Status Reports

I’m a software developer working on a stock trading application. Every week I have to write a quick summary of what I’ve been working on. A few weeks ago my actual acomplishments were looking a bit meager (must have spent too much time here that week), so I padded my report with a false, joke achievement. My supervisor liked it so much that I was inspired to end all my status reports with a small joke. The only problem is I’m not all that clever. I’m running out of ideas and could really use some suggestions. Here’s what I have so far:
9/22/2000
Oh, and I resolved that whole unpleasant Middle East situation. It turns out it was all just a big misunderstanding. I vow never to get so far behind on my phone calls again!
9/29/2000
I also proved that causality is an illusion. The seeming flow of time as an ordered linear sequence of events is simply an artifact of the human perspective. I should have a working prototype of a time machine by mid to late next week.

!keew siht rof ti tuoba s’thaT
10/6/200
I also developed a sure-fire system for predicting the fluctuations in the stock market. Unfortunately, it relies on David Niven being alive and married to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. (Don’t even ask. It’s a very complicated formula.) Yes, these are some formidable obstacles, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

10/13/2000
In regards to my stock market prediction scheme, I was able to locate both David Niven’s burial site and a nearby voodoo queen specializing in reanimation. (You gotta love the Internet.) Now I just have to convince Queen Beatrix to marry him. That may not be so easy since the years of interment have somewhat affected Mr. Niven’s unassuming English good looks. Plus he tends to moan a lot, and wander around looking for fresh brains to eat. Still, try to name a royal that doesn’t have a few quirks. I have Chrisjan working on some introductions, but for someone who says he’s semi-fluent in Dutch, he seems to be having an inordinate amount of trouble with, “Would you like to marry the zombie David Niven, your highness?”

10/20/2000
With the revenant David Niven and Queen Beatrix agreeing to “just be friends”, my market prediction scheme appears to be dead. David is also a bit bummed out, but he’s looking forward to restarting his acting career. He hopes to get some publicity from a “Zombies That Have Been Dumped by European Royalty” segment that will air on Jerry Springer next week. He was lucky to get the call for such a prestigious show, and it’s only because Celine Dion was bumped off at the last minute. She did have a brief affair with Prince Philip, but surprisingly, she’s not a zombie! It turns out that those hideous shrieking sounds she produces are not the pitiful wails of the undead longing to be returned to the tranquility of the grave, but are merely her attempts to sing.

10/27/2000
???

This is too funny because it it exactly what I do. I started doing it because everyone in my group had to do one weekly and I suspected that they were never even getting read. After about 4 months I didn’t add a joke accomplishment for the week and my manager came up to me and asked me about it. He said they were now the highlight of the management meeting.

I usually limit mine to psuedoscientific claims. Unipolar magnets, chupacabra, bigfoot, that sort of thing. I use the Skeptic’s Dictionary as a source for ideas.

I love the sequence ones … where the story evolves over several days … those tend to keep interest alive the best!

(like you stock market bit …)

Well, not much interest here. Maybe I didn’t make the subject line gripping enough. As I say, I’m just not that clever. I appreciate these two suggestions though. I think the zombie thread is pretty well played out, but something about a chupacabra sounds intriguing.

I don’t know, you may be able to drag out the zombie thing, since it’s hallowe’en soon. There could be some catastrophe at a frat party where someone mistakes him for her date…

We had a news 50 years in the future thing going for a while. Someone wrote a small section, then a wrote a bit back & it snowballed from there. You just need to follow the story through. If you throw in some small sideline note, you can develop that forwards to the next mainstory & keep it running.