Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I work with this girl, Katherine, to handle the evacuation procedures in my building. The most recent revision to the evacuation plan has a small oversight: our area is unreasonably difficult to escape from. It requires us to walk across the length of the building, through a long glass corridor, collect three scarab pieces to open a mythical door, chant a few incantations, and battle a giant arachnid using rocks and supplied pitchforks. Many people are concerned with the spider, but I think the bigger problem is voluntarily putting pitchforks into the hands of a an unruly mob. Whatever the hell it is, our evacuation route sucks.

There's many different solutions to this problem. A trap-door/pneumatic tube system for each desk is one. Inflatable water slide windows is another. Personally I'd like to see a catapult device, but would be willing to compromise. Even, I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there, an arrow pointing to the quickest way out of the damn building.

So we talk to the dude one level above us. He's odd. He signs his emails with Here's to Life. It's cool to have a different closing than most other people, but why are you toasting? And why to life? I mean, when I happen to be sipping champagne at work and I get an email, I want to toast to technology, or to the future, Excelsior! But to life? Fuck you buddy.

He does seem to understand that in the case of an emergency there will be no life to toast since we'll all be burning inside the building or impaled by glass shards outside of it, so he has an exchange with the person above him to explain the situation, and here's the text of the email he sends all of us to schedule a walkthrough:

Subject: RE: Egress

Hello Judy,

1:30 works for me. I want to bring Stan and Katherine along if they can make it.

Here's to Life!

Who is Stan? No seriously, who the hell is Stan? Have I been blacking out and posing as someone else. Stan's my straight laced alter ego. Stan is a go getter. Stan gets things done. Stan has an excellent resume and volunteers in many cultural and civic endavours. Come to think of it, I was just working on a report that had been on the procrastination stack for a while, but when I opened it there was a lot more done then I remember. Perhaps this was Stan's doing. People always tell me that I did a good job, but I haven't done a good job since 1987. Stan?

No, Stan is the brutal hacking of my last name. Why would anyone want to even call me by my last name: its a shitty last name for proper noun usage. There's a guy in our group, his last name is Samples, that's a great last name name, use that. Sant sucks, especially compared to Rory. Sant is boring, Rory is nonconforming. Use that. Everyone. And when the building does burn down and everyone gets out alive because of my heroism, this Stan guy better not steal any of my thunder.

  Wednesday, February 14, 2007

A lot of people are getting freaky right now.

I've never had a memorable Valentine's Day. The one time I had a girlfriend at this time of year, I broke up with her on February 9th and we got back together on the 17th. I think VD is totally overrated. Maybe that's just the bitterness of never being in a relationship, but really, spending time being close to someone you love... BORING! Years from now people out tonight aren't going to remember what they did this Valentine's, and their memory of who did what to who will just mull together with all the other romps they've had in positions I haven't even yet imagined.

I'm above having ridiculously awesome sexual adventures, and the comfort of knowing that someone thinks your more important than anything else. Tonight, I actually did something memorable. Tonight, I totally schooled my work's B-Level Volleyball League.

Our team is terrible. We play six games a day, against three teams, once a week. In four weeks our record is 5-19. Four of those wins came against the team that we had to split from because we had too many additions from last season's team. So we have one legitimate win against a team that we don't interchange players with.

Before the game a few players start backing out because they have to go out with their girlfriends and then have wild hyena like sex. Homos. But thankfully, all the players that backed out were the really sucky players. Who knew that lack of volleyball ability equated to getting with the ladies?

Each person that showed seemed to have different skill, and only one skill. Except me and this other guy, who has great instincts and I think can float 47 inches above the ground. The gameplan was to set it to the guy who can hover, so he's positioned next to the one person has setting as there skill. Behind them is the one guy who can bump, Another dude next to him is awesome a serving. If it's not their one skill they totally suck at it, and the rest of the team kind of works like that. I'm an all-around player too, all-around mediocre player. I would rank my skills as shitty to below average in all facets of the game: serving, bumping, setting, spiking, blocking, teamwork, camaraderie, patience, discipline, not swearing, and under-reacting. On a given night I will not totally suck at half of these things.

But on this day, I was at below average on all of them. I was at the top of my game. I'm not saying I'm the sole reason we did well, but when the girl on our team served the ball into the net for the third consecutive time, I didn't run back there to slap her and tell her I hope her babies have AIDS like I normally do. I'm trying to say that just maybe, discretion like that, might have really pulled the team together.

We won our first game, and I guess success breeds confidence, because suddenly everyone could play volleyball with some degree of ability. We displayed skills that we didn't have before. The short guy spiked one, the setter girl made an awesome dig, I assume the really good guy developed the ability to control the ball with his mind. I even managed to hit the ball over the net without punching it into the basketball backboard. In the middle of the fourth game we realized we hadn't lost yet.

The fifth game, we had a run for our money, down by three with the other team four away from a win, but then our good server came up and took us home. The next game we smoked the other team by seventeen points. Yes ladies and gentlemen, on this night, my volleyball team won all six games we played; undefeated. That's a Valentine's memory that will live forever.

The best part will be next week, when the ass-douche who's one skill is telling everyone else what to do returns. I can rub this 6-0 record in his face and taunt him about how he wasted that time sexing a girl.