Sunday, May 13, 2007

People like this...

Will you be my friend? Will you? What about you? Please? Can we be friends?That friend of yours, does he want to be my friend? Or perhaps you? Let's be friends. You can't be her friend, because you're my friend. Please be my friend. We can be friends now, and maybe good friends later. Someday we can be best friends. Doesn't that sound nice? So let's be friends! Will you be my friend? Please be my friend. I need more friends, and I like you. I think you would enjoy being my friend as much as I would enjoy being your friend. So let's be friends. Can we be friends? Let's be friends! Will you be my friend?
...drive me fuckin' nuts.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Quiet day.

It's a quiet day here at JvM/9. We were busting ass for weeks it seems (I guess it was really only a week and a half, looking back) on a brief for a big-ass German client. It was tough because we kept trying to do advertising that doesn't suck, and yet it seems the client desperately wants to do crappy advertising. "That's really smart and funny," our bosses would say about our work. "Too smart. And too funny." So it goes.

This was supposed to be a four day weekend - Tuesday was a "bank holiday" in honor of the beginning of May, and Monday was a "bridge day" because it's silly to have just Tuesday off. But of course the client presentation is Wednesday (today), so we had to work all weekend. Due dates here are always the day following the weekend... if they were scheduled for, say, the end of the week instead of the very beginning, the universe would collapse on itself and we'd be able to enjoy our weekends like normal people. So I was here Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and some sad bastards (read: Art Directors) had to be here Tuesday as well. Das ist nicht gut! But the powers that be promised to give us back the days... so it's cool. I didn't have any plans anyway.

But Tuesday was heavenly, if only relative to the grinding hell of the previous week and a half (whine whine whine, my white collar life in the first world is SO HARD). On Tuesday I got what I had been craving for so many days: alone time. And it was fabulous! Some people don't call it vacation unless there's a tropical island or snowy alps, but fuck that. I wanted to do laundry and dishes, and I got all that and MORE. I slept in, vacuumed, cleaned my room, cleaned the bathroom, did two loads of laundry, put the finishing touches on my new bed, took out the recycling, and read on our patio in the sun. It's the stuff that dreams are made of! And my roommate was gone too, so I had zero human contact for the first eighteen hours of the day. Then Teresa came over and we watched Pulp Fiction... she had never seen it, and I can't be friends with someone who's never seen Pulp Fiction. I mean really. She didn't like it, but whatever.

And today the final touches were put on the client presentation (happily not by us) and our bosses trained it to Berlin. Which means we've spent the rest of the day fooling around. Henning is playing with his axe. I went to the bike shop to buy shoes. Sergio went to another bike shop to fix his cruiser. We fixed a flat on his girlfriend's bike. We sang happy birthday to Peter. We chatted with the new guy. We threw some paper planes out the window. Can you say two hour lunch? I knew that you could.

Anyways, it seems that although little has changed, a lot has happened since last I blogged. Here's a summary for all my readers (both of you):

1. I got Spanky back! A year or two ago I quit my job, got rid of most of my stuff, and moved to SF. I wasn't using my dear old racing bike, and it so happened that Ian needed one. So I said listen, take it, and don't pay me. Consider it an extended loan; someday, i'll call you and ask for him back. Since then Ian's gotten married, divorced, and moved to Australia, and Spanky was with him the whole time. And then he sent him to me via air courier. Spanky went to Bangkok, Vienna, and finally the Hamburg airport where I picked him up like a mother and child reunion (sorry). Ian added a fancy carbon fiber fork, changed the Chris King headset from regular to Aheadset style, and built up a nice solid pair of wheels. I bought a new saddle, new shoes and Speedplays, and now I'm ready to dive back into cycling. I don't think I'll be shaving my legs anytime soon, but it's really great to have Spanky back. And I think I hear the Alps calling me.

2. I met a bunch of new people! I went out with Talke and met her friends Cornelia, Nora, and Miri (Mira?), three lovely students. We rode our bikes through the Elbe tunnel and froze our asses off on the beach. Cornelia is cute, she rides bikes, and speaks Swahili. How cool is that? We're going out for sushi on Saturday.

3. I went to the Ice Bar with Fernando and his wife Tamara. It was kinda silly, but now I can say I've gone (not that anyone's ever asked). It was all part of the Goodbye Fernando 2007 celebration. Homeboy moved from Zurich to Hamburg to work at JvM/9, but then the visa didn't work for his wife Tamara, so after three months he transfered to JvM Zurich. Sigh. It's really too bad because I liked working and hanging out with Fernando. But at least now I have a floor (nay - they promised me an AIR MATTRESS!) to sleep on in Zurich. See you soon Fernando and Tamara!

4. I bought a bed. A real bed! From Ikea. I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but as soon as I do, I'll post it for my teeming mass of followers who no doubt can't wait to see it. :-) It's really nice and simple, and more comfy than the air mattress (duh).

5. I read some good books. I read Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It's a weirdo fantasy book by Haruki Murakami and it's kind of about a guy who has to choose between the real world and his inner consciousness. I'm sure Wikipedia understands it better than I did. After that I read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. It was great, of course. Easy, fast, and delicious. Then I read a piece of crap called Everyman by Phillip Roth. Lame. It's a rambling story of a sad old ad man coming to grips with his own pathetic-ness at the end of his life. It went on and on with no real point (that I could see) and the writing style was only occasionally good and often downright confusing. There were all these dangling he's and she's where I had to read the sentence three times to figure out which character we were talking about. Whatever. And now I'm reading an EXCELLENT book called Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Interesting story, sweet writing style, nice sense of humor (though it's not a particularly funny book) and intriguing characters. Really a joy to read.

6. I bought green shoes! I have ALWAYS wanted green shoes, and now I have them. Hooray.

I think that's about it. Word to all your moms.