The impending weekend is especially welcome as I’ve been a little out of it all day today. I stood in the elevator in the parking garage today for a full minute before I realized I wasn’t moving. The doors opened again and my manager stepped in. She looked at me askance while I dumbly stared back.

“Forgot to select a floor?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said.

She nodded. “It happens.”

Yeah, not my finest moment.

The highlight of my day, though, was the guy striking a very heroic pose — shoulders proudly squared, hands on hips — as he used the restroom. Like seeing Superman piss into a urinal. It would have been weird had it not been so funny.

So yeah. As the kids are wont to say these days, “Thank Cthulhu it’s Friday.”

(Posted via mobile phone from Joshua Bales’s Posterous.)

The Restart Page is pretty badass, at least if you’re a bit of a computer nerd like me. Watching Windows 3.1 and 95 restart and go through the reboot process sent a wave of nostalgia over me. Nearly brought a tear to me eye.

Of course, you’ll have to go to the actual Restart Page to make the restart buttons work. But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?

[Via JWZ]

My apologies for such a long absence, but the last couple of months have been very busy, and I’m just now getting re-acclimated to working fulltime and still maintaining something resembling a social life. Semi-regular blogging has been a hobby I’ve been very much been to get back to, though, so let me start at the beginning.

No, that will take too long. Let me sum up instead.

I have now been working at the dayjob for six full weeks now. Training has been over for a couple of those weeks, and I’m now doing essentially what I’ll be doing for the next seven months, which is when I can try to aim for a promotion or switch to a different department more fitting my skills and temperament. What’s nice is that those next seven months — or however long it might be to actually make a change — won’t be a living hell because, for once, I legitimately enjoy my job. I spend all day on the phone, which admittedly isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but I’m handling incoming calls, so at least I don’t have to make cold calls like I did at the previous dayjob. Also nice is that I get to help people, and the company I work for places a big emphasis on that and actually enables its employees to help its customers, which is a shocking shift in attitude from past jobs.

Plus, I work with some cool people, and we have a badass cafeteria in the building that serves cheap, good food. It’s a refreshing change of pace to actually enjoy one’s job.

The only thing that put a damper on the whole new job thing is that for all of December I was massively sick. What started as a mild cold at the end of November turned into a full-fledged case of bronchitis that haunted me up to the beginning of January. Oh yeah, and the prednisone and antibiotic I was on to treat the bronchitis screwed up my body ever further. So between being sick and getting used to a new job I was perpetually exhausted and not feeling well for all of December.

It wasn’t all grey skies, though. The holidays were all pleasant and over and done with all too quickly. There was lots of good food to gorge on, presents to be opened, and on New Year’s Eve I was able to see a new favorite band of mine, Nightbeast, put on an amazing show at Blind Bob’s.

This is apropos of nothing, but my parents recently did that Ancestry.com thing to look into the history of my mom’s side of the family, and it turns out that that part of the family emigrated from England to Maryland in the early 1700s. And after moving to the Colonies they apparently wanted to get in on that whole groovy “owning people” movement, because we were able to look at the will for John — the fellow who first came over from the mother country — who bequeathed a slave by the name of Stephan to his son Nathan, y’know, just like any doting father would. It was kind of weird to learn that, but I suppose that although it’s abhorrent now — and really, then — it was general practice for the time.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop telling people that my mom’s side of the family were originally gypsy horse thieves. Oh no. Until I see conclusive evidence explicitly showing that we weren’t, it’s gonna still be my story. I’ll just have to modify it slightly now.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. More to come later. I hope you all are doing famously and have not died in the meantime.

I’ve wanted to mention this here for over a month, ever since I had the first interview — which I can say with all modesty, I bloody well aced — but I didn’t want to jinx it.

My first day of work is November 28th, so I’ve still got some time remaining as a gentleman of leisure. I’m sure in a couple of months I will be sorely craving all this free time I’ve had these past two years, but right now I am very much looking forward to working again.

Oh, and money. A steady income again is gonna be pretty swell.

It strikes me as kind of sad that Cookie Monster has offered one of the clearest and most cogent explanations for the Occupy movement that I’ve read thus far:

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn’t all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country’s infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system — your friends on Wall Street — and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy — knowing full well that what could and would happen — putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not “there always going to be rich people”. That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

[via JWZ]

In other technology news, my HP Pavilion laptop is throwing a Blue Screen of Death again, with the same “Memory Management” reason as before. Think I’m gonna just replace the RAM, since that’s what I was told the issue was before. Hopefully that will fix it, because, frankly, the damn thing is becoming too unreliable to use.

Gotta say, HP: not a big fan of your laptops right now. It’s my first, and it might be the last I ever buy from you.

Now I am off to Kristin’s. She’s making linguini in pesto sauce tonight, and I plan on helping by staying out of her way.

Friday night was Kristin’s birthday party, which we had at Skateworld. She and the ladies have wanted to dress up like extras from a roller disco movie and go skating for a while, plus I had a Groupon, so this seemed like a good opportunity to rub elbows with the under-15 crowd.

Everyone seemed to have fun, and I acquitted myself nicely by not falling on my ass once, and also by not punching any obnoxious tweens in the throat. The pizza was fairly tasty and didn’t give me food poisoning, so it was a win all around.

Then on Saturday I went to a goodbye party for Sarah, who is callously abandoning Ohio next month for the warmer climes of San Diego. Not that I’ll be sorry to see her go. No, sir, not at all. (If I mask the sadness with sarcasm, then there will be no tears, right?)

Saw a number of people there I went to high school with, which was entertaining and not awkward like I’d feared it might be. I sometimes forget the person I am now and the person I was a decade ago bear little resemblance to each other in a number of ways. Ate some food and wine, and did horribly at some drinking-related card games. Oh, and I also got invited to a wedding in a couple of weeks. And who says I’m not charming.

On Sunday, I went to Richmond with my family to celebrate my dad’s birthday, which was also last week. I had the best salad ever at Texas Roadhouse, of all places. And some awful cake. Thanks for using icing that tasted like it was made from paste, Meijer Bakery.

And on an unrelated note, the song “Carpetbaggers” by Jenny Lewis and Elvis Costello has been stuck in my head all goddamn day. Hopefully it’ll lodge itself in yours as well.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Now it’s time to sign off and try to pick up the threads of the Project of a Novelish Nature.

I need to give it a final once-over tomorrow, and then I’ll be ready to send it off. Dunno when exactly it will be published. Possibly later this year, though I’m not sure if my tardiness will have caused that timeframe to be pushed back any. But rest assured, when I find out, so will you.

#

I’ve not had a chance to watch the whole thing through yet, but CASEY JONES: THE MOVIE looks promising. It’s a gritty fan-made short film about the hockey mask wearing badass from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and cartoons.

Here’s the trailer, which I am automatically inclined to dig since it features music from 1990′s original and most awesomest TMNT movie:

The destruction of our film heritage, which is the focus of concern today, is only the tip of the iceberg. American law does not protect our painters, sculptors, recording artists, authors, or filmmakers from having their lifework distorted, and their reputation ruined. If something is not done now to clearly state the moral rights of artists, current and future technologies will alter, mutilate, and destroy for future generations the subtle human truths and highest human feeling that talented individuals within our society have created.

A copyright is held in trust by its owner until it ultimately reverts to public domain. American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as “when life begins” or “when it should be appropriately terminated,” but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.

These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tommorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.

[...]

The public’s interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.

– George Lucas, speaking to Congress in 1988 about the need to enact legislation to prevent corporations and filmmakers from tampering with existing works.

Less than 10 years later the first of the STAR WARS Special Editions would be released.

The irony would be hysterical were it not completely overshadowed by the foul stench of Lucas’s present-day hypocrisy.

A GOOFY MOVIE is one of my favorite Disney movies, and has a very catchy soundtrack that gets not infrequently listened to on my iPod, a fact I admit this with no shame. (Mostly ’cause there’s music on there that is far more embarrassing.)

That these kids were able to make a video of this quality utilizing only $100, a borrowed video camera, and 90-plus friends and family, and to do so in only six months in their spare time, is frankly impressive.

That’s, like, some real MacGyver shit there.