This is a momentous choice to make every year – well, for me anyway.
One calendar for home and one for the office.
The home one is easy – but for work, well, do you strive to impress (Ansel Adams or Diego Rivera), to titillate (O’Keefe), to amuse (Far Side), to get guys to hang out (Swimsuit Models)?
Or just go with what you like to look at – the Elvis Early Years calendar is pretty neat, I think.
Or do you just say to heck with the personal statement and use whatever the vendors have left at the front desk? “Ooooh, I want the Caterpillar, you can have the AmChem.”
Not that we should be judged by what we have on our walls, mind you.
I usually get my favorite painter. This year I have Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Monet is never a bad choice, either.
Aside from the pretty factor, I’d look for a calendar with plenty of room to write birthdays and stuff on. Those beautiful woman de jour calendars are just a cleverly disguised poster.
Every year I try to get something that’s different from what I had the previous year. (Usually by the time December rolls around I’m sick and tired of the theme and want something fresh.)
The 1999 one currently on my wall has been very strange and enjoyable. It’s called Abandoned Spaces, and features photographs of nearly collapsed old houses and rooms that the outside world are reclaiming (sand dunes flowing in the door, for instance).
My new one is called Thoughts from Walden Pond and features some lovely nature photography with Thoreau quotes printed beneath them.
For a decade or so now, I’ve just gone with what the insurance agents send me. The personal insurance is w/State Farm and it runs toward Norman Rockwell, while the business insurance is handled through a broker who consistently sends one with no illustrations; just Navy Blue background and an easy to read date format. Works for me.
Always a different shift on a theme. Almost always Speculative Fiction art. Last Year was Tolkien, this year was Dragons (Always a good one with me. ) and next year is Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
Right now I have a Alphonse Mucha (artist) calendar on the wall. Next year’s has Chinese paintings. I have a page-a-day calendar on my desk with a bed and breakfast theme. The one for next year is the LIFE Millennium calendar.
At work I now have a Rhino Records calendar up, and at home it’ll be Highlander (the TV show; yes, I am a geek). Unless I can find something better, like an Alphonse Mucha calendar.
I’m boring. My folks are both ministers, so I always have church calendars. How sad is that? I don’t even believe in god, and I have scriptures all over my perfectly good calendars. Oh, well. They have mom & dads’ phone numbers on them, so I guess it’s not a total waste of paper.
I am not insane. I am just an average girl who enjoys the lost art of torturing small animals by duct-taping them to railroad tracks.
My calendar’s an oddball; instead of January-December, it runs July-June.
That’s because my wife (she’s the greatest) gets me one every year for father’s day, and it has pictures of ours from the past year on it. Right now, I’m looking at a picture of my family of four (since grown by one) in front of a teepee in Little Bighorn National Battlefield, Montana, from August of '98.
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
At home - Georgia O’Keefe 'cause she’s my favorite author. Well, second favorite now, but I don’t think Andy Goldsworthy will be putting out a calendar anytime soon.
At the office, I always have a Sierra Club or Audobon calendar, whichever has the prettier pictures that year. I get these as stress relievers - whenever I’m tired of cubicleworld I gaze at whatever landscape is up for that month.
I’m a big calendar collector. I often buy a dozen every year. However, being cheap I usually wait until after Christmas when they sell them at half price. I like antique maps, so I buy all of those I can find. I also like scantily attired women, so I usually buy the Sports Illustrated swimsuit and Playboy lingerie calendars. I also saw an Onion calendar (the website not the vegetable) which I’m planning to buy for work.
I haven’t owned a calendar in ages. At least not the wall kind, I have my Day Runner in which to keep track of my hours and then I have my Outlook calender.
I prefer to use my Outlook calendar because the moment I launch it in the morning it gives me reminders and I can “snooze” them for as long as I want…5 minutes, 10 minutes, 4 hours etc.
Guess I spend too much time on the computer to purchase a pretty calendar, but when I do happen to recieve one as a gift, my family knows to get me a calendar with wolves on it.
BTW, Georgia O’Keefe was an artist, not an author…if you love her art, check out “Portrait of an Artist” by Laurie Lisle, it’s well written and gives you great insight to the woman behind the work.
I plan on getting the Dawn calendar by Joseph Linsner. Though, I have the last one on my wall, still showing June. Time is an illusion… lunchtime doubly so.
http://www.madpoet.com
Computers have let mankind make mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns.
I have three calendars…two of them are of the incredibly beautiful areas near where my Englishman’s home of Cornwall is. He brought them to me in Aug.
My other calendar…if I get it finished consists of the hottie males of straightdope … which for a small fee I can distribute to the other dopers who are interested.
Hurry up with that photo Democritus… the presses won’t wait forever Mr December!
I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!
I have two calendars: one provided by work and the other from a local Japanese restaurant that I frequent, showing all the various fishes that they use, with the Japanese name for it underneath.
) and next year is Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld.