Microfilm shelving project journal: Day 3,468.

I am beyond physical exhaustion. Hallucinations have become more commonplace. I begin to wonder if the purple orangutan really wants to be my friend or if he is merely setting me up. I refuse to be a pawn in his little simian game of chess....

For two and a half days straight now, The Powers That Be have had me moving microfilms one cartful at a time from the microfilm mines behind the Course Reserves Department out onto the floor and shelving them.

I have not had to do this kind of physical work, on my feet constantly, for a long time now. Normally that's what I have minions for, but unfortunately, the type of minions we employ around here do not have the mental capacity to be trusted with a job as mentally taxing as putting microfilms in alphabetical order.

I wish I was joking on that last part.

So that leaves me and my esteemed coworker, Lady Dementia, to get everything hauled out into the front area by the end of the week. I know it doesn't sound terribly hard, but when you're used to sitting at a computer for eight hours a day pushing book carts around and carrying armloads of microfilms around can be incredibly taxing, especially doing it all day long for several days straight. If I hadn't lost about sixty pounds recently I doubt I would have even made it this far. I would have died of exhaustion somewhere among the endless stacks of microfilm where the film-spiders would have found my lifeless corpse and dragged it away for a midnight snack.

Note to self: in regards to film-spiders, invest in flamethrower.

In case you've wondered, this project is a big part of why I've been neglecting my bloggly duties of late. It has eaten up almost all of my time during the day planning and executing it, and at night I've either been spending time with friends to relax or resting to heal my tired, broken, undead body.

Hopefully, however, it will be over by the end of the week and we'll be done picking up the pieces and fixing any errors by sometime next week so I should be able to post more often after that.

Until then, no rest for the wicked.

Of Dust Bunnies and Rock Anthems

Well, despite being the dead of summer, it's officially spring cleaning time here at the dungeon. All of the racks and iron maidens are being polished, the books of forgotten arcane lore are being given a good dusting, and the giant blast furnaces are being scrubbed down. Of course we've already lost over fifty minions on this last job alone, since The Powers That Be refuse to actually turn off the furnaces while they're being cleaned. Seems a bit self defeating to me, but hey, as the poet said, mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do and send others to die.

Or something like that.

Or not.

We've also been cleaning out the office break room, the contents of which have so far included:
-An entire shelf of outdated catalogs from various office supply companies (some going back to 2003)
-A box full of small, black, plastic things on whose function no one seems to agree
-Dozens of folders full of time sheets dating back as far as 1995
-A folder containing all of the job descriptions in the library dating from 1989 (The thing is actually printed on Dot Matrix paper)
-Trays, plates, knives, forks and cups of all sizes and shapes
-Two coffee makers, both of which have a thick crust of long-since-dried coffee and mold on the bottom
-Approximately 23,547,900,342 boxes of holiday decorations.

So at least we're prepared if there's ever a tinsel shortage.

Back at the overlord homestead, things have been surprisingly uneventful, although busy. The wife is currently working on a project related to her dissertation, so my evenings are much more boring than usual. Boring enough that I've finally been able to beat all of the songs on Rock Band on Expert! Booyah! Take that, "Green Grass and High Tides"! You thought your obtuse rythm and illogical, insanely fast solos had defeated me, but I rose up once more and pierced your shield of sixteenth notes with the sword of my sheer rock-and-roll awesomeness!

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Sorry. I majored in overly-long-victory-rants back when I attended Overlord University. Old habits and all.

Attack of teh kewt

I have seen the face of cuteness, and it's name is WALL-E.

So this weekend I took my wife, Mrs. Overlord to the local megaplex to see Pixar's newest animated feature, WALL-E (Which, for those of you who haven't seen it stands for "Waste Allocated Load Lifter - Earth Class"). I must admit that going into this movie I had the highest of hopes. The preview was one of the funniest I'd seen in a long time, and as anyone who reads the same webcomics as me knows, I'm a big sucker for cute.

Now normally when I go into a movie with great expectations a horrible, horrible thing happens. Somehow, no matter how good they are they end up disappointing me. Only a few movies (most notably this past winter's Cloverfield) have completely lived up to my hopes. And if they don't, I generally end up being overly harsh on the film in retaliation. I'm happy to say that WALL-E not only lived up to my expectations, but even surpassed them.

WALL-E is a comedy about a scatterbrained robot dealing with his loneliness on an Earth long abandoned by humanity. Despite being the only robot still functioning on the planet, he dutifully keeps going with his endless job of cleaning up trash on the polluted planet. Soon, however, his predictable world is disrupted by the arrival of EVA, another robot for whom WALL-E soon falls head over treads. Giving away any more would be doing a disservice to both you and the movie. Suffice to say, the script is tightly written, and hilarious.

This is the kind of comedy that they just don't make anymore. You know, the funny kind. The kind that doesn't involve Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler or toilet jokes. This is the kind of intelligent, thoughtful humor that has long been missing from modern movies. One thing that may turn off some moviegoers is the fact that the first half of the movie is almost completely without dialogue, however in this case, that's a very good thing. The physical comedy alone is well worth seeing, and the fact that Pixar can make a love story come to life using only two words ("Waaaaall-e" "Eeeeeeeeva") is a testament to this film's genius.

One final note: I've heard a few people say that this film is not really a kid's movie. Although there's certainly nothing inappropriate for kids, it's a more thoughtful movie with almost no dialogue that today's jack-ass generation may find hard to sit through without dying of boredom. Well I hate to sound like a cranky old person (Get off my lawn!), but that's exactly the kind of thing kids should be watching. Too many kids movies today are focused on crude, unintelligent humor and mind-melting action with no thought required, which means that the generations after mine are becoming overly-stimulated and unable to appreciate anything with more depth than Deuce Bigalow. With that in mind, this movie is quite a welcome change in direction that parents would do well to take notice of.

My rating: 9.5 out of 10 lashings.