A Writing Gig

Well, I'm off tomorrow to see Ella. I still haven't packed, need to shower, and want to finish cleaning up the place before I go to bed in 45 minutes or so. In other words, it's business as usual for the night before a trip.

The temp job goes on, but I've moved on to a new part of the filing routine, so it was a little more fun today. I've got a line on a good job that will give me a lot of freedom for writing and whatnot. I hope it will pan out.

In other news, I've gotten a paid writing gig (of sorts). AOL has hired me to write on their youth-oriented finance website, Walletpop. I am the resident go-to guy for bargain hunting and generally living on little to no money. In other words, most of my professional life has been informal training for this job! Please check it out if you get a chance.

I've tried to drop in on your blogs in the last couple of days, but it's been hectic. I will try to catch up when I return on Sunday or Monday.

All the best,

Crankster

Update

Whenever I take a little time away from blogging, my brain fills up with all sorts of weird useless screeds that I feel the need to download. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of time to do so right now, so here are three things that are currently floating around, in no particular order:

1. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had started reading Raymond Chandler. Well, last week I finished. Having now read all of his books, I would strongly recommend him to anyone who likes tight, philosophical, inspiring, and generally outstanding writing. I really got a kick out of his last two novels. The Long Goodbye is a depressing but honest contemplation on disillusionment and betrayal. Although it's a downer, it is also an honest end to Chandler's oeuvre, and would have been a good place to stop. However, a few years later, he wrote Playback. Much more energetic and lighthearted, it seems shallow after The Long Goodbye, but is a lot more fun to read. Best of all, Chandler writes his main character, Philip Marlowe, an awesomely hopeful ending in it. I liked it so much that I had to read the last ten pages twice.

That having been said, you need to eat dinner before you can get to dessert, and without The Long Goodbye, the ending to Playback doesn't make any sense. Together, though, they are a perfect meal.


2. I am working in a temp job that I really don't like very much. As I was financially strapped after the Jerome incident, I needed a job quickly and took the first temp assignment that came down the pike. It doesn't pay very much, and is in Human Resources. My job is refiling the entire employee records of a large company. In the process, I have to go through every record, which makes me feel a little bit like God. More precisely, I feel like a sad god, as I have to read these little biographies that detail the constant struggle for security and job satisfaction, which is so often undermined by drinking, divorce, cruddy superiors, and other problems. Added to this, I want to shoot most of the executives in the company, as they keep giving themselves gargantuan bonuses while dickering over $.50/hour raises for their employees. It's really pretty despicable.


3. Ella is having another operation on Friday. I am going out to see her on Thursday night, and will hopefully be back on Saturday or Sunday. They're going to put a drain in on the right hand side of her liver. She's strobing between anger, humor, irritation, and sadness, which seems about appropriate for the circumstances. Afterwards, she is coming up to the city to spend Christmas with us. One of my best friends, the infamous John, will also be coming up and is bringing his sons. Although it's going to be a cheap Christmas (we're all broke), it also looks like it'll have a lot of joy.

So that's it for now. I'll hopefully get the time and distance to write something more coherent in the next few days!

The Bottomless Well of Raw Stupidity

Last week, Verizon screwed up and wiped out service for my entire building. This being the Bronx, and Verizon being...well, Verizon, our phones and internet were out for four days or so, during which I was only able to access the internet through the generous offices of the New York Public Library.

Added to this, I am currently doing a temp job in the Human Resources department of a large advertising company. It's not bad work, per se, but I have to agree with Michael Malice, who once said that HR is what sorority girls do with their business degrees. Long story short, I can only get to the library about fifteen minutes before closing, which is why I've been absent lately.

By the way, I was great at making excuses in grade school.

There's a lot to write about, but one thing's been rolling around my head lately, and I need to get it out. Basically, I've been working on the proper epithet for the fine folks at Verizon. This is not as easy as it sounds.

As I mentioned, Verizon knocked out our telephone service then apparently failed to make the leap of logic to figure out that all the complaints that were coming in were all directed from the same building. They then claimed that they had come by for a service call and that our line was fine, when it was still not working. Subsequently, they fixed the problem, but not until we had called them repeatedly and complained until we were blue in the face.

Unfortunately, Verizon is the only company that offers phone service in our area of the Bronx, so we are caught in a difficult place. However, the wife and I have determined that we will switch as soon as possible.

Verizon supposedly is a combination of the words "veritas," which is Latin for "truth," and horizon, which is a popular term with business people who think that they are particularly forward thinking. After a great deal of thought, I have come to the conclusion that Verizon is actually short for "vertical horizon," a somewhat obscure euphemism for the rectal crease.

When I was thinking about the proper epithet for Verizon, my mind initially went to standard terms like "cocksuckers," "butt-pirates," "pillow biters," and "cum-guzzlers." However, I immediately realized that I was using these terms because I grew up in a homophobic environment and, on some level, I revert to form when I am upset. In a calmer moment, I decided that, were Verizon actually staffed with homosexuals, they would run much more smoothly, would take pride in their work, and would have a far more stylish logo.

I briefly played with terms like "idiots," "morons," and the ever-reliable "retards." However, thinking about my two retarded cousins, I recalled that mentally retarded people tend to take their jobs very seriously and do them quite well. In point of fact, calling Verizon "a bunch of drooling, inbred retards" was not only unfair to the many highly-conscientious retarded people out there, but was also giving Verizon too much credit. Even the inbred part was a little more than they deserved, as most of the inbreds that I've met at least have a strong work ethic.

I also played with terms like "dicks," "cocks," "fucksticks," "fuckholes," "stain-sticks," "mindless boobs," and "assholes," but realized that, like my earlier insults, these were unfair. Penises, vaginas, and anuses are fine, respectable organs, and do not deserve to be denegrated. Truth be told, they usually do their jobs to the best of their respective abilities, and comparing them to the folks at Verizon is patently unjust.

I also had a fair amount of completely illogical insults that I could add to the batch: "turd burglar," "butt muncher," "dipstick," and "ass-master." However, these terms were absurd. While they captured the surreal absurdity of Verizon, I think they missed the point somewhat. None of them really touched upon the certain something that makes Verizon the masters of their game.

It became apparent to me that my hatred of Verizon had become a sort of Rohrshak test, holding up a mirror to my own respective prejudices and vocabulary of slurs. To truly find the perfect insult for Verizon, I would need to dig deeper, to come face-to-face with my real problem with them, to dance with the demon, as it were.

And, oddly enough, a demon was a good place to start. When I imagined Verizon's phone employees sitting in a call center, I kept thinking of The Exorcist. Toward the end of the movie, after Father Merrin has had his heart attack, Father Karras is beating on the older priest's chest. The camera cuts to the demon, perched on the edge of the bed, staring at the tableau laid out before her.

In the book, the demon is brilliant, and regards Merrin's death as an unfair cheat. For the book demon, Merrin has escaped from the game, and the demon is infuriated. However, in the movie, William Friedkin took a different tack. As Karras tries to save Merrin, the demon's face is an unfeeling, empty mask of idiocy. It is clear that, denied an adversary to push against, the demon is nothing, a box of mirrors, an endless echo chamber of nothingness, a bottomless well of raw stupidity. It is, in short, the face of a pre-teen boy going into his seventh hour of an MTV Real World marathon.

I realized that I'd found the ultimate metaphor for Verizon. I imagine the soulless, empty stupidity of their call center, the employees staring vacuously out to the middle distance as they half-heartedly rub their genitalia and drool on themselves. These people are beyond humor, beyond sexuality, beyond argument, beyond redemption. I realize that the purest evil, as Friedkin no doubt argued, is the hopelessness of a truly empty mind.

The Cat with Hands

It was an interesting day. It began with three and a half hours at work in which I trained my wife to do the job that I've been doing for the last two weeks and which she will be doing for the forseeable future. It was a lot of fun, and most people seemed sad to see me go. There's some talk of bringing me on in a part-time capacity. We'll have to see what happens.

Afterwards, we met Sue, my eldest sister, for lunch. There was a problem with our debit card; while minor, it was still kind of embarrassing. Thankfully, Sue was quite cool about it. When my wife went back to work, Sue, her daughter Emily, and I went on a jaunt to Arthur Avenue, the Italian section of the Bronx. I've been wanting to bring Sue there for a long time, and it was a kick. We wandered through the little markets, cheese shops, butchers, and bakeries. Sue got to see where we live and George's day care. I, meanwhile, got to spend some time with my niece, my sister got to spend time with her niece, and a good time was had by all.

Once I got home, I started cooking dinner and went out to move the car, only to get nailed by the police for talking on the cell phone. They let me off with a pretty minor ticket, but my base tendency is to get really freaked out when approached by anyone with a uniform, so I'm still a little wigged out.

Mixed in with all of this, there have been problems with Jerome the cat and various other minor dramas. Long story short, it's been a pretty full day, and I'm a bit fried. However, I want to show you this. I've been told that it's a little scary, but I really like it a lot. It's creaky and cool in a Richard Gory/Addams Family/Tim Burton kind of way, and I hope you get a kick out of it:



Excuse the flakiness--I should be much more with it tomorrow.

Generally Crappy Day

Sorry for taking so long to post today. It's just been a generally crappy day. To begin with, Georgia's getting over a cold, which meant that she was cranky and sluggish about going to day care. I couldn't really blame her, as it was a bitter and blustery day, and I would have preferred to stay at home, too.

After I dropped her off, I rushed off to work. That's right, I've got a job: I'm temping as a personal assistant at a legal staffing firm. Actually, it's worked out so that the firm has provided me, as a temp, to itself, and is paying itself a fee for my services. Added to that, I am actually doing what will ultimately be my wife's job. She's giving her two-week's notice at her current job, and will end up working at the legal staffing firm that I am currently working for, doing the job that I am currently doing.

Yes, I have almost confused myself. However, it makes sense, even if it's plagued by the sort of slick, handy deus-ex-machinae that would seem out of place in a work of fiction.

Anyway, I like work, as I'm learning new things and the people are fairly nice, but it leaves me wasted at the end of the day. Today, I had to go to Long Island City, where I'm working on a sitcom script. I've been doing this every week since August, and I love it, but there are some days when I really just want to go home and crash.

Right before I left for Long Island City, I found out that a friend of mine recently had a cancerous lump removed from her face, and is going back to get more surgery done next week. She's being incredibly brave and cool about it, and I just wish that I could figure out something useful to say or do. However, I really don't know what to say, and am terrified of saying the wrong thing.

My wife gave me a call as I got off the train in Long Island City to tell me what was going on with the cat. One of our cats, Jerome, has been listless for the last day or two. One vet told us that it was either a hairball or he had eaten rat poison, so he would either be okay or he would die. After a brief discussion this evening, we decided that she should take him to another vet. It turns out that he has a bladder infection and might need surgery, which will cost a lot of money that we really can't afford. My wife had a little meltdown at the vet's office, which she told me about, and another little meltdown with me on the phone after I got out of my meeting.

I was walking to the Subway with one of my co-writers when all of this happened, so I told her about it. She responded by telling me about the deep emotional scarring that she was having over the fact that her cell phone is dying. I realize that this might seem shallow and meaningless to the casual observer, but I should probably point out that she's really "obsessed" with this phone and "loves" it, and that she will not be able to transfer her text messages and pictures to another phone.

I told her that I had nothing for her, and that she would really just have to deal. She put on a brave face.

On the way home, I saw a guy on the Subway who had no legs. When we got off at Kingsbridge, I wondered how he was going to navigate his wheelchair down the steep stairs at the station. I didn't want to insult him by asking to help, so I walked near him, in case he seemed like he needed assistance. When he came to the stairs, he turned his wheelchair around, got a firm grip on the bannister, and rolled backward down the stairs. After he went through the turnstiles, he repeated his feat on the lower stairwell. When we got to the bottom, I walked up to him:

"Senor!"
He looked up at me "Yes?"
"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen."
He grinned. "Thank you. I used to wait for someone to help me. Sometimes I had to wait an hour or more. Finally, I just decided to learn to do it myself."
"I was afraid of insulting you by offering."
"I saw you standing there, in case I needed it. I have to be self-sufficient, though."
"I know how hard it is to carry my daughter up the steps every day."
He nodded. "In a stroller?"
"Yeah. I can't even imagine how hard it must be to carry your own weight and a wheelchair."
"You learn to do it." He smiled and shook my hand. "Have a good night."
"You, too."

So, at the end of the day, here's the scorecard: my wife and I are healthy and employed, my daughter seems to be almost over her cold, my cat may or may not live through the night, my friend may need some surgery, another friend will have to learn to deal with the heartbreak of switching phones, and I saw an amazing act of human strength and courage.

It's been a very, very full day.