Sometimes work is just so stultifyingly work, I can’t stand it.

Part of this week has been spent on a fun carousel of deflection. One of the folks here essentially hates me. That’s probably an irrational overstatement, but it bears inherent truth. So, you make somebody cry during some important meeting once and suddenly you’re a wildcard. Yeah, whatever, she was just looking for an excuse to cry.

Seriously, though, this one chick of academia goes to absurd lengths to absolve another administrator, and invariably the excess plate of blame ends up sliding down my shirt and into my lap. One of these days instead of a reasoned and well thought out email response, I’m just going to write:

OK, let me just get this straight. I was over here minding my own business, while you forgot to tell your employee something important about her salary, like your inability to pay it. Now, since I was not prescient enough to create a policy and stack of forms in the event that you would decide to do Pontius Pilate proud and shirk all responsibility, I’m the douchebag. Oh, OK, now that we have that straight here’s what I’m going to do for you to fix it…

I guess it’s not so much that I have to go around fixing broken shit, because frankly that’s part of the gig. It’s the fun, fun, fun to be had when first I have to suffer through another session of “MY GOD, HOW COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN?” while the crowd is chanting “Crucify her! Crucify her!”

Oh, sorry, got a little messianic complex thing going on right there. The actual point is more Ramonesian:

From “Halfway to Sanity”

I’m Not Jesus
Don’t wear a crown of thorns
Got no holes in my head
Don’t accuse me of that crime
Don’t hang me up to dry

It’s not me
It’s not me
It’s not me

Don’t wanna die for your sins
Got no special powers
Sacrifice and sacrilege
Hey man, I wanna live

I’m not Jesus I can’t heal you

Taste my blood
It doesn’t taste like wine
Can’t you see
This cross isn’t mine
Judas must die
For what he has done
Satan’s watching
With his gun

It’s not me
It’s not me
It’s not me

Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Say your prayers-it’s your only hope
Twelve apostles can’t help you now
I’ll be back to stake my ground

Don’t wear a crown of thorns
Got no holes in my head
Don’t accuse me of that crime
Don’t hang me up to dry

I’m on a bit of a work stoppage at the moment. (It’s not much of a protest, since it will only last as long as writing this entry.) It’s my response to the powers above who request information immediately about something they could have mentioned weeks ago. And so goes my impotent little fist shake.

I now have two hits from people searching for IHoP’s “never-ending pancakes.” Ahh, the exalted glory of pancakes to infinity. Although, now that I have my own waffle iron, it is as though I can sip the gods’ sweet nectar unrestrained and uninhibited. It is the golden brown taste of freedom. (My apologies to anyone doing serious research on the pancakes, who reaches this site in error.)

Other than that, I’m happy to have M. around again. I’ve decided to stop wondering at the concept in which we enjoy time together and just enjoy the ride. (Well, up until I think of another neurotic reason to deny fun.)

The best use of web technology, may be right here. Northeastern is asking you, the web-surfer, to help identify the pricks run amok on Superbowl Sunday. It’s like a little Boston-tinged episode of “Cops.” Very quaint.

Working for a living sucks. Dumb people suck. Working with dumb people sucks exponentially. That’s the kind of day I had at work.

On the comedy front, I’m performing in my hometown tonight, down along the “South Shore” hard by the South Shore Plaza shopping mall, where I actually grew up. Generally, that is a situation that blackens my mood one step above actual wrist slitting. If I’m lucky, as I drive down there, martians will invade the world and blow us all to smithereens.

The first time I performed near my ancestral home, I lost my nerve and told the audience something a long the lines, of “Oh Yeah, I forgot you’re all Catholics, that’s why I left,” in reference to their lack of response to my sparkling wit. Turns out, if you ever find yourself publicly speaking, audiences don’t respond positively to open contempt. Who knew?

I better get the fuck out of my office, and get the show on the road, if you dig the cliche I’m laying down…

Recently, I told someone over here to not mind my blog. It’s just what I do to let of steam and not violently attack people.

Case in point, I want to throttle someone at work who is part Machiavellian, part incompetent and part perfectly adequate middle manager. I just found out about something, and I cannot possibly discern which hat he is currently wearing. Nor can I do anything, since it is something I stumbled on and is clearly not for my consumption.

My central frustration is despite the $15,000-20,000 gap in our salaries, I handle many of the responsibilities that in other groups would fall on his shoulders alone. On top of that, several people approached me in surprise over his last promotion, as they had anticipated that I would either be rising to a new rank at the same time, or even possibly above him. Apparently, outside of the little universe of our research group, people perceive me as doing things better. Huh, who would have thunk such a thing? It’s just a coincidence I am smarter, more imaginative, better spoken and written and more trustworthy.

I received a standard, non-exceptional four percent increase at my annual review instead.

He has explained to me that I must be patient, because they are changing my job and by 2005 at the latest (golly gee, thanks for rushing), I will be very happy with my situation.

So, Fuck YOU to the person I cannot stab in the old office cesspool.

Turns out the rich do get richer.

So, I’m sitting in my office, and I should be working. Instead I’m on the Internet. I don’t know what I would do if I still had the kind of job that monitors everything I do.

Meanwhile, I’m slightly afraid that I might die here in my office in a most humiliating fashion. For reasons that are partially to do with traveling and poop (see “Uncharacteristically base”) and partially to do with hypochondria, I decided to take a dietary supplement including fiber. Most fiber supplements come with the warning

Warning: Take this product with at least 8 ounces of fluid. Taking this product without adequate fluid may cause choking.

How must this look, choking on fiber? In my head, it involves massive swelling like one of those foam rubber in a pill toys, but worse.

All of this makes me wonder about Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which I am suspect could be a pharmacy-industry invented “disease.” Actually one of the doctors I work with told me when she was a resident, it was the diagnosis given to folks (mostly women)who complained a lot about their digestive system but didn’t have anything wrong with them. They would come back unsatisfied when they were told there was nothing wrong, so IBS sounded real and stopped their whining. I’m not sure, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that chicks aren’t allowed to fart. Granted the doctor who told me this fun fact is a total cynic (who thankfully is a research doctor who doesn’t see actual patients any more).

There’s a new commercial for some pharmaceutical that shows various women and their presumably bloated, distended bellies that really makes IBS seem invented. A friend of mine, whilst we were comparing the bowel habits of men we know (which is a long and stupid story in and of itself), basically sums it up that men need their special bathroom time everyday or think they are dying, while women cycle through constipation and whatnot and think it’s no big deal.

Yes, I am stuck in a Freudian psychosocial stage that puts me mentally around three years old.

In regard to the post below, and the resulting comment, I searched around the web for
Kanduna and figure I won’t be moving there any time soon. Like Nigeria doesn’t suck enough, this little ancient corner features a plethora of both Christian and Muslim fundamental nut jobs.

I also searched some of the text to see if it’s a known Internet scam. I didn’t find anything, but I came across Boys under Attack, a Christian website helping boys to cope with the scourge of puberty. I actually landed on the page under Sex Addiction after searching the phrase “After my prayers, I searched the Christian sites in the internet.” Go figure. I feel a little bad for the kid who has never developed normal relationships with girls, because he was feverishly rubbing one to three or four out every day, but with Christianity he is learning to talk with girls now. With the help of God, maybe someday he will SCORE.

So, earlier today I made a quick reference to King Lear on the Studio Kvetchboard. I was being glib and made a reference about Lear ripping out his eyeballs that was an incorrect reference. I know that I was wrong, partially because it was a glib reference in passing, so I didn’t give a shit enough to fanatically check detail (which I often do), and because this boy comic pointed it out. I will vent enough to say what I don’t enjoy about his conversational skills, arguments or comedy is his habit of deconstructing everything to a literal state. He appears to believe that this method shows his cleverness and intelligience. I find it mind-numbingly boring. Most of his jokes I have to think of other things entirely, like laundry or root canal surgery, to prevent myself from screaming, “Listen you precocious fuckhead, it’s a metaphor. An image. Get it? It’s not real, it’s a picture. Sit down.”

OK, now that I have that out of my system, what I really wanted to post there, since I know there are many actors and theater majors who read the board (but stopped posting in the whirlwind of morons, see below.)

Anyone out there know of a modern play with a name like “Lear!”?

When I was in London in the 80s, I saw a production at the Pit in the Barbican Theater that had a name like that. What I remember dimly, but would like to get confirmation on is this machine that was wheeled up on stage. The actor put his face up to it, and it appeared realistically like his eyeballs had been excised from his skull. There was plenty of fake blood and white balls dropping wetly into special receptacles in the machine. It’s one of those memories that almost lacks content, so if there were a play I could read, or information on a weird pop interpretation, I would use it to color in the dim details.

Every year I forget more and more about stuff I once saw or read. I suppose it gets supplanted by new stuff, but still and all it’s tough to swallow.

I should be working, but my mind isn’t on what I need to do.

Maybe as the day is drawing nearer, I have more emotion about M.’s leaving. I know rationally it’s not the end, but even if it’s not “the end” it’s an end. And, of course, life being as it is, it’s not the swelling music of a Hollywood ending with a setting sun and silhouetted embrace. It’s anxiety and stress and little details and miscues and misunderstandings, as with most moves and changes. I would much prefer the silhouetted embrace, or at least some hard-core cuddling.

Knowing that the future will be better and will be fine and hearing the reassuring use of the future tense and using it yourself, doesn’t quite solve the irrational sensitivity and fears, I guess.

Jesus, why am I so maudlin? I think I should focus on writing totally hack references to living with a guy v. living alone. What about the toilet seat being up, huh, ladies? Am I right? And, what’s with men and the remote control? It’s like it’s surgically attached or something.