Bottle Party

The after party at the end of the water bottle convention was the stuff of legend. All of the bottles would gather together in the Magnolia Ballroom and dance the night away, letting loose all the frustrations of work, the pent up energy from sitting in dull meetings all week. They would rant about their bosses, rave about the good speakers, and mercilessly joke about the presenters who clearly had no idea what they were talking about. They schmoozed. They networked. On the whole, everyone had a pretty good time. But the after party at the end of the 2008 convention almost ended it for everyone.

It started typically enough, but when the usual DJ, an oldies and slow jams kind of fellow took ill, his replacement DJ Dubstep had to fill in at the last minute without warning. From the moment the bass dropped, every bottle present knew things were different. The booming beats vibrated them down to the very liquids of their souls. The bottles rippled and sloshed like never before, and the laser lights reflected through them, turning each into a glorious, gyrating kaleidoscope, a prismatic wonder unleashed.

In the morning, the hotel staff found the whole lot of them undressed and passed out, piled atop one another on the floor. There were awkward apologies. Nervous glances toward the ground. Excuses about intoxication. Everyone accepted the story, but no one believed it. After all, it was pretty clear that no one had gotten drunk the night before.

- Originally mailed to Karen Murphey of Chicago, Illinois

The Gathering Storm

The twelfth annual The Gathering Storm, a convention for clouds, took place on the weekend of July 27th-29th in Oxbow, Nebraska. It allowed the various clouds of the world to gather, share news and gossip, swap job techniques, and generally socialize outside of the office. The convention began with the president's Harrison B. Nimbus's oft-quoted “Clouds: Above It All” keynote speech, in which he asked his vaporous brethren to take pride in all they do for the planet. Afterward, the clouds attended the seminars on topics such as when to rain (“The Grass Is Long, Looks Like Rain,” “Parades: A How-To,” and “Withholding Affection: Why We Drought”), panels on how to rain (“California: Just Pour,” “Attracting Water Vapour: A Growth Roundtable,” and “Gradual Intensity: How Sprinkling in the Morning Means More Drenched People in the Afternoon”), and the seldom attended lectures on where to rain (“Farmland Needs You!” and “Hurricanes: How to Choose a Strikezone BEFORE the Last Minute”). The the weekend ended with a mixer, which like most cloud mixers, had a lot of shouting, turned into a pissing match, and ended with everyone storming off.

- Originally mailed to H. Ainsworth from Gulfport, MS