Sunday, April 27, 2008

Pierre is Still the Alpha Male

I wrote about Pierre the Penguin quite a while ago, here's the link since he is one of the penguins I work with regularly. As you can see from a previous video I posted (see it here), Pierre is 25 years and had lost all his feathers. The biologists at the Aquarium where I volunteer decided to try something different to keep him warm and that was to make him his own neoprene wetsuit. Last Friday, Associated Press released an article about him and his wetsuit. I'm proud to share the article, videos and pictures here. Enjoy!

Click here for the link to article and pictures:

Here's the video, courtesy of YouTube:


Monday, April 07, 2008

Some Current Favorite Quotes

"Can I have one of those Chesterfields now?" Dennis Hopper to Christopher Walkin in the infamous "Sicilian" scene in "True Romance."

"It's not true I had nothing on, the radio was on." Marilyn Monroe.

"I've already told you want I want and if you ask me again, I'm going to scream! You keep asking me over and over what I want and I keep telling you and I'm tired of telling you, and, no, you can't ever, ever touch me. Do you hear me? You can't touch me!" a friend relaying a "conversation" she had on a date with a very wealthy man whom she didn't find attractive. She had this "conversation" outside a lovely restaurant in North Beach (a wonderful neighborhood here in SF).

"Okay, well tell Superman to iron his cape and get his super fanny over here, pronto." A co-worker talking to a vendor on the phone who screwed up a job.

"The crime you see now it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, 'O.K., I'll be part of this world.'" Tommy Lee Jones' opening monologue in "No Country for Old Men."

And one from me:

Me: "What we need is a form on the system that everyone can fill out. An apology form. In Word format."

Nice Boss: "Oh, so you can just fill it out and email to someone here in this office? Fill in your name, date and what you're apologizing for?"

Me: "No, that's the beauty of it. You don't have to do anything. It's there for someone who feels they need an apology. They fill it out and email it to themselves."

Nice Boss: "Oh, I get it. Then they can send you a thank you email in response, right?"

Inner Life: All the Crap in Your Head that Weighs You Down

I'm suffering from a lack of confidence. Today I helped out on a project at work, jumped in at the last minute. It went down to the wire, but it got done. I did good work, caught a lot of errors and yet all I can think about tonight is how I screwed everything up because it took me a long time to complete the centerpiece of the project. Everyday at work I beat myself up because I take too long, I'm not learning fast enough. Sometimes I want to cry from the fear and frustration of it.

I read somewhere that you should think about whose voice you're hearing when you start verbally beating the crap out of yourself so tonight I asked myself who has been doing been doing all the trash talking in my head. The answer is a woman and a man from my old job who I believe were responsible for my being laid off. I can't say for sure, but I'm fairly certain their comments were a factor.

Now mind you no one has told me at work that they're having problems with my work, speed or otherwise. Folks who have been there a while assure me that if I'm truly screwing up they would tell me immediately. But then I think they're just being nice to me. I don't know.

Then I thought about what my true voice, my real self is saying to me right now while the other voices tell me what a piece of crap I am at my job. My real self is telling me it wants a cup of tea, and it wants a snack, oh and it wants to take the dog for a walk because it wants to go to bed soon. It also wants to stop listening to the others because it's gotten so tiring. As for the job thing, well, it's saying any cluster-fucks that happen can be corrected tomorrow, no problem.

It also wants to write (I haven't written hardly anything in over a month), it wants to get through my current Korean DVDs I have from Netflix, and it wants to go grocery shopping.

It wants to have fun and not be bogged down by all this shit. Maybe this is what they truly mean by having baggage.

Ugh.