Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Les Paul Died today.

ThinFast is leaving for a couple years, and this makes me very sad. She was my favorite work-friend-who-is-a-girl-but-only-in-a-totally-platonic-way-honey-i-swear. I'm sure there is a word for that in German. She refers to me as her "work husband".

Ironman, my brother-from-another-mother, having cast his eyes longingly to the West for many years now, has finally caved, and weighs anchor for that halcyon coast in a little bit. Gone forever. How fucked up is that?

These are the types of events that could make me cry, if I weren't already an emotional cripple. As it is, I’m feeling pretty hard-done-by at the moment.

Wife (whose charity and patience I can never hope to deserve) keeps trying to get me to talk about my feelings.

Which, perversely, is hard to do without making everything somehow worse.

Obélix, recent hauptmann to my obergefreiter, has also been very supportive during these trying times, asking me how I feel, gifting me with desserts, trying to fondle my buttocks, "do [I] need a hug?", etc. Like his fictional namesake, he is enthusiastic, sensitive, fiercely loyal, energetic, and sometimes a bit soup-au-lait. A really good guy, in general, though a little naive. For example, he thinks he’s sneaky. Thinks I don’t know that he reads this blog (hah! piégé, mon ami!).

Obélix has a healthy appetite for good food. He eats the way the rest of us wish we could. So it was almost painful to watch him try to negotiate our communal platters of Ethiopian food last night, when we hit the town for a last hurrah, to wish ThinFast bon voyage (and for God’s sake, a speedy return, please!). Poor guy.

Well, I thought the food was great. After getting our hands dirty at the restaurant, we hit up Pang Pang Karaoke with about ten other people, and all crooned at each other until our throats were raw.

Surprise of the evening: SoftServe, who you’ve never heard of, but who’s been with PerpetualStartup since that ill-advised foray into the sleazy world of Precious Metals Redistribution. This guy has a voice like velvet, drizzled with honey, rolled into a fine cigar, and smoked with 12-year-old port. We were all suitably impressed. Still waters indeed.

Anyways, so that’s basically it. Pretty down in the dumps. But on the up side, Wife is once again knocked-up. That's right, I've been busy manufacturing replacements for all those bastards who are leaving.

Screw you guys!

Also, Directrix will be returning to PerpetualStartup in September (probably), so that'll be another friendly face.

P.S.: It has come to the attention of the editorial board that there has been a recent precipitous decline in the quantity and quality of intellectual content in this blog. So, next time I'll try and give you something educational. We'll start easy, maybe some Cantor Set Theory or something.

Guitar Player XOR Safe-Cracker

Sorry, no Christmas post. I had something lined up about how the war against Christmas parallels the War On Drugs, the War On Terrorism, and is really an expression of North American societal self-loathing, but I just couldn't pull it together. God I'm pathetic.

At some point, amidst the unwrapping, the face-stuffing, the food coma and credit card bills, my guitar arrived. Santa shipped it direct from China. My impish face glowed, my eyes lit in child-like wonder as I unwrapped it. Squeals of glee no doubt erupted.

I played it for about a week, but eventually I had to bring it into the shop for the "setup". This is something all electric guitars go through, usually before you buy it from your friendly neighborhood purveyor of musical oddities.

The setup is an array of delicate adjustments and fine-tuning that I couldn't be comfortable delegating to my own mechanical acumen (or dearth thereof), and so I had to give my baby up. I cried, but took solace in the fact that I'd see her again. I'm still waiting.

After a week of playing, I had basically lost all sensation in the fingertips of my left hand. The cold, tingly, frostbitten feeling was annoying at first, eventually soothing.

Someone said these are supposed to be calluses, a necessary step on the path to guitar mastery, but they don't really feel like calluses, like the kind you might get after a couple weeks of lifting weights, or shoveling dirt or something. If you've ever futzed around building model airplanes or the like, and accidentally gotten crazy glue on your fingers, it approaches the feeling I'm attempting to describe, a thin skin of unfeeling, coating your fingertips. The urge to gnaw on my own fingers until the feeling returns is unbearable.

Thus, along with the other trivial male pursuits of looking-without-seeing, listening-without-hearing, eating-without-tasting, and sex-without-loving, I now master touching-without-feeling. I think there's something ironic in there somewhere, that learning to express yourself through music, arguably the most direct conduit to human emotion, should require this deadening of the senses. And so now, these delicate instruments, my human hands, purpose-built for the business of feeling, with more nerve endings than the rest of my body combined, are denied their purpose, and die a little, that my music (such as it is) might live.

Is this a loss? Or a win?

I've heard it said, and maybe this is an urban myth, like becoming a ninja by dint of decades of studying with Tibetan monks, etc. But I've heard it said that safe-crackers actually use sandpaper on their fingertips, to remove the first couple of layers of skin in order that they can feel the tumblers of the lock clicking into place. I suppose the gist is of a heightened sensitivity to the mechanical puzzle before them. If this were true, then I have removed this occupation from the realm of possibility. In the quantum "many worlds" theory, I have amputated and cauterized the set of universes that are home to Cool Ranch Luke, master safe-cracker, in favor of that other set of universes containing Cool Ranch Luke, guitar player wannabe.

P.S.: If anyone out there knows how to get that little pencil icon to show up beneath my posts (the "edit post" link), let me know. In recent weeks, it has magically disappeared, and I miss it.

Knife Goes In, Guts Come Out

One problem with writing on the internet, is that it's easy to fall into the trap of writing for yourself, and forgetting that anyone can read this crap. Including your wife, your co-workers, your boss, or your priest.

So here's a thing that I feel like I need to write down, but I have to be careful how I do it.

Earlier this week, during casual conversation with Ironman, I mentioned some trifling work-related concerns. Little by little, the conversation became less casual, the concerns less trifling.

I was basically asking for advice from someone who's natural (almost supernatural) people skills and raw management "talent" are tempered with a sort of "Muppet Babies" innocence, and basically eclipse my own amazing awesomeness. Like a sparkling diamond in a dark, depressing sea of vomit, Ironman stands out as, well, something of a niftiness, managerially.

Lest you think I embellish just because he happens to know where I blog, let me assure you that the bar is set relatively low in this regard. The majority of managers with whom I've had the pleasure of working might not inaccurately be referred to as "a hooting band of blinkering cockslots", to paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

At any rate, the upshot of the entire conversation was that, as usual, the problem is me. This stinging truth was delivered by diplomatic hammer, and as I lay on the ground, groping about for my missing testicles, I vowed to do a better job.

Of course, two days later, this promise exploded into festive confetti when I commiserated on the subject of the "bureaucracy" with my lackey. This was an unfortunate choice of words, and the hammer, this time, was less diplomatic. The phone, accursed instrument of Beelzebub, rang.

"If the delicate subtext of our earlier conversation has slipped you by, then allow me to hold your head under the putrescent waters of knowledge," began Ironman (paraphrasing here), and the thing just got better from there. My end of the phone conversation went something like "Yes. Yes. I understand. Yes. Yes." The message was clear. Be careful what you say.

Perhaps I'm a masochist, but I'm hoping for a "be careful what you blog" message. Perhaps this time I'll be able to take a few days off and claim workman's compensation.

Ironman knows I kid. "Just kidding, boss!"

Seriously. Great guy.

In the interests of Changing the Subject:

Son, having recovered from pneumonia, promptly contracted an ear infection. Once he'd finished his antibiotics, instantly broke out in hives, an allergic reaction to penicillin. While at the pediatrician's office (for the fifth time in as many weeks), Son managed to accidentally give the doc a good swift kick in the gnarbles.

This produced in me a strange mixture of emotions that I can only describe as embarrassment, cringing sympathetic pain, regret, and of course, hilarity.

Why is it that all of humanity finds a boot in the nads -- someone else's nads -- so goddamn funny? No other sort of pain or misfortune is witnessed with as much suppressed mirth as having your balls kicked so hard you could wear them for a hat.

Is there some deeper universal bond that joins us all in our appreciation of this phenomena? Some common thread that cuts across cultures? Can it be used to bring peace to the Middle East, as opposed to fodder for America's Funniest Home Videos?

These are the kinds of deep questions that keep me awake at night. Perhaps I should kick Lackey in the nuts, in the interests of improved professional communications.

Spoiler Alert:

Well, I saw this. Which made me think of this:

Which reminded me of something I forgot to mention. FTC insider trading regulations prohibit me from telling you this, but what the hell. Osaka Seafood Concern, the Japanese company that owns a controlling interest in PerpetualStartup, where I work, is undergoing a leveraged management buyout of it's publicly traded stock.

So, I dunno, go buy some stock or something.

That Deaf, Dumb and Blind Kid Sure Plays a Mean Pinball

After grumbling and mumbling for (according to Wife) an eternity about how I need a vacation (despite, or perhaps because of, my inability to coherently explain to anyone what exactly it is I do), I finally took Friday and Monday off, and tried to relax. Since being stressed out doesn't appear to be helping my productivity, perhaps some chillaxin' would do the trick.

Friday was spent taking Son to the doctor, dragging him home from the park in a thunderstorm, and generally spending some quality father/son time. At some point I texted The Boxer, wanting to see if she felt like basking in Son's radiant glory (and my own, lesser, light). She declined on the laughable pretext of being a couple hundred kilometers away, and thus unavailable.

"Ottawa, eh?" says I, "Hmm...". And so, the inspiration for an epic family road-trip was born. Wife and I packed a bag, got a hotel using some sort of mysterious "points" system, the mechanics of which elude me, and boogied on down the T-Can to O-town for the bitchin' night-life and wild orgies.

Okay, no seriously. We went for the museums. First stop was the Museum of Nature, which is just like a zoo, except all the animals are dead, stuffed and mounted. This used to be called the Museum of Natural History, but that had a nasty boring historical ring to it, so they renamed it. The dinosaur exhibit is still in full effect, thank God (that's right, Creationists, "God" and "dinosaurs" in the same sentence. Suck it!), so Son spent a good hour and a half ogling the petrified skeletons of Devonian sea-creatures and the like.

They even had dinosaur poop! Which really didn't smell as bad as it sounds, and actually had a sort of burnished quality to it, as though transformed through the magic of fossilization into bronze or (*gasp*) Gold! I couldn't believe it. Here was a creature whose fleshy bits became oil, whose bones became stone, and whose poop became Gold. Truly a masterpiece of Intelligent Design, all form and function designed to serve that pinnacle of creation, Man (or, you know, Woman, whatever.). No wonder the creationists let this place slide!

We then whipped through the other five floors of the museum in about fifteen minutes, and adjourned to Sparks street, where a Buskers Festival assailed our senses. Seriously. That guy on stilts who plays the saxophone and looks like he's gonna kick you in the face with his skinny two-by-four legs? He was there. So were the break-dancers, the guy who draws Vermeer on the sidewalk with colored chalk, the man who bites the heads off chickens, that fucking string quartet who don't seem to know any songs other than Pachelbel's Canon, the Spoon Man, the puppet-show guy, the cotton-candy lady who always has a cigarette in her mouth, the chicken who bites the heads off men, the bloody Peruvian Pan-Pipe Band (or maybe they were Andean?), and various T-shirt, slushy, and snake-oil vendors. The highlight of the affair for Son, though, was bouncing around in an inflatable trampoline at 2 dollars a minute.

Lunch was crappy and expensive, and would set the tone for all our culinary experiences in Ottawa. Maybe living in Montreal has spoiled me, but the trip seemed salted and peppered with universally shitty and expensive food.

Finally, it was check-in time, and we repaired to the hotel for a quick nap. The rest of the day was spent in a whirlwind walking tour of all the salient touristy parts of Ottawa: the Hill, Byward Market, the Canal. We finished off the night with a dip in the hotel pool, and a light show on Parliament Hill, and hit the hay.

Sunday was breakfast at Chez Cora, more Byward Market, watching the boats in the Rideau Locks, then hitting the Museum of Science and Technology on the way home.

The Museum of Science & Technology was a heterogeneous mélange of the mundane and the fascinating, the old and the new, the shiny whiz-bangery of The Future and the insufferably dull nincompoopery of "The Future". Believe me, it's a subject for a whole other post, but by way of a tempting morsel of Things to Come, check it. I came across this unassuming black box in the "History of Radio" section of the museum:

	Herald of the age of Bakelite and cast-iron, the "fathometer", I assumed, was used to gage how Fat one's "Ho" was. Not so! (I was informed by a patient museum volunteer) In actuality, submarines had this on-board to determine the depth of the sea bed, in order to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience of running aground on the bottom of the ocean.
	Another miracle of the future: The Satellite Phone! According to the plaque, in distant 199?, "Earth stations like this, forecast for the future, would let you be in contact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Would you want one?" Gosh, and how! What won't they think of next?

Lately I've wondered about my qualifications. (I'm not, after all, an expert.) And not in any specific way, like "Am I qualified to do my job", but am I qualified to do anything really? Be a father / husband? Be a (yuck) "blogger"? What the hell qualifies me to try and make people think, when I can barely bestir my own gray-matter from it's perpetual hibernation?

Some people are uniquely unqualified for specific tasks. You wouldn't ask a gay man to judge a "Miss Nude Hawaiian Tropic" competition, for example, any more than you would ask a Catholic priest to babysit your kids, or an esotropic homeless man with an inner-ear infection to lead a firing squad. There are some specific unsuitabilities (all racism, sexism, ageism, creedism and nationalism aside) that simply cannot be overlooked.

When you're interviewing prospective employees for a position involving, say, fire safety, are you going to hire the former chief of the Asbestosville Fire Department, or a three-time convicted arsonist? Arguably, the arsonist knows a lot more about fire.

But this isn't a question of being uniquely unqualified. My disqualification feels, at times, universal, and I flash on the image of myself, or the meager accomplishments of my life, gathering dust in some Museum of Human Nature, atop a faux-brass plaque inscribed with my various paleontological vital statistics. And the sum of my contribution to the universe will be Son. The torch is passed, and now no light falls on me.

The good news is that you can't be fired from any of the really important stuff (short of a court order, and if you're reading this, Kevin Bacon, stop calling me). Sometimes, a nearly infinite series of second chances awaits. And I figure, if a four-year-old can offer unconditional forgiveness and acceptance, then how hard can it be?

It's a fucking work in progress, is all. Cut me some slack.