My first top 8 mistakes of 2007
January 18, 2007
8. The expression ‘if first you don’t succeed, try, try again’ should not be universally applied, this is especially true when trying to use a sexually charged metaphore with a coworker and not come off as creepy.
7. Nine out of ten is a great score in almost every context. However, one exception is when attempting to remember a dinner guest’s violent allergies while cooking the evening’s meal. Also, as a point of information, it takes approximately 27 seconds for a person’s throat to close after said person, who is allergic to peanuts, ingests a spoon of “hot n’ spicy Thai beef surprise’ – when the ‘surprise’ is a peanut filling.
6. No amount of explaining can mitigate the negative impact of certain situations. A mayonnaise stain on the crotch of one’s pants is one such situation.
5. Somewhat counter intuitively, Dora the Explorer Ice cream contains chunks of neither Spanish underage girls, nor monkeys. Additionally, complaints about this gross misrepresentation in advertising are not met sympathetically by grocery store managers, especially if they have children, and those children are female, and those female children are of Latin decent, and those Latin female children have pet monkeys.
Top 8 mistakes I’ve recently made: Holiday Edition
December 7, 2006
8. Buying, wrapping and putting away holiday gifts well ahead of time is a great way to reduce stress on the holidays, except when giving pets.
7. Holiday season starts promptly on December 1st. Going grocery shopping on a Saturday afternoon in December is therefore NEVER a good idea.
6. No matter how much your loved one might need this, some gifts are better left ungiven.
Besides, the ladies see right through this sham …. err … or so I’ve been told.
Yet another set of the Top 8 Mistakes I’ve Recently Made
November 9, 2006
8. The International Joint Commission of Canada does not do exactly what one might guess they do from the name. Consequently, showing up to an interdepartmental meeting with pizza and a copy of Harold and Kumar is not necessarily as strong an idea as it would otherwise be.
7. While technically not illegal, doing lines of powdered sugar off the edge of your desk to get through the mid afternoon may well be misinterpreted, and can lead to reasonable to serious misunderstandings.
6. Not withstanding the fact that factual accuracy is a legal defense against claims of libel and slander, it is considered poor office etiquette to comment on the proficiency (or lack there of) of one’s colleagues.
Also, the phrase “useless as tits on a bull in spring” is actually quite difficult to prove in terms of factual accuracy.
Top 8 (more) mistakes I have recently made
October 24, 2006
8. There is a thin line between being right, and being an arrogant bastard. Doing the “fuck you, I was right and you were wrong” dance, despite one’s best intentions, is more often associated with the latter.
7. Sexual touching is rarely taken as flattery, this is especially true when breasts or groins are grabbed while simultaneously making ‘honk honk’ noises.
6. Not everyone plays violent video games, nor is everyone familiar with violent video game “speak.” As such, replying to the question “what did you do last night” with the response “I got a record number of kills with my heavy machine gun, which is pretty impressive because I’m more of a headshot with the sniper rifle kind of guy” may lead to some misunderstandings.
5. Putting 25 mints in your mouth at once is rarely a good idea. Putting 25 caffeinated mints in your mouth at the same time is really really really not a good idea.
4. It can be challenging to recover from accidentally blurting out “what are you retarded or something?” during one of your supervisors presentations. Even the old stand by “Oh, I was just joshing ya” does not always work.
3. In the culture of the public service, “wuz up my niggas” is not considered an appropriate or cordial greeting.
2. Somewhat counter intuitively, stopping on a busy staircase to take a call on a cell phone or check email on a Blackberry does not, legally speaking, constitute consent to be pushed down said staircase and trampled.
1. Regardless of how far up his or her own ass a manager’s head may be, goggles and a roll of toilet paper are not, generally speaking, acceptable replacements in lieu of poorly conceived deliverables.
Previously: Top 8 mistakes I’ve recently made
Top 8 mistakes I’ve recently made
October 6, 2006
8. Microsoft does not own a substantial amount of Apple stock. As a result, the metaphor I employed in which I described using a Mac as having sexual intercourse with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was factually deficient. I have since amended my position to liken using a Mac to having sexual intercourse with Steve Jobs, while dirty Billy mostly watches, but occasionally gives a little poke here and there.
7. Stewartship is not the same as stewardship. In fact, it is not a real word. As a result the nice people in the Government now suspect York University may not be the temple of higher learning they formally believed it was.
6. As it turns out, and contrary to much advertising, this product:
is not part of healthy balanced breakfast.
