The @-Work Nettwerk
Mundane Tasks and Capitalist Pig-Dog Commands

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Volume Thirteen:
I Have A Paperclip Stuck In My Thumb

Today's "Golden Cubicle" Award goes to the lovely Miss Elizabeth Ann Rose, whose trophy will be promptly stolen, melted down by irate gang hoodies, and remolded into a diamond studded "Don't Fuck With Reggie" necklace:
**A brief impression of the Blair Witch Project (which I got to see at work today):
FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck! Fuck you and your fucking map we're fucking walking south! Fuck! What was that fucking noise? Fuck! FUCK FUCK FUCK! We fucking passed this fucking log be-fucking-for! Fucking turn that fucking camera off. Fuck you.**

My coworker smells like he smeared eggs all over his body. I wouldn't put it past him.

Checked morning email. An unnamed grad student friend writes: "But education brings us closer to god, huh? Who would've thought that my first midterm would be so venus in furs..." I reply with a psuedointellectual rant using Hegelian dialectics to explain the art-noise/death-disco synth(esis)core of Ministry's classic single "Jesus Built My Hotrod." Wanted to share humor with coworkers; found no audience for this joke. (err... is there a joke!?! help me! help!!)

I was typing something boring yesterday, and I drooled on the keyboard.

Luckily I landed a job and fell into a group of people who like to dress up in an appropriate group theme or Halloween. On Friday I have to come to work dressed up like a Cow on Parade, complete with horns, a tail and utters from a blown up rubber glove. Almost enough said--I'll be coming in as Cannibal Cow

www.meet-an-inmate.com

I'm really sick of writing abstracts. I'm sick and tired of writing boring abstracts. I am so fucking sick and tired of fucking writing these boring fucking abstracts, it's enough to make me want to fucking go back to school while my ability to at least still fucking care enough to be able to fucking hate my boring fucking job hasn't been sucked away by the sheer monotony of writing stupid fucking abstracts all fucking day long. That's nine, I counted for you.

Today was generally dull and unproductive. I contemplated changing my hanging files from drab green to turquoise, but I couldn't even get myself to do that.

Today I met the mayor of Seattle. He shook my hand and told me that I was doing a great job for the city. I had no idea who he was, in fact, I thought he was some overly emotional old man off the street, and I think that disturbed him somewhat

I've decided that it's more important to be a suckass that smiles a lot than it is to be a good worker. Take for example the fact that my workplace hired me because the project that I was working on (as a temp) seemed to be taking, well, longer than expected.

This morning my lunch leaked all over my tote bag and German book, so now everything smells like green beans.

Often, on my way back from lunch, I pass by an older, bearded black man who appears to be homeless. He stands in the same place every day and begs for spare change, but only from women. On several occasions, I have offered him money, but he always refuses, pointing out whichever random girl happens to be walking closest to us. "It's okay, I know her," he says, and starts begging her for change.

Today as I was getting on the elevator to go to lunch there were several women on the elevator who must be taking a sign language course. I know this because they all had a textbook called "American Sign Language." Anyway, they must be at the point where they "walk a mile in another's shoes" and experience what life is like when you can't talk. They kept pointing and gesturing wildly to the elevator buttons to make sure they were going to the right floor. Despite this agitation, it was quite a ride.

Last week I was pretty down. On Thursday I wore a black shirt and pants to work. The next morning I woke up and couldn't deal with thinking about what to wear, so I just put on the same thing, except I put a brown cardigan over it to fool people into thinking that I was wearing a different outfit.

Today I was playing on the internet during lunch, and I decided to ask Jeeves, "IS it raining in Seattle?" The answer is yes.

I'm starting to wonder if one of the guys I work with (who, incidentally, looks a lot like Sylvester Stallone) has a gambling problem. He is constantly asking me to bet (not that there are any stakes) on things. Hypothetical example: I am sitting in his cubicle with him and the phone rings. Before he picks up the phone, he asks me, "So, do you think this is our boss calling with the answer to our question or not?" I say, "Yes." (He honestly wouldn't pick up the phone until I said something.) If it is the boss, he quietly says, "You were right. One for you." If it's not the boss, he says, "YOU THOUGHT IT WAS THE BOSS! YOU'RE WRONG! IT WASN'T THE BOSS AT ALL, LIKE YOU THOUGHT IT WAS!!" Good God. He also keeps a list of things I've said that are wrong (like people's names), and constantly refers to it in conversation as "that list of all the stuff you say wrong," even though there are only two things on the list, and he has agreed that one of those things is technically correct. I think he just likes to be right.

www.artcurios.com/bleu.html

Volume Fourteen:
Business Before Pleasure.

Today's Golden Cubicle Winner, once again for the sheer simplicity, Jenny Jones:
**I like to park on the west-side parking lot because the few people I've seen coming out of there cars there are much better looking than the east-side lot.**

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/5651/form.html (Virtual dogshit.)

This past month I blew off work, drove across the country, ran out of money and spare tires, forgot to send post cards, did $700 worth of damage to my car, watched the season change over the course of a 12 hour drive, saw the most beautiful (from a completely objective standpoint) waterfall in the universe, watched my friends band open for Echo and The Bunnymen (my favorite sex band), danced in the Pacific Ocean, and drove back home. The previous month I filed and sent out mailings.

I ordered 43 pounds of Turkey today.

When looking up high school codes, my coworker discovered that Standing Rock High was merged with and renamed Sitting Bull in 1996. Her reasoning for this conversion: "They must have gotten tired!" Isn't she just precious?

I ate 6 pounds of turkey today.

Today I was thinking that it would be nice if I was like Eddie Murphy in "Coming to America" and this suck-ass job was just a cover so that I could find a beautiful wife to take back to my home country to live as royalty. It would also be nice if I had a cupcake right now, but that's not happenning either.

One of the professors that I do work for teaches a class called "Theoretical Perspectives of Leisure Behavior". What the hell are these people thinking?

Metal paperclips look pretty creepy covered in blood from your finger.

One of my roomates claims that he doesn't fantasize about office sex. After I learned this, I stopped trusting him.

A floppy haired boy, most likely an attention craving Freshman, is writing his German exercises in magic marker on the windows that look down on our office, supposedly to teach himself German. One of our temporary staff responded, "you know, the last time someone wrote in German all over the walls, we had a war." Such wit in such a short term position is indeed a tragedy. A footnote: I was just informed that security was called.

My new assistant doesn't understand that the halogens are there to REPLACE the overhead flourescents, not COMPLEMENT them. I may castrate him. Soon.

I am working on a project at work. I created two folders of papers related to the project, one labeled "More Useful" and the other labeled "Less Useful." Recently, I moved all of the papers from both of those folders into a third folder labeled "Not Useful At All."

Suggested the company who bought ours should have a catchy slogan, something like: "B & H: At Least We Don't Experiment on Cute Little Animals."

Today I got food stamps. The lady at DSHS informed me that I made so little that I qualified for the maximum amount of food stamps for a single person. She also informed me that I might want to think about getting a "real job."

It looks like Blade Runner outside my window today. I really wish I had the day off.

Learned about some obscure documentaries: "Raver Bathroom" http://techno.ca/film/raverbathroom/index2.html, which was inspired by the classic, Maryland-filmed "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" (http://www.planetkrulik.com/HMPL/ ).