Random Musings From a White Cubical

Got another showing of the Dark Knight to attend this evening, and suffice it to say that I'm quite excited. Even better is the fact that it's on the IMAX screen, and almost everybody (everybody save one person, that is) tells me it's far superior on the IMAX screen.

Can. Not. Wait.

It's been a very draining week. Mostly because of Monday, which saw me at the bar until 2am Tuesday morning. Just a quick note: it's not the brightest thing to do, being at the bar until 2 on a work night. No bueno.

It was the going away party for Steve and Mark, who are, sadly, moving to Wisconsin. The two of them have been good friends of mine going on about 2 years now, and it saddens me greatly that after nearly 2 years of friendship, some distance is going to end it. Mark and Steve are not good at keeping in touch through means other than face-to-face contact. Meaning no emails, phone calls, IMs, text messaging, MySpace messages... no anything really.

Sigh.

Life moves on, I suppose. I'm reminded of a book called The Rule of Four, which was written by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and the reason for that is it's got some of the best meditations about friendships in the history of popular fiction. I don't use the word "meditations" lightly either. This book goes far beyond the standard discussion of friendships found in many books that deal with the subject. this book digs, and it exposes some very interesting truths (and does it very artfully with many impressive metaphors).

I am in the process of editing a 53 page training document, and let me tell you all how much fun THAT is. It's a very, very long process. Ordinarily, it would take me about 30 minutes to read a document of that length, but actually having to edit it... whole 'nother story. So much writing is involved, and editing documents online at the same time.

I'm motivating myself with thoughts of Batmen tonight. Well, it's more the thought of spending another couple of hours with the Joker that keeps me going today. Now I can't wait.

Tomorrow is the company summer event, and by event I mean lets go watch a baseball game. Whoop-dee-doo. Baseball is easily one of the most boring sports ever. Right up there with golf and synchronized grass growing.

Cool story time. This is totally true.

My old, old, old room mate was very much into the Colorado Rockies... the team, not the mountains. He was always trying to convince me to watch with him, even though I was so adamant about how boring it was. He was convinced that if I watched it, I'd lvoe it as much as he did. In an effort to get him to shut up, I agreed to watch one game with him.

That might have been one of the longet 3 hours of my life... flushed away never to be recovered. Sometime during the game, the announcers appeared to get really bored announcing the game, so they started doing a comparison between the flavors of cotton candy. The interviewed people from the (sparse) crowd, taste-tested, joked around about it, etc. They completely ignored the game. The camera would cut to a pitch here and there, but eventaully even that stopped and I felt like I'd been transported to the Food Channel instead of whatever local channel we were watching the game on.

I've often been told that baseball is far more interesting when you are there... to which i say BAH! because I've been to way more than my fair share of baseball games and know better. About the most interesting thing about being there live is waiting to hear if they call my ticket number so I can go collect some cheap prize. I mean, come on, if the announcers can't even pretend to be interested any more...

I'm going tomorrow only because
a) it's free
b) there's an all you can eat BBQ buffet-type thing
c) there's cool people there
d) I don't actually have to watch the game
e) I might be going from there to see TDK again with Randy
f) did I mention free food?

Friday has become a toss-up between going to Denver and playing Magic (doubtful, as there will most likely be clubs involved) or jsut sitting at home and ripping 105 booster packs. That could take a while. A looooooooooooooooong while, but it's not a very social activity.

I hung out with a friend who I only see once every 6-8 months or so. We saw The Dark Knight on Saturday. It's kind of scary, a little saddening even, but when we were talking, it dawned on me that even though we used to have so much in common, we've both changed a lot. Out paths diverged somewhere along the way, and now there is very little we have in common. Our philosophies, world views, interests, personalities, everything has changed. It was a very interesting conversation, but it was different than what I've been used to, less synergy, fewer "on the same page" moments.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about our conversation was the fact that he seemed completely miserable in his life. Now, it's possible I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. Since the last time I talked to him, he's fallen further into the realm of alcoholism. Seriously, hardcore, bad shit. We're not talking like a few drinks a couple of times a week... we're talking about every night on the couch until he passes out. That's my idea of being happy with life...

There were many occasions where "my job sucks" came up in the conversation too. It was quite obvious that he hates his job, which happens to involve repairing vehicles for the Army. the pay is apparently good, though.

I'm saddened a little by this stuff, but, there's very little (as I've learned lately) that I can do about it, so moving on....

3 hours until Dark Knight!

As The Rule of Four gets at, we are all beings that, like matter at the center of an explosion, are propelled outwards for the duration of our lives. We start out with people who are close to us, but as time goes on, we move farther and farther out, which drives us farther from those around us. In the end, we are left floating, miles from those who are closest to us.

Weekend and Such

What an odd weekend... Friday, I thought I was going drinking with the work crew, but nobody was there when I showed up. I instead toured the card shops here and found some really sweet deals. One woman in one store even sold me $68.50 worth of cards for about $20. The store owner, a fat, fat, slob of a man was very busy playing WoW, and never even acknowledges I was in there. His wife helped me, and I got a sweet deal. She apparently got into trouble, because a friend went their yesterday and paid full price for everything. He was still playing WoW, of course.

I don't much care for that game. It's... it's an abyss that just sucks people right in. It's kinda scary the number of times a friend has bought the game only to disappear forever.

Famous last words: "Look! I just bought WoW! I'm going to go play it!"

Is a video game really worth the broken marriages and lost friendships? That may sound extreme, but I've known more than my fair share of people to whom this has happened.

Saturday, there was a draft, at which I placed 2nd. Not bad, not bad. Got a nice card out of it too. Then BBQ at the Taslers', which was fun, if a little rowdy. You get a bunch of drunk adults in one space, chances are good that there will be some disagreement, and of that, there was plenty. There were arguments over who gets to grab whose ass, who gets dunked in the big icy pool, who gets to defend said icy pool victim, who gets which instrument on Rock Band, what are the kids going to do now, and on and on. As perhaps the only sober person in the room, this was all rather amusing. However, I doubt I'll ever understand the joy people get in being belligerently drunk, and that goes double for people who do that and are prone to hangovers. Because the way that I want to spend my weekend involves not remembering the first day at all and spending the second day bent over the toilet wishing I didn't remember that either. Bravo.

Sunday... cleaning... yay. Then up until 430 in the morning playing Magic with Mike. All right. Who needs sleep? That stuff's overrated.

There's a corporate leadership conference for all the managers in my company this week, and all said managers were in panic mode on Monday. They figure with one day left before they're all out of office for the rest of the week, it would be a grrrrrrreat time to push in some (and by some I mean lots) last minute, must-be-finished-before-we-leave-work work. So yesterday, running on 3 hours of sleep, I got to deal with people in panic mode. Get it doen get it done get it done, is it done yet, how about now, finish it now now now now. Management pulling hair out, running around like a group headless chicken. It would be amusing if I weren't the one cleaning up after it.

What is it with upper management types that they are so prone to the irrational desperation of panic? I mean, seriously. I know they've got their heads submerged in the ceaselessly changing world of intracompany politics, but is it too much to ask that they look at the real world with a bit of calm? When something comes up, anything really, we go into some sort of OMG mode. I mean, this isn't a rational "This is big, here's a solution", problem solving kind of mentality, no no. This is full-on bug-eyed, happy-footed, hands shaking in front of the mouth, peeing in the pants panic attack. There might even be some high-pitched screaming of the teenaged girl sees a spider sort. Aren't these people making double or triple my pay in part to keep a level head when something comes up? If they're incapable of that sort of thing, I will happily take over.

Change of subject in 3, 2, 1...

I'm in a bit of an introspective mood today... so here goes some deep self-analytical stuff.

Tolerance. That word seems to be coming up more often lately. Here's a story. If I was the same person I was 5 or 6 years ago in the same situations I am in today, I would have exactly one friend... and no, it's probably not who you're think of. My mindset was the following: If you were not as good a person to me as I was to you, you're gone. If you made me mad, you're gone. Stressed me out... gone. Annoyed me, didn't appreciate me for who I was... gone. Picky, huh? It was an interesting defense mechanism, and I was ruthless about it. I cut ties to all kinds of people and didn't look back. On one hand, I think that's the way to live. Example, my old old room mates, two other Brians, for the record, never, ever cleaned up after themselves. I don't talk to them any more. Just snipped all the ties, and they were gone forever.

So, what has changed? A lot, really, but mainly... I've become a more tolerant person. More forgiving. The old idea was to avoid pain by cutting out of my life the people who are most apt to cause it. Simple enough. The new idea... risk the pain in order to have more people in my life. Some might call it "lowering my standards", which I suppose is accurate from one point of view. "Broadening my horizons" is another take. In the end, though, it comes down to this: I love my friends. The ones I have now, collectively, are better than any other collective group of friends I've had. Individually, I have an amazing best friend in Randy, damn good friends in Jason and Jen and Joe and Justin (a lot of J's there) and Damon, and a whole cast of people too extensive to list here, who daily enrich the quality of my life (you should know who you are). And that, I believe is something worth the risk.

Psychoanalyzing myself in a public forum is also a new experience for me. :)

I once saw a show called October Road... just one episode, and not even a whole one at that. It looked to me to be a very interesting show, one that seemed to revolve around old friendship and the struggles inherent therein. Plus, it stars one of my all time favorite actors in Bryan Greenberg (secondary part in The Perfect Score, starred in Prime, among others). I bought it yesterday and plan on spending my night with some quesadillas (homemade and delicious), some Dew, and that show. There are only 6 episodes, though, which is sad.

Edit: totally didn't do any of that!!

I watched Stardust on Saturday on the recommendation of a friend. For a movie that could have come out smelling like a hokie, over-dramatized, hopelessly cheesey pile of dung, it was actually really really good. I am pleasantly surprised.

The one flaw, and it's not really a flaw, more of a personal thing, but the main character, Tristan, was so incredibly naive and... well, stupid. He's this starry-eyed dreamer that just oozes innocence. He spends the movie with two expressions: bug-eyed adoration or bug-eyed fear. Not really much else. Not a huge fan of this kind of character... it's kind of cliche and boring.

The rest of the movie however... that's where it gets good. All of it, from beginning to end, was fantastic and original. My favorite character, by far, was Lamia the witch. There was just something so fun about her evilness. Yes, she wanted to cut the star's heart out, but dammit all, I was rooting for it. Besides, Michelle Pfeiffer is hot and doesn't look a day older than 35 (actual age: 50!!!). And, for the record, Robert De Niro is makes for an amazing gay pirate (or "wootsie" as they refer to him). I almost peed my pants when he was "revealed",a and during the haircut, and the "pirate fight" scene with the Can Can music bouncing in the background... priceless!!!

Nevermind that the sons of the king are all named for their birth order (Primus, Secundus, Tertius, etc) and that they are all killing each other and their ghosts hang around for the duration of the movie.
"What do you see?"
"The kingdom! My kingdom?"
Push... screaming.

Brilliant! And then there's the part where Tristan runs head on into a moving carriage (his best acting in the whole movie!)... ah, I'm laughing even now. Very good movie.

Eh, anyway. Life moves on, and I've got to actually do some work today. Peace.