I ask this question all the time, but this morning, I think I need to scream it out loud:
What the hell is wrong with this country?!!?!
Much like those of generations past, I find myself acting like an aging, out-of-touch parent, sitting in front of the telly, sipping Sanka and moaning about the diminishing moral state of today’s youth.
Thing is, I am neither a parent nor older than those I find myself complaining about.
In fact, for the most part, I am the very demographic TV execs and advertising agencies are targeting…
I guess I just happen to have a pretty well developed bullshit detector, and believe me, the shit is slinging with intensity these days.
I started keeping a list of commercials I found myself offended by a few weeks back, but ran out of paper and simply could not justify killing more trees in the name of widespread stupidity.
My beef this morning, however, has to do with the programming. (more…)
Like tsunamis and pyrotechnics-related club fires, being trampled to death is generally not a fate you consider while lying awake at 4 a.m., your brain buzzing with all the horrors you manage to push back during the day with coffee, the computer, work, family and all the other things that make you forget that, like everyone else swarming across the globe, life can be gone in an instant.
But seriously, who on Long Island would ever consider being trampled to death a viable ending, especially when the great American pastime, shopping, is involved?
WalMart security guard Jdimytai Damour probably didn’t. But I bet he’s watching his family put him to rest up in heaven, or whatever afterlife he personally believed in. And I bet he’s pissed.
So apparently a few people have been wondering where I’ve been, as I’ve not had much of a digital presence in the last, oh, year.
Well, let’s see. I’ve been, ah, right here. Although I will admit that I did manage to spill an entire glass of water on my laptop a week or so ago! (I am typing this on it right now. All is well. It just had to dry out…)
But I will admit I haven’t had much of an interest in writing. Not that things haven’t been going on. Lord knows there’s always something going on in my life, for better or worse, but I’ve been in uber transition mode. You know what that means. Uh huh. Too effing discombobulated in the brain to write.
But there are just too many things that drive me up the goddamn wall to keep away from here any longer, and so I’m going to just dive right back in and get y’all up to speed.
Do not be afraid. I’ve relocated the blog. It will be okay… Soon I’ll be back posting on an at least semi-regular basis, making the world just a little bit brighter with my tales of life in and around the land of the soft pretzel.
I call it progress!
Is it the warm, summer air… Oh, who am I kidding?
Is it the hot, humid, sticky air that makes your lungs feel like
they’re filled with honey and skin slicker than the ocean surrounding
the Exxon Valez that is making me lazy?
Or could it be something else? A lack of willpower, lack of drive,
get-up-and-go winner takes all sort of deficit that’s causing me to
stare, blindly, at my monitor while scanning craigslist for a coffee
shop job?
A-ha! Coffee shop job? Wait just a minute…
The way this life works she may be found somewhere else in the blogosphere, terrorizing another poor, delicate soul with her angry shriekings and bipolar demands for the unreasonable. But alas, I do not know what has happened to the Shrill.
But I do know that she is gone, no longer darkening CorpraCo’s hallways. Whether it was her own doing, really, is unsure, but I can certainly speculate.
Sometimes I really have to wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. Blame it on the A.D.H.D ., but I possess the maddening ability to make on-the-fly decisions without actually stopping to consider the real-world, long-term ramifications of the latest idea of my affection.
Granted, it’s not like I’m careening, wild-eyed and hopped up on half a dozen lattes, into disastrous oblivion for inane plans like a Tasmanian Devil ass tattoo, or opening the door when the Mormons come to call.
But unfortunately, my penchant for throwing caution to the wind and myself out of the proverbial frying pan, slathered in butter, and into the fire, has landed me dead center into the kinds of situations that would make even the boldest of risk takers think they woulda’ thought twice.
Because, alas, it is not that I possess the sort of devil-may-care j’oie de vivre that accompanies most life on the edge types as they venture boldly into odds-defying, oblivious Homer-like success.
I do not.
I simply do things cuz I want to.
Since that fateful afternoon, when I narrowly escaped the slobbering jaws of managerial rage, I’ve had time to reflect upon the errors of my ways, thanks to three weeks’ reprieve from cubicle hell.
How did I come by my much needed break from the never ending grind of the corporate machine? By landing my sorry ass in E.R. at midnight later on that dreadful day.
(more…)
It probably sounds weird. In fact, it’s pretty much straight up sexism I’m talking ’bout here. Because either way, no matter which way you shake it, 99.9 percent of the time, I just can’t stand working for a female boss.I apologized…
I know, I know! I can hear my fellow feminists, gasping in shock and shrieking that I am a traitor to my kind; Benedict Arnold to the estrogen army’s equality-focused grrl power cause.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not some uterus hating suit chaser, nor do I believe a woman’s “place” is anywhere – house, office, the freakin’ fields of Iraq, I don’t care. I only know what’s right for my life.
But what I do believe, without a doubt, is that from the time we’re old enough to tie our pink-trimmed, cartoon character bearing, sparkly, light up shoes, we’re well on the way to growing into fingernail-wielding, back stabbing, catty-with-a-capital-C bitches.
Granted, not everyone turns out that way. There are plenty of women out there who make the 9-5 grind the challenging-in-a-good-way, collaborative, worthwhile experience it should be.
But some chickies take the mean girl trajectory all. the. way.
Today we had the unique pleasure of participating in an all-day meeting. None of us knew why we were there, not even the Tsumommy. Never mind that she’d called the meeting.
I took half a Xanax. I’d learned from hard experience – accompanied by the occasional errant mid-meeting yoyo of drool – that a slow, steady buzz is preferable to losing control of one’s facilities in front of the coworkers.
I can’t say I’ve ever loved my job – a failing economy coupled with my wanderlust means I have no choice but to be okay with any gig that’s even mildly creative, pays the bills and doesn’t give me a bleeding ulcer.
And things were cool until the bloated bigwigs who’d hired the Tsumommy got so many complaints about her they were forced to notice. In classic bait-and-switch intimidation style they fired up the smoke machines and stepped away from admiring themselves in the mirrors of their Lexus and BMWs long enough to take out one of their own.
Unfortunately, the fall guy was my boss, and now the Tsumommy is my keeper.
