TOONDay #3 - Suck Up For That Quick Reward They Said

Hello ScoFans!



Ed from Ed's Funny pages recently chose his 10 funniest bloggers of 2010, and from over 40 nominations, yours truly made the final 10.Personally, I think is great that it's only May and the list has been decided. If John Cleese starts blogging in the last half of the year (he's almost as funny as I am), we have to say "Sorry John, your blog will have to wait until 2011. Your blog is not funny this year"

I was surprised to win, because I know Ed isn't a fan of long posts. I think his exact words were "Also, 5 paragraphs of joke setup before the punchline will move you to the bottom of the list. GET TO THE POINT".. actually I know those were his exact words, because I just copied and pasted them. (Jokes on him though, 5 paragraphs would be a short post for me.)

But I think the thing he realises is that even though my posts might be long, each word is more important that both the word before it, and the word after it. Yes, even these words right now.

Of course, a nominee can't win without being nominated, so a special thanks to B-Dub for the nomination.

And also thank you to the people who emailed me and congratulated me on this award.

I'd like to share a few emails with you now.

Brendan said..

saving factor no meeting!! Are it tightly? Or calf rounded.,.For Many? he A,. To graver of unofficial,.

Dorothy had these words of congratulations..

Not my robberies inherit brandy!! An map vanished, 'are. So illustrate ! was be mental, tweed. Or tall league ...

And I'll share with you one more email. This one came from Penelope.

passages necessitate do residing!! At do token? Is ploughed proceed. Which heavens? by His.. A expedition my ensue,.

I don't know who any of those people are, but they do seem incredibly excited about me winning this award. At least I think that's what they're on about. (Yes, those were all seriously emails I received)

This is probably where most people would move on from the award. They've covered everything they need to cover. They've let everyone know that someone else thinks they're awesome, and they've thanked the person who thought they were awesome to begin with, as well as sharing the emails of congratulations for being awesome that followed.

I'm not ready to move on just yet though.

I'm gonna do this shiz my way.

With a Cartoon (which shouldn't surprise you seeing as this is TOONDay.)

Some of you might notice some subtle changes from my last self portrait. That was thanks to your feedback. Some of you may not recognise the changes, they're just small adjustments.

The other character featuring is one of Ed's creations "StickMan". Head over to this link to catch his last episode.

And for those of you who are concerned about me stealing a fellow bloggers creation, yes I did make a deal with Ed. The deal was, if I use StickMan, he calls his lawyers. It's kind of like the deal rugby league players here make with girls they meet in bars, which is "If your whole team rapes me, I'm calling the cops"

Anyway, less words more toons...

I think after watching that, it should be painfully clear I have never been close to anything that resembles a six pack. Sure I've seen them on TV, but in real life? Nup.

If you enjoyed today's post and you're feeling generous, head over to Ed and B-Dub and thank them for their part in it. A butterfly flaps it's wings and ScoMan finds inspiration for a cartoon.

Friday Failures #24- Humbled again

Hello ScoFans!

It's been awhile since I've done a Friday Failure, but this week something happened that I must share with you, and Friday Failure seems like the perfect setting.

This week's Fail involves Andrew G..

For those of you who don't know, Andrew G started out his television career as the host of a late afternoon show on Channel V in Australia, which at the time was mostly about music (but has since thrown a lot of other crap in there.. kind of like MTV)

He was one of my favourite hosts on the show (they rotated between about 6-8 of them at one point), because I liked his taste in music. When all my friends and when the whole world seemed to be on rap, he was excited when people would call in and request a song by the likes of Tool or Kyuss.

But over the years, commercial television and money turned him into this...

The metrosexual pretty boy host of Australian Idol, where good music becomes bad and bad music continues to be bad. Except for Celine Dion songs, they're an improvement over the originals.

Of course, I lost all respect for Andrew G. (It didn't it help that when I worked with Channel V on their bus tour thing, he was a real tool. But that's another story for another day.)

Not only did I lose respect for him, he became my celenemy (Which just became the first word I submitted to the editors of Urban Dictionary. Good on me making up new words as I go). If I were Sheldon Cooper, he would be Wil Wheaton.

I believe it's healthy to have a celebrity who is your enemy (You're right, celenemy is a stupid word. Can I undo my application to Urban Dictionary?) because it means you don't need to find an enemy in every day life. You don't need someone at your office or in your family or that guy who always crosses at the same crossing when you're on your way to work, and sometimes you're just a little bit tempted to not brake for him.

You don't need those people to throw your hatred at. You can throw it at a celebrity. Someone you'll never meet. Celebrities are fair game.

And some of you might be thinking "What do I need an enemy for? Can't we all just get along?"

Um.. yeah.. right.. without an enemy, who are you going to direct your superhero catch phrases at?

What, like I'm the ONLY one who has pages and pages full of catch phrases I would use in different situations if I were a superhero. Like it's JUST me. Like NONE of you do that.

Really? You don't.

Oh..

Anyway, the point is Andrew G became a part of a war he didn't even know he was fighting. Some of you might remember me posting this quite some time ago..


FINALLY I get to the point of the tale.

When I was playing around with Twitter the other day and I found the place that suggested people I should follow (which I can't find again right now). You can imagine how I felt when it suggested I follow Andrew G (Didn't see that coming, did you? I should have written this whole post about Andrew G and then at the end, said it was Miley Cyrus that Twitter suggested.)

In fact, I decided to tell him (and the world) how I felt..


And I felt good about myself. I vented, blew off some steam, thought "Imagine how pissed he is going to be if he reads that. He is going to know some guy he's never heard of doesn't think very highly of him", and I went to bed and slept very peacefully.

And then I woke the next morning to this..

At first I thought "Who the hell told him about Bill Hicks?" (Really, look at that douchebag pose. How can someone who poses like that know about Bill Hicks?)

But then I remembered... he used to be cool.

I think I said it best when I said..

Yep. I later found out, that's not his surname.

So this weeks Friday Failure is me, for taking on one of Twitters celebrities and having it blow up in my face.

The Only Boy

I always get into stuff
Just when it's finishing being cool
I'm never quite brave enough
To take a chance on something new
That's for someone else to do

I'm never too far behind
I follow the trends
But I never take any risks
I'm not ahead of the pack
I'm just with the pack
Towards the back

Tripod - Always Get Into Stuff

Hello ScoFans!

This is something that's been happening around the bloggosphere for awhile now, and in fact I think almost everyone else has had their turn.

So when everyone else has finished, become bored with it, packed up and gone home.. then that's when I'll decide to give it a crack (although after I drafted this the first office tour for about a week went up, so I guess I'm not the only one towards the back of the pack)

Cher of The Only Girl and someone else who I'm not sure who it was started an International Workspace Tour many many weeks ago. I kept saying "I'll do it one day", and I was going to do it last week, but last week was the first of May and I had more important things to blog about (I forgot to mention anyone who liked that song can go here and download it, and about 30 of his other songs, for free- you can also pay for others if you choose to), so here is my workspace, albeit delayed by a week.

The title of this post is a play on Cher's "Only Girl", because as of last Friday I am the only boy in my office other than the boss (which means I am the only boy in "The pit".. you'll see what that's about later)

I know you're excited, you always wanted to know what an accounting office looked like right?

This is the tea room. It's the first room you see when you enter the building (from the carpark, obviously not from the street. We don't want our clients entering the building in the tea room. That's where we go to complain about them and the stupid, frustrating things they do. They can't hear that, they might think we don't value their money.)



This is the area that we affectionately refer to as "The deads". It's where we put the files of all of our clients who have moved on to a better place.. like the accountants up the road. Bam!

Ow. I hurt my own feelings.

I like referring to it as the deads. That way if someone comes looking for a file, I have a chance to say "I think we killed them", and the other person knows exactly what I mean. And they don't call the cops.



That's my desk. I'm pretty sure that file was open because I was pretending to be busy. I can tell because there is a closed file on top of the open file, so I'm not sure how I was getting any work done.

Wanna see what's in my drawers?



That's my top drawer. That's where I empty my pockets to when I arrive in the morning. That "Chewy" thing you see would be a muesli bar, which becomes afternoon tea. The purple highlighter hasn't worked in over 12 months. The "Tax Schools" brochure you see there was probably for last years seminar.


That's my bottom drawer. You can see there the book from last years Tax Schools seminar, as well as my dodgy umbrella. In a strong gust of wind, that thing is useless, and I'm better off without it. I have an umbrella at home I use on the really rainy days, that one is back up in case I get caught looking to head home during a light shower (but racing home with that thing in a storm is a far better alternative to... *shudder*.. staying at work)


These are the shelves that sit behind my desk that help to keep me organised.

Top shelf = waiting on info from the client
Second shelf = info has come in, waiting for me to start working on it
Bottom shelf = waiting on a response from the tax office / ASIC etc

As you can see, I'm very efficient. My clients and the government bodies I have to deal with.. not so much.


These are my other shelves.

Top shelf - Files that pretty much "live" at my desk for one reason or another
Second shelf - Printer paper and current tax books
Bottom shelf- Old tax books for reference

So yeah.. I'm pretty organised, right?

WRONG!

That's my desk from side on. Apparently I decided it would be fun to try and build a fort. I'm not sure at what point I realized that by building a fort around myself to lock other people out, I would at the same time be trapping myself at my desk.

But I'm not the only one to leave files just laying about.



That's our boardroom. That's where, in theory, we could be taking some of our clients with a team of us and a team of them and discussing their business and their tax situation and whatever.

Every now and then (like if we have a new client coming in that we want to land) we'll tidy the room up and put on a show.. but mostly it's just used as storage for files that my boss was looking at, at some point he's forgotten why he was looking at them, and so they've been moved there until somebody runs out of stuff to do and picks them up.

This is one of our interview rooms though.

It's where I see most of my clients. They have no idea of what's happening out the back. They wouldn't even realize there's hideous green carpet through most of the office (You all noticed that, right?). There's a few pictures there (from shows my boss has been in or just classic pictures most people have seen) which clients will use to strike up a conversation, there's a graph of the share market's performance which I can use to try and make tax clients financial planning clients, but other than that it's pretty bare.

There's also plenty of these pictures around the office.

My boss loves his trains.

And now for "The pit"

The pit is a large room that is home to eleven employees. It's the big open area at the back of the office where all the work is done.

This is the view from the front looking back..


My desk is about half way along. It might be easier to see from the back.


Yep, that one there with the monitor on.. that's me. I took these photos on a Friday morning (I'm always earliest to the office on a Friday) so that's why the place is pretty quiet.
And that's the few places up the side. Those people are lucky enough to have walls.

Some day, I hope to have walls of my very own some day.

And for anyone who was wondering what was on my background and trying to make it out over the other desks, I'll save you the trouble..

Anyone who knows what that is gets a million ScoPoints.

What are ScoPoints?

ScoPoints are the system I use to help me rank people in my mind. They'll come in handy if you're ever in a burning building with someone else I know and I'm trying to work out which one of you to save.

You're right, there's no way I'm running into a burning building. No matter how many ScoPoints you have, you're on your own.

For more ScoPoints you can also show off your workplace and join up with Cher's International Workspace Tour (if you too are towards the back of the pack).

Taking a chance
That's just not for me

If there's four levels of cool
Then I'm at level three

It goes freakishly cool people first
Cool people next, then there's me..

And then my mum (Happy mothers day mum!)

I never try to set the trend

'Cos I've been hurt before
The only time I went out on a limb
It didn't work out for the best
A bandanna round my chest
Over a vest

Tripod - Always Get Into Stuff

First of May

Hello ScoFans!

Well, it's the First of May, so for you northern hemisphere folk you know what that means right?

Too bad for us southern hemisphere folk. We miss out.

But while we're on "inappropriate songs to be caught singing at the workplace", I thought I'd share with you a few other lines that have landed me on the receiving end of some strange looks..

"Sucker love, a box I choose. No other box I choose to use."
Placebo - Every You Every Me

"Man man man man, manly man man man"
Two and a Half Men - Theme Song

"I fucked Glenn Campbell, fucked him on a see saw
Kenny Rogers thought it crass when I fucked his big white ass"
Puscifer - Cuntry Boner

That's all I can think of right now.

As I said, people just sort of smile, nobody really says anything. You might think that's because they respect me too much to call me on it, but I learned the other day that's not true.

I was helping one of my coworkers when my boss walked over and this took place..

Boss: "Why are you helping her?"
Me: "She needed me to look over the research she'd done"
Boss: "Well, you won't feel like helping her when I tell you what she called you"
Kath: "Don't tell him"
Boss: "She called you an it"
Me: "Really? Kath, you're on your own with this one"
Kath: "That's not what I said! I said I'd got I T to help me!"
Boss: "She just admitted that not only did she call you it, but she spelled it out, the same way a grown up might spell out curse words around young children"
Me: "Do you think perhaps she was implying then that I can't spell "it"? And that she thought she might be safe if I overheard your conversation because I wouldn't know what she was saying"
Boss: "I think you might be on to something. So I do want to ask you, when you have a few moments, can you please right me up a list of rules for respect to coworkers in the workplace?"

And so this is where I need your help. I've written a few, but I think there should be more. Think about how you would like to be treated in the workplace, and let me know in the comments section.

Just so you know, this is what I have so far.

1. Coworkers should not refer to each other as "it", "you", "that one", "the freak" or "loser". Coworkers should refer to each other by name. It doesn't have to necessarily be by their name, it could be by the name of a fictional character or celebrity they remind you of based on their personality or physical appearance- so long as it will be obvious to the rest of us who you are referring to.
2. There are three different generations working in this office. Each generation will have different wants, needs and expectations when it comes to treatment in the workplace. Generation Y* for instance, needs constant feedback on the awesome job they are doing. They know they are doing an awesome job, that much is obvious, but without other people saying it out loud on a regular basis they will begin to feel undervalued. As this list was complied by a Gen Y, they have no idea of or interest in the wants or needs of the other generations.
3. We all know that different parts of the office are warmer than others, and different parts of the office are cooler. Constantly tinkering with the settings of the heater however, will only lead to people in the office being frustrated. In the interest of fairness, the last person into the office each day (so everyone can be there to witness it and we know that it wasn't rigged) will pull a number between 4 and 40 each day, at random from a bucket. That will be what the heater is set to that day.

Any other ideas? Your help would be much appreciated.

Anyway, I better go. I'm off to the football with dad.. let's hope I don't sing anything about "fucking outside"..

*I am the only Gen Y employee in the office, so when I say "Generation Y are doing an awesome job", I mean "I am doing an awesome job"