It was a quiet and unassuming evening

Why do mystery and horror stories so often begin "It was a dark and stormy night?" We've all experienced a dark, stormy night, what is so mysterious about it? I know I tend to be home during those nights, only going out of the house if I have to. I don't want to be out in the rain. I imagine the same is true for most people. So why is this when all of the villains are out doing their work? Aren't they people, too? Don't you think they'd want to stay in on those nights?

For a storybook villain crime is their job, much like your job is your job. They don't want to go in to work if it means getting drenched on the way to the car. If they are like me and it is that dark and stormy, enough to mention at the start of a book, then they especially don't want to drive, I don't seem to see as well at night when it is raining. I think the villains would want to stay in on the dark and stormy nights. Perhaps if the start of the story when that business is going on is when the villains are planning their heist, or their caper, then I'll go along with it. There wouldn't be a better time to plan than on a dark and stormy night.

Some of you might be thinking that the stories don't always involve rational villains, so maybe that's why they are out on the dark and stormy nights. I'll give you that. It is not beyond reality to believe that there are irrational villains, and that these would be the ones cavorting on the dark and stormy nights. That could be a very real possibility. Perhaps these are the ones the stories are often involving. I still think there is an over representation of dark and stormy nights in horror and mystery stories.

If I was telling the story, I'd have it be a calm and unassuming evening, or perhaps even an afternoon, when the villain strikes. Especially after all of the priming that the other stories have done on us so that we automatically expect the worst when it is dark and stormy. My villain would certainly strike in the open, using the fact that people are inattentive in regular situations to their advantage. That's all I have regarding this topic at the moment. I was just thinking about it recently, how the dark and stormy line is so cliche in mystery and horror stories. I suppose I am done thinking about it now.

Ajax can't get enough of road signs

More road signs? Yes. Yesterday while driving home from viewing apartments I noticed the “Icing May Occur” sign. I imagined a literal interpretation of the sign, primed by the recent cake decorating Taylor and I have been doing, and saw a big hand spreading cake icing across the road and surrounding trees. This made me remember the signs I would see out west driving to and from college, “Game Crossing.” Of course we all know they are referring to animals as game, but in my literal imaginative way I pictured board games bouncing across the street in a line. I always thought that would be a humorous cartoon, but never got around to creating it. For one, I didn’t know how many people would understand the game crossing sign as being a real sign, I never knew about it until I saw it myself, just a few years ago. Secondly, I don’t draw so well. Finally, if I had the idea, someone else probably did too.


Now, years later, I did the Google search and discovered three variations of the game crossing gag idea. One was of some sport equipment walking frenziedly across the road by the sign. Another was of cartoon chess pieces crossing. The third was a split photo, one half had an actual photograph of the road sign and the other half had a picture of a stack of board games. So the gag has been done, but not in the way I had imagined it. I guess I might as well add my idea to the table…the table of the Internet…as well illustrate the icing on the roads idea as well. Maybe now I will be finished with signs for a while, but I make no guarantees. (click on the images for the full view)

I thought about enhancing them with some color after I scanned them, but didn't get around to it...yet.

If it Ain't Broke, Enhance it

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it…but that doesn’t mean you can’t enhance it. Where would we be in life if there weren’t any genius mad scientists trying to improve upon the machines and tools we use every day? Doc Brown’s DeLorean wasn’t broken, but he sure fixed it! Regular strength Tylenol wasn’t broken, but isn’t maximum strength a little more efficient? Do we want to be content with how things are, or do we want something better. The same rule that applies to stuff and things applies to life. My life isn’t broken, but can it be fixed (enhanced)? Of course it can. So can yours.


How do we define broken? Typically, something that is broken is unable to accomplish its purpose. A toaster that doesn’t toast is no toaster. Likewise, a car that doesn’t drive, a computer that doesn’t compute, an oven mitt that doesn’t protect a hand, these are all examples of broken things. An item created to perform a specific function which no longer performs that function is a broken item. Is that a satisfactory explanation? I say it is not. I’ve got something different.

A toaster that doesn’t toast is no toaster. A toaster that toasts is a toaster. There are a lot of different types of things you could toast; it isn’t a one size fits all realm. Bagels are different from bread and both are different from frozen waffles. Of course this is old news, and there are toasters with multiple settings for various types of toastable items. The point is that the toaster wasn’t broken, in that it was still able to complete its intended purpose, but it was broken in that it wasn’t able to toast the multitude of toastable objects with much efficiency. It wasn’t completely broken, but it wasn’t at maximum efficiency. This is where enhancements come in.

An enhancement makes something more capable of accomplishing its intended purpose. Toast settings on a toaster are an example of an enhancement. You have a selector switch to determine if you want more toast or less toast. Is a toaster without a selector switch broken? No. Does it accomplish its purpose? Yes. Does a selector switch make a toaster more capable at doing its job? Yes. Does a non-selector switch toaster hold its own against a selector switch toaster? No. Is the non-selector switch toaster broken now?

No, it really isn’t broken. The point isn’t to change the definition of broken, or haven’t I made that clear yet? No. The point is that something doesn’t have to be broken before we address how to make it more efficient. We can’t wait around until the toaster breaks and then while rebuilding it we decide to enhance it. Well, we could, but why wait? That’s the point. Why wait? There are many systems (such as government and formal education) which are limping along, not completely broken, but heavily damaged, and yet they still accomplish a portion of their purposes, so they are left alone. If we wait until they are completely broken we might not be in a state where we are capable of fixing them.

So maybe we do want to change the definition of broken, or maybe just use a different word. Nothing is perfect, and if it ain’t perfect, then enhance it. That can be the phrase. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” as a phrase is broken, so we’ll fix it with an enhancement: “if it ain’t perfect, enhance it!” Now those are some words we could all live by. We’ll enhance our toasters, our DeLorean sports cars, our government, and our lives. None of these things are perfect, nor are they all necessarily broken, but they all can use enhancements.

I don’t know how to enhance everything, if I did, I’d probably do it and I wouldn’t be worrying about having a job and earning a Master’s degree. I’d be making decorative cakes with my wife, just for fun, and all of the children we knew would have cool cakes and lots of cavities. Dentists would be our friends…parents not so much. Perhaps it is better that I don’t have the answers and the money fortune that seems to follow the best ideas in this country. If we even function as a meritocracy any more, I don’t know if we even function as a republic democracy, fully. Back to the point, I don’t know how to enhance everything, but I think if you want to enhance anything you need to get a full scope perspective of the thing. Sit it down, figuratively or literally depending on what it is, and then walk around it. See it from every angle. Get opposing perspectives. Learn all you can about its reason for being created, its capabilities, and its imagined accomplishments. When the right person gets the right item at the right time, enhancements will come.

Ajax Throws a Baseball

Here it is! My first attempt at animation from a few years ago. Rather than focus on school work during college, I wanted to see if I could make a cartoon. Having years of experience making stickman flip book cartoons on the edge of the pages of every book I read in middle school and high school, I understand the principles of animation (okay, not "every book," but several of them, and probably not "years of experience," but minutes, perhaps cumulative hours). I know that cartoon animation includes still images show in quick succession to provide the sensation of apparent motion.

With that knowledge I created the following cartoon by drawing images in Microsoft Paint, and then using Windows Movie Maker to make a slide show with very short durations of slides being displayed. When put together the slide show looks like a moving picture show. I tacked on a short guitar riff I once recorded to fill the void of not having other sound. With the success of this cartoon, I have plans to make further cartoons (I have made one already, and posted it on this blog. Here is a link: Fun With Microsoft Paint) with dialogue. These things take some time though, so don't expect it soon, but expect it eventually. That's all the words, enjoy the show!

"Tue"(Job Interview)s(in one)day

Yesterday


I got up early yesterday, a little too early. But that’s the way most days feel when I don’t have any place to be. Taylor gets up for work and I just want to sleep, but I don’t really want to just sleep because I don’t want to be lazy. So I usually get up, eventually, and make breakfast before she leaves for work. After she left yesterday morning I returned to the bedroom, looked at the bed, and in my best Liz Lemon said “I want to go to there.” I didn’t go to there, however, because I needed to leave in an hour to get to a job interview.

Interview #1

I arrived scandalously early and sat in my truck for a few minutes. I had a 30+ mile drive to get there, and I hate to be late, so providing enough time for any possible issue on the road, I left early. There weren’t any problems and I had plenty of time to plug the next address into the GPS and get an idea of how long it would take to get there. Did I mention the next address? It was for another job interview. I have been applying for jobs almost continuously since I finished school a year ago. I have had a total of 5 invitations for interviews out of the dozens of jobs I have applied for. Three of those happened to be in the last 3 business days.

Interesting side note, the first interview yesterday was the same group as one of those previous interview invitations. Last May when I was finally hired by the last place I worked (the one with the overnight schedule), I had been called back by this other company. As it had been weeks since I heard from the place I did end up working for, I scheduled an interview. The next day I was offered the first job so I cancelled the new interview. This is tough to explain when I don’t use company names, oh well. I took the one job and cancelled the interview for the other. Time passed and as I quit the job I had taken, I of necessity applied everywhere again, and that other company from back in May called again. He said, “I feel like I should know you, have we spoken before about a job?” I told him the story and he invited me to come in for an interview. This completes the interesting side note. Then again, perhaps it only completes the back story of the interesting side note. I think the punch line comes later.

I waited for fifteen minutes or so in my truck, and then went inside to wait for another ten minutes before my interview time; little did I know it would be another ten minutes before I met with anyone, that’s professional. The story gets interesting at the point of me letting the receptionist know I was there, or it would seem to get interesting, but I suppose it is kind of anticlimactic (you’ll see). As I went to sit down in the waiting room my pants pocket caught on the arm of the chair and I heard a distinct tearing sound. It was the seam of my pants above and below the pocket. Luckily the pocket held intact, somehow, otherwise it would have been a good 12 inch opening in the seam.

With a tear in my pants, waiting for a job interview, I sat laughing. I texted Taylor so we could share in the experience. I thought it was altogether humorous and I quickly fashioned a plan to conceal the catastrophe. I had a rain jacket with me, first I thought it would be fun to tie it around my waist just like we did back in 6th grade on the playground when we wore our coats out for recess and then started playing football and got too hot, we’d use the coats to mark end zones or something and then tie them around our waists when going back inside. It was fashionably acceptable to wear a coat tied ‘round your waist. I don’t know if that was just because of the era, or because of the age. I don’t see many adults (especially not men) sporting the fashion, maybe kids still do. I don’t know. At any rate, it was amusing to me to be inside wearing my rain jacket around my waist while wearing slacks and a shirt and tie. It might have been just the accessory to take the formal-edge out of my appearance. Who am I kidding? My disarming smile does that on its own!

Like I said, I waited well beyond the appointment time to actually meet with the interview crew. Perhaps that is just my perception, since I’m always at least 10 minutes early I consider waiting 10 minutes past an agreed upon time “well beyond.” In this time I moved away from my “waist coat” concealment plan. Instead I decided that I could just carry my jacket scrunched up in my right hand, which would efficiently cover the portion of my leg where the rip in the pants resided. The only flaw in this plan was shaking hands. Being a job interview, there wasn’t much chance that there wouldn’t be any hand shaking. To my surprise, there were three men conducting the interview, which meant 300% more hand shaking than I had expected. I had to make the switch of the coat from right to left hand and then do the shaking. It worked out well.

We had the interview, all went well, and then it was time to stand up and shake hands again. This is where I resumed concern over the ripped pants. I stood up and angled myself away from the interviewers. With coat in hand I was once again successful in hiding the open seam. (I am typing this in Microsoft Word and were I wrote “open seam” Word has underlined seam in blue, which means it wants to suggest a different word, I clicked to see what it wants me to have typed, “sea.” No, Word, that doesn’t make sense in this context, not even remotely. Thanks though!)

As the lead interviewer walked me out of the building, I thought it funny how concerned I was that they would notice the ripped seam in my pants, who looks at pants pockets when they meet someone? I probably could have spent the day around those guys and they wouldn’t have noticed. It also crossed my mind that I should have mentioned it to them when they asked me if there was anything else I wanted them to know about me that they hadn’t asked. I should have said “I ripped my pants when I sat down in the waiting room when I got here.” And then just left it at that and waited for them to say something. Could have been pretty funny, but as it was it was a top secret adventure, and I think I was successful.

It is a possibility that they had a laugh about my pants being ripped after I left. Once I was out of the room the other two guys might have looked at each other and said “did you see that guy’s pants!” It doesn’t really matter though, because an hour or so later they called to offer me the job. That was nice, but at just over $10 an hour, I wasn’t overly excited. It was a job, but not on the top of the list for me. Besides I had ripped pants to take care of, but to be accurately on the timeline, they called after I had fixed my pants.

And that leads into the fixing of the pants portion of this story! I had an enormous chunk of time before my second interview, although that did include another hour and a half of driving. Thanks to the recent flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene, the more direct route to the second interview location is closed. So I had to drive way out of the way to get there, but that’s what you have to do, so I did it. In the intervening time I decided to go to my parents’ house to find a needle and thread. No one was home so I had to call my mom at work to find out where I could get a needle. In short time I was standing, pants in hand, sewing the seam back together. I can hold my own with a needle and thread, but I’m more of a decorational sewer than a functional sewer. Decorational isn’t a word, apparently, but that’s how I sew. With the pants leg inside out, I thought I was doing a fine job, but once I finished and flipped the leg back out, it was obvious I hadn’t done such a find job. No matter, the seam was restored, or reformed at least, and I was ready to go on my way.

It was some time after that when the first interview people called to tell me I had a job if I wanted it. I told them I’d call tomorrow, which is now today, and I need to call them soon, in order to let them know my decision. What decision? Keep reading.

Interview #2

After driving another hour and a half, I arrived at the second interview of the day, again 30 minutes early. I waited until 10 minutes before the interview and then walked in. I was met coming through the front door by a friend of mine who works there. So as not to make it appear that the company only interviews and hires friends of employees, I acted professionally. “Hello, my name is [Ajax the whimsical revolutionary] and I am here for a 1pm appointment with [Marzipan Phillips].” Names changed. She had me sign in and then took me back to the offices. There wasn’t anyone in the waiting area, so my efforts at keeping it professional were really just for my own amusement.

My friend had me wait in the area near her desk while she went to check if Marzipan was ready for me. She came back quickly and got me, so I went to be interviewed. It was a quick and to the point interview, we had already spoken on the phone a few times and I think he just wanted to meet me in person to get an idea of who I was more clearly. We talked for a while and then he had me sign a background check release. I left with the understanding that I have the job and I’m just waiting for the official offer. Two job interviews and two job offers in one day. Let the deliberation begin!

Here is where the back story about that one company comes into focus. I set an interview with them back in May, but then had a job offer the next day from a company willing to pay more. I had to cancel that interview because I had a better offer. Now, I am about to call them back again, to decline their job offer because I have had a better offer, again. I’m going to tell them to just ignore my application if it ever comes across their desks again. Block my e-mail and phone number and ignore me. It is clear that I will never work for them at their $10 an hour compensatory wage rate. I don’t even know if it is a nice consolation to think that I could have a job with them whenever I want it. I’m sure I could earn at least that much if I went back to working at Subway, and there I might even get free sandwiches or cookies. How can you beat that? Oh right, livable salary and medical insurance benefits.

That was my day yesterday, at least the first part of it. The rest was good too, but not blog topical. Taylor and I have discussed the opportunities and weighed the consequences and we are going to accept the second job offer. This means a rush to find a place to live closer to the office because I am not going to do a 2 hour commute for very long, if I have to do it at all. This job pays more, but not enough to drive my 17mpg pickup truck 4 hours a day. It’ll be a unique experience for me, unique in comparison to my history of experiences. I don’t think there is much that we can do that is completely unique to human existence, but almost everything is unique to our personal experience. It is the uniqueness that is write-worthy. If I could do anything I wanted for a sustainable income, this would probably be it. Just write. But that doesn’t seem feasible, so this remains a hobby, but having unique experiences makes it an easier hobby. Just like Brian Regan says, “Comedy usually requires a surprise, but you people don’t seem to care about that.” This was in regards to people requesting he do old jokes during the encore portion of a set. Comedy does require a surprise, or something that is different, most entertaining stories do as well. But then again, familiarity is nice as well. How many times have you watched your favorite movie or listened to your favorite song and you still enjoy it? Maybe what makes a good story is a familiar surprise. Yes, I think that is rather accurate. I look forward to writing about many more familiar surprises.