Hermes Conrad

Hermes Conrad is Planet Express' resident Bureaucrat.

Biography
Hermes Conrad is a Jamaican Bureaucrat, and proud of both. He works at Planet Express, handling stamping, filing, collating, and accounting - all the fiddly little paperwork that only a true bureaucrat can handle properly. He claims, however, that he is only anal 78.36% of the time. He is also an honorary Globetrotter.

While he was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, he moved to New New York with his wife LaBarbara. They now have a teenage son, Dwight.

Bureaucracy is in Hermes' bones, but before becoming a bureaucrat he was an Olympic limboist. In the 2980 Olympic Games, he competed in the 200 meter limbo for the Jamaican team and came in 2nd place to Barbados Slim, LaBarbara's ex-husband. Then, in a tragic accident, a young fan attempting to emulate his hero broke his spine trying to limbo as low as Hermes. Hermes dropped out of professional limbo immediately afterwards, but took it up again when his limboing skills alone could save the entire Planet Express crew from certain death in the destruction of the space cruise ship Titanic. In 3004, when the entire Jamaican limbo team was detained at the airport because of their "other interests," Hermes was called back out of retirement to defend his country's pride (4ACV13). He came in dead last due to a freak accident with his special limboing suit. In the year 3007, he was decapitated when a decorative sword fell and sliced off his head after a limbo contest at Planet Express. Although he survived as a head in a jar, LaBarbara immediately left him and went back to Barbados Slim. At Lars' and Leela's wedding, he won LaBarbara back when he gets a new body (his own, stolen from the past by Bender). Later, he gets jabbed in the eye with a pen and his head is chopped off once again when a Chandelier crystal falls, due to his new body being a temporal duplicate. His head provides useful guidance in the war to reclaim the earth where, using his mighty bureaucratic mind to coordinate the human fleet, he defeats the gold Death Stars and wins LarBabara back. He gets his body back and witnesses space ripping open in the year 3008. In the same year, he attends Kif and Amy's wedding and participates in "Death Ball" to win the right to explore the Anomaly. He is the 3rd Planet Express crewman to have one of Yivo's tentacles in his neck and joins everyone else in the universe in leaving Earth to live on Yivo. He was last seen listening to Bender's story of Love. Hermes returns later in Bender's Game as his normal self, and as a hermaphroditic centaur in Cornwood, a universe created from Bender's imagination.

Family

 * LaBarbara Conrad, his wife
 * Dwight Conrad, his son
 * Granny (deceased), a zombie.
 * Mamma (deceased), fat and ugly

Additional Info

 * Apperently Hermes has head lice.
 * Age is revealed in "Bender Breaks Out" (US#020).
 * Someone looking like a female version of Hermes appears as a centaur in the preview for, but she has blonde hair.

Catchphrases and Running Gags
Hermes' basic catchphrase is "Sweet [something] of [someplace]!" (the 'something' and the 'someplace' usually rhyme)

Variations include the following:
 * Sweet llamas of the Bahamas!
 * Sweet lion of Zion!
 * Sweet three-toed sloth of Ice Planet Hoth!
 * Sweet bongo of the Congo!
 * Sweet Yeti of the Serengeti! She's gone crazy-eddy in the headdy!
 * Sweet guinea pig of Winnipeg!
 * Sweet gorilla of Manilla!
 * Sweet manatee of Gallilee!
 * Sweet giant anteater of Santa Anita!
 * Sweet squid of Madrid!
 * Great cow of Moscow!
 * S-s-s-s-s-sweet something of......someplace.

A recurring joke involves Hermes about to eat a manwich, until it is stolen by Bender or Zoidberg, at which point Hermes cries "My Manwich!"

Hermes usually refers to LaBarbara Conrad as "wife", supporting his bureaucratic nature by referring to her by title.

Hermes sometimes mentions green snakes and sugarcanes including:
 * Our electricity bill is climbing faster than a green snake up a sugarcane!
 * I'm hungrier than a green snake in a sugarcane field.
 * That's flatter than a green snake under a sugarcane truck.

Another running gag is that he shows hatred to Zoidberg for no real reason at bizarre times. For example, after witnessing a temporarily blind Leela destroying the ceiling of Planet Express, Hermes turned to Zoidberg and said "That's coming out of your pay!", which brought Zoidberg to tears. Also, when Fry suggested Zoidberg had a parasite, Hermes followed up with "Maybe he is a parasite!".

Quotes

 * Hermes: When push comes to shove, you've got to do what you love, even if it's not a good idea.
 * Hermes: Like my granny used used to say back in her tarpaper shack on Montego Bay, "If you want a box thrown into the sun, you got to do it yourself." (mournfully) God rest her zombie bones.
 * Fry: Jamaican? I thought you were some kind of outer-space potato man.
 * Hermes: My Speedos!
 * Hermes: My manwich!
 * Hermes: OK captain, dis is just a standard legal release, protecting Planet Express in de event of de unforeseen. Leela: (reading) Death by airlock failure. Hermes: Uh-huh. Leela: Death by brain parasite. Hermes: Yah. Leela: Death by sonic diarrhea. Hermes: Oh, you don't want dat... Leela: Look, I don't know about your previous captains, but I intend to do as little dying as possible. Hermes: (laughing) Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho! (dead serious) Sign de paper.

Appearances
While Hermes appears in most episodes, films and comics, these categories may be of interest:


 * A plots focusing on Hermes
 * B plots focusing on Hermes