Around Christmas 1995 a friend came to visit me in my newly married, presumably happy, life in Michigan. We went to a museum where we saw an exhibit of a Japanese tea room. Outside the display was an attempt to describe this exhibit. It started with something like: “Within the tea room, one feels loneliness which penetrates into the marrow of one’s bones...” and ended with the caution “Please do not enter the tea room”. I laughed out loud.
If you don’t get it, you probably should leave.
To me, halloween has never been about the sexy costume. Not ever. Ok, sure I didn't necessarily want to look unattractive, but I have not once done the sexy kitten or the naughty nurse - I was a nurse one year when in college and working evening shift at the hospital because I had no costume and had a party to go to after work. That nurse costume was about as close to real nurse as you could get...with the addition of a nursing hat with glitter, combat boots, and a syringe (sans needle) for doing "shots" with. If you feel comfortable in a pantsless/sexy costume, then more power to ya. But for the rest of us, enjoy the fun and know that yes, you can do it with your pants up.
My job is not that hard. There are some organizational issues which end up making more work for everyone, but providing it gets shared fully among the people whose slack caused the extra work, it's not so bad. There have been I think two days that I've been annoyed by this, and on both days I was feeling shitty enough physically to have it impact my mood and general outlook.
Our boss is kind of hands off, assuming we'll all self organize into a more or less efficient system. What makes for problems is that the system which academics naturally self organize into when confronted with tasks like those at this job (e.g. filing, organizing paperwork, tracking down administrative details) is not a more or less efficient one. For that goal to be achieved, someone has to take on the job of herding, coaching, cajoling, or whatever. It's a largely thankless, rarely respected, and much maligned job and so I can't blame my boss for avoiding it somewhat. And perhaps it has worked out in the past, however I think a few factors conspired against a more efficient outcome this year. One is that we had a shitload of students accept admission this year. Another is that the office was down a program assistant. That would be one of the people who would at least peripherally herd. And a final factor is that the staff consists of a lot of new people who didn't come in with a good idea of what needed doing or the best way to do it.
Anyhow, aside from the extra work we sometimes make for ourselves due to our tendency to self organize into a mini-goat screw, it's a decent job. I like it ok and I thought my coworkers did too. It has nice hours aside from being up early but I thought lots of people were early risers. Several of my coworkers have told me they are up and out by 7 most days even when they are not working here. There are reasonably decent people to work with, e.g., there is not a single person who is chronically tweeking or zombified, who is angry all the time, or who is all up in your face with whatever ("let's have a birthday party!!!"). Everyone says "good morning" and usually talks to one another if they are in the same room.
My coworkers are not disgruntled or maltreated workers. Our work is not physically or emotionally draining. It is not terribly cognitively demanding and while there are challenges and some problems to be solved, we have at our disposal the tools to meet and solve them. Many of us leave quite early most days because we think that although we were hired to work until 4:00, if we are done by 2:30 with whatever routine work we were doing in the afternoon, then 2:30 or very shortly after is quitting time. Sometimes this is true. Either way, we are actually underworking and getting paid for lots of time we aren't even there. Generally, no one gets too uptight about that either. Sometimes something slips through the cracks and it sets of a flurry of catching up and running around later but it's not like anyone gets viciously chastised or ostracized for having ditched out.
And finally, the students we work with (who do tend to make up the larger topic of complaint when any specific complaint is made) rotate through so fast that if there are some not so great ones in the bunch, they are out of your hair quite soon after they start getting on your nerves.
Thus, by all accounts, I'd say this job is a pretty sweet gig. Therefore, it strikes me as odd that over the last week or so, a lot of people have been making statements like "Thank god it's almost over!" While I consistently question what the motivation for this attitude is, I have different overt responses to these statements. Sometimes I try to look and sound agreeable because I know they assume we all share this sense of relief and to indicate otherwise would mean touching on a disclosure moment I'm fairly certain is not considered terribly polite. I sometimes ask "why?" And sometimes, when I'm feeling a little tetchy, I can't stop myself from saying I'm having a hard time feeling psyched about being unemployed. Yeah, gotta work on that.
Anyhow, I've decided that this "thank god it's almost over" attitude is similar to the "you don't have to be crazy to work here... but it helps!" type of comment/attitude which is repeated without much thought about whether a job or place of work really is all that nutty/rough/busy/hard/etc. This line of thought naturally called to mind Maria Bamford's "Crazy Office" routine, which I present below for your viewing pleasure.
Well only one I'm going to, so properly that should read "wedding", however it is wedding season and thus the plural. Maybe it should be a mass noun, like oatmeal or brick. I'm going to a wedding at the end of the month. Unlike many joyous unions I hear of, this is one I approve of. The participants, that is the blessed couple, are both fully self-aware adults for starters. Moreover, the bride (B___) and hubby (R____) to be have wonderful senses of humor which I'm sure will influence the ceremony. E.g., they have titled the wedding "The Motorcycle Marriage of the Martians" and sent B-movie themed invites. Excellent. They also requested no presents unless they are d.i.y. and out of sentiment, like a pair of knit socks - no seriously, this was in their invite. They're very cool people. So I made a special Letters to the Corinthians mix for them since B____ and I have a running joke about this being a necessary part of ANY wedding ceremony. As in "so how was the wedding?" "Oh you know, Letter from Paul, dyeable shoes, chicken polka, oh yeah and Pachelbel's Canon."
While the Letter from Paul mix (called "Love is Patient" and featuring Pat Boone, Eddie Izzard, Airplane quotes, and the Marx Brothers) is hand made, I have a prefab but still totally excellent version of Pachelbel called "the Taco Bell Canon". I have it somewhere. Somewhere in the boxes. I hope to unearth in it time to burn to the cd for B___ and R_____. Time's a ticking though, and speaking of, it's bed time for pfg, so I leave you with this google gem I found while leaning how to spell "pachelbel".
My fella and I watch a lot of movies. We see some good movies, although we're convinced that the post 9/11 film industry approved a whole lot of CRAP. That's another rant for another time, and no, there are no government conspiracy theories. Just a notion about what movie execs think the American people want when the American people are acting like or being portrayed as, well, idiots.
So we watch a lot of shitty movies too. I refer you to a (possibly already redundant) past blog post devoted to this topic for a more comprehensive discussion.
For some time now, I've thought it would be fun to record commentary tracks to these truly shitty movies, you know, MST3K style. We could do specifically feminist commentary (guest starring my sister of course) as well as just your generic, run of the mill knocks like yelling "LINE!!!" every time Keanu Reeves graces the camera with one of his signature blank stares.
Well it turns out someone's had this idea - and I am very glad for it. There was a niche which demanded filling. And someone has stepped up to fill it. Specifically, the MST3K folks (or folk). You can get the commentary or "riff" track for movies online then synch them up to movies (or get a special player which allows you to play a DVD with this audio track without needing to manually synch the two playbacks). It's called RiffTrax. Tonight, we are watching Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer. Here's the RiffTrax synopsis. The Fantastic Four are back! Or the Fantastic Four is back! Depending upon whether one is referring to the title of the film, the four individuals who are fantastic and number four, or the group of four fantastic people who use that title! The point is, they're back! And this time, unlike the first, there's a surfer made out of silver and he rises! It's fantastic!
This means I can finally watch ALL the new Star Wars movies without wanting to chuck things at my screen.
FromCombine meat market a little disturbing By Michael Silver, Yahoo! Sports
INDIANAPOLIS – Four years ago in the RCA Dome, a small-school defensive line prospect named Isaac Hilton nervously awaited his moment onstage at the NFL scouting combine. Chugging water to add every possible ounce of weight to his 6-foot-3 frame, the former Hampton University star wore only spandex boxer briefs, and his legs were shaking as he walked up to the podium.
A combine official began taking Hilton’s measurements as several hundred coaches, scouts and front-office executives carefully examined his musculature. And then, to the shock and dismay of everyone in the building, Hilton had an extreme physiological reaction to a very unnatural situation.
“The poor kid pissed himself,” recalls one scout who witnessed it. “He was standing up there … and it all just came out. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Says another team’s personnel director: “All of a sudden people were running up there with towels and spraying the stage and wiping down the wood, and they led the guy away, and he just looked stunned.
The text below is from an email I got today from my department head. The first sentence has been changed minimally, the second not at all. I am so very amused by this.
The organizational meeting for the weekly research group series will be held at _____ on ____ in rm ____. If you didn't get this message, let me know and we'll get you on the mailing list.
Found on Forbes.com (and thanks to my fella for sending me the quote). I provided some of the article for context.
Giuliani Is Asked His Conservative Views By Sara Kugler October 23, 2007 9:20 PM ET
Republican Rudy Giuliani declined Tuesday to tell a voter where he agrees and disagrees with conservative members of his party, saying it's about more than "just an ideology."
The former New York City mayor, who has made conservative Republicans nervous with some of his more liberal views - his support of abortion rights and gun control, for example - was asked pointedly at a town-hall-style meeting to outline where his views align with conservatives. ... Giuliani ticked off his accomplishments as mayor, including his administration's 1995 zoning law that effectively closed adult entertainment shops or pushed them to the edges of many neighborhoods.
It is a part of his resume that he has been noting more frequently lately, and on Tuesday he suggested he alone cleaned up New York City's smutty reputation.
"I took a city that was known for pornography, and licked it, to a large extent," he said.
I was looking over a quote file I started (and stopped) some time ago. My sister has some excellent entries in there which really seem like they should be shared.
Food “Jokes and snacks always get out of hand…especially in church.”
“It’s kind of like maple sugar on a piece of brown paper bag.” (critiquing the flavor of an Oatmeal Scotchies cookie)
Our family “Four out of five child molesters who eat pastry like it made with dead animals.”
“Why she refuses to acknowledge that they’re both in that giant diaper they call a marriage together is beyond me.”
“That’s like a 4 year old standing in the middle of the street saying ‘This is my street! And I made the sun come up today…’ ”
“What am I gonna give you for mother’s day? I’ve got a cartoon I might give you someday, but it’s not finished. I took out a book on anatomy from the library so I can learn how to draw the small intestine…”
The arts “For christ’s sake, she doesn’t deserve to have her music played on a Fisher Price Tooty-Ville Choo-Choo train!” (on Britney Spears)
“For some reason or another, I just don’t think people respect Li’l Kim.”
The body “If you think it hurts when your labia gets tangled under your pad, wait til your nut gets clipped by a leather thong.”
“Their asses are a marvel of the ligament structure of homo sapiens, because there is no way they should remain upright. They should have collapsed.”
“If I had a nickel for every crotch I split, I’d be rich.”
“All I’m thinking is someone must've done one of those double tit clamp tug-a-wars or something, ‘cause her tits were pointing at the floor.”
Miscellaneous “Oooh! You catty little…little…cat!”
“They should have one of those for marajuana (the bouncing ball cartoons on pre1980s TV where they taught you how to spell words like missippi). It’d go ‘M-a-r...j-k-y...na-na na-na na’”
