Multitasking (aka doing alot of things half ass all at once)

It has been drilled into all of us that multitasking is an effective and efficient means to get alot accomplished in a short amount of time. "Hi I'm Bob, I can multitask." "OK Bob, your hired. We need more people like you." What our pal Bob really means is "Hi I'm Bob, If you just let me hammer out projects one at a time, they would be done efficiently, effectively and without error. But, if I told you that, you would have that confused look on your face like grandma has when you try to explain to her that Facebook is not an actual book and you would not hire me." It may at first be hard for you to grasp even the slightest ideas that multitasking is counter productive. But that is to be expected since that's how we're programmed early on. So as always I am delving deep into the unknown for my faithful readers to find the origin and truth to lifes greatest mysteries.  As I bring you along on this journey, lets take the girl driving next to you this morning for example. She was driving, drinking a coffee, fixing her hair, applying lipstick and holding a conversation on her cell phone so animated and dramatic that it may have just netted her 2 Oscar nominations. Now if you are the girl I am talking about, thank you for also flipping the guy off in front of you whose not late for work (thats a plug to an earlier blog). Do you think her multitasking was effective and efficient? Two red light violations, lipstick on her tooth, some coffee spilled on her pencil skirt and a topsie tail malfunction. She did make it to work with the tasks sort of complete, but now you have to try to keep your eyes off her red tooth for 2 hours in that 'meeting just to have a meeting' meeting. (More on that in the near future) How the heck is it possible to keep your eyes off that bright-ass red tooth? Enter the inadvertent cleavage stare. (I am giving away way to much of my future topics here. But thats because I love you all). Next, lets think about the average office job worker. First of all it's your fault. You said "I am great at multitasking" in your interview, so as a gang member would say, "Blood in, blood out." It's too late for you now. Note how most office workers usually stumble on their words when someone asks them what they do for a living, often wondering what the hell the title of the job was in the paper when they applied. The most common answer is manager of something or other. This term encompasses doing a bunch of shit while juggling a bunch of other shit while answering emails immediately.  The title should actually be Shit Juggler or Poopyhands. Technology, the leading source if multitasking, does the opposite of what it was intended to do. Your life is now harder because of it. You see, just this morning my 'smartphone' said to me "Hey dummy, you have 22 apps that need updating. So for 45 minutes I watch it struggle to update all of them at once. The end result? I'm still rockin 'Mildly Upset Birds'.  Yes it's been so long since I have had my apps updated because of my phone's 'ability to multitask'  that I still have to spend the first 20 minutes of the game getting the damn birds pissed off enough to want to be slung across the air at the big green pig. Remember pre-internet? We used to only have to use the info we got from a 1976 volume of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Now we need to spend 96 straight hours researching every possible article ever written for any if our school or work reports. And where the telephone limited your communication throughout the day, email gives an unlimited number of people the ability to cc you on every single message they send, multiplied by 20 with all the 'ok' and 'thank you' follow up messages. You may even find yourself in a vicious game of email Tetris.  All those emails falling from the top of the screen needing to be read, sorted, replied to, rotated and stacked in different folder positions.  It's not that bad if you can find a way of tracking your high score. Now, since I am not one dimensional and value the luxury of keeping my job, I did look into the advantages if multitasking...sweetie, the tv isn't a chalkboard..and found that doing many....hey that green paper you just flushed down the potty was the rent money...things at once can help us to accomplish all the tasks...why is the dog blue honey?.....that need to be done in any given day without having to....it's ok baby we just need an ice pack...put it off until tomorrow. So to sum things, multitasking does come in handy when you need to accomplish many things at once. Thanks to my ability to multitask I was able to flawlessly..not now sweetie..write this post while watching the kids. Now please excuse me while I wash my hands. - if you liked what you read please click the little alien below to share this post with the world. It's free I promise :)

Oh Where Oh 'Wear' have the Wardrobe Malfunctions Gone?

Just when I have my doubts about His existence, God proves to me that I have nothing to worry about in the afterworld. This time it came in the form of Madonna saying "I promise that there will be no wardrobe malfunction." Thank you again God. I will be sure to leave something extra in the collection plate this Sunday. But more on that later. We all have noticed that, besides a few instances (Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake, etc), the Big Game's (which I have cleverly renamed since noone knows the rules of using the actual name in public) halftime show is always 25 to 30 years behind what's happening in entertainment today. Though the acts are pretty big with The Rolling Stones, Springsteen, etc.. whom I do love dearly and with such passion I may need to put a restraining order on myself, they are not quite what's driving the music and video charts today. When The Who played a few years ago it seemed like an Abbott and Costello skit. "Wow son, The Who's playing the Buper Sowl." "Who's playing dad?" "Yes" "Yes who?"...... "third base!" You get it. The younger generation and prime audience for the sponsors have no clue, except for their parent's vinyl records and cassette tapes, who these people are. Again, I do know, and am on the verge of having that secret creapy shrine room with their posters, pictures and candles, but the others in my generation and younger don't. So back to Madonna. Sorry but nobody south of 65 years old is looking forward to a wardrobe malfunction from her weird musclie body. Twenty five years ago most definatly yes, but now not so much. We all remember the original wardrobe malfunction incident. Why oh why did you not run with that, professional football guys? Let me explain something to you. The cable, satellite folks and even our old friend 'tevo' have been riding the wave ever since. Did you notice the price of cable and satellite these days? It's like 2000 times higher than it was back then. And people will not get rid of it! That is because there were enough lucky guys in the world to have had a dvr at the time. You know the one because it is still in your living room. With Duper Mole XXXVIII still saved and requiring a 'forgotten' password to remove. Noone is turning in that dvr no matter the rates. So please Pooper Roll halftime show planners, book Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna or even Cee Lo Green and his way too short arms for that matter, because like it or not, male or female, we want that malfunction. Else we will just tune to the 'Puppy Bowl'. Shit...can I say that? I meant Guppie Knowle.

S.O.P.s (Standard Operating Procedures or Secret Operation Primate?)

By now most of us have had a job where a Standard Operating Procedure was used for something or other. For the lucky few of you who have never been subjected to an S.O.P., please forward my resume to your human resource department, I want in. I will bring morning donuts with me. As for the rest of us, we have to follow a specific set of guidelines that dictate our every move and bodily function throughout every single workday, including the office holiday party. Lets begin with the first S.O.P. of the day, the notification we successfully made it in for another action packed workday. In the pre-s.o.p. era we would punch a time card or simply show up in the morning with a cup of coffee and some questions for Bob about his weekend. Maybe even start the day off by high-fiving the boss, like a wrestling tag-in, while yelling "I'm in. Let's get it on!!" followed by a chest bump and some shadow boxing moves. Enter the S.O.P.. Now we start the morning with 1.) Place time card vertically, north facing, into the slot face down and apply pressure to the clicking lever or 1.) Log into your computer terminal within 8 minutes of the scheduled start time but no earlier than 15 minutes nor less than 5 minutes prior to the start of your scheduled shift. Or even 1.) Place your left eye onto the retinal scanner, while simultaneously placing your index finger onto the fingerprint scanner (note: if you are either missing an eye our index finger please see appendix 5.1 for acceptable eye finger combinations).  Step 1 complete, however you are not 'In' yet. You must first touch your desk. Although you may have a meeting first thing in the morning, you must still touch your desk. It's in the sop. A glancing touch or a jacket drop on the chair is acceptable but some sort of contact must be made. Now you spend the majority of the day working on the 'How to Hammer the Square Peg into the Round Hole' sop. Occasionally, as most humans do, nature will call (or text depending on what apps you have installed on your smartphone) and you will once again have to quickly review the 'Guidelines to Bathroom Behavior' sop. Although legally your employer cannot monitor your bathroom activity directly, length of stay and number of occupants may tip them off.  We end the day by being directed, per sop, not to yell "Wooohooo I'm outta this hell hole! Let's get some drinks!" What fun is that? So, in the interest of keeping my readers informed, I questioned the need for so many of these step by step, inch by inch, instructions to everyday activities. My initial inquiries were answered via the faq section of the "How to question a Standard Operating Procedure" sop. Mostly simple self explanatory answers like 'Because we said so' and 'Please bring these questions up to your immediate supervisor prior to cleaning out your desk.' Not good enough. So I dug deeper. I wandered deep into the reasoning of the Secret Society if CEOs and Upper Management for the answers even your boss and supervisors lack the authority and classification level to answer. You would imagine the reasoning of these sops would be the need to control every aspect of their employees work lives. A way for the high ups to have a tight grip on your every move or even something to brag and laugh about at the country club luncheon. "Ha ha, that's a side splitter Godfrey. But I wrote one last week that spells out how many squares of toilet paper an employee may use. L.o.l. I'm laughing out loud right now. Get it?"  Yeah we get it. However, if your thinking they do it for their own personal sick enjoyment you would be wrong. After some covert investigation this is what I found: 'Secret Operation Primate' (Yes, the true definition of S.O.P.) was put in place in the late 70's. It is the global initiative to turn all of the worlds most efficient and creative workers into, well, monkeys. Trained monkeys that is. Nobody wants you flinging shit on the walls. For in the 70's a group of scientists and statisticians realized that the workers of the world were becoming so efficient when allowed to think for themselves that all the work in the entire world would be completed by 2023. Global retirement. It sounds like heaven, but the reality of this would cause the untimely demise of planet earth. The rational is as follows: 6 billion people retire, each if which purchase a plastic pink flamingo for their lawn. The migration pattern of the entire Canadian geese population shifts. It's obvious what happens next. Mass floods, tornados, hurricanes, volcano eruptions. Yes armageddon. I know what your thinking right now. "I saw the movie Planet of the Apes. What's to prevent that from happening and the world being taken over by gorillas?" Well the answer is simple. Mark Wahlberg folks. He is a real person. He has had practice with the whole ape takeover thing and can handle it for us if all goes awry. Option b was to actually physically tie up everyone's hands with red tape. There was a backorder on this but it seems the tape makers were caught in a catch 22. An sop they needed to follow about making red tape. That my friends is an eternal loop I can't even wrap my head around. It's like trying to eat your own head or touch your elbows with your nose. So until we can figure out a way to get things done without getting anything done, we will need the sops. Hmmmmmm..... Congress might be onto something.... Sorry, I'm staying a mile away from that one.

The legend of 2shot McGraw

Now for something way out of left field. Remember, the title of this page is "Random Thoughts..." Now where to start? How about with the article from the newspaper. 'The Country music world was rocked today with the news that country music legend and notorious bad boy, 2shot Mcgraw, was found dead this morning in his buckshot rittled Chevy pickup truck. Police suspect the heavily publicized, so called, "East coast/midWest rivalry to have been the cause of the demise for one of country music's fastest rising stars. A similar rivalry played out in the 90's hip hop scene between two mega star rappers leaving both of them dead. 2shot, not to be outdone by what he termed "Them sissy talk singers who can't play an instrument", immediately took the reigns of music's violence scene. Always armed with a double barrel shotgun and an attitude to match, the country gangsta spewed violent lyrics, lived a life of womanizing and held a grudge against all of Nashville's finest. Even taking it as far as rewriting other popular country stars biggest hits in what would be  deemed country music's first 'diss' songs. "Here's bus fare now go home and stand by your man" and "Your cheatin' heart ain't cheatin' if you don't get caught" even making the charts. Legend has it that 2shot's scorn for other country music artist started when a song penned by him, "Hole in my Wranglers", was performed for the first time live by one of his long time friends in the industry, Garth Brooks, at the CMA's without his permission or knowledge. "We saw for the first time a very big change in him that day", commented an old friend, Travis Tritt. "His eyes, his eyes just went blank. Like there was nothin behind 'em anymore. It's like that betrayal of trust took his heart out." The tensions heated up recently with the release of the latest 2shot record, yes record (2shot now refused to release cds and mp3s because of "then damn pirates"), "Polishin' my nine inch barrel". On it, 2shot teams up with West Coast rapper, Snoop Doggy Dogg, for the song "Your one gallon short of a ten gallon hat". A song taking aim directly at Brooks. Later Snoop recalls, "That was one homeboy you wouldn't wanna mess with. His combination of cussin and sweet revival melodies made me want to both cover my ears and weep with joy at the same time. You know what I'm sayin' ?" We do Mr. Dogg, all too well. And now the world will have to live without one of the greatest pioneers of the fusion of Country, Western and Gangsta hip hop.  A full investigation is set to take place with the main suspect being Brooks. When questioned this afternoon by the press, Brooks released this statement, "I would never do anything to hurt my old friend. Though there was tension between us when he also blamed me for stealing my hit, "Ten Gallons of Loving in my hat and one in my pants", I loved 2shot and was trying to get him the help he needed. If I were the police I'd be questioning Chris Gaines. Now that guy is one flat tire short of a mobile home." One of the clues on the scene was a freshly placed 'Ford' bumper sticker. "Now everyone knows that F.O.R.D. stands for 'found on road dead", stated a local deputy. "That sounds like some sort of calling card to me."'

How to manipulate the Soundtrack to your life

We all have watched movies who's soundtrack is customized to the individual scenes. For instance, "Time of My Life" plays as we watch Baby and Johnny's dance finale in the 80's masterpiece Dirty Dancing. Through this we have the feeling injected, directly into our souls that.....well..... they are having the 'time of their lives'. You may, depending on where you are, start dancing around the room using your bichon frise (a little white dog pronounced ˈbiʃɒn ˈfriz not bitchen fries, although both sound french) as a fill in for Baby. The scene just wouldn't work if the Allman Brothers "Tied to the Whipping Post" was playing while they pulled off the epic 'Lift' that gave us all goosebumps of excitement and had us high fiving everyone in the movie theater while yelling "I knew it!! I knew she could do it!! Baby!! Whoo who". Well over my lifetime I have compiled a music library that rivals even the 32 gigabyte ipods. Every moment of my life has it's own song playing in the background and therefore I can judge exactly how the moment is playing out for me and change the moment into amazing at will. You also have a personal soundtrack, even if you can't hear it.  It is a soundtrack that goes with your lifestyle. If you live and love Country music, your soundtrack will mimic that. Same for Rap, Rock and Indie. Once you gain understanding of this you too can manipulate your situations to your benefit ala the matrix, the force, inception, etc.. Now listen close, with that tilted gaze and eyes pointed upward. (Your coworkers may think you're nuts right now but that's ok, there's a song for that.) Do you hear it? Probably not, but that's only because you lack practice. But if you do, what song is it? If it's an AC/DC song then your probably reading this while doing something crazy like driving up a narrow mountain road at a high rate of speed next to a cliff. If the song in the air is Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird", carefully step back off the railing and go back into the window. You most likely have been doing cocaine all night and have wandered out there in a rash decision to toy with fate.  If it's a Lionel Richie song you may be blind and sculpting a creapy clay head of the man you are dreaming about.  If you are having trouble making out the song try this: Look around at where you are, who's with you, what your wearing and how you are acting. Try to relate a movie to what is going on. For example, if your reading this while flying a jet fighter plane doing unnecessary tricks not caring that your sargeant is screaming in your headset, then you would relate this to "Top Gun" and the most likely song playing would be "Danger Zone." If your in an elevator, for which there are unlimited  movie scenes burned into your subconscious, it's safe to say that there is a slow relaxing song being played at least until the doors open. Once you have mastered the simple notion that your soundtrack describes the moment you're in, you can then move on to more advanced tricks. Try this: Next time you walk by someone much bigger than you, pick a fight with him verbally. Once he has had enough of it and starts to pumble you to the ground, close your eyes and get "Eye of the Tiger" on the mental mp3 player. As he watches you slowly regain your footing and sees the 'Tiger' in your eyes, he will realize it's over for him and allow you to throw tens if not hundreds of unanswered punches and will eventually collapse to the ground in slow motion. You can then take him out for a beer and explain you meant him no harm and were just practicing. He'll understand and you both will share a nice rendition of "Staying Alive" as you and your new buddy continue the friendly competition with a 'Dance Off'.  Unfortunately, some of us have become so one dimensional that a single song continually plays when you have entered the room. As it may work for those who would like to impose fear onto everyone around them relentlessly and without end, like the well known "Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da" that plays every single time Darth Vader is around, including his bath time which simply must drive him absolutely nuts, most will get sick of it.  I mean come on now, date night must just suck. "Darth honey, can you think lighter thoughts? I'm trying to enjoy our appetizers and the violins are getting drowned out by that darn Da Da Da sound." "Sorry sweetie, I've been typecast with it." It's best to mix it up a bit and keep things fresh. Make the moments vary. If you go to the same boring work meeting every week, put on some 'Hungry Eyes' and stare at the new employee while maneuvering your eyebrows seductively.  At the very least the next seven hours of work won't end up being "9-5" anymore. So remember, if your ever listening and 'Shadow Dancing' is playing, you must be having a pretty freakin awesome time.

LifeLube™ for those who get stuck in time

Have you ever run into an old high school friend out at the mall and wondered to yourself, "Wow, that dude looks exactly the same as he did ten/fifteen/twenty years ago"? Although your not thinking "Wow he looks great for his age". It's more like "Damn that dude looks like my old high school janitor would have if he dressed like us in 1987". Yes sir, what I'm talking about is the poor unfortunate people who get 'stuck in time'. It is an unfortunate phenomenon that afflicts many of our friends  sometime during high school. The exact time they are afflicted is very hard to determine since they may have been cool for a number of years in school. But research has proven that it only happens to the cool kids. Nerdy kids usually keep a few of their nerdy quips but go on to amazing places as they grow older. Some founding giant computer corporations, some becoming mega superstars who perform in tuna fish mini skirts and command legions of followers.You can see them driving by in cars who's names you can't pronounce. But for the unfortunate cool kid who has been afflicted with 'Stuck in Timeness', the cars they drive have usually been taken off the market due to safety recall issues.  There is hope though. An underground product known as 'LifeLube™'. It is rumored to have been around since the late Seventies. It's use is pretty simple. When you detect that your life or image has been stuck in some sort of time pot hole, just apply a thin coat to your entire body and walla, your moving again. Sliding effortlessly through life's anus like your doctor's finger in the dreaded prostate exam. Your fringed leather jacket slides right off. The feathered or teased hair?...gone. You are now moving along with the rest of us. Some of the most popular rumored cases of it's use include John 'Vini Barbarino' Trevolta, who rose from obscurity when Quinton Terentino got his hands on a can of it, Charlie Sheen, although he may have become dependant on it and overdosed, and Mario Lopez/Justin Timberlake who can be grouped together because they seem to have it's use down to an exact science. If you have ever watched 'What Not to Wear' on tv you'll notice that every single person on that show is adamantly reluctant to take off their tube top, Rick Springfield tshirt or the still never been washed in any way leather pants, until they walk out of the legendary mirror room. What happens next is never shown on camera. The 'Stuck in Timers' are baited through a fine spray mist of 'LifeLube™' with a copy of Tiger Beat being dragged by a string. It has to be true. Have you ever been successful getting your family or friends to actually drop thier AOL account? While Clinton and Stacy have a 100% success rate for turning a Bon Jovi groupie into a Fortune 500 CEO. Think about it. So when you make that wish to be frozen in time, make sure that the genie at least wraps you in a ziplock freezer bag, because it really sucks when you pull out that New York strip steak you've been storing for the right occasion to find out it's all freezer burned and gross.  And that Delorean you've been saving up for, although I want one too, may be best as a second car.