7 posts from September 2007

When I was waiting at the Dr's office the other day, somebody left a booklet on my windshield published by some Evangelical group in SoCal that's titled "A Kindly Word about the differences between Mormonism and True Christianity." It's a thinly veiled (they keep stressing how much non-judgemental love they have for their misguided Mormon brethren) take-down of the LDS and Book of Mormon. The really crazy part is that like with all conservative Christian literature, the "Biblical Scholars" they always cite are people who were publishing around the era of the Scopes Trial. I was curious enough to skim all the way through and the tone gets more strident as it goes on, only making the statement of how true believers should not be "snared by the Devil's trap of creating a faith that mimics Christianity" at the very end of it.

I had no idea though that there was some kind of turf war going on for new souls. It makes sense because salesmanship is one of the tenets both of Mormonism and non-mainline Evangelical Christianity. But now I'm wondering if this signals some kind of larger change in the culture at large? Or is it just that Mitt Romney has the conservative Christian wing of the GOP freaked out enough that they're trying to convince their own not to vote for him?

I probably have an even crazier situation than somebody who has a cushy Silicon Valley job because it's not just software, but software and hardware for slot machines. Plus there's all sorts of themes and celebrity tie-ins that I can't really talk about, but it's definitely entertaining.

I've been trying to keep a list of things that are nice about this job in order to practice a little daily gratitude for the windfall of perks and benefits. Among other things:

1) The cafeteria with a full-time sous chef that offers discounted breakfast and lunch meals. This morning I had pumpkin spice pancakes for breakfast. Yes I know you're supposed to bring your own every day in order to save money in the long run. But it was $4 and I doubt anything I could have made for breakfast would've come close to how yummy it was.

2) Free fitness center and weekly yoga classes. Plus we got an all employees message this morning that the company will be sponsoring free tango and salsa classes after work as a fitness initiative and also to help us all prepare for the annual Christmas party.

3) Cash sharing day coming up in November, which generally means there'll also be a party to mark the occasion. Other than the birthday lunches at the State Railroad Museum (which the head curator paid for out of his own pocket), I've never had an employer do anything like this.

4) I'm getting trained on how to write documentation for the old school mechanical spinning reel slot machines. Today's training session was playing 3 reel games from Japan that are like old Pachinko Palace games. One game has two sets of strips on each reels, that switch back and forth between a base game and a bonus game. How do you know when you're in a bonus game? The concentric reels will shift to show three (very curvy) butts at the bottom of the reels. It's supposedly meant to designate that the bonus symbols are being farted out of the game?

I'm not sure if the just announced No Reservations holiday special is going to be really awesome or really lame. Although even in a horrible QVC Christmas sweater, Josh Homme is still one fine looking dude:

In an attempt to score a lot of viewers, television holiday specials always seem to have the oddest premises — such as the infamous David Bowie/Bing Crosby pairing and the beyond weird Star Wars Christmas special. Well, this Christmas, we can add another "weird-but-amazing" special to the list: the No Reservations Holiday Special. The Queens of the Stone Age have just performed "Silver Turkey Bells" for Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation special. While Bourdain was cooking up a full traditional meal in his Connecticut home, the Queens were down in his basement rocking out in the finest holiday sweaters. They then joined him for some holiday fun. They won't say exactly what will happen — we have to watch for that — but they have hinted to karaoke, surly adolescents, Japanese businessmen and violence. Or as Bourdain said: “It’s a traditional Thanksgiving/Christmas meal with turkey, all the trimmings, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie … some Christmas carols … and a vicious brother-on-brother knife fight.”

I haven't been too talkative of late because of the learning curve at the new job (which is going well & the people couldn't be nicer) and the Summer heat. Having no a/c will kind of take the energy out of you. But now it's Fall and it's cooling down. I'd like to say that I've been more introspective of late, but the truth is that I've actually been more social. Which is great, except that having moved to a new place and paying off all my Brazil trip related expenses has put me on a draft beer and weenies budget. At least until I can build up my savings again. The diminished savings thing is a bit of a stress inducer, but I'm sure I'll get it back up to speed over the comings months. Besides, it's not like I have any major plans to travel anywhere as long as I don't have any serious leave time accrued at work.

However speaking of travel, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Somebody I used to work with always says that she asks herself the basic question of what makes her happy. In her case, she wanted to find a way to work more hiking and being outdoors into her life. For me, the simple answer would be that travel and getting to meet people in new places and seeing how they live their lives there - that's what makes me happy. For a long time, I thought that I could be satisfied with travel and being overseas as a leisure activity - something that I did for me on my own time. However after the time that I spent in South America this spring, I'm realizing more and more that it's not enough. I'm not going to be truly happy with 3 weeks whenever I have the vacation time or a free airline ticket. It's going to have to be a bigger and deeper part of my life. Even the thought of saving my money to do a R-T-W isn't enough. I'm going to have to figure out something that will likely change how I live my life and how I support myself over the coming years.

Even though I actually got profiled in Quirkyalone, I'm not much of a fan of the whole quirky aesthetic that I supposedly fall under. Or maybe I've just outgrown it. This month's issue of the Atlantic has a pretty pointed article about the failings of quirk. Personally, I wonder if I've just outgrown it or is it just that cornerstones of quirk like TAL have become codified to the point of being predictable (I just find it really boring if I listen to it these days), hence no longer unique or quirky. Or maybe age/travel has kind of widened my perspectives beyond the world of quirk:

Quirk, loosed from its moorings, quickly becomes exhausting. It’s easy for David Cross’s character on Arrested Development to cover himself in paint for a Blue Man Group audition, or for the New Zealand duo on Flight of the Conchords to make a spectacularly cheesy sci-fi video about the future while wearing low-rent robot costumes. But the pleasures are passing. Like the proliferation of meta-humor that followed David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in the ’90s, quirk is everywhere because quirkiness is so easy to achieve: Just be odd … but endearing. It becomes a kind of psychographic marker, like wearing laceless Chuck Taylors or ironic facial hair—a self-satisfied pose that stands for nothing and doesn’t require you to take creative responsibility. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Anthony Bourdain's show about Beirut:

Kind of ironic they used promos for Ian Wright's show in between the credits. He's my least favorite Globe Trekker host because he's seems like the sort of self absorbed Western backpacker who's generally oblivious to the politics and history of a place. Or maybe I'm just grumpy because he was the host for their Cambodia show and it was at the 30 minute mark after discussing all the awesome beaches and sightseeing that he made a casually reference to the Killing Fields, the Khmer Rouge or the impact of Western Colonialism and US foreign policy on the region. Plus the shameless mugging? Just not funny.

Parodies of This American Life episodes.

They've definitely got it down pat with somebody mimicking Ira Glass's tone and cadence of speaking, the musical interludes that underscore the tone of the story and the interplay with the people featured in the story. The premise for each one isn't too clever, unless it's simply just to point out that the TAL "style" can sometimes mask the lack of real substance (or banality) of the stories discussed.
 -