January 18, 2001 - LIVE NUDES! (Not Really)

There are some fairly large images* on this page, so while they're loading, I'll just blabber on about a couple things.

(* And just a warning:  These images, while not displaying nudity, might not be the sort of thing your supervisor or boss or whatever would like you to be looking at while at work.  Someone walking by might get the wrong idea and fire you.  So, you know, use caution and all that, if you happen to be on the job.)

(Also, these pictures are of an adult nature, so if you're under the age of thirteen, please, ask your parents to leave the room before you view them.)

First of all, thanks to everyone who sent me mail about the site's new look.  Some people like it, some people hate it, but there seem to be two main schools of thought on the subject:

1)  It's kinda busy/crowded/cluttered on the main page.

2)  Um, dude, we don't care what your website looks like, just so long as you get back to writing regular updates again.  MAKE WITH THE FUNNY HUMOR WRITING ALREADY.

As far as the first one goes, the site is a work in progress, and yeah, it's a bit cluttered on the front page, I agree.  I plan to mess around with the design some more this weekend.  And as far as the second concern, well, I certainly hope to be back to a normal just-about-every-weekday type schedule.  Again, thanks for the e-mail, everyone!

Now.

I use Yahoo mail.  Lately, they've been pumping up the advertisements a lot more, cramming an ad into every available space.  This doesn't bother me a whole lot, since yahoo mail is free, but I've been seeing this one series of ads a lot lately:

Okay.  I know sex sells and everything, and let's face it, I wouldn't even look at the ad if there weren't a woman in a bikini in it.  Not that I really have a choice anyway, since the ad, as run, is probably about 30% larger than it appears here.

Still, though, they're not even trying to mesh the idea of a horoscope with the idea of a bikini lady.  There's no common theme.  It doesn't say "Is there love in your future?" or "Wondering how your vacation will go?" or even "Get your sexy personal horoscopes!"  Just the advertisement pasted onto a woman in a skimpy bathing suit.

And, upon visiting the site (which I wouldn't advise;  closing all the pop-up ads will give you a few good hours of clicking), it's a rather bland, boring horoscope site.  No bikini babes anywhere!  Whatever.

It just bugs me.  You feel like whoever created the advertisement just kinda slapped it together between bites of his hoagie (or grinder, or sub, depending on where he lives).

So, I created some of my own alluring ads for different things, using the same philosophy.  SEX SELLS!  WHO CARES IF IT'S RELEVANT?

Take a look, and have a great weekend!

e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

January 17, 2002 - Poetry Wham

I recently attended a poetry slam, or whatever they're called.  A buncha pretentious angst-ridden screwballs reading their poetry in a cafe to an audience of other poets.

I don't have a high opinion of this sort of thing, if you hadn't guessed.

One fellow, the 'headliner', had a poem about the media, in which he cleverly pointed out the fact that they sometimes cover trashy, scandalous stories much more than they do the legitimate news.

He did this by shouting "MONICA, MONICA!  WHERE'S CHANDRA?  MONICA, MONICA!  WHERE'S CHANDRA?" over and over and over again.  He's probably still there, shouting it.  Personally, I never noticed how the media was obsessed with scandal until he pointed it out.  I have a whole new perspective now.  For shame, media!

One guy took the mike and started his poem with the words:  "There is no 'I' in ME."  He held up a hand-written sign that said 'ME' in big letters.  "There is no 'O' in YOU," he continued, holding up another sign, this one reading 'YOU'.  It was weird, but pretty funny.  I thought he must be playing a joke on the poets at first, but he stayed up there a while and read some more 'normal' poems.  I can't remember what else he said, because I was pretty drunk at this point.

One woman brought a guitar up on stage.  She had set her poem to music!  An interesting twist.  Sure, some people might call this a song, not a poem, but hey, we're all friends here.  The weird part about her performance was that she was either playing and singing beautifully, and I do mean beautifully, or she was so incredibly off key and pitch and harmony and rhythm that all the Peruvian skim goat's-milk in all the half-caf Arabian frappuccino tazo latte sumatra sidamo coffees curdled.  It was amazing.  When she was bad, she was really bad.  It was enough to put you off your clove cigarettes.  Still, she had a nice arse, so I listened raptly.

Things got really interesting a bit later, though not due to a poem.  Another woman took the stage, and she was about two lines into her poem, when:

WHAM!

This was not a good WHAM!  Not that many are.  But this was not a WHAM! that makes you go "Hey, what the hell was that?"  Everyone knew what it was, because only one thing makes a sound like that:  a body hitting the floor.  Hard.

Yes, someone had collapsed, near the back.  And you could tell it wasn't someone tripping, or falling drunkenly off a chair.  The WHAM! indicated that the person had just completely lost consciousness while in a standing position.  It's not the kind of thing you enjoy hearing.

What was interesting was that the poet didn't really stop reading.  She kind of paused, and giggled nervously, and then, well, kept on going.  As the guy was dragged off into the back, unconscious, the poems continued.  Finally, she was done, and a guy took her place at the microphone.

He was reading his poems when help arrived.  He didn't stop reading either.  Even when the ambulance and fire truck pulled up, and while the big, burly rescue workers poured in the front door and shoved their way through the crowded cafe with a stretcher, no doubt snickering at the goateed, turtle-necked crowd, the poetry continued.

Thankfully, they carted the unconscious guy out through the side door, so the poet on stage would be able to continue his poem about the suffering and the sorrow of man, without having to actually witness it.

Or stop for it.

e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

January 16, 2002 - Lame-O

A new essay!  You can read it by clicking here.

e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

January 15, 2002 - A Bug's Life

I was sitting outside, reading and drinking coffee, when I noticed an ant crawling busily up my knee.  I flicked it off with your standard Chinese Football-style flick.

Then I thought, "Huh.  That's gotta suck."

It must suck, being of the lower orders of life on the planet.  And I'm not trying to put down ants by referring to them as 'lower.'  Ants are complete bad-asses.  They're organized, efficient, highly-specialized killing, breeding, and building machines.  If they weren't so teensy, they'd rule the planet.

But, they are teensy, and thus are subject to my whims.  It got me thinking, though, about how much that must suck.

I put myself in the ant's place.  What if we, meaning people, lived like the ants did?  This ant on my knee was unwelcome, sure, but I don't think there was any malice, or ill-intent on his part.  I doubt he was planning to drag me off to his anthill and force-feed me to his colleagues, or interest me in a new long-distance calling plan.  I'm thinking he just got lost.

Me, I get lost all the time.  Let's say I've taken an new temping assignment, and I've got the standard bad directions from my agent, and I'm wandering around the city trying to find the right office.  I make a wrong turn, and I'm thinking "Oh, man, this does not look right at all.  I'm gonna be so late.  Where the hell is the the fre--" 

PLAMMM!

Suddenly, I'm sailing through the air at about 400 miles per hour, and then THOOMP I'm tumbling and rolling through the dirt.  I finally stop and sit up, and find that I'm four miles away in some other town.

That would suck.  Especially if the town was Oakland.

And ants aren't the only members of the lower orders that have it rough.  Even if you just go a little lower, say, down to dog-level, you'll find some annoying stuff you'd have to put up with.

For instance, any time you meet one of your master's friends, your master's friend will RUB YOU ALL OVER YOUR BODY.  Head.  Back.  Ears.  Neck.  Stomach.  Possibly other places.  Without even asking.  Sure, it doesn't sound so bad in some cases, but still.  Your master has some damn ugly friends.

And sitting down is a huge deal.  People are always making you sit.  Here you are, with four goddamn legs, but for some reason, you have to sit down every goddamn thirty seconds.  And, if you're out for a walk, and you come to an intersection and have to stop for traffic, you have to sit down.  You HAVE to.  If you don't, intense pressure will be applied to the area just above your ass until you do.

Next time you go for a walk, sit down every time you reach a street corner and have to wait for traffic.  If you're in line for something, like coffee or a movie or a peep-show, just sit down when you're not actively moving.  You'll see what I mean.

Your friends, meanwhile, will sniff your butt when you see them.  And you'll sniff their butts.  Hell, same with complete strangers!  And if there are no strangers around and no butts to sniff, you're more than happy to sniff around where strangers have recently relieved themselves.  Just imagine going into a public restroom and having to smell all the urinals and stalls before using them.

Of course, you can't really help that in most public restrooms.  I meant, y'know, deliberately.

e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

January 14, 2002 - WHAT THE HELL IS THE DEAL?

Okay!  So!  There have been some changes!  Welcome to Not My Desk Version 2.0!  Um... Beta!

Okay, first things first.  By no means is the the overhaul done:

1)  I'm not entirely sure if I like the new layout better.  Actually, allow me to rephrase.  I'm not sure I hate this layout less than I hated the old layout.  Well, really, I didn't so much hate the old journal format as I was simply bored with it.  I wanted something a little friendlier, a little more colorful, a little, well, different.  So, this is it!  For now!  Rest assured, I'll be tweaking it for a while.  And I'll also be working on the website a lot.  (See!  A masturbation joke!  It's still the same old NMD!)

2)  The colors aren't really final.  I like the green, the blue is a bit, I dunno, weak, and whatever the third color is... tan?  Well, we'll see.

3)  The illustrations are most certainly not final.  In fact, they're just free clip-art I snapped up (shocker!).  A while ago, I spoke to someone about possibly creating some original illustrations for the site, but I never received any of the artwork, perhaps because I was so vague on what sort of artwork I wanted that I never actually asked her for some artwork.  In fact, I'm still fairly vague about what kind of art I want.

4)  I realized at about 9pm on Sunday night that I didn't have a spot on the main page for recent entries, which is, um... a bit of a problem.  So, I'll hopefully have that sorted out as soon as I have some recent entries.

5)  I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to archive things.

Anyway, If you think this is the most hideous thing you've ever seen, well, you should take a look at a few earlier tries.  In fact, I'll go ahead and show you, just because they might make the current temporary design look a little better.  Just look at this, this, and this!  And, there was the ill-fated attempt at making the main page look like a comic book, which went nowhere faster than the Flash on a triple Espresso binge.

So, as you can see, updates will no longer be featured on the main page, but will be linked through "The Lastest" graphic and link.  Mainly, I think new updates will be of the "Temp Journal" ilk or the "My Desk" variety, the Temp Journal being about temping and everyday goings on, and the My Desk being more traditional humor articles, which I hope to be writing more of.

Things that are sort of new:  A section for Temp Chat, which is the closest thing I have to an actual feature these days.  Also, a Link to NMD page, which just is a new page with old buttons and banners on it.  And, my Terms of Service page, which is an old TOS I wrote a while back, just on its own page now.  Also, I scoured the archives and pulled out some stuff to beef up the My Desk section a bit.

Actually new things:

1) My FAQ.

2) My Meet the Staff page.

3)  The NMD Store, where you can buy overpriced yet highly original merchandise such as shirts, hats, and mugs!  Can buy?  WILL buy!  Well.  Can buy.

4) A Mail page, which isn't set up yet.  But it's there!

All of this stuff is linked on the main page as well.  And, like I said, this isn't quite all worked out yet, so there may be little problems here and there, like links that don't work or that go to the wrong place or that make your computer explode or your hair fall out or whatever.  And Lord only knows what this all looks like in lower versions of Netscape.

Okay, enough of this explaining things crap.  Hope you like the new design!  Let me know what you think by mailing me at temp@notmydesk.com.  And c'mon back tomorrow for some actual writing!  'Kay?

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