Congratulations on your new job with the Carter Pool Cleaning Company. We take pride in two things here at Carter: extraordinarily clean pools and no sex with our customers. This is a guarantee and it’s one we take very seriously. It’s what differentiates us from our competitors.

Oregon State Penitentiary, Salem.

This place is showing its age. I know they moved it from Portland in 1866, but seriously…the concrete walls are under 15 ft. high. Both sad and ridiculous. On the plus side, it didn’t take as long to get served as when I went to Social Cube in downtown Portland. The bartender there totally ignored me. Of course, that’s part of how I ended up here. Three stars.

As one who has been showing up at the office for over 20 years, I recall the days when I would arrive at 8 a.m. on Monday, and in response to my coworker’s sleepy, “Hey, Mike, ready for another week in the salt mines?”

The English language is replete with swear words, so I was not surprised when a friend’s four year old asked me, ‘Where does nincompoop fit into the lexicon of obscene words when ordered by shock value?’ What kid wouldn’t want to know that? At the bottom of the rung is nincompoop. Nincompoop is a nincompoopish word, not an obscenity at all, but anything with poop in it is game for a four year old. (For instance, poop deck would get laughs.) In fact, just saying poop is more offensive, i.e., better than nincompoop. You turd, even better, and You shit is at least at the twelve year old level. Adding nincom makes poop fairytale material.

We are SEVERE, the first high-end alternative digital magazine platform of its kind to launch this year. As a visual, shift shaping digital literary performance space, we exist on the boundaries of the big, the obvious, the flashier brick. We occupy the outskirts, but we would never wear actual skirts.