The Resignation Letters I Wish I Could Send

Dear Immediate Boss,

I know you're going to miss me, my knowledge, and the opportunity to take credit for my ideas. However, because you're an ass-kissing yes man, I feel confident that you have a future of middling achievement ahead of you here at Corporate Happy Fun Job.

While I do regret that I will not be present to witness your future grammatical flights of fancy, I can only trust that your tangential understanding of the English language will continue to serve you and your unending pursuit of mediocrity.

I cannot thank you enough for all the important things you've taught me, including exactly how much alcohol a 32-year-old woman can reasonably expect to consume and still make it into work the next day. In return, please do contact me here if you should need assistance in my absence.

Sincerely,
etc.

Dear Swaggering Dildo,

I really do not know how to thank you for the opportunity to labor in in the unventilated mine shaft of your team for the past . . .god, it's so hard to tell time in this place without light. . . let's just call it a year.

Your inability, nay, unwillingness to listen to anything but the throbbing of your own engorged-yet-tiny penis has been an important lesson to me. To wit, that knowledge is secondary to swagger, and that knowledge is secondary to swagger.

When in my new role I am compelled to make a decision I will follow your fine example and simply masturbate--because input from knowledgeable actors invested in the process is for communists and losers.

In short, fuck you. I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.

Yours,
etc.

Dear Co-Workers,

God help you. You're all so fucking stupid that I can't imagine how you don't just die because you forget to breathe.

Please note: before my final departure, all inquiries will be filtered through the ticking clock of my remaining days and answered accordingly. Following my departure, please seek your answers here, or when in doubt, here.

Word to your mother,
etc.

Dear Corporate Happy Fun Job,

Behold, my sublime left tit.

I'm out. Peace.

Getting Here From There

A few weeks ago for shits and giggles, I decided to add a Stat Counter to this blog. I have it invisible because 1. I don't really care for them much on pages, and 2. I have some dignity and don't need anyone to see how paltry the visit count is, and 3. I don't want any of my two or three regular readers to realize how un-fucking cool I really am and be scared back into the ether.

I get a few hits from places I recognize as belonging to people I know. I also get a lot of shit from, like, India--I suppose most of those kind souls are concerned about the size of my penis and would like to help me enlarge it.

My favorite, though, are the random search strings. A couple folks arrived here after searching for "Bommarito Nissan." Hi guys! If you found this after googling Bommarito Nissan, all I can say is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF. Life is too short, and frankly, you'd be better off walking--which now that I think about it is what you're likely in for if you go to them for service. Just saying.

The other common theme I'm finding is people who are searching for answers to various grammatical questions. God help them if they find it here. While I can as needed deploy a heaping helping of Queen's English in the service of good, here I mostly don't concern myself with many of the niceties of grammar. Whatever poor bastard takes his or her writing tips from this blog is in a world of fucking hurt. Vulgar, nasty, ill-willed fucking hurt to be exact.

Spin FAIL

I have apparently gone retarded because it just took me 8 or 9 tries to log into Blogger. Frankly, going retarded will probably make much of my life easier--work especially.

Seriously, though, I'm guessing it's because everyone in the whole damn world is online talking smack about Sarah Palin. And why wouldn't they?

I have not watched the entire Katie Couric interview. I quite probably won't. You know? Because if you're going to be that fucking stupid at me, you're going to have to cut me a check. I don't suffer that amount of foolishness for free. I did catch the minute or so where she talked about how because she's governor of Alaska, and because Alaska shares a "maritime border" (that's the Bering Strait, to you and I) and land border with Canada, that she has foreign policy experience. By that logic, the meth lab up the block makes me a motherfucking chemical engineer.

She sounded so ridiculous I would have felt sorry for her except for, you know, bitch should fight her weight. For example, if I knew I was going to be campaigning for THE VICE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES, I would at least pull an all-nighter and come up with a better line of crap. I mean, shit, I can't respect someone too stupid use spin effectively.

Part of being a leader is the ability to shine a turd. Epic fucking fail.

So, Palin made me sad.

This makes me happy, though. Deep, happy, belly laughs.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Okay.

I'm not too familiar with the bible, or too down with religion generally, but I gotta wonder . . .

Do you really think it's . . . appropriate . . . to liken Jesus to a toilet lid?

It's amazing what's on tv at 2 a.m. when you don't have cable . . .

seven/24

So, this past weekend I did seven/24 VI, the 24 hour theater circus that The Tin Ceiling puts on every year. At 8 p.m. on Friday, 14 writers arrived at the Strasser’s gigantic and beautiful house. There, we were paired off to write 10-minute plays. At the same time, seven directors were auditioning actors over at the Theater at St. John’s. About 8 o’clock the next morning, the directors were presented with our scripts and began to cast and call actors.

Sounds simple, non?

Yeah, right. Nothing like 14 insecure lunatics let loose in pairs to try to assemble some vaguely entertaining narrative fueled only by exhaustion, booze, caffeine, and French onion dip. Further, the writers are constructing plays with absolutely no idea who might be available to act in them; while back at the ranch the directors are evaluating actors with no clue as to what they might need for their play. Figure in the vagaries of potential writer’s block and the ever-present possibility that a writing team might devolve into a sullen standoff, and the project begins with all the needed ingredients for disaster. And this is even before the actors try to memorize 10 minutes of dialogue and blocking over the course of a long day in a largely un-air-conditioned building.

Good times, my friend, good times.

Despite all that, seven/24 is an amazing experience. I understand that over the years there have been some disasters—bad plays or bad actors or writer shortages—but generally when all is said and done some amazing things happen. While I do not know that I would count my seven/24 work this year as an unqualified success, I think it went well overall.

This was the second year I wrote for show. My writing partner was the Boy, which absolutely floored the both of us since it is most unlike Robert the Producer to pair up couples to write. It could have gone one of two ways. Either the Boy and I were going to work smoothly and well, or we were going to wind up wanting to participate in a murder/suicide by the end of the night. I am pleased, and unsurprised, that it was the former. Our idea came early and the writing went smoothly. We finished at 2, which is practically early in seven/24 terms.

I was, and remain, extremely happy with how our script turned out. I have often complained of late that so very many plays tend to be so very, very male. They have male characters pursuing male interests and being compelling and interesting while women are mothers or love interests or pawns. Ours was a very, very female play.

I would like to take another opportunity to give a hearty thanks to god for our director and our actors. Had we not had an awesome female lead, our play would have slurped bilgewater and the baby Jesus would have cried. Who am I kidding? I’m sure our play made the baby Jesus cry anyway, but I thought it was lovely.

I was able to put my finger this year on a phenomenon that affected me last year as well. Writing something and anticipating its performance fills me with dread. All day, I just wanted to lock myself in the ladies room and cry my eyes out. I felt exactly the same last year, and the only thing both events had in common was that I had participated in the writing of something that was going to be performed. In front of people. Who were, you know, alive.

This year I exasperated the problem by getting a bit more personal with the work. When all was said and done it sort of turned into a “break your own femur and suck out the marrow” thing. I asked the Boy, a far more prolific and talented writer than I, if I could look forward to this part getting easier. “Nope,” he responds brightly.

Gotta love a man who tells the truth.

Sadly, my involvement with the production did not end with saving our script to the designated seven/24 flash drive. Oh no, that would be too fucking simple. After falling asleep at 4 a.m., I got a call at about 9:30. It was my inestimable future roommate. “Can you act?” she asks. Sure. Why the fuck not?

Well. I’ll tell you why the fuck not. Just because one was up writing until the wee hours and lacks much in the way of recent theater experience DOES NOT, contrary to what one might expect, mean that one will get a small part. Sometimes, the vagaries of seven/24 being what they are, it just means one is going to play an old lady in a muumuu for 10 minutes or so.

Zombie Killer and the incomparable Becky wrote a terrifically clever and funny play about a dysfunctional mother and son relationship and time travel, but, as I pointed out to Chris late in the evening after several cocktails, it had so many goddamned words. So. Many. Words. I never got those fucking lines anywhere near to cold. When all was said and done, I’m mostly happy with how the show turned out, but I still worry I didn’t do the script justice.

So. Picture this if you will. Me rehearsing and blanking on, oh, about every other line. I am not wearing makeup, which is fine because I haven’t brushed my hair either. I’m sweating and I suspect I’m starting to smell. I woke up with an “Oh my god I wrote a play” feeling of dread, and added to that a sense of “Oh my GOD I’m going to fuck up someone else’s play.” I think my fellow actors hated me before all was said and done, and frankly, I don’t blame them. Hoo-muthafuckin’-rah.

I like to act, and being on stage that night was mostly a good time (except when I was realizing that I’d just fucked up). There is nothing like the immediate “Love me! Love me!” that a loudly laughing audience provides. However, I cannot say that I would call THAT part of seven/24 “fun.” It was a wonderful challenge. It pushed me, not so much as an actor, but just personally. And I don’t think I would ever want to do it again.

Extreme Stupidity Challenge, Current Events Edition

So, I am finishing waking from the comfy nap that was my vacation and I am finding that, perhaps predictably, people did not get smarter while I was gone.

*sigh*

Let’s take a cursory glance at a couple of national, local, and not-quite-news stories from the past few days.

People Who Are Too Stupid Read Things Face Housing Woes

Certainly, everyone by now has heard that the housing market is circling the drain and that late mortgage payments and foreclosures are on the rise, especially among sub-prime borrowers, now that people’s adjustable-rate mortgages are beginning to “reset.”

Duh, motherfuckers.

I mean, come on. You have crappy credit, or don’t make enough to easily afford to buy a too big house in Whitehaven or some other exurban hellhole, so to get what you want you take on some incredibly stupid and risky loan. THEN, instead of addressing the problem by rebuilding your credit or selling a kidney or something, you expect a miracle to come along and fix your problem for you. Because, yeah, double digit percentage growth in home values is an historically common occurrence.

Look. I’m sure there are scumbags who lied outright about the terms of these loans. I am certain to my toes that there were tons of irresponsible mortgage brokers/loan officers/bankers/loan sharks who sold these loans to unsuspecting rubes without adequately explaining the terms. That said, though, who signs a document promising to repay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars without at least a cursory understanding of the terms?

It’s not important that you know what the “LIBOR index” to which your fully-indexed mortgage rate will be tied is, but it is pretty fucking important that you get that your sweet “teaser rate” will only be guaranteed for five years, and that after that it is going be tied to this other rate, which is almost certainly going to cost you a metric crap-ton of additional greenback dollars every month.

Back when I was married, and we had ARMs on our houses, I had a decent grasp on what was going on with my home loans. I knew the time frame for the expiration of the teaser rates (one was five years, one was 7); I knew the adjustment periods after that (one was once a year, one was six months); I knew the adjustment caps (2% max upward adjustment for each); I know that the 5/2 could be locked after the first adjustment into a 30-year fixed (which would have still left us forever with an APR below 7.5%); and I never intended to have the stupid loans that long, anyway (and didn’t).

How many people didn’t even attempt to grasp any part of that fairly simple information? When I worked at a mortgage broker, how many times did I hear her explain to people to whom we were giving subprime loans that they needed to rebuild their credit so they could get out of those loans at the conclusion of two years? How many times did I see the words go into one ear only to drift, like dandelion fluff on an April breeze, out the other?

Whatever. Yes, it’s a shame that folks are getting into trouble, and I’m sure that some have been legitimately deceived. Self-deception doesn’t count, and an inability to see the writing on the wall is not a legitimate handicap. It’s just stupid.

St. Louis City Schools See Writing On the Wall, But No One Can Read It

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has revoked the accreditation of the St. Louis City Schools. No one who has been paying the least bit of attention is the tiniest bit surprised.

There was a protest at the DESE meeting, complete with some teenager shoving a cop, then running, then getting maced, which makes me think this kid’s social studies’ teachers probably did an inadequate job covering civil disobedience and non-violent protest.

After the melee was quelled, the DESE Board predictably voted to, I don’t know, draw and quarter the school board and replace them with Muppets or whatever. Yes, this is terrible. The alternative? Immeasurably worse.

So, what’s noteworthy about this? Two things.

A current St. Louis board member called the decision, among other things, a move toward “regentrification” of the city, an attempt to make it more white. Huh? First of all, I don’t think “regentrfication” is a word (and neither does Microsoft Office). Second, saying that the district is grossly failing students and needs to do better—that’s a white thing? This woman should be forced to sit in room and write her inane statement 500 times as punishment for her all-encompassing idiocy.

Then, because I had not suffered NEARLY enough on my morning commute, the leader of the union that represents the St. Louis teacher’s union stood up and said that their primary concern was making sure that the state didn’t do anything to alter the current teachers’ contract.

Oh. My. God.

I hope this woman’s face rots and her brain falls out *splat* onto the sidewalk. That has got to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard said by anyone who wasn’t trying to talk me into taking off my panties. Shouldn’t, oh I dunno, the miserably failing students be the teachers’ primary concern? Just maybe? Just a thought . . .


(This link might include the two above statements...like I said, I was yelling at my car stereo. Listen to the MP)

Mom Apparently Fattening Son For Slaughter; State Intervenes
I’m sure that you all saw the link to the video of the woman in West Virginia who is at risk of having the state take her 7-year-old son from her because he weighs more than 250 pounds. Okay, um, wow. I usually don’t watch these things, but this one got my attention. I gave it a gander.

Jay-sus. One of a few things is going on here:
1. This woman suffers from some neo-Krispy Kreme- Munchausen-by-proxy abuse thing. She’s intentionally fattening this kid up for some twisted purpose of her own. Sometimes, folks is just CRAZY.
2. This woman is a serious idiot, who despite what she has been told by the various doctors to whom she has dragged this poor kid, just doesn’t understand the basic principles of nutrition.
3. She’s dim, and the doctors she’s seen have been either weak-willed morons educated in offshore backwaters who have either failed to adequately educate this woman, or have failed to test this kid for some kind of awful disease or hormonal imbalance or something. Let’s not rule that out as a possibility.

I’m leaning towards numbers 1 or 2, and here’s why: If you watch the video, it shows at least a partial list of what she feeds this kid in a day. First is breakfast, which consists of “ 4 eggs” and some other stuff.

What? WHAT? FOUR eggs? This kid is SEVEN. I’m 30. I’m 5’10, and curvy, and even at my most hung-over; plummeting blood sugar; been-out-all-night-drinking-and-dancing so feed-me-before-I-gut-you morning time starvation the most I can choke down is three.

For a moment, let’s give this woman the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s not fattening this kid up for slaughter or something. If that’s the case, before the state further screws up this kid by yanking him from his mom, they should do the following (clearly, I feel all list-makey today):
1. Send a nutritionist to his house who will throw away all processed foods of any kind and re-teach Mom how to cook.
2. Hire a trainer to Mousercize this kid’s ass.
3. Repo the video games and disconnect the cable.

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Literary Edition

The question on the table:

Do I still have my copy of T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land?

Let me get on the record as saying that I have, sort of, read The Waste Land. More accurately, I have run my eyes over all the words in the poem. I read it in college, towards the end of a semester. I will admit, freely, that I did not give it the attention that any piece of serious literature—especially poetry—deserves.

That said, I hated The Waste Land. I hated it with a hate that was sure and true. Not only did I hate it, I felt insulted by it. By the time I was finished with it, I had decided that Elliot was, in fact, having us on. My working theory on The Waste Land is that Elliot was a dick with an inflated sense of self who was gleaning a sick form of entertainment from watching the dopes that were stupid enough to slog through his epic struggle to ascribe to it a meaning that it did not have.

BUT

When I finished reading it, exhausted, unbathed, and seriously annoyed, I promised myself that I would read it again within 10 years. “Why,” you ask? Because I might be wrong. Because even though they might not be smarter, there are people out there who are better-educated and harder-working than I who value and appreciate it. Because Elliot also wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” which is a genius little snapshot of the great tragedy of a small man and his small concerns. Because before I call one of the most important pieces of 20th century literature a horrific insult to letters and human intellect, I think I need to give it a second chance, if not to like it, then at least to appreciate it.

I used to hate tomatoes, after all, and now I view a salad of ripe summer tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and a lovely soft cheese as evidence that there might somewhere be a benevolent god. It’s important to revisit things periodically to see if they are as you left them. (Of course, if the little fucker is as awful as I remember it, then at least I can say I gave it a proper chance and thus that I really mean it when I call it the sticky leavings of a terrible literary masturbation.)

So, why now? Well, we’re right around the halfway point of the 10 year deadline, so it seems a reasonably good time. Right now, I have very little going on in the way of intellectual challenges, so I have the brain space and abundant time to devote to my little adventure. Plus, I don’t know, the universe has gone to considerable effort of late to make me re-examine things that I thought I understood. I figure, in for the penny, in for the pound.

I’ll keep you posted.

Resolved

Well, day one of 2007 prompted a resolution from me after all.

New Year’s Day found me over at my grandmother’s house, exhausted and hung-over from the previous evening’s celebration. (Note: once you are dancing while drinking really cheap champagne-like substance from the bottle, your night is as good as over. There is nowhere to go from that). To get there, I had to abandon the perfectly good patch of floor where I slept, and where I enjoyed several hours of yummy food and terrific bad sci-fi movies in the company of friends. I then had to go home, contend with a pee-soaked puppy, shower myself, and turn right back around and leave. Leave my lovely house, my house filled with wonderful, soft, horizontal surfaces and snuggly pets. And visit my family. With a hangover.

That’s okay, though. I love my grandmother and my presence, however diminished it might be by a post-alcohol-apocalypse fog, would make her happy. If the cost of that is a bit of time spent with the trimmings from the family tree, so be it. Frankly, I probably overdid it by showering, as I would have fit in better had I just wore whatever sodden, smoky, sweaty nastiness that I had slept in. My cousin did. Only she didn’t smell like booze. Whatever.

So I go. Muster all my functioning brain cells to participate in some idle chitchat. Watch some mind-bogglingly irritating game show and find myself participating against my will. Fine, fine, fine. Fine.

After an admittedly short while, I decide that I have done my New Year’s Day duty and have earned the right to go home and nap. Just about that time my aunt takes it into her head to express her objection to gay marriage. She just “doesn’t think it’s right.”

Good to know, Aunt. Glad you’ve given this some thought.

Well, I was tired. And I was annoyed. So my response was, in effect, that she was entitled to any opinion she liked on the rightness or wrongness of it, but that people have rights based on the fact that they're people, and that includes the right to marry. “Well. I just think it’s wrong.”

Well. I think you might be a moron. And your eldest child? She’s definitely a moron. And your two eldest grandchildren? Also morons. But I refrain from expressing my controversial opinions at family functions. So should you. Don’t presume we’re all bigots.

And there formed my New Year’s Resolution. I am going to attempt to significantly cut back on my intake of other people’s bullshit. Unless one is actively involved in paying my mortgage or feeding my beasties, I fear I am going to have to demand one of the following:

1. An attempt at rational thought or discourse. We don’t need to agree, necessarily, but do not use as an argument something that I only acknowledge as fiction. Like the Bible. Or Fox News.

2. Civility. You’re an asshole. Terrific. Leave me out of it.

3. Silence. Not talking to me is always an acceptable alternative.

Happy New Year, indeed.

Oh, say hey and by the way. This archive says that all previous posts were written in 2005. Apparently, blogger has mastered time-travel. It should say 2006. And if I were smarter or cared more I would try to fix it. I'm not.