the simple things

I have a cousin who lives in Florida, a cousin who when surveying the landscape of potential men to marry, ended up marrying very well. She found herself a multi-million dollar husband to start a family with and they are currently living a very posh, very rich and famousy type of lifestyle…with more emphasis on the 'rich' than on the 'famous'.

They have a seven year old daughter and, like rich folks with kids, annual birthday parties become very competitive. The parents of each student in her exclusive private school tries desperately to out do one another in the quest for the most fabulous birthday party of the season. And if ever a seven year olds’ birthday party could make it onto the pages of the 'society' section in the local newspaper, these kids would be the ones to accomplish this journalistic feat.

We're talking full-blown spectacles, complete with pony rides, clowns of all shapes and sizes, enough balloons to kill half the birds en route back north for the summer, inflatable castles, rented carousels, and corporate sponsors. The birthday parties of these rich seven year olds would make truly compelling reality television, causing Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to look like mere middle class schlubs in comparison.

Naturally, the stakes are continually raised as the school year progresses, with each party becoming more lavish than the last. Thus, those poor, unfortunate souls whose birthday falls in September or October must hang their heads in birthday party shame by the end of the year. My cousin’s daughter had her birthday a few weeks ago, thus giving them ample time to plan an extravagant event.

My cousin asked her what theme she wanted for this, her eighth year, on the planet. After some thought, her daughter told her, "you know, I really don't want a big party with all my friends this year. I just want to go out for dinner with my family."

My cousin was overjoyed. She prided herself on raising a child with a true sense of family. A daughter which didn’t need lavish parties or expensive frills to make her birthday wishes come true. A daughter for whom a simple birthday dinner with her family was all that her little heart desired.

"Yep," her daughter said, "we’ll rent one of those limousines with a swimming pool in it and all go out for dinner!"

Ah yes, there's nothing like the simple little things in life, spent around family and loved ones, that makes birthdays so special.

the letter, if not the spirit, of the law

I’ve reached the point in my unemployment where I’ve started to consider that I may not find a job within these next four months…the time frame I’ve been given to find a job before the unemployment office cuts me off. Which has me thinking that I may end up waiting tables again. Which is really unfortunate because my table waiting career has been less than exemplary.

By the time I had started waiting tables at T.G.I.Fridays, I had already worked at a few smaller restaurants…but Fridays seemed to be the brass ring in the table waiting world, or at least a ring that was more brassy than the place that I had been working at. So, as a senior in college, when offered the job I jumped, visions of tips galore dancing through my head.

Chrissy, who would later drop out of college and become a corporate trainer for Fridays, started the same time as I, which made us classmates in the whole ‘training and orientation to the Fridays’ system’ that we were required to take. It was mid-morning and we were being instructed on how to use the register the ‘Fridays’ way’. The whole class, about nine of us, were huddled around this tiny little register, trying to see the even tinier little buttons that we were being told about.

I felt someone lean into me and, thinking that they were trying to position themselves to get a better view of the register, I backed up. I’m very considerate this way. And as I backed up, Chrissy, who had been the one leaning into me, fell flat on her back, unconscious and sprawled out on the floor.

Chrissy came to after a minute and the paramedics came a few minutes after this. As it turns out, Chrissy had spent a good portion of the night and early morning hours partying hard, which included massive amounts of alcohol. Being hung-over and not having eaten any breakfast, for fear that it would make an appearance during class, she passed out.

And I felt somewhat guilty that I had been the one to back up and let her fall. Had I known she was drunk, I would have been much more attentive to the fact that she was unconscious and would had saved her from her headache falling fate in a very ‘You’re my hero!’ type of fashion.

Of course, if I had known that a few years later she would be a corporate trainer for Fridays’ East Coast operations, I would have backed up and gleefully watched her fall. But I never would have guessed that a first day at work which entailed being hung over and passing out would ever lead to advancement. Had I known this was Fridays’ standard for excellence, I would have drank a lot more.

My start there, while much less grand entrancey, apparently was much worse in terms of not following Fridays’ philosophy. The Fridays’ uniform at the time were those barbershop pole striped red and white shirts and suspenders. And upon the suspenders, each person was instructed to have buttons…the management wanted suspenders that were just bursting in their buttonness.

I was never a huge button fan, and did not readily possess the required number of buttons that Fridays wanted on my suspenders…and yes, there was a ‘minimal number’ of buttons you were allowed to have. Come in to work with nine, instead of the required ten buttons, and you would be written up and this would be placed in your file. All of which would naturally keep you from ever getting that lucrative job at Microsoft, because when Bill Gates reviewed your past employment file at Fridays and saw that you were lacking buttons on that Tuesday in mid-July, well you could just forget about being offered the job.

So while some employees were walking around with buttons declaring their political views, ‘Buckwheat for President!’, and others waited tables with their funny, philosophical buttons that read, ‘The answer is no, now what was the question?’, I was severely lacking in buttonage. Which, as told to me by a manager, would ‘come back to bite me in the ass on my evaluation’. This said, I needed buttons.

As a server, your circle of friends is often other servers. And I enlisted their help in meeting the button requirements. Because, while the Fridays rule specifically stated that you needed ten buttons, beyond certain four letter words, there were no specifications as to what could or could not be said on these buttons. So soon, I was working at Fridays and proudly displaying my collection of buttons. My ‘Try our famous Damon’s ribs!’ button. And my, ‘Ask about Denny’s gift certificates’ button. I was especially proud of my, ‘You’re always welcome at Applebees!’ button. The management was not, however, fond of the buttons I chose to wear.

And this is how I ended up working the bathroom section. Those three little tables, situated right next to the restrooms, became my own, personal, domain. The same three tables that no customer wanted to sit at. The same section that customers would rather wait 15 minutes for a different table, than to sit at. Because apparently bathroom odors don’t do much in terms of whetting the appetite.

It got to the point where I left Fridays because I simply couldn’t afford to work there.

But had I known, at the time, that buttons were more important than coming to work with a hang over, I might just be President of Fridays today.

holding your peace

This weekend, my friend Gwen was telling me about her nephew. He's two and, apparently, has learned a new word which has become his favorite in the whole English language. The word being 'calculator'. Now while this word is most likely to be very mundane to most, to a two year old like Gwen's nephew, this becomes one hell of a great word...and she said that every other sentence out of the boy’s mouth simply had to include some type of reference to 'calculators'.

My little brother went through the same 'favorite phrase' phase when he was about six or seven. While watching a movie on TV…most likely The Toxic Avenger, or something like that…he heard the phrase 'decomposing internal organs', and this became his mantra for the next several weeks. Every event or situation was somehow going to lead to someone's internal organs decomposing. It became especially tiresome for my mom who would often be told by my little brother that, "if I eat this broccoli and meatloaf for dinner, my internal organs are going to decompose!’

Of course, as adults, our favorite words tend to be of the four-letter variety, but wouldn't it be great to tell the guy that just cut us off on the highway to 'go stuff a calculator up one of your decomposing internal organs!' And every week, we could tell those people who piss us off, to go stuff some new object up a different body part…all depending on what our favorite words of the week are.

And as kids, there are just so many words to learn...words that are just waiting to become a new favorite and be used in practically every conversation. Words on labels. Words heard on television. Even words found in the oddest places. Like this little kid named Matthew, who was in my kindergarten class years ago, and asked me one day what an 'elementopie' was. I gave him a quizzical look and asked, 'do you mean an elephant?'

And in an exasperated tone, he told me, 'NO! An elementopie...you know, A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. Elementopie.'

And, to a five year old, it made perfect sense that whoever created the alphabet stuck some large word right in the middle. This separation of the beginning letters from the ending letters being the most logical thing in the world…because how else are we supposed to keep them in order?

When I was about four, before leaving on a long trip, my mom would always ask me if I had to go to the bathroom before we loaded up into the car...a perfectly reasonable mom request. So I'd stop whatever I was doing and give the question some serious thought. And while I was gauging the pee level of my bladder, trying to estimate whether the need was bad enough to stop what I was doing or if I could hold out on what would surely be a five minute trip in the car...because when you're four, the typical thought is that cars take you places fast, so surely anywhere you’re going couldn't last much longer than five minutes…so I’d tell her that ‘no, I was okay’, and she’d say, 'well, go now or forever hold your peace.'

Which made absolutely no sense at all to me. I'm sure that I had some concept of 'peace' but how the hell were you supposed to hold it? It wasn't some object that you could pick up off the floor and stash under the bed. So, I figured that what my mom was saying was, 'go now or forever hold your penis'…because this made perfect sense. As everyone knows, the kid approved method of pee prevention is the crotch grab, preferably with an accompanying knee squeeze. And as every four year old will tell you, all pee can be stopped by forceful squeezing. And for years, I thought my mom was telling me that once I got into that car, all my bathroom privileges were forever forfeited and I was doomed to an eternity of 'penis holding' if the urge to pee ever struck.

Though, even at four, I knew she was lying. Because, usually ten minutes into the car trip, I would suddenly have to pee really, really bad. And that 'forever holding my penis' threat went right out the window as my parents would pull off the side of the road.

Because even the best penis holder in the world can't keep pee inside of a four year old. And my parents seemed to feel that it was better for all of us if I peed in the weeds alongside the mile 70 marker on the turnpike, rather than on the seat of the car.

my long and winding career path

My earliest thoughts toward a career came in the first grade. It was here that I decided being a mailman would be the absolute best job ever. I chose this profession because I really enjoyed passing back papers to the rest of the class. I also enjoyed reviewing how many problems they got wrong on their spelling tests and how many addition problems they got wrong on their homework…thereby keeping tabs on how everyone in the class was faring. Upon finding out that mail carriers were not at liberty to read the letters that they were delivering...thus not legally able to see if your Uncle Albert finally passed that kidney stone and whether your cousin Sue was still shacking up with her worthless bum boyfriend...I quickly lost interest.

Throughout high school, I began thinking of advertising as a possible career choice. I enjoyed drawing and was actually named art editor of the school paper. The fact that I was the only person that wanted this position, while slightly tarnishing the title, was still mine to bear and to attach to college applications.

The University of Pittsburgh did not have an 'advertising' program, however, so I was herded into the business degree program. I soon realized that I would never stay awake for four years of economics and business calculus classes, all which would pretty much lead me to a fascinating career as an assistant manager at the Footlocker, so I again had to rethink my future plans.

My little brother had just started kindergarten the same year that I started college, and during the winter break, I volunteered in little his kindergarten classroom. Here, I experienced the joys of Play-Doh and helping kids with difficult assignments such as how to write their name. I quickly saw that this was right up my alley. I could sculpt Play-Doh! I could write other people’s names! I could even solve the difficult issues that arose in the classroom, such as when a little kid named Jimmy wiped his mouth on Jennifer's sleeve.

"He got egg all over my sleeve when he wiped his mouth on it!"

"Jimmy, why, exactly, did you wipe your mouth on her sleeve," I asked.

And Jimmy, who always wore sleeveless shirts for some reason, explained, "well, I don't have sleeves to wipe my mouth on, but Jennifer did, so I used hers."

Now this was a problem that I could solve! I felt very much like Solomon, my years of experience having provided me with the answers to even the most difficult mouth wiping problems. Thus, education became my chosen career path.

Though the choice didn't turn out to be as wise as I first thought, and by 1999, I was sure that I needed out of the education field. I was teaching at a Catholic school…and working with a bunch of nuns was more than enough to convince me that I needed a new job. I realize that nuns have devoted their life to God, but what they fail to tell you is that the God they’re devoted to is the Old Testament, fire and brimstone, vengeful God.

So I began to think about alternative ways to make a living. The internet was a cash cow at this time, people were starting dotcoms all over the web and making millions in the process so I thought, ‘why not jump on the bandwagon and grab a small sliver of the pie?’

I found a college which was offering a program in Multimedia Technology and web design. A few months into the program, the dotcom biz went belly up, thousands of people lost millions of dollars, and tons of folks that were more skilled and talented than I was, were tossed out onto the street.

And now, ten years later, I’m back trying to get a business degree. People often ask, ‘what do you want to do with another degree?' And my answer is, 'to get a better job'. Beyond that, who knows? But when I finish, I'm hoping to turn my newfound business savvy into some intricate scam, and then have the knowledge to hide the money away in some off shore account...far away from the grubby hands of the IRS.

Yes, get rich quick schemes...the true American Dream!

a gratuitous post in which I feel extremely sorry for myself

You know, I try not to wallow in self-pity all that much. I try to keep my chin-up, head screwed on straight, and put on a happy face. Though this is proving to be a really difficult task…especially when I have no job, no woman, no prospects, and I seem to be getting snubbed by the city that I live in. I’m actually a pretty nice guy, and why Pittsburgh has decided that it simply won’t be my friend is completely beyond me.

So on occasion, I enjoy reducing myself to the ‘look at poor old me’ state of mind. It’s about damn time that I get some pity, and if not from other people then I’ll accept it from myself. And now that I’ve entered into a period where I’m getting no call backs, no job interviews, and the companies that I’ve applied to can’t even be bothered to send me a rejection letter but choose to ignore my existence completely instead, I feel that now is the perfect time to feel sorry for myself.

And perhaps, if I had some sort of support group to console with, this would all be easier. But rather, I’m surrounded by people who usually find luck just falling into their lap. Luck has never, ever fallen into my lap. Nor has it ever fallen anywhere near my lap. Actually, I don’t recall luck ever falling within a 50 mile radius of my lap. My lap has remained luckless for many years.

Take my brother, who is one such lucky person. Here’s a kid who majored in Fine Arts in college. He chose this major, not because of a love for the arts, but because this was the one major he could find that required no math or science courses in order to get a degree. He graduates, gets a job working for eight bucks an hour, and then quits after a month or two.

So he decides that he’s going to get one of those Microsoft Certifications…because one of our cousins is involved in the whole I.T. biz and makes a killing. My cousin provided him with all the old computer parts, discs, and books that he needed, and for the next year he lived in my parents’ basement, bumming money off of mom and dad to go out every night with his friends, sleeping until about four every afternoon, and eventually gets this certification.

Not even a month after this, he lucks into a job that pays him almost fifty grand a year. He marries a girl that he’s known since high school, and now lives with her in a brand new $200,000 house that they just built.

Take my younger cousin, the brother of my I.T. guru cousin. He decides that he’s going to drop out of college after his sophomore year. And, with no degree, my older cousin finds him a job working in the information technology department at an insurance agency. He’s now making close to a hundred grand a year, recently built a $300,000 house…all without a college education, mind you…and is only in his mid twenties.

And it’s bad enough that I’m related to all these people whom are on a first name basis with luck, but even the people from my past make appearances in my life, simply to point out the fact that I am one of the scorned who luck has no desire to befriend.

I recently ran into this girl named Chrissy, who I used to wait tables with at T.G.I.Friday’s while I was in college. Chrissy dropped out of college and committed to waiting tables full-time. I eventually dropped out of Friday’s and committed to college full-time. I am now unemployed, with several degrees that aren’t earning what I put into them. Chrissy, however, is now a Corporate Trainer for Friday’s and travels up and down the East coast opening new restaurants…all without a college degree. And all I can do is simply scratch my head and wonder what the fuck I was thinking quitting the table waiting business to focus on college.

I realize that life isn’t fair and that nobody ever said it would be. I can accept this. I just wish that life had a complaint department. Because I have quite a few complaints that I’d like to get on record! And now that this is out of my system, I’ll put back on my ‘happy face’ and just hope that the smile plastered there doesn’t start looking too much like a sneer.

writing a report the gang-bang way

I’ve never enjoyed ‘group’ reports. Making concessions, coming to agreements, and finding a happy medium, are things that just don’t seem to be strengths of mine. It’s not that I’m hard to get along with, just that I’m usually right.

So when faced with a group report for the mid-term project in my Business Policy class, I was less than enthusiastic. Granted, group projects usually mean less work. Except that I’m never happy with the portions done by the other members, which usually means that I volunteer to be the one who consolidates the whole thing, which usually means that I end up creating more work for myself than if I had just done the whole thing alone. And having many years of group project experience, I’ve found that most people phrase sentences awkwardly, can’t spell, and can’t support the arguments they’ve made…all of which usually leaves a lot of editing, revising, and re-writing for the moron that agreed to revise the whole paper…which is usually me.

To make matters all the more fun, the professor for the class is an idiot…which seems to be the trend at the college I decided to attend. Our professor, Dave Slante, isn’t a professor by trade. Oh no, when talking about night classes, the quality of professor you get is much lower on the educational scale than at a ‘real’ university. Here, you have ‘professionals’ who, once their normal day job is complete, come to campus to teach. Dave is a landscaper during all those sunlight hours. Yes, a landscaper. Which basically means that Dave cuts grass and shovels snow for a living. And this is who I’m paying thousands of dollars to teach me Business Policy. I could just as easily have gotten the 16 year old next door, who also cuts grass and shovels snow, to instruct me in all matters of business…but as everyone knows, if it’s not costing you an arm and a leg, it’s not really education.

And Business Policy by Dave is not so much ‘Business Policy’ as it is a four hour weekly lecture on ‘Wal-Mart’. Dave loves Wal-Mart and can speak for hours on end, all without taking a single breath, about how blades for his lawn mowers are so much cheaper there, how Wal-Mart is revolutionizing business, and how Wal-Mart will probably bring about world peace. Naturally, the topic for our mid-term project is Wal-Mart.

So, I met with my group, Susan and the other Susan, on Sunday to construct a seven page ode to Wal-Mart. The two Susans, who have worked together in the past, instructed me on the working relationship that has been foraged. “We'll throw out ideas and Susan will do the typing,” the other Susan told me, “because she has a great way of wording things.”

I soon found out that Susan’s ‘great way of wording things’ is synonymous with ‘plagiarizing’, which, I suppose, is why things sound so good when she writes them. Namely because someone else already did the writing for her.

And as I sat, for the better part of Sunday afternoon, in the one Susan’s living room while the other Susan typed, I made a mental list of all the things I could have bought with the money that I’ve sunk into this worthless degree. Like a new car. Or a trip to the Caribbean. Or a personal assistant who could have smacked me each time I began thinking that returning to school was a wise decision.

hair woes

My hair has officially reached its critical condition length...a true code red hair emergency. I simply can't put it off anymore. I need to get it cut.

And this cutting of the hair has never been an enjoyable activity for me. Not even in the slightest sense of the word. Because if there's one thing I've learned over my many years of having hair, it's that men's hairstyles are severely limited in scope.

Women have a plethora of hairstylings to choose from. In the 70's they could go with the Farrah Fawcett style. In the 80’s you had your feathered, Heather Locklear look. In the 90's, every woman was trying to look like Jennifer Aniston. Us guys, however, are pretty much stuck with three basic choices from which we can choose. These are 'short', 'shorter', or 'buzz cut'.

Years of hair cutting experience has taught me a few tricks of the trade, though. If you go to an old school barbershop, equipped with a candy cane striped pole and all, you're pretty much looking at a buzz cut...or a distant relative of the buzz cut, meaning that each and every hair on your head will not be left any longer than one inch in length.

If you choose one of those 'unisex salons' you're pretty much at the mercy of whichever girl is available. Scissors in hand, she'll ask, 'so how do you want your hair done?' Though this is just a pleasant formality, because you both know exactly how you're going to get your hair done...which will be exactly what she was planning on doing with your hair in the first place. And you can guarantee that your hair will look exactly like the hair of the last guy that sat in her chair, which will look exactly like the next guy that sits in her chair. Because, like it or not, your hair will either end up 'short', 'shorter', or 'buzzed'.

Though I've found that a good gauge of how your hair will end up looking is to look at the picture of the haircutting girl’s boyfriend which will often be taped up somewhere on the mirror near her cutting station. Because whatever her boyfriend's hair looks like, yours will be cut the exact same way. If your haircutter likes really, really, short hair on her boyfriends, you're going to end up with really, really short hair.

The catch is, you're not going to end up either looking like or being her boyfriend. And what these cutters always fail to realize is that while this really, really, short hair may look quite good on the guy she plans on making out with later on, it just looks plain stupid on you. Because this really, really short hair really, really emphasizes just how much your ears stick out, the odd, irregular shape of your noggin, and that weird dent in the back of your head that your hair so nicely hides. And what she effectively does is ensure that you won't be getting a date for at least 4-6 weeks, the time it's going to take to grow this hair back.

This whole hair cutting conundrum was especially bad while I was in junior high. This was back in the 80's, the days of the hair bands, when it was extremely cool to have long hair. Unfortunately, my hair simply won't get long. It's much too wavy and thick to get a good David Lee Roth or Vince Neil thing going on. Rather, my hair gets 'puffy', and I end up looking like Ronald McDonald with a really bad beehive.

I'd go and tell the hair cutting professionals, the same people that I was entrusting my hopes of junior high coolness with, that I wanted a hard-rocking, heavy-metal, chick magnet hair style. And every damn time, I'd walk out with really, really short hair. Sometimes, for those hair cutting girls that took some pity on me, I'd leave with moderately short hair. But never did I end up looking like I could be the drummer for Van Halen or Motley Crue.

And now, with my hair reaching that code red Ronald McDonald look, I'm forced to head out and endure more heartache. Hopes of finding a flattering style are merely wishful thinking...because I know that I'm doomed either 'short' or 'really short'.

And, while I guess that I could find an expensive, upscale salon that could probably give me some pretty impressive looking hair, I just keep thinking that it would be a lot of money to spend on hair that's going to grow back anyway. And I'm not really on good enough terms with my hair, those stubborn little strands that simply refuse to cooperate, to justify lending them that much dough. Especially when there's parts of me, like my stomach, that I get along with so much better, and would much rather lend money to.

the smell of clean

Cleanliness. It's next to Godliness, you know. And as many unemployed people will tell you, they find themselves cleaning obsessively due to increased amounts of free time.

Though the actual process of cleaning things can be really hard work. My solution is that, in lieu of doing 'real' cleaning, I simply try and make sure that things smell clean.

For example, Washed or not, my underarms always receive a swipe of deodorant. The 'Sport scent' when I'm going for a more manly appeal, the 'Fresh scent' when I'm just going for a ‘yes, I actually bothered to bathe today...can't you tell by my fresh smell?’ appearance. Around the apartment, the clean smell choices seem to be between pine or lemon scent.

I usually opt for the lemon and buy the lemon scented Pine-Sol, a confusing product that smells lemony but which has tied the word 'pine' into its name, thus giving the impression that you're cleaning with twice the power. Though I’m not sure why I associate this citrusy smell with cleanliness. Generally, citrus juice left behind on a counter top creates a rather sticky and unpleasant tactile sensation.

It might be that the pine smell reminds me of the woods, which then leads to anxiety that upon my hike to the couch, I may fall victim to a bear attack. So lemon scented it shall remain.

I have seen those commercials for Oxyclean lately, though. But I'm just not real convinced that this product is going to convey the level of clean that I want. I'm dubious that oxygen really has any 'cleaning' power in the first place. Really now, if oxygen was that great a cleaner, wouldn't the lungs of our smoking friends be pristine? If oxygen can remove tough grass and ketchup stains, a little bit of smoke and tar should be a piece of cake.

And oxygen has no smell. And if there's no smell, how can you tell if something is really, truly clean? Clean has a smell. Dirty has a smell as well. Something with no smell means that we're hovering somewhere in between clean and dirty. Revealing that we have moved out of the clean phase, have now become odorless, and are moving into the dirty phase. This being said, Oxyclean will most likely not be promoted to a spot on my shelf.

But even with all this time, I just can’t bring myself to do any cleaning. I shuffle across the kitchen floor in my socks and consider the floor to be polished…and this is about the extent that I can muster on the cleaning front. And how am I supposed to make any forward movement on the job and relationship areas of life, when I can't even master the cleaning portion of the test?

It might just be time for a maid.

working through the stages

So I find myself working through the different stages of unemployment. By my calculation, I’ve already passed through the whole denial phase…which isn’t to say that I kept going to work, pretending that I still had a job…but rather that for the first week, my body just wasn’t catching on. And every morning, even though my alarm clock wasn’t set, I’d wake up at the same time. I’m just thankful that this phase is over.

Which brings me to my current stage, the anger stage. And this is what I’m using as my excuse for being pissed off at the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

I realize that they grant wishes for all those soon to be dead kids. And I realize that they probably get lots of people applying for jobs there. And I realize too, that if I was dying they just might have hired me, which makes me think that perhaps I should put this on my resume somewhere; ‘a team-player who can multitask, work under pressure, and will soon be dead’.

Not that securing employment would be my wish if I was dying, but it still would have been a nice gesture on their part…even when you consider that I’d be dead soon and then they could hire the person that they originally would have hired…it still would have been nice. But knowing all this still doesn’t change the fact that they’ve irked me by sending me the shortest rejection letter I’ve gotten yet.

Dear Applicant,
We received many resumes and have elected not to consider you further for this position.

And I ask myself, WHY THE HELL WEREN'T THEY IMPRESSED BY MY CREDENTIALS!!!

At least all those other hundreds of companies were nice enough to let me down easily by telling me how ‘impressive’ my credentials were. Sort of like the ever popular ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ break-up line. And even though you know it’s all a bunch of horse shit, it’s the civilized thing to do, you know?

But no, these ass holes can’t even be bothered to put my name into the damn form letter. I’m simply ‘Dear Applicant’.

I’m anxiously waiting for the day when I pass through the anger stage and enter into the bargaining phase of my unemployment cycle. During this period, I fully expect to enter into negotiations with the devil…a job for my soul. Though I’m hoping that I’ll hold out for one sweet ass job that pays scads of money, as opposed to a low, hourly rate kind of deal. At the very least, I’m going to insist on a company car…or maybe full dental.

But, in any event, had I received this rejection letter a few weeks from now, once I’m finished with the anger portion of the program and have entered into the bargaining stage, I’m sure that I would have been filled with nothing but love for the nice folks at the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Each and every one of those fuckers.

death by paint

I fear that my mother is going to have a heart attack very soon. And I blame this all on Trading Spaces. Before this show hit the airwaves, people tended to be satisfied with their living spaces. Bean bag chairs? A great accessory! Electric blue shag rugs? Wonderful for that intimate evening at home! But now, because of Paige Davis and her posse of designers, we have been told that those things are bad. Very bad, indeed.

They have taught us other things as well. Like how the color white should never be on your walls. You need spice! Excitement! Something that speaks toward your personality, like mauve, or coral. And ceiling fans are a definite no-no. They’re tacky and don’t go with anything. And if there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it’s that having an un-tacky room is worth its price in sweat…the very same sweat that will be seeping out of every pore because your ceiling fan is gone.

So Trading Spaces has had my mother running around the house, declaring every room unlivable. Rooms that used to be fine, are now inadequate. And as the designers preach each weekday at 4:00, the easiest solution is to revitalize your room through paint.

The room that is currently under attack in my parent’s house is the master bedroom. Which, two weeks ago, became green. The problem was, however, that my mother didn’t realize just how green a green room would be.

“You know, this color looked beautiful on that little two inch square they gave me at Home Depot, but on the walls it’s the same color that my grandmother’s kitchen was back in the fifties!” my mom exclaimed. So in an attempt to lessen the greenness of the room, she tried sponge painting a grayish color over it, which she informed us was ‘chocolate frost’, though I feel that this was just a fancy name for ‘gray’.

The result looked like something that belonged on the set of M.A.S.H. “Well, this just won’t do,” mom said, and off she went, back to Home Depot, this time choosing the color ‘Sand Dune’.

Sand Dune went up on the walls. And its tenure on those walls lasted exactly one day. Because this is the amount of time it took my mom to realize that, once painted on the walls, ‘Sand Dune’ looked exactly like the less exquisitely named color ‘Orange’.

“Well,” she said, “I can’t have this! I hate the color orange!”

I spoke with her later that evening and she told me, quite excitedly, that she had finally figured it out. “You know, the problem is that I wasn’t thinking outside the box! I realized that I needed to go in a completely opposite direction.”

“So what color are you going with mom?”

“PURPLE!”

This will be the third color in two weeks. And my dad is starting to worry that may have to begin dipping into their retirement fund just to finance my mom’s new paint fetish.

I just cringe that she’ll start watching old Trading Space episodes again to get more ideas and that I’ll go over one day to find straw, feathers, and cardboard pasted all over the walls in a Hildi-esque frenzy of inspiration.