02.02.2004 - 4:28 p.m.
Monday
I must be working at the only male-dominated office on earth where the only people that watched the game yesterday saw it for non-sports-related reasons. "I didn't think they were that good this year," I overheard an engineer saying in the snack room. "The Panthers?" someone asked. "The ads," he responded.
I myself had no idea it was Super Bowl Sunday until the grocery clerk at my local QFC asked me, as I paid for my purchases yesterday afternoon, if I was having a Super Bowl party. "Nooo..." I said slowly. I was buying:
1 can tomato paste
1 onion
1 bag shitaake mushrooms
4-roll package of toilet paper
The hell kind of party could you throw with those supplies? Don't bogart the paste, dude!
I suppose it's really not surprising that Workplace employees - who work in an office with a basement crammed with every console game ever manufactured and an attic stuffed with old Apple machines/Star Wars posters/Magic cards - weren't, in general, all lathered up over some sports event.
Truly, I love how geeky Workplace is. I've been working for geek-filled high tech companies over the last several years, but they've also been sprinkled with sales reptiles, "biz dev" folk (now that it's 2004, can we all just admit there IS no such thing as BizDev? seriously?), dysfunctional marketing numbskulls, and other assorted odd and ends. But Workplace - All Geek, All the Time.
Geek evidence: one of our internal applications is called <Something>Zuul. The icon? The Ghostbusters terror dog face. Another one of our applications has some of the 'all your base are belong to us' text hidden in its document icon. There is a post-it note on a broken Silicon Graphics monitor downstairs that reads "The S is for sucks". And, our software boxes have "Moof" printed on the bottom flap.
Workplace is comprised of hardcore, old school geeks, in other words. You kids nowadays probably don't even know what a dogcow is. Do you?
DO YOU?????
Yeah, I didn't think so. Punk.*
* Just kidding. I didn't know either until just now when I looked it up. Or did I?**
** I totally did.***
***Not.
I like working in a geekhouse because geeks are funny. Even the engineers who drive me right around the bend with their overly-pedantic characteristics are natural comedians when they're in the right mood. Almost everyone in my office has completely and thoroughly cracked me up at one time or another.
In the middle of of a very awkward and tense meeting the other day, my boss did an imitation of Yoda ("fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering...") that was absolutely fucking spot ON, and everyone laughed like drunken hyenas for about fifteen minutes straight. In that moment, with all of us simply helpless with laughter, I thought, I love this place. Sometimes.
:::
So yeah, the Super Bowl - yawn. I am glad this happened, though, if only for the best news headline ever: Janet Jackson's Bare Breast Sparks FCC Probe.
Heh. Probe.
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