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Give me your office-workers, your stapler-hoarders, your frustrated novelists...
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Writers, throw in the towel! Why spend years angling for agents and contracts when you can P.O.D - or publish online? Carl Hayes, online novelist, embraces conformity and eschews the starving-artist lifestyle on his tongue-in-cheek website, Improving Thomas, the tale of a former nonconformist artist who has now embraced the life, and personal philosophy, of an office drudge. Hayes posts new chapters, prettily PDF'd, regularly and will even notify you when the latest installment is online.
Our companion website SFist beat us to the punch on this one, but we're not ashamed to follow a trend. We found it the perfect office stalling tool ourselves - almost but not quite as good as the Paris Review author interview archives. If there's a fault to be found with Thomas, it's that his actual adventures aren't as compelling as the IDEA of writing a novel about conformity. But perhaps that's to be expected, and even planned.
Thomas also gives you an Anti-Conformist Survey, featuring questions like "Does your job make you entertain violent scenarios and/or make you feel like you are buried underground, alive?" and "If you view pornography, do you find yourself aroused yet deeply empty?" Disillusionment was never so organized. We also have to give him props for a seemingly Flashless website, easy to navigate. Check it out, but not if you're one of those hipster types, OK? Thomas wouldn't approve. I light my lamp beside the cubicle door.
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