March and April 2008 - DE Expressions

After a three-year hiatus spent ignoring angry rants about Batman's alleged sexuality, I've decided to bring back DE Expressions and answer the first message board post for each of my AskMen.com articles.

AskMen.com accepts no responsibility for the content of its message boards. As such, the posts are considered public domain, so I took the liberty of copying them here for legibility. Also note that AskMen.com is not accountable for my inane responses.

The comment below is from the message board for How to Deal with Customer Service. I can't tell you how excited I was to find out the first post for my first article on AskMen.com was both racist and homophobic.

Middle Easterns are so gay, they mess my day up every time I call in about my Xbox.

Middle Easterns

Middle Easterns, at first, I thought you were coming out of the closet. Then I realized you just used a very ironic cyber alias. It's like rain on a wedding day (except, you know, actually ironic). Incidentally, the call center that provides customer service for Xbox users in Canada and the U.S.A. is situated in Austin, Texas. That's not quite the Middle East.

This next one is in response to the article Manage a Bad Boss.

I hate my boss and I want to kill him.

Dude

I don't recommend it, Dude. These things have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. For example, we all know how thing turned out for Starscream after he threw Megatron off Astrotrain and left him for dead. Unless you want your dying boss to get revived and upgraded by a giant planet-eating robot voiced by Orson Welles and then transform into a purple laser cannon to blast you to cinders just as you're putting on your Cybertronian crown, you should really consider other alternatives. Also, the animated Transformers movie from 1986 rocks.

Finally, let's take a look at the comments for Timeless Management Laws.

Better than Mafioso...

Excellent

I'm actually terribly afraid of Mr Mafioso, so I'm going to cheat and answer the second post for this article.

Great article! My manager can learn a thing or two from this. Not to mention, it's nice to know where the pitfalls lie before venturing into the wild.

Sun Diego

Thank you for the kind words. As you may have guessed, I read every comment on the message boards, and I really appreciate the feedback. I also completely agree with you, Sun. If you're working in the wild, as a manager, it's best you memorize the location of every pitfall and precipice surrounding you. You should beware of tigers and venomous snakes as well. Oh, and don't forget killer plants that can emulate the different ring tones on your cell phone. Those are nasty.

Well, that was fun. Hopefully, we'll have real letters next time.

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