I have to have a talk with custodial

The Exterminators have finished scraping the last of the parasitic head goo. There’s still a dent in the wall from where a 150cm tall Glenn Ridge head was smashed by a 160cm tall John Burgess head but, aside from that, things are almost back to normal. I can still make out the line of Glenn Ridge’s resplendent forehead in the dent. You know what? I’m not going to have Maintenance up here to fix it. That majestic pressing can remain. It will invigorate the staff and serve as a reminder that tendril heads can make a cute pet but they grow into a big responsibility. It’s probably just the right dose of Glenn Ridge forehead too. A hint to spark the muse, any more would be like mainlining savant cerebrospinal fluid and I got off that shit in the 80s. Gah! The bright light of sobriety burns.

 

Blinding, unfiltered personal insight aside, I’ll tell you what I told the staff. No more giant bloody heads. There was a point last week when some of the scuttling Glenn Ridge heads had fused together, a bit like that Society documentary, into a 150cm tall Gargatuglenn Ridge. I don’t know what I did to it but, whatever it was, it really wanted to get into my office. The glass has been specced to block even a dark matter bullet but there was something about the determination of the thing that put a serious case of the willies in me. The thing had the consistency of sculpting sand but screaming paranoia suggested I upgrade the glass anyway so now I’ve had a core of liquid inertia installed. Ha! I am now resistant to even the most persistent of colossal television game show host heads.

Watching the whole affair had killed an hour or so but the Gargantuglenn was eating into my lunch break so I dropped a live mouse with an epsilon tattooed on it into the tube that goes to Custodial Duties and awaited a reply. The tube belched in assent, so I sat back and began eating the bag of chips I told myself I wasn’t going to eat. Any minute now the Mutants from Custodial would burst through the floor, they are forbidden from using the elevator, and sort this bullshit out. Nothing happened for a whole bag of chips and I was about to grab a mouse with a frowny emoji tattooed on it when the elevator dinged. I was 3 sentences in to a long talk about punctuality and elevator using when a 160cm Baby John Burgess head curiously tip-tentacled out. Christ.

Look, I’m all for diversity, particularly when the bonus abilities of the various anomalies can be exploited for commercial gain. Did we learn nothing from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? But there has to be some kind of middle ground between how I want a problem solved and how this messy humanoid biomass actually bloody does it. It’s only because what happened next was, and I’m splendid enough of a man to admit this, terrifically entertaining that I don’t drop a bunch of rubber mice down the goddamn tube.

Gargantuglenn turned to face Baby John Prodigious and it was pretty much on from the start. Whether they retained some semblance of their former selves and were still fighting over who was Australia’s more beloved game show host or whether these vile fungus heads were only acting on instinct is up to the staff entertainment reporter/mycologist to discern. My money is on a 70/30 split. I don’t know how long the Mutants had been keeping an engorged John Burgess head downstairs but the thing seemed to have experience over the younger, quicker Gargantuglenn. Glenn was rushing toward Burgess, and knocking over my damn open plan office space, within a matter of moments and, for a second, looked as though it was going to easily devour the host of TV’s Wheel of Fortune.

But Ol’ Baby John wasn’t about to lose his crown that easily, or at all really. I’m not sure whether this was an ability particular to the giant head version of John Burgess or whether the Australian TV personality can do this too, but a chameleon like tongue with a sort of rhino horn on the end shot out and impaled the Glenn Ridge right in his magnificent forehead. Gah! What a shame! Reminds me of the time Jackie Chan was forced to defeat the Mona Lisa. Well, as sad as I am to see art go, I do acknowledge an organism’s right to self-defense. Gargantuglenn flailed it’s tubular little scuttlers about but it didn’t do much. Burgess slammed his rival into the far wall and then sucked the whole mass of the second (and superior) Sale of the Century host through the tongue. The sound will haunt my dreams, like someone drowning Bjork in a shallow puddle.

Burgess slowly undulated his way back to the lift and prodded the Sub-Basement 13 button with one of his wriggly flagellum. I swear it made eye contact with me before the doors closed.

I’m going to have to have a talk with the Custodial Mutants about this. On the one hand, I’m not exactly thrilled that there’s been a second Australian game show headmaster monster getting about the building without my knowledge. That’s something that I feel should be on a memo to me somewhere. Note to self: send out email chain demanding to know the exact number of giant monster heads in the building. But on the other, it seemed trained and resolved the most pressing issue of the day with an admirable animal efficiency which is more than I can say for a lot of the things that work here. With the Gargantuglenn dealt with the leftover little ones became quite timid and are now chasing a small cloth mouse about a little pen in the corner of the office. Cute as they are, they grow up, so consider the realities of giant monster heads before you adopt one. If you are still interested, just drop a mouse with “KITTY” tattooed on it into your nearest tube.

In other news, Amber has bought some kind of new microphone. Apparently her clumsy little meat buddies broke the last one while she was trying to kiss it, a point I didn’t have the emotional strength to press, and this new setup will prevent some of the audio bugs that have been popping up. Getting into a pattern of writing the articles now, the Simpsons one was late because the episode was depressing and I had to fidget it a bit. Hopefully the next one is less harrowing but I’ll plough through it no matter what. That’s why I get patronized the big bucks.

Catchphrase was better than Wheel of Fortune.

Gabriel.