APOKALIPSIS

It’s not that often that you get to get to write a news* story about quitting your job and leaving the country, but I guess that’s one of the perks of editing the staff and faculty newsletter. I sent my last issue of the newsletter to the printers on Friday night (actually, I forgot to attach the PDF to the e-mail, so I technically didn’t sent it until Monday morning, but my best intentions were there!), and I actually felt, I don’t know, just a little nostalgic maybe.

I never kidded myself into thinking that the staff and faculty newsletter was life-changing work, but it has been a part of my life for the past two years. I’ve edited somewhere around 100 issues of the darn thing, and now I’m never going to edit another one. It’s like finishing a calculus course, in that I had to remember a lot of technical quirks and now I don’t have a reason to use any of it. Except that doing the newsletter was not as hard as calculus. And I didn’t hate it.

There wasn’t room in Happenings, but I did want to thank everyone who read the newsletter for putting up with the occasional egregious mis-spelling, missing date or wrong room number that slipped in there. Thanks to the people who corrected me, and thanks to those who politely said nothing. Thanks to everyone who read it, especially if you read it in spite of seething in disgust for it (I hope no one fit into this category). But thank you more if you read it and liked it, or at least appreciated it. I probably got more complements than complaints about the newsletter over the past two years, and that meant a lot to me.

Thank you to Sleater-Kinney for providing the music I played in my headphones while I edited, and thank you to whoever recorded and bootlegged those shows from 2006 because they were astounding. Thank you to anyone who brought donuts or bagels to the break room. Thanks to the Dairy Treet across the street for making tasty BLTs, and thanks to the landscape architects and crew who put in that circle of benches under that big tree outside of my office where I got fresh air on my lunch break. I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff. Oh, thanks to whoever designed that bit of rockin’ dino clipart, which I was glad to finally put to use.

My boss asked me why I chose to depict myself as a dinosaur wearing an Abraham Lincoln hat, and I think I said:
“The Lincoln hat is because I am declaring my emancipation.
The dinosaur is because I’ve been in this office longer than 90% of the people here.
And the guitar is because I plan to keep rocking.”

*the term is used loosely

The good thing about working in an office on Halloween: Free candy! Getting e-mails written in orange fonts! Drawing bats on Post-It notes! Being the only one in the office to dress up in costume!

The bad thing about working in an office on Halloween: Being the only one in the office to dress up in costume on the day you have an annual performance evaluation. Awkward.

Also: I signed up for a class to teach English abroad next weekend.

I learned recently that it’s possible to get a doctorate degree studying the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. Now, as a graduate student in creative writing I clearly have no business assessing how useful or legitimate someone else’s course of study is, so I will just say that there must be something to it I simply don’t understand.

I think people like personality tests for the same reason they like reading horoscopes — to have a higher power tell us who we are. Look! I’m Cheer Bear! Great!

See what Care Bear you are.

The thing is, non personality test tells the whole story. I’m sure Myers-Briggs and other more complex tests probably have some layers of truth to them, but I always leave them feeling more confused than enlightened. When I’m taking the quizzes I’m always second-guessing the questions. For example:

34). I prefer to work:
a). in a group
b). by myself

What if I *think* that I prefer to work in a group, but in reality I tend to work alone? What if I have such an idealized opinion of what working in a group is like that I tend to work alone so that I don’t risk disappointing myself? What if I would secretly rather work by myself but always end up working in groups to please other people? And what kind of work are we talking about here anyway? Are we talking about writing a novel or raising a barn? And who is in this group I might be working with? Are they Nazis? Are they Super Friends? These things make a difference!

See, I don’t think people exist as a nuclear unit. We’re all connected and our personalities are volatile. How we act is affected by all sorts of things — what we’re doing, who we’re around, how much greasy Mexican food we had for lunch, etc.

How I act at work is very different from how I act around my family and friends. I don’t become a different person, but I suppose I act like one. I’ve been very surprised to hear my co-workers describe me as quiet, calm and reserved. Once, I was told, to my utter horror and disbelief, that I was relatively “metro.” Before I got this job, the most common way people described my sense of fashion was “homeless.”

My friends can’t believe it when they call me at work and I answer the phone in a polite, measured tone with “Public Relations, this is Aaron.” Everyone ends up either giggling or being completely thrown off, but I try not to let my other side show through when I’m at the office. This clash of worlds has lead to problems.

Today, there were also problems. My boss was in meetings all day, so I was answering her phone. There are a few salespeople who have been calling as frequently as salespeople tend to call (which is to say, constantly), and I’m always having to take messages which I know my boss will never respond to. I can’t imagine that this is fun for anybody. It’s certainly not fun for me.

One of the sales reps, who always introduces himself as “Hi, it’s Andrew from (Company X),” called today to ask my boss a question, and I told her she’d have to get back to him. About an hour later, the phone rings again.

“Public Relations,” I say, “This is Aaron.”
“Aaron? It’s Andrew. Hi. I spoke with your boss, and she said we’re going to go through with the deal, so I wanted to know if she had time to follow up on what we talked about,” Andrew said.
I couldn’t believe that my boss had time to get back to him back so quickly — he had just called an hour ago.
“She’s been in meetings all day, so she must have just called you on a break. When did you say she call you?”
“Oh, recently.”
“So you’re saying that you talked to her since you and I last spoke.”
“Yes, definitely. Can I talk with her now?”
“She’s still in meetings, but I’ll take another message. This is Andrew, from (Company X), right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Andrew from (Company Y).”

The dude caused me all sorts of confusion and grief just because he didn’t have the common courtesy to properly introduce himself! I turned to complain about Andrew’s phone etiquette to my friendly co-worker across the cubical aisle in a suitably subdued, office-like manner.

But that was not what happened. Once I started going, it was kind of hard to stop.

“Does he think there’s only one Andrew or something? I talked to half a dozen Andrews this week alone! How am I supposed to know which Andrew he is? It’s not like we’re friends! Who does that?!”

I didn’t realize that I had slipped until I heard everyone laughing, and I quickly reined it in. Half the office had overheard me. Fortunately, everyone seemed to think it was funny rather than terrifying, and they were amused to see this other, hidden side of my personality.

“I’m sorry,” I explained, rather sheepishly, “I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately.”

Now I prefer to think that I was just letting off steam. But then again, maybe state of stress and sleeplessness, it was my dominant personality was shining through!

Could it be?

Sometimes I can’t wait to quit my job. Dressing up each morning and sitting in a cubical all day long just isn’t that much fun. But I have to admit that every once in a while I’ll get a cool assignment or get to brush arms with someone famous or amazing. Today the bring spot in my workday was opening a mysterious FedEx package and finding this inside:

It may look like just a regular envelope, but take a look at the postmark:

It’s from Sweden! That’s pretty neat. If nothing else, I means I can tell people “We got a really Swede package at work today!”

But check out who the package is from:

The Nobel Foundation! Also known (apparently) as Nobelstiftelsen, which is really hard to type. The school I work for recently added a Nobel Prize-winning professor to their faculty, and we’re handling some A LOT of the publicity. This package didn’t come directly from the Nobel Foundation, but was re-used by the prof’s wife to send us some pictures of him receiving the award.

And so I have reason to believe that this is an envelope that you only get to see only under two conditions:
a). You win a Nobel Prize.
b). Someone who is sending you a package has won a Nobel Prize and can’t find another envelope.

I could be wrong, though. Perhaps this kind of stationary is actually very common. Maybe in the circles of the international elite getting an letter from The Nobel Foundation is like this is like getting a letter from the Publisher’s Clearing House and inside is a sweepstakes scratch-off card:

I prefer to think that it’s really rare, though. Which isn’t to say that I think this is the last time I’ll see a Nobel Institute envelope — clearly, this serendipitous piece of postage is only an omen of things to come. But it will probably be a while before I get a Nobel package under more legitimate circumstances. After all, the Nobel Prize is generally regarded as a career-spanning award, and I’m still a bit young. And this point I don’t really know what I’d win it for, either. Maybe they’ll start giving out a Nobel Prize for Blogging?

But in the meantime, I can marvel at the best part of the envelope, which is on the back …

Do you see that in the upper corners? Do you? IT’S NOBEL PRIZE STICKERS!!!

How amazing is that?!

When I was a little kid it seemed that my sisters and her friends were really obsessed with stickers, especially if they had unicorns on them. They would spend entire afternoons trading them with each other. Sometimes I tried to join in this child version of commerce, but I didn’t think it was very fun. The truth is that I never really understood the appeal of stickers, probably because their central function (after trading) is decorating, and the very idea of decorating *anything* is terrifying to me. But even I understand the power of a Nobel Prize sticker. It is The Ultimate Sticker. It can be traded with anything.

For example, I showed this folder to a girl at my work and she desperately wanted one of the Nobel Prize stickers. I’m not sure if we have to return the envelope, but if we get to keep it, I have been thinking about trading her one of the stickers for her considering going out to dinner with me.

Maybe would be using the power of the Nobel Prize for personal gain, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, it’s not like I’M the one who invented dynamite.

I got a regular 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. job before most of my friends did (actually, many of them still don’t have a comparable “daily grind”), and t’s taken them a while to learn that for a good chunk of the day I am not really free to chat on my cell phone. I can get pretty terse and focused when I’m at work, and I tend to assume that if someone is calling me, it must be really really important.
This makes it really awkward whenever I get a call about anything less than a life and death situation. Here is a sample conversation:

“Hey man!! How’s going?”
“Fine. I’m at work.”
“Workin’ for the man! Dude, we have to get you a job working as like a suberban ninja guerrilla or something, you know? Hey, is it snowing where you are?!”
“No. I’m in California.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Cali! Well you should be in Oregon because it’s snowing RIGHT THIS SECOND and we are having a snow day and it’s soooo awesome!”
“You know, that is fantastic. I am glad we are friends, but I am hanging up right this second.”

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to my friends about hypothetical fantasy careers and the amazing qualities of weather, it’s just that I tend to feel like everyone in the entire office is listening to my conversation, and the less they know about me, the less they will be able to destroy my life if I format a spreadsheet incorrectly or something.

Every time I take a personal call, I feel like I am putting my career in grave danger. Since I’ve made this clear to my family and friends, I don’t get as many calls like this one:

“Hi Aro! I didn’t think you were going to answer the phone!”
“Why did you call me?”
“I wanted to leave you a long, happy message! You weren’t supposed to answer the phone, stupid!”
“It was ringing!”

So when my mom called me the other day from beautiful Port Angeles, Washington apparently they were actually in Fairhaven, which is nowhere near Port Angeles. But anyway, I was sure that something important was going on. In fact, she was just calling to say that she and my aunt were in a moped shop and they thought that I should get an electric scooter, and that it would be so so cool. I was too taken aback to be stoic or annoyed. This seemed like the funniest thing she could be calling about.

I had considered getting a Vespa before, but I was deterred by two major points:
1). They don’t make diesel scooters, which means I wouldn’t be able to brew my own bio-fuel, which would make me dependent on dirty, foreign oil.
2). Even if you aren’t running on bio-fuel, riding a motor scooter around is pretty much the dorkiest thing. Unless you live in Europe or are a girl, then it is awesome. Actually, if you live in Europe or are a girl, you are probably awesome to begin with.

The fact that my mother was telling me that it would be cool to get a Vespa pretty much erased all doubts I had about point 2. As far as point 1 is concerned, an electric scooter would hypothetically pollute less than a gasoline scooter, but electricity is only clean power if it comes from a clean source, and in California (and in most of the world) it doesn’t.

But when I related this story to my friends, no one thought that having an electric moped would be a terrible idea. Some people even explicitly said that it would be cool! Then I realized that people think a lot of awful things are cool. And then, finally, I realized: Who cares what other people think?

So when I saw a little electric moped attached to a weathered, hand-written “For Sale” sign on my way home from work, I decided to inquire about it. Here is what I learned: the scooter needs a battery and has a top speed of 24 mph if you are lucky. It is a dull shade of pink and looks about 15 years old. It is also really really cheap. I’m going back to meet with the owner tomorrow.

I contemplated trying to cross the United States on a tiny, beatdown pink moped, cruising the continent at 18 miles an hour. There is a lot of desert in between towns in the American Southwest, and the desert is not known for having a lot of electrical outlets, which would be a problem. Also, I’m not sure that the moped’s six-inch wheels and battery-run motor would make it very far up the rocky mountains.

So the idea is probably a bad one.

But I still want to cross the United States. It’s an idea that’s been formenting (sic) in my head for a while now. In a few months I think it would be financially possible. I’m not sure if it would be particularly practical. But I’m starting to believe that there’s power in being outrageously impractical.

Developing….

…

BONUS FEATURE!
Christina dug up this old survey she made back in 2002 to determine which of her friends you are. Guess who I turned out to be!

 

Apparently Miss Teen South Carolina is the new biggest thing on The Internet. I know this thanks to Yahoo Buzz (which … it sounds like a news from a late ’70s sci-fi novel: “Melvin took a sip from his UltraNutri, then turned on the Holo-vision and took in the latest beat from Yahoo Buzz.” Pleasingly quaint and kooky, but not exactly cool). I guess she flubbed a question about geography pretty badly, and Yahoo Buzz is reporting the fall out:

“Searches on ‘miss teen south carolina’ jumped 831%.” Goodness! That is a LOT of percent! I thought people were ALREADY searching for “miss teen south carolia” a ton before this, but that is like, so much percent that it would get you kicked out of most math classes! 831%. Wow. I hope Miss Teen North Carolina can keep up.

But that’s not all! According to Yahoo Buzz “Her convoluted response also spurred queries on ‘miss teen south carolina video,’ ‘miss teen,’ and ‘miss teen usa south carolina.’”
This is the kind of hard-hitting news you can report when you are a search engine. I hope Google issues a special report soon about whether “USA” or “Iraq” gets more searches, because I bet that it would be really revealing!

Anyway, in case you happen to not be among the 831% who have seen this video, here it is:

I’m almost afraid to comment on it because I know thousands of bloggers have already beaten me to it, so the chances of me saying anything new are one in roughly 831%, but I will say two things:
First of all, as much as I really enjoy phrases like “the Iraq,” and “Everywhere, like such as.” (yes, with a period), not to mention “Aimee Teegarden,” the poor girl really just looks less like she knows nothing about geography and world issues (I mean, she has at least one basically good idea: MAPS! People need ‘em!), and more like she is completely nervous and scared out of her mind.
And I would be, too! After all, as this movie:

(which I saw in the theater) reminds us, behind the scenes of most beauty pageants is someone trying to take of the world or kill a prime minister or … ok, I don’t really remember. But I am sure it is nefarious.

Secondly, and the real reason I wanted to bring up Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, is that I have a story that can one-up her.

THIS IS THAT STORY:

We have student assistants at my office who help us with work that is easy and also boring. Sometimes they are reasonably professional and sometimes they are jaw-droppingly NUTS. One of them is a girl who often visits my desk to use my fax machine (which is the only one in the office). She struck me as a polite, basically competent kid, until one day we were discussing a staff member who started a charity to help kids in Ethiopia (which you really should read about), and she said to me, “It’s really great that he’s doing this, but do you know where Ethiopia is? Because I don’t.”
“Well, it’s in Africa …” I said.
“OK, but … where’s Africa?” she asked, completely earnest.

OH NO! This was not the response I was expecting. For a brief moment I thought, “Oh dang, that is a good question. “Africa” is the name we’ve given to a huge region of land, but is anything separate from anything else? Where does Africa stop and the ocean shelf begin? Is “Africa” truly a place, or only a concept? Does it only truly exist in the minds of those who live there?!” Then I realized this was not what she was talking about.

“Um,” I said, “It is a continent. It’s below Europe and Asia.”
She looked at me and there was no flicker of recognition on her face. I was very afraid that she was going to ask me where Europe and Asia were.
“I’ll draw you a map,” I said.
As I proceeded to draw a not very to-scale map of the world, she said apologetically “I’m just really not very good at history.”
I gritted my teeth and told myself, “She just used the wrong word, you don’t have to say anything. She’s IS a college student.”
“Out of all the people who go to this school, I probably know the least about history,” she said. “The least.”
“The thing is,” I told her as I sketched out a lumpy Cape of Good Hope, “This is geography.”
“Well yeah, same thing,” she said.
“Yes, they are related,” I admitted. “Because when things happen, they have to happen SOMEWHERE.”

This is the sort of thing that makes me fear for our country and our future. Maybe 20 years from now, instead of history and geography, college students will internet study search results and website hits. Who needs a map when you have Yahoo Buzz?

See, Miss Teen South Carolina will tell you that you do in fact need maps. Otherwise, HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?

A lot of my job involves the same thing every office job involves: the paper trails, the endless e-mails, the unfathomable memos, the crashing waves of existential angst, the giddy excitement of ordering boxes and boxes of pens, the acting need to act aloof when using the copier so that it doesn’t smell your fear and start jamming again and again, the carpal tunnel, the interoffice small talk (everyone is “doing ok!” or “hanging in there!”), the desire to hang up after an annoying call so hard that the phone explodes, and so on, etc.
But every once in a while I get to do something that uses my own unique talents and abilities! For example, I received this photo that had to go in the employee newsletter:

Ignore that it is a boring picture, ok? It was important to include the three people in the front row, but the picture was way too wide to fit comfortably on the page I was laying out. I had to get rid of all that empty space between them in order to make it fit. So, I bust out my mad photo-manip skills, and BEHOLD:

Now, this sort of thing is very common thanks to Photoshop. Normal-looking women are made to look like terrifying beauty queens in order to sell magazines EVERY DAY! But I do not have Photoshop at my office. Nor do I have any other comparable photo-editing program. But I do have …. MS_PAINT! Which is to say, for those of you old enough to understand, that I have a stripped down version of Kid-Pix. But I am undaunted! I was able to take my old school skills to the mat here and convincingly COMPRESS TIME AND SPACE (ok, so probably just space) in such a way that I bet when the people in that photo see it in the newsletter, they won’t even think, “Wow, did I really sit that close to that dude?” They will just assume that, yes indeed they did. They might wonder why they don’t remember that dude smelling as badly as usual, but they will not doubt that they were mere inches from his (or her) armpit.

That’s right, my skills are esoteric, BUT THEY GET THE JOB DONE!!
Wait, let me say that in MS_PAINT ….

(hang on a second here)…

BAM!

YES! Ok, that took a really long time, but wouldn’t it make a great tee-shirt? Of course it would! If for no other reason, than because MS_PAINT has such terrible compression that it makes every image look like it was printed on cheap cotton and sent through the wash about three dozen times.
See, that would be cool if grunge were still in. But soon grunge will be coming back again! Just when you think worthless skills are worthless, they become popular again.

And here is proof.

That’s right: POGS ARE BACK!
and: THEY ARE ONLINE!
… AND: THEY ARE NOT PAYING ME TO LINK TO THEM

xo, aro

I’ve never been much of a clothes person. I have historically based my fashion choices first on not wanting to look like someone else and secondly not wanting to spend more than 15 seconds thinking about it. So when I lived in Oregon I wore basically nothing but Hawaiian shirts, and then when I moved to California I started wearing sweaters and my dad’s old wool jacket.
Now that I work in an office with a dress code, I have to keep up appearances. I keep my hair short, wear a tie and even bought a belt, after not owning one for years. Looking like everyone else is a different sort of thing. It feels very culturaly specific — the nuances and rituals associated with dressing nice are fascinating, and comforting in a way. Knowing exactly where the end of my tie should fall (the middle of the belt buckle) gives me confidence that even though I tied it while skateboard down the middle of the street on my way to work, I’ll look like a respectable part of the office. It’s the same thing with changing out of my skate shoes into the work shoes I keep under my desk. In a very small way, looking professional makes me feel more serious about my job, and more ready to be taken seriously.
The fascinating thing is that looking professional varies from place to place and culture to culture. That’s probably a little less true now that suits are standard business attire in most of the world, but what was regarded as professional, serious attire in other times and places would be totally unacceptable in my office today. If I came dressed as a samurai or wearing a fez, I would probably not get away with it.
That bit of historical perspective lets me see wearing a suit and tie as a way of respecting and blending into the culture that surrounds me. It feels a little bit like wearing a costume, but for some reason I like knowing that if I were suddenly transplanted in another time or place, I would not look like part of the establishment as I do now — perhaps in the distant future in a tie-dyed police state run by facsit hippies I would be arrested for having short hair, being clean shaven and wearing a collar. (I would like someone to make that into a movie!)
For those of us who have always resisted looking or acting just like everyone else, it’s useful to realize that clothes are just a tool, and you can use them to your advantage just like anything else. After all, even the best-dressed of us all is still naked at the end of the day!

They were supposed to fix the air conditioning in my office yesterday. People had started talking about needing to incorporate naptime into the work day if it didn’t get fixed soon, because by mid-afternoon the whole office would be groggy and humid. We kept the window open and sometimes you could feel the breeze if you stood by the printer long enough. Some facilities guys in tan polo shirts finally showed up yesterday to install all the proper parts, and promised that everything would be in working order in the morning.
The morning was beautiful and cool, although you could tell it would be heat up another 20 degrees or so before lunch. I was freshly showered, awake and quite pleased with the world, until I stepped from the hallway into the office.
“They didn’t fix it!” I moaned, loudly, without a thought of office etiquette. It was hotter than it had ever been, at least twice as hot as yesterday. It was surreal, like a practical joke. My chair and my desk both radiated heat.
Of course, instead of activating the air conditioner, they had left the heater on all night. Terrific! Fortunately, within an hour the error had been reversed, and our working conditions are now more pleasant. It was a strange way to start the day, though.

It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday night! Do you know where Aaron is?
Still at work!

I did get a free rootbeer float today though.