On my way home from work about an hour ago, a really weird thing happened to me.
I was sitting in traffic, waiting for a light to change, and I looked at the car to my right. The driver was a girl, probably in her early 20s, talking on a cell phone. She was crying, really hard, and seemed to be really frustrated with the person on the other end of the line.
As I watched her, I noticed something: we were separated by only a few feet, but we were completely isolated from each other in our cars. Different cars, different clothes, different ages, different music on our radios (unless she was listening to Return of Saturn also)…just looking at her, I couldn’t tell if we would have had anything in common, other than our basic humanity.
I watched her, and I began to feel really badly for her. Just by watching her, I could feel her frustration with the person on the other end of the line, and it made me really sad, and I began to cry.
I cried, really hard, for close to 5 minutes, because of a person who I have never seen before, and will probably never see again.
I thought about what a metaphor that was for life, and the way we all deal with one another. We move through our lives, passing closely to hundreds of people each day, and we’re total strangers to each other. We keep our heads down, averting our eyes, rarely looking up to say hello to a stranger in the hallway. Even in our own families we isolate ourselves in our metaphorical cars, and stay in our own metaphorical lanes.
I wonder how different the world would be if we made an effort to roll down our metaphorical windows and say hello more often.

Hey, guess what I got today? I got my very own desk, here at G4!
Normally a desk wouldn’t be something to get excited about, but having this desk means that I have more space for stuff, and that means those cool Simpsons action figures I’ve bought over the last year or so have come out of the cabinet at home, and are now proudly on display. There’s something oddly comforting being observed by Professor Frink all day, while I’m sitting here with the writing and rewriting and the emailing and the Heeeyyyyy!
Honestly, when I got this job I told my brother to come and smack me in the head if I ever cared too much about where I sat, because that would mean that I’d gone totally corporate, but I really do like the extra space. I think I’m going to get some of those little chili pepper lights, and put them around my cubicle walls tomorrow.
NOT!
Jesus, what do you take me for? Come ON!
So, onto the weekend.
Friday, I took the boys to see Spider–Man.
I really liked it a lot. I was never much of a Spider–Man weenie, like I was for Batman, so I can’t really go Comic Book Guy on it, which I guess is a good thing. I wonder how many otherwise enjoyable movies are totally ruined for us because we go Comic Book Guy on them? That’s something interesting to think about…
I’m going to hold off on the big review for a few days, so I don’t lone-gunmen-are-dead it for anyone.
My favorite thing? I sat next to Nolan, and more than once he tuged at my sleeve to tell me, “Wil, I LOVE this movie! I can’t wait to get it on DVD!”
Other than that, it was a very uneventful weekend. I brought Silent Hill 2 home from work, and really enjoyed that, too. What a scary freakin’ experience that was…on the advice of a guy I work with, I played it late at night with all the lights in my house turned off…and after about 2 hours I had switched on a light, and had called Ferris to sit with me.
Yeah, I’m a sissy like that.
Speaking of video games, Anne and I took the kids to the Pakk Man Arcade in Pasadena on Sunday. It’s this arcade that I’ve been going to since I was too young to drive myself, and it’s really awesome to share that place with my boys, and see them experience the excitement that I once felt.
The thing is, the Pasadena City Council, in their infinite “wisdom”, is on the rampage to close down the arcade. They’ve been at it for years, but it looks like they may have finally found a way to do it. I’m beyond furious at this, and I’m joining the fight to keep the arcade open. If you live in or near Los Angeles, or Orange County, please consider coming to a huge rally that is being held to save the arcade, on Saturday, May 18th.
If you’re planning on attending, email me and let me know. I’ll look for you there, and we can make up some sort of WWDN battle cry to holler at the rally. It’ll be cool.
Speaking of cool, the auction ends tomorrow, and I can’t believe that it’s over 200 bucks. I think that’s really cool. I’ll be able to pay for a GPS device for geocaching with my kids, and I’ll have extra left over to pay some bills. Cool! 🙂
It’s time to get back to spinning in my cool chair before my meeting.
Thought for today:

“We live in age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
-Oscar Wilde