For whatever reason, I've been reading a bit today about the Duggar family, that family of religious nuts in Arkansas (natch) who so believe that Jesus told people to go forth and multiply that they have done so to the tune of 18 kids. If that wasn't freaky enough, the girls are not allowed to wear pants and wear some sort of cloth dress instead and all the kids name starts with the letter "J". And, yes, they are all home schooled.

So I'm imagining something like this as the conversation that happens when Mrs and/or Mrs. Duggar finally goes to the celestial beyond and meets the Big Guy Himself

Duggar: OMG, it's JESUS!!!!!!
Jesus: Yes it is me
Duggar: I know! I'm one of your biggest fans
Jesus: Thank you.
Duggar: In fact, just because of you, my husband and I had 21 kids
Jesus: You did what now?
Duggar: Because you told us to go forth and multiply and because you called children as blessings, we had 21 kids
Jesus: I said that?
Duggar: Uh-uh. And because of you, we had them all start with the letter J!
Jesus: Really?
Duggar: And we wouldn't let the girls wear pants and we home schooled them and made them vow not even to kiss anybody until they got married.
Jesus: Really? No, really?
Duggar: Uh-huh
Jesus: Jesus, you're a fucking idiot.

Oh, and yes, total Idiocracy.

I can't really say this is scientific, but I think cold weather makes people just as lazy, if not more, than the heat. Why do I think this way? Because ever since I've been off from work for Christmas, I have yet to pretty much do much of anything. I can barely make it off the couch these days. Now here's where the temperature comes in. The problem, I think, is that is that I finally get comfortable in one spot and then decide that I'm warm in this spot but if I were to move maybe just an inch or two out of that spot, I'll be back in the cold. So why move?

And I haven't.

I am once again watching a History Channel special on the Apocalypse and Satan and all that and I can't help but wonder about the ending of the End of Days. Supposedly, the whole thing has been foretold and everything will come as depicted which makes me wonder if so, why would Satan then go ahead and do everything he's supposed to do if he knows at the end it won't work and that Jesus eventually defeats him in the end? Wouldn't that be kind of stupid? You could argue, then, that the plot of the Apocalypse could be seen as Satan knowing how his fate is foretold yet can't do anything to stop it. Which, if you think about it, means that Satan is more of a tragic hero than the villain.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing lately over the state of the newspaper business caused by the announced bankruptcy of the Chicago Tribune and the reported loan taken out by the NY Times to stay afloat. This has led to an ever-increasing discussion of how to save the newspaper business these days as economic issues and the internet have taken away a huge, huge slice of their business. While there are plenty of people out there with ideas on how to fix the business and even if it is worth fixing, I think I have the solution on how to save the newspaper business, mainly to follow the lead of the British Tabloids and throw in pictures of topless women.

It's just that easy.

Journalistic integrity, schmournalistic integrity. There ain't no problem that can be solved in the newspaper biz like a little Lucy Pinder or Keeley Hazell. The Chronicle could hire every award winning reporters, break the biggest story in the world, and create the greatest news related web site in the country and it won't do nearly as much to help circulation as naked chicks would.

During my many unemployments, when I was down and running out of money, people would tell me that, well, there's always Starbucks. But a man has his limits and one of mine is that I didn't want to wear some sort of outfit. Then there's the fear I'd have that it makes you look like that much of a loser if you're serving lates with some kind right out of college in your 30's.

The good thing about a depression, though, is that since nobody has a job, there is no dignity to lose because nobody has any dignity anymore. We're all in the same boat. So who cares if I have to work at the 'Bucks this time around because I know I won't be the only 40 year old wearing Starbucks' outfit and making frappucinos. In fact, I'm willing to bet that at this time next year, a large percentage of people working at Target, Starbucks, and/or McDonald's are going to be people who a year before were all in middle management.

And speaking of jobs, I'm all in favor of Obama's stimulus plan and I'm eagerly awaiting to start my future career in highway construction. Which brings up the point that the stimulus' plan doesn't seem quite fair as it doesn't include anything for us ex-liberal arts majors, people who I might add or some of the most under-employed types in the country. Couldn't part of that stimulus package include us? New highways aren't going to market themselves, ya know. Or maybe they could create some sort of program where all you'd have to do is sit at a desk and surf the web all day. In fact, if you know your Depression History, FDR actually created a whole bunch of jobs for the artists out there. So, if you're reading this, Barack Hussein, couldn't there be some sort of nationalized blogger force?

Don't ask how or why, but over the weekend, a video of "We are the World" was watched. Again, don't even begin to ask how it happened. Which brings up the interesting thing about the song, that despite the intended purpose of the song and the whole bigness of the thing-- the earnestness, the chorus, the star power, the song is actually pretty crap. Between the overly produced '80's production and the overly earnestness, the song fits more in the category of "Hit From Hell" than classic pop. It is, in fact, pretty much looked over as a pop cultural moment despite it's star power. This is a bit different from it's inspiration, "Do They Know It's Christmas" which is still played on the radio and talked about despite the fact most of the singers who perform are currently in the "Where Are they Know" file (the video is actually fun to watch for this reason-- the whole thing becomes a trivia contest over who can recognize which star). Of course, it helps that "Do They Know It's Christmas" is actually a half-way decent song.

But what makes the song so awesome is it's star power, a motley and totally random mix of musical icons and 80's .

Here's what I mean-- here's the artist who sings a lyric of the song, in order of when they sing:

Lionel Richie (now known as Nicole Richie's dad)
Lionel Richie & Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Paul Simon
Paul Simon/Kenny Rogers (?)

Kenny Rogers (now known mainly as a victim of a really bad botox accident
James Ingram (who?)
Tina Turner (with that awesome wig)
Billy Joel (he looks a little pissed that he's here)
Tina Turner/Billy Joel

( CHORUS )
Michael Jackson (in his Thriller, you thought I was weird then look)
Diana Ross
Michael Jackson/Diana Ross (proof that they have been in the same room together)

Dionne Warwick (now doing informercials for a psychic hotline)
Dionne Warwick/Willie Nelson (??)
Willie Nelson (how stoned do you think he is at this point?)
Al Jurreau (yawn)

( REPEAT CHORUS )
We are the world, we are the children (Bruce Springsteen)
Kenny Logins (why?)
Steve Perry(!)
Daryl Hal (Oates is there but surprisingly never sings)

When you're down and out there seems no hope at all (Michael Jackson)
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall (Huey Lewis)
Well, well, well, let's realize that a change can only come (Cyndi Lauper)
When we (Kim Carnes)
Kim Carnes/Cyndi Lauper/Huey Lewis (?????????????????????????????)

(REPEAT CHORUS AND FADE )

(additional ad-lib vox by Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, James Ingram)

Alright, I guess it's time to post a new NY Times Wedding Announcement. This one isn't so easy to do as it's like a short story about the couple, who they are, how they met, how they courted, and eventually how they got married. Which raises the question who the fuck would care? It's a bit presumptuous to think anyone would really want to know who two random, completely uninteresting people are and how they're relationship would develop.

Anyways, meet Stacia Zukroff and Wyatt Biel. Since the announcement is way to long for anybody to read (including me), here are the highlights:

These are the actual opening paragraphs:

STACIA ZUKROFF treasures a photo of herself taken on the summit of the storied ruins of Machu Picchu, in which she is wearing jeans, an embroidered Peruvian blouse, her waist-length hair tied in a ponytail. She was all of 4 years old.

It is but one image from an eight-month sojourn with her parents through South America that her father, Carl Zukroff, described as a “posthippie spiritual quest.” But for Ms. Zukroff it marked the beginning of her own quest for travel and adventure, which has taken her to more than 50 countries so far.

As a youth, she traveled in the West and took flying lessons.....

After graduating from Bates in 1991, “She came home from college, did all her laundry, and then, that was basically it,” said her father, who is the director of marketing communications for the Museum of Science in Boston. She set out on the road again, this time for Barcelona, Spain

....Enter Wyatt Biel, whose own travels, until he and Ms. Zukroff met in 2001, had been limited to hunting and fishing expeditions in his native Wisconsin...

As a way of trying to expand his social circle in his new hometown, he attended a leadership training workshop and hike organized by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Ms. Zukroff was assigned as his mentor.

She liked him well enough to invite him, some months later, to a holiday party at her house. Mr. Biel, however, had a better offer, and headed to Great Britain — his first trip abroad — to visit a friend.

That might have been the end of the road for Mr. Biel and Ms. Zukroff, as she began a romantic relationship with another man who did attend her party. But months later Ms. Zukroff was single again and thought of Mr. Biel, eight years her junior, when his name came up as a possible co-leader for a club ski outing in New Hampshire.

On the weekend trip, he “flirted outrageously” with her, Ms. Zukroff remembered. “He was extremely attentive and touchy.” After the trip she sent him an e-mail message that read: “Are you really interested in me, or were you just flattering an older woman?

On the weekend trip, he “flirted outrageously” with her, Ms. Zukroff remembered. “He was extremely attentive and touchy.” After the trip she sent him an e-mail message that read: “Are you really interested in me, or were you just flattering an older woman?”

It took Mr. Biel, who did not have e-mail service in his apartment, three days to check his messages on a public library computer. He wrote back: “I’m just being me.”

Ms. Zukroff was perplexed. “I had no idea what that meant,” she said. Yet she found him to be so “cute, persistent and adorable,” she said, that she kept thinking about him.

Shortly thereafter, Ms. Zukroff and Mr. Biel were thrown together again at a first-aid course. When an after-hours group outing to a movie fizzled as members of the group begged off, she invited him to her apartment to watch a movie on cable. They settled on “Autumn in New York,” in which Richard Gere falls for a terminally ill Winona Ryder “A really awful movie,” she said. “But as I watched, I could feel him watching me. When I looked over, he was just grinning ear to ear. And then he kissed me.”

Their romantic adventure had begun....


In 2005, when Ms. Zukroff organized a hike to the 19,341-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mr. Biel was impressed, but disappointed that his classes prevented him from joining her.


At 15,700 feet, Ms. Zukroff said, “I called him on a satellite phone to tell him how much I loved him.”


Later in the day, 80 family members and friends gathered for the wedding in a small room at the lodge that is hung with enormous black-and-white photos of mountains taken by the late Bradford Washburn, an explorer. The couple stood before Kevin M. Kozin, a Universal Life minister who had hiked Mount Kilimanjaro with the bride, and exchanged vows that spoke about how marriage can and should be an adventure, too.

She recited: “I want to travel to the center of your perception of me.

“The place where you and I meet.

“Which, for lack of a better word, we call love.”

About a year ago, I lost my health insurance-- the perils of being a contractor in today's economy (actually, yesterday's economy as this all happened before everything went to hell in a hand basket). For awhile I was paying COBRA which was about $400 a month. Sucky, yes, but it's better than no health insurance which is what I would have had without it because apparently I am not eligible for individual plan health insurance because while I'm healthy, I'm not healthy enough.

Luckily, I was able to get on Harlan's health insurance as a "domestic partner" and now not only have health insurance, but really great health insurance. Today we discovered that, unfortunately, the federal government doesn't consider "domestic partner" health insurance but as extra income and so a huge bite was taken out of her paycheck. This despite the fact you'd think it would be in the best interest's of the country to have me, or anybody for that matter, insured.

Apparently not.

And, as Harlan pointed out, the one's who get really screwed are gay people because unless people stop being idjits, they can get registered as domestic partners and domestic partners only. That is if they're lucky.

Lately, I read "Deerhunting with Jesus," a book that I thought would be really funny, being all about life in White Trash Land and all. Unfortunately, it was depressing as hell. The so-called working class hasn't just been screwed, hasn't just been fucked, but more like gang-raped over and over again by the Powers That Be. It's awful what's happened to them and by them I also mean us. Now these people are the people who supposedly would never vote for Democrats, Obama least of all, as the people in the book all hail from that place Sarah Palin oh so eloquently referred to as the "Real America." This fact brings all sorts of hand-wringing/mocking from us Blue Staters because the people who probably need progressive politics the most are the very same people who vote against them because of things like guns and Jesus (the book, in fact, was the inspiration behind Obama's bitter comment). The thing about the book, though, is that that these people are either too stupid to realize just how fucked they are and/or so fucked that they don't have time to realize just how fucked they are.

What's the point of all this? Because now that the glow has faded from the election, what's left is the cold hard fact that this country is now a burnt-out shell of a wreckage. I know it's a little out of context, but at this point, the only way to feel is exactly like Charlton Heston felt when he came upon the Statue of Liberty at the end of "Planet of the Apes".

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Or, as Ricky Gervais said in his HBO Special, "how does it feel to be a third world country?"

At work a few days ago, they held Volunteer Day. The company signed up to do that Project Homeless Connect thing, where volunteers get together and for one day a month help homeless people (all snark aside, it's a pretty cool thing). A lot of people I work with volunteered to help out. I did not. As a contractor, I was left out of the email chain. Also, homeless people smell.

This, however, makes things a little awkward when asked if I was going to volunteer, or, as somebody said, "go help the Homeless." Because there's no way of saying that you're not without sounding like a selfish dick.

I'm still contracting where I was contracting before which means that now I have to deal with one of the best things contractors have to deal with-- Holiday Parties.

On Monday, I get into work to discover that the VP has scheduled the Holiday Party for that morning. At 9. At an ice skating rink. I know, right? So when I get in, those employees who didn't use the party as an excuse to extend their holiday for at least another morning were all standing near my cubicle as my cubicle is in the front row of cubicles in front of a little break area where everyone was gathered for breakfast and to hear the details about ice skating.

Now I didn't want to go. At all. But deciding what to do isn't as easy as it sounds. First up is that everybody around me and everyone in my department, even those who I wouldn't expect to, decided to go, and all made that decision right in front of me. And because there's a great big huge group of people standing in front of me all geeked up on OJ and Costco muffins getting in a holiday spirit, it's hard not to get sucked into the "well, everybody's doing it" vibe. Who wants to look like a loser?

OK, so what the hell, I'll go. Except, technically I can't because I'm a contractor and contractors can't go. To get clarification, I even asked the Creative Director (my boss's boss) and he said no I couldn't. He then also said I should go anyways only to ask on the way there if he'll get me in trouble for allowing me to go. On the one hand, it's a compliment that people who I work with want me to go even though they all know I can't. On the other hand, it's a little awkward when very-higher ups walk by you at the rink and give what to you looks like a "what the hell are they doing here?" look. Oh, and they handed out company tchotcke's to all the employers there and when I walked into the rink, I didn't know whether I should ask for one. The only reason I did was because the Creative Director, again, told me to go for it.

But still, why did I go if I really didn't want to and wasn't allowed to? Was it just one more example of me giving into peer pressure? Or was it because I talked to my boss a few minutes before all this happened and when I mentioned I wasn't going, she off-handedly mentioned that there was going to be nobody around and as she was busy signing time sheets at that particular moment, I wasn't sure she meant that just as a statement of fact or as a subtle way of letting me know that she knows that there's nobody around and if I don't go, I'm about to bill the company for several hours of time in which I won't do any work. Instead of, say, getting paid to ice skate.

How was it? About what you'd expect-- it was 9 in the morning, everyone had just come back from a four day weekend, and they made those who were able to skate do the hokey pokey. Oh, yes, they did. As for me, I wished I didn't go about the moment I showed up and not just because of the aforementioned reasons. Mainly because I got there and realized that I hated Christmas Parties for the most part because of forced interaction with people whose only relationship to you is a working one and as I had been only there for four months and was not really an employee there anyways, I didn't have that much of a relationship to anyone anyways.

Then there was today. My little group, the three other people who also do my job and my boss, went out for what looked like a departmental Christmas lunch. I'm not sure whether it was or not because nobody told me and I wasn't invited. I just know that at around 11:45, they all got up, put on their jackets, and walked out together talking about how they were going to miss something. Of course it makes sense that I wasn't invited to the lunch-- I'm a contractor, a temp. But still, I had been there long enough to have that awkward feeling of knowing that I wasn't invited something to which everybody else was.

And, yes, I do realize that there is a seeming contradiction here, of wanting to go to something for which I couldn't go but then wanting to go to something for which I couldn't go. Well, one involved ice skating at 9 in the morning, the other one lunch-- easy choice there. But mainly it's just that it's the subtle reminder that when it comes down to it, you do not actually belong. In one case, an effort was made to include me. The other one not.

Alright, here is a new, official, weekly feature of Hooray For Anything-- the NY Times Wedding Announcement of the Week. As anyone who reads the Times knows, the wedding announcement section, otherwise known as Jews Getting Married, is oftentimes the best part of the paper as it usually rich couples with even richer parents who are full of themselves enough to announce it to the world in the Paper of Record.

Anyways, the winning couple, heretofore known as the Cum Laudes, win for various reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they are either all broke right now, will about to be, or should be, all excepting the father who is too busy laundering money for drug dealers and CEO's looking for tax shelters to be in the poorhouse. Also, they win just for having the phrase "yachts department of an insurance subsidiary" listed in their announcement.

And here they go, the lovely Kathryn Bache & Christopher Lotz;

Kathryn Grace Bache, a daughter of Sara E. Davis and Stephen K. Bache, both of La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., was married Saturday to Christopher Philip Lotz, a son of Wendy Lotz and Philip A. Lotz of New Canaan, Conn. The Rev. Kelly H. Rogers performed the ceremony at the Congregational Church of New Canaan, and Rev. Ken Kline Smeltzer, a minister of the Church of the Brethren, participated.

The bride and the bridegroom, both 22, met during their freshman year at New York University, from which they graduated, she cum laude and he magna cum laude.

Ms. Bache is keeping her name. She works in New York as an intern at Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, a market research unit of the Omnicom Group.

Her parents work in Pasadena, Calif. Her father is the owner of Bache Capital Management, an investment advisory firm, and her mother is a manager in the portfolio management department at a subsidiary of Legg Mason, the Baltimore investment management company.

Mr. Lotz works in New York as an underwriter-in-training in the yachts department of an insurance subsidiary of A.I.G. Until this month he was a research assistant in the political science department at New York University.

His father is an owner and the chairman of Juniperus Capital, a hedge fund in Bermuda.

PS-- thanks to the magic of Google AdSense, on a message board full of people complaining about what a piece of shit Epson printers are, the entire right side of the page includes ads for Epson. Not quite sure this is where Epson would want their ads published.

One of the great mysteries of the computing world is that the very act of hooking up a printer, inserting all the proper chords, and the very act of hitting print never seems to work the first time. Chances are it won't work the second time either.

Now, you would think that this wouldn't be the case as the very act is one of the most basic functions of the computer world. But, for some unexplainable reason, it is far easier to use a web cam to film pornographic pictures of your neighbors having sex and then posting it on both YouTube and Facebook than it is to print a simple confirmation ticket to a movie.

It occurs to me in light of the recent financial clusterfuck that we might have been too hasty in getting ride of things like the stocks, public lashing, and tar & feathering as they probably would come in handy right now. Wouldn't things be much better if certain high level executives, CEOs, and even politicians responsible for this mess were punished in that way? After all, it's not like they're going to receive any sort of punishment that even come close to the mess they've created. Like what are we going to force them to do? Give up their Christmas bonuses? Be forced to resign? Sent to jail? Like that would mean anything-- a Christmas bonus would be a drop in the bucket compared to their salaries, resignations would come with golden parachutes, and jail would be some minimum security prison that's more of a day camp than anything. Thus, tar & feathering. Wouldn't things be better if, say, the idiots who run the Big 3 automakers be put in the stocks in the middle of downtown Detroit? Or all those people whose houses have been foreclosed to get at least one lashing at the head of Citibank or Fannie Mae?

Like executives would try and fleece poor people into ridiculous loans or lay off people right before buying the naming rights to some stadium if they knew it could end up with their being dragged threw town on a horse with people throwing their garbage at them.

Don't ask me how we discovered this, but last night Harlan and I stumbled upon this book.  This led us discovering an entire series of books (including reference books, mythology books, and comic books) about cats who apparently are formed in clans and battle with each other for cat supremacy.  Each clan leader-- with such original sounding names as FurPaw, Bramblepaw, Thornpaw-- leads their cat clans into various adventures and battles and conflicts with some apparent prophecy leading their way.  And, yes, they are illustrated just as seen as on the book cover.

Now, you maybe thinking "what the hell?"  as well as "how could anybody think these books are good?"  Well, according to the Wiki entry, one critic raved about the books for having cats that are "true to their feline nature," something I doubt as I'm pretty sure the cats in the book do nothing but sleep and chase toy mice.

And you maybe wondering what kind of audience their is for poorly written, awfully illustrated children's books about warrior cats and prophecies and all I can think of is that children of fat, wiccan cat ladies have have to have something to read.

Okay, I swear I'll post more.  I swear!  I'm still having issues detoxing from the election and spend way too much time reading politics.  Hell, I still can't even get into sports right now (although the suckiness of my fantasy football teams could have something to do with it).

Yes, I have an iPhone now.  And, yes, I love it.  On my way to work or at the gym, I can now do my two favorite things in the world-- surf the web and listen to music.  Throw in all those apps and I'm in love.  Except, of course, for the fact the whole phone thing is kinda sucky.  The other thing is that iPhones are so prevalent and they all use the same ring that often, when I'm at work, a phone will go off and I won't know who's iPhone it is.  I was at the store down below buying me some chips when the guy who was ringing me up iPhone's went off and both of us reached for our phone.

Anyways, my office is on the 16th floor and doesn't get really good reception.  It's especially not very good with my iPhone as AT&T kinda sucks.  As for internet access, I barely-- barely-- get three bars going and often have to wait a few minutes for a page to download.  I have, however, noticed that for whatever reason, the reception is much better in the men's bathroom and that downloading web sites is much faster there than at my desk.

Don't even ask me how I know this.

Yes, I'm on Facebook.  In fact, I'm becoming rather addicted to Facebook, especially as it's an App on my iPhone and with the press of a button, I can see what other people are doing. It's a quick and easy way to goof off.

Yes, it's kind of fun but it's also a really nice way of getting in touch with people you're not really in touch with anymore and see what they're up to the best possible way-- without ever having to email them or call them.  Like I saw that a friend from way back in the day just got engaged and I'd never know that if I didn't see that she changed her status.  Or that another friend is on some crazy-ass cleansing diet and has been eating nothing but fruit drinks for the past week.  Don't ask, don't know.

Of course, there's some downsides to it.  Like finding out that friends went out drinking and didn't call you up.  Or go to a party.  Or get married and not invite you.  Which wouldn't be that big of a deal if you weren't the one who was there when they met and hung out with them when they first became a couple.  

Not that I'm bitter or anything but I did spend some considerable amount of time waiting for that wedding invite.

Saw this t-shirt coming out of "Zach & Miri Make a Porno"- the front of the t-shirt had three trees on it with the middle tree obviously cut down.  The saying on the t-shirt?  "Who cut one?"

I'm back....

Sorry for a lack of posting but I've been so obsessed with the election I haven't done much of anything.  It's hard to write when you're clicking on Huffington Post every fifteen minutes while watching CNN at the same time.

Anyways, I'll get back to this whole election thing in a bit (because I might be the only person in the country to have not summed up the meaning of Obama's election) but two work related things.

-The office where I'm working is split into two sides with an elevator shaft/bathroom dividing those sides in the middle.  To get from one side of the floor to another, you have to walk a long, straight and narrow pathway.  This leads to situations in which you're on one end and another person is on the other side and if you're going one way and the other person is going the other way, there's a lot of time in which you're walking in a direction where there's nothing to do but stare forward at the other person.  

Now some people move confidently ahead as if it's not a big deal, even occasionally saying hi. Other people just put their head down so as to not make sure eye contact is made.  And other people, typically someone of the other sex, will turn things up a notch and suddenly find something inexplicably interesting about the wall they're walking by or their shoes.

-I was on my way to the men's room when I met up with another coworker who was obviously on his way to the men's room too.  We were both talking to each other when he suddenly just stopped and stood there.  Since I thought this was kind of weird, I asked him where he was going and he quietly told me that he had a phobia about walking into a men's room with another coworker at the same time.  So he gave me about a minute heads start and then headed off onto the bathroom behind me.

Later on, he partly explained his phobia and did so by breaking down all the various bathroom behavior of other coworkers- who talked, who farts, and who does things most people deem disgusting.  

I learned a lot, actually.

There's this weird thing in the bathrooms at work that when you're, umm, sitting on the toilet, the toilets shake when somebody in another stall gets up and flushes the toilet.  It's more like a rumble than a jostle when it happens too.  Now for some reason I find this a little scary in that sometimes it feels like it could be an earthquake and if I were to come up with a list of places I'd rather not be during the Big One, I think sitting on the toilet would be up there on the list. 

This brings up another phobia of mine, mainly when going to the bathroom on an airplane.  Because if there was any sort of bad turbulence or, God forbid, any sort of disaster, the bathroom would most definitely be the worst place to be.  I keep on having visions somewhere along the lines of the famous last scene in Dr Strangelove except on a toilet instead of a missile.  The fact that the bathrooms are usually in the back of the plane where things are often bumpier than in the middle of the plane does not help comfort me.

Sorry for the lack of posting but I'm just readjusting to working again and while I have plenty of things to say, I don't have the energy yet to post. Also, unlike previous times, I have a life now.

Anyways, about last night's debate. I know everybody complained about how boring it was but I actually thought it was a really good debate in that it was what a debate should be like in an ideal political world. Both candidates sounded well informed, the discussions were extremely issue related, and most importantly, both of them said what they believed and neither chickened out in saying it.  You got a really good idea of what each politician was like and what they stood for.  The problem is that we're so conditioned in seeing politics as entertainment that everyone was disappointed because it wasn't entertaining. We want zingers and gaffes, "defining moments," and gotcha moments. Instead, we actually got, well, a real live debate.

The other thing everyone is complaining about is that Obama didn't go for the jugular despite having ample opportunity and openings to do so. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be his MO and that's just the way it is. We should also realize that part of our desire to see him go for the jugular is more because those of us on the left-side of things see this as a blood sport and we want to see blood. For those people who aren't that partisan, they're far less concerned with seeing blood and the election doesn't turn on what we think.

The other thing is that everyone is missing the big picture, the whole strategy vs. tactics thing. The entire year and a half Obama has done the same thing, gotten a plan together and stuck to that plan no matter what while remaining entirely cool, calm and collected while doing so. The result of which is that it's made his two main competitors, Hillary and McCain, do stupid and silly things out of frustration in not being able to, well, get his goat up, to make it look like he's sweating. So Hillary started gunning shots down in a bar in Ohio and talking about dodging sniper fire while McCain has been nothing but acting bat-shit crazy for the past month or so. And the whole time, Obama just stood there in all of his zen-like glory and pretended that none of this was going on. The dude has some mother fucking  ice in his veins.

As anyone who's been in this kind of situation before (well not running for something but having some sort of argument with anyone) knows that the most annoying thing to face is somebody who doesn't appear flustered, to reflect back the other person's anger and emotion. The more you argue and the more you fight, the more and more frustrating it gets. That's what Obama's been this whole time and it's why he wins, because he makes everyone lose their cool before he does. It's the rope-a-dope strategy that everyone suspects is his main strategy.

Which brings us back last night. People were thinking that Obama would try and goad McCain on and try and get McCain to reveal his well known temper. Well, Obama didn't try to, or at least that's how it looked. But if you watched the debate or heard it on the radio, McCain got more and more condescending and snippy throughout the debate. Once again, Obama wins for doing nothing but letting his opponent hang himself by their own rope.

In other words, well, see the picture above.  That just might be my favorite picture in the world.

Sorry for the lack of posting but believe it or not, I've been working the past few weeks. I've been freelancing, getting temp work in something I actually do for a living (that is when I'm actually doing something for a living). The job is supposed to last for the month of September and is to fill in for somebody who took a month-long leave of absence for various reasons that are still unclear.

Now here's the twist on everything and something that I have never, ever said on this blog about a temp assignment-- I really like it there. A lot. It's one of the nicest places I've worked and it feels right, like I just fit there. So much so that even though I've been there for only two and a half weeks, I feel like I've been there for months and here's the kicker- I think my coworkers feel the same way. I'm already joking around with my really fun cubicle neighbors, making snarky comments to other coworkers over clients with whom I pretty easily figured out deserve snarky comments, and march into my higher ups office as if it's no big deal.

And despite the fact this all happened very suddenly and I got about two days of training, I'm ON it-- I get everything to the point that on my first day solo I was able to do the job and answer questions that I shouldn't have been able to do or answer because I never got trained on it. Right now, the place is starting up with their biggest campaign of the year, a monsterous project involving about thirty different components that all have to be done at the same time and while I was pretty intimidated about it when I started because everybody told me how hellish it is (it's the reason, I think, why the person who I'm replacing took a break), I figured out the whole thing in a couple of days. The result of which is that I'm already treated like one of the team and being thrown all the responsibility of someone who's done the job for years. Nobody blinks twice about asking me to do things that nobody who has been on the job for just two weeks should do.

But here's the thing, technically the job is supposed to end at the end of the month, when the person with whom I'm replacing is supposed to come back. There's some vagueness to what's going to happen-- nobody's said anything definitive and an occasional comment is made that there might be a slight-- very very slight-- chance that I could stay. Among other things, today I heard something that had been rumored, that the person who left might not come back or might take more time off.

Now, as somebody who has done this plenty of times, I know better than anyone that when temping, it's best to keep your head down, not be super-friendly, and try not to get emotionally attached to it. This isn't happening with this job-- I want to stay there and stay there forever. I don't think I've ever felt this comfortable and had such an easy time in a job than this one. All of which is causing a problem. The whole thing is like meeting someone and thinking you really hit it off and that they could possibly be the love of their life but you find out they're leaving the country or something in a month and as hard and as hard as you try not to get too emotionally attached, you can't help it. Sadly, we all know how these things end-- either there's either going to be some cheesy moment at the airport or there won't be and it's back to unemployment while trying not to pay attention to the fact we're headed to the next Great Depression.

The problem is that as hard as it is to get emotionally attached, it's darn near impossible. The people think so highly of me that my amazingly awesome art director took time out of her amazingly busy schedule to make some personalized job sheets for me, one with my name. She also took some time out of her amazingly busy schedule to email my boss to tell her how good of a job I'm doing and how much she loves me being there. Other employees come up to me and thank me for helping them with something.

So here's hoping there's a cheesy moment at the airport. I want to be Natalie Portman to the job's Zach Braff. Sadly, without the great CD soundtrack.

Saturday night Harlan and I went on a Ghost Tour of San Francisco. I've gone on ones in Gettysburg and New Orleans and loved both of them, the one in New Orleans especially because that place is so atmospheric that after walking around at night, you could pretty much believe most of it. So I figured that a tour would be fun to do in the city because it's old enough to have some history, also kind of atmospheric, and has a well-known and well-deserved history of craziness.

The tour actually wasn't that great for various reasons-- not nearly as good as the other ones I had been on, nor as good as I had thought it would be-- but....

The tour started at the Queen Anne hotel, a restored, hundred year old hotel in Pac Heights well known for being haunted. According to the tour guide, the hotel was known for the usual assortment of visions, random cold spots, and all sorts of weird things such as customers waking up to find themselves tucked in their beds despite not having done so when they went to bad. It was apparently common for guests of the hotel to take pictures of the place in which those mysterious balls of light show up in the photos, something anyone who's watched any number of ghost shows on tv know is supposed to be a ghost.

This was all being explained to us by the tour guide, who told us all of this in the lobby of the fourth four of the hotel, the floor most known for being haunted. Harlan and I were sitting on this tiny, antique chair by the side of the wall, pretty much parallel to the guide, and I was sitting on the left side of the chair, away from the rest of the group that had gathered, right next to a small coffee table.

The guide started telling us about how and why ghosts manifest themselves and said that most people experience them through cold spots and orbs. He then began telling us the history of the hotel. As I was sitting there, I started to feel a cold breeze on my arm, to the left of me, pretty much right over the coffee table. When I moved my head to the left and leaned in, I felt like I was sitting over some sort of vent as there was a stream of cold air rushing up to meet me. When I changed my position and sat up straight, away from the coffee table, I didn't feel anything at all, but whenever I turned to my left, I did.

After the third or fourth time doing this, I started to have this thought to myself somewhere along the lines of "what the heck?" mixed in with thoughts of "no, it couldn't be...." and I told myself it was either a figment of my imagination or a vent. But the more I sat there, the more I felt it and as the guy was going on, I began to wonder more and more what was going on.

Now, you could say I was feeling a bit freaked out right now. Not necessarily because I was spooked, well maybe a little spooked, but because there was something weird going on and I had no idea if it was just me or if it was a vent or for goodness sake a freaking ghost and there was nobody I could really tell at that point and it was killing me. I wanted to say something out loud, along the lines of "OMG, there’s this weird breeze next to me!" but I was not going to say anything out loud because the guy was still talking and there was all these people around and I was in no way, shape or form, going to say something out loud and sound like a total idiot. I wanted to tell Harlan and tried to either whisper something to her and thought about having us switch seats so she could feel it and confirm that there was something going on, but once again, I didn’t do anything because I didn’t want to cause a distraction.

So I sat there through the entire talk leaning to my left every few seconds to see if I could still feel something and that it wasn’t my imagination all the while trying not to look too freaked out about all this. At one point, the cold spot or whatever it was, was so strong I took a deep breath in and felt the cold air go through my lungs.

Finally, the guy stopped his bit and told us we could wander around the hotel and check things out and take photos. Almost the second he was done, I told Harlan we had to switch seats and after some cajoling, mainly because I couldn’t quite explain why I wanted her to, she finally did. Once she had moved, I stood up, went to the other side of the hallway, facing the chair, and took a photo just to see if something would appear.

Something did.

To the left of Harlan, were three noticeable orbs of light, dancing in the air, just like in all those photos of ghosts. There could be absolutely no doubt they were there.

Okay, NOW I was freaking out. I mean, it’s one thing to feel some waft of air because that could have been anything but it’s another thing to feel that draft of air and then see some friggin’ orbs of light in a photo. It couldn’t be…nah…..

After I had picked my jaw up from the ground, I ran over to Harlan and showed the photo to her. Now she’s really skeptical about ghosts, even more so than me (like most things in life, I’m agnostic about it-- I know there really can’t possibly be ghosts but want to keep an open mind about it because it would be freakin’ cool if there were). Whenever we talk about it, she would dismiss all of it by saying that whenever you go online and search for photos of ghosts, you only see those stupid orbs and those stupid orbs could be anything. But now I had just taken a photo of those stupid orbs and when she looked at the photo, she was a little taken aback. When I showed her the photo, she also said that she did indeed feel a cold spot to the left of her, by her leg.

The crowd dispersed, running around to check out the doors to the supposedly haunted rooms and to look around what is a really beautiful hotel. Still stunned, I went up to the guide, completely butted myself into a conversation he was having with somebody else, and showed him the picture in my camera and. without even batting an eye, he just took a look at it and said “yep, that’s it.” “If you blow the picture up,” he added, “you might even see a face” and then he went back to his conversation as if it was no big thing that I took a photo of would be classified as a ghost right after a ten minute discussion of one.

After that, I went back to the spot where I had taken the photo and took another one. Nothing. I then went around the hotel, taking the occasional photo but again, nothing. After about ten minutes of wandering around, the tour group met down in the lobby of the hotel to start the tour and I overheard a group of people say they took a photo of orbs too. I asked to see what they had and saw a photo of the stairwell with three or four orbs dancing around.

And so I say, once again “it couldn’t be….nah….”

The moment I got home, I downloaded the pictures to my computer. Sadly, the orbs aren’t as apparent after being downloaded as they were when looking at them on my computer. But they’re still there, faded a bit, but still visible.

So what to make out of all of this? Nothing? Something? Should I just wrap it all up to my imagination and make nothing of it? Was I just a little spooked and excited by all the ghost stories the guide had told? Or had, I, ahem, JUST ACTUALLY SEEN A GHOST.

I mean, ghosts aren’t real and the orbs could just be the camera playing tricks with the light and the cold spot could have been a vent, But, on the other hand, OH MY FUCKING GOD.

A day later, I still have no idea of what the hell happened but , well, it couldn’t be….nah….

Okay, so let's get this straight.  Apparently, the big issue in politics right now involves pigs and lipsticks and how a party that has done nothing for women's rights and have spent the better part of two decades railing against political correctness, is screaming sexism left and right because of a comment aimed at a politically inexperienced shrew who seems to be getting more and more popular the less she actually says something substantive.  And naturally, while all this silliness is going on, the press has done what they do and have debated this issue substantively after being told to jump by the usual people.

Also, apparently, this seems to be working.  As is all the blatant lying and slimy tactics by a geriatric dude with a face that keeps on falling off who keeps on blabbering about honor and how he survived as a POW for 5 1/2 years to completely trash the country while running for President.

With all that in mind, I think I have come up with my official Hooray For Anything Policy Plan

-If you are an elderly person living on social security and vote for the old guy mainly because you're scared of a black dude with a funny name, you will lose your social security.  The money will be taken and instead put into the social security trust fund so social security can remain solvent and thus be able to provide for those of us who aren't racist.

-If you are middle class/lower middle class/poor who complains about the loss of high-paying jobs and how all the factories have left yet vote for the old guy because the other guy doesn't like guns, you will have WalMart's put all over your town, thus making sure that the only job you can get is at WalMart. And maybe a Starbucks too.

-If you constantly complain about health care and the lack of it yet vote for the old dude because, gosh, that Palin chick sure is spunky and what a mother!, then, well, I wouldn't wish anything bad to happen to you because the lack of health care sucks.  You will, however, lose priority when it comes to seeing the doctor and will have to wait while all the people who didn't vote for the old dude see the doctor first.

Why?  Because you're voting for the guy who'll do nothing for the things you keep on whining about because you're an idiot.  Because we get the government we deserve and I am forced to live in it.

Sometimes I hate this country.

Today, I heard back from that company that called me about going in for another interview, the place where I wasn't sure whether they meant a second round interview or just a plain ole' HR screwup.  It was a HR screwup.

The HR person called me this afternoon and even had a time for me to go in so I asked her if this was a second round interview because I had already gone down for an interview.  There was a couple of minutes of silence followed by a reply of "oh, hmmm...let me check that."  A few minutes later, she called and apologized and told me that they hadn't gotten the paperwork back from the people I met with so there's no record of me going in there, or at least in the HR department, and therefore I don't need to come on down.  They did say they'd call me back real soon to let me know what's going on.

Err...thanks for jerking me around.  Stupidly, I was actually starting to get a little excited about things.

Between that, the recent polls, news from my old employers that makes it sound like they fucked me that much more, and Tom Brady's injury, I'm having a bad day.

Okay, first some background:

A few posts backs I mentioned that I had a phone interview with a major, super-huge company that went so well the HR person on the other end of the phone wished me good luck.  After waiting a week or two to hear back from them, I finally did and went through one of those long, grueling, 2 hour interviews with four different people.  I left the interview convinced that I was nowhere close to getting the job as it turned out the job utilized a whole different kind of skill set that I had.  Also, I sucked during the interview.

So Friday, late in the afternoon, I got a voice mail message from a HR type at that company saying that they wanted me to come in for an interview in a few weeks.

Good, right?

Except that the person most definitely did not say something like "another interview" or "second round of interviews" or even acknowledge the fact that I had already interviewed there already.  Also, it came from an entirely different HR person that I had talked to before.  All of which makes me wonder if this isn't necessarily a good "whoo-hoo!" type thing but instead a jerk around type thing in which a HR person called me up out of the blue, totally oblivious to the fact I had already gone in there, and that I'll never here from her again.

Which is silly, cause things like that don't happen.

Oh wait, they have.

That Sarah Palin speech depressed the hell out of me.

And so....work....

It's only for a month but it's still work.  Actually, it may not be for a month.  It could be for 6 weeks.  Or a full-time gig.  Just enough to keep my hopes up for employment but not enough to make me go woo-hoo and buy that iPhone I've been drooling over since ever.

And, yes, while I'm glad to be earning money, I hate to say that as per usual, I'll probably miss unemployment while employed.  Having to wake up early does, indeed suck.  The worst part, though, is that it'll mean spending an entire day not being able to keep up on the Palin train wreck.  How can I know what's going on when there's something going on every fifteen minutes or so.

This Palin thing is just possibly the most entertaining political thing I could ever remember as it's the joke gift that just keeps on giving.  These past few days, it's almost impossible to not check the internet every fifteen minutes to see what the latest is. Well, I do that anyways but you know what I mean.

Besides the fact it's a blunder of preposterous proportions, it's been highly entertaining watching the Olympic level gymnastics coming from pundits and politicians from the right who have in the past few days basically thrown out everything they've said about anything over the past ten years in an attempt to defend something that even they probably know is undefendable.  How could anybody think this whole thing is a good thing and how can anybody not be utterly blown away by the lack of thought McCain put into it?

The pick, however, does kind of scare me.  Because while the pick is almost farcical (somebody I read described it as "so beyond Fail that it needs a new word to describe it") there is still the matter of the great judgement and wisdom of the American people.  They could, for instance, see her lack of experience and trailer trash persona as making her merely "down to earth" and "likeable" and decide to hop on the Sarah love train.  Or people could look at the media coverage (which isn't nearly as bad or on top of it as the blogs) and make people feel sorry for her and all the coverage by a press that's actually doing it's job that they also start feeling that love.  Or that it could come off so sexist that the Hillary fanatics vote Republican.

In other words, knowing how politics work in this country, her nomination is probably going to turn out to be a great thing for the Republicans.  Plus, she's not black and has a funny name. 

I'm a little late to this, but here's what I think of the Sarah Palin pick-

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Had another one of those long, grueling over two hour interviews with whole different groups of people yesterday.  It was at that place I wrote about a week ago, the one in which the initial phone interview went so well I thought I was in but was starting to worry as I hadn't heard anything back yet.  Obviously, I did.

Here's another thing about those interviews-- each one is with a different person so each interview goes completely differently than the other one's depending on the chemistry or the other person's personality or the questions they ask meaning that it's a bit of a roller coaster ride.  The first interview I did was alright, the second one was great, the third was somewhere along the lines of a flail, and the fourth was just meh.  Somehow, I have to hope that the one person I did really well with is somehow able to convince the others that I should have the job and win them over to my cause.  

This interview was for yet another position that hadn't been created yet but they just knew they had to have somebody in this role, whatever that role may be.  Which is why I got four different interpretations of what the job was from four different people.  I did, however, get the feeling that they wanted something completely different than what I was originally told the job would be or had applied to and there is nothing quite realizing all of this right in the middle of the interview.  

So, yeah, okay, I did watch part of the convention, at least Michelle Obama's speech (I did, however, quickly change the channel the moment a talking head started talking).  I have to say while watching it, and other parts of the night, the reality of it all hit me-- Jesus Frickin' Christ, we're actually nominating a black guy.  And all these people out there cheering for and celebrating a black guy?  What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

Admit it-- it was just a little weird with a twinge of feeling that we're in some sort of bizarro/through the looking glass kind of world.  

But while I also think this just an awesome thing for all sorts of reasons, I'm worried that a whole bunch of people tuned in, drew the same conclusion I did, but didn't quite see it in such a positive light.

I'll also add some sort of paraphrase that I read somewhere this morning, about how cool it'll be to actually have classy, sophisticated, intelligent people in the White House.  For once.  And I'll also add another sort of paraphrase that I read somewhere else, about how all of that automatically makes them out of touch with most Americans.

I repeat something I've said before-- if you're a big corporation and the only way to apply for a job there is to enter a whole bunch of information on their web site, don't make it so complicated that the only way to enter your information is to have the latest browser and to be enabled in the latest web 2.0 flimflammery.  Because it's friggin impossible to apply for a job there when it's friggin impossible to get into the web site.

Because I'm a political junkie, I usually watch the conventions and all the hyperventilation from the pundits.  While I occasionally glance at the Republican convention, or at least watch it until my blood pressure approaches heart-attack levels, I do like to watch the Democratic convention.  It is my team, after all, and it helps to affirm why I am a Democrat, like actual minorities in the audience.  This year, however, I'm probably going to stay away from most of it.  I want to catch Obama's speech, of course, because he's friggin amazing when he's one (his speech at the 2004 convention almost made me cry) and because the fate of the world rests on his shoulders (seriously).

I am, however, not going to watch the pundits analyze and dissect the thing because political reporters and pundits make baby Jesus cry.  For example, before Obama went on his vacation, Cokie Roberts said on one of those Sunday morning gab-fests that she thinks Obama's vacation choice was a mistake because it was too easy for Republicans to brand him as an elitist with vaguely foreign ties.  This despite the fact he's from there.  Or despite the fact he has family there.  Or despite the fact that Hawaii is a state in the union and many people go there on vacations and/or honeymoons, including John McCain.  One of my fondest desires is that whenever a pundit says something like that, either another pundit or a politician will turn to that pundit and say something like "that's the most stupidest thing I've ever heard.  You're an  idiot."

I'm still waiting.

Actually, not watching the news is a pretty smart strategy in handling the election because I have yet to throw anything at the tv.  I'm surviving mainly on left-ish leaning web sites, like Talking Points Memo, because they seem to be handled and run by sane people.  There's still enough things out there that gets reported to make me want to ram my head against the table, but at least those people share the same outrage about it all.

This election, I'm surviving mainly because of Wonkette, which is where I spend most of my time during the day, trolling the comment sections and occasionally adding my two cents.  I like to go there because the site makes fun of all things that need to be made fun of and because it and most of the commentors share most of my views-- that Obama is the One; that McCain is a doddering opportunist who wants nothing more to do than start bombing someone, and that the press mainly consists of a bunch of retards.

Wonkette works this time around because while occasionally funny, the Daily Show hasn't been that with-it during the election.  Things happen too fast these days for the latest news to make it onto the show and so they are usually behind the news.  I also think that deep down, everyone on the show loves both Obama and McCain and as a result, they're having trouble mocking either of them-- there's no outrage to fuel the humor.  One of these days, they're going to fall out of love with McCain but I'm still waiting for it to happen.

PS- yes, there's Olberman, but Olberman has somehow turned himself into just as much of a blowhard as O'Reilly.  Rachel Maddow is the new hotness.

Just got back from getting a massage and I have to say it wasn't the best one I've gotten.  

We went to the Kabuki Springs which we've gone to a few times and has rocked both of our worlds when we went.  The previous times we went, however,  we got the full spa treatment, the kind that includes a bath and all sorts of fun stuff.  This time it was just a massage.

Usually when I've gotten a massage, I've gotten a special room for it.  At the kabuki, the rooms I've been in where beautiful.  But at Kabuki, the regular old massages weren't done in those special rooms, but in a much bigger room, one in which all the massages were done and one in which each "booth" was divided just by huge drapings.  So instead of getting this nice, private room with incense and all that, I got this small little section in which I could hear my neighbor whispering to his masseuse.  It made the place look like a massage chop shop-- bring 'em in and bring 'em out.  At one point, some guy got his back pounded on and I could hear the "thwap Thwap thwap" coming from nearby.

Even worse, mine was at the end and there was this glass partition between my booth and the hallway outside.  When I got in there, there were two women standing in the hallway and I could pretty much see them.  First, hello distraction.  Second, you kinda have to get naked before  getting a massage and I was so not getting naked when standing in front of glass.  I didn't get naked until my masseuse reassured me several times that you could not see in from the hallway.

As I was sitting there, I realized a few other things for which I was disappointed. My masseuse was some white guy with a receding hairline who looked older than me.  I don't like the idea of getting a massage from some guy who looks like a consultant.  I want my massages to be done by the usual type of person I get them from, some hippy chick with a weird name who does massages to earn some extra money to go to Burning Man and have some fake weird name that they've given themselves despite the fact they grew up in West Chester New York.

See, the thing is for whatever reason massages are seen as something kind of exotic.  All eastern and shit.  That's why I like getting massages from some buddhist wanna be named "India" and not some guy named Bob.

Which is also why I don't like the kind of massage I got, a Swedish massage.  There's nothing wrong with a swedish per se, but I usually go for something like shiatsu or reiki or some other weird sounding massage.  It sounds like the kind of thing they do in far-away places with far-away belief systems.  There's nothing exotic about Sweden.  

Friday night, we went to the Outside Lands festival mainly to see Radiohead. I used to see a lot of concerts back in the day but, like everyone else seemingly in existence, the older I got, the less shows I saw. I also used to go to those big, festival shows a lot, either things like Lollapalooza (btw-- it turns out that spell check is aware of the word "Lollapalooza" as it is not warning me I'm spelling something incorrectly) or shows by a certain hippie-ish band that I refuse to acknowledge ever being into. Now the thing about the concert is that I kinda skewed old. Like really skewed old. Yes, I was the old guy at the concert hanging out with people almost half my age and pretending that I was still "hip".

The thing is I didn't really feel old. I looked at the crowd and said to myself "these are my people" and felt transported back in time. Like I could go casually strike up a conversation with anyone in the crowd as if they were my peers. Except, of course, I wasn't. Which made me feel both young and old at the same time.

At the concert my friends and I were really concerned about being as close to the stage as possible. So we got there pretty much when the doors opened and spread out all of our blankets so as to make sure we had claimed our territory, much like settlers traveling out west. We were so concerned about being close to the stage that we bailed on seeing any other acts at the festival lest we lose our spot, and that includes some band (Black Mountain) which was described as being a psychadelic 70's rock-styled band and that's the kind of musical write-up that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. We also bailed on Beck, who I really wanted to see as I have yet to see him, because Beck ended about ten minutes before Radiohead came on and as the thing was a complete cluster fuck, there was no way to see both without missing part of each other's acts and/or be trampled to death in the rush of people going from one act to the other.

Well, we got our positions up close to the stage as we wanted but as the band came on and the crowd rushed to the front, we were pretty well crushed in our positions. Whatever room we had carved out for ourselves no longer belonged to us as everyone pretty much just trampled all over us.  Because of all this, we also couldn't really see the stage (which is the whole point of being close to the stage) nor the video screens that were set up because they were too many people in front of us to really see. I could kinda see but Harlan couldn't as she's a bit shorter than me.

For various reasons that I wont' get into, at the beginning of the third song (and right after an awesome version of Reckoner), we had to leave our spot and head towards a spot where we had room and a place to sit, somewhere considerably not near the front of the stage. So we found our spot, a nice spot where we could sit, have elbow room, and not feel trapped and quickly realized that by not being as close to the stage as possible, we actually had better positions. No, we couldn't see the the stage but neither could we see it before. Instead, we had a clear view of the stupendously awesome light show and the video screen. No, it wasn't like seeing the band but more like watching a laser show.  As one of the reasons why I love Radiohead is because they tend to be the kind of band that works well as a laser show, this made me quite content.

One more thing about the show-- somehow Radiohead has become almost a stadium rock band, as evidence by nearly 60,000 people paying $80 mainly to see them. People sang along to songs and one couple even did a nice, romantic dance to "Fake Plastic Trees." The fact that they have achieved such stature is quite remarkable considering they've intentionally done everything possible to not achieve that stature, doing the standard stunts like refusing to do interviews and releasing albums with the complete intention of pissing off all the people who liked the previous album. Yet, still, despite all this, they've somehow become a band that plays to huge crowds, crowds that hold up cell phones during ballads, sing along, and dance.

The amazing thing about it all, other than what was previously mentioned, is that they are not the type of band that lends itself to sing alongs as their lyrics are either completely non-sensical or so drenched in alienation and isolation that singing the lyrics in a crowd feels wrong.  Like it's completely not the point of the song. You cannot disappear completely or feel trapped in a body that you can't get out of if you are surrounded by 60,000 people all saying the same thing.

I've been applying for writing jobs as well as the jobs I normally apply for and this morning, I got an email about an editing position for a web site that's all about dogs. The email I got asked me if I have a dog or not. I, of course, told him that I do not have a dog and then went on a long bit about how much I love dogs, that I had a dog, and that I'm a dog person. I also mentioned that Harland and I would love to get a dog but it's friggin impossible to do so in the city (which is true).

Naturally, I haven't heard back from him yet.

So, for those keeping score at home, I've now not gotten jobs because I don't play enough video games and because I don't have a dog. I've read a lot of those "How to Get a Job" type books and none of them mention playing video games and owning a dog.

On Monday I had a phone interview with a pretty big company. So big I never thought I'd hear back from them. Anyways, the interview was one of the best interviews I've ever had, mainly because for whatever reason, the person on the other end of the line, a HR type, really liked me. So much so that was supposed to be a half an hour interview lasted over an hour.

Now, it was the "gateway" type interview, the kind in which someone from HR first contacts you to make sure if you're even worth presenting to somebody in the actual department. So you have to be extra diligent in these because you're not even close to getting to the real interview. But this one, this one went well. At one point, she repeated back to me a totally rambling answer to a question I wasn't quite prepared for but did redid it in a way that made me sound completely passionate and articulate about the position. At another point, I admitted I didn't know the answer to something and she suggested to me that while it's fine for me to not own up to it now, she'd recommend me studying up for it for my next interview. And, yes, she said she thought I'd have another interview, even saying she'd cross her fingers for me.

Naturally, I haven't heard back

I was at the store today and saw a headline on one of the tabloids about the recent death of Bernie Mac. The headline, if I remember correctly, read "Bernie Mac's Brave Last Days." Now I have no idea how brave Bernie Mac was but whenever somebody is either in serious condition or dead, you always hear that they are handling/did handle things with bravery. So, just once, I'd like to see a headline along the lines of "Celebrity X Faced Death Like a Whiny Bitch."

I'm getting a bad-- a really bad-- a really, really bad feeling about the election. It's starting to have that feel of almost every election I've seen since I've been alive-- once again, a weaker Republican candidate is outmanuevering, outthinking, and outflanking the Democrat in almost every way shape or form and in the face of the attack, the Democrat seems passive at worst, utterly outclassed at best. Except in the case of this election, it's not through incompetence as much as it is as overconfidence. And, as usual, it's one of those situations where somebody not in the campaign but watching from the sidelines, like, say, me, could come up with at least five tv ads and five speeches that would do a better job defending the candidate's positions and destroying the opponent's positions better than what's being seen out there. I mean, at this point, Obama should just run an ad of McCain saying "I'm not an expert on economics" followed with clips of Phil Graham saying American's are whimps and just show it over and over and over and over again. Hell, he should just run an ad pointing out the fact that as per usual, the Republicans have absolutely no ideas about health care and don't even seem to care.

And, as usual, an election that should be bringing forth serious, substantive debates on huge, tremendous, important issues (like, say, the obviously apparent decline and fall of the American Empire) is being lost in the haze of tv ads, counter attacks, and the Unbearable Lameness of the Media. Let's look at foreign policy, for example. It's obvious McCain takes uses whatever mobility he has left in his arm, pops some viagra, and whacks off every night to the thought of fighting war upon war upon war. Yet there doesn't seem to be much in the way of concern over this. Somehow, the neo-con's haven't been totally killed off yet and it's mainly because it's much easier screaming "Russia is evil!!!!!!" on tv than saying "well, yes, but Georgia fucked up, we kind of baited Russia, and let's not get into too much of a tizzy about this." Sadly, it's hard to run on a foreign policy of "let's not lose our heads here" which is actually probably the most important component of running a foreign policy.

Which brings up the final bit. That, as usual, an American populace that tells pollster after pollster that they want certain things will completely vote against them because of various reasons. The fact that we are completely tired of war or that Russia and China is doing what they are because we're mired in too many wars would lend towards one thinking that maybe blowing shit up isn't necessarily the best policy, but darn, doesn't McCain look experienced when he's popping a vein and talking about how we're all Georgians? I'm not, btw. Sorry to say this, but fuck 'em.

And I'm not even going to get into economic matters. Suffice it to say, that if you complain about lack of work, lack of healthcare, lack of pretty much anything, and yet vote against somebody who supports all that because of, say, an insufficient love of fetuses, you kinda get what you deserve. Except that they drag me down with them.

All of which means is that I'm kind of dreading the actual election day. Because now, at least, I can still think that there's a hope. After election day, it'll be just more heartbreak, disillusionment, and the crushing knowledge that for the most part, my fellow Americans are a bunch of idiots.

I haven't really been paying too much to the Olympics and part of me wishes I was because it's actually a lot of fun and completely engrossing. However, the little things that I've caught has reminded me just what I don't like about watching the Olympics. It seems that everytime I turn it on, it's either the American women's softball team or those American beach volleyball players. Both of them tend to kill their opponents meaning it's barely competitive. And beach volleyball is kind of a dumb, made up sport, and softball is a sport in which we should be kicking everyone's butts because it's our game and we're probably the only country that produces women who really care about playing softball. So, basically, what you got is a lot of events featuring American's kicking other countries butts in silly sports. Now, I'm sure other people get off on watching American's kick people's butts in not very important sporting events (U-S-A! U-S-A!) but I don't. I actually like watching us being competitive, even occasionally losing, in sports that seem a bit more traditional.

Either that or team handball.

Earlier, I had mentioned that I wasn't so sure cats were meant to be house pets. The idea being that they might not be so ideal of a domesticated animal because they don't appear to really care if they are or not. One thing I've learned, though, is that the they do have an incredible value just for their ability to entertain you for minutes on in by not doing much of anything. As a friend pointed out, cats are perfect animals for stoners not just because they're low maintenance but because they're kind of stoney themselves.

It's all about that aura of self-possession that they have. A cat will suddenly get up, go over to another place, then lie down again as if it perfectly makes sense to get up from one spot to another. Same thing with say suddenly jumping up on top of a bookcase. They just get up from where they are and move over to another place for reasons unknown only to them. This is especially true, when like my cat, they decide to go chasing imaginary mice. Of course, chasing imaginary rice is ridiculous and often extremely silly to watch, but when a cat goes about doing it, they make it look like there is totally a mouse right there and if you don't see it, that's not their problem.

Basically, what makes a cat so entertaining is that you find yourself spending hours just trying to figure out what the hell they are doing.

And, ick--- it appears I am now turning this into a blog about my cat. My have some things changed.

I've been reading my posts from seven years ago (Christ, it's been that long?) and it's kinda scary to read through. Some of it even painful. In doing so, I've discovered that:

-I'm not nearly as good as a writer as I thought I was
-I can't believe I revealed as much as I did
-I forgot about my unhealthy obsession with the Real World and the Real World/Road Rules competitions.
-I wrote way too much about politics
-Buffy too
-I wrote good reviews of not just "Signs" but "Attack of the Clones"
-I really came off as one depressed, angry, angst-ridden person who couldn't sleep and subsisted entirely on coffee and alcohol. As a result, the writing make me come off like one big, huge raw nerve, exposed pretty much everyone to read.

Good stuff.

Still, most of it comes off as the kind of thing one writes in their journal with all the encompassing embarrassment that comes with it.

The thing I'm realizing too is that there's a lot of stuff I let out and a lot of things I never got to write about and how that time was really much, much worse than I wrote about.

Oh, one more thing-- I started this here blog in October 2011, a few weeks after 9/11. During the time I was writing it, we went through umpteen terror alerts, two wars, all sorts of craziness. The blog is actually interesting in that it's a somewhat interesting time-capsule-- Life in post 9/11 America. Those were some weird and whacky times.

For those of you wondering just what I am doing with my unemployed ass all day, here's what I got going on today. Basically, my cat has worms and when I called the vet, I was told that I should bring a stool sample over to the vet so they could send it out to the labs to determine what medicine to give him. Unfortunately, there's not really any stool samples available right now so I'm basically sitting around in my pajamas waiting for my cat to take a shit.

More looking for a job stuff. This'll be it for awhile-- I swear.

-Three hour interviews suck. SUCK. And not exactly fair. Because while I'm sitting there getting more and more exhausted and mentally fried and while my vocal chords and being ripped apart, the people I'm meeting with aren't because they're only meeting me in 20-30 gaps. So they have a lot of energy. I could also say that I should probably get some extra-bonus points for having to deal with an HR person who didn't give me any details and told me I was interviewing for the wrong job, plus having to drive to and from Palo Alto but you never get extra credit for anything.

-And speaking of which, I've been getting a lot of "why do you want to work for this company" type of questions lately. Well, because it's a job and I'se gotta be paid. Actually, for some companies (video game company or home electronic companies) that's easy to answer. Not so easy if it's for, say an architectural firm ("I always wanted to be an architect") or a company that makes medical equipment ("why, I've always been fascinated by x-rays").

-Going back to that place where I interviewed last week, the one that told me I was both too qualified and not qualified enough for the job, I went back and re-read posts about the time I interviewed there years ago and discovered that the same thing happened-- first they said my resume had too much experience and then they said I didn't have enough experience. In other words, that company is fucked up, yo. Also, what was weird about that interview is that the first person I met with thought enough of me that she left the interview and ran to her desk to hand me her business card. Somebody who doesn't want to hire another person would not do that, right? Which means the decision went down to the last person I met with who, apparently, told my recruiter that I was too "low energy." Whatever that means. Funny thing is that the dude who interviewed me looked like the kind of person who like nothing better than to kick back in his cabin in Tahoe and popping open a Sierra Nevada while listening to the rocking sounds of Dave Mathews after a full day of skiing. In other words, I don't exactly see that guy as being very high energy himself. So, whatever.

Most places that I've lived in the city have been pretty quiet, or at least in terms of hearing your neighbors. My last apartment, in the Mission, was almost sound-proof in that I almost never heard my neighbor and only occasionally heard the people downstairs.

This isn't true of my new apartment, which is why it was a little disconcerting to have to spend the night hearing my upstairs neighbors get into a loud argument and then a loud bout of make-up sex.

So for those in the know, the big song out there, well one of the big songs out there is this song "I kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. Unlike the pervious "I Kissed a Girl" song that came out in the late 90's which was kinda Lillith Fair and written from the perspective of somebody who was most definately bi, this song is not. It's more "OMG! I was drunk and made out with Becky! I'm so cool"

The thing about the song it shows the complete mainstreaming of the idea of girl on girl action. It might even be the tipping point into Shark Jumpage (how's that for mixed cultural referential cliches?). How can girl on girl action be considered outre if there's a friggin' Top 10 hit about it?

Which brings us with two points

1)If I were a parent, it's yet another reason to fear for my kids
2)Something tells me this song gets played at a lot of frat parties. A LOT.

Okay, here's todays job fun.

I finally got the information about the interview late yesterday evening (around 9). But there was still no information about exactly what the interview was for. Remember, I didn't know how they got my resume and there was two job postings on the companies' web site that were completely different but for which I both could have applied for (one was project managing, the other one content management on the website).

This morning, before the interview, I wanted to make absolutely positively sure I knew which job I was to interview for and so called the guy up just to confirm. He told me it was definitely the web related job. With that, I printed out the relevant resume, studied the job description, and worked on my responses and headed all the way down to Palo Alto to do the interview.

Funny little thing happened when I got there-- he told me the wrong job. It was the project management position.

Luckily, I found out early on when I met the first person I had to meet with and said enough things to make me realize the guy was an idiot and quickly made adjustments. But because I studied for the wrong job, I was kind of shooting blind in that I wasn't sure what the details of the job were. But whatever.

Okay, onto the interview. The whole thing started at 11 and I was supposed to meet with 6 people over the space of three hours. At 11, which meant it was right in the middle of lunchtime. Hello yummy, greasy egg brunch. Anyways, if you haven't done one of those three hour interview jobbers with six different people, let me tell you-- they're fun. Really fun. I told the same stories at least three times, answered the question "what are your strengths" at least four times and answered the question "tell me a little about yourself" four times. After awhile, that story you tell and that response you have gets kind of boring and it's hard to be exciting and show energy when you've told the same story again and again and again.

But wouldn't you do better answering the question since you had to do it so many times? Well, you'd think so except for the fact it's friggin exhausting talking to all that people throughout the experience. First you have energy, then you lose energy,k then you get your second wind, then you get tired, and then you get your third wind and so on and so forth. And somewhere close to hour 1, my brain went from clear to completely muddled and English often became problematic.

Oh, and my poor, poor throat. I talked straight for pretty much three hours and have you ever gotten to the point where there's no spit in your mouth and your throat is starting to hurt and everytime you speak, you could literally feel each individual strand of your vocal chords shredding? That was me today. Luckily, everytime I hit the point where I was absolutely unable to speak anymore, somebody piped in and gave me a reprieve for a few minutes.

And finally, I leave you with this. For the very first time in all the interviewing I've done, I asked to go to the bathroom in the middle of the interview.

Good times.

Yes, it's a busy day...

On Monday I got a call from somebody about a job. Now the thing is that when companies post their job on craigslist, most of them use an anonymous email address and often don't mention the company. As a result, it's often hard to tell who the company is that you're applying to so when you get a call about a job, oftentimes you don't know what the job is. You just have to hope that the person who calls you mentions it when they call or you can figure it out what the job is by playing detective online.

This time around, I couldn't figure it out.

I went to the companies web site and looked at the job postings. On the site, I found two somewhat different jobs, both of which I could have applied to. So now I'm even more confused as to what the job is I'm interviewing for as it could be either one.

The guy who I talked to on Monday said he wanted me to come in on Thursday and Friday and would let me know as soon as he can coordinate with the people who would meet with me. As of 4 this afternoon, I hadn't heard from him so I called. When I reached him, he told me that I had an interview at 11 AM tomorrow morning (that being Thursday). Well, good thing they told me that as some people might find that information useful. Luckily I had nothing planned so there I go.

He then told me that he'd email me the information about the interview, things like where to go and whom I'm meeting with and the schedule. As of 7:30 this evening, I haven't gotten that email.

So, all I know is that tomorrow I have an interview somewhere in Palo Alto for some unknown job with a bunch of unknown people for an unknown amount of time. Other than that, I'm golden.

Make mad.

Alright, so I'm posting a lot today. What can I say, I'm bored, have a lot to get out, and feeling the need to start writing again.

Anyways, I have a phone interview in about an hour. Since I think one of my problems with interviews is that I get too nervous, I realize that I have to find ways of not coming off as nervous and more loose. And since I'm home and there's some beer and some Jameson's lying around......

Hey, it's an idea. Much better than my career councelors idea, mainly to get myself in an interview frame of mind by dressing up like I'm having an in-person interview.

Remember that job in which two recruiters tried to get me in? The one in which the first recruiter took their sweet time and the other one didn't? And remember how the company that took their sweet time to get me in couldn't because they did such a good job hyping me up that the company thought I had too much experience for the job?

Funny thing-- I had the interview yesterday with said company and already heard back. Apparently, they thought I had too little experience for the job. So, to sum up-- I didn't get the job because I somehow had both too much experience for it and not enough experience for it.

I guess this is my fault because after being told that I didn't have enough experience, I tried to play down my experience in the interview because of the previous feedback and was afraid they'd go back to their original assessment of me. I was so sure they'd ask me why I wanted that job because of that problem that I even had a pat response for it.

Now this might seem like a mistake in my part but I was pretty sure it was the right angle to play because....

-the first agency told me that the job description I got was wrong and that job pretty basic
-because the company that let me go two months into my contract let me go because they they only needed somebody who could do the basic stuff and they thought I had too much experience to do the basic stuff
-the position was listed as Jr. to Mid
-The salary was way (way) below the standard hourly rate of somebody with the kind of experience they appear to be looking for, so much so I was ambivalent about the job because it would have been a huge pay cut. On the application form I had to fill out for the job, I even left the question "what was your previous salary" blank. Stupidly, I thought low hourly rate = not that much experience needed.

Oh, one more thing- it was a job that was supposed to last for 3-6 months and that, apparently, was it. In the interview, they mentioned that they were having problems filling the position because everybody they hired left before their contract was up. I guess they haven't quite figured out yet that a short-term position with low salary might not be enticing enough to keep their contractors from staying there. Go figure.

Fear the surprise phone interview. There you are, in your pjs, playing on Facebook while reading about John McCain entering his wife into a wet t-shirt contest and the next thing you know you're answering questions about "what are your strengths?" It's hard to answer said question when you're not quite mentally prepared to answer those questions and you're mind is still wrapping your head around the idea that John McCain spoke at a biker rally and somehow that's considered a good thing in politics.

Fear it too because you have no idea who the hell you are talking to about who the hell knows what job and you just have to guess on what they want to hear.

The other day I was at the gym and worked out behind some woman wearing one of those tribute type t-shirts that one wears at some sort of walk to honor a friend. The front had the type of walk it was for-- either for lung cancer or breast cancer-- and the back had a list of the friends who were walking in that person's name. But as I kept on watching her, I started to wonder just how much of a tribute it is to their friend that the tshirt used to honor that person was now being as gym tshirt

As I stumbled upon new promos for the revised and revamped 90210, promos consisting of the famous guitar riff and "hey, bro" handshakes, I finally figured out why the remake is such a dumb idea. Besides the fact it's a remake, of course. The thing is that the promo shows that the people behind the show are doing the remake with the idea that the people who watched it back then watched it because it was good. The show was not good--not good at all. In fact, most people watched it because it was bad and the very definition of cheesy, that being something that was done with just enough serious intent and earnestness to make the awfulness entertaining. Just look at the infamous guitar riff and hand-slapping credit sequence of the original show-- it consisted of an over-the-top guitar hook that was done to sound rocking but was definitely not combined with images of people trying to look cool who were most definitely not.

So the promo has the same sort of look and feel of the original show, which is good, right, because it'll mean the same fun, right? Well no, because in doing the promo that way, it comes off like they actually think the entire title sequence was cool. And if they thought the opening sequence was cool, then they probably thought the rest of the show was cool and that people watched it because it was cool when they most definitely watched it because it was definitely not cool. In other words, they're redoing something people watched ironically unironically.

But wait-- if they're doing is just like the original, wouldn't it be the same amount of cheesy fun? No. It makes it a stupid idea.

So let's see, in the past two weeks Obama went overseas to find that everybody loves him, the Iraqis back his withdrawl plan, the Bush administration is now doing what Obama said he'd do and talk to the Iranians, and John McCain sorta begrudgingly said he kinda agrees with Obama's plan. In that week, McCain rode around on a golf cart with Papa Bush, showed up at a bunch of sausage houses, and had part of his cheek removed.

This week, McCain released a series of incredibly juvenile commercials which said a whole bunch of things that were so wrong even the press called him out on it and a reporter for the Washington Post got a quote wrong and despite the fact that everybody said he got the quote wrong, the quote is now considered fact. End result, of course, is that despite everything-- and I mean everything-- McCain and Obama are now tired.

So what have we learned from these past couple of weeks

-The Republicans excel at really nasty, awful, dispiriting campaigns
-Which work
-Because the American people are idiots
-And I need to stop paying attention to politics as much as I do.

Still....all of this makes me want to cry. Not to mention drink heavily til november.

I know I've fucking bitched about this before, but I'm in the process of trying to apply for a job with a big company. Like most big companies, I have to go online to their site to do it. Fine.

But first I have to set up my account which means creating a name and password and I have to choose a certain password and then have a question set up in case I can't remember my password. While I'm glad for internet security, I'm applying for a job, not entering in my bank information. Just fucking set me up-- I really doubt somebody's going to go into the system and play with my resume for shits and giggles.

Now this is where the real fun starts. First I have to upload my resume. Fine. Then I have to fill in my contact information (which is on my resume, but whatever). This is always great fun because sometimes your allowed parenthesis in phone numbers, sometimes not but they don't tell you so you have to guess then re-enter and re-enter again to figure out what form they want phone numbers in. Same thing with salary-- do you include a $ or not and how do you hours if they don't accept hours? But then you always miss something but instead of giving you a list of what you've missed, it tells you one thing at a time so if you miss a few things or get something wrong, you have to keep on re-entering and re-entering again. Kiss ten minutes of your life goodbye.

But here comes the fun part- these sites usually try and gleam things from the resume and fill out things in the online form. Which is what this site requested of me. Thing is, I already uploaded my resume so why do I now have to fill these things out. After all, they asked for my resume so they should have all that information. But if they wanted me to fill it out by hand, they didn't really need to ask me for my resume, now did they?

Now sometimes when you do this, the system figures it out correctly and the jobs are all listed in order. This was not the case of this site which somehow managed to miss the first two jobs on my resume. So after reading through the instructions (again, I've already uploaded my resume) I figured out how to add those two jobs, move them up to the cue. And, naturally, they ask for all the information I've already provided on my resume so I have to enter all that stuff again. But even the jobs that they got right, just in different order still missed all the pertinent information so I have to enter all of that information by hand.

So what's the fucking point of asking me to upload my resume if they want me to enter all that information anyways on the site? And if they were going to do it, or at least try and pull things from my resume, couldn't they have at least made sure it was correct instead of incorrect so I'd have to waste another fifteen minutes just filling out information I've already provided.

I finally got past that point, then filled out some more boxes and information and then went through another round of security. Half an hour (!!) later, I had finally officially applied for that.

Half an hour of my life wasted just because of their stupid, lame, web site. For a job, I'll probably never hear back from. Unless, of course, everyone else applying gave up halfway through like I almost did and I was the only person to have gone through the whole awful thing.