The Sasquatch Journal

I haven’t written in my blog as much as I anticipated I would when I arrived here in the lonely corridors of an Albany hotel, but part of that is due to the fact that I’ve written several articles for Popmatters. When they get e-published, I’ll throw the links up. Secondly ,I’ve been doing some reading (especially the newest book of essays from Chuck Klosterman, who I can’t recommend enough) some DVD watching (I’m riveted to The Shield right now Season 3), gameplaying (Half Life 2 on PC at the moment) , hanging out with some interesting people, and believe it or not, running. Like as in just running around with no purpose except for the idiot purpose of running. I’m such a sellout.

-With the upcoming release of The Borat Movie, (which I saw in a screening a few months ago in Playa Del Ray and was probably the most I’ve ever laughed in a movie), I’m reminded of Borat by a extremely entertaining guy I worked with named Sergio. Sergio is an ever smiling (Hispanic?) computer tech who knowingly uses his “I’m a wacky foreigner with a poor grasp of the English language” powers for some great comedy. Last week, he innocently asked us if we were working on a game based on the cartoon where cars turn into robots and vice versa. “I think it’s called The Transgenders? Is that right?”

And then on Friday, he asked one of the girls on our team how she got into the “man’s world of game testing.”

“Should you not be playing with Barbie dolls or someting? Don’t you like to play My Little Ponys instead of Marvel game?” Funny stuff, especially when he sounds so convincingly unknowning about the whole schtick, sort of like what Borat does.

-I wish my cellphone took better pictures, because I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets in my life last night. Part of it is that my hotel is near an incredible vantage point on the side of a hill/mountain in East Greenbush. Across the street, near the defunct Bennigan’s, you can see for miles the forest covered valley and hills and distant mountains. Nestled amongst the countless tress is the modest but stately skyline of Albany. Last night, most of the sky was covered in dark clouds, except for the south portion of the sky, which was filled with brilliant hues of pinks, purples, and oranges. A few minutes before the sun went down, there was actually a faint rainbow in the sky. Wisps of fog also crouched in nooks in the hills, and for some reason it totally gave Albany an almost mythical look. I couldn’t have imagined a better painting.

-I walked to Wal-Mart to grab an ethernet cord recently and when I checked out at the electronic department I noticed that there was a new message on the credit card display where I had just slid my card. The machine asked me, "Was your cashier friendly to you?" and I was supposed to push the YES or NO button with the little black pen thingy attached to it.
Just thinking about the notion of voting on the friendlyness of my checker while standing in front of him via some sort of secret ballot made me feel embarrassed. Maybe some would like the idea of a "direct democracy" approach towards good customer service, (does this mean Wal-Mart can fire some of its managers now?) but to me, it's incredibly demeaning to the employees, like they are customer service automatons and we're supposed to just press a button to increase the (usually altogether forced) friendliness of Wal-Mart employees.