Still and Silent

I wish I had a place

To be still and silent

Where my body would turn to tumbles of roots and bark and branch

And I could unaffectedly view life walking by me,

A downed, knotty tree,

A part of the daily scenery,

Unmoving,

With my lack of potential to grow, a sad, finished fact.

As still as earth.

Still. Silent.

Kardashian Mudslinging and Gay Marriage

I have to say, I’m really sort of sick to death of the statements going around waving Kim Kardashian’s name and face at us regarding…well, anything. But most recently, regarding why gay marriage should be legal. Actually, I was sick of it the first time I read it somewhere.

And this is absolutely not because I don’t support legalizing gay marriage 110%. And if you in any way question this, please refer to the article I wrote previously: http://gomersasquatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/proposition-8-protects-people-from-marrying-unicorns/ .

Furthermore, I agree that the sanctity of marriage has been compromised since probably its inception, and that upstanding right-wing politicians who yell the loudest about it often have several failed marriages under their belts, at least. Or extramarital affairs. Or hookers. Or extramarital hooker affairs involving belts. And often with a touch of gay scandal to finish it on up. And I can see how drawing attention to their hypocrisy only strengthens our pro-gay marriage arguments. The people advocating hardest for a sacred union often have a completely unfounded argument when it comes to the way they live their own lives. Let us silence them one by one by holding them up to the mirror. This is a valid argument, and it gains media attention, and helps the cause. It is an honest argument tactic to point out that not even the person arguing can live up to their own standards.

However.

Who the hell gives a good goddamn about Kim Kardashian’s failed marriage? So she got married in a highly public fashion—some have argued entirely for this publicity to promote her television show. Maybe. Not knowing much about her, I can still say it seems very plausible. Sooooo, that would put her in league with Gene Simmons this last season of his show. Fine. Then Kardashian filed for divorce some 70something days later. Sure. Okay. This seems on par for a celebrity marriage.  

And then—oh goodness—everyone just goes apeshit. Normal people who are otherwise good-natured people are standing in (a metaphorical Facebook) line to throw the fact that Kardashian couldn’t maintain a successful marriage back at her. Ha ha! One for gay marriage! …wait. What did we win here?

Now, let’s separate out the people who went apeshit because they’re actually interested in her life. Because, dear god, why even try to reason with them? You people—you go over to Perez. I’m sure he has something for you.

The remaining people—those whose Schadenfreude leapt from their hearts directly into their wagging fingers at the first chance to go, “AHA! Straight people sometimes get divorced hastily! Why can’t we get married?” those are the people to whom I refer.

I guess I just don’t understand the sentiment. Let’s step through it. Okay—I can totally see it if she was ever actively for the idea of the “sanctity of marriage” or was in any way against gay marriage. From what I can find (and if I’m wrong, please point it out; I don’t follow the woman’s “career”), she has never said anything against gay marriage to begin with. In fact, I painfully sat through this video of her stating that she is, in fact, for gay marriage. Nothing political about this video, really. She’s asked a question and seems to summon up a fairly neutral, if not slightly airy answer. But the point is, the only thing I could find linking her to speaking out about gay marriage is actually a statement supporting gay marriage. And if she has ever been against it, let me be the one to cast the first stone, now that her steroid-injected, diamond encrusted schmaltz package she called a marriage has finally been put out of its misery. But considering I can’t find anything of the sort on her…why is her failed marriage pivotal? In her being unrelated to politics or sanctity of marriage issues, it seems…I don’t know…mean spirited.

Seriously, people in Hollywood get divorced all the time. Well, for that matter, so do normal straight people. And if allowed the right to marry, so (probably) will gay people. I realize this is an unpopular thought for both camps, but it’s just the truth. Divorce is a right we are afforded when love turns cold, or expectations aren’t met, or someone is unfaithful, or cruel, or sneaking off to have relations with your livestock, or what have you. It seems to me, by offering Kim as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of marriage sanctity, you are either saying, “Look, her marriage was a sham, so clearly marriage isn’t a serious institution,” which totally undercuts the message that gay marriage is in fact a serious institution. Or even that Kardashian’s marriage proves marriage isn’t sacred or holy, when it actually still is to many gay or lesbian couples as well.

Or otherwise, it’s saying, “If I—an honest, loving person who has been in a committed relationship with the same person can’t get married, why should someone like her be able to get married?” And is that really a comparison you’d like to make? Is that a fair light in which to cast yourself? Making the comparison that this annoying, plastic socialite can get married and divorced; why can’t I? I mean, I understand the sentiment—trust me, I do. But that’s just not the comparison I’d personally want to use. It cuts at marriage as a whole, almost suggesting the argument that Kardashian shouldn’t have been able to get married if everyone else can’t get married because she’s such a poor model of marriage. That committed gay couples have more right to get married than people like Kardashian who don’t take marriage seriously.

And that’s backward. My problem with this issue is that nothing about it states, “We all have the right to marriage because we are all equal and deserve equal rights protected to us and our would-be spouses/families.” The point of the gay marriage argument is that everyone deserves that right—committed gay and lesbian couples, committed straight couples, and unfortunately, people who do it for money or reputation. Everyone. We’re all people and we all should get to choose how, when, and why we marry (within obvious reason).

And I feel like people are forgetting this in the ephemeral media haze right now. Instead, what’s been going on in reaction looks to me like impotent, useless mudslinging at someone who is just going through a divorce. And whether or not this divorce is painful for Kardashian, it still lacks tact.

Secondly, I’m quite dumbfounded that this woman is the one that everyone has been so ready to jump on. Um, can someone please explain to me, why should Kim Kardashian be the model of the sanctity of marriage to begin with? Why anyone who needs to have their mind changed about gay marriage would have assumed her marriage would have been meant to last? Were we all expecting that this marriage was going to be successful? Were we even really caring?

I realize some of you care, and you can go read someone else’s blog. Because that’s just silliness. She’s a non-celebrity celebrity. Call me old fashion, but in my day, you had to possess some sort of talent to be…you know what? Sorry. Tangent. I get worked up.

But who was really thinking she would be a great person to make an example of? No one was surprised that this arrangement didn’t work out (possibly least of all Kardashian’s publicist), so why is everyone all, “Look! Look at your straight marriage, everyone! It fails too!” It’s petty, it’s redundant, it’s a poor tactic, and I feel like it takes away from the serious, ardent message of people who want and deserve the right to marry the person of their choosing, man or woman. Or anything in between genders. I don’t know. That’s just my opinion.

Aged

I saw you today for the first time since I’ve come

of age

and grown into my own colored

and darkly spotted sanity—

Garments that used to outsize me

and have recently become a finished delicacy I can’t remove.

I stalked you, unseen portals to your expression,

Unseen petals on your brow,

To an unknown country you no doubt make

crisp, smoky, sun-burnt, like autumn.

Deeply affecting, lusty like a Bordeaux.

Sensuous as oil dragged wet across a canvas.

Long traveled past how many clear and painted bottles,

and my heavy shoulders now bare,

I stalked you to kiss a ghost.

You were older, not as lean,

and still the distance between us was no more than when

you used to stand over me, dearest, collecting my oxygen.

When I had breathed you in instead,

had tasted your closeness,

As I had worshipped every curl of your pen and

the way your words used to tip across your lips and spill out

to my breast, an endless well.

I stalked you out today

but rather

discovered instead my unspoiled spleen—

and the last bits that shrieked in ecstasy and bled violet—

right where I had left them,

In your delicate, thieving hands.

A Hole in Pandora’s Box

So, the joy of technology (and trust me, I find few joys in technology beyond simple convenience and warm face, warm hands, warm feet) is being able to find totally new hobbies that would have never existed before. Like customized radio.

I love Pandora. Pandora, if you’re unaware, is a Web site where you can make a customized radio station around a certain band you put in. Enter a band or singer, and you have a whole list of songs playing for you that are in some way related (usually). Sometimes it strays. Like how I got from Otis Redding to the Dixie Cups once, I’ll never know. There are some kinks. But generally, it’s a thoroughly pleasurable experience. Additionally, you can add variety to a station by adding the name of another band or singer you wish to incorporate, so Pandora can find songs that work between their two styles and merges them into one station.

And this morning, in order to keep me occupied, I’ve been playing with my new hobby, which is seeing how long it can take Pandora to get from Tony Orlando to the band Hole. Which, you know, just makes me giggle.

So far (and I’m writing this as I listen, so it’s like a play-by-play. Be excited, gentle reader. This is breaking news), I’m still waiting for how they’re going to bridge that gap. I’ve had Tony Orlando’s Bless You, I suppose as a punishment for placing such a silly request. Then Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely, followed by Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World, a darling song about the quest of a non-intellectual attempting the fair heart of the elusive smart chick. Sort of a “pre-Lloyd Dobler” Lloyd Dobler anthem.

And Sam Cooke is always marvelous.

Then It Never Rains in Southern California by Albert Hammond. Waaa, waaaaa, waaaa. This is also punishment for my silly request. Is it too much to ask for a simple Tie a Yellow Ribbon? Can I get a Knock Three Times? Anything? Throw me a Tony bone, here, Pandora.

Holy hell—leaped from Albert Hammond in a rather jarring transition to Hole’s Celebrity Skin. Ha! Oh, please play Candida next. This is brilliant.

Okay, so we have Dumb by Nirvana following Hole, and then a little Key Largo by Bertie Higgins. Hahahaha  Oh god, make it stop.

See? Hobby. This will amuse me for hours. It actually hurts. And some pain, you gorgeous people, is good pain.

Overheard

A conversation, as I boarded the elevator down to the lobby in search of lunch today. I got on in front of a hiring manager I don’t know from my company, holding a clipboard of information, and an interviewee in a fancy suit who was (he thought smoothly but I thought nervously) trying to make a final lasting impression of being–hey–a great guy. The hiring manager was seemingly less than impressed. It went something like this:

Interviewee [as the elevator doors open on the 18th floor]: “Man, something smells goooood downstairs.” [laughs for no reason]

Hiring manager: “………..yup. Not bad.” [We begin our descent]

Interviewee: “That’s, uh, another reason; I’d love to just work in the Loop. It’s just got to be so much better than Schaumberg. Nothing to do out there, you know? [clearly searching for common ground] It’s just terrible.”

Hiring manager: “……yeah, it’s probably….the best place to work in the city. The Loop.”

Interviewee: “Yeah, tell me about it. Tell me about it. Where do you live again in the city?”

Hiring manager: “I don’t. I live in Barrington. …Right next to Schaumberg.”

Interviewee [suddenly more optimistically]: “Oh. ….yeah, alright, alright, well–” [Door opens]

Hiring manager: “Well, thanks, and have a nice day. Your way out is to the right.”

Beautiful. I think there’s nothing that amuses me more than other people’s awkwardness sometimes. I was just glad I got to be there for it. It was like my 30-second theater break.

Really bet he gets that job…

Today

And not just today.

Beer Me That Job

There are just so, so many things that bother me about the job search process.

For instance: why is it that nowadays, if you want to send in a resume to a job that’s located on a site that isn’t Craigslist, often they make you register with a multi-step process for their stupid site which then begins to send you more spam than exists in the entire state of Hawaii? News flash: If I’m looking for a job, I need to be checking my email account for serious job inquiries or, like, videos of kittens happily attacking watermelons sent from friends who want me to be less depressed about the dejecting work of job-applications. I do not need it bulked up with requests for me to apply to jobs for which I would never apply and so, you know…I didn’t.

Or bulked up with ads directed at me, the job-seeker. Alleged head-hunting agencies that—if really scammy—want your money, or—if merely sleezy, useless, and opportunistic—desire for you to go to their advertisement-marinated web page that no one actually uses to find jobs (it just exists as a way for them to make money off advertisements). Don’t believe me? Actually attempt to apply to a job on one of those sites some time. More often than not, you can’t submit what you need to, it’s unnecessarily convoluted to the point that you end up just not applying, or you have to sign up for more advertisement abuse in order to submit a resume.

Departed are the days of sending in an application directly to the company via email or in a very simple one- or two-step process. Dead and buried are the days of just going over the building and handing the resume in.

Yeah, try this some time. Watch the receptionist enthusiastically use it as a great big wrapper for her stale, two hour-chewed gum. In a vast majority of the career-types, the physical resume is all but obsolete in the eyes of an employer.

Which is fine. All I wanted to do was to email the damn thing in anyway. But it’s just never that simple.

There are other things I loathe about the job application process, too. For example, feeling like the worst sort of corporate whore, having to sell yourself on your cover letter to please the sadistic evil hiring machine of the non-desperate, already-have-a-job HR Dementors while they muse over your life’s accomplishments in the most trivial of manners and make capricious decisions about the fate of your life.

Or that’s at least what it feels like. I know and love a few hiring managers—family members and friends. That’s really not Dementors. But I’m fairly certain that all the hiring managers who’ve gone over my resume and cover letter have been exactly like this. Evil suckers of happiness.

But most of all, what I cannot handle about the job search process is the interview. The terrible, horrible, stinking interview.

Very possibly it’s just that I’ve always been as inept with interviews as I have been with auditions or, say, blind dates. I lose all semblance of personality or even what a human is and how it functions when faced with the daunting task of “BE CHARMING AND SAY ONLY THE RIGHT THINGS.” What the hell?! It’s like someone telling you, “Be funny.” Or “Be interesting.” Or “Be sexy.”  Uhhhhhh. Ummmmm. Buuuuuuuh. *blink, blink, rub eye, blink*

You can’t put someone on the spot like that and expect them to perform well. It’s like I completely lose the ability to comprehend what humor or intrigue are at the moment and, in fact, lose all power of intelligent speech whatsoever. It’s amazing—another person’s power to abduct attributes you might otherwise rock when not having to try at them. In these situations, rather than funny, interesting, or sexy, I instead break down into a grotesque amalgamation of the antonyms of all three—a character I think of as Abused Meg.

Abused Meg has had handed to her some of the most ghastly, miserable experiences known to man or woman and is therefore now no longer able to talk with the normal shape or wetness of her former mouth, cannot comprehend numbers or emotions with certainty, can’t find an appropriate volume at which to express her monosyllabic sentiments, has never seen the sun or heard loud noises, is constantly on the verge of tears or hiding in her own arm crevice, and otherwise behaves just as an abused, neglected dog might. At best, she has no personality at all; at worst she’s strange and alienating with the ability to rob anyone else in the room of a sense of normality. I am not good at interviews.

And the thing with interviews is, you just can’t ask the freaking questions you want. Mainly—how much will I get paid, and what are my benefits? I don’t get why this is such a taboo. You’re not supposed to ask that until right before you get the job. Why are we all wasting so much time?!

I understand that employers want a person who is right for the job and dedicated to the work. I get that. That makes for a more pleasant work experience for all and a more dedicated worker. But here’s a thought that is applicable for every single person I’ve ever talked to with regards to this subject—unless there’s something horrific about my current job, I am leaving my job to look for either comparable pay or a vertical move of some sort—more pay and benefits. If money weren’t important with regards to the job, I wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. I’d spend my time…I don’t know…rowing a fucking boat or painting pictures of me rowing fucking boats. I wouldn’t be sitting in a cubicle taking orders from people. Right? And you—the job dangler—are remarkably stupid in not acknowledging that out in the open and right away.

So why can’t I ask on the first interview—or hell, before I go take time off work to waste my time interviewing somewhere else—what the pay is going to be? Then let’s see if I’m a good fit. Because I tell you what—even if I really love a potential job, I—like everyone else—have rent and bills to pay. I have to eat. I have a life outside of work I’d like to continue living in a similar fashion or better. I need to find a new job that’s going to pay me what I need to make in order to do all these lovely lifey things. And nearly everything beyond that is a minor deciding factor. The order of importance has to be: 1.) Do I vaguely want to perform this job/am I qualified?  2.)Does it pay what I need/want to make?  3.) Literally anything else that might be a point of interest. It doesn’t matter.

Number 1 is taken care of when I apply. I got the job description, I’m interested so far. Number 2 should be next. Number 2 should always be next. There is no point proceeding if number 2 is a deal-breaker. PEOPLE—NUMBER 2!!! Come on.

So yeah. This is the aspect of our job culture that I think I find most aggravating and wasteful of everyone’s time and energy.  And so does Abused Meg.

**I should note that this is not about a current job search I’m doing. In fact, I’m on the brink of going down to part-time work in a month so I can start full-time grad school (Yaaaaaay!). But being around others who are currently looking for jobs, it brings me right back to that same old rant in my head. Why the senselessness? Why the time-suckage? You know what? Let’s all just quit our jobs and join a commune.

Or go back to grad school.

Origin of the Phrase “Nose to the Grindstone”

Oh dear god, I’ve finally reached the end of these old blog posts (the ones I wished to actually keep). Here you have it–post number six of six that I have pulled from the murky depths of my former blog, washed off, and set here.

This one is from 2006. Pause with me to see if you can remember it. Back before our hovercrafts and our robot nannies. Back when we still lived on the ground. Before our food was given to us in the form of small, flavored pills. Ah, 2006. How I faintly remember what a tree looked like.

Okay, moving on. Here’s my final post of yesteryear, a snippet of me in 2006. I give you Origin of the Phrase “Nose to the Grindstone”:

The phrase “put your nose to the grindstone” is commonly used today to mean “get to work.” Its origin has been traced back 5,000 years (by the etymological research department of UCLA), when humanity relied on grindstones to sharpen all their tools, teeth, and household items. Carpenters of yore had made a startling finding about the sedimentary stone sandstone, and thus began using it solely to make the grindstones that sharpened their tools and other items.

The properties of sandstone were first discovered by renowned carpenter and gymnast William Van Metermeyer, who unearthed the fact that the stone, when grinding against something else, gave off a surprisingly invigorating lavender aroma (for which the stone is now best known). Carpenters began using it to build grindstones, because they found that it helped them to better focus and to stay more alert. When they would begin to feel fatigued, they would simply put their noses close to the grindstone and inhale the scent of the stone for energy, and then get back to work (hence the phrase).

As a related side note, this was also the birth of the popular new age practice of aromatherapy.

…this is all true.

Sexually Harassing Your Coworkers in New and Creative Ways

Ooookay. Enough seriousness. This is the fifth (of six; quit fretting so hard, I can hear you) installment of blog entries of yesteryear. Rather, blog entries I have harvested from my previous, now-stone dead Myspace blog that existed all those shiny, happy years ago. This one is slightly less than PC, but certainly anthropologically interesting in many important ways.

What? That’s true. Nothing…

This one is entitled Sexually Harassing Your Coworkers in New and Creative Ways, and it is from 2007 and marks my having just started my current job at Place Which Shall Remain Nameless in Order to Save My Own Ass, Inc.

Here goes:

So, I just sat through our Sexual Harassment Prevention Training video, which can otherwise be titled 101 Gay Jokes, Tit Jokes, Old Man Jokes, Blonde Jokes, Fat Jokes, and Jokes to Offend all Baptists (oddly enough): A Step-By-Step Manual on How to Sexually Harass Your Coworkers in New and Creative Ways.

Imagine a straight Christian white man winking at the end of that with his thumb way up. Pretty much how ridiculous it was, considering all the practical scenario parts. It makes fun of people and things I never even had considered, making it appalling.

Also, when I walked in, the dry erase board said Sexual Harassment Training. I was like, “All riiiiiight.”  I probably should have paid closer attention to the seminar; I’m pretty sure this reaction proves that the video was for people like me.

So they started the video, and every skit would be like “Julio wants to advance his career in the warehouse, but Foreperson Jill is inappropriately using what we HR people like to refer to as Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment. Watch here as the scene unfolds.” Seriously. It was said like that.

::Julio sets down a heavy feedbag, and Foreperson Jill tells him he can lift her feedbags or he can’t get a promotion:: Waa waa waaaa. 

And the only thing I can think throughout this atrocity is… damn, Julio has a sweet ass. I mean, I kind of feel bad for Foreperson Jill. Clearly he’s sexually harassing her by being so unearthly gorgeous, and she was only responding the way nature intended her to. They’re called pheromones, people, and they are the only true villains of these stories!

Man, I should be giving lectures on this stuff.

I’m also pleased to report that there was a scene between what looked to be two forest rangers:

“Hi, Sadie.”
“Hello, Lieutenant Supervisor.”
::Lieutenant Supervisor blows in Sadie’s ear while leaning in for coffee:: “Sadie, after you get your work done, would you like to come back over to my desk and view some forest fire prevention porn?”

“Um, gee Lieutenant Supervisor, I just want to do my job to watch over all this wood.”

::Lieutenant Supervisor leans closer:: “Really? Anything I can help you with…..?”

::Sadie bites lip and looks uncertain::

Okay, that one might have been a very slight exaggeration, but there was a Sadie and a Lieutenant Supervisor! And it was at least pretty close to how that played out. Come on, Sadie. Be a sport.

I want everyone to remember this post. This is me pre-lawsuit. Then bring this back up to me when I’m sweeping up neighborhood trash as court-ordered community service outside the building where I used to work.

**Important Note: I am actually very sensitive to sexual harassment in the workplace issues and don’t find the actual occurrences of it to be humorous in the least. Despite my love of sex outside of the workplace, I don’t generally condone its presence inside the office, nor do I condone actions or behaviors that selfishly make others uncomfortable in the workplace. Just…this video was remarkably stupid.

Moral Turpitude. An Outrage.

Hello, happy campers! Here it is: post four (of six) that has been ripped from the cold, dead hands of my former blog–from before I had ever begun keeping this WordPress blog. Re-posted here from 2007 for posterity, and may god have mercy on my sad, little soul. I give you Moral Turpitude. An Outrage.:

So I was reading the RedEye this morning like a good little CTA rider, and I came across this small, glimmering gem of knowledge:

“One long-term study on rats showed that former binge-drinking rats—with a binge defined as exceeding the equivalent of a .08 blood alcohol level—had more trouble learning new things than rats that had never had a drop to drink. Tasked with swimming around a pool in search of a platform to stand on, the teetotaler rats were able to find the platform easily after it was moved, while the former binge drinkers—which had last been drunk three weeks earlier, the equivalent of six to seven human years—kept circling around the platform’s original location.”

Which just begs the question–if the average lifespan for a rat is 2-3 years, where are these rats being served? Clearly Chicago’s age enforcement for bars is not as stringent as we all thought. Shame on you, city enforcers. Shame on you. I move we discredit this study as unethical on the grounds that they must instead test on animals old enough to understand the effects of alcohol. Like turtles.