Bright Lights, Not-So-Big City
Crowbar Headquarters Staff Update
Hi all,
Back after a long weekend of fun and relaxation. Ok, maybe not so much fun...or relaxation. Maybe recuperation. Ok, hibernation. Oh whatever.
Anyway, we all had four days off and we took a calculated risk, deciding to leave Crowbar unsupervised in Headquarters throughout. She doesn't know this, but usually when we "claim" to be taking time away from HQ we work out a little system to take turns keeping tabs on her. It's not that we don't trust her, it's just that she's completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Leave her on her own for too long and the next thing you know there's a SWAT team coming up the front walk and a smoldering police station down the street. We've always managed to buy her out of these tight spots in the past, but one day our luck (or the EBF - Emergency Bribe Fund) is going to run out.
Even knowing this, we're all aware that she's got to be left on her own sometimes and, if we're telling the truth, we also thought it might be rather amusing to see just how far she'd unravel if left to her own devices with no spy work or Mission Critical Emergencies to distract her. Of course we wouldn't want to give you the idea that we find Crowbar's little hissy fits funny, or that we like to mock her - it's just that we do.
So what did she get up to while we were all away? Well, we've actually noticed an odd trend with her lately - for some reason she's been randomly throwing on the Con Allyerd identity, even when Con isn't needed. Twice in the last month alone we've caught her dressed up in knee-high black high heeled boots, short skirts and - get this - carrying a purse. The first time we took it as evidence of either some mission we hadn't been briefed on or signs of Crowbar's mounting psychosis, but either way we figured it was a phase. Then we rolled back into HQ this morning expecting to find all kinds of damage and some new police reports to doctor, and instead discovered that she did it again while we were away. Rumour has it (ok, so we did have her tailed while we were out of town) that she not only donned the Con identity, complete with boots and black miniskirt, but in top of it all she went to a casino. This is definitive Con behaviour. Places with lots of people counting money, machines that spit silver and velvet ropes separating the rich people are Con Allyerd's natural habitat. That's no surprise, but some level of duress is usually required to get Crowbar to don the appropriate identity, and even then she does so grudgingly. Con likes the lights, the bells, the unadulterated, grasping capitalism and the chance to feed on it....Crowbar tends to look for nooks and crannies to plant explosives. In short, we wouldn't expect her to be going voluntarily, and certainly not if there were no scam to pull off to bankroll the Resistance Force.
Perhaps it's some of Con's recent successes spurring Crowbar to let her stretch her wings a bit. We got news a few weeks back that one of Con's works of masterful spin brought close to ten grand into the Resistance Force coffers for the upcoming year. We would have thanked her but she was off somewhere pulling a bank job. Instead we've spent two weeks attempting to find ways to avoid the funder's requested photo op (Crowbar, as you can imagine, doesn't like having her picture taken - we got her out of it). As it stands, Con is clearly way out in front when it comes to pulling her own weight around here, so we're guessing Crowbar thought it only fair that she get a couple of nights out. Sadly, all reports say that CB managed to lose $60* bucks while Con was off in the Smoking Lounge chatting up Baccarat players, so apparently the clothes alone don't make the girl. Seemingly you need the Con attitude to be a winner in the big rooms - something Crowbar on her own doesn't have. In fact, proving the old adage "you can dress her up but you can't take her anywhere", we hear she spent a good portion of the night trying to find excuses to kick someone with those big, black boots, although Intel says she didn't and the EBF confirms it. That notwithstanding, from what we can tell, she actually had a good time and nobody got hurt, except her wallet.
[CB Note - I feel a need to interject briefly here: While it's true that no one got hurt, I want to go on record pointing out that some old lady hit me. You heard me, hit me. I stepped up to a slot machine to drop a quarter in and the woman at the next machine (who had her back to me at the time) spun around and physically smacked my arm away. I was so shocked I didn't even kill her. So it's a bigger thing to say "no one got hurt" than perhaps the HQ Staff realizes.]
Crowbar tells us the creepiest part of the whole excursion were the old people physically jacked into the slot machines - at first she thought the Dark Side had perfected some sort of One-Armed-Bandit life support systems. It seems people who are thoroughly addicted to slot machines tend to use these "Preferred Player" cards, which are like casino credit cards. You slot them directly into the machine, play credits stored on them, and can move from machine to machine whenever you want without cashing out...your credit is all on the plastic. Unfortunately, the casino has seen fit to attach these cards to a long spiral cord like a telephone cord that appears to clip on to your person, ensuring you don't move on and forget it in the slot machine. Apparently old people feel the left breast pocket is the best place to attach the alligator clip on the end of the cord. The visual effect of this, however, is that you can gaze down a row of 50 slot machines and see old person after old person with a cord running directly from their heart into the machine, thus making the slots appear like external pacemakers. It was like invasion of the bodysnatchers, except the seniors stayed connected to the pods by long yellow plastic spiral strings. It's hard not to wonder; if you walked along the row and just started unplugging them, one after the other, would they die? Is the only thing sustaining them the mounting hope that the next spin will be the jackpot, thus requiring them to stay hooked up to these things for hour upon hour, quarter upon quarter? Maybe that's a morbid thought...oh right, it's Crowbar; morbid thoughts are her stock and trade.
What we did learn from this latest adventure is that Crowbar definitely feels dark casinos full of obsessive gamblers are the exact, correct locales for her to spend Easter Sunday. Being surrounded by terrifyingly dressed seniors and acne-ridden teenage crimelord wannabe's appears to be her millieu. Her choice of timing for the outing did beg the question of whether more or less people go gamble away the mortgage payment on Easter? Do fewer people go 'cause gambling's a sin and they feel they should pretend to piety on at the weekend of JC's supposed resurrection? Or do more people go, banking on the notion that Christ coming back from the dead was surely the greatest odds-breaker of all time, thus the 'anniversary' of the resurrection is luckier than the rabbit's foot? Not being a frequenter of these establishments, Crowbar is still unsure, but we figure we'll run it past Con when she next flits in - if it has to do with money and when people are most likely to part with it, our beloved Minister of Finance will know the answer.
*No Resistance Force funds were lost in the making of this losing streak. All payments were drawn on Crowbar's personal embezzled accounts.
Hi all,
Back after a long weekend of fun and relaxation. Ok, maybe not so much fun...or relaxation. Maybe recuperation. Ok, hibernation. Oh whatever.
Anyway, we all had four days off and we took a calculated risk, deciding to leave Crowbar unsupervised in Headquarters throughout. She doesn't know this, but usually when we "claim" to be taking time away from HQ we work out a little system to take turns keeping tabs on her. It's not that we don't trust her, it's just that she's completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Leave her on her own for too long and the next thing you know there's a SWAT team coming up the front walk and a smoldering police station down the street. We've always managed to buy her out of these tight spots in the past, but one day our luck (or the EBF - Emergency Bribe Fund) is going to run out.
Even knowing this, we're all aware that she's got to be left on her own sometimes and, if we're telling the truth, we also thought it might be rather amusing to see just how far she'd unravel if left to her own devices with no spy work or Mission Critical Emergencies to distract her. Of course we wouldn't want to give you the idea that we find Crowbar's little hissy fits funny, or that we like to mock her - it's just that we do.
So what did she get up to while we were all away? Well, we've actually noticed an odd trend with her lately - for some reason she's been randomly throwing on the Con Allyerd identity, even when Con isn't needed. Twice in the last month alone we've caught her dressed up in knee-high black high heeled boots, short skirts and - get this - carrying a purse. The first time we took it as evidence of either some mission we hadn't been briefed on or signs of Crowbar's mounting psychosis, but either way we figured it was a phase. Then we rolled back into HQ this morning expecting to find all kinds of damage and some new police reports to doctor, and instead discovered that she did it again while we were away. Rumour has it (ok, so we did have her tailed while we were out of town) that she not only donned the Con identity, complete with boots and black miniskirt, but in top of it all she went to a casino. This is definitive Con behaviour. Places with lots of people counting money, machines that spit silver and velvet ropes separating the rich people are Con Allyerd's natural habitat. That's no surprise, but some level of duress is usually required to get Crowbar to don the appropriate identity, and even then she does so grudgingly. Con likes the lights, the bells, the unadulterated, grasping capitalism and the chance to feed on it....Crowbar tends to look for nooks and crannies to plant explosives. In short, we wouldn't expect her to be going voluntarily, and certainly not if there were no scam to pull off to bankroll the Resistance Force.
Perhaps it's some of Con's recent successes spurring Crowbar to let her stretch her wings a bit. We got news a few weeks back that one of Con's works of masterful spin brought close to ten grand into the Resistance Force coffers for the upcoming year. We would have thanked her but she was off somewhere pulling a bank job. Instead we've spent two weeks attempting to find ways to avoid the funder's requested photo op (Crowbar, as you can imagine, doesn't like having her picture taken - we got her out of it). As it stands, Con is clearly way out in front when it comes to pulling her own weight around here, so we're guessing Crowbar thought it only fair that she get a couple of nights out. Sadly, all reports say that CB managed to lose $60* bucks while Con was off in the Smoking Lounge chatting up Baccarat players, so apparently the clothes alone don't make the girl. Seemingly you need the Con attitude to be a winner in the big rooms - something Crowbar on her own doesn't have. In fact, proving the old adage "you can dress her up but you can't take her anywhere", we hear she spent a good portion of the night trying to find excuses to kick someone with those big, black boots, although Intel says she didn't and the EBF confirms it. That notwithstanding, from what we can tell, she actually had a good time and nobody got hurt, except her wallet.
[CB Note - I feel a need to interject briefly here: While it's true that no one got hurt, I want to go on record pointing out that some old lady hit me. You heard me, hit me. I stepped up to a slot machine to drop a quarter in and the woman at the next machine (who had her back to me at the time) spun around and physically smacked my arm away. I was so shocked I didn't even kill her. So it's a bigger thing to say "no one got hurt" than perhaps the HQ Staff realizes.]
Crowbar tells us the creepiest part of the whole excursion were the old people physically jacked into the slot machines - at first she thought the Dark Side had perfected some sort of One-Armed-Bandit life support systems. It seems people who are thoroughly addicted to slot machines tend to use these "Preferred Player" cards, which are like casino credit cards. You slot them directly into the machine, play credits stored on them, and can move from machine to machine whenever you want without cashing out...your credit is all on the plastic. Unfortunately, the casino has seen fit to attach these cards to a long spiral cord like a telephone cord that appears to clip on to your person, ensuring you don't move on and forget it in the slot machine. Apparently old people feel the left breast pocket is the best place to attach the alligator clip on the end of the cord. The visual effect of this, however, is that you can gaze down a row of 50 slot machines and see old person after old person with a cord running directly from their heart into the machine, thus making the slots appear like external pacemakers. It was like invasion of the bodysnatchers, except the seniors stayed connected to the pods by long yellow plastic spiral strings. It's hard not to wonder; if you walked along the row and just started unplugging them, one after the other, would they die? Is the only thing sustaining them the mounting hope that the next spin will be the jackpot, thus requiring them to stay hooked up to these things for hour upon hour, quarter upon quarter? Maybe that's a morbid thought...oh right, it's Crowbar; morbid thoughts are her stock and trade.
What we did learn from this latest adventure is that Crowbar definitely feels dark casinos full of obsessive gamblers are the exact, correct locales for her to spend Easter Sunday. Being surrounded by terrifyingly dressed seniors and acne-ridden teenage crimelord wannabe's appears to be her millieu. Her choice of timing for the outing did beg the question of whether more or less people go gamble away the mortgage payment on Easter? Do fewer people go 'cause gambling's a sin and they feel they should pretend to piety on at the weekend of JC's supposed resurrection? Or do more people go, banking on the notion that Christ coming back from the dead was surely the greatest odds-breaker of all time, thus the 'anniversary' of the resurrection is luckier than the rabbit's foot? Not being a frequenter of these establishments, Crowbar is still unsure, but we figure we'll run it past Con when she next flits in - if it has to do with money and when people are most likely to part with it, our beloved Minister of Finance will know the answer.
*No Resistance Force funds were lost in the making of this losing streak. All payments were drawn on Crowbar's personal embezzled accounts.
posted by Crowbar at 1:24 a.m.
1 Comments:
Wow, hittin' the Casino in a skirt and boots? Yikesorama! Dust off my spycam and get me some film! You know I'll imagine CB in my head everytime I hear that crooner singing 'luck be a lady tonight' - I hope yer happy now...
Uh, next time you go, like, lemme know - I wanna hit the buffet and roulette wheel... for research purposes, of course...
Bonez-out.
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