This no longer exists.

I can't imagine how anyone would have found this blog, but should you be interested in reading a blog I actually update, I suggest So Slight.

Hey You! Vote For Me!

Only one thing could make me break my tradition of forcing Pavement lyrics to fit in my titles... and that's self promotion. I've entered a design contest, and I think my entry rocks. And I want to win. So, go here and vote for me, nameless, faceless, possibly non-existent visitor to my blog:

Vote for me in this contest!

You can vote everyday, which would win you eternal sunshine from my general direction. Relatedly, pandora.com is a killer website and deserves your support as well!

the word spread just like small pox in the sudan...

I hate CNN.

And when I say hate, I mean, "am fascinated and repulsed by it in the manner of staring at a smoldering trainwreck."

I have a personal vendetta against Jeanne Moos. I despise her nearly as much as I despise Scott Stapp. Why? Headlines like these:

- Incredible blinking Pelosi clocked at 85/min. The State of the Union speech was blinky. And drinky. And, of course, winky. CNN's Jeanne Moos reports. (Seriously. This woman probably makes three times what I do, and she's used blinky, drinky, and winky in a headline. Fail.)

- Freaky-eel-like-bulb-head shark in Japan (Surely there was a more descriptive phrase to be had. What color was it? What does it like to eat? Was it a freaky-tan-scaled-bulb-head-anemone eating shark, or something less interesting? Inquiring minds have long since tuned you out.)

- Kangaroo-ish animal caught in subdivision (It's either a kangaroo or it's not.)

- A bird, a plane, an UFO? (an UFO? I think your head might be up an ass.)

Other than Moos (to whom I'm prone to attributing all CNN drivel-headlines, which is probably unfair... CNN employs countless other idiots as well), here are some highlights from my collection of CNN bashing:

- Snowman, lesbians, bubbas steal debate (If they mean that a snowman, a lesbian, and a bubba could have a more stimulating debate than either political party, that's true.)

- A guide to guidebooks (Only in America. It's a video too. I have a longstanding hate of CNN video as well. I can't watch it at work, and so I am forced to imagine what they're talking about from the headline alone. The headlines are tiny gems of journalistic ineptitude.)

- Haggard 'completely heterosexual' (I hope this is Merle. I don't care to find out. Was there a question?)

- U.S. 'copter burns near Baghdad (When you're as rushed for time as CNN, spelling out "helicopter" wastes valuable nanoseconds, thereby leaving no time for such gems as "Denver, Thailand." Seriously. The phrase "Denver, Thailand" once appeared on the front page.)

- A talk with a porn star (Unironically, this is a video.)

- "Iraq Students: This isn't Vietnam." (If they actually said that, okay. If not (and I'm guessing they didn't say exactly that) shut the hell up CNN.)

- "Envisioning when Science can beat death." (Why? Why even bother? Science isn't meant to beat death. Perhaps Science should spend money on something more realistic, like, say, beating multiple sclerosis.)

- "Pork, the pill cause spiritual mess on job." (Please explain this to me if it makes sense to you. On what kind of job does the subject of the pill come up? Or, for that matter pork, in the sense that it would affect work? Other than a Catholic right-to-life clinic or a Kosher meat-packing plant, I'm at a loss. This is the perfect example of why I hate CNN video that doesn't have an accompanying story.)

- "Cheetah overtakes man in race." (Of course it does. This is not news. And it's certainly not newsworthy enough to be the top video of the day. I don't have to watch a video of a cheetah outrunning a guy. I can picture it in my head. And I've seen this stupid little experiement before. Unless the cheetah crosses the finish line, rounds on the guy, and eats him, I don't care.)

On the other hand, Harper's Weekly is the greatest thing that happens to me on Tuesdays. Here's a few reasons why (stuff in parentheses is my contribution):

- "You don't want your president sitting in the Oval Office worried about the activities of a hostile regime that can have all kinds of impacts on our security, starting with economic security," Bush told employees of DuPont, one of the largest researchers of alternative fuels. (I think he's trying to shame them. "You don't want daddy to spank you, do you? I didn't think so." Also, he's right. I'd rather have my president being productive than sitting and worrying. Or more accurately, sitting and letting his mind wander.)

- Bush picked up bottles of milled corn stover, poked his fingers into a beaker of wood chips and picked up a handful of switchgrass. (He then was asked to leave because he was unaccompanied by a legal guardian, and had contaminated much of their day's work.)

- The Milwaukee Brewers were giving away two free tickets to any fan who had his prostate examined, Bill Clinton wrote the clues for a New York Times crossword ("Team," read 5 across, "with Southern exposure"), and researchers at Johns Hopkins University linked throat cancer to oral sex. (Wow. It's just beautiful the way those topics all flow into one another. Save for the crossword puzzle clue, which I don't get. Throat cancer linked to oral sex. Too. Many. Jokes. Maybe the test subjects are doing it wrong? Now there's an excuse? Spectacular, Harper's.)

- In Richmond, Virginia, a painting of Britney Spears was covered up at the request of Barack Obama's campaign. Los Angeles was burning, and Democratic presidential contender Mike Gravel was speaking passionately in defense of gay marriage. (1. Why the hell was there a painting (not even a poster, but a painting) in a place where Barack Obama was speaking? I can't think of a single reasonable scenario.2. Once again, genius sentence structure on the second part. Referencing "Paris is Burning" and relating it to a presidential candidate? Sweet.)

- The Senate passed a bill that would lift a 1975 ban on the sale of baby turtles, but would require safety pamphlets warning children about the risks. (I wonder how many dollars of my money those Senators earned while passing a bill that concerns the sale of baby turtles. Whatever the amount, it was surely worth it, for the children of the world shall know the joy of baby turtle ownership and shall not be ignorant to the dangers. Thus ends Sarcasticpiece Theater.)

- Former congressman Tom DeLay gave a speech about abortion to agathering of college Republicans in Washington, D.C. "If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years," said DeLay, "we wouldn't need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today." (... I can't really get over the fact that someone actually said this out loud.)

Of course, every now and then, CNN does bust out an awesome headline, although not for the reasons that they think it's great:

Waitress: Gun-toting Spector looked like Elmer Fudd (It does not get much better than a reference to Elmer Fudd from America's Most Trusted News Source.)

Anyway. Fark.com does it better, but there's more to come from me. Although, probably no one reads this but me. Que cera.

Ta anyway!
Kate

Got struck by the first volley...

Job 2: Country Club Tennis Shop

Back to my crappy jobs retrospective. After Dollywood, I worked at the tennis shop of the country club in the city where I went to college. Looking back, this was pretty much a sweet job where we sat around most days with little to do but answer the phone, schedule courts, sell stuff, and string racquets.

The kink that made this job so hateful was that country club members were involved. Most were all right, but the handful of facelifted, peroxide blonde, wearing jewelry while playing tennis bitches (and bastards, but mostly it was the women who sucked) that made my everyday in the shop a holy living nightmare that sort of overshadowed the rest. Here's a little rundown of the characters I met there.

- The Cardio-thoracic Surgeon: If ever there was a surgeon with a God-complex, this would be him. My very first day, he walked in and yelled at me for not having strung his racquet. That was not actually a skill that I had brought with me to the table. When one of the pros (who was gorgeous and on whom I had a huge lust the entire year I was there, unrelatedly) heard this, he stepped out and explained, and CtS backed down. The next weekend, something happened that made this guy upset, and the owner had me go and fetch a beer to placate CtS. It might have worked, except that I do not read minds and got him the wrong kind, which he shoved back at me like a little bitch. Eventually, CtS came around when he realized that I was literate and could talk about books, and also was the better stringer in the shop. He once threw a tennis ball at my head which bounced off the wall behind me before I noticed it. He said he was doing a neurological test on me, and that I had failed, which he thought was hilarious. Another time, I had dragged myself into work with a fever and CtS came in and walked around behind me and felt my forehead to check my temperature. I wasn't delirious, but I sort of thought he might be attempting to strangle me or something. In the end, he made my boss let me leave to pick up the prescriptions he phoned in for me. All three were narcotics of some kind and I loved him beyond reason for that. Last I knew, he had a baby with his much, much younger wife (who he would not marry until it was confirmed that she was fertile; this was not the first time he had test-driven a girlfriend, apparently) and set his infant daughter up with a $1 million college fund.
- The Entitlement Bitch: Actually, there wasn't just one Entitlement Bitch, but this was was their queen. Of the many ways she irritated me, the main ones were that she often told me to order her lunch from the dining room (not part of the job), bitched me out for not knowing where the knee brace that she had left on the court was, and would spend an hour trying on tennis skirts and leave them in the bathroom for me to hang back up. I saw a picture of her in the paper recently, and it would appear that she has had several facelifts in the four years since I last saw her.

- Doddering Old Man: This man was nice enough, but grew increasingly senile during my stay. He had Parkinson's and could not speak much above a whisper. This was unfortunate, since one of his greatest joys (and one of my most hated activities) was to recite his poetry for me to type. Bad enough that I could barely hear him, I also had to continue to do shop things while he went on and on with the rhymie-rhyme poetry about how much dogs love God, and similar topics. He once tried to sell me a book of this poetry. He asked me to write an essay about my dog for inclusion in a book about people and their pets, told me the same story about his cat and how it had the power to cure cancer or something seven times, and when I told him that my dog had just died, responded with "Oh, I have a cat that can cure cancer..." Eventually, my boss caught wind of these little poetry slams and told me to say no. Doddering Old Man was affronted, but not dissuaded from making me listen to more verse anyway.

- Evil: Evil's nickname came from another employee's background check for the police academy. He had to answer true or false to the statement, "Sometimes I wake up evil." He instantly thought of this woman, who considered herself our boss but was not, and thought "Why the hell would I want to wake her up if she's asleep?" Additionally, we had a theory that she had murdered her first husband, who, according to her, invented Sweet Tarts. My favorite coworker and I envisioned his tombstone as a giant sweet tart, and his burial in a flat little packet. One of those only funny if you were there things, probably. Her second husband drank. I was the only female employee that she was unable to drive into a rage and have fired, and it ate her up. When I was sick and had to have surgery over Christmas break, thereby delaying my return to work, Evil called my house to inquire. My mother shrewdly declined to name the type of surgery I had, and to this day, I am certain that Evil thinks that I couldn't come back to work because I was recovering from an abortion.

A woman once hemmoraged to death in front of the desk. I was not there, but did have to force my deer-in-headlights-at-the-best-of-times boss to go home because he was wandering around in a daze saying, "I smell blood, I smell blood" and freaking out the children. Had I had the shift before that, I would have been the one asked to go and clean the blood out of her car, so that her family would not have to drive it in such a state. This is another thing which was not in the job description.

A year of working this job part-time prepared me for the next three. Sort of. Nothing can really prepare you for the smell of old cat urine, the knowledge of what fabric best protects ones skin from vomit, or what pure bleach can do to your skin. I'm nearly certain that you wouldn't guess what I actually did with those hints. Until then -

Ta!
Kate

songs mean a lot when songs are bought

When I was unpacking my things from my recent move, it hit me just how much of a problem my acquisitional tendency + obsession with music has become. I have the most ridiculously large music collection. This is not so much the problem as that I am pretty much useless until my CDs are organized in the way that I want them to be (this is absolutely the only area of my life in which I require such a rigid organization; I am capable of stepping over the same three pairs of shoes for over a month before it even registers that there is a better way).

There is a hierarchy to my system. That sentence could also read, There is a method to my sickness. Or, I am one imaginary friend away from being committed. Anyway, there is one CD rack which houses the albums I am proud to love. Pavement and Stephen Malkmus and Ryan Adams are on the top shelf. Followed closely by my cadre of independent stuff no one I know has ever heard of and the independent label success stories that restore my faith in - I've actually lost interest in finishing that sentence because it makes me sound like a pretentious Rolling Stone editor. On the rack over, I have lovingly organized my collection of Best Ofs, Essentials, and The Complete whoevers, because sometimes I get in the mood to survey an artist's career. That, and I have no intention of owning the entire collection of the Jesus and Mary Chain or Cult albums just to get the core songs included on their hits albums. (If I'm more than a casual fan, though, I feel the need to get all completist.)

Further, there is a stand that holds the stuff I used to like but am now indifferent to. Dave Matthews (college, Corona, various substances, and Birkenstocks always pave the way to DMB shows). The whole high school path to enlightenment series: love of Bon Jovi (it was the 80s) beget love of Aerosmith, who was soon replaced by Pearl Jam and Nirvana, leading to Led Zeppelin thanks to my pothead-art-class friend, somehow resulting in an all consuming obsession with Radiohead and then British music in general, with a little NIN type things thrown in there for good measure because of my friends at the time. Another holds a large quantity of singles (mostly Radiohead and the Stone Roses) that I bought in England. Other people came back with postcards and cheese or whatever, I had a suitcase full of music.

Conundrum, though. While my 80 gig iPod is possibly the greatest thing that's ever happened to me (that's a little bit of a sad commentary on my life), and eMusic* is an awesome website full of independent label music the likes of which are not to be found physically anywhere near where I live, and iTunes (which I consider mostly meh, but convenient still) exists, I really like having the actual CD. I like the artwork. I like the space it takes up. I am that person that record labels only dream of, who will buy the entire Maroon 5 album, like it, and compulsively buy the CD anyway.

Sickness? Sure. Problem? I'd like to think not. So I choose to not think too far into it.

Ta!
Kate

*If you'd like to check out eMusic, I'd love to refer you there. It's a really wonderful site. Plus, then I get some free tracks. Win/win.

I got beaten by weather

Today, on the hottest day ever recorded (not necessarily accurate), I spent the day moving out of my apartment. The things that I will not miss are as follows:

- The bass from my neighbor's stereo waking me up all the way in the back of the place. You might say, Kate, why don't you just say something to him? Because...

- I made the mistake of dating my neighbor. When I say dating, I really mean watching him get inebriated at a friend's birthday party. When I say inebriated, I mean passed out cold. Good times.

- Paying a ton of money for an apartment that sells itself on the merits of its gate system, which worked for maybe two full weeks in the two years I lived there. They kept raising my rent because of the high value of the real estate in the area. 1. If I do not own the real estate, I don't think I should have to pay because rich people built million dollar homes next to the Indian burial ground. Especially since my apartment was second floor, thereby not touching actual land. 2. Actually, I made my point without needing the 2. So it goes.

- Small children skateboarding/motocrossing/breathing near where I am trying to sleep/read/exist. Apartment kids are the worst. Their backyard is huge.

- Groceries + flight of stairs.

- Remembering how I fell down those stairs and split my knee open every single time I use them.

- Memories of several relationships that ended poorly there. Usually with many tears, and seldom were they mine. Because I was always happy to get rid of a guy that I could reduce to tears, the little drama queens. This little bullet just made me realize that counselling would not be the worst thing in the world for me.

There are probably more, but I have a sunburn and that makes me sort of loopy.

Ta!
Kate

...but success it never comes

I have been working at my current job for 2 years today. Two years. Two long years, of which it took me a year and eight months to figure out a career that would not whittle away at my soul as I sat rocking back and forth in an uncomfortable "ergonomic" chair, watching my 401k fluctuate. So I thought I'd take a look back at the other jobs I've had, to see if I could learn anything else about myself. I'm wordy, so it'll probably happen a job at a time.

1. The summer after freshman year of college. Dollywood, Sevierville, TN.

No really. I worked at Dollywood. My friend L and I went there on the understanding that the college kids had a wicked awesome time and made all kinds of money and friends and had the kinds of meaningful life experiences that one can only hope to have in a third rate amusement park in the Smokey Mountains. Of those things, it is true that it was a third rate amusement park in the Smokey Mountains. We lived on campus in Knoxville in a dorm with no hot water, 45 minutes away from the park, and soon found out that the promised bus? Only for the Russian exchange students.

We probably should have left on the first day of training when L's car broke down and it was only via the intervention of Dolly Parton's Uncle Bill that we found a mechanic not inclined to rip us off. Car fixed, we soon found out just exactly what we would be doing at the park. Wearing costumes and helping small children and the elderly in and out of the log ride or the authentic-esque train? Manning the rock candy counter at one of the several tourist sugar-coma inducing general stores? Pointing visitors with multiple camcorders in the direction of the dress Dolly wore when singing "Islands in the Stream" with Kenny Rogers while the same song played on a continuous loop in the background where it would terrifyingly bore its way into your dreams at night? None of the above. Parking lot attendants. Or, Attractions Host II. Lesson learned. Ask just what exactly the job title means before you take the job.

Being a parking lot attendant is a multifaceted job, and every single facet happens to suck. The first day, they put me on duty at the handicapped parking drop-off, where dozens upon dozens of non-handicapped people screamed at me about how unhelpful I was and how they were for damn sure GOING to park there while they got their tickets. Clearly, I had missed the VIP sticker that allowed them to be king douche of big-man land. Couple this with the first of many monotonous comments on my uniform and how unattractive it was. Because clearly, given the choice, I would have picked the ill-fitting traffic-yellow polo shirt, beyond knee-length granny shorts (with a butterfly stamped on the ass so you wouldn't steal them, no less) and brown leather shoes, which are always stylish in the heat of July. "Hey, nice outfit, kid." Hey, nice fanny pack, tourist. I was in tears before lunch.

I would have been happy to spend weeks at the handicapped drop off, had I known that the next assignment was a 7:00am-2:00pm shift of lot duty and traffic directing. We were given buckets and pickers and told to walk the entire lot (the furthest part being about two miles from our station) picking up all the trash. I learned a lot about people on vacation on those days. Such as, paper and cigarettes are the least of one's worries when cleaning up after people who are determined (by-God) to have a wonderful time away from home. Far more commonly than you would think, we picked up dirty diapers, used condoms, spit-cups (and if you think that doesn't sound so bad, you should probably never hang out with southerners who dip), rotten food, and used tampons. About three weeks in, an elderly coworker told us to never use our hands to pick anything up. I hate to think about the kind of person who regarded that tidbit as news.

I suppose the least horrible duty (besides toll-booth, which rocked in its solitude and simplicity, so we naturally never got assigned to it) was tram conductor. This involved sitting backwards in a moving tram that was originally a fixture at Disneyland in the 1960s (really - your grandparents totally rode on that tram) with no seat belt and talking to visitors through a microphone that simply could not overcome the bumpy road, shockless tires, and overall decrepitude of the system. As an added bonus, we were required to police baby strollers. Opening up an entirely new can of angst in my life.

Trams are, by nature (by which I mean the convoluted nature at Dollywood) open air contraptions. Save for the one nice tram, the "MILLION DOLLAR TRAMSTAR," which was treated as though it was made of gold and promptly died when the last car came unattached from the others and was left there in the road until the tow truck came, the other trams were crap. No denying this. They looked old and unsafe. And they were, even without the legions of morons who thought, "Hey. Lemme jump onto a moving tram. I've been meaning to break my leg." These people are the reason that I (L tells me) sat straight up in bed one night and yelled "Stay behind the yellow line!" I hated those people. Anyway. Strollers.

I hate strollers. I hate it when they are used at shopping carts while parents complain about how heavy their baby is. I hate it when children who are perfectly capable of walking are rolled around, complaining about it all the livelong day. I really hate it when the pack of stroller mommies hell-bent on getting the bargain to end all bargains rams me in the back of the ankle in the mall at Christmas time, glaring at me for corrupting their child when I swear in pain. At Dollywood, we were forced to keep empty strollers as well as strollers full of crap inside the trams, which were inevitably driven by extremely senile old people who took corners like they were nitroglycerin pills, all while we also held a microphone and bantered with visitors about the homemade ice cream. The worst were the little umbrella strollers, which fly off the trams all willy-nilly, upsetting the parents who paid, what, $12 for them? And then entrusted them to me? Whatever, man. Actually, the worst were Baby Joggers: gigantic, brakeless contraptions that do not collapse and thereby just sort of roll off the tram. If you have triplets, I get it. If you're a jogger, fine. If you have one kid who can totally walk, a penchant for shopping for big creepy dolls and other sundries which do not fit in an easily carried bag, and clearly have never been running in your whole life, you do not need a Baby Jogger and also, I hate you.

However, all this is nothing compared to the requests that we take on strollers with sleeping children in them while the parents grab a seat in the back. I suppose the reasoning was, "Hey honey, Annimaddison and Chauncey are asleep, let's have this teenager in the snazzy pants who is covered in sweat and clearly thrilled to be working in the 6th or 7th happiest place on Earth watch them sleep in this giant stroller with no breaks while simultaneously keeping an eye on the lecherous old guy to make sure he doesn't skip a stop or run over some guy jumping the barrier... Wouldn't want to risk having a grumpy child in MY car." After a few times of explaining that no, this is against park policy (and probably the law), I gave up that tack and just told them there was a high probability that their child could end up as a grimy place on the pavement. Some were still undeterred, but I assume that these were the same people who got revenge by leaving me their kid's diaper to pick up the next day.

Dollywood was perhaps the longest two months of my life. After the first month, I was given a review for the chance to get a raise, up to a full dollar more per hour. I got $.19. Apparently, despite showing up everyday and not being lucky enough to get knocked-up over the summer like one college coworker, I was docked for not socializing with my coworkers during free time, which basically amounted to my lunch half hour.

So that's Dollywood. It's actually not my worst job ever. But I'll get to that.

Ta,
Kate