Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Ways to Waste Time at Work

  • Browse maps of locations you might someday visit.
  • Save up all the email you meant to send all week and do it all at once.
  • "Review" your old work.
  • Get change for the candy machine.
  • Reorganize your files.
  • Call your home and leave messages for the dog on the answering machine.
  • Make dinner plans with the Professor. Be exceedingly vague so that you'll have to have a long, drawn-out email exchange for what could be settled in 35 seconds on the phone.
  • Get folks riled up about their in-laws.
  • Go and get the mail.
  • Write your to-do list.
  • Review your to-do list.
  • Consider writing a brief poem centering the names of people who have birthdays in October and one bland, unimportant character trait they share in common.
  • Call it "The Butcher, Miss J., and the Divine Ms. B all have noses."
  • Realize, after titling the poem, you've basically given away the whole point of the poem.
  • Wonder if you've forgotten that the Man in Miss J's House also has an October birthday.
  • How will you fit him into your poem?
  • Practice making "I'm very concerned about what's on my computer screen" faces.
  • Consider an experiment in which you make your dad and The Butcher watch the first fifteen minutes of every new movie, then insist they guess the end. If they're right, will that make them psychic or just prove that there are no new ideas?
  • Try testing your own psychic powers by trying to make the Shill and the Super Genius both crave pickles.
  • Wonder if that's really a fair test of psychic powers. Instead, use psychic powers to ask the Professor's brother to pick a number between 1 and 10.
  • Intuit that he's picked 7.
  • Psychically ask him if his number was 7.
  • Receive telepathic confirmation! You're psychic.
  • Briefly consider accepting phone calls for psychic readings at your desk.
  • Make a list of "Ways to Waste Time at Work."

8 Comments:

Blogger Aunt B said...

You know, I started to think "I wonder why so many of my friends were born in October?" but it took me to a dark place imagining all my friends' parents naked in February.

Now, I'm scarred for life.

10/27/2004 01:33:00 PM  
Blogger jr said...

i too have a nose and a birthday in October. It's the best month ever!

the inlaws bit is really just too easy....it should be used only in an emergency (that's "emergency" singular because you only get one of those per job).

10/27/2004 03:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's kind of scary because when people ask me if they can ask me a question I invariably reply "seven". While I understand that the laws of probability dictate that my answer will usually be wrong, I have been eagerly awaiting the day that I would be right and my questioner would be impressed. Having been questioned and my answer anticipated and received all without my knoweldge really took a lot of the fun out of it. That's ok, I think the entertainment value of Tiny Cat Pants will more than make up for it.

One day I'll teach you about the rule of 7. It's like the rule of 9, only different.

The Professor's brother - I think I'd like a better moniker, but seeing as you've already got a Super Genius, being simply The Genius seems somewhat diminished. I'd like to be The Guy Who Get's Laid A Lot, but let's be honest. I'll work on it. I mean the nickname.

10/27/2004 05:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, Aunt B, I think your psychic experiment failed with me because pickles are one of the things that around age 4 or 5 I decided I would not eat. Ever. I don't even like it when they touch my fries and then my fries taste vaguely like pickles.

But...I am currently amused by the pickle power commercial that has been running during the NFL games of a certain team. And, since I'm temporarily in central Illinois with my parents I've been obssessed by eating down home foods like chicken pot pie. It doesn't have pickles but maybe the food obssession and thoughts of pickles parts worked.

-The Well Fed Super Genius

10/28/2004 09:48:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Well, we haven't heard from the Corporate Shill yet. Maybe she's busy eating pickles and can't comment. I'm still convinced that, by guessing the Professor's brother's secret number, I'm clearly psychic, but if we find out that the Shill is eating pickles, that will just proved that my powers are almost insurmoutable.

You know, if I have proveable psychic powers, I'll get to go on MSNBC! I'll get to share a screen with my sweet baboo, Dan Abrams... My snookums, I come to you.

Ahem, yes, well, were was I? Coming up with an appropriate nickname for the Professor's brother... Both Super Genius and The Guy who Gets Laid are taken. The History Buff might work and it has the added benefit of the buff--enthusiast/buff--naked pun. Hmm. I'll have to think on it some more.

10/28/2004 11:31:00 AM  
Blogger tls said...

Oddly enough, Husky and I were enjoying lunch today at Duke's (Chicago style hotdogs, oh yeah) and I noticed that Husky set the pickle that came with his hotdogs to the side. I took our friendship to new levels by asking "Are you gonna eat that?" and, before he had even nodded no, I snatched the pickle away and ate it.

Who knew it was the result of Aunt B's fledgling psychic powers?!

10/28/2004 04:12:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Well, Super Genius, apparently, if you didn't crave pickles, the problem is not with my powers, which are, as ever, superior, but with your ability to receive psychic commands.

Ha.

10/29/2004 12:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, it must be that I wasn't paying attention to the psychic hints properly. I'm much more open to suggestions involving chocolate and baked goods. I wish I had some Halloween candy right now. Hey - you're trying to use your psychic powers on me, aren't you? Aunt B, can you give me some lottery numbers while you're at it?

Being the Super Genius in the comments on Tiny Cat Pants is like voting in Chicago - you've got to get in there early and often. Oh wait - I'm sure Illinois is free of fraud now.

Excuse me, I have to go laugh really hard.

Super (subliminal message: Aunt B, send me peanut butter cups) Genius

11/01/2004 02:19:00 PM  

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