Mondays are what you make of them.

I've been having such a hard time fitting in at work. I say hello to people in the morning and they tell me I'm annoying and not to "piss my pants" because it's Monday. I stopped greeting people in the mornings because of their bad attitudes, but I personally think it's awful to work somewhere where morale is so low it's creepin' around with the cockroaches.

Single-Space

Finally, everyone has left the blog scene.
Finally, some peace and quiet.

Impacted

My boss was nothing short of brilliant when she suggested to me that I should broaden my network of contacts by joining a local service club convening young professionals unified by their commitment to volunteerism, helping victims of the latest tragedies, giving motivational talks to apathetic teens, improving communities by showcasing their own potential as leaders, and handing out pink t-shirts to junior high girls who are better than their non-volunteering classmates. When can I sign up, I asked her. I am eager to help the less fortunate hone their limitless potential and realize the skills necessary to reach their goals. Despite all my sarcasm, I realized by the end of the day what a win-win situation this could be: Those poor people can really use some pink t-shirts, and I take the extras home to use as rags!

I'm at the Library, Mom.

Every college town has a bar called The Library Bar. I stopped to see the one in Minneapolis once and asked the hunky blond host how the place got its name.

"When your parents call and ask you where you are, you can just tell them you're at the library," he explained with a grin.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! I never would have guessed! So, instead of making out with a hot librarian in the stacks while high on the serendipitous discoveries only a library can afford, I can come here and throw darts at squalid walls, while my overheating beer-soaked face shamelessly melts my mascara into cloudy puddles under my eyes, which still scan the crowd for Corona-clutching guys present for some post-dart sex?"

Do you have an eye for this kind of thing?

How can I make this blog more ugly? Suggestions welcomed.

I can't get enough of jobs!

I just learned from a fellow in HR that I am to assume the responsibility of putting on a large benefit event, a task that falls under the "other duties as assigned when your co-worker quits and administration wastes no time to implement a hiring freeze" section of my job description. Although I have some reservations about my long term ability to deal with people--that is, people and their insatiable need to have personalities--I'd like the company to know that I am a team player and will leverage my limited skills to put on this little wingding. In the meantime I shall continue to appreciate my current job, where other people's personalities are evinced only by the modifiers they like to dangle and misplace within my copy. Who knew wingdings could give me such job security?

Palin's Resignation Speech

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/palin-speech-edit-200907

That's News to Me!

What happens when you write a 24-page annual report and the people responsible for approving it take months and months to do it, therefore rendering the financial statistics obsolete? You call it a newsletter! You use all your power to ignore the professional stock photos, booklet format, comprehensive information, and the total absence of news articles, and you call it a newsletter, damn it! You call it a newsletter and then you shoot yourself.

Today, there is no use in working.

Sometimes you have no choice but to cry and smoke cigarettes at your desk at work because you are the only person in the building on a Friday morning anyway, so who the hell is going to say any of these things to you?

• Are you sad or something?
• How do you cry and smoke at the same time?
• Your hair is on fire, lady.
• Didn't you get the memo about crying at work?
• Didn't you get the memo about smoking 20 feet within the entrance of the building.
• Hey can you help me with the printer?

Faceblock

Let me tell you about this hip new thing I discovered on the Information Superhighway: Facebook. I finally put two and two together and realized that this was the thing everyone was talking about: keeping in touch with family members so you can spend even MORE time tolerating people you don't want to know that much about; gossiping about co-workers who've befriended you not at work, not in your personal life, but ONLINE so that you have to censor everything you say, for fear of a trip to the HR office on Monday; and getting back in touch with people who liked high school way more than you ever did. With my new public Facebook account, I can tell people what I'm up to, that I dislike doing laundry, which bands I like, what line of work I'm in, how whine about gas prices but in actuality just want to talk about what I drive and how cool it makes me, whom I tried to poison at work, and how I can sense the desperation in some of those profile photos. I like it. It's like a community of loud people with no self-control and a lot of stupid things on their minds.

Prize

In one month and one day, I could say, "Five years ago today, I started this blog, and have I confused you with all of those time references one month and one day ago when I mentioned the then yet-to-have-occurred five-year anniversary?"

And you will hang on now, reading for the prize at the end of the post: a statement of wit, wisdom, weirdness, and, you know, alliteration.

Delayed Blog Post

I've been on and off the softball field for about 14 years now. My greatest and only fear to this day is getting hit in the face by a savage ground ball, whose sudden rejection of course leaves my surprise a much delayed reaction.

Oh cra-!

(Hello again. I can't get into the Twitter thing.)

It's a Jungle Out There

Available now at Ikea: roly-poly huggables.

I "give" you this:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Collaborative Bullshit

I wonder if all collaboratives are capable of collaboration. I can't collaborate with adjectives that have turned into nouns!

Death by Deletion

This morning I forced a can full of Crisco down my throat in a messy suicide attempt, for what use is this world where non-writers, like fools, delete periods and turn your writing into cheap slogans?

Vote Today

Go out and vote. I'll sit at my desk and mope.

I'm still mopey about the functionally illiterate crayon-editing of my work yesterday. I did manage to roll out of bed early to cast my vote at the public library, but that was only to remind myself what it feels like to have a voice in this world. If I could vote for the original version of my work, I would.

Complete and Utter Shit

I have a thick skin when it comes to my work being edited. JUST GIVE ME GOOD REASON FOR EDITING MY WORK DOWN TO A FLIMSY AND INEFFECTUAL SHEET OF TRITE BLATHER WHOSE SYNTAX STOPS SHORT OF BEING AWARDED A 4TH GRADE "GOOD EFFORT" CERTIFICATE FOR LANGUAGE ARTS SKILLS. Non-writers who masquerade as editors don't even know what havoc they cause to an entire piece of work when they replace just a single, meticulously elected word.

Voting's Boring. Get Buzzed at Starbucks for FREE!

Starbucks is encouraging voters to vote tomorrow

--on various propositions like NO on Proposition 8, a.k.a. Operation Bass Ackwards Bigotry--

by giving away FREE cups of coffee.

You can wait in line with your free cup of coffee, and people can ask you where the nearest Starbucks is because it has been or will be a long day and you can say, "There's one down the street. Pick a direction. There's one down the street in every goddamn direction you go!" And they can say, "Starbucks overcharges for their coffee." You'll say, "Starbucks doesn’t really do coffee anymore. They’re more in the business of flavored syrups and drinks that mask the flavor of coffee.” Another guy in line can say to you, “That’s why I don’t go there anymore.” Feeling uncool because you are endorsing Starbucks with a full cup in your hand, you can say, “Hey, I got this for FREE because I’m voting today!” And everyone around you can like Starbucks a little bit better for caring about things like your right to vote and their right to exercise good PR.