What is wrong with you people

Tartarus does a fund-raiser every December. Previous years, this has been called Wish Stars. We have a bulletin board that gets covered in paper stars. Patrons purchase a star, thereby fulfilling a wish. Cheesy, sure. But it all makes a kind of sense.

Not this year. Of course not. This year Turtle took over (Wish Stars always used to be Spoof's responsibility). Turtle thought stars were confusing. "Let's do presents and ornaments," said Turtle. "Presents for one department, ornaments for the other. Much better than stars."

Yeah. Okay. Whatever you say.

We'd like to pause the story here to inform you that Tartarus has always been under strict instructions not to be holiday specific. No holiday greetings for this crew. No special holiday displays. Certainly nothing Christmas. Had Spoof or Speck suggested this change it would have resulted in a sound scolding. Turtle on the other hand was praised for this "innovative" idea.

Just before Thanksgiving Turtle and Spoof were put to work putting up the bulletin board. As they posted it they had a discussion about what to call this new version of the fund raiser. "We can't call it Wish Stars anymore," said Spoof. "They aren't stars."

"Oh, but wish ornaments and presents is too long," said Turtle. "Hmmmm. I suppose we could call it Wish Stars With New Shapes."

And no amount of arguing could convince Turtle that was  a bad idea. In fact, everyone but Spoof and Speck praised this new name. We are dumbstruck.

Happy Thanksgiving

Spoof and Speck would like to wish you and your family and friends a very happy Thanksgiving.

 

A most unusual shopping trip

It's time for another Stuff Out of Context! Today's line is:
Oh, I forgot I had that squirrel in my bag.

 

Now Spoof is invisible too

A couple of weeks ago Turtle and Spoof were assigned to work on a project together. Neither of them were particularly happy about it. Spoof can't stand Turtle, thinks she's the most disgusting, annoying person on the planet. Turtle is, apparently, terrified of Spoof. So, instead of finding a time when they could work together, Turtle assigned half of the project to Spoof and vanished to do her half. And then drove us crazy by trotting out of her office every ten minutes to update Spoof on what she was doing, waiting for pats on the back and getting incredibly offended any time Spoof suggested improvements.

The whole project culminated in a display. Today they put up said display. While passing by, Opie stopped to stare at it. "Oh Turtle," exclaimed Opie, "I loved what you've done with this right hand side. It's so innovative, so fantastic, so adorable. You have the most amazing ideas."

"Actually," said Turtle, "Spoof did the right side. I did this left side."

Ohhhhhh......

"Well," stumbled Opie. "Well, it looks good anyway Turtle." 

And that was it. Opie skipped off without even acknowledging Spoof.

'cause that won't enrage someone at all.

We don't expect Opie to be Spoof's best friend but it would be nice to have hard work recognized.

It's Mo Monday!

We made the mistake yesterday of telling Mo about Thanksgiving. He's been demanding "a grand feast" ever since. No matter what we do we can't make him understand that he has to wait until Thursday. It's going to be a long three days.
 

We can't even begin to guess where he got the high chair.

Yeah, we're lazy.

Today is a total cop-out post. We can admit that. There is no humor in our anger fueled bodies this week. Instead, we share some of our favorite funny stuff from the internet. These folks can entertain you in our stead.

The Bloggess
Seriously, if you've never heard of this lady where have you been. And you have no idea what you have been missing. Just go take a look. There are no words for her awesomeness.
The Bloggess 

Glove and Boots
Internet puppetry at it's best. This is one of our favorite videos, though they are all pretty darn awesome.

A Very Potter Musical
If you like Harry Potter (or probably if you hate Harry Potter) and have a sense of humor, check out this musical written and produced by college students. They've since made other musicals worth checking out as well.

Nimona
This darkly humorous webcomic  features everything you've ever loved about print comics. Plus, it's coming to print in the spring. For now, though, you can read the full adventure at this link.
Nimona   

The best use for a vacuum

Grow up, Turtle

Yesterday the Powers That Be sent some of us from Tartarus to a conference. The whole thing was a colossal waste of time and money, but that's not the point of this story. No, what stuck with us from the day happened at lunch.

We ended up at a lunch table with Turtle. If you've joined us before and read a Turtle story you know this is likely to be disgusting. Now, this conference didn't feed us via buffet table. No, our meals were ordered in advance and delivered by waiters. Turtle was the first person at our table to get food. She immediately began to eat, stuffing huge messy bites into her massive maw. 

With just that crazy of a look in her eye

Then our waiter came around with desserts. Much like the sides, desserts were determined by your meal choice. One person at our table got chocolate mousse. Turtle's meal came with 2 churros and a dish of chocolate dipping sauce (it was a south-western sort of deal). Turtle was incredibly putout. "Why does he get a chocolate thing and I get stupid fried crap," Turtle proclaimed loudly. This would be embaressing enough in a general conference setting, not to mention at this particular conference where there was a speaker during the meal. 

I want what I want! Give me his!

As if that weren't enough, someone offered to trade desserts with Turtle. After not even saying thanks, Turtle scarfed down the new dessert in three incredibly disgusting bites involving a lot of licking and lip smacking. Then, in just ten minutes, she consumed eight mini candy bars and a granola bar.

That's got to be the whole story, right? If only.

Fast forward an hour and a half. After a short session there was time scheduled to visit with vendors. There was also a snack buffet. Upon seeing the spread of cookies Turtle loudly proclaimed, "At last! Real dessert!"

 

It's Mo Monday!

Ever spend your weekend baking? We've been known to do so on occasion. There's something about the weekend that begs for cake, pie, or other baked treats. Yesterday we were putting together a pan of brownies. When we went to put it in the oven, though. We were met with an unpleasant surprise.

No matter how we begged, we couldn't get Mo to get out of the oven. No brownies for us that day.

That laugh was not for you

Here's the situation:

It's Halloween. Zebra, Mosquito, and Speck are working the desk. Mosquito is wearing that stupid color-runner costume that no one understands. Zebra has on cheap superhero costume without the mask so he just looks like he's wearing a weird jumpsuit. And Speck is wearing a cow costume customized with a hood, cape, mask, and more. Speck has been receiving compliments all morning, while the others get ignored. Some people come into Tartarus, seeing Speck before anyone else. They immediately start laughing. Speck waves at them. "Oh, no," the man says. "We weren't laughing at you. We were laughing at Zebra." Then they go over and lavish attention on him, calling him clever. 

Speck is not petty and doesn't care if other people get compliments, however undeserving. What Speck doesn't care for is the attitude in the whole exchange. These people almost seemed offended that Speck might assume that they were laughing at anyone but Zebra. Imagine an adult scolding a small child "Not for you. Not for you."

How dare you take Zebra's laughter?

Zebra of the north

After a couple of days of bad weather around Tartarus, we had a warm-up.  The snow melted. People went from wearing their winter coats and stocking caps back to jackets.

Most people.

Zebra, on the other hand, has been adding to his winter wear every day. Before the snow, Zebra wore his pea coat daily. The day it snowed he added hiking boots. Now, with temperatures back up in the fifties, he's added boots and a hat. But not just any boots and a hat. His boots are knee high and felt lined. Like something you'd wear spending all day shoveling walks or something.

Like these. Only more so.

He also had on one of those fur-lined earflap hats. With the chin strap buckled even.

Why?! Can you tell us why? Literally everyone else we work with was wearing jackets. Why was he dressed for a blizzard?

Imagine this outfit...

...on this zebra.

The best/weirdest romance in history

It's time once again for Stuff Out of Context! Today's line is:
The American donkey love story.

It's Mo Monday!

Some days Mo is plotting to eat us all. Some days he just likes to show off. The last time we caught up with him, Mo was hard at work doing chin-ups in the park. No one was really paying attention but that didn't stop him from counting loudly in hopes of impressing someone.
 

"...97...98..."

We didn't think it was the end of the world

We've had some nasty weather around Tartarus this week. It was bad enough earlier in the week that much of the surrounding area lost power and Tartarus opened late one day. When we arrived at Tartarus the day of the late opening, everyone was in a frenzy. Zebra seemed to have no idea what was going on. Neppy was as loud and useless as ever. And Mosquito was just plain foul. Not only did she try to run everything and question everything everyone was doing (in spite of not having any real power to speak of), she was rude. Everything that either of us said to Mosquito was met with the rudest possible response.

Take what happened with Spider Hero for example. About half an hour before we opened for business we heard someone rattling the front door. Spider Hero went to see what was going on and let a guy in. Mosquito scowled. "What's going on," she snapped. "Doesn't Spider Hero know we aren't open yet?"

"He is the one who wrote the 'delayed opening' signs that are up on the doors," said Speck.

"I know that," snarled Mosquito in about the nastiest tone you can imagine. Seriously, friends, there is no good way to convey to you how nastily that was said.

Whoa, Mosquito. Calm yourself.

We wanted to ask for an explanation but decided to leave that one alone. Mosquito stomped off to see what Spider Hero was doing. And for the rest of the day, any time Speck attempted to talk to Mosquito she responded with bad attitude and cruelty.

Now, we understand that Mosquito had been without power for nearly 24 hours at that point and that can be stressful. But we don't feel like that's a good reason to be nasty to people. Speck has lost power twice this week, both times for 12 hours. Does that give Speck the right to go around snarling at people and being a general jerk?

Be grateful we don't have the authority, Mosquito.

 

What were you thinking?

When we got to Tartarus today we found a note from Shoes. The general theme of the note was as follows:

A lady had a complaint about fees. She says that Control Freak and Shadow have been waiving fees on her behalf right along. Shoes checked the lady's account and found no indication that her fees should be waived. Shoes has left the fees in place for now but did Spoof know something to the contrary?

We have several problems with this note. Firstly, Shoes is assistant director of Tartarus. Shoes should be making decisions of this caliber solo, not relying on underlings to make decisions. Secondly, and most importantly, Control Freak hasn't worked at Tartarus in nearly 6 years and no one currently on staff has even heard of Shadow? Shoes knows this but didn't question the lady at all.

Really, Shoes? Really?

 

An explosively good sandwich

For once, Mosquito gets tricked

We don't know how things work where you live, but around here kids go trick-or-treating in businesses. Our chamber of commerce compiles a list of participating businesses and the kids spend a couple of hours after school trotting around town and collecting huge hordes of candy. And Tartarus has never been allowed to participate. Spoof presents a series of well reasoned arguments to the Hutt every year just to be shot down. We are allowed to wear costumes (though the Hutt tends to glare at us the whole time) and if we want to purchase our own treats to pass out to any children who happen to venture in the Hutt won't stop us, but we've never been official.

Until this year.

Finally, after years of petitioning, the Hutt actually said yes to Spoof's request. We were on the list. Tartarus purchased treats (pencils and erasers, but at least they were provided for us). It was going to be awesome. Years of begging at last paid off. Spoof was excited to coordinate the whole thing and see the little kids in their costumes.
 

At last! At last! We're so excited!

Halloween arrived and most everyone in Tartarus was in costume. It was pretty cool (even if our co-workers costumes were incredibly lame). Then we heard Mosquito talking to Mr. Ed. "Well, obviously we should be the once to pass out the treats. Look at us. We look amazing."

They didn't. They didn't look amazing. They looked stupid. Mosquito was "a color runner." Basically, she put eye shadow all over her face. And Mr. Ed, who apparently was "before the color run", just looked like a hobo.

And besides, Spoof has literally spent a decade trying to get on the list for downtown trick-or-treat. If anyone was going to pass out treats it was Spoof. 

To make a long story short, we arranged it so Mosquito did NOT get to work in the spot that would put her in a position to greet the trick-or-treaters. When she discovered our scheme, Mosquito did not act like a gracious adult and greet kids with a smile from a different area of the main desk. First, she scowled at us while pacing around acting like she was working. Then she stomped away and pouted for the rest of the afternoon.

Grow up, Mosquito.

 

It's Mo Monday!

Did you remember to set your clocks back an hour this weekend? Mo did. After he reset his own clocks he went on a mission to change every clock in town. At first we were surprised by this display of civic good will. Then we realized that he was setting each clock to a different time. We could not convince him that this was just the end of daylight savings time, not temporal anarchy.
 

"I am the master of all of time!"