Archives for the month of: August, 2004
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A Day in the Life of a Driver

August 31, 04 //
5

Time-lapsed freewayWhat’s with these dri­vers that feel they own the road? They either drive too fast, too slow and rarely a happy medium. It’s no won­der so many acci­dents occur dur­ing the day with peo­ple ignor­ing basic laws.

I’ve seen peo­ple per­form the fol­low­ing tasks while driving:

  • Put on makeup with their eyes dart­ing from com­pact mir­ror to rear-view mirror
  • Read­ing a book with one hand (or both hands)
  • Scarf­ing down Taco Bell and smash­ing the remain­ders on the wheel and
  • Per­form a mad dash attempt to pick up what­ever they dropped

It seems that most peo­ple believe they are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an Indy 500. Have you ever expe­ri­enced some­one attempt­ing to out­run you while they merge on the free­way? Just the other day I left plenty of room open for this guy in a black beamer and he still felt the need to drive at my pace, then speed up and because of this he gets cut off. Of course he speeds up in front of me, cuts me off from the side and then angrily honks his horn.

Believe me, I have road rage. When some­one cuts me off and puts my life in dan­ger it upsets me, but not when it’s a sim­ple mis­take. Most of the time some­one isn’t pay­ing atten­tion, which is under­stand­able since my vehi­cle was issued a spe­cial invis­i­bil­ity fea­ture. At the click of a but­ton I can make my Corolla cloak itself just like on Star Trek.

Thus the rea­son why peo­ple rarely see me on the road.

Multiple skills and talents

August 29, 04 //
13

There are those of us who are right-brained and those of us who are left-brained, just as there are peo­ple more involved in logis­tics than aes­thet­ics. That is, you might be the best mime in the world but not the great­est pub­lic speaker.

It doesn’t have to stay that way how­ever. Before he was famous, Rush Lim­baugh worked at a local radio sta­tion. In an effort to work his way to the top he made sure he did every­thing, even if it wasn’t in his job descrip­tion. He cleaned toi­lets, brought donuts and cof­fee to fel­low work­ers and even mopped the floors. The pay­off was that Rush climbed the lad­der of suc­cess and was pro­moted to sta­tion man­ager. When you hear some­one com­plain about emp­ty­ing the trash at work, think of Rush and think of what impres­sion you might make on some­one, higher level or not.

In this day and age we have to bring a hand­ful of skills to the table, how­ever menial they might seem to be. You might be sur­prised to learn that Kevin Spacey can dance and sing, but not so much when you real­ize actors and actresses usu­ally per­form in many capac­i­ties. Dressed for suc­cess is one thing, doing some­thing that isn’t in your job descrip­tion is another. You might be the best-looking man in the room, but if you aren’t will­ing to go above and beyond, for­get it. Who needs a Joe Schmoe with lim­ited skills when a Jack Shpack not only refills the paper towel dis­pensers and shov­els the icy front entrance but man­ages to also do what’s in his job description.

Refrain from being one-dimensional when it comes to your skills, think out­side the “job descrip­tion” box and you’ll find that learn­ing new skills brings more to your plate. In the end you’ll be a well-rounded employee not afraid to help with answer­ing phones on occas­sion or clean­ing out the refridger­a­tor at your workplace.

Anti-Tomato Ketchup

August 27, 04 //
11

Dis­claimer: The fol­low­ing is 100% fab­ri­cated and was writ­ten by me purely for the amuse­ment of a few friends, fam­ily and co-workers. Up until now, it has been hid­den in the vin­tage kar​tooner​.com (circa 2000) archives so I fig­ured I’d unearth it and share it with whomever was interested.

TomatoFor the past twelve years, a research team located in Pills­bury, Min­nesota has been search­ing for the answer to ketchup with­out tomato-based ingre­di­ents. Dr. David Motaja men­tioned the idea orig­i­nally while vis­it­ing a local restau­rant after real­iz­ing his dis­like for toma­toes and crav­ing for ketchup.

“It essen­tially started as an idea of pos­si­bly cre­at­ing ketchup with­out the need for toma­toes. Ever since I was a child my dis­like for the red veg­etable fruit has increased excep­tion­ally. Peo­ple who love ketchup but are dis­gusted by toma­toes have no choice. I felt it was a task to be com­pleted by the year 2000″.

Dr. Motaja con­tacted his col­league Dr. Charles Groper and the two dis­cussed a few pos­si­bil­i­ties. As Groper explains, “David came to me with a bril­liant idea. Usu­ally the case being that we research some­one elses failed hypoth­e­sis. Here we were able to test some­thing new, need­less to say I was ecsta­tic. Give or take a few weeks, the project even­tu­ally started in Decem­ber 1988. Our ini­tial task was to recruit a team of sci­en­tists from dif­fer­ent back­grounds. Usu­ally a process like this can take months so we decided to just pick peo­ple off the streets and toss them in a lab.“
(more…)

One-Eyed Cyclops

August 26, 04 //
21

Clash of the Titans is an awe­some live-action stop-motion hybrid film made in the early 80s. It starred none other than the infa­mous Harry Ham­lin as the heroic Perseus. Fans of Greek myths like me know that Perseus’s sto­ries were always the coolest. Notably, Perseus’s encounter with the Medusa, a woman or thing with snakes for hair and the power to turn any­one who glanced at her to stone.

Perseus in a moment of hero­ism, and let’s be hon­est try­ing to save him­self from being turned to stone, reflects her gaze with his shield and there­fore due to the rub­ber and glue effect trans­fers the curse back to her thus turn­ing her to stone. Sweet poetic jus­tice if you ask me.

Clash of the Titans had it all; action, romance, a mechan­i­cal owl, stop-motion visual effects cour­tesy of Ray Har­ry­hausen and most impor­tantly the pin­na­cle scenes with Zeus (played by Lau­rence Olivier) and his posse. You haven’t seen any­thing in movie his­tory until you see Zeus play­ing the world like a chess game — the peo­ple his pawns. I swear this is a mani­a­cal pas­time for this Greek God. Imag­ine being able to con­trol the Uni­verse with noth­ing more than a check­ered board and a few pieces that rep­re­sent each per­son in the Greek pop­u­la­tion. It looked cool in 1981 and it still looks cool even now.

Of course, one can­not for­get Burgess Meredith’s per­for­mance, the won­der­fully charis­matic char­ac­ter actor from such films as Rocky, TV’s The Twi­light Zone (1960s-version) and the lov­able father from Grumpy Old Men. Mered­ith plays Ammon, teacher and idol to Perseus. This man com­mands such a pres­ence on screen that it’s sad that he is no longer with us. A true and blue pro­fes­sional if you ask me.

If you’re in the mood for some great 80s action wrapped in a Greek-myth shell you’ll dig Clash of the Titans, it’s a clas­sic that deserves a spot in your DVD col­lec­tion. Pay close atten­tion to the scenes with Mag­gie Smith (as Thetis), espe­cially one in which she ‘projects’ her image on the face of a statue. Creepy.

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