revision99

I can take a hint.

Careful readers will recall that I broke into the empty towel and toilet paper dispensers at my office a few weeks ago and illegally refilled them. I did this because it was looking like no one else was going to do it, and they were empty, and I couldn’t stand wondering how folks around here were managing to wipe their butts.

So today I found this in my mailbox at work:

So this is sort of a warning to you all, a corollary to the military axiom “Never volunteer for anything.” Never step up and do anything that needs to be done, even if no one knows you did it, or you will find yourself shopping for toilet bowl cleaning supplies.

A quick update, so no one has to worry about me.

So far, no one has noticed my maintenance work in the bathrooms at my office. I thought I was going to be in trouble for fixing the towel and toilet paper dispensers, but my meeting with The Boss turned out to be work-related (who could have guessed?). To wit, I now have approximately twice as much responsibility, spread across two locations, and no more money than ever.

As Emma Goldman has told me, I am exploited. But I’m voting Republican anyway, because I know I’m on my way to the top!

As always, my heart sways in the gentle breeze of your sweet, sweet gaze.

It’s the small details that tip you off when things are starting to go to hell.

You think Bernie Ebbers woke up one morning and said “I think I’ll cook the books about eleven billion dollars’ worth today”? That’s not how it happens. Little things go wrong, and get covered up. An investment that looked like a sure thing suddenly turns into a big loser. What’s wrong with hiding that loss from Wall Street? After all, everyone is making money. Who cares if some of it disappears down a hole?

But when greed and arrogance and stupidity and corruption all get in the tub with you, get ready to take the bath of your life.

Every coverup involves someone else, a “friend,” an accomplice, and then another and another, and pretty soon there are so many employees spinning plates in the air, trying to keep the show going and the plates from crashing to the floor that no one is there to take care of the details, like putting toilet paper in the rest rooms.

I got a copy of the email when The Corporation fired the maintenance company for our building. It was crude, blunt, almost cruel. It listed at least a dozen locations where The Corporation was “making a change,” bringing in a new janitorial service, including at the place where I work. They must have found someone who’d do it cheaper. Just like that, 20 or 30 janitors are out of work, maybe their whole company is out of business.

The corporate structure allows for one and only one goal. Like a shark that must keep swimming ahead to keep eating, The Corporation must keep improving the bottom line. All the workers want raises, the managers need to demonstrate their skills (and get raises), the officers and the board have those pesky yacht and Maserati payments to make and the stockholders want growth or else they’ll take their money and go home.

So all of them - us - spend our days cranking out more product and peddling it to whomever we can. The supplier corporations, the transportation corporations, the auditing and accounting corporations, the lawyers, the doctors, the consultants, the technicians, the advertising system - print, radio, TV, direct, web - they are all trying to beat each other and sell something to my corporation, while at the same time swimming like sharks and eating everything in their paths, making more and more money every quarter. It is a magnificent sight to behold.

Until a corner starts to crumble. Until someone hires a cheaper janitorial service and sends triumphant copies of the email to everyone who could remotely care about the cost-cutting involved. Until the old janitorial service packs up it’s vacuums, mops and brooms and walks out with the keys to all the towel and toilet paper dispensers. Until the new janitorial service thinks it’s someone else’s job to refill those dispensers. Hey, if it were their job they’d have the keys, right?

In a few days, all the dispensers were empty. I don’t know what everyone was doing with their wet hands and their stinky anuses. Maybe they were bringing stuff from home and keeping it in their desks. Wet hands you can wipe on your shirt, but the other…

I really did try to find a key. Why would you lock up toilet paper in the first place? OK, of course I know. Think of it as a Socratic question. I asked everyone on the staff, and I ransacked the storeroom and the broom closets, but the keys to the dispensers were gone. I got paper towels and toilet paper out of the storeroom myself, and placed them strategically around in the restrooms, the lunchroom, in locations where they might do some good. But the rolls kept ending up in puddles of water on the lunchroom counter, or puddles of urine on the rest room floor. Our facilities were starting to look like those of a bankrupt gas station on California State Route 99, a desolate and dilapidated stretch of highway that runs north and south through the great central valley, forgotten since the interstate went through thirty years ago. In other words they looked like the fall of civilization, the crashing of plates to the floor, the beginning of the end.

My theory, and the reason I did what I did, was that if I could stop this little detail from crumbling, if I could somehow keep up the appearance that whoever was in charge had his/her lights on, then maybe the whole place wouldn’t start down that road to hell.

So what I did was, I got a big screwdriver and, emulating the 13-year-old kid who’d stolen my car a few years ago, I jammed it in the keyhole of the nearest towel dispenser and punched out the lock. Then I pried the door open and loaded the dispenser. Then I went into the stall and did the same thing with the toilet paper dispenser. I made no effort to conceal my activities. I was proud of them. Sure, the towels and tissues were no longer secure, but, goddammit, they were available. Also, the doors to these dispensers were now a little bent and flappy.

I had a little free time, so I did all the rest of the rest rooms in my end of the building, and I fixed the towel dispenser in the lunchroom, too. I was, literally, on a roll.

But now I have a meeting with the General Manager, at which I will have to explain my actions. It turns out that my helpful team-playing might also be seen as vandalism and malicious mischief, or perhaps a precursor to going postal. I’m sure he’ll understand if I just tell him that I was trying to avoid the collapse of civilization.

I’m at the start of what promises to be a very busy week…

…what with my crummy job and writing one stinking line of my protest song every three or four days. Also, I am keeping things brief, as I stated in my previous post.

So. since you were kind enough to come here and see what I had to say, and since I have almost nothing to say, I give you this link to a very funny page of (mis)interpretations of DHS (Dep’t. of Homeland Security) signage.

The picture above is a generic hott guy whom I found on Google, using the search term “hot men.” Don’t try that at work, folks. I really meant, after my callous and beastly previous post, to find a picture of a really hot guy, someone that I myself would find attractive if I found men attractive. But I ran out of time, and thus the quick and dirty Googling. This one’s good-looking enough (perhaps a reader can let me know for sure), but he wouldn’t be my choice. For one thing, I think he’s laughing at me. Uproariously.

Click here for the humor, and remember my love goes with you, but not to the bathroom.

I have waded through another Monday at My Crummy Job.

I can’t believe my life has deteriorated to this. I don’t even thank God it’s Friday anymore, because on my way home I am already dreading Monday. I need like a year off to unwind, then a year to travel and have a little fun, then a year to get ready to go back. Then I’d like to work half days, from home, for twice as much $$.

I’ve been struggling with the Protest Song for the past few weeks, thinking this shouldn’t be taking so long. I don’t remember spending this much time on songwriting before, and I actually wrote a lot of songs. The quality may have been questionable, but there was no arguing with the quantity. Then I remembered: I used to sleep until ten, have breakfast and drink coffee until noon, and do music all afternoon - listening, playing, writing. Then, when it was time to go to work in the evening, guess what? I played and sang until one in the morning. My whole day was music. No wonder I wrote songs faster. And I was having a splendid time, too. These days I have to make an appointment with myself. Songwriting? Well, the whole day is out, until after 6 PM. Maybe I can squeeze you in from 7:20, after the yard work, until 7:55. I’m sorry. That’s all the free time we have for you and your protest song.

Whose idea was it for me to spend my last years doing meaningless work that I actively dislike, and doing such a fine job of it, too? I am already performing the work of two-and-a-half people. And the longer I stay at My Crummy Job the more work I do, even though I could not possibly care less about any of it. Why do the jobs that pay well have to be so freakin’ crummy?

And what’s up with those guys who say “I love my job! I am so happy to be here, I’d do this for free!” In my experience, those guys are either the owners and CEO’s, or they have high-powered rifles out in their cars. They are either getting rich off my labor, or they are nutcases planning to blow me and half my co-workers away, including themselves. I only hope their aim is true.

I made a smart remark on Emma Goldman’s War On Error blog the other day, and she came back at me with a quote from a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I am not making this up). Go read the post, because Goldie is quite literate and persuasive and if you play your cards right she might one day make you a French pastry, and I don’t mean turn you into an eclair. But here’s the quote, anyway:

So much of what we ordinarily do has no value in itself, and we do it only because we have to do it, or because we expect some future benefit from it. Many people feel that the time they spend at work is essentially wasted–they are alienated from it, and the psychic energy invested in the job does nothing to strengthen their self. For quite a few people free time is also wasted. Leisure provides a relaxing respite from work, but it generally consists of passively absorbing information, without using any skills or exploring new opportunities for action. As a result life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.

Right on, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi! But what can you do to fix it, once I have become addicted to the money? I have heard that you should “…do what you love. The money will follow.” I did that, and the money followed someone else.

OK, sorry. I’ll feel better by morning. And I’ll feel great on payday. And I’ll be walking on air when I finish the Protest Song and record it and post it here. Don’t think you can escape this. In fact, you should all start thinking of nice things to say right now. You might want to jot down some thoughts in advance, because if you take too long when the big day arrives, it won’t seem spontaneous. It’s best to get your awestruck adlibs ready in advance.

That post below this one has been there long enough.

“Next Blog” visitors here will think that I am using the internet to shop for sex. Heh, heh. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am using the internet to shop for porn. But you have to admit, the person who wrote that ad (see the previous post if you must read it) was pretty clever. I thought about contacting her to tell her that I had used her ad as a blog post, and to let her know that I appreciated her writing. But then she probably would have sued me. Is plagiarism a crime? Even if I acknowledge it right in the plagiarism itself? But I guess you can be sued for things that aren’t criminal. Look at O.J.Simpson: Not a criminal according to the court, but so sue-able. So if any of you were thinking about giving the ad writer a jingle, please don’t mention me, OK?

I’m writing this to blot out the memory of my previous tawdry post, so I have to think of things to discuss, so as to push that other thing as far down the screen as possible. I usually don’t do current events, because I have lived forever already and nothing much surprises me or outrages me, at least not enough to expose my thoughts to the world. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, there are professional writers with press credentials and lots of access, not to mention their own personal fact-checkers, who are able to do a better job of punditry than I could, so mostly I stick to trolling for comments from naked women. Some of you have been obliging in that regard, and I can’t thank you enough.

Nonetheless, because I am at a creative impasse, let me try a list of stuff:

• THE LONDON BOMBINGS. A lot of people hate us. I’m including the Brits and Americans in the group known as “us.” There are other countries that are hated, too, sort of a coalition of the arrogant. Blowing things up and killing people you don’t even know really pisses me off. Of course, it must really piss off the people who are blown up and killed. We’ve been doing it to whomever we want for centuries, so you’ve got to think they must be angry. So now they’re blowing us up and killing us. Everybody in the West wants to know “Why do they hate us?” The real question is “Why did it take them so long?” Get used to it, people. This is not the kind of war you can win. In fact, the very act of engaging this type of adversary sort of guarantees that it won’t end. The terrorists, who, let’s face it, are fundamentalist Islamic radicals, don’t have a political agenda, so we can’t even surrender. We can’t say, “OK, you win, we give up, you can have what you want.” Because they only want to kill infidels. If we give up, they’ll kill us all. So we have to take away their incentives to hate us. We have to treat the Arab and Islamic worlds with respect, instead of stealing all their stuff that isn’t nailed down, installing murderous dictators in their countries and sneering at their culture and religion. It will take a couple of generations to pull something like this off, and the healing won’t start until we in the U.S. dump our current crop of “leaders,” who are, not coincidentally, fundamentalist Christian radicals.
• TOM CRUISE. What a terrible spot this poor guy is in! He is as queer as Rock Hudson. A gay Scientologist. You know The Church wouldn’t approve. You know his twenty-million-dollar-a-picture career would take a nose dive if he came out. At least you’ve got to hand it to him for managing to get Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz and Katie Holmes to go along with the ruse. All he needs is to be married or paired off, and for that he could use anybody, but he went out and hooked himself three world-class babes. I’m trying to imagine being repulsed by doing the nasty with any one of these women. Not working for me, but I think I can simulate the feeling (of revulsion) by imagining myself with Tom Cruise! So not my type. One night with him and I’d be going on talk shows admitting my heterosexuality. And yet he has posed as lover or husband for these hot women for years! Has he won an Academy award yet? He deserves one for this ongoing performance. Maybe after a couple of years with little Katie he will cop. According to my calculations, sometime in the next 18 months he will have accumulated more money than God, and so who cares about the career anymore? He can “get back to his roots” and do some off-Broadway theater. But whoops! Here comes The Church of Scientology. They will have to lock him in a room and cure him, or else come out themselves. I can hardly wait.
• KARL ROVE. This is a non-story. But first, what kind of name is Plame? I’ve never known anyone with that name. It sounds made up. Is that the best the CIA can do? Making up names for their secret agents that sound made up? No wonder thay can’t catch Bin Laden. Anyway, Bush said he’d fire anyone who leaked information about Valerie Plame two years ago, and now it looks like it was Karl, the guy who sort of created Bush and still pulls most of the strings. So there will be some awkward moments between George and Karl, the President and his mentor. Despite the fact that half the people in Washington already knew about Valerie Plame’s job, if it can be proved that Karl did the leaking Bush will have to fire him. And the loyal opposition will grind on this interminably, so if there’s any evidence it will be found, and even if there’s no evidence the whole thing could bring the government to a standstill. Some of you will say “Good,” and you are probably right, but Bush has to think of his legacy, such as it is, and so Karl must be canned. But wait - is this a bad thing? Certainly not for Karl. The Heritage Foundation or some other right-wing “think tank” will gladly pay Rove a million bucks to join them, and once he is free of the fetters of being a “public servant” he should be ble to make twenty grand a night in speaking fees. That’s more than I make in a week. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who cares if people like him, so even if he faces the public humiliation of an indictment and a trial, he’ll still be able to laugh, especially when he is sentenced to six months in some low-security Martha Stewart clink (suspended, of course). Not to mention that he cannot do anything bad enough for the millions of ditto-heads in this country to lose their love for all things Rove. So this is a win-win: Joe Wilson is made an example of and Karl Rove becomes a millionaire. Because I don’t have a fact-checker, I have to state here that I don’t know if maybe he already is a millionaire. But either way I’m sure he won’t mind getting the hell out of D.C., and getting started on his “civilian” life.
• THE PROTEST SONG. You thought maybe this was going away, didn’t you? Well it’s not. I won’t bother to link back to the relevant posts about this debacle. If you were here, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you missed a great party. I am actually working on the protest song, using as much of what you sent me as I can, without violating the Hayes Act. When it’s finished I will record it and post it here, as I have previously threatened. I only wish I could somehow invade all your computers, you lazy do-nothings who have not helped me with this project, and force you to listen. It will not be pretty, but it will be done.
• THE DA VINCI CODE. Yes, I am reading it. I was forced to. Someone at work bought the book and loaned it to me, against my wishes. But I have to read it now, because I refused to read Atlas Shrugged when this same woman forcibly loaned that one to me a few years ago, and so I owe her one. This book has swept America, and it has been recommended to me vigorously by so many people that I expected it to be, well, really good. I will say this: It is a classic page-turner. Every chapter ends in a cliff-hanger, and since there are three (or four) storylines, you often have to read a couple of chapters to find out the resolution of one of the cliffhangers. But while you are doing that, you discover a couple more cliffhangers, and so on. I am only half way through it, so I don’t think I know enough to spoil it for anyone, so for God’s sake, don’t click away from here. For me the problem with the book is that the descriptions are dull and the characters are simply props. They don’t feel like real people, and therefore one does not get involved much with them. I think the world likes this book a lot because it says many bad things about the Roman Catholic Church (hooray), and because it piles on a lot of little “facts” about history and language and philosophy and religion, and makes it seem as if you are learning something by reading it. This is an illusion. Still, I have to say I like all the stuff about Goddess worship, yin and yang, and the sacrament of fucking. In my big-budget blockbuster movie, which will be out late next spring, I will cast Keannu Reeves as Robert Langdon and Isabelle Huppert as Sophie Neveu. The film will flop, but I will get to meet Isabelle Huppert, and share a sacrament.
• I APOLOGIZE to any of my blogging buddies whom I may have offended in private email. I didn’t mean to, I was thoughtless and crude, and I beg forgiveness.

As always, my heart is filled with love for you all, but tinged with vague unease.

I love this blogging thing! It’s almost exactly like writing.

If I were a real writer, I mean like a professional writer, a guy who actually got paid for, you know, writing, I think it would be a lot like this. You sit down at the computer - I’d use a computer because that whole typewriter thing, while it looks cool in the movies, you have to keep ripping out the paper with the crappy false starts on it and crumpling it up and throwing it away in disgust, missing the waste basket at least half the time, plus you have to use whiteout. Have you ever used whiteout? As The Oldest Blogger, it’s possible that I have more experience with whiteout than all of you combined. Oh, sure, it’s got a kick. I’ve seen the antelope-sized jackrabbits galloping alongside my car on the freeway. But it will give you a righteous headache, too, and it takes like five years to develop enough skill to use it and not make a big, soft lump of whiteout on your page, a wet mass of paste that will not dry anytime soon. You might as well rip that page out and toss it at the waste basket, because you will never be able to type over that goo-covered mistake. Plus, the high is not worth the headache.

So I’d use a computer.

Where was I? I’d sit down at the computer and start my professional writing. I’d have a beginning, a middle and an end, every time I sat down. Or at least I’d want to. And here’s another way that blogging is like writing: Writer’s block. Only you don’t get writer’s block. That’s for the writers. What you get is Blogger’s Block. You think you’re going to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but maybe you don’t have an end, or a middle. Maybe right now you’re like me, and you don’t have shit.

Don’t worry! This is Blogger’s Block. It’s not a bad thing. It is the proof that you’re a blogger! If the blogosphere gives you lemons - say it with me now - you make lemon-fucking-ade!

Welcome to Blogger’s Block. That extremely brief moment when you have nothing to say. Work through it. Chances are, your “readers” won’t even notice if you fill the screen with meaningless nonsense. I know that when I’m a reader, all my bloggin’ buddies get the full benefit of all my doubts. Was that a stupid, thoughtless remark? Of course not. Facts a little, ah, wrong? Nah - just a matter of interpretation. Was that a conclusion she just jumped to? Couldn’t be - she’s too smart. See how that works? Blog through your block, and you can’t go wrong.

Hey, and how about readers? Writers have readers. Well, so do bloggers. Bloggers have technical ways to check up on their readers, too, find out if they are being loyal. So I guess that’s a little different than it would be for a writer. A writer would go to bookstores and read his book out loud to a bunch of readers, and then he’d take his pick of the nubile coeds who had attended his reading. Bloggers don’t get out as much, but they do have stats. And they make up for being just a little withdrawn at times by being in the forefront of a new medium. Bloggers are in the vanguard, so they’re cool, and you can take that to the bank.

I wish I had a gray wool houndstooth sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. That would be something a writer would have. But that’s another post.

One day I will hit upon a traffic-generating scam that will make this blog the Most Popular Destination on the Web.

The revision99 Protest Song UnContest was not it, however. I am reviewing the entries this evening, and I have a few thoughts:

• Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who wrote lyrics and proposed song ideas. My creative days are long in the past, so I really need this stuff if I am going to maintain any sort of illusion of vitality.
• I will not name names at this time, because then everyone will know what a flop the UnContest was. Besides, you know who you are. If any of you “win,” - and this is a big if - I will request permission to identify you in this blog.
• Apparently, not many of you are very angry, and those who are, aren’t really angry, just a little annoyed. You have to stoke up a pretty heavy head of steam to actually want to write a protest song (or, apparently, even to say a protest sentence), and I guess I just didn’t piss off enough of you, enough.
• I thought my list of things to be angry about would get your creative juices flowing, and just in case, my reprint of the lyrics to “Eve of Destruction” should have made it obvious that there would be no reason for embarrassment, no matter what you wrote. But most of you who said anything, said you “didn’t know how” to write song lyrics, or that you “suck at” writing song lyrics. You should listen to “Achy Breaky Heart” a few times.

But, whatever. I warned you what the punishment would be if you didn’t cooperate on this: I will write a protest song myself. God knows I am angry enough. I will steal what I can from the songs and ideas you have sent me, mix in a little tambourine and acoustic guitar, and try to put them together into a rousing anthem for the New Revolution. When it’s finished I will record it and post it for you all to hear. Then you’ll be sorry. Get your picket signs ready.

If you’re here for the first time, details about the UnContest (which is over unless you want to enter now) can be found here and here.

Au revoir, my friends.

Last week I went away to attend a graduation, and I was completely disconnected from the internet for almost four days. I got so far behind in the daily serial that is my bloggin’ buddies’ lives that I felt guilty. Every blog I visited had three or four (or five) posts that I had not read. I was not just disconnected from the internet. I felt like I had been disconnected from life itself.

I tried to catch up, but I am hopelessly behind. Whatever was discussed is gone forever, and I am destined always to be out of the loop when references are made to the occurences of that long weekend. Oh, wait. I’ve been out of the loop since Reagan was shot, anyway, so what’s new?

Now, the very next weekend, I have another graduation. This one is right here in my town, and the wrap party is right here in my house. Due to the close family connection of this graduate (my niece), many relatives are descending on my town, and I will be entertaining them, probably every second from Friday early in the morning (who flies at 6:30 AM? My sisters.) until late Sunday evening. My only plans for entertaining all these people is a backyard party and barbecue on Saturday. Other than that all I’ve got is getting ready for the party, and cleaning up after the party.

The party might not be so bad, because my niece may have hot teenage girlfriends, and I have made it clear that there will be no underage drinking at my home. So I’m assuming they will be loaded to the gills when they get here, and you never know what those crazy kids will do.

So again I will be out of the blogging loop, in the dark, incommunicado. Naturally, I’ll be right here close to my computer much of the time, so I might be able to sneak in and check some blogs. But I have a large, demanding family, and I’m not in any way ready to throw a party for hot teenage girls (OK, and boys), so with all the last-minute running around I will be doing I anticipate that I will be offline again for the next few frantic days.

I’m guessing this is going to be mildly disappointing to about eight people. I don’t seem to have as many readers as Pops, or MPH, or Theresa, and they (you) don’t seem to be as fiercely loyal. But they make up for that with their intense, uh, their, ah, occasional mild curiosity, or something. Maybe. I’m not jealous or anything. All those people who don’t visit me here, well, it’s their loss. This really is one of the only places on the internet where “to, two, too, there, their and they’re” are never misused, and all apostrophes are placed correctly. Oh. Maybe that’s why no one visits me here.

Well, I just thought I should let you know. About my upcoming busy weekend and all. Busy, busy, busy.

A Few Items:

1. I was out of town since Thursday, attending the college graduation of someone I have known since the day of her birth. I was cut off from all computers, so I haven’t written anything or read anything you may have written.
2. I discovered that I really miss being on a college campus. I have almost no daily intellectual stimulation at my crummy job, whereas on campus, there’s tons of that.
3. College kids today have little to no fashion sense, at least in Santa Cruz, California.
4. If you think I am going to stop promoting the Protest Song UnContest, you’re wrong. I’m just too tired to do it tonight. But let me assure you the entries I have so far are stunning. The rest of you have a little more than a week to deadline. Don’t put it off, people. The punishment will be a protest song by me.
5. As always, my weary heart overflows with love and bittersweet joy.