joygantic

Name a Political Scandal Not About Sex or Money

Here you go. 

We humans are interesting creatures.

First Day

While I would not have minded being unemployed for ever, I couldn't have asked for a better first day back at work. 

Our company grows by 40% this weeK as we go from seven to eleven people on staff.  It's such the startup. I don't have an office or a stapler or a drawer or a phone. 

But none of that matters because the people are great and the work is instantly interesting, challenging, and satisfying in the way that (for me) work always is when you're starting from nothing and aiming to build something great. 

As an added bonus, while the problems I have to solve are challenging, none of them require bending the laws of physics.  Instead it's all about continually articulating a vision,  breaking it down into logical and manageable parts, creating concepts and vocabularies and methodologies and then executing. If we do it right the sum of those parts will be greater than the whole. 

Oh, Oh, Ohhhhh Canada!

I have been following with much glee the scandal unfolding to the north. 

It seems that someone working for the Canadian Minister of Immigration took it upon themselves to solve a critical labor shortage: strippers.  He instituted a a special stripper visa program which has resulted in more than 500 Romanian strippers emigrating to Canada.  Who knew (presumably) hot women willing to get naked for money were in short supply in Canada?  Who knew that Romania was the preferred source for stripper labor?  I sure didn't.

The result of the stripper scandal has been a series of news reports that I find hilarious with headlines like: Romanian strippers find Canada ideal gig and Martin supports stripper fan Sgro. I suppose there are some serious issues lurking here, it's much more fun just to gawk and imagine some stripper placement agency in Bucharest with an advertisement that includes a picture of a nude hottie with the naughty bits covered with red maple leaves.

"You'll surprisingly discover . . ."

You'll surprisingly discover that while monogamous, heterosexual, drug-free, non-adventurous travelers might seem a bit boring at some parties, they're hugely popular at blood banks. [via MeFi]

Fresh Start

I start my new job tomorrow and I can say happily that: I haven’t thought about it much. 

I’ve been reveling in downtime. It took me a full week to reboot and convince my cells that I wasn’t going back to my former job. I’ve spent the subsequent week making some progress on various chores and projects but mostly being a happy vegetable watching movies, listening to music, cooking, eating, sleeping. I spent lots of time just hanging out at home with Dia. Camille decided her favorite spot was my office chair, so I let her be and spent many an afternoon sitting on a stool in my office.

Next time I find myself unemployed I want to do the above until I can’t stand it anymore and start making birdhouses or overcome my fear of ballroom dancing and learn the tango. Or something.

I’m in a good space to start the new gig.  I pledge to not get wound around the axel of work.  To take care of myself and enjoy my beautiful life and everyone who populates its.  On my honor.
 

 

Disaster Strikes

I consider myself a very competent home cook which perhaps is why I found myself so perplexed and. . . OK, traumatized by the events of the past week. I failed to make sausage. In fact it took me four days to fail to make sausage.

Now Here's An Idea

You may have read about the 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich that recently sold on EBay for $28,000.  Of course thsi was no ordinary grilled cheese, it was Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese.

And this got me thinking.  It would be fairly straightforward to create a skillet with a special raised pattern that if properly buttered could turn every grilled cheese sandwich into Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese. Think of the difference this could make.

We Are Close

You can find poetry in the most unexpected places . . . like the the window of a Subway sandwich shop.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Fanalyst

I went out last night to watch Jason play front man for The Weeds at what I understand was their first show and possibly their last. I found out afterwards that Jason had ad libbed all the lyrics.  He did have a solid Jim Morrison moment or two.

I ran into a bunch of friends including one former colleague who, with a twinkle in her eye tolds me she had a "secret blog."  But not so secret that she immediately hand me a blog business card which read:

The Fanalyst
watching you watch the show
www.thefantalyst.com

Now I understood.  She was undercover.  An undercover blogger.  Her blog tagline sums it up: "Too shy to be a starf*cker, The Fanalyst lurks at shows and writes about the audience." All hail The Fantalyst!

Keyhole: Waste Time While Touring the World

Keyhole makes this groovy software that let's you tour the world thanks to incredible satellite imagery.  It's cool in a scary Enemy of the State kinda way.  Not all parts of the world are in hi res, but many cities are which allows you to zoom from a couple hundred miles in the sky down to 100 feet (with resolution at between one foot and one meter).  This picture to the left is of my new workplace. There's a 7 day free trial that I recommend as a diversion this holiday weekend.  The software is thirty bucks to buy.  I can't exactly figure out what I'd do with the software apart from goofing around like I've been doing for the past two hours.  Oh, Keyhole is owned by a small company called Google.