Golden Garrison?

Man craves secure shelter. This is a basic instinct we share with creatures of all shapes and sizes. The grizzly bear seeks a cozy den, the chipmunk a comfortable burrow, Superman his Fortress of Solitude, the louse a warm thicket of hair. To satisfy this instinct, I seek such a sanctuary at my office.

My desk is a traditional L-shaped cubicle. The two walls are approximately nipple-high, and I sit fully exposed in the other two directions. This affords me little protection from the elements.
I define "the elements" as people who want me to do shit for them. My goal is to avoid such individuals at all costs. Other examples of "the elements" include persons uncomfortable with viewing a man sit pantless at his desk. I have no time for them.

I'm better off than many of my coworkers, in that I sit at the window end of a row of cubes; it's unlikely (though not, theoretically, impossible) that the elements will intrude upon me from outside the building (let's face it, if something actually comes at me through the window, shelter will be the least of my problems). A network printer does sit a few feet away from me, however, and those folks who output to this device regularly file past me.

I should probably attempt to detonate that printer.

In order to protect myself from the elements, I'm considering constructing a physical shelter on or under my desk. The shelter must meet the following four criteria:

• It must be relatively discreet, and cannot draw attention to itself. A solid gold bunker would attract onlookers, so even though I would be safe inside, I would be in great danger upon egress.
• It must be relatively inexpensive. This is another strike against the solid gold bunker.
• I must somehow complete the construction without anyone noticing. At this point the golden bunker idea is basically dead.
• The shelter cannot get me fired.

I have a basic ten-step project plan in my mind, which goes as follows:

1. Measure the open area underneath my desk.
2. Purchase a sheet of plywood, along with wood glue and a set of hinges.
3. Using my radial arm saw, cut the plywood into a series of short planks. Also cut one wider plank that will serve as a door (approximately the width of my torso). Measure and pre-drill the door (and the plank that it will be attached to) for the hinges.
4. Using my router, create a groove on one side of each plank, and a tongue on the other.
5. Over a period of a week or two, discreetly smuggle the planks into the office and hide them in a desk drawer. Perhaps each day I will insert one plank into each shoe (running up my lower legs) and one into the back of my pants. If anybody asks about my unusual posture and stiff gait, I will mention constipation, or perhaps mumble something about accidentally sitting on a bottle. This should dissuade any further interrogation.
6. One evening after everyone has left for the day, assemble the planks with the glue. Screw hinges into place. Screw the end planks into the desk.
7. Squirt glue all over the exterior of the shelter. Create office camouflage by haphazardly throwing files, pens, staplers, etcetera against shelter. Keep adding glue and detritus until wood surface is no longer visible.
8. Run extension cord and network cable behind desk so they are accessible from beneath. Decorate interior with the finest silks and linens.
9. Gaze contentedly at my creation.
10. Hide from the world.

Though this all sounds pretty damn good, I do see a few problems with this plan. Upon first blush:

• This sort of construction may not provide the level of security I require. For example, it is neither fireproof nor bulletproof.
• I have absolutely no idea how to cut tongues and grooves with my router. I'm likely to lose a finger.
• I have absolutely no idea how to use my radial arm saw. I'm likely to amputate something important. (This last statement is probably redundant.)
• A man-sized plank will not fit into the back of my pants.
• I may have used the sitting-on-a-bottle thing too many times already.

None of these is a dealbreaker. It's just a matter of hammering out the details. A little aluminum spaceframe here, some kevlar there, perhaps a dash of asbestos insulation - and I'll be good to go. Hopefully my next post will be made from the intimate confines of my impregnable underdesk fortress.

Abstract Dew Art and Ventilated Panettones

This week my company moved to a new office building. This is important to me for one major reason: I now have a brand new cubicle to fill with my own special brand of crapola. One way or another, I will make it mine. I view my cube as an extension of my personality. Unfortunately, in the vast vanilla homegeneity of corporate America, there are obviously limits to what I can get away with. But that hasn't stopped me from pushing the proverbial envelope.

During my time as a contributing member of the workforce, I have occupied a total of five different cubicles - and I have tried my very best to put the indelible stamp of Craig on each and every one. I refer to one of my more memorable efforts as the "Dewscape". There was a period in my life when I suffered from an inexplicable addiction to Mountain Dew. This is probably fodder for a whole other post, but suffice it to say I drank a ton of that shit. For example, there was a two-year period during which every workday afternoon was punctuated by a Dew Break, held in the company cafeteria and attended by myself and a small cadre of colleagues. It was like a smoke break, except instead of sucking on cigarettes, we'd chug unnaturally-colored, super-caffeinated carbonated beverages. That amounted to five 20-ounce Dewskis per week (or 12-ounce cans when the bottle vending machines ran dry)...plus the gallon-sized buckets I'd fill every Thursday at Taco Bell...sheesh, it's a wonder I'm still alive.

In any event, I'm honestly not sure how it started, but I found myself saving all those cans and bottles. I believe I was initially toying with a Kramer-inspired run to Michigan to recoup some of my contributions to PepsiCo...but that idea fizzled. Instead, I began lining the bottles up along the windowsill behind my desk. When I ran out of room there, I looked for more real estate to Dew-ify. Bottles found homes on any spare square inch of my desk. I used paperclips and tacks to attach cans to my cubicle walls. I purchased a hot glue gun and cemented a couple dozen bottles together to form a sort of abstract sculpture, and then hung it from the ceiling with a paperclip cord - like a chandelier. It was beautiful, in a way. This went on for several months, until some asshole complained to HR (I have my suspicions as to the identity of the culprit). I mean, sure, it was totally unprofessional and certainly bizarre, but it surely wasn't hurting anyone. The Dewscape was perfectly sanitary (I took pains to rinse out the vessels before positioning them). Still, HR told me I needed to dismantle my creation. The guy was nice about it, but firm. I remember he e-mailed me offering to send over some large moving boxes in case I wanted to take the bottles and cans home. The fact that he even made that suggestion told me he thought I was completely bonkers.

While the Dewscape hurt no one, another cubical creation threatened to cause actual bodily injury. The team I worked with at the time was cordoned off into a six-desk area - a wall, then five cubes in a row, and parallel to that a long desk space which I shared with a couple of printers. It was actually a pretty crappy setup. However, one day I realized that I sat approximately regulation dartboard distance away from the wall. I scrawled a few misshapen concentric circles on a patch of cardboard, glued said cardboard to the aforementioned wall, and purchased a set of darts at a nearby Sports Authority (real darts, not the stupid soft-tips - when it comes to darts, I mean business).

Voila - instant entertainment.

Coworkers would regularly stop by for a quick game, which rapidly evolved from traditional cricket-style scoring to "hit whatever weird shit we stuck to the board". Later, the goal became to punish that shit by throwing as hard as possible. Items included business cards of our least agreeable customers, pictures of the Taco Bell chihuahua and Chevy Chase, and ketchup packets. The bullseye was a stale, rock-hard, year-old muffin-sized panettone (a traditional Italian cake, given to us as a component of a holiday gift basket), which was remarkably satisfying to nail with a dart. One of the guys I worked with pitched in college. It was hilarious watching him wind up and hurl one of those little metal missiles with fastball velocity completely through the panettone.

Good times. Generally speaking.

Upon release, the dart flew past five open cubes. At any time, it was theoretically possible (or likely) that one of those cube denizens would poke his or her head out into the field of play, and thus interrupt the projectile's flight path with his or her face. This added an element of excitement to the game. However, in order to ensure that no one was killed, we instituted some loose safety regulations. Throws were prefaced with warnings such as "Fire in the hole!", "Torpedoes away!", or simply "INCOMING!" Upon reflection, it's actually pretty incredible that no one was ever wounded. The office wall, unfortunately, was not quite so lucky. With all the forceful dart-launching, inevitably, it was peppered with holes. When we eventually moved out of that area of the office, I took a poster off of a nearby wall and hung it over the damage - no one was ever the wiser. Or at least, no one ever asked me about it. I'm sure at some point the poster was moved and the pock-marked sheetrock was discovered. Those folks probably assumed somebody went nuts with a .22.

I have some ideas for my new cube, which I'll work on and detail in the next post. As I've grown older and (ostensibly) wiser, I think I'll make an effort to err on the side of safety and good taste. Perhaps I'll go with Moet instead of Mountain Dew. And maybe I'll go for the stupid soft-tipped darts this time around.