Signore e signori, ragazzi e ragazze, bambini di tutte le età ...
My life of late has been a long series of excellent reasons for not writing anything, and only a few of them have anything to do with Azeroth. Do not concern yourselves with the rest of the strange dark secrets and unspoken words that can blast the minds of good men to a fine white ash and the humming mindmelting hymns to unseens gods that have played unceasingly on the jukebox in the greasy spoon of my daily life. If you have snarky comments, fucking keep them locked behind your flappers. Let's just get back to the postage.
There's so many fine places I could start back in, but I figured the best way to go about my surprise return (with music blaring to a huge pop, running down the aisle to make the save in the main event schmozz) would be to pretend that I hadn't really missed anything - and seriously, who really cares about April? I'm told it's the cruellest month - and just continue along as if I'd been posting about interesting topics this whole time.
Look, it's not MY fault you missed my incisive review of V for Vendetta or my stark and thought-provoking musings on Thomas Dolby's show at the Aladdin and my political commentaries and thoughts on the weather. Maybe you should be checking here more often. Maybe YOU'RE the one who hasn't written anything for five weeks.
Maybe you should shut up. How about that? How 'dat be?
Anyway. None of you have asked about where I work or what I do every day, so let me fill you in on the mind-numbing minutiae ...
WITH PICTURES!
That's right, mortals! WHEEL HAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECHNOLOGY AT HIS DISPOSAL NOW!
The much-coveted Vivicam 3301 is mine to command! MINE TO FLOURISH!
SO QUAKE WITH FEAR, YOU TINY FOOLS!
... ahem.
Anyway, it's a pretty decent little snapbox for the 20 bucks I spent on it. And I figured a nice way to use it might be to make an incredibly boring photodocumentary of the incredibly boring things I do when I go to my incredibly boring workplace. But some of the pictures are deceptively pretty. So ... well, just take a look.
This is my lair. It's where I ... hang out.
Okay, first you'll note that the quality of my camera is not so great, but bear in mind that thing is the size of a fookin' matchbook.
Looking past the streaking photoartifacture, you can see the pallet on which I make my royal bed; a combination of a very nice mattress from Value Village out on 82nd, a futon pad courtesy of pseudomammal, and about 40 sheets and blankets, as well as my requisite mound of pillows. Up above my bed is St. Jimi, wailing his paeans to all that is rocking. There's a stethoscope I boosted from a hospital so I can pose as a doctor and score med students or crack safes. The bright blaze is the loyal gooseneck lamp I snagged off the Free Table four years ago that has served me well ever since then. You can just make out a giant El Indio thermal mug cadged from vruba. There's the collected Sherlock Holmes next to the Alpenrose Dairy milkbox I use as a nighstand, and my Johnny Walker tote bag. Front right you can see the unwinking red eye of the tiny but mighty space heater I am constantly adjusting in my continuing efforts to stay toasty without being roasted like an herbed chicken.
Up on the left you can make out my shadowy Pop Altar. Strange things happen there.
That piece of paper on the wall is an old scrap from work that had a number I sometimes needed to call on it. That number is now defunct. I have no idea why it's still up, and I didn't really notice until just now.
The curiously noir little corner where I wait for the bus four mornings a week, blear-eyed and half-mad from lack of sleep. Spring is setting in, so now even in the ungodly early hours in which I stomp the half-frozen concrete jungle, the sky is dappled with blue insinuations of the day to come. You can see the bright steel of the TriMet bus sign and the neat geometry and urban pragmatism of the bus shelter, all lit gently by the soft yellow from the window.
The road there is Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., formerly Union Avenue, brother to a thousand streets just like it all across America as the street you go if you want to get crack, a cheap knife, shot in the face, or excellent barbeque (in this case, you can almost see the lights of Chef D's, a few blocks down on the left).
Lower right frame, you can see a cameo appearance by the Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Seen, star of American Beauty and Not Another Teen Movie.
This is the view I have of SPM, a company that apparently exclusively produces hand-ground ratchets. While I wait for the bus I can see waist-high machines that are nothing more than mad tangles of hydraulic hoses and turning wheels and strange humming belts, carefully grinding away the edges of gleaming ratchet heads to the specifications of some unknown benefactor.
You can see rack after rack of them. And I can watch the slow shuffling grace of the old man in the SPM cap, smoking his pre-dawn cigarette in that gritty two-knuckle way that seems endemic to blue-collar men of advanced age, moving between the strange gray-green cabinet he sits next to and the coffee machine to the right of the window.
I might not like where I work, but I'm glad I don't work there.
The chariot of the people. Limousine of the proletariat. Your tax dollars at work. The Hobo Hotel.
The number 6, ladies and gentlemen, running every 15 minutes from Vancouver, Washington to Goose Hollow at the southwest end of downtown Portland. A mere two blocks from the Secret House, runnning until almost 2 in the morning and covering the length and breadth of the city as it does, we find ourselves riding the 6 quite frequently. On the way to work, I take it down to the Doc Holliday MAX station. Even at such a very unpleasant waking hour as mine, the 6 is usually full. Blue-collars and telereps heading in for first shift, people on the start of a long commute to Gresham or Troutdale or Tigard, party victims returning from a long and soul-draining night of revelry, last-shift whores finally getting a chance to get off their platform heels, brunch cooks headed for the downtown hotels, clowns and transvestites and goldfish fanciers and milkmen and jackhammer jockeys.
I usually sit near the front so I can sag comfortably against the map rack and drowse over my book.
The Rose Quarter transit center and MAX stop. The MAX, naturally enough, is the award-winning light rail that runs Portlanders from the far eastern marches of Gresham to the western wilderness of Hillsboro, from the archaic Expo Center left over from the World's Fair to the sprawling PDX Airport. The MAX runs constantly and swiftly and hardly ever breaks down and manages to work around the protest marches, parades, and international incidents that are always making traffic in downtown Portland so colorful. Aside from the lingering odor of stale bodies and the occasional slavering Aryan madman, I really enjoy it.
The Rose Quarter stop here is one of the transit hubs on the east side of the Willamette River. You children of the Revolution were probably last exposed to the Rose Quarter during the justly-famed Green Day Commentary. Lots of good shows go and in out of the Rose Quarter, a sprawling entertainment complex built on the beloved '70s Huge Fucking Arena model of venue. The friggin' STONES were there, man. The STONES.
The Trailblazers also play there, which I have mixed feelings about - it's nice that there's a home team so I know who I'm obligated to root for if I happen to be drawn into a conversation about basketball before I have time to fumble the smoke bombs out of my utility belt, but MAN, does that pack the train on game nights. I'm just trying to ride home so I can collapse into my computer chair and die in peace and comfort, but instead I'm wedged up against the window like a sardine on a Tokyo subway by a horde of people in black and red and silver all talking excitedly about the very tall men they are going to sit and watch throw a rubber ball around for anywhere between $40 and $250.
Also, it's insane trying to walk AROUND the Rose Quarter. The pedestrian interchanges were apparently laid about by an artificial intelligence designed on vacuum tubes by the Nazis that has since gone quite mad.
Portlandia has many nicknames; the Rose City (because of all the friggin' roses that grow here like insane, fragrant mutants), Stumptown (a lovely moniker left over from our days as a logging town, when Portland was an island of bustling buildings and robber baron mansions in the midst of a vast sea of the stumps of hewn-down firs), and, d'accord, Bridgetown. 12 famous bridges hath the city; the Interstate and the Glenn Jackson across the gorgeous Columbia River, and the Sellwood, Ross Island, Marquam, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway, Fremont and St. John's bridges across the mighty Willamette. This is from the scenic Steel Bridge, where the MAX rumbles across the river. We're looking to the north - that's the low-slung iron growl of the Broadway Bridge in the foreground and the long, obscenely graceful arch of the Fremont Bridge just past it.
You can see the trailing head of the West Hills and the slow-burning glowfog that comes with a Portland morning. Down front is an enormous freighter next to the huge grain silos that sit right next to the river. Some interesting ships pull in there; my favorite was the Chinese-registered Pan Majesty.
These bridges might be my favorite part of the Portlandia Experience. Whether walking in the eerie blue-white wash of their blazing lights at night with the shadows of their strange steampunk superstructures thrown into strange relief or with your head bent against the sharp rush of ice-crackling wind from the vastness of the north, grinning at the savage wet snarl of the river with windtears leaking from your eyes or strolling in the sunlight and watching sea lions and Canadian geese dive and play on the water's glittering roil, each bridge is worth the crossing. Good times.
I really like everything that's happening in this picture.
This is from one of the comfy handicapable seats on the MAX, shot out the window when I felt the need to try to grab a shot of the lovely downtown Portland streetlights, which are done on a recidivist gaslight design that fits in nicely with the city. I also managed to get a bit of the sunrise over that parking garage, the reflection of a gentleman enjoying the last of his gourmet coffee-flavored beverage, and a counter-reflection of the streetlights in the windows of that building across from the Galleria, where this was taken.
She's a beautiful city. I'll miss her.
I'm going to wait a bit to tell you who plays here.
This is PGE Park. It's a baseball stadium located in the center of the city, set below the level of the sidewalk. A cheap conjuring trick, perhaps, but one of my favorites. You're walking along the sidewalk on the western edge of the downtown metroplex, just passing the Neapolitan pasta bar and the apartment building with the weird purple trim and the gargoyles, and suddenly you come across the trailing edge of a tall black iron fence with a wide sidewalk beyond that quickly drops off into a friggin' baseball field, stuck in the center of the city like a top hat in toffee. It's magnificent in its silliness. No high walls and huge light arrays like we've come to expect, no ancient Green Monster in the center of a webwork of misdirected streets, nor decaying stone edifice soaked in pinstriped blood ... just a park buried in the ground named for a publically-owned former Enron subsidiary.
The bleachers create an interesting space; consider the popcorn littered shadownest that you can find under a conventional set of stadium seats, soaked with stale beer and the sweat of crumpled dreams and the dusty gloss of expended exuberance. Now imagine such a space as tucked belowground, below the level of the sidewalk and opening onto the 200-year old drains that run below the city, and the shades of games long past take on Lovecraftian proportions.
You know what they have down there?
Feral cats. HUNDREDS of them.
You can see them poke their little faces up between the stanchions of the lower seats to snag juicier tidbits, and hear them yowling and writhing down below, a continuing antiphonic harmony to the crack of the bat and the blare of the always-amusing "Charge!" horns. And they race them.
No, seriously. The Feral Cat Races - a beloved Portland tradition, right up there with drag theatre, the abduction of sailors, and girls with two-tone pigtails.
... incidentally, the home team is called the Beavers.
GO BEAVERS!
Enough of my musings; this is a day in the life, slice of the pie, photodocuwebumentary sort of thing. This is the MAX sign for the Sunset Transit Center, another nifty little belowground station. This one is open to the sky, and I really like the glass elevators on either side. This is the first station west of Washington Park, a stop that the_crowchan heard way too much about when she visited Portland; that one's below an entire mountain (on top of which is an excellent zoo), making it the subterraneanest rail station in the world.
I would've taken a shot of the Aboriginal animal mural and mountain core sample at the Washington Park station, but I was snoozing then.
Orenco St./231st Avenue MAX. This is the stop where I disembark to catch the white shuttle van that takes me over to the Convergys office park, except on Saturdays when I walk the scenic miles past the vast Intel campus and manufacturing facility.
The TriMet people made every effort to apply a series of uniquely artistic touches to each MAX station - one of my personal favorites is the stop at Millikan Way, where you can find bronze placards of Oregon bird song sonographs in the sidewalk. Orenco has a tree theme - the frosted panes you can just make out on the left actually have laser-etched photographs from the Oregon State Nursery in the glass; there's also a memorial oak grove to the left and the sidewalk connecting the station to 231st Avenue is set with a bronze chart demonstrating how tree grafting works. The benches are built out of driftwood river branches and there's a "roots of the city" weathervane on the utility shed.
It's a decent station; I've become extremely familiar with the artistic flourishes as documented on the station marquette, waiting for trains.
The Den.
Well, there's my industrial grey acoustic fabric covering my half-height quarterbicle walls. There's my desk number - 437. 4 and 3 makes 7, and 7 makes 14, and 1 and 4 makes 5. Well, Hail Eris. There's my phone and bitch-ass little headset with the padded microphone bulb. A document stacker thing I stole from someone who was fired so I'd have a place to leave all the papers I'm handed over the course of the day. My polycarbonate water bottle, holding precisely 1 liter. I drink 2 or 3 of those a day.
You can also make out my business card pinned over the sarcastic attaboy certificate made out by my manager Bill, the most entertaining drunk I've been around since I lived with Heph. There's the GM Official Emergency Procedures Ring Binder with the colored tabs ("Earthquake" is in yellow. "Terrorist or Hostage Situation" in brown.) and my time zones map, so I can remember whether it's 7:00 PM or 6:00 PM in Flagstaff. Enough of the dull stuff; I know you're curious about my toys. It's okay. Let's take a look:
Up top we've got Admiral Akbar riding the enormous Cheshire Cat. That way if it turns out to be a trap, the Cat can get him out of it with that eerie grin of his. Fish-eyed martial valor tempered caution and pink-striped smug chaos. Two great tastes that go great together. To the Cat's left you can sort of make out the arched green of Murray the Mantis, my praying mantis bendy/bracelet, standing tall over the LE Captain Mako Heroclix, a rare figure available only with the City of Villains game. To the Cat's right we've got the Super Friends Green Lantern figure, with Ring Punch action that still SORT of works if you squeeze gently. I'm just glad it's not that pussy Kyle Rayner.
Down at the base of the stack of GM magazines I use to prop my monitor are some more toys, a bit harder to make out. There's the red Camaro driven by an ankylosaurus and the yellow rescue Humvee piloted by a velociraptor, my black and white and gray ninja triad, the Unicorn playset d_mcetiquette got me for my Christhday (currently spearing a hapless mime), and of course Frosty Klaws, the snowman with the gleaming retractable claws made from pushpins.
I spend most of my time here cruising forums and viral videos on that self-same monitor in between writing curt replies to requests for reimbursement and filling out recall fulfillment forms and taking calls from the sort of ill-bred lunatic who has already received too much press time here at Wheel Industries.
I'm torn about this picture.
On the one hand, it's great because it illustrates the kindergarten fantasy embraced by corporate HR 'droids; they want everyone quiet and studious, head down at the desk, coloring inside the lines, rewarded with bright stickers and the occasional cookie. They want no one to question the teacher. They want everyone to have attainable goals and strive to get their names on the board. They want you to sit down and shut up. They want you to do as you're told. It's lunacy and abasement and the despair of the human condition that is illustrated with perfect black irony by the idiot grins of the smiling moronicons.
On the other hand, I got three fucking smiley faces.
Lunchtime!
Feed the machine, and the machine feeds you.
From left to right, we've got the Rotating Carousel of Intestinal Torment (serving up generic-brand Chicken Salad Sandwiches, disturbingly-addictive Tony Roma's Ribwiches, Alpenrose milk, Dannon Yogurt, Lunchables - still the best bang for your lunch buck after all these years - and Chef's Salads composed of ten pounds of lettuce, an ounce of shredded grade D ham, and a highly-questionable egg), the Unpleasantly Gurgling Hot Liquid Urinator (dispensing "coffee", "tea", "mocha", and "French Vanilla Hazelnut Latte" with equal gusto. Although I will admit to a fondness for the General International English Toffee hot drink. Also, it serves the stuff up in poker cups, which I sip from in the vain hope that I'll get a royal flush and turn around and meet the T-1000 so I can die as I lived - quivering on the end of an eyespike), the Money-Stealing Corkscrew Bag Dropper (with a number of Frito-Lays products available as well as some excellent off-brands; my two favorites are Keller's Rye Chips and Tim's Hawaiian Sweet Onion Potato Chips in their distinctive lavender bag - and cookies, like Mocha Java Chip. This machine's selection is almost good enough to escape the pall of evil that hangs over the Vending Machine Area, if it hadn't eaten a score of my dollars), the Ice Cream Vacuu-sucker (I love that little guy. The cooler lid flips open and this big vacuum hose snakes down and snorks up the Good Humor or Ben and Jerry's selection of your choice. Pure genius. If it had clockwork wheels and a pendulum weight, it'd be Rube Goldberg's ice cream truck), the Way Too Brightly Lit Juice Machine (this fucking thing takes more money than the chip 'borg, and who the hell can pay $1.25 for grape juice? Honestly!), and the Requisite Corporate-Cola Machine (I got sick of Coke REAL fast working here.)
Let's close on a high note.
I've left my mark on this office that I'll be leaving ever-so-soon.
There came an initiative sometime last year to change the team naming system. Once we were all sorted into teams organized by our manager's last names. Team McNair, Team Devera, Team Scott, et cetera, et cetera ... and the Big Bosses took it upon themselves to liven the office up by letting us rename our own teams.
Through a carefully-organized Machiavellian bout of social engineering, I somehow managed to make 12 completely disparate and largely mundane people agree to let themselves be known as "The Laughing Ninja Squid Squad". We've got a logo. I'll show it to you sometime.
That name attracted a lot of attention, and has become one of the hallmarks of eccentricity here at the office - yes, I know that's sad. Shut up.
Anyway, as time went on, we got a new manager, and decided we needed a new name. Hence, Squid Squad II: - the logo designed by one of our team graphic artists, and the colon serving as an invitation to create an original subtitle. We each take it in turn to come up with something entertaining, and we do our own illustrations. This shot was taken as we were in the course of designing the logo for "The Wrath of the Search for Squids". The lazergun was added by one of my fellow WoW-players on the team. Because there's this running joke on multiple servers with a guild called "ZOMGLAZERSPEWPEW!". This has in turn spawned spin-offs such as "ZOMGKITTENZMEWMEW!" and "ZOMGTAURENZMOOMOO!" Hilarious.
Other subtitles we've enjoyed have included "Stray Dogs", "Still Oozing", and "Return of the Chainsaw Hamsters".
... and then I go home, but I was tired of taking pictures by then. Maybe later I'll show you the weird Druidic altar next to the pizzeria at Goose Hollow or the strange crowd that hangs out outside Delicious Donuts. And the Secret House. Although most of the pictures of that esteemed establishment will be taken in the midst of moving on out of it.
Things change. And regardless of what those French pricks say, they don't stay the same.
There's so many fine places I could start back in, but I figured the best way to go about my surprise return (with music blaring to a huge pop, running down the aisle to make the save in the main event schmozz) would be to pretend that I hadn't really missed anything - and seriously, who really cares about April? I'm told it's the cruellest month - and just continue along as if I'd been posting about interesting topics this whole time.
Look, it's not MY fault you missed my incisive review of V for Vendetta or my stark and thought-provoking musings on Thomas Dolby's show at the Aladdin and my political commentaries and thoughts on the weather. Maybe you should be checking here more often. Maybe YOU'RE the one who hasn't written anything for five weeks.
Maybe you should shut up. How about that? How 'dat be?
Anyway. None of you have asked about where I work or what I do every day, so let me fill you in on the mind-numbing minutiae ...
WITH PICTURES!
That's right, mortals! WHEEL HAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECHNOLOGY AT HIS DISPOSAL NOW!
The much-coveted Vivicam 3301 is mine to command! MINE TO FLOURISH!
SO QUAKE WITH FEAR, YOU TINY FOOLS!
... ahem.
Anyway, it's a pretty decent little snapbox for the 20 bucks I spent on it. And I figured a nice way to use it might be to make an incredibly boring photodocumentary of the incredibly boring things I do when I go to my incredibly boring workplace. But some of the pictures are deceptively pretty. So ... well, just take a look.
This is my lair. It's where I ... hang out.
Okay, first you'll note that the quality of my camera is not so great, but bear in mind that thing is the size of a fookin' matchbook.
Looking past the streaking photoartifacture, you can see the pallet on which I make my royal bed; a combination of a very nice mattress from Value Village out on 82nd, a futon pad courtesy of pseudomammal, and about 40 sheets and blankets, as well as my requisite mound of pillows. Up above my bed is St. Jimi, wailing his paeans to all that is rocking. There's a stethoscope I boosted from a hospital so I can pose as a doctor and score med students or crack safes. The bright blaze is the loyal gooseneck lamp I snagged off the Free Table four years ago that has served me well ever since then. You can just make out a giant El Indio thermal mug cadged from vruba. There's the collected Sherlock Holmes next to the Alpenrose Dairy milkbox I use as a nighstand, and my Johnny Walker tote bag. Front right you can see the unwinking red eye of the tiny but mighty space heater I am constantly adjusting in my continuing efforts to stay toasty without being roasted like an herbed chicken.
Up on the left you can make out my shadowy Pop Altar. Strange things happen there.
That piece of paper on the wall is an old scrap from work that had a number I sometimes needed to call on it. That number is now defunct. I have no idea why it's still up, and I didn't really notice until just now.
The curiously noir little corner where I wait for the bus four mornings a week, blear-eyed and half-mad from lack of sleep. Spring is setting in, so now even in the ungodly early hours in which I stomp the half-frozen concrete jungle, the sky is dappled with blue insinuations of the day to come. You can see the bright steel of the TriMet bus sign and the neat geometry and urban pragmatism of the bus shelter, all lit gently by the soft yellow from the window.
The road there is Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., formerly Union Avenue, brother to a thousand streets just like it all across America as the street you go if you want to get crack, a cheap knife, shot in the face, or excellent barbeque (in this case, you can almost see the lights of Chef D's, a few blocks down on the left).
Lower right frame, you can see a cameo appearance by the Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Seen, star of American Beauty and Not Another Teen Movie.
This is the view I have of SPM, a company that apparently exclusively produces hand-ground ratchets. While I wait for the bus I can see waist-high machines that are nothing more than mad tangles of hydraulic hoses and turning wheels and strange humming belts, carefully grinding away the edges of gleaming ratchet heads to the specifications of some unknown benefactor.
You can see rack after rack of them. And I can watch the slow shuffling grace of the old man in the SPM cap, smoking his pre-dawn cigarette in that gritty two-knuckle way that seems endemic to blue-collar men of advanced age, moving between the strange gray-green cabinet he sits next to and the coffee machine to the right of the window.
I might not like where I work, but I'm glad I don't work there.
The chariot of the people. Limousine of the proletariat. Your tax dollars at work. The Hobo Hotel.
The number 6, ladies and gentlemen, running every 15 minutes from Vancouver, Washington to Goose Hollow at the southwest end of downtown Portland. A mere two blocks from the Secret House, runnning until almost 2 in the morning and covering the length and breadth of the city as it does, we find ourselves riding the 6 quite frequently. On the way to work, I take it down to the Doc Holliday MAX station. Even at such a very unpleasant waking hour as mine, the 6 is usually full. Blue-collars and telereps heading in for first shift, people on the start of a long commute to Gresham or Troutdale or Tigard, party victims returning from a long and soul-draining night of revelry, last-shift whores finally getting a chance to get off their platform heels, brunch cooks headed for the downtown hotels, clowns and transvestites and goldfish fanciers and milkmen and jackhammer jockeys.
I usually sit near the front so I can sag comfortably against the map rack and drowse over my book.
The Rose Quarter transit center and MAX stop. The MAX, naturally enough, is the award-winning light rail that runs Portlanders from the far eastern marches of Gresham to the western wilderness of Hillsboro, from the archaic Expo Center left over from the World's Fair to the sprawling PDX Airport. The MAX runs constantly and swiftly and hardly ever breaks down and manages to work around the protest marches, parades, and international incidents that are always making traffic in downtown Portland so colorful. Aside from the lingering odor of stale bodies and the occasional slavering Aryan madman, I really enjoy it.
The Rose Quarter stop here is one of the transit hubs on the east side of the Willamette River. You children of the Revolution were probably last exposed to the Rose Quarter during the justly-famed Green Day Commentary. Lots of good shows go and in out of the Rose Quarter, a sprawling entertainment complex built on the beloved '70s Huge Fucking Arena model of venue. The friggin' STONES were there, man. The STONES.
The Trailblazers also play there, which I have mixed feelings about - it's nice that there's a home team so I know who I'm obligated to root for if I happen to be drawn into a conversation about basketball before I have time to fumble the smoke bombs out of my utility belt, but MAN, does that pack the train on game nights. I'm just trying to ride home so I can collapse into my computer chair and die in peace and comfort, but instead I'm wedged up against the window like a sardine on a Tokyo subway by a horde of people in black and red and silver all talking excitedly about the very tall men they are going to sit and watch throw a rubber ball around for anywhere between $40 and $250.
Also, it's insane trying to walk AROUND the Rose Quarter. The pedestrian interchanges were apparently laid about by an artificial intelligence designed on vacuum tubes by the Nazis that has since gone quite mad.
Portlandia has many nicknames; the Rose City (because of all the friggin' roses that grow here like insane, fragrant mutants), Stumptown (a lovely moniker left over from our days as a logging town, when Portland was an island of bustling buildings and robber baron mansions in the midst of a vast sea of the stumps of hewn-down firs), and, d'accord, Bridgetown. 12 famous bridges hath the city; the Interstate and the Glenn Jackson across the gorgeous Columbia River, and the Sellwood, Ross Island, Marquam, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway, Fremont and St. John's bridges across the mighty Willamette. This is from the scenic Steel Bridge, where the MAX rumbles across the river. We're looking to the north - that's the low-slung iron growl of the Broadway Bridge in the foreground and the long, obscenely graceful arch of the Fremont Bridge just past it.
You can see the trailing head of the West Hills and the slow-burning glowfog that comes with a Portland morning. Down front is an enormous freighter next to the huge grain silos that sit right next to the river. Some interesting ships pull in there; my favorite was the Chinese-registered Pan Majesty.
These bridges might be my favorite part of the Portlandia Experience. Whether walking in the eerie blue-white wash of their blazing lights at night with the shadows of their strange steampunk superstructures thrown into strange relief or with your head bent against the sharp rush of ice-crackling wind from the vastness of the north, grinning at the savage wet snarl of the river with windtears leaking from your eyes or strolling in the sunlight and watching sea lions and Canadian geese dive and play on the water's glittering roil, each bridge is worth the crossing. Good times.
I really like everything that's happening in this picture.
This is from one of the comfy handicapable seats on the MAX, shot out the window when I felt the need to try to grab a shot of the lovely downtown Portland streetlights, which are done on a recidivist gaslight design that fits in nicely with the city. I also managed to get a bit of the sunrise over that parking garage, the reflection of a gentleman enjoying the last of his gourmet coffee-flavored beverage, and a counter-reflection of the streetlights in the windows of that building across from the Galleria, where this was taken.
She's a beautiful city. I'll miss her.
I'm going to wait a bit to tell you who plays here.
This is PGE Park. It's a baseball stadium located in the center of the city, set below the level of the sidewalk. A cheap conjuring trick, perhaps, but one of my favorites. You're walking along the sidewalk on the western edge of the downtown metroplex, just passing the Neapolitan pasta bar and the apartment building with the weird purple trim and the gargoyles, and suddenly you come across the trailing edge of a tall black iron fence with a wide sidewalk beyond that quickly drops off into a friggin' baseball field, stuck in the center of the city like a top hat in toffee. It's magnificent in its silliness. No high walls and huge light arrays like we've come to expect, no ancient Green Monster in the center of a webwork of misdirected streets, nor decaying stone edifice soaked in pinstriped blood ... just a park buried in the ground named for a publically-owned former Enron subsidiary.
The bleachers create an interesting space; consider the popcorn littered shadownest that you can find under a conventional set of stadium seats, soaked with stale beer and the sweat of crumpled dreams and the dusty gloss of expended exuberance. Now imagine such a space as tucked belowground, below the level of the sidewalk and opening onto the 200-year old drains that run below the city, and the shades of games long past take on Lovecraftian proportions.
You know what they have down there?
Feral cats. HUNDREDS of them.
You can see them poke their little faces up between the stanchions of the lower seats to snag juicier tidbits, and hear them yowling and writhing down below, a continuing antiphonic harmony to the crack of the bat and the blare of the always-amusing "Charge!" horns. And they race them.
No, seriously. The Feral Cat Races - a beloved Portland tradition, right up there with drag theatre, the abduction of sailors, and girls with two-tone pigtails.
... incidentally, the home team is called the Beavers.
GO BEAVERS!
Enough of my musings; this is a day in the life, slice of the pie, photodocuwebumentary sort of thing. This is the MAX sign for the Sunset Transit Center, another nifty little belowground station. This one is open to the sky, and I really like the glass elevators on either side. This is the first station west of Washington Park, a stop that the_crowchan heard way too much about when she visited Portland; that one's below an entire mountain (on top of which is an excellent zoo), making it the subterraneanest rail station in the world.
I would've taken a shot of the Aboriginal animal mural and mountain core sample at the Washington Park station, but I was snoozing then.
Orenco St./231st Avenue MAX. This is the stop where I disembark to catch the white shuttle van that takes me over to the Convergys office park, except on Saturdays when I walk the scenic miles past the vast Intel campus and manufacturing facility.
The TriMet people made every effort to apply a series of uniquely artistic touches to each MAX station - one of my personal favorites is the stop at Millikan Way, where you can find bronze placards of Oregon bird song sonographs in the sidewalk. Orenco has a tree theme - the frosted panes you can just make out on the left actually have laser-etched photographs from the Oregon State Nursery in the glass; there's also a memorial oak grove to the left and the sidewalk connecting the station to 231st Avenue is set with a bronze chart demonstrating how tree grafting works. The benches are built out of driftwood river branches and there's a "roots of the city" weathervane on the utility shed.
It's a decent station; I've become extremely familiar with the artistic flourishes as documented on the station marquette, waiting for trains.
The Den.
Well, there's my industrial grey acoustic fabric covering my half-height quarterbicle walls. There's my desk number - 437. 4 and 3 makes 7, and 7 makes 14, and 1 and 4 makes 5. Well, Hail Eris. There's my phone and bitch-ass little headset with the padded microphone bulb. A document stacker thing I stole from someone who was fired so I'd have a place to leave all the papers I'm handed over the course of the day. My polycarbonate water bottle, holding precisely 1 liter. I drink 2 or 3 of those a day.
You can also make out my business card pinned over the sarcastic attaboy certificate made out by my manager Bill, the most entertaining drunk I've been around since I lived with Heph. There's the GM Official Emergency Procedures Ring Binder with the colored tabs ("Earthquake" is in yellow. "Terrorist or Hostage Situation" in brown.) and my time zones map, so I can remember whether it's 7:00 PM or 6:00 PM in Flagstaff. Enough of the dull stuff; I know you're curious about my toys. It's okay. Let's take a look:
Up top we've got Admiral Akbar riding the enormous Cheshire Cat. That way if it turns out to be a trap, the Cat can get him out of it with that eerie grin of his. Fish-eyed martial valor tempered caution and pink-striped smug chaos. Two great tastes that go great together. To the Cat's left you can sort of make out the arched green of Murray the Mantis, my praying mantis bendy/bracelet, standing tall over the LE Captain Mako Heroclix, a rare figure available only with the City of Villains game. To the Cat's right we've got the Super Friends Green Lantern figure, with Ring Punch action that still SORT of works if you squeeze gently. I'm just glad it's not that pussy Kyle Rayner.
Down at the base of the stack of GM magazines I use to prop my monitor are some more toys, a bit harder to make out. There's the red Camaro driven by an ankylosaurus and the yellow rescue Humvee piloted by a velociraptor, my black and white and gray ninja triad, the Unicorn playset d_mcetiquette got me for my Christhday (currently spearing a hapless mime), and of course Frosty Klaws, the snowman with the gleaming retractable claws made from pushpins.
I spend most of my time here cruising forums and viral videos on that self-same monitor in between writing curt replies to requests for reimbursement and filling out recall fulfillment forms and taking calls from the sort of ill-bred lunatic who has already received too much press time here at Wheel Industries.
I'm torn about this picture.
On the one hand, it's great because it illustrates the kindergarten fantasy embraced by corporate HR 'droids; they want everyone quiet and studious, head down at the desk, coloring inside the lines, rewarded with bright stickers and the occasional cookie. They want no one to question the teacher. They want everyone to have attainable goals and strive to get their names on the board. They want you to sit down and shut up. They want you to do as you're told. It's lunacy and abasement and the despair of the human condition that is illustrated with perfect black irony by the idiot grins of the smiling moronicons.
On the other hand, I got three fucking smiley faces.
Lunchtime!
Feed the machine, and the machine feeds you.
From left to right, we've got the Rotating Carousel of Intestinal Torment (serving up generic-brand Chicken Salad Sandwiches, disturbingly-addictive Tony Roma's Ribwiches, Alpenrose milk, Dannon Yogurt, Lunchables - still the best bang for your lunch buck after all these years - and Chef's Salads composed of ten pounds of lettuce, an ounce of shredded grade D ham, and a highly-questionable egg), the Unpleasantly Gurgling Hot Liquid Urinator (dispensing "coffee", "tea", "mocha", and "French Vanilla Hazelnut Latte" with equal gusto. Although I will admit to a fondness for the General International English Toffee hot drink. Also, it serves the stuff up in poker cups, which I sip from in the vain hope that I'll get a royal flush and turn around and meet the T-1000 so I can die as I lived - quivering on the end of an eyespike), the Money-Stealing Corkscrew Bag Dropper (with a number of Frito-Lays products available as well as some excellent off-brands; my two favorites are Keller's Rye Chips and Tim's Hawaiian Sweet Onion Potato Chips in their distinctive lavender bag - and cookies, like Mocha Java Chip. This machine's selection is almost good enough to escape the pall of evil that hangs over the Vending Machine Area, if it hadn't eaten a score of my dollars), the Ice Cream Vacuu-sucker (I love that little guy. The cooler lid flips open and this big vacuum hose snakes down and snorks up the Good Humor or Ben and Jerry's selection of your choice. Pure genius. If it had clockwork wheels and a pendulum weight, it'd be Rube Goldberg's ice cream truck), the Way Too Brightly Lit Juice Machine (this fucking thing takes more money than the chip 'borg, and who the hell can pay $1.25 for grape juice? Honestly!), and the Requisite Corporate-Cola Machine (I got sick of Coke REAL fast working here.)
Let's close on a high note.
I've left my mark on this office that I'll be leaving ever-so-soon.
There came an initiative sometime last year to change the team naming system. Once we were all sorted into teams organized by our manager's last names. Team McNair, Team Devera, Team Scott, et cetera, et cetera ... and the Big Bosses took it upon themselves to liven the office up by letting us rename our own teams.
Through a carefully-organized Machiavellian bout of social engineering, I somehow managed to make 12 completely disparate and largely mundane people agree to let themselves be known as "The Laughing Ninja Squid Squad". We've got a logo. I'll show it to you sometime.
That name attracted a lot of attention, and has become one of the hallmarks of eccentricity here at the office - yes, I know that's sad. Shut up.
Anyway, as time went on, we got a new manager, and decided we needed a new name. Hence, Squid Squad II: - the logo designed by one of our team graphic artists, and the colon serving as an invitation to create an original subtitle. We each take it in turn to come up with something entertaining, and we do our own illustrations. This shot was taken as we were in the course of designing the logo for "The Wrath of the Search for Squids". The lazergun was added by one of my fellow WoW-players on the team. Because there's this running joke on multiple servers with a guild called "ZOMGLAZERSPEWPEW!". This has in turn spawned spin-offs such as "ZOMGKITTENZMEWMEW!" and "ZOMGTAURENZMOOMOO!" Hilarious.
Other subtitles we've enjoyed have included "Stray Dogs", "Still Oozing", and "Return of the Chainsaw Hamsters".
... and then I go home, but I was tired of taking pictures by then. Maybe later I'll show you the weird Druidic altar next to the pizzeria at Goose Hollow or the strange crowd that hangs out outside Delicious Donuts. And the Secret House. Although most of the pictures of that esteemed establishment will be taken in the midst of moving on out of it.
Things change. And regardless of what those French pricks say, they don't stay the same.