Because no project is ever finished without some idiot's unqualified opinion.
So I'm working on the cover of a trifold brochure I'm working on for my company. I feel hesitantly confident in saying that, since the CEO, CFO, and HR director like it, I'm basically in the clear company-wise. Artistically I feel damn good about it given I've never learned how to draw. This is the background to the scenario I will describe below.
So the HR director told me to get a third party opinion of it, just to see what the other people around me think. So I head to the only cube monkey who's still here. A stereotypical redneck, one who thought Judaism was "all earth mother-y." I show her the Example of What Not To Do, a brochure of one of our competitors that the CEO gave me because it made her want to vomit.
Let me tell you what it looks like. Lavender background, dark purple type at the bottom, medical stock photography at the top, a person I am now fondly referring to as Generic Goateed Medical Professional #37. Then this quote, with various words highlighted in blue, otherwise white text on black: "I became a doctor so I could practice medicine." It's cringe-inducing.
So with the prohibition against stock photography, and with our corporate line being something like "raising the bar," or whatever, I go African-abstract or German Expressionist Art Deco or something and up pops my brochure cover. I like it.
I'm not really interested in someone else's opinion, least of all Cube Monkey's. So I show her the Example of What Not to Do. She likes it.
I shudder, because inside, I'm dying a little. I can feel it. It's my gall bladder. I no longer have a gall bladder anymore--it died because of Cube Monkey. I might need a transplant, and if I can't digest my food anymore and have to spend the next fifty-some-odd years in a constant battle with thunderous flatulence and Biblical stomach upset I'm sending her to jail for killing my gall bladder.
So I show her my brochure and steel myself for something else--maybe my left testicle. It might die. And I'm worried. I need them both. Dudes can back me up on this. It's not like God gives us two for an emergency plan. We freakin' need it, because all of fifth and sixth grade is a cosmic test to see if your nuts can survive this Comic Gravity the Almighty endows on them. Anything vaguely pain-shaped will immediately, because of the curvature of spacetime, fly straight at your nuts. This gets rarer as you get older, but it still happens, generally with footballs, and mostly when your family is videotaping you.
(The secret Djinn Corollary to special relativity: that the curvature of spacetime is warped by a Scrotal Attractive Force solely to allow for America's Funniest Home Videos. I postulate the existence of the Bob Sageton, a new particle that creates the Scrotal Attractive Force. God may not play dice, Mr. Einstein, but he goddamn needs that #1 video.)
Anyway, Cube Monkey looks at my cover. "It's nice," she says. "But it doesn't say what we do."
I point to the text that says, pretty clearly, in even Cube Monkey-legible English, MEDICAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT.
"Yeah, but, the other one had a picture of a doctor on it."
There. I feel it. Like a needle right into the scroat. I'll have one less stepchild by sundown, I know it. And all those injuries with soccer balls and what-have-you means I'm getting a two-headed kid in a couple years. Shit.
"You mean Generic Goateed Medical Professional #33?" I ask Cube Monkey, trying to erect a sarcasm forcefield to keep her nut-killing idiocy away from me.
"You know what you could do?" she asks, clearly wanting to be helpful.
At this point I get a nosebleed. It's really hot and coppery and it starts dribbling down my lip. "What?" I ask, and the blood bubbles a little. The needle in my scroat has temporarily receded. Whether this is because the hemorrhage in my brain is reducing my ability to feel pain, or some other, more ridiculous reason, I don't know, but I'm glad. I'll willingly sacrifice my frontal lobe to keep Lefty the Wonder-Nut. (Shut up. So I named my left testicle. I don't have to f-cking impress you.)
"You could put blue dollar bills going up and down the bars," Cube Monkey mentions, eyebrows up, totally ignorant she's just driven the last nail straight through the coffin and right into my forehead.
The sheer horror of the situation made me black out. I woke up after dark. The cleaning crew had helpfully moved me slightly to the side of Cube Monkey's space so they could get at the trashcan. I dabbed at the crusted blood under my nose and limped to the door, the pain in the left side of my scrotum nauseatingly hot.
This is who I have to work with.
Testicle-stabbing Cube Monkeys.
God help my children.
So the HR director told me to get a third party opinion of it, just to see what the other people around me think. So I head to the only cube monkey who's still here. A stereotypical redneck, one who thought Judaism was "all earth mother-y." I show her the Example of What Not To Do, a brochure of one of our competitors that the CEO gave me because it made her want to vomit.
Let me tell you what it looks like. Lavender background, dark purple type at the bottom, medical stock photography at the top, a person I am now fondly referring to as Generic Goateed Medical Professional #37. Then this quote, with various words highlighted in blue, otherwise white text on black: "I became a doctor so I could practice medicine." It's cringe-inducing.
So with the prohibition against stock photography, and with our corporate line being something like "raising the bar," or whatever, I go African-abstract or German Expressionist Art Deco or something and up pops my brochure cover. I like it.
I'm not really interested in someone else's opinion, least of all Cube Monkey's. So I show her the Example of What Not to Do. She likes it.
I shudder, because inside, I'm dying a little. I can feel it. It's my gall bladder. I no longer have a gall bladder anymore--it died because of Cube Monkey. I might need a transplant, and if I can't digest my food anymore and have to spend the next fifty-some-odd years in a constant battle with thunderous flatulence and Biblical stomach upset I'm sending her to jail for killing my gall bladder.
So I show her my brochure and steel myself for something else--maybe my left testicle. It might die. And I'm worried. I need them both. Dudes can back me up on this. It's not like God gives us two for an emergency plan. We freakin' need it, because all of fifth and sixth grade is a cosmic test to see if your nuts can survive this Comic Gravity the Almighty endows on them. Anything vaguely pain-shaped will immediately, because of the curvature of spacetime, fly straight at your nuts. This gets rarer as you get older, but it still happens, generally with footballs, and mostly when your family is videotaping you.
(The secret Djinn Corollary to special relativity: that the curvature of spacetime is warped by a Scrotal Attractive Force solely to allow for America's Funniest Home Videos. I postulate the existence of the Bob Sageton, a new particle that creates the Scrotal Attractive Force. God may not play dice, Mr. Einstein, but he goddamn needs that #1 video.)
Anyway, Cube Monkey looks at my cover. "It's nice," she says. "But it doesn't say what we do."
I point to the text that says, pretty clearly, in even Cube Monkey-legible English, MEDICAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT.
"Yeah, but, the other one had a picture of a doctor on it."
There. I feel it. Like a needle right into the scroat. I'll have one less stepchild by sundown, I know it. And all those injuries with soccer balls and what-have-you means I'm getting a two-headed kid in a couple years. Shit.
"You mean Generic Goateed Medical Professional #33?" I ask Cube Monkey, trying to erect a sarcasm forcefield to keep her nut-killing idiocy away from me.
"You know what you could do?" she asks, clearly wanting to be helpful.
At this point I get a nosebleed. It's really hot and coppery and it starts dribbling down my lip. "What?" I ask, and the blood bubbles a little. The needle in my scroat has temporarily receded. Whether this is because the hemorrhage in my brain is reducing my ability to feel pain, or some other, more ridiculous reason, I don't know, but I'm glad. I'll willingly sacrifice my frontal lobe to keep Lefty the Wonder-Nut. (Shut up. So I named my left testicle. I don't have to f-cking impress you.)
"You could put blue dollar bills going up and down the bars," Cube Monkey mentions, eyebrows up, totally ignorant she's just driven the last nail straight through the coffin and right into my forehead.
The sheer horror of the situation made me black out. I woke up after dark. The cleaning crew had helpfully moved me slightly to the side of Cube Monkey's space so they could get at the trashcan. I dabbed at the crusted blood under my nose and limped to the door, the pain in the left side of my scrotum nauseatingly hot.
This is who I have to work with.
Testicle-stabbing Cube Monkeys.
God help my children.
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