November 20, 2003

From the Minutes (Reginald Bastard, Secretary):

Well well well well well well well well well how very nice then. Important people like me who talk loudly in restaraunts know the importance of a good bolt of caffeine up the strap in the morning, just to get the old braincase turning over and fire up the old guttiwuts, you know? Speaking of which--excuse me for just a moment.

[leaves podium, exits stage right, heads down hall, turns right, enters loo, enters loo stall, does his business, exits loo stall, exits loo, realizes he's forgotten to wash his hands, re-enters loo, washes hands, exits loo, turns left, heads up hall, enters stage left via some kind of spatial rift, steps up to podium]

Much better; I'm positively buoyant. Which is to say that I now tend to float on a liquid or rise in air or gas, much like a "buoyant balloon," a "buoyant balsawood boat" or "a floaty scarf."

A floaty scarf?

Never mind that.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Board. Colleagues, associates, hired women, stockholders, and members of the clergy. I come before you this quarter with grave concerns, concerns brought to my attention by the dilligence of our accounting staff and several subpoenas. Although Astonished Head has posted profits of nearly eight hundred billion dollars and eight cents for the past two quarters, our marketshare has been declining precipitously in a way that looks rather odd to people who know about this sort of thing. Examine, if you would, this first chart.

Reginald! The slide!

As you can see, our first issue launched with a perfectly respectable market share number thingie of 28.9. This increased to 49.6 during the Afghanistan Campaign, dipped slightly with the premier of Tea Time With Biggles The Hedgehog, and peaked at 89.9 during the Iraq Campaign. This was followed by a precipitous decline after our feature, How To Recognize Different Sorts of Boils. We rebounded slightly with our religious affairs program, Is There A God And If So What Is He Wearing?, declined a bit again with our quiz-show foray, Win A Date With Aldous The Fister, and then it was one long miserable gangrenous slide into a vast pit of excrement with What's On My Shoe?, Essential Pus, and Flatulence Of The Stars.

Finally, we have achieved a historically bad market share of -125.2 with our apparently totally unnecessary offering, My Ass. As you are aware, this means that not only are people not reading Astonished Head, they are actually giving birth to children for the express purpose of increasing the number of people who are not reading Astonished Head.

Clearly, this is an unsustainable trend. At the very least, the cost of rounding up all of those children and raising them in Astonished Head-friendly environments will be detrimental to our bottom line and my expense account. I put it to you: contrary to our best market research, the evidence suggests that the reading public is not interested in things like boils, pus, flatulence, or my ass.

[audience reaction]

I know. I was astounded myself. But facts are facts, except when I've been able to purchase the negatives and destroy them. Our publication needs a new direction. I, for one, suggest heading north for a while, then sort of westwards until we reach one of the Great Lakes, and then plunging down into its watery depths until the pressure makes our eardrums implode or we can nestle safely in the soft, cold, lightless muck of the lakebottom. Either one is good; our research suggests that imploding eardrums will appeal to three-quarters of the reading population, and nestling in the muck will appeal to the other three quarters and to those members of the reading population who are bottom-feeding aquatic creatures of some kind.

Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. With your help, we can turn Astonished Head back into the towering, quivering mass of gelatinous goo it once was. With determination, grit, hard work, liberal applications of cream for my eczema, and vast infusions of cash from the Colombians, I know that we can prevail!

[applause]

Thank you. Now, please feel free to enjoy the oyster bar and the vodka tub.

[more applause]