My work phone speaks Spanish; I merely transcribe (poorly)

Hey Carlos it's Jorge
Today is Thursday it's about 9:45
Ela pa selecte recomendari tedela photo
I didn't know if you had received them yet
Sorry I missed you
telajo

It's not all drinks and debauch

Wake up (730), shower and go to work, hit the grocery store (1245), get home, watch y&r, read for class, turn on crockpot (200), go to class, come home (615), eat dinner, do dishes, go to class, come home (1100).

That's a colour photo, folks

Now that I'm no longer just the keyless, deskless, wandering filing rat and have actual drawers to hide things, and access to email, and place to eat my lunch, work is sort of the place I'd most rather be. Ugh.

Work is less depressing if you don't have to drive to it in a car.

Somebody's done for

You know what I don't even like anymore? Academia. I've been at this crap for ten years, and have engaged in all of the activities that are at the pinnacle of the next five - publishing, reading, writing, teaching. I do not enjoy these activities. I resist doing them, in fact. I might enjoy them if nobody knew I was doing them.

What do I like? I don't know. Arguing, I think. And travelling. Powerfully subversive action. Somebody guidance counsel me a job out of that. Also try to include the Sunday Times Crossword Puzzle and ska music.

212, 646, 718, 401,

Today I was calling contractors around the North Eastern seaboard about some very important filing business, and I came across this guy who turned out to be a big fan of the New School and chatted me up about it and then invited me to lunch the next time he is in the city. And I think this is just the sort of impetuous-but-casual thing people do here, and the idea of it beguiles more than intimidates me, but none of that changes the fact that this guy is probably just a big fat loser.

The upside of inane work errands

The New School is spread out among a bunch of mostly older buildings in the Village. The kind of buildings that have bricked-in windows where a new building has sprung up next door and remnants of curved mouldings inside what is now a storage closet and old stairwells with half doors that make you really curious as to what's behind them, but are always locked and painted shut many times over except.. wohoah! What is this? This is a little crazy janitor's closet -slash- interrogation room.

Posting is hard

Maybe because I am used to it here. All I know is that it is really hot out, and at least 20 hfahrhenheiht degrees hotter because the pavement radiates heat and the car hoods radiate heat and the asses of the air conditioners blow hot, dry air at you when you walk by them. Luckily all I do is travel from my tepid apartment to my frigid workplace and back. Oh yeah, that's why I don't post anymore.

photo source

oat lever

Today I rode an elevator - wait, there's more - and as the doors were closing, I realized there were no lights on in it at all. And then I remembered how coworker had mentioned about an hour before that he'd gottten stuck in the elevator...


But I arrived safely and promptly. Still - pitch black box. That's something.

This is a picture of me riding the elevator to work in the morning.

I've figured out a new analogy for my job

Take my bookshelf. It's not alphabetized. But I know where each of my books is; I put them there. Sure, they're vaguely organized by theme, and the same author will be put together, but there's no top-down system. It just makes sense to me, and I look at it a lot, so I know where my stuff is.

Now, imagine I hired some temp, and handed her the book I'd been reading and asked her to put it "in its place" on the bookshelf. That temp, no matter how intelligent or well-educated or fantastic-looking, would quietly lose her mind. Especially if I said to her in a tart and passive aggressive way, first thing this morning, that she was making me a little bit crazy because I can't find things anymore.

Hold on, I'm summoning the strength to carry on...


Here it comes!...


Ahhhh....

Best/Worst job ever

The very Form of a job. The structural realities of working laid bare. Not working: having a job. I spend most of my time ruminating on what 13 years in the workforce has taught me and marvelling at my prowess. I know how to manipulate four articles of office-appropriate attire into a seemingly different outfit every day. I know how to stretch a small assignment into a two-hour preoccupation. I know how to make up an answer to my own question because the boss isn't around. I know how to find one more thing to do when I have completely run out of tasks. I know how to look busy when I am not. I know how to kill at least half an hour before looking at the clock again. I know how to entertain myself in my own head when there is no music, no conversation, and no challenge. It's the wage worker's algorithm: timetheft in direct proportion to underpay.

Thank heavens sweet christ for little girls boys

Who will vacuum the cockroaches out of the kitchen cabinets of your new apartment and pull up the disgusting lino in the bedroom and carry trash bag after trash bag of crap to the curb.

I started a new job today. My job is to file files in a filing system without a system.

I moved today. The Russian movers tried to shake me down for more tips. I refused.

I broke my full-length mirror when lugging my boxes out of my upper-tier storage compartment. Pray for me.

Sto*rage*ies

Living out of a suitcase is its own kind of pleasure, but even funner (read: more fun) is when all of your other belongings are neither ready-to-hand nor present-to-hand, because they are in a storage locker in Lower Manhattan. So yesterday when I secured a job interview 4:30pm, for a 10:30am time slot the following morning, and the apocalypse was going down outside (blackened skies, ripping wind, pouring rain), all I had to do was buy a new umbrella, take the subway to City Hall, walk eight blocks, swipe my card at Manhattan Mini Storage, take the elevator to the fourth floor, find the movable staircase, manoeuvre it over to my aisle, climb up there, unlock my locker, drag the ironing board and clothes rack and other odds and ends off my big tupperware bin with all the clothes in it, unseal the bin, root through it for my suit jacket and nice pants, close it up again, re-shift everything again and unseal my shoes & coats box, dig through it for some black dress shoes, close it back up again, repack my storage locker, then carry my dress clothes around in a duffel bag on the subway for the rest of the evening as I went to meet a friend.

By the way, those guys that sell knock-off stuff on Fulton from off a queen-sized bedsheet? They keep their stuff at Manhattan Mini Storage.

Exeunt

Um, hi. Blog's gone dark, I know. Times are not good; everyone's stressed, everyone's sick, everyone's swimming in the whorls of mental instability that we academics like to masochistically impose upon ourselves every four months. It radiates out from work to time to people to life to health to self. I keep busy staring at the various aporias that every aspect of my life has resolved into: I need to be both here and there. I need to be both with and without him/her/them/that. I need to keep my schedule clear for academic work, which I won't be able to sustain without instead filling it with paid work.

And so, I present to you this commemorative shot I grabbed of the Empire State Building decapitated...



And a decapitated shot of my own, since I look good on Taz coffee and American Spirits.

Done. Now get back to work.

You know when you sign on to write a book review so that you can pad your cv with an itty bitty publication? And how you are all optimistic at first and excited when the crisp cloth-cover arrives in the mail? And how you read through it and think about what you're going to say and about seeing your name in print? And then you get a bout of feelings of inadequacy and decide to set it aside for awhile? And how "awhile" turns into a few months, while you're busy procrastinating on all the other work you have to do, and then you find that you are hiding from the publisher? And then one dreaded day they finally do email you and ask you nicely where the hell it is? And so you agonize for a few days and then email them back promising it will be done soon? And then you buckle down and actually produce the thing and feel a great sense of accomplishment, cuz after all the one God-given, unpractised talent you have is the ability to write?

I know, right!

Now starring Scarlett Johansson

Friend nannies for some screwy rich people in the West Village. Both parents are home all day, mind you, but they'd rather pay someone else $15 an hour to raise their kids.

Last week the mom's parents were coming over to see their grandkids, so the mom preemptively cleared out of the house. Yup. While the grandparents were visiting, they chatted my friend up, like you do, about where she's from and such, as the kids played happily in the back yard and the house gleamed from my friend having cleaned it top to bottom earlier that day, until the dad pulled my friend aside and told her she was not paid to socialize. And then, because he can't stand the grandparents anymore than his wife can, he sent my friend out to have dinner with them and the kids.

When the grandparents left, they cordially shook their son-in-law's hand and gave my friend a big hug goodbye. Aw.

Dangerous Nevermind

My job teaching has been cancelled due to lack of enrollment in the class. But the joke's on them: now I have a social security number. I can get a cellphone contract without putting down a $500 security deposit. And collect veterans' benefits.

Yesterday I went to my corner grocery store and noticed that the street was blasted with floodlights. I have learned that this generally means that a scene is being filmed. Now, I'm not one for celebrity sightings. When Sheryl Crow checked in with me at the airport, I asked for her name. Tom Selleck was pointed out to me after I bussed his table. And I only noticed Hilary Swank had been sitting in the lounge for an hour when she came up and asked me for Corn Pops. So god knows how many celebrities I elbow past on a daily basis in New York. Anyhoo, the streets were lit up when I went to the Jubilee, and I didn't bother to see who was filming. But a few hours later when I went back to the store with a friend, she suggested we take a look. Lo and behold, there was Chris Noth filming a scene for Law & Order: Lawfuller and Orderier, or whatever incarnation of that series he's on. We stood ten feet away from him, which was weird because we could see the acting but not hear it at all. He trash talked some perp, then threw him in the back of a squad car. IRL, he is not baggy-eyed or jowl-y at all.

The Trial

Terrible book, but if you read it, you'll have some idea of the kind of circular, inconsistent, no-progress, crazy-making bureaucratic crap I've been dealing with over the past few weeks, over every single aspect of my life (bank, phone, housing, school, job etc. etc. etc.). Josef K. had to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't beat them at their own game, but at least, mercifully, they kill him in the end.

So yes, I have a new job - teaching for a community college affiliated with SUNY. The woman I applied to was extremely enthusiastic upon hearing from me. The interview consisted of her telling me all the reasons I wouldn't want the job, then pleading with me to still take it. And she made it sound all Dangerous Minds like - me and a bunch of Black and Latino kids "who in the past have had mixed academic success." In Yonkers. Logic.

The interview was way up in Westchester county, so I got to take the train out of Grand Central, where they have this incredible sound and light show over the holidays. The acoustics are amazing and the classical music piece starts with the brass section making a sound very much like a train's horn blaring - so a propos. And they kaleidoscope holiday images all over the ceiling and walls. As one NY blogger put it "Another reason for people not to look where they're going."