Mrs. RoSA tends to worry a little bit when I am incommunicado. Have a listen to the most recent voicemail:
Wife-mandated caveat: She is not crazy -- her mind just tends to drift towards worst-case scenarios, is all.
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| (Source: E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune) |
I have very distinct feelings about each of the four seasons.
Spring and summer were great back in the Pacific NW and at BYU, but ever since I moved back east and have had to endure the adult-onset of allergies during the spring and unbearable humidity during the summer, my valuation of these two seasons has dropped considerably.
I remain a fall and winter guy. Always have been. Probably always will be.
Sometimes when people are filled with a sense of gratitude, they say "I want to thank (so and so), but I have no idea how to."
I feel that way right now, but my inability to express myself is not because I'm overcome with emotion or because I'm teary-eyed.
Take this mighty toaster oven, for example:
Frustrated with eating chips at work and getting grease all over your keyboard? Well, the Japanese were, and they came up with the robotic chip holder. Sent by Rijen:
You might be wondering what those three have in common, and I hope nobody was thinking "Christmas dinner with the family."
Yesterday was a strange day. Someone brought in a whole ham left over from a family dinner party and left it in the kitchenette next to my cubicle. My coworkers converged like vultures on a dead carcass (I suppose that technically, it was a carcass -- albeit a honey-baked one). Now, I would be a hypocrite to call it strange to capitalize on free food -- when people bring in jelly-filled donuts I'm the one at the front knocking old women out of the way. The strange thing was watching coworker after coworker leave the kitchenette with a handful of ham wrapped in a paper towel -- apparently there was a shortage of plates.
Photo sent by Josh M.
This one was taken a while ago. However, no other image conveys what I would rather be doing right now. And no, "drooling on your friend's mother's leather couch" is not what I meant. Sleep. Sleep is what I meant.
It was a fun weekend, but after lots of driving, chasing my nieces around, taking calls from work at 2am, and my sister Juli taking me on a "jog" (read: Bataan Death March) through some perilous jungle, I am exhausted today.
Regardless, Happy Monday to you. To temporarily distract your minds from the restrictive, fluorescent-bulbed hell that is your work cubicle, I have created a survey on the right to get your take on the Bourne movies.
Origins of survey: After listening to a lesson at church, BiL Ben was insistent on conveying the following principle to me: If you're in a brawl with someone, always have something in your hands to fight with. He cited the rolled-up magazine in The Bourne Supremacy. Don't ask me how this related to the lesson topic in any way -- I know for sure the lesson wasn't about Samson and the ass's jawbone -- but I'm sure it was related. If Ben has taught us anything, it is that his mind is unfailingly logical. Enjoy.
We have a kitchenette at work that I was practically running through last week (my new job is what I would call "demanding") when I almost turned a co-worker into roadkill. We'll call her Carrie. Carrie is the mother of young children, very nice, and most relevantly to this narrative, never sarcastic. So I know that what she was saying to me was sincere.
C: Oh, Josh, hi! I've been meaning to ask you about your hair.(At this point in the conversation I realized that the kitchenette is central to a dozen or so cubicles occupied by coworkers that I see every day. And that they've likely heard that I permed my hair. So I feel like I have to explain -- in a noticeably louder voice so all can hear -- the circumstances of my getting a perm.)
JD (internal): Oh crap. Oh no.
JD: Um, yeah...what about it?
C: Did you style it differently?
JD (internal): Lie, dammit-- Lie! Say the humid summer is wreaking havoc on your hair! That's what girls do! Say it!
JD: Um, yeah. I, uh, So I... got a perm...
JD (internal): Idiot.
JD: ...I did it as part of a bet with a friend -- this is not something I would ever do on my own.It's a bad sign for me when women are asking me for fashion-related advice. Almost apocalyptic. Read more...
C: Well, I think it looks good.
JD (internal): She's messing with you! There's no way you look good. You look stupid, and you know it!
JD: Well, that's nice of you to say, Carrie. But really, you don't have to lie. I realize it looks pretty ridiculous.
C: Where did you get it done? I've been thinking about doing a perm myself.
JD: I, uh...my friend just bought a box of stuff from the store.
So my managers at work thought that something I had volunteered for (been coerced/guilted into) was amazing (it wasn't) and had a huge impact (it didn't), so for my hard work (I slacked off) they gave me a kingly gift certificate to Chipotle. And, apparently, my hyper-contrarian and underachieving inner monologue has decided to manifest itself in a blog post today in parenthetical form (you'd better believe it, jacka**).
At any rate. The other morning I was in a meeting with two others, discussing contracts and workflow processes and talking about the "rubber hitting the road" and the undesirable nature of "reinventing the wheel" and all that annoying corporate-speak. I don't know. Honestly, I was paying attention to what was going on, but I was also starving. So, I did what all wise people do when they're hungry: I thought about food. And how much I wanted it. And how I was going to break in my Chipotle gift certificate as soon as this meeting was over.
At that moment a question was directed at me. My response?
"Chipotl--"
It wasn't a Turrets-like outburst, but I think if I didn't catch myself at that moment, the rest of the hunger-induced spew out of my mouth would have been: "Burrito, black beans, barbacoa, corn salsa, sour cream, guac, extra cheese!" (All of you just walked down that Chipotle assembly line with me just then...I know you did)
Well, I caught myself, and managed to salvage a level of coherence in my answer. Dodged the bullet.
I'm guessing the other two just attributed my initial gibberish to my English-is-not-my-first-language appearance. It's cool.
This week's is a doozy. The wager finally came to fruition.
The reactions have ranged all across the spectrum: Lots of doubletakes (myself in the mirror in the morning; everybody at church); extreme dread and anxiety, like a parent sending their child to their first day of school (AM before seeing the perm); semi-relief and a "it's not as bad as it could have been" (AM after seeing the perm); incapable of looking at me without laughing uncontrollably (Midge); rending of clothing, refusal to be comforted, and desperate beseeching to PLEASE cut my hair ('manders); disappointed headshaking, like I had been convicted and sentenced to do 10-15 in the State Pen (Josh M); backhanded comment about no longer possessing self-respect (DJA); "John Lennon called...he wants his hair back...No, seriously though: Get a haircut." (Banker); being told I should host a Japanese game show (Chunk). That's just the tip of the iceberg.
I'll tell you the worst part, though. My hair reeked like moldy butt. Seriously.
Anyway, I considered growing a mustache and going for an Adam Morrison-type look, but I would have needed to be ten times uglier, twenty times creepier, and willing to flush my social life down the drain. I still can't believe this guy has an NBA championship ring:
Happy Monday, everyone. Be grateful your coworkers have at least an ounce of respect for you. Mine may have at some point. But won't. Ever.
Odd stuff happens in the work bathroom: Guys suddenly become uncomfortably loquacious; my ongoing run-ins with bathroom awkwardness are made possible thanks to me inadvertently becoming the "pee buddy" -- someone with whom you share the same "pee schedule" -- of one of the big wigs at work. It's uncomfortable. I mean, he's not good game butt-slapping while I'm at the urinal like Alec Baldwin does to Ben Stiller in Along Came Polly; but it's uncomfortable, nonetheless.
Anyway. I have a work bathroom war story from a friend that tops all previous ones.
Here's how the dialogue went (I don't if there's any unwritten, Protect The Shield-type code amongst men and sharing bathroom stories, but in the interests of my friend's safety, I will anonymize him.):
Anon: dude i just had the weirdest bathroom experience everAnd here was the sketch:
Me: i like where this anecdote is going
Anon: you may regret saying that when this is over
so get this. i'm sitting in the stall, taking care of business
there is another guy in the stall next to me, doing the same thing
so he gets up off the can and i think he's wrapping up
but no
he turns the other direction, pants completely down, and squats
bare a$ showing underneath the stall, and wipes that way
multiple times
like ten times
for all to see
yeah, i don't even know how to explain it
so he's facing the toilet
Me: i need a diagram
Anon: squatting down so his bare a$$ is almost touching the ground
Me: sketch something up in MS Paint and send it to me
Anon: and proceeds to wipe
ok one sec
Me: i was completely joking
Anon: no, it will enhance the experience
Me: you do know i'm going to blog this
Anon: this needs to be shared with the public
0530 airport drop-off. cover for first-line supervisor at work. again. gym for an hour. turn down unreasonable and egregious request from mgmt. pen a kick a** analytic report. nurture myself on the good word. 7.45-mile run. watch unbelievable rainstorm in absolute awe. prevent flooding from invading apartment.
all on three hours of sleep.
We return to one of my favorite topics, and one of your most hated.
**A lot of work places have "Hawaiian t-shirt Fridays" and "casual Fridays." Both are lame and boring -- not to mention overdone. So I instituted Butt Rock Fridays. Fundamentally, this consists of me listening to some BR on my iPod during the morning hours at work and then wearing a BR t-shirt with my jeans.
**AM affectionately labeled me her "butt rock king," as she and MM were my road trip compatriots that partook in a powerhouse butt rock compilation CD I made. It was a 17-track assault on (and affront to) Mozart, Beethoven, and all things artistically beautiful; an auditory massacre. And yet it was somehow quite sing-alongable.
Hadn't thought about it since then, as it was a joke.People at my work are generous. They'll often bring in a box of donuts or bagels, set them in the kitchen, and send an email that says "Donuts/bagels in the kitchen for the taking." I appreciate this.
One of these "offer" emails disturbed me a bit today, though:
"Other half of my bagel is in the kitchen if someone wants it"
Who wants half of a SOLITARY bagel that someone else has claimed as theirs? I was tempted to take the (half) bagel to the person's cubicle and throw it in their face -- and then issue a Jason Bourne-esque threat. Like he does at the end of Identity when he's threatening Conklin:"I swear...if I [see you offer another half-used piece of food], there is no measure to how fast and how hard I will bring this fight to your doorstep."**
I couldn't agree more. I think Half-Bagel-Leaver possesses the same mentality that the makers of The Fast and the Furious movies have toward their targeted customer-set: "We know that the masses are fat, lazy and dumb, and will consume anything we throw at them, no matter how repulsive it is."-"My fresh toe nail clippings in the kitchen if someone wants them."Perhaps I'm overreacting a bit. I didn't get much sleep.
-"3-month old block of unrefrigerated cheese in the kitchen."
-"Free xerox'ed copies of my bare a** in the kitchen. Feel free to grab one."
-"Half-used bar of soap in the kitchen if someone wants it."
-"About half a can of Arizona Iced Tea left in the kitchen."
-"2-year old, used toothbrush in the kitchen. First come, first served."
-"Half-gnawed piece of beef jerky in the kitchen. Have at it, anyone!"
In an irony of ironies, I returned to a normal 40 hr/week work schedule last week, and somehow manage to get less sleep than when I was doing crazy shiftwork. The only guess I've got is that, to my body, my abnormal schedule became normal, and vice versa. All I know is is that my body is more confused than I was the first time I got a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book and tried to read it cover-to-cover. It has no idea what the hell is going on.
And so I continue to wake up at 4am. The only winner in this scenario is my relieved bladder.
Seriously, though, what happened? I used to be amazing at sleep. Ask anybody who knew me in high school or my early college days. In high school, my finest sleeping moment was a Rip Van Winklean-feat of sleep where I slept for 17 hours straight. All that was missing was the amazing beard. Now sleep avoids me like that large penguin avoids Adam Sandler in Billy Madison.
Remember in one of the crappy Superman sequels (I'm actually proud that I can't remember which one) when Superman loses all of his superpowers and gets the crap kicked out of him at that diner?** That's what I feel like.
Oh well. Nothing some Tylenol PM can't fix. Hopefully.
**Readers, please refrain from any and all Christopher Reeves jokes.
I like to think I'm a man of commitment and integrity. When I say I'm going to do something, I make an effort to follow through and do it.
I was recently put to the test.
In order to alleviate boredom when things get slow on a weekend shift at work, we change the channel on a couple of the TVs in the office to watch football, movies, etc. A week ago, during a particularly slow Sunday shift, my shiftmates decided to watch Titanic on TNT. I suppose this isn't anything extraordinary, considering the movie grossed more than the GDP of most African countries.
However, I promised myself long ago that I would never watch this movie, because I loathe it like Seinfeld loathes Newman. It's weaselly. It thinks more highly of itself than it should. And it keeps showing up at my door, wanting attention that I don't want to give it.
You know the opening 30-minutes of Saving Private Ryan? And how you as the viewer are completely drawn in, your eyes glued to the screen because you are entirely engulfed by the brutal reality of it all? Titanic is the antithesis of Saving Private Ryan for me. I'm repulsed by it. Somewhere between Kate Winslett getting naked and a love story crammed with more cliches than a "Grey's Anatomy" script, I developed a less-than-zero desire to see this movie.
And so when faced with the choice of watching Titanic or 4+ hours of boredom (the commercials for movies on TV are ridiculous), I chose boredom. At least I kept my integrity.
But seriously, that ship took forever to go down. I kept looking up at the TV, hoping the movie would be over. It kept dragging on.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to wipe up the venom I just drooled all over my keyboard.
Title: "Do I Really Look Like That?"
Location: Provo, UT
Year: Aug 2006
I know, posting a picture of myself is only encouraging my Napoleanic megalomania, but at the insistence of Jason Tanner, it's time for clarification on this picture of myself that anybody who gets the BYU alumni magazine might have already seen.
(for Jason Tanner's take on it, click here).
My campus job at BYU was working for BYU Independent Study (IS). IS usually has an annual photoshoot for their advertisements. Normal enough, right?
But here's the deal when you go to BYU: If you're not white, you are esteemed as a symbol of the University's diversity, something the school covets more than a lot of things. Enter my Japanese half. The Director of IS approached me one day at work before the photoshoot, and very delicately and gingerly asked me: "I, uh...don't mean to be offensive or insensitive...but Independent Study is having its photoshoot...and uh...we are looking for some...uh...cultural diversity--"
"Sure, I'll do it." The motivations were simple: I would get two movie passes and a gift certificate to Red Robin. For a poor college kid, that's a paid-for date right there. All I had to do was sign a waiver form granting permission to use my image any way they want. In retrospect, I should have asked for a royalty check each time they used my picture.
Regardless, my "diversity" got me the gig.
Think that's an oversimplification on my part? Perhaps.
But you didn't see the marketing people freaking out on the morning of the photoshoot when the black girl that was scheduled to model hadn't shown up yet. The closest comparison I have is what the White House must have been like the day the Kennedy administration discovered the Soviets were putting nukes in Cuba. People running everywhere and yelling. Pure, unbridled chaos.
Another comparison would be the scene in Ocean's 11 after they throw the Pinch and the casino breaks out into complete bedlam (that waitress getting clothes-lined is still priceless). Whichever comparison works for you. I'm sticking with the Missile Crisis.
Endnote: To be honest, I think they doctored my Asianness here. If you go into Photoshop, click on the Edit > Ethnic Doctoring, there should be options that say "Exclude Whiteness" and "Enhance Minority-ness." They might have used both here.
I'm a movie guy. Love them. But I've experienced so many colossal disappointments when it comes to sequels, usually due to my own elevated expectations being combined with horrible screenwriting (some notable disappointments: The Land Before Time II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, the aforementioned X-Men 3, etc), that I knew in order to survive my heightened anxiety leading up to the premier of The Dark Knight, I needed to seriously manage expectations. It was the only way I was going to walk out of the movie and not slit my guts open in order to preserve what little honor I would have left.
So like I said before, in order to avoid disappointment, I needed to manage expectations. How did I do in the leadup? Well, judge for yourself...
The good news is that The Dark Knight was amazing, I am going to see it in IMAX soon, and my life has returned to normal.
Location: Northern Virginia
Year: 2008
Short story from work.
So we got new napkin dispensers at our work cafeteria, like the one pictured above. Standing ones. Fancy, right? The first day they were there, I noticed they had signs on them that read: "These will help save 25-40% on waste." Seemed like an arbirtary and unmeasurable number to me, but they are keeping the tree-huggers happy. I'm okay with that. (So long as they reciprocate with a similar gesture. Like showering and other basic hygiene -- honestly, you can even use the expensive, non-animal tested shampoo!)
As I'm reading the sign, a lumbering, middle-aged man in front of me proceeds to take no less than 10 napkins out of the dispenser, one after another, after another...after another.
What could he possibly have been eating that day that required a quantity of napkins with the total square footage of a large beach towel? Or did he just say to himself, "No one tells me when to / when not to conserve on waste. Conservation my a**!" and make his point by taking more than he normally would have? It seemed almost Johnny Vranes-esque¹ to me.
So much for conserving on waste.
1 - Johnny was an old roommate from college who had an inexplicable and innate drive to do the opposite of what you said he could or could not do. Just seemingly out of spite. It was uncanny. On more than one occasion, I weighed the consequences of saying to him: "I bet you couldn't streak across I-15 naked at nighttime," but my conscience always got to me. I think the only reason he hasn't been mentioned in previous posts is because I was afraid of offending him if he reads the blog. Don't ask me why I decided to start now.²
2 - Apologies, Johnny. You know I love you.
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