More Thursday.

Damn the broccoli,
Damn you,
Damn the Wright brothers,
And double damn Thursdays.

Yep. Still here. I am in the Seventh Circle of Hell.
It is winter. It is beautiful out. And because it is winter, that ceaseless motherfucking thief of sunlight, I will spend every last second of potential exposure to unobscured solar radiation behind a desk.

Somehow the Wright Brothers must be at fault.

Sometime back my coworker and I had decided that since Thursdays were so bloody pointless we would obliterate them altogether and create “First Friday”. It was ruddy brilliant. Jumping from Wednesday to Friday? The sheer brilliance of it was blinding. “Second Fridays”, or what the rest of the sane world considers to be the only Friday, became somewhat of an event. We had themes.
– “Alice’s Restaurant” Friday. We had Arlo Guthrie looping nonstop for 9 hours solid. It was absolutely beautiful.

– “Dunce Cap” Friday : Self-explanitory.

– “In-a-godda-da-vida” Friday: Awesome in theory, but I must confess, this one was a bit trying.

– “Pi” Friday: A tribute to all things 3.141592653589793…

Unfortunately, the concept of “First Friday” was solely based in dellusions of grandeur. Once you lose the ability to delude yourself, you’re fucked, and once again left with Thursdays.

Double damn Thursdays.

I am supposed to be working. You can see how well that is going.

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Thursday Afternoon Musings

Why are legal pads yellow?

Did someone just wake up one morning and say, “I know…yellow…”

This must be investigated.  Let me call upon the “Series of Tubes”…

AH!  Here we go.

Dear Yahoo!:

Why are legal pads yellow?

Chris Middletown, New York

Dear Chris:

A company called the American Pad and Paper Company, or Ampad, claims to have invented the legal pad in 1888. A young inventor named Thomas Holley made the tablets from cheap leftovers, or sortings, from paper mills. His low-cost lined pads were quickly adopted by the scribbling professions, and the legal pad was born. AMPAD made business headlines a few years ago when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But fortunately, the Plano, Texas, based company was bought out of extinction, and now sells an array of office products, including EnviroTech Dual Purpose Legal Pads, made from 100% recycled materials.As for their distinctive hue, an article in IS Magazine claims that, “The yellow legal pad — a must among lawyers, executives, students, writers and thinkers of all sorts — was devised specifically because yellow was thought to be a color which stimulated the intellect.” The piece goes on to mention that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a big fan.Though we couldn’t verify the claim (considering AMPAD’s origins as a discount retailer, perhaps yellow dye was simply the cheapest?), in general dark text on a light background is considered optimal for reading. And yellow tends to be easier on the eyes than a harsh white background, a fact that 3M took to heart when they invented the Post-it note.