicans from Democrats | 132 |
Hows Your Brain? 132 | 134 |
The Punctuation Test | 135 |
Do You Know Your Baseball? | 136 |
Wordplay | 139 |
Twelve Hidden Books of the New Testament | 142 |
Message to Hotel Clerk | 143 |
How to Control the Birthrate | 145 |
Know You Believe You Understand | 105 |
The Boss Is Always Right | 106 |
Dont Wait for the Shrimp Boats | 107 |
No Problem Is So Big | 109 |
A Neat Desk | 110 |
Thimk Plan Ahead and Acurracy | 111 |
Attaboy Certificate | 113 |
Raffle for a Dog | 115 |
Baggage Ticket | 117 |
Instructions and Tests | 118 |
Compendium of Ground Rules for Laboratory Workers | 119 |
Itemized Bill | 121 |
First Aid Howlers | 123 |
The Halloween Party | 125 |
Regulation on the Sale of Cabbages | 126 |
How You Can Tell When Its Going to Be a Rotten Day | 128 |
Life after Forty | 130 |
Aptitude Test | 149 |
There Are Five Houses | 150 |
Situation Adaptability Evaluation for Management Personnel | 153 |
Cartoons | 162 |
The Mushroom | 171 |
Fly United | 178 |
Old Lady Hitchhiker | 186 |
Italian Polish Calculator | 192 |
Polish Maternity Ward | 199 |
A Round Tuit | 205 |
Now I Are One | 212 |
Parity for Parody | 234 |
The Night before Christmas | 250 |
The Modern Little Red | 258 |
New Classes in Continuing Education | 266 |