A Yearning for Glory in the Halls of Office Buildings

This is a time of year when nobody at my place of employment has any need of my services. I've got a whole department full of LCD projectors, DVD production, rolling wireless computers, DAT recorders, and Anything That Can Fit on a Cart -- On a Cart. And yet, my schedule is blank until January 3rd. As such, the boredom can get rather intense. I have already cleaned my work area twice, created a handful of PowerPoint templates, sketched out a blueprint for a homebrew high-definition media center PC, fixed the broken laser pointer, and got the office's new lightscribe DVD burner working. Beyond that, until the scheduled events start up again in January, I really haven't much to do. So I am seriously considering starting a Hallway Sports League.

I get this idea because I took second place in the peanut butter football league my floormates and I thought up freshman year, and I have been yearning for that level of glory, as well as rewards that don't involve being forced to clean peanut butter off of dorm hallway walls. So I've been tossing around a few ideas for Office Hallway Sports Leagues:

• Bagel Horseshoes
• Pen and Rubberband Archery
• Task Chair Equestrian Events
• Coffee Filterpack Hockey
• 3-team Basketball
• 5-team Basketball
• Every Man For Himself Basketball
• Tackle the I.T. Guy
• Kill the Man with the Paychecks
• Desk Gymnastics (vault, balance beam and floor excercise)
• Mayonnaise Football
• Stale Muffin Handball
• Hallway Slalom
• Christmas Tree Ornament Dodgeball
• Windex Fencing

I think I would fare well in any of the above. And the best part is that if my boss complains, I can just offer her a handicap. Personally, I think the only reason the assistant residence director complained about our peanut butter football league is that her team came in last. O, how I yearn for glory in the halls of... hallways. O, how I yearn.

Of Websites and Weblogs

Some of you may know that I have maintained a World Wide Web presence in one manner or another since December 15, 1996. My first shot at a website was simply black text on a white screen. I called it the "Lynx" or "Amish" version. All it contained was a list of made-up disclaimers called the Lawsuit-inspired Legal Fanfare Page. The page was meant to be funny, and was, for about three weeks. Still, it was my website. My official website. I decided to declare its officiality because there was an "officializing" craze at the time; people thought they would get more hits if they called their website "official," as in: "The Official Sony VCR Site" or "The Official Kermit the Frog Site" or "The Official Site of the Color Chartreuse." So calling my site the "Official Benjamin Rotskoff Homepage" was simply a joke that went on too long.

It went on for nine years, in fact. For two years it stayed in that format, a study in negative space. Then came The Official version 2.0, which was purple, and had lots of graphics, and was actually pretty well done for its day. After college, I published version 3.0 on December 1, 2000. It was, to quote a college roommate, "fun, professional, and grey." Yes, it was charcoal grey and had my personal logo and color coding and it went through numerous updates. But, on December 15 of this year, I elected to close The Official for good. Why, you ask? A number of reasons. First, after a while, I never had good reason to update it. This was a sad reflection of the way my life was going at that point in time. Second, I got downright sick of ad banners and guestbook spam. Oh GOD how I loathe guestbook spam. And third, it was just time to try something new. The Official had an amazing run, but now it's all about the weblog. The official weblog. :)

The Start of a Grand Adventure, or More Likely a Study in Slowness to Update

Yes, here it is. My very own weblog. I tried my best to stay above it all, out of the fray, away from the ultra-combustible hotheads that turn what was once intelligent debate into a quagmire of name-calling, not unlike what one would hear in a kindergarten sandbox. Or on cable.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts and analysis which people don't understand on subjects they don't care about. After all, that's why we read blogs, isn't it? We like to read a three-paragraph essay featuring college-honed analytical thinking and the insight of human experience and then respond to it by informing the author that he sucks.

What do I ask of my loyal reader(s), in exchange for providing them with unrequested opinions on uninteresting subject matter? Why, only civility and honesty, of course. The internet is no place for loud, obnoxious bullshit. That's what TV news is for. And so, here at the end of my third paragraph, I shall invite any and all to join the quest for greater knowledge of the world around us, and then sit back and listen to people tell me that I suck. Let us begin....

Of Azure Sea

The azure sea has never looked the same way twice for as long as the Earth has been cool, and yet it always seems familiar. Though the waters of the azure sea travel through clouds, rivers, lakes and streams, they always come back to where they began and are seen again. People are the same way and don't realize it. You change every day of your life, and yet there's always something, if even just one thing, familiar about you to those who have seen you before. The human race is an azure sea of another kind, and I hope we realize that before it's too late.