One thing that I've taken from High School (which now is almost a decade back in hindsight) is the role of Mrs. Hutchinson in 12th Grade Advanced English. She imparted upon me all the things I hoped and dreamed for in the realm of English literature within that year. Culminating in the early part of the semester with Beowulf and then later Chaucer. And later still Samuel Taylor Cooridge and all those other Romantic era poets. At the time, I was all about the Sublime and anything that had anything to do at all with things medieval or remotely medieval.
Of course, you all know that I'm a giant D&D nerd, so this shouldn't be a far stretch of the imagination. But,
The year before, in American Literature, I hated it, (with the exception of Poe). I spent the entire year trying to draw parallels to the early American authors and the English authors--saying that Twain stole the adventure story from the British, and etc and etc. It was a bad year for me and Literature, and truthfully, I've never been able to get into early American lit. But,
Anyway, 12th Grade English lit with Mrs. Hutchinson was the best. And I mean the best. With each unit, Hutch had us do some sort of big project, and the Medieval unit convieniently encompassed the beginning of English Literature up through Chaucer. Our project options included things like: doing a report on medieval times and life, reading additional works and reporting on them, creating/drawing/painting/sculpting something medieval and bring in a presentation based upon that creation, make an antic filled odd-ball highschool movie, etc.
I did all of that save the movie (which I ended up assisting with the following year for my one-grade-below-me friends). I read as much of the Knight's Tale in Middle English as I could (hoping there'd be dragons and fights and other cool things--too bad Chaucer's knight did all his fighting before the pilgrimage.) And then I wrote up this crazy story, in calligraphy on tea-dyed parchment paper. I drew a picture of the story's main character (I was also an art nerd in high school), and when I presented the whole mess, I did so in my best early-impression of an English accent. It was ballsy. I didn't prepare enough ahead of time, nor did I know much about the "proof read your fiction aloud before actually reading it aloud" bit, but I did it all anyways, and it was like a 20 minute read.
The result: A for the year. But I didn't stop there. I painted paintings after Wadsworth poems and after high school, I went out and bought $500 worth of pre 19th Century English Literature from Cooridge to Byron to Spenser. And honestly, I haven't really gone back and read much of it. But,
What I did do was go to college and drop the Chemistry major my mom wanted me to have, and applied myself full time in the English department, fully expecting at that time, to study Medieval literature. Well I did in a way--I took a wonderful Chaucer Class and leared to read and speak Middle English, but at about the same time, I learned about Postmodernism and experimental fiction.... Well that hooked me but good. So,
Coming up this Friday, I'm about to pay homage to my Roots. I'm going back to Harbor Creek and I'm going to do a bunch of readings in Middle English from The Canterbury Tales. It'll be my first time back to Harbor Creek since probably 1999, when I made a couple appearances to visit Hutch and Humes (the art teacher). And I'm very excited (especially since I'll be taking the day off of work to do it).
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
A not so Random FiRD
So today, being the day that my 2nd packet is due, and also being my second semester at Spalding, I'm required to send a piece of fiction to everyone in my group. And considering my last post, I thought I'd throw that piece of fiction up here as well. The story, formerly called "Four out of Five," and now entitled "Between the Lines," can be accessed in Adobe PDF format, here. Basically the story is a microcosm of action that gets skipped over in another story of mine called , "(Un/Re/I )Do." "Between the Lines" shows the breakdown of Johnny and Stacy's relationship and the build up of the eventual relationship between Johnny and Elise, which happens by the end of "(Un/Re/I )Do." "Between the Lines" itself is a sort of nested story that doesn't really "go" anywhere but constantly inward.
Also, since today is (was) Friday, I'm going to include another story, "Downtime." It's considerably more random and encompasses the other half of the type of fiction that I generally write. "Downtime" is both vulgar and absurd, so don't read it at work , and don't read it if you don't like a profluence of potty-mouth.
I hope you enjoy either or neither of them. In any case, I'm going to go to bed a lot earlier than I expected to tonight.
Also, since today is (was) Friday, I'm going to include another story, "Downtime." It's considerably more random and encompasses the other half of the type of fiction that I generally write. "Downtime" is both vulgar and absurd, so don't read it at work , and don't read it if you don't like a profluence of potty-mouth.
I hope you enjoy either or neither of them. In any case, I'm going to go to bed a lot earlier than I expected to tonight.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
What I'm working on
Lately the ole blog's been more random than writerly, so here's an insight on what I'm currently working on:
The Big Project: Not an Autobiography -- a collection of linked short stories more or less about yours truly--except better than real life, and very considerably darker. I've recently decided that the book will appear as three parts, now tentatively called: [Dark Erie], [Grey Erie - Dreary Erie], and [Light Erie - Fleeting]. Each section is going to follow the general theme set by its section title with Dark dealing more with the "bad shit" and light the "good shit" with Grey being a repository of shit that doesn't really sift to either side. I'm thinking the Grey section will be more of a morass of snippits and short shorts that are looking for definition of one side or the other but...failing on that endeavor. Dark will be longer than Light in terms of stories, and that's about it.
Current stories in progress:
[Runaway] - A triptych: This contains remnants of the story that kicked off the whole idea for the book. A revisualization of certain aspects of my life through the eyes of a very goth girl going through a period of extreme mundinaeity that gets instantly fucked up by the death of her father that she hasn't spoken to for twelve years because of some bad shit on her behalf during her parents' divorce. The "Left" and "Center" Sections I'm pretty happy with, but "The Right" hasn't earned its ending yet, nor does it really arc well enough as it's own story. This is a "Dark" side story.
[Medieval Weddings and something or the other] - This is a pair of stories written in Middle English originally for Sue for a wedding present. They tell the story of us, and a story about foxes. I'm at a standstill with this one at the moment. I'm still not sure how to wrap the stories into the proper context, since slapping 20 pages of Middle English on the page without any form of translation/explanation is going to go over like a lead balloon. Also the story about foxes needs to be rewritten to be more dynamic, and I'd like to make an attempt to improve the language/rhyme scheme (ie create one), or at least do something so that it doesn't read as choppily as it does. When finished, this will be one of the stories in the "Light" side of the book.
[Four out of Five] - This story is an expansion on a period of skipped time within "(Un/Re/I )Do". It's my newest endeavor, and currently it's scope is waaaay too wide. It's basically about Johnny meeting and working towards dating Elise, but in a very asshole sense. It strips away the hopeless arty victim characterization of Johnny in the parent story, and repaints Johnny as a complete womanizing asshole. This is definitely a "Dark" side story.
And those are the big Key items for the moment.
The Big Project: Not an Autobiography -- a collection of linked short stories more or less about yours truly--except better than real life, and very considerably darker. I've recently decided that the book will appear as three parts, now tentatively called: [Dark Erie], [Grey Erie - Dreary Erie], and [Light Erie - Fleeting]. Each section is going to follow the general theme set by its section title with Dark dealing more with the "bad shit" and light the "good shit" with Grey being a repository of shit that doesn't really sift to either side. I'm thinking the Grey section will be more of a morass of snippits and short shorts that are looking for definition of one side or the other but...failing on that endeavor. Dark will be longer than Light in terms of stories, and that's about it.
Current stories in progress:
[Runaway] - A triptych: This contains remnants of the story that kicked off the whole idea for the book. A revisualization of certain aspects of my life through the eyes of a very goth girl going through a period of extreme mundinaeity that gets instantly fucked up by the death of her father that she hasn't spoken to for twelve years because of some bad shit on her behalf during her parents' divorce. The "Left" and "Center" Sections I'm pretty happy with, but "The Right" hasn't earned its ending yet, nor does it really arc well enough as it's own story. This is a "Dark" side story.
[Medieval Weddings and something or the other] - This is a pair of stories written in Middle English originally for Sue for a wedding present. They tell the story of us, and a story about foxes. I'm at a standstill with this one at the moment. I'm still not sure how to wrap the stories into the proper context, since slapping 20 pages of Middle English on the page without any form of translation/explanation is going to go over like a lead balloon. Also the story about foxes needs to be rewritten to be more dynamic, and I'd like to make an attempt to improve the language/rhyme scheme (ie create one), or at least do something so that it doesn't read as choppily as it does. When finished, this will be one of the stories in the "Light" side of the book.
[Four out of Five] - This story is an expansion on a period of skipped time within "(Un/Re/I )Do". It's my newest endeavor, and currently it's scope is waaaay too wide. It's basically about Johnny meeting and working towards dating Elise, but in a very asshole sense. It strips away the hopeless arty victim characterization of Johnny in the parent story, and repaints Johnny as a complete womanizing asshole. This is definitely a "Dark" side story.
And those are the big Key items for the moment.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Stamp out Corporate WageSlavery
I've said it before, and to just about every person I meet, but good god, I [Censored by Corporate America] my job.
Let's not get too far into the logistics that brought about the slow buildup of [Censored by Corporate America] over the last 4.x years, but instead cut to the last few weeks.
At my place of [Censored by Corporate America] employment, I work three jobs, none of which are company sanctioned in the sense of having an actual job title/position/appropriate payscale. But, none the less, I've carved these three jobs worth of activity out of necessity to make the office a better place, and, in all honesty, the work itself is kind of cool--find ways to make the office use less paper and less manhours to make working life more productive and have more time for sluffing, and do all of it on a budget of $0. Turns out I'm really good at this sort of thing. I saved the company something like $786,000 in my first year and nine months of doing this, and the savings by now are probably pushing a cool million--all on my back.
However, [Censored by Corporate America], has decided that since only my boss knows what I do, and no one else in the building can do what I do, that I must, in fact, be doing NOTHING. *angst* *angst* *angst* *angst*.
So in the infinite wisdom of [Censored by Corporate America], I've been returned to my actual job title, in my actual department, and the office is now 100% without any form of tech support, after having me wait on the management and craft folks for 3 years, fixing nearly everything in house for no cost to the company, and now all of that is gone.
Of course, expect me to continue doing everything, but I'm not stupid, and so not even two full weekdays after going down to the old department, already had to rig up a replacement to cover for me while I fixed a completely useless report that had been misfiring data since Saturday. A report that they know I need to manually fix usually every day for the first 10 days of the month. So instead of having me work on keeping the office running like a well oiled, but severely corrupt, broken, and evil machine, they've decided to see how long it takes for it to grind to a halt.
Between Friday and Monday morning, I identified eight things that needed repaired. After today, I noticed that entire database tables were steadily corrupting themselves, no one had inspected the operators' positions for 4 days, and another host of stuff was broken.
All I have to say is that [Censored by Corporate America]
I just hope I can [Censored by Corporate America]
Let's not get too far into the logistics that brought about the slow buildup of [Censored by Corporate America] over the last 4.x years, but instead cut to the last few weeks.
At my place of [Censored by Corporate America] employment, I work three jobs, none of which are company sanctioned in the sense of having an actual job title/position/appropriate payscale. But, none the less, I've carved these three jobs worth of activity out of necessity to make the office a better place, and, in all honesty, the work itself is kind of cool--find ways to make the office use less paper and less manhours to make working life more productive and have more time for sluffing, and do all of it on a budget of $0. Turns out I'm really good at this sort of thing. I saved the company something like $786,000 in my first year and nine months of doing this, and the savings by now are probably pushing a cool million--all on my back.
However, [Censored by Corporate America], has decided that since only my boss knows what I do, and no one else in the building can do what I do, that I must, in fact, be doing NOTHING.
So in the infinite wisdom of
Of course,
Between Friday and Monday morning, I identified eight things that needed repaired. After today, I noticed that entire database tables were steadily corrupting themselves, no one had inspected the operators' positions for 4 days, and another host of stuff was broken.
All I have to say is that [Censored by Corporate America]
I just hope I can [Censored by Corporate America]
Friday, January 5, 2007
FiRD - I Was a Teenage Retard
In thinking about the whole Friday Is Random Day (FiRD) spiel that I've started here, it reminded me of The Question of the Week, from days of yore. Days in which I was a massively retarded immature kid that thought he was a badass. In reality, from 1998-2003 I was a dumbass completely, totally and without a clue. Thankfully, Sue pulled my head out of my ass and somewhat painfully showed me what kind of dumbass I had unknowingly become.
Granted, at every milestone stage in my life, I look back on previous times, and say, "God, I was a dumbass. So probably in five years or so, I'll have another random post debunking today's post, but for now, in my head, I've survived dumbassed-ness, and am on some level just a goof, or something akin to that.
But anyways, Back in THE day (that being the days of my first two semesters of college, and being the time between classes spent in the computer lab getting my first true injections of "Teh Intarnets") I immediately founded my first website, which somehow, by stunning luck still remains as a disheveled graveyard of mostly broken links and inane pre-blog-era blogging. Unfortunately, the section that I remember most fondly, The Question of the Week (QotW) is long gone and eaten away by the little bugs and insects that gnash and gnaw upon all the goop that makes up the abandoned webpages floating around on the net.
But the QotW was in fact an edifice of absurdity. The questions, as I remember them, were rambling oddities that seemed like half-formed math questions, but loaded with Monty Python-esque language and silliness. I'd post a question sounding something like, "You have an ice scraper, a quarter tank of gas in your '88 Plymouth Acclaim (with with 3 dents), and you are starving to death. How many Llamas are maimed in your search for food along the strip mall strip? And of those llamas' how many have alpacan relatives, and of which county do they reside in?"
The answers, garnered from my friends, were generally equally odd, and took on the form of a rambling, and occasionally, connected (to previous QotWs) narrative of absurdity. I scored each entry with a random point value and then chose the winner of the week. I think vaguely at one point, I even started giving out real prizes... but they were things like gum wrappers, bits, pieces, and other things that could masquerade as pocket nuff.
I have no punchline for this post, so I'll end with a .
Granted, at every milestone stage in my life, I look back on previous times, and say, "God, I was a dumbass. So probably in five years or so, I'll have another random post debunking today's post, but for now, in my head, I've survived dumbassed-ness, and am on some level just a goof, or something akin to that.
But anyways, Back in THE day (that being the days of my first two semesters of college, and being the time between classes spent in the computer lab getting my first true injections of "Teh Intarnets") I immediately founded my first website, which somehow, by stunning luck still remains as a disheveled graveyard of mostly broken links and inane pre-blog-era blogging. Unfortunately, the section that I remember most fondly, The Question of the Week (QotW) is long gone and eaten away by the little bugs and insects that gnash and gnaw upon all the goop that makes up the abandoned webpages floating around on the net.
But the QotW was in fact an edifice of absurdity. The questions, as I remember them, were rambling oddities that seemed like half-formed math questions, but loaded with Monty Python-esque language and silliness. I'd post a question sounding something like, "You have an ice scraper, a quarter tank of gas in your '88 Plymouth Acclaim (with with 3 dents), and you are starving to death. How many Llamas are maimed in your search for food along the strip mall strip? And of those llamas' how many have alpacan relatives, and of which county do they reside in?"
The answers, garnered from my friends, were generally equally odd, and took on the form of a rambling, and occasionally, connected (to previous QotWs) narrative of absurdity. I scored each entry with a random point value and then chose the winner of the week. I think vaguely at one point, I even started giving out real prizes... but they were things like gum wrappers, bits, pieces, and other things that could masquerade as pocket nuff.
I have no punchline for this post, so I'll end with a .
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
The Life and the Times
So what's new about you?
Post New Years, post the 2006 Christmas fiasco, post stomach flu, post-modern (but no flying cars quite yet). And along the theme of Posts, a post, posting (obviously) about the past and times thereof and aroundof the current. So henceforth, posting like post-its, let me post (with bullet-point accuracy) some things that are noteworthy...I mean postworthy:
* NPR
* Pandora dot com
* My Chemical Romance
* Five things I love
* Moleskin
* The Age of Wire and String
* Scarling
* Wii
* Grape Vodka
* Work
* Loot N Pillage
* The Gloaming
So starting with NPR.... Recently I hit one of those milestones (with a helpful nudge from Kilean back at residency) to start listening to NPR. Aside from the anger-inducing drivel concerning el Presidente and his ongoing failures, I'm finding that I enjoy NPR greatly, and somehow can withstand the anger because of the generally interesting format of NPR in general, especially so the dedication to other Media, the Arts, and a general all-sidedness (to a degree) when covering the news. In the last few weeks, I've heard about the new wave of Aggressive-atheist evangelists, how 80% of chicken can have a bacteria in it causing the vomiting, and a bunch of stuff regarding the state of Iraq that you won't normally hear/see on the scheme of network TV (not that I'm watching anyway). But going back to the media thing, they've talked recently much on the "best of 2006" stuff. Two things were mentioned that particularly captured my interest. One of them, Pandora.com, I've followed since early February, and the other a band that I'd really not paid any attention to, but thanks to NPR's constant raving, I am now happily enjoying: My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. Going back to Pandora, if you don't know it yet, It's a super-fab internet radio program that creates radio stations based upon your musical preferences. Feed Pandora a band or song, and it will play musically similar songs to what you like. You can store up to 100 different radio stations, and it's free (as in no cost and no commercials) and only has banner ads around the player. You can run it on any pc with Flash 7 or better, and it has some sneaky neat ways to 'keep' the songs that you really like. All around, Pandora is much loved.
Moving onward. Number one of Five things that I love (no particular order). With some of my B&N giftcard money, I picked up one of those little moleskin notebooks--you know like the kind that Hemingway and friends used to use. I'm not really much of a Hemingway fan, but previous to the moleskin notebook, I had been using a little paper pocket notebook that looked like it had seen the insides of a ravenous rabied wombat...twice. So I'm hoping this newfound hardskinned friend will be much more of a pocket nicety.
(Number 2) Recently, also thanks to Kilean's advice, I read Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire and String. It struck me both as a phenominal poetic book with massive massive amounts of kooky weirdness to the point of tipping over the brink of inaccessibility, but at the same time, I enjoyed not really knowing Marcus' world of Wire and String fully. It's hard to really say what the book was about in words, since the world Marcus created is so different than ours, but truly it is an edgy, tough, and wonderful book, and it felt totally worthwhile spending ~140 pages in a state of being somewhat lost within the text.
(Number 3) The band Scarling. They're a Pandora find, and I've been enjoying them actually for many months, but they're very small in their fanbase, so I've yet to actually get their cd, which seems to heighten my enjoyment for the band all the more, since I'm relegated to waiting for Pandora to play one of their songs. YouTube has a couple videos (City Noise) and some real bad cameraphone live videos. The band itself is fronted by Jessika of Jack off Jill fame, and it is her voice that draws me to the band the most--truly it's wonderful.
(Number 4) My wife bought me a Nintendo Wii for christmas. Actually, it was quite a fiasco for her too. When I was at residency, she preordered one through Wal-mart, and when she went to pick hers up, they told her that they sold it to someone else (even though she'd already paid full price AND checked the day before to ensure they were in stock). To make a long story short, she wrote a nasty letter to Wal-mart Corporate, her dad did the same, and she got her money back plus a gift card to Wal-mart as an apology. Her dad was put on an unofficial list and was called to pick up his Wii a day after he decided to wait outside of Gamestop for fourteen hours to get one. So, in the end, Sue's dad got two Wiis, and nearly kept the second for himself, but I think they ended up taking it back, but I got one Wii, and man is it ever fun. At christmas, everyone, including Sue's 83 year old Grandfather was bowling and boxing and cracking homeruns out of the park. After years of slumping with the N64 and the GameCube, I think Nintendo has really hit home with a great system.
(Number 5) Grape Vodka... what? I'm not really much of a drinker, but we were over at Sue's boss' house (because Sue's boss and her family are good people), and they made us these really tasty drinks with Grape vodka and White Cranberry juice. The drink is mostly cranberry juice, but man is it tasty. Sue and I mixed up plenty of those drinks on New Years Eve as we played Drunken Guitar Hero, Cloodle, and Uno Attack. It was good times for all.
And Lastly, on this megapost of nothings, I come to the topic of work, that hateful, teeth clenching ediface of the day to dailies that makes me mean and nasty and generally feeling like there isn't any point to anything. The good thing about work lately (and there is only one) is that the building next door, formerly the State Headquarters, lies currently in a funk of abandonedness. And currently, everything remaining in the building is being pitched. So we've been silently and sneakily scavanging through the building for interesting decorations for our cubicles. To date I've found the following: A large 1970s oil painting of a conquistador in oranges and browns and reds, eight MahJongg tiles, some crazy old cartridges that when played upon the old cartridge player, are tapes of strange alarms and system alerts punctuated by bleeps and bloops of autodialers. We also found some great antennae that look like they should be attached to a football helmet covered in tinfoil so that the wearer can communicate to aliens better, a couple of really powerful magnets, two tape demagnetizers, a slideshow on "Your Telephone Personality," a sculpture made out of Banyan T-connectors, among other oddities and/or vaguely useful things.
But, in general, if ulcers were to be formed by stress (they're caused by bacteria), I would probably have three to twenty of them on behalf of the job environment. In the ever growing morass of the Corporate Gargantua, our office, has been increasingly and more prolifically driving our center into the ground. We've seen two Management layoffs, the stripping of pensions, a massive increase in managment health insurance, the stripping of recognition for a job well done, and the beginnings of an internal reorganization hell-bent upon making all management more miserable than a poverty stricken coal miner with nine kids and black lung. Oh and in addition, despite my dedication, hard work, and massive amounts of in-hous innovation, I'm being told that "I don't do anything" because no-one besides my boss understands the complexity of the work that I do. So to Fucksville I travel and with the quickness at that. Hopefully the train's brakes will be broken and we'll bypass that shitstained town, but I'm not counting on it. Not one bit.
Post New Years, post the 2006 Christmas fiasco, post stomach flu, post-modern (but no flying cars quite yet). And along the theme of Posts, a post, posting (obviously) about the past and times thereof and aroundof the current. So henceforth, posting like post-its, let me post (with bullet-point accuracy) some things that are noteworthy...I mean postworthy:
* NPR
* Pandora dot com
* My Chemical Romance
* Five things I love
* Moleskin
* The Age of Wire and String
* Scarling
* Wii
* Grape Vodka
* Work
* Loot N Pillage
* The Gloaming
So starting with NPR.... Recently I hit one of those milestones (with a helpful nudge from Kilean back at residency) to start listening to NPR. Aside from the anger-inducing drivel concerning el Presidente and his ongoing failures, I'm finding that I enjoy NPR greatly, and somehow can withstand the anger because of the generally interesting format of NPR in general, especially so the dedication to other Media, the Arts, and a general all-sidedness (to a degree) when covering the news. In the last few weeks, I've heard about the new wave of Aggressive-atheist evangelists, how 80% of chicken can have a bacteria in it causing the vomiting, and a bunch of stuff regarding the state of Iraq that you won't normally hear/see on the scheme of network TV (not that I'm watching anyway). But going back to the media thing, they've talked recently much on the "best of 2006" stuff. Two things were mentioned that particularly captured my interest. One of them, Pandora.com, I've followed since early February, and the other a band that I'd really not paid any attention to, but thanks to NPR's constant raving, I am now happily enjoying: My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. Going back to Pandora, if you don't know it yet, It's a super-fab internet radio program that creates radio stations based upon your musical preferences. Feed Pandora a band or song, and it will play musically similar songs to what you like. You can store up to 100 different radio stations, and it's free (as in no cost and no commercials) and only has banner ads around the player. You can run it on any pc with Flash 7 or better, and it has some sneaky neat ways to 'keep' the songs that you really like. All around, Pandora is much loved.
Moving onward. Number one of Five things that I love (no particular order). With some of my B&N giftcard money, I picked up one of those little moleskin notebooks--you know like the kind that Hemingway and friends used to use. I'm not really much of a Hemingway fan, but previous to the moleskin notebook, I had been using a little paper pocket notebook that looked like it had seen the insides of a ravenous rabied wombat...twice. So I'm hoping this newfound hardskinned friend will be much more of a pocket nicety.
(Number 2) Recently, also thanks to Kilean's advice, I read Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire and String. It struck me both as a phenominal poetic book with massive massive amounts of kooky weirdness to the point of tipping over the brink of inaccessibility, but at the same time, I enjoyed not really knowing Marcus' world of Wire and String fully. It's hard to really say what the book was about in words, since the world Marcus created is so different than ours, but truly it is an edgy, tough, and wonderful book, and it felt totally worthwhile spending ~140 pages in a state of being somewhat lost within the text.
(Number 3) The band Scarling. They're a Pandora find, and I've been enjoying them actually for many months, but they're very small in their fanbase, so I've yet to actually get their cd, which seems to heighten my enjoyment for the band all the more, since I'm relegated to waiting for Pandora to play one of their songs. YouTube has a couple videos (City Noise) and some real bad cameraphone live videos. The band itself is fronted by Jessika of Jack off Jill fame, and it is her voice that draws me to the band the most--truly it's wonderful.
(Number 4) My wife bought me a Nintendo Wii for christmas. Actually, it was quite a fiasco for her too. When I was at residency, she preordered one through Wal-mart, and when she went to pick hers up, they told her that they sold it to someone else (even though she'd already paid full price AND checked the day before to ensure they were in stock). To make a long story short, she wrote a nasty letter to Wal-mart Corporate, her dad did the same, and she got her money back plus a gift card to Wal-mart as an apology. Her dad was put on an unofficial list and was called to pick up his Wii a day after he decided to wait outside of Gamestop for fourteen hours to get one. So, in the end, Sue's dad got two Wiis, and nearly kept the second for himself, but I think they ended up taking it back, but I got one Wii, and man is it ever fun. At christmas, everyone, including Sue's 83 year old Grandfather was bowling and boxing and cracking homeruns out of the park. After years of slumping with the N64 and the GameCube, I think Nintendo has really hit home with a great system.
(Number 5) Grape Vodka... what? I'm not really much of a drinker, but we were over at Sue's boss' house (because Sue's boss and her family are good people), and they made us these really tasty drinks with Grape vodka and White Cranberry juice. The drink is mostly cranberry juice, but man is it tasty. Sue and I mixed up plenty of those drinks on New Years Eve as we played Drunken Guitar Hero, Cloodle, and Uno Attack. It was good times for all.
And Lastly, on this megapost of nothings, I come to the topic of work, that hateful, teeth clenching ediface of the day to dailies that makes me mean and nasty and generally feeling like there isn't any point to anything. The good thing about work lately (and there is only one) is that the building next door, formerly the State Headquarters, lies currently in a funk of abandonedness. And currently, everything remaining in the building is being pitched. So we've been silently and sneakily scavanging through the building for interesting decorations for our cubicles. To date I've found the following: A large 1970s oil painting of a conquistador in oranges and browns and reds, eight MahJongg tiles, some crazy old cartridges that when played upon the old cartridge player, are tapes of strange alarms and system alerts punctuated by bleeps and bloops of autodialers. We also found some great antennae that look like they should be attached to a football helmet covered in tinfoil so that the wearer can communicate to aliens better, a couple of really powerful magnets, two tape demagnetizers, a slideshow on "Your Telephone Personality," a sculpture made out of Banyan T-connectors, among other oddities and/or vaguely useful things.
But, in general, if ulcers were to be formed by stress (they're caused by bacteria), I would probably have three to twenty of them on behalf of the job environment. In the ever growing morass of the Corporate Gargantua, our office, has been increasingly and more prolifically driving our center into the ground. We've seen two Management layoffs, the stripping of pensions, a massive increase in managment health insurance, the stripping of recognition for a job well done, and the beginnings of an internal reorganization hell-bent upon making all management more miserable than a poverty stricken coal miner with nine kids and black lung. Oh and in addition, despite my dedication, hard work, and massive amounts of in-hous innovation, I'm being told that "I don't do anything" because no-one besides my boss understands the complexity of the work that I do. So to Fucksville I travel and with the quickness at that. Hopefully the train's brakes will be broken and we'll bypass that shitstained town, but I'm not counting on it. Not one bit.
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