A Holiday Message from the CEO of CBennettworld

From my congested heart ventricles to yours, all the best for the 2021 holiday season.

All the best what? you’re wondering. All the best mRNA vaccines, all the best N95 masks, all the best physical distancing from your fellow humans! This is truly the most wonderful and awful time of year. 

As I reflect on another year drawing to a close, I can’t help but marvel at how I share a name with the latest variant of Covid-19. You see, my middle name happens to be Omicron. Carolyn Ann Omicron Bennett, (my parents were fans of the 1963 Italian science fiction movie of the same name, directed by Ugo Gregoretti.) I feel delighted and repulsed by this, similar to my feelings when I lost my virginity. But I digress. 

Once again, all my imaginary employees, from the overworked teams tethered to fulfillment, to the farsighted business analysts slumped at their computers, wish you a happy holiday season, full of joy and purified airborne particles. 

In our imagination, you’ve asked CBennettworld what it is doing for the environment. As a global citizen, CBennettworld is serious about doing its part to create a cleaner, greener world. To that end, and in keeping with our Corporate Sustainability Goals (CSG), our workers shall receive no Christmas bonuses or company presents of any kind this year. 

More news! Our conglomerate is set for big change in 2022. Imaginary Head Office is moving from Toronto, Canada, to a bigger and better Imaginary Head Office, somewhere between Kingston, Canada, and Centaurus A, Outer Space. I look forward to our new letterhead. 

2021 began with an attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, and is ending with more public health restrictions due to a highly transmittable variant of the coronavirus. We’ve gone from point A to point A, but through it all we’ve stuck together, like passengers on the 501 streetcar. In these trying times, I quote Genesis 15:9 (New International Version): So the LORD said to him, “bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon”.  What God is saying is … pets are nice. Pat a dog, cat, heifer, goat or ram today, along with a dove and a young pigeon. But do not eat them. Not these ones. Even at Christmas. They’re pets. 

So when life gets you down, when Covid-19 (or 20, 21, or whatever it’s up to) upends your plans to have a nine course meal at the top of the CN Tower and forces you to stay home and suffer through old episodes of The Crown on Netflix, do what I do – watch a documentary on the siege of Leningrad. You’re guaranteed to kiss the ground of your 7000 square foot forever home afterward. 

In the meantime, be of good cheer and of generous spirit. Public health says at 50% capacity, but I’m challenging you to be 100% grateful! On behalf of my imaginary employees and C-suite team, I wish you a peaceful and happy Christmas, free from facing your own mortality. 

Signed,

Carolyn Ann Omicron Bennett

Imaginary CEO, CBennettworld


CB w/ PGC = FUN Monday, February 22, 2pm EST

Please (and I do mean please) join Carolyn Bennett Writer/Comic along with playwright Daniel Thau-Eleff as they read from their work and converse about crafting comedy for the stage. Presented by the Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC). Free. Did I mention it is free? FREE <tag>Free<tag>. See what I did there?

Click here for free tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/craft-bites-featuring-carolyn-bennett-and-daniel-thau-eleff-tickets-141058340293?aff=erellivmlt

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Season's Greetings from CBennettworld

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Season's Greetings from the person, place and thing know as CBennettworld. All my imaginary employees wish you and your family peace, prosperity and good health in 2021 and beyond. Everyone, from the assembly line workers who package those last minute items you ordered online to the management team that oppresses them, wish you and your tolerable ones joy this holiday season.

And what a holiday season it is! No attempts at conversation with more successful peers at festive unions gatherings, no choking down freezer burned hor d'oeuvres at recovery meetings, no guilt about not shopping for gifts online or at the mall  -- this truly is a season of blessings for the introvert, the indifferent, or the selfish.

Of course, a monolith like CBennettworld must make a display of charitable endeavours. To that end, we have delivered a wagon full of remaindered goods to  a local homeless shelter, including Hai Karate (dealcoholized), Easy-Bake Ovens, and Carolyn Bennett's debut novel Please Stand By. We also have pledged 775 million dollars to send a Canadian to the moon to scout for suitable locations for our warehouse expansion. We hope to be manufacturing something on the moon by 2025, and have signed an exclusive deal with Tim Horton's to be the official lunar coffee chain in our retail stores. We are a forward-looking conglomerate, and right now, I am looking forward at a guy leaf-blowing garbage off the sidewalk and onto the street in front of his house.

2020 started off with optimism and is ending with despair. I think it was Job, or Justin Bieber, who said "the Lord giveth and the lord taketh away." As a thought leader, I would like to offer a comforting take on that phrase -- "but the Lord giveth again, and will taketh away again, and then giveth again, and then taketh away again, and so on."  

It's not the end of civilization as we know it; it's the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. Would that be so bad? Would eliminating social, racial and economic inequality be so bad? Would cleaning our environment, inventing green technologies to power our world, and allowing for arts, culture and scientific exploration to flourish be so bad? Would being kinder to each other and cutting each other some slack be so bad?

Do we need to produce any more useless crap on this earth? No! Because we will be doing that on the moon in 2025, fingers crossed.

In the meantime, from my stent-filled heart to yours, my imaginary employees and I wish you a calm and bright Christmas, miles away from family and friends. We're all in this together.

Signed,

Imaginary CEO

CBennettworld

 

 

News of the CBennettworld

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Greetings this day in November 2020.

I am happy, if not shocked, to report that I have received a Toronto Arts Council grant to support a new writing project. Please keep an eye out for short stories penned by me and collected under the title Going in a Different Direction, publication date TBA.

And if you are available Monday, November 23 at 1PM, please join me as I participate in the panel discussion Isolation, Disruption, and the Healing Benefit of the Arts. The discussion is part of the annual conference of the Canadian Senior Artists’ Resource Network (CSARN). Registration is free. https://www.csarn.ca/conference/

Stay well, cats.