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Welcome to Men's Week!  Grunt!

(That was a greeting, not an order.  But feel free to grunt, if you want.)

Yes, it's about damn time for a Men's Week, don'tcha think?  Sure, I know most temps are female.  I also know most of my audience is female, based on the fact that out of all the e-mail I get regarding this site, about 99% of them come from women.

So, why risk alienating my core audience with this beer-gulpin', butt-itchin', skirt-chasin' week of updates?

'Cause I'm a man.  And we mans ain't too bright.

Anyway, this will be a little different than previous theme weeks in that I'm putting the entire week up all at once (the reason being, my faithful but malfunctioning computer needs to be taken apart by some experts, and I'm not sure how long it'll take).  So, if you're good and patient and pace yourself, you can have a new update for every day of the week.  Or, if you're a SHAMELESS GLUTTON, you can have all five updates at once, and look elsewhere for cutting-edge, marginally temp-related internet humor for the rest of the week.  Or, if you want to be weird, you can come back Thursday and read Monday's, Tuesday's, and Friday's updates, skip the rest, and cover yourself in butter.

Your call.

Also, although my computer will be down, I'll still be checking e-mail, so feel free to write in!

One more note:  There's a lot of pictures this week, so it may take a little time to load them all.

jump to a day:

monday / tuesday / wednesday / thursday / friday

or just scroll down.

01-08-01 - Men's Week - Day One

Somethongs Up

Let's get right down to it, guys.  You know the best part of being a male temp...

There are HOT women EVERYWHERE!!

You can't walk into an office without seeing a beautiful woman.  And most offices are mostly women!  If you do the math, it adds up to BEAUCOUP BEAUTIES FOR YOU!!!

To illustrate my point, I've got a little photo gallery of pictures I've taken at just a few of the many babe-packed offices I've worked in.  These were spontaneous, un-posed pictures, taken surreptitiously with a small, concealable camera.  Feast your eyes on this, fellas!

Whew!  And hey, if you happen to be a gay guy... don't worry!  You haven't been left out!  Lots of hunky guys at these jobs too!  Take a look!

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e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

01-09-01 - Men's Week - Day Two

Knot My Desk

Hey, guys.  Have you ever wanted to know the origins of the necktie you wear to work every day?  Me neither.  But I do now, thanks to a book called The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie : The Science and Aesthetics of Tie Knots, written by Thomas Fink and Yung Mao.

Before we get into all that, you've got to see this ad, which I scanned from the book:

Boy, get a load of this, willya?  This is from 1951, which isn't really that long ago.  God knows why the guy is wearing a tie in bed, but it seems to be doing the trick.  Smug bastard.

Van Heusen is still in business, I believe, but I somehow don't think this line of reasoning works these days.

The book is chock full of information about ties.  I mean, CHOCK full.  For instance, I bet you think the first neckties were worn by Roman soldiers, don't you?  I bet you go on and on about it, never shutting up about the Romans and their ties.  Well, you're wrong.  In 1974, the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shih-huang-di (pronounced noo-yen) was uncovered, along with an army of over 7,000 terracotta soldiers.  And what were these soldiers wearing?  Around their necks?  Give up?

Yep, a necktie.  Type thing.  Sorta.  And this was way back in about 250 B.C.

After the Chinese and Romans got done with them, the necktie went to France, where it was adopted by "dandies."  After that it went to England, where it got really frilly and ridiculous looking.  That is, until some guy defeated some people or something.  I don't know, it's all in the book.  The result of this was the ties stopped being frilly and started being knotty.

There is an overwhelming amount of information about knots, knot tying, knot science, knot history, and knot theory in this book.  Think I'm kidding?

In order for you to know how to tie all these 85 different knots, you first have to learn all the different moves:

Then follow this table:

And study these figures...

...master these fomulas:

Oh, and a few diagrams...

Hm.

Or, just tie a pair of pants around your neck, like this guy did.

(Thanks to Nikki for getting me this book, which is actually pretty darn cool.  Sure, Nikki is a woman, but she knows more about football and baseball than most guys I know, so it's not too much of an intrusion in our week of testosterone to give her a mention.  Thanks!)

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e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

01-10-01 - Men's Week - Day Three

The "Stronger" Sex?

Boy.  Sometimes I really envy women.  They have it easy, don't they?  But for men... things are tough.

Men are mentally conditioned from day one.  As soon as we can walk and have more or less stopped drooling on ourselves, we are encouraged to buy comic books and watch super-hero cartoons.  Have you really looked at some of these superheroes?  Muscles upon muscles upon muscles.  Impossible physiques.  A complete absence of body hair.  Bright white teeth.  The ability to fly or project optic blasts from our eyes.  It is impressed upon us at a very early age that THIS is what we should aspire to.

This is extremely damaging to us later in life, as we reach puberty and sprout hair over most of our bodies, and then as we get older, and sprout hair everywhere we hadn't sprouted hair yet, such as our ears and backs.  Nature designs us to become pale and flabby and hairy with age, but society dictates we look like male supermodels, tan and fit and smooth-chested... much like the superheroes we were weaned on.  Coincidence?  No.

On television commercials, we are consistently portrayed as pathetic morons who aren't capable of choosing a cold medicine, as beer-guzzling goons who only want to watch football and peer under the hoods of automobiles, as bumbling morons who don't know anything about art or literature or whattyacallit... that crap, uhh... culture.  By reinforcing these stereotypes, day after day, the ad industries are just dooming us to them.  If you constantly tell someone they are unable to pick out tasteful anniversary gifts, or indeed remember anniversaries at all, they will eventually accept it as truth, and ultimately, it will become truth.

Go into a bookstore sometime.  Can you find the "Women's Interest" section?  Sure.  Can you find the "Men's Interest" section?  Of course not.  Flip on the TV.  The Lifetime Channel is made for women.  Is there a men's channel?  Nope (and don't tell me ESPN is a men-only channel, I often see women's golf and figure skating on there, and I can't name a guy who ever watches those).  Even the word, "man", seems to have been hacked off the end of the word "woman", almost as an afterthought.  It's as if society is overlooking men as a whole, and it's distressing.

Men also encounter a baffling double-standard as adults, particularly in our interactions and relationships with women.  For instance, women want us to be nice.  Or do they?  

We are expected to be gentle, kind, caring, understanding.  To suppress our ingrained genetic urges to conquer and battle and fight.  Violence, second nature to a man, especially after a childhood of comic books centered around physical conflict and pee-wee sports leagues centered around psychological abuse, must be stuffed down into the recesses of our being.  That is, until our girlfriend mouths off to the extremely large and muscular date of a girl who accused her of bleaching her roots.  Then, and only then, are we expected to be Bruce Lee.

Women also drool over hunky bad-boy celebrities such as Christian Slater, Bobby Brown, and Richard Dreyfuss, but if we bite a cop's stomach or tear someone's ear off during a skirmish, we're just "being embarrassing."  You know, if women ever want to be the "stronger" sex, they're welcome to!

Violence aside, we're also expected to behave like gentlemen in public, yet perform like a porn stars in bed.  One minute we're supposed to exhibit incredible sexual prowess and super-human stamina between the sheets, and the next moment we're opening doors for and holding umbrellas over our significant others.  We're supposed to talk dirty in the sack, yet use cutesie-poo talk in day-to-day life. Words like "sweetie" and "pookie" and "muffin."  How are we supposed to know when to act like sex-starved slabs of man-meat, and when to cuddle?  There doesn't seem to be any indication from these women.  Or is there?  No, there isn't.

When asked to evaluate how an outfit makes our partner's butt look, day after day, we provide thoughtful opinions such as "great!"  Yet when we evaluate other women's butts, simply as a matter of ingrained habit, brought on by our partners themselves, we are punished and told we're "horny perverts."  Does that mean it's okay to be a horny pervert with our mates, yet not with other women?  Frankly, I don't get it.

Women are constantly telling us they want us to open up, to share our feelings, even to cry in front of them.  We resist at first, after all, it's against our harsh upbringings to allow ourselves to cry, but eventually women get their way, and we do open up, and sob uncontrollably for hours, sometimes even days.  At the slightest provocation we will wail and cry and sob like preschoolers, and then it's suddenly "I wish you wouldn't do that all the time" and "Relax, it's just thunder" and "So, The Drew Carey Show got pre-empted, deal with it."  It's simply unfair.

...sniffle...

Well, men, it's time to tear down those stereotypes.  It's time to fight against the brainwashing.  It's time to re-program ourselves.  Take me, for instance.  Despite my conditioning, despite society deeming me a clueless lout with poor hygiene, I threw out a sliver of soap from my shower and replaced it with a new bar.

This may not sound like much, but normally, I'd use the sliver of soap until all that remained were three or four nearly microscopic shards, ineffectually rubbing them on my body until they were completely gone.  For the next week, I'd simply wash my entire body with whatever shampoo was available, switching to conditioner when that was gone, and finally resorting to toothpaste before going to the store for more soap.

But I didn't do that this time.  I threw the sliver away and replaced it with a fresh bar of soap.  And I still have an extra bar of soap standing by, because I bought several on my last trip to the grocery store.  How did I know I needed soap?  Simple.  I had added it to my grocery list.

Are you listening to me, society?  Do you hear that?  I have a grocery list now.  Today, a grocery list, tomorrow, perhaps, a box of baking soda in the freezer to stop ice cubes from tasting funny.  The day after, maybe I'll have a designated spot for my spare change.  Then fitted sheets.  Trial-sized bottles of shampoo for when I travel.  A Christmas card list.  Candles and matches in and easy-to-reach spot in case of a black out.  And then, the world.

I will fight back.

I will be hairy.

I will be pale.

I will grow my pot-belly, with pride.

I am a man.

And I'm starting, at last, to heal.

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e-mail: man@notmydesk.com

01-11-01 - Men's Week - Day Four

Guys, click here for some hot office models!!!   

Man, willya look at those babies.... damn!

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e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

01-12-01 - Men's Week - Day Five

The Sporting Newdz

So, the XFL (which I guess stands for X-treme Football League) will be in full swing starting in February, promising to provide us with a grittier alternative to professional football.  Among the changes will be no fair catches, a ten minute halftime, and quarterbacks in feather boas.

I think this is a good step, personally.  Professional sports do need to get jazzed up a bit, football in particular.  The Minnesota Vikings will be playing the Giants in New York this weekend, and all I've heard is "Well, the Vikings better hope for some good weather."  Huh?  Why do the Vikings need good weather?  They're from MINNESOTA fer chrissakes.  But in Minnesota, they play in a dome, so if it's cold in New York, their widdle bottoms will get all fwozen and they won't play as well.  Sheesh.

This is what is happening in professional sports.  The athletes started making millions and became a bunch of "dandies."

Football isn't the only sport that could use some X-treme re-hauling, either.

X-Treme Tennis:  

Turn on a tennis match, and what do you hear?  Thwap!  Ungfhh!  Thwap!  Squeak!  Thwap!  Love!

Something missing?  Yes, namely: cheering fans.  The fans just sit there in the stands in silence, only clapping politely after each point, seemingly regardless of who makes it.  And, if one of them should happen to cheer or call out, a strict "Quiet, please!" is issued from the announcer.

"Quiet, please?"  Oh, right, sorry.  Don't know what came over me.  For a minute I thought I was at a FUCKING SPORTING EVENT.

This is game where the fans have to be QUIET?  Are you kidding?  Just think what it would add to tennis when in the fifth set, and the match-winning service is about to begin, the fans are up on their feet, chanting, screaming, stomping, cheering, yelling, throwing batteries.  I can't think of a single sport that would make home-court advantage more of a deciding factor.

Also, Anna Kournikova in a thong.  That's a no-brainer, really.

X-Treme Basketball

Basketball is pretty fast paced already, and due to the fact that there's only 10 guys on the court at once, it's pretty easy to tell what's going on at all times.  Well, it's time to change that!

Just like football, I say we have eleven guys on a side, making it a total of 22 guys on the court at all times.  The clamor from the sneaker-squeaking alone would be deafening! X-Treme Squeaking!!!

Also, Anna Kournikova in a thong.

X-Treme Baseball:

Anna.  In a Thong.

X-Treme Soccer:

A big part of soccer is the play where they hit the ball into the net with their heads.  I say, make it mandatory.  You can ONLY touch the ball with your head.  That would lead to guys crawling around on the ground, scrambling to butt the balls forward with their craniums, which would lead to a lot of head wounds when they collided, which would lead to a lot of blood, which is X-TREME!

Not that anyone would be watching, what with Anna Kournikova walking around naked.  Yes, that's right.  No thong, even.  Not X-Treme enough.

X-Treme Golf:

Hm.  Nope!  I can't think of a SINGLE way to make golf even MORE exciting than it already is!

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e-mail: temp@notmydesk.com

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