Category: awkward

An Open Letter on Behalf of Mankind

Dear engineer-type gentleman I just passed on the way into the cafeteria:

I appreciate that today is pretty warm day. The weatherman predicts temps as high at 95 degrees where we are.

I also appreciate that when the weather heats up, it’s always nice to release your legs from the tyranny of pants.

Fair enough.

Given that our employer favors a “business casual” environment, shorts are, for the most part ok.

What I take issue with, sir, is not that you are wearing shorts, but rather the shorts you chose to wear. That garment was obviously bought in or around the year of 1985 when both you and Larry Bird had the legs to pull off a pair of uncomfortably short shorts.

The year is now 2010 and neither you nor Mr. Bird should put people through this. It’s a lot to deal with while strolling the campus of this very conservative and well-respected multi-national corporation.

I fear for your manhood when you sit, good sir, because there is not enough cloth available, given the dimensions of your now engineer-like body, to cover all that needs to be covered.

No. Don’t bend over. Please. I’m begging you.

Just take your cheeseburger and fries and head back to whatever research lab you emerged from.

I shall go cleanse my eyes with a Brillo pad.

Let’s not have this chat again, eh?

Warm regards,

Karen

Listless In San Francisco

In searching for something to entice The Muse to put down her bons bons and get off her settee, I like to search around for pages offering help to flagging bloggers.

Just about every page I visit suggests creating posts with lists.

I see it all over: “list posts are very popular!”

  1. Really? With who?

  2. Perhaps the who doesn’t matter as much as the what

  3. I’m not sure lists are my thing

  4. Maybe on this one I should go against my own grain

  5. And make a list

  6. A list for the listless

  7. (Yes, I went there)

  8. How about a blog post where the contents ARE the list

  9. No well thought out collection of ideas

  10. No useful reference guide

  11. Just random thoughts

  12. listlitized

  13. Which is so not a word but I don’t care

  14. I mean, does it count as a list if it’s not

  15. a clean, well organized list?

  16. I think it does

  17. In fact, I think it makes it better

  18. Maybe people will even want to

  19. read to the end

  20. instead of scanning down the list

  21. Which I am totally guilty of doing

  22. Maybe

  23. I should leave

  24. Some blank list items

  28. Just to make it confusing

  29. Or maybe

  30. Lists

  31. Are just too darn orderly for my disordered mind

The Well Went Dry

I guess my insightful marbles and rubber chicken post yesterday tapped out The Muse.

I’m at another lean spell on blog topics. So you know what that means!

Imagination Prompt roulette!

A spin of the wheel and away we go!!

Your present job makes you…

Able to pay the rent and buy groceries and every once in a while, a stupidly expensive bauble.

One food you would never give up is…

What?!? Give up a food?!? : looks around suspiciously :

Never! You can’t take me and my twinkies alive!

Nothing matters…

You’re telling me.

(I don’t make these up…they come straight off the prompt)

I remember when…

…my dad used to start a sentence with “I remember when…” and then I’d turn up the television just a little bit louder.

Why do you feel like you do right now?

A carefully managed concoction of sugar, fat, salt, and vodka. Lots and lots of vodka.

What’s the coolest piece of technology you work or play with?

I work for the most austere tech company in the world. We don’t make cool. We make reliable.

So that lets out the work part of the question.

Play with? Well, the husband has an iPad which is VERY cool. When he got that, I got his MacBook Air. I know the technology is a couple years old but I’m deeply enamored of this little thin machine. It’s beautiful and reliable and it makes the PC on my workdesk look like a hunchback.

What’s the last piece of art you made?

Ok, now we’re in my wheelhouse!

I think it was the three small canvases that I turned in for the Brooklyn Art House Co-Op project. I mailed those out on Sept 1.

That’s a LOOONG dry spell of not creating any art.

I’d better get on that.

High school reminds you of…

Horrible dark things I shant share here.

I generalize about _____ because…

… _____ is so specific.

Why now?
Because I’m booked later.

Could you stay in bed all day and think?

Yes. I could also stay in bed all day and not think if anyone is looking for that talent.

Today when I put on my pants, I…

Double checked I’d zipped my fly. Otherwise it’s too drafty.

Money is _____ and here’s why

Wait. I thought _____ was specific. Now it’s specifically money?

I have the golden touch!

Woo hoo!

I’m off to go spend my _____ all around town.

And there we have it.

Thanks for tuning in through the latest edition of Writer’s Block!

I’ve Lost My Marbles!

Woooo!

There they are! In my hand!

Oooh how I love marbles. I was in a Diddams party store today and I generally revert to about ten years old when I get in that store.

Sensory overload!

It was the bin of marbles that really did me in. That’s grade school, baybee! We used to have mad marble competitions on the playground.

Damnit, I sucked at sports but I was GOOD at marbles.

I remember winning a very big and very pretty shooting marble from a bully of a boy. He was SO ticked off at me.

What did I do? I giggled, dropped the marble in my pocket, and walked away.

That’s how I roll (pun TOTALLY intended!).

Ain’t nothing better than a big bin of marbles.

Unless, of course, it’s a big bin of rubber chickens!

(All photos taken with my iPhone)

Curse you PowerPoint!

Oh how you vex me.

Sure, so the boss of my boss says….”Karen, put together a couple slides on [insert name of project here].”

And because I am that kind of employee, I say, “Yes boss!”

Then I when the boss is out of earshot, I sigh. Deeply. Loudly.

Then I make motions not unlike a cat would when being shoved into a mailbox.

Then I open up a blank PowerPoint screen with the company approved slide template.

And I sigh again.

It mocks me. The blank slide mocks me.

The company approved slide template has a graphic and logo running down the left side and the bottom of each page.

This takes up valuable real estate on every slide.

In this already limited space further limited by the corporate branding, I’ve been asked, essentially, to describe the d’être for my department.

My powerful team and successful program that was a decade in the making by my very talented predecessor.

I’m to boil that down to a few salient bullet points, format them in the corporate way and in corporate colors.

I have to make all the bullet symbols line up. And the font on every page should match in typeface and size. If I put in a table of numbers, all the numbers should line up like obedient school children.

I haven’t even BEGUN to discuss “transitions” where you have your text come swooping in or looping out or emerging from thin air. I hate transitions. I really, really hate them.

I’m not *good* at PowerPoint. There are some people in this world who can make magic happen with the PowerPoint software. Unfortunately I am not one of these people.

One would think with my creative mind that I’d be all up and over PowerPoint. Nope. See, the times when I’ve gotten clever in the ol’ PowerPoint, I’ve received dismissive looks and suggestions for edits. My sense of humor doesn’t really translate to the rigid slide format produced by the PowerPoint software.

No. Must maintain a professional attitude. Must use a tool with SO many moving parts it could make the Pope cuss (you suppose they use PowerPoint at the Vatican?).

Must do a good job on this as I’m only sixty days into this new job. Must help them continue to think I was worth hiring.

Must make PowerPoint magic.

Oh and did I mention…this all must be done by Monday?