NiniaPimp Magazine

To Whom it May Concern:

I am writing to express my interest in being another sheet of paper that you skim. Due to my palpable lack of marketable skills, I am confident that I can make myself completely forgettable in the space of a few paragraphs. You will see that I am highly capable of this. I have two bachelor’s degrees. I’m sure that the following embellishments of my misspent life will make you want my sweaty, unfit body to be near yours in an office every weekday for many years. LOOK AT ME! Are you looking at me? Good.

Now I’m going to start lying about being good at the position you are offering. I will begin by making a completely empty statement by saying that I think I can be a valuable member of your team. I saw “Remember the Titans” twice in theaters. What a team they were, huh? That’s just one example of the empty logic I am employing in order to pass off my substandard abilities as the exact qualities of a desirable candidate. Additionally, I have extensive experience using computers, often for web games and porno. Ergo, I can meet the challenges of this tech-savvy position because, for the purposes of this cover letter, all computer skills are the same computer skill. And did you know that I went to college? That’s probably where I learned to waste people’s time.

I have also interned at several places. I spent the bulk of those internships thinking about mentioning them here, to you. Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t used the word “qualifications” yet. Oh shit, here it comes. I have many qualifications:

-I am well-versed in Microsoft Office. That’s real impressive, so long as you pretend that we live in a nomadic tribe of hunter-gatherers. Pretend harder.

-I have great organizational skills and can juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. I most likely gained both of these skills by pulling them directly out of my ass.

-I am enthusiastic and creative. For fuck’s sake, I might as well have put down “palm reading” or “unicorn breeding” here.

To reiterate, you have spent part of your life reading this. I think I have demonstrated my initiative, ambition, and enterprise, as well as my ownership of a thesaurus. I am excited to deprive you of more valuable time by further discussing my qualifications with you via telephone. This will allow me to elaborate on my qualifications, to conceal my dull personality with buzzwords, and to discuss the passions and hobbies that really make me, well, me–including an exuberant explanation of my masturbation addiction and its surprising, multifaceted relevance to this job.

Sincerely,

Some young guy who thinks he’s slick, but is in for a rude awakening

Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? If you’ve got an example of your “Parents Just Don’t Understanding”, submit it here!
And thank God we’ll never be as dumb as they are!

My mum was downloading pictures from her camera to DVD. For whatever reason, she put the SD card into the dvd slot… You can still hear the card rattling around in her Mac.
David B

So my dad is under the impression that in order to search for anything online, you must include www. and .com

Here is an actual request:

Dad: “Hey, I need you to look up the score for the UNC game. What’s that, www.uncscore.com?”

Me: “Yep Daddy, let me try that.”
Jenna K

My grandma unlocks her cellphone by taking out the battery EVERY time!
Philipp Schiller

My college professor put a rock on an overhead projector in a large auditorium (200+), and asked the class “what kind of rock is this?”
Preston O from The Ohio State University

When facebook asked my mom to change her password she said “well if I change it then how will all my friends know it to look at my face page” she then proceeded to email her new password to her friends so they can look at her profile….
Got Heem’ from Bu

My dad walked into the apple store today and asked if it was the app store
Reid S

My Grandma called me yesterday, inevitably having computer problems.
From her description, she had not registered Microsoft Office and it had gone into reduced usability mode.
I spent half an hour walking her through registering, step by step, to which she always would reply “okay” to each step.
It was only until I asked her to enter the product key that she replied “Will I need to turn the computer on for this part?”.
She had been writing down each step.
She was sitting AT the computer.
Ben Kelly

The other day I was watching tv with my mom when a commercial said that The Lion King would be playing in “3D and 2D,” which surprised her.

“Woah, they have 2D movies now! What even is that?”.

I tried to explain that we were currently watching a 2D tv but I dont think she fully understood.
J Hat from Northeastern

My mum was looking for a picture of the Mona Lisa she could use for a class. I asked her why she didn’t just image-search it and she was amazed that there is technology to “zap the pictures from the websites”. Now whenever the topic of computers comes up she acts all superior and tells everyone about this great new website she found called Google Image.
Rikkilee Petterson

I received an off brand digital camera about a year ago as a prize at work and soon forgot I owned it. One night my dad was asking if it was possible for me to shoot a couple pictures for him. I decided it would be much easier on me, and much more fun for him, if I just gave him the cheapo camera I was never going to use myself.

Upon giving him the camera, still in it’s packaging, I apologized for it’s poor quality but explained how it would be better than nothing and he wouldn’t have to worry about breaking or losing it. He opened it in awe, examined it, and in a state of child-like exuberance asked me, “Are you sure you’re not going to use this? It even comes with two AA batteries, Erica?!”
Erica G from JALC

Submit yours here!

Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? If you’ve got an example of your “Parents Just Don’t Understanding”, submit it here!
And thank God we’ll never be as dumb as they are!

Everytime my dad talks to someone on the phone and they ask for his email address when he gets to the @ part, he says “@ like the at sign @gmail.net.” Then double checks to make sure that they used the symbol and not the word at. Every single time.
Kendra Lachmund from Ball State

This lady I work with showed me her filing system today. She has an entire drawer full of printed emails. Every time someone emails her, she prints it out and then files it in a folder according to subject matter. She says it’s “too difficult” to find what she wants in her email and this filing system is much easier.
Some of her file folder labels are “boss,” “meetings,” and “forwards.”
Stephanie D from Texas

My friend’s dad called me because he didn’t know where the Desktop button was on his “icon screen.”
S. L.

Before my mom went on vacation, I told her not to use her phone or else she would be charged a roaming fee. In Europe, she used her phone to upload 3 photos to Facebook, which resulted in a $45 charge. She thought the photos were small enough that our provider would not charge us roaming.
Tony Jones

My boyfriend’s mom is ALWAYS on the computer so I assumed she was fairly good at it. I have sinced learned otherwise:

1. She has 3 copies of everything (and none of them are organized by folders
or ANYTHING)
2. She has had Facebook for a year I think, and just recently learned that she
had a profile when I showed it to her.
3. I told her once that it was easier to find things if you save them to your
desktop while you are using them. She has since saved EVERYTHING to
her desktop.
4. She can ONLY use her e-mail if it is on outlook express. There is no other
way.
5. DO NOT PRANK HER USING THE COMPUTER. One day when she
was gone, I took a picture of her desktop (with the TONS of pictures and
icons) and moved them all to a folder in the corner. Then I set the screen-
shot as her background so that it looked like the icons were all there but
they weren’t clickable. Apparantly, she turned the computer off and on a
few times before cussing it and blaming the problem on a virus.
Anna Stelling

I was telling my mother yesterday that I’m gonna need a more powerful computer because I’m doing more and more advanced video effects and 3d stuff and the computer can’t handle more complicated tasks. No matter what I say to her, she kepps telling me “but it’s the program that is supposed to make advanced stuff, not the computer.”
Alexandre Boucher

I was taking a nap, when I wake up to the sound of my mother screaming “FUCK YOU!” extremely loud. About two hours later, I heard her scream again, louder “FUCK YOU!” and I came in, and she was giving the computer the finger. My mom, being a really timid person, didn’t usually do stuff like that, so I pretended not to be there to see what she was doing. She screamed at it, and gave it the finger again, and again, about eight times. When I came in, she said she had seen dad do it once, and that it made the computer go faster.
Gibbon Firetoss

When I am in my mom’s car and she uses her phone, she thinks the faster we drive the faster the internet will be.
Safi Syed

Today my mom asked me to check if one of her old college friends was on facebook. When I found the friend and was able to show my mom the full profile she accused me of “breaking into facebook.”
Jeff N

This weekend I spent over 15 minutes on the phone with my mother guiding her though Facebook and how to change her profile picture. I had to tell her step-by-step “Okay, now look to the bottom right of the picture, see where it says ‘Make Profile Picture’? Click that.” And so on. After I hung up I realized I had been able to given her detailed instructions about on screen prompts without looking at a computer once. I probably spend a little too much time on Facebook…
Adam Tyner from Gonzaga

Submit yours here!

Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? If you’ve got an example of your “Parents Just Don’t Understanding”, submit it here!
And thank God we’ll never be as dumb as they are!

My stepmother signs all of her Facebook messages with “Toodles”. Even comments. Even her status updates.

I like to imagine she immediately leaves the room after posting anything.
Adam Mongrain

About two years ago, my mum discovered how to play solitaire on the computer. About two weeks ago she discovered how to play music on the computer. Today in total amazement she told me she could play solitare and listen to music at the same time.
Candy Mountain

My dad thinks that usernames need to end in “.com”…
Miles Peters

Back in high school one part of my history 30 assignment was to create several WWII period propaganda posters; naturally I saw this as a chance to show off my Photoshop skills. I spent weeks pulling pieces from actual posters of the time and blending them with my own original artwork I made with my tablet. I even had it printed on 3 food wide paper and spent time artificially ‘aging’ it with coffee stains, tears, burns etc.Two days after the last class I found out I got 60%. Apparently the teacher didn’t believe I could make something so realistic myself, she thought I just printed out pictures I found on Google. Most of the other students made theirs using magazine clippings and pencil crayons…
Josh K from MHS

My mother gets around 100 new emails on a typical day. One day I told her to open the email I’d sent her about a week before. As I watched, she began scrolling through her inbox, complaining about how tedious it always was to find old emails. I asked her why she didn’t just search for it. Turns out, my mother has used the same email for upwards of a decade and can forward messages or attach files with the best of them, but she’d never once noticed that her email had a search function.
Theodora Farah

I used to work at a video game store. Between serving the tween geeks desperate to talk to someone about the obscure game they liked, I had to serve the parents who actually forked over the cash. Around holiday time many would come and buy systems for their kids. This was before Internal memory in the ps2 / game cube age. Parents constantly would come and buy the system and a popular game such as final fantasy. When I suggested the memory card they would look at my like I was crazy. “Why would anyone want to save their game?” Okay, fair enough, see you again December 26th!
Allison S

My dad just walked into my room holding a book light and asked, “Is this an iPod?”
Melissa Rackus from Ohio State University

One morning, my dad had to use my car to drive to work because his wouldn’t start. When I got in my car the next day I realized he had changed every radio preset I had programmed. Every single one.
Annie T

My dad asked me to lend him my laptop to check his e-mail, he isn’t very quick doing this so I went to read something while he finished, as soon as I sat with the book in my hands he yells “Son, this just broke, the computer is doing whatever it wants”, turns out he had left his thumb hanging over the touch pad and opened VLC from the rocket dock… twice.
Leonidas Trujillo

One day I was showing my grandmother Youtube since she had never heard of it before. I played the ok go treadmill video for her and no matter how many times I explained it, she kept saying, “you and your friends need to be more careful when you’re filming all these videos”. She thought every video on Youtube was a home movie I made.
Sarah R

Submit yours here!

This is how the Windows commercial plays out in my head.

ANNOUNCER: This is Jane. Jane has a 4 year old computer that she doesn’t think she needs to update.

ANNOUNCER: So we decided to build a PC store in her house to show her what she was missing. Except she locked her door like most normal people do. So we decided we’d just break in.

ANNOUNCER: Then we got in. It took us like an hour. Seriously. We tried everything before breaking the window. We were hungry, so we made a snack.

ANNOUNCER: After the snack, we were ready…to build a PC store in Jane’s house. Until we saw her TV.

ANNOUNCER: So we took her TV…

ANNOUNCER: And her fridge…

ANNOUNCER: In fact, we pretty much robbed her blind.

ANNOUNCER: Maybe next time, JANE will buy a NEW FUCKING COMPUTER so WE don’t have to spend ginormous amounts of money on a store in HER house and give HER a FREE computer when you and I both know that in 6 months she’s just GONNA GO BUY A FUCKING MAC! HOW ABOUT THAT JANE? HMM?

END SCENE

Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? If you’ve got an example of your Parents Just Dont Understanding, submit it here!
And thank God well never be as dumb as they are!

A couple of days ago, my mom asked me to help her make an account on a website for some gossip magazine she likes, so she could get updates and newsletters. As her username, she put her first and last name, and then her birthday- 6763. The site limits the username to be 6 to 20 characters long, and hers was 24. To fix this she changed the number 6763 to 6759, then proceeded to curse at the computer because, “[She] took all the maths in school, 6763 minus 4 is 6759!”. She has since stopped reading the magazine because of her anger.
Dianna Lacey from Queens College

Yesterday, I made the mistake of showing my dad that when I tell my phone to “Call A**hole” it says “Did you mean ‘call Dad Cell?’” He thought this was absolutely hilarious and wants to do it on his phone now, but no matter how many times I try to tell him that his phone can’t do it (which it can’t), he insists that it can. He is currently sitting in the living room yelling “A**hole!” at his phone while pressing random buttons.
Irene Smith

My dad asked me to save “Google” to a flash drive.
Carrie Paps from Wayne State

I was setting up my parents’ new computer, and downloaded Windows Essentials, just to get Windows Mail. As I was unchecking the other programs in the pack, my dad stopped me and asked my why I didn’t install them. I said I didn’t because they didn’t need them. He then replied, “But what if I suddenly decide I want to join Facebook?” Because, obviously you need Windows Live Messenger to join Facebook.