Traveller's Tales

but then the spacemen abducted me, used a maser on my brain to alter my perception of the passage of time, and fed me chocolate.  It was very good chocolate, which is always nice during an abduction, but as a result of the very good chocolate, the only thing I can remember for certain is the fact that they did in fact have very good chocolate.

Damn those sly spacemen anyway.

In other news, nobody at work can function without me being physically in the building, so I have not yet been able to indulge in actual vacation time yet, despite having been scheduled to indulge in exactly that kind of time for the entire week.  In this regard, the aforementioned chocolate is not quite as effective at making me forget details, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Primarily bad at the moment, as it results in much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I expect it’ll be good in hindsight.

Lastly, someone whose work I quite like is showing a preliminary interest in the manuscript.  This is actually an incredibly cool thing and something I’d much prefer to turn into a headline while leaping from one tall building to the next (with or without a cape), but I must reasonably temper this news because (a) “preliminary interest” is not equivalent to “ready to purchase lock, stock and barrel,” and (b) I still have a quantity of residual chocolate to consume.

That is all.  More when the chocolate lets me remember I need to post again.

The first person to deduce the identity of the Word of the Day from the complex visual clue gets a cookie.

So I decided to print the manuscript for TGL early today, so I could miss the rush and all the people trying to use the printers, right? I load up the document, hit print, go to the printer.

And do a double-take: it’s missing. Not the printout, the actual printer, replaced utterly by a shiny new printer where the old one should have been. Reasonably, my printout should be here, though, yes? Reasonably, yes, but in this version of the real world, no. No printout to be seen. I suddenly realize that they’ve changed out the printers like they were threatening to do for all those months, but they never set up my PC with the new local printer. I apparently printed to the old printer address, to which a nearby printer no longer answers.

No big deal, though, right? I go back to my desk, expecting to find the print manager showing me an error, that the old address is no longer valid and would I like to cancel please? Instead, the print manager has already closed, which means that the job has printed.

Somewhere.

Just not here.

Getting slightly desperate, I call the help desk and ask them to locate where printouts to the old printer address would go, and, in typically efficient, forward-thinking and informative fashion, they have absolutely no clue where the old address now goes to, because naturally their operation is so thorough and efficient that a problem of the sort I’m describing could never have happened without it somehow being my fault. After considerable muttering they set up a ticket for me to talk to network operations so I can try to track down the printer.

I wait, and I wait, and I wait some more, and while I’m waiting I get a call from an extension I don’t recognize. Hoping it’s the aforementioned network operations group, I pick up to discover that I’ve answered an irate woman from the 5th floor (I work on the 3rd), wondering if I’m the idiot that printed out a 110 page novel on her printer. Aware that this has suddenly become absurd, I (perhaps inappropriately, but hey I’m ad libbing here) correct her, saying that the document is actually a partial novel rather than a full novel. Belatedly realizing I’m probably pissing her off by playing semantics so early in the morning, I elaborate that yes, it was printed erroneously, and yes, I’m terribly sorry, and yes, I’ll say five Hail Mary’s and go to Confession after I remove the offending document from her printer.

So I march up to the 5th floor to retrieve the aforementioned ream of paper in my best hangdog fashion. She’s not there, but in the interim she has kindly binder-clipped the printout for me, so I feel even more like a stupid oaf as I pick up the parcel, and slink back to my desk as obscurely and quickly as possible.

Upon my return, I see that network operations has finally replied to my request via email: they have courteously sent me the entire network printer map for the 3rd floor, thus managing to provide encyclopedic information for a question I hadn’t asked, while simultaneously failing utterly to provide any information actually pertaining to the original problem (which, in any case, is now solved anyway). A comedy of errors from beginning to end; I can honestly see Palin and Cleese adding just a touch of their own personal styling to the tale and turning it into a saga that would rival their infamous Book Shop skit.

Only two positive results came of this bizarre little episode. One, I have my printout. Two, I now know how to print prank messages on everyone else’s printer on my floor.

I expect both will come in handy.

There are two especially good reasons I always write in ‘Bart Simpson’ come presidential election years.

One, I believe it’s important to exercise my right to vote. Republican democracy (note to the fast reader: I’m not talking Republican vs. Democrat, I’m talking Republican as in, the kind of country we live in) in this country is an astoundingly important part of our heritage, and the foundation on which everything else we hold dear is built upon, so to completely skip on the voting thing is just plain wrong.

Two, I can’t imagine being held responsible for letting any of the sycophants who’ve bought their way onto the ballot into office.

Thus, my vote is often wasted on a cartoon character with no prospects of winning, but at least as much of a grasp on foreign policy as our currently elected buffoon. In a way, I feel badly for throwing away a vote that my forefathers fought and died to give me. In another way, I think those eighteenth-century radical rabble-rousers would partly approve: it’s not quite civil disobedience, but it’s definitely a self-aware and honest personal evaluation of the current state of politics. In any event, something tells me they’ be even more disappointed in me if I voted for any of the real-life candidates.

This coming election, though, Bart will have to do without me.

I don’t intend for this to become a political blog, but I will say this: if you’re reading this, and you’ve had any concerns about not just the current executive branch of the United States, but about any or all of the current political process, then you need to give this guy a look:

http://www.gravel2008.us/

I’m not going to fly flags, link to youtubes, shout how he’s the best thing since sliced bread met peanut butter or cajole people into voting for him. All I’m going to say is this: he’s a plain speaker, he’s not bankrolled by any lobbies, he’s got wit, he’s angry about where we are now, he’s the guy that singlehandedly stopped the draft in the 70s, and there’s not a single issue he dances around. He was in the Carolina Democratic debates. I don’t know why I stopped to watch them, but I’m glad I did. He may be 77 years old, but he was the youngest, most energetic, most open person up there, and he ‘gets it’ more than any of those other bought-and-sold marionettes ever will, or care to.

I’m getting excited; I’m sorry. I’m not going to tell anyone how to vote. But here’s the bonus: if really you know what you want from a President, you’ll know immediately whether this guy is it or not. There’s no bullshit in his speech or in his platform. He says exactly what he wants, and he explains why he wants it. In a way, he reminds me just a bit of the remarkable story that’s told about Davy Crockett as a Senator (a long, but excellent read for those who want to know more about the country they live in — and no, I’m not shitting you, Davy Crockett was a Senator and a damned good one).

Sorry, Bart. If Mike loses in ‘08, I’ll vote for you again, but for now I think I’m gonna give this politics thing one more go.