fine whine

This post originally began with "I laughed harder today than I have all week" but since that today refers to a day many, many weeks ago (April 25th) it doesn't really make much sense any more.

Nonsense, though, is more or less timeless, isn't it?

Here's what was funny.

I was at a two-day off-site conference with many of my co-workers. Between sessions the organizers would play music to signal the end of the break, so all of us could stop chatting, checking our email, going to the bathroom, grabbing snacks and so forth and would return to our seats, ready for another riveting hour or two. The song they would play was John Fogerty's* "Centerfield", which, if you haven't heard it, has some (canned) clapping in it ("I'm ready to play...today"), which, as we discussed, isn't always so easy to clap for those of us less rhythmically inclined.

"Centerfield" isn't the only song with difficult manual percussion. I thought back for a moment and recalled, "It's like the Friends theme song ["I'll be there for you" by the Rembrandts ]... just when I managed to get it right they canceled the show", joking, of course, because I'd stopped watching it well before its cancellation, and also because I'd never managed to clap it correctly either.

Just thereafter, though, following through with the same idea, somebody else chimed in with "I know, it's like, 'Alright, I finally got the clap!'" - loudly, as the rest of the people in the room were starting to quiet down.

Moments later she realized what it was she said, but we were already laughing. I think it took the organizers a good five minutes to quiet us down.

* Until that day (April 25th) I never really connected "Centerfield" with John Fogerty. I'd been hearing it for years, even as a child, since my dad had put it on his definitive 1980s mix tape. My first guess was actually Joe Cocker, though for the life of me I have no clue what his hits would be. And yes, once told, I was able to recognize that this was, in fact, Fogerty and his rather recognizable voice. I'd just never made the connection before, at least that I could remember.

Despite what I may say, my job isn't entirely mindless. I was thinking today about writing about work, and I had what I thought was a good topic, even.

I had been walking to the bathroom, averting my gaze to dodge greeting to a coworker with whom I am acquainted but not friendly, and attempting to look deep in thought, when I started thinking about people and names.

For some reason the idea struck me that it would probably be adequate to crash any meeting or other corporate gathering by bluffing an acquaintance with a guy whose name starts with "J", but a nickname one, like "Jack" or "Jay". Powerful men (and perhaps women, even, these days) always have a "Jack" or a "Jay" among them atop their bureaucratic heirarchy.

And then, as I heard one of the urinals flush itself, I realized that the ability to hoodwink oneself into a meeting isn't one that most people would want to acquire. At least, not the kind of people I know.

It was early in the morning. What can I say?

And in my ongoing quest to have every printer I can reach available to me, I have succeeded in adding our networked copier to my options*. I'm probably the only person connected to it, and that's fine with me. It burns through staples like nobody's business, though I'll try to staple stuff sparingly.

Well, somewhat sparingly. Serves 'em right for networking the thing, and moreover for posting its address so prominently. Otherwise I might need to, oh, I don't know, make it print out its configuration.

What should surprise me, but doesn't, is the fact that I'm probably the only person who ever tried this. Like I said above, I'm probably the only one connected right now.

* The fact that it is a networked printer/copier is no surprise to me. It has always been labeled with a network address, and in previous jobs I'd set up similar machines, but I hadn't messed with this one long enough before to have already added it. Now I have, and it's yet another printing option for me... one sitting next to a bank of three other printers.

Tonight was the first-ever get-together of Columbus Blogs, the beginnings of an effort to bring some of us Columbus-ites together.

As usual, I arrived fashionably late, and found the assembled few around a massive table deep in the recesses of the Arena District Max & Erma's. On the table I spotted three laptops and a number of digital cameras (one quite nice one) and I realized I was in the right place.

For a moment I regretted not bringing one of my laptops, except for the minor facts of the dead screen backlight and wireless incompatibilities. I'd grabbed my Palm but only pulled it out once by the end of the evening. In my pocket was my new Canon Powershot A610, but that's probably just because I like playing with it. In the end, or rather at the end, I only took one real picture anyway, and after a third of the people left. The laptops were getting pretty heavy use, though, and many a blog was visited and a post read. I have already added several of the people's sites to my aggregator, and look forward to reading what they'll write. I may even pop up in a blogroll or two.

We didn't spend the whole time talking about blogs and hosting services (one of the two writers from San Francisco is the "primary tentacle" of Laughing Squid, a wildly popular hosting service that I do not use) and cheap mobile phones (apparently my prepaid three to four dollars a month represents a fantastic deal, one about which I should probably write someday), but also about life in general and work stories and many other things. Real conversations, I guess you could say, like the normal people have.

It was only later that I realized that any of us could have told the others pretty much anything, as long as we had posts to back it up. I think everybody was being honest, but this came to mind because earlier this month I considered switching my failed nano novel to one about a character who is a frequent flier and pathological liar* whose lies somehow fit into the larger plot, probably about a murder or something.

But I didn't lie to the others, and I probably won't write that story. I will, however, watch the Columbus Blogs site more closely and its contributors, and maybe some good, or at least some good fun, can come of all of it.

* A while ago one of my co-workers said he was a pathological liar. I honestly didn't know if I believed him.

I hate to do this to y'all, but ladies and gentleman, I am attempting to turn over a something of a new leaf. You see, 2 A.M. (EST) is too late to go to bed every night. This of course is not your fault, as I generally tell you that I'm going to bed a while before I actually do, in fact, go to bed.

It's not a lie, it's just a little stretch of the truth. Does that make me a dishonest person?

I'm a negative person. Or so it seems lately. This does not make me happy*. I'm also one to occasionally dodge culpability, so I'm putting the blame on those late nights. Lack of sleep and whatnot.

It's probably a completely incorrect diagnosis, but it's what I'm going with for right now.

In the few days that I've started getting to bed before 1:30 (once even before 12:45) I've not necessarily been more pleasant. I've been no meaner, to boot.

I've also been waking up earlier, since I'm stuck in that rut of however many hours of sleep I'm used to getting, from between two or three when I fall asleep until five sometime when Jessica's alarm sounds.

Of course I very rarely hear her alarm, or at least react to it in a way that I can remember later. When she leaves for work and I fall back asleep, I generally don't even notice it, until I wake up at eight sometime (my clock is rather... inaccurate. Consistent, but inaccurate) and hastily rush myself off to work.

So that's how things were before. Lately I've awoken before my alarm, sometimes even having moments of dreams. Happy dreams.

So what I'm trying to tell you is that I'm trying to go to bed earlier.

But enough about me. Let's get back to the west coast.

Tonight I watched The Hitcher. It's the story of a guy who's trying to get to San Diego.

At first I didn't quite understand why driving a Cadillac from Chicago to San Diego would place our protagonist in the middle of nowhere Texas. After I watched the movie I checked out the route, and realized/remembered that the vast majority of the middle of these great States of ours isn't crisscrossed with convenient diagonal highways. A flying crow wouldn't cross the Lone Star state's borders (barring poor air conditions) but those confined to wheels on the ground find themselves at the mercy of the interstate highway grid, and that grid appears to pass through Amarillo between the city of broad shoulders and America's finest city (or so they say).

But our protagonist, played by the same guy I'd last seen (and only seen) in Soul man, is at the mercy of something much more sinister. He encounters Rutger Hauer, who I'd last seen (and possibly, again, only seen) in Blade runner, an enigmatic dark stranger who seems to vindicate every old wives' tale and urban legend ever uttered about hitchhiking.

I'd been told it was a creepy movie, and I was told correctly. It's quite creepy. So as to not give anything away, like the excessive bodycount (lots, but almost all of the violence is served offscreen), or the surprise ending (revenge is served), I'll just mention that it is crafted well enough, for what it is, and enjoyable enough, for what it is. It's not 'horror' (so I don't know where I thought I'd heard that), and it's not particularly deep, but it does lend me a tiny bit of perspective into Highwaymen, directed almost twenty years later by the same guy.

Let's hear it for Robert Harmon. C. Thomas Howell doesn't do too bad (he makes for a good everyman coming unhinged) but Robbie's really the star of the show. This time.

* In fact, by nature of being negative, I'm not happy. By definition, even.