Wallpaper Advice

I really liked the photo on today’s Bing, the one of Atrani on Italy’s Amalfi Coast.  So I wanted to wallpaper it and couldn’t figure out how to do it.  Instead, the click went to a generic search for all wallpapers on Bing and I wound up getting some horrifying results, the bulk of which were not appropriate for work, in my opinion.  At work you should find things cool, inoffensive pictures like this satellite photo of the eastern Mediterranean Sea without all the ads (including auto-load video and audio) or this.  You shouldn’t be getting all sexy with your wallpaper in the office.  Or creepy, for that matter.

Somehow, though, I bet that bizarre collages of Edward Cullen as a hot vampire superimposed on aerial photographs of Tuscan hill towns or anything Michael Jackson, however schmaltzy, or effeminate, he appears, would be tolerated in the workplace more than this perfectly chaste but gorgeous picture of, say, Indian movie star Priyanka Chopra.  (Damn double standards!)

And some were quite odd indeed, like one titled “1453 Istanbul.”  I don’t think that the brutal sacking of a city (which was still officially named Constantinople until 1930) is really worth commemorating in beautiful artwork even if you weren’t a particular fan of the Byzantine Empire.  Then again, I’m not Turkish, either.

So I wound up having to do a search for something and wound up with this fine and completely unobjectionable shot of the Dolomites instead. 

Folks, follow my example and pick non-offensive, pleasant sorts of wallpaper for your computer at work.  Landscapes.  Abstract patterns.  Stuff like that.  Pictures of your own family if you insist on personalizing.  There’s lots of options that aren’t going to get you in trouble.  Save the stuff that shows your “personality” (as if someone else’s picture could be a reflection of “your” personality) or pop culture interests for your computer at home.