Or rather, assisted in the breaking of a Guinness World Record. I was number 213 of 349 haircuts — and it was actually a really nice cut. And fun, too.
08
Oct 09
At least Bob Cratchit had a lump of coal.
I am a valued employee. (Except of course that I’m not.)
A while ago I tweeted about the TWO SERVERS on my desk, right? I’m not sure I ever posted a follow-up, but it took two months to remove them. TWO MONTHS. One month for each server. (Apparently.) Now the lights are burnt out in my windowless, cell-like office…and no one is fixing them. And I’ve let people know. Repeatedly. But the glow from my monitor has been deemed light enough for working, at least for me.
I am being moved next month to a new location, and while I had been looking forward to this move — you know, fewer people eating at my desk, maybe, and even the possibility that I might have a more ergonomic desk set-up — but I’ve found out that it will be even smaller, equally windowless, will still contain two commercial freezers, and I won’t even have a desk. A DESK. I won’t even have a desk!
They are seating me at a stainless steel prep counter.
Let that sink in for a minute.
A stainless steel prep counter.
That’s totally, like 100% ergonomic, right? And won’t say, be freezing cold at all times, either. Right?
I’m beginning to wonder if I will be allowed to have a chair.
Here’s the thing. I write the checks. I compile the financial statements. I am a pretty important part of the business (or I should be) — no one else does my job, and when the last bookkeeper quit without notice, it took six weeks to find a replacement. But it’s like they don’t want me to come to work. They make it as difficult (and as physically uncomfortable) as possible to work for them.
And yet I still go to work. It’s boggling, isn’t it?
28
Sep 09
Your own personal back hoe?
I recently saw a commercial for a personal back hoe. (Really.)
At first I thought it was absurd. But I gave it a little thought — the commercial was very convincing — and I was soon persuaded that everyone needs one…even apartment dwellers.
Because how else are you going to discreetly bury the bodies of people you kill in the middle of the night? I mean, you don’t want to borrow a neighbor’s backhoe for that, not at 3:00 a.m.
That would be an embarrassing conversation, I’m sure.
22
Sep 09
I shouldn’t be a spokesperson, either.
I forgot my book the other day, so I spent my lunch break flipping through an old “Parade” magazine I found in the break room. It had a little blurb about how Christian Slater was working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on an initiative to reduce the high school drop out rate, because he had been a high school drop out himself and felt very strongly about the whole thing.
All I could think of was this: Do you think a celebrity who dropped out of high school and became famous and successful anyway is really the role model for kids who might drop out of school?
Okay, his “success” is debatable by Hollywood standards, but he looks pretty damned successful compared to unemployed roofers and people working at Taco Bell. I might get behind this thing if he was working on an initiative to encourage adult drop outs to get a G.E.D. (like Slater recently did). That makes sense. But I don’t get just standing up and saying, “Hey, kids, I’m a high school drop out who went on to make such films as ‘Broken Arrow’ and ‘Hollow Man II’ — don’t be like me! Stay in school!”
Wait, maybe that is persuasive. Nobody’s too proud of “Hollow Man II.”
Never mind.
P.S.
I have a G.E.D. I am not dissing that at all, though I should add — in the spirit of full disclosure — that I didn’t drop out. I was homeschooled and went to college early.
16
Sep 09
Narrative required.
I have to make up a story for everything, it seems.
For instance, my partner and I drove by the house on Woodhead with the dancing bear topiaries the other night. The bears are usually decorated for whatever holiday is current: Bunny ears for Easter, flags for July 4th, masks and pumpkins for Halloween, and so on. But the bears are currently bare, and I remarked to Lennox that I hoped the kids weren’t getting too old for it. I said I would miss the decorations — and that I really looked forward to them each holiday.
Lennox agreed, but just shook his head as I went on to re-enact an imagined conversation between the mom and the two kids (who appear to be gradeschool aged, as I have seen them in the yard). My performance included the phrases “Seriously lame” and “Do you know how hard it is to be the kid from the ‘Bear House,’ Mom? The ‘Bear House’? This is Montrose, Mom, do you know what a ‘bear’ is?”
So, you know. I require narrative. And where it is absent, I create it — from shrubberies, when necessary.
03
Sep 09
The long Lynchian walk home.
I am almost sure I just walked through a random scene from a David Lynch movie:
- Vague sense of melancholy as I stared at passing cars.
- Large white poodle, barking wildly behind a huge picture window.
- Forlorn, discarded goldenrod feather boa lurking in a shrubbery, a mystery never to be solved.
I mean, it wasn’t from a specific film — it simply had the feeling of the Lynchian oeuvre. You know? At least I didn’t find an ear on the way, or get taken to Club Silencio by my (imaginary?) girlfriend…
Never mind. More of a fleeting thing, open to interpretation. As all Lynchian things should be.
27
Aug 09
Choose your own "Blade Runner" adventure.
I recently had a hankering to watch “Blade Runner” again. I always liked it, being a PKD fan and all, but I was never quite so, um, obsessed with it as people tend to be.
The problem is that whenever I want to re-watch it, I become paralyzed by the choices. Do I watch the original director’s cut? The working print cut? The all-new-super-fabuloso cut? There are like seven versions of that movie, and I never know which one to choose. (Are they all even available to choose from?)
I tried to find some sort of online “choose my ‘Blade Runner’ adventure” website, where you could click yes or no on things like “Unicorn dream sequence?” or “Shitty opening narration?” and then it would just tell you which version to watch. Someone should go out there and create that page, just as a public service. Seriously.
Still, I guess the ultimate choice would be to eschew the movie altogether and read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep again.
Maybe I’ll just do that.
19
Aug 09
The tweet that shook the world.
Okay, so I spent a good deal of the last week insulting William Shatner because he blocked The Bloggess on Twitter. It seems that pissing off people who love The Bloggess is now officially a Bad Thing To Do ™, as we pulled together in an army and roasted Bill ’til he caved…and unblocked her.
It built gradually, but still happened pretty quickly. One day you’re fine, and the next thing you know you have a code name* and you’re in The Matrix, and then…victory. We didn’t even have to wait four years to achieve our objective (unlike the Wachowski brothers).
And it’ll be a huge BYOH** party in Zion tonight, let me tell you. Success is awesome.
Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun on the internet since 1999 or so. And that is a high compliment to the members of the Bloggess Army. Also, it’s a relief to know that there are so many witty people out on the web. It was beginning to feel like a giant infomercial out there.
So, thanks again to the Bloggess Army — and a special thanks to William Shatner for being a sport about it. Really, Bill — all my best to you, too!
*I am Lt. Ellen Ripley, from the Alien franchise.
**That’d be “Bring Your Own Hooker” — which was kind of how this all started…
07
Aug 09
Coincidence?
Someone posted a link to H. G. Wells’s “Man of the Future” on Twitter last night, and is it just me? Or does it look terrifyingly like Helium, of Strindberg + Helium fame? I know we all seem like variations on Strindberg now, but maybe one day we really will evolve into Helium-like beings — cupcakes and all…
(Also, I had completely forgotten how damned funny those cartoons were. I feel certain that I will spend the rest of the day saying “Decay! Decay, decay, decay!”)
Edited to add: Mac Tonnies posted the original link. Sorry — I had saved it, but had forgotten the source.
06
Aug 09
My desk, my oasis.
I have two part-time office jobs, and one of the issues I have to deal with is shared and/or inadequate work space. “Artistic temperament” aside, I am actually an organized worker — and I adhere to some pretty minimalist standards for my workspace.
For instance, here is my desk at Job #1.
I took this photo right when I walked in the door on a Monday morning. The desk is clear and ready for work. Everything to the right of the pencil sharpener is my space.
Here’s a closer look.
See how tidy everything is? Adding machine, stapler, tape, tissues, calendar, weird albino rat under the monitor. (There’s also a stained glass heart hanging under the window — it’s not an inhuman workspace. I have tchotchkes.) I stopped using a pen cup years ago, because people tend to view these as public property and will take your writing utensils at whim. I keep my supplies in a drawer: one mechanical pencil, one black pen, one red pen, one click eraser, one Sharpie, and one highlighter. I absolutely don’t need anything else. There are also binder clips and paper clips in my drawer, along with a legal pad and a single square of sticky notes. The second drawer is for work in progress, and the third drawer is where I keep my backpack.
Everything has a place, it’s easy to access, and there’s nothing extra I don’t use. It’s pretty close to perfect. I admit that the paper storage issue is a non-issue here — the office is paperless, and the only paper I deal with is either scanned and shredded or returned to clients.
I have had trouble with temps using the desk during tax season, though — but only because the desk was so reliably neat they thought no one actually used it.
So, you know, you might think that my inherent anal qualities might object to the mismatched furniture, or something like that. I don’t really care about that in this case. So what’s the issue?
Well, here is the other side of the room.
See that tiny bit of grey countertop to the right by the chair? That’s the end of my desk.
I used to share this space with another employee. Here’s where her desk used to be.
Chaos. I work in chaos. I think my intense neatness is partially a response to work environments just like this — because this is not the messiest place I’ve worked. It’s not even the messiest place where I currently work. I cannot post pictures of that workspace, because it sort of makes me want to cry.
And there’s a little window into my workday for you…