This was sent to me in an email.  I suggest you give it a whirl...

OFFICE DARES
ONE-POINT OFFICE DARES

1) Run one lap around the office at top speed.

2) Groan out loud in the bathroom cubicle (at least
one other
'non-player' must be in the bathroom at the time).

3) Ignore the first five people who say 'good morning'
to you.

4) Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave
your name and say
"Just called to say I can't talk right now. Bye".

5) To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your
hands over your ears
and grimace.

6) Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone
points it out,
say, "Sorry, I really prefer it this way".

7) Walk sideways to the photocopier.

8) While riding an elevator, gasp dramatically every
time the doors
open.

THREE-POINTS DARES

9) Say to your boss, "I like your style" and shoot him
with
double-barrelled fingers.

10) Babble incoherently at a fellow employee then ask
"Did you get all
that, I don't want to have to repeat it".

11) Page yourself over the intercom (do not disguise
your voice).

12) Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink
directly from the
nozzle (there must be a 'non-player' within sight).

13) Shout random numbers while someone is counting.

FIVE POINT DARES

14) At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once,
it would be nice to
conclude with the singing of the national anthem
(extra points if you
actually launch into it yourself).

15) Walk into a very busy person's office and while
they watch you with
growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10
times.

16) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as
"Bob".

17) Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really
have to go do a
number two".

18) After every sentence, say 'mon' in a really bad
Jamaican accent. As
in "the report is on your desk, mon". Keep this up for
one hour.

19) While an office mate is out, move their chair into
the elevator.

20) In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your
forehead repeatedly and
mutter, "Shut up, damn it, all of you just shut up!".

21) At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce
"As God is my
witness, I'll never go hungry again".

22) In a colleagues diary, write in 10am: "See how I
look in tights".

23) Carry your keyboard over to your colleague and ask
"You wanna
trade?".

24) Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the
same person:"Do
you hear that?" "What?""Never mind, it's gone now".

25) Come to work in army fatigues and when asked why,
say, "I can't talk
about it".

26) Posing as a maitre d', call a colleague and tell
him he's won a
lunch for four at a local restaurant. Let him go.

27) Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig,
etc) during a very
important conference call.

28) Find the vacuum and start vacuuming around your
desk.

29) Hang a two-foot long piece of toilet roll from the
back of your
pants and act genuinely surprised when someone points
it out.

When I spend time with my father I realize that I know next to nothing about him.  I decided to make a list of what I actually know for sure. 

1)    & nbsp; One of my first memories of my father is helping my mother bust him out of BryLin  Clinic a substance abuse/mental health treatment facility.

2)    & nbsp; Somewhere my father has an eight hour recording of his college newspaper interview with Cheech and Chong that I am desperate to get my hands on.

3)    & nbsp; He designed posters for Steve Miller Band concerts.

4)    & nbsp; He spent time with Salvatore Dali.

5)    & nbsp; He ended up in Harlem in his underpants after taking too much LSD in Manhattan.  (A nice couple took him in and he spent several hours hallucinating in their closet.)

6)    & nbsp; Somewhere in Italy my father bartered his leather jacket for a guitar which he taught himself to play.

7)    & nbsp;  My father stashed his cheap gallon vodka jugs in the rafters of our basement

8)  Early on in their marriage my mother had a prostitute come looking for the money my father owed her.  “Mr. Barry” was hiding under a desk at the time.

9)    & nbsp; The only time I saw my father cry was when I went with him to an AA meeting and heard him talk about his childhood.

10)  My father contributes vary little to conversations now, and most of it comes in the form of rhymes.

I would give anything to have David Sedaris write my father’s biography so that I could curl up in bed and read it laughing out loud and crying silently with no tears.  As corny and as much of a cliché as it may be, what I know most about my father is that my life’s goal is to make that man proud of me. 

I think the fact that I am unsatisfied with my daily routine has started to manifest itself physically.  I wake up feeling alright.  I have some coffee and lo-carb cereal, but by the time I reach the expressway, I feel nauseas and feverish, with a sinus headache.  These sickly feelings evaporate only after I get home, lie down on my couch, and settle into some sort of guilty pleasure (My big fat obnoxious boss, or Blind Date.)  Maybe it’s cancer.  I have never taken care of my internal organs.  For years, I have been prophesizing a mutiny by my liver, lungs, and heart.  At any moment they are going to pack their bags and jump ship…Only able to turn and look me in the eye when they are forty paces away from my imminent corpse.

My interoffice arch-nemesis is wearing an acid washed jean skirt today. Even on casual Fridays I kill her with kindness.  I open doors, I smile, I wave...no response.    This is the type of woman,that makes the phrase "she deserved to be slapped" seem less redneck.  Every time she dismisses my minute gestures proposing civility between the two of us, I want to wring her thick neck and scream, "DID I DO SOMETHING TO OFFEND YOU!?!"  "Do I smell unpleasant?"  "Is there something hanging out of my nose?"  "Is it because my people killed Jesus?"  "Is it because I am young and virile, and you are an old goat woman complete with beard and haunches?"  Something has to give.  I need to understand her.  What makes her tick?  I may need to get stuck in an elevator with her and win her over just moments before I save us both from plummeting to our deaths.  I changed the header on my lotus notes memos to Art Deco.  Even this could not lighten the burden of rejection felt in my heart.  I need to know what can be done to refund her preconceived notions about the repugnance of my character.  Perhaps I will buy her some muffins, or a chip n dale lap dance.  So begins operation ”iniquity rescinder”!

How fucked up is the tsunami?  I don't know if that makes me feel more or less like there is no god.  The first I saw of it was a story on CNN about a supermodel who clung to a tree for eight hours, fractured her pelvis, and watched her boyfriend get swept out to sea.  Positive Petra and her Pelvis seemed to have survived the Tsunami in Sri Lanka.  Try saying that three times fast.

I am not assuming Petra is positive, that was the only adjective her cronies used to describe her during their 15 minute interview.  It felt a little strange that CNN chose this survivor story, but I know at least one person who would be willing to drop their own life and make a career out of nursing Petra's pelvis back to health.  As a die hard liberal, I am never one to stop people from knocking Dubya, but is his less then speedy public response to the disaster a surprise?  The man is one big delayed reaction.   Of course in my mind that is not the issue.  Like I said I am a liberal.  I was born that way.  My mom is white and she was a black panther.  I have seen her collection of buttons decorated with black fists and pigs wearing policeman caps.  America spends billions of dollars bombing innocent impoverished civilians, but scrooge up when we have the opportunity to feed them.  The real issue is not delayed public response but spending.  Should our government sack up and donate more money?  We could sure use the good PR.   Or, should we leave that to the big corporations, thereby saving blue collar Americans' tax dollars for national spending?  I know that I did the unthinkable, and donated $100.00 to the relief fund my bank set up.  Whoa big spender is probably running through your mind, but that is literally at least 30 rum and diet cokes, 20 songs on the juke box, and 10 foosball games, at my favorite dive bar.  I am personally sacrificing 3 to 4 nights of blacking out, so that Arziki won't die from the bio-toxins being released by his mother's decaying body into the rapidly depleting water supply.  Sainthood here I come.

There is nothing quite like an acid trip to get in touch with yourself.  When I was in high school, acid was not a recreational drug, it was an institution.  I literally have more then one friend who ended up naked and screaming in a convenient store.  What can I say; I am one of the unlucky ones.  Actually my cubicle is somewhat like a padded room.  The walls have a squishy texture, so I can pin up little uplifting notes to myself about the rewards of productivity, pictures of cats and children, and most importantly event calendars.  The most number of hits I ever personally took, which I must say is a record amongst my group of friends is 21.  I actually for a very brief and pathetic moment in time preferred that my friends called me Morrison.  Please, no judgment, I was 17, and I lost my virginity listening to the Doors.  While I was peaking there were about 20 of us hanging out on my friend’s dock. All of us were engaged in intense conversations with one another…convinced that we were all seeing the same incredible patterns/light shows/ cartoons/God.  The funny thing about acid is its not like alcohol or other drugs of its caliber, where the more fucked up you are the less you remember.  With acid the more fucked up you are the more you believe in your hallucinations.  Lucky you, you get to remember exactly what it was like to only be able to speak “Furbish” or to know in your heart of hearts that your friends father’s recliner could rocket you right through double paned French doors and out into the atmosphere so you could commune with the planets and the angels.  On the day that I broke the LSD consumption record, I was convinced that I was the winner of a very important game show, and all I had to do to collect my prize was walk off the end of the dock into the lake beneath me.  You know it’s bad when your actions sober up people on acid.  A group of my friends pulled me up out the water, as I gasped and choked on a combination of Lake Erie and laughter, asking, “Where’s my prize?  I won!  Where is it?”  They could tell that I was not kidding.  One of the new comers to our circle looked much like a deer in headlights, as she asked if I was ever coming back.  My friends weren’t sure.  That’s why they call it a trip.  Most of the time, you’re cleared through customs, and get to go home.  Occasionally though, you get lost in the Bermuda Triangle and end up in a room with no windows and copious amounts of space to tack up pictures of cats. 

Everyday, at precisely 8:00 a.m., I drive down the Earhart expressway going 80 miles an hour listening to Kenny Loggin’s “The Danger Zone”, passing vans filled with church goers on the right, giving them the Jeep wave from my hatchback, smoking as many cigarettes down to the filter as the half hour drive will allow, enjoying the breeze from the two windows my car has, which I have taken the liberty of rolling all the way down.  That’s right all the way down.  What can I say, I like to live dangerously.

The tassel from my graduation cap hangs from my rear view mirror stained brown at the bottom from whatever was last in my cup holder.  Not too many choices there, coffee or rum and diet coke.  I’m guessing its coffee.  I can’t decide what time I want to go to lunch today.  12:30 or 1:00?  The Christmas party is tonight.  It starts at 3:00.  If I go to lunch at 1:00 I will only have one more hour of this.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t go to the Christmas party but I am pretty broke right now, and every employee gets a free turkey.  I have spent 30 minutes praying to Yahweh today that the turkeys get handed out in the beginning.  That way I only have to stay long enough to not feel guilty about only going for the turkey procurement.  I hope my roommates are fucking hungry.  I wonder if I can get one of my girlfriends to come over and show me how to cook a turkey.  Maybe I should buy one of those electric carvers.  Wait I am so broke I am subjecting myself to this for free poultry…no electric carver.  It’s hard to make a clean getaway with a 15 pound turkey.  I wonder if they will be little bullshit turkeys.  I wish I had a deep fat fryer.  I actually wish that all the time but especially right now.  Can you pawn a turkey I really need gas in my car?

In two weeks I will be forced to spend a night with the last person that broke my heart.  Mutual friends of ours are throwing a Christmas party and I was informed that we should “make nice” and both arrive at 7:30 p.m.  The way I figure it, this means I have exactly 14 days from tomorrow to loose ten lbs and find a suitable date.  Could I bring a Prostitute?  No too obvious, and expensive.  I am only going to eat egg beaters and chicken breast, and I am going to find something to wear that makes my ass look fabulous, and booze gut non existent.  I have already darkened and cut my hair, which I legitimately did before I knew that I was going to have to hob knob with the heartbreaker.  Everyone has been telling me it looks great, but this will be a true test.   People of the opposite sex have always dwarfed my self-confidence.  Why is it that I can be perfectly confident and capable in all areas of my life, except for the categories of dating, sex, and relationships?  Being single makes you realize some very sad things about yourself.  For example, the people I am sexually attracted to actually validate my existence.  If there is no one there to approve the way that I look, act, and feel, then who am I?  Or worse yet…what if they disapprove?  The kicker in the crotch is that I am so afraid of rejection, that when the opportunity to put my heart on the line comes up, I shrivel up worse then George Castanza’s penis in cold water.  So much for mistletoe romances…Bah Humbug.

Ahh...God bless the monotony of thanksgiving.  When we went around the table and recited the ceremonial "I give thanks for..."  I said I was thankful for deja vous.  Am I the only one who considers these family gatherings 72 hours of that strange feeling I have done this exact same thing before?  Of course this type of thought process upset my mother who constantly insists that I hate our family and mock them with my phrasing and tone at any opportunity.  Ordinarily she would have been right, but on this particular holiday celebration, I found myself starting to appreciate the familial neurosis that had previously picked away at my sanity.  Nothing had changed; no one had grown metaphysically, and I was overjoyed.  The fact that my vegan cousin, dining on tofurkey, still refuses to pass things like gravy and meat to neighboring masticators, inspired a tear of joy.   My inebriated father went to the piano to play his usual one chord melody up and down the keyboard while chanting “Never get married you’ll always be happy, never get married you’ll always regret it…”  Although I could sense the hate rays shooting into his back from my mother’s side of the family, I did not feel the usual pangs of embarrassment and shame.  Instead I looked at the fat rolls hanging over the back of the man’s pants and felt at peace with the world.  Does this mean that I have finally grown up, and true to form have begun to fear change?  Or have I just been away from home for too long?

Before my life as a certified young professional, I had a series of literally odd jobs.  Probably none more memorable or legitimate as the years when I worked as a clerk in a catholic hospital in New York.  I was young, I was pondering medical school, and I thought I could change the world.  Surrounded by nuns and doctors, I dutifully organized charts, labeled stool samples, and directed family members to their designated invalid.  The under funded hospital  ;existed in a state of total chaos, and my twelve hour shifts slipped by in minutes.  The worst part about the job of ward clerk was that I was trapped at the Nurses station alone for long stretches of time while the nurses went on their "rounds". Allow me to explain why this is such a miserable circumstance.  Even at 2:00 a.m. nurses must obtain a doctor's permission to administer medication to a patient.  This includes everything from Tylenol to the much needed Ativan.  While we waited for the MD to return our page and prescribe the most appropriate sedative, I became the designated babysitter.  The Nurses would find the most combative and confused patients and wheel the restrained and drooling geriatrics up to my desk.  The most bizarre man I ever encountered was a serious pervert named Henry.  He spent the first 12 minutes of our late night rendezvous starring me down, threatening me with his half full plastic urinal.  Although he was previously restrained, one of the aids had released him so he could use the handheld bathroom.  I was left defenseless and this man had a loaded gun.  Henry smiled menacingly and chucked the yellow plastic contraption in my general direction.  I don't know if it was his arthritis or his cataracts, but Henry missed.  I thought the worst was over until Henry informed me that if I looked at his penis I would turn to stone.  Then he told me that he had something in his pants and it was "jumping".  Needless to say Henry was sending me mixed messages.  Was a supposed to look at his crotch or turn away?  God I miss that job...Life in the cubicle is so dull.

Because I am the lowest person on the totem pole at the Blue Chip company that I work for, I am also the youngest member of the "team"...This is actually more of an extended internship then a real job.  I am the whipping boy of the finance department...All of this I can handle...What I can not tolerate is the subtle infringement on my 1st amendment rights.  Allow me to elaborate...One day while enjoying a stale afternoon in my cube I received an email from my vibrant witty 83 year old Yiddish Grandmother.  The title of the email..."Thinking of you on your birthday"  Since it was not my birthday, and because my company's firewall had blocked the photographic content of the email, I became increasingly intrigued as to its true subject matter...I asked my Bubby to forward the email to a private address, and waited with baited breath...What I saw when I opened the email shocked me...Pornographic cakes...12 of them...covered with frosty penises, vaginas, and, nipples...One of them depicted a full blown orgy....There was girl on girl action complete with hot tamale nipples, peering out from beneath a layer of little Debbie's creamiest skin colored icing spread...I am not quite sure what was more disturbing...the fact that someone sent this to my grandmother, or the fact that the company I work for censors pastry???

Lately my friends and I have been playing a little game we like to call "PEOPLE YOU SHOULD NOT TRUST"...I promise those of you similarly shackled to your cubicle this is both time consuming and fun...I am going to start a list please feel free to add your own collection of untrustworthy fellows: As my name is captainobvious I will start with the most obvious choice and go from there.  People in big white vans and clowns.  Dubya... People who don't enjoy stevie wonder's music.  People who don't like dogs...Men who wear spandex shorts and those little biking shoes...For some reason Eskimos...Catholic school teachers... People who don't like the Cosby show and/or Golden Girls (that sophia is a riot)...People who didnt grow up watching sesame street loving Oscar the Grouch...This old guy that winks at me everytime he walks by my cubicle...R. Kelly...Republican's in bowties...Tanya Harding...Christian scientologists...Religious zealots of all denominations for that matter...

First off, I promise I will never use an emoticon.  Secondly I solemnly swear that the blogs to come will be a series of amusing and bitter comparisons between life before the cubicle and life after damnation to its confines.  I hope to give and receive advice about how to cope with a realization that many of us suffer from:  "Yes this is really how my life turned out...I will not be a rock star, porn star, artist, or lottery winner.  I will however start my 401 K plan in an effort to beat the rest of middle america to a town house in Ft. Lauderdale and a decent tombstone to commemorate my short but productive life"...See I told you I was bitter.