Not My Desk - Temporary Insanity

Back in October, we looked at a few different ways for temps to stay fit and healthy on the job with Fitness Week. Several books were ransacked for useful info, including Stretching at Your Computer or Desk, Office Yoga, and my own personal favorite, Facebuilding.

Ever since man stood on two legs and walked erect, unlike the quadrupeds, owing to the weight of head and torso, he has been fated to suffer from stiff shoulders and lumbago.

This book isn't specifically targeted at office workers or temps, but it describes in detail a great many ways to keep fit and comfortable through Shiatsu, otherwise known as stretching (see: Yoga). Not only that, there's also tons of goofy-ass, copyrighted pictures that we can scan, illegally post online, and snicker at! Huzzah!

(Please note: Goofy-ass, illegally-posted, copyrighted pictures may take a little time to load.)

Here we see a bunch of shiatsu points, from the Japanese word meaning "Milk Duds". Mmm!

I almost broke my neck trying to pull this one off. Ow. Then I realized his arms were behind his back. Ow.

Your lover will love it when you show her that men can be sexy too! Work those man-breasts to a hot Latino soundtrack, baby, and she'll be howling for more!

Forget haircuts. Forget expensive salons. Now, when your hair gets too long, just cram it back into your skull! Thanks, Shiatsu!

11-23-00 - Theme week redo! By Jack E Linn from QuickTemp Pro-Support Staffing Services Inc.

Hey, whats up? I'm Jack, and I'm temping for the guy who does this website today. I guess he's taking a day off for thanksgiving -gobblegobble!! :)

anyway, I don't mind working on thankgiving, because they pay a lot more if you work on a holiday. I need the money bad, I'm trying to go to Vegas in January (VAGAS BABY!!!! That's from swingers:). i'm only temping foir another couple months anyway, cause my brothers friends uncle might totally be hooking me up with this job at a dot-com in Sunnyvale. It's pays like 30 grand a year! and you can totally goof off!!!!!! and they give you a laptop

Anyways, I'm suposed to come up with 5 skills that temps need. THis is what i did last time i temped here, even thought i got in trouble last time because i only did four of them., but I had to leave early that day so it wasnt my fauly. plus i was supposed to spellcheck and i forgot but I'll do it this time

If you want to see the last SKILL WEEK, click HERE!!L@@K!! I hope i did that right, they didn't tell me i had to know how to do links for this job..

if it Didn't work ithink it's under themes on the left there, but i haven't really looked at the site yet, well execept yesterday but it was all about cheese or something stupid

if you come in late you can't just say you slept late or were lazy, you have to be clever and say something bad happened, like someone died or the bus never came or your roomate stole your car or got sick or died. if you say you just slept late they'll get mad, so you have to have a good excuse all the time!! heh heh i always have a good excuse like: 1) my roommate died 2) the bus woulcn't stop for me 3) my dog was sick 4) i thought it was a holiday

You can use those their free or emial me and i'll tell you some more of them!!! email address is: <jackrulez@hotmail.com>

I know hehheh this doesn't sound like a skill that has to do with temping but IT DOES!!!!! If you work a lot you have to wash you're clothes and that's a pain, i hate doing launry it SUCKS. So if you dont get too messy you can wear your clothes more then once without having to wash them bt don't get too STINKY because the girlies won't talk to you. HEH UNless they do the same thing i guess LOL

See how i did that? my chat name is JaCkDaRiPpA_437, its cool to do the letters olike that. I like chatting at work with my friends in the teenchat rooms, cos even though i'm 20 I still hang out there because my friends are younger some of them and theres girls there sometimes.

SkIlL four - Making sure you don't get busted looking at dirty websites at work. I do it all the time and I don't get caught, what you have to do is go into TOOLS and INTERNET OPTIONS and then DELETE something. it says delete something, and you should delete it. that means they can't see what you looked at. and there;s something else too, but i can't remember what is is. but i never get busted heh, and i look at STUFF LIKE THIS. bikini babes are HOT! i might get a geocities page and put bikini babes on it, my friend Paul says he's reserving the domain thing or something.

YEAH X-MEN ROCKS. I saw the dvd at my friend Scotts house and it totally rules! It would be cool to have claws so if you're boss said you should be working you could pop your claws out and say "TRY IT, BUB!" I liked the movie even though its a lot different then the comic book was, like toad didn't have a long tongue and rogue was a lot older and she was an evil mutant first but the movie was still good and they should have had more of rebecca romaine stamos because she was almost naked!!!!!! and she was all blue which is cool. she's married to that full house guy

"Who Moved My Cheese? For Dummies", created by spinn from spinnwebe.com. It's not just funny, it's eerily accurate. For context, please see the Total Cheese Experience, hawked on the WMMC? website. Sheesh.

When Cheese Week appeared on this site on August 20th, it was different than any of the other theme weeks before or since. Different, in fact, from anything that has ever appeared on this site. Different in that it actually had a purpose.

Its purpose was to fully examine the best-selling and unbelievably evil book, Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson, M.D. WMMC? is a business book, a self-help book, and a purported guide to dealing with change in life and work. I won't rehash the entire week right here, or explain my negative feelings about the book, because I don't have the time, energy, or rage to go through it again. Well, okay, I do have the rage.

If you'd like to see what all the fuss about WMMC? is, you can check out Cheese Week or, at the very least, read the book review. Or, you can just read the following sentence for a summary.

So, what's been going on with WMMC? since August? Well, a lot. According to the WMMC? website, they have sold over three million copies of the book in the first two years of its release. Three. Million. Copies. I don't know if you realize how rare it is that any book sells three million copies, but let me say it is exceedingly rare. WMMC? is, in many different ways, a monster.

It's been on the New York Times bestseller list for 53 weeks, and currently resides at number one in hardcover non-fiction. WMMC? has also been translated into eleven languages (there's even a Braille version), according to their website, which also reports: "The National Collegiate Athletic Association has recommended Who Moved My Cheese? to 450 universities and colleges for faculty retreats to help them deal with changes in education and for incoming freshman athletes to help them deal with changes from being Big Cheeses in high school to help them adapt to college."

More Cheese products are available, including software called the "Change Survival Kit", which includes screensavers and probably not much else. And don't worry, you can still pick up a copy of the 13 minute animated movie, for $495.00. Yes, just one copy, it's just 13 minutes long, and it's only $495.00.

Even Scott Adams has taken notice of the Cheese, in this cartoon from last Sunday (coincidentally enough, he also did a week on mutant temps). Please don't sue me for snipping your cartoon

Some people are having fun with WMMC?, however, as there are two parodies of the book out right now. One is called Who Cut the Cheese?, and the other is called, well... Who Cut the Cheese? Yeah, they've got the exact same name, but what are you gonna do (spinn also came up with a much better title for a parody: Who Moved My Pension? Again, the humor and accuracy makes you want to laugh and cry, respectively).

Parodies aside, the real gist of this update involves something that happened to me Saturday night.

I went over to the bookstore to look for a new office-fitness book for Friday's update.

While I stood there perusing the business books, a middle-aged couple wandered over, and I backed up a few steps to make room. The woman walked around to the other side of the shelf, while the man stopped a few steps away, and peered at the books.

The woman came back, and they started looking through the books, obviously for something specific.

Of course, I knew what they were looking for. I knew. I thought about just pointing it out to them, or telling them there were 800 copies down on the bestseller rack, but I thought I'd just wait for them to find it, to feel what it is truly like to have God or the universe or fate or coincidence kick me firmly in the--

At this point, it felt like someone had taken a length of barbed wire, tied one end around my stomach, and had given the other end to a small, portly child to use as a swing. The couple walked away, flipping through the book.

Elkman, from Elkman.net, happily sporting a copy of the accursed book on his webcam. He, too, shares my horror.

If I'd had my wits about me, I would have asked them some polite questions, such as why they were buying the book, where they had heard of it, and if indeed this was their sole reason for visiting the bookstore that night (which I know, in my heart of hearts, it was). It would have made a nice addition to this update. But, at the time, I was a little preoccupied with turning slowly around and banging my head against the cold window of the bookstore. Wham. Wham. Wham.

While I banged my head, a single thought throbbed in my brain, over and over. A revelation, really, weighty with promise, with purpose.

I don't know how, yet. I don't even really know what I mean by it. I can assure you, however, that this is not a physical threat of any kind. I have no wish to do him bodily harm (and I'm not just saying this in case he turns up dead with a wedge of cheese jammed in his mouth in the next few months, and I want to deflect any suspicion away from myself).

I just... I just want to GET him. I want to affect him. Discredit him. Damage him professionally.

Through my actions, whatever they are, I want his books returned to bookstores for refunds, and I want his books returned from the bookstores to the warehouses by the truckload. I want the next book he writes to do horribly. I want him to know my name, I want him to know who I am and how pissed off he has made me. I'm not talking about writing parodies or devoting pages of this website to his crappy books. I want to DO something. Take action. Fight the power. I know I can't move his Cheese, I just want to hock a loogey on it.

Have you read the book? Been given a copy of it by your employer? Just have some thoughts and opinions on it? Let me know via e-mail.

(Thanks again to spinn and elkman for their contributions to today's update, thanks to Kyol and wabe for making sure I saw Sunday's Dilbert, thanks to Nikki for handing me WMMC? and both parody books in the first place, and hey, thanks to all of my IRC pals for... well, everything. Not just for supporting my rage-fueled obsession with WMMC?, but for help and encouragement with my site in general.)

Today though, I'd like to talk about television commercials. With all the free time I have, I've been watching a lot more TV then I generally do, approximately 17 hours a day.

I saw a commercial the other day for some sort of riding mower that sucked up leaves and deposited them into a bag. This was presented as being much easier than putting leaves in a bag by yourself, which sounded pretty logical to me. Then they showed someone trying to pick up leaves without the riding mower that was being advertised.

Until I saw this commercial, I had thought the act of manually bagging leaves was annoying and perhaps a little tiring, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. It is nigh-impossible, as the commercial then illustrated:

A slovenly woman tried to put leaves in a bag, paused to wipe the sweat from her brow, sweat caused by her complete exhaustion, and she dropped the rake, scattering leaves everywhere. Then they showed a spastic guy trying to pull a bag of leaves along his lawn, obviously struggling with the bag, which must have weighed tons, and then (oh-no!) he fell down! God help him! Someone else cursed the day he was born as his leaf bag suddenly split wide open, and the leaves literally leapt out through the incredibly big, straight, neat, and in no way pre-sliced rip in the bag. DAMN YOU, LEAVES!!!

I also remember a commercial for a toothbrush that made it easier to reach your back teeth. You know, those back teeth that, as the commercial demonstrated, are impossible to reach with a normal toothbrush. They illustrated this by showing a guy desperately trying to reach his back teeth. He was stretching his face back, yanking at his lips, wedging his mouth open with steel clamps, detaching his jaw like a boa constrictor, etc., all to no avail. At one point, he even took his right arm, looped it around the back of his head, and pulled his left cheek wide open, because it was darn hard to reach those back teeth! At least he didn't fall down, although I bet that's still a risk!

My eyes were truly opened by an ad for a wedge-shaped electric razor. It showed a man, in profile, trying to shave with a normal, flat electric razor. He was unsuccessful, due to the fact that his face, unlike the razor, was not completely flat. Here is where the trouble came in, and please forgive my horrible drawings, for in no way do they do this tragic problem justice:

Here is his head (or part of it). Notice, just below his bottom lip, and above his chin, there is an indentation. If we zoom in a little...

...we see there is no way to shave that area with a flat electric razor! There is no possible way! I mean, theoretically, he would have to lightly press the razor on that area, which might (but probably wouldn't) bend his lip back the eighth of an inch necessary to shave that troublesome spot! Or, he could tire himself by expending the energy it would take to pull his bottom lip in over his teeth, but then he'd have to wipe the sweat from his forehead! Forget it!

Also to be noted: Once he shaved with the wedge-shaped razor, a half-nude woman immediately ran into the bathroom and rubbed her nubile body all over his smoothly-shaved face. Well, hell! I didn't need any more convincing! I ran right out and bought one (a razor, not a half-nude woman. Okay, I bought one of those too, but when they put them right near the register, it's hard to resist).

I'm glad those commercials enlightened me, because that little spot under my lip had been a tangled mess of overgrown facial hair, due to over a decade of not being able to reach it with a razor. That, combined with my black and rotting back teeth, which I've never been able to brush, and my extensive leg, hip, and back injuries from falling while trying to put leaves in a bag, have made me pretty damn unsightly.

I bring all this up because I have an idea for a new kind of fork. A fork with five prongs, instead of four. This extra prong would make it much easier to spear food and deliver it to your mouth. In fact, if you think about it, have you ever successfully eaten with an old, outdated, four-pronged fork? I doubt it. I figure my fork would sell pretty well if I had a commercial demonstrating just how much better it was than the old, useless, four-pronged forks. Here's what I have in mind:

A sloppy-looking man is sitting at a table, preparing to eat. He has a four-pronged fork.

Man attempts to impale a potato with fork, pauses to wipe sweat from forehead, falls over.

VOICE OVER (scornfully): Sick of not being able to pick up food and eat it properly?

Woman pokes futilely at piece of steak. In exasperation, she wipes the sweat from her forehead and throws down the fork, which explodes, killing her.

CUT TO: A horribly emaciated guy, sobbing in front of a huge banquet and clutching a normal fork.

VOICE OVER (disgustedly and scornfully): Tired of starving to death, while delicious food sits just inches away?

Man nods to camera enthusiastically, his normal fork getting caught in the obscene tangle of hair growing from just below his bottom lip. He looks exasperated and yanks the fork, which flies into his eye-socket, killing him. As he dies, he wipes the sweat from his forehead.

CUT TO: Happy, well-groomed, attractive family, eating, admiring their new five-pronged forks, smiling, and nodding to each other.

CUT TO: Clip of that "agony of defeat" skier wiping out, with the old fork digitally inserted in his hand.

Handsome single guy eats with his new fork, and a hot, half-nude woman immediately runs in and rubs her body all over his face.

VOICE OVER: Will you ever go back to eating with a normal fork again, thereby damning your eternal soul to Hell? If you say yes, I'll KILL YOU.

Hi, and welcome to Theme Week Redux, a self-absorbed rehashing of the Theme Weeks that have graced this site!

Over the next five days, we'll be revisiting those themes, and adding an update for each one. This idea was inspired by Ryan Sharpe, a reader of this site who e-mailed in the suggestion. So, if anyone has any complaints about the quality of the humorous content on the site this week, it's Ryan's fault. Feel free to e-mail Ryan by clicking on his name in bold up there, and let him know just how pissed off you are. Thanks, Ryan!

The first ever theme we presented was Women's Week, which was dedicated to all the female temps out there. And there are a lot of you! Women make up almost 3/4 of the temporary workforce in the United States, which would be a telling figure if I had some sort of idea of how many temps there were in the United States overall. Sadly, Ryan neglected to e-mail me with that figure, but hey, you know how he is.

Women's Week arrived way back on July 13, and featured lots of cool junk for female temps, including some safety tips for females, the review of a temping book written by a woman, a really horrible pointless essay, a guide to dating people you meet in the workplace, and a picture of my naked butt.

Today, we revisit my naked butt! No, just kidding! I wouldn't do that to you (again).

What we'll be visiting today will be our dating guide. If you're a female temp, particularly a short-term female temp, you're going to be working in lots of different offices with lots of different people. That means one thing, and one thing only: dates.

That's right, you can turn each temporary assignment into your own personal dating service. Just think of all those permanent employees out there, sitting in the same office they've been sitting in for years. They've met everyone in the building. They're sick of the people they work with. They're tired of the same old faces.

No matter how you slice it, you female temps have a great shot at getting some dates out of every job. The only question is... who will you date? Click on the scary man's face, and let's see what's in store for you!