MySpace Archive: Filler, Plain, and Simple

In an attempt to beef up this blog's appearance before I actually tell anyone about its existence, and also to relive some of my wacky antics over on MySpace, I am archiving all of my old posts over here at The Slog.

This one was sheer filler, just because I was a little bored. It's not particularly clever, it's only mildly amusing, and I'm only really including it here because I am a completist.¹

With that kind of a lead-in, how can you resist reading this fine slice of slacktastical Sloggery?

Note: All footnotes are new.

[Originally posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007]

Interlude: Life lessons

Okay, here's a brief palate cleanser before I tackle the trickiest of the 80s movies beginning with G.³

Over the past 7 years or so, I have largely worked in an office environment. That means annoying, cloying, something-else-that-ends-in-"oying" group emails with life lessons that can be learned from simple and pointless activities. The grandaddy of these is of course that All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten (or whatever) series. Well, kindergarten is great and all that (I sure as hell miss having naps and writing with enormous pencils), but it still takes 36 whole weeks of your life away. Screw that. You can get the same⁴ life lessons for much less of an investment of your time, by following my "soon to be an inspirational poster with a kitten, an eagle, or some damn thing" inspirational program:

ALL I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM DICKING AROUND PLAYING MINESWEEPER WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORKING.

You have to start somewhere*No one is going to explain it for you; you have to figure the rules out as you go along*Your "slam-dunk" perfect assumptions are not always correct*Sometimes you just have to go with a hunch*Simple pleasures are sometimes the best, but only if it's the only damn game you can get away with playing at work*Always look over your shoulder—your boss may be watching*Success is far rarer than failure. But you can always start over*The world is out to get you*It's not how well you start, it's if you can finish*Give up now*If you worry too much about how fast you're going, you're twice as likely to fail*"Alt-tab" is your friend*Trust your instincts, but verify them first*You will never accomplish anything if you do nothing but play minesweeper all day

Okay, I wrote that in less than 5 minutes, in between Minesweeper games. Screw Robert Fulghum for making a damn fortune on this schmaltzy crap.

Yeah, so that was pretty much it on this particular entry. I'm sorry you had to deal with my obsessions.⁷

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1. A note on geeks and completism: There is something in the obsessive geek's personality (and for crying out loud, I have links to blogs about comics on my blog - I am a geek) that screams for completism. If I like a music artist, TV show, author, etc., and do not own the entire produced output of albums, episodes, books, et al., a portion of my brain feels, well, incomplete. It will nag at me until my thankfully easily distracted brain²


2. Oooh! Somthing shiny! Er, I mean, until my thankfully easily distracted brain...well...where was I? Anyway, it's probably not important.


3. I was so optimistic then. patience gentle reader, it will happen. Oh yes.


4. Ooh! I remember now! I was talking about a geeky obsession with completism. Which really sucks when you get geekily obsessed with artists like Elvis Costello,⁵ whose phenomenal early catalogue will eventually trick the obsessive fan into buying North, an album that is so aggressively bland that I don't even feel like finishing th


5. David Lee Roth, speaking of why music critics like Elvis Costello, was heard to remark waggishly, "because Van Halen is overrated dreck, whereas Elvis has clever lyrics and a sense of musicality."⁶


6. Strictly speaking, this is a lie.


7. One thought about my completist OCD that keeps me up at night: at some point in my life, I will spend my hard earned money on Never Let Me Down, Tonight, or something by Tin Machine. Not because I want to, but because I will eventually exhaust the Bowie catalogue to the point that that's all that's left. Help me.