No. 5 is no Jive
"Who do you think you are?," asked a large Afro-American man whose jacket had a single button that rested at the widest point of his stomach.

"I'm doing the show."

"But where's your ticket?"

"I don't need a ticket." He waved me inside with an annoyed snort.

So there I was on the stage in my jeans and t-shirt watching people find a seat. It was amazing to witness the numbers of my colleagues who wanted to postpone the inevitability of going to work on a Monday morning. The first third of the theater was filling up. The Egyptian mummies and hieroglyphics decorating the side of the theater were shining in gold-paint glory. I watched more people sit down and park a laptop computer where a giant slurpie should've been. Some wore their best grungies, others were actually suited up and tucking business cards inside their pockets. Let the networking begin.

Then I panicked. "What the fuck was outsourcing messages about and why hadn't I thought about this sooner?" I asked myself. So I did what I was best at -- bullshitting.

"Hi, everyone," I said. My name is Mike Powers," and I'm the one who invited you to this seminar. Sorry we have no coffee and bear claws, but I couldn't convince the management to give up their concession in the back. But if you want a Coke and a box of popcorn, they can help you out." A polite wave of smiles flickered through the crowd like a flashlight. "This morning we're going to be talking about outsourcing messages," I said.

"Are they going to be taking more jobs away from us?" asked a man in the front row who was folded inside several double chins, and was popping milk duds into his mouth at an amazing rate.

"It's worse than that," I said. "Unless we find a way to speak to each other, we can kiss any kind of system we got going good-bye. They'll be no networks, no streets, no nothing. What I'm talking about is the disappearance of music and dancing as we know it today. No parties. Weekends will become indistinguishable from the rest of the week. Existence will become pure survival without fun."

The man with the milk duds was popping the last one into his mouth. He reached for his slurpie. It was deep purple.