Voodoo Time Dot Com

I’ve found that events that elevate stress tend to come in clusters. Why is that? Why is it that all your bills come in on a bad hair day when your car breaks down, you miss a deadline at work, and your cat comes home with a tattoo? Does disaster attract disaster, or does disaster beget disaster? Either way, those minor fender-benders on the road of life seem to become twenty-car pile-ups in no time, don’t they?

That last line reminds me of The Game of Life™ with those little plastic cars that your little plastic stick people ride around in. Then the next player rolls the dice and passes your car on one of the green hilly bits and knocks it over, spilling all your little plastic stick people all over the board. Then you have to spend half an hour threading those tiny blue and pink pegs back into their little seat holes in their little plastic car. Then you hit that player for being a big jerk, and then your mom comes storming in and tells you to quiet down or it’s back in the closet with you.

Speaking of closets, I’m getting my own office at work next week. It’s not a very nice office, but it has a door I can close and pretend to have very important meetings with myself. I’ve managed to get a pseudo-promotion. That’s one of those deals where they give you a whole lot of extra responsibility with no extra pay or a cool new title. I’m not really complaining though. It’s increased job security in an insecure job market. It’s just that I’m not sure I need more stuff to worry about right now.

I’m having one of those streaks where time seems to scream by. It feels like I haven’t even finished one day when the next one is already beginning. It is with this sinking feeling that I’ve realized that I need to get organized. My work and home environments are far too random for me to be able to get anything done. It’s time for me to get on top of my own life. Right now it seems like trying to mount a horse at full gallop. So here is the stuff I’ve resolved to do to get more organized:

1. Pay my bills as soon as they come in - not wait three weeks to see if they go away or something.

2. Stop leaving things lying about - this includes paperwork, food wrappers, socks, prescription drugs, disposable razors, rusty nails, and Cisco Catalyst 3500 Series ethernet switches.

3. Keep track of deadlines - Rent and student loan payments are both due on the first of the month. My project list at work has many deadlines on it as well. Also, Blockbuster likes to get their movies back in a timely manner (i.e, not two days late).

4. Do not put off until three weeks from now what should have been done two days ago.

By following these simple guidelines, I feel that I will be able to get back in control of my life. If it works, I’ll let you all know. If not, I’ll just keep complaining about it.

Bye for now.

This week, at the LA Convention Center, is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (”E3″ in the vernacular). For lovers of video games, a visit to E3 is more fun than being let loose in an arcade with a wheelbarrow full of quarters. All the game companies show up with their new and upcoming games and attempt to outdo each other with the biggest, loudest booth possible. Many booths are themed and feature video footage of the games along with playable demo stations. There are people dressed in costumes, contests, and all kinds of free junk to take home. In short, it is total sensory overload.

As E3 is an industry-only show, the only way for the general public to get in (i.e., those of us who don’t work for game-related companies, or the press), is to know someone on the inside who can get you a pass. This is the situation with which I was presented around this time last year. I had been dying to go to E3 for years. As it turned out, my boss at the time had a contact with a small game company and was able to get himself a pass. When I expressed interest, he suggested I photocopy his pass and he gave me an official badge-holder to put it in. This would effectively allow me to bypass the registration desk and go straight into the expo, as it would appear that I had registered earlier in the day. I set to work.

The badge itself was much like a credit card in size and composition. In order to pull off a convincing forgery, the copy would have to be perfect. Fortunately, our company was renting a ridiculously overpowered color photocopier. I laid the badge meticulously on the copy window and made a pass. The copy was good, but not good enough. I went through nearly a dozen revisions, each time changing color, contrast, and hue ever so subtlely so as to produce the most perfect facsimile possible. I then photocopied the back of the badge (which had some writing and a magnetic stripe on it) and sandwiched the two sides together with a glue-stic™.

Quite happy with my work so far, I soon realized that the surface was not glossy. The clear plastic badge-holder was designed in such a way that only the bottom two thirds of the card would be covered. The top third would be exposed, and a matte finish would give me away. My excitement turned to despair as I pondered whether this was something I would be able to pull off afterall. In my darkest hour, my eyes fell to a roll of packing tape. Clear, glossy packing tape. I carefully applied a layer of this tape over the top of my homemade exhibit pass. Brilliance. A few business cards strategically placed behind the “pass” would keep the top third from bending and giving away its true papery nature. I set my work on a table, and went to bed.

The next day I drove down to the Convention Center and stood in the foyer watching the crowd and how they interacted with the guards at each door. Taking a cue from the others, I marched right into the expo halls like I belonged there. I flashed my phony pass to the guards at every door and never got so much as a second look. I learned that the guards would scrutinize one’s credentials even less when one arrived with a large group of people. I would often time my arrivals into various halls to blend in with large movements of people.

I spent several hours at the show, going from one elaborate booth to another and playing video games until my thumbs and clicky fingers were sore. It was all I had hoped it would be… and more, because it was forbidden.

I have an opportunity to go to the show again this year due to a connection through a coworker. If I can get an afternoon off from work, I’ll be able to go to the show with a legitimate pass with my very own name on it and everything. I wonder if it would be as much fun though. Somehow it just seems… well… a little too easy.

Bye for now.

People who know me well, know that I don’t watch a whole lot of TV as a rule. I don’t really have anything against TV per se. I just don’t find a whole lot that engages me enough to invest a whole lot of time in front of the tube. I heard that tonight ABC is airing a reunion special of That’s Incredible!. When I was a kid, in the early 1980’s, I never missed an episode of that show. Luckily, ABC is the one station I get with my set-top antenna (I’ll get around to ordering cable… eventually), so I’m watching the show as I type this.

The reunion special isn’t particularly well-done. It’s rather smarmy and corny, sort of like the original show. So far all they’ve done is show some clips from the old shows, and made some cute, pun-laden remarks about them. Oddly enough, they even have basically the same hair styles as they did during their salad days between 1980 and 1984. For those of you who missed the show, the premise is simple. The show consisted of vignettes featuring people doing incredible and incredibly odd things. An average show might feature a yoga master with his feet behind his ears, a 2-year-old who can read, a man catching a bullet between his teeth, and a record-breaking domino fall. Basically, it was all the best that humankind had to offer in one hour, one night a week.

Why isn’t there as much of this kind of thing on TV anymore? Why don’t these things show up on the front page of the newspaper? I think it would be great if we concentrated more on celebrating our greatest accomplishments rather than the uglier sides of human interaction. Humankind is capable of beautiful and amazing things. I know. I saw it on TV when I was a child. What are children seeing on TV tonight?

They say that art imitates life. I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if only it were the other way around.

Bye for now.

Recently I’ve been doing a bit too much worrying about things - mostly about conditions I cannot change. All this stress is starting to manifest itself in poor health - both physical and mental. I know I’m not the only one. What is it about our society that we make so many problems for ourselves just to scrape up a halfway decent living?

Since I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the factors that aggravate my stress are not going to go away, I’ve decided that I need to stop taking them all so damned personally. The things I cannot change are exactly that. I find that there is one sentence that helps me to center on that idea: “This is the way it is.” That’s it. “This is the way it is.” It’s so simple, but it makes a lot of sense.

The way things are is the way things are. It cannot be otherwise. I find I get caught in this wishing that things were different. “I wish I were making more money.” “I wish my boss wasn’t so hopelessly clueless.” “I wish I didn’t have so many bills.” I get really lost in the way things “should be”, without making the best of what actually is - right here and now, right in this moment. So, I’ve been trying to bear in mind that this is the way it is, and that it’s really alright.

So I’ve been looking for my Happy Place™; the conditions that make me happy and help me to feel calm. So I’ve been doing a lot of laughing over the last couple of days. I watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus on DVD over and over. I’ve been reading science-fiction and playing video games. I think it may be working. Today at work, I was actually mostly pleasant, and completely unbothered by the typical incompetence (real and perceived) that normally gets me so upset.

I usually try to keep this site free of personal baggage, as I’m sure it’s not terribly entertaining, and I much prefer to write about things I find humorous or interesting. But I thought that maybe some of you might take a moment to find your Happy Place™ before you all develop an ulcer or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Best of luck in that.

Bye for now.

All over the country, sci-fi nerds are lining up with other sci-fi nerds in winding queues of sci-fi nerds in order to be admitted to special midnight screenings of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Many more sci-fi nerds will be taking the day off from work tomorrow in order to view the film at a more reasonable hour. It has been suggested that this exodus will cost U.S. businesses over $300 million as their technology workers call in sick.

Twenty years ago, I would have skipped work to be in line with those people. However, as a five year-old, work in technology was hard to come by, so I was unable to participate in such spontaneous shenanigans. Oh, but I’d have wanted to. You see, as a youngster, I wasn’t only a fan. No indeed…

I lived the life.

That’s right. None of this casual bandwagon fandom for this guy. I tucked my pajama pants into my socks to emulate Luke’s knee-length boot look. I had a glow-in-the-dark lightsaber. My father and I would square off in dramatic reenactions of the climactic duel between young Skywalker and the nefarious Lord Vader; I with my glow-in-the-dark plastic lightsaber, he with a long red plastic toy screwdriver. Lit by the glow of a black lightbulb in the den, our lightsabers glowed with an intensity matched only by that of the original encounter I’d seen on the big screen so many times.

It is with these fond memories in mind that I contemplate the idea that I may indeed be calling in sick tomorrow. However, it would not be to go see Star Wars, as much as I would love to go. It seems that I have actually come down with a bit of a legitimate bug. So, should I opt to stay home tomorrow, I will be spending a sick day actually being sick.

Curse you, Vader!!

Bye for now.

There has been some talk recently that Pope John Paul II is looking for a patron saint of the Internet and computer programmers. The favored candidate is St. Isidore of Seville (560 - 636) - St. Isidore was a brother of three other saints. He wrote a dictionary, an encyclopaedia, and a few history texts. He was a teacher, and brought the writings of Aristotle to Spain.

As a connoisseur of knowledge and information, I’d say St. Isidore fits the bill pretty well. However, I suspect that there may be other saints who could be equally qualified. Since I am not Catholic, I used this list from The Catholic Community Forum. Here are my candidates for patron saint of the Internet:

Gratus of Aosta (??? - 470): I could not find much information on him, but supposedly he is the patron saint of the fear of insects (aka “bugs”). All computer users, especially programmers, fear bugs (in software… get it? Ha!). Alright, it’s a stretch… Let me see who else there is…

The Archangel Raphael - Raphael’s patronage includes many things, one of which is eye problems. We all know that sitting a foot away from the screen all day is going to make us all go blind. This is especially significant to those of you who spend a lot of time on porn sites. Don’t you remember what your mother told you about that??

St. Dymphna (???) - Dymphna is the patron of mental illness, which to those of us who have been “online” for some time, is quite obviously a problem on the Internet.

Gengulphus (??? - 760) - The patron saint of unhappy marriages; With the explosion of online gaming, porn, and chat sites, I’m guessing there are more than a few households who should be asking this saint for help.

Well, I don’t think my choices are going to get much consideration. That’s okay. Maybe we should concentrate on the positives of The Information Revolution ™. In fact, I propose a patron saint for bloggers. I nominate St. Francis de Sales (1567 - 1622). St. Francis used letters and written pamphlets to spread the Word. His teachings emphasized love and joy. In fact, in 1608, he wrote a book called Introduction to the Devout Life, which was written originally as a series of letters. This book was condemned by many preachers at the time because St. Francis encouraged dancing and the telling of jokes. His last word of advice was to a nun, to whom he said simply, “humility” - certainly a fine sentiment to contemplate when our web stats are down.

Bye for now.

My day today:

Get to the studio at 9:00am.

Surf the Web, check on a couple customers by phone.

Drop off some network equipment at a production office for a major motion picture in the works, and spend some time chatting with the artists while I look at concept art.

Sushi for lunch.

Drive to beautiful Santa Monica to analyze the office network of a production company with a film currently in theaters.

Call it a day when Tom Hanks asks me to move my car so he can get out.

Sit in traffic for an hour for a 30-mile trip.

How friggin’ Hollywood is that?

Speaking of which, here is a funny quote I found about Hollywood by Fred Allen:
“Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.”

I haven’t written here in a little while because I’ve been working on something to post for Mother’s Day. As I do every year, I went out looking for a card and found absolutely nothing that was heartfelt but not sickeningly so. The greeting card industry must be a government work program for failed poets. I wanted to send her something nice, but money is tight this year, so I figured I’ve got this great medium right here on my little interwebnetpagesite, so I’d try to put some text up for me mum.

Anyway, my mom amazes me. Ever since I became an ‘adult’ and had to start making my own way in the world, I have wondered how on earth she managed to keep us all above water. She and my father married rather young. I arrived within a year (I have a big head too, so I can’t imagine my birth was pleasant). My sister showed up about a year and a half after that. My parents were divorced when I was five and my mom was pregnant with my brother. Like the song said, “Papa was a rolling stone” - at least he fancied himself as much. Mom was left with two very small children and one more on the way, along with a small house in a questionable neighborhood, and a used Chevy station wagon - neither of which were paid off yet. Dad moved out, got away with a very small monthly child support payment, and only had to see us kids two days each month.

My mom never got to go to college, so we lived on a receptionist’s salary, but somehow she managed to keep us all clothed and fed. I don’t know how that happened, but I never once went to bed hungry. I didn’t even know we were hard up for money. We never had to worry about that. When you’re a kid, you’re completely wrapped up in your own needs. Things were alright for me, so I figured everything was cool. Only much later did I realize that mom must have gone without pretty often. For example, she almost never took a day off from work because she could cash out her unused vacation days at the end of the year for Christmas money. I don’t know what other kinds of things she sacrificed for us (besides a social life - no guy in his twenties makes regular plans with a mother of three), because she never let us know.

For all this, I admire my mother more than anyone I know. She always put us kids first, and I could never thank her enough for that. So happy Mother’s Day, mom! Thanks for everything. I love you. I owe you.

Epilogue:
For those who are interested, mom’s got it a little easier now. When I was in middle school, she began dating my stepdad (though he wasn’t my stepdad at the time - that would be sort of backwards I think). Anyway, they got married about ten years back, and I got another sister just days before my 18th birthday. They all moved to upstate New York a couple years ago - back into the neighborhood where my stepdad grew up. They live in a nice house on a large lot - complete with their own little pond.

Epilogue to Epilogue:
The pond has an island in the middle of it. Ducks live there.

I just realized something today that makes me sad around this time every year. It’s almost summer.

Now you’re probably thinking, “What on Earth is wrong with that?” Well I don’t blame you. Summer is full of a ton of cool memories from childhood. No school, getting to play outside later, no school, ice cream, running through the sprinklers, melting crayons, no school…

All of that stuff is great - except for the ‘no school’ thing, which no longer holds any meaning for me. But even in light of all these cool aspects of the season, I still have never enjoyed summer time. Physically, I just can’t handle it. The entire warm-weather season (which is a fairly long block of time here in Sunny Southern California ™) makes me physically uncomfortable for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s really hot. I am a very white man of almost exclusively northern and eastern European ancestry. I come from a rich heritage of pasty pale people who lived in places that were rather cold and wet. Consequentially, my body makes plenty of its own heat. I often find myself feeling rather warm, even when others around me are cold. When it’s warm outside I get a double-whammy. It makes me sweat a lot and feel gross.

2. It’s really bright. This is a crappy condition for me for two reasons - the first of which I have already addressed. I am rather pale complected. This means I burn. Oh brother, do I burn. Sunburns are uncomfortable and dangerous. Secondly, I have very sensitive eyes. So when it gets bright, I can either walk around with sunglasses all the time (which I will either lose or break), or I walk around all squinty-eyed, which tends to make my face hurt.

There is a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder that tends to afflict some people in the winter months. Apparently these people’s levels of hormones called serotonin and melatonin are altered in a way that makes them feel sleepy and depressed. I believe I have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder, which no one else seems to have but me.

Here’s something funny I remember from my childhood. I went to Christian elementary schools as a kid. Once, during a Bible-study class, our teacher began describing Heaven and what we could expect to see there as good little girls and boys. She described it as being very very bright and shiny. It’s always bright and warm there, and there is no more nighttime or darkness.

I was so disappointed.

Bye for now.

Today is May 5th - el cinco de mayo. This is a regional Mexican holiday that becomes more and more popular in the United States every year. In fact, I suspect that Americans’ observation of the holiday surpasses that of people actually living in Mexico. Here are a few facts about the holiday, of which many gringos are unaware.

1. Cinco de Mayo means “Fifth of May” in spanish. If you ask someone when Cinco de Mayo is, chances are pretty good that you will be laughed at.

2. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. That day is September 16. Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of Mexico over the French at the battle of Puebla in the 1860s.

3. Despite Taco-Bell’s attempts to convince you otherwise, hard-shell tacos, burritos, nachos, and “Mexican Pizza” are not authentic Mexican food. The Mexican tourism industry is smart though, and they make these things available in tourist areas for Americans who wonder where all the “real” Mexican food is.

Ahora ustedes saben algo de la fiesta del Cinco de Mayo. ¡Salud!