"What the heck is WhirlyBall?"

There is something deeply bizarre about US corporate morale events. They are supposed to build team behavior, but more often than not they are humiliating forced-social functions with marginal food, terrible music, weird actives that nobody would really do if they had to pay for it with your hypercompetitive management chain, and often involve finding out your co-workers are kinda dicks.

So today--on the last day of the Fiscal Year--we had our first offsite morale event since I moved in with the Xbox ATG folks. Apparently they hit upon whirlyball as an activity last year so that's what we did.

It didn't suck, but as a sport is really bizarre. It's one of the few team sports where being paraplegic has no impact on your ability to play, and as such we probably net gained calories with the soda and pizza 'cause it involves sitting in an electronic bumper car and playing lacrosse. In slow motion. You can easily walk faster than the majority of the cars.

The place (which was in Edmonds, jeliza!) wasn't air-conditioned so the net result is a "sporting activity" that gets you sticky and hot, where you can get seriously injured by crushing your hand or at least twist up your back, includes the potential to get electrocuted, and doesn't actually require any effort beyond manipulating a driving mechanism and a plastic scoop. In fact, the sport has a fundamental flaw as a corporate event: it requires both hands and doesn't leave one free to nurse a drink.

Nonetheless, as a minority new to the group it was a chance to interact with coworkers who are usually hiding in their offices or at meetings rather than working on the things with you.

The fact that it is a kind of fun if weird corporate event isn't that surprising. The fact that they offer LEAGUE PLAY is just wrong.

Apparently despite the fact that I've never, ever heard of this activity in my 36 years of life, it has been around long enough to have championship banners from the 70s... The original Greek Olympic version must have used chariots. And spear throwers. I'd totally pay to watch that!

(no subject)

Listening to the Newshour and hearing the Republican's attacking the New York Times because a never-ending declaration of War Against Terrorism justifies any action the President comes up with as long as it's as "Commander-in-Chief", I keep thinking the phrase:

"We've always been at war with Eurasia."

Then again, I get the feeling most of them like the Prez aren't "readers" unless it's their favorite tailored-to-their-world-view version of the Bible.