J, my coworker had his birthday recently. Having a birthday is a serious liability when you work in the IT department at my company as you will see…

The plan was to wrap his office in cling wrap the evening before his birthday, after he left for home. Unfortunately, our boss whom has the master key to all of the offices had to leave early that day. This meant that we could not utilize her key to access J’s office after he left because she would not have any way of getting into her office the next day (she gets into work at some insanely early hour).

Then I realized that he had a key to the bosses’ office, so I hatched a plan…

Me: Hey J, you have a key to JT’s office, right.
J: Yeah, why are you going to do something to it?
Me: Yeah, M, U, and I want to wrap it in cling wrap after everyone has left for the day.

J smirks and gives me the key.

Later, while I am talking with J, we come across the topic of what we are doing for the weekend. He mentions that he is going out for his birthday at a restaurant. I feign forgetfulness: “Damn, that’s right, it’s your birthday… we should be wrapping your office! You better make sure that you lock you office before you leave tonight!”

Then later on, I went to see the boss before she left and did a little switch-a-roo with her: I gave her the key to her office that I got from J and she gave me the master key. So now, I was able to get into his office, and she would still be able to get into her own office in the morning. J was none the wiser, thinking that I only had a key to her office, and not his.

After J left for the day, U, M, and I went to work, and probably spent a good half hour in his office:

His office looking in from the door.

From the corner of his office looking over his desk toward his door.

We wrapped his chair to his desk. Did several laps of his desk and monitors. U piled up some loose items on two chairs back to back and then U and M created a mini wrapped pyramid. We wrapped his phone, then wrapped his handset, then wrapped his handset to his phone. After that, we wrapped his keyboards, his bar code scanner, and a pair of scissors. Finally, we did some turns around his entire office for good measure.

The most amusing thing about it all was that none of it would have been possible without his help with the key.

M comes into my office and looks at my white board on which I have drawn a complex diagram representing the layout of the intranet website that I am developing. He stares at it for a while, and then asks what “Warratees” are. He is a sarcastic bastard, knows that it is a misspelling of “Warranties” – he just likes to pick apart faults.

When he acts this way I tend to react in one of two ways: 1) Ignore him and change the subject, or 2) Go with it and have a little fun.

This time I chose the second option:

Me: “Are you familiar at all with the Manatee?”

M: “Those big sea things?”

Me: “Yes, sea cows.”

M: “Ok”

Me: “The Warratee is actually the warrior caste of the Manatees.”

M: “Ummm, okay…”

Me: “You don’t believe me?”

M: “Well…”

Me: “I have a picture of one, if you don’t believe me.”

M: “Oh really…”, cocks his eyebrow.

Me: “Yeah, I will have to find it, I will bring it in tomorrow.”

M: “I look forward to it!”

I flexed my Photoshop skills and came up with the following:

M was suitably impressed.

The NASCAR season ended last Sunday. Jimmie Johnson won the Nextel Cup series. Booo.

To celebrate another NASCAR series, I present to you, NASCARgot:

Amusingly, this hits close to home as Keet does exactly this same thing when he thinks its time for you to get up, and I have a baseball bat next to the bed.

Yes, I have a baseball bat next to the bed….

Expect a picture of me with a black eye in the near future.

Today while vacuuming the house I accumulated enough cat hair to form a new cat.

Now all I need is some electrodes, a kite, a psychotic brain (preferably not currently being used), a machine that goes “ping”, a storm, and a maniacal laugh.

Then I will be set.

Thanks for stopping by and remember, Reality is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Sort of.

If you look over to the right, just under the main banner picture, you’ll see a new section now debuting on The Scott English Show.

See that RANDOM SHALLOW THOUGHTS heading? Yah, you got it.

Every time that you visit, you’ll find a randomly selected Shallow Thought displayed here. Yes, these are my own thoughts. And yes, they are shallow. I am a shallow sort of guy.

My influences for writing them are Jack Handy, Lazyboy and Mitch Hedburg. Although those are are big shoes to fill, especially Mitch’s whom was brilliant, they are unique to me. And while I could easily quote some geezer that didn’t live in the same freaking century as me, this blog is about my life, so you are going to get me spouting off in this compressed space, as well as the usually retarded posts.

So join me in welcoming the Shallow Thoughts out of the archives and into the blog realtime.

And yes, I am updating them regularly. The astute reader may even notice a few new ones immediately. But if you get the same old ones all the time. Don’t complain, take comfort in knowing that the universe - or at least my blog is unfolding it as it should.

Let me know what you think of this new addition to The Scott English Show (yes, go on, click the link to see another Shallow Thought) (ok, click it one more time)(stop clicking, I haven’t written that many new ones yet).

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: Be safety conscious. 80% of people are caused by accidents.

The number one way to avoid embarrassment at the gas pump (or wherever you drive) is not to drive one of these:

I see this car drive up and my imagination takes over…

There is a cute blond behind the wheel. Her smile is almost too perfect and she has the deepest azure eyes that I have ever experienced.

She parks.

There is a strangely familiar song muted but still quite audible coming from the car’s stereo system. Suddenly a giant hand descends from the clouds, opens the driver side door, and plucks the blond out of the car and …

and…

waddles her around to the front of the car, and then lifts her right arm, which rises as stiff as a crane.

Finally, the guiding hand rocks the blonde’s body left and right so that in a strange way she seems to be waving at me.

Then it comes to me, the music coming from the car’s stereo is clear now that the door is open.

“Im a barbie girl, in a barbie world”

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

Odd stuff.

It is what makes life, well… odd. That is a good thing. The Martians’ Heaven definitely falls into this category.

Heaven is an acoustic mix of pop music, history, life advice, religion, Gladiator, Doctor Who, and Star Trek.

Its geeky yes, but its catchy as hell.

The video is bad eye candy (although in its own way weirdly amusing), but the tune is Scottish gold.

Thanks to both Psycho-Momia and Boutell for the link hookup: It is amazing what you find when you go down some previously un-traveled paths.

Also check out these other The Martians tunes:

Days Like These: An very 70’s observation about events of some day when something might have happened maybe.
geoff Killed a Pigeon: A theatrical of exploration of death by bicycle.
Cheesy: Christmas gone oh so wrong.

Thanks for stopping by and remember: There’s too much blood in your alcohol system.

I enjoyed watching Rachel Ray at one point. Then after a while, not so much. She got a little repetitive and that just made it all the harder to ignore just how annoying she can be.

This video clip is mighty amusing, and I imagine that if you have even the slightest familiarity with Rachel Ray, you’ll get a kick out of it as well.

Thanks go out to Slashfood where I found the original link to the video.

Thanks for stopping by and remember: Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.

A string of events that occurred some time ago lead up to me sending an email to someone I deeply care about, and in that email, I used a longer Subject line than I ever have before. Find out how this all came about and the verbosity I employed…

I was amused by one of Crickie’s posts of collected Spartanisms! (a phrase that I coined!), and showed them to my wife. She in particular liked the “We Dine In Hell” one the most:

and said that she’d like it as her desktop wallpaper at work.

Later on that evening, mayhap after some amber libations, I forwarded a copy of the image to her at work. It was a rather plain message, so I decided to jazz it up a little with a nifty little Subject line. However, I think I got a little carried away:

Message Sent: WE DINE IN HELL!!! Pass the butter ol’ chap, if you wouldn’t mind, oh thank you kind sir, very sporting of you, is this real butter? Jolly Good. I do so enjoy the real stuff on occasion while dining on the ninth plane of hell. Nothing else for it really but a couple of swipes of the real thing. Just makes everything a little less cumbersome. And that’s what I’m all about, you see. Less cumbersome.

Of course, her email client truncated the subject and she didn’t realize the little gem I had created until I was moved to point it out to her. Pffft. I worked hard to finally get my Dork Achievement Badge you know. Stupid email clients!