Work part II
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Schubert's Unbegun Symphony

Periodically, my company's Employee Assistance Provider holds Wellness Seminars on topics relating to health and stress reduction.

Here's an excerpt from their recent PowerPoint presentation, entitled "Developing A Sense Of Humor":


* Get some feedback from others about how they see your sense of humor

* Visualize how your sense of humor needs to improve

* Gather resources such as books or magazines on humor

* Take a controlled risk


I think these are excellent suggestions. To improve my sense of humor, I've created an Excel spreadsheet and embarked on a feasibility study. Phase 1 of PROJECT HUMOR will consist of Simulation and Analysis, including military exercises designed to duplicate the stresses of actual humorous situations.

In Phase 2 (Implementation and Deployment), a banana peel will be left on the sidewalk and kept under 24-hour surveillance.

MIS
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Garfunkel, Oates & Messina

In response to the previous entry, meaningofhaste wisely cautions: "Watch less TV. Read more books."

Amen, sister!

When I read Stiff and The Brush-Off two summers ago, my family banned me from the living room for disturbing the peace with continuous snorts and howling laughter. Really, you can't blame them. I think my favorite line came when Murray got clocked in the head, and he held his hand up to his bleeding ear "like a harmonising Bee Gee".

Speaking of Shane Maloney...

I used to work in an architecture office that employed the exact same scam as the meat-packing fiddle in Stiff. The owner kept several phantom people on the payroll, including assorted friends, Chinese emperors, and ex-employees, so that he could bill out projects at the partner rate instead of the associate rate. We, the lowly associates, were made to falsify our timesheets by including hours for projects we didn't work on. If we refused, we were threatened with firing and jail time (and the timesheets were falsified later on by his partner). As one of the most vocal protestors, I found myself steadily demoted, marginalized, and abused.

Some months later, as I was gathering up the courage to sacrifice my livelihood and blow the whistle with the government agency, the owner passed away suddenly from a pulmonary embolism, and the firm was dissolved. The issue became moot.

It was a little disappointing, actually. I had this really great resignation letter all prepared. It was called "95 Theses". I had been planning to nail it to his office door late on a Friday afternoon, a la Martin Luther, and walk out of the building forever. A few of the highlights:

1. At my second day on the job, I was called into the owner's office and made to explain the instructions on an enema bottle. The owner was Chinese and didn't understand English. Or pretended not to. Later, one of my co-workers commented, "Well, how often in life do you legitimately get to tell your boss to stick it up his &@*) and squeeze?"

2. I was made to eat fortune cookies out of a box full of cobwebs and mice droppings, which had been living in the basement for five years.

3. My ideas were routinely mocked and spat on and insulted, and then would turn up verbatim in his designs two weeks later (with no credit).

4. At municipal planning meetings, I was routinely introduced as "This is my associate. She's a woman. I hope no one here minds." I then had to sit quietly by while he called the clients "whores" and scribbled derisively on tablecloths and expensively-produced RFP booklets. Not surprisingly, we didn't get a lot of repeat business.

5. One Christmas, everybody else got a $7,000 Christmas bonus. I got two pieces of Chiclets gum. (Now, to be fair, they were unused pieces of gum. Not chewed or anything.)

6. I was often told, "If you don't have anything better to do, you can shine my shoes," followed by a pair of feet being propped up on my desk.

7. When I came in in the mornings, more often than not the presentation drawings I'd been working on would be covered in coffee stains and scribbled doodles, forcing me to start all over again. This was especially likely to happen near a deadline.

And so on, and so on. If only we'd had Murray on the job, it would have saved a lot of grief.

Revenge, of a sort, came a few weeks later when I had to write a letter to the Rhode Island State Minority Board, informing them that we would not be re-applying for minority firm status, as my boss had unexpectedly passed away. Before putting the letter in the envelope, I set it aside for a moment and slit open the rest of the day's mail.

Then I sealed the Minority Board letter and took it outside to the mailbox. As the letter disappeared into the dark innards of the mailbox, I was horrified to see bloody thumbprints all over the envelope. Looking down at my hand, I discovered a huge paper cut caused by one of the junk-mail flyers from the pile of mail.

I had a sudden, vivid image of the person on the other end, opening up a letter covered with bloody thumbprints and alluding to a recently deceased boss. It was about 15 minutes before I could stop laughing enough to go back inside.

mis
Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: "Last Night I Dreamt Of A Bagel"

"And so-and-so produces mediocre theatre!" -- David Wenham

Here's a summary of my Mediocre Theatre Weekend:

1. "Bug". I went to see a regional theatre production of this on Saturday. The story, which takes place in a motel room, involves sexually-transmitted paranoia, blood, self-mutilation, insanity, blood, drugs, blood, blood, and tiny insects implanted by the Army. The play was performed by nude actors who, at the end, douse themselves with gasoline and drop a match. On the way out, I overheard one patron mutter "Well, they won't be making a musical out of THAT one."

2. "The Brothers Grimm". OK, I have loads of respect for Terry Gilliam, who's done some brilliant work in the past, but this was a real mishmash that lacked soul, focus, and direction. A few stunning visuals, bland dialogue, not much in the way of plot. It felt like Gilliam's usual flights of tall-tale creativity were being restrained by budget and commercial restrictions. Did "Lost in La Mancha" break him? I hope not. Heath Ledger was good as the socially maladjusted, introvert brother.

3. "The Simpsons", which used to be one of the funniest things on television. Last night's season premiere was even lamer than the Australian episode (still considered the gold standard of horrid, shark-jumping Simpsons shows). The narrative had something to do with Homer paying off Mafia debts by allowing Fat Tony to shoot a porn video in his house, which caused Marge to leave and join up with a Save the Manatees organization. I didn't laugh once. Not even a wan chuckle. This was followed by.......

4. "The War At Home". Worst.Show.Ever. DO NOT WATCH THIS. The remote was lost somewhere in the couch and I was mesmerized by its sheer awfulness. No stereotype was too crude, no potty humor too lame to shoehorn into the dialogue. The basic plot: Blue-collar dad's world is under assault by modernity. His daughter is dating....gasp!...a black guy. His son.....gasp!....is ambiguously gay. His wife....gasp!....used to go out with black people and...gasp!....smoke cigarettes. Whoever wrote this show clearly hasn't been outside in a long, long time.

I found myself thinking, "They cancelled Firefly for this?"

make_it_stop
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: Vicki Sue Robinson has left the building.
I guess there's no need to keep putting my name on these Sacred Grove blog entries anymore, since PrincessFaz is no longer co-adminning this site. In fact, it might be better to post these anonymously, and then walk away quickly and pretend I had nothing to do with them. *tum de dum de dum*

***

Now, here's an interesting coincidence. Two of the top-grossing movies in the U.S. this summer were remakes of the very two movies that scared me most as a kid:

1. War of the Worlds
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Let's just keep going with this trend. How about a remake of "The Day After"? And while we're at it, why not redo "Squirm" (in which a hick town is terrorized by man-eating earthworms that come out of the faucets). And that traffic-safety film they showed us in elementary school, where the girl slips on a snowbank and gets run over by a bus.

Yes indeedy, there's some lucrative box-office potential there, deep in the catalog of Childhood Traumas. In the meantime, I'll be hiding under the couch with a baseball bat.

make_it_stop
Mood:  suave

Australian Parliament Lifts Ban On Saying 'Mate'

CANBERRA (AFP) - Officials in Australia's parliament have been forced on Friday to rescind a decision to bar the building's security guards from addressing visitors as "mate" after the move sparked a nationwide uproar.

The row erupted after the Parliamentary Services Department issued a notice to security guards during a routine meeting Thursday reminding them of the need to be courteous to people they encounter at Parliament House in Canberra.

"(Security) officers are requested to treat any visitor to Parliament House with respect and courtesy and not address them as 'mate' or use similar colloquialisms," the notice read.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Would this directive have applied to Murray Whelan?

2. So does that mean "foreign running-dog lackey" is no longer an acceptable colloquial greeting? How about "dingo-face"?

3. Exactly how many seconds should the forehead remain kowtowed to the ground?

4. Don't people have better things to worry about?

MIS
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: dolphin noises
You know what this blog needs?

Some pictures.


This guy is Nathan Fillion, aka Captain Malcom Reynolds of "Firefly". Some say he resembles David Wenham.

"Firefly" was a short-lived series on FOX (very short-lived...it was cancelled in the middle of its first season). Now, normally I avoid the science fiction/space opera genre. My eyes glaze over when polyester-shirted characters start babbling about phasmotronic multiplexers and ionic disturbances in Sector 7XX-Gamma-N. However, "Firefly" is different. It's a space western, set in a distant future when Earth-That-Was is no longer habitable, and humanity has been forced to migrate to distant, terraformed planets. The culture is a mishmash of Chinese and Old West frontier, supported by strong characters, bluegrass music, and hilariously sarcastic dialogue. I can't recommend it highly enough.

The reason this is being posted today: gratuitous eye candy Serenity, the "Firefly" movie, is coming out next month. If you're a Buffy or Angel fan, go check it out.


And finally, this is my new personal motto:

MIS
Mood:  special
Now Playing: Tony Rice's bluegrass mosh pit

Why won't Tom Cruise stop talking?

make_it_stop
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: footsie
I grew up being a hoarder and at my parents' place my bedroom is still chock-a-block with stuff I must toss out. -- David Wenham, In Style magazine


So, after 23 years in the same house, my mom got remarried recently (to my dad) (very long story) and is moving to warmer climes. That means hauling tons of junk out of the crawl space in my old bedroom, and deciding what to do with it. Old T-shirts. Bad art. A milk crate full of vinyl LPs. The wooden leg I wore as Long John Silver in our school play. (arr!) It's appalling, the rate at which stuff accumulates.

The records got put out for sale at my mom's yard sale, in the hellish 97-degree oven of our driveway, where they could bake to a fine warp under the June sun. I figured there wouldn't be many takers, so I priced them at 5 for $1. Come to find out, there are a LOT of people who collect "vinyl" now. Apparently, it's all the rage among teenagers. At 9 am sharp, the bargain hunters descended like locusts and began elbowing each other out of the way, fighting to get at the crate.

Having not gone through the records first, I discovered afterwards that I had been sitting on a veritable treasure hoard: The Traveling Wilburies Volume 1 (worth $40 on eBay). Dr. Demento's Greatest Hits ($20). A rare Frank Zappa album that would have fetched $100 on the open market. My mom's neighbor's dog-sitter snapped them up for 60 cents, with a wild glint in her eye.

Oh well. I look at it this way: the records weren't worth anything to me. They were just sitting there in the crawl space, neglected and quietly gathering dust. How often do you get a chance to make someone insanely happy for 60 cents?

make_it_stop
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: Madison's Head v. Marbury's Rock
*administers CPR to ailing blog*

So, this past weekend I rented "Don't Look Now", because it's been mentioned in several David interviews as one of his favorites. I'd never seen it before. It was quite good. It's a suspense/horror film, set in Venice, which here looks bleak, crumbly, and depressing. The city is literally sinking into the water (presumably in sympathy with Donald Sutherland's downward spiral), and there's a lot of repeated motifs - swirling water, breaking glass, the color red - and beautiful transitions. Without giving the ending away, it makes you realize that life can be seen as a series of fragmented vignettes that don't really make sense until the moment of your death. Only then do all the shards come together meaningfully, and then it's too late. (As Kierkegaard put it, "Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards").

In keeping with this theme of backwardness, I also happened to rent "Memento", starring Guy Pearce. Pearce, Pearce, Pearce....I couldn't figure out where I'd heard that name recently. It drove me nuts throughout the entire movie. Finally, this morning, I remembered that he'll be appearing in "The Proposition" with David. Duh!! I've since tattooed that fact onto my forearm, so I won't forget when I wake up in some seedy motel room tomorrow. Curse this lousy short-term memory. My train of thought keeps stopping right in the middle of a sent

MIS: Routine grove maintenance
Mood:  smelly
Now Playing: The Lakers vs. The Nuggets
Ack, I feel guilty...it's been nearly six months since I last ventured into the Sacred Grove. I'm debating whether to keep this feature going or not. *swats passing tumbleweed*

What the heck kind of a mood is "smelly"?