Well, I Shot a Man in Reno Just to Watch HIm Die

The past few days, Spokane has been basically covered in this thick and icey fog, which has lent the better part of this week a uniquely surreal feeling. Thursday in particular was the weirdest. So, the guys at work always go to the Satellite on Thursdays, because they get double-punches on their meal cards on Thursdays, and they decided to take Dennis and myself (as the two New Guys) with them in order to be "initiated." Whenever I hear that word, I cringe inwardly, as no initiation ritual is ever what you would call pleasant. The after-effects might be nice, but the ritual itself is always awkward and uncomfortable at best. The point of this is that the head waitress at the Satellite is absolutely batshits. She goes by "princess," which is never a good sign. At one point, she came up to David and I, and noting that I wasn't grinning from ear to ear, said to him, "your friend's kind of a hard-ass, isn't he? Maybe I should just give him a blow-job!" To which I could only smile and chuckle uncomfortably. On our way out, one of the guys said to me, "She's a little flirtatious, isn't she?" Yeah, she's a little bit flirtatious in the same way that Nazi Germany was just a little bit aggressive. It wasn't a bad lunch by any stretch of the imagination, and I'll probably join the guys next time they go there, but it was definitely not something for which I was prepared. The actual work has been going quite well, and I'm learning alot about AI, which is most fascinating. Basically, we are working with an actual Chinese Room, and I am in linguistic philosopher's paradise. It's a good thing that interests me. My co-workers are willing and able to explain all the stuff to me, which is important, as I am the guy who will be writing the manual for this stuff. We ended up getting a big government contract recently, so that means I will have plenty of work to do. Plus, I'm starting to get better at foose.

In other news, last night, Decken and I decided to try and see the new Harry Potter movie. Yeah, that didn't happen, namely because everybody else and their mother wanted to see it opening night, so we couldn't get tickets. So we went and saw Walk the Line last night (it's the Johnny Cash biopic). It was quite excellent, and the concert scenes were positively electrifying. The famous Folsom Prison concert sequence was particularly exciting. The music was awesome, and the characters all felt real and sympathetic, even when they were complete jerks. As I watched Cash's early life play out, I saw a fair amount of myself in him, at least in some of his vices. Like Cash, I have a tendency to just let things happen, rather than actually try to make things happen, and it often comes up to bite me in the ass. I'm working on that, but it does happen. At any rate, go see Walk the Line. Then go buy some old Johnny Cash albums, and then watch it again. You'll thank yourself for the experience.

For those of you who are interested, Lars has once again updated Life of Wyma. Check it out!

So I said, "brown liquor before Labor Day? Who do you work for? Esquire?"

Well, I had my first full day of work yesterday, and it is quite interesting. I'm basically paid to be my anal-retentive self and correct the spelling and grammar of our manuals. I have a fat stack of them that I need to get reviewed and edited by Monday, and I already have the bulk of them finished. I feel like I am accomplishing something here, which is important to me. I've also begun learning the way of the Foose. Today I'm dropping my car off at a mechanic to get the electrical fixed while I'm at lunch, and then leave early to pick it up. This means that I'll have to be in early, so that's why I am up at this unusual hour (for me). At any rate, it feels good to be employed once again.

Who's House? RUN'S HOUSE!!!

Well, I am now officially employed. Finally. I ended up getting a job as a technical writing intern, so that's really cool. I had my first day yesterday, which was quite nice. It's full-time work, which I appreciate. The only downside is that I have to pay for parking downtown, which can be something of a pain. Ah, it's worth it, though. This is a short post mainly because I'm writing it before heading off to work. At any rate, expect most of these posts to be more brief than in the past, due to said job.

I'm Strong to the Finish 'Cause I Drinks Me Guinness

Well, it is in fact my birthday. The weekend was spent basically celebrating it, which meant hanging out with the usual Saturday night crew, plus Decken, who made me a semi-ironic birthday cake. Sunday night, Justin came over and we watched the always execrable Casper van Dien in one of many Sci-Fi originals. This made me laugh. The funny thing is, 23 really feels no different from 22, except that, well, I'm a year older. The thing is though, that every day I'm a day older, but I don't go around counting that milestone. That would be just plain silly. The point being that the passage of time is really a peculiar thing. Each atomic moment occurs, and then it disappears for us, recalled only through memory, and we have to check that yes, we do in fact still exist. Except we don't exist as the same person, as Heraklitus so famously showed. It's rather strange, really.
In other, slightly more depressing news, the ass-hats at Fox decided to cancel Arrested Development because they felt that it was detracting from the viewership of Prison Break. Yeah, it's pretty damn stupid. Why do these networks spend exorbitant amounts of time and money promoting and coddling shows that are usually rather insipid and dull, while setting intelligent and clever shows up for failure by giving them crappy and inconsistent time-slots and minimal promotion (as in one single advertisement the day before airing)? This is further proof that God doesn't watch television.
P.S. Justin's birthday is Thursday, so Happy Birthday to you, too, buddy!