Celebrities?

This is seriously the saddest list of "celebrity" citings I have ever seen. Who the fuck is Jeff Gannon?

Totally NOT in My Job Description

So my coworker has colon cancer and he called to ask me if his doctor had by any chance FAXed the results of his latest colonscopy to the office, and if so, could I kindly read it to him over the phone?

Me: Really? Um...is it okay, if I like, I skim it and give you an overview?

I now know way more about my coworker's ass than I care to. And it sucks all around, because he's such a cool guy. I truly hope he gets better.


Why is today so surreal?

Another Community Outreach Pro Out of Work

You'd think somebody might have looked into the city's graffiti laws before doing this. Reason #801 why "communications work" is not rocket science.

I just had to edit this post because I spelled "communications" incorrectly, which is kinda funny, i think.

How Many Posts

Can I create in one day? 20? 30? 10? 5? Luckily, and "Good Doctor" will back me up on this, I only have 2 RSS feed readers, so it's not like anyone will be overwhelmed with reading material or anything. Stay tuned for more as my evil plan continues to unfold.

You Could Use the Interview Template Or...

...you could just make shit up as you go along. seriously, why did i never think of being a "reporter"? This is great--shooting the shit with new people, them thinking you have power because you tape record stuff. Being nosey for an f'en living? what what? Writing 24-7? It's like blogging, only credible and stuff.

Where the Fuck Are All My Coworkers?

Seriously, did I blank on an "optional Friday" memo?

Poll Time...

What is the most hung-over you have ever been at work?

(because it's friday so what the hell?) (i'll tell you mine if you tell me yours)...

The Last Time...

...I heard you say something endearingly idiotic in an attempt to be funny I rewarded you with a sloppy kiss on the lips. We were in the elevator in your apartment and we were heading to your car so you could drive me home.

Deleted to protect the innocent. Oh well, it was funny for a short while.

Unpopular Opinions

Just for kicks, I am going to start listing some beliefs that I hold that others might disagree with. I will edit this list throughout the day. Hopefully that won't mess up any RSS feeds or whatever.

Unpopular Opinion #1: I like popped collars, in certain contexts. Sorry if that makes me uncool, but I like them as a sly wink towards the spiffier elements of classical preppy style, like madras and tretorn sneakers.

Unpopular Opinion #2: I also like men in loafers, sans socks. Perhaps this should be messed with the first UO. Regardless, the look of bare ankles and loafers or dock siders drives me wild. I cannot help it. My mother is a Connecticut WASP and despite having been raised to become a bonifide granola girl, certain penchants are in the blood. Nature vs Nurture indeed.

Unpopular Opinion #3: The rise of blog culture has done something bad to mainstream English. It has infused it with a tone of sarcasm and snark that didn't seem quite so pervasive several years ago. It's getting old. When did we forget how to communicate our displeasure sans sarcasm? Has snark replaced irony? Methinks that it has. I know I'm part of the problem. Note to self: try to pare down the snark. Find an original voice.

Unpopular Opinion #4: Shit, I forget what I was going to say. Okay, More later. (several minutes later) I just rememered. This email made me cackle when I opened it--"Take Back America is the largest gathering of progressive activists, thinkers and leaders every year. And 2006 promises to be the year we actually begin to take back our country." What is funny about this is that the conference has always been called Take Back America, so presumably, that's what we've been doing all these years. But apparently not. THIS year we will take back America. In other words, forget all the effort you expended last year in taking it back. This times its for keeps, baby.

Oh, That's the Problem, Is It?

No offense to the 23 year-olds I know but, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? How can people just barely out of college, most likely still growing their land legs in regards to assimilating into the workplace be at all qualified to write a management guide for women? I think of my own professional self at that age, shortly before I learned that I wasn't always right and that my simple English BA entitled me to very little at work, that I might have to prove myself in order to gain the respect of my managers. Even six years later I like to believe myself a little wiser, but nowhere near qualified to tell my manager how to do her job. Kids these days. What is it about Gen Y that makes them so damned insightful and better than the rest of us?

While I'm at it, doesn't this further reek of the disturbing current wave of anti-feminist back-stabbing among girls in popular culture these days? The one exemplified by tee shirts like this and this incredibly lame song?

Hope for Choice in SD

Apologies for the lack of entries this week. I've been battling a case of consumption and have been too high on cough syrup to feel particularly creative. Today's entry comes from the Women's Information Network's list-serve and represents a new glimmer of hope for women in South Dakota who may ever need an abortion, soon to be almost impossible thanks to the state's legislators. It's also a rather clever means of circumventing state laws. As shitty as our treatment of Native American tribes as been over the past couple hundred years, the presence of reservations does create some interesting inroads for political resistance.

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe—Cecilia Fire Thunder, the first woman President they’ve ever had—has decided to build a PP clinic on her land, over which the state of South Dakota has no jurisdiction.

Information about supporting the clinic (and/or the tribe) is posted below. Please donate if you can, send a letter of support if you can’t, and either way, FOWARD VERY WIDELY.


If you want to mail donations to the reservation, you may do so at:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Make checks out to OST Planned Parenthood Cecelia Fire Thunder. This will ensure that the funds get routed properly.

Chicken Nugget Inventor Dies

This just came out on a PR list serve I belong to:

Robert C. Baker, Inventor of the Chicken Nugget, Dies
The man responsible for the popularity of chicken nuggets has died. He was
Robert C. Baker, a longtime professor of poultry science and food
science at Cornell University. In addition to developing chicken
nuggets, he also is responsible for ground poultry, turkey ham,
poultry hot dogs and many other poultry innovations.

Is it just me, or is the term "poultry innovations" a little disturbing?

Holidays Galore!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! Do you know what today is? It is a glorious one for several reasons. Today there is a holiday for just about anyone, great news for those of you bummed to see the 80 degree weather of the past few days go bye-bye. Holiday 1: National Potato Chip Day Holiday 2: REDACTED 

Holiday 3: Purim (In making an analogy to modern politics I compared Haman to Karl Rove. My co-worker's response was thus: "Does that make Sen. Russ Feingold the Mordecai of the story, and maybe John McCain is Esther? Fight the power Mordecai!") No matter how you look at it, Purim rules. Especially the edict that a person is required to drink until he cannot tell the difference between "cursed be Haman" and "blessed be Mordecai." See? Something for everyone! How will *you* celebrate?

An Open Letter to Tab Energy Drink

Darling, Where do I start? This has been a gradual seduction, this situation between you and I. I have had plenty of crushes in the past, even those on inanimate objects introduced to me by vehicles of mass communication. This thing with you began when, entrenched deep in my boob tube coma, a series of flickering images danced before my eyes--women in fabulous mini-dresses, boobs up to *here*, glossy pink lips, glossy pinkness everywhere in fact, slogans of independence, irreverence, kookiness, daring me to become who I am, especially as long as that "amness" purchases $2.10 cans of icky sweet carbonated "energy drink" goodness. Well, I finally caved. I found you today at the 7-11 near work. What I really wanted was a Diet Coke, my beverage of choice since the 8th grade, my wife in the world of thirst quenchers, the elixir I have depended on since forever to give me that much needed caffeine and carbonation boost while tricking my stomach into thinking it is full. Leaving the store, popping my iPod ear buds into place and pressing play (the song: the Cure's Just Like Heaven. An omen? Alas, not) I plucked a Parliament Light from its pack and cracked you open, eager to experience whatever was contained inside your fetching pink and silver container. Actually, lets pause for a moment to discuss your outfit. Given the fact that you market yourself as an "energy drink" your countenance is tall and slender, like Red Bull which seems to have set the sartorial standard for what beverages of your kind should wear, just like Britney Spears once established that pop stars need to wear hip slung denims and belly shirts. Like the vintage Tab cans of yesteryear, you are bright pink. In a playful nod towards being the next evolution of tab, you wear a sort of silver grid pattern. Written in the same font as traditional Tab, is your logo (Tab), that probably once looked futuristic but now seems exceedingly retro. You remind me of the latest incarnation of Madonna. Like her, you've adopted a late-70's early 80's aesthetic, moderately updated for the new millennium, and like Madonna this is a nod to the era in which you first sprung forth into our collective consciousness. Also like Madonna, I wholly preferred you the first time around.

Exhaling a drag of my Parliament I took a tentative swig. You are lightly carbonated. I swallowed and paused for a moment, considering your many layers of flavor, how you exploded on many different places on my tongue before leaving me with a highly acidic aftertaste. What is that main note? Bubble gum? You taste like Bazooka chewing gum with tons of lemon juice poured over it. Give it another chance I told myself. Not being able to decide if the flavor of Bazooka + lemon juice is a good thing or not, I quickly drank all of you down. It wasn't long before the pounding in my ears began, soon followed by a piercing pain directly above my right temple. Congratulations, Tab Energy drink. You have drained me of every good thought I have, my mind now spinning in ridiculous directions, consumed with the notion of you and only you as I furiously bang this letter to you out on my keyboard. Spell check? I don't think I have the attention span for it. Proof-reading? Ha, as if. Conducting that builder interview I promised myself I would do before calling it a week? Can you spell n-o w-a-y? You have ensnared me in your clutches. I will do all that I can to wrangle myself free. This fling was a short lived one but I am determined to escape in one piece. Needless to say, I am not at all hung up on you.

Ephemera

I realized I haven't posted anything of substance since my bummed out entry of last week. Since then I have started entries about such subjects as the advent or spring (more chirping birds=spring, I don't care what the naysayers thinks--chirping birdies do not lie); the "JT Leroy" literary hoax; my Saturday night (hot outfit + trying to find boys for my friends to hook up with + drunk Cap Lounge bartender losing my check card + nightmarish run-in with insane cab driver= impromptu visit to jail at 4:00 am and a scolding from the Capitol Police. I shit you not); and my thoughts on inter-office hookups, but I can't seem to flesh any of these out into anything worth reading. Plus, lately I've been feeling slightly more proprietary over my personal life. But because I feel like posting something today, I am going to make a list.

Random Occurrences, Themes, Stuff I like, Stuff I Don't For the Week of March 9, 2006


-I love it when people who are normally mild-mannered in temperament use sarcasm as a mode of personal expression. Nothing to me is sexier or wittier than when non-sarcastic people bust out with scortchingly sarcastic gems, especially when employed in order to stand up for me, while mildly joshing others. I think its that unexpected contrast in demeanor. Wit is good. Spontaneity is good. Combined, they're money.

-Good lord, their is an incredibly hot boy who hangs out in the basement level of the Pour House, like, all the time. He reminds me of the bartender from the show Wonderfalls, only more unkempt.

-Speaking of boys, a certain one who I have harbored an afar crush on for a very sad amount of time sent me a message through Friendster. How very 2003 of him. But because he's a DJ and has tattoos I will let it slide and write back to him.

-Work has returned to being intellectually unstimulating. And my coworkers have turned condescending and micromanegerial. Perhaps they sense my boredom and feel it necessary to "inspire" me to action by reminding me of the same deliverable once every 2 minutes. Regardless, it's annoying and makes me wish I didn't have an office job, something I wish several times a week anyway, regardless of how well my job here is going. Grad school, I hear thee beckoning...

-I'm finding it unnerving to work in a place with bureaucracy, but also where it is implied that there are hidden systems monitoring your activities but that management claims aren't there. For instance, management is all "of course we don't read your emails" while people who have worked here for years are like "dude, they totally read your email." Makes me wonder what else they monitor. Also makes me wonder what lies behind my boss's cheerleaderesque Type-A personality.

(Paranoid? Moi?)

-Not have a check card is not fun. So far this week I have spent a total of 8 dollars (mostly in quarters). Thank goodness for three things in this situation. 1.) The organic produce service I signed up for that delivered a 12 pound box of fruit and veggies to my door step last week; 2.) The box of pasta I had in my cabinet awaiting some sort of food emergency; 3.) My Smartrip card. One can survive for days on produce and pasta, and my Smartrip card had 60 dollars on it on Monday, and is taking care of all my transportation needs. I will also give an honorable mention to Jeff, my favorite Pour House waiter, who bought me two shots of JD on Tuesday, after a rather frustrating and long day at work. Hopefully my new card will come soon and I can return to my previous life of irresponsible spending.

-Cycling classes at Results the Gym. Wow. I used to go religiously then got sidetracked. I think because I got a social life and didn't know how to balance drinking with working out. This resulted in me gaining a bit of weight and realizing a while back, wow, my ass is getting really fat. Luckily, I realized this in February, not April, so there's plenty of time to get into "bikini shape" as the women's magazines would say. Not that I aspire to "bikini shape", I know I'd never keep it up. Short skirt and tank top shape is sufficient, thanks. Anyway, my approach to shedding the flab is to cut down on alcohol and up the intensity of my workouts. Thus, I have gone to cycling/spinning twice this week. I can't describe the surge in energy this has produced. It's like living inside somebody else's body. Hopefully some day soon it will be somebody else's body that looks slamming in a pair of designer jeans.

-Project Runway. I feel really let down. Chloe seems like a nice woman and all, but I just don't see what's so wonderful about her designs. They just look rather boring to me. And please, her runway collection? What was up with that green flowered material and the poofy stuff? Still, if the universe owes Chloe some good fortune after spending the better part of her childhood in an internment camp, well, I suppose the PR title is something. Still, I was secretly hoping Santino would pull off the win.

...and Washington, DC Breathed A Collective Sigh of Relief

CNN.com is reporting that the long-running dispute over Blackberrys has been resolved.

The Quote of the Day...

Goes to one Jessica Culter who writes "Lent is a breeze on coke!"

Indeed.