Even though, “I have a bad feeling about this,” Revenge of the Sith wasn’t half bad. It reminded me a bit of seeing the first one (which is now considered the 4th one, I guess, stupid episodes). When I heard that quoted line above near the beginning, I figured it was alright.

Though Mark Hamill was never what you’d call a powerful actor, you at least didn’t want to punch him in the face every scene. Not so Hayden Christensen. Punched, repeatedly, and not allowed to act ever again. Not to mention the pussified path to the darkside, which involved a lot of crying. Obiwan didn’t cry, Padme didn’t cry, Leia didn’t cry, but the future Darth Vader? Boooo whooo whooo whooo.

Unrelatedly, one of the things that had me thinking about stopping comedy was stumbling into a bookstore in Menlo Park with M. Thursday night and hearing a good chunk of a lecture/reading by Chuck Palahniuk. He was funny, interesting, engaging and the audience was rapt with his storytelling. I found it much more interesting than some assclown jumping around on stage at a comedy club making funny, funny, dancing monkey efforts to entertain.

Finally, thanks to M.’s Fortune subscription, I have a new hero.

Man, I can’t even slack off right.

Spent the weekend doing some fun stuff with M., like going to the Berkeley Flea Market, and trying so very, very hard not to obsess on the job offer that still may or may not materialize.

Instead of my usual fear and loathing on the HR trail, I’ll strive tomorrow to send the HR chick good vibes of positive energy. Then, maybe she’ll call the people I gave as references during EAST COAST business hours, instead of when she apparently has been. (I’ll try anyway to be positive with the old vibe-sending chi, but the years of HR contempt may block the feel good vibrations.)

(As of late Friday, the recruiter was pushing for an offer contingent on acceptable references, since she had trouble reaching them. One reference emailed no message yet from her, and another that she called around 5:30-6 p.m. EST. Worry, worry, worry.)

Meanwhile, it fucking dawned on me, that I may be getting a half-way decent job very much in spite of my best intentions. I had to think about this little bit of reality and find some humor. The humor to me is I want to be a slacker; I want nothing better than to have some shitty, poor paying gig, that leaves me plenty of free brain time to do some of my own stuff.

But I couldn’t get that kind of job. The mall wouldn’t have me. I tried. Various promo jobs, like giving out water samples, they didn’t want me either. Telemarketing down the street from the mall to which I can easily bike returned silence. Part-time office work? I tried. Seriously, no one would have the faith that I truly and in all sincerity am A-OK with being downwardly mobile from my resume. I sent out a pretty honkingly large pile of emails for part-time and lower paying jobs. A lot, actually.

But, this possible position at a major reputable place could end up being mine, just because a somewhat shitty, part-time job was listed by a recruiter advertising on Craig’s List, and to that shitty, part-time job I applied. The recruiter didn’t even consider me for that job.

While all the job worries are going on, I’ve also been taking a hard, rock hard look at comedy and whether I want to continue pursuing it. Some of the crap I have participated in and my own ambivalent performing has made that look necessary. Ultimately, sitting in some shitty bar waiting for a few minutes of me time to jump on stage ain’t really me.

So, as I think about only doing select shows, avoiding crappy half-assed bad comedy fiascos and creating a marketing kit to be able to sell myself to the shows I choose, I come home to an email for a Saturday night spot at a place to which I’ve been and been impressed.

The joke is, I am inert, virtually embodying a body at rest, slacking extraordinaire. And yet with inaction, I might get a job and a good comedy show.

Jesus, with the sunlight and the fortune, I might not see New England again. No wonder Marcia Brady was so goddamn perky.

Alrighty then, this should be the last test of my email posting capabilities. I think I have the script settings, cron job and accounts all sorted out. Yay, me!

The desire to make this all work is kind of fucktarded in the grand scheme or fabulously astute.

I figure that this time around, ain’t no one gonna fuck me up work wise by checking me on the web. So, I’ve blocked the IP of the potential workplace. Then, I’ll forward all of my email to a gmail account, so that I am not tempted to do any pop-mailing directly from my website to their network (leaving behind a little dee-rob.com trail).

Finally, I’ll weblog (if I must) during the day from a gmail account and/or my cell phone. That way, all they know is that I checked a gmail account, which seems pretty normal these days.

It’s all a bit crazy, and I can’t assume that that particular ball of lightning will strike twice. (Not to mention my disinclination to make any violent-seeming, work-related jests. Although, I still stand by my various descriptions of meetings in which beating yourself to death was preferable to the meeting continuing.)

All of this is also assuming that I get the job. (But, the recruiter keeps assuring me that all they want is to talk to someone under whom I reported. As agonized over in previous posts, easier said then done given the circumstances, including time passed, and policy restraints.

I did find another friendly doc who is out on maternity leave (thus far from bureaucratic big brother (is that redundant?)).

Dork that I am I will also be able to post using my Palm pilot.

Also, dork that I am, I will be seeing the Star Wars flick tonight. At least I can say I am not geek enough to have been in line yesterday. And, assuredly, I will not be wearing any masks, carrying any sorts or otherwise cloaking myself Jedi-fashion. Dignity, that’s what I’m fucking about.

Although, at Costco the other day, buying my boyo a rotisserie chicken, I did see a Darth Vader voice changer and light saber, which I wanted to purchase for said boyo but didn’t. I figure if he’s geek enough to buy these tickets in advance, enlist not one but two programming buddies (who truly are nerds nonpareil), he should look the part. But, frugality and the certainty he would refuse to play dress up won.

Speaking of Costco, somewhere or another I saw this guy dissing the Costco experience and meant to post a counterpoint or write something here, but I never got around to it. Here’s the abbreviated version.

The single best part of going to Costco (or I suppose any big warehouse purchasing club) is people watching. Sure it’s twistedly voyeuristic, but fun for the whole family (or at least for me). I love, love, love looking in other baskets and trying hard to imagine what the plan is.

So far, my two favorite sightings were an old, Indian woman with three giant, gallon bottles of catsup and a cart full of Bounty paper towels. (I like to imagine she was making a home video of a slasher film, like kids did in high school with catsup as blood (only then it wasn’t video, because I’m old and only film existed).)

The other one from this week is the guy with a case of vodka (six, large, maybe 2-liter bottles) and a package of six pairs men’s dress socks. Party, Party, Party.

Also, if you are living with a guy who’s essentially addicted to meat, you really need to shop there or go broke trying to keep him fed. And for the liberal-types who give a shit, I think Costco has a relatively good track record on not offering bargains on the backs of the working poor throughout the world.

I seemed to have fixed my email function, so here’s a bunch of stuff that had been on my phone.

(1) Might be David Walsh (2) Yeah, right New England (3,4) Cambridge parking sticker I don’t need anymore (5,6) Third rail? (7,8) Mmm. Steak & wine at Tad’s Steakhouse ($11 steak dinner in the Tenderloin) (9,10) The last two are very important! Why Cali is different and possibly better than Mass — Roving beer carts at the flea market. All such activities are improved by roving beer carts.

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.)