To: Newsletter
From: Peter Rivard
Subject: Cool Vice Principal

Hi, all,

       I'm continuing my campaign to embarrass all Americans everywhere. Today at Go-chu, I was copying some images from my homepage to use in a joke on a teacher at Manyo, and I decided to set one image up as wallpaper on the Go-chu machine as a joke on a teacher there. I figured I'd use the "save as Wallpaper" button in Netscape to save the image to the wallpaper file, and then from the Windows control panel I would select that as the desktop wallpaper when this guy is using the computer and steps away for a phone call I'd arrange (translation for those less familiar with this stuff: first, I'd save the picture, then later when the guy stepped away I'd jigger the settings so that the picture would fill up the entire screen in the background of whatever else he was doing). Many software controls use the same commands as in English, just transliterated, so it's easy to figure out. Or not so easy. Anyway, as I was talking to Takako at the next machine, our new Kyoto-sensei (vice principal) came in to chat. She had been an English teacher for many years before making the jump to unterboss (I know, I know, English, Japanese, and Mock German--just too many languages in one email). As she moved around the room, I quickly shut down Netscape to hide the image on a small part of the screen--only to find out that earlier in saving the image to wallpaper I had also set it as the current wallpaper, which means I'd changed the background of the entire screen (which had been hidden behind the Netscape window) to to this image, which, oh, clever me, was an erect penis. Just in time for Kyoto-sensei to arrive right behind me. We chatted for a little while, and she told us we could go home--the kids had left early that day, most of the other teachers were gone, so it was a good day to close up shop a little early. Small talk, small talk. Then, she noticed. And laughed. I suggested that it was probably better that I stay until I'd figured out how to change the wallpaper back to what it had been--she seemed to think that was a good idea. It didn't take long, and as I did it we had a good laugh about where I'd found it and what I was doing with it. What saved me was that the penis was so damned cute. It was Stompy The Disturbed Erection from my home page. After Kyoto-sensei wandered out, Takako whispered to me, "You are so funny." I don't think she meant "funny ha-ha."

		The Adventures of Stompy the Disturbed Erection

       Every once in a while you show your stern-looking new female boss a picture of an erection and don't seem to suffer too much for it. Luck of the Irish, I suppose.

Peter

p.s.--Max told me that Stompy (or maybe it was this image or this one) was the wallpaper for the computers at the U. of C. radio station, WHPK, for a while after I'd posted it.
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