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Whoops, that should say "2002", not "2001". The
"back" and "next" button format I stole from zompist's
rants pages, although mine didn't always work properly. Also,
"back" went chronologically forward in time, and
"next" went backwards, which was very confusing for one
reader. I guess I meant "next" as in "next update on
the page".
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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.)
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In case you're just scanning for commentary and not reading the actual
page, I'll repeat the warning above: there are large images of a
sexual nature on this page. A booty sexual nature! So be
careful at work.
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(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.)
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I remember, years ago, seeing a guy juggling chainsaws on TV. Before
he started, he said "I'd like to tell any kids watching at home that
this is extremely dangerous. So if you're even thinking about trying
this, kids, please, be really careful." I thought that
was hilarious.
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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: 
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I still see these ads all the time, and they're getting bigger and more
suggestive. Yay!
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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!
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This one isn't bad, design-wise! The logo colors match her bikini
pretty well, I think. Also, please not the Tigger & Pooh tattoo
inside her ankle. Adorable. I think this is a very silly
position to pose in, by the way.
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I had two versions of this one, and a long internal debate over which one
to use. Originally, the blue banner was below her feet. Thing
was, you could kinda, like... see... the shape of... well... her butthole.
Just a tiny bit! Her panties were kinda, like, poking in
there. A little. I'm guessing most of you know what shape a
butthole is anyway, so it's not like it would be incredibly shocking or
anything, but still. I wasn't sure I wanted to have a butthole on my
site, y'know? And nothing against her butthole, really. She's
a very attractive woman and it's just a lovely butthole shape she's got
going on. Kudos! But (ha) in the end (ha-ha) I decided to
cover it with the logo.
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e-mail:
temp@notmydesk.com
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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.
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I give poets a lot of crap, and I think a lot of it comes from the fact
that I simply cannot write poetry of my own. Not that I want
to. I'm extremely shallow and have no use for such things.
Still, it bothers me that I can't even if I try.
I remember when I lived
in Florida, and I went to my friend's house for a party. My friend
had this little poetry kit, which was a long wooden box with a bunch of
blocks lined up in it. The blocks had different words written on
their sides, and by flipping and rearranging them, you could create
poems. People were playing with it and passing it around (kind of a
slow party, I guess) and it finally landed in my lap.
Where I sweated over it
for about an hour. And I mean, sweated. It gave me a
headache. I couldn't even do simple block poetry where the words
where picked out for me. Ugh. I finally had to put it
down. There's just something missing from my brain that prevents me
from doing poetry. Math, too.
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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.
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That's a lie! The woman with the guitar did not have a nice arse at
all!
I wish I had been taking
notes, because there were a lot more awful poets, and I can't remember
what they said.
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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
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January
15, 2002 - A Bug's Life |
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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 |
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January
14, 2002 - WHAT THE HELL IS THE DEAL? |
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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.
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If you haven't read my FAQ yet, please go do so now (it won't take
long). Then come back and read the next line.
Someone recently asked
me via e-mail why I didn't include the answers in my FAQ. She said
something like "That seems kind of silly." Hm. I
guess it does.
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2)
My Meet the Staff page.
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I like pretending there is an actual staff who works on this site. I
use "We" a lot when I'm talking about stuff, and have done so
since almost the start. I get e-mail sometimes and people say
"You guys are really funny" or "Tell everyone who works on
the site that I liked the updates this week", and I'm never sure if
they think there is more than one person writing the stuff, or if they're
playing along.
The staff page was
created because I wanted to have a panel to answer e-mail, which I've only
done twice. I haven't given up on the mail page, I just forget to do
it.
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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.
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The store is still open for business! Woo! Woo! Um...
woo?
Okay, that's all for
Year Two! Thanks for reading it! Go away now.
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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?
Archives this
page is: http://www.notmydesk.com/archives/archive1_14_02.html |
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