Things on my Desk - Part 5

Sometimes I get nice things.  This is one of them.  Yesterday, my fiance and I went to get our marriage license, and when I returned to work in the afternoon I discovered that my cubicle had been strewn with streamers, wedding decorations, little plastic swans, and these Cindi Lauper-hairstyle table decorations that you see above.  I was really touched, because I hadn't even gotten MARRIED yet.  I just got my license, but someone at my work was thoughtful enough to do such a kind gesture.
It's times like these that working in the corporate world, isn't so bad after all.

I Know the Deputy Mayor

So I just found out that the First Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles is my former employer before I began working at Warner Bros.  Right now, he's trying to scale back Los Angeles' endeavor to have renewable energy levels running at 40% of total capacity by 2022.  Nice work, boss.  Keep lowering those expectations.

Things on My Desk - Part 4

See this thing?  Pretty cool, right?  No idea what it is.  My co-worker got it for me and the other people in our department from Hong Kong, which was nice of her.  I think it's a dragon and you're supposed to put it on your keychain or charm bracelet, but I'm not sure so I'm just leaving it on my desk.  That way, my co-worker understands that I appreciate the gift.  Maybe I'll hang it on my bulletin board, or maybe I'll just leave it alone, cause it could be cursed or something, like that idol that Greg Brady messed with when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii.  Remember that?

Now I'm starting to worry.  I don't want binders to start falling on my head or the elevator to plummet to the earth because I didn't treat this thing with the proper respect.  You know what, I'm gonna go ask her what this is so I make sure I don't offend it.

[Walking away from desk to ask co-worker]

She doesn't know.

Things on My Desk - Part 3

 

So this is a raccoon.  It's not real, so don't worry that I have an unlicensed raccoon on my desk.  Nope, it's just you're run-of-the-mill plastic raccoon.  I'm not exactly sure why it's here, but I think it's one of those prank things where you're supposed to pass the raccoon along to other people and then they come in the next morning and say, "There's a raccoon on my desk."  Then they move it to someone else's desk and the cycle continues until we are all dead.

I'm not a big fan of this prank, but mostly because it reminds me of when I was in Indian Guides.  Anyone remember that?  You probably don't, and that's OK.  Indian Guides was the lazy dude's incarnation of Boy Scouts.  Instead of getting merit badges and working to do good for the general public, you sat around a bonfire and played the fart game.  That was fun, but there was also this tradition at camp outs that we called "Injun Joe."  OK, so already that's pretty racist, right?  I don't want to write that word again so I'm gonna call him, "Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term Joe." 

Joe was this little statue of a Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term that would be passed secretly from cabin to cabin, where one tribe would cleverly hide the statue so the other tribe couldn't find it.  He was bad luck, and you were supposed to search your cabins relentlessly at every available opportunity to ensure that your tribe hadn't been given "Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term Joe."  If your tribe wound up with the statue by the time the unnecessarily big bonfire happened, your tribe had to perform a skit the next day that would inevitably be not funny because no one put any effort into it.  This happened to my tribe (The Fox Tribe, slogan: When in doubt, fart.) during one camp out and all the dads had to perform the skit.  It was pretty traumatic.

Anyway, that's why I don't like this raccoon. 

Quote of the Day by Me

"Don't do today what you just don't want to do.  Eventually, everyone will forget about it."

Things on My Desk - Part 2

This is my coffee mug:

I received this mug 2.5 years ago when I started working at WB.  It has not moved from this spot.  It has never been filled with coffee or water or tea or human blood or anything.  It's not that I don't like the mug, I just forget, and now it's at the point where the mug is filled with dust and probably some microbes, and it just doesn't sound appetizing to me anymore.

Also, coffee makes me go pee, so that's another reason.

Just Look at My Face

If you come up to my desk and have an idea, and this is the look that I give you:

Go away.  It's a stupid idea.

Things on My Desk - Part 1

This is Walter Sobchak:

He sits on my desk between my phone and my stapler.  You can see a bit of my stapler in the picture.  It's a Swingline...no big deal.  Walter protects me nearly every day from inane and soul-crushing conversations.  Here's an example:

Guy I Don't Want to Talk to: Hey Robert...favor to ask you.
[Note that they call me Robert, which is not really my name]
Robert (Me): What.
[Note that this is not a question, but an attempt to get their ridiculous request out of their mouth so I can get on with my life.]
GIDWTTT: I have a question that I've asked you fourteen times but I've forgotten and need to ask you again.  How do I......[sees Walter Sobchak]...what is that?
 Me: It's Walter Sobchak.
GIDWTTT: Who?
Me: From The Big Lebowski.  The movie.
GIDWTTT: I haven't seen it.
Me: You should.
GIDWTTT: So you have a doll on your desk?
Me: Yes I do.
[Guy walks away]

Seriously, this thing really works.  And he comes with a bowling ball.

Which Cylon are you? Part 1

No, this isn't an attempt to create some Facebook survey like are you a pirate or a ninja. I just love Battlestar Galactica, okay? And I don't think people talk about it as much as they should anymore since it was cancelled a few years ago.

I'm rewatching the series now, which is every bit as rewarding as it was when I first saw it. This is, without a doubt, one of the best television shows ever created. Lost, Dallas, Seinfeld can all go to hell. Battlestar Gallactica is the greatest of all time.

Galactica wasn't just a show about space. It was about survival after the apocalypse. It was about rebuilding a devastated society and either adapting or abandoning those policies and quirks and prejudices that we take for granted in our "normal" existence. It also had the greatest enemy of all time, the Cylons.

The Cylons were cybernetic organisms created by humanity for use as slave labor. Eventually, as it usually happens in any of these situations, the Cylons rebelled and a prolonged and bloody conflict ensued. After the First Cylon War, they Cylons vanished for 40 years, before launching an all out attack on the 12 Colonies of Kobol and leaving humanity with roughly 40,000 survivors out of several billion.

The Cylons were able to do this by adapting to human organic appearance. As it was so often uttered in the show by human characters, "The Cylons look like us now." So, the giant walking toasters still existed, but the real brains and leadership behind the evolved Cylons were the "skinjobs," the Cylons that looked like us.

In creating these models, the Cylons bottled the main aspects of human nature into each model, and I think it would be fun to analyze this now. To be exact, I am only going to cover the Significant Seven models and not the Final Five, because the Final Five were pretty lame and led to the watering down of the best show ever made. Seriously, watch this show and when the Final Five are revealed at the end of the 3rd season, you will see the show plummet in quality. Also, I'm only going to briefly cover Model No. 7 as he's barely even mentioned in the show.

So, anyway, here are the Significant "Seven."

Number One, alias Brother John Cavil

First of all, Cavil was played by Dean Stockwell. The guy was already in Quantum Leap, so c'mon, he's a badass.

We meet Cavil in the series as a priest that appears to also be an atheist. Shortly revealed afterwards to be a Cylon, Cavil embodies all of the cynicism and nihilism inherent in humanity. Constantly at odds with Number 6, Cavil embraced his identity as a machine while Six seemed almost desperate to be human.

Cavil is sarcastic, condescending, and also a freaking genius. A master manipulator, he breaks the Cylons in half with his machine vs. man ideology. He also nails Ellen Tigh (his mother/daughter when you think about it...gross), and pulls out Sol Tigh's eyeball with his bare hands.

The most telling moment of Cavil's outlook on life in the show comes during a discussion he's having with Ellen Tigh onboard a Cylon basestar. The dialogue is as follows:

Brother Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova?
Ellen Tigh: No.
Brother Cavil: No? Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.
Ellen Tigh: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.
Brother Cavil: I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!

Kind of an angry dude, huh? That section wraps him up better than I ever could, so we'll move on to Number 2.

Number 2, alias Leoben Conoy

I don't want to play favorites, but Leoben is by far my favorite Cylon. Not only is he played by Canadian kick ass actor, Callum Keith Rennie, but he is the most mystical of the group.

Leoben can easily be described as a zealot, holding a firm and almost unshakeable faith in the Cylon God and his plan for the "chosen" people. Leoben is also a prophet, consistently and accurately predicting events in the lives of both the humans and Cylons.

We meet Leoben in the miniseries, passing himself off as an arms dealer at the Ragnar Anchorage base. After being trapped by an explosion and cave-in with Commander Adama, his identity is revealed. To most of the remaining humans, with the exception of Dr. Baltar, Leoben is the first indication that the Cylons have taken on human form. Even in his weakened state due to the radiation storms hurling around Anchorage, he whoops Commander Adama's ass before being taken out by the hero.
Leoben also has an unhealthy fixation on Kara Thrace, a.k.a. Starbuck, constantly reminding her that she has a destiny and higher purpose that will reveal itself in time. Even Starbuck, the bruising, wisecracking Viper pilot, finds herself drawn to Leoben's visions of greatness for her.

As opposed to the Cavil or Number Four models, Leoben is a feeler and not a thinker. He bases his decisions on his own visions and instincts and often finds himself siding with the Sixes and Eights.

Leoben is both an angel and a demon, as Commander Adama alludes to in this quote:

Adama: Manipulative. Cunning. The only problem with Leoben isn't that he lies - that would be too easy - it's that he mixes lies with truth.

Number 3, alias D'Anna Biers

Alright, let's just get this out of the way right from the top: D'Anna was played by Lucy Lawless, who played Xena.  Yes, I know Xena was hot.  Here is a picture of Xena:



Now let's move on from there please.

D'Anna (we're gonna call her 3 from here on because I don't want to keep typing D'Anna, and most people call her 3 on the show anyway), was another Cylon stowed away on Galactica, posing as a reporter.  Soon afterwards, she's revealed to be a skinjob.

3 is a nice, smooth blend of Leoben and Cavil, possessing Leoben's gifts for prophecy and delusions of grandeur, mixed with Cavil's brutality and gift of deception.  3's obsession with the identities of the Final Five, a fact that Cylons are forbidden to discuss openly or even think about, shows us the first truly fatal flaw in the design of the humanoid Cylons.  They are not perfect after all, and can blow off their own programming due to a very un-Cylon trait: curiosity.  Maybe that is 3's human characteristic, not only a curiosity but an all-out obsession to discover the identities of the Final Five Cylon models.  She begins to have visions of the Final Five during the periods between her deaths and downloads into new bodies, turning her into the Cylon's first ritualistic suicide case.  She kills herself again and again and again so she can try to get a clear glimpse of the faces of the Final Five, but to no avail.

This obsession leads to the first major Cylon act of rebellion, when she deliberately ignores a majority decision among the skinjobs, and for this, her line is boxed (put into cold storage and deactivated).

Also, she played Xena, and threw around that disk thing that was also in Krull.

Number 4, alias Simon O'Neill

Simon is, unfortunately, not as thoroughly explored as the other Cylon models.  He makes a very large appearance in the episode "The Farm," and from that point on plays a largely quiet and supporting role in the rest of the series.  As I said, this is unfortunate as I find Simon to be a great example of the Cylon's views of humanity.  By that, I mean how Cylons see us and how they have modeled themselves as almost a mockery of these characteristics.

Simon is the most logical of the skinjobs, and in the aforementioned episode he plays a doctor posing as a human.  Throughout the rest of the show, he seems to be the medical expert of all the Cylons.  When he does speak after his main episode, he is cold, calculating, devoid of any emotion, and far less religious than some of his Cylon brethren.  In a way, this seems to point out the stereotype existent in our own society labeling scientists as unfeeling and uncaring, or nothing more than a "biped brain" as Dennis Miles would say.

 More Cylons to come!  This was the easy group!

A Plea to the Hopeless

Dear Chicago Cubs,

Please just do the right thing and hire Ryne Sandberg as your manager. Don't be dicks and hire Listach or Wedge, OKAY!!!! Those guys managed the Indians and Nationals! The INDIANS! AND THE NATIONALS!

Jim Hendry, this is especially directed at you because you have, time and again, blundered your way through this job as GM and put the Cubs into such a financial and talentless hole that we may not climb out for a dozen years. So, as penance for your crimes, you must hire Ryne Sandberg.

Do the right thing, Cubs. Give Ryno the shot he deserves, you morons. I mean, just look at this guy:




















He just looks like a manager, right? Am I right? Come on, he's one of the best players you ever had so just give him a shot, alright?! Stop being stupid. Hire Ryno. Do it. Ryno. Hire him.

Your disenchanted fan,

Bob

The End is Near

I am over 200 pages into my first novel. Almost every single word I've written, every chapter laid out, is garbage. Complete and total garbage. Some of the writing is so incredibly bad that I have to check my genitals for hair to make sure that I am no longer a prepubescent 10 year-old.

Still, I'm approaching the end of a labor that has taken me over a year. Granted, that isn't a very long time, but still, that's a pretty firm commitment from my end.

I am both excited and sick at the same time. I'm excited because I've never created anything on this type of scale. Sick because I now have to reorganize and filter out all the various loads of shit that I have written down over the last year. Okay, it isn't all shit, and my fiance routinely tells me that the ratio of shit to good stuff is much more favorable than I am expressing.

Here's the ratio that I envision:

This is more realistic, I guess:

That may not seem like much of a difference, and it isn't. Either way, I'm pretty much screwed, until I can start editing and turning a piece of poop into a slightly less pungent piece of poop.

Lessons from today...

When dealing with grown men who cannot bear to lose an argument, always ensure that you can win. Back up your data, write everything down, and never get into an argument that you cannot win.

That's my lesson for today, and remember, just because someone is over 40, doesn't mean they will act like it.

Soiling in My Sleep

We grow out of a lot of things from infancy to childhood to teenage to adulthood. We may love a band when we’re thirteen and then revisit them a few years later and wonder how we could have been so stupid. Like Korn. I loved Korn, and they completely suck. They suck so much, but I thought they were the greatest thing I’d ever heard when I was young and hated everything in the world. And when you grow up in the suburbs in a happy home surrounded by people who love you that hate is a palpable but ignorant thing. I didn’t know what exactly it was that I hated, but man did I hate it so much.

The strangest thing that I grew out of, completely outside of my own control, was sleepwalking. As a young man, I would sleepwalk fairly consistently, and even became famous in my family for ending up in awkward positions due to my sleepwalking. Today, there’s no sign of any nocturnal exercise whatsoever, like I forgot how to do it. According to a couple of psychological studies I found online, this is actually a common occurrence. Children who sleepwalk generally grow out of it by age 15, which is about when I stopped doing it myself. However, by the time I reached that age, the damage had been done.

My most famous/infamous/embarrassing incident came around the age of 13 or 14. I can’t remember exactly what age, which may be a good sign that I’m starting to forget this incident ever occurred. The unfortunate bystander to all of my sleepwalking incidents was my mother, who possessed ears which could rival a canine’s in sensitivity. My mother and father’s room was located directly underneath mine, and after years of my father’s intense and frightening snoring, she had become a pretty light sleeper. So, even the slightest movement coming from the room above would stir her from her slumber, and she would investigate. In most cases, it was either my brother or me going to the bathroom or crossing the room to punch the other one in the head for some reason, but in some cases, it was because I was embarking on a late night unconscious quest.

My mother had already caught me in our front yard a few times, usually just standing outside the front door, but occasionally she found me walking down the front sidewalk on my way to who knows where. My most illustrious sleepwalking episode, however, occurred right in my own bedroom.

Of course, I don’t remember any of the specifics leading up to this actual event, and my mother was reticent to inform me of what she found. Eventually I gleaned out of her an explanation.

She awoke that night to hear someone pounding around upstairs in my bedroom. She could already tell that this was more than a quick trip to the bathroom as whoever was upstairs was traveling back and forth across the floor in errant patterns. Deciding to investigate, she quickly climbed the front steps and turned down the hall to my bedroom. When she found me, my back was to the door and I was facing the large closet in my room, the doors of which I had opened. She heard a strange noise coming from the closet and cautiously approached me and quietly called my name. It was only when she was a few feet away did she discover what I was actually doing.

Peeing.

I was peeing in the closet.

Instead of panicking, my mother patiently waited for me to finish urinating on the carpet. When I was done, I turned away from the closet to go back to bed, and even uttered a mumbled greeting when I saw my mother standing there. I walked back to my bed and climbed right in, completely and utterly asleep and leaving my mother to decide what to do with the micturation I had just spread all over the closet floor. She went back downstairs and gathered a few cleaning products and went to work. I remained asleep throughout the entire affair.

My mother handled the entire ordeal like a mature parent would, never chastising me or digging into me the fact that I had soiled the carpet in my room. For that, I am very grateful. Almost as grateful as I am for the fact that I no longer sleepwalk and piss all over things.

Something is wrong with Milla Jovovich

My thoughts on the World Cup

The More The Pay, The More You Suck

In my travels throughout the maze of the corporate world I have learned many things, most of them useless. However, a few observations have stood out, and they are as follows:

- If your job has the title "Analyst" in it, be advised that "Analyst" is actually Greek for "Departmental Bitch." Your education, skill, maturity, communication acumen, and all the other tools that your professors in business school drove through your skull as important to your success do not mean a fucking thing until you have shed that unenviable title. Get promoted as fast as you can, because while you are an Analyst, everyone is trying to kill you. Seriously. They have meetings in their glass covered conference rooms plotting out ways to poison your Dr. Pepper or shove you into the street when you're walking to lunch. It's like playing that game "Lemmings," remember that one? Except in this game, the object is to actually watch you die and laugh their asses off.

- Which leads me to my second point: Pay grade is not indicative of actual ability. You'd think that they would be related, and I would completely understand why you would believe this, but sorry my friends, they have absolutely not a goddamn thing to do with each other. In fact, it can be argued that as one climbs further and further up the corporate ladder, they actually lose a portion of their common sense with each conquered rung. It's like watching someone age and mature in reverse. While they can handle complicated tasks and piles and piles of reports, they lose the ability to make copies of these reports or check their own work for errors. Whose job is that now? If you guess the Analyst, then you are smarter than your boss.

It is a common observation amongst artists and artist wannabees that the key to any success artistic creation is to experience the pain, misery, angst, and poverty that the life of a starving artist can invoke. While I agree with that sentiment, I disagree that this is the sole way of experiencing the necessary trauma to bring forth the muse. Instead, I pose an alternative means to the creative end. It's a fate as soul-sucking and depressing and confidence-draining as any unemployment check or fourth night of Ramen noodles.

It is the life that millions of Americans lead every day. The life of Corporate Finance.

From this pain and suffering I have experienced over the last 7 years, I propose that I am the most angst-ridden, pain-filled, loathing-encrusted son of a bitch in America. I am the voice of the Corporate lackey. I am Bob Simpson, the Cubicular Redeemer.

Do I sit in a cubicle, or does my cubicle sit around me? These are the questions I ponder as I sit at my computer typing whatever may have just come across my desk or through my e-mail. I guess I probably should be working, but I find it so much more self-gratifying to ruminate over the metaphysical aspect of the office I visit five days out of the week. For example, I think it would be really cool if my cubicle was retractable. That way, I would know that it was there when I was gone, beckoning me to return. I would just push a big red button, like the ones in the Staples commercials, and my cubicle would sink into the ground, lying dormant until I return and actively commit to do work in the next week. That would probably just initiate another period of needless determination, though, cause I would probably just stand at the cusp of my retracted cubicle with my fingers lightly touching the button, willing myself to extract it from the depths.I think if there was an earthquake, like a really monstrous earthquake, and I tried to hide underneath the desk lining my cubicle, it would buckle and crush me to death. I think it's been planning this for a long time, planning new and creative ways to bump me off. That's another reason to not have a retractable cubicle, cause as soon as the earthquake hit I know the damn cubicle would sink underground and I'd be left unprotected. I can hear my cubicle cackling as it sinks into its safe haven while giant beams and foil-colored lights collapse on me, just before I'm impaled by one of the fire sprinkler system pipes. Then, just as I'm about to breathe my last and give my soul over to the great beyond, my cubicle would rise back up from the ground, and pee on my face. I don't know how it would do that being a neuter object, but I'm sure it would find a way.