Irrelevant Cheetah

And here I was wondering what I was going to write about next. It seems silken tagged me as a blogger-to-know. I’m flattered, although I think she might be a bit loopy and not really sure who she’s recommending. It’s Blog Day, apparently, and I’m supposed to draw your attention to 5 bloggers I enjoy reading.

I decided that I won’t tag bloggers on my blogroll, because I obviously enjoy reading them, and hopefully people that visit me have visited them as well. So I’m going to recommend five others.

Let’s see:

Jay at Lost in that vast, terrible in-between is always worth a read.

Mist1 at Mustgethobby normally cracks me up.

Dan’s Blah Blah Blog is entertaining (and popular - I’m jealous, I think)

Brainyjane22 has a way with words

And last but not least…

Jay Pinkerton is hilarious. I only wish he would update more often. Seriously - good stuff over here.

Ok, now I have to go let everybody know.  Gotta love these meme thingies…

It’s funny. A few of the blogs I read regularly have been quiet recently, and today two of them had new posts. Both of them basically said “I know, I haven’t posted, and I want to, and I will, but I’ve been busy, and don’t forget me. Keep checking in.”

In both cases, I will, because I definitely enjoy reading them. I just find it funny because I haven’t posted lately either, but it’s not because I’ve been especially busy, or stressed. It’s just that nothing has happened that I find… well… bloggable.  I don’t want to fall into the trap of writing about how I had an absolute devil of a time comparatively pricing cat food, or how I constructed a scale model of the Statue of Liberty out of dryer lint. I mean, I wouldn’t want to read that shit - why would anybody else? (Okay, maybe the Statue of Liberty thing could be interesting.)

So I guess I’m trying to say the same thing here: I know I haven’t written, but if you do read this drivel occasionally, don’t give up on me. There’s some stuff fermenting in my brain that might be worth a read once it’s done.

Maybe you can help me with the following dilemma that is complicating my day. In fact, I’m begging for someone to explain this to me.

The other day I went shopping for socks. Actually, to be perfectly honest, my wife was going school-clothes shopping and I asked her to pick me up some socks, since mine are starting to resemble cheesecloth, or a fishing net. I also asked for a laser blaster and a DeLorean.

She bought me socks. Okay, one out of three – I can live with disappointment. I surveyed the spoils of war shopping and found my package of six pairs of socks, happily wrapped in cellophane. I took them to my dresser in preparation for sock-drawer reloading and could not miss the fact that the package had a Zip-loc^tm seal at the top.

Now, this brings up several reactions. To wit:

1.) Is this a selling point? “Honey, I know those nice woolen socks over there will keep my feet from bursting horribly and aromatically out of their fabric prison, but look! These socks have a stay-fresh seal on them!”

B.) Who the hell would use it? Is there someone out there who puts the package of socks in the drawer, takes out one pair, and then re-seals the bag so that the next pair he takes out will still have that “fresh-from-the-package” smell?

iii.) I would guess that adding that seal would add to the price of the packaging. Maybe not a lot, but enough so that adding up the cost of several billion packages of socks from Acme Sock Corporation could severely impact the quarterly bonus of Acme Sock’s CEO. How do they go about recouping that money? Do I want to know?

So there it is. Can anybody shed some light on this subject? I would be very grateful – enough to send you a free box of Scotch tape, still with that “fresh-from-the-package” smell.

The best thing about being too late is that there’s no more need to hurry.

- Ashleigh Brilliant

I like to be early. I don’t like being late. I don’t like that feeling of “oh-my-god-I’m-late-what-if-there’s-no-place-to-park-they’re-going-to-give-my-place/job/appointment/drink

-to-someone-else-and-where-the-HELL-are-my-keys-they-were-just-here” that tends to settle in my solar plexus when I’m running behind. If I say I’m going to be somewhere at a certain time, I’m going to do my damnedest to be there, if not early, at least on time.

Likewise, I don’t like other people to be late, either. At least without letting me know that they are, indeed, going to be tardy. I don’t need details about how the dog crapped on the rug and road construction funneled all the traffic in your neighborhood through Nepal. Just call, tell me you’re running behind, and everything will be dandy.

All that being said, there is such a thing as being too early. I am personally acquainted with someone who devoutly believes that if you’re not 47 minutes early for an event, you’re late. That person will probably be early for their own funeral, and will help survivors pick out the casket and ensure that there are enough drinks for the wake before the priest arrives.

So where was I going with this? Oh, yes. We make jokes about it every year, but I do believe this has set some kind of record. School, after all, hasn’t even started yet. But lo and behold: in the department store down the street, the Christmas ornaments are on display.

I really don’t know what else to say about it. The absurdity of it has, quite frankly, left me speechless. In case you haven’t looked at a calendar lately and are still under the impression that it’s 1996, allow me to inform you that it is August 17^th. Not even September yet, and I can start picking out my tree decorations.

Anyone who still argues that Christmas is not a commercialized feeding frenzy needs to be taken out and shot.

I got a response from BP concerning my post about keeping the lights on in their building at night. Phil Cochrane, Vice President of External Affairs, sent me this in response to We’ll keep the light on for ya:

Dear Mr. Donat:
Thank you for your recent email to BP.com.  I appreciated you forwarding the link to your blog and, in particular, the opportunity to see your observations about the lighting in our Anchorage building.

We appreciate you raising this important issue.

So it appears that my emails got some attention and even a response, for which I thank Mr. Cochrane. I do apologize for jumping to conclusions as I did. However, I don’t apologize for posting my observations. I am familiar enough with large corporations that often their own built-in oversight protocols don’t always work, and sometimes it’s the little guy like me that has more success keeping the big guys on their toes. So, BP: I hope you understand my reasons for posting, and once again, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.

I did notice, however, that Mr. Cochrane neither denies nor admits the presence of the Mole Person. Do you think there’s something worth investigating there? If so, Irrelevant Cheetah’s crack investigative journalist is on it!

My name is Wolf, and I have seen horrors. Unspeakable horrors that continue to visit me in my dreams. These visions will haunt me until my dying day – of this I am sure. I feel compelled to inscribe all I have seen on this digital page, to warn others of the perils that follow.

The offspring had a birthday this past week, and we held his party on Saturday. Remember that age-old image we all have of Dad sitting under the Christmas tree at 3 AM on Christmas morning, cursing as he tried to assemble a bicycle? Well, I believe that archetype is destined to fall by the wayside. It will be replaced, I predict, by the new archetype of Dad sitting under the Christmas tree until 3 PM on Christmas Day, struggling to get the kids’ presents out of the box.

One of the birthday presents, for example, was a set of two die-cast Transformers figures, each about six inches tall. In the process of removing them from the packaging, I counted no less than twenty-three twist-ties. And I’m not talking about the wimpy, we’ll-keep-your-bread-fresh-tra-la-la twist-ties. No, I’m talking about industrial strength twist-ties. These were twist-ties on steroids. These were twist-ties that would make a lesser man whimper and reach for the liquid courage (hey, it was hot, and I was thirsty, okay?)

Seriously – the toy companies are wasting their talents. Their packaging skills could be put to much better use elsewhere. You know the problems NASA is having lately with the insulating foam coming off of the booster rocket tanks on the space shuttle? That problem could be solved with a single visit to the Mattel world headquarters. I have a feeling the conversation would go something like this:

Mattel:  Look, I don’t know how we can help you guys. We build toys. We don’t know anything about space travel.

NASA:  You don’t need to. We just need you to package our booster tanks as if they were for sale.

Mattel:  Oh! I see! Not a problem! We’ll get the guys in packaging and securing right on it! That foam won’t be going anywhere!

After they were done solving NASA’s problems, Mattel could move on to designing restraint systems for NASCAR, and then possibly delve into security systems for places like the Smithsonian, or the Tower of London where the Crown Jewels are kept.

I might write to them and suggest a move in that direction. In the meantime, however, I’m going to sit here and try to get the horrible images of wire and plastic out of my mind before I try to sleep again.

The next time you’re around a bunch of kids on the playground (the ten-and-under set, preferably) wait until they’re all at the top of the tower/slide/tall point of the equipment and scream “There’s a BEE!!!” and watch them scatter.

Not that I would ever do such a thing, but hey, I’ve heard it can be hilarious.

Lately I’ve been working some weird hours. Not to get into too much detail, but the offspring requires supervision, and so I’ve been working late into the night. I used to be a night owl, but I’ve been working early mornings for the past several years, and this switch back to late nights has made my circadian rhythms resemble something played by a drunken bongo player with Tourette’s Syndrome.

But I digress. As I was saying, I’ve been working late. This means that I’ve been driving home around midnight or one o’clock in the morning, and it so happens that my route home takes me by the local headquarters of BP, or British Petroleum, for you non-Alaskans. It’s a tall, 13- or 14-story building, situated on a nice tract of land, with lush lawns, ample parking for the peons employees, and with the company logo prominently displayed near the roof. And at one o’clock in the morning, every single light in the building is on.

Okay, so I’m using some poetic license. Not every light is on. There’s an office about halfway up on the southeast corner of the building with the lights off, but I’m convinced that office is occupied by one of the Mole People, and said Mole Person has removed the harsh fluorescent lighting from his office because it hurts his little Mole eyes and makes him squint, and then he looks like a lawyer, and he doesn’t want that.

But back to the Thousand Points of Light. The first night I noticed the lights on, I thought it was a fluke. “Perhaps they’re fumigating,” I thought, since I have always assumed that Big Oil naturally attracts cockroaches, and I went merrily on my way. I even think I whistled. But the next night, the lights were on again, and the next night, and the next, until it hit me like a brick wrapped in Egyptian silk: This company doesn’t care! In fact, they probably have board meetings on Monday mornings, where they all get together and discuss how little they care, and they have Johnson from Accounting stand up and give a report on how they could collectively care a whole lot less, if only every peon employee cared just a little bit less. Then they throw darts at a picture of Ralph Nader and tip over the Recycling bins on the corner.

It’s ecologically insensitive, of course. This is the same company that has those commercials on TV discussing “How oil companies can help solve the global warming problem” and even tells you in their ads that buildings can cause up to 50% of greenhouse gases!

But more than anything else, it screams at me “Thank you for paying three dollars a gallon for gasoline and continuing to buy impossibly huge SUVs like the Ford Continent, which comfortably seats eighteen NBA players! Your excesses allow us to snicker and keep our lights on at all times and thumb our noses in your general direction!”

And it does create more greenhouse gases. I think I would prefer it if they held a party – say, once a week – where they collected that week’s portion of their $80 trillion dollar quarterly profit in cash and made a huge pile. Then they could just have a great big bonfire, and invite everybody in Anchorage for roasted wieners. That way, I could feel like I’m getting something back, and it’d be better for the environment. And I hear that an Oscar Mayer roasted over a Benjamin Franklin is simply divine.

I’m emailing a link to this post to every email address at BP I can find. Feel free to do the same.

I think I have determined a good future career for myself. After much soul-searching (during which I found that old pair of jeans I thought I lost in ’94, as well as several of the morals I misplaced when I started college) I realized that the job I am well-prepared for, the one for which I am uniquely qualified, has been staring me in the face all along. I need to become a dog psychologist.

I grew up with neurotic dogs. My father even had a copy of How To Live With a Neurotic Dog, by Stephen Baker (a book I highly recommend, by the way.) I had one dog who would not go to the bathroom unless you turned your back and looked the other way. She could have eaten an entire box of Ex-Lax, but if you were watching her, she would quietly sit there and suffer, with that unmistakable look of “Do you mind?” That was the same dog who knew that “vet” is spelled V-E-T, and would hide under the bed if those three letters were mentioned sequentially. Another dog I had the privilege of knowing lived under the impression that if there was a body of water anywhere within a one-mile radius, that body of water needed to have a dog in it. This remained true even if that body of water (which happened to be the only body of water for miles) was a septic tank. Needless to say, that experience did not turn out well, for the dog or for the rest of the family. That same dog was also deathly afraid of thunderstorms, and had evidently decided that the thunder and lightning were incapable of harming him in the bathtub. Thus, every thunderstorm was weathered from the safety of the porcelain cocoon.

Now I’m all grown up, and I have a dog with… shall we say… issues.  To him, chasing a ball is not a sport, it is a do-or-die mission that he must conduct until he drops from exhaustion. If he’s left alone in the house, he often shows his displeasure by either (a) leaving a big smelly present on the rug, or (b) finding anything edible (yes, beeswax candles and dry spaghetti noodles are edible) and destroying it in the most graphically violent way possible. He likes popcorn, but popcorn doesn’t like him (or the rest of us.) His insecurity borders on pathological, such that at times it feels as if I have grown an 82-pound hemorrhoid.

Yet, something like this
makes it all worthwhile. Indeed, I have lived with, loved, and even treated all of these canine companions, and I’ll probably continue to do so. So why, I thought, don’t I make money at it? I think there are probably enough crazy canines out there with wealthy owners to keep me in kibble for years. I’m thinking $75 an hour, and you get to keep any presents the dog leaves me.

Ah. I have been tagged again, and I am a-feared. You see, this tag, coming as it did from Gazing Into the Abyss, has the definite potential of frightening away all six of my readers. Yes, you guessed it: I’ve been chosen to show my face.

Now, before you run screaming from the room, consider this: all you need do is keep your mouse hovering over the ‘home’ button in your browser. Thus, if you see something that you’d rather not, you need only click your mouse button and be transported to wherever your home page is (mine is Blackle, in case you were wondering.)

So, without further ado:

Okay, now that’s out of the way, I suppose I must move on to the interview portion of this meme. (Must they always be so much work?)
Blog title: Irrelevant Cheetah
Description: Just another writer, navel-gazing and offering his view on things
Why “wolf”?: I started using Wolf instead of Wolfram around seventh grade. I got tired of hearing all of the possible ways to mispronounce Wolfram.
Name: Wolfram. I am named after the thirteenth-century German poet-knight, Wolfram von Eschenbach, best known (if at all) for his epic poem, Parsival.
Country: USA
Occupation: Right now I am a data processor for an oilfield services company. It’s really nothing more than the intellectual equivalent of brick-laying, but it pays the bills.
Email: wolf at wolframdonat dot com.
Birthday: March 23 (see if you can guess the year)
Favorite color: Green
Favorite drink: Ice-cold Harp lager, on tap
Favorite fruit: Jack on Will and Grace.
Favorite dessert: Cheesecake
Hobbies: I have so many varied interests it’s hard to select two or three and call them ‘hobbies.’ I know if it’s related to computers or the internet, I’m probably waist-deep in it. I really enjoy writing, and photography, and writing music, and model rockets, and I admit the fact that I’m an adrenaline junkie.
Some of the blogs I know that have posted pics of me: None that I know of. Most bloggers I know are pretty smart cookies.

Now to tag my fellows and hope they still talk to me:
Montucky
Pinhole
WordVixen
All Over the Bored
The usual rules apply: Post a short article and include your photo. If you already have a pic online somewhere, get creative with a new one. Next, include a link to the others who have displayed their pic, or include their pic in your post, adding a reference to it.

And the brave ones who have already risen from blognonymity:

Gayla at Mom Gadget Char at Essential Keystrokes Paul at Reflections Rob at 2Dolphins Zep at The In-Sect Ingo at Stixster Stevie at Lost In Cyberspace The Paper Bull at (oddly enough) The Paper Bull Lisa Sabin-Wilson at Just A Girl In The World Dawud Miracle at dmiracle.com Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home Dennis Bjorn Petersen at The Beta News Randa Clay at Randa Clay Design Drew McLellan at The Marketing Minute Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival Phil Gerbyshak at Make it Great! Steve Woodruff at StickyFigure Dave Olson at Live the GREAT life that you desire Greg at Become a Remote Control SEO Ariane Benefit at Neat Living Blog Genesis at the At Home Mom Blog Armen at iFFECT.NET Mihaela Lica at Online Public Relations Tara at Graphic Design Blog Doris Chua at Home Office Women Edward Mills at Evolving Times Tony D. Clark at Success from the Nest Jonathan-C Phillips at SmartWealthyRich Karen at A Deaf Mom Shares Her World Lisa Gates at intrinsic life design Rammel Firdaus at rammelfirdaus.com Carol at Pentimento Adam Kayce at Monk at Work Thomas at Technical Blogger Tammy Lenski at I Can?t Say That! Chris Brown at Branding & Marketing Rory Sullivan at Hamelife Derek Wong at Going The Wong Way Embuck at embuck.com Ms. Q at QMusings Shelly Tucker at This Eclectic Life Steve at Ramblings from the Marginalized Troy Worman at on!blog Lilith at Lilith’s Owl Nest Revov at REVO-OVER Karin at Stop/Start Jamy at Seay’s Kopitam this is a miracle Anything Goes! My Life Starts at Forty-Two Seiche Gazing Into the Abyss

The final step is that if you do link back to me, let me know and I’ll show you some link love as well. Everybody loves link love.