Opinionatrix

New Years Resolutions

2007-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

1. Take care of my body better, including but not limited to: Taking my vitamins every day, not just when Mom reminds me; Flossing, even if I hate it and its gross; Plucking my eyebrows consistently so that there's always two of them and not one; Washing my face every morning.

2. Lose all the weight I gained since leaving college. I'm guessing it's 10-15 lbs, although I don't know for sure. Too afraid to approach the scale.

3. Be less judgmental and critical of others. Appreciate them for their talents, even if they're not good ones, and forgive them their flaws, even if they're fucking inept at Pictionary and making my team lose--"Honey Bee" is not a hard subject no matter how much you whine about it, you twit.

All I Want for Christmas is My Job

2007-12-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

This morning, while peacefully enjoying my morning cup of Earl Grey, I caught the faint aroma of brimstone. I looked up, and stared into the face of evil.

This was only the third time I had seen this woman, including my first day of work and a chance meeting in the break room. She is my Kelly Representative, or as she would prefer to be called, Her Most Majestic and Omnipotent Workplace Overlord, Queen and Master of Temps, Devourer of Hopes and Dreams, and Sovereign Over All Lunch Breaks. Supposedly, her job is to be there to assist the Kelly Temps on-site. In practice, this means she’s there to spy on me and, if given the opportunity, call me into her office to inform me that I’m fired. Maybe my job got shipped to Bangalore, or maybe I took a lunch break fifteen minutes too long. The suspense is all part of the fun.

I’m not really sure what she does on the days she’s not firing people. I know that some of that time is spent thoughtfully composing her semi-weekly e-mail announcements. Last week, for instance, I got her Christmas e-mail, which informed us that the Christmas break was not paid. Stop asking. This was followed by a list of rules that, if broken, would mean that she could (and would!) fire us. Oh, and Happy Non-Denominational Holidays.

I tell you this so you’ll understand that her sudden presence at my desk this morning was as ominous and unwelcome as it was unprecedented. The conversation that followed, as I recall, went something like this:

Her: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Her: Merry Christmas.
Me: You too.
Her: I got your present here.

The blood rushed out of my face. I hadn’t gotten the Workplace Overlord anything. I’d briefly considered anonymously giving her a Darth Vader doll, but later dismissed the idea as a waste of money.

She flashed me her teeth in an expression that wasn’t exactly a smile, and then reached her hand into the depths of a paper bag. “Merry Christmas,” she repeated, handing me a sticker with “Kelly Services” logo on it, and a candy cane.

I hate candy canes.

I grinned maniacally like my job depended on it until she was out of sight. Then, and only then, did my heart resume beating.

I’ve composed a haiku to commemorate this moment:

A whiff of brimstone,
The creeping touch of Evil,
Am I still employed?

Plan B

2007-12-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

Reason Lee must die #78: Lengthy phone-calls to his mother about his teeth. Lee, I do not need to hear about your concerns about your tooth density. I certainly do not need to hear about it at length.

Reason Lee must die #79: The singing, off-key, and with lyrics of dubious accuracy.

Reason Lee must die #80: Lengthy phone-calls to his mother about the advantages of dog over cat ownership.

Lee, the only reason you still draw breath is that you're something to blog about... and that the trained assassin monkeys did not work out. Oooooh, just you wait until robotics advances just a little bit more. Then I'm buying a robot, naming it "Electronimo", and sending it after you. Electronimo will not rest, will not feel pain, and will not know fear.

Spoiler Warning (?)

2007-12-04T07:29:00.001-08:00

Ok. I think I have Battlestar Galatica more or less figured out. Here's my crackpot theory:

What makes the Final Five different from the other cylons is that they're from Earth. This means, of course, that this new Galatica is handling time very differently than the original show, which took place in the (then) present-day. If the new show takes place at least several hundred years in the future, then humans on Earth probably developed their own versions of cylons independently--although on Earth, they're probably called "robots." And if Earth was significantly more advanced than the Twelve Colonies, these robots could be so sophisticated that they could easily pass for humans. This would explain, in part, why four of the Final Five came to realize what they were by remembering a song from Earth: "All Along the Watchtower," by Bob Dylan.

Ronald D. Moore has, in the past, described the Final Five as the Cylon gods and suggested that they were immortal. Immortality would be a very handy feature in a robot sent on a long-range space exploration mission.

Supposing I'm correct in this guess, the Final Five likely stumbled onto the Cylons shortly before, or shortly after the Armistice. We know from Razor that the Cylons at that time were experimenting with upgrades to biomechanical technology. First contact with the Final Five would have held the promise of skipping all the trouble and jumping right into the finish line. (In fact, it's entirely possible the Final Five made a deal: the secret to biotechnology in return for ending the war with humans.)

The problem with this is that once Cylons upgraded to organic bodies, the old toaster models the Twelve Colonies made were obsolete, and needed to be retired. The result was effectively a form of genocide. This could potentially explain why the old Cylons in Razor were so pissed off at Kara Thrace. If she is the final member of the Final Five, than from a Cylon perspective, she is the antichrist for helping created the new Cylons.

What this also would mean is that the Cylons never actually broke the armistice. The machines that attacked the Twelve Colonies weren't real Cylons. So in that sense, Kara Thrace is also the human antichrist for helping to create an army of zealots hell-bent blowing up humans.

Regardless of if I'm right in any of this, what is clear is that for whatever reason, the Final Five decided to forget who and what they are, and then concocted elaborate personal histories so they could integrate into human society. Then, either at a predetermined date, or in response to a specific trigger, they came to their senses in unison. To me, this suggests a plan.

One problem that needs to be addressed before the show ends is Starbuck: Why did she have those visions, why did she crash her ship into that gas giant, how is she still alive, and how did she get to Earth and back? If I'm right about some of this, one explanation is that the visions were to keep Kara on track--to get her to do the things she needed to do, without having to remember why she needed to do them. Like, say, killing herself.

Let's say for argument's sake that the Final Five taught the cylons not only how to make organic robots, but also gave them the regeneration technology that allows a cylon's body to die and reawaken in a new body. If that technology has a parallel on Earth, but with a much, much longer range, then Starbuck could have died in that spaceship, and then woken up on Earth. Then it was only a matter of getting a new ship, finding Galatica again, and then leading them back.

Only time will tell if Starbuck is a good witch, or a bad witch, in the same way that only time will tell just how horrifically off-base I am about Battlestar Galatica. (I shall probably never live down my fevered insistence that Snape would kill Voldemort in Deathly Hollows.) That being said, I think this plot would make a cool ending to the show, and it also presents yet another possibility that really bakes my noodle:

I've so far been assuming the the Final Five are actually robots. They could just as easily be what humanity has evolved into on Earth--not quite machine, not wholly organic, and functionally immortal. If so, what kind of greeting can Galatica and the cylons expect to receive when they finally do get to Earth?

Oh, thank god I finally got that all out of my head. Ahhhh. I am cleansed. I feel so fresh and so clean. Now I can finally think about something--anything--else.

Mic.

2007-11-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

Reason #65 Lee must be killed: For the past week, Lee has been trying to noisly hack up his left lung in five minute intervals. The resulting sound is not unlike a chainsaw ripping through sixty pounds of wet hamburger. I swear, I can FEEL the germs crawling up the cubical wall, across my desk, and into my precious, vulnerable bodily fluids. I fear that if I don't act soon, I'm going to catch whatever horrible wasting disease he has. If I'm lucky, it'll kill him before he comes into work tomorrow.

Good news, though. Dad is not going to Iraq. My Aunt Ivonne is, however. Again. Out of the past six years, Aunt Ivonne has spent four of them overseas. Stupid war.

The Happening

2007-11-15T04:28:00.000-08:00

There's a possibility my father might go to Iraq.

First, let me explain something about my family. My father's father spent fifty years in uniform. He was in the Battle of the Bulge, he did a tour in Korea, and he went to Vietnam. Somewhere in all that, my grandfather found time to have seven kids. Of those children, six went into the military, including my father. The youngest of those children, my aunt, recently became the last of that generation to retire from military service, and the family consensus is that if she'd stayed in, she would have probably made General one day.

On just my father's side of the family, I have enough cousins to populate a small, Mid-Western town. I am the second oldest of my generation. The oldest, my cousin George, is already a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanastan. His younger sister is the newest member of the Army marching band.

I tell you this so that you will understand: When my Aunt D came to visit this weekend, and suggested to my father that it was his duty as a veteran and a civil servant to do a shift of duty in Iraq, to support the troops, this was not a suggestion that was made lightly, and my father took it to heart. He looked into it. As it turns out, the government agency that my father works for is in desperate need of volunteers to go to Iraq, and there are significant incentives for those that choose to go. To make a long story short, if Dad went to Iraq, he would come home with more bonus pay than I make in a year, before taxes.

My mother, unsurprisingly, is wholly against it, no matter how large the bonus. Aunt D is lucky my mother loves her as a sister, because it's going to be the only thing keeping Mom from throttling her over the Thanksgiving turkey for putting Dad up to this.

I can't really blame my mother for being upset. We never voted for the dumbass in the White House, and up until recently, I never really thought of Iraq as a war that belonged to me. Now, for the first time I'm forced to confront an aspect of military life I never had to face while Dad was actually in the military. My father might go to war.

Granted, the possibility he'll go is remote. And if he does go, he'll never leave Camp Victory, where the chances of dying are less than driving on the Beltway during rush hour. I wouldn't even say that I'm worried about him. But--

When Aunt D was in Iraq a couple of years ago, she had to leave the Green Zone one morning to get to the airport. She and the person she was with were going to take a helicopter to the site, but at the last minute, my aunt insisted on taking a humvee convoy instead. That helicopter was later shot down by an anti-aircraft missle, no survivors. That was how close my family came to having our first military fatality since my Great Uncle Norman died in World War II.

My aunt is right. My father should volunteer to go. But I don't want him to.

Let's Up the Ratings Among 18-45 Year Old Males

2007-11-14T12:25:00.000-08:00

Life never ceases to amaze me with how much it’s not like TV. For instance, according to Hollywood, my coworkers and I should be having dangerous and sexy adventures, but no one in the office appears to be having a sordid affair with the copy repair man, nor does anyone appear to be an uncover spy, and most disappointing of all, my boss isn’t evil. She doesn’t even have the decency to be petty or unreasonable. Her complete and utter lack of any semblance of a maniacal streak denies me my god-given right to struggle against the Man.

This makes for some hideously boring gossip to overhear, such as the following from this morning: “I know, and that’s not even the half of it. When I finally got the MIR report from DigiTrack, I found out that Debora didn’t even co-sign the footer. Can you believe it?”

I’ve decided to spice things up. So I’m going to murder the guy in the next cubicle over, Lee. The guy has it coming.

No less than three times a day, people will congregate near his desk and talk about Virginia Tech’s football team, the stats associated with the players, the stats associate with the players Virginia Tech opposed last week, the odds V-Tech wil win next week, the effect of rain/altitude/alignment of the moon on the performance of the players, and other sorts of conversations that need to be carried out in a sound-proof bunker no less than 100 miles away from me.

Also, his name is a pain in the ass. There’s another girl in the office with my name, which means people often resort to calling me by stupid nicknames like “Little Girl,” or “The New Person.” And because there’s someone around called Lee, I can’t go by Li.

Finally, he’s been whistling for hours.

So, Lee’s a nice guy and all, but the man has got to go. I have (most of) all of it planned out. Lee and I get in early in the morning, before most anyone else shows up. So as long as my plan unfolds before 7:30, there’ll be no witnesses. I’m thinking for the murder weapon, I’ll drop the copier on him from a great height, which will kill two annoyances with one stone. Now all I have to do is plant evidence that Lee was a CIA agent and having an affair with the copier repair, who in turn squashed Lee with the copier over a tiff involving improperly completed MIR reports.

Brewster's Millions

2007-11-07T17:38:00.005-08:00

I recently watched Brewster's Millions with my mom, and for those of you that haven't seen the film, it's a comedy about a man who is about to inherit 300 million dollars, but to get it, he has to spend 30 million dollars in thirty days. There's restrictions. First off, he can't tell anyone why he is spending the money, or even that he has to spend it. He can give no more than five percent away, and no more than five percent can go to charity. He can't destroy anything of value--meaning he couldn't just go buy a couple of Picasso's and then set them on fire. If he hires someone, he has to get a service of value in return. Finally, by the end of the month, he must own nothing of value. To get the 300 million, Brewster can't have a single red cent left over of the 30 million.

The movie makes this spending spree out to be hard, but I've put a lot of thought to it over the past few days, and I think Brewster's problems were entirely due to a lack of creativity. I, for one, would have zero difficulty blowing 30 million in a month.

How I Would Waste 30 Million Dollars in a Month or Less

First off, I'd dispatch with the easy part. Five percent of 30 million. I would hire a team of the most expensive lawyers money can buy to divide that money evenly between Equality Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace, and Wikipedia.
All my friends go to the college of their choice for free. Additionally (employing another crack team of overpaid lawyers), I'd set up a trust fund for each friend that can't be accessed until he/she turns 65. No one's going to have to worry about retirement.
Hire a pack of the most vicious and bloodthirsty immigration lawyers I can find to get Lav into the United States on an immigrant visa.
Rent out the top floors of the most expensive hotels in the world for my friends and I to crash. I'd stay at each one for no more than four days before chartering a private jet to visit another city.
At $50,000 a week, hire my friends/family/people on my Facebook list to:

Buy up all available tickets to movies, plays, sporting events, and concerts that are scheduled to perform before the one-month deadline, and instruct the theatres to simply leave their doors open to whoever wants to walk in.
Hire actors to stand on the street corners of their home cities/towns and perform Shakespeare to passerby.
In alphabetical order, call up every private detective in the country and have them research into the background of every elected official currently serving in the United States. I'm thinking one detective per county official, five per state official, and twenty for a major politician ought to do it. In the event an investigation turns up something of interest, that information is to be forwarded anonymously to the media, and then posted on my blog.
Hire every florist available to pave the streets with flower petals.

Buy up 2 minute ads on prime-time TV and hire famous comedians to do something funny to fill up the air time.
Parties. The kind that take professional planners and an army of hired help to pull off. I will, naturally, be serving the kind of wine that's about $900 a bottle.
Hire every contestant that was ever on Top Chef to perform gourmet cooking demonstrations in the streets of every major US city.
Back massages for everyone.
Get Aerosmith to perform a private concert for me and 50 of my favorite people.
Hire polka bands to play night and day outside the offices of anti-abortion groups.
Take out full-page ads in the major magazines and newspapers listing my favorite books, movies, comics, and television shows. Beneath the lists, I politely suggest that anyone that doesn't agree with me wrong.
Hire polka bands to play night and day outside the houses/offices of anyone in the media that suggests that I'm spending my money foolishly, and then hire lawyers to shield me from the inevitable harassment charges.

That ought to do it. Sadly, I wouldn't be able to buy any clothes, or shoes, or books with my money, which sucks, since they'd be considered assets, but otherwise, my list looks like a lot of fun. If any of you think of a better way to waste money, please do share.

eHowler

2007-11-07T08:41:00.001-08:00

On the e-mail client at work, most of my incoming messages appear as little white envelopes, but once every now and then a red envelope creeps in. Red e-mails are just my boss’ way of telling me that she wants something “immediately” instead of “right now.” But for my first couple weeks of work, the red envelopes never failed to shoot a trill of horror down my spine. Momentarily paralyzed, I faced a horrible dilemma: If I opened a red envelope, would my boss’ gigantically magnified voice boom through the entire floor, berating me for a typo on my TPS report? If I ignored it, would my monitor explode?

Every day, I’m sort of disappointed when neither one happens.

Open for business.

2007-11-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

Formerly at this location.

Different title. Same dribble.