Explosive Logorrhea

Over the break, Sue and I went to see the new Tron movie. It's ... it's a little different than I expected. It doesn't take a crap on the outcome of the first movie. It doesn't make me think of a studio executive trying to hump a dead horse. It didn't make me want to come home and burn the DVD of the original (yeah, of course I have it) just to erase all memory of it. It did, however, make me ask a couple of questions.

First, can software even be gay? Seriously. I mean, you think of things or people which can be gay and "software" doesn't really make the list. If there's anything in this world that sort of lives beyond the gay/straight divide, it would be software. Sure enough though, the new Tron movie had a flamboyantly gay character inside "The Grid". Which means he was software. And he's gay. Like, super gay. Like Ziggy Stardust on X gay. Now I don't mind gay characters in movies - but I do mind people shoe-horning it in.

Second, Jeff Bridges apparently made it through his life up to The Big Lebowski and decided "Yep, that's enough." From then on, he just played The Dude. The whole time we were watching Tron, when the other characters are saying how dangerous it is and how they're surprised he survived, I kept waiting for him to turn around and be all like "The Dude abides." Flynn, Bridge's character in Tron, has a nice apartment in "The Grid" and - honest to God here - has a nice rug that really ties the room together. I kept wondering if some bad dudes were gonna break in and piss all over his rug. If you've seen one of those movies, but not the other - see them both. Doesn't really matter what order you see them in. But you watch them then try to tell me it's not the same character. Of course, now I'm just that much more worried about the True Grit remake he's in. I mean, The Dude should not be out on the range with six-shooter taking down Tom Chaney. Probably turned his Colt into a bong.

On the other hand, they did put Olivia Wilde in a latex catsuit for 90 minutes. And they had light cycles. And light planes. And that disc throwing game thing. So it was still pretty damned awesome.

Since joining up to Facebook, I notice that most people seem fairly happy. At least, the people I know are. Maybe I should check out other people. Most of them are always wishing other people good times or happy days or some other damned thing. Haven't seen any anger or depression or pettiness. Granted, I'm only up to, like, a couple dozen people and I've only been watching for a handful of weeks. But if I took a random sampling of that many people I see on a day-to-day basis and watched them for that long, I doubt I'd see so much positive life affirmations. At least, not all in a row like that.

Maybe I'm just being jaded. Maybe they just make a point to only put the happy stuff on Facebook. Maybe I've finally lost all connection to "humanity". Or something. I don't know. Just seems that every time I check in there I find myself wondering "Soooooo, nobody's pissed off today then? Or, apparently, for the last week? Huh." I'm not complaining about it - more like I find it curious. Which makes me want to figure out why. Are all those people just genuinely that happy? Are they trying to put on a brave face? Do they filter out the "bad stuff" and it just never makes it to Facebook? Guess I'm going to have to start some field research.

I got some good news on Friday - it's fairly unlikely that I have to fly 2,000 miles over the holiday break. I mean, that's a good thing, right? I told Sue that Friday evening and she said "Wait, that was a thing? Were you going to have to fly over break?" No, not before Friday. I found out about at the beginning of a meeting Friday morning and found out it would be "unlikely" by the end of the meeting. Even if I don't have to fly, there's a good chance I'll still have to go in for a day or two. Which means we won't be traveling home for Christmas. I guess that works out OK since Sue has to work that whole time anyway.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. I did all my Christmas shopping in about 45 minute Saturday morning. Also, that's as much of other people's crap that I could put up with at once. So it worked out well. Of course, tomorrow I have to ship them all out, but I'm hoping I can make it through that much without totally losing my shit. We'll see how stupid people are being plus how many of them are out there.

I've decided that I'm going to stage a coup at work. Oh, nothing major. A little bloodless coup to get rid of the Goat Fucker. He's been the supposed "editor" of this document we're putting together. Now, this is a big honkin' document. It's already up to 160 pages or so. There's a few pictures in there, but not many - just a crapload of words. One the main actions from the last meeting was that each piece of the document was supposed to have it's own color in all the diagrams. Goat Fucker assigned the colors. Without talking to anyone as far as I know. Then sent out an email this morning letting everyone know that the newest version of the document was available and we were NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE COLORS. No, I didn't capitalize that on my own. That's how the email showed up. In fact, he capitalized it, put it in bold, and told us not to even ask if we could have a different color.

Just to keep things interesting, this all happened after everyone had made half-a-dozen pictures or more with at least five or six edits to every one of those pictures. And every color he picked did not match one single piece's color. So the first part was done in light blue and he said it should be baby poop brown. The second part was done in green and he said it should be baby puke yellow. There was also hot pink, lavender, and baby blue (though not the same part that was already blue-ish). THe main picture at the top of the document had all the various colors he picked. It looked like a three-year-old ate a box of crayons and then puked them up. Except the document wasn't as tastefully composed.

Goat Fucker also started changing around shit that don't matter in the document just because. That's it. That's the whole reason. Just because. Again, there was no "consultation" with the authors of those sections. We found out about it when the new version came out this morning. There's also the whole "what level of detail should this document be" question that he has ... left woefully unanswered.

Tomorrow I'm gonna talk to The Man and see about getting Goat Fucker removed from that position. Not fired, not sanctioned, nothing drastic - just not doing that job anymore. I'm not angling to get the job myself. If I'm asked, I'll do it - but that's as far as I'd go with it. All I'm really interested in is getting someone in that position that doesn't piss me off. Granted, that may be a short list - but it's not empty. And it don't include the Goat Fucker.

I'm going through another phase of "people really pissing me off" at work again. We had a day-and-a-half long meeting last week to review a document. Everyone had put in their bits for the document and we all got together to go over it. We did eight full hours the first day and four hours the second. We could have filled another four hours, but we had all had enough of that crap. The guy who was responsible for bringing it all together, whom I'll call "Goat Fucker", was getting on my nerves ... as evidenced by my clever codename for him. So Goat Fucker is sitting up in the front of the room shitting over everything. The other people in the room weren't much better. My team was well ahead of everyone else in really getting things done. Which, naturally, meant that they hammered on us for everything they could think of.

The document was supposed to be a fairly high-level description of the whole shebang. It was not supposed to be a down-in-the-weeds everything-under-the-sun document. Those documents come later. And they will be a set of documents, splitting up the various bits into their own documents - not one giant choke-a-horse file. But most of the people in the room were going on and on about how we didn't have this or we needed more detail on that. Basically, pissing me off. As I was sitting there listening to Goat Fucker and the others crapping over what my team and I spent a good bit of time on when they had barely started there sections, I kept thinking of a line I read in a book this past summer.

The scene is that some guy was getting his ass whipped and, bloody and broken, turns to the guy kicking his ass and says "You can rake me to the dogs and back, but I'll never lose the hard-on I use to fuck your mother." That's ... man, that's the nuclear option. You don't bust out something like that unless you're meaning to throwdown. Can't play it off as a joke or take it back later. You're pretty much in the middle of the fight at that point. I had to bite my tongue through most of the meeting to not shout that out every time Goat Fucker talked. So I took off a little early being as I was a little ... testy.

Last weekend we had a stretch of bad luck. Oh, nothing serious - just a lot of little pains in the ass. Sue went to wash my sock cap (because I haven't worn it since last winter and now I need it) and basically shrunk it by half. This wouldn't have been a big - to a person with a normal-sized head. Due to the massive cranium I lug around though, it feels like a head condom. Made of wool. That leaves a little stripe pattern on my forehead when I take it off. I should stop by the military surplus store - which is right on the way home if I go that way - and buy another one for three dollars. But I haven't. No, I've been walking around with this tiny little hat stretched so tight over my skull that you can see my thoughts though it.

We had a problem last summer with the door to the patio. The door handle on the outside broke and we put a new one on. The handle on the outside has to screws that go through to the handle on the inside. Both handles are held together like a handle sandwich. Well, the screws that came with the replacement handle never seemed quite right. The top of the inner handle wiggled a bit. This weekend, Sue was coming back inside and when she went to shut the door, the top screw (so that's half the screws in the handle sandwich) sheared clean off (so, like losing the cheese in the handle sandwich - you know, the part that really brings the whole deal together). It sheared off deep enough that I couldn't get a handle on it with anything. We went to Home Depot to ask if they had any device that could get the little bastard out. No dice. Said I had to drill the screw and put another screw in it then pull the whole contraption out. The trouble was, the original screw (the "cheese screw" here) was already tiny. To drill it out I would have had to use a drill bit that was made of hopes and dreams instead of, you know, metal. Screw that.

That evening, after we had taken a break from messing around with the stupid door handle, Sue was heading outside for something or other and I learned something. See, unbeknownst to me and probably not beknownst to her, she uses her whole body weight to close that door. Now, I had taken out the bottom screw so that I could remove the inside handle - meaning that the only thing holding that outside handle on was the busted screw and the fact that the handle pops into the door frame (so no cheese on the sandwich and the bread is stuck to the ham). When she put her entire weight into it, the handle popped right out and she damned near went ass over teakettle. When I stopped laughing, I said "Awesome. Now we can fix it. You need to stop at Home Depot tomorrow, take the non-broke screw, and tell the guy you need two just like it." She asked why I couldn't go. I said "You broke it. Also, there's snow and ice and I'm not sure I can safely negotiate that parking lot. ... But mostly the 'You broke it thing.'" She picked up the screws and we fixed. Actually works better with the new screws now than it did before (so, like upgrading from a crappy American cheese to a really nice Swiss or even an artisanal Irish farmhouse cheddar). Damn, now I want a ham and cheese sandwich.

So it all got fixed. Nothing major, but enough to be a pain in the ass.

Sue has been getting into Soccer recently. And by "recently" I mean "the last several years". So I get to hear about a lot of soccer results and news. Thing is, I don't like sports. Any of them. At least, not as a spectator. I just don't like to watch other people do stuff if there's not some kind of interesting story behind it. No - "this random group of guys wearing matching outfits really hates this other group of random guys wearing matching outfits. Oh, and half of the first group were in some other group last year and one guy was actually part of the other group they're facing today." Unless I've got money on it or something.

But I finally heard a piece of soccer news today that I found interesting. I may even venture so far as to call it fascinating. See, they have this deal called the "World Cup" every four years. It's a thing. Anyway, tomorrow the folks that take care of such details will announce which countries will host the 2018 and 2022 Cup. Japan would very much like to host the 2022 one. They whipped up a little presentation, sent some emails, and threw their hat in the ring. They've promised to spend $6 billion to get ready. Beyond that though is the one thing that truly set their pitch apart:

Fucking Holograms.

They are going to broadcast real-time life-sized no-glasses-required holograms around the world. So you can't go to Tokyo, no problem - they'll have a full-up hologram recreation going in London, New York, Cairo, and all the other big cities (presumably). They're also going to have real-time, automated, instant translators as well as hand-held see-through computers that will bring up stats and info on whatever you're looking at as you look through it. They say they can do it all in 12 years and $6 billion. I've got a feeling there was a conversation at some point like this:

World Cup Official: Hey, did you see Japan's bid for the 2022 Cup?

Scientific Adviser: No, I didn't get -

WCO: Here [bringing up video on monitor] you gotta watch this

[Video plays]

SA: Sooooo ... they're trying to say ... that if they get the Cup ... that they'll hold it ... on the Starship Fucking Enterprise.

WCO: [Laughing] Yeah. Awesome, right?

SA: But, I mean, ... They don't have ... How would ...

WCO: No idea. So you think they can pull it off?

SA: Shit man, really? You're really asking me that?

WCO: Yeah, I didn't think so.

SA: No, no, no. This is Japan. They are infamous for two things: electronics and crazy shit. This is the country that sells used panties in vending machines. This is the country that built a life-size Gundam suit for the 30th anniversary of a TV show. This is the country where the number one singer is a computer generated high school girl. Honestly, my money is on them pulling it off.

WCO: [suddenly sober] Oh.

SA: Yeah - "oh".