Wicked Witch

At work we have a little IRC (chat) channel that we use to quietly communicate amongst ouselves. Our working environment is a large, open office, so this provides a practical means to notify others of your actions without bothering too many people. As we are technology workers, it also serves as a common area for dumping text fragments (website addresses, pieces of code, etc) and is extremely useful.

Sometimes we want to capture a conversation or conclusion that we reach, and the IRC channel is perfect for that. We have our own (ro)bot that listens to our IRC messages, logging everything that we say. This bot is called the "WickedWitch", and we are her code monkeys. What is most fun about the WickedWitch, is what she thinks of us:

WickedWitch says: You are nothing but an elf-skinned mound of imp-bladdereddle-headed rat.

Yes, our bot throws random insults at us, or, more accurately, our work. It is programmed to insult our current project once every hour. Every day, we are given a fresh serving:

WickedWitch says: You are nothing but a bootless ooze of spongy spit. You are nothing but a lumpish puddle of goatish craptacular. You are nothing but a yeasty petrification of low-quality cold.

Now, some of us leave our computers on overnight, and get to watch the Witch overnight. And a curious thing was noticed. She would only insult us with squirrels when we weren't watching. This led to the "squirrel conspiracy".

Developer: a watched witch never insults squirrels

For example, at midnight: "You are nothing but a sausage-snorfling petrification of clapper-clawed squirrel" and four hours later: "You are nothing but a villainous petrification of full-gorged squirrel". So we did some quick statistical analysis; midnight and 4am are quite popular for squirrel insults, with 3 times more squirrel insults in those hours than the average! She would insult squirrels in the day time, but mostly on the weekends, when noone was looking. It was as if she was trying to trick us...

The Squirrel Conspiracy continues now, if only in our minds. Though we took a second to reprogram the Witch. She doesn't insult us anymore. Now she always insults squirrels.

WickedWitch says: Squirrels! You are nothing but a weedy half-mouthful of contemptible number-9.