I'm a cabbage!

Oh, DeNiro, you're my favorite.

Office Blog

Season 5 is underway and already the first episode was amazing.
This is, by far, my favorite show. I would love to see the schematic the 17 writers have developed as an overview for Season 5.

Here are a few predictions, and all will probably turn out false:
- The season will focus on the love problems of Michael. He will get extremely close to Holly with Jan's pregnancy looming. I expect Jan to have her child within the next 3 episodes (time-wise, the show did just skip three months ahead).
- Jim and Pam will marry as the season finale.
- Angela will either shoot down Dwight (causing this overly-confident Dwight to return to sorrowful Dwight) or shoot down Andy. If she chooses the latter, Andy will do something catastrophic to be forced back into anger management.
- The very next episode will introduce who has become Michael's boss at Corporate. Maybe Karen? There were no hints in this first episode.

Average weight of Dunder Mifflin - Scranton employee before diet: 170 pounds.
Average weight of Dunder Mifflin - Scranton employee after diet: 167.3 pounds.

Old Cars Go to Die Here

Montana is the Boca Raton of automobiles. I want to say that there are at least a thousand antique cars here. When I see them, I'm surprised their tires aren't flat, their radiators aren't blown. Perhaps the mountains have petrified them. Frozen in time.

I walk past at least three a day.

Sometimes, I wonder if they are all here because there's no leaving this valley.

What's Allowed

While checking the TSA website for a list of allowable items to carry on airplanes, I came across something strange.

Tweezers, check.
Optimus Prime, check.

17 September 2008

I've always found routines interesting. Like in action movies or paperbacks (Great Train Robbery) when a character is monitored closely and every minute of his day is recorded. It's so menial.

Sometimes, I wish there was a faux-cable van roving around with two men wearing headphones keeping notes on me. Just for one day, at least.
__________________
8:06am -- Subject turns off alarm clock, rises from bed. Observers note 8:06 as time set for alarm because Subject is too lazy to hit the button back around to :00.
8:07-8:30am -- Subject quickly eats a Kashi granola bar, and ingests Centrum vitamin with the help of peanut butter. Records indicate he cannot swallow pills due to a "soft palate." Subject showers.
8:50am -- Subject leaves basement, begins walk to bus stop. Continued surveillance is mobilized in panel van.
9:20am -- Subject waits at Transfer Center, noting the homeless, keeping a distance.
9:30-10:10am -- Subject checks his mailbox, then goes to the restroom. Surveillance could not enter, but time within leads Observers to draw conclusions.
10:10-11:00am -- Subject teaches Freshman Composition. Students seem entertained. Students seem comatose. Students vary by degrees. Photographs through the window indicate Subject speaks with his hands.
12:10-3:00pm -- Subject bends paperclip into a straight line, then into various other shapes. Subject does this as the classroom discussion around him continues.
6:13pm -- Subject eats a ham and syrupy mustard sandwich at home.
6:45pm -- Subject drives 5 over the 35mph speed limit across town, back to university. Van in hot pursuit.
7:00-9:15pm -- Subject listens vaguely to classroom discussion, finds the paperclip in his bag. Drives home, still 5 above speed limit. Van in mild pursuit.
9:15-11:00pm -- Subject talks to his computer. Observers are not sure, but assume there is a beautiful girl conversing back, via the interweb.
12:26am -- Subject performs gluteus exercises.

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Photo Exhibit

Hiroshima, then Nagaski. Not the other way around. The two are inseparable, and I'm sure they hated each other at first.

They are together on matte paper, poster board, pinned to walls with wheels in the library. They are two-dimensional, mobile. People are trying to read, do research, sleep, be in a library, and here is an A-bomb. I'm sorry, two.

Pictures of charred elbows, skin sloughing off due to radiation, a little girl with leukemia.

I see a few library patrons walk by and observe. I've taken a seat across from it, three feet away, lined up with People Who Lived Under the Mushroom Cloud, a collage. They had to have searched through several yearbook photos.

I want to think things over, get my setting straight, make sure characters are people and not characters. And an A-bomb is distracting me. Two of them are.

I find it immature to refer to it as an A-bomb, and I don't know why. I feel strongly about it, though I'm sure "immature" is not the word for it.

A man in a suit walked by nodding, making sure to digest the pictures, with his day planner in hand. He might have been the vice president of the library, of the university. I don't know. I'm sure he got the gist of it.

Thursday

Thursday is a son-of-a-bitch cat. He's brown, with a few black spots. His hair is mangy, his eyes are solid brown. He's an attractive cat, if you think refuse is attractive.

Here's a good approximation (think dirtier, less-desirable):

Thursday cannot meow completely. He will instead give you a series of painful, half-meows. He cannot meander or waltz like a normal cat. Instead, he traverses around in 90 degree angles. Thursday will do boxes around you. That's his trick. He'll show you how well he corners.

And when you're about to leave, and it looks like you're not going to feed him, Thursday will sink his mentally-deranged teeth into your ankle. What? You're not going to feed me? Didn't you hear my half-meows? I'm showed you my perpendicularity!

He's a son-of-a-bitch cat. Enough to make me give up on the species completely.

That Smell

It smells like manure outside in the Super Wal-Mart parking lot. It smells like someone has lit a bonfire of manure.

You know physics, however. You know that if you go inside the building, the massive Wal-Mart, the scent will disappear. They've got climatization in there. There's no way this smell of burning shit could persist indoors.

But, as the greeter says "Hello, I hope you're having a great day!" you get nervous. The smell is not dying. It's lingering. You proceed, and still, it is all around you.

Did I bathe correctly? Is there something on my shoe? No, my sandals are clean. You start to suspect that some child has performed #2 in his pants and is following you, lurking in the shadows.

After a circuit of the store--you've been through electronics, household goods, appliances, hunting gear (yes, there's a hunting gear section)--you have yet to find a place the smell doesn't reach. It is omnipresent.

You leave the Wal-Mart, and there it is, intensified. Someone has put more kindling in the manure bonfire. You turn the ignition in your car and drive away, thinking all the while "What the hell was that? Where the fuck am I?"

I'm vaguely aware

I'm vaguely aware that as a teacher, I could be just like Michael Scott from The Office and not even really notice. The kids seem to be having a good time, but who knows if they're laughing with me or at me?

Exempli gratia---------
Me: "Here's a good trick. Put the most important word at the end of a sentence. Strunk and White call this 'the emphatic word.' Now, let's look at this sentence from James Joyce: 'Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.' See that! Urine is the strongest word and it's at the end. It leaves a nasty taste in your mouth. OK, that's disgusting, unless you're into that. But do you see what I'm getting at? It's very memorable because of its position."

Good grief.

There is no Sierra Mist in Montana

I'm not kidding. Sure, I love Sprite. I've always gone to Sprite for thirst quenching.

Recently, however, I've decided I like Sierra Mist a little better. It never mixes the same way twice when coming from a fountain (test it, I dare you), but maybe that adds to the excitement.

I realized something was wrong here when I asked for Sierra Mist, and the man running the pizza shop said "We have Seven Up, is that ok?"

SEVEN UP? Who the hell drinks that?





I guess I'll go back to drinking old fashioned Sprite.

Two old women try and use the photo printing kiosk at Walgreen's:

Both white-haired, one is wheelchair bound, the other is mobile by use of a cane. They are both wearing denim suits. They are probably named "Betty" and "Etheleen," but I don't care enough to ask. Their denim suits should have come with name tags.

The woman in the wheelchair mutters "I have no idea..."
The one with the walking cane presses buttons on the screen at random, allowing one syllable at a time as her knotted finger jabs away. "Let. Us. Forge. A. Head."

Loose Lips Sink Ships

I have to relearn how to speak here. I have concluded this after several studies.
______________
The bus driver today rambled on: "Wouldn't it be funny if I was hit by my own bus? That'd be pretty funny. Hit by my own bus, what a way to go." He cackled on for about a minute.

The passenger nearest to him--a larger, older, curly-haired woman with glasses chained around her neck--laughed and laughed along with him, admitting: "You, sir, are a trip. Hoo!"