We are thrilled to announce that Season Two of the Friday Office Poetry Podcast will be premiering in May after a Covid outbreak has closed our Offices and now everyone wants some extra downtime to watch Netflix without the debilitating pain.
No, Covid does not count as vacation time!
Thanks to our underappreciated intern for attending the indoor rave that gave us all the virus.
Today we will read a few letters we received from listeners of Season One.
First The Statistical Breakdown of Comments on the podcast.
15% of comments were trolls.
Your hateful engagement actually boosts our stats but is it really worth it to you to be a rage goblin of pustule-laden misery?
10% of comments were suspected Russian hackers.
We hope this distracted you from a war of violent aggression and gave Ukrainians time to count the bodies.
10% of comments on our Friday Office Poetry Podcast were comments from enemies of the Association of Imaginary Schools or targets of satire on Schools News Today.
You might ask your therapist if this is a healthy use of your time, just as our corporate consultant asked us if school satire was a good use of donors’ money.
10% of comments were bots looking to sell us better equipment to get rid of our apparently incredibly annoying poor audio.
Okay so 45% of comments were negative, but they weren’t really legit.
Then 10% of comments were positive reviews from friends and relatives of School News Today staff. Thank you! We will also comment on your podcast! See you at the Annual Association of Imaginary Schools All Lobster Caviar and Champagne Listener Appreciation Party this summer at the luxury Boondoggle Hotel in Boca Raton.
15% of comments were from poets wanting to submit their poetry manuscripts for consideration to appear on our podcast, who, in the great tradition of aspiring poets not reading other poets, had not listened to any episodes of Friday Office Poetry. Thanks for your unpublished poems on Knights of the Round Table, Tinder and beautiful butterflies. Maybe next time! Keep writing!
8.8536% of comments were totally legit positive comments from strangers. Okay that’s a bit stalkery. Not sure how you saw my producer’s grade school yearbook, Stan, but thanks for the love. Glad you found a way to give six stars!
Not sure if this is all going to add up to 100% without a calculator! But that leaves us with the remainder of comments which we categorized as legit negative comments.
We are going to read a couple of these legit negative comments to round out our first season.
From Polly in Park Slope,
“I do not think office life is an appropriate topic for poetry. The whole point of poetry is to lift us out of our boring everyday lives and give us some inspiration and a glimpse of beauty. No way do I need to come home and listen to a poem about a broken printer tray after a day of broken printer trays. Hard pass on Friday Office Poetry Podcast.”
Polly, I’m so glad you’ve got poetry all figured out! Thank you for solving the age-old question of What is Poetry so succinctly.
From George in Topeka,
“Way too many poems with cats. Is Anonymous Admin really a sad old cat lady? If there are animals in poetry they should be horses–preferably stallions–or mythical beasts like Beowulf. Dragons if possible. Songbirds are also cool. But keep out the hamsters and house cats. Among other things, I have allergies.”
Thanks for the tip, George. But, Devil’s Advocate, you are kind of inciting us to commission a poem about a hamster. Maybe a classroom pet that comes home for vacation? Anyone who submits a printable hamster poem by the end of the day is eligible for a bag of free cedar chips and a cloudy bottle of dirty hamster water.
Meow.
See you in May for Season Two of Friday Office Poetry.
Please like and subscribe whether you are legit or not. That includes you, Russian totalitarians.
Also Read: Announcing Our New Friday Office Poetry Podcast