Woe is us!

It's dark days in the Duchy. The treasury is empty. The Follett Fairy Dust supplier hasn't been paid. (Someone forgot to pay the bill.) (Kind of like the State Legislature forgot to pass a budget!) Only Sage is left in DotLand. Sage now has to answer the phone "Libraries, Textbooks, Cataloging, Ordering, Reviews, Sorting, Classifying, Shelving, Training, Consulting, Fairy Dusting, and Bonbon Eating". It takes so long to get it all out that the callers have forgotten why they called by the time she finishes. This of course means that they have to call back when they remember. Turquoise has been drafted to work with the littlies in the Villages. Silver is semi-employed (or semi-retired, depending on the day of the week and the phase of the Blue Meanies in the Castle.) Indigo works zealously to keep the jewels in the Duchy Jewel Box (also called Educational Materials Center) shined up and ready to go out to a village to amaze and delight everyone. Out in the Villages, lonely Dots are sending pigeons "Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?" (From the musical 1776) In the SNEAC building, minions wander around wringing their hands, trying to come up with ways to refill the treasury. Sage suggested that Indigo sign up the Village Kids for Aid to Dependent Children and claim the them as dependents on her income tax. The Diva has tried decorating requisitions with colorful artwork and setting them to music but the Blue Meanies in the Castle were not amused. They turned them down anyway. Indigo and the Diva came up with some gold to pay Silver to keep sprinkling fairy dust around. The Blue Meanies cried "Foul! You can only use gold to buy THINGS, like paper and crayons, not to pay salaries". The Diva said "We're an Art Department> We have lots of crayons and paper. We don't have enough Silver!".. but it did no good. What will happen next? Will Silver become fully retired? Will Sage be able to get more Fairy Dust? Will the Village People be able to keep body and soul, not to mention arms and legs, together? (Triwall cardboard people lead hard lives, what with wear and tear and arms falling off!) Will Inhuman Resources ever be able to figure out where everyone is? IS anybody there?

Speed D*Ting comes to the Duchy

The Duchy, always on the ragged cutting badly sharpened raw edge, introduced Speed D*Ting recently. For those not up on Duchy phenomena, D*Ting is what happens when a school decides it no longer needs a teacher, or a school nurse, or a custodian, or an attendance clerk, or a librarian or a principal. (However, schools that are no longer that into their principals have recently discovered that the Duchy doesn't consider principals suitable for D*Ting. I guess no-fault divorce hasn't yet hit the administrative levels of the Duchy.) One of the Duchy's newly "separated" librarians recently attended the Duchy's venture into Speed D*Ting. She is only separated half-time (That must be awkward!) and wants to meet a good school with a sense of humor interested in a long term relationship. Picture a big room filled with small tables with two chairs. A school principal is seated in one of the chairs at each table. The prospective D*Ter (or is it D*Tee?) sits down in the other chair and they chat. After 5 minutes, a bell rings and the D*Ters (or D*Tees) all shift down one table. Can you picture it? Well, it was probably nothing like that.
Of course, Dotland wants to know why Turquoise wasn't invited to this soiree. As you know, Turquoise was D*Ted several months ago. Instead of being offered a roomful of choices, Turquoise was offered a sort of Hobson's Choice...a job already occuppied by a friend and colleague or a job with lower pay and more job-related expenses.
HR: We would like you go to this office and tell the person working there that you're replacing her.
Turquoise: But what's she supposed to do?
HR: We'll deal with that. You just replace her.
Turquoise: I don't want to do that. She's my friend. What's she going to do?
HR: Well, we do have one other job you could have.
Turquoise: What is it?
HR: If you drive down to I-10. Oh, wait, I-10 is closed. Drive up to Prince, get on I-10 there, drive to I-19, take I-19 south to Drexel. Oh, wait, there's no exit at Drexel. Continue on to Valencia, Take Valencia to Meadowvale, then take Meadowvale back to Drexel. You get the picture. It will only take a half hour or so a day each way for the drive.
Turquoise: What is the job?
HR: Their library needs a Peasant. And oh, by the way, that job doesn't start until August. Have a good summer. I'm sure there are lots of free things to do since you won't have any income.
Turquoise: But I can't afford to take that job!
HR: Those are the only choices.
Turquoise: I thought you said you would work with me to find a job that was a good fit for me.

(silence followed by a dial tone)
Turquoise: We must have lost the connection. I'll call back.
HR: I'm sorry. That department is no longer in service.

We've also learned that the Duchy Castle is cutting their staff by 20% except for HR. HR won't be cut by 20% until after the Speed D*Ting is over because "their expertise will be needed".
Dotland was discussing that expertise at the lunch table, attempting to come up with a job description.
Sage: Let's see, there's misfiling. They need that skill.
Silver: Don't forget shredding. They have to be able to find and shred Teaching Certificates. It's very important that documents get shredded before they are needed. There is no point in shredding them afterwards.
Indigo: They have to be able to lose PAF's as well.
Silver: What about lying?
Turquoise: They might not be lying. Someone might have sneaked into the castle, secretly injected everyone there with a date rape drug, and masqueraded as an HR employees, so they could steal your file after date stamping your copy of the paperwork and handing it back to you. That would account for why they say they have no idea why you have a complete date stamped copy of your file and they not only can't find the file but have never seen you before in their entire life. (But Mom, it's me! Your daughter!)
Silver: Oh that's another thing they need...a complete inability to find anything is a filing cabinet. When someone slips up and files the paperwork correctly, the rest of the employees have to be on their toes and avoid finding it.

Don't forget HR is the HeaRt of the Duchy. If you take HR out you're left with eat. Without HR Duchy employees might be able to eat, because their PAF's would actually be processed before they started work, rather than 3 months after. Without HR to add inefficiency and wasted time to the system, the Duchy might be able to operate within it's budget. That would never do. The School Bored does so adore begging for money from the legislature and budget overrides from the pitchfork carrying taxpayers.

The Black Queen and textbooks

From the Duchy Crier:
Textbook inventory management is site-based in the Duchy, as it is in many other duchies and central support for these local processes in the Duchy has been provided by the Black Queen.

Oh, really? The Black Queen?!! My dear, it is to laugh! I wonder if Sage knows this? Since the new part time Keeper of Textbook Inventory will be making $45,000 that must mean Sage is making $90,000, since she's a full time Keeper of Library Management. I had no idea Sage was so well paid! Not that she isn't worth it, of course. In fact, since Sage is already handling central Library Management and, in addition, Textbook Management, the job supposedly being done by the Black Queen, that should mean that Sage actually should be making $135,000 a year. She should demand a raise immediately!

Duchy in the hands of CAOS!

The Duchy has fallen into the hands of CAOS, the international organization of evil and Maxwell Smart is nowhere to be found. The new Queen Liz, obviously being held hostage by agents of CAOS, keeps sending out pigeons asking the villagers not to panic, it only seems like chaos and things will be all right. The CAOS agents are apparently heavily armed with weapons with odd names like RIF and DIT, SLA and MBU and maybe bumper cars? (Everyone is very worried about bumping.) The Duchy treasury has apparently been looted and there is no more money for the villages and teachers. The new President is trying to come to the rescue with a new weapon called a "stimulus package". However, CAOS is poised to spring into action and divert the stimulus package to "professional development" and shove the Duchy even further back in time. The village councils have had strategy meetings to decide how to defend themselves. Some decided that they needed an extra kindergarten teacher instead of a village headman. That attempt has already been foiled by CAOS. Agents from the castle told the village councils that there was still plenty of money for the councils to travel and see new and innovative educational experiments like DisneyWorld, Six Flags, and the Osama Bin Laden Preschool and Terrorist Training Camp. The village councils, ever alert, heard the operative word in that announcement...money. "You mean there's money!? We could have a kindergarten teacher after all!"

"No, no, no. It's money only for new and innovative educational experiments."

"We want a really innovative and educational kindergarten, with a teacher and everything. We'll even hire a new teacher for it. Let us have the money!"

But CAOS was adamant. The money is not for spending on fripperies like teachers and new pigeon roosts for the Duchy's increasingly elderly pigeons. (If they don't get newer, faster, healthier, pigeons soon, they be spending even more money on pigeon nursing homes, and pigeon medicare programs!) It can, however, be spent on the kind of resort visits that got the Black Queen in trouble!?

The Black Queen is back!

The Black Queen, who was briefly exiled to her living room, is back and in charge of...wait for it...Community and Parent Development. Sage thinks that means she will be going around confiscating condoms - to develop more parents. Silver thinks it's another misguided Duchy appointment. Silver's comment "Would seeing that face encourage you to go forth and procreate?"

The town crier reported today that the Duchy is still using stone tablet technology. Well, duh! After all there's way more stone in town than there are things like wifi and Smarty Boards and the School Bored does prefer to buy local, preferably really local, like a cousin or brother in law or whatever. Besides, after the Black Queen and the Lime Green Knight spent all that time lolling around the resort pool, they had no time left to make smart technology decisions. There's no money left in the budget for teachers, copier paper, new wiring, more bandwidth. Of course there is still enough money to pay for the Black Queen to confiscate condoms and to pay a librarian NOT to work because sometime in the distant and shadowy past he irritated a principal and that kind of offense can't be forgiven. Wait a minute, he can't go to work, he can do whatever he wants, and he still gets paid!! Who do I have offend to get that kind of job!

Of course, none of this should be surprising in the country that has created the ultimate weapon of mass destruction... the TOXIC MORTGAGE. Of course, we've used it on ourselves! And they wonder why we don't trust them with nuclear power!

Protection from what?

Report on the state of the Duchy defenses
1. Firewall
The firewall is completely impregnable to hackers attempting to find out if we have books in our libraries. Why hackers would want to know this is another question. The state legislature considers schools in general a socialist plot (along with streets, roads and parks). The lege would probably be very interested to know that we have (gasp!) libraries and (double gasp!) books. However, there has been no evidence that the lege is capable of hacking (or even e-mail!) The firewall also protects our children from finding out if their books are overdue. The firewall doesn't protect us from ads for viagra, toner cartridges and the Literacy Empowerment Foundation!
2. Webcensoring
Websenseless protects us from too much information, always a problem in schools. With information, we might be able to make informed decisions and look where the Duchy would be then. Actually, maybe we should look at where not enough information has gotten us so far. What would have happened if everyone had known that the Black Queen was picking out whiteboards based on the quality of the mint on her pillow? Would the Duchy still have bought the Brand X whiteboards? If everyone had known that the Duchy was paying a consultant for...well actually, we still don't know what the Duchy was paying the consultant for, but if we knew would it have made a difference? Would we be in hock up to our eyebrows if the Duchy hadn't spent all that money on broken Brand X whiteboards and consultants to tell us that Brand X whiteboards won't work with Brand Y software (Brand Y also has good quality mints.) Ironic that the Black Queen once accused the Dots of unethical practices.
Wait a minute. Why do we need defenses? The people we need to be protected from are all inside the walls! How do we get protection from the Black Queen and the Lime Green Knight? Some say the Black Queen and LGK are outside the walls now. Let's see, they don't come to work but they still get paid. They don't answer e-mail, the phone or the taxpayers. And we have NO IDEA which resort they are currently "reviewing bids" in! OMG, we'll be underwater on more than our mortgage if this keeps up!

All quiet on the Southern Front?

Scene: A foxhole somewere in the Duchy
Pvt. Turquoise "Sarge, do you think we'll get out of this alive?"
Sgt. Sage "I don't know, Turq. I just try to keep my head down and keep on keeping on."
Turq "Do you think the Black Queen and the Lime Green Knight are gone?"
Sage "No one seems to know for sure. They don't seem to be gone, they just seem to be ... not quite all there.
Dot formerly known as Silver "They've never been all there!"
Sage and Turq "Silver, where did you come from? How did you find us? Is it safe out there? Did anyone see you?"
DfkaS "It wasn't easy to track you down. You're well hidden in the Science Fortress here."
Sage and Turq "Is there any news?"
DfkaS "Queen Liz has been wringing her hands and crying "Woe is me! "Woe is me!" Woe is us is more like it! Somehow I think her salary will be the last to go! The Keeper of the Duchy Treasury is gone, though. She made $115,000. That should help the budget problem! I've got to go. Keep your heads down and be safe!"
Sage and Turquoise "Safety first!"