Board Games

One comes across many interesting specimens as a librarian-for-hire. In my time I've stumbled across everything, and nearly broken my leg on it few times as well. Of course there are your first edition Folios and everyday incunabula just lying about devouring valuable laptop space. Then there are the has-been popular novels of five years past, aged like fine cheese in the course of the aeons, then tossed into the for-sale bin like so much mouldy Gorgonzola. But the real treasures come from the special libraries.

For all the non-librarians out there, "special libraries" is a technical term in the industry referring to collections that fulfill the core requirements of 1) unreadability 2) undesirability and 3) inaccessibility.

I was once tasked with overseeing just such a corporate wood-pile. The business section was particularly enthralling, containing as it did so many penny dreadfuls of adventure and swashbuckling and derring-do. You think I am exaggerating, but anyone who has studied applied business literature from the 1980's knows exactly how Homeric the analogies can get. I remember one volume that insisted on applying to non-profit organizations the business strategy of a certain bandit who haunted the forests of Sherwood with bow and arrow. Call me Lincoln-Green, but the idea of business executives 'harking' and 'ho-ing' from cubicle to cubicle with hunting horns and drawn daggers seems slightly optimistic.

Robin Hood, Communications: What's this? Avaunt, men! Outlook hath befrozen! To arms, the Sheriff must be afoot!

Little John, IT: Methinks we have pinioned the wretch with our lusty quarterstaff!

Robin Hood: Very good sir. Verily we know not the meaning of the term, 'trouble shooting'. For all I shoot is fair and well hit!

Little John: Well bespoke!

Friar Tuck, Accounting: B'ym'faith! S'bodkins! Quaff of sack, my child?

Robin: Aye, an't please you brother! What of the quarterly reports?

Moving up the chronology, we come to the more butterscotch business manuals of the mid-90's and the dot-com bubble. The emphasis here always seems to be on garnishing the corporate guillotine with lavender candles, cartoon cut-outs, and freshly brewed "java". These books contain strange, ecclectic philosophies, part Zen-Buddhist and part Dilbert; they veer away totally from the making or maintaining of capital and into the rather dodgy architectonics of Maslow's "hierarchy of needs". I forget the exact order of his path towards fulfilment, but I believe it runs something like:

1) air, water, food
2) screaming
3) marbles, and associated marble activities
4) sexual innuendo
5) sexual outuendo, or "horizontal" corporate structure
6) big bag with a dollar sign on it
7) moksha, or corporate-cosmic release.

It's hard to say how much damage this kind of thinking did to the corporate atmosphere, but its horrific consequences in the mug-and-calendar industry has since been deemed a UNSECO world-heritage disaster zone.

Thankfully the negativity and warmongering of our present zeitgeist has set the business world squarely back on its own two hoofs. A taste for the old days of fire-breathing executives and damsel secretaries in distress has once more captured the minds of a generation. I believe this has its roots, not in any harkening back to "the good old days" on the part of today's young exec, but rather through the subtle influence of NES games on his constitution. The Nintendo Generation endured many emotional scars from the console wars and these are not easily hidden even in adulthood. The desire for a corporate structure resembling the ascent towards the final boss (note the term) through the castle and finally to the "highest level" is apparent to even the most slap-happy first grader.

This nostalgia for the old ways of "doing busines"s is also made quite manifest in the popularity of TV series like Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, and of course Man vs. Food. All three show the desire of modern man to free himeself from the shackles of the stifled "politcally correct" business atmopshere. Whether this is through fondling secretaries, shooting up coppers, or devouring extra-spicy chicken wing burger milkshakes is all one and the same. But, as Mad Men clearly underscores, the modern business Tyro has one aspect that is perhaps more indulgent than his rag-tag predecessors - he has a gout for plaisir like no other. A true Epicurean, he has managed to run his business entirely by means of pleasurable indulgence:

"Let's be frank" Simon says, taking a puff of his expensive, aromatic clove cigarette.

"Well we can't all be Frank," says James, "I'll be York." He punctuates his bon mot with a sip of whiskey. He rolls an uncut Maria Mancini cigar before his thing and thumbfinger... Er, between his thumb and forefinger.

"Well, whatever Simon says, goes." says Frank. "I'll be Frank." He takes a long drag on his California Roll. He looks dissapointedly at his empty glass.

"Quinine and tonic?" offers Frank, née Simon.

"Don't mind if I do." He accepts Frankly.

"One over here as well!" says Gerstein as he enters the board-room.

Cheers all-around. They call in the secretary, who enters wearing a black and silver lingerie two-piece and an apple in her mouth.

And so the corporate ballet continues. Was the great 19th century Utopian, Saint-Simon, right in seeing these men as our only hope for a technologically sane future? Don't ask me, Lady. I'm living out of my wheel-barrow.