By Jonathan Rivett
BENIGN TO FIVE
Months ago, I completed a "collaborative project". "Collaborative project" is the term foisted upon the debacle by others. In fact, it was an encounter with a person apparently dragged out into reality from the depths of a very badly written comedy television show dealing in the most facile stereotypes.
Some practical jokes are more obvious than others.Credit: Jonathan McHugh
I appreciate little in the world more than mischief. And a really sophisticated practical joke is one of the ultimate expressions of mischievousness. So I spent many quiet moments during this futile assignment excited by the possibility that I was being stooged.
My antagonist was a preposterous cliche who hid their ulterior motives with the same discretion as a trenchcoated 1980s flasher might have hidden his (or her) jibbly bits.
Like an angry little minah bird, they strutted and preened and fluffed themselves into a ball of idiocy. Then they pecked: my work, apparently, had "a deficit of pop". Theirs "grandly straddled the worlds of conceptualisation matrices and innovative entrepreneurial mapping". (They were a business development manager.) All the while I carefully surveyed the architraves and cornices of the offices we were working in for hidden cameras.
Mild insults continued throughout. I managed not to lose my composure. Nobody ever burst into the room yelling "Gotcha!". I got paid. I never heard from the unhinged mollusc again.
If it was a hoax, it continues, and in doing so it has reached a new echelon of brilliance. If it isn't, I fear for the future of humanity.
If you've encountered something similar, I can offer reassurance: you're not alone.
Keep your eye on the cornices.
Jonathan Rivett wants to believe. He writes every day. Sometimes for haught.com.au. Mostly for theinkbureau.com.au