Okay, so sure, I’ve been like double my already high usual levels of both “self-hatred” and “hating my job” because this month sucks more than typical at work. I’ve beat myself up for not getting a closer look at a cat and I’ve beat myself up for locking myself out of my apartment (see my last two posts) and that’s the just stuff I hate myself for that I remembered to post about. At least the lockout thing I can find funny because it was a way of shaking up dull routine, but it still took several hours of my time. I’ve also been sleeping fitfully at best and getting less reading done at work. So anyway, I’m not spending as much time doing things I’d like to do is what I am trying to use this paragraph to say.

So one day this week I woke up late and watched the Daily Show and Colbert as I am wont to do and then turned on my music and prepared to do whatever it is I do with my days, but then I realized the time and that I needed to get ready for work sharpish. I muttered to myself “No one told me when to run, I missed the starting gun” and people with good taste will recognize that is a line from “Time” by Pink Floyd, an awesome song about the passage of time bringing us all closer to death.

Within ten seconds of my quoting this, the clamorous opening to the song begins on my computer. It was on random, so there was no way I am aware of that I could have subconsciously picked up that it was next. It was a pretty sweet coincidence, but I didn’t think so much of it that I would have bothered to post about it here.

Tonight, at work, during a rather dull moment I got the assistants to watch things while I went into the office to get a head start on the paperwork I had to do at the end of the night. In the office I had a radio playing tuned to a local station. As soon as I sat down I realized Time was playing, which reminded me of the previous occurrence. It was a pretty easy night at work so there were literally a dozen or more times when the operation was smooth enough that I could have gone off to do that and I chose the one time that Time was playing. Pretty neat.

So anyway, ruling out the possibility that I have just developed some sort of unconscious prescience relating only to that one song, I am left with the option that the Song is Following Me. If the universe is using the song in an attempt to cheer me up, I thank it, but couldn’t it maybe choose a song that is not about Exactly What Is Depressing Me? If the universe is trying to mock me… okay then yeah, good choice.

For posterity’s sake I will point out that at the actual end of the night when I was finishing the paperwork they played Wish You Were Here, another Pink Floyd song which, while melancholy, does not cut so deep into specifics with me. And I love that one too. Clearly Q104 is the station to go for for Pink Floyd, I guess. Not that they don’t play plenty of crap in between.

Anyway, the time is gone, the post is over… thought I’d something more to say…

I successfully managed to forget my keys at work! The ironic downside to this awesome occurrence is that I simultaneously managed to fail to remember to bring my keys home from work. Some would say that that is a more important fact than the first one, but they are Too Negative.

Seriously though, I just spent the last four hours locked out of my apartment. Mostly this was okay because I spent those four hours eating a burger, going for a walk while listening to music, reading in the lobby of my building and then buying donuts before finally I was rescued by a guy who works in my building. Super? Custodian? Some other thing? I have no idea who does what in this building, but whoever that guy is, my thanks go to him.

Haiku!

Doors are made of wood.
Lasers are made of pure light.
They are different.

It has been a long time since I’ve locked myself out. The last time I remember was like five or six years ago. And it was for a longer amount of time that time, but then I had somewhere else to go.

I took a slightly different direction on my route home tonight and encountered a Lost Cat poster. Sitting directly across the street from this poster was a cat. My first instinct was that the cat did not look like the one on the poster, but it was dark and I thought I would get closer and try to get a look. The cat immediately ran away.

Maybe I was deluding myself, but as it ran away it kinda did seem line the one on the poster. But now I’ll never be sure. I’ve had cats come up to me and let me pick them up sometimes when I’m walking at night, but not this time. And what makes it worse is that on the rest of my journey home I saw like seven more posters about that cat and they all made me feel like I’d missed my chance. Maybe if I’d made less of a sudden movement I could have helped someone out.

Or maybe it wasn’t even the same cat.

In other news, since this past Monday my co-Whatever I Am has been on vacation. Since he does most of the work that I really, really don’t enjoy at all, his absence more than doubles my work. I suddenly find myself having to talk to people and fill out paperwork. It is not cool. And this will last until early July. This is going to be one lame month.

Hey, you know something I find annoying? Music videos where the singer is standing there or sitting in a car or something and he’s looking right at the camera and he is ostensibly singing the lyrics, but his face is not showing the emotion of the lyrics? It’s like he’s just talking the lyrics? I think it may be some kind of attempt at being casual or something, but if you aren’t showing the emotion that the lyrics are trying to convey, just get out of the video and show me some cool visuals. Actually, I’ll take cool visuals over showing the singer pretty much every time.

Remember that, people who make music videos.

Not that I actually bother to watch very many music videos…

So, I lost my cable channels. I mean, I’ve not been paying for cable for years, but for some reason instead of getting the basic channels one is supposed to get, I was getting an eclectic mix of networks with no rhyme or reason.

I was getting TVTropolis, which was good for getting sitcom reruns, something everybody should enjoy at least now and then. I was getting A&E, and though it was no longer the A&E I remembered from my youth with documentaries and stuff, I watched the occasional crime show or really censored episodes of the Sopranos on occasion. I had Spike, which is a monstrously stupid channel from what I could see, but they had Star Wars on, pretty much nonstop. PBS had some science programs worth watching, but mostly I just watched kids shows like Effing Super Why. Also, there was an informercial channel which could amuse if you were in the right mood and maybe one or two sports channels that I pretty much never watched.

Basically, I was getting enough channels to flip around a little bit before I realized how much television sucked and would move on to something else. But now I only get the three basic Canadian channels or whatever. Now realizing that there is nothing on happens faster than ever before.

I may not watch all that much television, but unlike some I don’t lambast the entire medium. There are things I appreciate about it. In a way even watching it alone seems more like a social activity than watching DVDs or downloading episodes of things. It seems less canned on television somehow. I suppose that is, in part, because of the unfortunate presence of commercials which, though annoying, are at least a sign of companies trying to keep you up to date on their activities. Also, much more positive than commercials, is the fact that you can get breaking news interruptions. If I’m watching a rented movie and the Queen sets herself on fire and then declares war on the Vatican and then has a swordfight with the Pope, I’m gonna miss the whole thing, but if I’m watching most television networks you’d think they’d interrupt programming to say “Holy Shit, check this out!”

When I watch programs online, such as the Daily Show and Colbert, I guess I get the ads (the annoying one of the connections to the outside world) but even then I lack the other thing I like about the medium of television. Sometimes I am definitely in the mood to say “Okay, TV, let’s see what you’ve got for me.” Sometimes I might find something worth watching. An episode of some show I didn’t know existed, or an old one I had forgotten or some movie from the eighties, who knows? As far as I am aware there is no way for me to just “flip around” on the Internet.

I mean, YouTube comes close to that level of flip-aroundedness, but… It has also somehow succeeded in having more garbage than television. Go figure.