The Riddler has been conspicuously silent over the past few days in the wake of a savage beating laid on him by the HPDEB. The mauling was instigated by the Rid’s attempt to redefine Starbeer’s workload, and was thus entirely justified. At the same time, however, there was something very sad about watching a grown man cover his face in shame and leave a meeting….kind of like I was in grade 3, watching a friend beat up a kid who deserved a visit from the pain train. The vigilante justice was necessary, but I still felt some pity.

That lasted until this afternoon, when the Rid attempted to rally out of his Bootsy Collins funk. He began by discussing our Christmas vacation with the HPDEB…forgetting, of course, that he had already made us a vacation offer. Originally, he had offered us the entire week off. He went back to the HPDEB today and tried to see if he’d be willing to take vacation days instead of the proffered freebies.

He followed this up by telling me that a courier company had left a message on the unmanned general delivery mailbox for me, letting us know that a package I tried to send couldn’t be delivered. I said I’d call the client and see if things had worked themselves out. He insisted I call the courier company instead. A small argument ensued. I called the courier company….who told me that the Riddler had called them about the message earlier in the morning and settled the issue.

The Rid moved onto Starbeer, who was running late and had to leave.

He tried to hold him up with a discussion of a small “sidebar job” (sic) which turned out to be the company Christmas card.

Ah, the company Christmas card. In years past, the Rid managed to keep the Designer insane for about two and a half months with the Christmas card. Now it barely gets a week. The kicker here was that the Rid tried to chisel a free photo out of the HPDEB for use on the card.