Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Thursday, June 04, 2009 Salvation, rising like the sun over a dewy meadow, bringing promise and hope to the land.
Swut.
Belgiuming swutting swut.
Am I alone here or is this the bleakest day in modern history? It's wrong on so many levels even I can't begin to articulate them.
No one wants to buy an American car, but boy oh boy, "we" just can't get enough Wal-Mart. Intelligent, creative, educated, hard working people with experience and great ideas can't find jobs for months at a go because no one's hiring, no one. No one, that is, except swutting Wal-Mart. It's come to this?
I weep for the future.
I'm not sure what my lowest level of desperation is. I've been pretty low. I've plummeted to some pretty low depths. But I've never been forced to choose between unemployment and working at Wal-Mart.
Still, I think that's my definition of rock bottom. I'm not certain because fortunately I've never been quite that low. But as I sit here today, facing a probable lay-off in a few months, I'm not ashamed to admit to the world that if I could find paying customers I would prostitute my body before I'd even consider prostituting my soul to Wal-Mart.
I know, I know, pride goeth before a fall, and when I find myself in that situation perhaps I won't be so self righteous and that Wal-Mart smock won't seem so bad. (I assume they wear smocks - they wear smocks in the commercials and it seems like it would be a mandatory smock and name badge kind of place.) But the thought of getting up and going to work at Wal-Mart makes me more nauseous than the thought of getting up (or, well, down) and going to work on my back. And I wouldn't have to wear a smock or a name badge.
I mean, think about it. At least that's over in a few minutes. Since I'm clean and friendly I'm thinking I could get at least $100 per trick.* And with prostitution I could just turn-off my body, let it go numb, send my mental focus deep and far from the physical activity - conjugate German verbs (Present es geschieht; sie geschehen Simple Past es geschah; sie geschahen Present Perfect es ist geschehen; sie sind geschehen Past Perfect es war geschehen; sie waren geschehen Future es wird geschehen; sie werden geschehen Future Perfect es wird geschehen sein; sie werden geschehen sein)and classify animals and plants (Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Osteichthyes, Order: Gasterosteiformes, Family: Syngnathidae, Genus: Hippocampus) - to take my mind off what I'm doing with/to my body. At least I could still use my brain at work.
A job at Wal-Mart, I'm guessing, is just the opposite. Turn-off your brain and use your body. For $7.50/hour. No conjugating or classifying there.
Assuming there's a future beyond the next few years it makes more sense to keep your brain sharp for hopeful future employment.
It's a very personal decision, prostitution. Some people already consider me a prostitute because I work for corporate America. Basically, how low will you go? What's your threshold of vulgarity and/or morality? To define selling your soul you have to define soul. My definition of soul lies in my brain - the ideas, emotions and decisions I choose. As far as I'm aware my vagina doesn't have a brain - or a soul. Nor is it capable of vulgarity or morality. (which could explain the woeful state of my love life...perhaps that's the problem, my vagina isn't vulgar or moral) Don't get me wrong, I'm not excited about the prospect of prostitution, I'd rather not turn tricks for a living and to be clear, we're talking only after I've lost everything including my home and have exhausted all forms of employment other than prostitution and Wal-Mart. And I certainly do not mean to be glib about It in the Big Picture sense. Prostitution born of desperation isn't funny.
Nor is working at Wal-Mart.
I know. I know. Some people don't have a choice. Some people aren't as willing to compromise their bodies as I apparently am. I'm not dissing people who work at Wal-Mart.
Well. Not all of them. I am dissing the people who like working at Wal-Mart because they like Wal-Mart and it's their dream job. And don't mind wearing a smock and a name badge.
For the rest of the Wal-Mart employees, the ones who hate it, the ones who were forced into it because every other company in a 100 mile radius of their home closed, the ones who resent wearing a smock and a name badge, the ones who understand the implications of all that Wal-Mart represents and hate themselves for being part of, and consequently perpetuating, the problem, for those Wal-Mart employees I have sympathy and sadness.
And I feel sadness and compassion for the second and third generation Wal-Mart employees. They simply do not know any better. Children raised by parents who work at Wal-Mart, barely scraping by, barely providing food and shelter, shopping at Wal-Mart because it's all they can afford, those children don't know another way of life. With few other opportunities they are forced to seek employment at Wal-Mart, too, and the cycle is perpetuated. Sound familiar?
It does to me. It sounds like welfare.
And with 22,000 - 34,000 new jobs in the next year, that's exactly what it is.
Wal-Mart is the new welfare.
When you think of it in those terms my threat to become a prostitute before working at Wal-Mart doesn't seem quite as severe. There are plenty of women who take up prostitution because they've hit bottom but won't or can't go on welfare. "What else was I going to do? I needed money, I couldn't find a job...it was prostitution or welfare and I couldn't get welfare..." I mean, most of us feel compassion for a woman in that situation.
Well, guess what? By September I may very well be one of those women. If I lose my job I can last a couple months unemployed, at best. I can pay the mortgage for a few months while I hopefully, quickly, sell my place, or, go into foreclosure. Then it's on friends' couches or home to my mother.
Ahhhh, my mother. If my mother loses my dad's GM pension her savings and income are going to be quickly depleted by her medical expenses**. We joke about the two of us being homeless, living in her handicapper van and eating cold tins of beans because her van doesn't have a cigarette lighter to warm them, but the joke stings with an all too near plausibility.
I don't "mind" losing everything, including my home. I've been emotionally numb for years. Loss has become a way of life for me. But my mother? No way am I going to let her suffer. I will turn tricks to support her if need be. And, given the choice between that and Wal-Mart, she'd probably support my decision to choose prostitution. Watch for us on the "Mothers Who Allow their Daughters to be Prostitutes Rather than Work at Wal-Mart" episode of Maury Povich.
Play along at home. Try it. Substitute the word Wal-Mart where you'd usually say welfare. See how apt it is in every sentence. It's like the Chinese fortune cookie "in bed" trick. It works every time.
*What is the going rate, anyway? I mean, for just a straight up roll in the sack, nothing kinky, nothing oral, nothing drug-related? $100? $200? Do they still call it turning tricks? Are there men with corporate middle manager women fetishes? I mean, if all I have to do to get a guy off is put on a work suit and talk about spreadsheets and quarterly marketing strategy reviews I should fetch a high dollar. Assuming guys with that fetish exist. I realize it's a niche market but I'm guessing not a market with much competition so I might stand a chance at making a profit. "Ooooo, such a naughty systems analyst, aren't you, huh? Aren't you? Oooooh, yeah, baby, spread this sheet and skew my data, RSS this!" I can't imagine anyone getting off on that, but there's a whip for every kink and I'll bet a paycheck there are men out there who get turned on by women speaking middle manager-ese.
**FYI, GM cut health care for non-union retirees last year. Hence, many people, senior citizens, who retired with the promise and expectation of health insurance now have none. I know, I know, I don't have the promise of health insurance when I retire, lots of people, most people do not. But, these are people who budgeted and planned their retirement around that promise and expectation. Imagine being 78 years old and out shopping for health insurance. Yeah. Good luck with that. That's just one fact you don't read in the news snippits and something you might want to consider before you say "GM and its employees 'deserve' this."
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Fortune Cookie Thought for the Week Okay, so not exactly a fortune or advice or winning lottery numbers, but funny: "You have a mouth as sharp as a dagger, but a heart as soft as tofu." He who write fortune cookie saying should stick tongue out in mirror. Like the steamer calling the wok black, there fortune cookie writer.
I've heard people talk about the kernel panic screen but I thought it was like unicorns - it's always a friend of a friend who had one, never anyone you directly know. And what it actually means is cloaked in myth, legend and speculation.
I doubted if it was real. Oh sure, I saw the screen shots, but hey, I've seen paintings of unicorns.
I'm here today to tell you: The Mac kernel panic screen is real. It happens. It exists. It's swift and it's thorough.
One minute I was working in PhotoShop with iTunes keeping the playlist crooning, the next minute I was staring at a blackened frozen screen telling me: You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
It was so unexpected and surprising I just sat there staring at it for ages. As one might react upon seeing a unicorn. I was afraid to move, scared to do anything. As one might react upon seeing a unicorn. I was shocked. And afraid. As one might react upon seeing a unicorn. My brain went into that hyper-fast Run Lola, Run special effect mode. Memories, trivia, what...what...what the...what if...it can't be...it doesn't exist...but there it is...it's real...it's true. As one might react upon seeing a unicorn.
Yadda yadda yadda Genius Bar yadda yadda yadda Airport card yadda yadda yadda disk drive yadda yadda yadda browser update yadda yadda yadda money yadda yadda yadda Genius Bar yadda yadda yadda kernel panic resolved.
Cripes.
Here's the thing. I was out of town working in a hotel room when the kernel panic hit. The day prior to that the hotel's server was down. When the concierge told me it was up and running again I couldn't get Firefox to load and Safari was flaky. Grudgingly I tried Explorer for Mac and it was more stable than Safari (and the non-functioning Firefox). A day later I got the kernel panic screen.
So, it's possible this is all Bill Gates' fault. But still. I was out of town, relying on my laptop to get me through meetings with clients. Exotic as it was to see the kernel panic screen The Steves really let me down this time.
I mean, now that it's over it was, you know, kind of exciting. I feel, well, kind of privileged, chosen. I don't often get bragging rights. But now I have them. "Kernel panic on a Mac? Oh yeah, it's real. It happened to me. The black restart screen? Oh yeah, it's real. It's real."
And it opens a whole new world of possibility. I have a renewed sense of awe and wonder. If the Mac kernel panic is real, what other scary myths are true? Big foot? Unicorns?
