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aaaaaahhhhhhhhh

friday the 12th

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! That’s the most horrible place I’ve ever been, like, EVER! My worst nightmare! It’s one thing to go the home office to catch a meeting or deliver a package, it’s another to go walk into the giant cubicle farm hell upstairs knowing there’s a box with your name on it.

Ha! Kidding! THEY DON’T PUT NAMES ON CUBICLES. Just numbers. Say hello to T-95.

I’m at the end of the row, in the main corridor, across from the two busiest meeting rooms on the second floor. My partitions only come up to adam’s apple height, so people going by stop and rest their chins on my wall and say stupid stuff to me. My workday is going to be an endless succession of disembodied chattering heads.

I worked out a long time ago that none of my co-workers are psychic. You know how I know this? Because a psychic would see past the bland look on my face and hear me mentally screaming, “if you don’t SHUT THE FUCK UP with that droning, stupid story about your stupid dog or your stupid kid or whatever stupid morsel of your stupid life you’re inflicting on me in slow motion, I’m going to leap the six feet between us and poke your stupid eyes out with this exceedingly sharp #2 pencil I’ve been ramming in the electric sharpener for the last five minutes!”

My cube furniture is so new, the stink of fresh plastic makes me blink. I’m down to two monitors, and there is no arrangement that makes either of them invisible from every angle. Best I can do, the lower left corner of the monitor on my right seems to be pretty well hidden from view. I’m going to play South Parks in a little window there, with an emphasis on the ones with the most swear words.

With headphones. Huge, conspicuous headphones. Thanks for the headphones, Uncle B. And so much, much more…

Comments


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: October 12, 2007, 6:50 pm

I got myself a pair of these monitor mirrors soon after I got chucked back into the cube farm. You oughta make your own cool nameplate for the cubicle.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 7:27 pm

I have that exact one from ThinkGeek. I never found it sat on the edge of my monitor as advertised, but it did the job propped in a teacup. Not needed this time. The one bright spot is, I don’t sit with my back to the entrance here. The wall behind me and to my right is quite high. The front and side partitions are the low ones.

I brought my name plate from my last cube and stuck it on this one. I am not a number! I do, however, have a large whiteboard on which I drew a quick landscape sketch. So, you know, I’d have a window.

Ahhhh…I used to have a office. Wif a door!


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: October 13, 2007, 4:00 am

Is that a salt-shaker half full of cocaine in that photo? And what are those plastic tubs full of? Amphetamines?
Holy Mike – what do they teach you on the first day of Graphic Design school, how to snarf drugs?
And there was me thinking Graphic Designists were people who used Macs, listened to U2 and wore the old EMO glasses and soul patch combo. Little did I know that they gobbled crank, snorted coke and drank tea out of fine, bone china cups.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: October 13, 2007, 4:03 am

By the way, a T-95 is a Russian Tank. Are you a Commie? Good god…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 13, 2007, 6:31 am

My generation of art student fell somewhere between punk and goth. And I was quite disappointed in the level of drug use. I had to beg my own from my friend who went to hippie school.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 13, 2007, 9:07 am

Something in this room is very, very dead. Damien has killed three mice in three days (well, technically, I killed the last one. He just broke its spine so its back legs didn’t work and then watched it drag itself across the carpet with its front legs), so I suspect the Mousinator has left me a maggotty present in here.

Must be the colder turn bringing them in.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 9:22 am

They have hippie schools? I thought it was a trade – y’know, like velvet portraiture or village idiocy. Ya apprenticed to an older hippie for a few years and learned the scams, welfare ropes, how to roll and bogart, proper pipe-stuffing, etc?

I didn’t know it was, like, a profession. They sure as hell didn’t offer it at the school I attended. It was more of an intramural activity.


Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: October 13, 2007, 9:34 am

Your landscape sketch reminded me of our window…at work, we all got stuck in this craptastic little building with no windows that will blow away in a hurricane. Several people had moved there from rooms with windows, and I had moved there from an actual office which I shared with this guy who was almost never there, so I had had an office to myself with a huge whiteboard and everything (no window though).

So now I had a cubicle. When we saw the plans at our group meeting, I noticed that I had a giant fucking pole (the ethernet and phone cables were running down the pole from the ceiling) right in the middle of my area, between my two desks, and they told me that I was going to have it there for a few weeks while maintenance decided what to do with it. I pitched a huge fit and insisted that I absolutely could not work with a giant fucking pole right in the middle of my desk area. For one thing, there wasn’t room for my chair. My supervisor attempted to shut me up by saying, “You know, you’re not the only one with a pole,” and I retorted, “Yeah, well, I’m the one who’s going to bitch about it!”

So on the day of the move, a Friday, I was informed that the poles were moving that night, and everything would be ready for us on Monday.

ahh, the sweet taste of victory.

Oh right, the window. Anyway, one of the guys got a big piece of paper and drew a window frame and an idyllic landscape, labeled it “[Group Name] Window,” and put it up by his desk.

By the way, I think I qualify as a moronblog…but if it works better for you to categorize me as a castaway on Gilligan’s Island, that works too.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 13, 2007, 10:30 am

You know the story, Mrs Peel? The first season of Gilligan’s Island, the theme song went “a movie star, and all the rest.” Which, since “all the rest” was just two characters, seemed unfair to Bob Denver. So he held out until they changed it to “the Professor and Mary Ann.” Which is why that line doesn’t scan for shit.

Office before last, we were on the second floor facing a patch of forest, with a stream running through it and a little bridge. It was beautiful. We saw all kinds of wildlife. Traditionally, whenever it snowed, one of the draughtsmen would haul out an ancient overhead transparency (remember those?) with “Winter Wonderland” written on it and tape it to the window. Beautiful. It was a funny little patch of conservation land in the middle of urban suckitude. The irony is, the prestige offices were at the front of the building, facing out over Industrial Office Park Hell.

I didn’t have a window, but I had a real office with a door. I didn’t rate that; the computers I worked with did.

Ever hear if Evergreen College, McGoo? They don’t leave their hippies to chance in Oregon. They train them special.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 11:01 am

Oh! Oregon. yeah, they would have a special breed, wouldn’t they? I bet they export ’em, too. I wonder if there’s a tariff on ’em?

I didn’t know that shit about Bob denver. Cool. I do remember the change in theme song lyrics, but never knew why.


Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: October 13, 2007, 12:27 pm

Oh, ok. Well, being a moronblog is better.

Right now, I have a corner of a fairly large room, right by the window. It’s pretty sweet. I get to watch squirrels playing. I’ll be moving in a couple months, though, and I don’t know yet where I’ll be sitting. Probably somewhere crappy, but I’ll be managing a cool new project, so that will make up for it.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 13, 2007, 3:11 pm

Didn’t Saint Pancake go to Evergreen? I mean, before she did that grudge match with Caterpillar?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 4:24 pm

You is correcto, jw. At least according to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

The Flattened One attended Evergreen, where she got a Masters in Flakery & Reason Avoidance. Unfortunately she flunked Dodging Objective Reality I and II. Hence the result.

Mrs. Peel – the Moron group has way better parties than the Professor & Mary group.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 13, 2007, 4:53 pm

What, THIS happy young lady?

angry rachel corrie

I always thought it was sad that she couldn’t gin up a real American flag in Palestine and was reduced to drawing some stars and shit on a piece of paper with a crayon before this little demonstration.

Searching for this pair of snaps, by the way, I discovered there are some not nice pictures of her post-Deere floating around out there. There’s one with her body wrapped in the American flag being shoved into a plane or something. Is that irony, or just WTF?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 13, 2007, 5:02 pm

Wrapping her useless carcass in toilet paper would have been more appropriate.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 6:35 pm

Why didn’t they just slip the flattened idiot into a mailing envelope and send her home? She coulda gone home First Class instead of as baggage.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 13, 2007, 7:23 pm

well, coming home as baggage was pretty much how she left it. And her IQ was identical both times.


Comment from Gnus
Time: October 13, 2007, 7:43 pm

Oh hai,

Seen teh lolsecretz?

Maybe it’ll cheer y’all up a bit.

Or not.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 8:37 pm

Wrapping her carcass
In Charmin or newspaper
Is more than deserved.

We screamed our warnings
But our fears and misgivings
Fell on flattened ears.

When Pancake came home
She was much like Raisin Bran
Two scoops in a box.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 9:09 pm

Dingbat

-with apologies to Don Robertson & Hal Blair: ASCAP-

She lay face down in the Gaza sand
Clutching a peace sign in her hand
Squished from the front, she looked really flat
But her friends said her bossum was always like that
Picketing the ‘Cat, she couldn’t be seen,
and, with engine noises, no one heard the scream – of Dingbat

Diing-baaat,
Dingbat!

Now, a ‘Cat D9 weighs four or five tons
And your typical Dingbat weighs almost…none.
The ‘Cats got armour, the ‘Bats got meat
So the ‘Cat will pulverize the ‘Bat complete.
But the ‘Bat should be happy, not sad or glum
‘Cause once and for all, ‘Bat and earth….are one – Go! Dingbat.

Diing-baaat,
Dingbat!


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: October 14, 2007, 3:24 am

Jesus, you guys are cold. Sure, she died for a rotten, non-cause, but she still died horribly. And yeah, I know – strangers die everyday, but she gets my pity more than my condemnation. When a squishy human goes up against a bulldoser, there can only be one outcome and it’s never pretty.
What a waste of a life; something all too common in ‘Palestine’.


Comment from porknbean
Time: October 14, 2007, 3:50 am

She should have been buried in Palestine, but ‘they’ would not want have wanted their filth pit desecrated with infidel.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: October 14, 2007, 5:07 am

I like the kids’ expressions in that ‘photo. If there were every an encyclopædic reference for the phrase ‘what the fuck?’ – those kids’ expressions would be it. Most notably the girl behind Ms. Corrie’s left elbow.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 6:15 am

Dingbats who – after being born and nutured here and being protected by this country – go to other countries and burn our flag and then stupidly block multi-ton machines for no good reason get no sympathy for me. Choices have consequences. Most adults know that.

Its unfortunate that you find it cold, GH, but fuck her and the dirt she bled on. I will not allow myself to feel any sympathy for her at all. She’s not worth it.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 14, 2007, 8:02 am

My mother sent me a copy of Flattened Fauna. Dude plays it a little too straight. After a while, it’s just depressing. But, hey, line up all the spoiled brat activist ingrate know-nothings in America, and I’ll bulldoze them down myself. We need to revive the concept that the world is a better place without some people.

Take the Palestinians. They were probably human once. But for so long now, the world has told them their every atrocity is justified that they have become sociophathic monsters. Some state these people will make. Sooner they eat their young, the better off we’ll be.

<koff>

Thanks for the lolsecretz, jw. I needed that. The strain of throwing my precious office supplies and mismatched socks away is really getting to me.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 9:02 am

Yeah, the FF dude needed to lighten up a bit. But I liked his new word: “Enroadment – the process of being pressed into the pavement.”

Kinda like what happened to Pancake; she was enroaded, briefly, which is why I included the link. I figured I’d get to the word before The Filtered One spewed it out.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 9:14 am

…and, since I didn’t sleep last night and am all coffee’d up:

– – on second thought, no. I will not rant on cultures of entitlement and contrived victimhood. Its not worth my energy today. Suffice to say “Kill ’em all and let Allah sort ’em out.”

But by god, Weasel, I understand your recent frustration. Your world (40 hours a week and more) has been stirred up and dislocated. Your precious stuff has dwindled, and you have an even bigger disturbance ongoing for the next 4 months, followed by a traumatic dislocation and more disturbance. Life will have occasional suck-like moments for the Weasel for the forseeably future. Stiff upper lip, Lady.


Comment from Pupster
Time: October 14, 2007, 9:24 am

Sorry to see you have been relegated to the cube farm Stoaty. Been there, moved up and out, probably going to be back in 1/2 size fabric covered plastic walls soon.

I was able to convince my cubical neighbors at my last job to leave the overhead florescent lights off, and I used low wattage desk lamps with full spectrum bulbs. It makes a difference. There is a pretty good Tom Hanks rant in the movie “Joe versus the Volcano” where he goes off about the overhead fluorescents sucking the life out of his skull through his eyeballs. Tough to be creative and motivated in a gray cube.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:01 am

“We need to revive the concept that the world is a better place without some people.” – Weasel-

Yep. Few people consider the fact that – now that the passenger pigeon is extinct – there are millions of houses and people and car windshields NOT getting shat upon by this prodigious crapper of a swarm-bird. And you’ll never have to worry about a Dodo digging up your yard looking for grubs.

There are some critters and folks we’d just be better off without.

Mosquitos. Need I say more?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:15 am

About a decade ago, a buddy of mine gave me Flattened Fauna as a birthday gift. As extended parody (and extremely dry, sick humor) it is a tour de force.


Comment from Gnus
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:23 am

Yerright, McGoo. Mosquitos. Ptui! What are they good for?

And black flies too. Oh, and don’t forget the yellow flies. Satan’s critters, all of ’em.

But seriously, what good are mosquitos anyways? Wonder what would happen if we extincted them.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:27 am

Oh, you’d hear some boo-hooing from the bats, I imagine. But then, without mosquitos, what good are bats?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:30 am

I’m with you, Weez. I have a pretty long better-off-dead list myself.

I save my pity for those who deserve it. Idiots suffering the eminently foreseeable consequences of their own actions aren’t in that category.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 10:36 am

God, I so feel I belong here….

I figure the bats can probably learn to eat other things. If not, well, tough shit.

Seriously, Gnus has a valid point. What good are mosquitos other than a food supply for some bats and a few birds (and fish food in the larva stage)? Can’t they eat other things? It’s not like Pandas and that bamboo crap or whatever, is it?


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 14, 2007, 11:08 am

Ah, McGoo, McGoo….

Who can disagree with your philosophy that it’s an ill Caterpiller flattens no one no-good?


Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: October 14, 2007, 11:34 am

But I love bats! They’re so cool!

Mosquitoes also serve as a vital transmission vector for certain diseases, which is not-so-good for us but very good for the diseases. They’re alive too, you know.

(well, sort of. Actually, I don’t know if there’s a consensus on whether viruses [virii?] are alive or not. Tattooed Intellectual, any thoughts?)

(p.s. the transmission vector thing is one of the many reasons I hate radical environmentalists with a passion. Their actions re: DDT have caused millions of easily preventable deaths.)


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 14, 2007, 11:50 am

That’s such an imperialistic, human-centric viewpoint, Mrs. Peel. Have pity for the poor, defenseless mosquito. I mean, what right do humans have to kill other living beings? Except for the Jews, of course.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 2:25 pm

“…it’s an ill Caterpiller flattens no one no-good?” -Lokki-

That’s right. If Pancake had had a lick o’ sense she’d be stateside right now, plopping out crotchfruit and going to peace marches. Instead, there’s probably a whole generation of nieces and nephews in her family that’ll just refer to her as “Aunt Jemima Pancake”.


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 14, 2007, 2:27 pm

JW –

” I mean, what right do humans have to kill other living beings? Except for the Jews, of course. “

You want me, at the very summit of the food chain, to eat other living beings alive???

Ewwwwwwwwwh! How savage!

I mean, I’ve been known to enjoy a bit of particularly fresh sashimi, now and again, but in general, already dead food is better for everyone involved in the transaction.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 14, 2007, 2:35 pm

“Crotchfruit.” Jeez-uz I love that expression!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 2:40 pm

Aw, c’mon Lokki. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve swallowed a live rainbow trout.

I like watchin’ me belly bulge and kick around when it hits the ol’ acid. Yee-haw!


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 14, 2007, 3:24 pm

Yeah, McGoo – When I take old acid I imagine a lot of strange things too. Maybe if I’d kept it in the freezer or something, the hallucinations wouldn’t be so wierd.

Anyhow, I thought you were on painkillers…..


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 4:36 pm

Opiates? Naa. I gave ’em up for Winter Solstice. Besides, nothing hurts, presently. Not even my titanium knob. Suits me. It’ll leave more for “later”.

I did eat a sack of White Castle squareburgers once.

Trust me: Don’t.


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 14, 2007, 4:52 pm

I did eat a sack of White Castle squareburgers once.

Now there’s something that would make your belly bulge and kick around all night.

Funny, isn’t it? We’ve come full circle. All the way from the pain and suffering of placing Weasel in a confined space to the pain and suffering caused by putting a bag of White Castles in a confined space.

Spooky that. Oh, and that ties in the bats Big Fucking BATS part of the conversation. Wow! Cosmic.


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 14, 2007, 4:54 pm

PIMF PIMF PIMF PIMF PIMF!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 5:10 pm

Ya see, LokKi. I never do that fancy bold shit. I know my place in the universe, and its not bold. I’m more of a …. polymoron.

Thats like an autoidiot only a lot different.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 14, 2007, 5:29 pm

PIMF Pairs in Metal Foil
PIMF Pensacola International Music Festival
PIMF Percent Intramuscular Fat
PIMF Preview Is My Friend
PIMF Price Indexes of Materials and Fuels (UK)
PIMF Product Improved Mini-Flail (Robotic Combat Support System)
PIMF Prototype Integrated Manufacturing Facility
PIMF Pseudo-Instantaneous Mean Frequency

You want that bad boy unbolded, or would that make the next two hang there all not making sense?


Comment from Anonymous
Time: October 14, 2007, 6:03 pm

Weas – When I’ve sinned, I’m man enough to admit it…
Bah! Leave it there.

I’m going out for drinks with Akismet to get the taste out of my mouth.

I hope no one here takes offense to me cursing out the
Pensacola International Music Festival…


Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: October 14, 2007, 6:04 pm

Speaking of bats, they’re an example of convergent evolution (evolution occurring along two independent lines but producing the same general form). Macrobats (the big fruit bats and such) are diurnal and roost in trees–>no echolocation. Microbats (the small ones) roost in caves and have echolocation.

As for viruses being alive. Well, that’s a bit of a deep philosophical discussion. They’re not sentient.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 14, 2007, 6:07 pm

So macrobats have good eyesight?


Comment from Anonymous
Time: October 14, 2007, 6:38 pm

So you think you have it bad with YOUR cubicle, eh?

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/10/enter-our-sadde.html


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 14, 2007, 7:31 pm

Where do dingbats fit in? I suspect that they, too, are convergent evolution – their line probably originating with serial crossword puzzle cheats and celebrity nipple-tweekers.

Pie In My Face. Nope. Just teasin’.

I didn’t know what pimf meant either, but thanks to the Internet I’m all better now.

I thought the Deep Thinkers had decided that viruseses were not alive. Kinda like prions and UN investigators. They’re just…evil.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 14, 2007, 7:41 pm

Prions might not even exist. Rogue-replicating proteins are just one possible explanation for the phenomenon of ‘prion’ diseases. They are the explanation advocated by someone who was angling for…wait for it…!…a Nobel. I read dis book once.

And I’d kill for one of those cubes, anonymous. They’re grubby and horrible. I *like* grubby and horrible. What I got is clean, new, antiseptic, corporate and HIGHLY conspicuous. The only person in the company more conspicuous than me now is the front desk lady. I kind of like the front desk lady, anyhow. We’ve been buds for years.


Comment from BGG
Time: October 14, 2007, 8:03 pm

Just coming in on the end of this conversation. If you have to work in a cube farm, headphones are ok but take my advice and keep a stockpile of earplugs handy. It’s the only way I stay sane. And that part’s debatable, but trust me: get earplugs.


Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: October 15, 2007, 12:28 am

Yep, macrobats have really good eyesight.

Last bit of anything I heard re prions was that rogue proteins is the best answer we have at the moment. Personally, it wouldn’t really be an issue if some dumbass hadn’t been feeding animal bits to herbivores.

And the Nobel prizes in anything but “Peace” are fairly highly respected and sought after.


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 15, 2007, 10:16 am

Yes, a good rule of thumb seems to be “don’t be putting your animal bits into a herbivore”. Isn’t that where syphillis supposedly came from?

Of course that leads me to the whole frankenfood question about strawberries without flounder anti-freeze genes in them.

I’m not totally opposed to genetically engineered foods as we’ve been mendeling about in modifying plants and animals for hundreds of years, but I am concerned that we don’t take too great a leap of faith too fast.

The Law of Unintended consequences fits snugly up against Murhpy’s Law


Comment from lauraw
Time: October 15, 2007, 10:55 am

“My partitions only come up to adam’s apple height, so people going by stop and rest their chins on my wall and say stupid stuff to me.”

Here. Plus you can dry apple slices on them.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 15, 2007, 11:33 am

“…mendeling about…” -Lokki-

Heh. I like that.


Comment from Dawn
Time: October 15, 2007, 1:15 pm

with that droning, stupid story about your stupid dog or your stupid kid or whatever stupid morsel of your stupid life you’re inflicting on me in slow motion
Ouch!


Comment from Dawn
Time: October 15, 2007, 1:43 pm

Need any help?


Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: October 15, 2007, 5:35 pm

Lokki, re the GMO (genetically modified organism) it’s remarkably safe (given what we’re playing w/). The hoops that have to be jumped thru before the project can start, and before it can ever hit the outside are truly amazing. And to be honest, GMOs may be the only way to adequately feed the population. If you get a chance check out golden rice.

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