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guerilla bathroom decorating
Friday, November 17 2000
Guided by Voices Fans: did you ever notice the guitar shuffle throughout "Picture Me Big Time" (from their highly-produced big rock 1999 album Do the Collapse) is a sort of slow, dark parody of the sweet guitar arpeggio infusing Blimps Go 90 from the lofi 1995 album Alien Lanes? I guess it shouldn't matter much, since it's the same semi-obscure rock and roll band. But the interesting thing here is that though I like both songs, the thing I like about them is the passages of simple, contemplative guitar. The "big rock" moments are all well and good, so long as they don't get in the way.
At noon today there was a goodbye luncheon held for Laurie, the erstwhile DBA for the Community team. Laurie is friendly and outgoing in a way that makes it difficult for one to shoo her out of one's cubicle, so lots of people knew about it and felt compelled to show up. The lunch had been planned by Stan, an older Japanese developer who joined the Community team within days of its being dissolved. It took place at Stan's favorite restaurant, Hakata at Yale and Wilshire in eastern Santa Monica. Among those people making an appearance were both Linda and Julian (my erstwhile boss and her youthful boyfriend, who is now a project manager in the data systems group, which I will join once I extricate myself from the UK site). Julian now has a fake ID that looks like a genuine California driver's license, so it's doubtful he'll be staying behind next time Linda and I go out to a show together.
This morning I'd fully resumed my coffee-drinking ways and by lunchtime my nerves were all a'jangle. So, along with my sushi, I ordered a small bottle of sake. When others saw me drinking alcohol, of course they had to order some too. Such was another Friday goodbye luncheon in the dot com world.
At the end of the meal it fell upon Linda to calculate the splitting of the bill, and when one of the anonymous chicks in our entourage only offered to pay 70% of her even fraction of the total, Linda non-judgmentally complained, "That throws off my calculation!"
[REDACTED]
In the afternoon as I sat on the downstairs office crapper, my nerves all buzzing anew from another cup of coffee, I realized that I could make wild faces and offensive gesticulations at people urinating outside my stall without the slightest fear of consequences. The absolute privacy of the bathroom stall allows for this, but I'm sure that few people take advantage of their freedom in this manner. Interestingly, though, I noticed I could see from beneath the divider the little droplets of piss landing on the floor just outside my stall as the urinating gentleman made a sloppy job of it. I suddenly realized how easily I could be busted each time I casually flick my last few drop against the divider while someone is in the stall. I don't think I'm going to stop though. I take a certain pride in adding to the dried piss residue forming a thin crust on the stainless steel divider. It gets washed off every night, but by the end of the day it's rallied like a Terminator and must be washed again. For some reason I've pretty much stopped performing one of my other guerilla bathroom decoration rituals: the pubic hair harvest and sprinkle. I used to do that all the time to the urinals back at Collegeclub. People complained about it (especially Poorbob) but no one ever busted me.
In the evening John and I drank brandy and worked on our respective paintings. Mine has been languishing since August, but I think I made some progress tonight. Spike Lee's He Got Game was on the tube the whole time and I have to say it was one of the least impressive movies I've seen in awhile.
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