Iron Fist

Over Christmas I sat down and watched my new-to-me copy of Watchmen, and caught a quote by the Silk Spectre which I had to go back and verify in the graphic novel I had sitting on my bookshelf.  In that version, Adrian Veidt sits in his orrery  and wonders aloud to Dr Manhattan whether or not he did the right thing “in the end.”  The good doctor replies,

Nothing ends, Adrian.  Nothing ever ends.

This made me think back a bit to a link that Neil Gaiman posted on the Twitter, to this story about a man who has a quote from Death: The High Cost of Living tattooed on his arm.  The slant on this quote is a bit different:

It always ends.  That’s what gives it value.

I don’t know why I drew the mental connection between these quotes, other than the arbitrary end of this year by those of us using the Gregorian calendar was rapidly approaching.  Also, I probably spend entirely too much time living in imaginary places.

It’s easy enough in the the hectic holiday season and the ridiculous pressure at work to GET EVERYTHING DONE to turn around and write off the entire year as a complete wash, but honestly I had a good year, and I think I’ve laid the foundations for some better times ahead.  Anyway, I did this silly thing with pictures last year because I was lazy, but I think I liked it enough afterward that I’ll do it again.  Here’s my 2009, in photos:

It’s been an awesome year, and here’s to the next one, and they’re boarding my flight so I guess I better wrap this up omg see you all next year!

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I woke up last weekend with a pinch of cabin fever, so I hopped in the car to take a quick drive up the Columbia Gorge.  It’s one of my favorite drives, and it’s just a short distance from the city.  And the colors this time of year are spectacular.

I swear this view will never, ever get old for me.

After uploading this photo, I went back through my Flickr stream and found a few more taken from almost this exact spot.  Here’s one taken last year in September, before the green had begun to give way to the colors of fall.

And another one, taken the previous year to that in late October.

With a view like that, can you blame me for going back and taking these shots again and again?  I can’t wait to take some serious hikes up along this part of state next spring.

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Good morning, internets.  This year I got you some wild flowers.

My coworkers, being both lazy and not very good at keeping details straight, decided to recycle the half dozen Mylar birthday balloons gifted to our accounting manager on her birthday at the beginning of the month by taping them to my cubicle walls.  This is pretty annoying, but they got bent out of shape when I took a scissors to the one they had tied to my monitor so I left them up.

Towards the end of the week one of the girls across the way in another department asked when my actual birthday was and how old I was going to be.   “This next Monday,” I said, “and…thirty-two?”  I scratched my head.  I can’t keep track of these things.  “Yeah, that sounds about right.  Thirty-two.”  I shrugged.

“Cool.  I’m turning thirty-one in a few weeks.”

“Oh, sweet!  Stop by my desk later, I’ll give you some pro tips.  I’m pretty good at this thirty-one thing.”  And you know, I guess I am, though this is more by accident than design.  It’s been a pretty good year.

Anyway, here I go around the sun again.  Thirty two, here’s looking at you.

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On my trip to our Salt Lake City office I arrived to find that they are even more disorganized on the Utah end of the operation than they are at home, and all the company cars were missing and no one seemed to know where they were.  When it came time to call it a day and none of the cars had happened to wander back from where they had gotten themselves lost, there was a bit of a scramble and eventually it was decided that I could take one of the big work trucks for the night.  I sighed in resignation, tossed my overnight bag and laptop across the bench to the passenger side, and climbed up into the cab of the giant GMC truck for the drive into town to my hotel.

After a few hours cooped up in my room I decided that what I really wanted to spend my dinner allowance on was a pizza.  A big, greasy pepperoni and sausage pizza.  Yelp! turned up a few promising places; I picked one that sounded about right for what I had in mind, memorized the directions, and wandered down to the parking lot with the truck keys in hand.

There had been few cars when I checked in, but now the first level of the parking garage was nearly full.  Things were a bit cramped, and the truck was a bit longer of a vehicle than I was used to, but I judged that I shouldn’t have too much trouble backing up and driving off in one straight shot.  I climbed back up into the truck and started the engine, slowly backing up and watching the car parked to my left as I turned the steering wheel.  Satisfied that I wasn’t going to scrape up my neighbor on the way out, I turned to look over my shoulder, only to discover that for some reason a man was standing directly in my way.  And when I say directly, I mean it — if I there had been crosshairs mounted on the rear gate of the truck he would have been dead center in them.  Surprised, I stopped the truck, probably less than two feet from where he was standing.

And the man just stood there, looking down.  I could only see the top half of him, and couldn’t make out quite what he was doing.  Was he drunk and had stopped right there to take a pee?  Held frozen in fear by the sight of a mouse?  Being mugged by a dwarf?  No, it wasn’t any of these things, and after a moment I recognized enough of the tell-tale signs to realize that this was a person Playing With His Mobile Device.  I gave him a minute to notice that hey, there’s a big truck immediately to your left, but when he showed no sign of moving along I brought my hand up to hit the car horn…

…and I wondered.

I wondered what it would take to get him to notice that there was a truck right next to him.  Apparently the nearby rumble of the engine in an enclosed parking garage wouldn’t do it.  The bright red glare of the brake lights wasn’t triggering a response, either.  For as close as I was, the exhaust had to practically be blowing on his legs.  Curious as to what it would take to trigger his proximity sense of HOLY SHIT THERE IS A 2-TON TRUCK RIGHT NEXT TO ME, I began tapping on the brake, letting the truck inch slowly back towards him.  So now, in addition to truck noise, diesel exhaust, and giant mass of slowly encroaching steel, he had the added warning factor of bright flashing red lights as I tapped repeatedly on the brakes.  Closer.  Closer.

How oblivious do you have to be to fail to notice a long bed truck slowly filling up the entirety of your peripheral vision?  How had natural selection let this man down that he was unable to detect an enormous truck inching closer and closer to hitting his legs?  How would someone like this fare against a natural threat more dangerous than a tree stump?  I began to imagine him as a caveman on a savanna in mankind’s distant past.

“Moog.  We need to talk.”

“Hey, Buldar!  I found some sticks!  You know, for the fire.”

“Ah…I see that.  Listen, Moog — you’re a nice caveman and all, but I just don’t think you’re going to cut it here.  You can’t hunt.  You can’t gather.  You don’t seem to be able to make fire on your own.  You even got lost inside the cave once.”

“Hey look, if this is because of what happened on the last hunt–”

“Yes, Moog.  This is because of that last hunt, where we were hunting the mighty cave deer, and you were so engrossed watching some beetles that you didn’t notice that stag nearby and it knocked you over into a ditch.”

“That deer totally snuck up on me, Buldar!”

“How, Moog? You were in the middle of a prairie. It just sauntered right up to until it got close enough to hit you with its antlers.”

“But…but…”

“Look…you’re gonna have to go.  Maybe there will be a time after so many winters have come and gone that no man now alive can count them, and the tribe will have grown so large that they can support someone who looks at shiny pieces of obsidian all day but can’t make a decent spear-head or trap a hare, but the glaciers are coming closer and we need everyone devoted to making sure we survive the long cold ahead, and as such there is no place for you in Buldar’s Tribe.  Sorry.”

“Fine!  Whatever, Buldar!  I’ll leave, but I’m totally taking these sticks with me!”

“That’s actually part of an antelope thigh bone and a piece of dried mastodon turd, but you’re welcome to them.  Good day to you, Moog.”

I had to be less than a foot away from him now, and still: nothing.  Concerned that I might actually knock him over, I stopped.  And waited.  And when it seemed that I was going to have to hit the horn and scare the bejeezus out of him, Moog came to the last of his emails and looked up, and then to his left, and made the face that meant WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS TRUCK COME FROM?  Properly embarrassed, he ran around to the passenger window, waving his Blackberry in weak apology.  ”Ha ha, you know how these things are!” he said.  I rolled my eyes and nodded, and continued backing up now that he had vacated the last two feet of empty space I needed to finish backing up.  In an effort to make amends he ran back towards the rear of the truck, windmilling his arms in the direction I was already moving, calling out “YOU’VE GOT PLENTY OF ROOM!  YOU CAN BACK UP MORE YOU HAVE ROOM!”

I shifted gears and gave an absent-minded wave through the rear windshield as I drove away, not sparing another glance for that lousiest of cavemen, hoping that another tribe would take him and his Blackberry in before he froze to death in the coming winter.

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This is just fun.

(via Pomplamoose Music, via Truth and Beauty Bombs)

Happy Friday, everyone!

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