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Showing posts with label annoyances. Show all posts
Showing posts with label annoyances. Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Ladies And Gentlemen, Step Right Up...
Saturday, March 03, 2012
A Painful Truth
Just as I said I would, I stopped at the comic shop on Wednesday on my way home from work to pick up my comics and join in their Superman’s Birthday/Leap Year/15th Anniversary Celebration.
This primarily involved going in, being handed my comics – the cute girl who works there always spots me well before I get into the place and has my comics at the ready – wandering around for a while to see if there was anything else I wanted to buy, being offered and accepting a (small) piece of cake, paying for my comics, and leaving.
So, yeah.
Of course, the end result of that was the disruption of my usual Saturday morning routine. Still, I had stuff to do, so I ventured out a little further into the world than usual, and then stopped to pick up lunch from Five Guys on my way back home.
When I got home, I found, to my annoyance, that someone had parked in my space. Swearing, I turned around and headed to the parking lot, squeezed into a space, got all of my bags and my lunch out of the car, and started walking to my house, only to be more annoyed at the sight of the person who had taken my space leaving.
It’s a bit of a paradox to find having my space opened up to be more annoying than finding it taken, but by that time I’d already gone through the trouble of parking somewhere else and starting the trek home.
****
As I’ve ventured out into the world in recent weeks, I’ve begun to realize that there is a painful truth that I can’t avoid much longer: I need to go to Ikea.
I’ve really wanted to avoid that necessity. Not because I have anything against Ikea. The Ikea part isn’t the problem. The going there part is the problem.
The nearest Ikea isn’t terribly far away, but its location is such that, due to traffic, just getting there and back will be nearly an all-day affair. Certainly it’s not something I’m going to attempt on a weekend, so it’ll have to wait until I’ve taken a day off from work.
Still, it needs to be done at some point, as I desperately need a new desk for my office, and have been unable to find anything close to suitable at any of the more conveniently located stores I’ve been to lately.
Even so, it’s a painful truth to have to accept.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Hacking My Own Brain And Random Departments
The other day, Friday by Rebecca Black (no link provided because I’m not that cruel) popped into Scott’s head, and, because that’s how the sickness works, he tried to pass it along to me via IM.
However, with considerable effort – I commented that I thought I’d burned over a thousand calories from the act of concentration – I managed to prevent it from infecting me.
I accomplished it by voluntarily getting the song Like a Stone by Audioslave stuck in my head:
The reason that this worked is that, while I kind of like the song, I don’t really know it that well, and, while I hate Friday, I do, unfortunately, know it well.
This was the key to keeping young Miss Black out of my head, as I know that, when presented an option, my brain will always go with the song I don’t know very well, as I tend to find it more irritating to have a song – even one I that I like – that I don’t know playing over and over again in my head, even when the alternative is much, much more annoying.
Scott described it as “hacking my own brain.” I pointed out that it’s just a matter of having learned a few tricks in the nearly four decades that I’ve spent living with the thing.
A New (Old) Department Department:
After more than a year after mentioning that it was coming, and then never officially talking about it again, we recently had a reorg at work. Because they decided that the employee opinion survey-identified goal of improved communication is something that they’re going to work on for what remains of the year – and also because I’m reasonably certain they had no idea what they were doing – our managers were provided with virtually no details about what was coming beyond a vague guess as to when.
Naturally, the rumors started swirling, because, as much as executives hate to have rumors circulating, it never occurs to them that there’s a very effective method for stopping the rumors before they start. (Hint: It’s not keeping everything top secret and flat-out refusing to answer direct questions.)
For a while it seemed as though some major changes were in store for me – though I was assured that my neck wasn’t on the chopping block – such as being moved to a completely different department. This was a bummer, as it meant that I’d be losing out on having the great boss I’ve had for over a year and a half.
However, at the last minute, those plans changed, and the end result is that not much of anything is changing for me. Same job, same boss, but she’ll have a different boss, and our team is undergoing yet another name change.
I did, however, lose some team members – who performed an entirely different function from whatever the hell it is that I do – as they got moved to a different manager, and three entirely new (to us) people are joining the team, presumably to the same thing that I do, whatever the hell that may be.
In the announcement that went out, the names of the five people who will now be reporting to my boss were called out, and while it wasn’t an alphabetical listing of names, there did seem to be some kind of order in how the names were listed, which made me take note of the fact that my name was listed dead last.
I copied that bit out of the announcement and e-mailed it to my boss – who was on vacation – with the subject line “Well, at least I know my place…” and said, “Whoo! I’m Number 5! I’m Number 5!” (I also told her that I was glad that she was still the boss.)
She replied that maybe “5 is the new 1.”
Like I said, I’m glad she’s still the boss…
Ultimately I can’t complain too much, as this is still much better than some of the rumored changes, and while my neck was, apparently, never in any danger, there were a lot of other necks that ended up on the chopping block.
The Key Takeaway Department:
(In briefly explaining the history of the Java programming language to someone much, much younger than I am at work, I realize that I’m talking about things that happened when she was still in grade school.)
Me: …anyway, the key takeaway from all of this is that I’m old.
Life Expectations Department:
Some things I – perhaps foolishly – expected to see in my lifetime:
Humanoid household robots
Off-world colonies
Cold fusion
The discovery of extraterrestrial life
Something I never expected to see in my life:
A Captain America movie that’s even halfway decent
The jury is still out on some of those expectations, but today I learned that I was wrong about the Captain America movie. Not just wrong: dead wrong. Captain America: The First Avenger is excellent. I couldn’t have – and didn’t – hoped for a better Cap movie.
However, with considerable effort – I commented that I thought I’d burned over a thousand calories from the act of concentration – I managed to prevent it from infecting me.
I accomplished it by voluntarily getting the song Like a Stone by Audioslave stuck in my head:
The reason that this worked is that, while I kind of like the song, I don’t really know it that well, and, while I hate Friday, I do, unfortunately, know it well.
This was the key to keeping young Miss Black out of my head, as I know that, when presented an option, my brain will always go with the song I don’t know very well, as I tend to find it more irritating to have a song – even one I that I like – that I don’t know playing over and over again in my head, even when the alternative is much, much more annoying.
Scott described it as “hacking my own brain.” I pointed out that it’s just a matter of having learned a few tricks in the nearly four decades that I’ve spent living with the thing.
A New (Old) Department Department:
After more than a year after mentioning that it was coming, and then never officially talking about it again, we recently had a reorg at work. Because they decided that the employee opinion survey-identified goal of improved communication is something that they’re going to work on for what remains of the year – and also because I’m reasonably certain they had no idea what they were doing – our managers were provided with virtually no details about what was coming beyond a vague guess as to when.
Naturally, the rumors started swirling, because, as much as executives hate to have rumors circulating, it never occurs to them that there’s a very effective method for stopping the rumors before they start. (Hint: It’s not keeping everything top secret and flat-out refusing to answer direct questions.)
For a while it seemed as though some major changes were in store for me – though I was assured that my neck wasn’t on the chopping block – such as being moved to a completely different department. This was a bummer, as it meant that I’d be losing out on having the great boss I’ve had for over a year and a half.
However, at the last minute, those plans changed, and the end result is that not much of anything is changing for me. Same job, same boss, but she’ll have a different boss, and our team is undergoing yet another name change.
I did, however, lose some team members – who performed an entirely different function from whatever the hell it is that I do – as they got moved to a different manager, and three entirely new (to us) people are joining the team, presumably to the same thing that I do, whatever the hell that may be.
In the announcement that went out, the names of the five people who will now be reporting to my boss were called out, and while it wasn’t an alphabetical listing of names, there did seem to be some kind of order in how the names were listed, which made me take note of the fact that my name was listed dead last.
I copied that bit out of the announcement and e-mailed it to my boss – who was on vacation – with the subject line “Well, at least I know my place…” and said, “Whoo! I’m Number 5! I’m Number 5!” (I also told her that I was glad that she was still the boss.)
She replied that maybe “5 is the new 1.”
Like I said, I’m glad she’s still the boss…
Ultimately I can’t complain too much, as this is still much better than some of the rumored changes, and while my neck was, apparently, never in any danger, there were a lot of other necks that ended up on the chopping block.
The Key Takeaway Department:
(In briefly explaining the history of the Java programming language to someone much, much younger than I am at work, I realize that I’m talking about things that happened when she was still in grade school.)
Me: …anyway, the key takeaway from all of this is that I’m old.
Life Expectations Department:
Some things I – perhaps foolishly – expected to see in my lifetime:
Humanoid household robots
Off-world colonies
Cold fusion
The discovery of extraterrestrial life
Something I never expected to see in my life:
A Captain America movie that’s even halfway decent
The jury is still out on some of those expectations, but today I learned that I was wrong about the Captain America movie. Not just wrong: dead wrong. Captain America: The First Avenger is excellent. I couldn’t have – and didn’t – hoped for a better Cap movie.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Brain, I Am Disappoint.
I spent most of last week in a PMP Exam Prep “Boot Camp.”
What does any of that mean? It doesn’t really matter, but the point is that Monday through Thursday found me in one of the big conference rooms at work, surrounded by several of my fellow employees – some of them visiting from other locations specifically for this class – from 8 AM to 6 PM.
For my part, as I’m a creature of habit, that meant putting in four twelve-hour days, as I kept going in to work at the usual time (between 6 and 6:30 AM), and staying a bit after the class ended to wrap up some work things.
It was pretty brutal, and did not make for a happy Jon. I will get into some of the specifics of my unhappiness a bit later, but the biggest issue I ran into was further evidence of the overall deterioration of my brain.
Most of the class focused on test-taking strategies and mnemonic devices and tricks for being able to pass the exam without requiring the twelve to eighteen months of preparation that most people put into taking it. Ideally, I would have had the exam scheduled on Friday (again, more on that in a bit), but things didn’t work out that way. Even so, once I take the exam, and if I pass it, I will have done so much more rapidly than most people.
In any case, the problem for me was that, in general, my test-taking “strategy” has always been pretty simple: I just walk in knowing whatever it is I’m being tested on. It’s a strategy that has served me well over the years.
Or at least it did before my brain turned into some sort of mush that is no longer capable of retaining information.
The only “information” that my brain seems to be able to hold onto with any consistency these days is the words to crappy pop songs that I’ve heard once or twice (if they’re recent), or that I haven’t heard in 20+ years. That and Simpsons quotes.
Because I never had any need for them, I’ve never been big on using mnemonic devices or any other sort of memory tricks, so I’m not terribly adept at using them now. Besides, how am I supposed to remember the information that a given mnemonic device represents when my memory is so shot that I can’t even remember the mnemonic device itself? “Let’s see, there’s a mnemonic device for remembering the names of the Great Lakes. ….what was it again? HOUSES? APARTMENTS? Dammit, brain!”
(I’m kidding with that specific example, btw.)
I’m not looking back on my past academic performance through rose-colored glasses, either. The fact is, my brain used to be amazing. It was like a sponge. Often it seemed like I learned things through osmosis. Its ability to absorb and retain information with minimal effort dovetailed nicely with my laziness.
But now it just…wait, what was I talking about again?
Anyway, the whole class was about “leading with strategy” rather than “leading with knowledge,” which was problematic, because leading with knowledge has always been my strategy.
Still, setting aside my brain’s former glories, the fact of the matter was that I did, in fact, develop test-taking strategies that I used to complement my knowledge base over the years, and most of the strategy stuff that the instructor talked about was the kind of stuff I already do when it comes to taking tests. So where I was running into trouble on the practice exams wasn’t with getting caught up in all of the test-taking traps he was trying to teach us to avoid, it was just plain failing to remember the material at all. I mean, the strategy can only go so far. You have to have some basic amount of knowledge retained in your melon in order to do anything beyond simply guessing.
By the end of the boot camp, I did bring my practice scores up to a point where there’s a slim chance that I could pass the exam, proving that my brain isn’t entirely useless, particularly given that, for a variety of reasons, I got a pretty late start on actually preparing for the class. So not all hope is lost. Just most of it, since apparently, I if I want to actually pass the exam, I’ll have to engage in that whole thing where you go over the material over and over again in an effort to retain information the way I used to be able to do with minimal effort. That thing that other people did in order to be able to score well on tests. What’s it called? Studying?
Something like that. All I know is that the whole thing reeks of effort.
The one promising thing to note was that, regardless of how I actually end up performing, I’m still very quick when it comes to taking tests, because I read fast and don’t agonize. I know the material or I don’t. I don’t waste time when I know that all I can do is make a guess.
Beyond spending the time wishing that I still had the brain I had when I was a full-time student, I just plain did not like the class. Part of it was ridiculous hours, a big part of it was an instant personal dislike of the instructor, part of it was the fact that it was a brutal week following on the heels of the two previous brutal weeks at work, but the biggest part was the entire methodology of the class, which drew heavily on classic cult techniques.
People laughed when I would encounter them around the building on our rare – and brief – breaks from class and I would tell them, in response to their questions about how the class was going, that it was like a cult, but while I was seeing the humor in it, I wasn’t joking.
Seriously, if they had been trying to indoctrinate me into a system of belief based on the idea that there’s a spaceship hiding behind a comet rather than trying to prepare me to take a professional certification exam, they would have used the exact same techniques.
- Near-total isolation from the outside world
- An insistence that they had all the answers that I was looking for and that their way was the best way
- Only those who are properly initiated into the mystery may be privy to the secret knowledge
- Special “relaxation techniques”
- An unrelenting effort to wear down your resistance through things like repetition and a rigid structure
- A special diet (lunches and snacks were provided)
Even little things like having two instructors – one male, one female – came straight from the cult brainwashing playbook.
To be fair – and I don’t say this to denigrate the military – it was supposed to be a “boot camp,” and there is more than a little overlap between the techniques used in cults and those used in military boot camps, but while there was no obviously nefarious intent, it was still more than a little disconcerting once I made the realization.
And it did make sense; after all, the idea was to “program” you into a different way of thinking in an effort to maximize your ability to pass the exam. Still, it was troubling. And annoying. Particularly the isolation aspect, which was managed through the very short (five minutes) breaks.
Other than that, I was annoyed by the fact that even with ten hours to work with – and sometimes more, as we ran late more than once – they couldn’t manage to cover the complete daily agenda.
I was also annoyed by a lot of the standard training techniques that were presented as being somehow revolutionary. “This is an unconventional training class,” the male lead instructor asserted on day one. I found myself thinking, “Hmm…I already hate it and you. Seems pretty conventional to me.”
After all, this wasn’t my first rodeo. In the five years I worked in the NOC at AOL, I took a lot of training classes, as they represented easy overtime opportunities. I’ve encountered pretty much every “unconventional” training technique there is.
For example, on Tuesday morning I thought, “I’ll bet they’re going to pull some stupid horseshit like making us switch seats today.”
Yep.
Of course, it doesn’t help matters any that I have a bad attitude in general, I suppose, and it especially didn’t help that I think that the whole exam thing is rather asinine, as there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through just to be able to sign up – and pay for – taking the damn test.
Said hoops represented the only thing that actually was unconventional about the class. Most exam prep “boot camps” that I’ve taken, such as the one I just did back in December, end with you taking the actual test on the last day, on-site. Because of the way the exam is administered, that wasn’t possible with this one. Ideally, you would have scheduled your exam, at an off-site testing center, for the Friday right after the class, but that’s dependent on you jumping through the aforementioned hoops in advance of actually taking the class.
I have since jumped through all* of the hoops, and will be able to schedule the exam at some point, but, again, it’s apparent that, thanks to my non-functioning brain, I will have to engage in a lot of additional preparation for it.
I ended up taking Friday off anyway, and also Monday, as, after a string of long, brutal weeks, I needed a break.
The title of this post, by the way is, appropriately enough, a variation on an Internet meme.
*Assuming my application for eligibility to take the exam isn’t subjected to a random audit. Seriously, that can, and does, happen.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
It's Official
I hate my lawn.
Why?
Let me list the reasons:
Weed killer, no matter what type I use, kills the grass and not the weeds. The weeds seem to feed on it.
The grass that manages to survive grows at a supernatural rate.
Somehow the soil in the backyard is different from the soil in the front and side, so, combined with the fact that it gets more direct sunlight, it grows even faster and is much fuller and nicer-looking, and doesn't get nearly as many weeds. It's exactly the sort of yard I would like to have actually visible, as opposed to the patchy, weed-covered POS I have out in front for all the world to see.
The final straw was that a random piece of debris got hurled out by the mower and hit my car, putting two big scratches in the passenger side door.
And, worst of all, I've become that guy: the guy who spends way too much time thinking about his lawn.
Why?
Let me list the reasons:
Weed killer, no matter what type I use, kills the grass and not the weeds. The weeds seem to feed on it.
The grass that manages to survive grows at a supernatural rate.
Somehow the soil in the backyard is different from the soil in the front and side, so, combined with the fact that it gets more direct sunlight, it grows even faster and is much fuller and nicer-looking, and doesn't get nearly as many weeds. It's exactly the sort of yard I would like to have actually visible, as opposed to the patchy, weed-covered POS I have out in front for all the world to see.
The final straw was that a random piece of debris got hurled out by the mower and hit my car, putting two big scratches in the passenger side door.
And, worst of all, I've become that guy: the guy who spends way too much time thinking about his lawn.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Remaining Gap Or Can't Someone Else Do It?
I was supposed to have an eye appointment this evening, but it had to be rescheduled for next week.
However, the appointment reminded me of the fact that when I made my “filling in the gaps” post a while back, there was one that I missed.
(Note that you didn’t miss anything as a result of my lack of posting yesterday. I worked, came home, dozed on the couch, watched TV, went to bed. Exciting stuff.)
In any case, on the day before Halloween I woke up in a bad mood, for no particular reason that I could identify. It was just a lousy, under a black cloud, hate world…revenge soon kind of day.
I told Scott, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and went on to explain that by “this” I meant all of it: everything that’s involved in being Jon.
I had decided that 36 years of being Jon was long enough and that it was time to retire and let someone else do it. Meanwhile, I could start being Dave, or Steve, or anyone other than Jon.
Of course this wasn’t really an option, and realizing and understanding this fact made my mood even darker.
I wasn’t sure what time my eye appointment was, so I called the office to confirm, and ended up sitting on hold for an extended period of time.
Because I was still Jon, I was, of course, gracious and understanding about the whole hold time thing and said that it wasn’t a problem.
I’d put off going to the comic shop on Wednesday so that I could stop by there on Thursday, stop somewhere to get something to eat after that, and then go straight to my appointment.
Naturally I ended up getting stuck at work later than usual, so after stopping at the comic shop I really didn’t have enough time go figure out where I wanted to eat, go there, eat, and make it to my appointment on time.
So I skipped the eating part, which meant that I still ended up getting to the eye doctor’s early, getting progressively more pissed off about the nature of my Jon-ness and my inability to escape it.
I sat in the car for a little while sifting through my CDs to find one to replace what was currently in the CD player, and while I did so, some lady and her kids pulled up nearby. They got out of their car and one of the kids was blathering on about something, which prompted me to angrily mock him as I sat there.
I got out of my car and spotted a Lexus SUV, parked diagonally across four parking spaces, noted the “McCain/Palin” and “I [Heart] Palin” bumper stickers, and also the presence of a yappy little dog inside and found myself hating the world that much more.
To kill a few more minutes I went into the far too busy Giant to pick up a couple of things, brought them back to my car – yappy dog still yapping – and then decided that it was close enough and went into the eye doctor’s office.
I did take heart in noting that the lady and her kids, who, after my unnoticed mocking, had gone into the eye doctor’s office themselves, were leaving, so I wouldn’t have to put up with them and fight my urge to make fun of the kid’s high-pitched pre-pubescent voice while inside.
Once I went in I was greeted by the girl I’d talked to on the phone earlier, who once again apologized profusely about the hold time, and when I said once again that it wasn’t a problem, she said to one of the other girls working there, “He’s just the nicest person.”
I thought, “If you’d seen me in my car ten minutes ago, or were privy to the thoughts I had while I was in Giant, I think your assessment would be a bit different.”
At this point I need to go off on a bit of an aside. Years ago, when I lived in Ashburn and went to the office location there for all of my eye-related needs, I semi-successfully asked out the extremely attractive office manager who worked there. It was semi-successful in that we ended up going on two dates, but ultimately – and frustratingly – nothing really came of it.
The end result aside, the actual act of asking her out had been kind of an irritating and humiliating experience. I’d gone in for my appointment with the intention of asking her out, but my nerve failed me, and I left without following through on my plan. However, once I got to my car I smoked a cigarette, steeled myself, turned around and walked back towards the office. When I got there, I saw that she was at the desk alone, so, coasting on adrenaline, I burst in and headed towards her. Seeing me, she looked up, and concerned that there might be a problem, asked if something was wrong.
Before I could utter a word, another patient came in. I sighed and decided that total privacy was unobtainable, and started to make my pitch, just as the eye doctor – the owner/senior partner – came back up front to ask her about something.
So he ended up being there to observe the whole nervous mess.
Since I’ve been doing the gentle molding thing, I’ve been treated by one of the associates/partners, who is a pleasant enough woman, which has been good, because, while I recognize that the chances of him remembering that debacle – or at least that I was the person involved in it – are almost nil, I can’t help feeling uncomfortable around the practice’s titular doctor.
Naturally I ended up getting examined by him, which annoyed me, as did the realization that the whole “Ashburn Incident” was five goddamn years ago already.
This was annoying because a. how did five years go by so quickly? b. can’t I just forget about that nonsense already? and c. I really haven’t had a date since that time? *Sigh*
Still, I fought down all of the day’s annoyances and my black mood and stayed “in character” through the whole thing, which took a lot of effort and made me tired. Noticeably so, apparently, as the doctor suggested that after the exam I should go home and get some rest.
On my previous check-ups I haven’t been given any instructions as to how many nights I should have worn my lenses before going in, and this appointment happened to fall on the day after my night off. The doctor requested that I come back after having worn the lenses for a full four nights.
He also mentioned that, while it had been cleared away by my watering eyes in the course of the examination, I apparently have some sort of mucus build-up on my eyelids that can interfere with the production of tears (another fun part of being Jon: the grossness just doesn’t quit), and a good tear layer is essential to the gentle molding process, so he also wanted me to come back to have that checked out, and, if necessary, have my eyelids scrubbed, which just sounds like it’ll be a blast.
This is why I had an appointment for tonight, which has, as mentioned, been rescheduled for next week.
In any case, that fills the remaining gap.
For the curious among you, I woke up feeling considerably less hateful and desirous of retiring from the job of being myself the next morning.
Oh, and the Lexus and the yappy little dog were still there when I got out of my appointment more than a half an hour later.
As for today, it’s been much like yesterday, with the notable exception of my writing this entry.
Tomorrow night is, of course, Riff Trax night, though we’ll most likely start off the evening by watching Hellboy 2 on Blu-ray…after I stop by Target and buy it, at any rate.
Thursday is too much TV night, so you likely won’t be seeing any sort of substantive entries before Frida.
However, the appointment reminded me of the fact that when I made my “filling in the gaps” post a while back, there was one that I missed.
(Note that you didn’t miss anything as a result of my lack of posting yesterday. I worked, came home, dozed on the couch, watched TV, went to bed. Exciting stuff.)
In any case, on the day before Halloween I woke up in a bad mood, for no particular reason that I could identify. It was just a lousy, under a black cloud, hate world…revenge soon kind of day.
I told Scott, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and went on to explain that by “this” I meant all of it: everything that’s involved in being Jon.
I had decided that 36 years of being Jon was long enough and that it was time to retire and let someone else do it. Meanwhile, I could start being Dave, or Steve, or anyone other than Jon.
Of course this wasn’t really an option, and realizing and understanding this fact made my mood even darker.
I wasn’t sure what time my eye appointment was, so I called the office to confirm, and ended up sitting on hold for an extended period of time.
Because I was still Jon, I was, of course, gracious and understanding about the whole hold time thing and said that it wasn’t a problem.
I’d put off going to the comic shop on Wednesday so that I could stop by there on Thursday, stop somewhere to get something to eat after that, and then go straight to my appointment.
Naturally I ended up getting stuck at work later than usual, so after stopping at the comic shop I really didn’t have enough time go figure out where I wanted to eat, go there, eat, and make it to my appointment on time.
So I skipped the eating part, which meant that I still ended up getting to the eye doctor’s early, getting progressively more pissed off about the nature of my Jon-ness and my inability to escape it.
I sat in the car for a little while sifting through my CDs to find one to replace what was currently in the CD player, and while I did so, some lady and her kids pulled up nearby. They got out of their car and one of the kids was blathering on about something, which prompted me to angrily mock him as I sat there.
I got out of my car and spotted a Lexus SUV, parked diagonally across four parking spaces, noted the “McCain/Palin” and “I [Heart] Palin” bumper stickers, and also the presence of a yappy little dog inside and found myself hating the world that much more.
To kill a few more minutes I went into the far too busy Giant to pick up a couple of things, brought them back to my car – yappy dog still yapping – and then decided that it was close enough and went into the eye doctor’s office.
I did take heart in noting that the lady and her kids, who, after my unnoticed mocking, had gone into the eye doctor’s office themselves, were leaving, so I wouldn’t have to put up with them and fight my urge to make fun of the kid’s high-pitched pre-pubescent voice while inside.
Once I went in I was greeted by the girl I’d talked to on the phone earlier, who once again apologized profusely about the hold time, and when I said once again that it wasn’t a problem, she said to one of the other girls working there, “He’s just the nicest person.”
I thought, “If you’d seen me in my car ten minutes ago, or were privy to the thoughts I had while I was in Giant, I think your assessment would be a bit different.”
At this point I need to go off on a bit of an aside. Years ago, when I lived in Ashburn and went to the office location there for all of my eye-related needs, I semi-successfully asked out the extremely attractive office manager who worked there. It was semi-successful in that we ended up going on two dates, but ultimately – and frustratingly – nothing really came of it.
The end result aside, the actual act of asking her out had been kind of an irritating and humiliating experience. I’d gone in for my appointment with the intention of asking her out, but my nerve failed me, and I left without following through on my plan. However, once I got to my car I smoked a cigarette, steeled myself, turned around and walked back towards the office. When I got there, I saw that she was at the desk alone, so, coasting on adrenaline, I burst in and headed towards her. Seeing me, she looked up, and concerned that there might be a problem, asked if something was wrong.
Before I could utter a word, another patient came in. I sighed and decided that total privacy was unobtainable, and started to make my pitch, just as the eye doctor – the owner/senior partner – came back up front to ask her about something.
So he ended up being there to observe the whole nervous mess.
Since I’ve been doing the gentle molding thing, I’ve been treated by one of the associates/partners, who is a pleasant enough woman, which has been good, because, while I recognize that the chances of him remembering that debacle – or at least that I was the person involved in it – are almost nil, I can’t help feeling uncomfortable around the practice’s titular doctor.
Naturally I ended up getting examined by him, which annoyed me, as did the realization that the whole “Ashburn Incident” was five goddamn years ago already.
This was annoying because a. how did five years go by so quickly? b. can’t I just forget about that nonsense already? and c. I really haven’t had a date since that time? *Sigh*
Still, I fought down all of the day’s annoyances and my black mood and stayed “in character” through the whole thing, which took a lot of effort and made me tired. Noticeably so, apparently, as the doctor suggested that after the exam I should go home and get some rest.
On my previous check-ups I haven’t been given any instructions as to how many nights I should have worn my lenses before going in, and this appointment happened to fall on the day after my night off. The doctor requested that I come back after having worn the lenses for a full four nights.
He also mentioned that, while it had been cleared away by my watering eyes in the course of the examination, I apparently have some sort of mucus build-up on my eyelids that can interfere with the production of tears (another fun part of being Jon: the grossness just doesn’t quit), and a good tear layer is essential to the gentle molding process, so he also wanted me to come back to have that checked out, and, if necessary, have my eyelids scrubbed, which just sounds like it’ll be a blast.
This is why I had an appointment for tonight, which has, as mentioned, been rescheduled for next week.
In any case, that fills the remaining gap.
For the curious among you, I woke up feeling considerably less hateful and desirous of retiring from the job of being myself the next morning.
Oh, and the Lexus and the yappy little dog were still there when I got out of my appointment more than a half an hour later.
As for today, it’s been much like yesterday, with the notable exception of my writing this entry.
Tomorrow night is, of course, Riff Trax night, though we’ll most likely start off the evening by watching Hellboy 2 on Blu-ray…after I stop by Target and buy it, at any rate.
Thursday is too much TV night, so you likely won’t be seeing any sort of substantive entries before Frida.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Setbacks And Some Geeky Schmaltz
Because nothing in life – and in particular nothing relating to this job – has ever really been easy, I found out today that I am not starting my new job come Monday morning.
While I’ve been assured that it’s not actually a problem, apparently there is some information in my background check that couldn’t be verified in time to clear me to start work on Monday. I don’t know what that “something” is, but the long and short of it is that my start date will be delayed until probably the middle of the week.
Oh, and just to make things more irritating, even though I no longer qualify for the severance package payoff from AOL, today the money from the severance showed up in my checking account. This wasn’t a total surprise, as I’d gotten the little check stub/Advice of Deposit in the mail the other day, but it’s still irritating because somewhere along the line I’m going to have to give it back to them.
On the advice of the recruiter for the job that I want and now have(?), I’m transferring the money over to my high-yield savings account, as she’s seen it take 4 to 5 months for them to get around to sorting the situation out when this sort of thing has happened with other laid off AOL employees who moved over to that branch of the corporate tree.
So I might as well make some interest off of it while I wait for them to come calling to collect it.
This morning I headed to the comic shop, then stopped at Super Target on my way home and picked up some Just For Men. Light Brown was the closest match to what was my natural color. This afternoon I tried it out.
The end result? Well, instead of looking like someone who once had dark blonde hair and has since gone gray, I look like someone with brown hair who either has some oddly-placed highlights or is starting to go gray. I guess it’s an improvement.
I tried taking some before and after pictures of myself, but the lighting is such that you can’t really see much of a difference so I didn’t see the point of posting them.
One Less Day Department:
Back in the summer of 1987 in a Spider-Man annual (which is part of my collection), Spider-Man (Peter Parker) married his longtime friend/sometimes girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, a character first introduced into the Spidey mythos back in 1964.
While plenty of stories – some good, some bad, some dreadful – featuring a married Spider-Man have been told in the last two decades, somewhere along the line Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided that it is completely and utterly impossible to produce Spider-Man stories so long as he’s saddled with the old ball and chain, and that having Spidey be a mature, married man makes it equally impossible for new, young fans to relate to the character.
With that in mind, comic fandom was treated to an editorially-mandated “event” entitled One More Day, which Quesada himself drew, the purpose of which was to resolve this “problem.”
There are plenty of comics blogs which have discussed this issue to death, so it’s not my intention to delve too deeply into it here, but there are a few things I want to say about it.
Quesada has gone on record as saying that he didn’t want to simply kill off MJ or to have them get divorced, as it would send a terrible message to the kids.
So what did he do instead? He had Peter make a deal with the Devil to rewrite history so that the marriage never happened.
Because that’s a much better message to send to the kids.
(As a side-effect of the history rewriting deal, they also retconned out something that was, unlike the marriage, actually a legitimately bone-headed move: Spidey publicly revealing his secret identity.)
Personally, I think the marriage was a good idea, and that it does not present a barrier to telling good stories. In fact, it creates considerably more possibilities than endlessly exploring the woes of a single Peter Parker as he struggles to find love could ever hope to do.
Beyond that, there are already existing Spider-Man comics that do feature a single Peter Parker, such as Ultimate Spider-Man (the whole purpose of which was to tell modern stories that present a young, single Peter Parker) and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man.
Further, an entire generation of comics fans has grown up with a married Peter Parker being a simple fact of life.
What’s really at play here is not some concern about what the fans want – in fact, the guy at the comic shop told me that several customers have requested that the Spider titles be removed from their subscription lists – but what Joe Quesada wants. And what he wants is for Spider-Man to be exactly the way he was when li’l Joe was reading comics.
This is actually a pretty widespread trend in comics these days. So many creators are trying to make comics the way they “should” be, which is to say, the way they remember them. Nostalgia is the most important consideration, and anything that’s happened in the years since they were reading comics can (and should) be thrown out the window. Screw character growth, screw history, and screw what the fans actually want.
Okay, getting a little off track here; the above is itself suitable material for several lengthy posts.
To get back to my point, I need to get into some of the actual content of the One More Day storyline (which, taken out of the context of the rather heated debate, was actually a really bad story). The catalyst for Peter and MJ – both had to agree to the terms of the deal – to enter into this pact was Peter’s beloved Aunt May getting shot with a sniper’s bullet intended for Peter. Not for the first time, May’s life was hanging by a thread and her chances for recovery were virtually nil. Peter did everything he could to try to restore May to her normal state of health (which has never really been good – she is a very old woman, after all), but to no avail.
The deal he was presented with was that in exchange for giving up his marriage, the Devil (technically a demon named Mephisto) would restore May to health.
(What does Mephisto get out of it? There will be a part of Peter and MJ’s souls that remember the love they shared and will be crying out in pain throughout eternity, a sound that will be pleasing to Mephisto’s ears. Also, their love is so pure and wonderful that their forsaking it will be an affront to God Himself, which Mephisto will also get off on. I told you the story was really bad.)
Anyway, we’re getting close to my point, which is that there is one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned a lot in the various comments I’ve read about the story, and which was not mentioned at all in One More Day itself, and that is this: had she known what Peter and MJ were doing, May would never have approved.
The last thing that May would want for her beloved nephew, whom she had raised as if he were her own child, would be for him to give up his happiness for her sake.
If she’d been given the opportunity to speak, I imagine May would have said something like this:
I’m an old woman, Peter. An old woman who has lived a long, full life, one that has, perhaps, had more than its share of tragedies, from the loss of your parents to the loss of my darling Ben. Despite that, I have no regrets because I had the opportunity to share a long life with your uncle, and though I would have liked that life to have lasted just a little longer, I know that one day he and I will be together again and our love will last throughout eternity.
I have also had the opportunity to watch you grow into a fine man. A strong man. A loving man. A man like your uncle. A hero. Sometimes I look at you and I can still see the sad, awkward boy that Ben and I took in and loved as our own, and when I think about how far that boy has come and what he’s accomplished, I feel like my heart will burst with pride to think that I played any part in making you the strong, wonderful, heroic man you are.
The happiest day of my life was the day you made MJ your wife. To think that you could find someone who complements you so perfectly, someone with a fierce spirit and a heart full of boundless…it filled me with so much joy to know that you had found a love like the one Ben and I shared.
And I would happily give up my life to make sure that you hold onto that love.
Let me go, Peter. My time has come, I’ve lived my life, and I so want to be with my Ben again, to hear his warm laugh, to feel his strong, gentle arms. Let me go, and know how much I love you, and how much I love MJ, and that all I want is for the two of you to know the happiness that Ben and I knew.
Don’t throw love away, Peter. In the end, it’s the only thing we really have.
*Sniffle*
Anyway, I realize that this new status quo is, like all things in comics, likely only temporary, and I’m not filled with anything even remotely like the near-murderous rage that some fans are over it, but I do think it was a dumb idea (and lousy story), and thought I should put my two cents out there and speak to the issue of May and what her wishes would have been, since no one involved in the story seemed to be capable of doing so.
While I’ve been assured that it’s not actually a problem, apparently there is some information in my background check that couldn’t be verified in time to clear me to start work on Monday. I don’t know what that “something” is, but the long and short of it is that my start date will be delayed until probably the middle of the week.
Oh, and just to make things more irritating, even though I no longer qualify for the severance package payoff from AOL, today the money from the severance showed up in my checking account. This wasn’t a total surprise, as I’d gotten the little check stub/Advice of Deposit in the mail the other day, but it’s still irritating because somewhere along the line I’m going to have to give it back to them.
On the advice of the recruiter for the job that I want and now have(?), I’m transferring the money over to my high-yield savings account, as she’s seen it take 4 to 5 months for them to get around to sorting the situation out when this sort of thing has happened with other laid off AOL employees who moved over to that branch of the corporate tree.
So I might as well make some interest off of it while I wait for them to come calling to collect it.
This morning I headed to the comic shop, then stopped at Super Target on my way home and picked up some Just For Men. Light Brown was the closest match to what was my natural color. This afternoon I tried it out.
The end result? Well, instead of looking like someone who once had dark blonde hair and has since gone gray, I look like someone with brown hair who either has some oddly-placed highlights or is starting to go gray. I guess it’s an improvement.
I tried taking some before and after pictures of myself, but the lighting is such that you can’t really see much of a difference so I didn’t see the point of posting them.
One Less Day Department:
Back in the summer of 1987 in a Spider-Man annual (which is part of my collection), Spider-Man (Peter Parker) married his longtime friend/sometimes girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, a character first introduced into the Spidey mythos back in 1964.
While plenty of stories – some good, some bad, some dreadful – featuring a married Spider-Man have been told in the last two decades, somewhere along the line Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided that it is completely and utterly impossible to produce Spider-Man stories so long as he’s saddled with the old ball and chain, and that having Spidey be a mature, married man makes it equally impossible for new, young fans to relate to the character.
With that in mind, comic fandom was treated to an editorially-mandated “event” entitled One More Day, which Quesada himself drew, the purpose of which was to resolve this “problem.”
There are plenty of comics blogs which have discussed this issue to death, so it’s not my intention to delve too deeply into it here, but there are a few things I want to say about it.
Quesada has gone on record as saying that he didn’t want to simply kill off MJ or to have them get divorced, as it would send a terrible message to the kids.
So what did he do instead? He had Peter make a deal with the Devil to rewrite history so that the marriage never happened.
Because that’s a much better message to send to the kids.
(As a side-effect of the history rewriting deal, they also retconned out something that was, unlike the marriage, actually a legitimately bone-headed move: Spidey publicly revealing his secret identity.)
Personally, I think the marriage was a good idea, and that it does not present a barrier to telling good stories. In fact, it creates considerably more possibilities than endlessly exploring the woes of a single Peter Parker as he struggles to find love could ever hope to do.
Beyond that, there are already existing Spider-Man comics that do feature a single Peter Parker, such as Ultimate Spider-Man (the whole purpose of which was to tell modern stories that present a young, single Peter Parker) and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man.
Further, an entire generation of comics fans has grown up with a married Peter Parker being a simple fact of life.
What’s really at play here is not some concern about what the fans want – in fact, the guy at the comic shop told me that several customers have requested that the Spider titles be removed from their subscription lists – but what Joe Quesada wants. And what he wants is for Spider-Man to be exactly the way he was when li’l Joe was reading comics.
This is actually a pretty widespread trend in comics these days. So many creators are trying to make comics the way they “should” be, which is to say, the way they remember them. Nostalgia is the most important consideration, and anything that’s happened in the years since they were reading comics can (and should) be thrown out the window. Screw character growth, screw history, and screw what the fans actually want.
Okay, getting a little off track here; the above is itself suitable material for several lengthy posts.
To get back to my point, I need to get into some of the actual content of the One More Day storyline (which, taken out of the context of the rather heated debate, was actually a really bad story). The catalyst for Peter and MJ – both had to agree to the terms of the deal – to enter into this pact was Peter’s beloved Aunt May getting shot with a sniper’s bullet intended for Peter. Not for the first time, May’s life was hanging by a thread and her chances for recovery were virtually nil. Peter did everything he could to try to restore May to her normal state of health (which has never really been good – she is a very old woman, after all), but to no avail.
The deal he was presented with was that in exchange for giving up his marriage, the Devil (technically a demon named Mephisto) would restore May to health.
(What does Mephisto get out of it? There will be a part of Peter and MJ’s souls that remember the love they shared and will be crying out in pain throughout eternity, a sound that will be pleasing to Mephisto’s ears. Also, their love is so pure and wonderful that their forsaking it will be an affront to God Himself, which Mephisto will also get off on. I told you the story was really bad.)
Anyway, we’re getting close to my point, which is that there is one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned a lot in the various comments I’ve read about the story, and which was not mentioned at all in One More Day itself, and that is this: had she known what Peter and MJ were doing, May would never have approved.
The last thing that May would want for her beloved nephew, whom she had raised as if he were her own child, would be for him to give up his happiness for her sake.
If she’d been given the opportunity to speak, I imagine May would have said something like this:
I’m an old woman, Peter. An old woman who has lived a long, full life, one that has, perhaps, had more than its share of tragedies, from the loss of your parents to the loss of my darling Ben. Despite that, I have no regrets because I had the opportunity to share a long life with your uncle, and though I would have liked that life to have lasted just a little longer, I know that one day he and I will be together again and our love will last throughout eternity.
I have also had the opportunity to watch you grow into a fine man. A strong man. A loving man. A man like your uncle. A hero. Sometimes I look at you and I can still see the sad, awkward boy that Ben and I took in and loved as our own, and when I think about how far that boy has come and what he’s accomplished, I feel like my heart will burst with pride to think that I played any part in making you the strong, wonderful, heroic man you are.
The happiest day of my life was the day you made MJ your wife. To think that you could find someone who complements you so perfectly, someone with a fierce spirit and a heart full of boundless…it filled me with so much joy to know that you had found a love like the one Ben and I shared.
And I would happily give up my life to make sure that you hold onto that love.
Let me go, Peter. My time has come, I’ve lived my life, and I so want to be with my Ben again, to hear his warm laugh, to feel his strong, gentle arms. Let me go, and know how much I love you, and how much I love MJ, and that all I want is for the two of you to know the happiness that Ben and I knew.
Don’t throw love away, Peter. In the end, it’s the only thing we really have.
*Sniffle*
Anyway, I realize that this new status quo is, like all things in comics, likely only temporary, and I’m not filled with anything even remotely like the near-murderous rage that some fans are over it, but I do think it was a dumb idea (and lousy story), and thought I should put my two cents out there and speak to the issue of May and what her wishes would have been, since no one involved in the story seemed to be capable of doing so.
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