Elon Musk recently used his new royal powers to order millions of federal employees to take time away from less important work, like providing health care for veterans, to send him a written report on what they had accomplished the previous week.
No one will actually read these millions of reports, sought in the name of government efficiency nonetheless.
This did get me thinking. Maybe Musk is onto something. Maybe everyone should be required to submit weekly reports to Mr. Musk. I asked some of those in my personal orbit to write theirs:
Our dog Lola — It was a busy week. I have been practicing my hypnotic powers on writer Jim, with a set of successful metrics to report. I got him to give me 17 dog treats, take me for 7 walks in the freezing winter weather and rub my belly 20 times. On my own, I spent approximately 40 hours this week taking daytime naps on the bed upstairs, leaving approximately two pounds of dog hair on the bedspread. As dogs, this is not our fault. We can’t lick shed hair up like cats and barf up hairballs. Dogs are never going to agree to that, ever. I also barked at 10 trucks.
Curious George the monkey — I had a pretty typical week. Cleaned windows in a skyscraper, stole a couple of cows, broke the giant dinosaur at the museum, started a paper route and used the newspapers to make paper boats for ducks, and flew into orbit in an experimental spacecraft. I also spent time with a sweet classroom of pre-K children and talked to them about what it means to be curious. Some of the children thought it meant being bad. So I explained that being curious was great, that it meant wanting to know about things, even if it gets you into trouble from time to time
Lester the oak tree squirrel — Look, my weeks in the winter are just a slog. They are a daily repeat of the same crappy task over and over. I worked like crazy last fall finding acorns and burying them in the dirt. And guess what? I can’t find any of them for the life of me. This isn’t my fault. They have been buried under snow since before Christmas. It isn’t like squirrels put up little marker flags over them the way plow drivers do with driveways. So that’s what I did this week. I looked for acorns under the snow. If that’s not as productive as you expected, you try being a squirrel in February.
Sam-I-Am — This week I worked on an experiment to see if I could pester a guy, a total grouch, into actually eating green eggs and ham. To achieve this goal I badgered him incessantly, using a variety of props and tools. These included a boat and a goat, a mouse and a house, a fox and a box, and others. At one point we also plunged under water and I not only had to get him to eat green eggs and ham but to eat really soggy green eggs and ham. In the end, not only did he try them, he liked them! Big success. But you won’t see me eating them, yuck.
Month of February — I lived up to my reputation of the longest month of the year, despite having the fewest days. I kept the ground covered in snow, forcing people to shovel their driveways almost daily. Then just when they tired of the snow, I thawed it out for a day so it could turn into ice — icy sidewalks, icy streets, icy falls. After that no one complained about snow anymore. Finally, to be especially mean, I gave children a whole week of snow days, right smack in the middle of the winter school break they had off anyway.