Back around 1985 I started doing retirement flyers for older colleagues. My tools were an original Macintosh, MacPaint, and a rented laser printer at a service bureau. This brought me to the attention of middle-management at FCT&D, and ultimately made my career. Retirement flyers were a regular part of my portfolio for many years, but rather fell off toward the end, which made me feel sorry for myself until I realized: D’oh! Everyone ahead of you in line is already gone!

Anyway, as I sort through the digital archives I came across this from a slightly more senior colleague, Napoleon [Anonymous], whose flyer I put together six or seven years ago. I reproduce the text here (an image of the better-known Napoleon was prominently featured on the page):

“Unlike me, this guy’s going out at the top of his game.”

Hi. I’m Napoleon Bonaparte. I’ve learned a lesson or two about retirement planning, and I’m here to say that the important thing is to take the pension when you feel like it, and not on the say-so of a bunch of jumped-up Prussians. Also, you want to spend those golden years living La Vida Loca in a hip and happening town, not on some godforsaken windswept flyspeck in the South Atlantic where you can’t even get basic cable, much less a high-speed internet connection.

That’s why young Napoleon Anonymous has impressed me. Forty-two years on the payroll, and he’s taking off on his own timetable. Also, he’s headed part of the year for Las Vegas, which has an abundance of warm weather, games of chance, good restaurants, adult beverages and lissome showgirls, all of which were mighty thin on the ground out there south of the arse-end of Tristan da Cunha last time I looked, let me tell you. Trust the ol’ Naperoo, you’re going to want to lay out forty simoleons and put in an appearance at the kid’s farewell bash in June.

I had lunch with a former colleague last week. She informs me that BDS now forbids retirement notices to appear on the company LAN. Sigh.

cordially,

which probably only demonstrates the small account in which BDS management held me toward the end:

Longtime readers of the BrainDead Bulletin may remember that back on Wednesday a passing reference was made to the dearth of editorial content here in mid-summer. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but scarcely had the cooling fans on BDS’s servers spun down after dishing out that day’s issue when the good folks at Life Support sent a frantic “stop the presses” telegram to the newsroom here, imploring us to hold off pending some late-breaking administrative news. Alas, the Linotype had been switched off, and the crew in the basement had already turned the hoses on the great offset presses: the Bulletin had left the barn and was already streaking toward your mailboxes via our state-of-the-art acoustic coupler modem.

However, we are nothing if not flexible here, and accordingly the Editorial Board agreed to put together a special “EXTRA” edition, consisting entirely of the new material, which we promptly dispatched Jimmy, the new intern, to fetch. Unfortunately, he got lost on his way back to the first floor and—long story short—somehow wound up overnighting in a St. Louis cathouse. Following a misunderstanding with the Transportation Security Administration (he had forgotten to remove from his carry-on a cosh, a switchblade knife, a vial of industrial solvent exceeding the three-ounce maximum, and four ounces of Semtex made up to look like a bar of Irish Spring, all left over from a staff meeting earlier in the week. Pro tip: this sort of thing is regarded as contrary to the spirit of the courtesy “TSA Pre√” status offered to contractors), he was obliged to fly standby and then, following a sixteen-hour layover in Salt Lake City, Jimmy’s connecting flight was cancelled, and he was obliged to make the last leg to San Francisco via mule train over the Sierra. All this to say that a great deal of effort went into the special edition of the Bulletin that has just now touched down in your Outlook inbox, so we expect you lot to read it with commensurate attention. It’s attached, along with a couple of hangers-on, and backups have been stashed as usual at the SharePoint link.

Between the tight deadline and the fact that our staff historian is still in rehab, we’re skipping the “History Minute” this week, but have every expectation of resuscitating the feature with another thrilling tale ripped from the headlines of a former century come the next issue.

cordially,