It's alive! It's my creation!

If you're in the south bay or Fremont, you may have spotted some new buses invading the streets and highway. They have a bold, menacing design, that makes all other buses look downright impotent. Our secret code name for it was UBT, which stood for "Urban Bloodbath Transport." So look out, my latest creation is crashing a neighborhood near you!

My initial designs were mostly black with just a slight splattering of blood color. I think it reflected the mood outside my cell. Here it's mainly dark with threatening shadows from the flickering torches along the galley way. And the blackness is complemented with sounds of agony as fellow prisoners are beaten on an hourly basis. I wanted my design to depict that same pain and hopelessness as you spiral down the black hole of despair.

The Major asked me to "tone it down" on the evilness and add more color to spruce it up. She explained that not everyone appreciates our depressive culture as much as we do. She said to make it look fast. I asked, "you mean like a flaming arrow just as it's about to pierce the body cavity with glorious after effects-fast?" She responded, "Yes, think more embers and less ash." Okay, I guess I could live with that.

We bypassed Captain Insano because she'll only slow down the approval process. Besides, she already has a full plate with that world destruction plan she's brewing. We went straight to the top and got it done fast. Godfather Merciless was especially pleased with the design, as I knew he would be. I told him I recommended removing the rear door so the further back you go, the more trapped you'll feel. With an affirming grin he said, "You're starting to think like me."

Godfather Merciless wept as he detailed how the colors resurrected childhood memories of their vacation home. As a junior deatheater, his bedroom tower overlooked several meandering lava flows intertwined throughout the barren valley. Across the midsection laid a scorched path littered with bones and smoldering remains. That path is where he scampered daily with his beloved pet Balrog. All the rivers converged and spilled into the giant Lake of Fire where his father once taught him to swim. "That is why my body has no hair," he exposed to my burning eyes.

There was a recent article about our January media event. To soften the image for public consumption, they described the color to be "candy-apple" red. I guess "hematoma" red may be a bit too violent.

In the near future when the weather improves, I'll have more photos of the UBT in action,  terrorizing transit centers and consuming passengers whole. Until then, look out!

The armada preparing for the onslaught.

Hello outside world...

A few of you have inquired about my lack of blogging or my inconsistent blogging the last few months, and I thank you for your concern. My life has been busy and eventful as usual, and there's lots going on at my job, but my communications have been crippled. Yes, I've been cut off from blogging at work.

Back in October, Godfather Merciless dropped the hammer and blocked all internet access to all social networking sites including my blogger site, Facebook, and Scrabble! – my one and only joy around here. Yup, all gone! He realized that all these external sites were providing an unnecessary source of happiness and hope... all of which are detrimental to the corporate morale code. In fact, happiness goes directly against our company motto: "If you are cheerful, you better be fearful!" Happy people have a tendency to disappear around here.

To further push his message across, last week I was summoned to attend the meeting of the Enormously Vile Infamous Leaders. Together with the Godfather, Captain, Sarge, and Major, we snaked down to the darkest depths of the underworld. I was told to bring my camera to capture a few beheadings to serve as a warning to my fellow inmates of the consequences of any illegal outside access. (The picture above is all I dare to publish. It is shot far from the back to spare you from seeing these hideous beings up front.)

Right now, the only way I can get this blog out is to bribe one of the prison guards with contraband. In return I get temporary secret access. But to keep the bribes going, I would need to further stock up on cigarettes and toilet paper…

So yes, I'm still alive. And hopefully I can find time to keep on blogging. The problem is, most of my blogging is done spur of the moment and on the fly. Without instant publishing abilities, I don't know if my material can come out on a timely basis. And when I get home, I'm instantly swarmed by the demands of three little monsters. Sigh. So please be patient, and I thank you for visiting.

I can live with a 27

Above is my newest piece of equipment, a HP 27" monitor. It is paired with my Apple 23" Cinema display. On the surface you may think it's a pretty sweet setup, but once you dig deeper, you'll understand why I'm not totally happy.

Here in the dungeon we have a five year upgrade plan for our computers. Each of us was given a $5000 allowance to upgrade our workstations. Yes, generous amount. But did you know that it was originally only $3500? They increased it only after I complained about how Major Mallrat spent $4700 on a screaming machine that she uses just for displaying her email! And then three months later another $2700 on a Macbook Pro so that she can display her email at the salon. Okay, I admit I may be exaggerating her shortcomings a wee bit. She also is quite capable of opening a PDF file on occasion and can click on a link to get to the web... In other words, she's a perfect candidate for a $400 peecee.

So I get 5000 of your tax dollars! Woohoo! What to buy? What to buy?!

I decided to settle on a Mac Tower 8-Core 2.26ghz for $3299 and a Dell 30" monitor for $1249. Total just under $5,000. The Major burnishes her saliva with her mystic medallion on the dotted line and the order is executed!

Enter Captain Insano.

Here is an updated photo of Captain Insano. She recently underwent a makeover in an attempt to make her look more human.

Captain Insano, being the micro manager of all micro managers, always feels the need to look at all expenses incurred in the underworld (although she conveniently ignores the salaries of herself and her axemen). She nitpicks about EVERYTHING! When I scrape my knees on the cobblestone floor or if the rusted shackles cut into my ankles, she'll feel the need to take inventory of the bandaids I use. That's how anal she is!

So she sees my monitor arriving at the docks and immediately inquires with the Major about it. Together they decide to ship it back and blindly pick the above $350 HP 27" (with horrible specs) instead. Then in a total reversal, the Mallrat has the gall to come to me and say, "I had a feeling she wouldn't go for it..." Huh?? It's already been budgeted for!! You spit-sealed the paperwork!! And it already got delivered!! Talk about being twofaced! Good thing for my self control or else I would've grabbed the closest dead rat in my cell and chucked it at both her brown noses!

Captain Insano reasoned that the 30" is too bright and would lessen the gloomy vibe in our dungeon. She also says it eats up too much energy and may strain the torturous effectiveness of the electric chair. As a good will gesture, she offers to move me to an even smaller cell so that I can sit closer to the monitor.

In an unexpected surprise, she then invites me to her private lair to show how she too has to deal with the current budget woes. There she demonstrates how she can get by just fine by using one candlelabra and the heat lamp in her python cage for lighting. She further confesses how she's unable to upgrade her crystal ball to the beachball sized one and how she hasn't sharpened the blade on the guillotine in months. "You ought to hear the wailing when it doesn't cut through on the first pass!" she jokes.

When her evil echoing laugh finally died, the Captain glares at me and cautiously reminds me that I should be happy with my situation. "Perhaps I have treated you unfairly," she prods. She then inquires if I've noticed the absence of Sargent Scrooge lately. I nervously nod my head as I try not to look at the puss oozing from her boil. She then reveals how she demoted and dispatched the Sarge because of her complaints. The Sarge is now in some far away unknown territory serving as the chief fleet mechanic. Unfortunately the wheels on their bus go Stomp and Stomp.


My heart began to pound as I pleaded her to spare me a similar fate. With a flash of mercy, she says to me, "You can live." And orders the axemen to drag me back to the dungeon.

Back in my cell I realize that I should just be happy with what I have, and to not dwell upon what I almost did get but got sent back before actually getting it by my evil selfish oppressors. I mean life is pretty good here. We just got a new shipment of rat traps, and my neighbor with the B.O. problem is only here three days a week... And yes, a 27" monitor is still very nice, especially running extended desktop alongside a 23". With all that screen space, I can be pretty darn productive having four applications open at once, not having to click through layers of windows to find them. And it's so much easier to ignore emails if you can just glance at the sender and then blow them off. And when my 8-core arrives, I'll be able to work even faster!

Yes, life can be good if you change your perspective on things. I will always have my tormentors. But if I accept them for what they are (pompous, inept, power-hungry) and do what they demand of me (clean up their mess, perform miracles, read their minds), then we all can live, work, and play in harmony in our beautiful realm of destruction. Because I know life can be a LOT worse. They could make me work on a peecee!!

Oops, gotta go! The lights are flickering, which means the crystal ball powering up...

Disclaimer: Some or all of the characters may or may not exist in real life and can just be a figment of the author's imagination and varying frame of mind. Some story lines may have been altered and/or embellished for added entertainment value.

Progress is made

As promised, here is the final printed cover of our Progress Report. Looks familiar, doesn't it? You're thinking, "Didn't Captain Insano hate it?" Yep, she sure did. So what happened?

When I last left off, I was tied in this 3-legged race with a fellow return-from-the-dead designer and we were going nowhere. After a few fruitless collaborations, we decided to just separate and work on our own. Good thing.

Without being tainted by my superior design experience individual style, the other designer instantly created a cover the Captain truly loved. It was a montage of people, families, children, all smiling and enjoying life in the great outdoors. I found it strange that the Captain would gravitate toward this cover since it was not a lifestyle she exemplifies. But it seemed to have created a soft spot in her rigid demeanor. My guess is that the cover is like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter.

In the Mirror of Erised ("desire" spelled backwards), people will see whatever their hearts desire to see. In Harry's case, he longed to see his parents so he would spend hours in front of it dreaming of how life could have been. In the Captain's case, in that cover she saw a reflection of what she yearned for... an exuberant life with loving family and cheerful friends joyously romping outdoors under the bright sun. She saw herself being sociable and warmhearted and gentle – a total reverse from the horrible creature she has become. In that cover, she found a life she had long forgotten. In that cover, she found her own personal Mirror of Erised.

Wiping away her acid tears of sentimental bliss, she took off in her warcraft to visit Godfather Merciless, destined to sell this cover to him. Moments later, the walls shook and my shackles began to rattle again, as loose pebbles rained upon the scattering mice in my cell. Yep, you guessed it. The Godfather hated it! "What is this?! How dare we distort our clientele!! No happy family would ever ride our transit system!! Where's the homeless people and the teenage moms??!!" He warns the Captain that this is now two strikes. A third strike would result in complete annihilation!

The Captain returned dumbfounded and speechless. We feared who she would drag out back next. But she was too crushed and hurt... unable to raise her eyebrow and flare her nostrils to summon her python. For a moment, we felt kinda sorry for her as she sluggishly retreated to her cave. Sometimes when I walk past her cavernous den, I hear her soft sorrowful moans echo throughout the darkness. Something has changed.

So now what? The year is almost half over and we still don't have a cover design. Both the Sarge and Major were freaking out, frantically updating their resumes and stockpiling their bomb shelters. For they say, no one is safe from the wrath of the Godfather!

I live to tell of this...
The next day while I was dusting the cobwebs, I had an unexpected guest. It was the Godfather himself! He totally caught me by surprise! You see, normally I hear visitors coming way in advance because it's a long way down to the dungeon and I can hear them wheezing because the air is thin. Also sometimes they slosh or slip on the remains of the half-eaten designers. But the Godfather, unlike mortals, floats and drifts inconspicuously without warning. The only traces of him are a sudden chill on the back of your neck and a subtle stench of death.

As I tremble, trying not to look directly into his eyes, he stares and studies me but says nothing at all (I was later told he was reading my soul). He inspects my cell and evaluates my various mock-ups taped upon the concrete walls. He eyes one of my designs. I hear a sinister snicker. He snatches it and quickly floats away.


Later that evening at the assembly of the Enormously Vile Infamous Leaders (EVIL), the Godfather demands why he was not shown this design! The Sarge explains that she and the Major both loved that design, but since the Captain hated it, it never made it to his unholiness. With this revelation, the Godfather becomes enraged at the Captain and strips her of all artistic oversight. But little mattered, as the Captain, deflated and demoralized, no longer had any interest in our department. She now plans to refocus her efforts and torment another group.

So in the meantime, I was asked to do some minor tweaking, such as change out some photos and add more people to make our company seem more "human." Furthermore, I was permitted to go outside in the sun to take photos of fellow captives employees in our courtyard. Below are the individual photos I had to assemble to create the final cover.


Now that the job is finished, I am overjoyed. This was by far the most difficult project I've ever encountered – not to mention working with the absolute most difficult people too! With this project I realized the importance of my regular therapy sessions – which is known as my blog. To me, quietly typing out my frustrations is an incredible stress reliever. Sometimes, to take your job more seriously, you just need to step back and joke about it. Well, it may not work for everyone, but it works for me!

Disclaimer: All the facts presented here are not entirely accurate and some characters may be fictitcious and only exist in my imagination.

Related Link: Making Progress with the Captain

Making progress with the Captain

So we have the battle of the designers again. We all have to submit a design for the cover of our annual report (we call it "Progress Report" because it's always late). Anyhoo, below was my first design which was picked as winner by both the Sarge and Major. It was a photo composite that had movement, nature, color, and best of all, it made you forget you're in this graffiti-ridden paradise we call San Jose. I'm commended for my good work and off it goes to get the Captain's blessing.

The Captain didn't like it. In fact, she didn't like any of the others either. Not even close! She reduced them all to ashes with a single heated breath. Being blessed with uninformed wisdom, she offers some ideas and guidance to each of us for the next round of designs.

To me she said, "You! Lowly Servant #4, I order you to create a geometric collage of a specific transit center that features a variety of transit modes!" OK. To be honest, I thought it was a good idea. So I went exactly where she ordered me and took some photos and tried to incorporate precisely what she wanted. I came up with the cover below, to which both my rulers were even more pleased with. Score!


So off it goes to the Captain again. She didn't like it. Again. She didn't like any of the others either. Again. Being anointed with unharnessed power, she changed her mind and started running off with more different ideas. She barks to me, "You! Lowly Servant #4, listen carefully. I want a design that encompasses all these ideas: meeting the needs of the future, the evolution of transportation, the different fuels and different vehicles, digital readouts and technology, operations control room, transit grids and traffic patterns, and innovation and planning images. And the tagline shall be, Transportation solutions in the 21st century."

To make matters worst, the Captain took the other designers out back and executed them, thus elevating my ranking to Lowly Servant #1. Clearly this choice was made because I'm the nicest and least likely to offer resistance (yes, this is my curse). So now I get the honor of working with the executioner one-on-one. She hovers behind me as I type and my neck starts to twitch uncontrollably. I painfully follow her every morsel of non-sensible advice and try to make it work. Below was my creation. She absolutely loves it! I am now Dungeon Master!! Woohoo!!


She happily speeds off on her warcraft to visit the Godfather. Shortly after she enters his unholy realm, our walls shake as thunderous sounds rattle my shackles. We then hear a groan as it can only come from the depths of Hades. He hates it!! Oh noooooooo!!!!

He hates the photo. He hates the tagline. He think it looks too slick. "How dare we misrepresent our prison culture!" Heads are gonna roll....

Upon her return, I am stripped of my title and demoted back to Lowly Servant. I am commanded to work into the night on a 4th, 5th and 6th cover design because the Godfather wants choices. I crank out several covers not worthy of posting and that's when Insano realizes that I've suffered enough. My body and soul has endured irreparable damage and I could no longer perform at optimum levels. In her eyes, I've become a once-winning thoroughbred horse with a broken ankle.

She drags me out back for execution only to be saved by the Major. The Major reaches into her voodoo bag for a magical potion that restores life to one of the dead designers. "Let them work together and maybe they'll come up with something to your pleasing," the Major suggested.

The Captain agreed and I was spared. Besides, her python was still digesting one of the other designers.

Working with another designer is no fun. You would think we would speed along like a team on a tandem bicycle or canoe, but instead we moved like a three-legged race – awkward, uncoordinated and self-defeating. Clearly too many cooks in the kitchen and an entire new level of torture... I was about to end my life, but a fortunate series of events happened and the job was magically finished.

Stay tuned: Next week I'll show you the final winning design.

Related Link: Meet Captain Insano

Meet Captain Insano, my newest boss

In a previous post I already introduced you to my director, Sargent Scrooge. Directly under the Sargent's control is my manager, Major Mallrat. As if this wasn't enough rulers invading my cell, we recently hired a new mega boss to torment us all... we call her Captain Insano.

The picture above is not totally accurate, she normally dresses nicer, complete with a yellow python and matching noserings. This warlord was appointed by the mighty Godfather Merciless (The GM, we call him) who rules over all beasts and mankind throughout our troubled kingdom. Is it any wonder why I never leave my cell? There is constant evil looming around every corner. The amount of tyrants I bow to is mind-boggling. Our company is more top-heavy than Dolly Parton!

Here's the dilemma. The Captain comes from a banking background and has zero design experience. None. Nada. Zippo. Now all of a sudden she thinks she's a designer and tries to art direct everything. She constantly overrides the Sarge and Major (who were both designers in their previous underworlds) and insists we do things the Captain's way. Another problem is that she doesn't tell the Godfather of her "bright" ideas until all is said and done. Then SLAM! Godfather hates it! Having no mercy, he declares a complete overhaul and guess who has to do the dirty work... yep, me.

One job we had to totally reprint it because Captain's "fersuredaGodfatherwilluvit" design was reduced to ashes. The Captain was crushed. As you can see, her black acid tears have permanently scarred her face. You would think that she would learn from that experience... that her and the Godfather don't share the same venomous plans for world domination... But nooooo. If you add the cost of that reprint to her $180k salary, all you taxpayers should be calling for her head.

On top of all that, she wears these tiny tiny glasses and has real lousy tunnel vision. She stares really really close to the page with no peripheral vision. If she was reading a page on the table, from afar it would look like she's snorting coke. It's pretty funny but we dare not laugh because her python is constantly monitoring us. Is it any wonder why she isn't getting the "big picture?" Another reason may be from lack of sunlight due to too much time spent in the dungeon.

The Captain has been making my life miserable ever since her spawning six months ago. I struggle to find meaning in my job with three oppressors constantly bickering on who to destroy next. And of the five designers, I'm the one who is often chosen to carry out their wickedness. Why me???

Lately I've been toiling in the deepest, darkest torture chamber, where I'm deafened by the sounds of constant screaming from fellow captives. In between the daily tightening of the screws, I give you these memoirs of my suffering. I don't know how long I can survive this persecution. If I live to see this through, perhaps I will record this ordeal on my blog. Stay tuned.