Monday Morning Time Killer
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 5, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, January 5th, 2009Don’t waste more time not wasting time, the year is already 1/73 over!
For some, this is not only the first work day of the week, it’s the first work day of the year. In our ongoing effort to prevent Monday from happening, let’s start with an annoyingly simple yet challenging short-term memory test, Beer Caps. Gave me a headache. Let me know if there’s some reward at the end. I spend most of my life trying to forget things, and here a game asks me to remember things. Moving on: in the tradition of Karoshi Suicide Salaryman (previously mentioned as a Christmas Eve Demotivator) Comedy Central’s Adult Swim brings you Five Minutes To Kill (Yourself). Hopefully you have more than five minutes, because it takes about that long to load, and another five to realize the arrow controls are a little counter-intuitive. And speaking of slow load times, some of you will appreciate the Dial Up Kid. Yes. That thing he’s doing is all he does. Double irony: if you’re on dial-up, you might not find it so funny after it finally loads. And here’s your positive thought for the day: The year is already 1/73 over!
Monday Monkeying
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 29, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, December 29th, 2008Lives for the weekend
 You’re a monkey. You have darts. There are balloons. Any questions? |
For all you poor souls whose jerk of a boss is making you work during the least productive week of the year, this is our last Monday Demotivator of 2008. Jeez. Just call in sick, will ya? Here’s some stuff to at least help make you late. A perfect brainless warmup is Bloons. You’re a monkey, you have darts, there are balloons. Should be manageable even before you finish the first cup of coffee. After you realize that you’re not even very good at being a dart-toting monkey, check out Superfollow. It acts sort of like a game, but then isn’t one. While your coffee kicks in, ponder what kind of job that guy must have that enables him to sit around all day designing Flash-powered gizmos that serve no conceivable purpose. Now that you’re finally awake, try your hand at Fancypants, fancypants. My pants must not be fancy enough. I killed a few spiders and became overwhelmed with a sort of nebulous sense of futility. Someone please let me know what happens after all the spider killing. And lastly, if you’re still hell-bent on this “going to work on Monday” thing, here’s a list of words you can’t use at the office next week when the rest of the staff is back, but you might be able to get away with this week. It’s amazing the words they come up with for things like “large European beetle with larvae that destroy trees and other plants”.
It’s All Lap Dances And Cupcakes Until Someone Sprains a Man-boob!
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 22, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, December 22nd, 2008The Cliche-O-Matic™ And Other Time-Wasters
In our ongoing tradition of trying to make you late for work on Monday, we bring you, among other things, The Cliche-O-Matic™. Tired of the same old hackneyed phases like “Don’t piss on my shoe and tell me it’s raining”? The Cliche-O-Matic™ brings you 35 one-click cliche generators. Some of them were kind of stretching it, but maybe it’ll inspire you to think up your own. For those who are out to prove how smart they are, try Achievement Unlocked. Your college education won’t help you, and if you get it in less than 1,000 seconds you’re either a genius, or need treatment of some kind. Hard to say which. For you first-person shooter addicts who are tired of throwing shoes at Bush, we have a simple, “realistic physics” archery game, mysteriously named Jackpot. For something a little more holiday-themed, try Christmas Escape 1 and Christmas Escape 2. A friend told me that after spending several minutes being stumped, his six and nine-year-old kids bailed him out in less than 5 minutes. And speaking of wasting time, check out selfcontrolfreak.com. Although pretty clever, I’m surprised there’s any time left over for the rest of us to waste with this guy around. Which reminds me. Have you seen my Three-Second Rule Flowchart?
Don’t Be A Googlewanker
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 15, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, December 15th, 2008The Internet. I’ve Seen It.
Although Google recently released their 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, I’d like to point out a significant oversight in their methodology: If they were to treat every individual searcher’s name as a single search term, I’m pretty sure the number one search would be a form of Googlewanking. And for the record, if you’re prone to this behavior and find you’ve left an embarrassing trail on line, you might want to try a Googlewashing service. In any case, I think it says something about America that the top searches haven’t changed much since the . People still pretty much search for celebrities, games, and cataclysmic events. Personally, since I have to do a lot of research for clients, I think I’ve actually viewed all the pages in Google (as I joked with a friend the other day: “The Internet? I’ve seen it.”), so I’m always looking for new tools. One of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while is Idée Labs’ tools like Multicolr Search. Click colors and it finds photos that contain them. Or TinEye. Give it an image and it will tell you where the image appears on the web. And for you Googlewankers who haven’t seen the entire Internet yet, maybe you should talk to Ms Dewey, if you haven’t met her before. And since she takes so long to get loaded, here’s your Monday time-waster: MindCards. Annoyingly simple, yet annoyingly hard to score well on.
It’s Like Throwing A Stick For A Puppy
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 8, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, December 8th, 2008Except you don’t have to clean up any poo.
I take a perverse pleasure in introducing people to things that they enjoy, but that I have no interest in taking part in. This manifests in a few ways; I like throwing parties, I’ve introduced a few people who became happy couples (and speaking of not taking part, two of them have been gay couples!), and I like turning people on to easy-to-learn but addictive computer games (video games otherwise don’t interest me much). I consider this last pursuit particularly gratifying if I know I make the person late for work on Monday morning. This can be a risky pastime. At least three people aren’t speaking me because they became addicted to Stack the Cats, for instance. And in cases like the amazingly simple but disturbingly intriguing Spin The Black Circle, I run the danger of becoming addicted myself. Which was also true of the game Auditorium, which adds an extra level of aggravation by not having any hard rules and allowing multiple solutions to the same problem.