Finally, some good news – all that doodling you’ve been doing in meetings is actually beneficial. The little swirls and flowers and stick figures of your boss with knives all over his body “thought to focus the mind and stop daydreaming, allowing people to persevere with dull tasks,” according to The Daily Mail.
A recent study asked 40 men and women to listen to a long, tedious phone message listing details for a party. When quizzed later on the contents of the message, people who had doodled during the phone call were more likely to remember the names of guests, locations, and other critical details.
If you’d like to print this out and casually slip it to your boss the next time she tries to look over your shoulder and see those “notes” you’re taking during the meeting, you have my blessing.
I’ve linked a few times to The Angry Office Manager, but for those of you unfamiliar with the blog, it chronicled the adventures of a real, live, pissed off office manager who worked at a company in Manhattan. The blog, which was funny, sad, and did a great job of depicting the daily life of an office and the people who work in it, has ended. The blogger (who uses the nom de plume “Angry Mandy” and has asked us not to reveal her name–yet) was laid off last week.
Angry Mandy’s last post talks about how she feels about being let go, and I think we can all identify with the feelings of loss, sadness, and weirdly peaceful bliss that she’s feeling right now. After all, we all hate our jobs, but do we really want to lose them before we have a chance to quit? Til then, goodbye Angry Office Manager, and I look forward to revealing your identity someday when you end up with a much cooler gig.
Did you have five too many shots at the office happy hour last week and say something really embarrassing to your bitchy coworker? I sincerely doubt you’re the only one. The website Tequila Confessions is a place where you can post stories or video about dumb shit you did after imbibing too much tequila, or just laugh at other peoples’ misadventures while nursing a hangover. It’s sort of like PostSecret, but with way more booze.
If you’re really good, I’ll tell you that story about the time I (Lilit) drank a bunch of tequila and ended up facedown in a kiddie pool, wearing water wings.
Oh, wait.
The good folks over at 236.com have a new online offering that I love: Dickipedia.com. Based on (of course) Wikipedia, it has pages for people who are dicks, including Dr. Phil, Ann Coulter, and Kim Jong-Il. Get an account and add your boss to the list.
One of the great sadnesses of my life is that I did not learn about the Eurovision Song Contest until about a year ago because…well…I don’t live in Europe. To fill you in, Eurovision is kind of like American Idol, except that every country gets to submit a song and they all compete against each other. The contest is a beautiful mix of camp, pastiche, satire, and a couple of people who can actually sing. Thankfully, the invention of YouTube now means that Americans can enjoy the hilarity as well. The contest wrapped up last night, but here are a few of my favorites:
Latvia, “Wolves of the Sea” (it has pirates!)
Ireland, “Irelande Douze Pointe” (it has a turkey puppet!)
Azerbaijan, “Day After Day,” (it has gender-ambiguous angels!)
Oh, and the dude who actually won the whole thing, Dima Bilan of Russia. He’s cute and a good singer and everything, but the guy could really benefit from a singing puppet counterpart. Also, try imagining your boss’ latest dumb speech turned into couplets by Latvian pirates. I promise that meeting will go a whole lot faster.
Are you Catholic? Lapsed Catholic? Met a Catholic person one time? If you have assistant-related sins to confess, why waste time going to a church when you can confess online? The website Ivescrewedup.com lets you write out your sins anonymously. If you still have “I put laxatives in my boss’ coffee” riding on your soul, this is your chance to deal with it and not get fired.
Imagine our excitement to find out that STA not only has a patron saint, but a patron band! The Assistants is a group from Toronto who describe their music as “psychedelic shoegaze punk.” Whatever they call it, we dig it, and we’re happy to share our name (sort of) with them. Not only is their music totally listenable, but they’re also kinda cute. Their name was inspired by a character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Castle.” You can listen to their music on their Myspace page or check out their website for more info.
It’s a gloomy, rainy Friday in much of the US, so here’s a video to entertain you while you pretend to be checking email:
Enjoy!
If you guys are anything like us, you devote a hefty amount of each day to slacking on Scrabulous, the Facebook Scrabble application played by an estimated 600,000 people a day. But now Hasbro, who produces the Scrabble board game, is making Facebook remove the application because it’s ‘too similar’ to the real thing.
Can we all say “Emergency Senate Bill”? This is important, people. Save Scrabulous!
Please note: You can email Hasbro’s PR Department at hasbrogamespr@hasbro.com.
