Sometimes the hardest thing about my job is tempering my natural sunshine puppy-dog rainbow love optimistic streak with cynical reality. OK, I know I’m more up in the cynical shit, but a girl can dream.

Back in the olden days, there was a musical called “Hair” and a song called “Easy to Be Hard,”incidentally covered by groovy 70s band Three Dog Night. In the lyrics, whilst bitching about someone being mean to them, the singer shits on the meanness in question by suggesting progressive activists are the biggest assholes. OK, maybe I should let the lyrics speak for themselves:

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud, easy to say no

{Refrain}
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend, I need a friend

Sometimes, that song just runs through my head all fucking day at work. I mean I work with some seriously committed workers who by the very nature of their work are trying to fix some shit that’s very wrong politically and economically. For less money than they could be paid in the real world (or the political world) and with likelihood of ending up at best a silent-ish partner footnote in public, published reports, they are actively doing shit for the world.

But, interpersonally, apart from the large world stage agenda, and in the small little office setup, I just gotta scratch my head and think, “you got to be fucking kidding me.” I ain’t no saint, and I am quite arguably not the least bit nurturing, but I dunno, maybe ‘cuz my ma taught little kids most of her life, including her own, I picked up a little eensy bit of something like etiquette or courtesy, something that says, “Hey, I’ll wait my turn.” Everyone has not been so blessed to upon occasion put someone else’s needs ahead. Sigh.

I’ll stop that rant there, given that I’m writing right up against that line where I got myself hung on my own rope at another job (mind you by a fuckhead with an axe to grind), but nonetheless my own words themselves did contribute to the ending of that gig.

Point is, really about me. Ironically, I know, my hating on the behavior of others is really about me. My needs, my viewpoints. Fuck you all else.

In several of my past jobs, I’ve worked with women who for personal reasons, including health, have had to take time off and make adjustments around taking care of themselves. (What are the fucking odds really that that’s been the dynamic? Two of them actually have had the same chronic health condition that hit only about 1% of folks in the country.) Anyway, I mention gender, because at the same time, I’ve worked with the regular middle class cliche — married with children (and, of course, this being 2007 and the whole sexism mojo still at play women are the primary caregivers in the dynamic).

Me, I’m in the middle, no kids, no caregiving, but no health problems to speak about (’cept for feeling increasingly creaky around the joints and fat around the middle). I’m the schmuck who pretty much can be at the office most all of the time, given there ain’t no standardly accepted excuses that trump health or children. “Um, yeah, love to help you out there, but I have dinner reservations at this cute bistro, you see,” kind of makes you sound like an asshole.

Somehow, I think my relationship with Pat has made me a natural to fall right into that middle, and it’s presumed responsibility to help out the others. The suck side, of course, is I hate care taking. I hate extra responsibility. If I wanted to nurture I would have spawned my own cell cluster and dragged my DNA-carrier to soccer practice, dance lessons or tae kwon do. But, I doubled up on the prophylactics and focused on the joys of double-income no kids.

Pat once told me she never expected me to take care of her if she ended up so infirm as needing it, because that just wasn’t my talent. Wisely, she suggested hiring someone with the requisite skills.

Here’s the thing, though, and it also relates back to Pat. There seems to be an inverse proportion to women who could use an extra hand asking, versus them that don’t who do. Here’s what I mean. Pat was a single mom. She had five kids (a good 2-3 more than today’s averages). She had a job, and before that she had a full-time class schedule to get the training to get the job.

She pretty much never missed a day of work. She didn’t shirk extra responsibilities expected to come out of her own short-supply time (bus duty after school, parent-teacher meetings, assemblies, training). Only one fucking time can I remember her using one of her kids as an excuse to get out of anything. Yup, I think she might have called in sick the day she was trying to get in touch with the Soviet consulate to figure out what the hell was up with her traveling middle child and his ill-timed appendicitis in Moscow.

More than anything, she didn’t make excuses or accept them. I know some parents now who are like that, too. And, it seems like a lot of single mothers in particular to this day find it necessary to hold up to the world that they’ve got it covered.

And, folks I know and have met with various serious illnesses, chronic problems, they pretty much tough it out. I’ve worked with people who hid chemo, diabetes, HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, hormonal conditions, migraines, MS and all sorts of things that just make it tougher to get through the day. What they’ve had in common seemed to be a desire to not be perceived as invalids. Nope, instead, they plugged on, sometimes with what looked like a cockeyed optimism, because otherwise they’d be throwing in a very personal towel. Who the fuck wants to limp around and act pathetic, since once you do it’s like a lifestyle choice.

But, and here’s the shit that rises my dander, yanks my chain and overall just pisses me the fuck off, sometimes it feels like it’s the folks who should have it all covered who ask for the most favors. Let me get this straight, you have an intact family with two grown-up adults working together to raise the family, you have an extended family, you have a house, at least one car and maybe a nanny thrown in for good measure, but I have to listen to you tell me how hard your work schedule is because you have kids? Sister, please.

I’m similarly unmoved by jet lag, colds or flus, unless you give everyone the same courtesy you request when you’re sick. In my career, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been called or emailed when I’ve taken scant days off by prima donnas who weep and ask you to weep in solidarity for their every hangnail. (And, by all fucking means, if you can’t function when you are downed by a rhino virus, I don’t ever want to hear you complain about how the folks with the actual illnesses always seem to have something come up when you need them. We all gots to bend some of the time.)

If you are well, if your children are well, if you and your husband have built a middle-class castle with the accoutrements of a comfortable life, I’m not sure you get as many favors as them that don’t. It might sound unfair, but you might even have to be the giver not the taker.

I am very likely as much of an asshole as the next guy. I am sure I am just as selfish as the human condition allows. However, it seems like I’m the schmuck who gets asked to cover by the people who in my opinion shouldn’t be asking. And, I’m the schmuck who offers to help out the people who don’t ask, simply because I’m aware enough and mildly conscientious.

With all that helping, I guess the only thing that keeps me from being a complete schmuck, is I do know how to help myself. My last life’s lesson from a woman who hated to ask for help was to fucking learn how to take care of myself.

Woe is me that me and my kind might constitute a minority.

Technorati Tags: tired, work, women, children, breeders

In honor of it being just about the two-year anniversary of the life that prompted the sketch that prompted the post below called “Soundtrack, and inspired by “Freemblap” and his comment about kowtowing to the man, here’s a link to the post that started it all.

For the record, and keeping the whole debate alive and honest and shit, here’s a couple of things to note. I wrote that little bit of creative bullshit in March ‘04. I got spoken to late June ‘04 (a date I will remember always here in the land of the free and brave, ‘cuz my flag-waving July 4th weekend was interrupted by the second psych eval). Yeah, baby, three months later, you know, like long enough for shit to change, you got your clear and present danger heating up.

Point two in the whole debate is told in the sketch. I was interviewed alone by little miss zero tolerance and allowed to go back to my office to get my stuff. Yeah, um, just yeah.

It’s a cake eating too kind of dilemma. I was a freak, or I was not a freak. You just don’t fucking let a violent loon go get her stuff with an admonition “Ah, don’t talk to anyone, OK?”

Oh, and after working there through seven years, um, I would’ve thought someone would know me. As my lawyer put it, in all his years of pulling employee records for various and sundry disagreements and disputes, my file was shockingly stellar and spotless. The signs weren’t there.

Dunno, maybe I’m dwelling today, because at the new place, the place that came at the end of the snowball spinning ride that started two years ago, there was a summer shindig kind of thing going on. Food. Because, fucking yeah, everything about this job plays out in food. And, some wine and beer. Shit, I hadn’t had an ice cold beer in many months.

Anyway, it reminded me of the fabled beer hours from circa 1989, when I first started working in the non-profit world. I was in my 20s, as were a huge assload of others at the job, and there just wasn’t anything wrong in drinking the free beer and talking to folks. I did my job well enough to go from temp to perm and ultimately like triple or quadruple my salary in 5 years’ time, and until the director starting banging my co-workers, all was groovy. I just didn’t spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder or worrying if I was going to lose my job. (Well, again, until the director’s indiscriminate banging began.)

I never felt that relaxed in my last job and may never again. It’s fucking hard after being fucked with for so long, and it pisses me off.

For about a minute, I was all chill in the new job, thinking, “it’s going to be alright,” and cracked a second beer.

That whole post below was meant to be an intro to the introspection I was doing after that boss chat. But, I got off on a bit of a separate direction.

The inside my head meanderings were about my last job and the number it most definitely did on the old psyche inner self. As I’ve written about here, and now mention on stage, the whole episode was a bad break up from the ultimate horror show pile of shit boyfriend.

Today, someone came to the office for a meeting/presentation. I’m the one they call when an outsider comes a-callling for our group. I set up the meeting, so why the fuck not, right?

So, I’m walking this dude from the lobby and chatting with him and explaining that I’ll set him up in a conference room and then round up the others and offering him a complimentary beverage and all that kind of thang. At heart I’m a polite person, generally minding my p’s and q’s, thank you very much, and on a good day I’m empathetic and intuitive enough to do the old Jesus thing and treat someone they way I might want, if I were entering a strange place and presenting a little talk.

(As an aside, so far every such lobby-getting, meeting chat has brought out that I just got here and barely know the place, followed by the “Where from?”/”Massachusetts” call and response. And it turns out, every fucking person in that universe has lived in Boston or Cambridge at some point in time. OK, not the other day, when it turned out the guy was from a neighboring suburb to my hometown.)

Anyway, I’m chatting and polite and making these people to home, and I can’t help but reflect on the psycho head trip my last employer laid at my doorstep. There was a recurring convo about how so and so “has a great administrator who’s really friendly and welcoming, I guess you couldn’t really be that kind of administrator, good thing you work here.” All a good-natured, chuckling rib about my ever so bitchy, icy, friendless, anti-social, bitter, angry, incapable of human contact self.

Yeah, kind of like the type of ex-boyfriend who reminds you you’re fat and ugly and couldn’t find another man.

Just like a chick who wises up and gets the restraining order, I am back to a self that doesn’t have the constant litany of stressful reminding of how much I suck. So, you know what, I wasn’t actually the weak link in the polite chain or the asshole after all. In fact, I’m betting that most everyone I’ve met so far out here has seen me as funny, engaging and all right to be around.

Sometimes I just want to call those motherfuckers up and tell them that life is better without the soul-crunching gig they made me feel like I was lucky to have.

Good advice for a bad breakup, though, is live well and leave it all behind.

By the by, and I mention it only for the symmetry of my hugely dysfunctional past work that is now a shitty memory, yesterday there was an all-staff meeting, roughly in size the same as some of the past departmental administrator sessions I used to loathe. The ones undoubtedly that gave an assist to my mental and actual undoing. The ones where I wrote in this space about a bad meeting being one where you couldn’t decide whether to stab the person talking or stab yourself just to get out of the room.

Anyway, same size meeting, sort of flip side process issues on the money giving or money getting sides. The difference? Pretty much everything said in yesterday’s meeting was on topic and not self-aggrandizing. What the fuck kind of place am I working? They can’t even do Dilbertesque meeting cliches.

Better yet, when one guy was caught getting asked a question off guard, he fully admitted to not having been paying attention at all and needing stuff repeated, including the question.

Who the fuck are these people with their openness, honesty and other anti-herd, bullshitless meeting behaviors.

I’ve been polishing the resume and sending it off a few places. It’s got me thinking about next steps and all.

One of the things I’m dealing with inside my tiny melon is the residual anger I still feel about my last break up, as it were. I have all sorts of rational things I can talk about for the future and all, and I’m pretty confident that I’m a balanced human being stepping into a new adventure. I’m looking forward (believe it or not) about getting me some employment and trying out new things.

However, would it be wrong to bring up some shit talk in the interview? I’m just dying to mention, for example, that my last leader continually referred to “my people” and things like drinking and my working class roots.

I wouldn’t mind, I suppose, if I actually had working class roots. But, in truth, with both my parents’ having college degrees, my mom being a teacher and all, her father having a law degree and of all her degreed siblings, including one with a Ph.D. and another a J.D., it was kind of irksome.

I can’t imagine why I wasn’t comfortable going along with the Ivy League program. Of course, with my family history of living in Boston and being descended from folks with leprechaun-esque accents, I would be uneducated and poor and working class. Except for this being the goddamn 21st century not a scene out of Gangs of New York.

I think she was disappointed my dad didn’t have a cute nickname like “Whitey” or “The Butcher.” I guess Earl, the accountant, didn’t live up to the stereotype.

So, can I talk about that?

I have been spending a long time trying to get a resume together that doesn’t cause me to weep at the futility of mankind’s meager existence on this small and revolving planet.

Now, I’m going to take bits and pieces of it and cut and paste everywhere that I possibly can in order to rejoin the daily work force.

Although, I am pretty proud that I have done some of the independent projects I have set out to do, including learn a lot about web design and freelance out some of my new skills and making decisions about a writing future. I think if I focus on a very fluid, yin yang balance of my own interests and a job without the required emotional, full-tilt, take no prisoners investment, both my own bad self and a future employer could approach a bunch o’ contentment.

Look for my opus of the week at job boards and employment websites near you.

By the way, if you are reading this post, and you have any friends, family, lovers, enemies, colleagues or what have you in the Northern California vicinity who might be hiring, please let me know. I’m going to use as many networking angles as I can to get a good thing going.

I’m bright (or at least not slow). I have a meticulous, scary even, attention to detail (believe it or not, based on this shite). It turns out that my ability to read poorly and obscurely written government policy and legalese and turn it into normal speech is savant-like.

I write, some might say, “very well,” and thanks to my A-one, brand-certified, wicked excellent journalism degree, I’m actually rather skilled at writing for different situations, audiences and environments. In other words, I don’t always write like I do here, and quite frankly recognize that no one need toss around the fuck word with such wanton abandon.

I’d link up my resume here, but if history taught me anything it’s keeping the comedy/writing site clearly about comedy and writing. This ain’t my working gal self.

For the first time in a week, I don’t feel like crying myself to sleep like a weak baby. Whatever cold or flu this one was, I don’t recall having felt so fucking miserable.

Add on top of it that I’ve been trying to work on my resume and looking through job listings (at those brief times when my read and rheumy eyes could focus without tearing), life ain’t exactly the banquet I’ve been hoping to enjoy. Now I’m behind in everything I planned to do this week, and on top of it, haven’t seen or talked to any of the friends with whom I need or want to catch up.

Aggravating.

A lot of my anxiety about finding a job is less about my getting shitcanned yet again six months ago or the money. I do worry money will run out, and I’ll end up homeless without even 49 sweaters to wear in the streets, because I’ve already given them all away to charity. Would it be the definition of irony if I end up in a shelter and someone hands me something I used to wear?

No, while all of those thoughts do enter my head, that’s not my central area of anxiety. I think most of it has to do with the life and times of old Pat.

(Incidentally, right now is the anniversary of her leaving the mortal coil. Well, I guess it is. Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday is the anniversary of our discovering she was actually gone. I thought it was the 18th, but my sister said tomorrow. Hard to say exactly, though, since she went quietly and alone, and the house was freezing cold.

By the way, both the police and the oil company guy said that it was common for old people to stop oil delivery (or not call for a fresh delivery) right around the time they die, like that’s part of their whole plan. Why pay for oil if you ain’t gonna use it, right? It’s kind of sad, yet so compact and efficient, like folks just know when it’s time. I don’t know, though. For me, I might leave all the lights on and the heat cranked up and leave in a blaze of glory, power consumption-wise anyway.)

Maybe it’s work or maybe it’s the anniversary of her being gone or maybe it’s my naturally tendency to worry, but how I spend my time to make money to live is big on my mind right now. And, the only thing I am sure about is that probably the best way to honor the memory of my mother is to deliberately not live the way she did.

I don’t mean the good parts. She was hella loyal to her family and her kids, even as she bitched and moaned. And, even though she was never demonstrative and closed off all outward manifestations of affection, when something went wrong or when I saw her at moments of truly losing someone, I could tell there was a depth of love. She was also a great provider, and, I’m told, a great teacher.

All of those things (well except never demonstrating affection) I would emulate.

No, the thing I don’t want from her life is always living to not quite get what you want. Like she never, ever took a sick day from work for herself. She dragged herself in and did her job no matter what. In the end, the town made her feel old and used and forced her into retirement essentially against her will.

Obviously, it’s complicated, but she literally suffered for her job and felt none of that loyalty back. Her experience, and my own, taught me that I don’t want that. I hope to take every sick day or vacation day and enjoy my time, if I work for someone else. Or, if I’m lucky enough to do my own thing, I want to remember that putting in that kind of effort and energy is of benefit to me, and if it’s not I want the presence of mind to see the risk-benefit analysis.

She was also good with money and had gone to college for business. From the circumstances of being a widow with five kids, though, she became a teacher, because it was the only gig that she could do in the days before child care centers. I think she wanted a nice, neat office job where she could use that part of her brain, but it didn’t happen.

She was also good with her hands and crafty, and as far as I can tell was always doing something artsy fartsy. (There were ceramic figurines (think Hummel) around our house from days long past when she had taken some kind of ceramic figurine molding and painting class. And, there was a veritable town of dollhouses left in her house, each one built and furnished and decorated by her. And those were just the ones she kept.)

I think she would have like to get formal training in painting, but she held herself back from even taking an adult ed class. I’m not sure why. She had a friend who went back to school for an art degree. When she talked about her friend’s success and even her scholarship trip to France, you could see the excitement and, I guess, longing.

I don’t want to have those kind of unfulfilled dreams, especially if it’s as simple as paying a few dollars and driving to the local night school.

And, so I write this bullshit on the Internet. I hope to better understand and better achieve what I do want.

In the end, while looking for a job, I think I have one life’s goal. I want to die at break even. Financially, I want to have enough money to live comfortably and not have any left over that I could have or should have used to live. Emotionally, I want to feel like I’ve extended myself or tried new things or continued learning. I don’t want to feel worn out or broken or used.

Do you know anyone hiring for something like that?

My groggily working on my resume, tonight’s fun project, had me reviewing and thinking and churning.

Maybe it’s some meta-Freudian subconscious thing, but I can’t hold onto a decent copy of my resume. First, a while back I realized the best version of my resume was left on my former employer’s computer. No problem, I had paper printouts. Only somewhere in my apartment emptying, they must have been left in the recycling bin.

Then, I typed up a swell new version and began the needed updates to reflect the goals of the new, non-academic-administrating me. Only before I backed it up anywhere (d’oh) I fucked my Powerbook and may very well have vaporized it. (Could be the data recovery and repair I’m waiting on will make it all better, but since I’m pretty sure my hard drive died. I’m not counting on it.)

Then, I dug up my old IBM ThinkPad (running Win95, a rocking OS when I bought it) that had a circa 2000 resume on it. Cool, cool, cool, since I was at the same place of employ from 1997 until the incident. Only when I cracked it open tonight to retype everything (since none of the ports it uses are currently in fashion) something crackly happened with the screen and the display is all trippy colored lights and spots.

Finally, I hooked up a monitor and typed away. Fucking Whew.

Now, I’m refining the timeline, because I want to make sure I have all of my promotions and exemplary work record reflected. Bwahaha. So I went back through this space and realized the night before the troubles began, I wise cracked about losing my job. The fucking night before. I’m a witch I swear.

But, the most important sign of all was talking to a friend of mine from comedy last night. She was majorly stressed out and not feeling well and just generally having a bad day. Among the reasons was the pressure cooker of her boss’ working on needed stuff for his continued academic success. Like I once was, she is an administrator in an academic environment.

Anyway, her stress was palpably familiar to me. The weird edge of being a team player supporting others, yet knowing that at the end of the day it ain’t your team and if the “they” you support ain’t helping the ball club, you can’t do nothing about it.

Academia is a distinct environment and if you know others working there, you’ve heard the same stories over and over again. You end up ceding all control to the one personality at the top whose ego and needs must be coddled and fed. Generally, they are benign despots with compelling enough leadership and personality to allow a few pecadillos to pass forgiven, and the worthwhile goals of the body of work provide an esprit de corps.

But, when shit falls apart and they require your hand holding at midnight, goddamnit, they expect your full cooperation.

I’ve worked late shifts and crunch times in the private, for-profit sector, and yeah, there’s stress. Somehow, though, I never felt the emotional drain that I did in academic support. It’s not enough to just work late, they need to feel that you are completely committed to their needs, when they need you most.

I’m describing it poorly, but it’s the manipulative tone of disappointment I heard in the last conversation I had with my former director. The tone when I think she realized that I was choosing my own ventures over hers.

Obviously, I am projecting, but it’s that pressure that I read in my friend’s face last night.

I’m sure she will work out the middle ground she needs. For me, it was a reminder that even if my path is unclear right now, it’s the correct one.

Today’s lesson in living life as though I was all growed up is never tell a construction contractor how much your paying for a job. I made that mistake this past week. Twice.

The thing is, I think we all operate on our own internal economies, and you can manage just fine if you know where your tolerances lie. I know for a fact I’m paying high for the work I’m getting done on the bathroom. I know it in the same way that I know a pork chop is gonna cost me the price of a pig if the menu is vellum, the napkins linen and the family name LaFitte appears on the wine list.

I also know that if the work is done right, it’s a wash in my overall investment, if I rent, and definitely when I sell. And, if it’s done on time (i.e. before Christmas), I get to enjoy it a bit longer and so does M. on what could end up being one of his last ever visits to my place.

It’s not a point of view that guys who can construct stuff can really grok. Why would you pay for stuff they could’ve done on the cheap?

My mom was like the construction guys. It was physically impossible for her to truly enjoy a four-star meal, because the guilt or consciousness over the real cost of the raw ingredients swamped the enjoyment. “$10 for an omelette? I could buy seven dozen eggs and have omelettes for months for $10.”

No distinction was made for skillful preparation and artistic flavors and presentation.

I think that mind set was partially responsible for why she lived so long allowing her house to collapse around her. The sense that if you could do yourself, or if a couple of friends helped out, or if you called around and got the best offer, all of those ifs, caused nothing to get done. Because, in the end, it’s almost as though if you can’t put in the sweat you’re not worth the extra expense.

I let my bathroom go for too long, too. Getting over that hump meant I needed a lot of extra hand-holding and assurances and guarantees and the contractors to return my calls and give me just a little bit more service. For that, I will pay.

I spend a lot of energy trying to live a bit happier or more contented than my mother, or trying to fathom her choices. I have the extra money to improve my house, my investment, my lot in life, because she lived frugally and sacrificed and left the cash behind. But, she lived many years untenably uncomfortable (e.g. turning the water off and on in the toilet rather than getting a leak repaired) and seemed so physically and mentally pained and exhausted by the time she died.

So, is that trade-off worthwhile? Struggling, but saving, versus spending freely and gaining some piece of mind? I realize the inherent indulgence of opting for the comfortable route, but I don’t truly understand the struggle just to save a couple of bucks for an unknown, possibly unrealized, future.

The other side to all of this nonsense about how much should my bathroom cost is a great lesson in human nature.

Not matter what, anyone in any given field will tell you that s/he could have done things better, faster, cheaper, prettier, whatever. Which gets me back to our own personal sense of economics.

In my world, I will pay well for someone to rip out walls, re-wire some ‘lectricity and build up tinker toys of PVC, so I can shower and shit in luxury. But, I will pay nothing for someone to hook up my computer, my network, my home entertainment center or install anything to make any of them work or do more things. Other people pay for that stuff, but I’m going DIY all by myself on that electronic shit.

I also do my own taxes with the help of that ‘puter, and there’re about 712 craft projects I would opt to figure out and not pay anyone to do.

Everyone has their own list of what’s worth doing and what’s worth farming out. Once you have that list worked out, it ain’t no thang to start writing the checks and lying back to watching someone else toil.

Any number of cliches could have been used to title this entry; All would be evocative of bootstraps and buckling and changing stuff with both vigor and resolve. This week is the week I strive to get out of my current productiveless funk and fucking move (figuratively and literally), aided and abetted by outside forces, which always helps.

Judging by the paperwork I just signed, it appears strange men (I assume men, because I’m sexist) will be appearing on Wednesday to demolish and rebuild the privy. The toilet, or lack thereof, will force me onto a new course, one in which I rise early (because emptying the bladder prior to the crew’s arrival each day is well-advised) and I exercise regularly (the price of showering, since habituating a gym shower only would appear pretty creepy, I fear).

I went with the high-priced, likely cavier-munching, contractors, because in the end they returned every phone call and showed up exactly when they said. I’m praying that the trade off of big checks, chockful of zeroes, will be service and making good on the promise of completion by Christmas. So far, my hopes are high, since they were heading out this morning to get the permit, as promised.

What the hell, it’s only money. And, it’s ultimately a wash. Between renting and selling, especially when the capital gains are calculated, the Monopoly money should reappear.

Meanwhile, today I must buy some kind of sporting footware, sneakers I called them as a youth. I don’t think the old DMs would be welcome on the yuppified, sweat-inducing gear.

Completely unrelated, here’s a scary search that hit my website and hints of frightening world domination by bad computing:

[Proprietary enterprise software system, which I suspect may be related to my present employment situation and is based in Minnesota] is a piece of shit.

The IP address resolves to : South Africa - University Of The Orange-free State. Good to know truly shitty, US products are being sent overseas to fuck up foreign administration too.

Thanks in part to nothing on the web ever really dying, I still get search hits for that company, even though I changed all references to “Demonware.” For all of your human resources and accounting needs it is the devil’s spawn.

Apart from tanning and seeing like every old friend I’ve ever had, I’ve been thinking about my next career.

I figure administration is right the fuck out, since, well, it has kind of a, how would you describe it? Oh yeah, a rather bitter taste.

M., the newly minted American entrepreneur, has a few great leads on some technological kind of jobs, which, who knows, when I’m done tanning I might network and BS my way into. And, there’s all the shit I think I could freelance.

However, above all things, I have a brand new role model and calling in life. I now worship at the career doorstep of Dog, the Bounty Hunter.

Looks like all you need to be a bounty hunter are cell phones, ’80s pro-wrestling, camo fatigue, cut-off fashion style, some paperwork, questionable hair-dye and hair-growth useage and some badass attitude. I got the attitude, baby, I am tough as nails and intimidating as all hell. I mean, if it weren’t for my fearsomeness I’d be employed right now, right?

So, I am so there. Yeah, scumbags of the world watchout, I’m collecting on your bail bond and getting you thrown in the hoosgow, or however it fucking works. I’ll have to do a little reading.

I’m off to a strong start acing this quiz as a “Top Dog.” Rock on, I’m Dog’s newest disciple. Woof.