13th Floor

Ah, beef stew. Once again, I'm not eating a pretzel. And once again, I'm not among the noon time exodus from DEC, because I prefer to enjoy my lunch from the safety of my work station, where no heavy objects will fall on me whilst I munch.

I noticed a curious thing this morning in the elevator. In fact, it's not really curious, it's standard practice, but I find it curious regardless. The button for the 13th floor was conspicuously absent. For some reason, buildings higher than 12 stories skip right over that 13th floor, from 12 to 14. I mean, the employees on the 14th floor all know deep down inside that they actually work on the 13th level, whether it's named thus or not, and appropriately dread the day when that floor collapses in a fit of irony. Addressing the matter of superstition, I would like to point out that last night I witnessed Mike Mueller, sporting number 13 on his jersey, seal up the final three outs of the Section 2 championship at Colonie Little League last night. If it were unlucky, he would have blown the game for them.

Unfortunately, as a counterpoint, I also saw Alex Rodriguez, also sporting the number 13 on his jersey, strike out in a totally clutch situation in the bottom of the ninth inning two days ago. That's because I was at Yankee Stadium, which is also why there have been no blog posts for the past two days. I did not enjoy lunch at 625 Broadway in order to maximize my work hours, since I left early and came in late on two days, respectively. The Yankees lost.

I was listening to the Black Parade earlier, the greatest musical recording yet made, and I thought that if I were ever to become fabulously wealthy, I would pick an album that I liked and personally make it go platinum on the day of release. That would cost me something like 11 million dollars, but it sure would be worth it. I could call up My Chemical Romance and say, "Hey guys, I saw to it that your album went platinum in under a day," at which point we would become best buds and they would give me tickets to every show for the rest of forever.

Speaking of music, I was also listening to Black Holes and Revelations (Muse, 2006), and this is my review of the album: the first six tracks are good (a couple of them very good), and then there are four weird tracks that kind of fill the void to make it a full-length album, and then there's KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA, which is pretty much boss as crap and arguably the best Muse song in existence. Guitar Hero 3 did no justice to that song. It's not a very guitar-heavy song; most of what makes it awesome is the other audio effects that, for the most part, drown out the guitar. Hence, I listen to the song more than I play it in Guitar Hero.

Going back to MCR, I thoroughly enjoy the counterintuitive (and counter-reality) opinions of people who say that IBYMBYBMYL is their best album. Sure, it's good, but it's not phenomenal. Like any band just starting out, it's rough around the edges and sometimes lacks musical finesse, or in other words it just doesn't sound quite right. Yet people hail this as "back when they were good." I don't know of any band that actually gets worse over time. Have they gotten worse at their instruments or vocals? No...that's not possible, because practice makes perfect, or at least better. Sure, that album was before they "sold out," or in common language started producing really good music with mass appeal, rather than just the cult followers. Honestly, who expects an artist to put effort forth to only reach a small audience? Art's goal is to deliver a personal message from the artist themself to the world, not just the dark little broom closet in the back. Going "mainstream" is not "selling out," it's actually a far more artistic end. Plus, each successive MCR album is roughly three million times better than the last one. I can't wait to hear the one they're working on now. Although I'll be sad when the Black Parade no longer seems as awesome as it once did.

Wow. That was a rant. These pretense-engorged fans of the past really crack me up. They're just so absurd. Anyway, there's some food for thought (ha ha) at lunch time. Lunch time is waning now, and I have a pair of express envelopes to defeat, in a hydraulic press and a vat of molten metal.

Woe, those who haven't seen the Terminator movies.

Pizza Day

Today is Pizza Day. By that I mean that I'm eating Pizza Hut pizza for lunch, leftover from last night. It's funny, as soon as I chose the URL for this blog, I basically ceased eating pretzels. Perhaps it's only seasonal. I may be eating pretzels again tomorrow, for all I know. It's not really up to me.

Aside from being Pizza Day, today is also Gruesome Mail Day. I received two brimming bins of mail to sort, stamp, and staple. I've stacked it into three piles: regular sized envelopes, large envelopes, and evil.

Evil is, of course, the pile for express envelopes. If I weren't entirely convinced that one day machines will rule the world (a la Terminator or the Matrix), I would place my bet on express envelopes for total domination. Those sinister pull tabs. Those glossy carboard exteriors. Pure evil, I tell you, that's what they are. They represent all the bad things in the world, including the odor of the water at Splashwater Kingdom.

I am one of a select few people who can claim to have ridden the Comet in a thunderstorm. It was without a doubt the greatest theme park experience of my life, greater than riding Dueling Dragons six times in a row, greater than riding the last Superman train of the night, greater even than winning Spider-Man from a crane game and taking him on Dr. Doom's Fear Ascension after fast-passing the ride without passes.

Ah, that's a good story. We had fast passes (they're not actually called that at Universal Studios, but it's the same same (as opposed to the same difference, which makes no sense)) for Jurassic Park, whilst several of our companions instead got passes for Dr. Doom's Fear Ascension. We got in the fast pass line anyway, for goodness knows what reason. In order to reach our companions in line, we would have had to budge several other guests. Upon attempting to do this, we were scolded by a park attendant and told to wait while the would-be budgees got on the ride ahead of us. However, this worked to our advantage, because when the attendant did let us on the ride, he failed to collect our non-existant passes, apparently just assuming that we had them.

Holy cow, there's a lot of mail here. Before it eats me, I'm going to start clearing it out. You're going down, express envelopes. I'm the mail equivalent of John Connor. Take that.

Goodness, I can't imagine what it must be like to have never seen the Terminator, and thus completely miss all these references.

Bonus Post: In the News

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/24/odd.names/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail
Also, Christian Bale beat up his family, supposedly.

Door Close

Alright, so I skipped lunch yesterday. I got to work late, and it was in my best interest to simply not take a lunch break. But I'm back today, in better health, and with a fine topic to write about.

If there's one thing I've picked up in all my time here, it's that the "door close" buttons in the elevators at 625 Broadway do absolutely nothing. That's not to say there is no door close function on the elevators; it just isn't operated by the button, which is strictly ornamental.

As far as I've gathered, it works something like this: You walk towards the elevators, and see one open. As you make your way towards it, the elevator picks up your brain waves, reads them, and determines that you are making to enter it. At that point, the door close system kicks in, and the doors seal dramatically just before you get there to stop them. It's a brilliantly designed, external elevator door closing system. You can stand inside the elevator and mash on the button until it shatters into a million pieces, and those doors will stubbornly remain open, until the end of time.

I have yet to try the door open button. I'm afraid it will release a deadly neurotoxin and abridge my life, and frankly it's not worth the risk.

Joy to the world! Friday is come! Let Earth receive her...well, you get the idea. I love Fridays now. I love them more than I ever used to. Like I've said before, I don't hate my job. However, the arrival of the weekend is wonderful because I get to take a break. I can sleep in, do what I want, and I don't even have to worry about homework. Even school never allowed me to look forward so to Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. If this is what Real Life is like, bring it on.

I refuse to do yardwork when I grow up. Either someone else will do it for me, or I'll just live in a concrete haven free of all flora. Take that, weeds and leaves. You will never plague my life. And no, I'm not grown up yet. Real grown-ups don't carry lightsabers in their backpacks. Except even when I am grown up, I probably still will. Better safe than sorry.

Long live Ramen.

Comments Welcome

I decided I'm not going to ask people for their opinions in real life. I'd much rather have comments adorning my posts. Anyway, I'd prefer to keep my blog life separate from my real life. Wait, did that sound ridiculous? Well, I'm not going to over-advertise or anything. It's not like a lot of people read to begin with.

Today I'm not eating pretzels, nor did I eat them yesterday. Instead, I ventured to the convenience store on the first floor of 625 Broadway to fetch myself some soup. I'm still being assaulted by a cold, even though I slept for 12 hours last night, and soup seems to magically alleviate the symptoms. I will shortly be enjoying (as soon as it cools off a bit) a cup of Ramen with little bitty shrimp. Yesterday I had this really good beef burger soup, with minute hamburgers floating amid vegetables and potatoes. At only a buck, the Ramen was about 67% cheaper.

Yes, I actually slept for 12 hours last night. I went to bed at 5:15, and woke up at 5:55 this morning. I'm still feeling a bit woozy. I imagine this is the after-effect of my John Connor immune system sending Kyle Reese's back in time to destroy viruses before they infect my cells, but I wouldn't know from personal experience. It's just cool to imagine it that way.

A funny thing happened in my dream last night. I went back to CBA to be a "super senior" (I personally think the term sounds dumb, but in the dream it was cool as heck). This random, little kid was cadet Colonel. I had no idea who he was, which of course I wouldn't, considering that I don't really know any of the upcoming seniors. I had three study halls a day and very few classes, which I guess is what one would expect when going for a Master's degree at CBA (which is what I was doing). Well, I wasn't actually going for a Master's, just the equivalent to a high school diploma. For whatever reason, I don't know.

I wouldn't mind being a philosopher. I could make a living out of thinking. Besides that, I could get my name in text books. People would have to read about me for classes. I could contribute to future students' boredom! I feel like I owe that to the next generation of scholars, having suffered through a sufficient amount of boredom, and still having at least two years of it to come. Granted, my boredom stems more from math than philosophy, but math is like regulation drill compared to the interpretive dance of philosophy. The funny thing is, philosophers seek to turn their interpretive dance into regulation drill, which rather boggles my mind. If you're going to put the meaning of life into a simple formula, you might as well just take the cosine of an angle to determine the y-compenent of the load on a truss. I guess the reason I'm not a philosopher is that I'd waste time and make a joke out of the whole thing, rather than actually attempting to make any headway. Besides, I figure the reason we're all here is to eat Wheaties. Boy, are they good.

Well, that about wraps it up for today. Time is short, you know. Clearly, since two quarter-hours later, my soup is still almost unbearably hot. If time were long, I'd be able to eat them by now.

The Common Cold

Today I have developed a cold. I dislike colds so very much. The fact that a cure is impossible drives me crazy. Fortunately, my immune system is engaged in a valiant (and winning) struggle against the invasive pathogens which cause me to ail. Take that, cold. Soon, I'll have antibodies galore that will prevent your evil grasp from clutching me any longer.

According to Wikipedia, a virus is a "sub-microscopic infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell." The sneaky little things, in a nutshell, attach to cells, break inside, and then force the cells to make more of themselves. They're like little robots. Supposedly there is an argument as to whether or not viruses are living organisms. If you ask me (not being a biologist, but offering my opinion anyway), I'd say they aren't. I don't think the presence of genetic material qualifies them as being living any more than does a computer program make a computer living. The parallel isn't perfect, but it seems that often these things are a matter of essence rather than form. Thinking outside the box is often required, as opposed to strict definitions. This is in a similar vein to the main issue addressed in Michael Crichton's most recent novel, Next.

At one point, in a forum discussion on global warming, someone argued that Crichton's opinion (specifically taken from State of Fear, a novel about the legitimacy of urgent claims regarding climate change) was not relevant, as he isn't a scientist. Strictly defined, he isn't a scientist. But of course, that is what leads us to the issue in the first place: strict definitions. He does not hold a doctorate in any branch of science, and does not perform scientific research. In other words, he's not an "expert," as defined by the Academia. But the essence of a scientist is not a certain amount of training, it's a desire to ask and answer questions about the universe. I reject that Michael Crichton is not a scientist. For one thing, he is a medical doctor, practicing or not. That itself requires extensive training in several fields of science. For another thing, he does research. Not in a lab, or in the field, perhaps, but collecting the opinions of other scientists in order to put together the pieces, so to speak, is still research. He uses the research to write novels, yet underneath the novels are important scientific issues, increasingly more about the politics of science than the actual science itself. At the end of the day, knowledge is knowledge, and whether public awareness of certain aspects and issues of science comes from fiction or non-fiction, it ends up the same. Therefore, I consider Michael Crichton a scientist based on his pursuit of answers to what he considers important questions.

That's all kind of tangential to my original point. In my opinion, viruses lack a sort of essence that living organisms possess. They would seem to me more like natural robots, pre-programmed (yet adaptable) to simply assemble more of themselves. After all, assemble themselves (via a host cell, akin to a factory) is what they do, rather than actually reproducing. They're like Terminators.

In which case my immune system can be John Connor.

A One Month Look Back on the Summer Solstice

Let me begin by introducing myself. I am Chris. Obviously. Read the blog's title. The idea of this blog meandered around my head for several days before finally coming to fruition. Now here I am, at lunch time, tapping away at a new blog. New blogs are about as exciting as blank notebooks, although unlike the latter I usually end up filling a new blog with lots and lots of wondrous material. I felt the need to exercise my literary muscle; not that I write literature, because I don't employ "official writer-ese" (thank you Jean Shepherd, for that gem). I speak, textually. Therefore, you can also hear with your eyes. Nifty, huh?

I feel I have moved on to a new stage in life; I now have a Job. Despite being only a temporary employee, or "temp," the fact that I am working for the State of New York (via AccuStaff, the temp agency) justifies capitalizing the word "Job." Were I to work for a full year, I would make roughly $20,000 (I did the math). My employment confines itself to summer, what with school taking up fall, winter, and spring. I don't feel it's fair that school gets to monopolize three of the four seasons, but at least it doesn't get the best one. Unless, of course, one enrolls in summer classes, which is a mild form of insanity.

Anyway, I have a Job. I perform the trying task of Data Entry. I tell you, it's not for the weak of heart. Okay, that's a bit dramatic. In reality, it's quite easy. I put in numbers on a computer. In addition, I also retrieve the daily mail, which provides me with more numbers to input. I would have said "put in," but ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically incorrect. Curse you grammar, for ruining conversationalism.

I dislike going to work, but I don't altogether mind being here. The night before a work day is filled with dread and a slight feeling of nausea. Once I'm here though, while not out of my mind with ecstasy (I don't mean the drug, I mean happiness, but also the drug), neither am I cursing my life. I lose myself in the sheer mind-numbingness of my work. I don't get bored easily at all, allowing me to perform the most mindless of tasks and suddenly snap back to life eight hours later, go home, and actually function as a human being again.

A half-hour certainly flies, between a pair of pretzels, 20 ounces of Mountain Dew SuperNova (the best of the three new flavors; vote for it), and this blog. Wait a second...if blog is short for weblog, and functions effectively as a journal, couldn't I just as well call this a bjournal? BJOURNAL!

I tricked you about the summer solstice. I had nothing to say on the matter. It's been a month since then, and nothing of any kind of screaming importance has happened. I haven't even gotten my hair cut. So that's that. I'm going to eat the granola bar sitting on my desk trying to be inconspicuous. Then, it's...MAIL TIME.

(Like Morphin' Time, but I don't change into a colored outfit with a sweet helmet)