The Whopper Strategies

2005-10-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Contents

Preface by Fifth Wheel

Author's Note

1. Where It Started

2. Getting Dirty

3. Inside the Perimeter

______________________________

2005-09-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

To Future Division Employees:

The principal aim of this work is to help produce the fertile ground necessary for Whopper cultivation. This will be attempted from multiple angles. The author will discuss basic foundation skills, seeing green and going with it, how to bring the Whopper out of you, and not to sweat the small stuff.

Turn to the table of contents, and follow the entries in italics and you will find an almost entirely nonscientific biography of the author: his life as an Intoslocheck, personal reminisces about Mr. Phipps, and the discovery of some of his more famous Whoppers. Some of these abstracts are taken directly from his journals, and others have been written expressly for this manual.

I hope these pages inspire your Whoppers.

Sincerely,

Fifth Wheel
Future Division Supervisor
Phipps Incorporated

2005-09-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

whopper (hwop’er), n. Informal. 1. Something uncommonly large of its kind. 2. A big lie. Also, whapper [< to beat, overcome + -er1]

2005-05-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

Click Here for Audio Post

I work for Mr. Phipps. He found me on a quiet day. I didn’t expect it. I was walking. No, not walking more like standing in this line. It was for a movie theater. Everyone was staring at me. I squirted ketchup on my hotdog.

“What’s that?” someone asked.

I said it was a hot dog.

“Not that.”

“Ketchup?”

I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. It was just ketchup. Pretty soon this guy pulled me aside, and said I had a real future. That was the first time I thought about my future.

“My future?”

“Yes,” he answered, “with Phipps Inc. where we put the love back into chip.”

He told me he runs a company where a smart guy like me could be put to good use. He said he could tell I probably didn’t do too much. Maybe I had a job as a copy boy or worked in a mailroom somewhere (actually I did work in a mailroom, I was in charge of outgoing packages over 9.2 ounces), but that was small peanuts compared to what he could offer me.

It sounded like a neat deal. He invited me to come to his office after the movie for a tour of the company. It was a pretty nice place. There were security cameras everywhere. It made me feel like I was some kind of spy, especially after the movie we saw. It was an old James Bond re-released for all those dumb fucks that like spy movies. I am not a dumb fuck, but I like spy movies, and I usually figure that most things I like are out of the ordinary, that’s why I say it’s for dumb people. It’s just a way of making me feel better, you know?

Anyway, there were secret codes that Mr. Phipps tried to teach me right away. He said, “Pay attention. I am only going to show you this once.”

I paid attention and he showed me a lot of things. How to walk through the main corridor, show my badge to the guard at the gate, what his favorite pen was, and how to dress for a day’s work. I listened and took notes in a notebook he gave me to write in.

“Remember to write all your ideas in that thing.”

“Okay,” I said.

After I worked there for a month and filled the notebook, Mr. Phipps said it was time I fished with the big boys. He moved me up to the future division on the 33rd floor of the Phipps Inc. Super Building. It was a nice place to work. There were plenty of notebooks to write ideas in, and nobody bothered you because you had these great cubicles where you could process an idea in complete solitude. I only talked to one of the four people that made up the future division. His name was Fifth Wheel. The other two weren’t as friendly as FW (what I called him for short). In fact, according to him, they wouldn’t last long. They spent too much time in the present. And if you wanted to make a difference on the job market of today’s consumer, the future was all an Intoslocheck should be thinking.

FW was right. After three days without an idea on the future, a guard came to move their stuff on the street. At least that’s what he said.

“I am here to move your stuff on the street.”

I tried not to look at the guard. I focused on the future, that’s what counted. The mean people wanted to know on what basis they were being put out. FW told them he reported their work progress to Mr. Phipps, and it didn’t meet the standards of a Phipps Inc. employee. There was a huge incident that followed. Bad words were exchanged and one of the former Intoslochecks was shot in the face.

FW took the whole thing in stride. He said the future was what counted. Think about how many lives you can help with just a slogan, or a better way to vacuum the salt from a pretzel that’s just too salty. (The invention was called The way to get that goddamn salt off my lap, or Slip-o-Matic by FW, only later was it changed to Dustbuster).

“What have you produced in the last month? Not even a slogan,” FW said to the woman that was crying

He had her there. Slogans were the bread and butter of Phipps Inc.. In fact, since I joined the company I have come up with a few: “Squuueeze it easy. Squeeze it fast,” “Oh feel good,” and “Don’t do it without _____” (to be filled in with whatever product the Product Division puts out).

The woman said FW was an asshole. She said she’d report the incident to the police, but she never did. FW shot her in the breast, and that was the end of her.

“There’s no use in having bad press,” FW said.

Soon, after the Phlegmatics cleaned up the muss, and FW informed the police it was self-defense, we went back to work. It was real nice. There were no interruptions. FW didn’t talk to me, and I didn’t talk to him. We just thought about the future.

2005-05-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

We worked in shifts. FW had the easiest ones. It was in his contract. He worked mornings and afternoons. I didn’t read my contract. I worked all day. I didn’t mind. It was nice to be around FW. He really knew how to think about the future. He could just tell when I needed to sit up straight or get my mind out of the gutter. It was really liberating. I tried to figure out how he did it, but I didn’t get very far. FW was a real professional.

“Get your mind out of the gutter and sit up straight!” he shouted.

“Okay,” I said.

“It’s only Tuesday!” he said.

He was right. I told him so.

“Then get cracking!”

I took FW’s advice. I got my mind out of the gutter, sat up straight, and really got cracking. I came up with two new slogans: “Do it dirty” and “Trust me”; a poem about FW (He’s great/ He’s great/ He is so very great), and invented, Where the hell is it, or Low-q-tar, as it is now called, which enables television remote controls to be found after they have been lost. The boys down in marketing had a field day. They used the slogans for Midwives & Me (a subsidiary of Phipps Inc), made Low-q-tar a household name with their billboard campaign on 95 South, and posted my poem in the company newsletter. It was a real team effort. FW was proud of all of us. He tried to hide it, but I could tell. It was there. I felt the same way.

2005-05-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

When we ate, we ate healthy. Mostly protein shakes and shots of wheat grass. We really didn’t have the time for anything else. We were supposed to concentrate on the future. The shakes made that possible. They were fast and convenient. Just add water and stir. Not like omelets. Those took forever.

Chuck didn’t like the shakes. He said he needed something more. He even tried to get me to sign a petition he started. It sounded pretty good. Pickles were high on his list. Cranberry sauce wasn’t far behind.

I liked pickles. I could eat a whole jar in no time. Cranberry sauce was pretty good too. But they were both outside the perimeter. Dr. Shaku Itsugiro, the Future Division’s dietician, made that very clear. It was written in the Optimum Diet Plan for Whopper Cultivation. I got a copy as soon as I started in the Future Division. Right there in bold print, it said:

“Stay away from sour foods! They disagree with the body’s metabolism, lower its overall circulation, and have been known to create back aches.”

“As a Future Division Employee, it is your responsibility to stay inside the perimeter listed below. Anything outside, can affect your ability to make decisions, operate heavy machinery, or think about the future.”

Pickles and cranberry sauce were considered sour foods, according to Dr. Itsugiro’s diet plan. They were definitely out of the question. I tried to explain this to Chuck, but he was a rebel. He always went against company policy. Just last week he used the company Xerox machine to make fliers for his performance art piece, Feng Shui on Ice. It was next Saturday at some church in the Bowery. He invited me to go. I wasn’t really big into performance art. Give me Kandinsky any day! But I wanted to be nice. He was new to the company.

“Okay, I’ll go,” I told him.

“Great,” he said, and pulled out a pickle jar. They looked pretty good. He tried to offer me one, but I refused.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m supposed to think about the future.”

“Seems a waste.” He said, and crunched into his pickle. It hurt my insides.

I couldn’t resist when Chuck offered another. They were the good kind. They even sounded good.

FW didn’t notice. He was at his cubicle.