Confessions of a YouTube Junkie

Some people snort cocaine.  Others shoot up on heroin.  I watch YouTube videos.

As far as I know, there is no support group for people like me, and there are many of us.  If there were a support group, I suspect that the church basements where the meetings took place would be so tightly jam packed they would have to hire Japanese subway pushers to make room for new arrivals.

It has become almost a requirement, around the world, for anyone who has made a video of anything to post it on YouTube.

Did your crazy uncle say something stupid when you had the video camera going?  Put it on YouTube.

Did your neighbor’s security camera catch your cat in the act of stealing their Fruit of the Looms off their clothesline?  Put it on YouTube.

Do you have the world’s dumbest dog?  Put him on YouTube, so that the world can laugh at the unsuspecting animal with you.

Did your daughter, a soprano who you swear can sing better than Sarah Brightman, win an honorable mention in her school’s talent contest with her special rendition of the tenor aria “Nessun dorma?”  Make sure her performance goes on YouTube and try to make it go viral.

Can you summarize the entire history of pre-historic man in one 20-minute video?  Make that mini-documentary, claim that it is scientific, and put it on YouTube.

I don’t dare log onto YouTube.  I don’t dare, but I do it, anyway.  It only takes one YouTube video to send me into a binge.  I can’t help myself.

This is how it often happens:

One of my Facebook friends posts a video that I feel I must, for one reason or another, view in its entirety.  Clicking on the video leads me to YouTube.  YouTube automatically logs me on, which means that my entire library of saved videos is handy.  It also means that, over on the right side of the computer screen, there is a tantalizing list of videos that YouTube feels I might like to watch, based on the one I am watching now and the ones I have watched in the past.

I do my duty and watch my friend’s posted video.  Then, instead of going back onto Facebook, I look at the list of videos on the right side of the screen.  In the meantime, my computer is automatically playing the next video on the list because I have neglected to press STOP.  I’m that kind of person.

The list is eclectic, because I am one of those people who delights in learning all kinds of trivia about a lot of things, and my YouTube fare reflects that.  I can’t blame YouTube for this.  My brain is the perpetrator here.  It is infected with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.  I like little bits of quick knowledge about a lot of things, and I get bored easily when I am surfing.

What starts out as a viewing of a video posted on Facebook turns into a binge something like this one.  Bear in mind that most of these videos are short:

Mario Lanza singing a Neapolitan song

Enrico Caruso singing a Neapolitan song

The differences between Italian and Latin

How the ancient Romans pronounced Latin

The Romance Languages

The Slavic Languages

Billie Holliday singing “One for my Baby and One More for the Road”

Mahalia Jackson singing “On My Way (to Canaan Land)”

A mobster biography

Another mobster biography

Reconstructing the face of Cleopatra (who was sexy, but not all that beautiful)

Reconstructing the face of Julius Caesar (who looked like a typical bald Italian)

Why so many Europeans are part Neanderthal

Humanity’s genetic trails

Etc.

By the time I am finished, I have used up a couple of hours of my life, having fun and gaining mostly useless (for me) knowledge.  I haven’t figured out yet if I am enriching myself or wasting my life.  I suspect there are elements of both here.

I must stop now.  I just remembered that I was interrupted in my last YouTube binge and I want to go back and find what I was watching.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Jobs

I extend my apologies to Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish for stealing eight out of nine words from the title of that famous short story.  It started out as a story called “Beginners” by Raymond Carver, but, by the time Gordon Lish got through with the editing job, he almost completely re-wrote the story and changed the title.  It was published his way, since he was a powerful editor and nobody wanted to get on his bad side.  End of American Literature minute.

In my last little article, to be found here, I gave useful tips about how to deal with the availability of workplace restrooms.  In this piece, I would like to cover the availability, restrictions and rules governing free food and free coffee.

In our dreams!

Free Goodies

No employee is ever paid enough.  This fact is so well known it must be scientific.  I would appreciate it if anyone would steer me toward some genuine research.  In the meantime, I am assuming this statement is true.  I know it’s true for me.  I can always come up with a better compensation plan for myself than any employer can come up with.

Because everybody who works is being paid less than they know they should get, everybody who works is entitled to whatever perks they can snatch from under the eyes of their bosses.  Warning:  this does not include larceny, a co-worker’s lunch or anything that will seriously piss off other employees.  In other words, that brand new all-in-one PC sitting in its box waiting to be installed may not be removed and taken home, unless you hate your job so much that going to jail is preferable to showing up at the office.  End of disclaimer.  I am not encouraging anyone to commit crimes.  Leave that to the professionals.

Food that the company has bought and paid for is another thing altogether.  Company food is just waiting to be snatched and devoured.  If the food is meant for a meeting with high-end clients, it is imperative for employees to try to snitch some of it.  If your boss is trying to impress people, the food is bound to be good, even if it is being served in a conference room.

The first, and safest, way to get your share of free conference room food is to watch the closed door of the room like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of a hole, and make a quick dash into the room after everyone in the meeting has left the area.  If you are clever, you can even dash into the room before they all disappear, claiming it is your turn to clean the room or turn off the equipment in there.  Once you are in the room, you can survey the wreckage on the food table and rescue anything that looks untouched and still edible or drinkable.  This is the honorable way to get free food.

If the meeting attendees were more hungry than usual, or the company was cheap with the amounts and portions, the honorable way won’t work.

Because the honorable way is a crap shoot, it is in an employee’s interest to learn the second way to grab free nourishment, sneaking it out of the room before the meeting starts.  This method requires planning, dexterity and cleverness.  It helps to have the assistance of co-workers, although it will be necessary to share the spoils with any accomplices.  The method used to filch the goodies depends a great deal on the caterer.  If the food is brought in on carts from the company cafeteria, and it is not covered in Saran Wrap, it might be possible to lift it right from the cart, especially if you have made friends with the cafeteria staff and they all know you.  If the person wheeling the cart is a hottie, a bit of flirting can earn you a nice culinary reward, if you are not sued for sexual harassment instead.

If the food is covered in cling wrap, and the wrap is left on it even after it is put down on the table inside the conference room, you have a problem.  For this, you will need great skill in opening cling wrap without tearing it, grabbing something, closing it up again, hiding the loot and leaving the scene.  It is best to practice this at home until you can perform the entire exercise in 10 seconds or less.

When your co-worker comes around with the Girl Scout Cookie order sheet, you are going to look like a stingy jerk if you don’t order at least a couple of boxes.  If you ignore everyone’s advice to get Thin Mints and buy a kind nobody likes, just sneak them onto the food table the next time there is a catered meeting.  Someone will eat them.

If you don't know what this is, you haven't been paying attention.

Free Coffee

Most offices have a pantry or some other space set aside for that honored, sacred institution:  the office coffeemaker.

The job of washing the carafe usually falls, by default, on one of the lower-level female executive assistants.  Women have made great strides in the workplace in the last several decades, but anything involving cleaning up remains firmly in the category of “women’s work.”  If there is no lower level executive assistant available, the unspoken rule says that any female employee can take over the job.  If there is a choice between cleaning up and getting her caffeine fix or not cleaning up and going through minor withdrawal, many women will shut up and wash the f***ing pot.

The quality of office coffee ranges from great to awful.  This depends on the boss.  If the boss is a coffee snob, the stuff will be good.  If the boss doesn’t care what kind of mud is in his/her cup so long as it gives a caffeine kick, it will probably be the cheaper stuff.  My thoughts about this tragic situation are: (1) if it’s the end of the pay period and cash is low, hold your nose and drink the free stuff; and (2) at any other time, go to the Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts up the street.

Executive assistants are not required to fetch the boss’ coffee anymore.  Some bosses take this more seriously than others.  I don’t need to elaborate on this one.

This is the end, at least until I come up with something else to warn everyone about.

MORE Family History

My Ancestor Thor Knudsen,
Looking Stupid

Very few people know this, but there were Norwegians on my mother’s side of the family tree.  This included one of the most famous Vikings of the early Middle Ages, Thor Knudsen.

If you don’t recognize that name, it’s because once the Viking Era was over everyone forgot about Thor Knudsen.  If you happen to know someone named Thor Knudsen, he wasn’t named after my ancestor.

As a young boy on his family’s part of the fjord, Thor was bullied by other kids, who thought his name was funny.  Thor was the name of one of the gods.  Nobody ever dared to name a kid after a god because they thought the god would be insulted and get even.  Thor’s father, Knut the Hairy, who liked to be different, thought Thor would be flattered.  Everyone was wrong, of course, because the god Thor never existed and could, therefore, not feel anything.

The other kids used to gang up on Thor, corner him and tease him.  “Hey, Thor, where’s your hammer?” one kid would say.  “Hey, make it thunder for us,” another one would add.  This went on until the day Thor realized that he had grown to be six feet tall and muscular, while the rest of the gang were the usual puny medieval types.  Thor didn’t have a hammer, but he had two super-sized fists.  He soon sent the gang flying – literally – right off a cliff.  That taught them a lesson.

Everyone was afraid of Thor after that, which made him the perfect choice to send on raiding and pillaging expeditions.  This meant he had to learn to sail.  The problem was he got seasick and he was afraid of water.  Knut the Hairy solved the problem by threatening to have Thor buried in that damned boat if he didn’t get into it and stay there.  Thor obeyed.

Thor led many expeditions, and his name soon evoked terror throughout northern and western Europe.  Only his crew knew that he spent his time at sea lying in the middle of the ship, vomiting into a bucket, and they weren’t telling.  Once he landed, his raiding and pillaging skills made him very successful and very rich.

After ten years of this, Thor had accumulated enough ill-gotten booty to retire.  He gave up the sea forever, remarking that he never wanted to see another ship so long as he lived and the only water he wanted to see was in a bathtub.  He bought some land, as far inland as he could go, and set up business making the great Norwegian delicacy, lutefisk.

The next time you come across the stinking, horrible tasting concoction, remember Thor Knudsen and the anguish he had to go through to get rich enough to make the stuff.