Secretaries Day comes but five times a year, all in the one work week which surrounds the officially Hallmark Incorporated "Secretaries Day."

Part One: Bao Dai of Hollywood's Predictions on the fate of the American Holiday System

Few "holidays" have been created over the past quarter century: Indeed, aside from Secretaries Day, all i can think of is Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday (or MLK Day, as I believe they quickly abandoned (if they ever had) the notion of having it on his birthday and opted for the more popular "closest Monday" concept) is the only one of which I can think.

There have been a lot of "Mondayizations" of holidays -- the crushing together of Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays (along with any other President anyone has ever thought was any good) and Mondayization of them as "Presidents' Day." Then there's Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Labor Day... and in the future... well, first, all the holidays which do not have dates attached to them will be moved to Mondays (unless it's proven Friday is a less productive day anyway).

I'll wager come 2100 the Rose Parade will rumble down Colorado Blvd on the "First Monday of the New Year" and will be a month from Christmas, which will be moved to the first Monday following that lousy parade they have here in Hollywood.

Christmas Eve, that nonproductive and unofficial half day will end up being consolidated with and celebrated with Thanksgiving, which shall be moved and in partial recognition to the ridiculous Adultization of Halloween and because of the ever increasing Hispanic origins of the citizenry, will be celebrated over a five day weekend beginning Thursday which will include Halloween/All Saints Day, The Day of the Dead ("DoD"), the arguably redundant and already only partially recognized and already Mondayfied Holiday known as Veterans' Day could be switched with the more earnestly taken off Memorial Day and be tossed in along with MJK, Jr. Day.

The Five Day Nature of the event will mollify all those people who will scream bloody murder when they try to move Thanksgiving (Roosevelt already tried it for some reason which probably had to do with packing the Supreme Court with communists, and it only lasted a year and almost cost him a term in office). The MJK, Jr. addition will set a needed tone to the whole affair (see below) and also help free up the already over holidized First Quarter, which may make the idea of giving employees a five day holiday more palatable to Corporate America.

Corporation Ameika can be further sold on this if retailers go along and have their one and only pre-Christmas sale. This will cut down on late in the year productivity drops due to shopping -- especially since price gouging will be mandatory on all other days during the last fiscal quarter (all prices on non-food [non-gift variety]/fuel/water will quadruple).

And let's face it, these Holidays (especially with Memorial Day switched with Veteran's Day) all go nicely together:

a. Halloween, All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead are all really the same day(s), but right now, except for a few places in East LA, no one is making any money off the DoD -- and it's a natural money maker. I can see Kraft's "Meals for the Dead" line and boxed El Pollo Loco "Dead Dinners" -- slogan? "Why Cook for Someone Who You Know Isn't Going to Return the Invitation?"; b. Memorial Day will be used to "Americanize DoD and create a new custom in places like Iowa... the grave side BBQ -- and not for just the family or even extended family, but for the really extended family. Depending on how many dead are honored and how many living show/ how they wish to honor the dead, Dad might be grilling burgers all night... and as for those killed in war, well, they get a steak. I suspect this will also result in a surge of Battlefield DoD/Memorial Day Halloween, DoD and T-Day, as well as Christmas Eve, and Memorial Day picnics at which people will pay $25 a pop to watch battles recreated. This will especially be a big deal at the Alamo; and (c)What about riots you ask? Yes, there's definitely a chance for riots -- Mexicans and Texans meeting up for recreations of the Mexican American War, not to mention Yankees and Rebs arguing because some idiot is using the Confederate Flag as a tablecloth at a re-enactment of Manassas/Bull Run (I and II for $35 dollars a head, perhaps with a rock concert in between reenactments).

Anyway, that's why the addition of MJK, Jr. Day is crucial. It will add a tone of peace to an otherwise ignition prone situation. It will also make African Americans feel included rather than excluded. It will end that nasty "choice" given each First Quarter when people (read black people) are told they can take either MJK, Jr. Day off or President's Day, which in my opinion does a disservice to both Martin Luther King, Jr. and our Presidents. Finally, between January 1 through Easter, there are just too many holidays at present. Not that businesses recognize them all, but the fucking Post Office sure does, as do banks and courts and City Hall. Why with stuff like the New Year's Day Bowl Bonanza of Football and the Super Bowl alone, there are too many Monday morning (or presently January 2) hang overs, all of which not only lower productivity but make for a dangerous work place. Now I'm not saying African Americans go get sloshed on MLK, Jr. Day (they don't -- white supremacists, however do... and they are nasty drunks who swill cheap beer while muttering about "niggers gettin' an extra day off" from dawn until dusk on the day before and either call in sick and still angry on MLK, Jr. Day or take a bottle of Rebel Yell with them to the job operating a crane.

So we start this Five Day Holiday on Thursday, and that will be Thanksgiving complete with college football, turkeys, and being forced to cook for/clean up after and talk to a bunch of relatives you hate. Friday will be Halloween/All Saints Eve, which homemakers will spend cooking for the DoD, doing last minute costume alterations and stocking up on Snickers Bars (or other Mars, Inc. brand candy) -- and will end with the enchiladas burning while you answer the door to give candy to some little brat and step into a flaming bag of dog shit. Saturday will start the Americanized DoD BBQs/ war reenactments and feature numerous parades in Mexican neighborhoods. Sunday will be Christmas Eve: the morning will be consumed from 6 a.m. until noon with a crazed rush to all stores to avoid the mandatory price gouging laws, and homemakers must return to cook, for Christmas Eve will no longer consist of shoving spaghetti down the throats of excited kids because Santa ain't going to make it to their place until Christmas. It will be yet another day complete (again) with turkeys (or Roast Beef or some elaborate meal), the annual showing of It's a Wonderful Life, decorating the Christmas Tree/ entire house and being forced to cook for/clean up after and talk to a bunch of relatives you hate. Monday will be the culmination of Memorial Day (when some may choose to celebrate the Americanized DoD) and MLK, Jr. Day... which, through a small media campaign, should by then feature "soul food", including fried chicken, grits, macaroni and cheese, and a variety of greens to help flush the body of all the constipating feasts of the previous days.

Sounds pretty grim for anyone responsible for doing the household chores, so... hey, restaurants will be mobbed! I'd make my reservations now if I were you (but I'm not... I'm hip and trendy and get my usual table at any restaurant I call from my cell phone as I cut to the front of the line.

The True Origins of Secretaries Day

Now many claim Secretaries' Day is the only holiday created by capitalism a/k/a Hallmark, Inc and its lackies that caught on during the past thirty years -- which is not to say that there have not been other attempts. Take, for instance, Grand Parents Day.

According to my journalistic kind of unidentified and First Amendment protected source at Hallmark, Inc., had "Grandparents Day" caught on, there were plans for Uncle/Aunt Day, Niece/Nephew Day and Pet Day. All but the last was shit canned, but while I ask you to please keep your freaking adorable pet stories away from me, you might want to copyright them and send them onto Hallmark, Inc., because while each succeeding generation seems less and less interested in even acknowledging any elder generation kind of relation other than a parent -- knowing that the Grand Folks will come through with lavish gifts and college tuition even if they treat them like shit, and uncles and aunts have decided they are as capable of forgetting the birthdays of nieces and nephews who through word and/or deed have made it clear they don't give a flying fuck about their own blood [buying all the passed on sibling rivalry tales and complaints better left on a psychiatrist couch by their own Baby Booming parents], the concept of "Pet Day" still has its champions -- and not only with the odd Board Member/Spinster who has 29 cats in her Manhattan Studio Apartment that costs half its tenants monthly limo bill, but with those Board Members who are awakened by the barking, chirping, meowing and growling (and occasional hoot) coming from next door. Anyway, as I was saying, Secretaries Day, like many of our "holidays" which benefit our capitalistic economy, arose from legend (take, for instance Christmas and St. Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day -- and please don't take offense... I said "legend", not "myth").

It is well known that the CEO (or the Big Boss as he was known in the 1950s and 60s) at "the Company and a good friend of the then chairman of Hallmark, Inc., was a lecherous old fool named C.A. Lyndberg. Despite his graying skin and arcane ways, he fancied himself quite the Ladies' Man -- and in fact, whether it was his money or his self-confidence or his inability to see himself as an old fool, or because he was seen as the only thing between these 20 year old girls and the welfare office, he scored quite a bit of the time.

You'd think women would be concerned about a penis which shed its dried old skin while in an orifice, but contrary to popular myths (mainly propagated by chicks themselves), women -- especially young gold digger types -- are not that discerning.

C.A. would not take "no" for an answer. If an 18 year old typist caught his eye but was not wealthy enough on her own to dress the part necessary to be taken to lunch by him and fucked silly, he'd simply grope their boobs, discreetly or otherwise, in public, and try for a quickie in his personal restroom at work.

Meanwhile, while he was off cheating on his wife, he had a loyal band of lackeys (a/k/a attorneys) around him who would recommend "immediate termination" of anyone who was accused of sexually molesting a female co-worker, which in a perverse way put the Company ahead of its time on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. Indeed two of five Board Members at the Company were women -- one whom CA had hired as a secretary, taken a shine to and put her through college and then on the fast track to a vice presidency all while grunting and groaning and doing all manner of disgusting things to her. The other... well, there were rumors... but it was more likely she had some serious shit on him and/or it was just because she'd put up with his sexist jokes about her alleged lesbianism, and do so with a smile.

Anyway, back in those days a young executive at the Company could get his walking papers by smiling at a woman on whom CA had his eye, or by having a mutual flirtation (or affair) with her, and CA finding out about it. One guy who used to get regular and prolonged back rubs from a young nubile co-worker was placed on six months probation when the co-worker got mad at him for reasons about which he was never to sure (as no one would say exactly why he was being placed on probation), although there was another male who wanted to pork her (not CA, but one of CA's favorites) who convinced her that an innocent act of days before had been an attempt at rape [while she was on the phone to her boyfriend and 12 feet away] and that this guy et all his friends she knew -- both those who worked there and those who did not had been calling her a "tease" and worse. At any rate, CA's own attempts to get into her pants ended after that, as they did with any woman who accused anyone else of showing a sexual interest in her.

Well, legend has it that Secretaries Day came about after CA called his friend at Hallmark to report that a secretary who he had been having sexual relations with at lunch each day has threatened to wreck him by calling Mrs. Lyndberg unless he produced a new Jaguar. As CA went on bemoaning this injustice, the CEO of Hallmark hit on the idea of Secretaries Day as he envisioned the headline in the local newspaper "Sex Wrecks CA's Day." A light bulb went off over his head.

"Get her the car," the CEO suggested.

As CA stammered and groaned, the CEO explained "We'll create a new National Holiday -- Secretaries' Day. You can write it off... I think... that will at least explain it if Audrey finds out. Plus, she's bound to let you do you want to her she'll be so lust crazed over the car. Tie her up, stick a sock in her mouth, and then find the tapes of you slipping the old gray snake to her.

"Just keep the car in your own name, because once you have the goods, I think you should say good bye to this babe and drive home in that Jag -- maybe give it to Audrey."

CA followed the advice of the CEO, purchased the first ever Secretaries Day card. However, the secretary in question -- a Hallmark plant as it turned out -- blabbed the existence of this holiday all over the it all over the office, and before CA could get the evidence out of her, every person with a secretary was running off by week's end to hunt down a card, flowers or edible panties... just as the CEO had hoped, and promised during a meeting with Big Ragu Vistoni, who through trucking "diversions" and union "shennanigans" in various other businesses gets 5% of what is spent on fresh flowers and chocolates and stupid meaningless books, and CA had to let her keep the car because he didn't want his future girlfriends to realize he was a skin flint, and Audrey found out about the car.

Audrey, to whom CA offered a used Gremlin when she found out, didn't buy any of CA's denials and divorced him and wrecked his life (unless you do not consider drinking Sterno beneath an over pass a wrecked life).

So for all you cynics who thought Secretaries Day was, like Mother's Day, a purely financially inspired holiday, well, it wouldn't exist if an old gray snake knew how to stay in its hole in the ground.

Part Three: Secretaries I have Known

Note: If you think I mean you below, you're mistaken.

My first real secretary was Ms. Whitney. She didn't like being my secretary because she was very experienced (as both a secretary and somewhat of a slut who was quite open and obvious about her preference for large, thick penises... and she'd go off on these vocal riffs about how little old Size One her liked a monster schlong ripping her apart, and I found these annoying because I had a huge crush on her and not that she'd ever let me anywhere near her, but like it gets you thinking stuff like, 'Will the entire office know my dimensions if... if... the impossible? It's a little off-putting, but just further proof that women, not men, are far more ready to reveal the details of their sorted lives and their partners physiques than are men.

Ms. Whitney and I had a fight because she gave something I'd dictated to an inept, alcoholic to type and there were so many errors in it I put it on her desk and when she protested "Lushola typed that," I told her "You gave it to fucking Lushola, you fucking fix it."

Not that Ms. Whitney objected or didn't herself use the 'F' word, but she knew I'd get into trouble for using it. This only goes to prove that women are often two faced cunts of hypocrisy. Fortunately, when I was really going to get it for so speaking (I'd been hearing rumors all week), we made up (only going to show that when I'm beaten I can still turn on the charm and bullshit) and we went hand in hand into the Second in Command's Office. Since he already had a speech planned, our statements that all was nice now meant nothing and he explained that Ms. Whitney would be working for him come January.

Well, Ms. Whitney's old boss had quit and promised her a job when she returned from her honeymoon with Mr. Eleven Inches. She gave notice, came back from Hawaii and her old boss didn't have that job for her.

Which only goes to show in some odd way that what goes around does come around.

My next secretary was Donna, a 6'5" 480 pound whale of a woman who was a very good secretary... except she stunk to high heaven. After being made the butt of many jokes and having Marge, who was the Greatest Secretary in the World (but not mine) and probably a former drill sergeant tell her she stank, and after she managed to use all the remaining budget of a committee of which I was chair to buy ten dozen deli sandwiches for a meeting of ten people (and taking the rest, rotting mayo and all home as a snack) and after (when I was gone, thank God) being chased around the maze-like offices after stealing some cake that came in as First Prize in some bake-off, I had Norm Watkins fire her. She ended up in Florida working for a guy to whom I recommended her who obviously had lost his olfactory lobe in an accident.

Karen was my next secretary. She was super smart, super organized and super hot to fuck me. It was scary because you could sense a bit of the old stalker in her. Plus once she rubbed my neck in such a way as I got an erection so quickly I almost lost consciousness.

I realized she could rape me (which might be fun). Thank God before she did she went on to better things, wrote me letters I never answered and is probably in a mental institution.

Then there was Cherie who had no secretarial skills to speak of, but was a sheer delight to speak with... well, to look at. I have no clue of her fate. I just know I had nothing to do with it.

Then there was Marianna, perhaps my all time favorite secretary. She was built like a fire plug and at times was moody as hell, but she knew her shit and was smart as a whip. When the company broke up, one of the partners took her as one of "that group's secretaries." i last saw her when we were both interviewing for new jobs.

Then there was the young lady who came in the morning, went to lunch and who I never saw again.

Then there was Chris. Chris was an excellent secretary. She also could have posed nude for a living. She was also always going around commenting about various stages of STDs/crabs she had contracted. I had to fish her out of jail once, and I think she was a heroin addict, although I didn't care if it didn't interfere with her work.

Chris finally left for more money -- and not from a strip club either. I went out on a limb for her and got the firm to offer her more to stay. She said no.

I figured that, given all I'd heard about Chris, and how she used to just come into the men's room to get me if I was there and wanted on the phone, that her last act on her last day would be a blow job.

It wasn't.

Then came Pat... from England by way of Texas. Pat had managed to get the accents perfectly blurred so you couldn't understand a thing she said. She also acted like she was seriously into ether and liked to drink at lunch, which didn't help communication. Plus she was butt ugly.

When Ann, a secretary on disability (mental) came back, she replaced Pat, who kept working there. One night I had dinner with Pat and a mutual friend. Turned out Pat was really a super nice lady.

Ann wasn't. Well, she was and she wasn't. I think she was an abused albino child raised by some insane religious cultists. At one point she was strung out on Valium, although I suspect that except for the strung out part, Valium would have helped her. She had a way about her that could really piss people -- especially the other secretaries -- off. She was petty in some ways -- furious that the big boss' secretary didn't do squat but somehow ended up going with me to New York and Boston (to work although it's hard for people who haven't been on business trips to realize there isn't much fun about them unless you like sitting alone in a hotel room watching network TV) and doing so under the title of "paralegal" (she just didn't understand the lengths one goes to in order to keep a valuable drug connection happy). At the same time, she had every right to be pissed, because she was the best secretary at that place, did all the boss' major typing and there were times I threatened to hold up the production of income because, despite a perfect review, she was not given the highest possible raise because she was no raving beauty.

Then again, she may have lied to me, or at least been disloyal with the hope of becoming the boss' secretary... and that would make her delusional.

After I left that company she was assigned to a couple of nobodies and finally got a really good job elsewhere... until she was killed while driving into work. They think she had a heart attack and crashed her car.

Then there was Teri, who reminded me a lot of a younger, prettier, more pleasant version of my sister and who was also a cracker jack secretary, and then I shot through a series of jobs in which, if I had a secretary at all, she had no clue what she was doing, if she even spoke English.

And now I have Kim, who, bizarrely, could be my ex-wife's daughter by another man. I'm always tempted to ask, but then she might have to kill me.

These were my secretaries... with whom I had a purely professional relationship. Now, as for the secretaries with whom I have had sexual relations....

Oh.... okay. Family oriented and all that. Well, you know who you are, and if you're reading this, e-mail me (or call). I have a special secretaries Day gift for you....