Did you ever hear that myth about cold cereal being devised to keep unruly children under control? The thinking was that, by giving
them bland food for breakfast, it would leave them so numb they would be
perfect angels for at least the first half of the day. Or maybe it was
to defeat the Russians. I'm a little fuzzy on the details (possibly
because I made them up entirely), but the moral is that "something" was
devised to keep "someone" down. Throughout history, we've seen this
happen over and over again. It's so commonplace, we often don't even
notice that it happens anymore. So let me remind you with some of the
more obvious ones.
Math was devised to keep girls down.
Wheat was devised to keep celiacs down.
Zantac was designed to keep acid down.
I can see I'm starting to wander here, so I'll reign it back in.
I
want to talk cubicles. Cubicles? Yes, the grown-up equivalent of a
big bowl of mind-numbing cold cereal. If you are among the lucky few
who spend their days confined to beigy-gray views, you know what I'm
talking about. Cubicle walls are what you get when a think tank comes
together to answer these hard hitting questions:
- What is the optimal color (or non-color) to promote resigned defeat, without inciting homocidal rage?
- Can a pattern be incorporated in such a way as to mask or
camouflage stains, ranging from bodily fluids to sweet and sour chicken
glaze?
- What thread count would be needed to support the weight of a phone being thrown at it, full force, from a distance of 32 inches?
The result is a complete array of the most nondescript fabrics ever
to grace the workplace. Gray and beige tend to be the most popular
colors, and the mental image alone is enough to send me into a functional
coma. Is there such a thing as a functional coma? I don't know, but I
tell you, I fall into one every day of the week, Mon-Fri, about 8am to
oh, let's say 5pm. Completely functional, I am productive, yet still
manage to feel absolutely comatose.
Or that's the way I used to feel, until the day I discovered that
my walls could actually entertain me. Turns out some clever designer
at the cubicle wall textile shop decided to pay us all a little favor by
designing a pattern that could only be described as interpretive.
Behold my cubicle wall:
At
first glance, you're probably not impressed. But let me tell you this:
listen in on a boring conference call long enough, and you will begin to
see what I'm talking about. These are some of the images I've been
able to detect in this wall of mine:
- a gnome
- a chinese dragon head
- a lady's face
- an owl
- a row boat
I'm not unconvinced that my cubicle is hiding one big 3D image in
it. I wonder what it could be. I haven't cracked it yet. Have you
seen those tricky 3D pictures? My cube could easily be hiding something
mind-blowing, if only I could loosen up my eyes enough. Here's an
example that actually does have a 3D image in it.
I've given myself a headache from all this staring, so I'll have to end this post soon. But for the record, I don't do drugs at work. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I just have an active imagination. A very active imagination.
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