Hermes Conrad

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.

Hurricane in Kingston town
Hermes Conrad was born to a fat ugly Jamaican woman in 2959 and soon after began to develop into a fine young bureaucrat, crying when his alphabet blocks are knocked out of order as a four year old and making friends and family file long applications to get into his tenth birthday party.

Limbo champion
During his adult life, Hermes became an Olympic grade limboer. It was around this time that he married LaBarbara, the ex-wife of his rival Barbados Slim. When competing for the Earth team in 2980 a young fan trying to emulate him ran onto the field and snapped his spine, Hermes dropped out of professional limbo immediately after the tragic accident. Turning to his other passion, Hermes and his wife moved to New New York, home to the Central Bureaucracy and the couple had a son, Dwight.

Heroic Bureaucrat
Hermes, as a grade 36 bureaucrat, joined the staff of Planet Express. When his limboing skills alone could save the entire crew from certain death in the destruction of the space cruise ship Titanic, he overcame his aversion to the sport he loved. After a few bad experiences with Brain Slugs, Hermes received a pair of letters from the Central Bureaucracy, the second of which informed him there would soon be an inspection - and a chance at a promotion. Unfortunately, his office was messed up by the angry staff of Applied Cryogenics and he was sent on paid vacation. On returning to the Central Bureaucracy building, he was able to sort the master "in" pile, with time to spare, and was demoted to grade 38. Shortly afterwards he was re-promoted back to grade 37.

It's called parenting
When Dwight and Cubert Farnsworth started their own delivery company, Hermes and the Professor felt threatened, and rightly so; the pair soon took over the company, until they were revealed to not have been delivering their papers. Later, The pair of parents formed a Bender protest group, Fathers Against Rude Television, which successfully protested All My Circuits to get him off the show and remove his influence on their children.

Old Habits
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, but he came in dead last due to a freak accident with his special limboing suit. Three years and three bureaucrat grade increases later, 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 received a new body (his own, stolen from the past by Bender). Soon after, he was jabbed in the eye with a pen and his head is chopped off once again when a Chandelier crystal falls, destroying the time paradox duplicate body. His head then 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 then regains his original body back and witnesses space ripping open.

Mysterious Destination
In the same year, he attends Kif and Amy's wedding and participates in "Deathball" to win the right to explore the Anomaly. He is one of the many people who live with one of Yivo's tentacles in his neck and joins everyone else in the universe in leaving to live on Yivo. After returning, Hermes comes to LaBarbara and the other Feministas' rescue, as they flee Zapp Brannigan and the Earthican legal system through a wormhole.

Family

 * LaBarbara Conrad, his wife
 * Dwight Conrad, his son
 * Granny (deceased), a zombie.
 * Mamma (deceased), fat and ugly
 * Unnamed father (possibly deceased), along with Hermes' mother, he promised his son that he would never be attacked by tentacles when he gives up diapers.

Additional Info

 * Apparently Hermes has head lice.
 * Age is revealed in "Bender Breaks Out" (US#020), when he dies in an alternate timeline.
 * In Cornwood, a universe created from Bender's imagination, Hermes counterpart is a hermaphroditic centaur.

Catchphrases and Running Gags
Hermes' basic catchphrase is "Sweet [something] of [some place]!" (the 'something' and the 'some place' 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 heady!
 * Sweet guinea pig of Winnipeg!
 * Sweet gorilla of Manilla!
 * Sweet manatee of Galilee!
 * Sweet giant anteater of Santa Anita!
 * Sweet squid of Madrid!
 * Sweet sacred boa of Western and Eastern Samoa!
 * Cursed bacteria of Liberia!
 * Great cow of Moscow!
 * Sweet lamprey of Santa Fe!
 * S-s-s-s-s-sweet something of......some place.

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 sugar canes including:
 * Our electricity bill is climbing faster than a green snake up a sugar cane!
 * I'm hungrier than a green snake in a sugar cane field.
 * That's flatter than a green snake under a sugar cane 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!". However he secretly thinks that Zoidberg is "pathetic but lovable".

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 tar paper 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