that time of year

Just waiting for the "Two A holes Sell a Senate Seat" skit.

grey tuesday

It's raining and gross out and I'm sick - a hard to drag myself out of bed kind of day. So here's some humor. Enjoy.

It's Thursday

Today is officially "Don't take shit too seriously" day. It is for me at least. I was hoping to try this earlier in the week, but the hormonal storm that is my period on progesterone made it impossible to take anything at a level lower than very, very seriously.

My arms hurt, my job is ending, one of the few people I like at work has been told to stop talking to me (long story, I'll write later when I actually know more about it), the holidays are coming, I dislike christmas on a less bad year but this year I think I'm really going to want to drop kick some lawn ornament Santas. I can feel all this stress over things which are largely out of my control building in me. And so today I've resolved to try to let shit go, and what can't be let go, I'm going to try to laugh off. I don't have to take the job too seriously because now that I know there's no way in hell I'm going perm because they have a bias against temps, my work consists of not fucking things up too much. This is liberating if approached correctly. E.g., most if not all of my problems with K-cop result not simply from her being her but from me being me too. I want to assume that people have logical reasons for doing shit. When I discover evidence that they don't, it just blows my mind so completely. Moreover, when I believed that there was even an eensty chance of this job being permanent or longer term temp (or of these people being good connections to find another job), I cared more about not following K-cop's effed up reasoning.

The big problem with this kind of reaction is that I have the anti-poker face. I can't keep the look of what I imagine is shock tinged with outrage and/or disgust and/or contempt off it. This does not help matters because even idiots like K-cop can read that level and type of emotion when it's displayed right there at eye level.

So if K-cop is in my face with her moronic crap today, rather than start down this path to horror at the largely unexamined self serving idiocy, I'm just going to laugh at her.

To get me started on not taking shit too seriously day, I thought I'd share this video.

work out

What, no leg warmers?

From CollegeHumor, via DevilDucky.

will it work?

A video of my cat making out with his catnip plant. The quality is bad because it's recorded on a cell phone. But what I'm wondering is will it even play? Go blogger - yay! The lovely audio is the downstairs neighbors remodeling. At least they have the decency to work on the condo during reasonable hours (not like my old landlord, who felt 10:00 PM was a perfectly reasonable time to begin stripping the floor on the apartment above me). When I get a chance to sneak into my (ex) lab next, I'll use the version of quicktime pro I bought those losers and add some nicer audio. Perhaps a love song, maybe some Isaac Hayes. For now, I give you my cat (with carpentry, allergro ma non troppo).

terrible life choice

Grad School Musical

"Where is my P.I." is my favorite...

blah

The last few days have kind of sucked. Fortunately, the Kitty Cat Dance helps.

perceptions of feminism

More from "I Was A Teenage Feminist", distributed by Women Make Movies.

Some issues with the voice over - although I realize that I haven't seen the whole movie and so I don't know the context these words were being said in. But the notion of worrying about whether or not to hide that you're a feminist on a date simply does not resonate with me. Trying to hide that I'm a feminist would be like trying to hide an elephant in a teacup. However, while I can imagine that lust-blindness or extreme wishful thinking could lead to such an incompatible pairing for a first date (do people date as a way to get to know each other still?), I don't understand why someone who identifies as a feminist would in fact want a second date with a person shows signs he thinks all feminists are...well, watch the clip and ask yourself if you'd want a first or second date with any of these characters (excepting Anthony in NY).

Are you a feminist?

Clips from "I Was A Teenage Feminist", distributed by Women Make Movies.


An added bonus - a link from Trixie Films (makers of I Was a Teenage Feminist) is to Women In Media and News, a site I am thinking will appeal to at least two of the people who read this blog (which is a considerable percentage of my readers).

OMG - my cell phone is cooking my brain!

I just heard about the cell phone/popcorn thing this weekend. The person who told me about it was not telling it in a "funny" way. He was telling it in a "omg think about what it's doing to your brain!?" way. I have a strong streak of skepticism and so I googled it. Apparently it was a "stealth marketing" campaign which was supposed to be "funny". On the CNN video clip below, the announcer asks "and what about the idea that videos try to scare people who hold cell phones close to their heads?" The response to this or a similar question from the CEO of the headset company behind the hoax is "we really never meant to eh ehm insinuate any of that ehm...the truth is that it was funny..." The jerk goes on to chuckle about stealth marketing. The news guy obliges him with a giggle, which was to me entirely creepy.

temp to perm

tgiao?

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.

Good vid

Can ya tell A____'s been busy? Ok, one last thing and then I'm off to bed. Thanks to Winterwheat for the link.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

job posting of the day

Non-Destructive Inspection Project Manager
I could and did parse this in ways not intended by the HR rep who posted it. Here's what kind of thing came to my mind.

weddings

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".

jobs

If you've used online job sites like Career Builder or Monster lately, this isn't news to you. For me, it's news. It seems no matter what I'm searching for, apparently the US military offers me employment opportunities which are an excellent match. E.g., are you looking for work as an entry level professional hummel duster in Duluth, Minnesota? Well apparently the United States Navy Reserve is the place for you. Cat washer in Sweetwater, Texas? You'll want to try the Army. And just wait 'til you see what you get after 6 months of active duty...

Thank you Ms. Silverman

Gah.
I just watched some Sarah Silverman Show episodes before returning to grading and now I have "Poop Song" in my head. Not totally irrelevant to grading these essays, but a song I'd rather not be humming for the next day or so. I think I'll have to get a Bonnie Tyler fix to bump it out. While I don't love Bonnie Tyler, few songs have the perseveration power of Total Eclipse of the Heart. We'll see if it can overcome the apparently quite catchy refrain "We pooped at the mall today!"

erin go...aarrrrrrrrrgh!

Oh boy, oh boy.

Dear Paul [Saint]...

I love this bit.



I so dislike Paul and his letters. Not exactly sure where it came from. I mean, this is an implicit dislike at this point, an aspect of a long standing opinion I've held about Paul's writings and their place in Christianity since my childhood, when I spent a bit of time in Catholic school. I'm thinking perhaps as a wee 5-6 year old, I was told stories about Paul and his various letters which lead me to form this aversion. Hearing the same tired bit read at so many weddings doesn't help (you know, the part that goes: "...love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Love puts down the toilet seat, never makes you buy your own birthday cake, and always remembers the fabric softener..." or something like that).