I...I Believe...I Believe You Have My Stapler

For those of you who haven't seen the movie Office Space, that line will mean absolutely nothing to you. You're probably not sure how a stapler could have any kind of meaning or abstract symbolism, but it can. It absolutely can. Here's the story.

There's a character on Office Space named Milton. He works at Initech (some random tech office) with the other characters, but there's a catch. He was fired years ago but never told, and through a glitch in payroll, he keeps getting paid. He doesn't really do anything, and people keep taking advantage of him. Here’s some of Milton’s rambling dialogue:

. . . and I don't care if they lay me off either cuz I told Bill if they make me move my desk one more time I'm quittin'. And I told Don too because they've made me move four times this year already, and I used to be over by the window . . . and then they switched from Swingline to Boston staplers, and so, I kept my Swingline stapler because they don't bind up as much and I also kept all the Swingline staples from the supply cabinet too, . . . so if they make me give 'em back, I'll just, I'll, . . . I could set the building on fire.

Let's just say that by the end of the movie his cubicle is in the basement and he is very distraught about his stapler. Milton is the proud owner of a special edition, red Swingline stapler. It's his pride and joy, but his boss stole it.

Hi Milton, what's happening? Ah, I'm gonna have to ask you to go ahead and move your desk again. Yeah, so if you could just go ahead and get it as far back against that wall as possible, that would be great. That way we'll have room for some of these boxes and things we need to put in here. And ah, . . . (noticing something) Oh, there it is . . .

At this point, his boss steals Milton’s red Swingline stapler. He spends the entire movie trying to recover his stapler, but to no avail, eventually resorting to burning down the office building out of sheer frustration. The stapler, fortunately, was recovered.

So, why have I told you all this? Is it because I have a tendency to talk about staplers on my blog? Perhaps in part, but the real reason is because of something my parents got me for college. I am the proud new owner of a special edition, red Swingline stapler.



I know, it’s amazing! It staples like a dream and gets all the chicks. It’s also quite the model, posing for a photo shoot this morning at McDonalds. Here are some highlights:



I took it to work today and I think it feels right at home in its cubicle, next to its TPS Report memo (Yes, this is the actual memo from the movie).



And it is now resting comfortably between my scary phone (with far too many buttons and weird features that aren’t clearly labeled or intuitive) and my OfficeMax solar calculator.



My red Swingline is now my official stapler. Forget that fancy electric stapler that I could use, this has style and class. I know you’re all jealous, but you’ll just have to get your own, because I love my stapler

4th of July Extravaganza

'tis the season for exciting goings-on at Riverfront Park and the Carousel. Yesterday, as you may or may not have realized, was the 4th of July, which of course brought patriotic Americans out en mass. Lucky for me, the social hotspot of the day was also where I happen to work, so I got to play Mr. Tough-Guy security important dude. Here’s the skinny on what went down.

I got to work at about 2:00 PM and quickly realized that this was all a very big deal. At one end of the park were giant inflatable toys. I would have definitely played on them, but I was dressed nicely and not 8 years old. They did look like quite a bit of fun though!



The one in the picture is the sinking Titanic. Crawl through the iceberg, through the smoke stacks that have fallen off the ship, up the ship, and slide down, only to freeze to death and sink in front of your girlfriend (ok, not that last part). As you can see, there’s a rock climbing wall behind the Titanic toy. There was also a neat jumping thing that the little kids were having fun on.



You get strapped into a bungee cord harness and jump up and down on the trampoline, allowing you to pretend you’re Neo and do all sorts of flips and Matrix-y moves.



Here’s the rock climbing wall again, and in the distance is some kind of inflatable rat-race game.

The next thing I noticed when I got to work was the food. Of course there was food! It’s all expensive, but hey, food is food. Check out the line of deep-fried purveyors.



Now, I realize at this point that the park looks pretty empty and kind of boring. That’s because it was. No matter, as you’ll see in a bit, it got a bit more crowded. Next thing on the park sight-seeing tour was the Cruise-In. Now, I know nothing about cars, so I just took pictures of the ones I thought looked cool. I’m told that there was a ’55 wagon there, which means nothing to me, but if there are some car buffs out there reading this yelling at me right now, I’m sorry that I got to see it instead of you. Here are some of the cars.







The grass is still kind of dead from all the World Beat booths, but normally the park has really nice green grass. After checking out the cars I headed into work to begin my turn spinning horses. Oh, wait, did I mention that I saw this in the park too?



Woo-hoo! Human Cannonball! More about that later though.

I keep promising that I’ll talk about my job at the Carousel, so I’ll go over it a bit now. I work at a Carousel. See?





This is me at the control box, taking pictures of myself, because I was bored.



Ok, that’s about all the explaining I’m going to do. I know, pathetic, but I just can’t get up the effort to describe the Carousel in detail, so I won’t today. Remember how I said that since I work at the Carousel and go to all these events I get the special shirts and stuff? Yesterday instead of shirts they had badges for the special people. Here’s mine.



Yep, VIP, that’s me. Alright, time to talk about the human cannonball.



The lady that launches herself out of the cannon is actually from a family of cannonballs. Her dad holds the record for the longest flight and her 4 brothers and sisters all shoot from cannons too. She flew 125 feet from the cannon into the net. Luckily, I escaped from work in order to document her flight. Here’s the video:



Pretty sweet, eh? I got another picture of her later in the evening. The original picture looks something like this:



But after some cropping and zooming, you end up with this:



I was really excited when I saw how that picture turned out! I love my camera, 6mp for only $100.

Alright, so, the day progressed and eventually turned into night. I told you, the park got more crowded, here’s proof:





Oh, I forgot to mention that there was a band playing all day. They were playing on the patio of the Carousel, so again, exclusive access for Michael.



The evening finished up with fireworks, which I won’t show here because Oregon fireworks are lame and you all know what fireworks look like anyway!

So, you would think that that concluded my day, but oh no, there was more to be done. It was time to clean the bathrooms! Cleaning bathrooms, honestly, is not that bad. We clean them every hour throughout the day so they stay pretty well kept, but yesterday was an exception. The guys, I have to hand it to them, kept the bathroom really clean. The women, well, GOOD GOD! Honestly, you’d have to try to make the bathroom as bad as it was. I think they made a conscious effort to destroy it. I took some pictures. Keep in mind, the bathroom was spotless an hour before these pictures were taken, look what they managed to do in an hour!





There was paper everywhere, a pair of flip-flops sitting against the wall, and a beer bottle hidden behind one of the toilets. Also, in the span of an hour, they had used almost every single roll of toilet paper. They’re animals! I just don’t understand!

I finally left work at about 12:30 am on July 5th and got to bed at about 1:00 am. I was up by 5:30 am today and am running off caffeine and sugar. I’m gonna crash tonight, I guarantee, but that’s ok, because sleep is good. I hope you enjoyed hearing about my exciting fourth of July, it was quite an adventure. AND! . . . I didn’t get attacked by a bird!

Vending Machine

Here's a quick update to an entry I posted earlier. Remember that vending machine I mentioned? I made a video of it for you, just in case you were having a hard time picturing it. Enjoy!

New World Symphony

Actually, this post has very little to do with the New World Symphony. I was just trying to think of some creative title for a dull-sounding post about what happened to me while I was going home yesterday. For those of you that aren’t classical music fans, just ignore this entire first paragraph and read on to hear about my adventures.

I got off work yesterday and had an hour to kill before I had to be at my next job, after which I could go home. I decided to be productive during my hour, so the first thing I did was to go to the bank and deposit a check. Unfortunately, the bank was closed, so I had the opportunity to experience the joy of depositing a check next to the ATM machine. It wasn’t too hard, but it surprised me when I opened up the drawer to drop the check in. I guess I was expecting a little metal flap that revealed a hole in the wall where the check dropped into a bucket, similar to any blue mailbox, video return box, or book return slot. What I got instead was a huge, 30ish pound metal vault-like drawer where I placed the 2.2 oz check and then hoped that there wasn’t a monster inside. I guess they’re afraid of somebody breaking into the bank through the depository drawer. Regardless, I successfully deposited the check. Next stop, food.

While I was walking towards the mall’s food court I glanced at the newspaper box to read the headlines. I guess I’m supposed to do this since the front of the box is glass. When I read the headline I realized that my city (Salem) is officially out of news. Yep, there is no more news in my city. Why do I say this? Check out what I saw . . .



Headline, front page news. EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT, OREGON HAS DECIDED NOT TO HAVE A STATE DIRT!

dumb.

I continued on to the mall and decided on McDonalds. Yes, I’ve seen Super Size Me. Yes, I know it’s unhealthy. Yes, I still eat there. I ordered my usual, 2 McChickens and a small fries.







After I ate my food I decided it was finally time to go to work. I started walking and made it almost all the way there. I was just crossing the train tracks in front of the carousel when, I kid you not, I was attacked by a bird.

I was just walking along, minding my own business, when I heard this evil bird sound and felt something hit me in the back of the head. I whipped around because it scared me have to death and I saw a starling fly away. These are starlings:



Starlings are worse than pigeons. They’re territorial, aggressive, dirty, and generally useless creatures.

I stared up at the starling after it had alighted on a pole. It had something in its mouth (that doesn’t really matter, just an observation). I stared at it for a little bit in disbelief and didn’t quite know what to do next. It had obviously dive bombed me, but would it do it again? Surely not, and I would look stupid backing away from the pole towards the carousel, so I turned around and just walked away, still not quite believing what had happened. *SCREACH!!!! BOOOOOOM!!!!*

It freaking hit me again! I whipped around, ducked, and yelled at it as it flew off towards the same pole. I didn’t waste any time this time, I ran away from the pole towards the safety of the carousel, muttering not-so-nice things about the starling the entire time. When I got inside my boss was just laughing, because of course he saw the entire thing.

So, I made it to work alive (barely). While I was up inside the carousel repairing one of the horses some teenagers walked in. My boss came out of his office and said that we were closed and that they’d have to leave, unless they just wanted something to drink from the vending machine. They decided on vending machine. Now, the vending machines at the carousel are kind of cool. When you buy something, instead of it just dropping down, a little platform comes up to the drink, takes it, and then moves over to the spot where you grab the drink from the machine. A lot of people are really enthralled by this and will buy multiple drinks just to see the vending machine work. People aren’t always the smartest things in the world.

Anyway, they decide to get a drink. My boss says something along the lines of “Have you seen our vending machines? They are pretty cool, watch what they do when you buy something.” A girl in the group puts in a dollar, buys a water, and watches it get delivered to the drink-taking-receptacle (honestly, think of a better way to describe it). This is when I heard, quite possibly the stupidest question ever uttered by a human being. The girl, obviously fascinated by this machine, asks my boss “Wow! Did you invent this?”

I dropped the crescent wrench and almost fell off the carousel. I couldn’t believe it! Did she sincerely think that the guy who worked at the carousel invented the vending machine that we use? Take it from me, there are such things as stupid questions. That was one of them.

There you have it, my extravagant journey home. It involved McDonalds, bank vaults, dirt, evil birds, and the stupidest question ever. Don’t you wish your days were as exciting as this?!

The Salem World Beat Festival

I swear, eventually I will talk about my job at Salem’s Riverfront Carousel (maybe) but until then I have to tell you about the nifty stuff that happens during my time there that is completely unrelated to my job. The Carousel is comfortably situated at a huge riverfront park which is the main local for huge events that happen downtown. Conveniently enough, most of these events happen during the weekends and I work on Sunday. This means free entry, parking, and the ability to look very official. You see, whenever an event is going on and I’m working, I automatically get staff/volunteer shirts for the event and access to all the different parts. I also wear a radio for the Carousel, so I look REALLY cool with an earpiece on. The Carousel has its perks.

This last weekend (6/30/2007 – 7/1/2007) was the 10th annual World Beat Festival at Riverfront Park.



Click here for the program/brochure for the event


It’s a huge festival that takes up the entire park with dancing, music, food, venders, Dragon Boat races, weddings, crafts, and all sorts of exciting things. I tend to focus mainly on the food just because there is so much, it all smells so good, and I’ve never tried most of it. I ended up eating something called Lukku Chicken from the Horn of Africa booth. It had lemon chicken, curry, rice, beans, and some kind of cabbage side with yellow sauce stuff on it. I also bought an elephant ear and an African iced tea. To aid you in visualizing all of this, let me show you where a few key things are in this handy-dandy map I found.



As you can see, my place of business was pretty centrally located, providing me a couple of opportunities to flee and check out the sights. As I said earlier, I get to wear official stuff and look really cool at these types of things. I took a couple of pictures of myself with my phone to show you (I know, that’s really something only 8th grade girls should do, but I didn’t have my digital camera!)

Check out the earpiece in the right ear:


And, now for a shot of the cool shirt and microphone


Yep, very official.

Every day at work is different, there’s a lot that goes on in the park. I’ll keep you up to date with whatever goes on down there, especially the types of food I get to eat!

I Need Your Help

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-contest.htm

As you may or may not know, The Simpsons movie is working its way to theaters on July 26. It's one of the only animated movies to hit theaters that isn't some new-fangled 3D masterpiece. It's pure 2D and looks awesome! Here's why I need your help:

The promoters for the movie are starting to develop some marketing plans that will boost public support for the movie. They've converted a dozen 7-11's into Kwik-E-Marts where they are selling Squishees, Buzz Cola, and Krusty-O's.







So, why do I need your help? There is a contest underway at USAToday.com to elect the city where the premier of the movie will be held. The powers at be have decided that the movie needs to be premiered in Springfield, but there are 14 Springfields in the United States that all want it.

HEY! There's a Springfield in Oregon! What's that you say? Oregon's Springfield has long been regarded as the actual Springfield from the show? Matt Groening used to live in Oregon?

Springfield Oregon has gotten totally into this Simpsons hype and is dying to host the movie premier. Check out this local news clip covering some of their antics:

http://www.kmtr.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=10297@video.kmtr.com

I need you to help vote for Springfield Oregon as the Springfield to win it. Here's all you have to do, just go to this website and vote. That's it.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-contest.htm

Bring the Simpsons Home(r)!

I get the last laugh!

Remember how I mentioned that AP tests laugh at me behind my back? Well, it's my turn to laugh at them! Starting July first, Collegeboard gave people the option of calling in and getting their AP Scores. I only took one AP test this year (AP Calc BC) and had a bit of an issue with it. Read the above link to get the full story, but this pic should be a reminder of what went horribly horribly wrong:



Yeah, I drew a comic on the last question. I decided that I should call Collegeboard and see just how much that hurt me. My score?

A 5.

Yes, that's right, after drawing a comic and getting the last short answer question completely wrong, I sitll got a 5. Also, I would like to mention that during every single practice AP test we took in class, I never got more than a 40%, which leads me to believe one of two things happened while my test was being graded:

1) I got almost a perfect score on the multiple choice section and that buffered the disaster that was the short answer.
2) Somebody who was at CPW or goes to MIT/CalTech graded my test, saw the comic, and just gave me a 5.

I'm not sure which happened, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had been either.

So, AP tests, I'd just like to let you know that you can quit your laughing. It's my turn now!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!