a word such as "paperwork" almost sounds pleasant. It sounds somewhat as though the work is of a floaty, flimsy quality--what one of the swells in The Great Gatsby might engage in betwixt swilling booze and making idle chitchat. Or maybe it's something like decoupage, which is a French word from the 1970s meaning "gluey paper mess applied to ugly bottles which are then inexplicably turned into lamps." Still, not really a bad thing, if you have a surplus of ugly bottles and a dearth of table lamps.
As a kid, you'd watch TV shows about adults doing adult things, and they always said they were "buried in paperwork." To a kid, this sounds sorta like being buried in leaves. You imagine pipe-and-fedora equipped office workers with rakes, gathering up vast piles of paper, then suddenly jumping into them with glee. And with SECRETARIES! (And we know what THAT sounds like! Especially if those "secretaries" have been taking dictation!)
So, you know, you grow up having certain expectations, and then you find out that paperwork has a lot in common with another fun-sounding thing, waterboarding.
Anyway, I've been shuffling vast piles of paper today with nary a twitch of even the slightest breeze of mirth, which explains the lack of Possumblogging today. And now I have to go answer the phone at the front desk.
Blah.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at March 21, 2007 12:29 PMHmmm - your vision of paperwork, with dictation-taking SECRETARIES... with decoupage!
Doesn't get much better than that, does it?
Posted by: skinnydan at March 21, 2007 12:47 PMNot hardly.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at March 21, 2007 02:41 PMI read that wincing with the thought of full body papercuts.
Yet another hazard of dealing with the spawn of those evil trees.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at March 22, 2007 07:37 AM