Catching Up, Part 1

• Wednesday staff meeting: In which I learn that our Retreat is This Friday. Starting at noon, we close this place down and convey ourselves to a lovely park building at which a duplicitous hypocritical cow named Jan (who is with the English department and who was my least favorite person there, at least of all the bovines) is going to run us through a Myers-Briggs personality assessment. Because it will be fun! And because "considering our tendencies can be interesting and valuable"! After all, this assessment "has been used for a long time in many industries and coporations," and that's good enough for our boss. So I'll be bringing along my own astrology chart, tea leaves, and entrails to even better try to determine exactly what cubby hole we all belong in.
  
  I really am amazed at how often these "what personality are you?" things I've been to here at the university. These little events are always done in the guise of "it'll be fun!" but there are waaaaay too many managers who also take a frankly creepy interest in the results. While the presenters are categorizing people as "artistic, mathematical, clinical, and enabling," you can see the supervisors matching those same phrases in their heads to "troublemaker, lacky, drone, and suckup." There's always the participants who get way too into it, so I'll have to deal with at least one woman who'll not only be amazed at how "true" her assessment is, but will then spend the rest of the day doing nothing but making hilarious jokes based on how other people were labeled. "Well, that's just what you'd expect an enabler to say! Hahahahaha!" This will go on for the following 2 days at work, as well, and then thankfully be forgotten. And the worst part about it is that it's a parlor trick at best, literally on the same level as astrology but with more professional and legitimate baggage attached to it (there's a tortured metaphor for you). It's more, you know, true.
  
  So I'm looking forward to that.
  
  
• Finished the second season of Veronica Mars. Still very enjoyable, though at a huge disadvantage when compared to the first season. The first season was one of the very few series that I immediately watched again, because while there were (and are) Dawson's Creek-style teen drama embedded in the show the writing and characters (especially Veronica and her father) are so... classy and smart that I can forgive the occaisional "I'm your real father!" moments. Generally--as with Deadwood, Firefly, The Wire, and some other shows I've taken to--it's the kind of manipulation that doesn't lean on the drama for its own sake, but as a general framework for the writing. Kind of the opposite of shows like Alias where the writing means more-or-less fuck all compared to good hooks to end that week's Dramatic Moment(s) on. Anyway, second season VM good (fire continues to be bad, yet useful). Still a smart show with a well-fleshed out main character, though some of it felt like it was borrowing a bit too much from the 1st season, which to me doesn't bode well for the 3rd.
  
  
• Took an IQ test online and apparently I'm Bill "Fucking" Gates. Scored a 133, and that's just what Bill would have done, because we're both so successful and have hot wives and smart homes and lots of cars and... hmmm. I'm pretty sure I'm at least smart enough to realize that the test is calling me an asshole slacker (a not very desirable porn job, unless you're into that sort of thing) while sniggering up it's electronic sleeve. I'd be depressed, but IQ tests are so amazingly stupid on the face of them that I can't really seem to feel much about this one way or another. Except that I scored a 133, and the rest of you are morons. Also, you're all dumb.
  
  Stupids.
  
  
• Sigh. This meeting, and the issue I had to talk about with the boss afterward, has truly left me angry and lazy. These are not two great tastes that taste great together. I've always got the impression the boss sees 90% of us as tools: useful for the one or two things we were designed for, but otherwise without any versatility and not too bright.
  
  
• I totally left two Zany and Irritating messages on Someone's voice mail on Saturday and have recieved nothing in Retaliation. These messages, I should point out, were fueled with a certain amount of vodka and involved if not singing, then at least one brief interlude of crooning, and it should be noted that there is a clearly finite amount of both vodka and crooning in the world, I am feeling a bit put out! But then, I'm used to crying myself to sleep nowadays, what with it being so hard being me. For instance, I saw a commercial for a movie a day or two ago. It's a CG movie involving penguins and it's called Happy Feet, starring the voice of Robin Williams. Misreal, at least, should understand why I can't decide whether this is reason enough to kill myself, or Robin Williams.
  
  
• I'm currently suffering from a desire to Cook. This desire is very nebulous, however, and I can't decide what I should chefify (a perfectly cromulent word--fuck you). I need to make a mess of something that (1) doesn't require ingredients I have to go out of my way to get and (2) will freeze well for future eatin'. That isn't chili or soup.
  
  
• Still reading The Terror. Slowly. Mostly just a little before bed each night, because I don't actually just sit down and read anymore. I've almost ordered The Devil in the White City a few times now, but I could have sworn Misreal gave me a copy of that as well and I should give my place a good looking through to find it.