Replies from the VoiceBox... Reply #1 - 08 December 2003 What I would like to do today, which is a warm day, and a day on which I dealt with a lot of stupid people at school and have been pensive and maybe a little sad... today I would like to tell you, dear friends, about one of my greatest joys... something that brings me nothing but childlike glee and happiness. Something pure... something that cuts through the emotional filters piled upon us by the bullshit of everyday life. I really like it when people catch on fire. More than anything else, I think. I mean, I have other joys... Japanese deathmatch wrestling, for example, and sharp objects, among many others... but nothing has ever brought to me the simple happiness that I get when I see, most often in a movie, a human body lit on fire. Living, of course... dead just isn't the same, you know. There are some requirements, but not many. For one, it's best if the person involved is male. I do not know why, but it is. For another, they can shout and yell but not scream... and yes, there is a difference. For example, shouting things like "AAHHHHHH" a whole lot is ideal, but wild sobbing screams and pleas for help are a downer and tend to detract from the whole experience. If there are any strict requirements, though, I would say that flailing arms are key, more than anything else. Flailing or waving, really. Either are nice. Again, there is a difference. I have found that people on fire can make a bad movie good and a good movie great. Queen of the Damned? Awful, until that lady lit people on fire. Gladiator? It lost my attention after the bit at the beginning where people were running about... you guessed it... on fire. But I still stayed for the whole movie and didn't feel like I was wasting my time. If a director is nice enough to provide me with a good human inferno, then I feel I owe him at least enough time out of my life to watch his (or her) whole movie. To be totally honest with you, I would happily watch an entire two-hour movie of just different scenes of people catching on fire and running around waving their arms. I would probably see it a few times, I think, and each time I would make sure to notice something different, like how maybe there would be one guy who has a lot of hair and when the fire gets to that it goes WHOOOSSH and there goes his whole head. I guess real people who are really on fire don't do cool things like run around waving their arms wildly, so maybe it would all have to be that Hollywood-style fake stuff. But that's okay, because if a director wanted to go the mainstream, big-budget route with a movie about people on fire, I wouldn't consider him a sellout. In fact, I would applaud his decision, because more money equals more and better scenes of immolation. And every single time it happened, it would be, for me, much as if I were seeing it for the first time, and I would clap my hands and giggle like a schoolgirl. Every time. I really like it when people catch on fire. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #2 - 09 December 2003 I had a friend once. His name was David. But not long ago, David went away, and nobody has heard from him since. Everybody remembers the day, because that was also the day that fourteen people had the gas siphoned out of their tanks. See, David was pissing me off that day. So he underwent spontaneous combustion. ..with a match. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #3 - 09 December 2003 David came back the other day. We were all happy to see him. Especially Salz, because David owes Salz money. We decided to throw a big party to celebrate David's return. We filled the back of a pickup with booze and firewood, took it all out to David's favourite gravel pit, and had one hell of a party. We all felt pretty much like shit the next day though. Especially David, he got pretty burnt out. ..with a match. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #4 - 11 December 2003 A walk in the park can be lovely. Last summer a number of people went walking in a local park. This particular park has a lake in it, so we decided to rent boats and race each other around the lake. It's not really that healthy a lake though... see, with all the boats on it, some of them go down. It's not a very deep lake, and sharp rocks near the surface are par for the course. So when a boat goes down, over time, its fuel tank leaks gasoline into the water. David discovered that it makes parts of the lake particularly flammable. His boat tipped and he fell in, and the water around him ignited. ..with a match. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #5 - 13 December 2003 Snowbanks are pretty cold. Poor ol' David fell into one today. See, there was a party at his house, and as these things tend to happen, everyone was drunk. Somebody decided to toss David out a window. A second-floor window. David was lucky enough to land in a snowbank, which broke his fall. He was pretty coldwhen he came back inside though, so we warmed him up. ..with a match. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #6 - 15 December 2003 God Damn you Alessa!!!! You SPAT in my hair. Well there goes your x-mas present. But yeah any how enjoy the movie. How many times have you watched Red Dragon so far???? Give it back sometime. Adios! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reply #7 - 26 December 2003 A memo from the management: To: Staff, Fordham-Mason Co. Cc: Accounting Subject: State of the company Dear Staff, It's never easy to say things like this, especially given that I think we've all known it's coming for some time now, but as my father used to always tell me, "If we only did what would be nice, nothing would ever get done." Wise words, from a wise man. And now they ring truer than ever to me. So, I won't beat around the bush - the economic outlook at Fordham-Mason has gone from bad to very bad to worse in a very short time, and our most recent figures indicate that we simply cannot sustain further losses. I wish I had better news for you all, but unfortunately, as of the close of Friday's business day, Fordham-Mason will be forced to shut down its puppy-mashing operations permanently. I know this comes as no massive surprise to most of you, but I do feel profound regret that we were not able to make our economic model work in a real business environment. It certainly wasn't for lack of effort, as I can tell you firsthand that we, as a business, strove for no less than complete innovation in the field of mashing up little cute puppies and getting their puppy brains all over the walls. Our engineers have always been matchless and at the very top of their field when it comes to puppy-mashing technologies. Unfortunately, at times like this it is only natural to look to others to assign blame. But I personally feel that perhaps the public simply was not ready for a company such as ours; perhaps we have been a little too innovative, and demand has not yet caught up with our bountiful supply. Maybe one day we will gather once again in new offices, ready to provide solutions for consumers who desire only the finest when it comes to taking adorable wide-eyed puppies and just mashing the holy swinging fuck out of them over and over and over until they don't even really look like puppies anymore but piles of meat instead that maybe smell sort of like puppy, only bloody. And on that day, we will have triumphed both financially and philosophically. But this is not that day. This is today, and today we take a long hard look at our mistakes and see how they may be applied to our future ventures. Fordham-Mason may have failed as a company, but its employees will all take from it important lessons, not soon forgotten. Our drive was there, our work ethic was there, and if our failure was for lack of anything, effort was not it. I wish you all best of luck in your future endeavors, and hope that one day the world will be ready for us, and for mashing up fat little puppies like overripe grapes and making their adorable little eyes come shooting out of their heads and puppy juice come going BLOOOOSSHHHH out of them until they turn into greasy red puppy paste and just mashing the fuckers up real good, mashing them until they're good and mashed. All my best, Nicholas D. Fordham President Fordham-Mason Company