One more thing

Found this link as well, because I've been working extra hard.

NAMBLA's answer phone. It's really disturbing. Now, I'll get back to work.

Stuff wot I found on the interwebs

So two things I found while I was working hard today.

Spot the difference between a Google.com image search for Tianamen Square and a Google China image search for Tiananmen Square.

And, a Kurdish proverb:

A man is crazy. He believes he is a flower and birds are trying to eat him. A doctor takes him to the hospital. After months of treatment he improves. "I am not a flower," he tells himself. As he is walking home from the hospital he looks up at the sky. "I know I am not a flower," he thinks. "But those birds still want to eat me. How do I convince them that I am not a flower?"

That is all. No stories, I'm too hungover. Oh, FYI, don't try to cure a hangover with a laxative. It doesn't "get it out of your system."

That's a relief

Next time you get that feeling that you're insane, click here and compare. You ain't.

New elevator algorithm

Over at Collision Detection, Clive Thompson tells us about a new elevator algorithm, where you wait for a bit longer for the elevator on the floor, but it takes you to the floor you want with a lot less stops on the way. He says people will hate it, and I think I can confirm that.

I'm pretty sure that once someone presses 16 around here, the elevator won't pick up anyone else as it rushes to the executive floor. It usually stops at the floors other passengers have requested, though, but I think that's because they think we smell and want rid of us asap. They might be right about the smell, but still... how rude! Still what this means is at about 11:30, when their morning coffee "meetings" are finished, the upper levels of management drib and drab back to the building, and take the elevator straight to 16 for their pedicures, champagne parties and ritual disembowelments of lackeys even less fortunate than yours truly. Those of us still with our bowels in know not to try to take an elevator in the late morning hours, as we're often left standing stranded in the floor lobby, as lift after lift swishes by filled with singing, maniacal giggling and the stench of unlaundered money.

I still haven't made it in and out of Executive Heaven with my memory intact, but I'll keep you posted. You may rest disturbed that all descriptions you read here are quite accurate.

Perspective

Sometimes the corporate angst gets to me, and I find myself thinking that I should have just joined the army. Better pension scheme, structured career path, and more intelligent conversation. But then I read BoingBoing and remember, even though there's some strange goings on around here, I never get told to shoot ten year olds.

Thirsty?

A while ago I created a cocktail. I wanted something you could down during work on Friday that would get you through the weekend with no need for further intoxification. So all you'd need to take during the weekend proper would be whatever you felt like at the time, rather than having to calculate your mood and the effects of any prospective fundrop.

I called this creation the Lacktini, but then someone said it sounded like it had breastmilk in it, so new suggestions are welcome. It is a five course cocktail, naturally.

Recipe:

• Fill a high ball half way with absinthe, pour in a gram of cocaine and stir thoroughly. You can also caramelise some sugar, according to taste.
• Cook up some morphine tablets, and suck contents into a syringe.
• Throw some ice, and whatever spirits you have to hand in a shaker. Shake thoroughly. Garnish with ecstacy tablets.
• Three shots of tequila
• Three bottles of beer.

To take:

• Down each shot followed by one of the beers.
• Take the lid off the shaker, and pour contents down your throat.
• Sip the absinthe casually, while discussing art nouveau with the dancing shadows in the corner.
• Wait for the pain to hit, and when it does, numb it with the morphine. Once you come to, you should be right for the weekend.

Operation Alibi: Kitsch

Those of you with the slightest awareness of current pop culture events will know there is currently a huge, very kitsch Chuck Norris revival. This follows on from, and complements nicely, the Mr. T revival of 2005.

However, it turns out that claiming to have been caught in the middle of a bare-knuckle brawl between the two, with Mr. T saying "I pity the fool who thinks he can take over from me in the kitsh revival stakes, hell I only just got ahead of the Hoff to number one, and I ain't giving it up!" and Chuck sending out roundhouse kicks left right and center (all at once which is pretty good, considering he appears to have only two legs) and obviously I had to talk to the two of them, get them to see eye to eye, give them a joint to chill them out, and before you know it we were all giggling together like school girls and they were both just so relieved that all of that competitiveness had lifted from their shoulders, so they could pursue their first loves, which incidentally were watercolours and dyi renovations, but I promised not to say whose was watercolours, so I walked them into town and showed them where they could buy paint and power tools and left them to go into business together in a watercolour house venture, hence saving the rest of the decade from what would have been an intensely uncool era of kitsch-wars! doesn't hold water as an excuse for being late to work on a Monday.

Don't bother trying a "stung by a new species of waspfish" routine either.

In fact, stick to the tried and true "Morning!" with a big bright smile, acknowledging nothing before you slip under your desk into the fetal position and wait for late.

Sugar Glider

One of the most beautiful things about life here at 21st Century Cosmodemonic is the wide range of opportunities the company offers its employees. A range of opportunities limited only by the imagination and chutzpah of the employee.

Today we have a beautiful example from level 11, the floor of petty bureaucracy gone madder, and home of the Sugar Glider - one ornery middle aged, morning-tea-cake eating grandmother of none. Named for her resemblance to the flying squirrel, Sugar Glider is very elusive when there's work to be done, and has enormous deposits of fat under her arms, causing mild consternation amongst innocent passers-by whenever the wind gets up.

She has lately performed a minor coup and set a new level for all aspirants to corporate laziness to aspire to. The health and safety officer role used to be part of one supervisor's job. Recently Sugar Glider assumed the responsibility, and cunningly set about complaining about all the health and safety issues that were creating imminent dangers in the work place.

Convex mirrors were erected at all corridor corners so blind and quiet walkers didn't walk into each other. Signs were posted everywhere warning of everything. Other signs were posted advising that the signs should be read diligently. Other signs were posted advising that it is a sackable offence to graffiti the signs. Meetings were held to design more signs, which were duly created and posted. It was decided that it is too dangerous to walk through doors holding coffee. You must walk the long way around the floor, or down the coffee first. Sitting on desks was ruled out, and signs were posted on desks to so advise. Open toed shoes and mobile phones were ruled out, unless you were higher in the organisation than Sugar Glider in which case they no longer posed a risk.

Quickly in this process, Sugar Glider had done so much good work, that it was clear that the health and safety role needed to become a full time position. I thought at that point that she had achieved everything she wanted, and the madness would soon cease. But I was wrong. Sugar Glider wasn't just after the easy job and a laugh, no! Sugar Glider craved power, authority. So she kept going, relentlessly signing signs and ruling rulings. Anything she didn't apporove of was a health and safety hazard - slightly sexy clothes could cause colds and flus. Laughter could cause headaches. Open blinds could cause eyestrain. Soon the floor resembled a cave. With everyone wearing full length drab clothes, and at all times maintaining an expression of aloof indifference, it was clearly a cave gulag filled with robot workers. You could almost hear Stalin laughing, but of course he wouldn't have been allowed to.

Having created this atmosphere of fear, loathing and automated misery, Sugar Glider has now acieved what she really wanted from the start: 21CCd has given her two assistants! Sugar Glider wanted a cabal, and now she has one.

They wanted to throw a party, but it turned out they had already ruled against parties on or off the business premises, in or out of working hours. So they threw a health and safety meeting open to the floor, and it turned out the big issue was the toilet paper seemed to have got rougher lately. A letter was drafted to the building maintenance people and that was, for the time being, that.

If the Lackey had a pet parrot

It would say "Beer." A lot.

Rules of Office Etiquette IV

An illustrative story, from your pal the Lackey.

I went to the loo. As you do, sometimes. However, this particular time, I decided to combine the loo break with a general lunch break, mostly so I could take a long lunch break with a ready-made excuse if anyone asked. ("Oh, yes, I did take quite a while for lunch I suppose, but you see, I was in the toilet for the first half hour or so. So.") So, because I was going to go downstairs and eat whatever I could find claiming to be food in these parts, I needed to take the newspaper with me. So I could do the sudoku, you understand. Nothing to do with a general knowledge of current events or what's going on in hollywood, don't worry.

Anyhoo, in a moment of rash common sense, I left the paper sitting on a big-arse wheelie-bin while I went in to do my business. So no one would think I was going to the loo to read the paper see. Since I wasn't. After I've washed my hands and I'm wandering out, Moustache Man wanders in. Holding a paper. I congratulated myself, because I certainly thought I'd busted him going in to read the paper on the loo for the next half hour or so, and no-one had busted me for anything for minutes now.

My mood changed when I turned the corner and found my paper was gone. I had a sinking feeling that I knew just where it had gone, too. Later on, I found the paper, back where I had left it. Suffice to say, I decided to buy another copy.

So, new Rules of Office Etiquette:

• If you see something lying around in the office environment, at least wait five minutes before nicking it, in case the owner has just popped to the toilet.
• If you're taking the paper to lunch, you might as well take it into the toilet on the way. It's safest, and you just might learn something. Or save a buck.
• It is silly to leave something safely on top of a recycling bin, and expect it to be there when you get back.
• Dude, don't return a paper you stole after you've touched it with hands that just wiped your bum. That's gross.