Dynamo, Part 2: Appearances

It was Tuesday morning. Morning is the time that Patrice goes and picks up the paper from the ground floor. Tuesdays are the days when the paper will, for some reason, be late. She left to pick up the paper at 9:15. She came back at 10:00, a new record. Hank had begun to get antsy, Dawn glanced at the clock every two minutes, and Chaz kept saying “Hey, shouldn’t she be back by now?”

When finally Patrice did return, she brought with her another person. We all turned to face to elevator as she got out, dripping wet. The paper had been late because of the rain that morning – you’d think the Seattle paper services would be used to it, but the case was clearly otherwise. She turned to the interior of the elevator and said “Come on, don’t worry. You just need to talk to Harry. He’s our manager. It’ll be fine.” Out of the elevator car stepped a woman. She was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. It wasn’t a porn star attractive, either; it was like a fairy queen. Delicate, gossamer, and yet as lithe as a willow bough. She was something else. I heard Chaz start a cat-call, but it died on his lips as if recoiling, afraid of being coarse for this lovely creature. The Fairy Queen, eyes focused on the ground, followed Patrice into Harry’s office.

Conversation began – real conversation, not electronic blips.

“She looks nice.”

“She looks like a tall cool drink of hot, my man!”

“Charles! She seems like a very nice lady. I suppose she’ll work with us now?”

“One would assume so, Dawn.”

“Does Patrice still have the paper?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Dammit.”

This continued. After a few minutes, full of rumor and intrigue and impatience, the door opened and Patrice came out, Fairy Queen in tow. The two stood near the water cooler, the communal watering hole around which our attention was focused. She addressed us, one arm around Fairy Queen’s shoulders in a matronly manner. Fairy Queen’s long black hair didn’t seem a strand out of place, even though she was practically quaking at the knees with nervousness.

“Guys, I want you to meet Kaitlin. She’s new to our company and-”

“Patrice! Newspaper!”

“Give me a shitting second, Chaz. As I was saying, Kaitlin is new to the company and has been assigned to work in our pod, alright? She’s going to be moving into the empty cubicle between Mikey and Arthur.”

Chorus: “Hi, Kaitlin!” She offered a coy smile and waved. I got up – not sure why – and held out my hand.

“Hey, I’m Arthur. Looks like you’ll have to put up with me as your neighbor, huh?” She took my hand demurely, but shook it with surprising confidence.

“Nice to meet you, Arthur. I’m sure we’ll be fine neighbors.”

I could feel Chaz’s eyes burning holes in my neck as I walked back to my desk. Kaitlin entered the cube next to mine and sat down. It wasn’t long before she stood up again, however. She walked into Mikey’s cube. This was something that none of us had dared attempt before; Mikey was beyond “loner” and bordered on “Unabomber.” But Kaitlin entered. We could all hear the conversation.

“Hey, you must be Mikey. I’m Kaitlin. It’s nice to meet my other cube neighbor.”

“Hi.”

“Hey, no need to be a stranger. Come on, open up a bit. Tell me, do you like to go to parties?”

“Sometimes.”

“Yeah? I’m having one this weekend with some friends from college. You should totally come along! Get some social interaction. I insist.”

If there was a way to quote stunned silence falling like a heavy chunk of metal onto the carpeted floor of our office, that word would be used here. Nothing can describe the sheer lack of noise that hit us like a cannonball. To say that it was dead quiet is an insult to the dead and to quiet.

“Yeah, sure.”

The office exhaled a deep breath laced with confusion and brimming with gossip.

“Cool! I’ll shoot you an email with the details, Mikey. I’m looking forward to it.”

And with that, Kaitlin returned to her desk. No one was exactly sure what our Fairy Queen had wrought. But Mikey was only the beginning. 

Dynamo, Part 1: Portrait of an office, undisturbed

There are 50 people who work in my office building, including the nighttime security staff, the janitors, and the executives. In my particular section of the cube farm, though, there are really only six of us. This number does not include my manager, Harry, who likes to remind us over and over that an office is meant to be a socially welcoming environment, that those who work here should be friendly and warm to one another. Harry is bullshit. No one likes Harry. These reminders come squeaking out of his short throat, hissing lispingly around the slightly oversized front teeth that barely hide behind clammy-looking, pale lips. His eyes, too, are pale and watery; his skin, gray and pallid. I hate his nose. It protrudes like an invasive, bulbous beak, both long and fat. He always seems nervous when he addresses us. It’s as if he fears to be around the most antisocial farm in the building. And we really are. We scarcely talk, and when we do, it’s only about business. We’re efficient beyond belief. This, too, is bullshit, by the way. We never speak out loud – freaks the holy hell out of Harry – but there’s a constant flurry of emails and chats and texts and various crazy interpersonal connectivity activities.  

There’s Mikey, the young one. The rest of us – me included – are all in our mid-to-late twenties, a good time to have life goals get sucked away. But Mikey’s too young for this. Mikey is only 20, not even out of college, but word around the office was that his mother banged Peter Bramley, the chief executive in our building. How she managed that we have no idea. But other than that, we really know little about him. He’s quieter than the rest of us, which is really saying something. I mean, at least Dawn and Chaz and I are always sending emails or chatting or something; we don’t speak, but we can still talk. I know for a fact that Patrice and Hank are always talking somehow – it’s no secret at the office that those two are constantly finding any excuse to go have a shag somewhere. Dawn has a theory that they’re actually married, but that since company policy explicitly comes out against in-office marriages, they’ve kept it a secret. Chaz is nearly positive that they are really just each other’s “booty calls.” He likes to tell us that he’s positive that they are both secret sex addicts, and that they just use each other to sate their own desires. Chaz is like that, though.

Chaz is quite a character. I think I would’ve certainly hated him in college – certainly in high school. He’s maybe a few IQ points up from a frat boy. Maybe. He laughs at the crudest things, drinks every night out at a club, and is not ashamed to tell us about his lifestyle. I can’t decide if he’s honestly proud of the way he is, or if he just does it for the attention. I’m no shrink; I can’t tell. He’s a good-looking guy, though – that I will freely admit. It’s obvious how he gets the girls. He has that male clothing model look that girls just seem to die for – Dawn once sarcastically called him “smoldering.” I have to agree with her, even if I hate him.

Patrice and Hank are such a couple. There’s not much else to say about them; Patrice is a pretty woman; not luscious and beautiful, but not very plain either. Just a very pretty woman. The male equivalent can be said for Hank; he’s no model, like Chaz, but he’s not a nerdy-looking character, like me.

Me. I always tell people I’m 25; I’ve been 25 for three years now. I almost forget how old I really am sometimes. I figure that once you get out of college, age comes more in five-year chunks than in single years. In a few years, I’ll be thirty, one way or another. Rounding is good enough for me. I am, as I said, nerdy. I still have scars from my adolescent battle with chronic acne. I wear glasses that Chaz swears are “bitchin,” but in reality, I know they just reinforce my image as the one who, if asked, would love to talk to you about HackMaster. And I cannot deny that I live up to expectations. I’m still a gaming kind of guy, and have been ever since picking up Final Fantasy Seven as a young man. Loved that game. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried like a little baby when Aeris died. I hope you begin to see, now, what grade of nerd you’re dealing with.

I almost forgot Dawn. I can’t believe that. Dawn. Dawn’s the oldest out of our little group; she’s like a mother to us. Sweet as anything, that woman. Everyone is nice to her – even, maybe especially Chaz, who treats her like she is his literal mother. She looks out for us. She has all of our birthdays on her little hanging wall calendar with the black-and-white pictures of dogs, noted in black marker, and on every birthday she bakes a cake for the birthday person. I think she and I are the closest in this office – besides Patrice and Hank, of course. She’s not so much a mother to me as she is a very good friend. Oh, we disagree sometimes: she’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat, for example, and she hates the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whereas I love it. But we get along well about it. As long as we avoid talking about politics or Audrey Hepburn, we’re fine.

Dawn is what you might call frumpy. She’s probably about 50 or so – I’ve never asked her age, and I don’t plan on asking. Here, everyone is only a rough estimate of an age. She too wears glasses, horn-rimmed affairs that look like something out of a Far Side cartoon. Her clothes are always what I think can be safely called “sensible.”

Portrait of an office hard at work. That’s us. Harry, sweating bullets over some fart-catcher in upper-management’s demands. Mikey, always appearing hard at work but sounding out too few keystrokes to be really working. Patrice and Hank, exchanging heart-shaped emoticons with one hand while typing in the data for fourth quarter with the other. Chaz, snorting through his Red Bull – swear to God, that man must go through ten a week – at some filthy joke on the deepest recesses of the internet while simultaneously emailing a programmer on the third floor to ask for those quarterly reports. Dawn, finding some scathing counter-argument to my latest blow against her ideas about taxes (okay, I lied, we talk politics all the time) while seeing how those taxes will affect her ability to pay the rent this month. And me, holding serious debates on the forums at IGN while coding. Such is the life of our office.

Correction: such was the life of our office. Then came Kaitlin. 

Mean Girls and The Dark Knight

Today, in my AP -AP, mind you - Psychology class, we watched the Tina Fey/Lindsey Lohan movie "Mean Girls." Now, without going into a full-on review of this movie, I can safely say that it was better than I had expected. Witty, funny...not amazing, but fun to watch. Not a horrible film.
However, while watching, I began to notice certain similarities to one of the best movies of the decade: The Dark Knight. Yes. Active parallels between the twain.
I'll try to explain.
The villianess, Regina George, follows a fascinatingly Harvey Dent-esque pattern of control transitioning to anarchy. As the movie starts, she is the leader of "the Plastics," the clique of popular and ruthless girls at the top of the social food chain. This parallels Dent's role as the golden boy, the leader by the favor of the people. The direct foil to Regina's strict rules and social codes is Janis Ian, a social outcast who wants only to see Regina's destruction. Janis, fittingly enough to her name, plays a two-faced parallel: she is part the Batman, the seeker of justice and vengeance both. On the other hand, she is a bit of Joker; her desire to create social anarchy in order to take down Regina is at times frightening.
However, Janis pales in comparison to Cady, Lindsey Lohan's character. Cady enters the school as a formerly-home-schooled student, awkward and looking for friends. She takes on the role of Janis's companion, helping her infiltrate the Plastics and create social anarchy. However, she is the catalyst for the evolution of the characters into their archetypes come the climax. Cady demonstrates something similar to Stockholm Syndrome, in which she becomes like her "captors," the Plastics, and, in time, comes to replace Regina George.
Regina George devolves from the Harvey Dent of the beginning into the Harvey Dent after his accident: essentially insane and bent only on creating anarchy. In this way, Regina begins to resemble the Joker; perhaps the ultimate evolution of Harvey Dent. Taking her place is Cady, whose desire to take down the evil she saw in Regina has only caused her to become Regina; in a way, she is the Harvey Dent to Regina's Joker.

On the side of good, there are similar parallels. Tina Fey's teacher is the Batman of the day. After the climax of the movie, in which Regina spreads anarchy throughout the school, which descends into a massive brawl and riot., Tina Fey is the character who takes order over the girls and demonstrates to them how their fighting was silly, etc. The main idea is that Fey fights the anarchy that threatens her school - or, from a Batman analogy, her city. The principal, in his own way, symbolizes the police in The Dark Knight: while supposedly the voice of reason and justice, he is unable to hold control over the forces of chaos. The baseball bat that he carries symbolizes the brute-force technique for regulation that is so ineffective against so nebulous a threat. Additionally, the cast on his right hand is symbolic of his being crippled literally and metaphorically, unable to hold back the tide. The only true order comes from Tina Fey, who stands out as the true voice of strength.

There are, certainly, other parallels; however, I haven't seen The Dark Knight in a while, and my knowledge is a little rusty. This seems to cover the main points, though.

The hunt was on

When a spider enters your bathroom, how do you kill it?
Perhaps I should give some background.
Sometimes, particularly in the warmer months, when I get out of my shower, there are various creepy-crawleys waiting for me. The worst one was a cricket on the bathmat outside my shower - I stayed under the water for a good extra half-hour. This one today was more intimidating in a different sense. I was going through the post-shower routine (you know the drill: brush teeth, comb hair, put on clothes - not necessarily in that order) when, by the corner of my sink and the mirror, I saw a dark shape. It was roughly as big around as my thumb, not including the legs, which spread out to a fairly great distance. The fuzz covering its back was a dark auburn, with little streaks of what appeared red to me. It sat perfectly still, just waiting.
Now, I'm no animal murderer. No fan of wanton slaughter, me. But when a thing that disagrees with me on my most instinctual levels enters my domain, I must defend my territory.
At first, I merely sprang back and evaluated the situation. It was not aggressive - perhaps it was passive-aggressive - but looked like the kind of spider that screams or jumps or rips or some ghastly natural defense mechanism straight out of my deepest, darkest nightmares. So, like the Singing Sword of Prince Valiant, up came my paper towel roll, sitting near the sink with one lone paper towel hanging limply from it. I raised it and slammed it once - hard! - against the wall. The spider fell to the ground. I lept back and reviewed my situation. The thing was there on the floor, a little nervous now, scuttling a bit. Clearly, I needed to take action fast.
So, I tore open the cabinet beneath the sink quickly and drew the first thing that I found - a quarter-full spray bottle of Tilex. Without hesitation, I released my deadly spray. The thing would have screamed had it had a set of lungs capable of such feats. It scuttled faster, angrier, but hurt; I could almost hear the sizzle against its eyes and the roasting of that auburn fur. It lay in the corner, and I thought it dead.
But spiders are hardy, it seems. It began to slowly, painstakingly work its way up the wall again. Now came my trusty blade once more -snickersnack! - to my rescue. I smashed the foul beast again and again, knocking it first to the floor and then into pieces.
At the end of it all, I was the victor. I felt bold, animalistic - like any creature could have crawled through my window, and I, armed with my cost-efficient bathroom cleaner and nearly-empty paper tower roll, would knock it back with confidence.

So really, internet, how would you deal with the invading arachnid?

Donut

I heard your clarion call from the depths of my computer
And, so crying,
You drew me from my electronic reverie.
I followed the call down the dimly lit
Hallway that led to the kitchen.
The evening was moist,
A long rainy day.

You sat in your box marked
"TastyKake"
So seductively dressed all in white.
I did my best to resist, i'faith so I did.
But your call was too strong.

"No! Donut! Get thyself behind me, Satan!"
Alas, I was too weak.
All that remained of my crime
Was a trail of powdered sugar
Leading back to my computer

Editor Fodder: The Blog

This here interwebs thing is going to be my outlet for writings that I've done. I'll probably link this with my facebook somehow, actually. It's going to, essentially, be a blend of my thoughts, my poems, my stories, and other things. I suppose. Kind of a nebulous concept for me right now. Definitely more later; I plan on having at least one serial story going on the site, to be updated weekly or every few days, whichever I feel like.