prolixity at its best

my job interview yesterday was more of a screening appointment than an actual discussion. i woke up early (for me), tried to shake off the bleariness with a few games on lumosity and spent 20 minutes of borrowed time on the gauntlet that is I-85. the culling process consisted of a 125 question vocabulary test (anyone care to take a stab at "mephitic"?) and a timed number recognition or "clerical accuracy" test. i have a weakness for "brain games" (that don't involve math), so i actually enjoyed the clerical test. when the nice man in my headphones said it was over i felt like someone had just told me to stop playing and go clean my room. after the tests, i was directed to a corner office where a professor-type gave me the company spiel and said that they would be doing callbacks on Monday. years of data entry and time wasted on free online IQ tests may have finally paid off, at least for the initial cut. i still have to form coherent sentences when the professor asks me inane questions like "where do you see yourself in five years?"

going back to lumosity for a minute -- i was about to say i came across this website by way of a google search, and then i realized that would be redundant because let's face it, who doesn't use google 42 times a day? anyway, in preparation for my clerical accuracy test, i signed up for the free 14 day trial and i've played at least 30 minutes of games for the past 5 days. i don't know what a paid membership is like, but if you're bored and want to do something besides check blogs all day, try it out. i'm sure there are far more useful ways to spend your time than shooting at birds while memorizing a letter that's flashed on the screen, but at least it's a semi productive way to be unfulfilled. who needs perezhilton when you can hone your spatial skills?

i spent the remainder of yesterday avoiding lumosity (two words for you: addictive personality) and reading douglas coupland's jPod. there's something to be said for familiarity. jPod is everything the Gum Thief was not: rife with computer geeks that muse over the most asinine topics while working for The Man. in terms of originality, jPod gets a 2 because it feels like a mirror image of the idiosyncrasies and tone found in Microserfs, but i can't say that i care. in terms of the subculture i was in the mood for, it scores a 9. the only thing i could do without are the disruptive devices that coupland (or maybe his publishers) included: pages of random words strung together in varying type treatments, sometimes with an obvious theme and other times with no apparent logic, and periodic 2-3 page brain vomits that i imagine would make sense to a heavily drugged schizophrenic ex-microsoft employee.

speaking of schizo, i was roped into watching the first episode of Lost last night. alright fine, i attended voluntarily, but only for the sake of good company because i have no investment in Lost. the reactions of the avid fans in the crowd were just as entertaining as the show itself. i confess to feeling a certain degree of interest in what will happen next week, but i'm attributing it to the pleasure gained from spending time with engaging people, and not the cult-forming power of j.j. abrams. we'll see how long i can keep up this cellophane (noodle) facade.