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Friday, October
29, 2004 at 13:18:31 (EDT) |
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It's all over now baby blue
Ah, they put up some more
pictures from the last WYSIWYG
show, of which I was a part. Once I get home, I'll get to work
on processing not only the video from that performance, but
some of the other videos the Sylvia was kind enough to shoot
of several of the last Motico
performances! See? My working at home benefits you AND me.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Friday, October
29, 2004 at 12:27:57 (EDT) |
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You've
got to fight to see things your way
Last night my dad was in town again. He's always asking if I
want to do something when he comes to town, but I can never
think of anything to do besides going out to dinner. And after
my last two weeks in the office, my imagination has been especially
stunted. So, uncharacteristically, I requested that we go see
a movie. Sitting for two hours without the stress of having
to make conversation sounded good to me.
My dad always stays near Times Square when he's in town which
means I have spent far more time in that hell-hole than I
ever would otherwise. To think, some people's impression of
New York begins and ends with Times Square. No wonder they
think we're weirdos. Who can stand that place for more than
10 consecutive minutes? Anyway we went to that AMC theater,
the one with the series of narrow escalators that take you
up and up and up into the stratosphere, as the glare of the
Great White Way retreats from you view through the big windows.
We saw Collateral,
that Tom Cruise/Jamie Fox movie. It was better than I expected,
but I've always had a problem with Michael Mann. Is there
any other director who so wishes it was still 1985? Does LA
really look like that or is it just his production designer?
Anyway before the movie started some homeless guy somehow
got into the theater. He had been sitting right behind us
for a while when several of the burliest staff members entered
the theater, asking to see his ticket stub. He produced a
stub from the previous showing of the film, so they asked
him to leave.
"But I missed the beginning of the movie," he whined
in a super-nasally, old-New York accent. "I just came
in here to see the first ten minutes." The staff argued
that this was not allowed, that he would have to leave. He
wouldn't budge.
"No! I paid for this movie and I'm going to see the
part I missed! Stop picking on me!" They tried to convince
him to come down to the manager's office to work it out away
from the other patrons.
"You won't let me back in if I go out there now. Leave
me alone. Why don't you pick on the people who come in here
drunk, and the ones who cause a big scene?" He was already
causing quite a scene himself. The words "police"
and "arrested" were uttered.
"Go! Call the police! They'll have to drag me out of
here, and I'll scream bloody murder the whole way!" This
was going to be a good show.
They kept trying to reason with him, but to no avail. He
started ahouting, "You're just doing this to pick on
me. Because I 'm a senior citizen. It gives you a SEXUAL THRILL
to pick on SENIOR CITIZENS!"
Other people in the audience were pleading with the staff
to just let him stay for the supposed first ten minutes, reasoning
that if that's truly all he planned to do, he would leave
after he saw the opening of the film. But like George Bush,
AMC does not negotiate with terrorists.
They called the manager in, who was a little more honey-tongued
than the other guys. He talked it over with the homeless guy
and eventually he got up and was led out of the theater. The
last thing I heard him say, much more quietly, "If I
go with you now, is there still a chance you'll let me back
in?"
I was a little let down by his calm exit. Sure it's always
a little off-putting when some nut freaks out in front of
you, but we see this sort of thing fairly often around here.
And this guy was clearly not a physical threat to anyone,
just an aural threat. I feel like the only way that everybody
involved could attain proper closure for this scene would
be to actually have the cops, possibly in riot gear, drag
him out while he screams bloody murder the whole way. The
audience would feel like they had really gotten to see something
unique, the staff would feel justified in their sense that
this guy needed to go, the cops of course would enjoy it,
and the man himself could maintain a sort of self-righteousness.
He had done what he said he'd do, he stuck to his guns in
the face of overwhelming adversity.
But he didn't, so we had only the film to entertain us. Afterward,s
we went to John's
Pizza, which, despite being in Times Square, makes really
good pies.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Thursday,
October 28, 2004 at 13:16:32 (EDT) |
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Take
a stand, fuck the man
I ask my boss if he has any idea why I haven't received my hard
token yet. He says he doesn't know. He tells me, "Go up
to Room 400 and ask." Room 400 is where they have been
processing and distributing the hard tokens. I was up there
earlier in the week but not surprisingly, they were of no help.
They looked to see if my hard token was there, but it wasn't.
That's all they knew. They only looked blankly when I told them
how I had been told our department would have first priority
since we are mostly remote users.
So I go up to the 38th floor and revisit Room 400. It's like
a scene from a David Mamet script: the office, previously
full of people on phones, tons of paper and hard tokens piled
everywhere ... is totally empty. It's as though there never
was a team of people doling out hard tokens to needy office
drones. Hard Token? Never heard of it. Get outta here,
kid.
I return to my floor to ask my boss if he know where they
went (of course he won't know, I just want to rub it in that
he doesn't know). My boss is gone. His computer is locked,
which means he won't be back for a long time.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Thursday,
October 28, 2004 at 12:22:54 (EDT) |
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I don't
care if I don't make it back
Jeez I've been having a bad week. Going into the office is wearing
thin, still no hard token in sight. I caught a cold the other
day, most likely from having to consort with these officefolk
on a daily basis (the cold was bad enough to take me out for
one night but not even enough to keep me home the next day).
And of course I'm still coping with the loss of Toby earlier
in the week.
To top it all off, on my way to Freddy's
last night I got a flat tire. No, it's not the end of the
world, but when you have one of these uphill weeks, a little
thing like that seems like an omen, telling me "Don't
go to that spelling bee!" And I almost didn't. I was
about to turn around, take my bike home and climb into bed
with a bottle of Jim Beam. But for some reason I decided to
lock the bike carcass to a scaffolding and walk to the bar.
I arrived just before the bee was to begin, but there was
not, shall we say, a full house waiting to spell. There were
four
people,
counting me and the Spellmeister.
Josh pushed back the starting time an hour to allow stragglers
to get in on the action. By 9 there were a couple more people,
including Linus,
who claimed he would only be observing (although he did later
participate, but Josh used a special "Linus List"
for his words). We still didn't have much of a group, but
we decided to go anyway. Kathy won the first round, which
went so fast Josh declared there would be a second round.
More people who had wandered in signed up and spelled, but
somehow Kathy won again. We had a third round and just when
it looked like Kathy would sweep the series, she misspelled
"sarsaparilla" and some other woman won the dough.
Overall, I did better this night but still got knocked out
on words like 'occurrence' and 'decrement', those damn words
with and 'e' in the middle that sounds like an 'a' to me.
I did spell 'facetious' correctly, more or less.
It's amazing how a little spelling competition can take your
mind of how lame your life is. It's in those brief moments
that I understand how people can watch organized sports on
TV. Speaking of which, the other room at Freddy's was full
of Sox fans, all of whom were forgetting their problems to
the strains of "I'm a Believer" (every time Boston
got a run), "Roadrunner" (the Modern Lovers song),
"Dirty Water" (that song about Boston), and a really
annoying version of "Take Me Out to the Ball game."
Tim the bartender played these songs over and over. I never
thought I would get sick of "Roadrunner" but I came
close last night. We wanted him to put on Boston's
first album, but I don't know that anybody ever actually asked
him to cue it up.
So we were all packed in main bar room to watch the rest
of the game. Meanwhile outside we had an unobstructed view
of the lunar eclipse. Kathy was walking around with all her
prize money conspicuously fanned out in her front pocket.
I totally forgot to take pictures of any of this. Maybe it's
better if it stays a memory. At the end of the night, I borrowed
a bike pump from Heather
and tried to temporarily inflate my flat tire. It totally
didn't work, I must have rolled over a nail or something.
So I had to drag the bike all the way home. But when i was
two blocks from my door i just got on the thing and rode it
the rest of the way. I probably did some further damage to
it, but by then I could care less.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday,
October 27, 2004 at 12:25:05 (EDT) |
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Just
one word: Backslider
Let's try to think of something other than depressing cat stories.
Day 9 in the office and still no sign of the hard token. Due
to my company's incredibly efficient expediency, my department
(full of people who telecommute every single day) were not given
the priority we were promised because, as my boss put it, "You're
not officially virtual workers." Okay, sure, we were not
hired to work remotely, but after September 11th left us without
a building and Weehawken, NJ, left us without enough space for
everybody, we were handed laptops and commanded to work from
home. We have been doing this for several years now. The fact
that there may not be an official distinction to our work-at-home
status should be immaterial; obviously, we are virtual workers.
Right, boss?
Once again, my boss refuses to help us in any way. He butts
up against the status quo and lays down faster than a cat
on a heating vent. The man has the authority to officially
change our status, or hell, he could just make some actual
phone calls. But no, he's swept helplessly along in the Tide
of Business, feebly burbling about how chaotic it's been since
all the remote users had to come into the office. What a dick.
In the political sphere, The New Yorker has published
a long and informative article
throwing their support for Kerry, qualified not only by his
record but also an extensive examination of Bush's incredibly
hypocritical and shortsighted Administration. But of course
it will convert exactly no one as it is pretty much preaching
to the choir. Why has it been so difficult to bridge the gap
this time? Is it because there are only two real kinds of
Americans: the type who responds to logic and common sense,
and the type who responds out of fear?
Speaking of partisan politics, the backlash against Jon
Stewart has begun.
He's getting criticized for wanting to have his cake and eat
it too as a mostly-political comedian who can also earnestly
bash those he accuses of ineffectual journalism. But they've
got it backwards, it's his critics who want it both ways.
They want to hold Stewart up to some standard of journalism
that was abandoned long ago by all other 'hard' news programs
because his humor is so rooted in politics. But comedy doesn't
work that way. Satire says, "Look at how absurd the system
is!" It is not the job of satire to necessarily propose
solutions. Stewart is in a unique position; he can't be touched.
He can say whatever he wants because he's smart enough to
know when to say them, and he's funny enough that nobody really
ever gets tired of him. When critics rail against him, their
overstatement of his importance means their priorities are
mismanaged. Like Stewart said to Carlson Tucker, "If
you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more
than welcome to." If only our politicians were as smart
as this guy.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, October
26, 2004 at 13:15:51 (EDT) |
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Sorry
I don't know how to put this on a blog so I'll just blurt it
out. Toby's bloodwork came back and the prognosis is terrible.
He is FIV positive, his liver has basically shut down and the
disease has left his bone marrow impaired, meaning his red and
white blood cells are not being produced properly. Despite the
positive signs I heard about yesterday, apparently he is not
keeping his temperature up and requires tons of outside meds
just to keep him going at this level. The vet said there is
basically nothing else they can do for him. They're putting
him to sleep.
FIV
is obviously a very serious incurable disease, but Toby was
still a young cat. Many cats with FIV live for years before
there's even a hint that something could go wrong. What I'm
saying is, I think the shady vet who ran the expensive blood
tests on him on September
8 either didn't bother to really test him, or were so
incompetent as to miss his FIV+ status. I suppose there is
the possibility that it just didn't show up (I know that can
happen), but fuck it, I gotta direct my anger at something.
Then again, even if they had caught it, I don't even know
what I would have done.
Either way it all sucks. The little guy was sick when we
took him in and he pretty much just got worse the whole time
we had him. It's so unfair, and I know, life isn't fair,
but it still bothers me. Why does a totally unassuming cat
with a sweet disposition get taken out while some totally
antisocial alley cat lives for decades? I wonder which cat
infected him, is it one of the cats I see in the yard all
the time? And of course there is the nagging concerns about
our other cats and whether they were exposed (although I've
heard the chances are slim).
I'm trying to console myself with the whole "well, you
gave him a good home for the last part of his life" speech,
but it still seems like there must have been some other, better
way this could have turned out. Thanks for everybody's kind
words, I'm sorry Toby's story didn't have a happier ending.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, October
25, 2004 at 13:07:43 (EDT) |
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One
more mouth you can't feed
Toby the stray cat has taken a turn for the worse. Buzz found
him unable to even walk on Sunday morning, and he was displaying
signs of jaundice. He had been lethargic over the past few
days and as much as I hate to say it, if I didn't have to
come into this stupid office I would have taken him to the
vet sometime last week. But there was no way of knowing how
severe his condition was. The vet pronounced it liver failure,
but couldn't say what caused it. Although he had been feverish
just a month ago, his temperature was now far below normal,
like his body was just giving up. They took him in and put
him on an IV, we'll have some blood test results later today.
Although this is obviously pretty dire, I am strangely optimistic
that he'll pull through.
Ever since we took him in this cat has had problems. He never
seemed completely well, he was always getting over one thing
or another. Whatever is causing this liver problem most likely
has something to do with his overall failure to thrive, so
at the very least we will know what we're up against. I've
never had a cat who was this messed up, so I'm sort of at
a loss to know what to expect. But at this point contemplating
anything other than an optimistic outlook is far too depressing
to consider.
I'm all for the vets working their magic on him, but they
are charging an arm and a leg for his treatment. I can't believe
now how I used to balk at the few hundred dollars I've spent
on a given cat here and there. They're asking for serious
cash here. They say they will try to keep the costs down by
only doing what is absolutely necessary, but it's still gonna
cost a small fortune. It won't break me, but it will set me
back quite a bit in terms of my vague savings plans. I'll
have to make sure I don't get fired any time soon.
If it's any consolation, the vet showed Buzz another cat
who had the same problem but was even worse off. Toby's still
been eating (liver failure often occurs if a cat stops eating
for several days), so at least he's not the sickest cat at
the animal hospital.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Archives
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Week of October 24-30, 2004
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The
subway is 