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!