Accomplishments
~ Showered, Shaved, Cologned, Dressed, Fed (Trader's Joes Apple-Cinnamon Cereal, non-fat milk, 45g protein shake)
~ Meditated on "remaining centered, remaining light, remaining hey folks thanks for having us here tonight at the Tacoma Sheraton where I'll be a pork tenderloin and that wine last night was so freakin' good I hope I have the bottle or the cork because holy shift supervisor at Alfy's Pizza when I was 16 was a total cock-a-doodle dog doo or doo not, that's not funny, there's no joke there, as long as I can get to work before 10 I should be able to get some decent parking lot attendants can kiss my honeybaked and look me in the I remain calm, remain as one with the moment, remain as a breath in, a breath out, remain as love, be as love, beastie beastie boys, aaaw yeeeeeah... did I eat yet?"
~ Deny that I have A.D.D.
~ Drive to work. Road Rage 743 - Me 2
~ Review action plan from yesterday. Ooops, I missed something. #3-A: Give two sh*ts.
~ IM with Shoogs-B
~ Question again whether or not I'd be a good father after almost choking on water.
~ Talk with M on the mo-bile 'bout nothin' I can put on here.
~ Review set-list for tonight (friggin' GOLDEN)
~ IM with Kilo G.
~ Almost miss a team call where we dialed-in and used the password "SUCKAGE." Review how to use webtool to track all time used on projects and other items of daily work. It's micromanagement minutiae.
~ Update webtool with "Blogging, bite me" project. It has no budget, yet I feel that since they won't lay me off, I'll just throw extra slack into the day. Call it a "rolling Layoff."
~ Read some of THE MOST REAL BLOG EVER, www.DOOCE.com
~ Despise Stumpy Von Whistlechunk for being stumpy and whistling and coughing and sniffing like an 88 Escort.
I think that's all of the parts left, anywhere.
~ Went to Quizno's... stop the singing!... for a sub. Honey Bourbon Chicken, it's gone now. Big sandy, it was the size of my head. And that's big.
~ List my goals. One of them is This. Another is This.
~ Forget the funniest thing I was gonna put on here, making it almost totally moot. How can I forget some of the things I want to dark chocolate is better than milk, any day. Frigging Valrhona will kick you in the nuggets. I could totally go for some 45 miles to Tacoma, 40 miles an hour avg., I should get there by Tuesday.
~ Realize that I'm not as big a player in the comedy scene as I thought I was. Take solace in that fact. Lightly brush hand past the grocery bundle.
~ Drink 53oz of water already today. Feelin' moist.
~ Fart. Sorry Aspenwood Conference Room... sorry it wasn't occupied when I did it.
~ Stop blogging.

G




Take Me Home

Right About Now, The Funk Soul Bruva
I have a gig tonight for a Lexus dealership that I'm sure I'm being paid WAY under the MSRP for. I didn't book it, I agreed to do the show. But it's pocket-style change and I get to slyly make fun of Car Sales-holes for 30 minutes. Mostly I'll be making fun of myself and my place in the world, but I'll let them know they're still just a notch or two above lawyers. Besides, Lexus paid however much for two guys they've never heard of to tell them jokes they won't remember at a moderately nice hotel. Lexus needs a Knute Rockne, not a c*ck joke.

My work laptop has been booting up for just under 23 minutes now. "The fastest wireless data network, ever." My cellphone could log in to the system faster than my Dell WheelChockXR9. Say it with me... "PILE OF SHIIIIIIaaaving cream." Dude, where's my job? India? Dhangh.

Epiphany this morning. Not going to divulge the what & such of it, but I feel like a weight was simultaneously ("at the same time," for the King Of Queens fans) taken from my shoulders and then wrapped 'round me heart. I think it's this feeling that pressed-forth the saying "Ignorance is Bliss." It was either this feeling or somebody who caught their grandma comin' out the pond after a skinny dippin'.
Oh lord, did anybody else just throw up a little?

Most Americans Oppose Gay Marriage. They're all for Gay Marriage, but not if they're gonna do all that gay stuff, like gay off with gays and totally gay up their gay parties. While America has a veritable Krystle vs. Alexis Carrington over whether or not people of the same sex should be allowed to have the same rights as a serial inseminator with a penchant for bathtub crank and fishin' shows, there's a cave full of Yankee Haters in the Middle Earth planning their next move. Let's get the Department for HomoLand Security on this right away. Do we have a surplus of love we're trying to trim down lately? I judge people on what they do. They're here, they're queer, I'm used to it, and now it's their turn to buy a round, and NOBODY leaves the bar before buying a round.
If you're that deeply affected by somebody you don't know doing something you never see in place you've never heard of, you're either psychic, psychotic, or a Falwell. Hey, let's have a sit-down and we can talk a bit. Give me directions to your glass house, I'll bring tea and some Windex and my friend Maurice to redecorate.

Can't Buy Me Love. Underappreciated? Come on... Ronald McDonald Miller's "African Anteater Ritual" is classic, no? "Aaaw, he must be in Special Ed." The best slow-clap of all time after Kenneth and Ron... I'm done, you can't follow this, I'm done with you.
What about Kenneth crying in the arcade after throwing Ronald into the Galaga machine because Ronald "sh*t on (his) house, man. You sh*t on my house."

So far, so what.
Geoff Lott... yeah, do something.


Take Me Home

A guy asked me why I was taking the stairs this morning. I couldn’t tell him the truth, which was, even though he had an elevator waiting, I really couldn’t stand to talk to him for 30 seconds as my first human interaction of the day.
Idiot: “Yeah, so the contingency for the roll-out is in effect and now everybody’s depressed. How’s your morning?”
G-off: ”I should have been in Olympia last night, and now I’m hoping to just make it through the morning without a felony arrest or hallucinogenics. Nice sweater, is that HyperColor?”
I fibbed a little and told him I always take the stairs. I didn’t tell him it helps with a hangover.

“Personality” Out The Wazzu

Last night I was chatting away with M, who is the cat’s jammies, and we started talking about personality. I mentioned that I had once met somebody who didn’t have any personality, just kind of a Being and not really an Entity. I don’t work well with those kind of people. I’m far too extroverted to have a speedbump of a human being sitting there in my road to Funberg. So as we’re chatting away M, who is all killer and no filler, mentioned “well, personality can mean a lot of things.” True dat.
Personality I suppose can be negative, not just a person’s ebullient jocularity. A Personality is a ToyChest of Moods and Moments, and together they create either one Personality, or if you’re really smart, you channel another personality, call it “CrinkleFry, the 4,000 Year Old Mystic Weasel,” and bilk $5,000 weekends out of saps looking for a Higher Calling. Your Person-ality is the Outward expression of your experiences in life. Some people have a bright Personality, and some people are just, well, hungover today.
Moods are like the weather. It’s different with anyone, and some people become less like Weather and more like Climates when they’re together. Sun can be happy as much as it can be overbearing. Rain can be drowning as much as it can be helpful to growth. Some rain, some sun, and things grow. Rain, rain, rain, and your prize pumpkin ain’t gonna grow and all your best shirts get mildew and then the umbrellas come out. Too much sun and you scorch things and cause tumors, and then we wear sunscreen and can’t stand to be in it for too long.
The key is to be balanced. Not too much Rain, not too much Sun, not too much Wind, not too much Cold. If you can temper your Rain with some warmth, it’s a little more tolerable. If you can shine some Sun and have a few clouds, people won’t get burned out. If you can throw a little Sunbreak into your Cold days, people take notice and make sure they give your Carpenter’s CDs back sooner. Just ask anybody who lives in Seattle. Basically you can’t predict anybody’s Personality, no matter how many radars and experts you have trained on them.
As I write this, there’s a heavy rain being blown into the windows of this building. I know M, who isn’t taking any of your shine-ola Buster, is in the middle of this deluge, and that has a dampening effect my mood.
The preceding message was brought to you by AntiDepressants: AntiDepressants don’t kill people, untreated psychiatric disorders and God-Complex Doctors, among other things, kill people.


Take Me Home

Tuesday and No Changes! What the pup?
That puppy report I was doing yester-puppy-day is still puppy running! It was corrupt yesterday due to, oh gosh, a puppy drive that didn't want to puppy up the puppy data I needed. This is like having a fight with your neighbor that never stops. I'd say "a fight with a psychotic ex-girlfriend," but my database doesn't call me to pick it up from some dude's house because he ran out of Tequila and she feels like drinking more!
However, much like a psychotic ex of mine, this puppy database IS stealing moments of my life that would be better spent elsewhere. If I could choose 5 minutes with that crazy puppy spore or a walk across hot coals with my besties in a C-clamp... grab the matches and tighten that screw down pronto.

The puppy whistling puppy-sock is back, so I'm going to lunch. Everyone with a puppy door in this corridor just closed-up due to his puppy whistling. What a pile of puppy split.

Not one dirty word, and all the rage is out!
G

Fakin' It 'Til I'm Makin' It

Here's what I do at my job, to stay sane.
1) If it's the day after a drawing, I check my Lotto numbers at work. I wait until I'm at work so that I can have a dramatic exit that includes the words "leverage," "market share," and "my honeybaked ham in your face." Why hang out for references? I'M RICH!
2) I walk around with my earbud from my cell-phone plopped in my earhole, and my phone in my hand. If someone I no wanna talky to comes by, I nod and silenty say "Hey," then wave the phone as if to say "my pending ear tumor beats your ideas of upgrading the Sonics by a long shot. You suck."
3) Fake keyboard: I want one so I can hammer away, quickly, and make people think I'm throwing work around like beads at Mardi Gras. Most of my work goes to boobs, anyway. Yes, I see the loopholes in using a fake keyboard. Send me your comments in the form of cash.
4) Conference Room Ninja attacks. Lots of meetings going on. When one wraps up and another one is happening soon after, I'll sneak in and write something on a whiteboard to mess with folks. Just make a fake list, if you like. My recent favorite is as follows
1: Budget & Restrictions: Cut training, cut promotions, downgrade bonuses, decrease benefits
2: Headcount Reductions & De-Hirings: Most of NW Corner of building gone in 25 days
3: Office Supply Purchase Moratorium: Must supply own Pens and Chairs
4: Executive Trip: Hawaii or Mexico?, Discuss menus, entertainment, duration of stay (5 or 7 days?)

Paranoia works two ways, no?

What I Do For My Job:
Do not read this entry while operating heavy machinery.
I run reports that reflect the amount of time it took for an IT-related issue to get resolved. The time-to-resolution is tracked in an application called Remedy, which is pretty close to an old "buttons and sh-shing!" cash-register. The time starts when a new record is created by an employee. Each record has an assigned "Severity Level," depending upon how big the problem is. A big issue would be, for example, when a heavily-used file, e-mail, or web-server decides to do something other than work properly, and there are about 300 different reasons for that to happen, to be modest. A small issue is accidentally deleting an e-mail and needing to have it recovered. That usually means a call from "beeg weeg" who needs "to have the e-mail team back the server up to the time the e-mail existed and re-fresh my mailbox, because I need that (insert recipe or directions to some lawn party at a fat white dude's house) ASAP," usually pronounced "ay-sap" because the caller's self-importance far outweighs their courtesies or coolness or knowledge of retrieving deleted e-mails. [Click on Deleted Items>>Tools Menu>>Recover Deleted Items>>Choose proper message to retrieve>>Understand that we all get laughed at for this kind of thing]
So when the work is done and the record rolls off "live" status to "closed" status, it is available to my database for retrieval. I enter a date range to grab all data for a month (it's cumulative, a Latin word for "morbidly useless data"), and it takes about 90 minutes for the database to pool the data, and that’s only if the database runs all the way through. Sometimes it runs for 2 hours then vomits an error message, but I don't know it vomits because the screen goes blank after 20 minutes and I'm not always at my desk, as you read above.
Next I run an Excel spreadsheet that formats the data, which is then accessed by another report in Access (it goes from Access to Excel, back to Access… um…), and then kicked back to Excel… wake up… to be formatted into the weekly or monthly reports. Then I send those reports out to peeps hosting LawnParties this weekend, and they don't tell me how they liked it, and I don't get invited to any parties.
If anyone needs me I'll be drying my tears with Dilbert "bathroom tissue."

Help Me Help Myself to Office Supplies,
Geoffers

WARNING: SARCASM, SATIRE, SARDONIC TEXT TO FOLLOW.
LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT HUMOR CAST THE FIRST GROAN

"The Passion Of The Christ" Was Not "Merchandise Tie-in and 4% of Gross"

Mel Gibson's 'independent' film "The Passion Of The Christ" has soared past the $300-million mark. Made for $30Million, which in Hollywood can be found in the "Scientology Dues, March '04" envelope, the film has surpassed the critics expectations of a film starring Jim Caveizel. I was pretty astounded myself. I will not dive into the debate of "Religion And How It's Ruined By The Religious," or some such.
Religion is big business, always. Whether a person is Against The Use Of Religion As a Means Of Furthering a Secular Cause, or For The Use Of Religion As a Means of Life-long Guilt And Repression, the spiritual quests that humans find themselves in can be pilfered and plundered for profit, if you play your Tarot right. Now that we see a movie that is graphic in its depiction of the death of Jesus, how far behind are films for other Religions? I figure a lot of folks owe the positive changes in their lives to the teachings of Christ, Buddha, and Dr. Atkins, among others.
Now here's this movie about the final hours of Jesus' life, prior to and including the Crucifixion. That's not to be confused with the CruciFiction, likely the name of a grind-core metal band, nor with the title of countless poems soy-inked to Textiles 103-made paper by Liberal Arts majors who discovered the joys of Rice Protein and decorative clay beads. Father forgive them; they know not what they do with patchouli.
I have not seen the film, but I've heard a number of comments on it. When people throw around words like "Heartbreaking," "Powerful," and "Evocative," they are really trying to sound less-shallow than they are. I've heard some of these folks describe my Cappuccino Brownies and "2Fast 2Furious 4SmartPeople" in the same manner, so…
If you want to know where I fit in, because, after all, it's MY name on the bill for all of these webpages, I am a Spiritual person. Spirituality and Religion are not necessarily walking Hand-in-Hand, but they can see each other across the stream of Life. I'm connected with the Higher Power, I know that a piece of it is in all of us and that drives us forward to greater things if we acknowledge and nurture it, and I try to do the best I can to treat others with as much respect and dignity as I would want. I'm happy I got over my Masochist phase! So why aren't I more Religious? The biggest turn in my head comes when I realize that Religion is a lot like Spirituality, but with more homework and meetings. I guess I'm an independent-study kind of guy. Good? Bad? You decide. It's not my place to judge. (Those shoes don't go with the ensemble, btw)

This is all another case in the study of Perspective. To some, the most important person around is the Espresso Machine Repairman. If this were my job I'd organize a union and see that we got paid a percentage of every cup of kawfi that was sold after our repairs were done. I wish I could use this power for my own Good.

One Last Thingy
I swear I have no idea what to do about comedy right now. Stand-up comedy is taking a spanking in Seattle, and I don't know why. People WANT to laugh, but I think we're looking for more Realism and Direct Honesty right now. Too much realism and people have to read between the lines and feel belittled. Not enough realism and people know it's a sham. Or do they? I guess it's a fine line between comedy and commentary, but Comedy MUST be Funny. Funny is Subjective, therefore Comedy is Subjective, and therefore it will never be totally figured out. My passion for creative expression through Comedy has taken a seat in a dark corner of a smoke-free environment, and may very well be on its way through bottle of Merlot #4 unless I either:
1) Close its tab
2) Sit and drink and converse with it, slurred as it may be
3) Let it drink the pain away, and wrangle it early tomorrow when its head hurts and it wants to sleep in. I think it needs a jog around the park and a soy-protein shake. If I get my Passion back into fighting trim, I believe I can pay for the sins of numerous comics who have defiled stages before me.
There, but for the grace of Laughter, go I.

And I saw that it was good,
Geoffers