Clint Shaw PHD

At work they often have vendor shows. These vendors are the type that sell stuff like $100,000 microscopes or cancer curing computers. I know nothing of the wares that they sell nor do I care to know, but they do offer a refreshment table and free lunches. One thing I and any self respecting human can scarcely resist is a free meal.

So when these vendors roll up at lunch time with their sign in table, I become a totally different person. No longer am I, Clint, Professional Support Specialist, I am, Clint, PHD in Microbiology, a part of the Kenneth Douglas lab, located on floor 3M of the Weintraub building. I scribble my info on the bright green cards, careful to not make anything too legible. I toss my card into the pile face down, smile at the lunchtime gatekeeper. I grab a clear plastic bag and am finally ready for corporate trick or treating.

Each vendor has at the very minimum some type of candy or branded pen but if you're lucky you'll get a LED lit bouncy ball or clip magnet. I have bags full trinkets and trash underneath my desk.

Now when you're walking into a seemingly intimidating environment such as this, you have to stick to certain protocols or else you run the risk of exposure.

1. Don't make eye contact for too long. You need to let them know that you know that they know that you're there but, you don't want to let them smell your fear. That's when they'll attack.

2. If attacked, ask intelligently sounding questions about their products.
Them: "Oh, hello. Are you interested in an XYZ product for your lab?"
Me: "Maybe but where do you see this technology going in the next 5 years?"
Doesn't matter what they answer just smile at them, nod and carry on to the next booth.
Saying that you've already got a similar product on order also works well.

3. Keep your feet moving and don't linger too long. Lingering means interest and the only thing I'm interested are those halved muffins & bagels, tiny .5oz containers of cream cheese, and razor thin cantaloupe slices on the center table.

I always do a full circle around the room before jumping into the food line. I think I try to do this out of respect, but I'm also a hypocrite because you don't respect someone you just lied to. After collecting my food I sometimes have a second go around, as to say, "I am really excited about these products and maybe I am going to write up a grant to the government just so I can put one of those thingys in my lab!" Then I jump back in line for a second helping.

Don't get me wrong this is a dubious and even shameful act, but when I'm drinking an ice cold fun sized cranberry juice I am reminded that shame is just pride's less attractive sister.

So I'm on the toilet at work writing a blog

I'm not normal. Not to weird either.
Comparatively speaking, I try not adhere to social norms or do what's expected in any given situation.

I constantly bring up inappropriate things, not usually in mixed company, but sometimes. Like at my birthday when I was talking about those bummy folks that walked underneath I-5 to run a train on the woman who followed them back there.

However, there are some places that are sacred. The Men's public restrooms being one them.
You don't make eye contact with anyone in there, and you certainly don't talk to them unless certain that you know the only other person in the room.

This "gentleman" in the stall next to mine was making that ever so soft shushushshush repetitive noise. This has been going on at varying speeds for the past couple minutes.

As I see it there are three options:
1. jacking off
2. rubbing blood/another bio-hazardous material out of his clothing
3. wiping poo physically back into his butthole.

Right now I'm hearing someone come into the restroom from my stall and I need to leave so that I'm not confused as to being the one who is masturbating.

I'm going to give him the, "WTF is going on in there?" look on my way out, but not talk...never talk.

Hang on, I forgot my black face in the car.

Working at Fred Meyer granted me the distinguished pleasure of observing and in rare cases interacting with some strange human beings. I say rare because after they were on my crazy radar I would just walk the other way when I spotted them. Most of these people would be in the store every night, often for three or more hours at a time. These people weren't homeless in the stinky or dirty sense but they didn't really appear as if they had any place they called home, except the Lake City Fred Meyer.

There was an middle aged, over weight woman that would sit in the display furniture for five plus hours, reading the first 30 pages of about 50 books she had taken off the shelves. I often wonder why the hell she didn't just poach at the library?

There was a blind disabled gentleman that would buzz around in his wheel chair asking me to read the instructional information off products and bend steel bars on his chair to secure his grocery bags. Never nice about it, he always made you feel like you were his servant.

Like moths to a flame these ilk are drawn to the wobbly clearance racks. A 50% off, hot pink, panther pattered, bean bag chair would look perfect plopped in front of your television and at $6.15 who could resist!?

On this particular day, a regular crazy was sifting through the various wares strewn about the rack. This woman always fooled me because from the back she always looked normal, albeit attractive.

I asked her, "Are you finding everything okay today?"

She turned around and I immediately realized that I had done. Those ugly sunglasses and the crazy caked make-up; I knew I had to get out of there and fast.

She picked up a lime green wash cloth and unfolded it.
"Are these 100% cotton?" She asked while stretching out the tag like it was some the embroidered text was going to grow three font sizes larger.

"I don't know," I said as I quickly thought of a plan to escape.

"Well if they are, this is a great deal! Didn't you hear? The cotton fields are burning to the ground," she declared.

Now when she said this, I was intrigued. Was this somehow true or was she just talking crazier than her poorly stenciled eyebrows? I decided the later made more sense and I smiled to myself saying, "I hadn't heard that. Will you excuse me?" With that I slinked off out her line of sight.

Her comment of the cotton fields burning humorously resonated with me though as if she was comparing cotton to a precious metal that was no longer found in the soil.

I had to share this with a co-worker.

So I was sorting through the return carts when my manager walked up and smiled at me. Without hesitation I looked her straight in the eye and with that 'I am sorry but your son has cancer' tone said, "Did you hear? The cotton fields are burning." As the -ing came out of my mouth I realized exactly what I had done.

"What?!" she said.

"Oh, no...I'm sorry I didn't mean to.."

"You can't say things like that to black people," she smiled at me. Obviously seeing how uncomfortable I became after I had realized what I'd done.

So if you didn't know, I'm a terrible person and a racist.
You've been warned.

Attached is My CV for Your Sexual Consideration or My One Week Affair with Online Dating

I'm rarely optimistic, but for some reason when I created my Okcupid.com(OKC) account I thought, "Hey this might actually work out in my favor. Hell, I know and have met couples that have actually gotten married after initially meeting online."

So I crafted a profile. Careful not to leave out some key elements like my enjoyment of video games. I know this can be the Kryptonite for some girls but I'm not interested in compromising with some girl over hobbies if she's going to be intolerant of mine. I waved my freak flag proudly, I wasn't interested in just getting laid.

I searched through the matches that OKC gave me, looking for that perfectly realistic mate. After a little poking around I found someone; a seemingly unpretentious, normal, educated, cute girl.

From this point I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I was going to actually send her a message. Afraid of rejection certainly, but also apprehensive that this might not be for me. The awkward interaction via text, and, god willing, an even more awkward meeting in person.

I wrote her a message. The message was of medium length, proofread, contained a sort of check list of things that we had in-common and the golden question: "Will you go out on a date with me?"
Coffee, Lunch, Dinner; I left what kind of date up in air and in her court. I hovered for an extended moment over the send button and pressed down on my left mouse button.

I then waited.

I saw that she logged in and out without responding. This frustrated me as we were obviously a good match. The compatibility questions that we had both answered were almost identical, she and I had more than one similar interest. What gives?

In a quest to find answers I stumbled upon "guides" on how to make a profile as well as etiquette sending messages and requesting dates. One of which clearly stated in bold letters, "Don't ask them to meet in person until the third message!" This is not what I did. I assumed that people were on dating sites because they wanted physical dates, not just a forum to message ePeople back and forth like an extension of facebook with more anonymity. These guide writers suggested using the "shotgun approach" when messaging girls, sending messages to as many as possible so that you have many dating options. That's all well and good if you aren't picky or don't really care about a potential long-term relationship but for my purposes it seemed a little trite.

It was obvious that meeting girls online was exactly like looking for jobs online, and looking for jobs online is probably one of the last things I want to spend my time doing next to getting my nuts tapped repeatedly with a melon baller.
Very few people actually care about the you the applicant, it's all about how you present your CV or in the case of OKC, ePersona and how non-creepy or hipsterly clever you are in your profile.

I'm not gonna play that game. I'm a nice, considerate, moderately attractive dude with a retractable beard. I don't need to play that game. What I need is to find some similarly positioned female(minus the beard) that will not play that game with me.

FML.

Kick-Ass

Charlie and I went and saw Kick-Ass last night, directed by Michael Vaughn of Layer Cake fame, a film I did see and thought was an okay snatch wannabe since he was also a producer on Snatch. I was slightly apprehensive about this film but when I did some research and found out it was an actual comic written by Mark Millar, and seeing it's ~76% on Rottentomatoes.com my apprehensions were put to ease.

While sitting in the theater, I fully enjoyed the experience a side from some hokey parts. After leaving and digesting it was more apparent that the film had a major identity crisis. I'll write a math equation for you to follow my point:

Spider-Man + Ultra violent R rating + American Pie + (Dark Knight x Satire) = Kick-Ass.

I could of done without the Teen comedy shit that is so fucked out. There also was glimmers of reality tied in with over the top action and plot. Which in the end worked well and I was never not engaged with the world Vaughn/Millar had created. I just could of done without the "awkward" sex jokes via the high schoolers.

People like Roger Ebert have given this movie a very poor rating due to the ?exploititive? nature of "Hit Girl" the 11 year old bad ass that rentlessly kills bad guys and says words like, "cunt, and cock." To those tightwads I say, Chill the fuck out. Spend your time worrying about things that actually effect well being of young people instead of harping on FICTION that you have the choice not to review or even better poorly review based not on the quality of the movie but from one single objectional part, american soceity is not going to be degraded based on a little girl saying words that you think she shouldn't be saying. But Ebert has been quoted many times in saying that Video Games aren't art, which is laughable and has done nothing but degraded my opinion of his jawless ass.

Movie was good, not great. But I had a good time.

Best line in the movie: "Wow, that was a strange sounding Bazooka!"

6.5/10

Be Kind Rewind

It bothers me when a movie's goal is to be 'cute'. Shooting for your final product to be hilarious, touching, or meaningful makes sense. You want to make a picture that either makes a profit or one that is a culturally important piece of art, if not now, down the road.

"Be Kind Rewind" attempts to be cute and the only reason it comes close is because it has the help of some big name actors. Jack Black does his damndest at what he does best being ridiculous and for the most part he does an okay job. Mos Def, who I have little to no connection to, does an okay job at playing an emotionally impotent straight man. Danny Glover does a good job whisper acting as an old shop keep trying to save his business. And even Sigourney Weaver of Alien fame makes a brief appearance and while mildly distracting doesn't do a bad job at playing a disgruntled movie executive. I like Jack Black, I think he's funny. Is he less funny in this role than any other given role? No. You put all these good actors in one film you can't have a total piece of crap right? No you can't but that is the exact reason why extra critical.

Dawned with the label: a Michel Gondry Film just above the title on the DVD case makes me think I should know who this joker is but I don't. Upon further research he directed Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, a truely touching film, but without the backing of the great Charlie Kaufman writing his script, "Be Kind Rewind" falls flat.

This came as much as a disappointment to me as it was a surprise. This film meanders so much and makes you suspend your disbelief to the point of skepticism. Maybe it's because I know how hard it is to make a film, even a shitty one with no production value. Or maybe it's because there are like half a dozen different plot changing conflicts in the 102 minute film. Not once did I care about their building getting demolished or whether or not their films were getting repoed in a cartoony manner. Did I mention that this film also had probably the worse conclusion of any fiction I've seen or read, video games included? Cause it did. It made me think, "Wait which plot points are we resolving here? Not the main one? Wait, we're just confirming whats already been confirmed 30 minutes into the movie, which is that people like their shitty movies?!"

Without carrying this on for too long, this film tries for cute and ends up being a regrettably stupid movie. I'm glad Charlie's the one that blindly bought it at Best Buy for 3.99.

3/10

Junebug

I've been pretty busy(shockingly) as of late. I've stumbled into this semi-lucrative flash website design gig, something that I would never of thought I'd be doing, and it's taken its toll on my patience on more than one occasion. But the good news is once I get it down it should be easy income with minimal hours and I can do it from anywhere as long as my partner in crime keeps them clients lined up.

Last night, although 30 minutes into Zardoz starring the great Sean Connery, I chose to start another movie that I got via Netflix called Junebug. This one intrigued me because it was about a fish out of water of sorts coming to meet her husband's Southern Family. And me being in sort of that position when I lived in Georgia decided it would be interesting to watch if for nothing else to see how closely it represented real people.

While not an exaggeration of southern culture, it had hints of stereotypes but, at no point was it mocking or misrepresenting anything and for that I am grateful. Some of the character arcs were a little too subtle, the brother's especially. The whole movie he's silent and angry except at the end when he tells his wife that he wants to try and have another baby out of the blue.

I don't feel like I really got to know these people other than the main character who was the least interesting of them all. And that is a shame. None of the Family really broke from their mold. I'm not sure if it was due to poor directing, casting or writing but what you see in the first five minutes is what you get for the rest of the film for the most part.

I don't think it was a bad movie, maybe a little slow, and maybe a little too dramatic at times, if it wasn't for Amy Adams' character the whole movie might have worn on me. But as it stands there's not a bad taste in my mouth.
6/10