Secret Orgs I Wish I Belonged To

I've mentioned before of my fascination with somewhat covert organizations such as the Freemasons and the YMCA. Yes, I said the YMCA. Sure, you can become a member, but that doesn't mean you get access to their secrets. You have to be invited to join that inner circle, and then you'll get to see the special workout rooms hidden in each facility, with real bottled water and fluffy towels. Did I just blow your mind?

My little town has a Freemason lodge, which drove me to look into the group when I first arrived here. And by "look into" I mean a quick search on Google. Well, I found all kinds of information about how they are a tight-knit group of so and so's who do the occasional "good deed" in the community. So what goes on in that brightly lit building one Wednesday a month? What are they discussing? And do they need a whole building just to have one meeting every 30 days? Why not just meet at someone's house and spend the money on pigs in a blanket.

That leads me to suspect there is something in that large building on main street they don't want me or the public to know about. What the hell could it be? Abe Lincolns brain in a jar? The files containing the truths about UFO's, Sasquatch and the Kennedy Assassination?

Why the secrecy? It's not like they are the Girl Scouts, who make delicious cookies and therefore need to keep the recipes safe and secure from the prying eyes and little fingers of the Keebler Elfs. They are deserving of the armed guards they have posted outside their facility up in Albany.



But back to the Masons. Maybe they just get together in their wild outfits and drink. Then I can relate, as that wouldn't be so different than me hanging out with my hockey team. We dress up in a weird sport-related costume and after (er, during) the game we have a pop or two. Come to think of it, we also play at a YMCA, but no bottled water or fluffy towels for us.

Not yet, anyway.

JV Does Disney. And Us.

In case you missed it, JV recaps his Florida vacation, part of which involved dealing with us.

The part about the bat is 100% true and 200% disturbing.

Money-Saving Ideas You Can Steal

Times are tough, and the place I work is scrambling to save money, just like everybody is now that we can finally call this recession a "recession". The company masterminds met at a secret mountain retreat and threw around their ideas in an all-day, fully catered "idea storming" session and emerged with an amazing list of things we could do as a company to save money.

Well, actually only one idea, but it was FRESH! "From now on, we are turning off lights in the office after 8pm". Wow. Stunning.

A few months later, they were dismayed to discover the savings from that brain jolt didn't amount to much. So the next thing they thought about was cutting bonuses and the door prizes from the company holiday party. Hey Now! Cancelling the ice sculpture and mime waiters was one thing, but the door prizes?? We certainly weren't packed into that Holiday Inn meeting room for the mass-produced, rubber-tasting dinner entrees or "DJ Spazzy Spaz". Not to jump on the James Blunt-hating bandwagon, but that is NOT the music to go to when you want to get the crowd "grooving".

After that, the river of money-saving ideas from the management ran dry. In desperation, they turned to us (the employees) for ideas. I say "in desperation" because from the managers perspective, if an employees had any really good ideas they would be a manager not an employee.

The building is now flooded with new posters and emails promoting "Idea-Palooza", a fun, wacky yet constructive campaign to generate ideas on how the company can save money and improve processes. I'm all over it, because I have a few ideas for generating income :

1) First Class Parking - Our parking lot has free parking, but the idea is to designate the first two rows of the lot "First Class Parking". If you want to park there, you can buy a monthly pass for 30 bucks and you get a reserved spot up front. Hey, the airlines are charging more for the first few rows in coach, why not apply that to a parking lot? This is a sure-fire winner with the lazy yet well-paid managers who spend $30 for coffee and a bear claw on any morning. Take all that money and let's hire back that Russian cleaning crew who used to spit shine our bathrooms. Man, they were good.

2) Baloney Tuesdays - the biggest drain on company resources is the gabfest lunch breaks. People loiter in the lunch room well beyond the 7 minutes it takes a person to throw back a lean cuisine meal, and this is a waste of time and space, since the lunch room also doubles as an employee counseling center. They could easily squeeze in several more sessions if they could get that room freed up another 15 or 20 minutes a day. The idea? Fry up some baloney on the little grill in the cafeteria. The aroma of an over-cooked mystery loaf will cut short the elongated discussions of last night's "Hole In The Wall" episode. Unpleasant odor will free up much needed room resources and get us slackers back to our desks quicker.

So, that was what went into the submission box. Maybe they'll be so well received they'll even make me a manager! So. Not.

Red Green

A cross between McGuyver and Al Bundy, Red Green is a classic. It ran for 15 years on Canadian tv, and for a bunch of years down here in the states on PBS. But don't hold that against him.

In this episode, Red devises a low-tech navigation tool.

Thrillsville

My kids are starting to talk smack.

For example, using the Wii. Emily and Dan (about 10 & 8, respectively) are enjoying the new toy and my son just got a game called "Thrillsville" for his birthday. The game is all about building roller coasters, but not just that. You become the owner of a park (kind of like the SIM games), manage the park, and you can ride the coasters as well. There's also video games within the game, like bi-plane fighting and tank battles. I saw them playing the tank battle game and I said I wanted in next game.

So when it was my turn, I grabbed the controllers and asked them where I needed to go on the menu to get to the tank game. They had me add my name to the profiles, then I had to start my own park. Once the park was up and running, my new character walked around and I asked them "OK, where's the tank game?" They told me I had to add the tank ride to the park. So I did that, then moved my character around to find the ride I had just created, but I couldn't find it.

"Ask that person where it is." My son said. Huh? Person? I guess you can go up to the other "people" walking around your park and talk to them. So I initiated a conversation with one but you can only ask set things, not like you can type in a question. There was nothing about "Where is the tank ride" so I broke off the conversation and ran off to look on my own. "Why'd you do that?" Dan asked. "What?" I asked. "You didn't finish talking to that person." I said something about how all I wanted to do was play tank, not build and run a dam park or have to talk to these fake people.

"You're too old for this." Emily said. "Yeah Dad." Dan added. "This is a game for the young."

The young! These kids were throwing down like Bobby Flay. "I just want to play a video game, not work!" I said. "Who wants to listen to fake customers whine that they can't find the bathroom?"

I handed the control to Dan, and had him navigate to the tank game. Once there, I took back over the controls. I blazed away, firing missiles and machine guns and blowing up power plants and running over little enemy guys and kicking the crap out of the highest score they ever got. "I was playing video games from before you two were born!" I responded any time they tried to tell me how I should be playing the game. Not the best smack line, but I did get some respect. They may be all up on the "social" parts of the game, but when it comes down to basic tank battle, I had Atari. So eat it.

I also can kick their butts at Wii tennis. So far.