Something That Happened.

Sperm all over the place! In Taiwan yesterday a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, "showering cars and shops with blood and organs".

This event may seem rather juvenile to mention, and usually I'm not too interested in stuff like this--but sometimes you've just gotta pause and take a look at the strange, strange world we're living it. For example, what was a whale doing in the street, anyway? Was it trying to find a shortcut through Taipei on its annual transpacific trek? Was it on its way to the National Taipei University to take a class in English as a Second Language? Perhaps it was simply crossing the street to get a cup of Joe at Starbucks, intending to explode in the cafe to take revenge on the infamous coffee chain for its being named after the famous whale-killer of Herman Melville's classic, Moby Dick.

This event reminds me of a scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life. An extremely overweight man, weighing in at probably around 500 pounds, walks into a restaurant. Recognizing the man, fish--terrified--quickly hide behind rocks in the restaurant's fishtank. The man sits down at a table by himself and orders literally everything on the menu--"I'll have the lot", he proclaims--and proceeds to eat course after course of the restaurant's offerings. As he chews on turkey drumsticks and slobbers on several dishes, the man vomits in a bucket between bites. The bucket fills rapidly and the waiter replaces it with another, racing to keep up with the diner as another bucket is filled, and another, and another, as the man vomits all over the floor and eventually on the waiter as he is bent over to replace a bucket.

The scene is hilarious, believe it or not, and made funny only in the way that the men of Monty Python can. The scene culminates with the diner, done with his meal, accepting a "wafer-thin mint" from the waiter, who carefully places it on the man's tongue. The waiter then runs for cover, diving behind a some potted plants while the diner's indigestion steadily builds...

...exploding in a furious eruption of blood and guts which splatters all over the restaurant and its guests. The diner, still alive, sits there, a gaping whole in what remains of his torso, his heart--now exposed--beating steadily.

Disgusting, huh? But funny, oh so funny, in that strange way.

So the day went well. I was nervous, of course, but not as nervous as I expected to be. I'd taken a Xanax with me as a security blanket, but I found I didn't need it--the day went rather smoothly. I woke up without too much effort, had a good breakfast at a local diner, and strolled into the temp agency about 10 minutes early. The fact that I wasn't running into the office out of breath and sweating from rushing to make it on time probably kept me more relaxed than usual. I have a terrible habit of arriving late for everything. I don't know what it is with me; it's one of my worst qualities. It's that 800-pound gorrilla I just can't shake; it's my downfall. Future employers beware: I'm not your punctual employee. But when I do arrive, you can bet your ass I'll get the job done--and usually, more thoroughly than most of your other employees.

Thoroughly, however, is not always better for a company's immediate goals, and therein lay my other fault: I have a nasty habit of perfectionism that has a knack of getting in the way of flexibility (or prioritizing). For example, I'm that type of person who won't let go of a project until I've completely seen it through to perfection. Most of the time, I can't stand leaving something "well enough"--if I know I can make it better, I won't stop until I've seen it through. I'm relentless--if I was a programmer, I'd be Linus Torvalds, attempting to code perfect applications. If I was a musician, I'd be Trent Reznor, working solitarily for years to create only the fullest aural textures. Unfortunately, I'm neither, and until I find a way of balancing my innate attention to detail with most company's goals, I'll have a helluva time holding a job. This is one reason I'd be the ideal person to run his own business: I have vision, and I see it through.

The reality is, I need to make money somewhere before I'll ever have a chance of starting my own business. So I need to learn how to prioritize the bottom dollar for any company I work for, and leave my perfectionism at my own front door.

Man, am I in trouble.

So I haven't officially worked for a few months now. Sure, I've sold a few things on Amazon, and that's work, believe me, especially the way I do it. I treat every sale as a marketing opportunity for my Internet radio station, VoyagerRadio; when someone buys a CD from me, I package it up real professionally, inserting a personalized Thank You note on VoyagerRadio letterhead and a homemade, CDR complete with a compact version of my website. All this in the hopes of getting one or two people to tune in to my Internet radio broadcast to listen to my music (and sometimes, my voice).

Yet I haven't had a real job in awhile--I haven't seen the familiar print of a W2 form for at least 6 (more likely 8 to 10) months, which also means that I haven't temped in awhile, either. Today, however, I received an automated phone call from my local temp agency, apparently in an attempt to contact potentially available temps for upcoming assignments. I hadn't heard from this agency in about a year--hell, I haven't even temped for 2 years--so I was surprised to receive the call, and pleasantly surpised, at that: rent's due in a few days and I'm short. So I decided to take the plunge and give them a call.

Lo and behold, I got the assignment: riding around on my local university's bus system to evaluate the system's functionality. I'm supposed to survey students and determine whether the buses are overcrowded. Sounds like it could be fun. I'm serious! At least it'll get me off my ass for awhile. I suppose I won't be hosting VoyagerRadio live tomorrow, but I'll be sure to fill you in on the details during my next live webcast (or here).

I'm currently a Nielsen family, so I feel compelled to watch television. But I refuse to change my viewing habits--I won't watch more television this week than I normally do I won't go out of my way to watch programs I want the Nielsen ratings to register, such as Huell Howser's California's Gold or Fox's 24. The fact is, I don't watch any television shows with regularity--no weekly sitcoms, or dramas, or news magazines.

Still, there are shows I don't regularly watch that I want to succeed because I feel that they're good for television overall. Example: American Family on PBS. This show is the first dramatic series on broadcast television featuring a Latino cast, and although I've been told it's not absolutely representive of the experience of being a Latino family, my source also believes, as I do, that the show is important for Latinos and non-Latinos alike because it offers some representation of a significant group of Americans. If you disagree, then you must live in New Hampshire or something, whitey.

Let's kick start this thing again. I feel like I have so much more freedom with this blog--with Transmitting to Earth, my other blog, I'm still deciding whether or not to keep my commentary strictly professional or whether to include anything personal. Now that I've got a real web host for my Internet radio project VoyagerRadio and a new broadband stream, I feel the project has a new level of seriousness. I would like to attract more artists and record labels to the station, and I'm apprehensive about integrating a personal blog with website. So, until I decide, I'll continue to experiment here at Something That Happened.

My apologies for being absent from this space for so long--it's been turmoil as of late. Not in a bad way--although certainly not in the best of ways, either. Yet things have stabilized, more or less. We've all got our problems, right? You can't ever expect them to fully dissipate--you can just hope the waters will calm down every once in awhile. Right now the waters are relatively calm, although beneath the surface the sharks are still swimming.

So I'll renew my acquintance with Something That Happened by turning you on to a blog I rediscovered today, written by Anne Hefley, another Joe Frank admirer. The blog is called Anne...straight from the hip, and deserves to be well-read--mainly, because it's well-written. I had been going through my blogroll (a list of links to other blogs) to see which blogs I was still interested in linking to, and as I was about to delete Anne's link I began reading past the first few paragraphs of her most recent post. I found myself absorbed by her "stories"--her style was natural and felt honest, yet wasn't the juvenile fare you find on most blogsites. This journal read like a professional memoir--or at least, the makings of one. Anne is a fine writer and will probably make for an excellent novelist. Read for yourself.

This blog is a ghost town. Where once stood a thriving outpost, now stands an empty facade.

Perhaps one day some creative being will gallop into town and revive this place. There's life there yet. Until then, strap into your doom buggie and go for a ride somewhere where there's more action.