Re-Tardiness.

As many of you know, I’m often late. It’s a chronic condition commonly known as tardiness. Let’s take a look at the word a little more closely, because I think it is telling of whom I am or, at the very least, how I act sometimes.

According to Dictionary.com: [Alteration of Middle English tardive, slow, from Old French tardif, from Vulgar Latin *tard vus, from Latin tardus.]

Vulgar Latin? Gee. I wonder where the vulgarity comes in to play. It seems, Gentle Readers, that tardy is another word for retard. So, I am a retard because I am tardy more often than not.

I stumbled across this not-so-revelatory revelation last night as I was listening to music, staring at a blank Microsoft Word page, dismayed by my lack of creativity that my lead to generating some possible blog topics for the days ahead. Yeah, that’s right. I was trying to plan ahead.

Instead, I screamed inside and did not post to the blog after midnight, as I had planned. I thought to myself, “Great. Now I’m going to get some crappy, retarded thing up there tomorrow late in the day and no one will read it. I am always fucking late.” Two key words there, obviously: retarded and late. And then, in a neat bit of synthesis, my brain reorganized the statement and I repeated to myself, “I am fucking retarded.” Then I thought, “Wait. Tard. Tardy.” And, I have myself a nifty little post.

I can’t speak to the virtues of tardiness. Certainly, it is largely drawback. Timeliness, on the other hand, gives one the advantage of being the first to arrive, or simultaneous arrival with whomever you’re meeting/working with. Getting started on time is important when we work because, well, the business days has strictures, and one of those is time.

But creativity doesn’t have time boundaries. That’s one reason why time is this amorphous thing in my retarded head.

Oh, sure, it used to be very important to me that I was on time. Certainly, a bell schedule in high school helped matters quite a bit. Deadlines for essays and projects, too. Rehearsal schedules. You get the point. After college, though, all those timelines vanished and it was all me and all nothing. Writing doesn’t need a schedule, but it’s helpful to have one. But when I had nothing to do, there wasn’t a need for walls.

Suffice it to say, I know better than to be late. I have disappointed, upset, enraged, pissed off, driven to murderous rage many people close and not so close to me because of my often late habits.

In college, I dated a woman who lived two hours away. One Saturday, I was to drive up to see her and go to a local festival with her and her friends. I was an RA at the time, so, I was “On Duty” the night before (basically, making sure nobody got drunk, made noise and/or fell off the balcony). These nights typically required staying up till 1 or 2. In fact, our RA guidelines mandated we keep our doors open till at least midnight. I’m not an early riser, so, I shut my door at 11 and went to bed soon after.

But I still didn’t get up till later than planned and I got to my girlfriend and her friends two hours late. That’s right. Two hours.

I was 90 minutes late for my first date with my current girlfriend. Sure, I called ahead to amend the meet-up time, but I was still later than expected.

These are two supreme examples of my retardation. In both cases, the people expecting me were important. Yet my tardiness not only suggested that I was unreliable, but also that I viewed them as not that important.

In relationships, tardiness creates anxiety and resentment, which soon leads to anger, which soon leads to the Dark Side – err, arguments, anyway. Nothing groundbreaking about that statement, I realize, but it’s important to have it on a Google search in case some teenage boy whose father never bothered to teach him about respect for relationships comes across it. Or, better still, a tacit acknowledgement of my fuck-up-itude.

Tardiness for work is another matter altogether. In a lot of jobs, they’ll just fire your ass. I’ve been fortunate in that regard, as the majority of my jobs here in Los Angeles have had flexible work hours. Still, I recognize that coming in later than most of my co-workers sets an ugly precedent and suggests to Higher-Ups that perhaps I’m not as invested in my job and the organization as they’d like.

Would I show up earlier if I loved my job? Hard to say.

I do believe, however, that chronic tardiness represents a social retardation of sorts. If late people can’t arrive to congregate with other people in a timely fashion, maybe there’s something wrong with them. Maybe they’re socially retarded. Maybe I’m socially retarded.

Yuck. So many words and so little revealed. If I were a judge – or better yet, a teacher – I’d say that I spent a lot of time and used a lot of words stating my case to you, the public, the jury, etc. but that, ultimately, I didn’t make my case.

Tomorrow: A Smelly Hobby.

Holy Crap!

Holy Crap!

How long has it been since I’ve updated this thing?

...

27 DAYS?!?!?! Twenty. Seven. Days. What the frak? This is my 50th Post, and it should’ve happened WEEKS ago!

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why have I forsaken you, O Blog?
There’s a perfectly reasonable answer to all of these questions: malaise.

You see, there’s nothing churning in the old cranium. Oh, sure, my brain is regulating body functions and making decisions, but there’s been nothing significant crossing along the corpus callosum for a while now. And inspiration is the engine for my blogging.

Professional bloggers get up every morning and do it like it’s their job. I have never had that ability. Typically, whatever my job or primary focus is remains that way to the detriment of any secondary or tertiary matters. It’s why I’m a lackluster multi-tasker and all-around mediocre go-getter. My drive knows only one gear, and that’s whatever I’m doing at a particular moment. Somehow, writing has fallen off the priority list, or completely off my transmission, to continue the car/gear metaphor.

I like to post voluminously, but I’ve had nothing of late that I can fill up column space or bandwith with.

"Bandwith with." Nice.

Having said all that, I am finally starting to fall into a routine with my job and I’m beginning to dabble in my outside writing projects. This blog is finally going to get something new going up here.

So, here’s a promise to the half dozen of you who occasionally check to see what’s going on with the Murph: I’ll post every week day from now on.

The key to blogging, I’m told, is to write, write, write. If you update your page regularly, they will come. And, ultimately, I do want them (those out in the interwebs) to come a-lookin’ and see what’s cracka-lackin. So, from now on, every day. Even if it’s only 100 words.

...

This is gonna suck.

The Beard.

My beard is the longest it’s ever been. I am somewhere between House and a caveman. The reason for my lax grooming is simple: I’ve yet to buy a new razor. As most of you know, I am a lazy bastard.

It’s been an odd growth journey, though. I didn’t really seem to mind the hair for a while, but now the pointy stuff scratches my skin whenever I move any part of my face, particularly when I talk. Thankfully, I don’t have to talk at work. Ever.

I work for yet another internet company. I believe I have worked for every major internet company that serves the entertainment industry. This job, though, has a lot more perks: benefits, sick leave, and a salary – you know, a real job. And the kicker? I get to sit on my amply growing ass and watch TV all day.

Problem is, I don’t get to talk very much. Pretty much only whenever I have a question regarding the database. Beyond that, I sit in a dark office in front of a computer screen and a television screen for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. There is no sunlight. There is no God.

Okay, that last bit was overly dramatic, but I think there’s a corollary between my beard and this dark, forsaken place. Darkness breeds darkness. Silence breads insanity. This isn’t the first job where I’ve left at the end of the day feeling socially disconnected. It’s hard for me to want to talk once I get home. The lack of human contact for a lengthy day carries over to everything else. But, I do get to watch TV at work.

The beard ensures I will remain disconnected from people because it looks scary. It’s a well-known formula: Dark features + black beard = scary terrorist-looking dude.

*****

I just want to put this out there, so that all of you know where I stand on them: I hate the band Blue October. I hate them so very, very much.

I’ve searched my feelings on the subject and I’ve concluded that the singer’s voice is grating to me; it sounds like he’s trying to sound the way he does. Sure, every lead singer has an act to make his/her voice sound distinctive (Brandon Flowers of the Killers has to work overtime just to sound like a halfway decent singer) but this guy, whoever he is, sounds like a tool. Also, I don’t like the way their music is produced. Something with the audio mix. His voice sounds separated from the music, like he wasn’t actually in the studio while it was happening. The mix of voice and music just isn’t natural to me, and it drives me frakking nuts. In any case, I hate Blue October.

*****
The only Tears for Fears song I hear nowadays (particularly on the XM) is Head Over Heels. Thanks a lot, Donnie Darko. Your slightly unique but ridiculously over-hyped time-synched sequence done as a faux montage to this song to set up the mundane world that surrounds the detached “protagonist” (capably played by Jake Gyllenhall) has seduced “young,” “hip” program directors to play only this Tears for Fears song in order to appeal to the trendy/hipster youth demo you pray listen to your station(s). Guh.

I will confess relative ignorance about Tears for Fears’ catalogue, but I know they have one or two more popular hits besides Head Over Heels. Everybody Wants to Rule the World immediately comes to mind. Shout is another. Though I like that one less.

In any case, my beard is too long, Blue October sucks, Tears for Fears is a good band and the movie Borat will rock.