Older stuff moved somewhere else because the page was getting quite absurdly long, and how much narcissistic, poorly-written self-pity can you take in one sitting? Also, I'm not particularly thrilled with the new color scheme, either. Suggestions are welcome.
I got a new place. Drop by, make yourself at home. I'm still figuring out what to do with it, other than spew bitterness at a world I never made. Whatever the hell that means. C'mon, I'll give you an e-mail address.
More appropriate tomorrow, I suppose. Or less. Or something.
Remember kids, no matter what Grant Morrison tells you, Chaos Magic is nothing to fuck with. Unless you want synchronicity to just go nuts, which, trust me, sounds like a much better idea than it actually is.
Weird, talking to people fighting border wars for countries that never existed in the first place, except in their own fucked-up heads.
They're so 20th-C.
Playing a game where the point is to run around accumulating as much as possible. Yeah, lots of us played Super Mario Bros. as kids. Except we grew up, and moved on.
They aren't the enemy, because this is not a conflict. That's another concept they seem incapable of grasping. Paradoxically, allowing them their space and treating them like the relatively harmless mental cases they are infuriates them; they want us to fight them, they need us to define our world in binary opposition to theirs. But why fight turf wars over infinite space?
Back when I worked for Moore Data, I tossed together a site for beta testers of the program I did phone support for. Just a proof of concept, really, to show them how quickly and cheaply it could be done. A few days from notion to implementation, using free Perl scripts and some mild hacking. That lot would have taken months of meetings and drawing up proposals and setting up who would get the credit if it worked and who would take the fall if it didn't.
Although the (white) folks at the corporate headquarters told my (white) co-workers they were impressed, it never crossed their minds to, you know, call and tell me. Negroes were born to serve, after all.
So the day before the cds were meant to be mailed out to the beta testers, some random woman named Nancy Kozen called to demand that I change the location of the site and inform her of the new name, since the docs had to be printed out.
I think I pointed out, accurately, that I didn't work for her, and I'd see what I could do. And then ranted and swore for a bit, made the change, and phoned her back to tell her the new URL.
And she asked, in the most condescending tone one can imagine, "Did Mike Grimes talk to you?"
Mike Grimes was my manager's manager. Another white male who'd been promoted far beyond the level of his rather limited mental abilities, he was out of the office that day.
There was a brief pause.
"No," I replied. "Should he have?"
There was an abundance of hostility packed into those four words. She must have heard it, because she hastily mumbled something about thinking Grimes had spoken to me, and got off the phone.
The next day, Grimes was up in my face lecturing me that Nancy is a supervisor, and "you can't talk to her that way."
I was actually stunned by that comment. I'd not yet realized what I was dealing with, you see. In my book, respect is a two-way street. If someone treats me well, I reciprocate. If someone, particularly a white someone, treats me like an inferior species, odds are I'm going to respond with unconcealed hate.
This earned me a reputation for attitude and unprofessionalism among upper management.
Which translates roughly to "uppity nigger."
Coming from them, I took this as a compliment.
No, I didn't get a Playstation 2. Shut the hell up.
Stupid Sony Computer Entertainment America, anyway.
My problem is my inability to hide my contempt.
So, for example, if someone hands me seven script pages out of about two hundred and fifty and tells me that the lot of 'em suck, and I then go to work at 5 in the morning and stay until 7:45 at night going over every single page with a fine tooth comb and discover that, out of that two hundred and fifty pages, there are, in fact, only seven that suck, I tend to get annoyed.
If I'd spent the previous weekend working on said scripts, only to get shat upon because seven pages out of two hundred and fifty suck, I get even more annoyed.
And after a certain point, I figure fuck it. Tomorrow I will finish reviewing the last of my four scripts, and I will go home promptly at 5. If anyone has a problem with this, I will smile at them politely, tell them to go fuck themselves, and still go home.
I never did learn to suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. Living in Minnesota, then, is a Very Bad Idea Indeed.
Fasten your seat belts.
I suck at my job. I know this, because the person who reviews my scripts said so, in a meeting between me, him and our Chief Technology Officer. Odd, since I'd asked last night if there were any problems with my scripts and received a shrug in response, but there you go.
I got a script back with many, many suggested improvements. Including changing a sentence with a present-tense, active verb to one using the future tense, and another changing "you will" to the contraction "you'll" in both the body text (which appears on screen) and the voice over copy. Good thing I'm not paid to think, or I'd think I was dealing with complete fucking idiots.
I did make a snarky comment about writing for people who had actually finished high school. Colson, the CTO, mentioned that many real estate agents have, in fact, finished college. Mr. Milowski, he who reviewed my scripts and pronounced their suckage, did not chime in that the instructional design document I work from specifically states that our intended audience has only a high school education. Gee, I wonder why?
He did read a particularly long, ungainly sentence which, in isolation, makes little sense. I expect that someone hearing it while looking at a screen showing the information it describes would be able to follow it perfectly, but it turns out that the voice over copy I write should stand on its own. And here I thought it was part of a multimedia presentation. Oops! There I go thinking. Darn.
So I walked to the library downtown to pick up some books on technical writing. Not that what I'm doing is technical writing, but hey. I'm at least going to make an effort to be nice, even though I really feel like walking in tomorrow, asking them to cut me a final check, and getting the fuck out of Dodge.
According to the library's on-line catalog, the Dewey Decimal System number for books on tech writing is 624. There were no shelves with that number on them. I did manage to stumble onto the right section, but the stickers on the spines of the books say T 11. Perhaps this is 624 in hexadecimal.
At the checkout desk, I asked the woman behind the counter what color library cards are in this state, since I'd actually forgotten what the thing looked like. "Red or blue," she replied unhelpfully. I found the thing in the pile of video rental cards, discount cards and assorted crap I carry in my wallet for no particular reason, and handed it to her. It was red, which she said meant it was one of the new ones. I politely mentioned that I hadn't been here long.
Long enough for the card to have expired, it seems.
"Why am I not sur- why isn't there an expiration date on this thing?" I asked, taking the (apparently useless) card back from her and examining both sides. The red side just states that it's from the Minneapolis Public Library, A Melsa Library, whatever the fuck that means, while the other has my name, printed and a signature, a bar code and number, and some phone numbers for renewals, their InfoLine reference service and for hours and locations. She explained that they don't put the date on the cards. Yeah, those little stickers with a month and year must cost a bloody fortune to print up.
She then tried to renew it, and asked for my address. Silly me, I gave her the new one. She asked if I had anything with that address on it. Of course I didn't. I still have a ton of Xena checks with my old address, and my driver's license is from the Land of Lincoln. She very sweetly let me check the books out anyway, explaining that she could get in trouble for it, and told me that anything with my address (state i.d., utility bill, subpoena) would be fine to use to renew the card.
She handed me the books, I walked out, and the alarm went off. Another woman behind the desk just waved me through. The person behind me set off the alarm too, so I guess it just does that no matter what.
Welcome to Minnesota, my friends.
Guy bummed a cigarette off me while I was walking back to my apartment. I handed him the more-than-half-full pack and told him to keep it. He seemed confused by this, then thanked me and said, bizzarely, "God bless you."
For giving you shit that's going to kill you?
I tend to doubt it.
More like the opposite, in fact.
Further down Nicollet, there was a woman leaning against a wall playing a medley from "West Side Story" on her violin. Leonard Bernstein is always good, so I dropped a dollar in her case, and she smiled gratefully and kept playing. Had to resist the urge, further down the block, to go back and give her the other thirty bucks I had with me.
It ain't like I need money where I'm headed.
Thank you for flying Southwest Airlines. Please check the overhead compartment and beneath the seat in front of you for any of your belongings, because anything you leave, we trash.
Give 'em some rope and let 'em hang themselves.
George W.'s official web site attempts to "stop the lies" about Bush and his running mate. Included is an explanation on Cheney's vote against "a non-binding resolution supporting Nelson Mandela's release from prison" because the bill "also urged the United States to recognize the African National Congress, which was then considered a pro-communist, anti-American terrorist organization." It also mentions Cheney's opposition to sanctions, and an interview where the man says, "A lot of black South Africans, including (Zulu) Chief (Mangosuthu) Buthelezi, were saying at the time that the only good jobs for blacks were with American firms."
Some of you may not remember Chief Buthelezi. Suffice to say, he was not considered a spokesman for the majority of the Black population, except when convenient. "Quisling" may be the proper term, and the dictionary's always worth a look.
It seems I must vote for Gore after all, unless the 40-odd percent of the population who seem to actually want another Bush administration suddenly become intelligent, or keel over dead.
I'm hoping for the latter option.
No, really, according to the Sailor Moon calendar, today was Labor Day in New Zealand. Why would I make up a thing like that?
I have been advised that I need to "lighten the fuck up."
Actually, advised may be too mild a term.
I'm working on it.
So anyway, a few months after the incident at the Blind Pig I mentioned back on the 9th, I asked Teresa to go see a movie. She picked me up, and on the drive to the theater I started getting Really Bad Vibes. When she stopped at a light, I came very close to opening the door, getting out of the car, and walking the few blocks back home, that's how bad they were. Foolishly, I ignored them.
We get to the theater, she parks, we're walking to the entrance, and a car drives by and honks and she says matter-of-factly, "Oh, there's my boyfriend."
She'd not mentioned that he would be joining us.
This was the first and only time I've called a woman a bitch to her face.
Nowadays, when I get bad vibes, I get out of the car.
Live and learn.
Simulated anger. The appearance of mirth. Selection of whichever emotional response people anticipate, and the construction of a passable artifice.
I really, really need to get out of here.
Spending today at work, finishing up a draft we're meant to submit to the client this coming Friday.
No, I don't see the point, either.
In Memoriam to Identity:
I'm getting actual mail for a Mark Caligiuri/Caligiuri Apparel; yellow forwarding labels stuck to envelopes insisting that the stuff should be coming to my apartment. Um, no. Tried calling the guy's number in the phone book, the number is not in service (no duh), with no new number given. Suggestions?
I'm also getting returned e-mail notices because some chucklehead using a Media One account has decided that my address is a good one to use as the return address for his spam. This person is also running Windows NT, and has no firewall. Luckily for him, I'm a good person.
So far.
Minor issues involving statements made by a co-worker at our department meeting yesterday. Although no one is assigning blame, the scripts I'm producing are error-ridden, with 10% of the pages containing problems. This is contributing to his already-heavy workload, as he must fix these careless mistakes.
My response did not include any of the following words or phrases: bitch, fuckhead, lying asshole, lazy dipshit, dead honkey.
Because I'm a good person.
So far.
Today's programming on Channel 11 is brought to you in part by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the annual financial support of viewers like you.
So last night I have this nightmare where I'm pulling the bloody stumps of my teeth out of my mouth, and this little girl wanders up and says she can do the same thing, and takes one of hers out, and I tell her that those are baby teeth, and she'll grow replacements, while mine are gone for good.
The American Dental Association is sponsoring my bad dreams. What the fuck?
Went for a walk, as I was advised that this might help the not sleeping thing. So, down past the building where I work, past one of the Star-Tribune buildings (which has a Snoopy statue in the lobby that I'd not noticed before), down the riverfront (oddly abandoned; I'd expected to see some homeless people sleeping rough, or couples, or anybody, but I was pretty much alone there), up to Hennepin Avenue, and down Hennepin to 13th and back to the apartment. Took about two hours. I do not feel even slightly sleepy, but my feet hurt. Which is something, I suppose.
I shall try reverse psychology. I'm gonna stay up for 48 hours straight! 'cuz it's fun to be sleep deprived! It makes everything more interesting, like walking and picking things up!
So when you wake up at a quarter to four in the morning and you've got a slightly overdue assignment at work anyway, of course you go in. Rock Star parking, no distractions, why it's a wonder more people don't do this.
Wait, that's right. Most people have lives. Never mind.
Some other yowling furball showed up on my porch this morning. Great. What, do I also now have Cat Slave painted on my door?
Updates have become infrequent, and generally impersonal. Clearly, there's not enough fucked-up shit in my life to write about these days. And who wants to read ill-informed political rants?
"If affirmative action means quotas I'm against it," Bush said. "If it means what I'm for, then I'm for it. You heard what I was for. He keeps saying I'm against things. You heard what I was for and that's what I support."
See, this was one of those times Gore broke the rules and asked a direct question of George W. Which is the sort of thing one expects in a debate, but seems to have been against the rules established for last night's session. Somehow, I don't think the Gore camp is the one who pushed for that particular stipulation.
Bush really does prove that any child, no matter how slow, can be president. If you're a rich white male whose daddy was president, that is.
Affirmative access? Is that what they call it these days?
Christ.
Yeah, there I go overreacting again. Whatever.
For fuck's sake, shut up and listen for once in your life.
Or go back to sleep. I really couldn't care less at this point.
Anyway, so. Bush seemed to take a disturbing amount of pleasure in the second Presidential debate, when he related that the three men responsible for the racially-motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr. had been sentenced to death.
Which, of course, they hadn't. Two out of three, which I suppose is factually accurate enough. After all, Bush isn't the one who exaggerates. He's the dumbfuck.
And yes, I missed Jessica's show again this afternoon. I will commit ritual seppuku at my earliest convenience.
Bad Subjects is a long-running (since 1992) progressive web and print 'zine. Read it. Now. This is a good place to start, although this is fascinating as well. Hell, it's all good.
Also check out Common Dreams, the page where I found the Molly Ivins columns mentioned yesterday, along with articles by various other authors, and stories from numerous publications worldwide. It's a reminder that there are people out there building a finer world.
End political screed, cue amusing anecdote:
So a few years back I went to the Blind Pig with Teresa. I forget the name of the band that was playing, or if we went there specifically to hear them. Anyway, she didn't want to dance, and I did, kind of. And at one point one of the backup singers came off stage, walked up to me, pulled me towards the front of the crowd and started dancing with me.
This seemed to annoy Teresa. When I called her later, she asked if I'd gotten the woman's phone number. Which, of course, I hadn't, although I got the feeling that the correct response to her question was "No" regardless of the truth.
I do not speak of this often, because there's no way to tell the story without coming off as an arrogant sod or a manipulative bastard, when the truth is closer to clueless idjit. Arrogant, manipulative clueless idjit, maybe.
This is one of the reasons I don't go out much. Too much drama.
However, I did learn my lesson. When you're out with someone, even though you're not on a date, because you're Just Friends and she has a boyfriend, although he is in Japan for the summer and she never really liked him that much in the first place, one should not look at, dance with, or otherwise acknowledge the existence of other women, even if they do approach you first.
This is hard-earned wisdom, and I'm giving it to you for free, dear friends.
Fade anecdote, cue screed the second:
Interestingly, and a bit predictably, I haven't heard or read the (intellectually bankrupt) phrase "politically incorrect" applied to Spike's new movie. Perhaps I just missed it; inform me if you notice such a thing.
Kind'a chilly yesterday, so I let the stupid cat in again. I asked some guys in the laundry room if they knew who it belonged to, and although they knew immediately what I was talking about (one guy called it The Devil Cat), they had no clue whose cat it is. I am not adopting it. Period. End of discussion. I mean it. No.
Tried changing the way files are named around these parts, and adding links to make the mess easier to navigate. It's an experiment, and there are no failed experiments. Even if you don't get the results you expected, you learn something from the process.
Or so I've been told.
Briefly considered explaining the sources of the various quotes and song lyrics (like the above, from Fishbone's Chim Chim's Badass Revenge), but figured no one needs really cares that much.
Anyway. Read Molly Ivins, because she actually lives in Texas, poor thing, and can criticize the Republican Presidential candidate more knowingly than most. I'm too lazy to do the research, and rely on pointing out that the man just ain't that bright when you come right down to it.
For example, in one of her older columns, she mentions that Texas still doesn't have kindergarten statewide. Which astonished me. I'm not sure Illinois does either, but early education seems like such an obviously Good Thing that it's hard to believe that even a Republican could stand up in front of a group of voters and say he (and it's almost always a he) is opposed to a tax increase that's slated to open fucking kindergartens.
Perhaps I've overestimated their intelligence.
In which case, if George W. can walk and chew gum simultaneously, then he's comparatively a genius.
The truly scary thing is, I'm not all that fond of the Democrats. It's just that every conservative Republican I've ever dealt with has been such a hidebound, racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic little dipshit asshole that I can't resist taking potshots at the lot of 'em.
Besides, it's fun. What am I gonna do otherwise, tease vegans? "Want some iced tea? Oh, sorry, I put honey in it." Where's the fun in that?
Bamboozled. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.
Opens October 6th my arse. Well, I'm sure it'll make it here eventually. . .
Reading a review of Spike's new joint, like going over the ones for Margaret Cho's I'm the One That I Want, tells you more about the reviewer than it does about the film itself, I think. Oddly, this time Spike is getting slammed for being heavy-handed with his message and for having a muddled message at the same time. And even some of the negative reviews, like Ebert's, mention the power of the images presented.
But because it's Spike, it means there must be a Message, and if you don't like the Message it means it's a bad film. Acting, cinematography, music, editing, none of that matters. No wonder the guy comes off as pissed at the world in interviews.
Not that there aren't other reasons.
Favorite part of the Vice Presidential debates, other than the question about women still making 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, was the one that started out "Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, you are Black for this question." 'twas surreal.
So I missed Jessica's radio show again yesterday. You'd think at some point I'd run out of ways to suck. . .
Okay, maybe you wouldn't.
Housekeeping: bought a new shower curtain (amazingly, not black) and replacement bulbs for the two (of four) blown lights in the living room. I kind'a hope this will head off Seasonal Affective Disorder, now that the days are getting shorter and tend to be overcast.
That new vinyl smell the shower curtain is giving off is definitely improving my mood.
Heard on NPR's Morning Edition that Al Gore was on The Tom Joyner Morning Show the day after the debate. Yeah, I'm sure Bush would go on, if the evil, brainwashed-by-Democrats Negroes would invite him. . .
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