In praise of SCAT (it's not what you think)

On a lazy Friday night with nothing better to do than watch Battlestar Galactica with Mike from upstairs, I found myself channel surfing though my local cable provider, RCN's lineup of fabulous programming. And what should my wandering eye behold? Nothing but a high quality program from the good folks at S.C.A.T., also known as Somerville Community Access Television. I actually spent thirty minutes of my life watching, entranced, a group of four men sit in someone's basement and play five card draw poker while pornography was on in the background. I shit you not, this is what's on television here.

It gets better.

Halfway through the programme, one of the players - a burly gentleman with a handlebar moustache broke out a guitar and sung a short little diddy that went as follows: (to the tune of "Jimmy Crack Corn")

"When I was young and had no sense
I stuck my dick in an electric fence
It curled my hairs, it tickled my balls
It made me crap my overalls

[...]

and I'll never have sex again."

Brilliant. Just brilliant. What made this show even better was the constant exclamations by the participants of, "I'm so drunk," "I think I'm on my sixth beer," and the blatant advertising plugs for a Somerville bar, and a Somerville pornographic video store. "Of course if you're too embarassed to take some of these titles home, we have viewing booths for your pleasure."

What's the word for, "simultaneously disgusting, yet totally enthralling as a cultural phenomenon?"

Some more silliness

I'm sure we've all been to these ridiculous sites, or at least left them open to our roommates' annoyance. Just a refresher course for anyone who wants to be reminded of some of the absolute crap that is on the intro-web.

It all started with this insanity, the song from which, I must remind everyone, is just the opening song from Disney's Robin Hood, sent through some audio filters. From there, the possibilities were endless:

Transformers Rave

Well excuse me, Princess

Welcome to zombocom

Khaaan!

Young earth theory


Sometimes, it's just that funny. Most of the time, not so much.

When Cameron was in Egypt land....

According to Jessica, “Cameron Marlow is a grad student at the MIT Media Lab. To finish his Ph.D., Mr. Marlow is going to be analyzing the results of a survey “about how people use their weblogs and their general communication behavior. To get the best results, he needs a large sample size so if you’ve got 15 minutes or so; why not help the poor guy out?”

Why not then? Since he's local, I gave it a shot, and you should too! (I'm looking in your direction, the Brian.)

I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and come in on Saturday.

"Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour [...] Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."


As I read during my break at work, I am reminded of that scene in Office Space where Peter explains to the Bobs about how much work he does. Then I started thinking, I'm sure we all waste massive amounts of time at our jobs, and not just an hour here or and hour there. I mean real chunks of time spent doing nothing worthwhile.

Granted, there are some marginally respectable ways to waste your time at work. I for one, read Fark almost constantly. It is an unending source of some important events and a whole battery of marginally important 'news' events from a variety of non-traditional sources. However, if you do a simple google search for "waste time at work," you will find a variety of mildly interesting things to do while you're getting paid to sit on your ass.

The Boston Globe has a bit to say about it too. I'm not sure who paid for that study - probably some higher-ups looking to cut corners and save on labor cost. At this point, I'd like to remind everyone that your time is a commodity, just as much as anything you can buy in a store. Furthermore, I am reminded by Annie Dillard, (and I'm paraphrasing here from The Writing Life,) what are you doing with your life? To find the answer, just look at what you are doing with your days, your hours, and your minutes, because after all, what you do with those fragments of time is what you are doing with your life. So you sell your time, your effort, and your freedom for often times, not enough money. Why not take a little back here and there?

So you got me. I waste time at work. Here I am posting to my blog, though I hardly find blogging to be wasteful, at work. Though I haven't gotten any real work done in the past 15 minutes as I have been writing this, I'll feel a definite sense of satisfaction for the rest of the day, having done something creative that others will see. As for work, well, I'm out of here at 6:00.