That giant sucking sound

I could discuss at great lengths all the things I enjoy about working from home. But lately I've found some serious disadvantages. For one, since our organization within the company is so spread out, we have to completely rely on conference calls for all meetings. A lot of times, this is wonderful; if I'm not an integral part of the call, I can zone out and nap while listening for my name. However, I'm apparently more important than I used to be, because I've had to actively participate in a lot more calls the last few weeks, enough to notice some serious fundamental flaws in conference calls.

For one, it's too easy to skip a call. When your whole organization works in the same building, there's nowhere to hide come meeting time. Your coworkers have seen you around the office, and everyone is expected to show up. But if your coworkers are in Texas and California and don't even know what you look like, it's a lot easier to justify ditching the meeting and taking an extra-long lunch. This has led to me having the exact same conversation five different times with five different managers in the last two weeks, which could have been avoided had they all attended the first conference call like they'd agreed to do.

Second, there's no subtle, polite way to tell someone to shut the fuck up. When everyone's clustered around a table, it's easy to tell when you're carrying on a bit too long. People start shifting in their chairs, fidgeting with their pens, avoiding eye contact, etc. But on a conference call you actually have to cut people off by yelling at them, which I don't have the authority to do at this point in my career (when I do get to that point, look out).

On a related note, nobody listens anymore. And why would they? Ninety percent of these conference calls are taken up by bloviating gasbags in love with the sound of their own voices. I spent two hours today answering a dozen slightly different phrasings of the exact same question, because every time someone asked it, they rambled in corporate-speak (teaming, strategic partnerships, deliverables, blah-de-blah) for so long that everyone else tuned them out. At least I was only on a conference call, so I could gesticulate wildly and give the telephone the finger repeatedly.

Moving on.

It's far too late to make any meaningful comments about the elections, but a friend of mine raised a very valid point when he asked, "Why don't victorious politicians and campaign managers shower each other in booze like athletes do when they win a championship?" Clearly, there's no valid reason for this not to happen, and it's not too late for Obama to pour champagne all over Biden.

No other thoughts on Obama, except that he seems to be my generation's JFK. I fit (barely) into CNN's Young Voter Demographic, and had never really understood the fascination with JFK and the other Kennedys that my parents have until now. Obama's the first politician I can remember that people seemed genuinely excited to vote for. Or maybe I'm just getting less cynical in my old age.

Visions of damnation

I'm not a big believer in the concept of hell, for reasons I won't go into here for fear of alienating any of my thousands of readers. However, I was raised Catholic (got confirmed, even!), so I've spent some time thinking about eternal punishment. And I realized the other day that I know what it is.

If there is a hell, it's me, alone in a movie theater, forced to watch every embarrassing, stupid, boorish moment of my life as narrated by Dan Dierdorf.

I reached this conclusion while watching my beloved Broncos go down in flames against one of the worst teams in the NFL the other week as Dan Dierdorf howled with pleasure. Around about the fifth time he started a sentence with, "If you don't think the Kansas City Chiefs aren't fired up for this game..." I muted the volume and barely resisted the urge to fling the remote at the dog. I appreciate that Dierdorf is there to inject a little drama into the proceedings, but there's no need to turn an early-season contest between a mediocre-but-lucky Denver team and a hapless Kansas City squad into the second coming of the Miracle on Ice. Every play, no matter how mundane, turned into the epic struggle of plucky underdogs against overwhelming odds. Every tackle by a Kansas City player was a scream of defiance into the cold dark void of an uncaring universe. After I while I stopped thinking of ways the Broncos could get back into the game and started imagining scenarios involving me presenting Dierdorf with some kind of Crappy Sports Announcing Lifetime Achievement award, then removing his larynx with a plastic spoon.

I'm sure none of this had anything to do with my team losing. Anyway, that's my hell:

"If you don't think that the pretty girl didn't just throw up in her mouth when she realized the geeky boy was asking her out, and that he geniunely believed he had a shot..."

"Oh, ho, ho! Let me tell you, that was one AWKWARD, mumbling answer that guy just gave there when the popular kids asked him how he was doing. If you don't think they're not looking at him like he's some kind of MUTANT from another PLANET right now..."

On a completely different topic, this week's quote of the century:

"Really, if you are a competitor in any field of human endeavor, you haven't lived until you've been called 'be-atch' by one of your opponents."

That comes from the late, great Ralph Wiley. I was re-reading some of his old ESPN columns the other day and stumbled, once again, upon this gem. Of course, when reading Wiley, it feels like I spend most of my time stumbling over gems. I just spent twenty minutes trying to describe what I love about his writing, and I failed miserably. Which, I guess, is the difference between me and him; he made something I can't even achieve look effortless. The best way I can put it is that he's one of two people (Mike Royko is the other) who make me want to be a writer.

Why the sudden nostalgia for a dead sports columnist? No idea. Probably just an excuse to put that quote up there. Enjoy.

Confessions of a spendthrift

Things I've actually spent good money on recently:

• A second copy of Top Gun on DVD. I've heard Quentin Tarantino's homoerotic theories a hundred times, and seen this movie dismissed as worthless cheese and blatant Navy propaganda. And I don't care. It's one of the best action movies of its generation, endlessly quotable and well-written. And when I popped my first-run DVD into my Blu-Ray player, I was anticipating some escapist retro bliss. Which I got, but on only half my screen, since apparently including the widescreen and fullscreen versions of the movie on the same side of the DVD downgraded the quality too much. Clearly, this would not do; I need to see Mav and Goose "communicating" with the Russians in as high a definition as possible. So off to Amazon I clicked, and ponied up ten bucks for a more recent version. It arrived in the mail the other day, and is one of the best purchases I've made in years.


• Also in the Amazon box? Fist of Legend, a movie I had never seen, but that the internet seems to regard as Jet Li's finest effort. I'm hesitant to annoint the internet as the expert on anything, but in this case, it's right on the money. I enjoyed the hell out of it, but at the same time it made me a little frustrated with the fight scenes in today's movies. The zoomed-in cameras and split-second cuts make it impossible to get any sense of the fight, or the speed and skill of the guys hitting each other. I'm not sure who to blame for this. Maybe the Bourne trilogy?


• Late registration for a 5K "fun" run. At 9,000 feet of altitude. My lunatic sister was running a half-marathon, and somehow talked my dad and I into running the 5K race held on the same course. She ran a personal-best time; I discovered that I have masochistic tendencies, and reaffirmed that I really, really, really hate running. I finished, and immediately swore it wasn't something I would ever do again unless I start getting fat and have no other options for staying fit. I'd like to say that I got some good bonding time in with my dad, but it's hard to have a conversation when you're both sucking wind and trying to ignore the burning in your legs.


• The Forger's Spell. I'm only halfway through and I have almost zero interest in art, but I can't possibly recommend this book any more highly. It alternates interesting historical chapters about the Nazi's art looting program with absolutly fascinating discussions on how art forgers fool experts. Two big thumbs up, and more money well-spent.

So that's the update on my smoking credit card. I'd claim that I'm going to take it easy for a while now, but I'm going shopping for iPhones tomorrow...

Chicken proof

Lest anyone doubt the veracity of last night's claims:

ESPNightmares

I just finished watching the Monday Night Football doubleheader on ESPN, which means that I've now seen the replay of Tom Brady's knee turning to spaghetti roughly 5,000 times. I'm not usually one to cry out, "Won't someone think of the children?!?", but what the hell is ESPN trying to do here? It gets worse every time I see it, and I'm not even remotely a Patriots fan. The only thing I can think of is that they're trying to stimulate television sales in Boston. I imagine Bill Simmons took a blunt object to his flatscreen about 3,000 replays ago.

One of the most traumatic moments of my childhood was watching Denver Broncos running back Gerald Wilhite get his foot twisted 270 degrees in the wrong direction on national television over... and over... and over again thanks to a sadistic replay operator. Everyone in my dad's generation can tell you all about Lawrence Taylor snapping Joe Theisman's leg, and younger sports fans will still shudder if you mention Willis McGahee's knee injury (click here if you feel like vomiting). And now I'm going to be seeing Brady crumple to the ground in my sleep for a month. Thanks, guys.

In other news of the hideously ugly, our neighbors have recently purchased (or fashioned) a six foot-tall statue of a rooster made of chrome car parts. They put it up in their backyard, presumably to frighten squirrels or school children or something. Not content to ugly up the daytime view from our back deck, they also installed lighting to illuminate that motherfucker at night. Seriously. There's six feet of angry metallic poultry gleaming outside my window right now. I object to homeowners' associations on general principle, but I'm staring to see how some people might think they'd be a good idea. If I were more adventurous (or inebriated), the urge to decorate it would be damn well overpowering. Maybe that's why they put in the lighting?

Further Adventures in Minion-sitting

I've talked about my minion in this space before, the wonderful lady who took over some of my job responsibilities and has been carrying them out with great zeal and an even greater lack of quality control. She has recently been asked to redesign our group's newsletter, and has attacked that project with her usual mix of eagerness, good humor, and failure.

I'm not holding myself up as a paragon of design; if I have a style, it's quick-and-dirty functionalism without bells, whistles or flourishes (see: this blog page). I've had no formal or informal training beyond an old manager who would occasional look at something I came up with, shake his head, and say, "Christ, that's bad. Try again." Which is what I'm longing to tell the minion. Her redesign prominently features the colors orange, black, and navy blue. She recently discovered the gradient function, so in several instances one of these colors fades into another. All of this is ugly, but not horrifying. What's horrifying is that in half the newsletter, she used navy blue as a background color for where the text goes. For the other half, she used a dark-colored tiled graphic. Trying to read more than a paragraph of this newsletter would make my eyes explode. I've spent all morning trying to come up with a way to tell her this that won't hurt her feelings.

In other work-related frustration, my usually awesome boss has been holding up another project by asking thoroughly useless questions. She'd understand the concepts if she'd read my responses, but she doesn't have time to do that because her daughter was cut from her top two choices during sorority rush, and needs to be talked off whatever ledge she's sitting on. I don't have much else to add here except to say that when I have kids, I pray to god they're boys.

Time-honored traditions

There's been another creativity drought lately, bringing with it the usual lack of blog postings. It's not that I was lacking material, just motivation. This time, instead of wasting way too much time on craigslist, I was actually reading video game forums, which feature the same grammar school dropout syntax as craigslist, but are devoted to imaginary characters and acts of violence instead of getting laid. Anyway, custom dictates that I break back into blog posting with some aimless venting, and that I utilize bullet points. If I lapse into 1337-speak or stop using capitalization and punctuation, blame the video game forums. Then come shoot me in the head. Now, on with the aimlessness and bullets.

• Enough with the goddamned gymnastics. I recognize this is not a unique point of view, that I am not exactly making groundbreaking, controversial statements. Still. The scoring system is a sick joke, and if your "sport" can be performed better by pre-pubescent children than mature adults, you've got some issues. The wife and I actually got sucked into the Olympics this year, but there's audible cussing and a scramble to change channels whenever coverage switches over to the Karolyis and the sequins and the malnourished girls lying about their ages. I spend one third of my time hoping someone will fall, another third feeling like a hateful prick because I'm rooting for a little girl to get hurt in front of billions of people, and the final third wishing NBC would show something else. It's not like there's a dearth of choices there, either. We were in France last time the Summer Olympics were going on. Handball is huge over there, and that is a bloody fantastic sport full of speed, athleticism, and dudes leaping into the air and winging balls at each other. Imagine junior high dodgeball played by Olympic athletes and you have some idea. America would fall in love with this game, if NBC could cut away from its creepy fascination with teenage midgets doing flips long enough to give it a chance.


• My company mystifies me sometimes. As previously stated, I work for a very large tech company. I recently dreamed up a project that would be a perfect excuse to learn PHP. For you non-web nerds, PHP is a pretty big deal when it comes to internet technology, to the point where most web developer job postings list it third or fourth among required skills. I don't know it, which leaves a pretty big hole in my resume. So I did some research and proposed my project to the senior editor of the internal website I post to. And he said, "What's PHP?" as I fell out of my chair.


• An open letter to the brains behind the new Mummy movie: if you're going to shell out whatever it costs these days to get Jet Li in your movie, it had goddamned better result in some kung fu. I don't care if you go the realistic route or shoot for more of a Crouching Tiger feel, but putting that man in your movie and forcing him to spend 90% of his screen time trudging jerkily around because he's supposed to be made of stone is an epic waste. I knew going in that your movie would suck. All I asked in return for my ten dollars was to watch Jet Li spin kick some fools, and you failed to deliver even that.


• The Brett Favre situation has been like Christmas in the summer. Not sure if I've delved into the subject in this space, but I hate Brett Favre. Hate how he's immune to criticism, hate how he publicly talks about retirement to goad the adoring media into begging him to keep playing, hate his faked good old boy persona. When he finally did retire, I almost drowned in my own bile during the the Favre tributes. What could save the situation? How about if he came back without even missing a season, but horribly botched a power struggle with his old team, lost the support of his adoring Green Bay fans, and wound up playing for a mediocre team in a vicious media market that will crucify him when he starts tossing interceptions and might actually see him for the diva he's always been? That'd be about perfect.

I have no car, and I must snack

I bought my current Ford Ranger almost six years ago. During that time, I've put 85,000 miles on it and spent a grand total of $200 on car repair; the hydraulic clutch fluid line broke a few years ago. Other than that, the car has been a worry-free, bulletproof chunk of reliability. Which, given that it's a Ford, qualifies as a goddamned pope-certified miracle. Unfortunately, the "Check Engine" light made a mysterious appearance a few days ago, which means that the car is currently in the shop, leaving me without transportation. This wouldn't be a problem for most people who work at home, but I'm currently going through severe cheeseburger withdrawal.

Yes, I'm still making a half-assed attempt at a diet. Cutting out soda has been irritating, but that and a switch to 2% milk have been the only parts I've been able to adhere to. I have at least cut back on the cheeseburger/french fry consumption, leading to an increase in deli sandwiches and Chipotle chicken burritos (yeah, I know, they probably aren't good for me, but they've got to be better than red meat and potatoes fried in lard). But no car today meant no fast food runs, which meant a bowl of leftover quinoa for lunch, which meant a hunger pains this afternoon.

I ransacked the pantry and fridge and found a box of cereal. I wasn't sure if the box belonged to me or our current (fresh out of law school and dirt-poor) houseguest and had just about talked myself into having a bowl or six (wishing I had whole milk to pour all over it) when I took a closer look and noticed that it was a box of Honey Bunches of Oats... with chocolate flakes. I know for a fact that I'd never buy a cereal that half-assed; I demand my breakfast food be either delicious or healthy, with no overlap. So I sadly put the box back on the shelf and tried to content myself with some apples, all while dreaming of a nice cheesesteak.

On another note, allow me to be the millionth person to complain about the new online banking "security" measures. Our Snotmobile loan is with Bank of America. As I am morally opposed to buying stamps and too chronically irresponsible to make regular phone payments, I'm a HUGE fan of online autopay. So I signed up for online banking. I put in all my info, but wasn't able to log on. I called customer service, and they told me I needed a password reset, which they would send via mail "for security purposes." The temporary password arrived a week later, which I used to log on, only to learn that I needed to reset my password before I could do anything else. I called customer service again, and they told me that my temporary password had expired in the time it had taken me to get the letter (!!!!) and that they'd need to mail me a new one "for security purposes." I used this opportunity to take out some unresolved anger on the customer service lady, who eventually gave up and read me my new password over the phone. Which they could have done with the first password, but anyway. I finally logged on, and spent the next 20 minutes hunting fruitlessly for an autopay option. It was in this frustrated state of mind that I picked up the phone and blundered through the horrible automated phone system to make the payment, which might help explain why I made the payment from the wrong account and am now looking at $40 in overdraft protection charges from my other bank. In the meantime, that other bank has also reset my online password and mailed me the new one "for security purposes." I have no point here, except to say that the phrase "for security purposes" is being used to get people to put up with some incredibly stupid, useless shit.

Dicks

So as part of the "eat healthier and get in shape" mid-year resolution that should last at least until late June, I bought some adjustable dumbbells from Dick's Sporting Goods. I'm pretty far from having what could be called a home gym, but with these and a curl bar I bought last year, I now really have no excuse for my pipecleaner arms. I'm also hoping that doing some shoulder exercises with them will make my volleyball swing hurt less, but that's a vague wish that isn't based on any evidence or actual advice from anyone who knows about this stuff.

Anyway. The dumbbells work as advertised, and I'm pretty happy with them. Unfortunately, the set's stand is missing a piece -- the small plastic rack that one of the weights sits in. Should be no problem, right? Just return to Dick's and grab one out of the box, right? Wrong.

Of course, I got the last one and they're out of stock. But that's still no problem, since the guy I talked to last week assured me they'd have more this week and I could come in and get my piece of molded plastic. Of course, when I called this week, nobody had any idea what I was talking about. They didn't have any in stock, and they weren't willing to swap out the piece even if they did. They gave me the (wrong) number for the manufacturer, who sent me right back to Dick's. To make it worse, the people at Dick's kept asking me who I talked to last week. As if it made a difference. No, I don't remember who I talked to. It's not my job to remember your employees' names. It's your job to train them not to screw up and give bad information.

Also, you may not realize it, but Dick's is the most ass-backward company in the free world when it comes to stocking their stores. In the internet age, where just-in-time delivery is king and communication is easier than ever, the morons running Dick's are stuck in the 1920s. Want something they don't have at the store? They can't order it for you. They can't get it from another store in any reasonable amount of time. They can't even predict when more will be delivered from their warehouse. The best guess anybody at the store could offer me was, "Maybe in two or three weeks we'll get more." Um, yeah. Thanks. Fantastic. So I'm going to be returning a $300 piece of equipment because it's missing a 50 cent hunk of plastic. And the morons at Dick's are going to have to ship this 100+ pound bastard back to the manufacturer. I hope the random employee who outright lied to me gets a hernia loading it onto the truck.

Stench and double-edged swords

It's been a hectic two weeks of profuse sweating. First, I spent four days in Atlanta for the club volleyball national tournament. Indoor volleyball in swamp-like humidity with a few hundred of your closest friends is a good way to lose some water weight. The tournament was held in the absolutely cavernous convention center, which is located in the absolutely desolate downtown area. Looking for good bars and restaurants that might foster a fun social scene? Don't bother with downtown Atlanta, where the most happenin' place to be was the Omni Center Food Court. Your choices for entertainment in the area consist of the food court (which at least sold cheap beer), Hooters, or getting mugged.

Came home for a few days of rest before embarking on another sweat-a-thon, a two-day rafting trip. The blast-furnace heat was actually kinda welcome, since the water was all fresh snowmelt and therefore suck-the-breath-from-your-lungs cold. After two days on the river I smelled like an intoxicating mix of sweat, campfire, pond scum and stale beer. It was fantastic fun, but I'm excited to be home where it's nice and cool as opposed to sitting around, soaking in my own stench.

I've also been enjoying the benefits of being the only remotely technical person on my team; the downside is that people will often request things that they consider to be trivial but are, in fact, a huge pain in the ass. (Somebody yesterday asked me to add two slides into a video of someone presenting a PowerPoint file, which might be possible for Pixar or ILM, but is a little out of my range.) Fortunately, there's a definite upside: occasionally I'll do something that's laughably easy and everyone will react like I've just cured cancer. I got several lauditory emails from various bosses Monday for something that took literally 15 minutes of my time. Now, if my boss asks me, "What have you been working on lately?" I have an answer she'll like (napping and working through Grand Theft Auto IV strangely doesn't count as productive work).

In other news, I'm making a half-assed attempt to eat better. I'm reasonably active and skinny to begin with (aside from the ghetto booty), but have always been curious how my body would react to a diet that wasn't based around bacon cheeseburgers. We'll see how long I can eat bananas for breakfast and apples for dessert; the two toughest things will be giving up soda and drinking 2% instead of my beloved whole milk (with half and half on top of cereal). Wish me luck.

Return of the Malaise

My hypothetical readers (and my two real ones) may have noticed that it's been two weeks since I've seen fit to plumb the depths of my geekery or complain about minor irritations here. Not really sure what happened, other than that I've been pretty much uninspired in all facets of life. It happens to me every now and then; It's usually marked by severe insomnia, and side effects include hours upon hours of reading mindless drivel on craigslist. But I've realized that if I read one more grammatically horrifying all-caps post my brain will melt. So without further ado, here are random musings as I attempt to bore myself to sleep (if that doesn't entice people to read this, nothing will)...

2004 called, it wants its buzzwords back

Had a conference call this week with some fellow tech nerds and my manager's manager. She's a good, reasonable boss, but she doesn't have much technical knowledge. We nerds were discussing how to adapt a tool to solve a problem we'd been having getting our information out to people who need it. Someone asked what other tools we were considering, and she confidently announced that we were thinking about using Web 2.0 to fix things. Cue horrified silence as all the nerds had these two thoughts in sequence:

1. Oh my god, she has no idea what she's talking about.
2. I'm not going to be the one to call her out on it.

If you're scoring at home, it only took four years for a meaningless buzzword to worm its way into the consciousness of my huge tech company's upper management. Now all they need is for someone to explain it to them.

Then again, I'm not sure if it's worse to be totally ignorant, or totally enraptured; the slightly hipper, more web-savvy folks in our corporate communications division have decided that since people ignore their work and screw around with social networking sites all day, they'd get really fired up about knock-off company-only internal social networking sites. Blog about work! Twitter about work! Build a MySpace-type page to talk about work with coworkers! None of the productivity of actual work and none of the escapism of actual socializing, all in one inconvenient package! Yippee!

Brief sports detour, NBA playoff edition

New Orleans, the lone remaining team I actually liked, lost in the conference semifinals. Which means I had to generate a rooting interest based on which team I despised less. My rankings, from most loathsome to almost tolerable:

• I hate the Lakers. The whole team, especially Kobe and Phil Jackson, gives off a smug, arrogant vibe. And Pau Gasol just looks like someone I'd enjoy punching in the face.


• I hate the Spurs slightly less. I like Tim Duncan, but Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker have taken the flopping/whining act way too far to be respected. Can't for the life of me figure out why the referees continue to fall for it.


• I was all set to root for sentimental favorite Kevin Garnett and the Celtics, but every time I catch them on TV they're pounding their chests and yelling after mundane plays. Paul Pierce fell on a loose ball and called a timeout the other night, and even though he was the only guy who had a shot at the ball, he let out a victory scream that put William Wallace to shame. I don't even want to imagine the self-congratulatory acts we'd see if this team actually won the title.


• Guess that leaves the Pistons. They're still obnoxiously playing the "nobody respects us" card and strutting around like the defending champs even though it's been four years since they won, but all that is offset by my latest man-crush, Jason Maxiell. A big, burly dude who blocks shots, throws people around, shows zero concern for his own well-being by diving for every loose ball, and is such an intimidating badass that he inspired this? Yes, please.

One final craigslist posting before I go...

Couldn't resist. The Hyperbole Committee has declared this to be the greatest posting of all-time. Ever.

As close to politics as I'm going to get

I am utterly fascinated with the Indiana primary coverage on CNN. I could do without the talking head spin people yelling at each other and I zoned out whenever the candidates started speaking, but that big map thing that John King is playing with has me absolutely hypnotized. It's like a super version of Google Maps projected on a 72" version of the iPhone, with a touch screen display that he can zoom in and out on and draw on in different colors using only his fingers. The display shows the counties color-coded by which candidate they've voted for, but he can also bring up results from past elections, show histograms that represent the county population, or zoom in on the county to show the precise voting numbers, which update in real time as they come in. At one point he even turned the display into a satellite photo of the state to show which areas were rural and which were urban, which officially blew my mind. I don't know where one procures a 6-foot election board touch screen, but I really, really want one for Christmas.

My second-favorite part of the coverage was watching a senile, twitchy Larry King berate some poor hick mayor from Evansville for late election results, when Evansville's in a completely different part of the state than the tardy county. The poor guy looked completely shell-shocked (not that I'd have performed any better), and they mercifully cut away to talk to the mayor of Hammond, who was extremely nervous at first but warmed to the spotlight after a few minutes. It looks like they've finished with him, which is good, because you could literally see his ego swelling out of control the more time he spent on camera.

Gotta go. They just busted out the map thing again.

Grand Theft Apologist

Bought Grand Theft Auto IV last week after an impressive string of perfect reviews popped up on Metacritic. Ah, who am I kidding? I'd have bought that game no matter what the reviews said. Enjoying it so far, except that they made driving too realistic (it's now difficult to pull off 90 degree turns at full speed without doing a few inadvertent donuts). Also, I don't seem to have the attention span for just screwing around with the game world like I used to, which is too bad because it's a doozy of a game world. But enough pseudo-review. Instead, I thought it'd be fun to be the nine billionth person to weigh in on the moral implications behind the game.

It's true that you can do some horrifying stuff in GTA without serious repercussions. Anybody looking for a misogynistic streak in the game isn't going to have to look very hard, and any watchdog organizations searching for something to offend them are going to strike gold early and repeatedly. It's a pretty hard game to defend; you can call it satire, you can argue that the scenes of the protagonist shooting cops are taken out of context, you can claim that some of the most morally repugnant actions available aren't necessary or even encouraged by the game itself. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a game where you can kill policemen and beat up hookers. I almost wish people would stop trying to defend the game at all; I'm certainly tired of trying.

It seems like a generational thing; the generation currently running the mainstream media, the one in charge of being outraged over things, sees video games as an activity exclusively for kids. To them, GTA is the equivalent of some network showing hardcore porn as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Video game publishers can stamp "Not for kids!!!!" all over their game boxes in size bazillion font and it won't matter, because the "games are for kids" mindset is too deeply ingrained. It won't get any better until a younger generation, one that grew up with video games and sees them as a form of entertainment that needs to be filtered for children like music and movies, takes over the controls of the Outrage Machine.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing GTA, and I refuse to feel bad about it. It's a great way to blow off steam and relieve stress. It's got an interesting story that will take me as long to complete as a 1,000 page novel, and will hopefully be as rewarding.

Bonus Unsolicited Media Thoughts!

• Go see Iron Man. It's the best comic book movie since the X2 (don't even bring up Batman Begins; Katie Holmes was awful and the Batmobile redesign should have resulted in criminal charges). I'm developing a man-crush on Robert Downey.


• I can't think of a single movie that I want to see less than the new Mike Myers... thing being previewed right now. I told my wife I'd rather pay money to see the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants sequel, and I was completely serious.


• Wanted is probably going to suck, but I'm still excited to see it.

Swat the barfly: an ode to marriage

As a happily-married suburban guy who doesn't drink much and is several steps down the road to boring adulthood, it's been a while since I've hit the big-city downtown bar circuit. Throw in the fact that most of my friends are now married too, and it's also been ages since I've attended a "get a bunch of single people together" house party. But this weekend with the wife out of town and boredom setting in, I managed to do both. I also managed to realize (again) how great it is to be married so that I don't have to spend time looking for a potential girlfriend in either of those settings.

The evening started with the house party, a birthday celebration for a friend of a friend of a friend. In other words, the only person I knew at the party was the guy I came with, and he only knew one other person. Quick fashion aside -- I wore my standard uniform: reasonably nice black t-shirt and rapper jeans. My buddy wore a pink button-down shirt, sweater vest, and linen pants. Since nobody knew us, we weren't surprised to find out later that a rumor had started that we were a gay couple. Anyway.

In my single days, I was really bad in these kinds of social settings. I'd end up clinging to the one person I knew, or hanging out silently in the corner, watching people and making everyone nervous. It's been my experience that if I talk to girls at parties, they assume I'm hitting on them, and guys don't want to spend time talking to me when there are girls around that they could hit on. Being married changes things; guys still don't want anything to do with me, but I drop the phrase "my wife" into conversations with females as fast as possible, implicitly stating, "I'm married and not trying to flirt you. Now we can have a conversation like reasonable adults, and you can take a break from having the other guys here hitting on you if you want." It makes life fantastically easier.

After a few hours of socializing and drinking, the whole party headed downtown to one of those trendy bars where they replace a random vowel in the name with a "Y" to add an air of sophistication and justify serving stupidly overpriced alcohol. Happily, the typical third element of that equation, the impossibly stuck-up staff, seemed to be missing. We got there ahead of the crowds, so I took out a quick home equity loan, bought a round of drinks, and sat back to watch the mayhem.

Mayhem definitely ensued. Roving bands of gym-toned boys with artistically-mussed hair, girls in too-tight black pants showing huge swathes of cleavage, etc. I'm not going into further detail, because it's not like I'm describing an unfamiliar scene; you can find the same thing at any downtown bar where the doormen wear suits. All I can say is that I've reached a point of my life where I don't want to do that more than once every three or four months, when the entertainment value of watching the attack/defend manuevering of the singles scene outweighs the annoyance of being in close proximity to so many males wearing hair gel and cologne.

One last anecdote... my friend had clearly been invited to the party with the hopes that he'd hit it off with the token Nice Girl of the group. (Every friend group has at least one; it's the girl who's friendly and reasonably attractive, but can't find a decent boyfriend, so everyone tries to find people to set her up with. Bonus points if she's endured a painful end to a long-term relationship or recently dated a particulary egregious asshole.) In this case, the Nice Girl was indeed nice, but had zero personality. Ask her a question? Get a one-word answer. Tell a story that might prompt her to share something? Get a polite laugh followed by an expectant silence. Ugh. Anyhow, my buddy committed the ultimate faux pas... he ditched the Nice Girl in favor of the Younger Girl With the Low-Cut Top, who works with the core friend group but doesn't usually hang out with them. Which worked out well for him, but probably ensured we wouldn't be invited back for next year's party, and also led to a horrendously awkward scene later at the bar. At one point, I ended up sitting between the Nice Girl and the chill guy who had come to the party with the Younger Girl and clearly hoped he would be going home with her. My buddy and Younger Girl were making out a few feet away on the dance floor, and I got to watch the people on either side of me realize their evenings would end in disappointment. I briefly kicked around the idea of trying to introduce them, but settled for rubbing my wedding ring and muttering a prayer of thanks.

Searching for universal truths with Kurupt

I stopped looking for meaning in song lyrics a long time ago, as I imagine everyone does when they pass a certain stage in their lives. In high school and even into college, I wanted the songs to represent something deeper, to apply to my life, to sum up how I felt. I'd listen carefully to the lyrics, commit them to memory, try and figure out what the singer really meant by each line, which is no mean feat when you're listening to dense, wannabe-philospher bands like Tool.

Lately there's been an astonishing dearth of good new music, so I've been digging through my collection and listening to older stuff. Some of it hasn't aged well, or was crap to begin with; I can't really be sure what compelled me to spend actual money on Bloodhound Gang CDs. But some stuff I've been listening to for 15 years now, and it just never gets old. For instance, I have never gotten tired of Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, which I maintain is the greatest hip-hop album of all time. Sure, it wasn't as revolutionary as The Chronic or as influential as Enter the Wu Tang (which we'll get to in a minute), but for my money there isn't a better rap album to listen to start-to-finish.

So anyway, I thought I was done looking for deeper meaning, until I was listening to "Doggy Dogg World" for the nine thousandth time yesterday and heard guest rapper Kurupt brag about "using hoes like tennis rackets."

Now, I'd like to think that I'm inventive and juvenile enough to imagine all kinds of uses for hoes, but I can't conceive of any that in any way resemble tennis rackets. I think you could read the entire Kama Sutra without finding a single reference to tennis rackets. Clearly, Kurupt is doing some novel stuff over there in Compton. Of course, I'm not really sure I want to know the details; I'm both intrigued and horrified.

While we're on the subject of weird rap lyrics, there's a line in Jay-Z's Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) that goes, "I rub on your tits, and what-not" that always makes me giggle. And what-not? Of course, it doesn't help that he's sampling the song from Annie.

Now back to the group that really cured me of my need for deeper meaning, the immortal, infamous Wu Tang Clan. Freshman year of college I basically decided I was going to like gangsta rap, and Enter the Wu Tang was the first album I bought. One look at the lyrics made it clear that they weren't really going for anything beyond words that rhymed and either made them sound tough or referenced old kung-fu movies, which was fine by me.

Sophomore year of college I had a sort of cultural exchange program set up with my roommate, where he taught me to identify the different types of metal (death metal, black metal, power metal, grindcore), along with probable nation of origin (now there's a musical genre where you don't want to go poking around looking for deeper lyrical meaning) and I tried to teach him to identify each of the nine members of the Wu Tang Clan by voice alone. Because, you know, Wu Tang is for the children.

So my iPod playlist these days has been heavy on early-90s G Funk and the classic Wu Tang albums, which could seriously use some remastering (the bass level on Tical jumps around like a schizoid rabbit), but otherwise still hold up. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rip Liquid Swords to my hard drive. Protect ya neck.

Gadget Paralysis

The most disturbing thing happened to me today... I had a few checks to cash and some time to kill (slow day at work), so I walked out of the bank with a little over $200 in my pocket and had a little mini-debate with myself in the bank parking lot. As a married, responsible adult with a mortgage and a new Snotmobile, there are probably a million things that I should do with the money. But I've been pretty good about spending lately and didn't have any pressing needs, so I decided to take a trip to Best Buy.

One other strong motivating factor: I was hungry for deep-fried lumps of chicken, and the local Best Buy is down the street from Chick-fil-A. Clearly, this was a trip I was fated to make. Not that an avowed gadget junkie like myself needs a whole lot of prompting.

On the short drive over I tried to figure out what to get; I had the cash, and was even willing to break out the old credit card if necessary. Would it be a video game? I'd been itching to play Dark Sector despite less-than-stellar reviews. How about some DVDs? The wife wants to add Enchanted to her (horrifying) library of movies to watch when she wanted me to make myself scarce, and I have a weakness for buying old kung fu movies and westerns that I haven't even seen. Perhaps a computer or stereo peripheral that I didn't even know I needed yet? I even toyed with the idea of buying a PlayStation 3 now that Blu-ray has won the format war.

So after 30 minutes of browsing the aisles, what did I proudly carry to the check-out? A whole fat lot of nothing. I talked myself out of every single item on my list. Video games? I've got three that I've barely started, let alone finished, and Grand Theft Auto IV is looming. DVDs? They wanted 20 bucks for Enchanted, and none of the kung fu flicks caught my eye. Computer toys? Eh. PlayStation 3? I hear there's a price cut coming soon, and there aren't any must-have games out for it yet.

The only thing that really made my techie heart race were the televisions... 46" 1080p LCD HDTVs for $1,500, oh my! I spent five minutes staring at one until I actually said to myself, "Get out of here before you do something really stupid" and slinked out the door feeling responsible, but totally unfulfilled. I know that the toys people crave get expensive as they get older, but I thought I had a few years to go before mine reached the $1,500 mark. Does this mean I'll be in full mid-life crisis mode in a few short years, eyeing power boats and sports cars, at the tender age of 30? Man, I feel old today.

Disclaimer: yeah, I know I suck. There are people with real financial problems out there, people losing their houses in the mortgage crisis, and I'm bitching about not being able to figure out which gratuitous toys to buy in order to get my hit off the consumerist crack pipe. Boo freakin' hoo.

Disclaimer to the disclaimer: most of the people caught in the ARM housing crunch are idiots. "Interest rates are at all-time record lows! Let's base our financial planning on the idea that they'll stay there or get lower for the next 20-30 years! Wheeeeee!"

One final, unrelated note: if I look out the east-facing windows of my house, it's sunny and inviting, without a cloud in the sky. Out the west windows, it's overcast and snowing. I'm going to take the dog for a walk and try and figure out if some dimensional rift has opened above my garage.

Nerd Crack

The geek bug bit hard this week, which explains the lack of posting; I've been funneling my spare time into filling the holes (ok, gaping chasms) in my nerd resume. One of the problems working for a large IT company with tendrils snaking into pretty much every corner of the software industry is that we have our own (markedly inferior) tools for the web stuff I do on a daily basis, instead of using the industry standards. So I've got to stay current with the tools on my own time, on my own projects. Motivation is always a serious problem, as is the growing alphabet soup of languages and technologies employers seem to expect web developers to have. The average job posting on Craigslist reads something like:

Proficient in HTML, DHTML, XHTML, CSS, CMS, PHP, MySQL, Ajax, ActionScript, ASP...

... and on and on. Of course, there's simply no way for anyone to be an expert on everything on the list, so the key is to learn the big ones top to bottom and be able to claim passing familiarity with the rest. To that end I've spent hours this week mucking around with Flash animations and web page creation, and in the process rediscovered two things I used to love:

1. Bending the computer to my will. Nobody gets started in the computer science field saying, "I want to write printer drivers." But every kid who's ever liked video games kicks around the idea of making their own, and the friendless kids like me end up spending countless hours in their basements learning bit by bit, with every triumph a small rush as you get the seemingly inscrutable machine to do what you want. (The those kids they go off to college to major in comp sci only to learn that the games industry is a meatgrinder and that it's better and safer to take a job writing boring code at a big company, which eventually gets so dull that they change jobs and quit writing code entirely, but that's another story.)

So it'd been a good long while since I'd really pushed myself to create something. Part of the problem is that games these days are created over the course of years by teams of hundreds of people, built on mind-bending technology that costs into the five figures. No sane kid (and definitely no reasonable adult) is going to look at BioShock and go, "Hey! With a few weeks of study and a home computer, I could do that!" When I was a kid (insert sepia-toned montage and tinkly piano music here), the primitive graphics and structure of adventure games or stuff like Legend of Zelda didn't seem too far out of reach, which is what chained me to that keyboard all those Saturdays. I'd be worried that the steep learning curve would scare the next generation of programmers away, but most of them have probably already discovered what I finally found in the last few weeks: Flash. There's a market again for simple, innovative games, and a tool for creating those games that doesn't require a graduate degree and years of experience to use. I haven't made any games yet, but I keep seeing animation effects on web pages and scurrying to the computer to see if I can duplicate it. It's immensely satisfying, and I can justify it to the wife by saying I'm learning important stuff that will help if I get laid off.

2. Buying computer books. God, I love computer books. The huge, thick manuals that delve into minute technical details. Each one contains the obligatory CD inside the back cover, the index that runs over 60 pages, and the promise that reading it will confer vast knowledge. It'd been years since I grabbed a stack of manuals, commandeered a book store chair, and spent the next 45 minutes deciding which ones were worth purchasing and which ones made empty promises on the hyperbolic back covers. Now I've got a whole new set of tools to learn, which obviously means I have a whole new set of books to buy. I've been prolonging the experience as much as I can, buying one new book every few weeks, but always jonesing for that next hit from the bookstore. I feel like a kid again.

One other (unwelcome) way in which I feel like a kid again: when I was first learning to program, all the fancy compilers cost over $100, which was well out of my price range and required me to use old stuff that didn't necessarily work with the books I was buying, or trial versions of the good stuff that held back important features. I figured being employed would allow me to buy all the new tools, but I quickly learned that Adobe wants one thousand dollars for the new versions of Flash and Dreamweaver, which is highway robbery. Adobe, no wonder everyone pirates your shit.

Manhood Test

Part of owning a home is dealing with the occasional trial of manhood it flings your way. It's helpful in determining whether you're a latte-swilling yuppie or a burly, beer-chugging manly man. I've already overcome a few of these challenges (Installing light fixtures? Easy. Unclogging pipes beneath the garbage disposal? No problem. Change a Jeep tire? Bring it on), but I have to report that I failed miserably this weekend. Are you manlier than me? Here's a chance to find out. For this test, you will need:

• One tree of indeterminate age, trunk roughly six inches in diameter, stone dead from beetle infestation


• One shovel


• One hatchet (preferably acquired from Home Depot, where people give you a wide berth if you roam scowling up and down the aisles covered in dirt, carrying a hatchet)


• An assortment of hand saws


• One sympathetic, willing, but physically unimposing wife


• One sense of extremely misguided optimism

Can you dig the tree out without calling in paid, professional help?

I should have known when the guy at a place that sells trees told us to hire somebody, but our dead tree was so pitiful, with its bark falling off and everything, that it seemed like a few shovelfuls of dirt, a couple swings of the hatchet, and a stern glance would topple it.

So with a blind, stupid belief in myself, I cut the tree down to the stump, hauled the wood away, and started digging. I got about three inches into the ground before I discovered the root spaghetti. Seems that maybe instead of falling victim to the beetles, our tree was strangled by the root system of three huge cottonwoods in the neighbor's yard. Every thrust of the shovel uncovered three or four more roots, some as wide as a finger and others as thick as my (admittedly puny) bicep. I hacked at the damn things for a good two hours, pulling more wood out of the hole than dirt, before I finally accepted my fate and called the dude with the stump grinder. He came by today and quoted us $85, which is almost insultingly low. I hang my head in yuppie shame, and blame the purchase of the Snotmobile for turning me into a quivering mass of loser.

National Irritate Me Day

If anybody needs me later this afternoon, I'll be cowering in my basement, rocking a sweet tinfoil hat. (Can one rock something while cowering? I will try.) The structure of the hat is still up for debate, so if any hypothetical readers have suggestions, I'm all ears (literally; please take my freakishly large ears into account when submitting chapeau designs). I was originally thinking generic dome shape, but since tinfoil is pretty easy to work with, I might actually fashion something. Like maybe tri-corner. I'm not artistic at all, but I guess paranoia gets the creative juices flowing, and there's no sense in having a mundane tinfoil hat.

Why the sudden feeling that everyone's out to get me? Probably because they are. Today has been a non-stop stream of irritation. People I haven't heard from in months have crawled out from under their rocks with the sole purpose of pissing me off. And my friends wonder why I don't get a Facebook page.

I just had a woman who I worked with two years ago and haven't seen since take 30 minutes of my time because she couldn't figure out basic features of PowerPoint and apparently has never heard of Google. Another coworker blatantly lied to me about the readiness of some information he wanted posted to our intranet site, then left the country. A different lady spent all last week harping on me about how I needed to format her newsletter content correctly, then informed me today that we had to re-send it all because she screwed up all the dates she listed in the content. I'm dreading every peep from my instant messenger client, every ding from the email inbox. And worst of all, my laptop keyboard is broken... the tiny plastic tabs holding K and L keys to their respective supports have mysteriously vanished, which makes typing kinda like running in the dark down a bumpy dirt road. Covered in crocodiles. OK, that last bit might be overdramatic. But still.

I also wonder why these particular keys broke. I can't think of a word containing those letters that I type emphatically and repeatedly. Is it because They have put a tracking device in my keyboard? Are They listening now? Where did I put the tinfoil again?

Snotmobile

We fell off the wagon this weekend. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but the wife and I sallied forth and bought a Prius. Welcome to cliche-ville. Population: us, and every other filthy yuppie in the area. The damn thing is even painted green. (The technical term for the color is Sea Foam Green. I live in a land-locked state, can't swim, and associate sea foam with drowning, seaweed and bad smells, so until further notice I'm calling it Snot Green. I don't expect the salesmen to start using my term, but I think it's significantly more descriptive.)

Back to cliches. We can now drive our Prius to Whole Foods, bust out our official Whole Foods reusable bags, and stock up on all the free-range organic soy our yuppie hearts could ever desire. That mental image made me so nauseous that after buying the car, I drove us straight to Wendy's, where I ate the biggest bacon cheeseburger I could find.

It had been nearly six years since I'd bought a car. I remembered the experience being unpleasant, and boy, was I ever right. The salesman started with stupidly low offer for our trade-in, which I certainly expected, but seriously... with all the information available on the internet, any non-retarded person should know about what their car is worth. They offered half that, which was almost insulting. Though at least our salesman admitted as much, saying, "Well, that's the game. We offer something low, and you try and bump it up."

We went back and forth for a little while, but the wife and I didn't have much bargaining power. With gas expected to hit $4 this summer and Priuses (Priui? Prii? WTF?) practically evaporating off the lot as yuppies scramble to replace their SUVs, they could have sent a different employee over every 30 seconds to give us the finger, and we'd have had to grin and bear it. Had we walked away, there were 30 cliches-in-waiting lined up to buy the Snotmobile, and the bastards knew it.

So now we own a Prius. I actually feel ok about it. Yeah, the car screams, "I don't actually burn gas at all! I'm fueled by NPR, Starbucks and my own staggering moral superiority! Look upon my trendiness, ye earth-haters, and despair!" Yeah, it's a goddamn eyesore. But... it has a weird, misshapen charm (kinda like my head!). And it does get that crazy gas mileage. But most importantly, it's a tech-nerd's dream car.

You can unlock the door, start the car and drive away without taking the key out of your pocket. It actually senses if there's someone sitting in the passenger seat and, if nobody's there, the car shuts down a bunch of the touch screen controls (did I mention there's a touch screen? Because there is) so you don't fiddle with them while driving. There's voice-activated navigation and GPS and Bluetooth, oh my. And finally, there's display screens that show your mileage and how much energy you've regenerated by braking, which turns driving into one big video game complete with high scores and bonus points. It's practical and silly and addictive all at the same time, even if it's quickly turning my lead-footed wife into a Sunday driver (mashing the accelerator causes your MPG to fall off a cliff, ruining your score).

In conclusion, gimme some of that tofu Kool-Aid, because I dig the Snotmobile. Now all we need to do is name the GPS voice lady... what's a good name for a female who's bossy, hard to shut up, and is frequently wrong? Insert cheap mother-in-law joke here.

Oh, and since the entire western world is breathlessly awaiting the update... the new pants fit, kinda. They're a little tight on the thighs, but I made the mistake of trying them on in front of the wife, and she liked them (she's fighting a long, grueling, uphill battle to make me look metrosexual), so now I'm keeping them. There will be no stockpiling, though.

Pantsquest (aka Why I Really Hate Emo and Hipsters)

Well, yesterday finally marked the day that my bloated ass pushed me to a new frontier.

I'll explain.

It makes me feel like a female to admit this, but I have an impossible time finding pants that fit. I've got a skinny waist coupled with a huge butt and thick thighs. Think a less-extreme version of Barry Sanders (without the crazy athleticism, millions of dollars, YouTube highlight reels and Tecmo Super Bowl immortality, of course). So when it comes to pants, I have three choices:

1. Buy a pair that fits in the waist. This would work, as long as I never bent over or tried to put anything in my pockets. Horribly uncomfortable. Clearly the worst option. I've been told this is how womens' jeans are designed to fit. This is ludicrous.

2. Buy a pair that fits the thighs. Of course, this leaves me with about six extra inches of fabric around the waist that folds over when I put a belt on. Far more comfortable, but I look like I'm a little kid borrowing his dad's clothes. Not recommended.

3. Rapper jeans.

Damn skippy. Fubu. Roca Wear. Freakin' Sean John. They're the only jeans that fit comfortably, which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that I have ghetto booty. I'm kinda proud of it. Unfortunately (since we're feeling list-oriented today), there are three big problems with rapper jeans...

a) I'm white. And I refuse to be that guy, the middle-class white kid who heard Snoop Dogg one day and decided he was from the 'hood. So I can wear rapper jeans, but not ones with big logos covering the entire ass (which, as discussed above, is ample in my case). I also have to restrict myself to certain brands. Fubu is out entirely, until they start marketing "For Whitey, By Us." Sean John is out too, because "P Diddy sucks" is one of those universal truths, and I can't give him my money. Which pretty much leaves Roca and Ecko.

b) They're hard to find. There's one store in a 100-mile radius that stocks them. That's what I get for living in one of the whitest parts of the whitest states in the country (no, not Utah). And that store doesn't carry many, so if they don't have my size or a decent style, I'm SOL. Why don't more stores sell rapper jeans? Well, probably because...

c) They're going out of style. Which brings me back to Emo and hipsters and all those heroin-skinny bastards parading around in pants that I couldn't get over my calves, let alone my thunder thighs. I blame the death of commercial hip-hop (Sean Kingston? Soulja Boy? Are you fucking kidding me?) and the rise of shitty garage-rock bands. The music discussion is probably best saved for a later post, but the decline of rap music has been a double-barrelled blow for me; I can't find new music I like, and I can't buy any more pants. Damn it all.

My last hope? Work pants. Made for contractors and mechanics and dockworkers and lots of people manlier than me. Help me Carhartt, you're my only hope. Except that, once again, nobody around here sells the damn things.

So finally, we come full circle to the new frontier I mentioned waaaay up at the top... the internet. Yes, I work for a tech company. In fact, I work from home all day with only instant messaging keeping me in touch with my coworkers and friends. I have a blog, for chrissakes. You'd think I'd be comfortable buying stuff online, and you'd be right for the most part. But clothes that I've never even seen, much less tried on? When I'm pickier about the fit of my clothes than anyone else I know? This is going to be interesting. The new pants arrive via UPS on Monday. My hypothetical readers wait with baited breath to find out what happens. But I can tell you this much... if they fit, I'm going back online and stockpiling those motherfuckers like Mormons do with bottled water. And if they don't fit? I'm taking the Plain White T's* hostage until my demands are met and my ghetto booty is comfortably clothed.

* Side note on the Plain White T's: their label is called "Fearless Records," but these guys look (and sound) like they'd be afraid of lots of things. Like the dark. And strong winds. And possibly hyperactive kittens.

Gluttony, sloth and mini-eggs

My family's annual Easter face-stuffing came and went yesterday... prime rib, rolls and twice-baked potatoes for dinner. Chocolate fondue AND chocolate pie for dessert. Corn Pops for a late supper, but that's not important right now. It left me feeling a bit tubby today, and I wasn't exactly svelte to start with since March Madness has kept me glued to my couch (which, since I work from home full-time, is also my desk), gorging myself on Cadbury Mini-Eggs.

(I'm one paragraph in, which means it's time for the obligatory digression: I'm snobby about lots of things, but there aren't many food items on that list. Easy Cheese? Box wine? Hot dogs? Yes, please. Cheap chocolate? God, yes. You snobs can have your Dove and Godiva and god knows whatever else. I'll be sitting happily in the corner with my milk carton of Whoppers and my bags of Mini-Eggs that I've been hoarding for six months because the evil genius bastards at Cadbury only sell them for a few paltry weeks out of the year.)

Anyhow, with the belly swelling, it was time I got myself to the gym. In my experience, most people who go to the gym fall into two categories: runners and meatheads. They're either toiling away on a treadmill for hours at a time, reading magazines and wearing short shorts, or they're top-heavy frat boys clad in cut-up t-shirts doing endless variations of the bench press between long breaks spent staring at their muscles in the full-length mirrors and discussing protein shakes. I've got pipecleaner arms and a healthy distaste for all things cardio, so I don't really fall into either camp. And for long stretches of time I don't come within hailing distance of the campers, either; today was the first day in months I've actually darkened the corridors of the local rec center. I also go at certain times to avoid as many people as I can; obviously, I'm not getting up at 6 am to fight for equipment with the overly-motivated morning crowd. I also try to avoid the lunch-timers, who are on a tight schedule and glare daggers at you if you're using a machine that they want.

I've found that 10 am is ideal, because at that time the rec center is populated by a good mix of senior citizens and soccer moms with the stray high school dropout meathead to liven things up. The soccer moms are there to do pilates or spinning or yoga or whatever they do that involves the wearing of black spandex pants, and the senior citizens mostly sit around and weigh themselves on the scales, so I can do my leg exercises in peace. When I first started lifting weights, I was a little worried that the meatheads would mock my pathetic arms and chest, but most of them are nice enough fellows who ignore me entirely. The ones who do take notice are so dumbfounded that I'm not doing bicep curls that they avoid me because my crazy might be contagious.

So it was a successful session today, because I avoided passing out or hurling, and whoever was running the music in the rec center kept me from yearning for my iPod. (Marvin Gaye! Wilson Pickett! Morris Day and the Time!) Might want to rethink my post-workout diet, though. I downed two Cherry Cokes with lunch when I got home, and the subsequent crash from the sugar high, coupled with the first-day-back exercise exhaustion, left me nearly lobotomized. Which is why I can't figure out a good way to end this post...

Sacrificial Minion

I have a minion. At work, that is. A few months ago (just before the Great Blog Hiatus of early '08), my manager called me and said, "So we'd like to get somebody else trained to do some of the stuff you do. Namely, the boring things, so you can focus on more interesting stuff." Which is obviously a fantastic development, as the Alpha and Omega of my Boring List is the newsletter, and here I was being given carte blanche to pawn that off on someone else. Hell yeah.

Why did the give me a minion? I'd like to think it's because they realized how brilliant I am, and that they were wasting my genius by forcing me to spend all day fiddling with fonts and table layouts. That's certainly how they pitched it to me (my bosses are somewhat paranoid that I'll leave and have been awfully friendly lately; more on that in a future post). But what I suspect happened is that the managers realized there was nobody listed as my backup on the official organizational chart, and that if I were ever struck by a bus THEY might have to be the ones fiddling with the fonts, and thus they gave me a minion.

Let me start by saying my minion is a wonderful person. She's sweet and friendly and genuine, with a good sense of humor. She dotes on her kids (one in college, the other in high school); she's sent me pictures of them and tells me about their baseball games, which I enjoy. I don't have kids so I tell her about my dog, and she listens and laughs at my jokes. She's eager to learn new things, and willing to put up with my sometimes stilted, meandering explanations.

She's also driving me insane.

I've recently started explaining my job to non-geeks by saying, "I do technical things for non-technical people." I set up ftp sites for salespeople to download presentations. I figure out the video editing software, then write tutorials with lots of pictures so sellers can record their pitches. I create websites to store and track information. I write Excel macros to make peoples' lives easier. And I format newsletters and mass email so that it looks professional and is easy to read. I'm a former software engineer, an occupation where misplacing one semicolon can cause the proverbial plane to crash into the mountain. As a result, I'm detail-oriented to a spectacular degree; things like "two different sizes of text in the body of an email" almost cause me physical discomfort.

The minion does not share this mindset.

I can't blame her. I realize I'm in the (vanishingly small) minority. But today she was ready to send an email to 5,000 people that contained a large graphic about the benefits of "Vizualization." Yesterday she tried to update a web page and subsequently broke every link because she pasted an extra "http://" in front of each URL. Wednesday she sent out a mass email to the right group of people with the right heading, but forgot to include half the email text.

Some of this is just her adjusting to a new role and learning new things. Some of it is my fault; I'm definitely not cut out to be a teacher, and since she lives in another state we have to do all the training over the phone. But the main problem is that she's just not detail-oriented, and I don't think she ever will be. So when the boss suggests I delegate some moderately complicated web work to the minion, I have to tell her that noise she heard from my end of the line was a sneeze and not me shooting soda out of my nose in horror.

I can't rat her out or request a different minion, because that'd break her heart and I'd feel like crap. So I correct her HTML before she sends it in for approval. I swallow the bile when mass email goes out formatted in such a way that it doesn't fit horizontally on the screen. I tell myself that, in the end, it's all worth it.

And it is. Because now she's the poor sap who has to fiddle with fonts in the newsletter.

Somebody Hug Cormac

Yeah, three month hiatus. The insomnia's been back, but it was the kind where I stay up until 2 am reading ESPN.com instead of shaking my fist at the sky, blog-style, for all my hypothetical readers. Also, there were books to be read and video games to be beaten. So let's start with the books (aka What I Read on My Winter Blog Vacation)...

Cormac McCarthy is one seriously disturbed motherfucker. I pretty much inhaled The Road, which was both my first McCarthy book and my first Oprah Book Club book (had to make sure the Oprah sticker peeled neatly off the front before I bought the thing). Anyway, it's a wildly depressing book about a father and son dodging cannibals and scrounging for food in a post-apocalyptic world that consists mostly of ash and dead things. Given that there's limited ways to describe the aforementioned ash and dead things, and that Cormac's not exactly verbose to start with and just flat out doesn't believe in apostrophes, it was a quick read. I was expecting something dark and haunting that would stay with me and keep me awake at night, which it might have done had I not followed it up with Blood Meridian.

Blood Meridian is the story of a group of Indian fighters who range from appalling to despicable to appallingly despicable. They rape and murder and pillage their way across Mexico, with the closest thing to comedy relief being the character who wears a necklace made of human ears (no, it's not funny, unless every time the necklace comes up you get flashbacks to Dolph Lundgren in Universal Soldier, in which case it'll pass for humor, but I doubt that's what Cormac was going for). Anyway, the entire book passed without a single character for a (non-psychotic) reader to identify with, then came to an abrupt, unclear ending that left me staring at the wall in confused horror. There was some philosphy put forth that I don't even want to begin to contemplate, because the whole book just made me feel dirty. It was kind of a highbrow literary version of that (old?) TV show Fear Factor... a bunch of unlikeable characters doing unsavory things that for some reason you feel compelled to watch.

Next came All the Pretty Horses, which was fantastic. I understand that the movie was terrible (never saw it), but I enjoyed the hell out of the book. It was bloody and dark and all that, but there was at least some humor and a character or two that you'd let walk behind you in a dark alley. Finished off the Cormac kick with No Country for Old Men, which was also terrific. The movie translation is about as true to the book as any I've ever seen, with all the plot points included and only a few small pieces of the backstory left out.

McCarthy's definitely not a populist; I read his four most famous books and there wasn't a happy ending to be found in the bunch. No Country and Horses came the closest, and they pretty much ended in stalemates. He seems more interested in how people react to extreme violence, and in creating the most disturbing characters he possibly can. I'm glad I read his books, but I'd be terrified if I had to make smalltalk with him.