High Five Anxiety

Bear with me; this is going to be a long setup.

As I was leaving today a coworker, Ms. X, referenced the Ghostbusters movie theme song (“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”). I started to joke about what Ray Parker Jr. was doing right now (something to do with booze and lounge singing). Ms. X was shocked, SHOCKED!, that I knew who Ray was.

Woman please, my snotty group of 11 year old friends called ourselves the “Ghostbusters” at day camp. I probably still have the Ghostbusters painter’s cap that I wore. . . I faintly remember some sort of gray Ghostbusters shirt. . .was it sleeveless? I can’t remember.

Anyways, we were having a good laugh about the song and Ray when another coworker, Mr. Y, walked in. While Mr. Y probably has seen the movie and heard the song there was little chance that he remembered who performed the song. But when I told him that we were talking about Ray he responded (in a deep, “soulful” voice) “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” WTF! Ms. X and I started freaking out and laughing. It was a riot until Ms. X offered up a High Five Opportunity (HFO). I was able to execute this one but just barely.

For some reason I just don’t get high fives. HFOs just make me nervous and slightly weirded out. Maybe it’s the overt camaraderie or the situations that I am in when HFOs occur. It’s usually work related; we’re not curing cancer, just celebrating some minor, lame made-up victory.

When ever a HFO occurs time seems to slow down for me as I stare at the hand. Lord, I hope time stands still and I’m not just standing there like an idiot. I usually miss the opportunity or miss their hand completely.

Those few beats are pretty intense for me. My brain is usually chugging away on four fronts during that pause: should I respond?, is this person cool enough to be offering a HFO?, trajectory and force of my potential response and a brief analysis of whether this HF is warranted. It’s the last one that gets me. I don’t really do anything with others that requires a HF; I’m not a team player, I don’t play sports and as mentioned above I haven’t cured cancer. HFs should be reserved for something truly momentous and I can’t get behind an unworthy HF.

I think some people can sense this. They usually learn after one awkward HFO with me. About a month ago I was third in a row of people and a passing person was high fiving the first two. Then he got to me and he ended up trying to shake my hand instead. Unfortunately I was already for the HF damnit. It just ended up being a weird moment involving both a HF and handshaking. It was like Richard Simmons and Oprah were freaking out about some fat-burning cheese cake.

I just hope that my successful HF (which I was slightly shocked to have actually done) today doesn’t get around. I can’t be expected to slap everyone’s damn hand just because we got in new PostIt notes.

Enneagrams

One of my recent classes had me cranking out a lengthy paper on a management topic. While management isn’t my strong suit I did manage to find an interesting topic: personality testing. I’m normally pretty skeptical about these things. There are so many variables to a person that a simple assessment can’t pin them down. At my place of business we did one assessment a few years ago and, despite my skepticism, it seemed to do a pretty good job of describing me. But I still and a bit leery when it comes to them.

For my paper I did a survey of some of the standard ones. One that stuck out was more a system than a specific test. Enneagrams seem to be a mess of astrology, philosophy, mysticism, geometry and a lot of other hooha. But after taking a simple version of the test myself and asking others to do so, it seems to be able to describe people’s major tendencies.

One caution however, the first time I took it I was classed as an 8. About 2 weeks later I retook it and was a 5 and I scored another 5 just now. I feel that 5 reflects me pretty well (at least until they add “10-The Jerk”) particularly the diagram. These diagrams sum up each category in three ways (this one is for 5’s):

• World View: The world is invasive and confusing. I need privacy to think.
• Basic Desire: to understand the world
• Basic Fear: of being overwhelmed by the world

Hmm. I’d say that this pretty much sums up what underlies most of the actions I take.

The Cat took it and a few people at work did. I’d say that all the assessments were pretty right on. So give it a whirl yourself here and read about the types at www.9types.com. If you could post your result and if you agree with it, I am curious to see what other people think.

Now I am not going to start to consume all the media associated with this stuff. I still doubt that a person’s personality and be reduced to a single number and apply for all instances over time. But so far Enneagrams seem to be pretty accurate and at the very least they provide one with the opportunity to step back and look at how they behave and react.

The Real Problem with MySpace

The Cat recently started MySpace page in her quest to sniff out what her high school classmates are doing. I’ve been meaning to start one too to be familiar with this huge phenomenon. (I’m either one phenomenon ahead or one behind, never right on). I suppose it is interesting, but mostly it’s just slightly skeezmo. Even if a nun had a page, it would be instantly turned sketchy from all the nasty on MySpace.

The real problem with the whole damn mess isn’t the squadrons of perverts patrolling for dumb teens. Or the legions of news media scouring for the perverts. Or the moron teens that post every detail so that they can be found by the above. While these are certainly problems, mostly involving idiots, the real problem is ugly, obnoxious, grating, eye-melting pages.

Have you ever poked around on there? It’s like the end of the world or at least the end of the world for graphic artists. Is this what we invented the Internet for? Or this? Lord I hope that the information on this page is a joke (or some sort of complex cipher). Or this riot of color and sound. I vaguely knew this girl. She seemed like some one that could make good choices. Little did I know that she was operating without sense or decency.

Speaking of decency: parents, please, if you have kids on MySpace educate them. If you don’t know the technology, educate yourself then educate them. You don’t need to teach them HTML just common sense and how not to run off to another country with a tubby 40 year-old from Ohio. Anyway. . .

I’d waste time finding more, but you get the point. Maybe there is something elegant about 15 animated GIFs, music and a video all going as soon as you load the page, but it’s lost on me. It’s like we’ve regressed 10 years to really bad geocities homepages. I’m almost positive that the world doesn’t need another page with animated flame and that bunny that says I suck.

I am turning Japanese.

Or at least the segment of the Japanese population that reads manga. I was originally going to say “I’m turning into a Japanese school girl” but The Cat would probably freak. Anyway, I’m really enjoying a couple of manga titles that I ran into in my recent class. Most happen to be targeted to girls; they happen to have better stories and don’t seem to exist to put blood on the page like the ones targeted at boys.

At the recommendation of a comic store employee I read Fushigi Yugi. A Japanese school girl gets sent back to ancient China and drama ensues. One that I ran into at the library is Full Metal Alchemist. It’s sort of steampunk, sort of technomagic; I don’t have a real good handle on it yet. Kids screw around with some alchemy to bring back their mom from the dead and action ensues. And while The Cat and I scoffed at Fruits Basket, it’s pretty good. Sure, it is run of the mill teen soap opera stuff, but a bunch of the characters turn into animals of the Chinese zodiac when hugged by a member of the opposite sex (and hilarity ensues). I’ve only read the first book of each of these, but plan to keep reading the series through the library. It would cost a fortune to buy them.

All of these are confusing as hell. Maybe that’s part of the appeal. Cecil graciously let me a heap-o graphic novels to read. I love DC books but they are a bit too familiar. I don’t have to try very hard to understand or get it. Not that the story isn’t good, it just isn’t challenge. Now these manga books are so different in terms of art, pacing, conventions and story (and the fact you have to read them “backwards”). It often takes a bit of mental work to simply ID the character because they change shape and hair color so often.

If you dig comics but think manga are just for pervs like The Cat does, you should really check out a couple of titles. It takes some poking around but there are plenty that are low in the creep factor. You could ease into it with a few Western manga titles like Scott Pilgrim or Neotopia.

I’m not giving up on standard superhero fare, but it’s nice to mix it up a bit.

Ultracrap

Ultraviolet. . . why? Why were you so stupid? This movie started off good. Mila, check! Future, check! Automatic pistols, check! Swords, check! Vampires. . . uh, ok, check!

But it just can’t manage to become something more. It tries to have emotion when we just want to see another scene of Gun Kata, which I’ve decided is my new favorite thing. They should really offer classes in it at the Y, right after Pilates but before AA.

Maybe I was just being needlessly dense, but the movie just didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t the kid really dead? What the hell was going on in her head that makes it ok to kill a few hundred goons to protect one kid, er clone? She keeps saying “But he’s just a kid” right before she mows down some more black suited extras. How is she reconciling that? And what was up with those guys’ armor at the beginning? I think it was made of glass, bad I idea guys.

I’ve become spoiled with BSG and the new Doctor Who (of which the second disk is as good as the first). That stuff is quality. *gasp* could I actually want more than just senseless violence from my entertainment? I hope not.

Heading out

Well my media binge didn’t really pan out. I only read one part of Rocketo and played some Sly 2 and Luxor. But not what I was hoping for.

On the upside, the new Doctor Who was great. They’ve managed to continue with the same formula while updating it considerably. The 9^th Doctor is super (if a bit too fashionable) and so is his companion. Sure the special effects are better but the overall pacing has improved a lot. The old story arcs I’ve seen took about 2.5 hours. It was just way to long to watch British folk run around hill and dale. The new ones are down to around an hour and that is just right.

I can’t want until the second disk. I’m really hoping that an ongoing story will begin to emerge to guide the series along. It has already been hinted at. I’m sure that Daleks or Cybermen or The Master have something to do with something or other.

I’m off to a city for some business (it begins with an R and rhymes with Snitchmond). I won’t have a laptop so no Internet connection! I hope I don’t get the shakes from withdrawal.

I will have my spanking new Creative Zen Vision:M media player. The Cat and I went to Best Buy on Saturday and picked one up. But it had a wee little hole in the screen so back it went. Thankfully it was a hassle free exchange.

So far I am very impressed. It’s easy to use, the screen is beautiful and it sounds great. But the real test will occur on my flights. I’ll let you know how it faired.

Back in the Slackle Again

(Slackle – a portmanteau of slack and saddle)

Whew . . . well it’s all over but the grading. That is the last time I take 6 hours (two courses) during a 5 week summer course. While the comic and graphic novel one was great, the management class was a complete crapfest. I won’t say that I didn’t learn anything, but I will say that it was badly executed in almost every possible way.

I’ve only had one other class that was this bad. I walked out of that one after making a huge scene. Unfortunately I couldn’t storm out of an online class or really foment dissent as I am wont to do. But it is over and I hope I can avoid this professor for the rest of my degree program. I don’t think so as he teaches another course I probably should take.

To celebrate I will wallow in media this weekend. I’ve got a ton of graphic novels from the library (currently about 2/3 of the way through The Dark Knight Returns). Barnelia, Cecil and a very reluctant The Cat are going to watch the new Doctor Who (heezy geezy, that site is loud, but you can lay down a neat beat by scrolling over the Cybermen and then a Dalek). And to round out the weekend there will be game; definitely a little Sly 2 and perhaps some WoW. And sad to say, Luxor.

I’ve been saving Rocketo vol. 1 graphic novel I purchased about 2 weeks ago. I wanted to wait until all the classes are over and now is the time.

One thing that I want to make absolutely clear to the 4 people who actually check this blog: I could not have been as successful as I have been in my classes without The Cat’s mad editing skillz. I am the worst proofer; if Word doesn’t catch it chances are I won’t. She works very hard to keep me from sounding like an idiot. I really do appreciate it.

I am going to try to get back into posting crap regularly. It’s slightly amusing and I do love to hear my voice (which is in my head as I type).

Topics we’ll soon cover:

• I’m turning Japanese
• Enneagrams
• Checking out graphic novels from the library
• Rocket Red