Act I, Scene I

I'm returning from lunch to go into my office building. Outside the front door I see one of the designer's I work with. I see him pull out his cell phone and almost drop it, bobbling it a few times. Good time to make small-talk with coworker I haven't made small talk with before. And I have an opening too!

Me: Be careful with that cell phone
GD: What?
Me: I said, be careful with that cell phone. You could drop it.
GD: What? What about my cell phone?
Me: Uh, didn't you almost drop your cell phone
GD: No
Me (obviously flailing) Really, I thought I saw you bobble it?
GD: No. What do you mean by bobble?
Me: You know, kind of like drop it?
GD: No, I don't know. I've never heard of that word.
Me: What word?
GD: Bobble. I've never heard the expression "bobble it."
Me: Ah, umm, well, ahhh, I'll see ya. I gotta duck in there (heads to bathroom).

So I really wanted to respond to Brenda Elfgirl's response that we should all listen to the RNC so we'd be able to "debate" with Republicans and to not live in our bubble, blueish world, but all I can say is whatever (sorry, Brenda). I know what they're going to say and I know it's all lies and I know the press isn't going to do a damn thing to call them on anything ("hey, we're compassionate, except if you're gay and we love the military unless you run against us!"). Once again, the problem we Dems have is that we want to "debate" the issues, the Republicans just want to kick our ass.

Once again I flipped onto the RNC just long enough to get that icky, queesy feeling. Everyone's favorite drunken twins (as opposed to everyone's favorite coke-whored anexoric twins) came out to introduce their Stepford Wife of a mother. First of all, Jenna's not looking so hot these days. It's like part of her head's expanded and flattened while part of her head's gotten skinnier. She's looking like cartoon Ken Griffey on "the Simpsons." Anyways, so they come out, like a bunch of dumb-ass teens at TRL Live (I'm liking the Kerry daughters much more) and give a speech. First they make a bunch of jokes about how unhip their Grandmother, the drag queen of an ex-First Lady, Barbara Bush is. 'Cause you know, Republicans are just so hip. And to prove it, they make some joke about their Grandmother not knowing what "Sex in the City" is all about. All this in a convention mainly filled with born-again Evangelicals who'd probably give half of their pension funds to Pat Robertson in horror if they ever stumbled upon reruns of that show. God only knows what would happen if, say, Vanessa Kerry made the same crack at the DNC. But remember, folks, the Republicans think we're all idiots.

Anyways, I'm just ranting all-political wise because Slate had a great column today about the GOP story-line that Smirkboy showed real strength and courage after 9/11. And how did he show such strength and courage? Basically just by showing up (which, as Woody Allen said, is 90%) of life. Okay, yes, Bush gave a great speech to congress after 9/11 and he did good up there in the rubble with the bullhorn (truth is Kerry would have said something like "the whole world hears you if they watch the news or have a TV and are paying attention to what's going on here"). But isn't that what the President has to do? Are we basically just praising him for not freaking out? Or at least, not freaking out when the cameras weren't on and he wasn't in front of school kids? And all this going on while his cronies are slamming somebody who actually did fight in a war.

Wake up, white people, wake up.

Because it's the little things that matter-

Starting tomorrow, I'll have a new health care plan, one through my new employer. Yeah, not the most exciting thing in the world, but for some reason it's making me happy. Part of it, I guess, is that it's one more sign that this weird, surreal, dream that I've been having for the past month (things feel so askew lately that I'm half expecting a big guy in a bunny suit to start talking to me) is actually true. And part of it is because the health insurance I was getting was through the ex-company and so now I'm completely and totally rid of them.

When I sent an e-mail to the HR person at the ex-company, I felt like adding a signature to the end of the e-mail, one that mentioned my new title (much spiffier sounding than the one I had there) and new company (a company whose owner could buy the ex-company just using the spare change he could find in an old couch). You know, because living well is the best revenge and revenge, as the Klingon's tell us, is a dish best served cold. But I didn't.

Either way, Kush meer in toches

On one of the stations tonight they showed one of my favorite "Seinfeld" episodes. It's the one were Jerry decides to take a stand on the very important issue of kissing people hello. As he makes his stand, he winds up pissing off all of his neighbors who think he's being rude by not kissing them hello. I like the episode because I got the same issue. Not really with kissing people hello, which thankfully isn't something people really do here (New Jersey, on the other hand), but with hugging. I got issues with hugging. Sort of.

As you might gather, I am not a hugger. I actually wish I were, but I'm not and at the age of 36 it's probably to late to turn into one. And yes, there are people I hug but it can sometimes be awkward (and sometimes not). The problem I have with is when to hug and when not to hug.

It's easy with guys. Unless you're long, long friends and it's some sort of big occasion, then hugging is not done. Guys can just do the hand shake or the high-five of the post-millenium age, the knuckle tap. All of that works fine. The problem usually comes with women. Women are tricky in these regards because it just doesn't feel right to give them a handshake. The knuckle tap definitely not. Which means hugging. But when is hugging okay? Is hugging okay after a first meeting? I know lots of situations where I've hugged after I just met them and I guess it's okay (sometimes fun), but it's not like we're that friendly and now we're having bodily contact. And once you hug, it's hard to go back, you're pretty much locked into hugging (unless, of course, it moves to the hello-kiss). And if it isn't a first meeting type thing, what are the rules here? Is it a second meeting thing? A third? Is it kind of the friendship equivalent of going all the way. You know, like we've both agreed we want to be friends with each other, so we'll start hugging now?

And then there are the women who you don't hug. Some women, for instance, are not quite huggers either. Or, you don't necessarily have a hugging kind of relationship. For instance, hugging is kind of awkward if there's any sort of tension. There are also some women with whom you don't have any sort of hugging chemistry whatsoever and by that I mean it just, for whatever reason, feels kind of weird. The question then becomes how do you say goodbye to them? And if you decide to bite the bullet and hug, when is it okay to start hugging? It gets all weird when you try and hug them. Or the whole thing is just so weird to begin with that there's no hugging involved. And if there's no hugging, does it look bad on the one not doing the hugging?

As much as a political junkie as I can be and as passionate as I am about this election, I'm going to try my best to stay far away from any sort of news type thing with the RNC going on. Even the masochistic part of me, the part that likes to watch Fox News just to see how long it takes before I start throwing something, wants to avoid the damn thing. Not that I don't kind of want to watch it, it'll just upset all of my attempts to be all serenity now-like. I even just peeked- peeked- at Fox News this evening and just hearing Sean Hannity tell Sen. Trent Lott that he's being treated like a rock star at the RNC makes me want to projectile vomit. What, praytell, kind of twisted universe is it in which Trent Lott is seen as someone to cheer?

Oh, I'll watch news-related things this week just as long as it involves Jon Stewart. And sites like Gawker and Atrios are extremely invaluable right now, but I'm trying to go cold turkey off the NY Times. Nope, the only way I'd watch any of this thing, even pay the slightest attention to the convention is if something bad would happen, and when I mean "bad" I mean "something horrifyingly disastrous befalling the Republican Party". Like if John McCain would finally snap out of the "Manchurian Candidate" mode he's been in lately and tell the entire convention just what he thinks of President Smirkboy. Or if in the middle of Dick Cheney's speech he turns into a snake-like demon and in order to reach "Ascension" eats all of the convention goers. Sadly, I don't think either will happen.

The worst part of this whole convention is that there's real stuff going on in this world and we'll never hear about it this week. Like how can we even think about listening to Bush blab away when Lindsey Lohan and Tara Reid are having some huge cat-fight to get Paris Hilton's attention. . Come on, folks. Let's get real here.

You know, I had actually made it a point of sitting home during a blazing hot Saturday afternoon to write up a bunch of stuff for the bloggie- brilliantly witty stuff that would have taken this whole thing up to a whole other level if I don't say so myself. But then I got to the point where I was going to edit them before posting and realized that they weren't brilliantly witty but more like crappily shite (ed note- is "crappily" even a word? Should you even be writing at 11 PM Sunday night?). Not that what I was trying to say was shite- first weeks of a new job tends to lend itself towards all sorts of whacky misadventures- but what I wrote was shite. And I wasn't even hungover when I wrote them.

So I started rewriting them and, well, didn't get very far mainly because I'm hungover now. What this all means, of course, is that I apologize for not having more stuff to post. And come back later, y'all cause I got some good ones.

I'll just conclude all of this with an annotated Brilliant List, which I didn't even really do this weekend (see note about hangover).

-The new flick "Hero.". It's an absolutely beautiful movie.
-Also the flick "Garden State." Yes, Natalie Portman is totally adorable. And yes, the soundtrack is totally bitching.
-Barry Bonds four homers away from 700 (and yes, I'm totally going to SBC this weekend in hopes of seeing 700)
-New, cheap-ass benefits
-Lobster dinner at the Gun & Sport Social Club.

And the not so Brilliant thing of the week-
-Kerry now down by 4 in most polls and in statewide polls too. All because of those Swift Vets for "Truth." Way to go America. Kudos. Those of us who are actually paying attention to what's going on in the world totally thank you. Remember, folks, just because you see it on TV doesn't mean it's true.

Oh yeah, I saw a preview for this movie, Shaun of the Dead. while seeing "Hero." I am so all over this movie.

My job is actually a contract job, meaning I get paid by the hour. I still get benefits and it's mine as long as something happens, but I'm still considered freelance. Part of my excitement about the job came because when I first got the job, I took the amount of money I was paid hourly, multiplied by it by forty hours and came up with the conclusion that I was about to make gob loads of money. Thus bling-bling dreams of Kristal, iPods and lots of trips to Mexico. Turns out, however, that the job really isn't a forty hour job. The hours are basically something like 9 to 5 with an hour lunch- a total of 35 hours. But it's also kind of flex time in that I could work more if needed or wanted but I could also work less if I wanted to or needed to. For instance, because I'm still training and there's not much for me to do, I got into work all last week at 9:30 and with an hour lunch, I basically worked a 32.5 hour work week.

First off, what this means is that each week I'm presented with the decision of how much I want to work. I could get up at my normal hour and get in at 9:30, and take a short lunch or stay half an hour late. Or I could take a normal lunch and either come in early or get home at 7 instead of 6. Or I could just leave it be and only work 32 hours. Somebody told me that an old freelancer always ate his lunch at his desk just to make sure he got the 40 hour week. I know, the obvious answer is to work the 40 hours to get the full money but it's an easy thing to agree to when it's not, say, 4:30 in the afternoon and there's not much work to do and you're not only half-asleep and on your third cup of coffee, but bored to tears. Plus, if you think it's obvious answer, then you don't really know me that well.

The main thing about all of this, however, is that it means that it's not the salary I thought it would be. So I started figuring out what all this meant in terms of salary. Over the course of a year, five hours a week adds up significantly so that my salary, again based on a forty hour work week, drops about ten thousand dollars. At thirty-two and a half hours, even less. There goes dreams of Kristal, iPods and lots of trips to Mexico. Now it's more like Kristal and iPods, but no trips to Mexico or trips to Mexico but no iPod. This made me kind of bummed, I mean really bummed- I wasn't going to make as much money as I had thought.

Then that little voice in my head came and bitch-slapped some sense into me. What all this means is that I have a flex-time job, a job in which I can still get up at a reasonable hour, can get home at a reasonable hour, and will hardly ever involve working overtime. And since the hourly salary is so good, I can not only afford to work these hours, but live comfortably. In fact, even if I take away the five hours or so a week, it's still way more than I've ever made in my life and way more than I would have gotten elsewhere. In other words, I have just pulled off getting the perfect job- lots of money for not that much work. Score!!!!!

Which, of course, raises the obvious questions: it can't last, can it?

From Wonkette:

"New York has changed so much with the arrival of the protesters. It has, in fact, turned into San Francisco. Artfully unkept, earnest young people who genuinely feel they know what's best for you, personally. (Case in point: An ad in the subway for a women's razor defaced with the angry retort: "Mammals have hair, deal with it!!") Of course, it's San Francisco overrun by Republicans and police, which some would argue is an improvement."

Well, maybe the police part....

And check this out:

Swift Yacht Vets for Bush

And now…..the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week…..

I was going to post something about the cover story, one of those "Our Friends Are So Cool" stories about four women who perform jump-rope (wow! you women are so cool), but I noticed this little story about the big NY Protests next week (don't even get me started) and, well, here we are.

The story is basically about the preparations protestors are doing to get ready for the Republican National Convention next week (remind me not to go near a TV). As we all know, there's these huge protests/temper tantrums about to go down and between the terrorism paranoia and the protests, NY is completely clamped down. The protestors are totally chomping at the bit to go smash stuff and "make a statement" despite the fact most political observers think it's going to backfire and most Blue Staters are holding their breath in hopes nothing bad happens. The Bay Guardian, of course, doesn't see it that way, instead claiming the "massive show of people power that could have a profound impact on the presidential race." Just like those massive shows of people power had a profound impact on globalization and the Iraq War. Boy, those protests sure worked didn't they?

Anyways, the Bay Guardian goes out of their way to show that the protests are going to be a good thing and that the inevitable "Cops Bust a Whole Bunch of Hippie Heads and the GOP Blames it All on Kerry" will actually backfire on the GOP. Why? Because, as this guy says:

"Maintaining overt empire requires restraining domestic dissent, as empire cannot survive very much democracy," said David Solnit, who is going to New York with the Code Orange affinity group of Bay Area-based Direct Action to Stop the War. "I see the RNC as an opportunity for people in the U.S. to start asserting people power."

Right, I'm sure that's the exact conclusion hicks in Ohio and Iowa will draw.

But my favorite quote is:

"Carwil James is an activist with Anarchist People of Color, an organizing forum "working for a world in which popular direct democracy replaces the state." James said the Aug. 31 action will illustrate the diversity of popular resistance to the Bush regime."

What about the People's Front of Judea? Seriously, the Anarchist People of Color? I'm sure all three of them are well intentioned but, Jigga what?

Here's an idea: if you really, really, really, really want Bush to be defeated, take all that money that you're spending on travelling out there, all that money that you're spending on living out there, and all that money that you'll probably spend getting bailed out of jail and instead of protesting, give it to a political organization. Give it to, say, MoveOn.org or the DNC. Or anyone one of those "shadowy" 527 groups. That will help defeat Bush. Smashing Starbucks, making giant paper mache puppets, and chanting "the people…united….will…never…be…divided…." won't do jack shit. Some of us really, really, really want to see Bush loose to and you're about to go screw it all up.

Sorry for the lack of postings (computer issues).

Just to catch you up, here's Tuesday night's post…..

You know the "Seinfeld" episode where Putty reveals himself to be a face-painter and Jerry wants tickets to a Devils hockey game? So Jerry winds up getting tickets through Putty but only under the condition that he paints something on his chest and has to stand up and cheer everytime the camera shows him?

Tomorrow night that's me. Sort of.

Friend called up and did the "so what are you doing Wednesday night?" thing. Tell her nothing and she asks if I want to go with her to the A's game. I say, fer sure (of course). This may come as a surprise to those of you who read this (and those of you who are just joining us- ahem), I like baseball. And as much as I hate to admit it, I haven't gone to an A's game in an awfully long time (not since they were good) only because I'm from San Francisco and a huge Giants fan. And, yes, I am a snot. I admit it.

Of course, it wasn't until I had already agreed to go that she told me that I'll be going with her office. Oh, and that I'd have to wear a t-shirt for the occasion and that we're going to be put on the Jumbotron and I'd have to stand up and cheer when we're being shown to all 20,000 drunks at the Coliseum.

Addendum- it was my first A's game in about six years. It really is a different world entirely from good ole SBC. It's more run-down, scruffier. It's like you know when you hang out with friends who got the totally nice furniture and the totally nice house and then you go visit your slacker friend and he's living in a house with roomates and old paint and run-down furniture. That's what watching an A's game is like. All of which sounds kind of depressing in a way until you open up the Chron and see this photo of your typical SBC Giants fan- drinking wine in their box seats while talking on the phone.

This week's Brilliant List-

1) Christopher Mathews bitch-slapping around Michelle "Interning all the Japanese Americans during WWII wasn't such a bad idea" Malkin- wow a cable station talk show host refusing to let a guess throw slimy rumours around? Now how about that?

2) "La Dolce Vita" at the Castro- Anita Ekberg: wow

3) The Bush Twins attending the Gay Wedding of their eyebrow waxer (eyebrow waxer?)- wonder how that conversation at the dinner table went? By the way, it looks like Barbara got her nose fixed. What would Jesus do?

4) The Men's Basketball Team getting kicked out of the Olympics- call me a purist, call me what you will, but I kind of like Olympic athletes better when they don't live in the kinds of houses that are shown on MTV Cribs.

5) Trey Parker & Matt Stone telling the NY Times that they went to the 2000 Academy Awards on acid- that rocks

And, of course, goodbye temping, hello bling-bling

And the not so Brilliant List

- The fact that the 49'ers/Raiders pre-season game, last week was broadcast on not one but two channels at the same time. But wait, there's more! A day later, another station played a rebroadcast of it. All this for a game in which the coaches were so afraid of getting a starter hurt that by the fourth quarter, they were playing the players' entourage. And for those who watched the rebroadcast, there's something called life. Get one.

The first day of work today was no big. I'm actually getting pretty good at them, what with this being like the fourth new job I've started since I've been writing this here bloggie. The thing that was tripping me out about today is how weird everything is on the first couple of days and how normal that weirdness will become. Most of my jobs have been in the city and with small to medium sized companies. This job is my first one in the Silicon Valley (the S.V.?), the first one with a long commute, and with a company that I heard today had around 25,000 people working there. The place is so huge it's not even like a campus, it's like a small city. Everything's so completely different from what I'm used to but in another couple of months or so, it'll all be totally, completely normal.

And another thing about today….

It's the first day, right? So I gotta dress to impress. Today I wore my black dress pants, black shoes, and a really nice button down shirt. The thing is, though, that I'm working for a company in California, one that's involved in software. Not only that, most of the people who I work with are artists and artist types. In other words, is dressing up nicely really correct way to dress to impress? If I really wanted to impress, shouldn't I have wore jeans, Skeechers sneakers, a Polyphonic Spree t-shirt or some other totally hip band, and maybe, like, a trucker hat? Here I am all dolled up and pretty much the entire office was in jeans and t-shirts. I might have looked smart and professional, but I was looking pretty square, man.

Bye, Brew

It's been a fun past couple of weeks, despite the craptastic temp job. Basically for three whole weeks I had nothing to worry about other than what I could possibly do with all the gobs of money I somehow find myself about to be making. So far, I've bought an iPod, a VW Beetle, season tickets to Giants games, several three day trips to Mexico, a rented apartment on Telegraph Hill, dinner at all the fab five-star restaurants I've never been able to afford, and a dog. Not to mention various day dreams involving the sorts of things one usually sees in rap videos. Why it's so much fun is because I can dream up all this stuff without actually having to do or deal with the things that'll get me all the money. Therein lies the rub.

Tomorrow (or more accurately, as you're reading this) it all begins. The job, the work, the money, the bling-bling. All those dreams and fantasies are about to become real. As well as the attendant job stresses- possible long-hours, tight deadlines, and oh so fun personality conflicts. See, the funny little thing about not having a job is that when you listen to everyone else bitch about their jobs, you realize how much having a job actually sucks, but not nearly as much as not having one. Luckily, my feeling is that unlike the last job, my boss seems emotionally stable. Not that I know her that well, but she didn't strike me as the type who starts off her morning by slamming the phone down on her co-worker boyfriend. Nor does she seem like the type who eavesdrops on conversations I have from around the corner. Still, there's gotta be something out there, something stressful, because there always is. And considering my recent job experiences, well, let's just say I have a couple of friends who have started a pool to see how long I stay at this job. Even my dad basically told me "don't screw this one up."

In some ways what's about to happen is like when you've waited in line for hours to check out the latest, newest, kick assingest roller coaster and are about to finally get into your seat. Or you could say it's like being an explorer and starting off on the big expedition, visions of gold and glory dancing in the head, not to mention slight anxieties about cannibals, falling off the edge of the world, and syphilis. Or like a baseball team leaving spring training to start the regular season, visions of pennant glory dancing in their head despite the fact they're the Brewers. In other words, it's all down hill from here.

Strike that. Let's just say this- here we go.

Got into BART after the Temp job and sat next down to some guy who was reading a Star Trek the Next Generation novelization. I started to laugh at his geekiness until I realized I was sitting there reading a Fantasy Football Magazine.

And here endeth the Temping. I'm so happy that when they let me go home and hour early, I almost cried. As God is my witness, I will never Temp again. Or so I hope.

The Temp Job today was the way I like 'em, slow and boring. Out of the almost seven hours that I was there, I'd say I worked for a good hour of it. And while I'm totally down with money for nothing, I couldn't but help think about the fact that if I was going to do nothing, I'd much rather do it in my bed. Especially since they made such a bit snit about me having to work that day.

The day was so boring that after seeing two completely adorable Golden Retrievers outside the office, I spent a large portion of the afternoon trying to come up with a cool name for a dog. Up until seeing those dogs, I wanted to get a cat, mainly because I had the perfect cat name- Elphaba. If I wanted to get a dog, I'd have to come up with the perfect dog name first. What's the point in getting a dog after all if it has a dumb name?

Sadly, the only thing I could come up with as a good dog name was Khan. And only because whenever I'd take the dog off-leash and they'd run away, I'd get to yell out "Khaannnn!!!!!!!!!!"

And, yes, it's time for the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week. This little bit of po-mo mojo concerns a new art exhibit.

Basically this guy downloaded porn images from the Web (only to do his artwork, of course), pixelated them, then painted over parts of it so that it only slightly looks like porn, but instead mainly looks like cool Photoshop tricks. Actually the description sounds kind of interesting, especially as it's something I could do. Naturally, the images mean something a whole lot more than just a good excuse to downloaded naked pictures of women. Because art is never that simple. Gotta love any review that manages to get in the words misogynist, fetishistic, and milieu. It's like hitting the art theory trifecta.

"Whereas pornography hung on the wall as such would be confrontational (and would disturb the casual social milieu of a bar like the Latin American), the abstraction produced by Connelly's reproductions provides a distance from their subject matter that allows them to be enjoyed as if they weren't pornographic. Much like Kurtis Blow sings "don't do it" on "White Lines" and then proceeds with his encomium to cocaine, Connelly's distortions serve as a censor that (paradoxically) enables the pictures to be enjoyed in their obscenity. At the same time, Connelly's close attention to the images' pixelation reveals truths about the enjoyment of digital porn. His paintings articulate an instrumental (and perhaps specifically misogynist) fantasy of sex objects reduced not merely to body parts but furthermore to objects of pure illusion – as a stimulus only to the eye and the mind – which he captures in his titles, such as zuztu030.jpg, 31.jpg, and 05.jpg. He doesn't paint women; he paints digital files. He presents the digital screen as an object of desire, a surrogate for the pleasures of the flesh, and a fetishistic defense against the vulnerabilities they entail – as if to say not "you can look but don't touch," but rather "you can look and don't have to touch."

Side note- I actually had to look up the word "encomium." Not that I'm an editor, but my feeling is that if you use a word that has to be looked up in reference to "White Lines," you should probably think of using another word. As the song says, "don’t do it."

Tired….so…so….tired….

Temp job today sucked. As per usual. After finally finishing up the sorting, we moved into putting the newly sorted files into boxes. Yippee-kie-ay motherfucker.

And all day, as I'm picking up files and putting them away, I kept on thinking about the immortal words of Dante (of "Clerks," not "the Inferno): I'm not even supposed to be here today. You know, Dante Allegeri might have given us one of the first epics of Western Literature as well as the best look into Medieval thinking, but did he give us the term snowballing? I don't think so. What do you think is the greater accomplishment?

PS- While I do love the Sports Guy, can he name-drop both a classic of medieval literature and a classic of Slacker filmmaking? And in the same sentence even? I don't think so. And while I do love a good 90210 reference (as we all know), there's only so many times one can reference Kelly Taylor and still get a laugh. Besides, where is the love for Melrose Place's Allison? Doesn’t just the mention of her name instantly make you cringe in remembrance of her whining?

I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I'm buzzed, so.....

Actual transcript of one "Ask the President" campaign events:

"Mr. President, you were a fighter pilot and you were with the 147th Fighter Wing?"
"Yes," answers Bush.
"And flew a very dangerous aircraft, the Delta F102?"
"Right, and I'm still standing."
"I want to thank you for serving our country"
"Thank you."
"Thank you for serving."

And of another one:

Q On behalf of Vietnam veterans -- and I served six tours over there -- we do support the President. I only have one concern, and that's on the Purple Heart, and that is, is that there are over 200,000 Vietnam vets that died from Agent Orange and were never -- no Purple Heart has ever been awarded to a Vietnam veteran because of Agent Orange because it's never been changed in the regulations. Yet, we've got a candidate for President out here with two self-inflicted scratches, and I take that as an insult. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Six tours? Whew. That's a lot of tours.

I've said this before and I'll say this again- Wake up white people!

More on the les job du temp…..

As I mentioned before, I mainly work with one other temp, one who started the same day I did. She's in her late 40's and as I also mentioned, a Temp of Color. Now, she's a nice enough lady and well-meaning, but she's also a little too eager, a little too happy to be there, and a little too sociable. As you can pretty well imagine, I am none of those things.

As soon as I get in and get my coffee, I put on my headphones. This is so I don't go crazy with boredom. It is also because putting on headphones is usually a universal signifier meaning "don't want to be bothered." The other Temp is often pretty good in respecting my desire to be left alone, but out of boredom or sheer eagerness, tries to tell me something, even though I have my headphones on. I don't like this. I just don't care- not a whit, not a hoot, not a shit.

Sometimes, if there's really nothing on, I don't mind. Sometimes, though, it kind of bugs. Especially when there's something on I want to listen to. It's one of those situations where I try really, really hard not to look perturbed when she starts talking to me but probably give a glimmer of annoyance when she starts up. I'll be listening to Howard Stern and all of a sudden she'd want to talk about some job she had years ago or her homework for some classes she's taking. Now what do you think I'd rather listen to- Howard Stern busting on the Miss. Teen USA competition or her prattle on?

The continuing adventures of the Last Temp Job:

Sometime this morning we finished the tab tearing. Finally. My fingers were actually cramping from all the tearing I had to do. This lead to several hours of thumb twiddling as they weren't quite ready for the next part. Now, I'm as down with getting paid to thumb twiddle as the next person, probably moreso in fact, but I still couldn't but help to feel a little pissy because I had asked for the time off and was made to work some more. I was not working. After lunch came the next bit.

See, what we're dealing with is test packets consisting of eight notebooks. Each notebook is a separate color and each packet is coded. When we were filing the stuff, we were filing them in sequential order based on the code. What they wanted us to do now was to take the packets apart and then separate them sequentially by color. All the blues were now to be put together as well as all the yellows and greens and so on. And, as I said, they still had to be in numerical order. What this basically means is that after first filing them, then refiling them after they were recoded, we were now refiling them again. How this was done is that basically they took these eight dividers, put them next to each other on a small table, then have us one-by-one take a packet and go down the side putting the colored notebook in it's corresponding divider. One big huge, Henry Ford-like sorting system. Once we had sorted all eight notebooks, we'd then go back to the front of the table to get the next one and since there's only eight of them, it took about thirty seconds to do them. Once we'd get 50 sorted, we'd put a rubber band on them and then put them on the shelf for the fourth time.

I did this for about four hours today. Tomorrow, the first day of my wanna-be day off, I'll be doing it for eight hours. And with the expected Post-Writing Group hangover too. The best part? Because we're a team of people doing it, unlike the tab tearing, it's a bit more noticeable if I do stuff like come in late, take long breaks, and hour-long lunches. Oh, and I forgot this bit- when we started the sorting, one of the head temps, a Chinese guy who speaks about ten words of English stood over me and the other Temp, making sure we got what we were doing. Just in case we were confused about whether the brown notebook was supposed to go in the brown notebook divider or the yellow divider folder.

This whole temp job is getting to be kind of like when you break up with somebody but still find yourself having to go to a couple of social functions with the ex, like visiting Grandma or a wedding, because you were already committed and can't get out of it. Except extremely boring and with no alcohol.

When I took on my way crappy temp job I told the Temp Agency that I'd commit the full three weeks. Anyways, then I got the job and as the job wore on, I started to think that maybe I should not work the full three weeks and maybe take a day or two off. I mean the temp job sucks, I'm starting a real live actual job next week, why not take some time off? Just for old times sake I could do the not working thing, except this time without the whole extremely stressed out thing. Stay up late, sleep in, watch "Charmed" at 10, then get coffee and surf the Web for the rest of the day. And so I asked for Wednesday, that being tomorrow, to be my last day. No problem, right? It's a Temp job, what's a commitment? Isn't that the point of them? And it's not like my job is that difficult. My friend's soon-to-be-four year old could do it.

But no.

The place I'm working at got pissed at the Temp Agency because I was supposed to commit for the full three weeks. Not only were they not going to replace me, meaning the agency loses two days of fee's, but they were going to look elsewhere next time they asked for a Temp. So basically I got the Temp Agency in trouble for wanting to leave. All this over two days of frickin' remedial temp work. And because I'm a sucker, because the Temp Agency has been good to me and the owner a really good guy, not to mention the fact that it is money, I'm there til Friday. All I can say is they want me to work, so I will. And I want to come in late, take long breaks, and hour long lunches. So I will.

Fuckers.

Ummm, how did the theme song from "Hong Kong Phooey" suddenly get stuck in my head?

To the guy on BART this afternoon who decided to clear his nose by blowing snot onto the floor of the train,

Dude, that's gross.

A note from the Editor's of Hooray for Anything- starting with this post, we're going to be adding a new feature to this here bloggie. It's "the Brilliant List," named after one of our favorite British expressions and our fave beer commercials. Or, at least it'll be named such until we come up with a better name. Or maybe just ditch the entire title entirely along with the idea. Who knows?

So, after such a big introduction, here's this week's "Brilliant List" (please note- it'll usually be about only five things but as this one has been building for awhile, this one's a bit longer than usual. And a bit more political than hoped, but we've been listening to a lot of NPR lately so we're in a political state of mind).

Anyhoo…..

-"The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus" from Al Franken's also brilliant "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them"- Sample quote: "No James, Leprosy is a matter of personal responsibility. If people knew I was healing lepers, there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy."

-"The Daily Show's" subtle shift in tone from bemused mocking to one of we're-mad-as-hell-and-we're-not-going-to-take-it mocking.

-Ricky Williams quitting the NFL to go hang out in Koh Samui and smoke thai stick. Like you wouldn't if you could.

-Prawns in garlic butter sauce at whatever the hell that hole in the wall Salvadorian Restaurant Cherry, Deemer, Hopskates, and I ate at last weekend.

-The Illinois Republican Nomination of Alan Keyes to run against Barack Obama- We here are huge Alan Keyes fans as he is one of our favorite political personalitie. As someone who was interviewed about him said on NPR, he is a raving lunatic, a hilarious combination of hyperbolic speaking style, freakish religiosity, and delusions of grandeur. So far he has compared Obama to a "slaveholder" for not voting against a bill for late-term abortion, said his possible victory over Obama would be a "Victory for God", and sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on an Illinois TV station. My favorite Keyes moment was when he ran for President in 2000 and Michael Moore somehow managed to talk him into stage-diving into a mosh pit and slamming with the punkers, all to the strains of Rage Against the Machine. This, naturally, wasn't looked on too favorably by his fellow candidates and it was brought up in an actual 2000 Republican debate. Fellow Republican candidate Gary Bauer attacked Keyes in the debate for being "anti-family" for moshing to what he said was the band "The Machine Rages On."

-Last week's column in the SF Weekly proposing new campaign songs for the Presidential Candidates. We think the idea of John Kerry trying to toughen himself up by coming out to NWA's "Gangsta Gangsta" would be off the hook. And the suggestion that Bill Clinton should use Eminem's "Without Me" is, well, brilliant.

-And from last week's "Savage Love" column, here's Dan's response to someone with a dead girl kink:

" Finally, if you can't let go of your extremely-beautiful-pretend-dead-woman fantasy, and if paying for it is a turn-off, check out the local goth scene in your area, as some of those girls might not be too spooked by your fantasy. But there's always a catch: I've never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself--most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, "Oh, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!" From the neck down, their look seems to say, "I'll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.""


And the not so Brilliant Thing of the Week?

Gavin & Kimberly's fashion spread in Esquire. Love ya, Gavin, but please don't embarrass us again.

To the Woman Sitting Behind Me at the 4:30 Showing of "The Manchurian Candidate,"

Just a suggestion, but maybe next time you should think about toning down the amount of perfume you spray on yourself just a smidge. If I felt sick and nauseous the entire movie just sitting in front of you, I can only imagine how your date was feeling.

Thanks for ruining what was actually a pretty good flick.

I actually watched part of the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics Friday night but somewhere around the "Tribute to the History of Greek Sculpture" I turned it off. I always get a kick out of watching the Opening Ceremonies whenever they take place in European countries. They're always so, well, European- pretentiously arty and cheesily avant-garde but still kind of cool. As opposed to all the Opening Ceremonies in the United States which always come off as inoffensively arty and cheesily middle-brow, like a slightly higher-class Disney Parade or Superbowl Halftime show (and wouldn't it be fun if we did a Superbowl Halftime Show Eurotrash style? Like instead of Janet Jackson and Mary J. Blige would have Circe de Soleil and that minotaur type figure shooting off glowing arrows? Wouldn't it be hilarious to hear John Madden have to explain to all the TV viewers what almost-naked acrobats dancing on a three-dimensional skull represents?). All you need to know about how we differ from the Europeans in all things show is that the Greek's got Bjork to do the big musical number (which they totally would) and we'd probably have, oh, Jessica Simpson do the big musical number. What do you think is cooler? I guess I'll take my European cheese over American Cheese any day. Well, as long as it doesn't involve Ace of Bass or something like that.

I was actually planning to write some long, poignant and intensely well-written piece about how much I loved watching the Olympics as a kid and why I don't know. Something to do about TV Coverage, American solipism, blah blah blabbity blah but took a pass. Instead I think I can sum up my lack of interest in the Olympics thusly: having to suddenly care about athletes I've never heard of playing sports I don't care about equals extreme apathy. You have to commit to watching the Olympics in order to make it work for you and I just can't commit. Besides, it's looking like I'm going to be in two (two!) Fantasy Football Leagues and I have about two weeks to go before my first draft. Who has time to worry about Olympic Fencing Rivalries when I need to research things like whether or not the Saints will be utilizing a third-down back and whether or not the third-down back is good enough to hurt the regular back's numbers? Priorities people.

Besides, I'm having trouble watching these Olympics because Greece is probably my favorite place in the world (well, definitely not Athens, but the rest of the country) and seeing all those pictures of white painted houses overlooking shiny blue seas makes me depressed that I'm not there. I see a couple shots of the Islands during the program and all I want to do is pound some Ouzo, find a copy of "Rythm is a Dancer" and dance on my coffee table.

I was actually thinking about giving the politics thing a rest as I'm trying to move in another direction, but spending seven incredibly mind-numbing hours listening to NPR tends to make one obsessed with the State of the Union. So, here we go.

First of all, the ex-Gov of New Jersey resigning because he had a gay affair? Wow. I mean, seriously, wow. See what happens when you let gay people marry? Gay guys who marry women and have kids because they're too ashamed of themselves for being gay will go out and have gay affairs. Won't somebody please think of the children?

Second of all, how about that? Maureen Dowd's kind of cute. What is it with snarky redheaded political columnists and are there any who are Jewish?

Okay, now onto the thing that has my panties all in a bunch. So our Vice-President, Grimli Wormtongue is getting a lot of play for his criticism of John Kerry's use of the word "sensitive" in describing how we should conduct our war on "terror." Strangely, a lot more attention than he's gotten for, say, bilking the US Government out of millions when he was running Halliburton and creating an offshore account to circumvent US laws against working with Iran. But I digress.

Anyways, Wormtongue appears to have scored a direct hit on Kerry, who for some reason is having a rough week because a bunch of people have been running ads accusing him of not getting injured more severely during 'Nam. Kerry wants to the US to be "sensitive"! What a wuss. How French! Doesn't he know we have a war going on and we have no time to be sensitive? There's no room for girly-men here. We need manly-man. How dare he suggest something other than just blowing some shit up?

With the blow landed, the yap-dogs started yapping. Fox News got their marching orders and spent most of their talk shows mocking Kerry for being a pussy. The non-Fox press also joined suit, bombarding him with questions about Wormtongue's attack and wondering if it will make him look as spineless as he sometimes can come off. Especially in light of the fact that it appears that his three injuries in the war might have possibly mere flesh wounds.

All of this sounds kind of bad in fact because let's be honest here, we are in the midst of a War on Something or other and being sensitive is not what we need to do. And as a candidate, Kerry does need to show strength.

Crazy little thing about that word "sensitive." If you go look it up in a dictionary, the second definition of the word, the one right above the wussy definition is this definition:

-Responsive to external conditions or stimulation.

Isn't that kind of what you want vis a vis a war on terror?

And according to the New Republic, there's also this definition-

2. Reacting readily to external agents or forces.

Again, that's pretty good.

But, of course, to understand all of that, you'd have to be half-way literate. Which rules out most of the country. It also puts Kerry in kind of a bind. He could try and argue that he meant the word sensitive a different kind of way than how it's being played by the Republicans but if he did that, he'd look kind of like a wussy nuancer who gets pissy about definitions. Saying something along the lines of "it depends on the what the definition of sensitive is" isn't going to work.

The Republicans now have Kerry in a box. He could just leave it alone and he's seen as not strong. He could try and argue against the charge but get tied up in definitions. All this because the Republicans got tricky on the definition of the word. Yet despite all that, it's Kerry who's looking bad.

Of course, there'd be a way out of this stupid little debate. The press could, instead of just repeating Cheney's stupid comment without comment and then go to some non-partisan like Newt Gingrich to explain what a girly man Kerry is, they could just say something like, "well, according to the dictionary, sensitive could also mean this…." You know, kind of actually doing their jobs and separating the lies from the truth. So far, only the New Republic seems to have noticed this.

Funny little story I read about the DNC. Apparently, Ted Koppel got all high and mighty at the Convention and during an interview with John Stewart, castigated Stewart for somehow besmirching the good name of journalism.

PS- I swear I wrote this before the "Daily Show" which spent about five minutes tearing Cheney a new asshole for his comments. Then showed that Bush pretty much said the same thing. What can I say? "Daily Show" 5,342-Mainstream Media 0.

And this weeks' Bay Guardian Wank of the Week-

Hey kids, there's a Butoh performance going on! Pretty exciting stuff, ain't it?

Anyways, here's a review of it!

.Remarkable return:
inkBoat build on their success with Ame to Ame (Candy and Rain) at Yerba Buena Center.

By Robert Avila

YUKO KASEKI AND Shinichi Momo Koga, the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of Butoh, come together in inkBoat's Ame to Ame (Candy and Rain) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The duet marks a return of sorts. Berkeley-based inkBoat's choreographer-dancer Koga, founder of the 10-year-old dance-theater company, was 2002's Wattis artist in residence at Yerba Buena Center. This relationship culminated in November of that year with Onion, a remarkably ambitious and memorable premiere that seemed to fuse Butoh and Beckett into a compellingly original theatrical pantomime. Onion, which featured Berlin-based choreographer-dancer Kaseki and Koga, enjoyed much too brief a run at the time, though it went on to tour the United States and Europe.

God, I don't know why a performance that fuses "Butoh and Beckett into a compellingly original theatrical pantomime" wouldn't have a long, lengthy run. Figured something like that would have some sort of "Cats" like run.

Temp Job, we finished up yesterday. This makes me all sorts of happy in that the assignment was easily one of the most boring things I have ever had to do.

My new task? Taking all those thousands of binders, binders that have been subsequently recoded, and tearing off the tabs on the front covers. And that's your Giants replay.

Imagine doing that for a little over seven hours. Just sitting there, tearing tabs. Pretty exciting, n'est pas? I think, after all these temp jobs, all these bouts of unemployment, I might have finally achieved it. That being, the Most Boring Temp Job Ever.

And that's saying a lot. It might even, in some ways, be the Worst Temp Job Ever. That's saying a whole lot. The only thing that could possibly compare was this temp job I had right after school in which I sat at this table counting up to 100 wine labels and then banding them together and putting them in a box. There were six of us around this one table but we had only one chair so everyone had a total of ten minutes to sit on the chair and when the ten minutes were up, we'd pass it on over to the person next to us. Anyways, while the crappiness of the temp job would normally put me into some sort of alcoholic, "my life sucks" stupor but not this time.

And the reason? A couple of days ago I e-mailed my boss-to-be just to check in on things to see when I'd have to deal with all the paper work. No, this story's not going anywhere, but I just like saying the words "my boss." It's like being able to say "my girlfriend" for the first few times. Or "new tongue stud."

Kind of ironic, actually considering what happened with me and my old boss. The funny thing about the job is that when I started, the Temp Agency told me it could turn into a long term thing. All I had to do was get in there, show them that I had the skills to pay the bills, and they'd keep me on. But just what kind of skills would I be showing them that would make them want to keep me? Tab tearing? Filing?

What-ever.

PS- Today we were a tab-pullin' when I noticed that there was this huge gap between in the order of tabs that we had pulled. The result of which was that people (there's about four other people working with me) were putting their bundle of tabs all over the table. This wasn't good. So, for some strange reason, I took the tabs by the horn as it were, figured out where everything was, and put it all together again. I then took over things and started marking up boxes, putting them away, and keeping tabs on all the tabs. I took charge of the situation. In fact, I am now "take charge guy" between the four temps. Yes me.

What the hell?

PPS- Two of the women I work with are black. Excuse, "Temps of Color." One of them was the one who was holding things up by being a bit slow tearing the tabs off. When I checked in with her, I jokingly told her about how she was messing everything up and now everything was a big huge mess. This got a laugh out of the both them, especially the other Temp of Color who listens to me bitch all day about how bored I am. So she jokingly calls me a "slave driver."

Now I am white. They are, as I said, Temps of Color. Was calling me a "slave driver" harmless, a figure of speech that we all would use? Was she merely just being post-PC, post "I Have a Dream"? Or was it meant to sound like that, but was it secretly some sort of coded message between the two of them in which I had basically been dissed and dissed big time?

PPS- Just for old times sake, bite me Jenna.

Last night I had another of my periodical demented dreams. In it, I was stuck in some land that was ridden by the plague and spent most of my time going out of my way trying not to get it. Which, of course, would be the wise thing to do. I don't really remember much about what happened in the dream, other than it wasn't the most fun-filled frolic of a dream. I do, however, remember the fact that it all ended with me copy-editing someone's essay.

I dunno either.

This morning I went online to look up what it all means. All I could find about the meaning of a plague in dreams is this:

"Plague

Interpretation: This dream signifies some mental disturbance, probably arising from an infection or other medical problem. See your doctor.

Umm, that's not exactly what I wanted to read.

I did, however, find another site that told me basically not to research the symbolism of my dreams but instead to just use my intuition to figure it all out. In this case, I'm pretty sure what the dream meant to me is a reiteration of the fact that late night beer and pizza is bad.

Here's another good thing that Google stalking can accomplish- on those wistful, melancholy evenings, when you're haunted by all the could have been's and should have been's, you can Google stalk all those who are haunting you to make you feel better knowing that it just wasn't meant to be.

Like there's one person who I've Google stalked and I keep on seeing her name mentioned in conjunction with Jewish feminism & spirituality retreats. You know what you get when you combine feminism, spirituality & Judaism? Bad folk music.

That wasn't meant to be.

Then there's another who I looked up over the weekend. She joined the Peace Corps and is running some sort of program where she and her compatriots climb mountains to "bring awareness to women's issues." Now right there there's two things that I really love- climbing things and things that are done to "raise awareness" of a certain thing that has absolutely nothing in common with the thing they're doing to raise awareness of it. Like do they really think there's gonna be some guy out there thinking "well, I used to beat my wife but stopped when I heard these eight girls who climbed Mt. Hood say it was bad." Come to think of it, I farted today at the temp job and while some might say it was because I've had way too much Mexican food lately, I really did it to raise awareness of working conditions in third world countries.

But I digress.

In her spare time, the woman runs several mentoring programs for at-risk children in Marin (you know, for all those kids whose parents couldn't afford an Explorer and had to be the BMW SUV instead). In my spare time, I drink too much, play kickball, and post dumb-ass comments onto a blog page nobody reads.

That wasn't meant to be.

Then there's another one who I found out became a lesbian.

That wasn't meant to be either.

And just like that, I'm cheereped. Of course, I could think that if I had only had the balls to do something way back when I could have saved them from a life of crocheted yarmulkes, dreary earnestness, and and the Indigo Girls but were not going to go there.

Is there any sort of meaning in the fact that both my wall clock and my wrist watch broke down in the past 24 hours? Is it just a really random coincidence or some sort of sign about something on a cosmic level? Like I've been switched out of my previous reality into some sort of Twilight Zoney alternate reality? Or, considering how most of my life my reality has been some sort of Twilight Zoney alternate reality, I've now been switched into a normal reality?

As Keanu would say, "Woah."

And if so, does this mean that at some point, I'm going to have to choose which reality is real and which one isn't and have that decision somehow affect the fate of the universe? If so, that would kind of suck.

I really hope that's not the way it'll be 'cause everytime there's an episode like that on a TV show, I always get a headache trying to figure it out.

And here's this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian Wank of the Week. This one was an actual toughy as there wasn't that much stuff out there that was that over the line. What's up with that? Also, I thought about giving them a break this week because they actually wrote an intelligent, well-reasoned cover story on how to defeat Bush. We certainly are living in strange times.

Anyways, in a column that discusses the problems with hip-hop stars like Kanye West name-checking Jesus in songs (they're also trying to make money!), I found this:

"Don't misunderstand. I'm not shutting the door on music or throwing my hands up in "kids these days" defeatism to go meditate in a cave. I'm just suggesting that in the end, during such trying times, it might serve us well to heed the contemplations of those more invested in souls than sales when seeking higher ground. For example, in Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, music is simultaneously viewed as a path toward transcendence and a cause of potential spiritual harm, a seeming contradiction I've often approached by placing the words of 10th-century Sufi mystic and scholar Ibn Hamdan beside the overlying sentiment in the writings of 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi.


You know, the writings of 13-century Sufi poet Rumi often come to me when I'm listening to hip-hop. Wasn't it he who said: "I need to know a whole lot then to teachin' a broad, with my ding dong make her tongue tickin the bong.

So Bruuuuuce! and the usual suspects are gonna tour in October to help get rid of Smirkboy. Gotta hand it to the Dems, they do seem to be the hepcats of politics. They got Ben, they got Leo and John Cusack and now they have R.E.M, Dave Mathews, and the Boss. Poor W. appears to have no famous people who support him.

But wait! According to a White House flack, W. does indeed have celebrities who endorse him. Mark McKinnon, the media director for the Bush campaign said that "Bush had drawn his own support from the entertainment world, citing stars like Lee Ann Womack, Kid Rock and Jessica Simpson."

So many jokes, so little time…..

And on Scarborough Country today (or, as Jon Stewart refers to him, "douchebag"), Gene Simmons said he was a Bush Supporter. What are the chances of seeing Kid Rock and Kiss perform at the Republican National Convention? Cause nothing says Family Values like the God of Thunder

I hate it when you get a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon to keep yourself awake, then have it not affect you until pretty much the exact minute you leave your boring-ass temp job thus ensuring that the main thing that'll happen is that it'll keep you up late so you'll be tired the next day and so need another cup of coffee in the afternoon to stay awake and so on and so forth. Hate riding the caffiene horse.

The new job doesn't start til mid-August which is actually kind of perfect because it gives me some time to do nothing but not worry about anything. Among other things, I don't have to worry about going straight from no-job stress to new job stress. Things kind of worked out perfectly too because I have a temp job until pretty much the new job starts. Even though I need the money and it gives me something to do, I can't really say that I'm that excited about temping. It's nothing but the bad residue of a really bad dream.

Still, I was okay with this temp assignment. As I said, it's money and I was told that it's data entry. That's fine by me. Go in, type away, listen to tunes, and then leave. One of the things I like about data entry jobs too is that they're very rarely supervised so it's easy to take long lunches and copius breaks. If I had to choose what sort of temp assignnment I could do for the last three weeks, it would be data entry.

Stupd temp agency lied to me, something that I've noticed that this particular Temp Agency has been doing a lot of lately. No data entry at all. In fact, it's the bane of every office temp everywhere- clerical work.

The job is with the place that goes through all of the Bar Exams Satan's Minions take to become lawyers. The job is to first file them, then go through every file to make sure everything is in it's right place, recode them, file them again by their new coding number, and then triple check to make sure everything is still in it's right place. Yesterday and part of today was all filing and the rest of the day was checking. It's looking like I'm checking file for the rest of the week in fact. I am overjoyed. Worst part of the job? Instead of working alone, I'm part of a team, one that has shifts. Since somebody is waiting for me to get back from lunch so she can take lunch, I actually have to take thirty minute lunches. And there's no internet access anywhere.

How boring is it? Think of the most boring job you've ever had, then multiply it by about a hundred times. It's that boring. I went through about several hundred files today and only found one that was in anyways messed up. I should probably say that there are probaly many others that I missed due to not giving a shit, but oh well. I know, I know, I should give it my all, but Jigga please.

Over the past several months, I actually was pretty able to grin and bear most of my temp assignments. Well except for maybe the Nordstrom's one. And the filing job where I had to wear that stupid t-shirt (believe it or not, despite what people have been thinking, I really didn't mind the Towel Picker Upper job. I was always moving so it was excercise, the spa was on Nob Hill so I had a great view of the city, everyone was pretty nice, and I got to stare at women in bikini's all day. Of course, I also had to pick up their towels and occasionally take their order but I've convienantly blocked any sort of memory of that happening). Probably because I had no other choice, but also because in a way it was able to, as a friend would say, "feed my monkey." My stupid-ass temp jobs were able to let me put the woe in "woe is me." Now that there's no need for woe, I have no ability to grin and bear anything. On my first day there, when I realized what I the job was, I wanted to basically say something along the lines of "umm, I have a job. I'm not desperate anymore, so if you want me, I'll be in that corner over there, reading the paper." When I didn't have a job, nothing was really beneath me. Now that I have one, a lot is beneath me.

These next three weeks are gonna kill me.

Whenever ESPN gets to the point where they run the inevitable "Top-25 Clutch-Ass Moments" they will invariably get to your Kirk Gibson home runs, your Michael Jordan shots, your John Elway and the Drive. If they haven't already done so, they can add another great Clutch-Ass moment to the list. That clutch-ass moment is how one person, that being Your Humble Narrator, down to pretty much his last week, his last job interview, his last chance to find a job before having to move back home with the Parents, got a job. And not just any job, but the job with Super-Mondo Corporation and the Gobs of Money. That's right, that's right, we bad, we bad.

How clutch was it? I had pretty much told my dad that if I didn't get that job, I was giving up and moving back home. My mother had laid it down and told me that she'll support me staying here, but I'd have to give up my apartment and move in with friends. I had even talked to a friend who was packing up and moving about packing up and moving with him. But nuh-huh, ain't happening. After pretty much a year of trying, I managed to pull this one out of my ass in little less than a week- call for interview on Monday, first interview Tuesday, second interview Thursday morning, job offer Thursday Afternoon, passed out drunk Thursday night.

And how do I feel? Like I've just gotten the best damn massage in the world, all blissed out and happy. I feel like I should have a smoke. Actually, after threatening to celebrate Biblical style, I find myself now feeling a little less like partying and a little more like sleeping. A whole lot of sleeping.

I had never seen this quote about San Francisco until last week, but I think it just might be the truest words ever said about my City by the Bay:

From Rudyard Kipling-

"San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty."

Well the last part was written way before the advent of bull Dykes, hippie chicks, and the over-saturation of back tattoos, but still... that's my city, that's my home. I may not be as perfectly insane as some of the people in this city (that's a very hard thing to do here), but there my peeps.

Some quick takes….

-Saw a guy walking around Valencia Street wearing a "Nixon/Agnew" campaign button. Could you BE more ironic?

-I used to be a bit of a chicken when it comes to amusement parks. Finally, after confronting my fears several years ago with a trip to Great America, I have grown to love roller coaster rides. I am now, in fact, not that much of a chicken anymore. However, after spending Saturday at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, I have realized that there's still one ride that scares the beejezus out of me- the Ferris Wheel.

Damn, fear of heights

-You know how with TiVo you can kind of pause something that's on TV and while the TV records something in real time, you can go off and do something else, then come back and fast-forward through all the real-time that you just missed? Wouldn't it be great if we could TiVo our way through life? Like when you know you're about to go through a rough, traumatic event and you know it'll be fine after three months or so, you could kind of put things on pause, wait for three months, then fast-forward through the rough parts?

-There's a cheap but really yummy Vietnamese restaurant on the block where I live. The past couple of times I've been there, there's been a new waiter working there. The waiter is a little too friendly and a little gay. Not that there's anything wrong with it. A couple of weeks ago, a male friend and I were there for dinner and the guy and besides being a little too flirty, made one too many wink…wink "you guys are a couple" jokes. Okay, a little annoying but still dealable. Today I went to go do carryout and the waiter was there. Once again a little overly-friendly but this time also a little touchy. When I gave him money for my meal, he grabbed my shoulder on the way over to the register. Then, when he gave me my change, he caressed his hand over my hand as he gave me my change. I was so icked out that instead of waiting for my meal at the restaurant, like I usually do when ordering take-out, I went outside, stood at a corner for fifteen minutes, and read the paper.

-It now looks like Target is selling those kabballa wrist strings. Is this the sign that mystical Judaism is about to jump the shark?

Poor Britney. Somebody better let him know before she goes through with her Jewish wedding?

Haven't my people suffered enough?