Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains High School Literature

Madame Bovary

So I come back to school this fall and I look at my schedule and there's this "Advanced Novel" course or something and I'm like all "What happened to Mechanics III?" and the counselor's all "You have to repeat Math since you flunked it last year and so your schedule didn't work" and I'm all "But this is like some AP course" and he's all "If you limited your weed to weekends you could probably do it" and I'm all "Whattya mean, I don't smoke any..." and he's all "Do I look like I was born yesterday" and I figure that's a good time to shut up and then he says apparently from some sort of IQ test I took back before the recreational smoking got outta hand I scored "Well into the slightly above average test range".

So here I am. And it's full of hella smart kids and the first thing they make us read is Madame Bovary. And I'm like all "Woo-hoo--it's short". That's the only good thing to say about it.

In this course we have to look for all this symbolicisms and stuff. So I figure the title's a symbol cause it sounds like 'bovine' and 'ovary' and it made me think of what my mom says when I go in and outta the house when I'm working on my car--did I ever tell you I bought a 69 Plymouth Duster this summer? It's bitchin' and I'm gonna put a shift kit in it but I'm gettin' kinda pissed at some of my so-called friends who sneak into the driveway at night and pull all the spark plug cables off the distributor cap--Do you know anybody who's got their firing order memorized to put those things back? Oh wait--

Yeah, so when I keep goin' in and out of the house my old lady's all "Close the door--were you born in a barn?" So I say something about the whole "Bovary is bovine ovary" and the smart AP French girls start arguing and one calls me an idiot and then the other says something about this guy named "Tuvache" and then the first one yells at her in French and one of them says "No, you're a cow".

Anyway, this Emma chick is all "I want a life like the romance novels" and then she marries this doctor but he's crappy so soon she's all "Life sucks" and then she's a whore. Well, and she has a kid and then the kids says "Mommy pay attention to me" and she's all "No, I'm busy being a whore."

And then she gets sick but really just her boyfriend ditched her (well and maybe she had the hep) and her husband is all "poor baby" but she's just skanky but he's too stupid to know. (Kinda like if Homer Simpson was a doctor and married Vegas Mom only instead of Marge.)

But then she gets better cause she has other guys and he's all still "I'm stupid and a crappy doctor" and she's all "I have to shop and buy more stuff" and he's all "okay dear" and she's all "I have to go to another town for music lessons but really I'm having an affair there" and he's all "Okay but I met your music teacher and she didn't know you" and she's all "Shut up stupid it's someone with the same name" and he's all "d'oh".

And then I think she dies. But not of bovarian... Ouch. Somebody just smacked me in the head with their book. I hate this class.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Nanowrimo

It's very close to that time again folks--National Novel Writing Month.

Just as I have Amelia to thank (or blame) for getting me started on blogging a few years ago, I can thank Camila for introducing me to this event, which I rather foolishly attempted in 2005. (I was trying to complete a masters and working full time and... well, it was silly of me.)

I think maybe I got about 1/4 through and crashed.

Back then I, as many others do, created an online location where my novel was posted as it was being created. I shared it only with others doing the same thing, and maybe one or two privileged souls. I remember reading the one that Camila had written the year before (what was she, maybe 11?) and thinking it very good.

This time I'm ready. At least I like to think so. It's a marathon of words and I feel like I have a little better idea of how to start this grind. Plus--no masters.

I invite you to consider joining me in this adventure. The website, if you want to sign up is nanowrimo.org.

I don't know who of my nano "buddies" will be doing it again this year; I know Camila has said she's on board, and I suspect that Katie H. will be finding art school too crazy busy to allow the time. As for Bayley, well, I have sent her a message but I don't know.

But there are others among you. If she were not leaving for India during the month, this would be a great thing for Milly to try during her year off school. I think, from what I've read, that 'neuroticmom' could do a biting satire behind the scenes of a legal office, and I think 'Jourdan' is also someone whose skills would be up to the challenge.

I don't know if Jenny P. could turn road rage into a full length book :P
or if Berkeley G's dysfunctional roommate anectdotes would provide enough fodder for this sort of project.

If Ella still visits, I think her work stories alone would fill a book, and her adolescence yet another.

Dustin, based on your improv, I think you might be able to pull it off (and maybe turn it into English credit to make up for unavoidable class absences).

If I haven't mentioned you, that doesn't mean I don't extend the invitation.

Think about it.

I'm not sure how free I'll be with the address of wherever I end up posting my novel attempt. I will, of course, give it to anyone else attempting their own, and hope that they reciprocate.

I could just create a new blog with this i.d., then all you'd have to do is check my profile and there it would be. Alternately, I could use the profile of another, less public writing place, but then anyone who finds the novel gets that. Hmm.

Likely I'll make it available to anyone who visits here.

The gauntlet is down.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Yeah we are

And if the weather stays the way it's been this week, this has to be true.

Y'all come visit sometime.

(and oops--I posted this in the wrong place first)

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

day after summer

I know it's been three CCC posts in a row. I'm also not feeling those posts as much--I want to write them, but then they feel too long and all the same to me. I think I'm actually in the right mindframe for Nanowrimo to start in a little over a week.

Weird news from the mainland last week. Drug shooting leaves six dead in an apartment building, but two were innocent bystanders--one of whom was just a gas repair guy there to fix a fireplace. No signs that they've got any good leads on the killers, just that it's gang related.

Also, a small plane crashes into a 15 story condo building. Turns out the pilot, who was flying by himself, was 82 years old. I don't even think most amateur pilots of any age are wise to fly alone, and I wouldn't trust my father or my father in law--both 82--to drive a car in rush hour, never mind fly around one of the busiest airports in the country.

I guess people who didn't think to buy insurance weren't counting on this.

Yesterday set a temperature record for that date in October. It was around 20 degrees--or close to 70. No wind, beautiful day--I even went for a run.

I hesitate to write much these days here 'cause I've got local readers who I don't know--so maybe I'll put more on my other writing place; if you are from elsewhere and want the link, let me know. Suffice to say I feel like venting about the show a bit, plus I'm kind of down about having to say some goodbyes very shortly.

I need to sort out about 10 major things very soon. Should go start, I guess.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Productivity Consultant

Hi there--right on time, come on in. I see you've already dropped off a resumé and a synopsis of what you want to discuss today. Do you even really need to hear anything I have to say? Data collection? I guess you could call it that. My car? Yeah, I know it's probably not the best on gas mileage, and it does seem to end up in the repair shop a lot but... Hey--this is about your future, not me, right?

"Productivity consultant"? Hmm--that sounds to me like what we used to call "efficiency experts". You're talking about one those people who businesses hire to show them how to improve the profit margin, right? Well, it's not a quick path to popularity, but I suspect that won't matter much to you if you're really into this.

You'll go to some college where you probably have family and can live cheap in their basement while you get your degree in economics or business. You'll take electives studying the works of Ayn Rand while your main courses teach you all about Keynes and Locke and all that philosophy of economics and stuff. You'll do your required work experience in the college credit counseling office, where you'll quickly become convinced that most of your peers are morons--or are you there already?

After you graduate you'll sniff around a few consulting firms, but nobody's interested in some kid just out of college, and you find yourself unimpressed by the fancy lobbies and high-end water coolers that some of these companies have sitting out for the public. It's simply not cost-effective, as far as you're concerned.

You finally decide to set up your own firm. You realize you won't find clients rushing to your crappy storefront location in the bad part of town--all you can afford--but you begin surreptitiously visiting your target businesses and jotting down a dozen ways each can shave costs, then mailing your thoughts to their owners and managers, along with your business card and an offer for a complementary consultation.

A few bite, and one meeting with you convinces them you're wise beyond your years. Soon you're dropping off 200-page reports with detailed cost-benefit analyses, but you are disappointed to discover that no more than a third of your suggestions are ever implemented. When you question the clients, they explain that some of your cuts seem simply too cruel--laying off the loyal 20-year secretary to replace her with a call center based in India, or slashing the employee health-benefits package by choosing a cheaper but disreputable HMO for medical services.

You begin writing letters and editorials for the most fiscally conservative of the financial publications, and after two years you collect your essays and letters into a book: "The Courage to Compete".

You also find your notariety isn't always positive in nature. Unions and anti-poverty groups begin quoting you--out of context, as far as you're concerned--as evidence of the soul-less nature of big business. Employers keep secret the fact that they've attended your 'slash and burn' business seminars.

You still keep consulting--it's your bread and butter--but you notice an annoying trend. Whenever word gets out that your company is doing an efficiency audit, or your vehicles show up at corporate offices, suddenly all the employees are on their best behavior. Video games vanish from break rooms, and lunches are suddenly 29 minutes, rather than 50. You find that most of the data your compile is tainted by this false work ethic that hampers your ability to ferret out the shirkers and the deadwood.

You hit upon a brilliant solution: You'll go undercover. You take a new approach; when you get a new client you send members of your team most comforable with that particular industry or business to work as new employees, who in truth are reporting daily back to you. Usually two weeks of research is all that's needed; employee theft, truancy and incompetence are all dealt with mercilessly.

You even enjoy the occasional foray into an undercover job yourself. You're still relatively young, and you delight in the pompous pronouncements of jaded, lazy corporate slugs who take you under their wing in hopes of keeping you unproductive and non-threatening. You even secretly tape some of their juicier cynical observations.

Just out of curiosity--you're not taping this interview, are you? Good.

Your ego will be your downfall. You'll make a lot of enemies along the way, but you drive a nondescript vehicle, live in a high-security residential complex, and have no kids to be targeted. In fact, you have relatively little social life because you find it a waste of valuable working hours.

You will, though, have employees who become friends of a sort. You'll come to rely on two of them--a guy you got to know in college and hired in the early days, and a ruthless girl you dated for a while and although that didn't work out, you respected her cutthroat approach to business.

Late in the fiscal year, as businesses realize there are some heads to roll when the financial report cards are shared with stockholders, is always your busiest time. This one particular time you're supervising the audit of a transcontinental trucking company, your male partner is overseeing a hospital analysis, while your female partner is running point on a major grocery chain's examination. You're up late working on your findings when your male partner gives you a call.

"I've found something pretty big," he whispers. I think I want you to come here and help me sneak some files out. At least bring the microcamera and we can get some proof before someone figures out they should've shredded all this.

You jump in your car and head to the hospital. It's almost midnight, and you part next to your partners car and flash your headlights. He opens a side door and lets you in. When you get up to the room the filing cabinets are empty. You look around, but nothing. You ask your partner what's up, but he smiles.

Seems your enemies have taken a page out of your book--work from within. Turns out he'd been working for the hospital union after they got wind of his audit and arranged a compromising blackmail situation. He soon saw their side of the argument, and he's being well paid to help arrange your tragic fall down an out of service elevator shaft.

Your funeral will be poorly attended, but it will be short, and very efficient.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Microbiologist

Hello, have a seat. Oh, yeah, I didn't see that on the chair, let me... Oh, you brought your own sterile wipes? I guess maybe I should keep a case of them around this office.

So, what career strikes your fancy? Microbiologist? Interesting--I have some definite ideas about how this might go:

You'll need to have really good science marks here in high school--you do? Well, that's just a start. Then you'll have to go to university, and not just for four years. If you want to get into real microbiology and not just be some public health inspector, you'll need at least a masters degree and probably a doctorate.

You'll get some on the job experience during lab placements while you're doing your many years of study. Money will be tight, and you'll be tempted to walk on the dark side a few times--shady characters offering you money to help them infect a rival at work during competition for a promotion, or shadowy agents of oppressive regimes looking for biological weapons to poison their own populace, and willing to pay handsomely.

You'll be strong, though, since you have your eye on the prize. When you finish, your work ethic and your intelligence get you a placement in a laboratory studying some of the more difficult 'superbugs' which are spreading due to the rampant inappropriate use of antiobiotics--yeah, I'm talking about your handiwipes, there.

It's lucrative, and you're paid well not only for your regular work, but also for the many hours of overtime you spend in the lab, working late all alone when it's just you and the custodial staff. You get to know a few of them fairly well, so it pains you when you notice they aren't quite keeping certain areas of the lab as clean as they should, and you have to report them. Seems fastidiousness wins over friendship with you. They hold grudges, though, and that will come back to haunt you later.

It's not long before your hard work and long hours begin to pay off and you're being published in prestigious journals. This helps motivate you to work even longer hours, and you have even less of a social life than you had in college. You have another reason, though, for staying so late--you notice little signs that your work is being tampered with. There's not enough to make any definite accusations, but you're sure the custodial staff is exacting their retribution for your earlier ratting them out, and hitting you where it hurts the most--your work.

You mention your suspicions to your supervisor, and all it gets you is a visit with the employee 'wellness' coordinator, who suggests you might want to use some of the 12 weeks of vacation time you've built by not taking a day off in over four years. You explain that work relaxes you, but you also realize that you can't confide in anyone in the lab--they see your accusations against the janitors as the paranoia of a workaholic nearing a breakdown.

You throw yourself back into the research with more vigor, and the grant money and accolades you bring your employers silences any suggestions that you are working too hard. Then one day it happens--the event that changes your life.

There's a technician visiting the lab--apparently a genius who designs electronic scanning and montoring devices that assist in the early detection and identification off a wide variety of diseases and conditions. He's working with some incredibly delicate sensor equipment; your employers have purchased a unit he designed and he's there to set it up for them.

You come back from your lunch break and he calls you over and asks if there is a foreign radio station nearby. He's got some headphones in his hands and asks you to listen. Very faintly you hear the sounds of voices, speaking in some sort of language you don't recognize. There are, however, a few words you can pick out, and for some reason one strikes you as familiar. You tell the tech expert you can't help him, then ask him pointedly to remove his equipment from your table. He's not even supposed to be in this part of the lab, and he'd put his sensor pickup very close to your sample of c difficile baccillus which had just came in from Syria--a troubling and potentially deadly new strain that your were being asked to examine.

You put on your biohazard gear and take the sample into the appropriate area of the lab, and while you are reading the background on it, you recognize one of the words you just heard. It's Aramaic. The sample's abstract description includes some of the names for the condition it creates, and the word you heard means "danger".

You immediately go back to the technician, but he's leaving--says the sensor pickup is probably defective and he'll bring you a new one. You convince him to leave the problem sensor behind, and take it back to the sample and try to hear more. Sure enough, there are other words you notice, and you begin transcribing what you hear on the headphones that become your constant companion.

The next few months are tricky. You know that most of your colleagues feel you are mentally fragile, and without proof you dare not share your discovery--you'd be made a laughingstock. You build your vocabulary of Aramaic, and even take a university extension course on the language. You try to communicate with them, and eventually you are able to notice unusual patterns and even slight pigment shifts in your petri dish--signs, you are sure, of their attempts to respond to you. You even convince yourself that they are particularly fond of Mozart, and you play it in the lab nonstop.

Then disaster strikes. Another lab working on the same strain of bacillus from Syria has a hazmat breach, and two researchers die within 48 hours. Your lab receives instructions from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta that you are to destroy all samples of this dangerous material. You are horrified. Your little community is destined for the incinerator.

You offer to transport the samples to Atlanta yourself, but you are ordered to surrender your petri dishes for destruction.

You then break the rules for the first time in your life. Convinced you are the only hope for a world in miniature, you sneak your microscopic friends away and make a run for it. You are caught within two days, and the media paints you as some sort of double agent who was about to poison the water supply of a major city at the behest of some unspecified foreign regime.

When you are awaiting trial in a federal lockup, you are allowed few visitors, though the psych team from military intelligence meets with you every afternoon. Then, surprisingly, three of the custodians from the lab are allowed to see you. They bring a fourth man with them, and introduce him as Dagon. He's been working downstairs, as a custodian, a recent arrival from the middle east. You hadn't realized it, though, because his English was so good when you first met him as a "technician". He smiles, pulls a little lapel microphone out of his pocket, and tells you "good luck" in his native Aramaic. Then they all laugh and leave.

Your best bet is an insanity plea--you might get work in a sketchy animal testing lab after you serve five years in the pen. I see a painful death from an untreatable strain of rabies in your future.

What's that? No, I don't think you're an elephant--though you could probably lose a couple pounds... No, come back, I didn't mean...

Damn. He'll probably never forget that.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Sanitation Engineer

Hi there--hey, aren't those coveralls supposed to stay in the auto shop? Oh, well yeah, I guess I can give you a career overview quickly enough to get you back by when that oil's finished draining. So, what'll it be--a mechanic?

Really? Garbage man? Right, a sanitation worker. Doesn't make any difference to the flies. I think I can figure this one out:

You'll need to get hired on by the city first. If you don't have a connection, now's a good time to get one. Find out who the local foreman is for the garbage pickup in your area, and maybe drop by to do a 'school project' about careers--make it clear you respect and value the contribution his crew makes, maybe even paint yourself as an environmentalist who sees them as heroes of the 21st century. Throw in some comments about the plague and stuff so he'll know you aren't just blowing smoke up his... well, you get the idea.

After you do the project, he'll likely suggest a 'ride along'--or if he doesn't, you come up with the idea. Take a video camera, and treat them like celebrities--use their nicknames, and if they don't have them, come up with some cool ones of your own, like "Ace" or "Lefty". Buy coffee at the break for all of them, and ask them to tell stories about the craziest things people have thrown out, or the worst weather they've worked in. Hang on their every word.

They'll remember you, and you'll stop by their depot every couple of months to say hi and maybe drop off some muffins. Once you're done high school, let them know you'd love a chance to even get on as a relief garbage ma..., er, sanitation worker. By this time you'll be a shoe-in.

Unfortunately, while they can help you get hired, it's the city who decides where you work. They won't put you in the nice residential area; as new guy you're stuck in the crappy neighborhoods where your main task is avoiding needle pricks and recognizing bags with body parts in them. The nice thing about working those mean streets is that at least people won't look down their nose at you--you've got steady employment with benefits; that will probably get you dates in that part of town.

After a few years you get a call--one of the guys you sucked up to back in your old neighborhood remembers your great attitude and he recommends you for a driving job. You'd already gone out and got your air brakes ticket just in case, and you are happy to sit in the warm cab while two underlings pitch trash in the back of your truck. You also get a nice pay hike in the new position.

Still, like all city employees, you have to deal with a labor dispute every five years or so, and sometime around your seventh year in your career there will be a nasty strike. You'll be there with your comrades, chanting slogans for the t.v. cameras and playing poker, sitting on lawn chairs, when nobody important is watching. Unlike the previous couple of strikes, this one gets ugly, and neither side seems close to backing down.

Meanwhile, the garbage begins piling up. A few private contractors cash in on the desperation of homeowners in the rich part of town, but for the most part, people try to look after their trash themselves--dropping it off at overpriced disposal centers, or simply tossing it onto the lawn at city hall late at night.

The taxpayers get angrier, and with their eyes on next year's municipal elections, the politicians decide to hire replacement workers--"scabs" to you and your friends.

This escalates the hostilities, and soon you and your union brothers and sisters are linking arms in front of the depot gates, while the city lawyers file for one injunction after another to move you aside.

Then it happens--your 15 minutes of fame.

In a particularly bitter confrontation early one Thursday morning, a frightened replacement driver accidentally hits the gas pedal instead of the brake, and you are struck by the very truck you'd been driving before the work stoppage. You're rushed to hospital, but the leg is crushed so badly they have to amputate it.

This tragedy helps win the public relations war for the striking workers, and soon the dispute is settled. You, for your 'heroism' receive the accolades and sympathy of your colleagues, and a sizable payout from the city.

You try to go back to your job; they even specially outfit a truck with a hand brake, but it's just not very comfortable for you, so they give you a desk job.

You fit in well with the guys in the coveralls; you're not so comfortable with the more refined member of the city's clerical staff. At age 33 you make your first suicide attempt, but fail.

The city realizes the potential scandal if the worker injured in the bitter strike two years earlier should subsequently off himself, so they send you and your girlfriend on a tropical vacation--everything first class. When you return, your girlfriend has had enough of your bitterness and dumps you. This leads to your second attempt.

The city sends you to a crack team of doctors and therapists, and after some counseling everyone decides you're not cut out for the office scene. Instead, they buy out the longtime dispatcher and give you his job in the depot. Soon your voice fills the airwaves--well, at least in the cabs of all the city maintenance vehicles.

Now you're back with your blue collar compadres, you begin to enjoy life a little more. They make sure you never have to buy a drink at the bar after work, and they introduce you to new employees the way new recruits might be introduced to a legendary military hero.

After a few years, though, the shine wears off. Your friends tire of buying your drinks, and your daytime consumption means you tend to ramble on the radio to the point where you become an embarassment. The city once again intervenes, but you refuse alcohol treatment, so they buy you out and give you a pension at the ripe old age of 41. You're lonely--after a series of unsatisfying relationships you seem destined to die single and alone--and your friends all seem busy when you call them or drop by the depot for a visit.

Finally, you begin gambling to relieve the boredom. The casino at first, then high stakes private poker games you hear about from an old work acquaintance. Unlike the other players, though, you don't stay sober enough to win much, and soon you owe more money than your pension pays out in three years. You go into hiding to avoid the mob types who come collect your gambling debts, and you move into a downtown street mission where you manage to get a minimum wage job in the kitchen, though spending all day on your artificial leg is agony.

There is one bright spot at the end, though--the down and outer who spots you and rats you out to the mob ends up using his reward money to start a hot dog stand that evolves into a chain of 30 in 8 cities and makes him a sought after member of the motivational speaking circuit. You, on the other hand, will likely be found by your old work mates as they empty the dumpsters in the sketchy part of town.

There, that was quick, wasn't it. Make sure you recycle that oil now.