The Aerie
So I'm NOT in England. Not that I would have been yet, but neither would I have been blogging.
The trouble started before I left: the phone rang. It was Orbitz. An automated voice informed me that my flight was 52 minutes delayed. This was helpful since my spouse now had time to leave piano lessons, pick me up, and give me a ride to the airport.
Unfortunately, I was also aware that I only had a 90-minute layover.
Entering the airport went smoothly and I reached the gate with ninety minutes to spare. Grabbed a burger, since there wasn't going to be any food on this flight, and took my time getting back to the gate. By the time I got there the attendants had arrived and were fielding questions.
"I have to change planes for London in Detroit, and this is cutting it pretty close."
"London? You're with him," said the clerk, pointing at a bloke at the counter beside me.
The clerk said they'd try to message ahead and inform the flight that we were running late, and they also moved our seats up to the front so that we could disembark earlier.
We boarded around the stated time... and then we sat there. And sat there. Eventually an attendant came on. "We're waiting for flight crew on a delayed flight from Alaska." Greeeeat.
We sat longer. My whole fly-across-the-pond novel trickled away before my eyes, and the plaine was still at the gate. Flight crew arrived with much thumping and bumping.
And we waited.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the pilot informed us, "We are waiting for additional flight attendants. Unfortunately the delay has caused some of our attendants to exceed the legal 14 hour limit, and we need fresh attendants."
And we waited.
Attendants arrived, breathless and flustered, paged to the airport from various places around the city. Finally, two hours - that is to say 120 minutes - after we were supposed to depart, we pulled away from the gate. Still we held out hope: we ought to be arriving with 20 minutes to go, with 15, with 10.
Finally we were on the ground, and my inadvertent colleague peered out the plane windows to see the British Air jet parked at the terminal. Excitedly we watched it draw closer, and lo and behold we parked at the very NEXT gate! We could make it!
Incredibly, not only did we park at the adjacent gate, but when the gate was extended it did not join the front of the plane where we had boarded, but the door in the middle of the plane, right where we were seated. So we leapt from the plane the moment the door was opened and ran pell-mell to the adjacent gate.
The door was closed.
I was taking a casserole out of the oven yesterday when it hit me...
"Two days from now I'll be in the air."
It's not the aeriality that scares me, it's the preparations. For instance, where is my passport? I think I know, but when I'm at home I forget to double-check, so everytime I'm at work I panic: will I find it at home? Then I go home and forget to look.
Yesterday was a good example of what I face. Yesterday I finally got paid: yay! Good thing, yes. But that was just one more thing I had to do between leaving work at 4:30 and the bank closing at 5:00 p.m. I already had an errand on my plate: stopping by my ex-bookkeeper to pick up my files, and in fact I was driving over there when I learned that the check had arrived.
So I changed course, drove home, picked up the check, the endorsement stamp, and the deposit book. Kissed the wife and kids, drove over to the bank. Got there at 4:59:59 - endorsed, recorded, deposited... great! Now when that clears I'll have money!
Hopped back in the car, drove to the accountant's. Grabbed the box of papers, hopped back in the car, and since I was downtown I drove to the Post Office to check the PO box. I know, after the last time why would I ever look in there again? But there was no IRS letter this time, just the signed contract for my training course in London.
So that was home, bank, accountant, and Post Office, all in an hour. Returned home to tend the kids, as the spouse was now gone to a meeting, and undertook my financial preparations since there is now money in the bank.
Spent the evening and the money working on our finances, wrapping up around midnight. Just got the basics covered - paying us, for example, so that we can pay down our bounced-check fees.
These loan-increases were buried in the loan total: we'd make our payment, the principal would drop. Then at the beginning of the next month, before our payment, the principal would be HIGHER than it had been at the end of the prior month, but we'd pay our loan and the total would drop correspondingly. So the onus was on us (hah!) to notice the increase in the principal from one month to the next.
I know what they were doing, of course - they were counting on us refinancing before we noticed. Right? You remodel the house, you take out a big loan, then you refinance that amount back into the mortgage. And if along the way you pay $1800 for something you didn't ask for, well, it's up to you to notice...
When I spoke to the woman at the credit union I asked for her last name. She didn't want to give it to me. "What is this for?" she asked. "It's for the complaint I'm filing with the State Attorney General's office, there's a line here for the contact at the organization." Heh, it was almost worth all this bother to listen to her veins ice up over the telephone. "Don't you think that's an overreaction? We're refunding the money to your principal."
"And if I stole $150 from the credit union for several months, and you caught me, you'd be content if I merely returned the money?"
I could hear the telephone's handset making that crackly sound that plastic makes when it's plunged into liquid nitrogen...
Yeah, it's a crime when an individual does it to a bank, but when a bank does it to an individual it's an innocent mistake...
Apparently I need to let someone's people go, because I am being plagued like a Pharoah. First it was a rain of financial woes, which are at least on their way to sorting themselves out. Today it's a plague of stupids.
One stupid:while perusing our checking account my spouse notices the not-very-surprising-at-this-point: we've got bounced checks. In this case, an automatic withdrawal has come in while we are waiting for my consulting check to arrive today. This is just Murphy's Law, of course: the day the check shows up, we bounce a check. Thanks, thanks a lot.
That's not Teh Stupid however. Teh Stupid was discovered when she examined the detail of the loan to determine why its auto-withdrawal date was a surprise. Buried in the loan detail was a fee, $140/month for life insurance.
WTF?
A few calls later we determined that, indeed, we had never signed up for such a thing - nonetheless we've paid about $1260 over the past year. They have offered to cancel the fee and refund the money into our loan balance. The gall! The freakin' gall! How about I steal $140 from the bank every month - I'm sure when they catch me they would be perfectly content if I simply gave all the money back...
Grrr...
Why? Why would anyone use this piece of crap?
An example? I have a shortcut on my desktop that points at a folder for one of my projects. So I get an e-mail attachment in Notes, and I want to save that attachment in the project folder. I click "Save" and then when it asks where, I click on the shortcut.
"There is already a file named 'shortcut.lnk' in this directory, do you wish to replace it?"
So Lotus Notes thinks that when I click on the shortcut link, that I want to re-name my attachment to "shortcut.lnk" and overwrite the link file with my attachment?
This is a bug that should have been caught in the first fifteen minutes of software alpha-testing. And this is in a major corporate e-mail system.
The mind boggles.
This morning I awaken - no e-mail. Now, my overnight e-mail is all spam anyway, but nonetheless. So I look at the firewall - turning off the firewall also turned off my port-forwarding that allowed my e-mail to work.
Wha?
And in searching for ways to re-enable my port forwarding, I discover that there are not one, not two, but THREE means of enabling port forwarding on my firewall, each subtly different and apparently incompatible with each other.
Fortunately I got up early this morning, so despite taking half an hour to rebuild my port forwarding table, I still got to work on time. And yes, I would simply "get rid of" this firewall, except I can't - it's a necessary part of my connection to the Internet. It's the optional firewall in back of this one - the one I could remove if I desired - which has been protecting my network from disaster for the past week...
Oh, it's like they're trying to drive me mad.
I'm working at my current client thanks to a consulting firm I've never met. Everything has been handled by telephone. I've never set eyes on one of their representatives. Which is too bad, because at this point I'd like to slap one of them.
It was bad enough that when I took this job they gave me a flat rate that was 20% less than when I was doing the same work for my prior client. When I pushed back and noted that their rate hadn't changed since a colleague of mine held this position five years ago, they were unimpressed and unwilling to discuss raising the rate. Unfortunately with no other prospects immediately available, my bluff was called.
However, my current rate appears to be 100% lower than my prior position, because so far I'm not getting paid.
Their invoicing process was explained to me when I called in at the end of the first week: go to a website, fill out a web form, get your money two weeks later. I did that. Three weeks and three web forms later, no money. So I call their accounts receivable.
"Oh, we don't log into that website, it's too difficult to get access."
WTF?
"No, you have to print out a copy of the web page and fax it to us."
Well, this was new. So I contacted my manager at this firm, and explained my need for payment. She agreed to immediately take my faxed invoices over to payroll. I zoomed home from work on Friday, painfully aware that the consulting firm in Michigan was an hour ahead, and faxed the invoices over. I called the manager, who said she'd immediately get them off the fax and process them.
Fast forward to Monday. Being busy at work all morning I didn't get to phone the manager until 2:00.
"Oh, I'll go see if those are on the fax machine."
Apparently "immediately" has a different meaning in Michigan. In Michigan, Jesus was crucified and died "immediately," e.g. three days later. I waited an impatient half hour while she claimed to be dealing with the situation, and called her back. She put me off, claiming she needed to return to her desk, and eventually called me back.
"Okay, it's all ready to go, they're ready to cut you a check."
Great.
"Unfortunately the Vice President who signs the checks is out of the office until Wednesday."
At this point I'm vibrating so hard with anger that my molecules are starting to slip through those of the floor and I'm in danger of sinking straight into Hell. Considering that my life is spent in a taupe cubicle amidst a field of identical taupe cubicles, a quarter-mile from the nearest window, about the only difference I might notice in Hell is that I would apparently have a better chance of seeing a paycheck.
"About how happy should I be right now?" I whisper in my most hoarse and dire tone.
She mumbles through some lame apology and makes helpless comments when I suggest that any senior executive must be able to sign checks. What would happen if this vacationing fellow was hit by a bus, does the business just shut down? She signs off, promising to "look into it," which of course is a promise I find just about as compelling as Bush's promise that after one more Friedman unit we're sure to see the victory of his victorious victorosity in Iraq.
I take a short walk to recover my senses, and when I get back to my desk I decide to cut to the chase and called the central number. "Accounts receivable, please."
There I spoke to the same sneering accountant that told me last week that logging in to their billing website was too much bother, and that I should print off the web pages and fax them in. She lectured me on their billing processes, while my newly-recovered cool threatened to evaporate: I was only able to keep calm by reminding myself that anyone this self-righteous was bound to be a twit. Finally she shut up for long enough to say "I'm not really concerned about future invoicing, I'm concerned about my paycheck."
"We'll mail that Friday."
"I'm leaving for England on Friday."
Hem. Haw. Point at rules. Oddly, no mention of missing Vice Presidents.
"We'll get your check in the mail for you to receive on Thursday."
"Okay: please mail me a confirmation when you send it so I know to expect it."
Like turning off a burner on a whistling teakettle, my fury began to drop in pitch.
"Urge to kill fading... fading..."
Then I got the e-mail from my soon-to-be-former accountant... Then I got the e-mail from my lawyer who is handling my five-figure lawsuit against a fellow who didn't pay me three years ago...
"Urge to kill rising... RISING..."
(Update: my cubicle neighbor across the aisle is on the phone discussing her husband's failed vasectomy and her own ovulation-related medical issues. I may soon run screaming from this place...)
Update: And why is no check in my mailbox? The consulting firm's contact told me to invoice my time using a website... but the financial people at the consulting firm don't use the website. Too much bother figuring it out and getting access rights, apparently. No, I have to print off the web page and fax it to them. So I'm not getting any money for, oh, at least a week if not longer...
Sigh. Okay, so everybody is healthy. Nothing has been damaged. There have been no accidents or emergencies. There is no smoke or blood.
Have we set the scope appropriately? So that having been said, yesterday was Disaster Day.
I went to the Post Office in search of a check, and was excited to spot an envelope through the little glass window on the little brass door. Imagine, then, my disappointment when instead of a check I found an IRS letter.
The IRS letter said "We still have not received your tax return for March of 2006, you owe $X,000." Well, it said something like that. Actually my eyes got so spooked that they leaped into the ditch like hobbits on the nazgul freeway as soon as I saw the IRS logo, and I really couldn't take in the content.
I drove to work (not on West River Road) and faxed the form to my tax accountant with a cover letter that included the acronym "WTF". Midway through the day I got an e-mail back. The IRS must have lost the tax FORM, my accountant told me, which is easily replaced. So for March of 2006, you just have to re-submit the tax FORM. Not the $X,000.
So that was a relief. I read on.
However, she continued, you owe $X,000 for your 2006 personal taxes.
My response in e-mail was simply "I can practically hear my skullbones cracking." I don't know if that made any sense to her, but that's all I could think of given that I had an absolutely fearsome headache even BEFORE I got her e-mail.
Part of the reason I had the fearsome headache was work. Brought onboard three weeks ago, I was tasked with the impossible: manage a project to install a firewall into a production network, in one month. This was ridiculous: normally such a thing would require, for example, recompiling all the applications on the servers to be protected by the firewall, which simply could not be accomplished in a month even if there were a list of all the applications on those servers to begin with, which there was not.
However, one of the employees here is a fellow I worked with at another client a couple years back, and he is brilliant. He came up with a way to add the firewall without needing a recompilation, and was able to test and configure the firewall in the lab. So I was entertaining the possibility of pulling off a miracle on my very first project.
Yesterday I learned that the evaluator, who will determine whether or not this new firewall is sufficient, just returned from a security seminar. All fired up with security evangelism, yesterday he called for two new items to be added to the firewalled network - intrusion detection, and two-factor authentication. Without explaining what those are, I can tell you that both require an existing infrastructure to support them, and there is almost no way these can be added in the next week-and-a-half to three weeks that remain.
So there goes that miracle.
Then I spoke with the company organizing the classes that I'll be teaching in London the week-after-next. In the course of discussions I was informed that, contrary to what I had been told before, I will NOT be teaching from 4:00-9:00 pm every night, I'll be teaching from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every day. So suddenly I have twice as many class-hours to teach, and my days of idle London tourism turn into a week of sitting around a motel every evening preparing for the next day's class.
By far the smallest of the disasters, but still annoying. I'm even more glad that I arranged to spend the surrounding weekends in England, and I guess I am happy, now, that my spouse decided not to go. She'd have spent the whole week alone except for the evenings, and doubtless been seduced during the day by some handsome British soldier and run off with him to Majorca. So I guess that's a disaster averted.
And still I have not received my first paycheck.
The idea of crawling under a rock is sounding more and more attractive.
Monday I was driving to work on West River Road, which is a quiet parkway that follows the Mississippi along St. Paul's western border. It's 25 MPH, which for most cases means 40 MPH, but I've learned to be cautious. Unlike its counterpart across the river, there are a lot of police cruisers patrolling WRR, particularly on its southern end.
So I'm following this taxi, he's doing about 35, I'm doing a little less because he's pulling away from me. Around the curve ahead comes another taxi in the opposite direction.
It flashes its headlights three times, and the brake lights come on in the taxi ahead of me.
"Interesting," methinks. We slow and round the curve ahead... and pass a squad car parked in a bay on our side of the road, radar gun in hand.
So apparently the International Cabbie Signal for "speed trap ahead" is three flashes of the headlights.
Good to know!
I have written in the past about my deep disdain for the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. This crumpled-up beer can of a building was dropped beside the Mississippi River on West River Road some fifteen years ago or so, and nobody has recycled it since. Architects apparently love it, but few of them I think have ever driven east towards it at sunset, when it reflects the glare in to brain-piercing needles of fierce solar radiation. Nor, I suspect, have any of them ever strolled along the river bank in the autumn, when the warm colors of the leaves are interrupted by its severe slate-gray reflection of the overcast sky. It's an ugly, ugly building, but maybe, as with jazz, I just don't "get it."
Anyway the news had a story last week about this thing growing another limb, and Frank Gehry is being brought back to direct the sequel. Being the shy, reserved type that I am, I sent in a letter to the paper.
On Saturday when I took my daughter to Al's Breakfast for Dad 'n' Kid Day, I checked the paper. No sign of my letter. "That's okay, " I told my daughter, jokingly, "sometimes they save the good letters for Sunday."
Sunday the paper showed up, and I opened to the letters but didnt' see my name. Then I realized that the letters wrapped around a gray-boxed photograph, in a spot reserved for the "Letter of the Day." The photo: the Weisman Art Museum: the letter "Given the eyesore he left us last time, I hope Frank Gehry's addition to the Weisman Art Museum is a giant bottle of Visine."
Woo hoo! Not just letter... Not just saved for Sunday... but Sunday Letter of the Day!
Than Kew, Than Kew, I accept this award, and all the honors and privileges accruing thereto...
So I turned left up to University Avenue, down two blocks, turned back onto WRR again... and stopped. Different construction vehicles were scattered all over the road ahead. Looking back, I could see the first vehicle still trying to park, and between it at me a sign which no doubt read "Road Closed Ahead"... which I couldn't see earlier because the truck was in the way.
So I three-point the car around to head back to University Avenue...
And there's a gigantic semitrailer swinging wide into my lane in order to pull into a business. Of course he misjudges the turn and has to back up to try again.
So I sat in my car in the middle of the intersection and listened to the radio. Whaddaya gonna do?
Note to self; West River Road by downtown Minneapolis is busy in the morning.
So the other day I'm leaving the Post Office when a voice calls out "Nice hat!"
I turn. The speaker is a chubby little fellow bucking an enormous backpack that looms over his head.
"Thanks!" I say smiling. It's so nice to receive a compliment.
"It's a little pretentious, but it's okay."
A cloud settled over my mood. "It's not pretentious!" I object, feigning hurt but actually rather annoyed. We continued to draw apart, I walking into the parking ramp, he proceeding along the sidewalk, separated by a concrete wall.
"Sure! You look like Clint Eastwood!" he chortled.
Rolling my eyes I climbed into my car. Why can't people just say something nice? Why does it have to be qualified with rudeness?
As to what to visit in London, well, there are the usual tourist attractions - Big Ben, the London Bridge, etc., etc. But one of my dream-locales? Cardiff. "Why?" do you ask? Because that's where they shoot 'Torchwood!' Okay, so it's two hours there and two hours back, and my only real interest is to visit the seaside plaza where the show is filmed. Silly! We'll see what I end up doing. My birthmother suggests going to visit Stonehenge, however, and actually it's rather on-the-way to Cardiff, so maybe I could make a day of it and visit both!
So over the weekend I upgraded the firmware on the firewall, which was quite out-of-date. The new firmware seems to be working fine, no reboots necessary. During the upgrade process the installer made quite a show of "Saving settings"... and later "Restoring configuration settings." And since it worked after the upgrade I made only a cursory review - yep, all the settings seemed to be there!
So today I go in to make some changes to it, and what to I find? The settings were all there.. but the firewall functionality was turned off!
Fortunately I have a SECOND firewall! You see, originally my connection had a "bridge" on it, which didn't offer firewall protection. So I spent real money and went out and bought a firewall appliance in order to protect my network. Then the ISP changed from a bridge to a modem with firewall capability, and suddenly there I was with two firewalls. Well I set them up and got them working with each other, but I kind of felt silly about having TWO firewalls for my little home network.
Not anymore! I can just imagine the mess I could have had if my kids' computers were discovered by some Internet hacker-bot... *shudder* Hooray for two firewalls!
The big job opportunity I was looking for fell through - oh, they said they're going to make an offer, but I'm going to turn it down. From an entrepreneurial, groudbreaking leadership position, the job slowly morphed into a lone clerical position, with broad responsibilities, no staff, no resources and no power. Sorry! Not interested! A pity, but what can you do. I can already tell the job wasn't structured for success, because the more invested I became in the role, the less my potential bosses seemed to regard my opinion. My first visit they were all ears about what I would recommend: my last interview my proposals regarding the position received flat "No" resposnes. Why is it that someone from "outside" an organization is regarded with more credibility than someone from "inside" the organization? It's like a Dilbert cartoon, "Well, if you work here you must be a moron."
Well that's it for Odds 'n' Sods - more random, disjointed thoughts later! For now, back to work...
Okay, THAT was the Gayest Movie Ever. Now, mind you, there's nothing wrong with a gay movie: gay is not an epithet. However, when the gay movie appears to be both by and for an audience that would purport to hate gays, then yes there's something intrinsically wrong with that group making and watching a gay movie.
The movie in this case is '300,' the latest special-effects extravaganza derived from a Frank Miller graphic novel. This lush blend of imagery and music is fatally flawed by its dialog: a hash of action-movie cliches and White House talking points. Yes, '300' is 'Spartacus' for neocons.
The plot of '300' is based upon the Battle of Thermopylae some two thousand and five hundred years ago, as described in Frank Miller's 1998 graphic novel. While the events portrayed seem to stick pretty rigorously to the accepted view of history - from hurling Xerxes' ambassadors into a pit, to the pithy "then we shall fight in the shade" rejoinder - the movie's dialog and stated motivations reveal an agenda beyond the gory retelling of a gory battle.
The movie begins with obligatory and gratuitous nudity - first the lovely Kelly Craig, as the Oracle of Delphi, imitates an image from Howard Schatz' 'Waterdance'. I was puzzled for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I had never heard that the Oracle at Delphi floated weightless and naked prior to making her pronouncements. More to the point, however, the film goes out of its way to describe the pestilent priests of the Oracle as "sub-human," and "inbred," but then minutes later describes how these disfigured creatures demanded fresh young girls from across Greece for their pleasure. Well, if they're getting it on with fresh young girls, then it doesn't seem like they'd be inbred, would it? Regardless, their disfigurements bespoke not inbreeding, but radiation poisoning.
Following Kelly Craig's naked dance came a love scene between Gerard Butler's King Leonidas and his queen, the inelegantly-named Gorgo, played by Lena Headey. The shot opens with Butler's butt as he stands nude, staring out at the night. After some spousal reassurances the King and Queen get bizay - once again, thoroughly gratuitous but deliberately very heterosexual. And it was a pretty convincing display of kingly heterosexuality... right up until the king insisted on finishing the queen off with her face-down on her bed. I wonder if he told her to talk in a really deep voice, too.
Oh well, I guess they're Greek.
After all the scenes of men wearing only leather panties and cloaks, I'd started to wonder where this movie was going, and when the camera lingered on the naked king's butt I leaned over to my son and whispered, "Could this movie GET any more gay?"
Of course it could.
Following the gratuitous, heterosexuality-affirming sex scenes the plot proceeded. The King wanted to raise an army to oppose the invading Persians, but his dithering, wet-lipped advisors wouldn't hear of it. The priests of the Oracle had been bought off, persuaded to say that because of some badly-mumbled holy day (Wikipedia suggests it was the Olympics, I couldn't make out the word in the film) the king's army could not fight. (Riiight... if a million man army invaded on Christmas Eve, we'd all watch helplessly from the dining room table, immobilized into submission by our holiday dinners.) So the king summons his personal guard of 300 soldiers and "goes for a stroll," in defiance of the dithering council that tries to intercept him out in the wheatfields.
The hopelessly-outnumbered Spartans are joined along the way by volunteer forces from other cities. Much sport is made of the Athenians, who the Spartens refer to as "boy lovers" -- completely ignoring the Spartan practice of pederasty. Again - a gay film is fine if it's a gay film: a homophobic gay film is a not-surprising result of self-loathing neoconservative gays.
The tiny Spartan force immediately mocks their volunteer allies by asking what their jobs are, pointing out that the Spartans are all career soldiers. So, okay, let me get this straight - who's braver: the trained career soldier heading to a hopeless fight, or the unskilled volunteer heading off to a hopeless fight? These volunteers arrive to die for their families and lands, and they are mocked for it.
So this very, very straight collection of muscular men in tiny pants arrives in the narrow canyon, and they build a wall to prevent the Persians from going around their position, using a bunch of hapless Persian scouts as mortar.
While this is going on, a deformed hunchback arrives and begs to help the Spartans in order to redeem his father. King Leonidas refuses, which persuades the hunchback to turn traitor. Now, how hard would it have been to give the hunchback a job? Put him up on the cliff, tell him he's a scout; put him in the back row to hand out spears; put him in front of the phalanx to soak up arrows. I mean, it's a war, how hard would it be to get the guy killed? But no, annoy him, reject him, send him off to tell Xerxes of the secret path around the back of the canyon...
The main Persian force finally arrives, and we are treated to the sight of buff men in leather panties slaughtering vast numbers of guys swathed head to toe in turbans, neatly encapsulating the dreams of the 101'st Fighting Keyboardists in basements all across our nation. Much butchery and carnage ensues, and a lot of shots in which the action variously slows to a halt and then zips forward.
Some have complained that the battle scenes are too bloody and violent, but for me the violence and butchery was so absurd as to not register as "real" violence in any way. Indeed the battle scenes are so fantastical as to make little sense. The Spartan's shields bristle with enemy arrows which, despite being so deeply embedded they need to be sliced off with a sword, nonetheless do not pierce the shields to injure the Spartans. Yet the Persians are easily kebabbed by Spartan spears, even those wearing heavy metal armor. Such one-sided violence smacks of children playing war, with the most outspoken refusing to acknowledge injuries. Hey, we're the Spartan heroes, we don't get hurt till the third reel!
After a couple of waves of guys in turbans only serves to build the Spartan wall even higher a number of special acts are brought out. Xerxes' lieutenants and majordomos are paraded forth on weighty palanquns to issue threats, cable-necked giants drool on the king, and 
rhinoscerouses and elephants arrive to make us wish Legolas were here to brighten the mood.
There was even a squadron of Flying Ninja Monkeys called "The Immortals," who posed a brief and hollow threat to the Spartans due to their cunning marketing trick of taking a name that suggested they could not be killed. A couple of well-placed spears later, and monkey kebabs littered the battlefield, leaving behind only the question of what 14th-century Samurai were doing in King Xerxes' ancient Persian army.
Finally Xerxes himself gets exasperated enough to put in an appearance.
"It just got gayer," my son whispered. I could only shake my head.
Nine feet tall, pierced and covered by gold chains and collars, with long claw-like fingernails painted crimson, King Xerxes made the most flamboyant entrance since Dr. Frank N. Furter welcomed Brad and Janet in from the rain.
And, as the villain, he had to monologue. Unfortunately, King Leonidas wasn't sensible enough to do what any REAL hero learns to do on day 1 of Hero School - kill the villain while he's monologuing. No, Xerxes showed up and made the usual "I admire your courage so much I might let you live" speech. Which was all well and good, except that towards the end, well, his inisistence that King Leonidas needed to merely "kneel before him" started to take on a distinctly, well, do I have to say it again?
At this point it was too much, and I just started to laugh, which earned me the glare of my neighbors. This wasn't a new experience for me: during the movie Independence Day I started to laugh uncontrollably during Bill Pullman's over-the-top Presidential motivational speech from the back of the pickup truck. This was the same - so over-the-top ridiculous that I couldn't believe that anyone intended it as a serious scene.
Of course Leonidas turns down Xerxes offer, and doesn't kill him either. Xerxes then plies the Hunchback with the Hollywood package: wealth, sex, and girl-on-girl action. Predictably for such a gay movie the only same-sex action takes place during these scenes of absolute debauchery, including two women who neck furiously, until one turns to reveal a visage twisted and scarred, possibly by the same source of radiation that afflicted the Oracular priests. Because of course if two people of the same sex are kissing each other, they must be sick and deformed, right?
So at that point we had the full set o neoconservative talking points on the table, to wit:
We (the noble, non-gay, buff-bodied Greeks) must fight the enemy over there (Thermopylae/Iraq) to prevent the turban-wearing invaders from Persia (modern Iran of course) from fighting us here (Sparta/America). The people who stand in our way are either doddering wet-lipped liberals, or traitorous queen-groping lechers, or both. And it is the weak, the deformed, the hedonistic Hollywood-types, and those damned out-and-proud gays who will work to undermine our noble war.
It's like they stole the plot from underneath the copies of 'Blue Boy' on Karl Rove's bedside table.
The word "Freedom" was thrown around a helluvalot too, which was ironic inasmuch as the only free men on the Greek side were the king and the hunchback, as any reading of Spartan history will reveal. Still the use of the word "free" in that context does echo our "freedom" here in the United States, which is pretty much the freedom to work quietly at our jobs until we die or are fired six months short of our retirement.
In the end King Leonidas clumps his men, Pilobolus-style, into the shape of a Volkswagen, and uses this as a distraction to, well, I'm not sure what he does here. Finally crouching on the ground, Leonidas signals one of his men to jump out and kill, not Xerxes (which might have made some sense), but some guy standing in front of King Leonidas.
This futile murder accomplished, the Spartans are cut down with swords and arrows. In a final valiant effort, Leonidas uses his spear to give Xerxes a messy facial.
The Greek survivors straggle home to tell the Queen that she prostituted herself for nothing, and then a year later ten thousand Greeks gather to find that, following his cheek-slashing by King Leonidas, Xerxes has simply left his army encamped while the Greeks reinforced. Possibly Xerxes' army spent the year scrabbling in the dirt, under orders to find the missing facial piercings dislodged by Leonidas' spear. The Greeks rush forward, presumably to a victory: unlike us, having had 'victory' defined prior to engaging in battle; but like us, woefully short of adequate body armor.
So it was a great, grand, and stupid film, which would have been much better had the cliche, trite, and unoriginal dialog been left out. As series of images, it's supberb. As a movie, it ranks right up there with "Showgirls" and "Basic Instinct 2." As a political propaganda piece I'm sure it is very exciting, but I'm afraid it's dangerously impractical. After all, in '300,' when the ruler sees a threat, he's the first to take up his weapon and head off to die for his country. I didn't see anything in the film to suggest that King Leonidas dodged out of the fine-wine unit of the Sparta National Guard...
The trip to England is back on again, and looking moderately solid this time.
The training firm that's hiring me has set the dates of March 26-31st, and I'm hoping to extend that to something like Friday evening through the following Saturday. But we'll see what airfares and reality have to say about that notion. I'd also like to bring my spouse along, but likewise reality may have something to say about that. Damned reality, how I hate it!
And there's still a smidgen of a chance it can all fall apart, although at this point that would be pretty surprising.
I'm really really looking forward to visiting London for the first time in twenty years. The classes are scheduled after work in the evenings, leaving me the mornings of every day to tour and explore. It doesn't hurt, either, that I like British food. I know, I know, but what can I say, I just had a pot pie for lunch! I like gravies and pastries, bangers and mash, Shepherd's pie, the whole lot. Oh, look at me going all Madonna and I haven't even gotten to England yet, "the whole lot" indeed!
In other news, I had second interviews for a Chief Information Officer position for a mid-sized business, an online training firm, and today I got a callback from their HR which I suspect regards setting a meeting to come in and talk brass tacks about salary and the role and everything. To that end I've contacted a the firm that helped me build my resume, I'd like to get their tips on salary and role negotiation. This job isn't just a matter of salary, I suspect there are stock options and days off and other factors to discuss, so I want to approach it the right way. And of course there's the question of, should I receive an offer, can I and this company afford each other financially? We'll see!
Meanwhile this week has been a bear. Very exhausting. The objective at the client site is to install firewalls in a certain manner that ought to take a year, or at the very least a couple of months, and doing it in one month. I already told my boss it was impossible, but she encouraged me by saying that everyone's schedule and priorities could be reassigned to make it happened. Fortunately then one of the engineers, a brilliant fellow I worked with over at Wells Fargo, came up with a Scotty-I-need-Warp-10 solution. If he can make it work then we may just pull off the impossible, and right before my trip to England.
And should I accept an offer for that one job, then that's what I will have accomplished with my month at this client, and frankly that would be a neat little package to tie up.
Meanwhile I've put in a couple of 10 and 11 hour days already, so Friday will be a half day because I'm not permitted to go over 40 hours of work a week. Why is it I want this perm position again? Oh yeah, getting too old to continue consulting, right. Well, we'll see. There's every chance that they just can't offer me what I need to pay the bills...
So all in all a pretty good week so far - very busy, passing very quickly. And the weather is improving, so that's a nice change. By the time I get back from England it will be April already, and after that comes the summer - another winter survived!
One of my idle whims regarding visiting England is getting down to Cardiff, for absolutely the only reason being that it's featured in the series "Torchwood." There's a big eye-shaped waterfront plaza that features in the series, and it would be quite the larf to get some shots in that location. Which, I admit, is a pretty silly reason for going to one place in England over another. But if I don't go to Cardiff, I'll have to revisit Sandwich and get another photo of myself eating a sandwich...
So I can't complain! My job is going okay, I have a trip to England in the offing, albeit a working trip, and at least the prospects for a career-advancing new position if I play my cards right. If only I had a lovely spouse and three terrific kids, life would be perfect!
Oh, wait, I do!
A quiet weekend. Attended class for half the day on Saturday, but became discouraged with the ongoing irrelevancy of being there and decided to leave after noon. My instructor is leaving to adopt a baby in Guatemala and turning over the class to other instructors, so it's hard to care too much, particularly since it is a pass/fail class. As long as I finish the project by September I pass, so why sweat every hour?
I also wanted to take the kids to Marscon on the anniversary of their first attendance at a science fiction convention. Unfortunately this year didn't work out too well for our attendance. I lost my last contract right before I was going to send in our discounted registration, so I didn't send it in. Even discounted, registration for four people is not cheap.
Unfortunately the at-the-door registration was stiff: almost $200 if I simply brought all the kids. I may have work now, but I still haven't received a paycheck yet. So we had to be a little choosy. Well the kids looked over the on-line program and reviewed their options and in the end only the Oldest Boy decided to attend at all. The other two went to friends' houses or movies instead.
So the Boy and I headed down on Saturday afternoon. I was debating whether to attend or not. There were some panels I wanted to attend, but really I could get by without them. I could just drop the Boy off and head home to do some chores or something.
Then we passed last-minute replacement Guest of Honor Pat Tallman in the hallway.
Now, I had been hoping to get a chance to ask her a question or something in a panel, so finding her simply wandering through the halls unattended was a delightful surprise. I got to talk to her both in the halls and in the Dealer Room where she was headed. Having had the chance to chat with her you'd think that would have reduced my need to attend any more of the convention, but when push came to shove I bought a day pass anyway, and spent some time in the afternoon wandering around.
Unfortunately the weather, and the last-minute change in guests, seemed to have impacted the con attendance. The hallways and meeting rooms seemed much less busy than they had been last year. And when I returned around midnight to pick the Boy up from his gaming I passed through the thirteenth-floor party suites, and they were also very thinly attended.
Still I had some fun. I got the photo with Pat Tallman, above. I sat in on some panels about writing and writing groups (although I missed the panel on plotting that I would have liked to catch), and sat in on an hour of "Dork of the Rings," a fan-parody of the 'Lord of the Rings' films.
That last was an extraordinary film. It was dreadful in the charming fashion of fan films, but despite its dreadfulness it demonstrated a phenomenal amount of effort on the part of its creators. I didn't attend the Sunday "making of" session with the film's creators, but its length alone - ninety minutes - and the size of its cast indicated that thousands of hours and thousands of dollars were invested in this lark. Some of its jokes were so lame that the laughs only hobbled in five minutes later, such as the "Keeblers cobble" joke... It certainly ranks up there with "Troops" and "Hardware wars" in the genre of fan parodies.
Otherwise, the weekend was quiet. I finished watching the first season of the revivified Doctor Who, and was very very impressed with the writing. Many of the episodes took unexpected turns that showed the writers to be a lot more sophisticated than those who have worked on this series in the past.
Sunday I stayed home and tried to attend to office and paperwork, including emptying my file cabinet of some ancient client files relating to my business. With a full banker's box of files removed my little entrepreneurial venture seems more and more thinly relevant. Unless I ever assemble the energy and will to redesign the business plan I suspect that my little company will start to gather dust on a shelf, particularly if I end up taking a permanent position someplace.
Speaking of which I have a second job interview tomorrow, for a Chief Information Security Officer position with an online training firm. I'm looking forward to this because its owner is a computer guy from way back in the 1970's, and I actually used this company's systems back when I was in high school. I am looking forward to meeting him and discussing the Old Days. And if it turns out that he's ever heard of my previous ventures - Scepter or Internet Gopher - then I could be a shoo-in for the position. We'll see if I can afford to live on what they can afford to pay me... and if I care to drive 25 miles to work. I know, it's not that far, but I'm spoiled by jobs that I can walk or ride my bike to...
Anyway that was the weekend. I've got about an hour before my next meeting so I'd better get back to work...
February has come and gone, and for me, it's already spring. Oh, it's blizzarding out (is that a verb, blizzarding?), but that doesn' t matter because it's March. March, they say, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, but what they don't say is that it has the attention span of a nine year old doped up on sugar cereal, TV, and video games. Today it blizzards... tomorrow it melts. Day after that, blazing hot sun and college kids sunbathing next to melting drifts. Day after that: blizzard again.
March and February are siblings who do not look alike. January and February, there's the resemblance: the barren gray icy cold, the interminable sameness. The only difference is that February is 10% shorter - a small mercy! Otherwise: twins. However, in honor of February's shorter stature, I think it's only fair that we chop the end off of it and start calling it Februar.
Why not?! Bwah-hah-hah-hah! Hah. Get it? Y-not? No? Sigh. Never mind.
Today as I mentioned it's blizzarding. At my client site, everyone has already gone home although it's only 2:00 in the afternoon. I could go home, except I'm paid by the hour AND I'm actually trying to stay on track with my work. I'll do this last thing, figure out the status reporting process, and then I'll probably head out. However, figuring out the status reporting process will likely take me till 4:00 or 4:30 anyway.
Wackiness continues in the rest of life. My U of M classes are languishing beneath the glare of my ennui. I have class Saturday and I'm sorely tempted to skip it, despite skipping one of the Saturday classes being equivalent to skipping a week of regular classes. Two weeks. My instructor, you see, is leaving, headed to Guatemala to adopt a baby, and everything is getting turned over to two other instructors... so who will know or care whether I attend class Saturday? Nobody.
Also, this weekend is the Marscon convention. I was going to take the kids just for their sakes, when they substituted guests of honor: Patricia Tallman of Babylon 5 is replacing some guy I never heard of (assuming her flight can make it in through the snow). Talk about getting bumped from coach to first class! So now I have to go too...
That will lead me to decide whether I'm going to class on Saturday, or maybe part day in class, part day at the con. Hard to say!
And then there's my biology class, with which I have done little. I did read the first two chapters, but I've stalled when it came to sending in the homework assignments. Mostly because they want me to mail them in old-school, using envelopes and paper and those sticky little photos called 'stamps'. I'm a 21st century kind of guy, and I sent them an e-mail, asking if I could e-mail my homework. A month later, no reply. Something tells me they're traditionalists.
Work continues to be weird. Well, not work itself, which is going fairly smoothly, but "the employment situation." Due to my job-search in January, I now have all sorts of odd opportunities going on. One company wants to send me to teach security in London at the end of the month: another is interviewing me for a Chief Security Officer permanent position which I might or might not be able to afford to take. With so much up in the air, it's hard to know what's going on from one day to the next.
Anyway it's going to be time to head home soon, and I still can't figure out how to do my status reports, so if I want to spend the night anywhere but here, I'd better get back to it...