September 05, 2008
My Cube, Let Me Show You It
For whatever reason, I've found that professional writing and editing has almost without fail landed me in working environments where there are A LOT of women. This holds true for my current job where, in the half of the building I'm seated, I'm the only guy amidst 10 female co-workers.
The thing is, I don't quite understand the reasons behind decorating your office or cubicle space. During my last job, spanning over seven years, the only thing decorating any of my offices were the numerous conference badges and laniards from the assorted IT conventions I'd attended around the country. When I left that job behind, I also left behind the badges, hanging unceremoniously on the wall by a single thumb pin.
Here, however, my female co-workers really seem to get into decorating their cubicles. And I'm not talking simply photos of friends and loved ones, either. These cubicles remind me more of dorm rooms. Seriously, they've even put up a dry erase marker board in one of the cubicle hallways where they write French and Spanish words and phrases for the day. In contrast, my cubicle looks like something where a troll that subsists on stacks of paper would live. I have no decorations. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Zippo.
And the thing is, I'm starting to get razzed about it. My co-workers are now insisting I should at least have a picture of my wife up, or something. One even offerred to bring in some art for me to hang on my fabric cubicle walls. Seriously, why would I want to do that? What possible reason would I have to hang a Van Gogh reprint in my cubicle?
Now, maybe if I had an opulent office with a mahogany desk, with busts of Athena and Zeus on either side of a solid oak office door, I'd feel more compelled to bring in some decorations and momentos. But a cubicle?
Although, it might be fun to maybe hang shrunken heads and a string of Viet Cong ears on my cubicle walls, just to see what people say.
An uppity post, from an uppity guy
I feel downright uppity today. I know it seems somehow counterintuitive to be both "downright" AND "uppity," but that's how I feel.
Gosh darn it, that MUST mean I'm racist.
UPDATE: Having experienced the stench of wading through a Jeff Fecke comment thread firsthand, the following image came to mind:
What would Freud say. . . ?
September 04, 2008
Fun Exercise You Can Do At Home
Take a deck of cards. On each card, write down one of four exercises: Push-ups, squats, burpees and sit-ups (or "V-ups"). Place four jokers into the deck.
Now, shuffle the cards and start going through the deck, card by card. If a 4 comes up with "push-ups," for example, you do four push-ups. All face cards count as 10, and aces count as eleven.
Oh, and those jokers? If a joker comes up, you double the number of reps from the previous card, and you pray the previous card was a frickin' two. Oh, and you DEFINITELY pray that two jokers don't appear back to back.
Why, yes, this is one of the new exercise regimens thrown into jiu-jitsu warm-ups, why do you ask? First gymnastic rings. . . now this.
I prefer Texas Hold-em.
An Ode To The Dog I Saw Hit By A Car This Morning
A dog of undetermined breed, yet full of canine joy,
Unleashed its boisterous need, the world was its toy.
Unfettered by the leash of man, it ran into the street,
It had not yet traversed the span, when car and dog did meet.
As meetings go, it did not end well, as the car was moving rather fast,
Beneath the car, the doggie fell, tumbling head over its ass.
For me that's when the scene did end, since I was running late for work.
The guilty driver I cannot defend, since he drove on as well, the jerk.
And so today, a doggie died, and it shall woof no more
I'm too heartless to have cried, at the sight of doggie gore.
To the poor doggie I can only say, it sucked to be you, my friend.
I only hope you felt no pain, as you met your grisly end.
September 03, 2008
The History of the Internet. . . Sort of
I really think the scientists who dabble in science should conduct a scientific study, using science, regarding the phenomenon of obsessive Internet commenting. I genuinely think this could be a ripe area for scientific scientists to exploit in the name of science.
I've basically been plugged into the Internet now for well over a decade, having spent most of my professional writing career staring into the radiating warmth of countless computer monitors, usually for eight straight hours a day, if not more. In that time, I've watched as the Internet has morphed into a technology that enables narcissistic navel-gazing to a degree previously deemed impossible.
In the mid to late 1990s, the Internet was still mostly a repository of static Web pages consisting mostly of text relaying information of varying degrees of value. Companies wishing to remain hip and with it established their own official Web pages, while some enterprising individuals armed with some understanding of Internet language coding carved off their own personal corners of the Web.
The insanity that is the current state of the Internet really got a boost around the turn of the Millennium, at which point personal Web logs (or blogs) emerged, which put the power of online publishing literally into the hands of the masses. Blog publishing tools were, and are, exceedingly easy to figure out, and in most cases they were, and still are, free. For the first time, people could expound endlessly on their love for cats, their incredibly niche hobbies and, most ominously, their political ruminations.
The most nefarious innovation made possible through blogging, however, was the advent of the comment engine. At first, comment engines were novel, dare I say "fun." Suddenly, the Internet became a worldwide discussion, no longer limited to newsgroups or other forums that had previously been the sole domain of the world's geeks. In those halcyon days of blogging and commenting—up to but not exceeding the year 2005—people engaged in, for the most part, somewhat civil and sane online conversations.
Invariably, blogging became even easier and thus more popular, eventually giving way to manifestations such as MySpace and FaceBook, forums that allowed countless teenagers to post images of themselves in various stages of undress, teenagers who were apparently oblivious to the fact those images would be accessible by roughly 408 million people at any given time. Sensing a ripe market for online exhibitionism, YouTube emerged at about the same time, which added the innovative touch of allowing people to comment on each and every submitted video, resulting in comment threads that are at the same time borderline unreadable and mind-numbingly idiotic.
Coming to the game nearly a half decade late, online newspapers and other Internet news outlets have begun equipping their content with comment engines. Unfortunately, because they're coming to the game so late, and because they have seemingly no idea how to moderate the insanity that now is online commentary, watching these news outlets adapt to unfettered commentary has been a lot like watching grandpa trying to set the time on a VCR.
The Internet of today is still trying to come to terms with the commenting Hydra it accidentally spawned. People who are otherwise mild-mannered and pleasant in face-to-face interactions can become vitriolic online ranters in the time it takes to open a Web browser. Anonymous commenting has become the equivalent of screaming "Hey, Baby!" from a moving car. Endlessly yammering Poindexters convinced of their own superiority can hijack comment threads and kill them through the weight of the sheer boredom they bring to the debate.
And the worst part? The worst part is: each and every day, several hundred thousand people discover online commenting for the first time and enter the fray, believing what they have to say is somehow fresh and illuminating, rather than the tired and irrelevant tripe it actually is.
You know, kind of like my ThunderJournal.
September 02, 2008
I Protest!
Well, it's time, once again, with the Republican National Convention underway in St. Paul, to watch repeated loops of frenzied protesters protesting things, which is what protesters are apt to do in this charged political climate.
After watching the drama unfold first at the Democratic National Conventions, and now again this time around, I've come to the conclusion protesting is the in thing to do.
Even though a lot of today's protesters don't appear to have any real coherent message, and sometimes they come up with such laughable concepts as the Lysistrata Project (which, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with Listerine), I have to give them credit, they're out there anyway, marching, marching, holding up signs, marching, and, perhaps most importantly, getting on T.V.
Despite the apparent difficulties inherent in being a protester, I can't stand on the sideline and watch the latest fad pass me by without whipping up my own protest. Therefore, I spent a considerable part of last week carefully orchestrating my own protest movement.
First and foremost, I needed a cause; something so profound that I would be guaranteed to garner a loyal following of like-minded protesters. I considered starting a "Make Ryan Rhodes Rich Beyond His Wildest Dreams" protest movement, but I decided a movement like that would probably only benefit me. No, I needed to organize a protest that could, in the end, help other people as well. That's just the kind of protester I am.
I briefly flirted with the idea of an "Anti-Junk Mail" movement. All my fellow protesters would strip completely naked, glue junk mail to their bodies, and march through U.S. cities chanting catchy slogans like "We don't approve of being pre-approved" and "Sweepstakes are the tool of the devil."
Again, fearing that I would have a tough time rallying a large enough number of protest troopers to my anti-junk mail movement, I decided to dig even further into my protest bag.
Finally, I meticulously crafted a protest certain to bring millions of people within my protest fold. Let it be known today that I am officially establishing the "Anti-Protest Movement." All who join will be asked to work tirelessly to bring an end to the protest web that is spinning its way across our country. We will protest day and night until the last protester throws up his or her hands and surrenders. If you wish to support my fledgling movement, I simply ask that you adhere to the following rules.
First, as a protest protester, you cannot reveal your identity to anyone. To do so will mark you as a protester and, under my movement, all protesters will be protested against.
Secondly, all members are asked to work tirelessly, at risk to their own safety, to not do anything even remotely protest-like. In other words, simply go about your daily routine as if you never even heard about the anti-protest movement. However, you are free to think all the anti-protest thoughts you want. You can even think of the anti-protest signs you won't be making and the protest gatherings that won't take place. This is a very tight-lipped movement.
Third, I've noticed that every good protest movement has solid lines of communication with its members. But, since all my protest members are anonymous, I ask that no protest protester talk about their non-actions to anyone. This rule coincides closely with the first rule, but it's so important I thought it should be underscored again.
Finally, I have to mention the difficult area of donations. After all, maintaining a protest movement like this is an expensive pursuit. All I ask is $5 per member, a fee that you obviously cannot pay because to do so would mark you as a protester, and we just can't have that in an anti-protest movement such as this. We don't want to be labeled hypocrites after all.
Let me take this moment to thank all of you who have just now joined my anti-protest movement and, judging by your silence, I can only assume there are millions upon millions of you. And thank you for your $5 non-donation. I can assure you that any money I don't receive won't be spent on anything even remotely anti-protest in nature.
Of course, I'm sure such a popular protest movement as mine is bound to give rise to copy-cat movements who will no doubt try to steal my thunder.
If that happens, I can only assure you that I will strenuously protest.
*This is a somewhat rewritten column from way back when, and it was also a blog post from March, 2003, and again during the RNC in NYT back in 2004. It's amazing how fresh and up-to-date this thing remains.
Storm Porn
That's what I'm calling the breathless coverage media outlets are now devoting to every single hurricane or tropical storm or cumulus cloud that looks like a puppy.
In retrospect, this should have been a Twitter post. Oh well.
Ironical
MSNBC.com asks 
, while running a picture and article link on its main page.
So, apparently, the answer is. . . yes?
