Textual Exhibitionism

LAST FIVE ENTRIES
The Sunday Suicide Ritual - 03.19.06
somnambulism: n, Jeremy on a Sunday night - 03.13.06
careful what you wish, you may regret it... - 03.05.06
somebody gona geta hurt real bad - 02.20.06
=NOT(rain V sleet V dark of night) - 01.31.06

too much responsibility for an entry by a pacifist - (02.04.05)

When you live in a fairly large city, a clique of which Vancouver is proud to be a member, you are bound to be approached on the street. Most of the time - in fact, I'd say 99% of the time - it's someone asking for change. That's just a fact of life. There are people asking for loonies, there are people asking for quarters, and there are people asking for pennies. But to the best of my recollection, I don't think I've ever had anyone ask me for such a specific amount as I was asked for today: one dollar and seventeen cents.

As I stepped out of my boss's truck (I got a ride partway home today), a smiling girl/young woman/whatever around 25 said "Hey!" while looking directly at me. I should tell you that this doesn't happen every day. In fact, the only time that a member of the opposite sex will strike up a conversation with me is to either call me a chauvinist pig simply for having a pair of testicles or to ask me for her dentures that fell on the floor because she left her glasses somewhere (on her head) and she can't see properly without them. So needless to say it caught me a little off guard. And as I usually do when I'm caught off guard, I made like a statue, wet myself, and hoped upon hope that whomever had startled me would move on their merry way. This was not to be.

I guess it could be said that it was a character flaw of hers that allowed her to ignore the increasingly obvious puddle down my front, but in retrospect I suppose it was simply her inhuman desire to accomplish her goal. Her goal was to sell me something, which I suppose we are all trying to do in one way or another. But rather than sell me an electric ab machine, or an amazing food processor, or, ahem, knives, she was trying to sell me a warm fuzzy feeling.

As far as I can remember, I have never actually been asked to sponsor a child in some distant land. I have, on rare occasion, been propositioned over the phone by someone representing some company whose name I have never even heard of, but most of my phone calls are surveys and long distance phone carriers, the latter of which I have been tempted to reply "actually, I'm roaming on my cell phone right now, so this is long distance, and it's super expensive so I can't talk. Bye." I can't think of a time when I've seriously considered donating to anything remotely resembling World Vision, though I suppose now that I have a steady income and have come across a reputable organisation, the time is now.

But here's the problem: I can't make decisions. It takes me an hour to buy a pair of shoes that are going to get the shit beaten out of them anyway, so they don't have to look pretty. So when I am presented with a decision that means a whole hell of a lot more than shoes, even if it's significantly less expensive, I tend to clam up and expell any remaining urine.

But I've gotta say, she played her part to perfection. It was like an intricate dance, me back-pedalling, her taking long, confident strides with me without seeming over-bearing. The light touch just above the elbow, meant to convey a sense of "hey, we're all friends here, right?" She even pulled out the "I have a dollar in my pocket right now, I'll give that to you for your first day's donation." Oh yes, she was good.

In the end I broke out the "I'm poor [which I am] and need to make sure that I can financially handle this committment [which is true], because I don't want to be one of those people who goes for it and then realises that after a couple of months they've had enough [which is also true]" and tried to beg off to a later date (i.e.: tomorrow) so I could make sure I could swing this sort of thing. She said she starts work tomorrow at 11am on Granville (ahh, workin' girl, eh?), so she's actually going to call me at 11. I gave her my phone number of my own volition; I guess if I really wanted nothing to do with it I wouldn't have done that. God works in mysterious ways, as they say. I guess one of those ways is having me so mortified that a girl is talking to me that I go and halfway sign myself up for something that could actually do some good. Go figure.

I suppose that I should talk about work, because when you sign up for a diary/blog/journal, one of the prerequisites is signing a form stating that at least once every 5 entries you must complain about either your job, your significant other, or the stock market. Since I am drastically lacking in the second category, and the first one hasn't really produced enough for me to dabble in the third, it appears as though my options are somewhat limited. That said, I really don't have anything to complain about at work. Everyone is still super nice and I haven't been working the crazy long hours recently. In fact, the only thing I could see in a negative light would be perhaps I don't quite have enough to do. I know, I know, the grass is always greener, etc. Before I [would have been complaining had I actually been updating] that I was working too hard, and now I'm complaining that I'm not working enough. I guess I'm just not used to having to burn up a bunch of the overtime I've built up over the last 5 months (yeah, I've been working there for just over 5 months now, crazy, no?).

A few weeks ago they asked me to take some time off because there wasn't much going on. So in addition to the weekend, I took Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off, and slept in on Thursday. How rad is that? And in case I wasn't clear, that time off was paid. Whoo. So despite spending three days of banked time there and a couple over the holidays, I still have four full days of banked time. So, in theory, if I wanted to fuck off for a six day weekend, I could. But, like I said, in theory.

There are certain natural laws that man has derived from observing the world, and indeed the universe, around him. Formulae, if you will, that allow us to predict or explain, with varying degrees of accuracy, what will happen next or why something happens. Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, for example, describe the motion of the planets, moons, and other bits of crap that orbit around a bigger mass. Murphy's Law states that if there is even the slightest possibility for something to fuck right the hell up, it will. Newton's Third Law is the one I'm hinting towards, here.

For those of you who have taken even the slightest bit of physics, you'll probably recall that the Third Law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. F₁ = -F₂ and all that. It's basically the physicist's version of karma. So when you let x = 3 days off recently and y = not much to do at work, you can see where I'm headed with this.

Yes, a couple of my bosses approached me about perfoming two somewhat large projects in one week, that being the week of the 14th. One of them will likely not pose too much of a threat, as it is something that I've done about half a dozen times and have started getting pretty good at. The other is something I've done once before, and we still aren't really sure that it worked, despite our feigned confidence in the form of an official report sent to the client. During the initiation of this latter test we encountered a number of unexpected problems, which were handled with the grace of a figure skating elephant with diarrhea. And believe it or not, that was the easy part. Trying to explain the results was the hard part.

I can predict with a relative certainty (Jeremy's Law of Crisis Management) that the majority of next week will be spent trying to get everything ready to go, feverishly and frantically dashing about, washing this, autoclaving that, collecting the other thing. Then the week of the 14th will be upon me, and I will be a big ol' ball of stress. Then the week will end, and I'll wonder how the fuck I'm supposed to prepare for an even bigger undertaking that is happening the week of the 21st. This is something that I have never done before, essentially adapted a protocol from one almost 10 years old for, and will be performing entirely on my own. Oh, and did I mention I'd be performing the entire operation inside one of these?

In fact, that's precisely the model I'll be using, which I am certain is actually older than time itself. Except. Except! Oh, this is the best part. My glove box has patches to keep it sealed. As if that wasn't ghetto enough, this isn't factory recommended patching. No. I'm talking duct tape. I shit you not.

The worst part is that I think I grossly underestimated how much time it was going to take for me to pull this project off, so it looks like I'll be using some of that precious banked time to pay for all of the free work I'll be doing on this project. Hey! I don't remember signing up for responsibility and accountability. This wasn't in the brochure.

Speaking of responsibility and accoutability, from March 1st through the 4th, I will be taking on a work experience student from my old high school. The school apparently has a "Where They Are Now" board, upon which past graduates' pictures can be placed in order to promote staying in school and better dart throwing skills. My mom, being oh so proud of my acquisition of a B.Sc., asked to put me up on the board so that all of the fuck-ups at the school could look at me and wish they could be as awesome as I am. In what has become abundantly clear in retrospect as a conspiracy, the guidance counselor (for lack of a better term, though without all of the associated negative implications) at the school e-mailed me and asked me to do a quick write up of what I've done since graduating high school, concentrating mainly on what I did for my post-secondary education and where I'm now working.

As it turns out, there is a girl at the school whose dad used to work at Vizzle Scizzle (as I will now be referring to my place of employ in an effort to not only make me look "cool" and "hip," but also to evade unfortunate Google hits) back when it was called, uh, BC Rizzlesearch. She was also interested by the insanely bloated and fanciful description I wrote for my job, and so to make a long story short, I will be showing her just what the hell it is I do to pass my time these days. Luckily for her, she'll be coming right after all of that shit will have hit the fan, and with any luck I'll have managed to clean most of it off and had a decent night's sleep over the weekend so I don't go all spazzy.

My major concern is that there won't be enough for me to do, let alone both of us. I'm also concerned that I will suck at being a teacher for a few days, thus shattering my plan to teach college in 20-30 years. I suppose it's better I find out now rather than when I quit my highly lucrative research position at a well-known and highly respected company to go teach a bunch of 20-year-old shit-stains about the beauty of restriction mapping and how we did it "in my day."

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