I’m genuinely excited for my new day job. Two weeks in, and all of my coworkers have been unfailingly brilliant, charming, and kind. The work seems interesting and I’ve found my normal level of cynicism for employment cracking and flaking just a little bit.
It’s still a job, though, so I’ve spent the past two weeks mired in the tedium that accompanies every new white-collar position. There are a seemingly endless parade of forms to fill out, trainings to do, and boxes to check. No one forgets that we’re not allowed to bribe government officials, harass our colleagues, or sell company secrets to the Soviets, but it makes everyone’s job a lot easier in those inevitable cases that someone does it to have logged evidence that they should have known better. And so the rest of us have a parade of mandatory 20-minute trainings with names like “[Company] Not Selling Secrets Policy Training”.
I’m interested in the new mode of these trainings, which is built around narrative comprehension quizzes. You read a dry policy document, sometimes accompanied by a video, and then are presented with what a lawyer would call a “hypo”. Paulette is in possession of secrets for the next generation of our product. Paulette bet big on the ponies last week and lost. She’s in hock to some people. Bad people. She’s running scared. Paulette should: a.) Ask for more time to pay the debt and wait until bonus season. b.) Make peace with the impending loss of her kneecaps. C.) Call the company ethics helpline. D.) Paulette hears that the Soviets are buying, Paulette should get that bag!
Whoever comes up with them might be the only person left having fun with a corporate writing job.
“Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.”
I’m also currently taking a class through Hugo House. It’s a close-reading course on George Eliot’s Middlemarch. It was a bit of an impulse choice for me, since I’d never read it and it wasn’t high my list, but had a previous, excellent experience with a deep-reading course in college, covering Joyce’s Ulysses. In that case, it really helped me get through Joyce’s work and get much more out of it than I otherwise would have.
Fortunately, Middlemarch is much more accessible and, in my opinion, Eliot is a better writer in many respects. One thing I wasn’t expecting is how funny it is at times. Once I got used to Eliot’s slightly archaic style, I found myself laughing aloud at some of the quips and descriptions. Even small asides—like describing a Maltese puppy as “one of nature’s most naïve toys”—make the prose a delight, despite the impediment of 150 years of stylistic development.
The depth of characterization also struck me. The unusual intrusions of the narrator, combined with the richly rendered interpersonal connections between the characters serves to really bring them to life. Even the tiny plots which are unimpressive in the grand scheme of things, become gripping because they mean so much to the characters themselves. I never would have thought that I’d be so interested in whether a lazy, fun-loving failson could flip a horse so that his dad doesn’t find out about his debts, but I stayed up late, gripped and genuinely wondering if Fred Vincy would pull it off.
I’m looking forward to Powerplant’s upcoming record, Bridge of Sacrifice, but with a little trepidation. Of the two singles they’ve released so far, one of them (“The Fork”) strikes me as unbearably goofy, even by nerd metal standards. (“Hands are cold / left my gloves at home / Take the armor off when we are alone / Castle walls dancing skeletons”)
Fortunately, the title track is much more in the vein of what I’d been hoping for, with a solid black metal turn, great energy, and a sick bridge (musical) to accompany the titular bridge (sacrificial). The tinge of fantasy and pseudomyth in metal is very much a case of the dose making the poison. A little bit lends itself to theatric worldbuilding and aesthetic enrichment. Too much of it, or a lack of dilution with musical acumen, and you end up with cringey, unlistenable garbage.
“Bridge of Sacrifice” seems to have just the right amount and I’m hopeful it’s more in the vein of the rest of the record. The full album is out March 13th and can be preordered on Bandcamp.