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It's my first anniversary at the Blue Beast! A whole year of being gainfully employed, this is quite the milestone for me... and to think I already feel like I'm part of a Dilbert cartoon. It's overwhelming. I'd like to thank my agent, my therapist, ... [cue wrap it up music]
I should be hiding this, but hell, we've all been there. I just want to be perfectly clear, I only tried it one time and I didn't even inhale - or enjoy it at all for that matter! Fear of Girls
courtesy of Pedro
This weekend was insane, mainly because I didn't expect it to spiral so rapidly out of control. What I thought was going to be a simple housewarming party in SF where I'd show my face and leave, turned into a long night of drinking and bad British accents. My friend Jason who is both terribly nice and terribly odd had laid out quite a spread and between the booze and the "Greek mashed potatoes" [don't ask] and I found myself slightly tipsy and speaking in a terrible British accent at the prompting of an actual Brit and another tipsy person attempting an accent. Saima would have been proud - mostly - at my efforts. In the end I didn't end up leaving till 3am. A quick call to the frat brothers let me know what hotel they'd crashed at (safety first kids, never drive home drunk, just say no and all that). I took a cab to Union Square and managed to find my way to the hotel in time to pass out before the fellows could. This morning I woke up at 8:30a to get back to my place before my 10:30a soccer game, but my performance there is another story altogether.
Any bad sitcom (or good sitcom for that matter) has a moment like this. It's a moment when the cast finds itself staring across a room at a group of people that are identical to them. The moment is typically awkward and comical in the same way that getting kicked in the groin is. That, in a nutshell or disproportionate size, is what happened to me the other day.
I went out to lunch with two of my coworkers (a pale gaunt guy and a bulky Italian guy) to a gourmet Armenian restuarant named, simply, The Armenian Gourmet. The food is good, the service lousy, and the wait staff similar to your culinarily talented but socially retarded Aunt Gertie. We arrived 10 minutes before the lunch rush, but the place was already mostly full. The only table left was a six-person table. The hostess asked if we wanted to wait for a smaller table or to take the large table with the caveat that we might have to share. We opted to be seated immediately and had almost finished eating when we were joined at the table by three guys sporting Spansion badges (Spansion is one our direct competitors). There was a pale gaunt guy, a bulky Mediterranean guy and the "ethnic" guy. They looked at us, we looked at them, and the whole thing was uncanny. They got the same food that we had ordered, and as we rose I wondered if this sort of thing was just a coincidence or whether life in Silicon Valley had created legions of identical drones pumped out of the same four or five molds.
Last weekend, on the eve of my mother's departure from the verdant valley of Mountain View, my car started "acting up". Not the sassing me back, "you're not my real dad" sort of acting up, but "I know I'm in gear, but why go anywhere" acting up. Starting the car in the morning I'd taken to putting the car in drive and and lifting my foot off the brakes, and just waiting for it to start moving. The sound of the engine was high and clattered in the sort of way that sets a person's soul at ease in the same way that hearing a strangled gurgle in your living room at midnight does.
I didn't really have a choice about what to do. This past week was riddled with early morning meetings and late nights at work, leaving one sleeping till the last moment and then rushing out the door to work. Hence, no way to leave the car at the garage, and no peace of mind during the day. So I only got the chance to drop it off at the mechanics' on Saturday morning. The prognosis was not good, as I'm sure you can imagine and requires an outlay of more money than I had hoped. So I find myself weighing a hitherto unimaginable option - to buy a new car.
That's right, a new car. A flashy, shiny, overly compensating new chariot with which tool around. So I'd like to solicit some advice from you fine folks. What sort of car would you buy? Why? Pros and cons? Think of it as dressing a paper doll in the sort of outfits you think are fancy.
While avoiding work the other day, I walked into the courtyard at my place of business with Chuck (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent). We idly chit chatted and tried to distract ourselves. It's the mental equivalent of prying one's tongue off one's palate after a particularly uncontrolled incident involving peanut butter. I would typically be a little bit ashamed, but the thing I've realized lately is that it is entirely necessary to maintain my tenuous grasp on sanity.
But I digress. I walked into the courtyard and followed the poorly designed reflecting pool to its source, which is a stone basin about waist height that pours broad, thin sheet of water into the pool itself. The basin is far more elegantly designed than the reflecting pool, whose roiling surface makes actual viewing of any reflections somewhat futile.
All of this is unremarkable, though. What is remarkable is the way that the water flowed in the basin. While all the water obviously flows towards the notch in the side of the basin that feeds the pool, the thing that you'll notice is that it's difficult to see if flowing in the basin, at least till it gets to the notch. The best you can hope for, without some object for reference like a leaf or twig, is to observe the surface. That's what I was doing, and to my delight I saw three thin lines in the surface, radiating outwards from the notch.
The lines were quite fine, practically invisible unless light struck the surface just so. They didn't correspond to any wave or ripple, and resembled nothing more than a line drawn on the surface of the wafer freehand. The water flowed on either side of the line, like the river and the ocean, completely distinct and separate. I was mesmerized by it. How did the line come to be? What kept the water separated like that? Chuck ran his finger across the surface of the water to distrub it, but it didn't budge or disappear, subsumed into the ripples. I wished I had a camera with me, and wondered if the same lines would be there the next time I played hooky from work.
In a stunning return to this blog, Pedro has given me another choice link. This one goes to the British Library's Online Gallery. My favorites so far are Sultan Baybars' Qur'an and Mercator's first atlas of Europe. The ability to leaf through the books means that the only thing missing is the smell of old books.
I pride myself on not really being impressed by stardom or fame, as many people are. I am not a total curmudgeon, but the celebrity fetish in America annoys me and I purposefully eschew that sort of behavior. And yet I can be starstruck too, but not in the way you might think. It started when I saw my first blog. I had been opinionated for years, and apparently there were people out there who were opinionated before an audience of untold tens of people! I say that cynically now, but back then I was startled and awestruck. They were all articulate, interesting, and had the sort of varied tastes that I'd been trying to cultivate for years. They also all seemed to know each other. Reading their blogs I could see they all lived in the Bay Area, they all worked for tech firms, or were part of enterprises that were riding the cresting wave of the tech boom. They were the clique of smart kids, who were hip but not overly popular, in high school that I'd never been a part of, and I wanted in.
Around the same time I was getting into webcomics, which differed from the paper variety in many ways. They weren't all great, and many were just poorly drawn and sophmoric, but there were some that were just quietly brilliant, somewhat subversive, and cheeky. I got the same feeling reading the webcomics as I did reading the blogs, like I was listening to some charmingly cool kid who was a friend of a friend. That's a seductive thing, to have such a feeling of closeness, and I was caught up a little bit in it, in the same way that housewives think that Oprah is talking to them.
I got to meet a bunch of the webcomics folks in San Diego in 2003, and it was a shock. I was starstruck and said as much in the previous incarnation of this blog. The shock, though, was that they were so ... normal. They were regular folks who were themselves surprised that anyone read their work or liked it, and they were friendly. What was more surprising though, was that no one else thought talked to them. In fact, no one seemed to be paying any attention to them at all. Was I the only person who thought of them as celebrities?
Showing up in the Bay Area I'd fallen out of the habit of reading blogs, especially as some of my favorites have fallen quiet. Whenever I was in SF, though, I was keenly aware that in that grubby town there had walked some expressive and interesting folks. It was like walking through the Alhambra and remembering the poets and artisans who walked through there a thousand years ago. But unlike those dead Andalusians, you're not crazy if you see these bloggers walking around. I am forever seeing vaguely familiar faces, even in the south Bay, who are the bloggers I used to read so avidly. It's an odd feeling to see them, walking through the bar of Pedro's Mexican Grill, or some other nondescript watering hole, on the way to a Friday evening happy hour. I'd go up and ask for an autograph, but you know, that's not my style.
Now let me start by saying that I have no pride. Or rather, I do have pride, but only about certain things. Other stuff I wrote off a long time ago, and never bother with. For instance, physical strength. Now I know, you're thinking to yourself, "But Lo Fat Mo, you're low fat! You're fit as a fiddle and a paragon of health! You're the physical apex of human history, so how can this be?" And you're right - mostly.
Last month, in a fit of bravado brought on by testosterone poisoning, I challenged one of my direct superiors at work to a push up contest. I can't tell you why I did this because I have no idea why. I had been rock climbing as part of a work outing, and that always gets me going. I was doing fairly well despite the rather long interval since my last climb, which no doubt contributed to the euphoria. So I went over to my manager and challenged him to a push up contest, mostly in jest.
aside: My manager bears an uncanny resemblance to Keifer Sutherland. The shock of blonde hair, streaked with even lighter hair. The bugging blue eyes and wispy facial hair. It's like Agent Jack Bauer is your supervisor, creeping around being pensive, armed to the teeth and hissing, "where's that TPS report?" The effect is ruined by his tendency to wear tiny black penny loafers and tuck his t-shirts into his jeans.
When he took me up on it, I was surprised, but of course I had to go through with it. Now mind you, I was hard core climbing, and he was doing the easy walls with the oversize hand holds. So I had no serious expectation of winning, that is, not until we started. I started out pretty well, surprisingly well, even. But they were fist down pushups, and I made several tactical mistakes:
1- keep my hands directing under my shoulders
2- going for speed and not smooth motion
3- neglecting the fact that I outweigh him by almost 15 pounds
All factors, mind you, for my loss. An slightly shameful loss, but not something that kept me up at night. After all I am a man of letters, a man of art, logic and razor-like wit, not some muscle-bound oaf.
So what possessed me to agree to a revisitation of self-same contest? Testosterone mixed with peer pressure, which is not my preferred cocktail, but one I seem to imbibe far too often. The person pouring me this particular brew was a certain hatchet-faced coworker who shall remain Tim-less. In passing at the end of the day, he mentioned that I was due for some derision, and when I asked why he brought up the push up contest. So of course I had to defend my honor and before I knew it I was doing push-ups in the aisle between two rows of cubicles. The first 15 were easy but after that I was huffing and puffing. I think I was holding my breath towards the end which of course wasn't helping. Thus, I was bested yet again. That's why those guys get the big bucks I guess ...
To my credit, I can both admit this whole thing happened AND brush it all off, until my time comes, and I wreak bloody revenge. They'll pay, OH YES, they'll PAY! They called me MAAAD at the University! Ahem. Um. Goodnight.
Part of the "charm" of my blog is the spontaneity of it, and of course the fact that I am not filtered in the slightest. Like a pack of Lucky Strikes you get the full impact of my observations, with not even those flimsy cylinders of fiberglass that save you from premature lung cancer. This sets up an interesting moral dilemma for me, namely do I show any restraint at all in my writing?
What brings all this up was the fact that I was sitting in a meeting today with a young man who looked like he'd been unfrozen from glacial ice in the Pyrenees scant moments ago. His hairline seemed to be rolling downhill towards his nose and he looked very much like someone who didn't especially need to ever wear a baseball gap. I sat across a conference table from this specimen and forced myself not to log in and comment on this. My fingers twitched and I began to sweat. This restraint thing is not quite as easy as one would have thought. Lucky for me I have great intestinal fortitude and managed to avoid it ... but it's only a matter of time before the urge overtakes me again... God help me!
Don't know what a banana slug looks like? I've updated the previous post with an image if you're curious. Not for the faint of heart.
My folks are in town these days and when I am not crushed under the weight of my overbearing job I try to show them around the Bay Area. This Saturday we went to Big Basin State Park to show my brother the redwoods. The weather was inclement the entire time my father was in town so we tried to take advantage of the quick break in the clouds.
My cat herding skills are not quite what they used to be and by the time I managed to shepherd everyone out of the door, the clouds had gathered again. By the time we got to Los Gatos we were sitting on the fence about going forward. I'd had a nasty incident driving my mom in the rain once (a microburst over Phoenix) and this has colored her impressions of me behind the wheel. We forged ahead anyway and found ourselves driving through misty hillside roads that were only missing a band of proud silverbacks to make it all complete - that and a machete wielding poacher or two, but you get the idea.
The mist alternated with rain as we found our way to the rear entrance to the park. About a mile in we pulled over at a clearing I like and got out of the car. By then it was raining fairly steadily, but none of it was reaching the ground at all. The canopy was deflecting most of it and as we stepped through the soft cushion of pine needles I reflected on how amazing it all was. That we could walk around in the rain and stay bone dry, washed only by the sound of the wind and the raindrops hitting the foliage at treetop level. But I'm waxing lyrical ... and that's not the tone we're trying to set here.
As we walked around, I saw a brightly colored spot on a fallen branch. Upon closer inspection it seemed to be a slimy, unpeeled banana clinging to a branch. It was actually a banana slug! I had only ever seen them on John Travolta's tee-shirt in Pulp Fiction, and had no idea they were real creatures. And what vile creatures they are, orange-yellow, and glistening, a cross between a banana and the Devil's phlegm. I couldn't figure out the head from the tail, but after staring at it for a few minutes I turned away, only turning back to yell at my brother to stop poking the damned thing with a stick. We're city kids, is the only excuse I can come up with.
There's only so much tromping about in the woods in the rain (albeit rain not getting to us) and cold, and after an hour or so we turned around and drove back. Predictably the sun came out as soon as we were close to civilization, another message from the Great Chicken that this family vacation will be spent indoors staring at one another forlornly. Who am I to question the will of the Great Chicken?
I haven't been at it long, I'll admit, but this 'grown up' thing already has me down. It's not the long hours, it's not the bill paying - it's the injuries. But what injuries! I am coming down with the scourge of the nerdly set, the precursor to carpal tunnel syndrome.
This is hardly the way I saw my end coming. I thought I'd be at the top of a mountain, wrapped in the flag, with a large spotlight on me crying out, "Come and taste human steel you villains!". Alas, my end is not the honorable one I had envisioned. What would my proud Viking ancestors say? Will the battle to improve throughput time count as I petition to take my seat in Valhalla?
Now I can hear some of you chuckling with prurient glee in the background. No, my wrist does not hurt for the reasons you think it does. What's most vexing about the whole thing is that my job requires that I continue at least some of the activities that brought this damned affliction upon me, namely mousing and typing. So I am basically between the rock and the hard place, which would make me a tragic hero in the epic mold, except for the wussy nature of my injury. Which makes it even more tragic. Alas!
I'll be reposting my dispatches from my travels winter 2004/2005. The last few posts never made it to the web due to my webhost, hostlane.com, sucking. In case you missed them, or didn't know me then, this is your chance to relive the magic.
Don't worry, there'll be more new stuff too, but I just want all the old stuff to live on...
I have risen after a year's hiatus and when I look around, everyone is different. Like Rip Van Winkle, my beard is long, my nails curling and my hair unkempt, and I might be using some archaic language. Things were really different back on 2004, and I know some of you young folks don't believe me, but it's all true. It was really groovy, but hopefully I'll acclimate right quick.