Hey there fellow hive-workers,
I have been a bit busy of late on some other writing gigs and that equates to fewer DUFL’s for you to read. Apologies for that, to hopefully make up for the lack of schadenfreude in your lives I’m going to share a video that some friends and I recently made. We all felt that filtering our Internet simply wasn’t going far enough – so here is a further solution.
Motivation, some people don’t seem to need it at all, others drink it from Styrofoam cups. You have to admit though; there is a breed of person who is unfalteringly chirpy in the face of adversity. Where some would simply give up or indeed just not care, these chosen few switch their frowns into reverse and don their best theatrical winks every day of the week. They exhibit the blind optimism of people who nail up missing bird posters.
I wouldn’t say that I’m highly motivated, unless it’s something I’m passionate about. As you may have surmised, I’m not all that enraptured by my office. I think writing about it is the only thing preventing me from doing a celibate Michael Hutchence in the storage room. Although this week has been somewhat of a blessing, for you see, my boss is on holiday. The days have flown by so smoothly I barely realised he was gone, although the youngest girl in our team has taken it upon herself to become our departmental cheerleader in his absence. Envision the relief of finding out you don’t have HIV being replaced by the gut-punch of Herpes.
Due to a downpour last night, I had planned to spend my morning cycle wrapped up in my warm bed. I liked this plan, it was a good plan and everything was going according to it. Until, despite turning off my alarm, I was still rudely awakened by the piercing electronic beep of my phone. It was a message from Princess Perky. The contents of which was so mind bogglingly offensive to read at 7am that it had me reaching for my leather belt and gauging whether my ceiling fan could take my weight.
I’ve had to fight the urge to grammatically correct the following, but I feel that any changes would be like giving the Mona Lisa a breast augmentation.
Whats fuzzy, filled wit letters & makes u feel good.
This!
GOOD MORNIN. Spread the smile and give at least 2 people a hug on ur way in.
I love you guys
7am… Christ, it’s like waking up to find a Care Bear smoking a cigarette in bed with you and saying ‘boy, you were really drunk last night, but not too drunk’
Yo, where my tweeps at? – http://twitter.com/DUFL
I never understood why so many people exercise in their lunch hour or before work. Of late though, I’ve been getting up early and riding my bicycle and I really enjoy it. Through the simple act of heading outside and upping my heart rate, my whole day improves. When I would normally moan and roll my eyes, I serenely sit in my adjustable chair as my annoyance melts away. There are of course some people who shouldn’t indulge in exercise, the sudden rush of endorphins doesn’t encourage a peaceful euphoria. Instead the chemical surge enhances their aggression, they basically become angry drunks.
Steve started a pre-work boxing course about a month ago, and the results are increasingly apparent. Instead of him glossing over when asked a question, his eyes flicker with a meth intensity and he constantly spars with whoever is talking with him. It’s really hard to conduct a conversation when the other person is ducking and weaving, throwing mock boxing fists inches from your face and yelling
“Eat the Steve, taste the pain bitch!”
This morning Steve was punching the absolute crap out of some thin air and complaining about his son. He’s about 20 years old and works here in our office, but I suspect his real job is creating inter-parental wars for profit. Steve was whinging about how disrespectful his son was when Polly remarked that he could keep him in line now that he’s learning how to box. I don’t think he recognised it was a light-hearted comment, because Steve simply told us he’d already punched his son in the head before. The office went silent and a garden of heads started popping up over the cubicle walls, straining towards the eavesdropping sun. Sensing an immediate uneasiness, he tried to rectify the situation with
“Aw, not lately or anything – it was back when he was a kid”
I’m really not sure how that is supposed to make it better.
It’s like trying to put out a fire by smothering it in petrol.
Yo, where my tweeps at? – http://twitter.com/DUFL
Women are incredible. They are the true creators in this world, connected to the Earth through their ability to create life. Mere men can only imagine what it’s like to grow a person inside of us, to house a human life for nine life changing months. Women must come away with such an understanding of the sanctity of human existence. There is no greater bond or intimacy than sharing your life-blood with another creature, except perhaps, the moment that connection is severed. After the birth, once they first hold that fragile life in their hands, a mother will never let it go doing anything they can to protect their progeny.
That is until they put their child into a stroller, and then they’ll ram that kid through hordes of ankles like a Russian Ice Breaker.
I should know, on the train platform I had a toddler ploughed into my shin and it’s left me with Roseanne Barr’s ankle. I’m calling it a Bankle.
After explaining how much my leg hurt from having a child bashed into me, the female pharmacist told me to try having one bash out of you.
Irony hurts way more than Bankles.
Yo, where my tweeps at? – http://twitter.com/DUFL
If you find yourself running from a Tyrannosaurs Rex or sleeping with a young hottie that turns out to be your great great grandchild, then I really do apologise. It’s all my fault you see, for yesterday I foolishly broke the space time continuum in my lunch hour. I had gone out for dinner the night before and had no leftovers to bring in for my lunch, so I went over the road to the upmarket market to scout for upmarked prices on food. The whole place was filled with organic produce of every kind, organic sausages, organic vegetables, even organic cling wrap. So expansive was the choice, they had some apples labelled ‘neutered apples’. When I asked the small freckled girl in the fruit section what a neutered apple actually was, she scoffed at me like I’d just asked her how many feet I have. After spending several minutes bathing in the glow of condescending food stuffs, I quickly grabbed some pumpkin soup that came in an actual pumpkin and headed for the check out. Before I got there I picked up some bread to have with my soup and noticed they also sold imported beer. I picked up a Belgian Pilsner and went straight back to my desk.
After realising it’s almost impossible to microwave a pumpkin filled with soup, I had transferred the contents to a bowl and it sat steaming in front of both my monitor and me. The hiss of the pilsner bottle opening was akin to shooting a maritime flare into the ceiling or simply screaming AIDS at the top of my lungs for no apparent reason. The people in my office completely lost their shit over the fact I was drinking a beer at my desk. I literally drew a crowd. It was like the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ where the ape creature first uses a weapon to the dismay of it’s hirsute brethren. Such a simple concept, yet it had never occurred to my colleagues before. I’m fairly certain it was around this moment that my actions caused the universe to implode, such was the reaction from the other staff. Steve appeared panicked and asked me why I was drinking a beer at my desk. My answer of “I’m an adult” seemed to cave his mind in. All around I could hear whispers of “pssst… psst… beer… pssst… desk… psst” If I’d known it would cause such a fuss I’d have charged two bits a gander.
Naturally I was called into the office of my boss who expressed much concern over my deskside drink. What I found strange was that he didn’t care about me having a beer at my desk, he just wanted me to be more discreet about it. To further illustrate his meaning, he picked up a snowglobe from his desk, pulled a small plastic plug from the bottom and took a large sip. His only comment was “You get used to the vodka, but the snow tastes like shit“
In all of the meetings I have to attend there is one common motif. At some point, one person around the table will begin doodling. It might start out as a series of abstract scrawls, but soon enough the blue biro smudge scrawls find form, becoming recognisable patterns and eventually a stick figure can be seen. That figure then meets another stick person and they multiply into tribes, then those groups wage wars on the blue lined sheets.
It’s the evolution of doodle. The more banal the meeting, the more shading and realistic the drawings are. The best is watching those people who only doodle after someone speaks, you can tell by their hand movements that they’re not writing, they nod their head and go through all the motions of calculated contemplation, but if you look across you’ll still see an inky flower or a stick figure mutilating one of it’s own with a hastily drawn axe.
Unless of course you’re Steve, who is obsessed with drawing three headed stick figures. There are tri-noggin folks on boats, driving cars, and many are wrestling. I’ve noticed him do it a lot, but it was only yesterday I realised that the two extra heads are actually enormous breasts. If a picture says a thousand words, this just says one word a thousand times – pervert.
I feel sorry for Todd, one of the web developers at our work. During this morning’s meeting he flipped open some pages he had stapled together to reveal a doodle of… well, a doodle. There have long been rumours of Todd’s sexual preference. His mouth says straight, but the product in his hair disagrees. So you can imagine that a small doodle of a small doodle will only fuel the rumours.
At this point, I should point out that it wasn’t just an outline, but a fully realised illustration, there was shading and even a drop shadow. Todd did his best impersonation of a tomato and explained that it was a sketch of a bullet. We all remained tight lipped with embarrassment for him, except for Steph. In a matter of fact tone she simply said that bullets didn’t have veins. The lady has a point.
Yo, where my tweeps at?! – http://twitter.com/DUFL
My boss is extremely excited about his impending vacation to Thailand and other than one-too-many jokes about ping pong balls I think he’ll have a fairly relaxing time. In fact, not having him around the office is, for me, a holiday in itself. While I’ll be tanning myself under an air conditioned sun, he’ll no doubt be checking every girl he talks to for the tell tale signs of a Thai Lady Boy. He’ll be bobbing for Adam’s Apples so to speak. I shouldn’t be so judgemental, but he did spend a little too long explaining the leaps in tranny technology to us at after work drinks last Friday. I’m now to understand that Bangkok is to transsexuals what Japan is to chrome pocket-sized gadgets.
Craig, one of our senior managers, firmly believes that homosexuality is caused by either men not playing enough sport or women playing too much. Craig is also the kind of guy who only listens to your anecdotes so that he can dismiss them with what he thinks are his own infinitely cooler tales. Perhaps he was inspired by my boss discussing his itinerary or maybe it was the eight beers he downed in quick succession, but he told us about his last vacation that he took with some of his ‘High-End Friends’ or HEFS. Yes, he’s made an acronym based on Hugh Hefner.
All of his over achieving buddies run their own companies and every now and again they blow off some steam without their trophy wives impeding them. On their last trip away they hired a house boat for the long weekend and sat around drinking and snorting my entire week’s wages on an hourly basis. They also hired a number of hookers to accompany them, which led them to officially creating ‘The Singlet Rule’. A sacred commandment that one can only assume Moses simply forgot to add on to his ten.
The Singlet Rule came about because, due to the size of the house boat, they realised that at some point they were going to see each other naked and that was considered far too gay to be permissible. I mean what if one of them hadn’t kicked a football around enough when growing up? If Craig’s theory was correct, they’d flock to the cock like a moth to a bug light. To circumvent the apparent homo-erotic situation, one of the HEFS had the brilliant idea of wearing singlets. Essentially if they were wearing singlets, they weren’t technically nude. Thus standing bourbon-in-hand next to a guy being felated by a prostitute was somehow completely heterosexual and not in any way awkward. It’s as logical as staying dry in a thunderstorm by hitting at the rain with a stick.
I remember when male bonding was all about poker, not poking.
I often wonder what it would be like to be married. To have that person you’re content with and slowly graduate through the ranks of coupledom. Going from not breaking wind in each other’s company, to brushing your teeth whilst they poo and discuss last night’s episode of the West Wing. I suspect you give up the occasional ecstatic highs for a more consistent baseline contentment, and I’m fine with that. It seems like a good deal really. Although sometimes I chat with the guys in the office and it makes me think twice.
Last night I stuck around for some after work drinks. We were highly conscious of being those people that meet up to pit our annoyances against each other. Much like a game of snap we were matching up identical grievances, sharing in the mutual frustrations of our day. Eventually Mark, a short deliberately British man whose life motto is ‘it’s never too early to start worrying’, insisted we stick to non-work related topics.
There was a heavy silence, dominated by the realisation that most of our life was woven from reports, unanswered voice mail and strategy meetings. Mark broke the quiet with the announcement of a game of golf he intended to play this weekend. He told us that all he had to do was finish up some of his ‘man chores’. I asked what constituted a ‘man chore’. Mark explained that for every man chore he finishes, his wife allocates a golf credit, get enough of those and he’s allowed to play a whole game of golf. Around the table you could audibly hear eyebrows raising, even those in wedlock were wide-eyed with disbelief. Mark just grinned back at us, looking awfully pleased with the number of credits he’s earned.
I asked “What else is in the jar?”
Mark asked what jar I meant, to which I replied “The jar your wife keeps your testicles in”
We all erupted into laughter, except for Mark. His only comment was that his wife didn’t like him to use the word testicles, instead he had to call them ‘knicker glands’
Being ejected from a bar because you can’t stop spraying beer out your nose is oddly satisfying.
I realise that I really shouldn’t drink coffee at work. Riding the agitated chemical wave makes my chest tighten and I’m more than a little disturbed at the Pavlovian response of my bowels. Just the smell of Colombian juice gets my sphincter twitching like a junkie’s eye. Still, when my boss actually offers to buy me a cup, it’s such a rarity that I can only jump at the chance to be reimbursed for the huge number of skinny-lattes I’ve bought for him.
We crossed from the elevator to the café at the bottom of our office building and my boss asked if I saw the email that just went out. I haven’t, but apparently Walt has resigned. These resignations have been happening with alarming regularity, only they’re never referred to as resignations. We just get an email saying “…will no longer be with us and we wish them all the best” No explanations. Were they fired or did they resign? Who knows, they’re just gone and that seems motivation enough for everyone to stay tight-lipped.
Walt is a mainstay of the company, I think he’s been there since year one. He’s a little deaf and was one of the first people to receive a cochlear implant. I always liked him because he swore like a sailor. Worse than in fact, he’d start talking and sailors would take out a pad & pen, jotting down phrases like “whore-knuckle” and “poof-lips” for future use. Although, he’d say it with the distortion of a deaf person who overly commits to vowels, which upgraded his word filth from crass to charming.
I asked why Walt left and my boss laughs like a ruptured bastard. They’ve never gotten along and he proceeds to explain that at last week’s once-a-month cake meeting, which I missed out on, he told people Walt had tended his resignation. The rumour caught on, and fuelled by the sugary high of fake cream, ended up reaching our CEO. The boss of bosses made a huge speech about the number of years Walt put in and how sad he was to see him go. Apparently some of the ladies from accounts teared up at the news of his departure. The poor fellow ended up going along with it, because he didn’t have the heart to correct all the well wishers.
I can’t tell if my boss is an evil genius or a gifted idiot. He had someone removed from the company without lifting a finger and still freaks out when that same finger nudges the insert key and “the computer is stealing his words”
Oh and guess who forgot their wallet and had to buy their boss a coffee – again.
At least once a week I join my colleagues for a two-beer lunch. This had started out as purely a Friday affair, but has now bled over into Monday. I’ve also been rounding up everyone to go ten minutes earlier so that we’re not followed by one of our IT guys, Ulrich. I’m not that fussed if he comes, but he seems to put everyone on edge. Particularly when he giggles to himself over anyone eating anything even remotely phallic. Our lunch crew has learned to stick to burgers, salads and soups, although we avoid any soup described as ‘creamy’ for just the same reason.
I think he’s cottoned on to our escape plan, as he was already at the pub when we arrived for lunch. Nina, our receptionist, was meeting her sister there for lunch so we had a few of the more attractive girls from our office eating with us. Ulrich suggested we all try the sausages. No one ordered them.
There is no secret that Nina is a bit of a looker. Not only did God deem fit to bless her with the pouty looks that fuel male adolescent pant fizzing, but he also made a back up copy. Yes, Nina has an identical twin. You’d hope a second version of herself would diminish her beauty due to it being shared between two, really, it only amplifies the fact.
As we waited for our food to arrive, he kept putting both hands below the table and sipped from his beer by craning his face down into the glass. Ulrich was firmly engaged in a staring competition with Nina and her twin Erica’s nipples and he was determined not to blink first. Most of us were asking polite questions about what it’s like to be a twin and the girls spat out well rehearsed lines at us. Ulrich decided he would ask a question of the pair, the twins, not the breasts.
“So if you both share 99.9% of each other’s genetic make up, if you went down on each other, that’d technically be masturbation right?”
I don’t think they ever rehearsed the answer to that one.
They certainly had nothing to say after
“Oh man, if you cross your eyes a little, there are four of them! Mm… top of the range”
