This is just a few words to introduce an acquaintance of mine.  Mike Daisey.

Mike is one of the great raconteurs.  He specialises in the wonderful art form – the monologue.  His pieces go for hours and he works as you see him above.  Sitting in off-Broadway and many other theatres on the West coast.  He railed against the machine all through the Bush era, and has a diverse range of topics often rooted in history, or maybe history and philosophy of science.  He has about six lines on a single sheet of paper as a backup – and extemporises.

I once heard him  do an extended piece on Tesla versus Edison and another on the Death of Theatre.  Another presentation had the L Ron Hubbard people up in arms and produced a staged mass walkout – that phased him for a few nano seconds.

I met Mike Daisey through his book “21 Dog Years at Amazon” – meaning that he lasted 3 human years as a minion in Jeff Bezo’s monolithic (and Mike might say “evil”) empire.  He was doing phone support – and his stories I found particularly resonating since I had done a similar job – for just one year (1983) for the now infamous Jodee Rich – when he owned “Imagineering”.  That is before he trashed that corporation – which was also before he masterminded the more specular disaster “One-Tel”.

We (that is, Mike and I) exchanged a few Emails about our shared experiences.

One time at Imagineering, the marketing people asked tech support (Steve and me) to write “something technical about new products”.  We had 1,200 products and 900 dealers Australia-wide to deal with.  We were up to our nipples in deeply frustrated novotech retailers and the marketing guys wanted us to do their jobs too !  So we made up a few products, we invented problems with the made up products and also the solutions to the imaginary problems with the non-existent products.  Hence my diatribe on the Hashimoto Krakatoa K1 printer interface with the Venetian blinds in the EEPROMS.  The marketing people published their technical gurus’ sage words and we got some hilarious responses from people who could clearly see that it was totally fabricated – and a joke at the expense of our own marketing wankels.

That was not long before Steve attempted employment suicide at work by responding on the telephone to an irate and abusive dealer with a huge problem that she could “F*ck off because we don’t sell that product”.  He had had enough – but they just gave him a friendly caution, a few beers and a couple of paid days off.  Ah, the good old days…… of acute technical scarcity …..

This was rather more direct action than appeared in Mike Daisey’s story, but I’m sure you get the drift….

He was in Australia last year – but foolishly only went to Melbourne (sorry, ‘Mou).  I gather he’s planning a more comprehensive return for a flash-in-the-pan season.

Anyway, you can sample Mike Daisey’s material at http://www.mikedaisey.com/monologues.sht

You might really enjoy him.  On the other hand – you might intensely dislike his work.

Sometimes I do both.  Mostly not.