Nooooooo! Emily from BOTS has a boyfriend. Which I kind of knew, but it turns out it's James from another season of Road Rules. Your typical white-frat tool with absolutely nothing even slightly remotely interesting about him. And somebody whose gotten together with someone in every season's he's been in.

Even my tv fantasy is like my reality.

So how crazy is the world getting? Some politician was assassinated. In the Netherlands. Yes, the Netherlands . Even the Dutch are going crazy. Think about it. The Dutch. Have the Dutch every done anything crazy? Have they ever shot anyone? Started a revolution? Had a civil war? Persecuted minorities? Don't know my Holland History, but I don't think so. I know they were kind of bastards as a colonial power, but who wasn't?

Let's see- political assassination, school shootings, rampant crime, racism, and fucked-up elections. You know what'll stop all of the problems in Europe? They need the NRA. Why, because it's obvious what'll stop the insanity- guns. Because if they had guns, there wouldn't be school shootings or crime or synagogue burnings. They don't, we do, and look what's happening.

And think what would of happened if Europeans would have had guns in the past? Do you think the Germans would have had it so easy marching through Europe? Nope. Everyone would have fought back. Think France would of rolled over if they were all armed? Of course not, they would have kicked some Nazi butt. Would Belgium have been used as parking lot for every army in existence? Nope, they would of organized themselves into well armed militias and defended themselves.

And think those countries would have had to have suffered through years and years of royalty and autocratic systems of government? Nope. They would have been like us and overthrown everyone.

See, if the Europeans had guns, they would be exactly like us.

Because, you know, the NRA is totally right.

Oh yeah,

That Mayday Poster I picked up also mentioned that one of the Mayday Events features "Subversive Finger Puppets."

The Revolution will not be televised, it will be done by subversive finger puppets.

So much to write, but this'll tide you over for a bit-

Things I learned while playing two games of softball this weekend:

1)It really, really sucks playing a team that's so good their women even know how to hit. Played right-center and the other team basically hit it wherever I wasn't. Shaded to the center, it went to the gap in right. Shaded to the gap in right, hit it straight to the center. Played deep because they got some boppers, so they kept on dinking it in front of me. Then, I think I'm on to them and creep up, so they bopped it over my head.

2)It's really hard to catch a fly ball that's dead straight in the sun and you know somewhere right in line with the ball is the completely oblivious left-fielder from the other game, not realizing that me and the left-center fielder are on a direct collision course with him.

3)That playing softball games on back to back days isn’t necessarily a good thing because I didn't realize just how soar I was until I had to go bat.

4)It's especially not good when one league features pitches that don't have much of an arch to it while the other one does. Spent most of Sunday's game standing at the plate, to frazzled by the change and swinging at every pitch no matter where it was.

5)Playing deep left-centerfield can be really difficult when somebody launches a towering rocket about twenty feet from where I'm standing and my timing is not so great judging fly balls yet.

6)If a ball is considered a home-run if it automatically hits a tree, do not assume that the fly ball will hit the tree. Sometimes they will find the only gap in the branches and go through it, thus causing a big huge problem when the ball goes flying over my head because I thought it was about to hit the tree. I hate chasing balls.

7)And most importantly, even if you get your butt kicked two games in a row, even if you drop two fly balls and have several go over your head, even if you go 1-4 in a game and make the last out in an inning when the bases are loaded with a dribbler to the shortstop, and even if you got home at 2 the night before and had to get up early for the second game, it's still a lot of fun

You know I love this stuff:

Picked up a flyer from a coffee shop. It's for a celebration of May Day. You know, that major holiday to celebrate the workering classes. Popular in the Soviet Union, France and all those other places. This flyer lists events for what it calls "May Day- anti-capitalist & autonomous festivals of resistance."

And the first thing being brought up to help with resistance?

This: PuppetLOVE! A Festival of Radical Puppetry.

Now of course, the obvious question is what is Radical Pupettry? Is it a puppet show featuring sock-puppets of Che Guevera, Trotsky and Mumia? Or is it puppets who are known for their radicalism, like trying to organize other puppets into a big huge puppet union or protesting "Sesame Street" for unfair labor practices against other puppets. Or is it just an issue-related puppet show? Because nothing rallies the masses like puppetry. I'm sure watching a couple of puppets representing global capitalism swallowing the oppressed, third-world minority ranks right up there with Sifl & Olly in terms of puppet hilarity.

The other thing is that it reminds me of the John Cusack character in Being John Malkovich. You remember, he played a puppet master who wanted to do something with his puppetry, like represent the dehumanizing of the world in the midst of technological society. And then, when he became John Malkovich, he was able to bring a whole new level of art & culture to the world through puppets? Are radical puppets like that? Is that what they are trying to accomplish?

Which would be funny if it were because in the movie, it was supposed to be a joke.

Obviously, somebody didn't quite catch the fact it was supposed to be a joke.

Woke up early, grabbed the paper on found these two stories on the front page. One, a freed Arafat calling Israeli's Nazi's upon his release. Nice. Way to help spread that message of peace all the Europeans and Nobel Prize people seem to think you're so good at (umm, if the Israeli's were Nazi's, as he so claims, then wouldn't he be gassed by now instead of walking out in front of hundreds and hundreds of tv cameras?). Then there's the story saying that the Germans are all rallying for the Palestinian cause and protesting Israel, conveniently forgetting, of course, the whole fact that nobody would be in this mess if they didn't try to kill all of us a little while back.

Ugh.

And all of this before a phone interview this morning. Which is why I got up so early, because the guy who was setting it up suggested Nine in the morning and because I'm pretty much everyone's bitch right now, I said sure, I'll do Nine. Don't usually get out of bed till 10, but nine will work fine by me (and no, I didn't say that).

Long time ago, I learned my lessons about phone interviews. That basically whatever they want, whenever they want it, however they want it, you have to do it. If they want to conduct it at 3 o'clock in the morning and you standing naked on the corner of 16th & Mission, you have to. The reason I know this is because I've learned that this is so.

Once, a long time ago, I was trying for a job with an Event Planning group. I sent the resume in and one Saturday morning, just as I was getting out of the shower, I picked up the phone only to find some guy from that company on the phone. He told they were interested in me, loved my cover letter (as a joke, I wrote it as a poem), and that they wanted to do a phone interview with me. Problem was, he wanted to do it at that moment. On a Saturday Morning. At like 10. And me just out of the shower, still in a towel and dripping wet. When I kind of hemmed and hawed about doing it, he told me I didn't have to do it then, but that he could set up an appointment to call me back. Great, I said, not knowing I just made a major faux pas, and we arranged for him to call me back the next day around 4.

The day came and I was all prepared. I even had written out pat responses to questions I was sure he was gonna ask. Friends came over to hang out and tried to get me to go out for drinks at the Kezar, my Achilles heel, but I held fast, saying no. I had to be sober and ready. I wanted this job.

So 4 comes around and no call. Then 4:30 comes. Again, nothing. Five came, then 5:30 and six rolled by and still nothing. For two hours, I sat there at the kitchen table, alone in my apartment, sitting with the phone right next to me, pat response at hand. Couldn't help think about my friends drinking pitchers at the Kezar, having a great time, but afraid to get up for fear that will be the one moment that they'll call, and pissed off to high heaven. Not to mention feeling a little on the pathetic side. Did I blow my chance by not wanting to do the interview then, even though I was dripping wet and in a towel? Was this just a screw-up on their part? Or, was someone just fucking with me because, well, I'm not predisposed to the idea that occasionally people just like to fuck with me. I saw the HR department looking at my cover letter, the one I wrote out as a poem, and saying let's have a gas at my expense so they play me. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you.

So Nine o'clock interview, here I come. I'm up. I've had my coffee. I've read the paper. I'm ready to go. First problem arises. At pretty much Nine o'clock, I suddenly realize I have to go to the bathroom. Not a #1, but more like a #2 and it didn't feel like it was going to be one of those quickie trips. More like a bring the paper and have a good read kind. But it's also Nine. What to do, what to do? Can't go to the bathroom because if I miss the call, I could screw it all up. He'd leave a message and I'd try to call him back, but besides not looking good, how could I explain it? I could bring the phone into the bathroom with me, but- ick. So I'm not really going anywhere. I'm just going to sit there and wait and hope that even if he does call soon, I won't have a sudden emergency situation going on.

Nine rolls around and nothing. Then it's ten after and still nothing. Just as I start getting that little "uh-oh' voice, the phone rings. Phew. It's the guy from the company. The interview starts.

In some ways, phone interviews aren't that bad. Kind of easier in a way. Here I am, in my apartment, the Fortress of Solitude, unshaven and still in sweatpants and sweatshirt, pretending to be really professional and hirable. It IS easier to relax in these circumstances. You also get to avoid the person directly, which is something I always hate about interviews, especially when it's with more than one person, the whole sitting around and having people watch you like you’re a lab rat or something. Just another thing to make you feel that much more anxious. But in this case, nobody's watching. I could of scratched my balls or watched "Regis & Kelly" if I wanted to and they would never of known a thing (which I didn't do, but still, I could of).

And how did it go? Like most interviews. Hemming and hawing, starting to say somethng and realizing half-way through that you probably shouldn't say things that way, but another way. Being in the middle of a sentence and realizing that you're like a ship lost at sea and not knowing how to get back to the point you were trying to make. Wondering if you should have said this instead of saying that. And wondering the whole time if when he said '"great" he really meant that or was just saying it because it was written on the question sheet he was so obviously reading from.

Sigh.

I need a job.

Searching through job postings on a Government Web site for a government job, I stumbled upon this description of what it takes to be qualified for the position:

Candidates (must) meet the Qualification Standards Handbook requirements for GS-301-13. This requires at least 1 year of specialized experience equivalentin(sic) responsibility to the GS-12 level in the Federal service that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to perform the work of this position......Federal status candidates must also meet the time-in-grade requirements of having been at the GS-12 level for at least 1 year.

Guess I don't qualify.

And here's another fun thing I'm discovering about looking for work, that a lot of jobs are asking for writing samples. Fine. No big deal. Don't think this'll quite qualify, though.

I do, however, have official type stuff, stuff actually sent out and used on Web sites, including a wonderful Introduction to Judaism. The problem, however, is that they don't exist anywhere anymore. They've all been lost along with the Web sites I was working on. Another peril of doing the dot.com thing.

Wonder how many other people are in the same boat? Having wonderful samples that they could use but unable to use them anymore because they've disapeared into the nether regions of failed dot.com. I know, I could of backed them up, or kept copies of them, or taken .pdf files of them, but way back when, nobody thought that way. We all thought the sites would last forever and our stuff would be up on cyberspace til the sun finally exploded or that asteriod they're always warning us about finally hits.

But no.

Okay, few more things before I pass out from the half-bottle of wine I drank....

News items!

First, it was the Webbies the other night. You know, the awards for best Web sites and all that stuff. So '99. Does anyone even care anymore?

And then there's this beauty, which I'm sure you've all seen. As much as I love the NRA, the one group that I love more than any other has to be PETA. Because when thousands of people have been killed in Afghanistan, AIDS is ravaging Africa, and the whole world is teetering on the brink of WW III, it's obvious that the most pressing issue that faces all of us is the depiction of cows in tv commercials. Because the fact that they're depicted to look happy in commercials is sooooo wrong.

It's one of those things where you wonder what they were thinking when they announced they were going to sue. I mean, there had to be more than one or two people in the meeting and some of them seem pretty bright. How is it that nobody in the meeting went "uh, you know, that's a really stupid thing we should be worrying about." Or "hello, it's a commercial? It doesn't mean anything?" Or maybe even "you know, this is really silly. maybe we should, like, get a life?" They even managed to drag a lawyer into it, but, of course, lawyer's would have a threesome with Ron Jeremy and Janet Reno if they thought it'd get them somewhere in life.

Someday, when I'm rich, I want to parade in front of the PETA headquarters wearing leather pants and a fur coat.

Gonna go light before I cough up the big hairball of vitriol for tomorrow's post.

I promise, I will not watch next week's very special 9/11 episode of "The Real World." Say it with me, I will not watch next week's very special 9/11 episode of "The Real World," I will not watch next week's very special 9/11 episode of "The Real World," I will not watch next week's very special 9/11 episode of "The Real World."

Dear Lord, let me be strong.

Hopefully, I'll be so blown away by next week's Buffy that I'll be spending too much time on the board's to watch it. Because I'm weak I read just enough spoilers to have a pretty good idea of what's gonna happen and all I can say is bye, bye Tara, it was nice knowing you. Rest of the season's looking pretty bitching, though.

Okay, here's today's daily dose of snark:

Just an observation, but....

Couple of years ago, it seemed like everywhere you went, everyone you saw had those dumb-ass scooters. Now, everywhere you go, everyone you see has those dumb-ass yoga mats.

What it means is all up to you, but my guess is that yoga is the new scooter.

This just happened to me...

At work, wandering down the hallway on my way to the bathroom. I run into Janice, the Outsourcer in charge of Outsourcee's. She's the one who not only watches over me, but holds my fate in her hands.

We talk a bit, I tell her how my week's been going, and in reaction to a joke of hers, I kind of half laugh, half snort. Mid-snort, a small bit of snot comes flying out of my nose. It shoots directly to my left, away from her, but still visible enough that I wonder if she saw it. I have no idea and I really hope to God she didn't. What do you do or say when that happens? How do you react other than hoping she didn't notice?

But now there's still just a little bit of snot left on my nose. Do I go immediately to it, thus calling that much more attention to the fact I just let one shoot? Or do I casually go to the nose, pretending like it's no big deal, allthe while hoping that she then doesn't notice the snot remaining on my nose.

Sometimes the smallest things in life can be the most difficult.

Here's the other great comment I saw in the Chron, from a story about Jean-Marie Le Pen and who makes up most of his voters. Have I told you how much I love the French?

But in a residential neighborhood about a mile north of the Front headquarters, one white-haired woman, walking a small dog, said she is a longtime Le Pen supporter.

"For me, all the other politicians are rotten," she said, identifying herself only as Claude, 72. "There's only one who has the values of General de Gaulle, and that's Le Pen."

"He's not a racist," she added. "He's only against Jews. And what can I say about that?"

You know, I was gonna say stuff about Le Pen and what a hoot it is that the French have just totally embarrassed themselves. Again. But it's not funny anymore. Let's face it, this world is going to hell-in-a-hand-basket quicker than you can say hell-in-a-hand-basket.

We got this huge conflict in the Middle East that gets scary mainly because all three religions that hail from there all claim that the end of the world comes just from the particular spot where it's all going down. On one side, you have a group of people that think it's a really neat idea to send 15 and 16 year old kids on suicide missions and whose allies have been holding Jerry Lewis-like telethons to raise money for the "martyrs of the cause," ie suicide bombers. On the other side is a leader who just recently refused to even discuss tearing down the settlements despite the fact everyone in his country, everyone in our country, everyone in the entire fucking world, knows that it's one of the main reason's why people in his country keep on getting blown up by 15 and 16 year old kids.

Then there's the Saudi Prince, who just paid us visit and supposedly lectured Smirk-boy about the Middle-East and what's wrong with the U.S. The Saudi Prince is also said to have forbidden women air traffic controllers to handle his flight in. And we're getting lectured from him. From a country that won't even allow women to drive cars.

And finally there's Europe. On one side is the anti-globalization, anti-American, vaguely anti-semitic left, a group so fucked they blew the French elections because they were too busy splitting votes between three or four Trotskyite candidates (Trotskyite! Trotskyite! Haven't they gotten the memo that Communism didn't fucking work? Didn't they realize that as a political theory, it's SO 19th century? What's next, are they gonna try and support Feudalism?). Then there's the neo-fascist, xenophobic, vaguely anti-semitic right and let's just say we all know how well things go when Europe starts voting in neo-fascists. Stuck in the middle, the only hope of salvation, is the muddled, wimpy bureaucrats who've spent the better part of the past decade having sub-committee's on subcommittee's on committee's just to figure out what to put on the fucking Euro. Let's just say that if the shit came down and Europe said "don't worry, we got your back," I'd be watching my back. Europe is Bill Paxton in "Aliens." Europe is the Judean's People Front debating resolutions while poor Brian is about to be crucified. If Europe were a basketball team, they'd be the Trailblazers.


And who's the man on whose shoulders the whole world now rests on? W.

I'd pretty much say that it's even odds that we're all seriously fucked right now.

Man, Malcolm in the Middle has only been on for two season's and they've already done a clip show. What's up with that?

Still kind of funny, though.

Anyways, couple depressingly funny articles in the Chron today. This bit comes from a story about the latest meeting of everyone's favorite red-neck gun lovers, the NRA. Here's a really classy quote from Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, and all around great guy:

... LaPierre went after a new crop of gun-control advocates who he called "political terrorists." He singled out Andrew McKelvey, the wealthy founder of Monster.com and Americans for Gun Safety.

LaPierre said McKelvey has a lot in common with Osama bin Laden, describing him as "an extremist billionaire with a political agenda using personal wealth to train and deploy activists, looking for vulnerability to attack, fomenting fear for political gain and funding an ongoing campaign to hijack your freedom and take a box cutter to the constitution."

If there really was such a thing as karma, such a thing as cosmic justice, or if there was a God, we'd wake up one day to find in the news that LaPierre had accidently killed himself while cleaning his guns.

But there's not.

So I guess y'all saw that some German kid went all -Columbine and shot about seventeen of his classmates. Am I the only one out there who breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the story and found out it wasn't in the U.S? And am I the only one who kind of enjoyed the fact that it happened in Germany, one of those snooty European countries that's spent the better part of a decade tutt-tutting about American society?

Didn't think so.

Also found this great story in the Chron today. More fun with the Catholic Church.

Since the story is funny in and of itself, I think I'll just reprint some of the better lines. It's a story about a wayward, child molesting priest who tried to blackmail the Archi-Diosece to save his own skin.

The latest round of documents released by the Roman Catholic archdiocese here shows that a priest accused of pedophilia who was shipped from Boston to California once tried to blackmail a cardinal...In a letter, Shanley threatened to go to the media with allegations of homosexuality in the archdiocesan seminary."

In rambling diary entries found in the newly released documents, Shanley describes signing up at the local venereal disease clinic whenever he moved to a new city, "for help with my VD.

Church officials in Boston approved Shanley's transfer in 1991 to San Bernardino. With another priest from Boston as his partner, Shanley also owned and operated a Palm Springs inn that was popular with a gay clientele.

But wait, it gets better. As if the VD part wasn't good enough, comes this revelation:

A first set of documents made public earlier this month established that church officials in Boston were aware of sexual abuse allegations against Shanley and knew he was present at a meeting of an organization that became the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA.

Umm, shouldn't the membership in NAMBLA be some sort of clue that maybe, just maybe this isn't the kind of guy who should be around little kids? Hello? Bueller?

And gotta love any story about a priest dealing with VD. Wonder how he got that, being celibate and all.

I'm so happy I'm not Catholic right now.....

Man, I hate when I go to a restaurant and decide to try something that I usually don't order just to be new and different, but once the food shows up all I can think about is how I should of stuck with the tried and true.

Anyways, here comes....
Temp Job: Day III

Head in at 8:30. Supposed to go see someone knew in another department because they have work for me. I call. Of course, she's not there. So I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Finally, ten minutes later someone comes down and gets me. She apologizes and tells me that nothing was finalized and since she didn't realize I was gonna show up, wasn't thinking about waiting for the call. Getting a little sick of this routine. The women is definitely not someone I'd expect at PG&E, though- mid to late twenties Chinese lady, decked out in super hip yet stylish clothes and both nose and tongue peircings. Have a feeling I might like being in her department for a day or two.

She takes me upstairs to the "College Recruiting" Department. Which I find kind of funny, considering that it might be kind of hard looking for employees when in the past year they've declared bankruptcy, been accused of intentionally sabotaging their power plants, and blamed for the Energy Crisis ("umm, it's all Enron's fault, we had nothing to do with it"). I'm told that there's a closet full of trinkets that the recruiters have to hand out and that I'm supposed to go through the boxes of trinkets, count fifty of them, and then put them in a special PG&E bag. If I finish that, I get to go through recruitment folders and take out all the old and out of date pamphlets. I am so happy that I had a hunch about today and brought my walkman with me.

I grab a few boxes from a small, stuffy closet and head to a cubicle assigned to me to start counting. I am introduced to the guy sitting across from me. He's your prototypical dude with a huge "Cal State Hayward" sticker across his cubicle. I don't know whether or not I should be impressed. He's really friendly, introduces himself to me and then thanks me for doing what I'm doing. When I make a half-sarcastic comment about a "first aid" kit that I'm packing up, he tells me that PG&E's motto is always "safety first." I am not sure whether he's joking or not. He doesn't seem like the type of person with any sense of irony, no sense of the absurd- in other words, the perfect corporate drone. I realize within a few seconds that while he is a really nice and well-meaning guy, I probably have nothing in common with him. A feeling that's confirmed to me when he uses his CD player to listen to music and through the sounds of AC/DC on my walkman, I hear him listening to some soft-rock music.

The women in the cubicle next to me I recognize. She used to work with me at MFI, way back in the day. I recognize her because she was kind of cute and because she was the one I had to deal with after they laid me off. I wonder if she recognizes me, but I don't think she does. I think about saying something to her about the whole MFI thing, but decide against it, what with her being on a good, career type path and me sitting there counting up to fifty pens and putting them in a clear basket bag.

I start counting and move from pens, to staplers, to flashlight keychains to "First Aid Kits," all emblanzoned with the PG&E logo. I am caught in the Temp's great dilemna, to finish a really boring task as quick as possible all the while knowing that it'll only lead to yet another really boring task, or do the really boring task as slow as possible to avoid the really boring work that you know is coming.

I can't wait until my real job starts.

Faced with a choice between more filing or staying home, I opted for staying home. So I headed off the Y this morning to get a swim in. Usually, if you get there early enough, you'll be able to avoid all the problem swimmers. But not today. For some reason, in just the half an hour that I was swimming, I got them all.

I got:

The Talkers- This is the type of person who spends all their time walking up and down the lane, talking to someone. They're usually either old Russian women holding their coffee klatch or a couple who are so in love, they can't go an entire lap without getting all shmoopy with each other.

The Walker- They're the one's who don't quite understand the point of a lap pool so they spend half their time kicking around with the little kick boards or then doing some sort of funky aerobic walking thing. All of this while totally oblivious to the pool right next to the lap pool purposely set up for that kind of stuff.

The What Are You Doing Guy- Usually this type gets in the middle of your lane and decides it's a great place to do some yoga stretches or contemplate the state of the universe. For some reason they never seem to notice the three or four people at each side of the pool, waiting for them to get out of the way so they can actually do some swimming.

The Doesn't Understand the Point of Lanes Guy- There's two types to this one. Either they get in the wrong lane, like they're really slow and get in the fast lane or really fast and get in the slow lane. Or, they're like some guy today, who got into my already crowded slow lane without checking to see that the other slow lane had no people in it. (I think this guy was a double offender because the purpose of his getting into the lane was so he could talk to his wife in the lane next to ours).

The German- See, when there's more than two in a lane, you have to somehow circle each other. The key to doing this is to always pay attention to the other people in the lane so that you never run into them. Pacing here is key and I find that the best thing to do is to stop at each end, assess what's going on, and maybe wait a bit before diving in because there might be someone who is just a little too close to you.

Usually, however, when it's like this, there's always somebody who just puts their head in the water and swims away. When they get to the wall, they just turn around and swim again, never paying attention to any other people in the lane. As a result, they send everyone else scrambling into other lane's to avoid them or wind up getting hit or kicked by them. They're kind of like in the movies when they show a car going onto a sidewalk and everyone has to dive out of their way.

The reason why I refer to this type as the German is for some reason, half of the people at the Y who do this are German. Go figure.

And for the icing on the cake, today I also had the Encounter with A Friend's Bad Breakup Ex-Girlfriend. This is always stressful because while you still like them, you know things went really bad for the guy afterwards and that they've been cut out of your social circle because of it. In this case, the name is hardly ever mentioned, except in really quiet, hushed whispers. The stress here comes from not saying anything that some people might not want them to know, like "oh, he's doing really well know. I think he's doing a lot less drugs now and he's a lot less freaky." Or "yeah them (referring to a couple that she helped introduce) they had this beautiful wedding in Miami and they're very happily married and living in New York. Didn't see you at the wedding, what happened?"

Hmmm... a friend says I've been dipping a bit too much into the angst well lately. Guess this blog lately has turned into Season 6 Buffy- overly depressing, bleakish in outlook, and not nearly as much fun as it was in the past. Sorry. I'll bring back the funny in a bit (and Buffy better too or I'm gonna be pissed). Do have a job now, you know, so no more dark tales about watching porn at three in the morning.

But now, some more of the continuing adventures of me Temping.......

Temp job, Day II…..

Tuesday

Worked a half-day. Due to a long story that I won't get into here, they had me assigned to my job so quickly that they didn't even realize that my boss would be away doing off-site stuff til Thursday. Which means I don't have anything to do and I get to come in whenever I want. It also means that there's nobody to sign all of my papers, so I'm unable to get a security pass or computer I.D. Every day until Thursday, I have to go to the Security Desk , call someone to come and get me and stand out in the lobby for the ten minutes or so that it takes for the person to come. So love having to do that.

Today I walked in at 1 and went to do what I had to do. The Security Guard in charge was either about to retire or had already retired but decided he needed something to keep him busy, so was kind of on the older side of things. He did things very…very….slowly. He was also hard of hearing and didn't really speak English, exactly the kind of Security Guard you'd want to watch over your corporate HQ. Anyways, after taking about five minutes to explain everything, saying everything at least three times before he got it, I called the person who I report to, Arlene, only to get no answer.

So I go off to one side of the lobby and stand and wait. And wait. And wait. Fifteen minutes go by and nothing. For the entire period, the old SG kept on eyeing me, constantly asking me over and over again what I'm here for. And everytime I tell him, I have to tell him at least three times. We try the person again a few times, but still no answer.

Sick of standing in the hallway, I call someone else. PG&E, you see, actually hires another company to hire their temps. Which means that, yes, they out-source the people who are in charge of hiring the out-sourcing. Since I had the number of the person who I dealt with earlier, Janis, we called her, the guard once again asking me what my name was. No answer.

He tries another number, says something on the phone and mentions my name, completely mangling it despite the fact he had heard it so many times, and five minutes later, some frosty blonde came down to get me. The person from the out-sourcing company was still at lunch, but the Guard called the General number and got her. Frosty takes me up to her office to figure out what to do with me.

I should probably add here that I had no idea what I was supposed to do this day. Arlene had something planned for me and was planning on giving me to another Department to help them out, but she hadn't gotten it all settled when I left on Monday. So, basically I had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, however, because she knew I was gonna come in at 1 and didn't say anything about it. Naturally, I thought she'd be there. But she wasn't there.

Frosty takes me up to her desk, listens to my story, then takes me down to my floor to see if we can find Arlene. Not there. We do, however, run into Arlene's boss. Turns out Arlene's at a training session and won't be back til 2:30. Ooops. She doesn't know what I'm supposed to do. I tell everyone that Janis had mentioned that I was supposed to go work in another department and she might know what to do, so we go back to the Out-Sourcing office and wait. Janis is, of course, late from lunch..

I get some coffee and sit at her desk, waiting. There's nothing to do. Nothing to read. I just sit there. After about five minutes, Frosty stumbles upon a "Glamour" magazine and since that's the only thing I had to read (well, except for an issue of Tupperware magazine that I saw in the break room), I sat there at Janis's desk, reading Glamour magazine.

I am a lost little orphan in a shopping mall, looking for his mother, with all these people I don't know trying to get me home and tell me it'll be alright. Except I'm getting paid $20 an hour for sitting in someone's desk and reading an article on how to tell if the guy you're flirting with is really into you.

Hope this thing gets better....

to be continued....

You know, right now It's a tough time being Jewish, what with the sudden feeling that everyone in the world hates you. And it's probably even tougher being Moslem, what with everyone out there thinking you're either a religious fanatic about to blow everyone up or Al-Queda.

But man-oh-man, it's probably even tougher being Catholic. Don't know about you, but the communiqué's being issued by a bunch of old, wrinkly guys in black robes wouldn't exactly bring me a sense of relief. And what is the difference between a child-abuser and a serial child-abuser? Does that mean that murder is okay, but serial-murder is not?

I wonder just how many Catholic families out there who normally send junior off to Catholic Retreats are now looking at the brochures and thinking that maybe, just maybe, junior probably won't be making it this year.

PS- the Catholic Church seems to do a lot of apologizing. Don't know the exact list, but it's up there. Being Jewish, the Pope's apologize to me several times over the past ten years. I'm thinking that if I were them, I'd just issue a big, huge apology to everyone out there. Doesn't matter if they deserve it or not, I'm sure somewhere down the line, the Church will discover that they need to.

Ooops, double post.

Nothing to see here.....

"Bubbles! I won't have fucking bubbles! I'm the Prince of fucking Darkness, Sharon!"
-Ozzy (of course)

In honor of Emily winning the March Madness contest on Television Without Pity Contest-

A reader, the lovely and fabulous Miss Julie P., writes concerning my obsession with Emily from RR/RW:Battle of the Seasons (or herewith known as BOTS). Good question.

She has, for instance, been showing up in my dreams. Not in that kind of way, but more like making guest appearances in my drunken, psychotic, straight-out-of-a-David-Lynch movie dreams. Not to mention my constant cheering her on for the March Madness contest and defending her honor everytime the Whicks' blame her for everything including the crisis in the Middle East. Rumours of a Google search on her, however, can neither be confirmed nor denied at this point.

But why Emily? Why the obsession? Besides the obvious needing a life, I'm pathetic kind of thing, of course. I do think she's the cutest one on the show, but I seem to be the only on the boards who thinks so. She even said herself that she wasn't the cutest one in the show. Then there's her aloof manner, the fact that you're never quite sure what's going on in her head. That whole moving in mysterious ways thing. Her rep on the show, after all, is one of being both cool and of being a bitch.

Then, after digging around for info on her (on the TwoP boards, of course, not Google) my fascination grew. Turns out on a previous RR/RW Extreme Challenge, she got kept on getting into cat-fights with Julie from the RW New Orleans cast. Since that Julie sucked, extra bonus points go to Emily. And there is, of course, her single-handedly took down the Whicks- grabbing her partner Timmy by the balls and pointing out the obvious, that Chadwhick deserved nothing more than a good karmic spanking and sent home ASAP. She knew they were evil. She knew they sucked. And so she fought the good fight, the fight for truth, justice, and the American Way and sent Chadwhick home. Score another for Emily.

But that's not really the reason for the obsession. See, the thing is that with her haircut, she looks exactly like some girl I had a huge, major-ass crush on. Some girl who then, through no fault of her own, went on to smash my achy-breaky heart all over the place. Which would of been fine except for the fact that we also worked together, and that, well, let's just say that it was just another thing that made life at Super Sucky Dot.Com that much more super-sucky.

Now, whenever I go out, somewhere in the back of my mind, there's always a thought about how nice it would be if I never ran into her and how I don't really need to deal with it. But now she's there, kind of, on tv. Every Monday night, in fact.

Except in this case, she won't tell me that she's not into dating people she works with, only to start dating someone at work a couple of months after I leave.

Adventures in Temping

Part III

And just like that, it all ends. One phone call Monday morning, with me not even having showered yet, and two hours later I'm at PG&E about to start a new temp job. But not one of those temp jobs. A good one. Or at least one of the best kind's you can get. More money than most temp jobs, long-term to perm, and not data entry. Goodbye sleeping in til 10 and staying up late til 2 watching porn. Goodbye spending all day surfing the Web and feeling trying to ignore that annoying little voice that keeps on telling me I should be more productive (stupid little voice). And goodbye anxiety ridden slept stressing out on money.

Been there two days so far, and you know, it IS the little things. And not just the money. I get an office, a big office even, one that I share it with someone else, and with a big window overlooking Market Street. I have an entire office supply cabinet in the office. I get a computer to call my own, a nice- brand new one- and a phone with it's own extension number. I have an extension number! I even get the word "Senior" in my title. Yes, I'm still an Administrative Assistant, but I'm the Senior Administrative Assistant. And unlike a certain other evil corporation, there's free coffee, tea and aspirin. The person who I'm replacing, whose on leave doing some company related employee benefit thing, even left her boom box for me at my super big desk.

And although I'm already on first name basis with the photocopier, I get the feeling that this assignment will require actual skills and brain work. Which makes me feel better knowing that the Temp Agency wanted me to work at some place not just because of my ability to type really, really fast.

Although I'm kind of happy with it all, I have to admit I was kind of hoping that I'd still be unemployed for at least another month or so. The World Cup's starting in a month or two, after all. Wanted to do what I did last time I was laid off, go to the Mad Dog every other day, drink pints at ten in the morning and learn English football songs. Man, that was fun.

Oh well….

I'm kind of embarassed to admit this, but....

Today, I was, like shopping at Safeway. And like I always do, I was like listening to my walkman as I shopped. And, well, I was going up and down the aisles, up and down the aisles and the radio station I was listening to, the Bone, kind of like put on Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" and, well, I kind of liked it. In fact, I kind of had a smile on my face and if, like, you happened to spy me during those few minutes, you might have seen my head bob up and down, rocking out.

Must listen to Radiohead....

Must listen to Radiohead....

Must listen to Radiohead....

You're all worthless and weak. Heh.