I’m typing this from the heart of wine country with a complimentary beverage of the area by my side. Sonoma.

About a year or so ago, I went on my first work retreat in a Mexican village. I dreaded the trip. Dreaded being with co-workers who I didn’t yet know from a state I had just moved to and talk about work, a concept I will always have mixed feelings about.

I swear to god, somewhere there’s a self-help, workplace consultant, game playing guru chuckling over inventing retreats. It all came about from a twisted reinterpretation of Stockholm Syndrome no doubt.

This year’s dread, which grew into fear and loathing worthy of Hunter S., but unfortunately lacking the ether, ammunition and Dr. Gonzo banter, crept in because I know the job better now. That knowledge meant I pretty much on my own had to set the whole motherfucking retreat enchilada into motion. Talk to hotels, haggle prices, get rooms, get food and tell people where to go. You’d think I’d like telling people where to go. Hasn’t rocked as hard as I wanted, perhaps because of where I didn’t get to suggest.

Dealing with arranging 20 people from different backgrounds, different experiences, different levels of self-awareness from four different time zones just fucking sucks all away around. I am too exhausted to play the ice-breaking games I luckily won’t have to play.

Cockeyed, crazy, laser beam sunshine sweet optimist that I am, I’m losing all Is that aren’t in team and making a whole bathtub full of lemonade. That would be a Jacuzzi brand tub.

Here’s the flipside of feeling the hurt of planning a big work function. You’re ground zero, the bullseye, the lynch pin of all contact with the hotel staff, and they know you are the one to review the contract, pay the bills and make happy nice business happen for them.

Thanks to that dynamic, I sleep here tonight.

That’s a pic of my suite. There’s a bunch more pictures here.

Fireplace, Jacuzzi, four-poster bed, a balcony overlooking a fountain, complimentary spa lotions and salts, wine and the fucking size of a decent sized studio apartment in Cambridge. You gotta check the pictures.

Retardedly plush. Especially considering my beau snoozes about 70 miles south of here, and I should be doing some work reading.

By the way, I have no business in a fancy schmancy hotel. I like parking my own car and carrying my own bags, valets and bellhops make me jumpy.

When room service brought my fabulously delicious club sandwich, the room service dude knocked when I was taking the pictures. Being as I’m about one beat away from the Beverly Hillbillies, I confessed to photographing digs I ain’t never seen the likes of. Not only does the toilet flush, but the magic water tub shoots jets.

I am a giant rube-like dork.

I’m still trying to find the perfect bird of prey. Plants are easier, because they stand still. Then, there was the Hitcockian flock.

Usually I hate these fucking things. But something appealed to me vanity-wise that I’m much more like Nietzche than O.J.

You scored as Friedrich Nietzsche. Well you’re an egotistical maniac, and you are so very iconoclastic that you probably are currently lost in a post-modern Jupiter, I mean jungle of self-definition. Don’t let it get you down though, someday, through a willful onslaught of reinterpretation of dated forms and ideas, you will strike on something that passes as remotely new, and people WILL be into it on the basis of how hip it is alone. Also, the average espresso drinker looks up to you. Friedrich Nietzsche 92% Dante Alighieri 58% Sigmund Freud 50% Miyamoto Musashi 33% Charles Manson 33% Stephen Hawking 33% Hugh Hefner 25% Elvis Presley 25% Steven Morrissey 25% C.G. Jung 17% Mother Teresa 17% Jesus Christ 17% Adolf Hitler 8% O.J. Simpson 8%

What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You?
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I stroll into the Bank of America today looking to move my cash into full liquidity, get the last fee removed and impotently rage against the nameless, faceless machine, but using the faces available.

Fuckers to the end.

I get into the teller line, rehearsing my “Can I speak to a manager?” in my head. There’s one teller counting cash or whatever they fucking do behind the counter and the sign saying “Next Teller.” Another is doing something with her back to the line. The third is actually interacting with a customer.

I wait.

Some fucking old broad comes into the bank clutching one of those zippered pouches into which managers jam the cash register cake in retail operations. She sashays right the fuck in front of me in line and shouts, “Hey,” to all the girls. The tellers all look up, smile and greet “Kathy.” So, she walks right up to the counter smack dab in front of my line-waiting dumbassedness and proceeds to get to bidness.

Fuck me. I’m stewing and planning my little ‘splanation about why I hate them. Inside my head, I was all cocksure and righteous and all smart-talking and worthy of banking sympathy. I’m sure out of my head and into my mouth was mealy and weak and whiny.

No mind, the fee is looking to be reversed, and I’ve opened another account at a local bank. Post-holiday, given that lord and turkeys and we all know that bankers ain’t killing themselves moving my cash over Thanksgiving, so post holiday, my money will be moving.

Thanks “Kathy” for being a careless, selfish old biddy bonding with the BofA crew and reenforcing that that ain’t my bank.

I don’t generally write about movies. I don’t generally like James Bond movies. Moreso, once upon a time I had a mad, stupid, rich fantasty life around “Remington Steele,” and the Pierce Brosnan Bonds broke it. Total British buzzkill.

So now it’s Daniel Craig, and I have a new crush. It’s a bit shorter and hairier than I would like. But, Sean Connery had the short, hairy precedent set.

The flick was pretty good. The love interest bored me a bit, but I ain’t no romantic, weepy chick. I likes the action. Not really, but you know, time and place. It’s a spy flick, I want to see spying and killing and shit.

From the fractals in the opening sequence on, I was pretty hooked into the movie. Not high art, but fun.

There ain’t nothing I can do about the depraved, dank cesspool of a culture we be enjoying this the 21st century. I mean, I can yelp in the wilderness a bit, but no one’s listening.

Nonetheless, here’s my idea. Go ahead and sign the Goldman family’s petition at dontpayoj.com. But, no that the interwebs are a perverse place. That’s just the kind of thing that advertises for the wrong guy and gives shitheads something on which to latch.

Instead, I say how about a little criminality to fight the gains of a criminal? Borrow O.J’s book, If I Did It, (Come on, how fucked up is that conceptually?) from your local library or steal it. Just walk right into a bookstore and steal it, knowing that somehow Judith Regan will have to kick in a bit for “shrinkage” at the bookstore.

Don’t read it, unless you must get your scary, vicarious thrill, knowing that there are likely thousands like you, but scan that puppy. Create a PDF or e-book or whatever kind of document you want. And, flood the internet. Post it everywhere, make is more prevalent than the Daniel Pearl video that freaks of all persuasions downloaded.

Flood the market and kill the profit margin. Fuck O.J. Seriously.

I have about $80 large in BofA’s coffers, which will soon be making an appearance in any other bank in the fucking world or possibly my mattress.

Few months back, flush with the proceeds from my house sale, my bank accounts were magically converted into “VIP” accounts. By VIP, I’m pretty sure they mean “we hate you, you venal fuck, and now we own you, oh yeah and go fuck yourself.” That’s how VIP I feel.

Turns out the fallout of VIP-ness is no overdraft protection. Fuck me.

I wrote the rent check, bought groceries, pumped some gas all the while thinking I had a couple bucks enough in the bank to cover. Not to Bank of America’s fucked up calculus. My check bounced and each little extra transaction gained me a total of about $100 in insufficient funds fees. None of the three other accounts they opened for me to “maximize” my money can cover my checking account.

I couldn’t quite follow the argument on the other end of the customer service line, but my balance at the time right before I got special VIP bank accounts seemed to suggest to her that I would have bounced these checks anyway. To be all polite she’d reverse SOME of the fees, but some of them I still got, because my balance in July in the savings account that disappeared (the one with overdraft) was only $200 and wouldn’t have covered these checks.

Um what?

Slowly I’ve been moving my dough elsewhere. Soon that will be mightily speeded up. Maybe I should grab something sawed off and get it all right now.