Brian: “Wenches.”

As we were discussing this video while carpooling home from work, it reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago.

Now, I love the Internet for many things. It gives me information when I want it, instant communication with virtually all of my friends and family, and entertainment on demand. In fact, I love it so much that if it were not an abstraction, I WOULD marry it, so don’t even say it.

However, one day I was brought to realize that there is one flaw, one wart, one horrible imperfection with the Internet that threatens to ruin the love affair.

It is the existence this video. (Warning: Watch at your own risk. This is, after all, the WORST VIDEO ON THE FACE OF THE INTERNETS. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING.)

The first time I watched it, I couldn’t finish it. By the time they started rapping, I was literally about to start dry heaving. I got dizzy and had to sit down. I swear I am not making any of this up. Even now, just the thought of watching it makes me a little nauseous. It is because of this video that I will always and forever despise Microsoft marketing, no matter how slick it gets from here. Because for me, there is no forgiveness in this life or the next for a video this terrible.

“Nice name,” I said, “and by nice, I mean retarded. What am I going to do with an online list-making reminder service?”

So I ignored it. Until today. See, a month or two ago, I realized that my productivity had dwindled to approximately zero and that, if I wanted to keep my sanity (and my job) I was going to have to change something. And I started making lists. Every night before I went to bed, I’d make a list of all the junk I needed to get done the next day. And it turns out that it works pretty well for me.

Fast forward to today. I got into work and had a little bit of time to kill before the rush of the day hit me. And suddenly I remembered Remember The Milk.

Less than one hour later, I had put my entire to-do list into RTM, organized it by work and personal to-dos, tagged everything, and integrated it into GMail, iCal, and email. And then I actually used it. So anyways, Ryan, this post is for you. You were right, ok?

And for the rest of you, if you don’t hear anything further, it’s because I’m happily Remembering The Milk.

That is all.

A while ago, Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne was on NPR doing an interview. Apparently he has a good friendship with the legendary Warren Buffet, and so the interviewer was questioning Byrne on that relationship and some of the ways that it had influenced Byrne’s life. In response to one of the questions, Byrne shared this analogy that Buffet had told him at some point:

You see, life is like a baseball game where you’re perpetually up to bat. So more like a home run derby, actually. Anyway, life will throw you lots of pitches. Some will be good, and some will be bad, and the temptation is going to be to swing at all the good pitches. The problem is, if you swing at all the good pitches, you might knock a few, but you’ll be exhausted from all the swinging. Instead, you should sit and wait for a big, fat, slow pitch right over the middle. And once that pitch comes along, you swing away for all you’re worth, and because you’ve saved your energy, your odds of hitting it out of the park are multiplied.

I’ve chosen to adopt this strategy, so anytime I ask myself what I’m doing, I tell myself that I’m waiting on a big, fat, slow pitch. I just hope that life keeps throwing.

8:00 AM - I walk into the office and notice that my coworker who always locks his computer has left it unlocked for the first time. I commemorate the occasion by changing his background to cute, cuddly puppies and kittens.

11:00 AM - I find a video called Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag about the annual air combat exercises held by the U.S. Air Force. Somewhere, my inner ten-year-old self starts drooling.

3:00 PM - Our HR Manager walks into our office and hands me and my two office mates little sqooshy rubber balls. A sqooshy ball fight quickly ensues, ending with me pegging one of my coworkers in the face. Totally awesome.

6:00 PM - I rekindle my love for documentary filmmaking by stepping behind the camcorder lens to capture my little sister’s 20th birthday party. My camera privileges are quickly revoked.

6:45 PM - My brother and I arm wrestle for a solid two minutes before we call it a draw, much to my chagrine.

10:00 PM - I go to the gym to make sure I beat my brother next time. While there, I determine that PC Laptops have the most annoying commercials since Totally Awesome Computers. Their tagline is “PC Laptops, where we love you!” Insultingly stupid commercials + obnoxious CEO on TV = not feeling the love.

11:30 PM - After giving up the search for a link to the kitten picture I put on my coworker’s desktop because of some disturbing search results for “kitten,” I decide to give it up and go to bed.

I come home, sit on the couch, and watch TV. Somehow, between the time I leave the office and the time I get home, all my motivation and excitement dissipates from my body, leaving a shiriveled, lazy husk. Somehow I manage to extract myself from the car and drag myself upstairs to the couch, where I sit with a bag of whatever junk food is most convenient, watching Law and Order reruns whatever happens to be on TV.

This is a frustrating situation for me, because deep within this unmotivated shell of a man is someone who really wants to do great things with his time. And yet the siren song of easy, mindless entertainment is too much for me to resist. After all, the TV promises an evening of effortless enjoyment, asking only my time in exchange. Forget the fact that at the end of the night, all that’s left is this vaguely disappointing sense that, somehow I have managed to waste yet another portion of my life on something of little to no value. Curse you, TV, with your seductive, seductive appeal. I shake my fist, nay, I bite my thumb at you for the hours of time you have stolen from me.

Anyway, writing this blog post has made me pretty tired. I wonder what’s on right now?

P.S. It’s remarkable how many cat pictures show up when you do a Google image search for “couch potato.”

First of all, I love how this is almost universally the leading statement that the losing lawyer says. There must be some class in public relations or something in law school where they teach law students to say this exact statement just in case they have to represent a client in front of cameras because it shows up so consistently. And of course, who can blame the lawyers for expressing this sentiment? After all, what corporate lawyer is going to get up and say “yeah, we totally saw this coming, and, well, we’re really not all that torn up about it?” But at the same time, I could use a bit more variation.

Second, the sheer hyperbole of the statement is audacious enough that I’m considering using it in my own day-to-day operations. After all, how much more sincere will I sound if I’m “shocked and deeply disappointed” when I don’t get my way, as opposed to just “bummed?” This new phrase is guaranteed to pull at the ol’ heartstrings of everybody who hears it, thus swaying public opinion in my favor, which is all I was going for in the first place.