Customer Service Test

I went in this morning for my customer service test at LargeUnnamedTemporaryService this morning. Hint: It's nationwide and starts with a K and I mistakenly thought, given their perky emerald green logo, that perhaps some shared ancestral heritage would make it kind to me. The customer service test is done on a computer with a headset; you put on the headset and the computer gives you your choice of three little scripts to read in response to the completely bullshit sounding customer. It's not difficult, because even I can figure out that in the horrible alterna-world that is the temp company's training module of evil, you're supposed to answer the phone by saying "Hello, thank you for calling XYZ Corp, this is Felicity, how may I help you?" in a sweet and cheerful voice instead of snarling "XYZ Corp!" as is done in real life. Well, I say it isn't difficult, but then I failed.

Part of it anyway. I got the being nice part okay, and the greeting, and the ending, but I missed the vital Sell The Customer More Shit in the middle part. So I had to take a remedial module. I was not happy about this, particularly since the 22 year old temp service employee said encouragingly to me "Gee, you did really well on the first part! Have you ever done customer service before?" and I wanted to strangle her.

I took the remedial sales module and I learned all about the ways to sell people shit they do not need or want under the name of Customer Service and I decided that what I really want to do with my life is make those training modules, because, jesus, they suck, and I could do it better with a sharpie and a torn piece of newsprint. It was like being submerged in evil: I learned about how to use leading questions to get the people to admit other things they wanted and then I learned the most evil trick of all: closing the sale by assumption. The assumption means that you just say, "Okay, Mrs. Smith, I'll sign you up for that right now" before the customer has actually agreed to purchase anything. You can tell that they're approaching a "buying moment" by the fact that they'll either agree with you, ask your advice, ask for details, or, as far as I could tell, do anything at all other than hang up shouting Fuck You!

I wanted to take a shower. When that happens to me on the phone I become completely berserk, but apparently it's standard operating procedure and the customer is the better for it. So I finished my remedial and walked into the other office to learn about the horrible job I agreed to take next week. The temp lady started to explain the timecode and then said, "Dress code is business casual, which means. . . "and okay, maybe I'm sensitive, but I got offended that she felt she needed to explain business casual to me. I got more offended when she said patronizingly, "You look pretty nice today." Fuck her. I'm wearing basic office lady uniform: gray skirt, black sweater, black tights. Then she said something about MAY which caught my attention. "MAY?" I said, "I'm not still going to be doing this in May." "Oh," they (the other office lady got interested at this point) said, "Isn't this your career objective?" Yeah, hon, all my life I've wanted to work in a miserable call center being treated worse than an animal for less money than I need to stay alive. "No." I said. "No, it is not my career objective." "What is your career objective?" she said haughtily, "Administrative? Clerical? Data Entry?" "No." I said, even though I knew this was going to go nowhere good. "My career objective has nothing to do with this kind of thing; what I want from you people is short term, temporary administrative work while I look for a real job."

So they fired me. This is some kind of personal record: I haven't even done any work for them yet and I've already been fired. Am I good or what?

March of the Penguins

I can't stand it. I just watched March of the Penguins and I'm going to Antarctica right away to rescue some penguins. I totally cannot deal with it; I don't care how well adapted they are and how miraculous it is that they've developed these amazing tenuous survival strategies, they'd be much happier in my backyard. I can bring in a kiddie pool. My god, if I was those penguins, the backyard, the zoo or really, any-frickin-where would look so much better than my life, I'd smuggle myself out with the filmmakers.

I know that this is not what I'm supposed to be taking away from this film, which is, granted, amazingly shot, as in, how the hell did they do that? but really, even back in the days of Mutual of Omaha I knew I could never make it as a wildlife photographer. How can they just stand there with the cameras and let. the. baby. penguin. die. of. exposure? When there are even sweaters available?! I can't take it. That movie was too much for me, and I still have tons of unanswered questions, mostly revolving around the miserable lives of the various bereaved penguins, who made me cry, not to mention the ones who didn't find mates. I hope they found happiness anyway.

No more nature! I have to go back to something forced and artificial, like Six Feet Under, or the movie I watched again this weekend: Swamp Thing Science transformed him into a monster. Love changed him even more! which is totally atrocious and did not make me anthropomorphize anyone or anything.

Mr. Bill is Crazy

Mr. Bill is having some kind of weird resurgence of kittenhood. Mr. Bill is, frankly, nuts. Crazed. In-bloody-sane. And he's not quietly mad either, no, he's meowing mad. He makes more noise than anyone else in this household, which is saying something, since Theo barks all the time, especially if, as occasionally happens, there's a squirrel on the front porch. Mr. Bill comes in and out the kitchen door (and he prefers that the door be opened for him; he doesn't like the pet door that's conveniently located in the kitchen door) mewing wildly the whole time. Then he mews at me for a while until finally he decides that what he really wants is to a) go right back out, or b) eat something, or c) just to meow like a banshee for a while. I've never had such a vocal cat. What happened to the cat like the fog, creeping silently about on little gray cat feet? The poet clearly never met Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill jeers at the poet! Loudly.

This would be kind of funny and sweetly amusing, if Mr. Bill did it only during daylight hours. It's distinctly less charming at 4:30 am, particularly when nothing will shut him up. Oh wait. There is something that will shut him up: playing with a beaded scarf on my bed. Playing by meowing, naturally, and pouncing, and trying to eat the jet beads off the scarf. I lay there and wondered if he'd seriously gone crazy. Brain worms, I thought: (4:30 is not my strongest thinking time) maybe he has brain worms. What will I do if he has brain worms? "Mrrrrreeeeeooooowwww" said Mr. Bill, and dragged the scarf across my face.

Another Old Photo

Because it just wouldn't be fair to do a post about Baltimore in the 80s and leave out poor A. These black and white pictures were taken by my friend Michael McDonald, by the way, just so he gets credit, and this one is in my old, beautiful, apartment in Bolton Hill, that we would later be kicked out of because the Allmighty Senators moved in for a week or so during a particularly cold snap when the pipes at the Hour House froze, and our 85 year old super would then accuse us all of being, and I quote, "Garbage People" because of the vast quantities of trash that were coming out of my apartment. Which led to one of my two plaques on the bar at the Mt. Royal (you can buy a small brass engraved plaque saying whatever you wish and have it set in the bar, thus memorializing you forever) to wit: Garbage People: Live in one dump, drink in another. And, making this nicely circular, my other plaque says The Non Aquatic Cousins of Jacques Cousteau something something weekend, which commemorates a particularly insane weekend which involved me, the aforementioned Michael McDonald, Hy Chase from Charleston and frightening amounts of Natty Boh.

Encounter

Last night I went, as is my wont, to do my laundry at the Amoco conveniently located across the street from the Westville Pub. (The stupid laundromat has raised their prices, the fiends, not just on the washers but on the dryers too. Although that annoying fact has in fact nothing to do with the following narrative; still, it's a drag.) I got my clothes into the washers and went across the street, got a beer, went outside and walked into a conversation about Baltimore. Cool, I thought, and then I heard the name of some kids that my daughter knew back in the day. "Wait!" I said, "Did you say . . " And yes, they did. There were three guys there reminiscing, and the younger one went to the Baltimore School for the Arts with my friends' daughter, and the other guy knew my ex mother & stepfather in law. It was like old home week. Not only that, but one guy was about my age and - this is where it gets truly bizarre - knew all of the people that I knew, from the Maryland Institute and from the Mount Royal Tavern, from back in the day, from when I was so cool it was scary. As you can see from these circa 1987 Baltimore pictures. I was cool; I was invincible; I was young. I hadn't yet figured out that I look like an idiot with blonde hair and bangs.

It was amazing and wonderful, and I think we blew my friend J & A's friend (I called A & made her come down to talk to these guys too) C's mind since we talked about stuff like, oh, the Hour House back in the day with the phone booth made of a shower, and the All Mighty Senators (I was their first manager. Yes. Yes I was and you can even see my name and a long long defunct phone number on the back of their first album. Which I probably own the only copy of.) and their giant puppets and Mitchell Valiant covered with ashes playing the accordion (that came from the farm commune where I lived) and Landis being just Landis, and Ron Compton's tattoo of a stomach filled with beer, and tEntaTively a cOnvenience and Vermin Supreme and the party at Brent's out in Aberdeen during the 17 year cicadas when everyone was eating them deepfried and raw (the party of this color photo, in fact,) and my old boyfriend Jack Snope and his cockroach farm. And the powwow and Danny Van Allen and Spoon and more, and more and more, moving into true crime stories, without which no Baltimore gathering is complete, and promises to have a crab feast here in Asheville this summer.

Lately people seem to be remembering me as an artist and recalling to me the days when I thought I was an artist too and it's kind of guilt inducing. Cousins I haven't seen for years at the memorial service asked me how my painting was going, MICA people talking about installations - it reminds me that I did used to be an artist, really. Really. It's possible that that was even the defining thing about me and the important stuff in my life and probably letting it all go to hell - and beer, do't forget beer - except for Christmas cards and mosaics and weird craft-y stuff like that was a big mistake. Not that I was a great artist, I was mostly just kind of a weird artist, but I was an artist of sorts and I am beginning to miss that. I think just possibly it's time to take out the paints again.

Mucking About With ArtRage

I decided to make myself business cards yesterday and I "painted" this in ArtRage to put on them - but I chickened out and opted for a stolen borrowed .gif of a generic flamingo instead. I identify with trees, but also with flamingos, which may be why it was so difficult for me to figure out what to put on the cards. I'm pretty much willing to do almost anything, but somehow saying that on a business card doesn't look so good, so instead I went with a long list of stuff that I would do, classily in the present tense, beginning with organize and ending with art (they're lined up according to length.) Still, I kind of like the tree.

Several Arguments With Myself

Today is Saturday and I'm arguing with myself. I have been really bad lately and so I have a lot to yell at myself about. For one thing, the house needs to be cleaned again, and I'm reluctant to get started. "You are a lazy slob," I tell myself. "Stop playing computer games and get some semblance of a life, and clean the house, it's disgusting." "So?" I reply sullenly, "It's my fucking house and it can be trashed if I want it to be. Let it reflect my inner angst and sorrow!" (I can be annoyingly melodramatic sometimes.) "No," I say reasonably. "You have to clean it up because otherwise it will depress you. And you need to go for a walk; it's a beautiful day. And work on job stuff." "Fuck you!" I say with all the fervor of my inner 15 year old, and then I sigh resignedly at myself.

However, I need to do these things, and I definitely need to figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I'm going to start by cleaning my messy bedroom and getting rid of a bunch of sweaters and shoes. Panic grips me at the thought of parting with any of my shoes, though. "I can't get rid of these, they're Steve Maddens and I love them! Also, I got them on sale and they were so, so cheap." "But you never wear them. In fact, you've never worn them because they have five inch heels and you can't even walk in them. If you could walk you'd be 6'3" in them anyway." "But they make my legs look fantastic and what if I suddenly start dating someone who's 6'7"? I'll need them then."

I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life careerwise, too. I'm not one of those people who decided at the age of 4 that they wanted to be an insurance executive; I'm one of those people who decided at about age 23 while drinking heavily that she wanted to be, like, an artist, and you can see how well that's worked out. So now that I'm middleaged I need to be all responsible and adult like and possibly go buy a copy of What Color is Your Parachute (black. Mine is unrelieved black, except for the flames.) and decide, you know, what I find joy in so that I can have a happy and rewarding career instead of just lurching around from one thing to another. Actually my career really resembles the other meaning of that word, or, well, according to dictionary.com I'm thinking about careen & not career, but still: To lurch or swerve while in motion. Yes. What do I find joy in and what am I good at? Mostly Bookworm, lately, and somehow I don't think there's much of a call for someone to find words in racks of wooden letters, although, hey, if you have an opening, I consistently achieve the rank of Grand Archivist and would welcome the opportunity to talk further with you about my qualifications and abilities. It's too bad I don't find joy in creating Excel spreadsheets, but alas, I just don't. I kind of want to be a graphic designer, but I'd have to go back to school, which is unlikely, and then, after graduation, I would just be joining my many many graphic designer friends, almost all of whom are out of work and drinking wine desolately on their porches while discussing the possibility of jobs creating Excel spreadsheets. So I don't know. I think that since when I was linking to Bookworm just then I inadvertently opened it up I'll just . . just . . be right back . . .

Politics, or 5 Easy Steps To Save America

This is a political post, or, well, it's my version of a political post, which means it's me telling the world in somewhat strident tones exactly what America needs to do to fix things. Now, this is not one of my Evil Overlord posts, wherein I explain exactly how to fix the entire world by immediately making me Supreme Overbeing With Ultra Powers. This is a levelheaded, rational, realistic approach to American politics. That also uses a lot of long words, to prove that it's serious and all, you know.

1. Get rid of the two party system and implement parliamentary representation. Our voter numbers are the lowest in the world and a national disgrace. We have a completely uninterested, disenfranchised electorate and it's horrible. We're not a democracy, we're a hideous oligarchical plutocracy, and it makes me ill. Having more than just the two parties of corporate lickspittle buttlicking sycophants, indistinguishable except one-is-slightly-less-evil-than-the-other-one, would go a long way into reinvigoratiing the American people. We might even start getting political graffiti, like every other nation worth it's political salt. (I feel that the American lack of political graffiti is a sad commentary on American politics: to wit, people really just don't care even enough to spray paint their candidate's name on a wall. That's pathetic.)

2. Vote with your ATM card for one week in November. Everyone who doesn't have an ATM card can trot on down to the DMV and be issued a free one that's only good for voting. I mean, seriously, the fucking technology is already there. Any ATM in the country can recognize me and access my bank balance, how difficult would it be to write a program utilizing that network to vote with?

3. Eliminate the Electoral College. It's not 1805 anymore, people, and we don't need someone on a horse to tell us who won the election. One person, one vote, that's that.

4. National health care. National health care. National health care. I'm tired of living in a third world nation while more enlightened people everywhere kind of smirk via the internet and say in horrified tones: you mean you really can't even go to the doctor? No, I can't go to the doctor. I don't have insurance and I don't have money, all I can do is pray I don't get sick. That's a horrifying thing in this day and age and it's un-fucking-known in any other nation that has any pretensions to being a world player and even in a lot that don't even field an Olympic team.

5. Bye bye, Iraq. Sorry about all this. Apologies. See ya!

I Did Manage to go Hiking Today

And here's proof. It was cold but beautiful out at Bent Creek and yet again, I proved my theory that if you start to feel alone and lonely out there, all you have to do is try to pee behind a tree, and lo! There will be streams of mountain bikers to cheer you on. One time when I was up there, climbing up a small and vertical trail, I ran into the great god Pan. At least I think it was Pan, although I grant you that it could have been just a middleaged overweight balding man in polyester shorts with a small snappy dog. Still, I was either overcome with panic, or dizzy from climbing, but I took it that he was Pan. He appeared and disappeared rather suddenly, and there was distant haunting music, and he and his dog glared at me, and I felt a bit, well, panicky. So you never know who you might run into at Bent Creek.

Big Important Thoughts, China Mieville and Some Job Possibilities

This is kind of a disjointed post, or, if you will, several posts in one. Leap now with me from one thought to another, completely unconnected thought, and be less linear. It's good for you. Let us start with large and important thoughts, vital questions and the nature of the universe, shall we? First up on our list is the Zit Question: Has anyone, ever, anywhere, managed to ignore and not pop the giant zit on their chin? I can't do it. I tried, but I just can't make it through. And why, why do zits happen at the same place over and over again?

Einstein said, famously, that e=mc squared. This has something to do with the speed of light, right, and also something to do with the fact that no matter is ever created anew in the universe, it just changes from state to state. Or so I think I understood, once, long ago, before I burned that last vital brain cell with a shot of tequila one dark night. Except he obviously wasn't thinking about leaves and leaf mold. See, there is no way that the nutrients in the soil sucked up by a tree equal the amount of leaves that then fall off that tree, go under the hedge and then eventually turn into soil. Not in mass or space or anything do they equal out. This is, over years, a bunch of soil, which means that the earth is actually getting bigger, kind of like a rubber band ball. That is matter that's been created. Also, kids. And puppies, and kittens, and even horrid tiny hairless baby mice, eerp, they too are new matter. So, sucks to be you Einstein. There is so new matter, and I figured this all out this afternoon smoking a cigarette in the back yard and looking at the new matter under the hedge.

China Mieville is a genius. I'm reading Iron Council and while people said that it wasn't as good as The Scar I actually like it even better. However, it reminds me of a theory I have about British authors vs. American authors: to wit, British authors are tougher. American writers get sentimental and don't kill off their major characters; British writers don't care and in fact take a kind of fiendish delight in oceans of gore. They routinely kill of their entire cast of characters; they let babies be eaten, hundreds be masscred in entirely new ways and they don't care. Witness not only China Mieville but also Jeff Noon, who is incredibly tough on his characters, and early (before he became an American) Neil Gaiman who has gotten much nicer and more sentimental since he basically switched countries. This theory is still under construction. Don't mind our dust!

I agreed to take a horrible job with Kelly Services in a call center selling cosmetics. I really don't want it, so let's all hope that something else comes up in the next week before I start. Actually something may have - a strange Craigslist ad looking for people to proofread magazine articles might actually be for real, so keep your fingers crossed for that possibility to materialize. It's almost real money AND I don't have to leave my house. Yeah.

blurry cat yawn

blurry cat yawn
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

It's a terrible thing to say, I guess, but Barbieri's death has really brought me closer to Mr. Bill. He used to rely on his brother to handle all the interspecies communication he thought was necessary - stuff like "isn't the food ready yet?" and "Why don't you make it stop snowing?" Now, he must ask me these questions himself, and he's decided that he loves sleeping in my bed, which I love too, so we have shared interests. M says, "Mom, the cat is not your best friend." and I say, "Yes he is. Mr. Bill, that orange cat was around here this morning looking for you. You had better be careful if you go outside" and Mr. Bill yawns and stretches out deliciously on my comforter and says "Have you opened a new can of breakfast for me yet?"

Jobs, Despair and Ringtones

I got another call from Kelly Services this morning. I'm getting to know them well, although they still haven't found me anything resembling what I want from them, which is a relatively painless couple of weeks doing data entry or answering phones so I can transition my brain back into the workplace. No, they either offer me stuff like that, then tell me that they'll "submit my resume" and I don't get the job, or, as today, they call to offer me a "real" job for $9 an hour at a call center where there is no hope of advancement because the actual company isn't even anywhere near Asheville and I'd be working 10 hour shifts - after two weeks of training at less money - with no end in sight. I do not want this, although I'm stupid, since I'm desperately broke. I had no idea I'd still be unemployed now. It's starting to freak me out more than a little.

So I've spent the morning trying to figure out how to become a teacher and I haven't figured it out yet, although I did print out a whole bunch of applications and looked at my college transcript for a while. The only class I ever failed was Arts Management, which is just so ironic. In actual fact it wasn't so much that I failed it as that I didn't withdraw in time and thus never even went to the class. Dumb, in retrospect, but please, North Carolina school systems, realize that 20 year old college transcripts just might not offer the clearest image of me available. It doesn't really matter though, since I cannot for the life of me make my way through the maze of PRAXIS II exams and complicated requirements and this and that to even become a substitute teacher, which is apparently nearly damn impossible nowadays. I'd have to take a class and, surprise surprise, the classes are all full. There's one available in March, and I'm going to sign up, what the hell, but god I hope I'm not still unemployed in March. The classes are all full; the websites are forbidding; the maze seems unnavigable and that's just to make $58 a day as a substitute. Becoming an actual teacher seems even worse, but I printed a bunch of application information and I'm going to try. Unless something better comes along. My friend J called to tell me that there's an ad in the Iwanna for, and I quote, "someone to do internet computer work" which could be, you know, anything at all although the chances of it being some complete loon who I visualize as an old man in a wifebeater, spitting tobacco juice and deciding to get in on some of that there internet stuff he's heard about on the tee vee, are high.

In the meantime for a little light relief I have renewed my search for a cel phone ringtone of Warren Zevon's Lawyers Guns and Money but alas, the only thing I can find is Werewolf of London, which is kickass, yes, but not good enough for me to pay $2.50 for and replace my current ringtone I Wanna Be Sedated which I adore and is always appropriate in any circumstances. Although Lawyers, Guns and Money would be awesome. Truly awesome.

If you click on that Ramones link you will get to a video and it's great, if a bit blurry & dark. Or maybe that's my monitor.

The Fifty Most Loathesome Americans

Read it and weep. With laughter among many other things.

Altered States, Apocalyptic Light and Suchlike

I took M up to Celo this afternoon, after a long grey stormy Sunday of doing essentially nothing. We did go out for breakfast at the Silver Dollar, where I swear they put valium in their coffee; nothing else, after all, could excuse the taste, or the fact that after leaving A there to doze in the booth while I dashed up to the ATM (the Silver Dollar takes nothing but cash for it's incredibly cheap cholesterol laden breakfasts,) dropped M off (where else but the Sword and Grail) and came back to duly pay the check, we came home and passed out for almost 3 hours. Then there was the drive up to Celo, and the discovery halfway there that, oh, by the way, M was supposed to have graph paper and sundry other school supplies by tomorrow, which necessitated a stop at the Roses Discount, worthy of it's own sweet blog post enumerating the many useful and less items that can be purchased therein, and then we left the Roses and walked outdoors into sky. The sky and the light was apocalyptic, so that we had to stop and just stand there for a moment, and try to take a picture, but you can't take a picture of light like that. Or possibly you can, if you have a good camera and have actually read the manual, and know about stuff like shutter speeds and lens apertures.

At any rate, it was glowing everywhere, the kind of light I've been trying to capture for days now, the kind of light that I saw briefly up in Sapphire but didn't have time to take a picture of the moss laden dead tree that was being illuminated into neon. Do you know the kind of light I mean? It's the kind of light that is coming from all over, the kind of light that if suddenly, a big door opened over that sudden neon tree, and Elvis, Mary Magdalene, three Munchkins and ET came jouncing out in a big pink Mary Kay cosmetics convertible cadillac, you wouldn't blink an eye, you'd just say, yeah, it's that kind of afternoon.

Back to Asheville, through intermittent rain, the kind that makes you have to fuck with the windshield wiper speeds through the whole drive, annoying, but I have fallen in love with the rental car (the defrost works so fast! It moves so smoothly! I passed someone on an uphill grade! The CD player, oh gods, the CD player!) so it's okay. I came home, made lentils and left again to go see Mirrormask.

Mirrormask was brilliant. Art movie, kids movie, adult movie, okay, it has some flaws, but not many, and it's visually stunning. Drawings and surreality, nods to Dali & Bosch, fish swimming through a mutable sepia city, masks and black lipstick - really, if you haven't seen it, do so immediately. I walked out of there and got into my lovely little rental car, turned it on & later vintage XTC started blasting loudly into my otherwise silent bubble, which fit weirdly and perfectly with the movie and the mood. Everything was an amazing movie. The streets were shining black, the black and unmarked and silent car ahead of me went through a puddle with cinematic precision: each drop of water slow, backlit, and technicolor. The highway was deserted and glowing and the Smoky Park Highway bridge has never looked so smoky, so park, so highway, or god, so taken out of a 1950s futuristic fever dream. The sky is a purplish smoking orange, the air is so clear it's water, and everything looks like a painting, like a perfect dream of paintings.

Family

I just came back from my uncle's funeral. It was a nice service; a full mass and I haven't been to a Catholic mass since I think my own first wedding in, uh, 1982, but I didn't get struck by lightning or anything. Although they've changed the words to everything, including the Lord's Prayer, again, and I never know when to stand up and sit down. Also, in complete blasphemy, I had forgotten to turn off my cel phone, and I couldn't figure out a polite way, seated up with the family and all my cousins and all (we were, of course, bordering on being late) to reach into my purse and turn it off, so every time we were supposed to pray quietly, I devoutly offered up my prayers unto God that the damn thing wouldn't ring, thus unleashing the Ramones plus a kind of vibrating mooing noise into the silent church. My stomach, objecting to the three cups of black coffee and half a pumpkin muffin, was making enough noise to fill the church anyway, and I prayed to God to make that stop too, but in his infinite wisdom he decided to let the ominous rumblings and glorping noises continue.

The reception after the service was lovely, full of cousins and their children, all of whom have grown alarmingly, and some of whom, even more alarmingly, look identical to their parents. It's scary how much we all look alike, actually; there were photos of my aunt (her husband, my uncle Jack, died; my aunt is my father's sister) as a young woman and I didn't realize how much she looked like my father; how much I look like her, and was reminded again of just how much my son looks like my father. My son will be sorry he missed it; some of my cousins' girls are about his age and they're an astonishingly pretty bunch. They cried. I got a bit teary eyed myself. There were golf jokes (we're that kind of family, yes) and some of my cousins spoke about their father, sweetly and well, and my cousin who is a master brewer in California brought not only a keg of beer he had brewed in his father's honor but also his utterly adorable 2 1/2 year old son who I had never met before. It was a nice afternoon, if you can say that about a funeral. I'm sorry Uncle Jack wasn't there, because he would have enjoyed it - my mother said perhaps the nicest thing you can say about anybody about him on the ride up, to wit: "You always wanted to be seated next to Jack at a dinner party, because he always had something interesting and funny to say; he could carry on a conversation about anything." My father would have liked it as well.

I don't see my cousins often; and when I do it's usually for something like this. There doesn't seem to be any way to get around this aging and cycle of life process. Our lives are all different, have always been, although as we all get older that stuff matters less, I think. They usually say something to me about how wild I am (my older brother and I are the token black sheep of our family) and I usually say something witty back about how somebody has to do cocaine with rock stars but really, I am glad I have them, and I kind of wish we saw each other more often, without death.

Raise a glass to Uncle Jack. He liked dogs, and golf, and kids and sports. He raised 6 good kids and he told many a kickass anecdote.

Rental Car And An Old Meme, Revisited

I rented a car today, wahoo! Naturally this took longer than it should have, because the first car they gave me, a PT Cruiser, didn't have a CD player. Fuck that, I know my rights, and my $22 a day entitles me to blow those speakers, baby. What madness could have inspired the car people to put a cassette deck into a 2005 car is also somewhat mind boggling; I personally own the last extant cassettes of the world (the Smiths! the Ramones! . . Men at Work, gah!), and they're getting kind of stretchy and creaky. By the way, what they say about PT Cruisers having no visibility is essentially true: great style, creepy to drive. I had to take it up the highway to the next rental place so they could give me a nondescript blue Chevy, with a working CD player and a bass boost that rumbles the doors. Yeah. I went up to Celo with 6 Japanese swords (a late Christmas present from M's dad) in the back seat and Mary Prankster shaking the frame and all was well in my world. The cows are all lying down out there, though, so your Hangover Journal Early Weather Change Warning System is now advising you that Mom always says cows lie down when the weather is going to change. Bring your umbrella, or, do as I do: forget it. If you bring it you'll just feel dumb anyway: walking around trying to juggle purse, umbrella, coffee, cigarette and probably a file folder full of papers. On the way back M played me wild surf music, his latest craze, and that too was good.

Tomorrow I am going up the other side of the mountain to Sapphire for my uncle's memorial service. I am bringing my mother and so I doubt there will be punk rock, alas, she doesn't like to play music in the car. The rental car was her idea though, so I won't complain. She didn't want to show up in front of the family in my Asheville hippiemobile and really, who could blame her? I get a little leery of it myself whenever I venture out of city limits, although of course that rarely happens. It's somehow easy to forget, in Asheville, that not everyone is majorly tattooed and driving a biodiesel station wagon covered with fading stickers. Kayak on the top and border collie with bandanna optional, but preferred.

The Old Meme I am Revisiting is: Songs in List Form. Here is my contribution to the genre, inspired, of course, by driving along listening the the Clash:

Where I am:
- all lost
- the supermarket

How I feel:
- Unhappy

Why I’m here:
- Special offer
- Guaranteed personality

My background:
- Fell Out
- Unnoticed
- Lived in suburbs
- Shorter than hedge

What I heard then:
- People on ceiling, fighting

What I do:
- Watch TV
- Save tea coupons
- Listen to disco record
- Drink

What I hear now:
- Kids in halls
- Pipes in walls
- Phone calls
- Silence

Where I am:
- Lost.

fliss interview outfit

fliss interview outfit
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Check it out, it's what my ex used to refer to as the Execuchick Outfit, complete with ladylike pumps. Despite it, however, I did not get hired to manage an upscale ladies' designer dress shop, which is okay, because I probably would have been very bad at it. But don't I look like I work for IBM or something? You should see the full black suit; it's overwhelming and even more so with the houndstooth jacket. I would at this point just like to point out that that skirt is a size 10, yes ten, and it fits just fine, hee hee hee hee, and if you don't think that cheers me up to impossible heights, baby, you just don't know me very well.

You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

You are the president.

Computer Woes

I made the hideous mistake of downloading Google Pack. I'm not going to link to it because I am saving you from ending up in the same boat as me; namely, it borked Firefox completely. I spent like two hours last night and then again this morning trying to restore it; ultimately I had to do system restore back to two days ago AND remove every mozilla folder that's ever been on my computer AND find hidden google files and remove them AND completely reinstall firefox. That even sounds easier than it was, because I'm leaving out all the useless, pointless, in between steps AND the swearing AND the stomping around AND the smoking of the cigarettes of anger - you know, the works.

Last night was an exercise in frustration anyway. My brother and I did one of those drive-back-and-forth-between-the-autobody-shop-and-my-mom's things; of course the car wasn't done because, you know, it never is. So we went to Broadways, where I ran into my friend D and we shot some execrable pool, and I told my brother to go ahead and take my car back to my mom's; D would give me a ride home. Which he kindly did; that part was okay. The part that wasn't okay was that my laundry and the book that I'm reading and the DVDs that are already very late going back to Orbitz, were in the car as well. It's a good thing I have another set of sheets, because all my sheets and pillowcases are in that laundry, which would be why last night I slept on 2 leopard print king size pillowcases and one Noah's Ark one.

I got home and decided to finish redoing my filing cabinet. I spray painted it black yesterday (spray painting is a drag. Getting it all even and stuff is an even bigger drag. Making up your mind that the sort of swirly uneven paint on the side of the filing cabinet actually looks kind of like a Chinese landscape painting and thus is artistic, cool and okay is priceless.) and I was ready to decoupage all the zen quotes I've been collecting for a couple years off my zen quote a day calendars onto it. I did so. It looked good. I realized that they were all on there backwards. Yes, backwards, facing the back of the filing cabinet, the unpainted back that goes to the wall. In the middle of all this I also discovered the true extent of my computer problems, namely, that I can't even run Bookworm with IE! The horror!

So I tore the whole thing apart and started again, which entailed losing a bunch of quotes and very, very carefully removing others with my thumbnails, a painstaking and persnickety process that is not what you want to do when your computer is borked and you're utterly frustrated already and at some point in the middle of this I lost my Exacto knife and that's when I really became overcome with misery. I ended up cutting the clear contact paper off the filing cabinet with a carving knife, which actually worked better than I thought it would) and I smoked many, many cigarettes of fury.

But now it is Wednesday morning and the cabinet is done: it looks a bit, uh, eccentric, but what the hell, and firefox is back, and I have two peculiar job interviews tomorrow, so things are looking up. At last.

Summary of the Previous Post

An oldie but a goodie.