My actual, honest to god, secret hidden agenda

?True story. I don’t remember exactly what prompted this, but while I was in office, I set up an auto-responder. If you emailed the VP with “Send me the hidden agenda” in the subject, this is what you would get in return.

The SECRET HIDDEN AGENDA

DO NOT SHARE!

I MEAN IT!

1. Run for office and accumulate all the power.
2. Disqualify yourself from awards to lull people’s sense of security.
3. Turn down paying jobs so that you create an illusion of vulnerability.
4. Schedule junkets to Cancun, Paris, Reyjavik, Wisconsin to plan our nefarious deeds.
5. Once all the pieces are in place, will stage a flame war.
6. While the members are distracted by the flames, begin what we have always planned to do.
7. Take all of SFWA’s money to stage SFWA the Musical! On Broadway with puppets and pyrotechnics. Starring Hugh Jackman as John Scalzi.

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16 thoughts on “My actual, honest to god, secret hidden agenda”

  1. Apparently my brain is in the wrong world today. I spent the whole of this thinking, “She was in politics? When? Why? Senate, or House?” And then I got to the end, and remembered. Obviously, I have been being “a serious adult in the real world” for far too long. Time to spend the day wearing my cape and building a castle out of pillows.

  2. Mary, you would be my favorite Evil Overlord. You could use soothing speech as a weapon of mind control. (That reminds me of Brave New World, though.)

    Good job on #2.

    Re #7: Someday, I will steal the line “with puppets and pyrotechnics”!

  3. Not that I don’t love me some Hugh Jackman, but it seems to me that Paul Giamatti would be a perfect Scalzi.

  4. Mary,

    I’m just floored by this reveal. I understood that we disagreed about Reyjavik, and that I thought Chris Hemsworth was a better choice for Scalzi, but I believed that the SECRET HIDDEN AGENDA was going to remain… well, secret.

    I’m deeply saddened by your traitorous actions here, and have no choice now but to reveal the SUPER SECRET PURPOSELY MISPLACED AGENDA that *I* was utilizing the whole time!

    Wait a minute… where did I put the damn thing?

    Yours,
    Russell

    1. Russell, must we rehash old arguments? While I will grant that Chris Hemsworth and Hugh Jackman are both Australians, Hemsworth is blonde but, more importantly, does not have the dramatic range required for the rock-aria, “Ye Gods of Hate Mail.”

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