What I’m Blogging

Hi. My name is Ric, and I’m a present-a-holic. I suffer from a dreaded disease known as presenteeism - the feeling that one must show up for work even if one is too sick, stressed, or distracted to be productive; the feeling that one needs to work extra hours even if one has no extra work to do. I remember back in the late 80’s when we used to be called workaholics, but I suppose there are subtle distinctions that I don’t grasp. In any event I have a monkey on my back that is guilting me into returning to the office tomorrow.

…break this cycle of dependency that I’ve developed with the modern corporation…

Guilt runs deep in my psyche, a gift I suppose from a dormant Catholicism that sleeps like a volcano ready to pop. I don’t want to go back to work. I feel like crap. I want to stay home, heck I want to find something else to do entirely. My big problem is that I need to go back to work; like a wino needs a bottle, like a junkie needs a hit. I get nervous and anxious at the thought not being there and doing my part. People are depending on me, or so my ego tells me. I need a hit - the dim glow of florescent lighting, the cramped cubicals, the stress, the politics.

What I really need is a local chapter of Present-a-holic’s Anonymous, so that I can break this cycle of dependency that I’ve developed with the modern corporation. Won’t you give?

Recently, the government has been conduction computer simulations about what would happen during an outbreak of some pandemic flu bug. Heck I even posted about it over on Now Public. Well the government could have kept their research money on that one.

…avoid places frequented by the near, or recently sick…

You see, I’ve been conducting a little pandemic experiment of my own, and the results are in - I’m a goner. I’ve been home the majority of the week with some kind of weird bug. Joints ache, head aches, throatis sore, and the actions of the stomach and connected large and small intestine cannot be discussed in polite company. I picked it up at the office (tip #1 avoid places frequented by the near, or recently sick). One of my guys was out the previous week, but in a fit of company loyalty he returned to the office, still coughing, still a carrier (tip #2 if you are one of the near or recently sick - stay home, you’re not impressing anyone). I was going to go to work too, but I was informed by my better half that I wasn’t going to go, and my frail disease ridden body agreed with her (tip #3 Listen to your spouse, and fluffy blue slippers with yellow duckies on them can be manly when you feel sick).

It’s the birthday of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, born in Rome (AD 121). He rose through the ranks of the Roman Senate and became emperor when in AD 161. He wrote a philosophical work called Meditations, and he’s one of the few Roman emperors who is known as much for his writing as he is for his reign.

Before Aurelius came to power, the Roman Empire was experiencing incredible prosperity. It was the period known as the Pax Romana, a time of peace that lasted nearly two hundred years. The Roman Empire was the largest it would ever be, stretching from Scotland to the Arabian desert. The richest people lived in great villas with central heating systems. The historian Tacitus wrote that it was a time of “rare happiness … when we may think what we please, and express what we think.”

But almost as soon as Marcus Aurelius became emperor, Rome encountered a series of disasters. There were plagues, famines and wars. He was almost constantly trying to defend the Roman Empire against invaders; in the north his armies battled the Germans, and in the east they battled the Parthians.

In the midst of all this chaos, Marcus Aurelius consoled himself by keeping a kind of diary filled with philosophic meditations. He studied the Stoic philosophers, who believed in detaching yourself from everything in the universe that’s outside of your power to control.

His Meditations was first printed in Zurich in 1559.

I came across this site today on Craiglist. It is a clearing house for freelance writing gigs. It is set up along the same lines as elance.com [which I used when I was a nerdy computer/network contractor]. Here writers can bid on jobs posted by clients. There are no membership fees for writers, however a percentage of the transaction has to be paid to the site when the deal is completed. Sounds interesting.

Take a look for yourselves: www.writerlance.com

Some of the current projects are;

Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England (1564). He was a playwright and poet, and is considered to be the most influential and perhaps the greatest writer in the English language. He gave us many beloved plays, including Romeo and Juliet (1594), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), Hamlet (1600), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1605).

… first writer to invent or record many of our most common turns of phrase…

Only a few scattered facts are known about his life. He was born and raised in the picturesque market town of Stratford-on-Avon, surrounded by woodlands. His father was a glover and a leather merchant; he and his wife had eight children including William, but three of them died in childbirth. William probably left grammar school when he was thirteen years old, but continued to study on his own.

He went to London around 1588 to pursue his career in drama and by 1592 he was a well-known actor. He joined an acting troupe in 1594 and wrote many plays for the group while continuing to act. Scholars believe that he usually played the part of the first character that came on stage, but that in Hamlet he played the ghost.

Some scholars have suggested that Shakespeare couldn’t have written the plays attributed to him because he had no formal education. A group of scientists recently plugged all his plays into a computer and tried to compare his work to other writers of his day, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and the Earl of Oxford. The only writer they found who frequently used words and phrases similar to Shakespeare’s was Queen Elizabeth I, and she was eventually ruled out as well.

Shakespeare used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he was the first writer to invent or record many of our most common turns of phrase, including “foul play”, “as luck would have it,” “your own flesh and blood,” “too much of a good thing,” “good riddance,” “in one fell swoop,” “cruel to be kind,” “play fast and loose,” “vanish into thin air,” “the game is up,” “truth will out” and “in the twinkling of an eye.”

Shakespeare has always been popular in America, and many colonists kept copies of his complete works along with their Bibles. Pioneers performed his work out West. Many of the mines and canyons across the West are named after Shakespeare or one of his characters. Three mines in Colorado are called Ophelia, Cordelia, and Desdemona.

Shakespeare continues to be the most produced playwright in the world.

On this day in 1906 an earthquake struck San Francisco. It was one of the worst natural disasters in American history. At the time, San Francisco had a population of about 450,000 people and was the busiest port on the Pacific coast of the United States. Business had been booming, and new office buildings, factories, mansions and hotels had been constructed all over the city.

…the streets began to dance and rear and roll in waves like a rough sea in a squall…

The earthquake began near dawn, at 5:12 AM on a Wednesday morning, and lasted for a little over a minute. Scientists later determined that the San Andreas Fault had moved about twenty-three feet. The quake measured 8.3 on the Richter scale, and it was felt from southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and as far east as central Nevada. The epicenter was near San Francisco.

A San Francisco journalist named James Hopper said, “The earthquake started … with a direct violence that left one breathless. … There was something personal about the attack; it seemed to have a certain vicious intent. My building quivered with a vertical and rotary motion and there was a sound as of a snarl. … My head on the pillow, I watched my stretched and stiffened body … springing up and down and from side to side like a pancake in the tossing griddle of an experienced French chef.”

A policeman said, “[The streets] began to dance and rear and roll in waves like a rough sea in a squall, [then] sank in places and vomited up car tracks and the tunnels that carried the cable. These lifted themselves out of the pavement, and bent and snapped.”

The world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso had performed at San Francisco’s Grand Opera House the night before, and he woke up in his bed as the Palace Hotel was falling down around him. He stumbled out into the street, and because he was terrified that that shock might have ruined his voice, he began singing.

There was a loud sound of an explosion as the city gas plant blew up. Wooden structures caught fire from overturned stoves and immediately began to burn. The fire department went out to fight the fires, only to find that the city had lost all of its running water. Firemen attempted to stop the spread of fire by dynamiting whole city blocks, but despite their efforts the fire raged for three days and most of the city burned to the ground.

More than 500 city blocks and more than 28,000 buildings were in ruins. Some 250,000 people were left homeless. Nearly 3,000 people died. Americans mourned the loss of San Francisco, one of the country’s greatest cities. The journalist Will Irwin wrote in the New York Sun, “The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of huddled refugees living among ruins. … San Francisco is the city that was.”

But people immediately began rebuilding the city. In three years, about 20,000 new buildings went up.

Monday Monday, so good to me, Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be.

…basking in the glow of the laptop screen…

Well it’s Easter Monday and I’m working from home. I’ve got some errands to run, appointments to keep, so I’m exercising a management prerogative to sit in my PJs for the majority of the morning, basking in the glow of the laptop screen. It makes me wish all days could start like this. It’s more civilized.

I know however, that it is only an illusion. When I get back to the office tomorrow there will be a crap storm of things to take care of. But today, I’m going to sit in the eye of that storm and enjoy the peace over a nice cup of home brewed coffee.