Monkey In a Suit

Why do we hatecrush (link goes back to Ms. Slackmistress, the individual I believe coined this most excellent term for it)? Incidentally, Ms. Slackmistress, along with Death Wore a Feathered Mullet and Non Vocabulum (damn, must write her for the password) are probably the top 3 funniest blogs I have ever read.

I know you do it. I most definitely do it and I strongly suspect that I am a vortex of hatecrushery for at least a couple of people. For instance, there is one particular purveyor of rayon bamboo sheets who angrily comments on my blog every few months in the hopes that I’ve forgotten about the last time I didn’t approve his/her rant about how I’m a puppyeating Nazi with “absolutely no understanding” of the Gandalifian properties of mf’ing bamboo rayon. And this individual DEFINITELY reads every day-although I will give them mad props for not adding me into ”Favourites” but re-Googling their way here to keep track of ONE POST.

Then I remember a year ago how I was getting some random bitchy comments, I mean, not comments that disagreed with me on my positions on politics/life (and I have published many of those on this blog), but someone who was covering up his/her IP (I banned every single one) but wanted to make sure to let me know that I was not “all that” or whatever. Total hatecrush. And I know the blogworld is divided on ”not publishing an opposing viewpoint” (or as I like to call it, people who want to take you down a peg) but my position is that I have never pretended to be anything other than a totally miserable c*nt who enjoys annoying people. I mean, come the frock on…I am politically-socially-liberal-while-personally-socially-conservative -fiscal-conservative-annoyed-by-people who think the Free Market could solve a Rubik’s cube while farting out the ultimate answer to the African debt crisis. Except I also hate people who think More Government is always the answer. So  I am annoying by definition. Goddamn, I annoy myself with my hedging and inability to commit to any sort of real ideology.

So anything that frustrates you probably makes me extremely gleeful. Not approving bitchy comments just makes me snicker.   

In terms of my personal hatecrushery, I tend not to leave comments. I just read these 2 blogs because I’m fascinated by what crazy sh*t they’ll convince themselves of next (the people who hatecrush on me are nodding their heads and say that’s why we read you, whore). I mean, I seriously consider these individuals co-dependently pathetic (on different things) but I can’t stop. It’s a sickness.

So why do we do it, Webby friends? Why do I read a person who cannot start or end a post without referencing lolcatese when it drives me up a wall?

Title edited, because I can’t escape playing with words even when it’s a reference to PARAMORE.

I have a semi-composed tome about all the problems I have with the 23andMe campaign that’s going on right now but it’s in “Draft” mode and I’ve decided against publishing it because the only fair thing would be to link to some of the bloggers who are participating (not because I have a problem with them, but because some of their posts have highlighted what seriously concerns me about this company) and I just don’t have the energy to fight off the crazy right now.

In short, people, I think it’s about as effective as storing your baby’s cord blood, which is to say not at all. And I think it’s really really really low to use parent bloggers with  limited science backgrounds to make wholly unsupported claims like “If I had known I was at genetic risk for X then I might have been able to Y.” Because if the very same company had made that claim they would have been open to all sorts of scrutiny from federal agencies.

I also raise a brow at the utility of direct to consumer genetic information. If you really need that information (and I do not believe the majority of people do), you’re better off having a genetic counselour who could better interpret and explain the data to you. Because, you know, they have the appropriate level of education necessary to interpret the results. Seriously, if this sh*t becomes widespread I see a massive increase in official requests for genetic testing as well as pisspoor self-diagnosis.

But who knows? Maybe I’m just crazy and off on this one. But seriously, I think it’s exploitive and unnecessary and that this campaign is all sorts of weird and would result in massive regulatory smackdowns if it hadn’t been farmed out through conversational marketing.

Vegas was great. I think I’ve finally exorcised the issues I used to have with it. I took about a zillion pictures, of which approximately 10 turned out beautiful and a number turned out merely mediocre. Every time I get a hankering to buy an expensive DSLR I remind myself that it’s the photographer not the camera. I will update tonight with some good pics and eventually get around to posting a set on Flickr.

Aside, am I the only one who gets Flickr envy? I also spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out who took a genuinely amazing photograph and who photoshopped some intensity into the colours and cleared up fuzziness etc..

Finally, I have an exciting new purchase that I will be posting a picture of-let’s just say that Coach is more or less throwing purses out right now and I scored a bag that I had eyed 3 years ago for something like $580 for under a $100. I’m keeping it shiny for business school and not using it-that’s how obsessed I am with making sure I look perfect on my first day.

Finally finally…I’ve decided to go to Maui and the Big Island in September as quicky one week vacation/treat for myself. I was telling my parents this and they were so excited about it that they were like “can we come?” and I was like, yes that’s totally cool…so, I’m going to Hawaii! Awesomeness.

More photos on my Flickr Page

Vegas, Baby

 The Other Half

I know someone who works in the finance department of the Wynn so he gave me a tour of some of the crazy suites. Hey, the 60th floor double floor suite is going for a song at 8K (down from pre-recession prices of 12K) if anyone is interested.

 We saw a show

Isn’t that what everyone says?

 And I picked up a little something for me

It warms the cockles of my heart that I wrote a single line of “this is what I’m up to and hey, I decided to go get my MBA too” to one of my favourite outside counsels because we’ve been working on a teensy side project transaction while I wrestle with the BOD recall, and not only did he pass along that information to one the attorneys in his firm (whom I also get along with very well) but they both separately wrote to me today to say they’ll do anything to help me get in and hey, did I know their sons were planning to go too?

Considering how Mentos and I bust our asses here and get nothing but “you’re not good enough because you didn’t enter your work items properly into 7 different tracking systems” it really warmed my heart.

So it’s only on the eve of my 30th birthday that I manage to best my dad at math.

Consider the following-my father and I are driving to the train station. Ahead of us we see the following license plate, 1USA234. Those aren’t the actual numbers because I feel bad posting someone’s real plate number on the net but that’s the configuration.

We decided to try to figure out how many possible vanity plates you could create with “USA” and 4 other digits and the “coincidental” probability of getting a plate like that thereafter. This is because I just spent the last 3 days intensively studying probability, combinatorics and statistics since they usually comprise the hardest problems on the GMAT.  

So we both agreed that there are only a limited number of ways the license plate could be configured if you use a 7 character requirement. These individual setups are:

1USA234

USA1234

12USA34

123USA4

1234USA

Then we both agreed that the permutation and combination formulas don’t apply because in number strings like phone numbers or license plates you can reuse each digit and the perm/combo formulas sort all of those out-essentially they vary independently. However, 3 of the 7 places are blocked as a group because we want the block “USA”-leaving 4 possible places for numbers to go.

So we then decided that for each individual set up, there are the following number of total possibilities:

(Total digit possibilities in Position 1) * (Total digit possib. Pos. 2) * (TDP Pos 3) (TDP Pos. 4)

= 10 * 10 * 10 * 10

or 10000 (normally I would write it as an exponent but I don’t know how to do that on a keyboard)

Now, here’s where we differ. My dad thought that the Ultimate Total was 

10000 * 10000 * 10000 * 10000 * 10000 or 10 raised to 20. He says it could be setup 1 AND setup 2 And setup 3 AND setup 4…hence multiplying.

I thought it was 10000 + 10000 + 10000 + 10000 + 10000. My rationale was that it could be setup 1 OR setup 2 OR setup 3 OR setup 4 and setup 5 and no others…you add the total possibilities of the total number of setups.

I ended up posting it on a Board and asking for help and hahaha, I was right. Except I got home and my dad was all, no I meant that you have to multiply it by 5. Okay, whatever. He just didn’t like being bested.

Anyway, I think it’s a fair accomplishment that I could even manage something like that on my almost 30th birthday.

I guess I’m supposed to/should write an introspective post reflecting on my life or something tomorrow but tomorrow also happens to be the day we go ahead with the meeting/election that I designed for the corporation whose affairs I’m handling, and there’s massive controversy flying around it so I doubt I’ll find the time. We had a particularly contentious conference call with the outside attorneys today and I’m guessing tomorrow is going to be pretty hectic around here. Friday I leave for Vegas.

See you all on the other side of 30!

These are just very short blurbs that I wrote up that I’m re-posting. Maybe once my case is removed to federal court and the US Attorneys take it over I’ll have more time to come back and flesh out my thoughts on the bad-awesomeness of the series.

Post 1:

I also disagree with everyone that says don’t read Breaking Dawn. I mean, WTF…you’ve managed to get this far, why not go all the way? This is the novel where Stephenie Meyer straight up starts snorting blow and then sits down at her computer and types out some hallucinatory livejournal fanfic with full-on swinging references and teeny tiny mutants named EsmerNettalina like whoah, someone was doing some interesting livejournal communities research! And then I guess she had a pretty bad crash because it’s true that the 2nd half drags, I think mostly because she went off in search of cookies and meth and to re-freeze her full length body pillow that has a picture of Robert Pattinson’s face taped to one end because it wasn’t as marblehard as four hours ago when she was cuddled up against it watching Tori Spelling movies on the Lifetime Network eating queso and that probably resulted in some super tight deadlines because you know her editors are like “it should only take you a couple of weeks to pound this shit out girl, so get on it!

Anyway, that’s all to say that Breaking Dawn should be widely distributed as an example of what happens when your brain is on crack.

Post 2

The only thing that’s disappointing about Breaking Dawn is that it’s so obvious Stephenie Meyer is sitting at home letting her freak flag fly what with dropping acid, humming Hendrix and perusing the polyamory boards so you’d expect way more f*cking for your dollar than you get, you know? I mean, now that they’re married you’d think you’d get some more info on what all sparkles and most importantly solve the mystery of how a vampire’s eye venom is sizzly enough to melt a pair of contacts but vampire ejaculate does nothing to damage the internal hideyholes of one Ms. Bella Swann-Cullen but it’s all a bunch of fade-to-black nonsense. I’m thinking there was more f*cking in the original drafts but her editors took it out and were all “Go take a cold shower, Stephenie.”

Post 3 (in response to someone else)

Originally Posted by XXXXXX XXX I thought about reading them for shits ‘n giggles. Also I like to snark young adult novels on my blog, but I thought this might be too much horribleness even for me to handle.

You’re really missing out. Especially the pivotal dry humping scene of Book 3 that culminates in the Awkward Teen Abstinence Message delivered in a very Thus Spake His Holiness Sparklethustra moment.

Virtue is all Monster!!! has, Bella mine. We musts bind ourselves a’fore the God that hath deserted me and the many Men who want to savage you before I yoke mine sparkling loins to thine!

Also, I could take it all a lot more seriously if Sparklepire who has two medical degrees (two!) didn’t spend all his time being like “what is this fire that hath seized my “core”? Uh, permaboner, dude.

Post 4

Yeah she totally gets sparklepired, when EsmerNettalina makes an appearance, and then it’s obvious that the rest of them are all state school sparklepires but Bella Swann-Cullen graduated early from the Harvard School of Vampiring and is a member of Vampire Mensa! She smashes boulders in a cocktail dress! She and Sparklehubby have sparklesexing in their forest cottage!

And she has the most self-control ever demonstrated by a Sparklepire and it becomes clear that she is the VampireJesus come to save their kind, without the inconvenience of having to die for their sins and with really awesome hair. So she stops all the other Sparklepires from fighting a Sparklewar because that was her Holy Mission but she looks really good in Abercrombie and Fitch jeans so the author stops short of crucifying her.

And then she and Mr. Sparklepire live forever on the planet Kobol with their baby NotWithoutMyHandbag.

Just in case anyone was wondering!

Well, it was all sent back and with large red slashes that said READABILITY so I got my way on everything after all. Mentos and Other Party made some small changes after I re-drafted everything but for the most part they left it alone and Higher Up happily approved this batch.  

At the end of the day I sent out all the revised documents formatted for a layperson of average intelligence with 8th grade reading level so now they barely even look like “legal” documents even though they are. Because it is the right thing to do, I gave everyone credit in all communications to Higher Up (“we drafted” etc.).

All’s well that ends well…except for the forthcoming onslaught!

How emotionally distant are all of you from your professional work/jobs?

I will say that 99% of the time, especially on my transactions, that I cut a wide emotional swathe. At the end of the day, the decision to bring X, Y and Z to the transactional table is out of my hands. I can create difficulty in completing the transaction (lack of legal compliance) but the driving force behind how they all got there is out of my hands. It took me 3 years to cotton on, but yeah, lawyers are basically high-end support staff, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

But yeah, let me sum it up for you. I don’t really care. I’m totally over giving away $15, 20, 40, 60 million dollars at a time. It’s like chump change.

Then once in a while I’ll get a sizzler of a legal issue and all the passion and fire I used to have comes back because it’s one of the rare occasions during which I have been assigned an interesting task. And sad as it is, I take a great deal of pleasure in designing and delivering my arguments. Like, an OCD level of pleasure, complete with flow charts showing how arguments relate to one another, impeccable legal memoranda etc. 

Which is why I find it EXTREMELY FREAKING ANNOYING to have to maneuver around people who have to “put their oar in” and mess up the elegance of my work. The individual I’m referring to is Not Mentos (who actually really respects my work), but let’s say they’re in a position such that they can 

a) Add “fluff” arguments that I’ve already eradicated for brevity

b) Add language that I find stylistically offensive.

For instance, you would probably not know it by the atrocious grammar on this blog, but I am a grammar and style nazi when it comes to the letters and memoranda that I produce. And to see my arguments, the same arguments I designed mind you, re-written in 

1) Passive voice

2) Unnecessary legalese (I HATE HATE HATE this, it’s so indicative of when someone was last in law school, too) 

3) Complicated and overly long sentences

Just does something to me. It’s like, why do people have to justify taking credit for my work by adding in stupid $hit or re-writing it in poor prose? Can’t you…just take credit and leave it alone, already? And believe me, it’s not me, usually Mentos gets handed the addendums first, tries to argue that they’re unnecessary and then lets me know we’ve been “overruled” once more.

The second thing that I have a hard time maintaining distance about is that whether I do good work or not, whether I volunteer and take the iniatitive and am passionate (for once) or NOT…I am given the same amount of praise by this individual. None. Mentos and I were discussing how we could have just passed the buck on this one, just completely mangled it and handed it off (the way it was handed to us, incidentally) and we would have received the exact same amount of credit at the end of the day.

Right now I just shut my eyes and follow a “Do No Harm” legally speaking philosophy. If it’s re-written badly, so be it. Thankfully I don’t have to sign my name to it. On the other hand, if the individual changes the meaning of the sentences, or mucks up the actual ARGUMENT, that’s when Mentos and I have been taking a hard line of stubborn refusal to agree until the argument is once more poorly re-written to reflect reality.

ANYWAY…do you guys care if someone is messing up work you think is actually really well done? Do you care if you get recognition or not?