Saturday, March 10, 2007

I got nothin'

OK, seriously, I have nothing to write about tonight.

Hmn, there's the art case on the shelf above my desk. Sort of like a really big, hard-sided briefcase that opens from the top with two spring-action combination locks. I got a really good deal on it back in the 90s because somebody had reset the combinations and locked it before putting it back on the shelf, so the guys at the office supply store didn't know the combination to open it. Having nothing better to do, I asked them if they would still give me the discount price if I managed to open it before buying it. They said sure, go for it.

About an hour later, I had figured out the combos for both locks and now owned a really nice art supply case for about $10. Right now I think it is full of old pencils and markers and random things like the bendy curve maker thing that I though might be useful but did not prove so.

I don't really know what the point of that story was.

That was also the office supply store where I bought my favorite office chair (on scratch and dent discount) (I'm pretty cheap). The chair lasted about 15 years before finally breaking to an extent that it could no longer be repaired. That was a comfortable chair. The chair I'm sitting in right now is not. Despite the fact that it was described as an "Executive" office chair, I think there's some sort of bolt protruding up through the padding of the seat and jabbing me in the right thigh. Occasionally, the little locking mechanism that holds the seat in an upright position will spontaneously disengage, sending me plummeting backwards into a position that I assume was meant for reclining into a self-satisfied state of smirkery as my executive response to skyrocketing stock options or perhaps another successful round of layoffs. Instead I am torn abruptly from my labors and sent into a terrified state of "Holy Crap!"edness as my arms flail wildly for purchase like some hapless German spy booted unceremoniously from atop a swaying gondola by an angry Richard Burton.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of villains, especially those in Disney movies, perish from falling? I mean, for a good guy to get away with killing someone and still be a good guy, he either has to wait for the bad guy to pull some sort of hidden weapon out after having surrendered and then blow him away (or, in the case of Ladyhawke, hurl a massive sword through his body), or he has to let gravity do the dirty work for him and then look suitably horrified and regretful that he could not catch the bad guy in time to save him. I did like the end of Disney's Lion King, where a very good villain falls for the old, "I'm gonna knock your heroic ass off this cliff! Whoah, no, I missed! Holy Craaaaaap! The Irony!" "Jeremy Irony!" (sorry) Only the twist is that he isn't killed by the fall, but rather is torn apart by belligerent, comic relief henchmen at the bottom.

Impaling is another option for particularly nasty villains. Where was I?

Oh yeah, this chair sucks.

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