Gherkin Street

By Red Dinger:

Well thanks for everyone agreeing to come in so early for today’s staff meeting. I know how hard that is for some of you. Jason for example commutes for over an hour each day. Such is the life of someone who takes Viagra too late in the evening.

Now the fist thing I want to talk about is what we should do with all the money we’ve earned from our latest book release, the Total Wellbeing Diet. I like all of your suggestions, especially the one about buying Fiji. I'm not sure we need to eject all the locals, we are going to need someone to serve us drinks. As for the rest, I think we should go with Jake’s plan and put them on dodgy ships and send them to Australia. That way they’ll get locked up and it’ll be years before anyone works out it was all a con. Sort of like the book.

Now you all understand that we do need to remain employees of the CSIRO if we are going to enjoy the money. So, Peter we need to try a bit harder or the wrong people, a.k.a “taxpayers”, will start asking questions. I have no problems with your recent webcast of the solar eclipse. The all-expenses paid four-week trip to New York, London and Amsterdam was perfectly legitimate in terms of research leading up to the event. I have no problems signing off on the food, alcohol, sightseeing and “company for lonely days and nights” you expensed.

But next time Peter, make a bit more effort with your podcast commentary will you? “Its light, its dark, its light” is not really all that enthralling you know. You’d be surprised how many people don’t actually have a life and watch that sort of stuff you know.

As for the rest of you, your research trips have been approved. We’ll stagger them so nobody gets suspicious. Please remember not to buy anything too obvious like a house or Lamborghini. I will make sure we all get those as part of the Christmas bonus process.

Now, people as for the CSIRO website. Will somebody please take down the tagline, “House of Bling Bling!” It’s a bit obvious.

Couple of housekeeping matters. The deed polls will be coming around soon so that you can change your names. Those of you who opted for the “protection program” will need to ensure that your dental examinations have been completed before we arrange for fiery accidents for the corpses we’ve purchased. Not point throwing in the fake teeth after the bodies have been charred.

Now as for the recent “Pyjama Day”. Look, everyone had a great day and it was lots of fun but just because we are all a bunch of so-called boring scientists does not mean we need to have every party end up the same way. Its not that I'm against nudity but for god sake people, every party? Its so puerile people. They audit that stuff you know. So please stop looking at in on the internet, drink some champagne and take your clothes off! Other office workers do it all the time.

That said, we can still proceed with the “Fly to Bahamas Day” and “Shop Till You Drop in Venice Day” but please try a blend in a bit with the locals this time. The “Carnival Day” was just plain embarrassing. Surely just one of you could have dressed in the spirit of the occasion. We were the only ones in the whole of Brazil with lab coats and pocket protectors!

Lastly can we try to keep our work just a bit relevant to the CSIRO charter. Those of you who arranged for the entire cast of the MASH to be flown out for an encore performance were very lucky that we convinced the Minister it was an “army intelligence” project. But the rest of you who are building that “space exploration” project will have to find something else. Did you really think a full-size replica of the Death Star in the car park would go unnoticed?

That’s it for now. Champagne and caviar to follow. Just make sure you are on the private jet by 3pm, we should get back to the office before anyone notices we’ve held this meeting in Paris.