Tap tap tap…
Wow, it’s been a while. I just haven’t had the motivation to post for the last couple months. The nasty stuff at work which prompted the last two bitter, fatalistic posts has continued and gotten worse, to the point where I generally didn’t want to talk about it outside of work. I’ve mostly come to terms with the downward spiral, and this should be the only work-tainted post before I get back to the more upbeat stuff (or to silence, more upbeat if only by omission).
I watched “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” with the kids tonight. My favorite scene in the movie has to be the chocolate boat in the tunnel, inexorably speeding up, the psychedelic lighting, the odd film snippets (millipede crawling on man’s face, chicken getting decapitated) in the background, and Gene Wilder chanting:
There is no earthly way of knowing / which direction we are going …
getting louder, faster, tenser, building to:
The danger must be growing / because the the rowers are still rowing / and they show no signs of slowing…
(it goes on, of course, but the rhyming routes it through the part of my brain which remembers lyrics and poetry, which is only capable of holding tiny snippets). I identify with this scene; it sums up perfectly how most of my projects at work are proceeding, but it’s fun to watch, well staged and executed, and it ends with the participants in a boat floating in chocolate, a vast improvement over work’s version. Still, next time I lose my mind, there’s a 50% chance of me breaking into this monologue (at least the bits I remember; I can mumble the rest). Should break the monotony of a conference call, at least.
…
Part of the fun of working in a giant corporation is that everything proceeds so slowly. “Executing quickly” and “turning on a dime” generally mean completing something within 18 months. And that’s if processes are skirted and expedited. This means that when a project is doomed, there’s usually about a good 9 month window between inevitability and denouement. If you’re one of the early naysayers (i.e. prophets), you’re in for quite a sight; I’ve compared it to a train wreck in extreme slow motion, giving the viewer the opportunity to appreciate the grotesque forms of buckling metal, loosening then popping boiler rivets, and water flashing to steam.
I was a little put off by one doomed project, when I couldn’t decide whether to describe it as a clusterfuck or the aforementioned train wreck. Then I realised the two weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. You could have a clusterfuck occuring on the train that is crashing. Perfect. I feel much better now.
