A Watched Clock Never Boils…Or Something

At least if you’re Salvador Dali anyway. He had all those melting clocks and that entire dream sequence in Hitchcock’s "Spellbound". Yet another example of drug-infused art. But that was last post.

I really enjoy my job. Quite a bit. I get to be creative, have a leadership role, and push boundaries of thought and design in an arena that most people would say "Quit your lying, you lousy liar" if they knew what kind of projects I worked on. Pushing boundaries and being creative are not largely regarded as being synonymous with financial mega-corporations.

But this week, I’ve wished I had a hit or two of whatever Dali was taking (wait…he regularly dropped acid, so scratch that) to help get me through to the end of Friday, when I can head over to my friends’ house and play a Hallochristmagiving-themed game of Mage Knight Dungeons and look forward to Trick-or-Treat with the kids on Saturday.

Before anyone starts strapping in to read me whine and complain about my lousy boss or crummy long hours or how my projects are too demanding, let me stop you right there. It’s none of those things. I love my manager. She’s great. We get along famously. I enjoy my projects. I find them mentally stimulating and I enjoy challenging people’s preconceptions. And I don’t have crummy long hours either. I’m currently a contractor, and if I go over 40 hours I get paid overtime. Ergo, nobody ever wants me to go over 40 hours in a week.

My problem is that this week, I’ve had squat to do. And I’m massively, extremely, painfully bored.

My projects are currently in a temporary state of limbo. My manager, along with most of the rest of our department, has been tied up all week getting a site released polished off. And what work I have had to do, well, I finish up faster than the average bear. And sitting around for the better part of four days makes me antsy. There’s only so much I’m interested in having corporate IT track me reading online during work hours, and the book I’m reading isn’t holding my attention as well as others have. I’m currently working through a book on CSS styling for web sites, and while I am finding it informative, it’s one of the duller technical tomes I’ve read this year.

Yeah, now you’re getting the image. Loves a good zombie flick and reads technical books in his spare time at work. It’s a wonder some intellectual beauty like Diane Keaton in her early 30’s hasn’t snapped me up already. But hey, at least I’m not an accountant.

What I have a hard time understanding is all the people who seem so comfortable with not having anything to do at their job. Wally in the Dilbert comic is their lord and master, except he’s to lazy to lead them and they’d be to lazy to follow even if he did. How can people be so at ease with their sloth? Don’t they worry that, perhaps, someone might find them to be expendable at some point? Don’t they have any ambition? Any drive? Any kind of autonomic nervous system?

And then there are the people who don’t actually have anything to work on, but somehow manage to maintain the illusion of being busy all the time. That’s the one I really don’t get. How is that possible? The one answer I’ve been able to come up with is claiming to have meetings at the other offices downtown all day, then stopping instead at the movie theater for the afternoon.

So what I’ve had to come to grips with is that sometimes the money I’m paid isn’t about having me being constantly productive. Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s going to be about having me around and available to be productive when things are ready for me. But it would still be nice to have something meaningful and interesting to fill the time with.

The one "A" is for "Ambiguous"

Yesterday was the twenty-third day of Hallochristmagiving, and by odd coincidence the gift for the day was “twenty-three dollars to purchase ‘Fido’ from Best Buy. It was perfect because I had been looking forward to picking this movie up since I first read about it this past summer.

You see…I am a fan of zombie films.

What’s important to understand about that statement is the unwritten word “good”. I am a fan of good zombie films. There are honestly loads of bad zombie films. And I’ve seen a few of them unwittingly. They are poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted, and tend to focus on entrails and breasts. They have no story and no message. They are, in a word, crap.

I’m sure many of you are already re-reading that last paragraph and thinking “Good zombie films with a story and a message? What’s this guy smoking?” The answer to that, of course, is nothing. Read the previous post about the Word of Wisdom. I live by it. The truth is that I’m utterly serious. There are good zombie films out there. They are smartly done and very entertaining without being exploitative. They carry strong social messages and deep insight. “Fido” is one of those films. It’s a Lassie movie with the collie being replaced by a flesh-eating corpse.

Those Mormons in the crowd might now be saying to themselves “But hey, Finite Monkey Guy, aren’t zombie films all rated ‘R’? And doesn’t the church teach that you shouldn’t be watching those?” Guilty as charged. I do own (and watch) a select few movies toting an ‘R’ rating. And I have some quandries over it. Not the least of which is how the heck do the people in the MPAA come up with their ratings?

Certainly many movies with an ‘R’ rating richly deserve them. And I don’t go to see those. Like “Super-Bad”. The title pretty much sums up all I need to know to make an informed decision about not watching that film. Any of the Freddie or Jason flicks. Boobies and blood. Not where I want to be. But then there are those like “Fido” where I watch them and come away wondering whether anyone actually watched the film before rating it, or just saw the word zombie and rubber-stamped it. I wonder because, aside from a blood spatter when a zombie is shot in the head to put it down (the traditional way — trust no other) there is absolutely nothing, and I do mean nothing, offensive in the movie. Not one single curse word. Not even of the mildest variety. No boobies. No entrails. Only a wink and nod piece of innuendo. Prime-time television has more in it to offend the innocent than this movie, especially if it’s a night that an episode of CSI or Law & Order is on. So any given night of the week, really.

“Fido” is a light zombie-comedy that, dare I say, could almost be a family film.

Compare that with something PG-13 like, say, “Blades of Glory” from earlier this year. A film which starred Jon Heder, Mormon actor and star of “Napoleon Dynamite”. That film was loaded with straight-up references to sex, let alone innuendo, along with drug and drinking references, vomit, bathroom jokes, and Will Ferrell walking around in underwear. How is that less offensive? How does all that require a less mature individual than watching “Fido”? I mean, aside from the maturity of those writing it of course. Really when you think about it, even the ‘G’-rated fare of Disney is loaded with wink-and-nod references to the burgeoning sexuality of their nubile female characters.

Other cases like this led me to the conclusion long ago that, in many ways, I just can’t trust the MPAA and their movie ratings system. I need to be more active in checking the commercials and trailers, along with checking viewer comments on movie sites and paying close attention to the explanations that began accompanying the ratings not so long ago. All together, those cues have been immensely helpful in avoiding many ‘PG’ and ‘PG-13′ movies that contain plenty of material I don’t care to see. The same cues have also let me feel not completely guilty about watching a few ‘R’ films as well. I feel like I either need to take that approach to movies now, or give them up completely because I’ll never know what I might get hit with.

So, Kanye actually left me a note that for the twenty-fourth day of Hallochristmagiving the verse should be something involving “ho’s”. I told him I could see my way clear only if they were undead and fully clothed.

I call it "The Amy Winehouse Effect"

Have you ever come away from a session of surfing the Internet, looking at train wrecks in Hollywood and elsewhere, and thought “Damn, we’re way too connected”?

I have. Several times. And I’ve come to call this “The Amy Winehouse Effect”.

Why Amy in particular? Why not Brit-Brit, or LiLo, or Paris, or one of the dozen other celebrity ho-bags? Why do I use Amy Winehouse as my touchstone? It’s simple. She, unlike the others, has actual talent.

I had at first rejected the notion of buying her “Back to Black” album. I mean, c’mon, the big hit is about how “they” (seemingly meaning “everyone”) tried to get her to go into a rehab program for substance abuse and she told them all to pound sand. Not your typical role model of the week. It just seemed too trashy. Too low-brow. Like I would be supporting someone who needed to get their life turned around rather than lauded. Like…like…uh…geez, that song’s really kind of catchy.

In a moment of weakness, and an effort to add some current material to my music collection by joining BMG, I ordered the album. I’ve had it for over a month now, and it seems I listen to part or all of it pretty much daily. It’s on the verge of being a joke. But it’s just that good. Sure, she has some inappropriate language. Not Eminem calibre, but it’s there. What she also has is an amazing voice, and honest-to-goodness real instrumentation and composition in her songs. Much of the album doesn’t even have a guitar. You listen to it and can easily imagine hearing exactly this same performance live, in an intimate club setting, exactly as it’s meant to be.

And when I realized all of that, I immediately saw just what all this connectedness of the Internet had done to me. Done to all of us. It has been collectively tainting our souls by making it a popular sport to find as much fault in each other, and especially the famous, as possible.

Amy Winehouse, for all her troubles (and they are legion), isn’t any worse in how she is conducting her life than many of those famous musicians and artists that preceded her. Led Zeplin were known to have done some incredibly outrageous and drug-fueled things in their day. John Bonham died from his excesses after all. As did Hendrix and others. The Beatles attained many of their sounds while under the influence. Go back far enough and you’ll find Mozart largely inebriated throughout his genius.

This isn’t to say that what any of these people did was right. Again a quick tutorial for those non-Mormons: we believe in a little thing we call the “Word of Wisdom”. The long and the short of it is no alcohol, no drugs, no coffee, no tea, and no smoking. Along with the no sex outside of marriage, some people think we must be more dull than a convention of chartered accountants, but really we’re quite enjoyable to be around and in an awkward moment make for superb designated drivers. So I by no means condone chemically altering one’s brain in the name of art. However, that isn’t to say that the resultant art can’t still be appreciated. And what’s more, when all of these people created their art the entire world wasn’t blathering on daily to each other about how trashy the artists’ lives were outside their work. The odd story would crop up, like the John Lennon “bigger than Jesus” comment, but it wasn’t constantly on the nightly news.

Can you imagine what it would have been like had the Internet existed in late 1800’s France? How many people would have been relentless in their pursuit of the distasteful details surrounding the crazed ravings of Vincent van Gogh? And how much more or less likely would it have been that the world would then be able to recognize the beauty in his unfortunate insanity? He would more likely have been turned into tabloid fodder and ground under the heel of a society consumed in its desire to point at those less respectable than themselves in a vain effort to feel superior. Which likely wouldn’t have changed his outcome other than to hasten his inevitable end.

So all that’s said to get to this: Amy Winehouse is a wreck, but I don’t care. The fact that I nearly let the Internet and tabloid gossip machine prevent me from listening to (and legally owning let’s not forget) one of the most enjoyable albums I’ve had in a long, long time is depressing to me. My career is focused around the capabilities of the Internet, and the gossip machine is one of those abilities that really taints it for me. It’s like renting a herse for a family trip. Sure I’m using it for honorable pusposes, but I can’t shake the thought of the bodies its buried which kind of ruins the experience.

We need to stop turning into a bunch of Romans looking for the next spectacle. People need to stop digging dirt for fun and sport. More importantly, I want Amy Winehouse to get her life in order so she doesn’t wind up dead from an overdose. Because she needs to make another album. I’ll buy it when she does.

The high cost of lower education

Ah, school time. The first quarter is almost over, and my three oldest children are in the throes of learning. At times (many) they may argue that the only kind of “throes” they get from school are those involving death, but they are throes nonetheless.

We are fortunate to live in one of the best-rated school systems in our state, which means a couple of things: pretty good education, better-than-your-average-bear athletics, and “they didn’t even buy me dinner first” property taxes. The amazing thing about the taxes to fund the schools is what you get in return. State-of-the-art buildings and equipment, newer generation computers, excellent teachers, and an apparent dearth of basic supplies.

Yes, a complete lack of anything and everything that isn’t a textbook, chair, desk, or building. I’m sure it’s this way in other school districts, but it’s completely astounding how much isn’t provided. School supplies for my three skulls of mush totalled close to $200. And that didn’t include the additional school fees for…uh…whatever it is the fees are used for. There’s another $100. And the mandatory field trip in the second week for daughter #2, which was another $30.

Then of course is the constant begathon. The year-round tin-cup-carrying, cardboard sign on the freeway, clean your window with a dirty rag, knife-fight you for squatting rights, incessant pandering for everything one might think of. You’re wondering why I hadn’t written this post back at the beginning of September? Well, sloth for one, but also I’ve just grown to accept this nonsense until the two most recent attempts to put a hand in my back pocket with the intent of doing more than cop a feel.

Daughter #2 is in band, and there has been a request that each parent send in a bag of individually wrapped candy to be passed out as rewards or something. Sure it’s only a $3 bag of candy, but it’s also the principal of the thing. I played in orchestra when I was a young skull of mush, even to the level of spending a couple years in the city junior philharmonic. We were good. And you know what we got? Yelled at for tapping time with our feet. Candy was for wussies. Candy was for Hallochristmagiving.*

The second item was when daughter #1 asked me to sign the permission slip for participation in “art club”. “Sounds good,” says I, followed by “But what’s this mysteriously folded-over front sheet stapled on here that you seem to want to avoid having me see?” Ah yes, that would be the page with the hand reaching again for my wallet. Sucker! I don’t carry cash (much) and you don’t take a debit card. So no, you can’t have the $20 pay-to-play fee and the additional $20 for “supplies”!

Apparently last year, the money from the dozen or so participants (around $240 I suppose) was enough to buy the necessary materials to create a five-foot papier-mache letter “O”. Call me an ogre, but I’m thinking my $20 could be put to better use. “Transformers” came out today on DVD for instance. That movie was cool, even if it was made by Michael Bay. Way better than a papier-mache block “O”.

I’ll give the school here credit for the education though. It’s 10:50pm right now, and daughter #2 is still working on her homework. Yay school!

*Happy 16th day of Hallochristmagiving by the way. I believe the song is up to “16 loaves of white bread to start drying out for making stuffing”. I’m still trying to get the rhythm to flow with “Golddigger” but it’s tough. Bustin’ a rhyme with an ill flow like that ain’t nothin’ for a playa, but it’s a biznatch for a Wonderbread, yo.

Happy Hallochristmagiving!

Egads, we’re already 11 days in and I have yet to wish everyone a Happy Hallochristmagiving. While we’ve been slowly migrating into this new holiday since the middle part of my happy childhood I guess it’s now official, and I’ve missed jumping on the bandwagon by a week-and-a-half. At least I think it’s official. It was either Fox News or CNN that I read it on, I’m sure of it.

I would have completely forgotten that it was the Hallochristmagiving season if it hadn’t been for a short stop by my local warehouse club format store. There were glass ornaments for trees, fakes trees blaring music, roasting racks, palettes of candies, and in the middle of it all a manger scene with baby Jesus wearing a goblin mask while holding a jack-o-lantern and a turkey baster. It was a fantastic site that caused an unfamiliar emotion to well up inside of me. But fortunately I made it to the bathroom in time.

A lot of other changes have begun to take shape now that Hallochristmagiving has become official. Most notably is the special spirit the season brings. It used to be that you had to wait until the day after Thanksgiving for things to really start ramping up. Then you would suddenly see decorations on the streets and in the stores, with a window of only 30 days or so to enjoy them. The excitement and wonder of it all was amazing. So why not extend that by starting things off earlier? A lot of people think that moving to Hallochristmagiving is just a shallow attempt by retailers to generate a longer sales season. But I don’t really think that’s it at all. Perhaps stores do realize a boost in sales, but I believe the genesis is the spirit of charity and giving, and the desire to have that joy last the entire fourth quarter of the fiscal year. It was evident that it was working for one of the employees at the store I visited when I heard them commenting on the fake Hallochristmagiving tree blaring out electronic Hallochristmagiving music. They were talking with a co-worker, and in an animated voice said “It’s only October and I can already hardly stand it!”

Obviously the anticipation is already building even at this early stage in the season.

The official Hallowchirstmagiving movie is making its second annual opening in 3D this weekend I think too. “Nightmare Before
Christmas” is a pretty cool movie, and it was very forward-thinking of Tim Burton to have made something that now so perfectly fits into our new, three-month long holiday season. I’ve seen the movie a few times on video in the past of course, but seeing it in 3D would be pretty slick. Even better if it were a triple feature with “30 Days of Night” and “Fred Clause”.

The other big change, of course, is the complete overhaul to the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song. I’ve never actually been sure why it was twelve days to begin with, but there’s no doubt now about the origins of the “Ninety-two Days of Hallowchristmagiving”. I’m working now on committing each of the verses to memory, and though it may clock in at slightly longer than a performance of Wagner’s entire “Ring Cycle” it’s certainly worth it. Although I have to admit, I still haven’t quite figured out why all the instrumentation has been changed. Instead of the traditional tune, it’s now set to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”.

So again, Happy Hallochristmagiving everyone. And I’ll look forward to next spring when I can wish you a lovely Valeasterick’s Day.

Of course I’m working. Don’t you see this hammer in my hands?

Have I mentioned before that I love my job? Well, I do. I love my job. My position is referred to alternately as “interaction designer” or “information architect”. What it all means really is that I figure out how to present stuff in computer programs so that it makes sense and connects on a personal level. It’s creative and thought-provoking, and when it’s done at it’s best you look at it and go “well duh, of course that’s how it should be because that makes total sense”.

I can talk about that some other time though, because even from here I can see that the mere mention of something pseudo-intellectual-geeky is putting people to sleep. This isn’t an association journal article after all.

But one of the great things about my job is where I work. It’s a great group of people in a decent company. This week, our entire group is out at a retreat of sorts. Which is cool, except that it’s only the full-time people and not us lowly contractors Which is okay besides being a bit out of touch with whatever new company mindset might come out of it. But what it does mean is that it’s really quiet at the office. Maybe a little too quiet. But at least there are some other people there, and somehow I just concentrate better in the office setting.

Which of course brings me to today, and another upside to where I work. When something happens the requires staying at home for the day, like having a scheduled maintenance appointment at my apartment, then it isn’t a big deal to work from home. So home it was for me today. My home computer rig is better than my office setup, my dog is here, and today so was my four-year-old daughter. How could it be any better? When I had my own business I worked from home all the time with my kids around and it was great. So I was looking forward to it, getting to do my work in the comforts of home while enjoying my daughter’s fun and creative play. (As a quick aside, has anyone else ever thought it’s funny how close “precious” and “precocious” are in terms of spelling, but not necessarily in meaning? Anyway…)

I, however, have lost my laser-sharp focus when it comes to working at home.

Not that I didn’t still do my work. Got a good bit done actually. But creative four-year-olds do have a way of…uh…distracting you. With anything they can think of. I’m not sure how many rounds of “Break the Ice” I actually wound up playing over the course of the day today, but I knew it was time to cut it off we we started playing a new home-rules variant where the object was to slide the blocks of plastic ice down the hammer handle cocked up against the frame for the game. An interesting variant, but it was kind of difficult to tell whether you were winning. Honestly I’m not sure that anybody won, aside from the fact that we were having fun together. But the revised game rules clearly weren’t ready for tournament play.

Tomorrow I’ll be back at the office and will be able to better concentrate, so I’ll get close to finishing this prototype I’m working on. But in the meantime it appears I have a game of Sponge Bog Tic-Tac-Toe waiting for me.

Guess Ho’s Coming to Dinner?

All hail Windows Media Center, which does me the great favor of keeping track of what crappy television I’m wanting to waste hard drive space recording. Important tonight because it was the premier of “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila”. Since the VMA’s I’ve been waiting for this one just to make sure I didn’t rant uninformed.

Now let me preface the rest of this monologue by saying a couple things, most important of which is this: I’m not a homophobe. Many people might assume that, just because I was married to someone that later decided a man wasn’t really what they were after, that I would be instantly anti-gay. This is patently not true of me, or the community of us that have been down that road in general. As a matter of fact, some of the str8 spouses (yes, it’s something of an official term) go so far in the pro-gay direction that I think they’re a bit dillusional about it all. Anyway, not homophobic. Beyond that, Mormonism is not inherently homophobic either. Where people get confused is thinking Mormons, and Mormonism in general, hates gay people. Totally wrong. Disagree with the lifestyle, sure. We believe any sex outside of marriage is wrong. So if you’re straight and skankin’ around we’re going to disagree with that too. But people are people, and just because you’re predisposed to homosexuality doesn’t make you any less of a good person than someone predisposed to heterosexuality. So before anyone goes getting their noses bent out of joint and decrying a homophobic foul, put a sock in it and learn to think objectively.

Okay, so with that disclaimer all out of the way, we can start. *ahem*…mi mi mi miiiiiii…do re mi fa so la ti doooooooo…I think I’m ready.

Tila Tequila is a whore.

So that’s the blunt bit. The short version of the story. So now I’ll be fair and dig into that a bit more. In truth, everyone on the show is a whore. Gay…straight…doesn’t matter. All whores. The premise of the show is simple. Er, sort of. Tila is a closet bisexual who hasn’t even come out to her family. So what better way to let them know than by having her own reality show wherein she attempts to come to some kind of personal closure on who she likes to bang…uh…hang with more, and see if she can’t find a relationship along the way. To that end, MTV networks puts her up in a four-story mansion along with twenty-two of the most desparate attention-seekers in the country. Eleven men who dig chicks and eleven women who dig them more. They’re brought in as separate groups and all hear Tila’s little more-than-bi-curious surprise for them at their first meeting.

What about any of this doesn’t scream whores? But more importantly, what about this isn’t fully representative of the moral decay of our society. People flocking from all across the country to (based on the previews of upcoming episodes that I won’t watch) make out everywhere with Tila and also get drunk, pull each other’s hair, swear, and fight amongst themselves. All in an effort to be “the one” for Tila. Because reality television is so much the right place to find true love. Just look at all the happy couples that has worked out for.

Beyond that though, as someone who had their family turned upside-down by a spouse coming out, I am apalled because this kind of behavior and emotional turmoil isn’t entertainment. Throwing Christians to the lions is kinder than what that sort of emotional hell puts people through. Yet the electronic coloseum of MTV is doing just that. And more, this spectacle appears to want to take itself seriously, somehow representing an overlooked part of the common America.

Well, it’s not. Look, MTV is contantly trying to find ratings without playing music videos any more. Who the heck knows why. But this kind of television is just wrong. Life is confusing enough for the MTV target demographic. This type of “Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” gone wrong pap does nothing to help or improve that. I’m not advocating that they go to only programming “Sound of Music” and “Mary Poppins” (even Julie Andrews went for the shock factor in “S.O.B.”) but let’s show a little responsibility, shall we? Or at least some creativity. Sex is easy to program. Something of substance takes work, sure. But then at least you wouldn’t have somebody like me calling you whores.

Well Don’t I Suck

Two weeks. Two…friggin…weeks. How have I gone that long without writing something here?

I really enjoy writing stuff in blog form, so one would think I’d be a little more consistent about it. The biggest reason I like it is because I feel it helps me in overcoming one of my biggest personal concerns.  I have, for years, felt disconnected. Like the world goes on and I don’t quite catch it in the way I would like. I have felt that I don’t appreciate everything to the level that it has enough personal meaning, creating the kind of lasting memories I wish I would have.

This isn’t to say that I’m perpetually shallow and blind to what happens around me. Or that I’m disengaged from reality or anything. My family thinks that I’m probably overly worried about something that isn’t any different from anyone else. But…it isn’t how I want to be. Seriously, just because something is how “most everyone else is” hasn’t ever been a good reason for me to leave something unchanged. Though some things may be harder for me to get my teeth into.

So how does blogging relate to all this? Coming up with things to write about, and the desire to write something well, forces me to concentrate a little more on the smaller things. I try more to pay attention to the details, because there is where the interesting bits are found. And that totally makes sense to me, because my job is all about the details of experiences. Ironic, no?

So not writing sucks for me. I blow the opportunity to commit those details to myself as much as to words on the screen. Plus, I blow the opportunity to write some stuff that doesn’t make sense to go on about outside of the timeframe they come around. Sure would have been great to flip some stuff about scientists saying the world’s helium supply will run out in 30 years.

So, in short, yes I’m still here. And yes I’m going to get better about doing this regularly and making putting my thoughts down a higher priority. Because while it’s about you too, it’s really all about me!