The unsolved riddle

Anyone reading this blog has long known that nothing too good comes out of this stinky pile of a city they call Wichita. Anything that I write having to do with this town, city, cesspool, whatever, is usually dripping negativity and pieces of an impending insanity. Not today. Today I highlight something positive being unearthed from the basement of Midwestern sensibility. Head over to AlCantHang and check out the song of the day from a local band, Nutsnack, called Mongolovely. Like Wichita, it is so very wrong, but it is also so very funny—which makes it oh so right. (Thanks for hosting, Al!)

********

Ironically, this story came to my attention while I was…..ummmm…well, click on the story, remember the word ironically, and then put two and two together. Or maybe it’s ironical, I forget--way too much Dubya on the news lately. There is nothing quite like this type of story to make a person feel better about their own shortcomings, which is also the reason I’m around. How ironical.

(/tongue in cheek)

********

While I do work in IT, it is only a section of the company that employs me (duh). I’m out working “in the field”, as they say, instead of being safely insulated by fellow nerds, warm cuddly servers, and the calming manta-like hum of various hardware fans. (Of course, doing well on this upcoming interview will remove me from “the field”, which is the reason I may have the aforementioned breakdown if I fail, but I digress) I have been in one kind of big business, corporate, soulless, idiotic environment or another for just over a decade now. The various fields traversed include popular choices like fast food (read: spat in a few burgers), telemarketing and collecting (are you a highly motivated self-starter?), languishing for a few years in sales (we know our product is crap and we just increased your sales targets, but you are our engine towards the future!), finally getting my head on straight and getting into a field that’s worth a damn. I know, I know, the world wouldn’t run without these various things and a career of substance or worth is relative. Just let me bitch.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to tell the world all of that.

Anyway, throughout all of these things there is one consistent riddle that I have been thus far unable to solve. Why, oh why, are there still so many childish games played at meetings/presentations, stupid “activities” at department birthday celebrations (for that matter, why are there birthday celebrations at work?), and money spent on a constant stream of nonsensical, company-branded trinkets? The only place I didn’t encounter these aberrations was when I was doing an internship with a full-on IT shop here in town, which I miss terribly (if I’m not figuring paycheck into the equation).

It’s like working amongst 4-year olds with PCP-sodden pituitary glands. Won’t someone help me solve my riddle?

I think I just may have graduated from bits of insanity up to chunks.