I'm working tonight... for years, I covered this particular Sunday night to allow one of my co-workers to attend a party that his daughter throws. I used to enjoy going out to watch the game- most of the bars around me run food and drink specials, and it's a great night to meet women. Nowadays, I just can't be arsed caring... chalk it up to reading Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. A billion-dollar testosterone-and-consumerism extravaganza played at ear-splitting volume? Maybe I'll just have a nice, quiet night on the job.
I can't even get excited about groundhog day, since my rodentine nemesis kicked the bucket over three years ago.
It is Candlemas... and that's a good Lovecraftian day. Of course, by Candlemas, I mean it's Imbolc... Syrbal-Labrys, hanging out in her labyrinth, is the go-to blogger on Imbolc.
Yeah, there's something going on tonight, alright, but I'm opting out. I'll be sitting here at my desk watching an old Wire performance:
So much for a quiet night...
I heard a little on the car radio.
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A billion-dollar testosterone-and-consumerism extravaganza played at ear-splitting volume?
ReplyDeleteMaybe so, but that's neither here nor there - unless you think you're making some kind of a socio-political statement by 'boycotting' football, watch it if you enjoy it, don't if you don't. The world, and the NFL, will neither notice nor care.
Me, I like the sports. Well, professional baseball and football anyway. Are these pure, uncorruptable wholesome undertakings? Nope. Neither is the grocery business. Living in 21st century America, you get your endless, non-stop sales and marketing, you get your corruption, you get your spectacle and its associated volume. But you can't opt out of everything, and if it gives you some modicum of enjoyment, as it gives me, then dwelling overlong on the making of the sausage serves no valid purpose...
Speaking of socio-political statements:
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"Hitachi has created a 'perfect virtual boss' The company is manufacturing and selling a device intended to increase efficiency in the workplace called the Hitachi Business Microscope (paywalled). 'The device looks like an employee ID badge that most companies issue. Workers are instructed to wear it in the office. Embedded inside each badge, according to Hitachi, are "infrared sensors, an accelerometer, a microphone sensor and a wireless communication device." Hitachi says that the badges record and transmit to management "who talks to whom, how often, where and how energetically." It tracks everything. If you get up to walk around the office a lot, the badge sends information to management about how often you do it, and where you go. If you stop to talk with people throughout the day, the badge transmits who you're talking to (by reading your co-workers' badges), and for how long. Do you contribute at meetings, or just sit there? Either way, the badge tells your bosses.'"
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/02/opinion/greene-corporate-surveillance/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
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Thank you for the shout-out, tho' alas, I don't celebrate Imbolc. I DO have a good old pagan fire-fest in February, but more akin to the old Roman Lupercalia. We celebrate at mid-month and call our personalized version "The Feast of the Wolf".
ReplyDeleteAnd to my own shock, we DID watch and enjoy the Superbowl this year, even tho' we are not crazed Seahawk fans.
Of course, a good deal of Chinese New Year celebrating was going on this weekend…maybe that is what you were thinking about?
I heard a little on the car radio.
ReplyDeleteOut on a beer run?
Maybe so, but that's neither here nor there - unless you think you're making some kind of a socio-political statement by 'boycotting' football, watch it if you enjoy it, don't if you don't. The world, and the NFL, will neither notice nor care.
Yeah, there's no real larger statement to be made... I just opt out.
Embedded inside each badge, according to Hitachi, are "infrared sensors, an accelerometer, a microphone sensor and a wireless communication device."
Damn, that's Orwellian!
Thank you for the shout-out, tho' alas, I don't celebrate Imbolc. I DO have a good old pagan fire-fest in February, but more akin to the old Roman Lupercalia. We celebrate at mid-month and call our personalized version "The Feast of the Wolf".
That sounds like a good time... lamb chops for everyone?
Saw Wire a few years ago. They're playing again in Auckland in a few weeks and I would have bought a ticket but I am otherwise committed to accompanying the Doktorling down to the other end of NZ to begin university. Priorities!
ReplyDelete[Sobs quietly]
LOL…well, yes, lamb IS very, very popular in this household. And we make giant stamped shortbread cookies with a wolf's head!
ReplyDeleteThere is one (a rodentium, LOL) down here in NYC. The mayor dropped it, apparently ... which I guess is an occurrence on which we can blame the confluence of fifty-degree days on which Super Bowl fans storm the Metro area and then another foot of snow dropped down on us out of, ostensibly, nowhere.
ReplyDeleteI had the pleasure of hearing/seeing Wire perform in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I think it was the best of their shows that I've seen (maybe six? These things run together).
ReplyDeleteSonic wizards, they are. Amazingly relevant, after all of these years, too. Bruce Gilbert was dancing in the audience for the opening act and the whole crew hung out for a chat at the merch table after. Swell.