Fuck ya, Labor Day weekend has arrived. Three whole days of freedom. I drove home blasting tunes on the iPod and convertible wide open to the sun and the wind.

But, then, I had a pang of guilt about Hurricane Katrina and the horrible mess, actually and metaphorically and governmentally and basically every which way, that is now New Orleans. It’s a city I’ve been to a couple a times and rather liked (not just for the tits, beads and 32-ounce glasses of booze).

It is one of those cities that has its own striking geography; I can remember the other-worldly feeling of arriving at night and driving along levees with swamp creature noises on both sides of you.

My guilt subsided, though, when I realized I had just moved to Silicon Valley, which is invariably on the short list of another tragedy that the nation just might handle inadequately.

I’m pretty proud of Condi Rice for heading back to DC after she caught a Broadway show. Damn, those tickets are expensive and you don’t want to waste that cash. It ain’t like the poor and miserable wouldn’t still be there in a couple few days. (Thanks to the place I now work, and it’s neighborhood, there’s a special warm place for Condi’s whereabouts when the government is failing to govern. Can’t wait until she returns to the ‘hood, if only because it means this administration is through.)

I’m not sure I’m quite comfortable with the charges of racial bias and, basically, that it’s because of the critical mass of African Americans that nothing has been done. I think it’s more about being poor. There’re enough trailer parks full of whites blown away by tornados each year that no one does much about either.

The shitty thing is the formula is pretty much the riskier the locale the poorer the people. Except for your occassional house in Chatham or land-slid mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

Anyway, I gots to go enjoy some sun before the next big earthquake hits.

I am currently obsessed with the brilliant marketing ploy and bad
science that is "intelligient design." I love the creativity where
the Christian Right constantly finds new angles to explore in
thrusting a 2-millenium old religion down our collective throats.

Even more refreshing is the newest, and arguably most fucked up, angle
that I discovered through this guy’s website —
http://hbeeinc.com/blog .

Apparently, some astoundingly crazy Christians have pointed out how
the swirling blob of Hurrican Katrina captured on radar screens
resembles the swirling blob of a 6-week forming embryo. Why? Because
capital-G god is smiting the godless abortion-filled Sodom of New
Orleans, of course, silly.

The bright side of that lunacy is searching it further I found this
website: http://venganza.com.

I so worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster now.

I can’t stand the paranoia that lives within me (and as it turns out
after a phone conversation lives outside me, too.)

There should be some sort of fucking acid test for whether you were
destined to screw up, implode (or in my case be perceived to fuck up)
in the old workplace. Or, if your seemingly cool boss might be
inclined to throw you to the wolves on a whim.

A girl’s got to know when and if there might come a time when she
mights have to get a lawyer working for her again.

Everything about this job and this state so far indicates it’s a far
cry from my former digs. From the Onion (www.theonion.com) reading
president to the fact that just about everyone here has come from a
variety of past jobs and varied interests and seems pretty true to the
school of making the world a better place. Shit, people here right
letters to the editor and op ed pieces out there in the public world,
where everyone can see them.

But, little old me, I’m keeping my light slightly under a bushel.=20
Because I can’t let myself take the risk of trusting I won’t get
fucked again.

So, when the boss starts talking about Intelligient Design and leaves
an article from the NY Times on my chair and we discuss the decline
and fall of American culcha. (She thinks it’s the end of civilization
with US inhabitants at their fattest, dumbest and most complacent
ever. I told her I think it’s the "End Times" and I’m waiting for the
Rapture.) So when all this goes down, and I want to write about
Intelligient Design, I’m checking myself and over-thinking whether
it’s work safe. What the angle might be. Where I can get reamed
anew.

Fucks with my ‘blog-writing mojo, that’s what.

Same with checking out the new boss’s husband’s website, which
apparently has gotten a lot of ‘blog buzz. It’s an interesting music
thang. I’m listening now. But, I ain’t linking to the site.

Fucking hell. I should have changed my name when I moved west. From
now on my name is Cassandra Peebles.

And, because I think I secretly have a death wish (career only). I was just thinking. One of the top searches that leads to this site is about meetings sucking. Clearly, it’s a universally felt issue, and one that I embraced in my last job by writing little games like a scoreboard allowing you to buzz people out, or if you had a knife in a meeting, would it be better to speaker for speaking or just stab yourself to get out of the meeting?

Yesterday, probably not coincidentally a Monday, was the first day I felt the itch to write out such a scenario as I imagined escape routes for a long, long, long, wished I could have tunnelled out of the room with a spoon, meeting.

I think I am simultaneously completely heartless and hard on myself, unforgiving in all quarters, self-critical to the nth+1 degree and just all around negative about the likelihood of my ever succeeding at my heart’s desire, while also willing to cut myself a giant swathe of slack.

I wanted to go to a comedy thing tonight that was partially a roast for someone leaving town who has been pretty cool to me. In theory, great fucking idea. Get a little networking in maybe, or maybe just catch a bit of community spirit for a comedy community into which I haven’t pushed myself too hard to assimilate.

Great fucking idea in theory and, I was thinking, a great step in taking charge and getting something done to act a tad less lacksidasiacal and stalled.

Buuut, I have a friend coming into town tomorrow and the boss has asked me to write shit and I like writing and SF is a bit of a drive and gas is expensive and if I go out tonight, it will be hard waking up in the morning and the boss said I could leave early but I promised to work on the writing project and what about M. does he want to go and is the house ready for company and won’t I go out every night while she’s here and I have to RSVP to my aunt and I wanted to work on that Photoshop thing and then there’s the video I’ve been editing and it’s really just an open mike and do I really want to hang out with comics. BLAH FUCKING BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Bottom line, I’m pissed at myself for not working a bit harder on comedy. But, I am also totally all-forgiving of myself, because I have stepped into a whole different world and scene.

I’ve been pretty high on performing and proud of the room reaction the last few or more times out. So, yay comedy, rah rah.

On the other hand, I don’t lust, hound, pine and obsess about stage time like before. I can take it or leave it. Open mikes, feh. Among other things the endless showcasing for someone else to line their pockets has lost its allure, so I need something tangible (like maybe something folding into my wallet) to leave the house.

Or maybe it’s just the complacency of a happy little suburban existence.

Or maybe this job is different. But, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m deluding myself into relevance the same way I did with my last job and the job before that and they are all just fucking endless excuses for not writing and not pursuing (thereby guaranteeing failure) a writerly path.

Here are a few things I know — I’m a greater than passable writer compared to the mass of folks; I enjoy myself when I’m writing in a mindless seamless way when you are doing something where you feel a comfortable level of mastery; I’m beginning to feel the same way performing, I am fucking unbelievably lazy, a wicked procrastinator and lack self-discipline; I don’t want to die having never tried and, finally, I don’t really fucking know what I want (which makes it damn tough to get).

By the way, when I’m in the kind of see-saw mood of flagellation and forgiveness, I like to focus on the success of friends and imagine my life is stalled, buried in inertia and they all see me as the one left behind. More than one comedy buddy has thrown together a successful night or more of comedy in Boston or started shows, a few others were in Edinburgh, including one producing the overseas version of the Naked Comedy Show, something conceptually I had been in close to the ground floor, as it were, and another is doing well in the Bay Area. I, on the other hand, went to Target tonight.

Realistically, I haven’t sat as still as that perception would suggest (else the breeze outside my door wouldn’t palpitate San Jose August). Also, many of the friends I have made in comedy were light years ahead (or at least a few earth years) of me in the way of the comic path. (It might even be to my credit that relative veterans were friendly to my neophyte self.) So, logically, they are beginning to peak sooner. (The bitch of comedy is that, I think, more than anything else people might mention, it takes time to learn how to do it well. Just time.)

In conclusion, either I suck. Or, I don’t.

Work is curiouser and curiouser in it’s being another admin gig, like oh so many others, but at the same time, there sure is more shit I’m interested in…

Today’s adventure includes perusing the website State of the Media. Interesting stuff, that. You know, junk like how Fox is winning, news is shit and facts don’t matter. It’s a strange world.

And there is, of course, gag me for the use of the phrase, the “blogosphere.” I don’t know why but that word is always accompanied in my head with a visual of the round face and gentile, jew-fro of the brief, comedy-related boyfriend I had once. The image and the word together then give me a little shiver of recollection. Brrrr.

So, after chatting with the boss a bit, there’s a chance there might be a place for my tossing in a couple of cents worth of opinion on blogging and Internet news and all the shit on which I expend too much bandwidth (haha, get it, like bandwidth for reals, plus, like, as a metaphor).

Funny thing is too, she mentioned telling her spousal unit to send me a link to his website, because the product he’s pushing has been all bloggedity word of mouth.

If I weren’t so friggin’ paranoid and underground and hating on the man trying to keep me down with my need to earn a livving and all that, I would probably be excited. But, I am paranoid and ascared.

So, I guess, reservedly and guardedly, the Silicon Valley move ain’t a bad thing real for me.

By the way, the boy-o mentioned that he purposely chose dining at
Bennigan’s the other day in nostalgic celebration of downtown Boston,
where he and I both seperately and together had chowed down happily.

Few sandwiches beat their deep-fried Monte Cristo with a side of raspberry =
jam.

It just about made up for my unfortunate housekeeping mood of the
weekend. In preparation for a visit from a buddy in Boston I’ve been
sterilizing the homestead.

I made the unhappy choice of cleaning all bathroom floors and fixtures
while listening to the book on tape of the "People’s History of the
20th Century." Right about the time it hit the Women’s Liberation
Movement, I encountered a pretty trashed "good towel" and thought
about packing some bags and liberating myself.

Work is work is work, but I wish to hell I could relax and stop
looking over my shoulder. I feel like some kind of violent or sexual
crime victim who can never quite shake the feeling it could happen
again.

It is for that feeling that I wish I could go back to the old employer
and picket or discuss or write letters or do something non-violent,
constructive but mentally retaliatory. I figure my lawyer would punch
me, though.

The weird part is here the so-called intelligientsia (OK, I doubt they
would call themselves that) are of a different breed. Just as
credentialled and degreed, mind you, as the past "elite" (and, yes,
the dicks for whom I used to toil would likely call themselves that or
at least think it). But the cred is of a different sort, and quite a
bit more ecletic. Perhaps because those in health care are long on
attitude but not what you might call renaissance.

Now I’m working with folks from just about every other professional
discipline apart from medicine, with a couple who have in fact worked
in health for good measure. And they read and discuss wild and crazy
shit like what the fuck is going in the world.

(Here’s something unlikely to happen at the new place, where all staff
are invited to various talks, lectures, slide shows, musical concerts
and discussions: On 9/11 at my old job, one of the docs came out of
her office to tell people to get back to work, no need to obsess on a
plane crash. She hadn’t even realized that there were more than one
plane and it weren’t no accident. )

Anyway, the cool part for me, and among the things I’ll count as a
benefit, is the variety of mags and journals that pass by my desk.=20
Sadly, I can’t keep up.

But, the August 22 issue of The New Republic has been foaming at the
mouth anew over the fuckers who came up with "Intelligient Design."=20
Yeah, let’s all set our way-back machines before FACTS were gathered
and just say screw it to proof that species like, you know, evolved.

I think even William Jennings Bryan would suggest that the brain trust
behind "ID" were misconstruing reality (and likely being manipulative
assholes in the name of divinity).

So, today’s cosmic giggle, workplace version. The place I work and
specific the group within which I work is pretty hip to the media.
You know like news stories and all that shit.

Big news consumers and all that. Plus they pay for some of the stuff
out there on the airwaves.

So I alluded to them strategizing some media stuff. And, I might have
mentioned that I’m thinking about shit I ain’t thunk about since I got
a degree in Public Communications, specifically journalism of all
things. In a misguided belief in what little gray matter I might
possess, I’m actually writing and editing some of this stuff.

OK. Not a bad day’s work for someone who ocassionally attempts to pay
attention to current events. I’m talking about this stuff with the
boss, specifically about a couple of possibly about to be born
websites and, you know, the Internet. And, then, she uses a word I
might have heard a couple times, “blog.”

Yeah, we probably should address something about blogging and all that
in the strategy stuff and figure out how that fits in….

The open-ended reference/question in the air to me the office
newcomer, do I know anything about that kind of thing.

Yeah, I’ve heard of ‘blogs. But, with me blocking the IP address here
and all, and staying underground on the subject, yeah, like, um, yeah,
maybe we just shouldn’t talk about how much.

Funny. (And, to think my last job couldn’t even grasp that there was
such a movement in existence at all in the universe. “There’re people
writing diaries on the web?”)

You know that hippie kind of sentiment that talks about “you have to be taught” to hate and junk. (OK, not really hippie, unless James Michener was a hippie back before they were invented during World War II. South Pacificand all that.)

Point being, racism isn’t born it’s made through lots of hard work.

You kind of forget about pervasive ignorance when you step away and plop into a new world, until you catch yourself hesitating. Probably, someone who knows my roots might think I’m referring to some kind of old school Boston, Louisa Day Hicks action, and a culture clash between my upbringing and Cali style.

But, no. Today I was thinking back on my former employ and some of the rhetoric tossed around the ivy walls and ivory towers amongst the best and the brightest.

I worked with one Indian woman, who is I believe from a somewhat financially comfortable family, and who had multiple degrees and specialities of a medical nature. Perfectly OK to work with, as far as working for medical professionals go, but fairly demanding in a very polite, but sure that she was going to get her way kind of confident manner, with a dollop of not suffering fools gladly. I think we were fine, and she even wangled my involvement into a couple of things I wouldn’t normally touch. (There were a few doctors with that kind of confidence and sureness.)

Another member of the elite, referred to her as “imperius” in a joking, ain’t she like royalty kind of way. The joke basically was extended to explain the Indian upper and middle classes and basically that ALL woman scholars who ended up here from there were of the same ilk. Well off, proud and unwilling to suffer, because they had silver spoons and servants before hitting the U.S.

Perhaps there is, or more likely was, some truth in that in the days before outsourcing and India’s push for education. Afterall, isn’t the basic rationale for a lot of covert racism that grain of truth that makes the rest plausible? And, when I once cooked at my university’s international living center almost every foreign student had wealth well beyond my imaginings (which is, of course, why I was their cook.)

Anyway, now I am working with Indian women of about the same age as the woman I was told was the same as all other women scholars from India here in the U.S. Only they are not just different from that model, they are different from each other, and neither is particularly convincing as an imperius diva.

Prior to working and living in Silicon Valley, my contact with Indians was essentially the army of mostly male research assistants and postdocs who come over and keep many labs running all over the country, along with counterparts from the People’s Republic, and then go back home with their western training to run labs and pharmaceutical factories in Asia. Generally, I didn’t have any contact with the mainstream, US middle-class everyday folks here. (I finally admitted to my boss the other day that when I saw her name I was shocked to find out in my interview that she had a completely American accent. Apparently, her brother has a Southern drawl.)

So, I’s all getting enlightened and shit and I’m thinking the ivory towers I left were more shit-stained than I thought.