jogging a tightrope

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. -- Abraham Lincoln

A lot of people (kidding! I don't know a lot of people, let's say:) Some people have told me, or have at least implied in my general direction, that this little bizarre blog is a Bad Idea Waiting To Get Worse even though I'm pretty sure that there's a sizable group of people out there who would find a behind-the-scenes look at That's Bizarre pretty funny, if not fascinating, terrifying, pitiful and/or confusing, to say the least.

The way I figure it: I've already got all this experience writing and editing copy for an extremely rigid (yet absurdly facetious) Bigass-Bureaucracy-Beast whose whims and wishes change more frequently than the wind and for reasons usually less than obvious. The name of game in never being "caught", especially in such a linguistically unique country such as, I dunno, this one, I would assume is to game the system by never serving up what's expected of you. I had considered taking photos of the people I work with to flesh this blog out with some color, but I think I've realized, the best use of this space will be to seek out the moments of plausibility in an otherwise (here comes that word again) absurd place to work.

Another thing I've come to learn: there's always a way to write for an audience more critical than it knows what to do with itself (hint: censors).

When your job is to shit on ideas to make them more "publicly viable", or whatever the hell nonsensical philosophy there is behind such a thing, you don't feel like you've done your job until you've dumped on your work at least a little.

Word to the Wise Writer #1: Intentionally include over-the-top inflammatory portions of a piece that covers a controversial topic. The grossly "offending" parts are excised and the attention is drawn away from controversy of the piece at large. This works just as well by offering up "sacrifice" pieces to be slashed so the ones you actually want to make it through do.




One out of many faceless Golden Shield web-censors agree.ⓒ
The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. -- Jonas Salk

I suppose I will be continuously refining my goal for what I intend to use this space for. We all are witness (I should hope) to absurdities everyday, though I imagine most choose to not stop, stare and ponder, laugh and giggle for so long about why such a weird thing may or may not happen, um, like I tend to do.

Like just the other day a coworker of mine -- with whom I very often verbally struggle, sometimes mightily, not just to understand his/her intentions but to simply figure out: just what exactly is your job again? You find yourself saying to him/her: "Wait... what, why?" -- this coworker of mine, his/her desk is further down the row computers we all sit at like drones everyday, and just the other day he/she walks into the office having returned from a meeting, the bathroom, sleeping outside - I have no idea - just holding in his/her arms this huge box of pens which came from...?

"Pens! Pens! I've got pens! Who's want's a pen?" He/she motions to me and gets my attention, "Hey... Pen? You need a pen?"

I was in the middle of a typing an email. Everyone looks up to figure out what exactly is going on. Pens? Wait... what, why?

Most everyone: "Um... no? I'm, uh, going to go back to typing at my, um, computer." Type type.
Me: "Hell yeah! Pen me up!"
Him/her: "Pen!"

My only regret is not seizing such an obvious opportunity for a high-five. The sad thing though: I've already misplaced it. Damn.

I'm not exactly sure why this story was worth sharing... though would it be interesting to know that our pen-friend here, this Johnny Pencilseed act of charity was likely the only productive thing he/she did all day. Maybe that's why we were all taken aback by his/her act's, um, misguided-ness?

Always be smarter than the people who hire you. -- Lena Horne

What an array of characters in this place. I'm serious, I wish I could be more specific, and in time I hope to find a strategy of doing so within this lil' walled garden to call my own.

The best thing about working somewhere where you come not to expect the unexpected, but actually come to expect some special form of entropy meets nihilism meets naked opportunism meets anarchistic power grabs meets... what's a synonym for "pointlessness"? Yeah, well, the best part about working in a place like that is learning to take it easy in situations that by necessity don't warrant a relaxed attitude.

Yeah, man. I may get to writing about how stressed I was when I first started here but whew! what a messy month that was.

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. -- Vaclav Havel

You beginning to understand what this blog is yet? No? Well I'm not too sure I understand either. This other recent tale may not help things either:

We were working on snatching up all the right domain names, you know, to build a successful website, because that's one does when one works for Media in the 21st century (or in this case: a kind of media) when one of us suggested, "Ooh! What about dot C-N?" Yeah! Let's try it. That would be a great one to buy!

Click.

Wait... what, why?

A minute or so of confused silence. Then we laughed, pretty hard too.

http://thatsbj.cn/

We're still waiting for their webmaster to respond to our email asking if they want to sell, though if I ever do, the body of the email would likely go something like:

See: http://thatsbj.cn/