There may be a few of you that don't know the origin of the title of this blog (yes, I know, a blog- how late last year. That Pansy, always on the bleeding edge)

Long about 6 years ago, months after I had parted ways with Rizzoli and the show I had been working on closed, the state of California (and American Express, my landlady and Pacific Bell) started making serious if annoying noises about me getting a job. Since the lottery maintained its dreary habit of not picking my numbers, and David Geffen refused to adopt me (Why David, WHY!!!), I went looking. A friend turned me on to temp work. The agency I went to, in a rather random building on Wilshire, was run by an unfortunate woman that I like to think of as Elsa, the friendly Gorgon. Within about 6 minutes, she was sending me off to my personal hell, the place that I like to refer to as "Thong World"

Thong World, as you may guess (clever boots, you) was a place that made underthings. Just in case there is a lawyer out there I won't mention the company, but you've heard of them. They were (I assume are) located in a particularly unattractive part of the LA basin, and, as much as I love LA, that's saying something.

My job? God knows what I was supposed to do. In hindsight, I think I was supposed to run reports- the job description was for someone who knew Excel. Well, I can surf Excel with the best of them, but this job seemed to involve having my rather nice and very attractive boss pop out of her office every few hours to stand behind me and run me through a DOS program that involved a lot of use of the F-keys and random acronyms to tell the plant in Tel Aviv or Tuscon or Tijuana that the thongs for this season would be fuschia jersey with grey sateen piping. I was never let in on whether this was a report that I should be running daily, hourly, or weekly, or whether there was any particular reason behind doing this. Like an irregular cookoo-clock, she would pop out of the office, reel off a list of F-keys, have me press enter, and leave.

Thongs were played close to the, er, vest. In case of industrial spies, you know.

The other workers were, uhhhh, colourful. There was one girl, who was terrified of being fired, since she had sent "inappropriate" emails. She had forwarded something that had her put on full Thong Probation. Double Secret Thong Probation, to be exact. Unfortunately for her, she seemed to have a couple of friends that delighted in sending her emails that downloaded porno pictures, complete with macros forwarding them to the global address book. Oddly, this girl didn't think not to open these emails from her purported friends. Her computer savvy was about zero also, since she had no idea how to undo the pictures that her "friends" sent to her- including a very outre picture of a young woman in truly desperate need of a Brazilian wax that automatically became her wallpaper. Charming.

She didn't last.

Then there was Gun-Boy. He was a very nice young Asian guy who was obsessed with "The Matrix". He called himself Neo, had the leather coat, and was on a serious mission ot get the exact boots that Keanu wore. Looaaddds of research went into finding these boots; substitutes would not be accepted. While this was enough to send an eyebrow skyward, there was also his Y2K issues. (yes, it was 1999) He was one of those people who were expecting Y2K anarchy- to the point of arming himself. Really arming himself. Like Rambo. When he told me that come January first I'd be begging to be his bitch... well, let's just say my eyebrow may have actually have slapped a passing plane. His job was to keep up an incredibly complicated spreadsheet that no-one else was allowed near.

Oh, and there was the woman whose sole job was to call Mexico and scream at the top of her voice in an accent that sounded like she should be "plwotteenk trubble fuhr moose and sqwurrurl" about the thongs being held up.

Or the overly tanned glad-hander who was some sort of exec who was canned by the woman who headed the company, a gorgon of whom everyone was so afraid, they painted the entire complex in expectation of her royal visit.

In any case- if you're still awake, I will solve the mystery of Pansy....

At Thong World, there was no internet access- one must not be visiting defamer.com when there are thongs to be made. When I got there, I was directed to do my chores using the address of the previous occupant, who had no doubt fled screaming into to night. For an entire month, I would email all of my friends, furiously deleting the sent items and trash folder as soon as I sent anything (remember, all eyes are on you in Thong World). The nome de plume was....

Pansy Tham.

Yes, Pansy Tham.

I think that some of my friends (quite understandably) could not pass up the opportunity of calling me Pansy with impugnity, so it's stuck enough that I've named this blog after it. For those of you who knew the story, you have got some added info that I hope will give you a few giggles. For those of you who never knew, you have far, far more info than you ever needed.

Don't ask me to pity you, I lived through it.