August 15th, 2008

The Spider

I overshot my desired bus stop, so I found myself walking along Geary Boulevard. Somehow my my mental map of San Francisco got corrupted and I placed OfficeMax about six blocks west of its actual location, which I was making up on foot. I noticed this sign on the front gate of a building on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Geary:

The Spider, Inc., sounds like the perfect front for a low-rent superhero, like the late, lamented The Tick. An upstairs office in the Inner Richmond seems like the perfect location for a superhero who can’t afford more upscale digs downtown, let alone Wayne Manor.

At OfficeMax, I found a new desk and hutch for my office. I’ve been in the process of rearranging my office and making it more functional. I bought an iMac with a screen large enough to preside over Times Square, and a lot about how my office was arranged wasn’t working for me, so we’ve torn it up and started over again. Looking at the mess, which exploded out into every adjacent room, my partner Ron said “I”m starting to wonder if we’ve destroyed the village in order to save it.” But once all the furniture is in place, order will be restored. Really.

Like all the furniture at office discount stores, the desk is made out of particle board, covered by a thin veneer of, in this case, black. And, of course, it comes completely unassembled, with error-ridden instructions written by someone for whom English was not their first (and maybe not even their second or third) language. Assembling it has been a nightmare, and has basically eaten the last three days.

We can afford better furniture than particle board crap from office stores, but we’ve always put off buying anything but cheap furniture until we actually buy a place. We’ve always regarded living in our current flat as a temporary situation, but it’s been a temporary situation for 14 years now. We’re the beneficiaries of San Francisco’s insane rent control laws; without them, we’d have bought a house years ago. We still want a house—this place is in lousy shape, and we’re tired of having upstairs neighbors—but for a variety of reasons, we’ve postponed that. So we live in some kind of limbo between adulthood and college-kid-ness, buying cheap furniture because it’s all theoretically temporary.

As particle board furniture goes, this isn’t a bad looking desk, but it’s been a nightmare to put together. Neither of us are the hardy, do-it-yourself types, but this one’s been harder than most of the stuff we’ve assembled. Last night, Ron was talking with a coworker who’s very handy at building things (he’s one of the few people in California licensed to build and own a flamethrower or something like that) and even he said stuff like this is difficult to assemble. It’s not encouraging to hear that from some guy who probably ought to be part of the MythBusters cast.

So right now, our flat is a complete mess. It looks like we’re in the process of moving in or moving out. Or that the place has just been ransacked by the FBI or mobsters. On our living room floor is a hutch in mid-assembly. Tonight we’ll finish it or die trying.

Maybe we should enlist the help of The Spider.

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  1. obscuranta posted this
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Thoughts, en passant:

"No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." —John Stuart Mill

"Earnestness is stupidity sent to college." —P.J. O'Rourke

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." —H.L. Mencken

"This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there as no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men." —C.S. Lewis

"Politicians taking credit from what they’ve done for the economy are like little kids working the controls of video games without putting any money in. There’s all kinds of stuff happening on the screen of the video game and they think that it’s all due to the frantic work of their fingers." —Tom Foreman

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." —Ed Howdershelt

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big." —Daniel Burnham

"Careless exaggerations are a million times worse than the Nazis." —Merlin Mann

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