alack! alas!

I spoke too soon when I said yesterday that I was feeling unsmirchable, even if it involved Rusty. Last night I had this very besmirching dream about him. I will have to undergo therapy relating to it for several years, if not decades.

What can cleanse my mind? Perhaps some eyewash?

crisis at the message centre

Timmy is injured! Luckily, not a horrible season ending sort of injury, but still, injured. I hate Clumsy James Jones for his futile attempts to stop Timmy's greatness. For that, mr. stupid-leg-in-the-way should be sentenced to the circle of the Inferno where the people where lead robes and are forced to walk in never-ending circles around a roasting fire. That is the weight of guilt. If it had been a acl tear, I don't think Dante described a level severe enough.

This whole incident has been enough to expel the sparkle in my heart which was disguising my space there, and it has brought to the forefront the black spot on my soul.

UPDATE:

Ok, here is something that makes this a tiny bit better.



I love these boys!

this cupcake's for you

So, near my place of work is a fine establishment, a purveyor of cupcakes. I love these cupcakes. Brilliant and tasty. Today, in celebration of my quitting, me and Camille went to lunch and then to the cupcake store. I had a sweet chocolate cupcake, and I would like to say, this cupcake is for everyone who has ever been in a work situation that is untenable. It represents the sweet and rich creamy goodness of giving that crappy job the proverbial finger as you leave to do anything but that. Including being unemployed.

So, when I announced I was quitting, Earnesto said that I was too ambitious for this job. Since when is asking for some feedback ambitious? Not accepting mediocrity is not ambition, it is sanity.

As I once said to my #2 favorite Dave, this cupcake's for you, all those who know they are for better things than the dust they have shaken from their feet.

penta-annual faulknerian (near) non-fiction: it'll make you stab your eyeballs out

This is a post for everyone who has ever had to write a scholarly paper in the general field of the humanities, specifically in English. Do you recall the time spent crafting a sentence to say exactly what you mean, pouring through words and phrases until something would click? When there was very little difference to be found between content and style because the two were inextricably linked. Then I recommend that you never have a go at editing the report that is now sitting on my desk.

Usually a visceral reaction to a written work can be considered a good thing. But it has to be for all the best reasons. If the reason is because it is so terrible, so full of errors and inappropriate tone, than no, not awesome.

Granted, this blog is hardly a stylistic achievement of greatness. But it's informal. I don't care, and if you are fretting about my abysmal punctuation, I have to say, get a life. This is something I write on the sly, like when I'm editing papers that make me cry (I wept on the way home last night thinking about how bad this was: truly wretched).

A report that you do five times a year, prepared for your Board of Directors, should not be this bad. It really shouldn't be bad at all, but if it has to be less than stellar, make it M.O.R, or mediocre. It shouldn't be this bad: it could be spread around it leaflets and used as a torture device.

And such a report should have a formal tone. If there is money on the line and it doesn't involve a lotto ticket, you should be formal. You can be conversational without becoming a servant of an Editorial Demon.

Curse you Earnesto, and your report as well.

Harry Potter gives me hives!

Actually, it's not Harry who does it, but the unwashed masses that turn out to the book release.

I rarely comment about my life outside of work, because it is very much more personally satisfying than my work life, and I don't need the catharsis of the written rant. But now I will tell you and after hours story that may curdle you blood, or make it boil, depending on what sort of person you are.

Now, this isn't a anti-Potter crusade, it's an anti-obsession thing. UPDATE: More of an anti-obsessing-over-everything thing

My dear little nephew is all of five-years-old, and loves Harry Potter. He is not a skilled enough reader to read the books, since lifting them might kill the poor fellow. What he has done is listened to the books on cd as he and his family travel hither and yon. He has been waiting and anticipating the last book for some time.

As you may have heard, book 7 came out at 12:00am Saturday morning. I happened to go with my sister to the chain store she had ordered the book from to pick it up. she was wait-listed on the audiobook. We arrived at 11:30pm Friday as were told, and were subsequently informed we would have to wait until the last book had been sold to pick up a copy of the cds. Or we could come in the next day and pick it up. We were #102 of 1000+, and still had a wait and then some, in close proximity that 1000++ people crammed into the store.

And such people. Not everyone was frightening, in fact it wasn't the costumes that were most unnerving. It was the people that were there because it was the obsession du jour. The girls that were squealing on their cells about 'a whole book all about Smallville, can you even believe it?' and the anime section was crammed full of crazy. How can you have that much obsessive energy?

We got out alive, but I'm not kidding, the whole thing left me with hives. If Dante were alive, he would ad this as a level to Purgatory, if not the Inferno.

Who let him in the building?

Some one is going to suffer from letting Rusty in the building. When I find them, it's going to be the level of the Inferno for those who committed simony, because upside-down baptism in fire is what they richly deserve.

I got hit by a car!

Yesterday. In the parking lot of a bart station. and I have to say this: Just because you have a BMW does not mean you have the right of way, jerkface backing up without looking in the mirror. It does mean I am ten times more likely to sue you than I would a guy driving a Prius or Accord.

It was just a tap, which more annoyed me than anything. I bet it scared him to death. Good. I hit the car back, open palmed on the trunk, which resonated with a satisfying thunk and gave him a death-glare version 'I wish you will be put in that circle in the inferno with the tar and the demons with grappling hooks' and then went on.

Not the exact illustration I was looking for, but still, not an enviable fate. Courtesy of Sandro Botticelli





What, you say? This does not sound like me? True, usually I would have totally reamed the guy, but I really had to go to the bathroom, and I didn't feel like stopping a block from home to argue with an idiot. But next time, he better hope there isn't a next time.

And the Spurs Win!

One miserable day in April, I had to go to a baseball game for work. It's a long story, but for me, it was terrible (akin to being in the Inferno at the level where you are in the giant Iron robes walking around and being roasted). And at the game a fellow tried to point out that a fan is someone who loves a sport; someone whole loves only one team in a sport is a fanatic. And when it comes to NBA basketball, I am a Spurs fanatic. But I also like to think I am a fan of basketball.

And Thursday was a victory for both. With the Spurs winning the championship, my life reached a happy point only exceeded by the time they won it in 2003 on Father's day for David Robinson to retire in style. I loved the whole world (except for Anderson Varejao for being outrageously overrated). For one brief "shining moment" I even didn't want to beat down Eva Longoria for being so ridiculous and having dated J. C. Chasez at the same time she dated Tony (there is no excuse).

Don't tell me that anything detracts from this. Don't talk to me about suspensions and fixing the playoffs. I think that's a lot of sour grapes from Fanatics from other teams. How long must we suffer the whining of Knicks and Celtics fanatics before we realize that just because at one point in time they were great does no entitle them to greatness in perpetuity? I have less sympathy for them than those people who have never reached the elite level.

If you are fans for the sport, then you will accept that the best team won, and they proved they were the best by winning 16 games they had to win, closing out games, having discipline, and otherwise "kickin' them while they're down." The Spurs are not boring. The Spurs didn't break basketball. That was the fanatic.

Really, what you know is if you were a fan you would know that a good solid rebound is great, no matter the uniform. You would appreciate the fact that 82 (I think that is what someone said on the telecast) year-old Robert Horry threw down a fabulous Game 3. You would not write-off the Spurs as what is wrong with Basketball.

Do you really want to know why people like March madness soooo much. Because in general, it is full of 64 teams that you don't have fanatical tendencies towards. How many of us are actually invested in Xavier? No, it is a chance to bet, and watch games without a bunch a bias and be a fan.


So I will wait until October/ November and watch every game on TV next year, and Tivo the Spurs, and in the end, I will be watching the Finals, even if the Spurs by some really twisted reason are not in them. But, if that is the case, know also that the fanatic inside of me is spending the timeouts constructing an effigy of the team that beat the Spurs, and will be burning it during the 3rd quarter break.

But this year, I got what I wanted!! Spurs Win!

What Dante means to me

Or: How a man who lived centuries ago and wrote pointed political satire has kept me just this side of sane.

I know, I know, good people believe in thing like the golden rule and turning the other cheek. I try very hard to follow these things as well, I do not mean to mock them. I respect more than I can say the good people who can follow such rules because among their ranks you will not find me.

Because good people do not mentally plot out elaborate revenge against people who have worked meticulously to make life more difficult. And I do. You know the kind of obnoxious troublesome people I am talking about. The ones who always manage to ruin a month running day by pawning off some emergency on you, an emergency that they have been lovingly whittling for you for weeks as you frantically try to fix the last one they foisted on you.

I work, a many people in this good world, with a great population of vastly annoying persons. I have the unenviable tasks of having until recently (and perhaps still do) have two direct supervisors in high ranking positions within the institution. And I have the bonus of many well-meaning souls thinking that they too qualify for supervisorship of my position.

And this is what Dante does for me. He gives me comfort that it i not abnormal to imagine your antagonists being tortured in various ways for their perceived sins. He provides stunning visualisations for the moments that I am so infuriated I cannot think of original ways to torture a person. And he motivates me to think creatively and put pen to paper rather than shoving pen through the eye of the person who just told me that the multi-million dollar mistake they just made is somehow my fault.