pasticcio

I will never be in the office again on a Tuesday.
No more homestead exemptions.
No more data entry.
No more sketching.
No more edits.

I'm not sure that this is the kind of thing you want to be taking nationalistic pride in. Then again, I'm not German.

"At least we're not burning them and dragging them through the streets like they did to us"
- actual quote in re prisoner abuse @ Abu Ghraib heard in the office 5/10

I suppose this quote deserves to be put into some kind of context. But I don't really feel like it. Maybe because knowing that the comment essentially amounted to a "Yeah, but look what they did!" in response to a rather generic "Boy, that torture was pretty bad" type comment doesn't really make the remark sound any better. I'm pretty sure that any attempt to excuse or justify torture is always in bad taste.

I suppose that airing this particular pet peeve is also a little unfair of me. I have come to respect the people in the office and actually kind of like the woman who made this lame excuse for an excuse. But no matter which way you cut it, every now and then I hear stuff that makes me feel like my head is going to explode.

on a related note, does anybody know how to pronounce "Abu Ghraib"?
I'll give you a hint: It's not Ah-Boo Ga-REEB or Ah-Boo GA-rib.

I will never be in the office again on a Tuesday.
No more homestead exemptions.
No more data entry.
No more sketching.
No more edits.

You know, working here has taught me something: the government is incredibly inefficient by nature. It's alternately like a big immoveable rock and a rampaging elephant. Sometimes it won't move at all, but when it does it's going to run over anything in its path. Working here has taught me the meaning of futility: no matter your relative degree of competence, your ability to make a significant difference is essentially nil. Local government, I have discovered, also has a strong tendency to attract the lazy (me), the hucksters (a lot of people I've met outside the office), and people who couldn't make it in the outside world (my boss). And just in case you thought that this tendency was moderated as one moves farther up the ladder to higher levels of government, take a quick glance at this article about some hard-working and honest employees of your Federal government and mine.

I will never be in the office again on a Tuesday.
No more homestead exemptions.
No more data entry.
No more sketching.
No more edits.

some times you get more than you bargained for.

a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters could have given this article a much funnier title than the one it was given.

this article about the invisible adjunct is neither funny nor short. but I read it, and afterwards I'm feeling increasingly nervous about pursuing a career in academia. and rightfully so if the author has any idea what he/she is talking about. honestly, I feel like I was better off before I read it.

I will never be in the office again on a Tuesday.
No more homestead exemptions.
No more data entry.
No more sketching.
No more edits.

in re Van Helsing:
"Was that a movie? Or a 2 and a half hour video game?"
-liberally paraphrased quote from Jon "Lawd" Dunlop

This movie had lots of problems. It didn't really tell a story as much as it thrust itself on my consciousness forcefully for 2.5 hours via loud noises and CGI effects. Honestly, I don't remember anything that happened that didn't involve an explosion, shooting a crossbow or something evil exploding into a pile of goo. There was also a very nice Lion King-style dead-guy-appearing-in-a-cloud moment.

And for a movie with Dracula as the villain, it seemed to shift a lot of the burden of evildoing away from Big D to his annoying bat-brides and to his army of post-apocalyptic Oompa-Loompas. Despite being (supposedly) evil and/or terrifying, after biting Dr. Frankenstein's throat out in the first sequence of the film, Dracula pretty much just twiddled his thumbs until the last fight scene, in which he turned into a giant bat creature just in time for Hugh Jackman eat his face off. Look, if you're going to make a monster movie I am of the opinion that it should be about MONSTERS. Not Hugh Jackman. Unless you're accusing him of being a monster, which is a totally different proposition.

In the end, though, Van Helsing was good enough to break Jon and I out of our post-Punisher, post-Envy movie slump. It still wasn't a good movie and my life is in no way altered for having seen it except that I am $8.50 poorer. Sure, I enjoyed watching it, but then again I walked into the theater turning my iron will to the difficult task of steadfastly refusing to be anything except entertained. So take that for what it's worth.

I will never be in the office again on a Tuesday.
No more homestead exemptions.
No more data entry.
No more sketching.
No more edits.
Ever.