There was a security update to the weblog software, so I reinstalled and am doing some retooling. Thanks to this guy I now have a very simple way to post thumbnails from my ever growing photo gallery.

For example, here is my sister and yours truly in Monterey. If you were to click on it, you could see us in all our glory.Monterey/100_0741.jpg

(The day before , my sister overhead someone saying something suggesting we were mother and daughter. I think that ruined her trip.)

On the topic of references, if your resume showing the past 10 years only has three companies and one of the three companies has morphed, reorganized and vaporized into non-existence, leaving only two companies, it’s kind of a pain. Add on top of that one company has informed you of a policy to only confirm period worked and title, while the other one has changed and grown exponentially in the past decade since you worked there, so it’s entirely possible no one there has heard of you, it’s just painful.

I’m such a fucking ‘tard, I am amazed that I as yet have not had the massive myocardial infarction caused by the angst wrought in retardation.

I am clutching my chest, while my lungs seize right now, though. I just realized that among the references I gave, one of the numbers has a big, old friggin’ typo right there in the area code.

Subconscious self-sabotage? Nothing like a typo in a phone number to show off your fab-u-fucking-lous attention to detail.

Of course, there is a logical explanation. The reference is from a friend I worked with back at that big tech school they have in Cambridge. We were IM’ing in what were the wee hours for him back on the East Coast, and it dawned on me that he would be a fine, fine reference. Honest to god we worked together in both our sort of fledgling laboratory days, and now he has a title and business cards and stuff at a powerful pharmaceutical bizness.

So, if you are IM’ing with a buddy who you know hangs on Yahoo! when he’s put the wife and kiddies to bed and had a beer or two and is just looking to chat or fuck with people’s heads in chat groups, the next day you should confirm the office number he gave you.

And I’m still thrilled that I saw:

OTTERS!!

Here’s a way not to start the day — Pass the kitchen counter en route to tea brewing and pick up and bite a chunk of last night’s garlic bread.

Garlic bread is not just for breakfast anymore. Oh wait, make that garlic bread blows for breakfast. Hours after chucking the rest of it out and showering and tooth cleaning, I’m still feeling the regret.

I’m continuing my self-torture vigil as I wait word on a paying gig meant to lift me from poverty and squalor. (OK, not so much poverty as idleness.) Maybe it’s nostalgia for the halcyon days of interviewing last week, but I’ve pretty much convinced myself that this job could be a good fit. I liked the folks I met, and I’ve liked everything I’ve read and researched before and since the interview. (I’m holding off on reading a bio of someone who battled publicly the foundation’s founding son, since I tend to lean toward obsessive anyway.)

My current mantra is kind of like “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But, it goes, “Non-profits aren’t assholic, assholes are assholic.” Just because I once worked for a woman who tried to convince me “my people” were all working-class drunks, and I couldn’t possibly have intellectual thoughts because I wasn’t ivy educated, doesn’t mean I will again.

One thing I just can’t get over is all of the references to “transparency” and openness on their website. Transparency would cripple the Boston establishment that had been my milieu. You pretty much can’t sustain back-stabbing fiefdoms of power if everyone is all open and shit. Even now, the nasty secrets kind of still worry me a bit, even though I’m literally and figuratively miles away.

Here’s one thing from the interview that I think makes this job seem vastly more comfortable compared to the last (and even then, I was there seven years). When I interviewed for my old job, I got a few questions about my alma mater and my degree. It was pretty clear that the journalism school I attended, which is generally seen as noteworthy, had not been heard of and, therefore, certainly not noted.

Years later, in a story I’ve told before, my boss returning from lunch and stated something like “Hey, I just found out that your school is tough to get into…” She went on to tell me about how competitive my journalism school is and how one of her colleagues children was having a tough time getting in and apparently it’s not easy, blah, fucking, blah. She ended with “I didn’t know that some programs are seen as ivy caliber; I thought anyone could go there,” or something to that effect.

Fucking hell. Without even discussing the intricacies and inherent bullshit of education and name-branded learning, that whole conversation made me feel like “I thought you were dumb and assumed that’s why you went to a dumbshit school.”

By contrast, and for the first time in many, many, many years, in the interview last week, I was greeted by a flattering remark about my old school. True enough in many areas the university has a pretty solid reputation and has innovated in some, among them global policy and international study.

It felt good to not have to explain about where I had been.

(Still and all, the best part of all of this process, whether I get the job or not, should be considering that so much is behind me. M. is a bit right (I can’t say too right, in case he reads this) in his assessment of New England’s hide-bound, hierarchical bullshit. Funny that Boston/Cambridge’s unique brand of conservatism also came up in the job interview, and also probably a good sign.)

Man, I wish I knew for sure if I had a job or not. All I can do is wait.

Do I keep sending out letters to job ads, or is it now cool to relax? I really want to enjoy the dwindling days of unemployment, if indeed they are dwindling.

Oh man, I didn’t realize how brain dead I was from the five days entertaining my sister. Apart from a few phone calls, including one to the recruiter about that job thang (waiting on HR and the reference checking), I did very little today.

Let me put it another way, I embraced toilet cleaning as the right level of emotional and intellectual involvement.

The weird thing about staying with a family member, I think especially if you come from a big family, is realizing how different you are, and even more so, how your adult choices magnify those differences. I have a friend and fellow weblogger who has written about nervousness of planning a trip with a Mormon sibling. (If he’s anything it’s a godless, soulless, groovalicious Unitarian.) My sister ain’t a Mormon, but, man, our choices and experiences are almost as foreign to me.

Interestingly, one thing I’m taking away from the week is the thought that where you choose to live and among whom is a kind of activism. (Granted it’s a wimpy, passive, kind of flaccid form, but, hey, I’m fucking lazy.) I absolutely choose to live in places with all sorts of diversity, skin, religion, money, artists, capitalist, whatever. My ideal weekend probably involves a street festival, full of crowds, booths and maybe some kind of food of which I’ve never heard. (Like, if you ever end up in Japantown, SF at a Cherry Blossom Festival, try the little treat that is essentially two pancakes sandwiching a layer of bean paste. Quite lovely.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally racist and narrow minded. Just ask my boyfriend who I torment. And, I certainly lack in cultural literacy, although maybe I do alright for a chick from a Clorox white Boston ‘burb.

I can say this, though, one thing I absolutely fucking hate about my hometown, always have and always will, is it’s homogeneity. When I lived there, I found it stifling. I was too curious about all of the other junk out there in the world from curry sauce to books and music and geo-political systems. I wanted to know how it felt to be Jon Feldman, the only Jewish kid in my grade school, or hear the stories about Boston neighborhoods from the METCO kids with whom I played half court and listened to Parliament Funkadelic.

I never told my mother when my junior high friend, Ronnie Valentine, got stabbed a couple of blocks from her Dorchester house and missed some school. I knew that would mean my world closing back to only the kids on my own block who were just like me.

I think music has always had a lot to do with it. The early taste of reggae and funk with the kids from the city and the records of my older brothers introduced me to shit outside of my view. Later, in high school, it was punk, a loathed and disdained music by the vast majority of my peers who memorized every lyric from Seeger, J. Geils and Meatloaf. I still hate listening to Seeger and Geils, although Meatloaf at least entertains me. (And, there’s the punk crossover fun fact of Clash girlfriend and collaborator Ellen Foley’s vocals on “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.”)

By contrast, my sister moved from New Hampshire to Wyoming, where the deer, antelope and Republican white boys roam, and I don’t really know what kind of music really yanks her crank. I once found a Celine Dion CD in her possession, which I think speaks adequately.

She enjoys and lives in places I don’t think I could. I can appreciate the mountains and Yellowstone and wildlife for a bit, but ultimately I would need the fix of city streets and color. Afterall, an elk is pretty much an elk, but different folks and strokes can liven up the week.

Besides, if I were surrounded by outdoorsy Republicans for too long, I’d probably get mouthy and end up on the wrong end of a high-powered hunting rifle (intended to preserve and protect the herd by thinning them out and getting some good eating in the process). No doubt I would at least attract some negative attention in Mayberry, RFD.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just finding bullshit theory to cover the little kid aspects that always live in any family. Some of the same stuff still hurts my feelings and makes me all teenage angst-y and misunderstood even at 41.

I mean, when the fuck will I no longer have to listen to siblings rag on my weight and athleticism (or lack thereof)? (I’m a normal weight, but to a section of my family I’m positively bovine by virtue of hating sports. However, since there’s a whole lot more people like myself who roll over stiff into a pile of catatonic boredom when faced with golf, I believe my hatred (which is only melodramatically strong) entirely rational.)

Only a sister or brother would say at the end of a trip something like, “Oh, I’m really surprised that we ended up doing a lot of stuff, I figured visiting you would mean a lot of sitting around.”

Man, oh, fucking, man, comedy here out west is EX-pensive.

For anyone who finds this post from my old ‘hood, ya’ll a bunch of whiney fucking crybabies when you bitch about the special place the All Asia. You know, like, “Oh, poor me, it was hard and no one could hear me and then I had to pay for my drink, and Patty wouldn’t give me a free one.” Boo – F’ing – Hoo.

Tonight was the All Asia with tougher acoustics, a sports bar atmosphere, a wireless mike sound system from Walmart, no mike stand, the same crowds and a $15 cover. Fucking hell.

Sure, the $15 included two drink tickets, but that is equivalent to nothing when the friends who drop by can’t/don’t drink. The ‘rita I had was a bargain, because I didn’t have to pay and at least the bartender sloshed a lot of tequila in the glass (which when you’re sharing with a non-drinker, and you’re both beyond tequila shooters on a Sunday night fun age, is actually not a treat), but the Cokes and water worked out as christly expensive.

I ended up picking up the dinner tab, because the combined 45-buck cover of my three friends seemed aggregious for a Sunday night showcase and four Cokes. I’m glad to do it for my friends, but man, I ain’t planning on paying to play.

And, for the first time in my life, I was at a sports bar that had shitty wings. Things sure is different here in the Bay Area. Good wings should be the one thing you can count on in a sports bar, beside aging frat boys in numbered jerseys and many TV screens.

One of my comedy dreams, except for riches and fame, is never, ever, ever to be handed a wireless mike in a wide-open, stage-less space again. Is a sound system intended to broadcast the human voice (and a mike stand) too much to ask?

I guess the bright side is on my learning curve. The silk purse/sow’s ear paradigm that produces mediocre comedy shows from the best intentioned folks holds true wherever you go. Cavernous bars with awkward sight lines and clusters of tables, chairs and couches set to face different screens and games do not transform themselves into temples of hilarity when new batteries are thrown into a wireless mike.

There were a couple of genuinely funny folks drowned out by feedback and acoustic hell, including the host who seems to be a genuinely nice and funny guy, who was kind enough to invite me. (For the Bostonians looking for a sense memory — remember Hannah’s?)

I’ll save it for another self-indulgent whine to mention that I performed behind a bar/counter feeling sunken, short and far away from the “crowd” on the other side.

As always, the best summation of most comedy shows: “Kill me now.”

Finally fixed the glitch that was keeping me from posting new junk in my photo gallery. Check out the latest from running around entertaining my visiting big sister.

Since she’s visiting, especially coupled with the likely curtailment of my free time soon, I’ve been taking her on little excursions. Yesterday’s was through the redwood forests of Muir Woods, one of the National Parks.

Maybe because of the Bambi line I have, this pic is one of my favs, though the quality is not terrific. Right after that click dead batteries meant I couldn’t go for perfect.