Did some more work on WRP’s back-end last night. Fixed a couple bugs that were driving me nuts. The main attraction was finally implementing the monthly archive system for the site. I haven’t transfered all of the old entries over from Blogger.com just yet, but I’ll get there over time. It’s gonna be slow, though, since I decided to do it manually rather than write a script to do the whole thing automatically. I figure both methods are going to take just as long. Meantime, you can now read all the way back to this past March. I know you care.

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Office life is an odd thing - the word “odd” should be taken as an acronym standing for “Outstandingly, Direly Dull”. Very little actually happens, taken in the literal sense of the word, which is really the only sense in which one could take it.

To illustrate the extent to which such monotony permeates the soul of the typical cubite, I note the commotion generated by the unique placement of furniture with which I have chosen to arrange my new work area. My vision is unequaled, the inspiration flowed over me like sand in a desert, each miniscule grain carrying its own piece of the whole in this billowing miasma of creativity, as I positioned my ergonomic workstation desk at a 45° angle in the back-right corner (Figure 1).

Figure 1

With that simple act, I was heralded as the Chosen One, the chimerical out-of-the-box thinker designated by the Almighty Himself to deliver us to a far-off land, where the ceilings are checkered with skylights, employees are given a choice between a Flex 40 or a 9-80 work schedule, and all are provided with those crazy, posture-enhancing kneely chair thingies you used to see in the 90’s.

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Pandemonium reigns today at the office, with all individuals present packing up their belongings and trying to get the hell out by noon when the movers show up to destroy all of our stuff. No person can coax himself or herself into working. Productivity is being lost. I have little doubt that the company’s stock will take the tiniest hit as a result. But it’s okay, because I’m really excited about Harry Potter next week.

Anticipating a Harry Potter release is very different from anticipating a Star Wars or Hitchhiker’s movie release. With ROTS and H2G2, we knew what we were getting into. There were big, blinking neon signs punching the films’ respective synopses into our retinas. If you were surprised at Anakin becoming a Sith Lord, then you demonstrated a level of shielding that would have been better applied to the protection of space ships from micrometeorites.

With Harry Potter, however, we know not what to expect. Who is going to die this time? Will Harry face Voldemort again? Will Ron and Hermione finally come out with their relationship? Just who is this Half-Blood Prince? I’m going to go crazy!

Do you see the tension here? We are completely in the dark; no light, save for the pinpoint glow at the end of the tunnel, the sweet release of midnight madness. I did not preorder at one of those antiquated brick and mortar shoppes, and so I will be at the mercy of the delivery guy Saturday afternoon. Steph, my sister, and current heir to the Hindrances legacy should I meet my untimely demise, saw fit to indulge one of these antediluvian institutions with her legal tender. Such unfaltering faith in the old ways is representative of the most regressive practices of our society, but somehow, it means she gets her book at midnight, and I get mine more than twelve hours later.

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I got the opportunity to take a look at the cube that I’ll be living in when we move upstairs. It’s not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I get a bigger desk than what I have now. That’s always nice. Unfortunately, the chair sours the whole thing, and I’m going to set the reason for this off into its own paragraph, because it’s just that important:

The chair has an Invasive Butt Groove™.

Understand, many chairs have butt grooves, be they factory-installed or user-eroded. If this butt groove is there by design, then the manufacturers clearly have either low standards of comfort or highly misunderstood senses of humor. If it was gradually carved out by its current user, then this user must have the most gaping gludial cleavage that ever gaped. Have you ever slipped off the front of a bike seat and landed square on the bar below it and felt it press, through your pants, right onto your rabbit hole? That is the feeling of sitting on this chair. This butt groove violates, encroaches on private territory normally reserved for you alone.

Invasive Butt Groove is not a registered trademark of The Hindrances to Progress Company, because it costs $325 to register one. I came up with it, though, so don’t be a dick and start using it yourself. Mine.

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It’s a feature that hasn’t been seen since October! You’ve asked for it! You’ve begged for it!

And you’re not going to get it.

Just kidding! Ha ha ha! Get ready for another edition of…

RAY HAD A WEIRD DREAM!!

The realistic ones are always the worst, and this puppy was damn realistic. It started with me groggily getting out of bed. It doesn’t get much more realistic than that.

I got out of bed, feeling extremely dizzy, took magnificent pains in turning off my alarm clock, and promptly lost my balance and fell over. To fix my situation, I got up. It didn’t help.

Either everything was spinning around me clockwise, or I was spinning counter-clockwise. I stumbled into the living room and turned on the lights, but nothing could stop me from constantly tripping and running into the wall. I finally executed a mighty pirouette, fell over again, and the chandelier fell on me. The one in my apartment.

Trapped and completely unable to figure out which way was up, I did the only rational thing and screamed for help like a little girl. No one came. That was fine, because I woke up a few seconds later.

I still felt like everything was spinning when I woke up, which was unreasonable, because nothing was spinning. Or rather, everything was spinning, the Earth doesn’t really stop that, but I was spinning along with it all at the same rate anyway, so it shouldn’t have been an issue.

Things settled down pretty quickly, though, so I went back to sleep and was promptly beaten to death by some guy.

Waking up from that, I finally decided screw it, and went to work.

To cut and paste my usual cut-and-pasted RAY HAD A WEIRD DREAM!! closing: As usual, while this dream really did take place, it is submitted merely for entertainment. Go ahead and interpret it how you want, but come on, you already knew there was something a little batty in my head.

Next time on Watch Ray Purge: The Shuffling of Office Meat!

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