Slowly Going Bald

Over at AngryJournalist, they've started selling T-shirts. It's admittedly a weird little endeavor, but I still find myself drawn to a couple of the designs.

I can see the hills
cooling in the summer sun;
so close, but so far.

In a meeting now;
Internet confuses some.
Boss could use some help.

There's a window here.
I wish I could see the sun
from my cluttered desk.

This is my lunch time,
but they scheduled a meeting.
Thanks a pantload, boss.

Tony's nodding off.
He dips in and out of sleep
like a tired child.

The title of this post is taken from a fantastic and also terribly depressing essay David Simon recently wrote for Esquire. You can read the whole thing here. When you're done, hop on over to the sites listed below for a broader view of the general unrest and unhappiness that's worming its way through the industry and the medium.

Excerpts from AngryJournalist.com:

Angry Journalist #1106: I’m angry because I work so much that I can’t get a decent date to save my life. Then I take a day off to go to the doctor, who says I’m stressed and charges me $150. His recommendation: Have more of a social life. Thanks genius for completing the Catch-22.

Angry Journalist #1107:
I’m angry because print journalism is dying, internet journalism doesn’t exist yet and there’s just not much else to do for someone who’s young, energetic and loves to write. I’m angry because the medium is committing suicide as fast as it’s dying and the people who should care the most — average people and readers and thinkers — don’t give a shit. I’m angry because in the age of information, I’m being scared off the only profession I’m suited for.

Angry Journalist #1272:
I’m angry because as a music journalist in the UK, there will be no realistic job prospects for me when I get to my mid-30s, by which time I will have fulfilled a lifetime ambition but still won’t be able to afford to live in anything but a shared house or contemplate such things as saving for a pension or, in fact, getting a taxi back home from a night out instead of the night bus with the crack-heads.

Angry Journalist #1268:
2/29/2008
22 out at the L.A. Daily News (buyouts and layoffs)
9 at the Daily Breeze (layoffs)
8-9 at Long Beach (layoffs/attrition/consolidation)

Also, Headsup: The Blog is a great resource for info and gripes related to copy editing. Then again, I'm the kind of person who can talk about how happy he was when AP made "fundraiser" one word in all instances, so the site's right up my alley.

If you need a happiness chaser, there's also Happy Journalist, or this puppy howling.

I think he said "rocket scientry." And I think he said it twice.

me: i just tried to fix the printer for the new woman who [job description redacted so my ass doesn't get fired]
she's cute
and she had that girl smell
what the hell is that smell
Sis: a girl smell?
a mixture of shampoo and perfume and cleanliness
me: no, it's more than those 3 things
has to be
Sis: well i don't know
i don't know if i have a smell
me: because i wash my hair, stay clean, and wear a pleasing cologne, and i don't smell like a meadow in springtime mixed with sexual repression
Sis: hahahahahahahaha
ok i'm trying not to laugh out loud
me: :)
like body glitter and conditioner and sunshine and 19 other things
her face was SPARKLY
don't wear that crap to work
it's gonna distract me
"can you help me fix the printer?" "you cheeks look like stars." "...thanks?"
Sis: hahaha
this is great
your cheeks look like stars
hahaha
me: "i really just wanted you to help me fix the printer." "you smell like a bed i want to wake up in"
Sis: oh wow
eek
me: oh come on, that one was funny
:-/
Sis: it is
but not innocently funny like the cheeks one
me: i think it is
i was also debating, "you smell like being at home"
i was going for the comfort angle
Sis: ah
it was more of the comfort/sex angle
me: sex = comfort. male mindset
Sis: ah
me: well
Sis: well

I will kick in the solar plexus the next person who says "dudette" unironically. I realize this means I will probably be delivering my vengeance unto an adult, and a member of a generation currently stranded between the cultural relevance of their children and the deification of their parents.

But please, for the love of all that is good, stop saying "dudette." You sound old, and weird, and just generally creepy and out of touch.

Please stop.

Coworker: Jennifer Hudson is gonna be in the "Sex and the City" movie.
Me: That's gonna be a terrible movie. You know why? Because the TV show wasn't that good.
Coworker: Yeah, but it's got a buttload of fans.
Me: So does NASCAR. Doesn't make it right.

1. He falls asleep at his desk at least once a day.

2. He consistently shows up late.

3. He does almost no work before 5 p.m.

4. He does one minor task between 5 p.m. and whenever he stumbles home, usually around 8 p.m.

5. He manages to screw up that one minor task at least three times a week.

6. He yells at everyone.

7. He ignores suggestions of help and insists that he's always right.

8. He once ate a kitten right in front of me.

9. He doesn't wear socks.

10. He shows a grasp of newsworthiness that could be described as cavalier at best.

11. He occupies a chair that could be filled by someone much younger and more talented.

12. He thinks that old age equates with skill, and that tenure implies the right to underperform.

13. He constantly whistles, and it's always something tuneless and scattered.

14. He creates errors where there were none and doesn't fix the errors he should be fixing.

15. He is apparently clinically incapable of pronouncing a "th-" sound, instead saying things like "dis" and "dat," though whether this is some obscure nod to the jazz culture he claims to have once been a part or whether it's just senility is beyond my ability to say.

16. He takes several personal calls a day, usually to walk his even more addle-minded wife through tech support.

17. He shows no remorse about his complete inability to execute his job with even a fraction of the quality that would be required of someone his junior. That's ageism: Protecting the jobs of the elderly out of guilt and supposed obligation while shunning the more talented but younger workers desperate for a chance.

18. He farts. A lot. I wish I was making that up.

19. He constantly mutters, sighs, and talks to himself in his own little gibberish language. Sometimes he'll answer the phone with the greeting, "News things."

20. He won't die.

When editing a news story about socialite Kim Kardashian, I wondered if it would be feasible/appropriate to make a Cardassian joke in the headline.

me: GTHM¹ just walked by
i would read the entire book of first nephi for her
i would wear black slacks and avoid all carbonated drinks just for her
i would bike from door to door in a poor attempt to convert people just for GTHM
Sis: wow
isn't GTHM taken?
me: by a skinny hip rock star, yes
but is he willing to wear the chafing underwear? will he make the yearly pilgrimage to salt lake?
because i will
I WILL
Sis: haha
tell her that
me: i will
Sis: and then launch into "Take My Breath Away"
me: watching in slow motion as you turn to me and saaaaaaaaay
...my love...
TAKE MY BREATH AWAAAAAAAAAAAY
i will do it
today's the day i let berlin do my talking for me
Sis: what a glorious day

^{1. GTHM is the colloquialism I have bestowed on a female coworker, G——, who is a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and so cute I could puke. You can assemble the acronym yourself.}

So, there's a near-constant stream of snacks flowing through my office, and today one of the guys in another department brought in some peaches, and cut up some and gave them to my department on a plate. Free fruit is always appreciated.

The new guy in my department saunters up to the plate. He's a nice guy, but probably the ditziest man I have ever met; it's like a gay Ken doll come to life. Anyway, he grabs a peach and takes a bite and says, "These are good." And in the instant that he does that, I see Chris Farley dressed as one of the Gap Girls, saying the exact same thing with the exact same inflection. It happens around the 0:12 mark:

I was floored by the fact that the new guy is so gay he sounds like Farley in drag, and went half-crazy with excitement about my discovery. I shared what I'd found with a coworker, and she completely agreed.

So, that's the new guy.

100%The Movie Quiz

That's right.

Again: That's right.

58%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

This seems a little arbitrary, but then, there's some truth to it.

This was actually surprising. Apparently I used "hell" four times (believable), "shit" three times (less so, but there's one more mention), "porn" twice (seems low), and "ecstasy" once (I can't believe I'm being penalized because the quiz can't differentiate between the drug and the feeling).

60% Geek

Also not that surprising. I know some geek stuff, but let's face it, I also call tech support. Sometimes you just get tired of printer maintenance. Though I am happy that I finally get points for knowing who Smaug is.

45%

I can't run very far, but then again, I've never had the kind of adrenaline pumping through me that I imagine a zombie invasion would produce. Still, I think my lack of physical prowess is balanced my ability to find a hiding place and look for weapons, as well as my willingness to kill my friends if they became zombies.

• "Wrestling is opera for men who don't know they're gay yet."

• "She's hot. Every time she walks by, I want to sing 'Take My Breath Away.'"
"What does that girl have to do with Top Gun?"
"Nothing. That's just the best song to sing when someone hot walks by."

When your female mid-40s coworker hands you a two-sided 4x6 card advertising her erotica-themed podcast. There are photos. One of her.

Daniel,

First of all, how's it going? It's hard to believe you've been here for almost two years now. Who could have predicted when I interviewed you that there would be so many managerial and staff changes?

Speaking of staff, your supervisor, D——, asked me to speak with you, but as I will be out of the office next week, I'm opting to send you an email instead of holding a more formal meeting in my office. You should still consider this a verbal warning, though. D—— has brought it to my attention that your behavior of late has been a little off. Specifically, he says he has witnessed you performing the following:

• You softly sing the chorus of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" when our most recent hire walks by your desk, a girl you have described (rather ill-advisedly) in intraoffice emails as "cute enough to kidnap." Needless to say, this is inappropriate, as are the jokes among coworkers using seemingly innocuous terms like "teabag," the meaning of which was made horribly clear to me when I Googled it this morning.

• You have occasionally worn flip-flops, despite the fact that company dress code forbids men from wearing open-toed shoes, and have also been seen slipping them off to walk around in your bare feet. This is a violation of corporate policy, as is your habit of rubbing your feet vigorously against the carpet to "grunge out the sweat," as you've been heard to say.

• You go out of your way to work the word "balls" into conversations with management, which, though humorous in an after-hours or weekend setting, is discouraged at the office.

• You used a pica pole to scratch your chode during the most recent office-wide meeting.

• Finally, instead of coping with our parking difficulties as we have done by allowing the garage attendants to double-park your car and retain your keys, you have simply begun hurling cinderblocks through the windows of cars in reserved spaces. This will not stand.

Needless to say, we still heartily value your skills and the contributions you bring to a team that has been functioning stronger than ever in recent months. But these behavioral lapses are just plain unacceptable. I understand that this time of year is stressful on all of us, especially employees like yourself who have not yet worked their way up the ladder of opportunity to a survivable wage. Feel free to swing by my office next week, when we can discuss these matters in greater detail.

Sincerely,

M——
Director of Human Resources

You want a video?

You got it.

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Him: I know this isn't the first time we've talked about this. Your methods are becoming a little unorthodox.

Me: Well, excuse me. I guess I'd mistaken you for somebody else.

Him: Pardon?

Me: Somebody who gave a damn. Somebody more like myself.

Him: Again, I don't know what you're talking about, and I find these little cryptic hints you're dropping to be really —

Me: And THEEEEEEESE foolish GAAAAAAAAAAAMES —

Him: Oh, knock it off with the Jewel.

Me: ...

Him: ...

Me: You knew what I was doing?

Him: Yeah, and I knew last time, too, with the Lisa Loeb. Hadn't heard that song in a while. What's she even up to now?

Me: Wait, wait. I'm supposed to sing, and it's supposed to be awkward, so then people will read about it and ask me later if it really happened, or maybe they'll just compliment me on my quirky uniqueness that isn't even that quirky and certainly not unique.

Him: So this is all some elaborate set-up?

Me: Yeah.

Him: Well, then, why do you do it?

Me: It's a confidence booster. I'm the eldest child. It's a long story.

Him: Well, knock it off.

Me: Your thoughtless words are breaking my heart. ... You're breaking my heart.

Him: ...

Me: ...

Him: Are you quoting now, or was that for real?

Me: I don't know. [Stares off into distance.] I just don't know.

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Him: See, this lede is a little too cluttered. You need to trim it, simplify it.

Me: But I thought what I felt was simple.

Him: Well, I understand that, but you need to keep an eye out for things like this. You've been here long enough.

Me: Then I thought that I don't belong.

Him: It's not that you don't belong, you just —

Me: And now that I am leaving, now I know that I did something wrong, because I missed you.

Him: ...

Me: ...

Him: What are you talking about —

Me: YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHH, I missed you.

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I walked down the hall to get a soda from the machine, which is right next to the men's room, which I always thought was weird, since the last thing you want to smell as you stand there waiting on your Dr Pepper to drop is the foggy remnants of all those anonymous office dumps.

So I put in my 75 cents to get a DP (drinks are 65 cents, which is unholy, but whatever), and I reach down to the hepatitis-infected slot to grab my dime when my finger finds a whole little treasure trove of silver down there. I pulled out almost a dollar in change. Either (1) somebody/-bodies used a dollar each time to purchase two drinks and didn't collect their change or (2) somebody stuck in a dollar, which the machine ate, and they walked away mad, at which point the machine, sensing victory, returned the dollar in coin form.

Either way, it was a windfall for me. Winning the vending machine lottery like this has been in the back of everyone's mind since middle school, when we'd put in money and push two buttons at once and, on rare occasions, actually get two drinks for the price of one.

I don't know who used the soda machine before I did, but I've got your change now, sucker. Good luck getting it back.

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Last year, while working for that unnamed but definitely horrible academic publishing company in Thousand Oaks, Crazy F***ing Denise pioneered the April Fool's plans around the office. It was a Friday, and she, being the heart and soul of the misnamed Fun Committee, engineered the hijinks: We were all to call in sick, or claim to have car trouble, or say we had the clap, or something that would allow us to come in late. Then we'd all meet at Starbucks that morning, and slip into the building while the managers were in their daily briefing. Then they'd come out and see us all waiting there to surprise them and, I don't know, we'd all have a good laugh and life would be peachy up on Walton's Mountain and our nipples would squirt sunshine and we'd all be bestest friends.

So, the managers came out, and wowee, they were surprised. Of course, CFD had actually cleared the "prank" with the department head, Kim, so it wasn't as much a practical joke as a poorly choreographed elementary school skit, somewhere on par with a plan that any 8-year-old could devise. And Shaunna, this idiot woman whose job title I can't remember now, took the whole thing up a notch on the hilarity scale by rearranging staplers and crap on people's desks while we were gone.

Man, I was so close to punching Shaunna in the mouth when I quit that place. If she'd been a man, I would've killed her outright, but since she was just a mannish woman, I had to settle for hating her.

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I didn't even know his name until a couple weeks ago. Coworkers would mention a guy named Andy, to my blank look of confusion; I would ask what's the deal with the guy that walks really fast around the office, and was met with similar uncomprehending stares. But now that I know his name is Andy, I still feel better calling him The Guy That Walks Really Fast, since he's constantly plowing through the office, leaned forward, as if he's ascending a steep hill.

TGTWRF is also an avid hoops fan, and has announced several dozen times that he's running this year's NCAA office pool. Now, I didn't mind playing the Oscar pool because (1) I could stand to part with $5 and (2) I figured I had a good chance, even though I wound up in a three-way tie for fourth, meaning 10 people or so in my office did better than my score of 18 for 24. But, since I've written before about the permanence of art vs. the transient nature of athletic glory, coupled with the fact that I just don't care, I've decided not to participate in TGTWRF's pool. Not to mention that it costs $10, and I'd be better off shoving the ten-spot up my butt than filling out a bracket and pretending I know anything about players' stats. You want me to talk about how the styles of Wes Anderson and David Gordon Green can be seen in the work of Phil Morrison? Can do, and will gladly do. At length. But asking me to parse the Sweet 16 is a waste of everyone's time.

Plus, The Guy That Walks Really Fast is just creepy. I was standing at the soda machine, near the bathroom, when he pauses before entering to ask if I'll participate in the pool; since I'm from Texas, he expects to see Texas in the Final Four, he says/jokes/mumbles. I don't know how he knows I'm from Texas, since I don't recall ever telling him this, but I move on, asking him what the price is for the pool, knowing full well that it's $10 but hoping that he can ramble long enough for me to get a Dr Pepper and edge slowly away. TGTWRF then launches into how he decided to set the $10 entry fee: "It used to be $5, but this is my 20th year doing it, and I figure after 20 years, dammit, I can do it because it's not like it was 19 years ago when I was 14 I'm 33 now and I've been doing this for 20 years…"

… at which point blood starting running out of my ears. Thinking quickly, I threw my can of soda at TGTWRF's face. It connected with a solid thunk; he hit the carpet, blood pouring from his forehead. I ran all the way home.

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At my former place of employment, Amanda recently sent out a department-wide e-mail asking if anyone had seen an extra copy of the Chicago Manual of Style; the e-mail actually said it in the cutesy/mildly retarded prose to which many women seemed to gravitate in that office, saying that the style book had "sprouted legs and walked away," which I think we'll all agree is a pretty elementary way to address a group of working adults.

But the best part of her e-mail is her typo, one that, tragically and more than a little ironically, could have been prevented if she'd actually had said manual in the first place. She asked in her letter: "Has anyone seen an extra Chicago Manuel of Style"?

I've never seen Manuel of Style, but I bet he's one smooth operator. I'll keep an eye out for him.

[She's never going to find the style book, either, since it's currently sitting on my bookshelf. Suck on that, nameless academic publishing company in Thousand Oaks.]

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Is there an age beyond which old men are required to wear hats like this? There's an elderly guy at my office who's a faily worthless drag on our efficiency, and he wears caps like these every day. If it turns out that I'm going to be required to wear one of these when I'm too old to serve a societal purpose, I'd like to request that someone kill me or something beforehand.

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Being both weak-willed and hard up for cash, I allowed myself to be persuaded one summer in high school to pursue a seasonal position as a door-to-door salesman. A friend dragged me to a meeting at an office building a couple miles from my house, where we filled out applications and waited. We were led down a narrow, low-ceilinged hall that smelled like the '70s to a tiny conference room where a few other people, also applicants, were sitting around a table. The head of the small company came in and told us we'd be selling home security systems; as he talked, three or four of the eight or so applicants drifted out, though my friend and I, too dumb to leave and too fascinated by the whole experience, stayed. Other salesmen came in and joined the presentation; one of them was a jerk about 26 years old who disagreed with me when I voiced the opinion that people could always so no to what we were selling. He enlisted me in a role-playing exercise, where he tried to "sell" me while I kept refusing. He eventually said, "Your family's safety isn't worth a few dollars a day?" And I said, "Not right now, it's not." He said my response wasn't reasonable. I don't know where that guy is now, but I hope he's stuck in a dead-end sales job and weighing his suicide options.

Anyway, my friend and I actually went on a ride-along with these guys the next day, and it's only the fact that we were both strapping young males that probably kept us from getting assaulted in all kinds of heinous ways. These guys must have been pretty desperate to build their sales force, too, since there's no way a pale, sweaty, weak-voiced high schooler is going to close the deal on a stranger's porch; I couldn't sell a candy bar, so intruder alert systems were definitely out of my league.

Anyway:

The best part of the whole stupid ordeal was that first awkward meeting when we filled out applications. We were there for quite a while, and they ordered pizza for me, my friend, and the two or three other people who were dumb enough to stay. I'd noticed the secretary on my way in: Cute in an adult way. So when the pizza arrived, the oldest salesman there (think Shelly "The Machine" Levine) took some pizza out to her. Upon his return, the boss inquired, "Did you give her a slice?" And the old man grinned a little, mimed a humping gesture, and said, "Oh yeah, I gave her a slice."

And that's when I realized I'd rather swallow a knife than be a salesman.

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