77th storyblogging carnival

it was put up monday by Mr. Crankshaw.

Goe, linking to it.

8th day

my 8th day of jogging and I went four miles this morning. will do that all week then try for six next week.

Goe, feelin' a might bit peckish.

whee

so I took up jogging this sunday, and the last three days I was able to go two miles, going to see if I can up that to four this coming week.

Goe, weirded out at the moment.

Trick of the light

The place I go running at has a park bench every quarter mile or so. Today I was running past one and it looked like it was made of a translucent orange plastic. It was a green bench, sitting in front of green bushes, and had been poorly repainted orange. Made me go wtf? for a second.

Goe, tired of not working.

Squirrels

To make up for the exercise I'm not getting at job#1 these days, I've taken up jogging. There's a park with a trail through it within walking distance from where I live, and while there yesterday there was an incident of squirrelly interest. There are signs indicating quite plainly that the squirrels are not to be fed by park-goers, but this obviously happens anyways because the squirrels like to come out of their trees and follow a few feet behind people utilizing the trail. Yesterday, the day mentioned prior, three squirrels began to follow me as I was going along the trail. I looked back at them and saw the closest one turn and chase the other two off before resuming it's vain pursuit of goodies I didn't have and wouldn't have shared with a rodent in any event.

Goe, knows that even though everybody wants something from him, it's only sometimes funny.

HSX

My account on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a hollywood-centered investment game, is now worth over $340 million of the fake investment money. It's probably been close to a year since I've even looked at it, it's almost all based on solid investments I made several years before that.

Goe, amazed himself.

Perils of Peeping

He stared at the form. It was the same form he'd been filling out for 5 months, with only a few label changes from the previous form, which itself predated his 7 years of employment in this office. He knew this form intimately. He even dreamt about this form. His entire life seemed to be wrapped up neatly in the inviting yet limited rectangles, the attention-getting but forbidden hash marks of the 'for office use only' portion, and the large margins that made it appear independent, self-contained.

He kept staring at the form, with only a general idea of what was supposed to go into the next box. He glanced briefly at the stack of papers near the corner of his desk which gave him all the relevant information. He glanced briefly back at the half-completed form. He chose to look past the rectangles, the hash marks, and the margins, and pushed his chair over to the window instead.

There was another margin outside. The sidewalk, many floors below, teemed with life. He knew that the maintenance closets were the hash marks of his life, and his office was his rectangle, which he filled nicely in spite of recent revisions. He watched the people mill around at street level, watched the cars and busses make their way through downtown traffic, watched a falcon perch on a flagpole protruding from another building. He started to look for her.

She normally worked in the office across the street from his. He didn't know if she was young or old, pretty or homely, smart, or funny. He could only see general size, build, and colors through the semi-reflections of her windows. Yesterday she had worn a red blouse with black pants, today it was a white blouse with a tan skirt. He didn't remember seeing that particular skirt before, but for him she was just an idle distraction, so he returned to his form.

After finishing several more forms, he felt like taking a break. He looked for her, but she was not in sight. He sluggishly rose from his chair, and wandered to the break room, stopping to chat with a few friends on the way. In the break room, he purchased a cup of coffee from a machine that made bad gourmet coffee and a box of small donuts from a machine that usually sold nothing but candy. He sat down at one of the tables, and looked out the window.

From here, he could see into what appeared to be a conference room. There were five people in the room, and she was one of them. They appeared to be moving the chairs towards the door. Suddenly, all five backed away from the door, scrambling over the table in the middle of the room. He stood up and walked over to the window to get a closer look.

There was, in the room across the street, a pile of chairs in front of the door. He could see the pile shaking, and the people appeared to be going hysterical. After a few seconds, light began to come through the door, as if holes were being knocked in it. As he stood and watched, the door disintegrated, and what appeared to be giant chickens began ripping the chairs apart. They only sort of looked like giant chickens. They appeared to be the size of a man in a reddish brown chicken suit, and they appeared to be hopping like he'd seen pigeons do in the local parks and plazas.

He continued to watch as the chickens circled the large table, as more flowed into the room behind them. He started to count them briefly, but stopped when their incessant jumping made that task impossible. Two of the five people had gotten back on the table, surrounded by the chickens. The other three appeared to be in a pile on the ground, being pecked at.

One of the chickens at the pile stopped pecking and leaped onto the table. The two people on the table, startled either by it's movement or the human foot sticking from it's mouth, ran for the door. He couldn't see what happened to them clearly, but he was pretty sure they didn't make it.

"Am I interrupting something?"

He turned around. One of the new guys from marketing had come into the room, and was standing in the doorway, holding the door open. "Excuse me?" he asked, knowing what had already been said but stalling for a few moments to refocus his attention. He could see the marketing guy start to speak again, but all he could hear was the clucking noise coming from down the hallway.

Goe, needs to thank somebody.

assmunchers

not very many people stumble this way, but 'assmuncher' is the leading draw for people who come via search engine.

Goe, will fight evil for food.

bah

scratch that last bit about probably going back, i'd definitely go back if they apologized and told me to get to work.

Goe, has a work-ethic stronger than his ability to handle work-related stress.

Gone

quit job#1, now just have a job#2. not good. they treated me like crap but i liked the work and feel like there's some huge gaping hole in my life now even though it's only my second day not there. it's like hard work is a drug and i'm going through withdrawals. i'm not at all sure i did the right thing and if they asked nicely, i'd probably go right back.

Goe, still miffed that people feel obliged to harsh on his mellow.

quitting

i've never quit a job before. going to give notice at job#1 this evening. i'm tired of being one of only two team players in a group of eleven when the others, including management, root for me to fail and try to sabotage what i'm doing so that i will fail.

Goe, feeling kind of queasy about it.

transfers

going to ask for a transfer at job#1 tonight, got laughed at for working hard by full time employees who then started bragging about how little work they actually do. tired of busting my ass so they can get paid more, so gonna try to work in a different area with hopefully more attentive management. hopefully this will go better than my attempt to transfer in job#2 (which failed miserably but did net me a fancier job title.)

Goe, an unhappy non-camper.

A couple of things

Firstly, there are pigeons at one of the bus stops that I frequent, lots and lots of them. They wander around like tiny turkeys or chickens. There are also small brown birds there, but they don't move like chickens but rather like the rats or mice their coloration more closely resembles.

Secondly, I hate people and wish you all a most painful death.

Goe, unwell.

addendum

nuking any city paris hilton happens to be in is also fine with me.

Goe, has a pro-nuke policy.

Nuking Paris

Paris was on the 'to nuke' list several times for assorted reasons. That list having met it's demise with the collapse of the nest, I've not bothered to try resurrecting it. It occurred to me, though, that every spy film I've seen that were made recently held to 'the enemy within' theme. The only exceptions are some of the Bond films, but even the last few of them hinged on having 'good guys' turn out to be working for someone else or pushing some evil agenda. Barring WW2 spy films and the earlier bond films, I can't think of any spy-thriller where the good guys actually all were. (the jack ryan stories came to mind just as I wrote that, so it's not all, but even the ww2 set film 'enigma' had a traitor or two). What does this have to do with nuking Paris? It was the damned frogs who came up with using cynicism as a form of societal suicide.

Goe, not writing as much as he would like to.