Train Ride from Hell

Not only was the train 15 minutes late this morning, but they also shut down one of the cars so that there was overcrowding, which resulted in me having to stand halfway to LA. That was not cool. I've come to rely on those cat naps to work in order to recover from my Tuesday and Thursday late nights enough to make it through the day. Even when I'm not exhausted, actually, I tend to enjoy the napping most.

Who Knew That Johnny Rotten Is Such a Comedian?

I sure didn't, because I only know him for being angry, almost juvenile, certainly unsophisticated - I didn't predict that fine English wit! Not that I think the English are particularly witty, but they have a way with the language that is amusing, and Johnny Rotten's Loveline guest spot tonight did a good job of hitting those subtle points. I'm not even sure I could put my finger on it. Maybe it's his voice, or his predilection for rhymes and aphorisms: there's something about him that resembles a nursury rhyme, a bedtime story, a puppeteer, or a school marm. I don't think I'm being very clear about it because I'm very, very tired right now. Suffice to say that I picked up a choice new phrase: "You're a saucy missus, aren't you?"

I'll have to play it back tomorrow to gather some more.

The Toilet Seat Paradox

I've had this thought several times: the way we regard public toilets makes no sense. Either they're sanitary or they're not. If they're sanitary, we should use the same approach we use when, say, we go to a friend's house and use her toilet; that is, we should assume that the seat, by virtue of being OUTSIDE the bowl, is just as likely to transmit fecal matter and communicable diseases as a park bench (and if you wear mini skirts, you know that the analogy is not that far-fetched).

Or (more likely) we should assume that that the toilet seat is NOT sanitary and take the appropriate precautions. I myself prefer this path, and elect to "hover" and wipe down afterwards. I wouldn't want to sit in my own waste, so why would I even admit the possibility of sitting in someone else's waste? As a hoverer, I know that as long as there is at least one other hoverer out there, my ass is in peril.

(Not to worry: when I go to your house I don't hover.)

The one approach that doesn't make sense is to line the rim of the bowl with a little sheet of tissue paper, and then sit your bare ass down with confidence. If there were any bit of waste matter on that seat, that wimpy tissue paper would do you no good at all; and this I learned the hard way. I recognize that there are some circumstances where it's more advantageous to sit than it is to hover, but for God's sake, when that's the case you should make a veritable pillow of toilet paper over the seat. Something that would actually be a reasonable barrier between you and public poo.

Aversion to Computers

How bad of me to neglect posting these last few days. That sudden aversion to computers I wrote about - and perhaps more specificially that aversion to computer screens - still has me in thrall. I believe I have a lot of good stuff to share about my discomfort with authority figures, which I've been giving some thought to lately, especially since the authority figures in my present work have started to suck pretty hard. Long story short (because I may not ever get around to writing about it), the way my firm operates is that the partners do work only once a week, on Fridays. The rest of the days they're off camping and hiking and shit...no, I mean literally. Then they finally come into the office on Friday morning and find a pile of work that should have been addressed a long time ago, and so they devote all of Friday afternoon yelling at everyone else about how there's an "emergency," because the absolute last deadline to get this or that filed is in two hours. Oh, and it needs to be hand delivered in two hours...to San Francisco. What, that's not possible? Why am I surrounded by fucking morons? Get me someone who has a brain!

Turning into a Loser

I just remembered that the other day I actually caught myself saying:

"What can I do you for?"

You know, instead of, what can I do for you? And what's even more disturbing? I was kind of amused by it. I'm not sure I would be above doing it again.

Next thing you know I'll be telling people off like, That's none of your beeswax!

Ah, mortality! How relentless is the march of old age.

Turning into a Loser

I just remembered that the other day I actually caught myself saying:

"What can I do you for?"

ie, instead of, what can I do for you?

Next thing you know I'll be telling people off like, That's none of your beeswax!

Ah, mortality! How relentless is the march of old age.

I've Figured Out What Causes Me Micro-Unhappiness

The thing that makes me feel discontent on a day-to-day basis is sitting at a computer all day. It's uncomfortable, it hurts my eyes, and it makes me feel a little nauseated by the end of the day, whether it's because of the visual stimulation or the hunched sitting position. It's one of the big things I couldn't jive with in the LIFESTYLE of an academic, and it looks like it will continue to bother me in this present and future occupation. Unfortunately for me, I may be looking at a lifetime of micro-level unhappiness, because I can't think of any job I'd be good at that wouldn't require sitting at a computer. Maybe I could start trying to be a longhand writer.

Work So Hard It's Ridiculous

"Hi Rex, it's Tough Boss."
"Hi Tough Boss. How are you feeling?"
"Fine." Pause. Cough. "Uh, I mean, I'm not fine, obviously. I'm still sick."
"But better?"
"Yes, feeling better. But I'll be working from home today..."

What Makes a Shark Jump?

WARNING: Spoilers

I've been rethinking that long-elusive, ever-tormenting question, "What makes 'camp' different from 'stupid'?" since about Chapter 11 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. The series was still going beautifully up until Chapter 10, even though the main gag of a man walking into his house and finding another man in bed with his wife was starting to get a little stale by then; believe it or not, I initially thought the James and Bridget episode wasn't going to be all that exciting. Boy was I in for a triumphant twist!

I had read in the NY Times article one fan saying that he was afraid that the show might jump the shark, before qualifying it with the consideration that the show started off with a shark jump. I would agree with that fan, for the most part, minus his faith that another, fatal shark jump would be impossible. It's true that the first premise is absolutely ridiculous, though marvelous; Sylvester is in the closet after bedding another man's wife, and while he's hiding from the unsuspecting husband, his cell phone starts ringing. Asinine, right? And yet simple, clean, effective. The subsequent chapters obey that same tone: Sylvester gets a leg cramp during sex; Sylvester thinks he killed Twan before Twan starts coughing and reviving and saying that the bullet just scratched him; and finally, Bridget is sleeping with a midget. This last one, I think, is slightly different from the others in that it's completely over the top. Not only does "Bridget" rhyme with "midget" - a happy coincidence that Kelly exploits fully - but the midget also craps himself AND has an asthma attack. One would almost accuse them of trying too hard, except that with gems like that you can't possibly fail.

The newer chapters, however, you can accuse of trying too hard. I don't know what it is, but there's something about the secret agent rendezvous, the lesbian lovers, and the reverend preaching to Pimp Lucius that just wasn't working for me. It went from funny to ludicrous - laughing with to laughing at. I can't put my finger on what it is; I wonder if it might have something to do with the absence of plot. Simply put, there is no real, good reason for those characters to be there at all, except that they're goofy or satirical - they spoof a certain kind of stereotype that, by virtue of being a stereotype, needs no further spoofing. And because they parasitically spoof a spoof, it seems right to say that they are trying too hard, and much of the humor comes out dead on delivery.

I believe I can tie this to larger aesthetic concerns by comparing these "jokes for jokes' sake" to "art for art's sake." Just as some critics find some avant garde works to be lacking in passion and vim and emotional consequence, I could argue that the a joke needs subtlety in order to fix it in some context and thereby confer a degree of weight beyond the empty laugh. The earlier chapters of Trapped in the Closet seem to have that more than the later chapters. The jokes are embedded in that relatable, scary circumstance of almost getting caught cheating on your lover.

Perhaps it's not just Schadenfreude that makes us enjoy the comedy of pain. Maybe pain is much more essential to comedy, such that comedy cannot exist without the possibility that something terrible could happen. My observations of the need for a jokes to be planted in situations with a beginning, middle, and end might suggest that this is the case; a joke wouldn't be funny in the deep sense if it has no consequence to OUR experiences of reality.

Things to Do

Correspondence is delicate and time-consuming work. I have a stack of letters I need to write, that I've been putting off because of the delicate nature of the task; so I'm going to make it my goal - a solid goal, the kind you can put a check mark next to after you complete it - to write them tomorrow. I bought all the cards and stationary a long time ago; I just need to remember to bring them to work.

1. Congratulations on your wedding
2. Letter of recommendation? Hey, did I mention that I'm leaving Classics?
3. Letter of recommendation?, part 2: let's do lunch sometime
4. miscellaneous long-time-and-howdy notes

How Embarrassing

I was out walking my dog the other day when he farted in front of me for the second time. This time, it was more like a shart. He was doing his usual thing of marking his territory, but because he was mostly out of water by this time, he had to exert some force to tinkle. That's when he let out a little toot. There was this surprised demeanor - and I don't think I was imagining it, because he definitely jolted a little when the fart came out uninvited - and then his better judgment advised him to put down his leg and assume the squatting position.

Union Talk

"What is the justification for asking the company to discharge 4 of its new employees in order to hire 4 guys who are sympathetic to us?"
"It's in the contract that the company give preference to those with seniority. Our guys have been there 30 years, whereas these new guys were just picked up a few months ago."
"But one of them is...a pregnant woman."
"Yeah, well, we got some guys taking care of that right now. We're sending Gino and Rocco to bust her kneecaps."
"But she also has an autistic kid."
"We'll get someone else to go urinate on the autistic kid."

Haha!

Creepos Truly Abound

There's another man in this building, this time on my floor, who needs to get cold-cocked or pepper-sprayed or tazered or something.

"New fashion today? I like it better than what you were wearing yesterday. It's more you: more innocent."

Jesus H. YIKES.

Trapped in the Closet

I've been hearing so much hype about this that I finally started watching the episodes on ifc.com...and HOLY SHIT! this stuff is gold! I never knew R. Kelly - the mind who brought us "I Believe I Can Fly" - had so much camp in him. Today's NY Times article (the one that finally made me capitulate) quotes one enthusiast saying: “You can’t tell if he is a genius or a guy who just saw the definition for cliffhanger in the dictionary yesterday and decided to run with it." That pretty much captures it.

So far I've gone through 8 episodes, but episode 4 made it especially hard for me to keep my work composure while I was watching:

And then I turned my radio on and did 55 all the way home

...

I said, I love you, she said, I love you too
Then a tear fell out my eye, then I called her my sunshine
And then she looked at me, and said, Baby go deeper please
And that's when I started going crazy
Like I was trying to give her a baby
The room felt like it spinning
Cuz we keep turning and turning
As if we were in a whirlwind
The way our toes all curl in
Then next thing you know she start going real wild and screaming my name
And then I said, Baby you must know now before I bust a vessel in my brain
She said, Please no don't stop!
I said, I caught a cramp!
She said, Please keep on going
I said, My leg is about to crack!
Then she cries out, Oh my goodness, I'm about to climax
And I say, Cool, climax, just let go of my leg!
She says, You're the perfect lover
I said, I can't go no further
Then I flipped back the cover
Oh my God a rubber!

An Unusually Provocative Loveline

I was just tuning in and out as I was driving home last night, but I could tell from the exasperation in Dr. Drew's tone that the callers from last night's Loveline were especially fucked up.

1. a 19-year-old girl having an affair with her 60-year-old married professor, who then tried to make HER feel bad about seducing HIM.

2. a 16-year-old boy, perhaps a chromosomal case, born without testicles. He has no body hair and a high-pitched voiced, but is 6 feet tall. He never investigated hormone therapies because his mom told him that his testicles got cut off at birth when they got caught in the umbilical cord.

3. an adopted 16-year-old boy is getting hit on by his 14-year-old adopted bipolar sister.

4. an older guy calling into reiterate Loveline's advice to the affair-with-professor girl. He has a lawsuit pending against a janitor who molested him when he was 7. "I know about abuse, and it's wrong. If a person is in a position of authority - and I don't care if it's your teacher, your priest, or your janitor - that person should not be taking advantage of you. And I just want to say to that girl who called in, and to all you other listeners out there who have been abused, that if you have a problem and need someone to talk to, you can reach me at bigbirdbill@hotmail.com...
"Can you put me on hold? I want to say something to Dr. Drew off the air."

Kool-Aidisms on UrbanDictionary

1. KOOL-AID (139 up, 17 down)
The universal drink of the ghetto. Comes in many flavors such as grape, cherry, blueberry etc, but known to the ghetto natives as red, purple etc. also used as a slang term to describe a situation.

You all up in my kool-aid and don't even know the flavor.

2. KOOL-AID INCIDENT (4 up, 4 down)
An episode of anxiety, outrage, anger, or extreme stress where one could potentially go through the wall, as would the Kool-Aid man himself.

Wow, did you see Mikey flip out? He really had a kool-aid incident!

3. KOOL-AID MAN (343 up, 27 down)
a glass of juice who thinks it is ok to just bust into people's homes while they are minding their own business

the bitch just busted through my wall and yelled oh yeah!

Plato on Art as Illusion

I was reading Woody Allen's obit for Ingmar Bergman, published today in the NY Times. There's not much in the article that I would call surprising: I love Woody Allen, and as such I know how much he loves Ingmar Bergman, and also, how likely it is that he'll start waxing anxious about mortality - no matter what the topic on hand is, and in this case it actually happened to be death. At one point, Allen goes on at some length about how Bergman did not resemble that brooding intellectual in life that you would presume him to be from his cinema; rather than thinking of his work as a kind of conduit to immortality, Bergman loved life and was caught up in all the trivialities of feelings, and Allen conjectures that he would have traded in each one of his 60 films for an extra day of living...which he would then use to make more films, not because of some artist's dream of lasting forever, but just because making films was what he did.

I forget where I was going with all this. As always, Allen has a way of mesmerizing me. I guess the point I'm driving at is that this picture of Bergman - the contrast between the dark philosopher who confronted us with troubling questions about love and loneliness and religion, on the one hand, the the Woody Allen-esque character who fretted about where to place his camera angle, on the other - this picture got me thinking about how petty and sordid all the details of life appear when you have to concentrate on them one at a time, while all the while you want - and desire! - life to be obscured and glamorous and meaningful, the way it's captured in the movies and in art. Even Bergman, according to Allen, a lofty artist, lived with this double-bind. He would create that philosophical other realm, where knights play chess with Death, but at the end of the day he still had to go home and, I dunno, wonder if he felt like chicken or pasta for dinner.

It's a striking theme for reflection for me because I've often noticed, here these days in my paper-shuffling job, how disappointingly...little the end-products are once you translate the best and noblest ambitions into real-life results. The work done at my firm is actually pretty high up on the ideological ladder of things; we (and by "we" I mean "they") help the working man get his just piece of the pie from the greedy and abusive management. Important, necessary work, without which we couldn't have an equitable society or a strong middle class, and possibly even a democracy. But how does it translate into billable work? We churn out the most boring documents in the world about how this-and-that institution is defined as county property, or how being violently insane is a disability that demands benefits, not discharge. And for me personally, it gets even less glamorous: protecting the working man generally means running photocopies.

I must have shied away toward the arts all my life because they seem to offer a haven from all this sordidness and pettiness of living out the details. That is, they gave me the Big Picture, and suddenly I would marvel at how beautiful and profound life could be. But Allen's thoughts on Bergman's death is making me think that it's all an illusion, and even the profoundest minds inevitably engage with the boring and banaustic, like, 95% of the time. If this is true, then Plato is right in saying that an artist is merely like a magician, who can't reproduce anything true about the world but holds up a mirror, as it were, in order to give us an image that we find delightful.

Plato's relentless, neurotic, Woody Allen-esque insistence on the philosophical life may have blinded me to what could have been his secondary message: maybe we should all be shoemakers. He readily admits that we can't all be philosophers, and he leaves no question that it's better to do something honest and real, like carpentry, than it is to be a politician or a poet. I always interpreted this position in light of Plato's intellectual milieu: that he was merely whining with an unpragmatic perversity and a transparent competitiveness, because he couldn't effect a wholesale intellectual and cultural and political revolution in which philosophers are kings; that it was more a thought exercise about how things would be best, rather than a commentary on how anything actually is. But now I'm considering revising this interpretation. Perhaps Plato isn't as unrealistic as I'm crediting him to be; maybe he is suggesting a "second-best" option that accounts for all the banal and disappointing realities of our non-ideal world - and that option is "shoemaker."

One More Case for Luck

(See post below for theme.)

Then again maybe choices can't be smart or dumb, just good or bad in retrospect - determined, of course, by how lucky you were. Case in point, I just learned that one of my sorority sisters, who was an early bride, is now an early divorcee. She had dated her husband all through college (4 years) and they got married shortly after; everyone says that he was a super-nice guy who was completely devoted to her, and even now, after the divorce, they are still friends.

What happened? Apparently the guy became a bona fide crazy. One day, perhaps in a schizophrenic fit, he went completely off into the deep end and hung their cat from the rafters.

Could the wife have made an informed decision and taken reasonable steps to avoid being a divorcee at 26? I'm inclined to think not. What more can you do beyond dating a guy through your whole college life? Some might say she should have waited, but would that sound like a necessary condition if they were in love and partnered up the way they were? Others might say she should have known, that there must have been warning signs; but I'm told that schizophrenia (if indeed that was the culprit) often sets in late in life, around one's twenties. Is it so unreasonable then to hope that the person you love will NOT someday transform into a raging nutzo?

I think not. This leads me to believe that she was just very, very unlucky.

Life Choices

One might call it a coping mechanism, but I feel like I've always been under the impression that my big decision are actually not that big, and that in the end it doesn't really matter because life has a way of equalizing itself. I think I have to tell myself that because my own life seems to have hit a series of dead ends as a result of what in hindsight appear to be bad choices (or at least that's one interpretation; the other is that I lack a certain stick-to-it-ness that would see me though those bad times and give me time to bring my decisions to good fruition).

Anyways, the point I'm driving at is that I've been seeing a lot more unwashed masses these days, and that got me thinking that there might be something flawed about the above-described belief. Presumably all those people got to where they are at because of some of the choices they made. Luck also probably had a hand in determining their fates, which is central to my previously held thesis, but I'm starting to admit that maybe self-determination is much larger and more terrifying than I'd like it to be.

The same hold true for those who are fortunate/made good life choices. I must have always told myself, to ward off envy, that the successful people got to where they are because they were in the right place at the right time, or else so incredibly toolish that they forced themselves on the Right Place and the Right Time even if they weren't wanted (keep in mind that this system completely eliminates the variable of "hard work" which would introduce too many complications of deserved vs. undeserved rewards). But maybe there's just something to be said about being smart about life. Just thinking about the options carefully, and making good choices.

The problem is that I'd like to think that that was what I was doing when I was following my instinct or heart or passion or whatever. But there's a reason why Plato separated the rational impulse of the soul from the passionate part. Perhaps it's a mistake to think that I have good reasons for my choices just because it was what I wanted most.

Say What?

I was sitting here all morning doing nothing, and some LSAT homework, and thinking about how surely I'm going to get fired if this persists. I also happened to write an email this morning to a friend, in which I mused about how I'll need to go back to MI at some point in order to tie up loose ends and pry an MA out of them. This got me thinking: the MA plan is workable if I get fired in time to return in January, and then all my law school applications will be in and I'll have a whole semester free, which would be perfect for taking those exams or writing that thesis or doing whatever the hell it is they're going to make me do to earn a degree that would salvage those 2 years of edumacation. The problem is the timing: would I be able to stick around long enough to get a respectable line on my law school apps? If by December I can't demonstrate a commitment that lasts (or might be said to last, in the absence of contrary evidence) at least a year, I might as well not include it at all. But see, that scheme would appear to compromised these days by my sitting on my ass all day with no work.

Imagine my stunned pleasure when I get a call from one of the attorneys - the one who is Hell on Wheels. She was calling for another assistant, but she took the time to tell me that she's been hearing amazing things about me. It's pretty embarrassing to admit, but I have to say the compliment made me feel all giddy and blushy like a schoolboy. I mean, whew! what a relief to know that I'm not going to get fired...right away.

At the same time, I can't help asking, WTF? Is sitting on one's ass so fine a task that there's actually anything to compliment? Clearly something in the lines of communication is being dropped. Score!

Someone Has a Case of the Mondays

I spilled coffee on my white skirt this morning in the most spectacular way. The lid on my traveling mug wasn't on right, so that none of the coffee ended up in my mouth, and all of it ended up on my skirt. The coffee was still hot, too.

And I guess this is a pretty minor thing, but on the subway this morning, a homeless man wandered by me and brushed me, as in actually touched me. Twice. Eegh. Call me crazy, but I do not like being touched by strangers, especially if they are the unwashed masses. I was tres displeased. That's right, displeased in a Frenchified way.

Eureka: the Least Sexy Word in the English Language

Ready?

"Math."

So Sleepy

I'm done for the week. I have to get a bed built under my desk.

Twitchy Eye

I must have some freaky-ass computer screen at work. For the last few days the outer corner of my left eye has been experiencing random spasms.

What is it, you get a JD and lose all ability to wipe your own ass?

I was printing out some mailing documents for one of the attorneys (not Nice Boss or Tough Boss), when I noticed that that attorney had sent my mailing's cover letter to the copier. So, to save him the walk, I picked it up and handed it to him. He looked at it like he had no idea what it was (though it was his document). I suggested, Should I include this in the mailing? He looked at me in frustration and said,

"Can't you take care of this?"
"Sure. Do you want to sign it first?"
"Can you just sign my name for me?"

I admit, that made slightly more sense after I was told it's legal if you have the person's permission. But it still sounds pretty close to fucking insane when you consider that there was a pen on a nice fancy pen stand not two feet away from him...and that, you know, we're all adults who have been wiping our own asses since we were...9, at least. Or that's what I always thought, but maybe I'd be wrong.

Actually Working

What a weird week. My nice boss left town today for an arbitration, so I had to work hard and everything yesterday getting his exhibits together. Meanwhile, my tough boss is out of town this whole week camping. Yesterday I worked overtime, and since I thought I'd have nothing to do today, with no bosses, I got permission to skip out early, in order to take a make-up LSAT class for a class I had to miss yesterday (meaning that I've officially stopped pretending like I plan to work here for life). All would have been well, except that everyone else called in sick today, so I'm the one assistant left in the office, and I have to do everyone's work. Long story short (besides the fact that my writing has turned inexplicably verbose) my chilled out day has turned weiredly busy. One of the attorneys not usually assigned to me, but for whom I had to do a spreadsheet just now, is totally cracked out. She stayed with me on the phone for about 30 minutes to dictate what exactly I should put on her spreadsheet; if she had come in and done it herself, instead of working from home, I bet it would have taken her less than 5.

In any case, I'm leaving early, so all's good.

Last Tie Severed

My chances of going back to my Ph.D. program are even slimmer than they were before, as I got news from one of my friends still stuck there that my only faculty friend, Jim P, is moving to UCI in the fall. Which will leave perhaps two sympathetic professors in the department, both of whom are, let's be honest, crazy as hell. I had suspected that Jim might have initially turned down the UCI job because he felt the obligation to not to abandon me to that den of hyenas all by my woebegone self (I had said as much to him), and I always felt a little bad that I might have held him back from greener pastures. It looks like that won't be an issue any more. I was once told that most students find Jim hard to get along with, so it's possible I might have been his last tie to the program as well.

Stakes are even higher now for me to move into my next career. It's a good thing I scored a 173 on my practice test yesterday...!!! Although, that number is pretty inaccurate because at this point I've seen almost every test question that was ever printed, and now it's just a matter of if I remember it or not (I remember about a third of the answers I've already seen).

Time to Invest in a Tazer

As I was getting into the elevator in my building after my lunch break, a man said, "Done studying already?"

"Excuse me? Have we had this conversation before?"

"No, I saw you studying during lunch."

Keep in mind that lunch was across the street, in a big common area much like a mall food court.

Assclowns Are Becoming Writers

You're going to have a built-in audience in me if you happen to write about serial killers. I haven't met one yet that hasn't perked up my interest, in spite of myself. So if you're writing about serial killers and STILL make me put down the page - and moreover, make me turn away from it in disgust - you know that you have to be some heinous breed of piss-poor writer.

This applies to some dude named Romero, who wrote an article about the 80s LA serial killer Richard Ramirez in a recent issue of Tu Ciudad magazine. His writing was damn near intolerable. I was trying to plow through it, even when he uses the adjective "savage" like it's a verb ("Ramirez savaged several more victims that night"), but couldn't take it anymore after these two sentences...in the same paragraph:

"The detective surmised that the killer had murdered Nelson first, then raped the Monterey Park woman to satiate his sexual desire."

"The detective knew he was dealing with an ultraviolent killer, the likes of which the world has rarely seen."

Jesus. I could eat Alphabet Soup and crap out better writing than that.

One of Those Mornings

It was one of those commutes this morning when every lane I move into instantly becomes the slowest lane. I thought I was losing my mind.

The funny thing is, I still got to work in just a little over an hour, making this one of my faster commutes. But my deep frustration in spite of the absolute speed indicates how relative human satisfaction is. It's like I'd almost be happier with a slower commute, being the fastest one on the freeway, than a faster commute, being the slowest one on the freeway. Could it be that there is no such thing as happiness, unless it comes at the expense of another? Does Schadenfreude underlie every enjoyment?

And wow. Apparently with dissatisfaction, I lose all ability to write NOT like an eighth-grader.

Damn, I'm Good

Remember that ridiculous assignment I got when I was supposed to fix my boss' palm pilot? You know, because of all that technical training I DIDN'T get, ever. Yesterday's attempt ended with me synchronizing the device, all right; I synchronized it so well that the palm's empty Outlook completely wiped out all the data I had on my computer's Outlook. After despairing overnight, I gave it another go this morning (I hated the thought of the conversation where I say "I couldn't do it") and BOOYAH! it's working perfectly again. Damn, I'm good.

Next week's assignment, I'm sure: go shopping for wife's anniversary present, pick up dry cleaning, and scout out apartment for mistress. Leland Stanford must be rolling over in his grave right now.

Kind of Amazed

I got my first paycheck yesterday, and while it isn't anything very impressive, it's still more than what I was living off of in grad school - with the added bonus that it goes longer, since I'm able to have a living situation that is qualitatively and financially better here. I'm a little awestruck that there is a greater monetary value on my sitting on my ass and shuffling papers than on my being an educator and a scholar. I guess that proves what I long suspected, that you only get paid to do the things that no one else wants to do.

Reflections after two weeks? My life is definitely more boring, and the work I do is pretty much worthless. But if there's someone willing to give me my piece of the pie in exchange, I say, bring it on!

Two supplemental points:
1. It is imperative, when you're a working stiff, to find meaning in your life outside of your work. Not only do I have to write on my own time, or something, but I also have to do all those yuppie things, like go to the gym, in order to round out my life.
2. Move upward! While this piece of the pie is pretty sweet for now, I definitely think I'm better than this.