The Twilight Report

Zombies in the Hallways

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:27:00 GMT

Tyler asked me if I would help him make a first person shooter involving zombies and the Amish. Let me just say that I have nothing against the Amish, and my understanding of them is limited to that which I gleaned from the Peter Weir film Witness. [ Editors Note: Peter Weir is the best Australian director Ever ]

Today I am driving to work, thinking that I am late (the meeting is in fact 9:30 not 9:00, so I will actually be 20 minutes early) and I have a remix of Bloody Tears playing in the car CD player and I start having this fantasy that the factory building that I work in is actually a run down castle inhabited by my co-workers, who are actually zombies, ghosts, gules and other assorted undead monsters, all of which can be dispatched by a neat *snap* of my chain whip. My manager is that really weak bat creature at the end of Level 1 which anyone can defeat.

Diversity and Columbus Day (Unobserved)

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:41:00 GMT

I get the feeling that The Twilight Report is becoming a Dilbert's rant about the stupidity which is The Company. While this is not A Good Thing generally speaking, it must be because The Company has been on my mind a lot lately. Every year we have these diversity training meetings where our manager explains to us what diversity is. Today was that day for my new department. One of the slides Tom showed us went something like thus:

Diversity

To which someone in the department said "I don't really understand this chart. I mean, why is Germany and Vietnam in red, and nothing else is?"

Nobody could really give a satisfactory answer to this, but someone else did say "It shows diversity."

I think it is fabulous that you can take the emotionally charged and complex idea of diversity and encapsulate it into a single chart. It is a good thing that The Company decided to show us this chart, otherwise we might become bigoted. On another chart they lumped Women in with all the popular minorities. I know it is a cliché to even bring it up, but since when is 51% of the population a minority? (And if it isn't a minority, then why can't I get a date for Friday night?)

Today is Columbus Day (Unobserved). Yesterday was Columbus Day (Observed). Some people call it Native People's Day, with an acute sense of irony. Columbus began the subjugation of North America, something Leaf Erikson failed to do centuries before 1492.

Every year seems as though I go to the Adirondack's Columbus Day weekend for our annual cabin trip. Not because we get Columbus Day off at The Company (because we don't)... it just always ends up like that. This year was our first exception since the people who own the cabins closed shop early this year. This was terribly disappointing.

rc3: another day in the life of robert cobbler

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 04:55:00 GMT

Note: I originally wrote this early in the morning on August 4 for another site, but I am particularly pleased with it, so I am reposting it here to get total coverage. I've only made a few additional corrections.

I did this once before, almost ten years ago. Thought it was time once again to write about my old friend RC.

rc3: another day in the life of robert cobbler

3 August 2004 / August 3, 2004

By the time I got into my car to... I would say go to work... but the fact that I am going to work today seems almost incidental... but anyway, by the time I get into my car to go to work I have already been up for almost 3 hours today. I got up extra early to photograph a still life for my second assignment which was really due yesterday, but I had forgotten to take the film out of the fridge last night so I spent an hour going through my writing desk searching for the title to the Toyota so that I can get Green's Auto to haul the thing away so I don't have to spend money on it. Right now that car is costing me money just sitting in my driveway and it has to come to an end. By the time I have confirmed that I really don't have the damn title anymore and that I will have to deal with DMV, the film is ready to shoot, but I still am not. I can't think of what to shoot. The content of my writing desk is scattered across the floor neatly organized into categories. The largest pile is stuff to throw away. The batteries I found stored in the desk are lying about and I imagine the Energizers confronting the Duracells in a medieval conflict. A couple of candles become castle towers in my mind. It seems the dumbest thing I can think of, but I arrange this ten second fantasy into my still life assignment.

I finish photographing the still life on time, and this is when I get into my car to start my day which already seems to be progressing. What I have to accomplish seem to add up to something larger than 24 hours, and even so I manage to forget three somethings in a row, each time having to turn around and drive back home to get it. Each time I seem to get further, which seems like progress, although it is really more work because it's longer to drive back. First I forgot my medication. Then it was my Australian passport application. Then it was the CD I had sold on half.com and had to post today.

(read more...)