Organised Resistance

The Headbangery, at Prominent Global Communications Firm GmbH

Today, January 12, sees the Professional Personal Organising Community aflutter over National Clean Off Your Desk Day. In a brilliant stroke of post-modernism, the day was first declared by a leader of the Professional Day-Declaring Community.

I have two words for the Professional Personal Organising Community. One of them is off.

You have read before that the Headbang clan lives in junkyards. We are slobs, with a capital ob. Yes, it's dysfunctional and neurotic, and we have some damn fine reasons, thanks.

Since moving to Germany, where Ordnung ist das halbes Lebens, Headbang8 has attempted to mend his ways.

In part, one can thank The Enforcer, our Putzfrau. Master Right is neat. I mean, like Japanese neat. Even he maintains (get this) she's too professional.

For example, since we're guys, we both used to do, um, the toenail thing. You fellas know what I'm talking about. Well, we don't do it any more.

But I draw the line at the desk. It's a joke in the ad game that every strategy planner's desk is a fire hazard of research reports and articles he intends to read. Our hard drives groan with downloaded cool-hunting. You can't think without shit around you. It's not creative.

I know EXACTLY where everything is on my desk. Yet the tyranny of the tidy means that over the years, people have looked at my office and sneered about it being unprofessional, even as I covered their asses and saved their bacons. You know who you are, my little honeys.

Time has come to resist. Do not be neatened. The Headbang Liberation Front declares tomorrow, January 13, as National Bite Me Day.

The boss. The guy at the DMV. Your mother. No matter what form of small-minded tut-tutter gives you the evil-eye, tomorrow is the day to tell them to kiss your sweet, fragrant buttcheeks. I might even design a logo for it, if I can just find my password to that online clipart site. I wrote it down, somewhere.

Comments

[Little Britainer]

Thank you for visiting my blog. This is my first visit to yours, but I will definitely be back.

Oh, and if you're not into Days, don't ever try to live in Argentina. For eight months, Argentine Day Declarers made it their life's work to figure out just how to inconvenience me. Wanted to go to the library? Oh, sorry, it's Librarians Day. Fancy a walk in the park? Tough shit, it's Park Workers Day. Etc etc. If only I could have shoved some National Bite Me Day good wishes up their arses...

[A Free Man]

Well said. The cleaners at my office straighten my desk every Tuesday and Thursday. I don't know why. I haven't asked them to do this and they don't do it to my office mate. They also gave me a candy cane at Christmas. I hate the cleaners...

[headbang8]

@AFM

A candy cane! What an outrage!

[ian in hamburg]

Aw c'mon! The clutter on that desk is clearly less than 8 inches deep, the internationally recognised minimum for creativity to get going.

[Tammy B]

amen, sister!

[Irish Gumbo]

Ich bin ein Mitglied der Front Bite Me!

Widerstand, Genossinnen und Genossen!

Please tell me I got that right.
Very funny and timely post!

[SSG]

AFm made me laugh!
and me likey likey- national bite me day? woof woof!

[Diane Mandy]

You are so funny!

[SubtleKnife]

I don't understand. Get a life is three words...

If anything, that picture would make me comment on the lack of clutter on your desk.

[SubtleKnife]

PS. Looks like you're also stuck with an inside courtyard view... I look out over a pyramid-shaped skylight set into the roof of a little plaza in the mall below our offices.

[Blogging Mama]

I salute you! And I will happily join in today. Perhaps you should make this a quarterly event.

[nursemyra]

damn! I missed it

[headbang8]

@ SubtleKnife:

You're right. The "get" was ambiguous. I have changed it to "off", so there is no mistake.

I could have just written "get fucked", but there's no need to be vulgar.

@ I-Gumbo

Close. Very close.

Genossen covers both genders; if you wanted to specify comerades of both sexes, you'd need to say "Genosseren und Genosserinnen". Which would just sound clunky. Not that the German language hesitates to be clunky, usually....

Yes, "Widerstand" means "resistance, but I think it's the kind you measure in Ohms. Dr. Ohm is buried here in Munich, by the way, in a leafy spot in the gay neighbourhood. I'm sure he doesn't mind, given what the boys do for property values.

[Irish Gumbo]

So close...Thank you!
I did not know that about Ohms, a pleasure to learn something new.

[SSG]

i have "bite me" as my MSN tag yesterday and today. Work sucks. We have to use MSN to "communicate" so no-one speaks to each other.

[cliff1976]

"Widerstand" means resistance both electrically and uh...politically.

"Spannung" (voltage) definitely also has a non-electrical application, meaning tension. "Potenz" and "Strom" may or may not be directly usable outside the world of electronics, but the closely related "potenzial" and "Ströung" definitely are.

Viele Gr¨ße aus KCMO!

[Snooker]

@*$@ I missed it!
Oh well, my life has its share of unofficial Bite Me Days.
As always, your post is worth a good laugh.
And hey, your desk doesn't look bad at all.

[Cissy Strutt]

All I can say about my mess is, I know where everything is. And if you give me a second, I'll clear a space for you to sit. I used to be embarrassed, and had CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) but now I think, whatevs.

[Arizaphale]

Phew. There you are. Just found you under a pile of ...hey!....so THAT's where that is......:-D