Have you ever lived in a really crappy apartment or duplex? I mean, a really crappy, miniscule dump? If so, did you ever have crazy, scary-looking next-door neighbors who fucked like rabid ferrets all night long every night, moaning and wailing, the very skin-slap noises of their raunchy coitus clearly audible from every single inch of your house? And it's not like you mind rabid ferrets, and you like raunchy coitus as much as the next gal, but...damn...you know these people (envision Beetlejuice astride a 275lb version of the Wicked Witch of the West) and the image is just a whole lot more than you really ever wanted or needed on your mental hard drive?
I have. I don't anymore. But now I have the internet...
I am home from Spartanburg. Sylacauga never looked so good. Ahem.
Unfortunately for my, you know, life, my inlaws decided to follow us home and stay for a few days on their way to Arizona. Don't get me wrong; I love these people - but I'm not playing my "A Game" right now (mentally, physically, emotionally or intellectually) and honestly, at the moment, my in-laws seem like two more mouths on the titty. Two more people to cook for and clean up after and wait upon. I know, I know - pole, grease, hell.
I'm just not in the mood. I'm down, okay? My spirits were not elevated, either, by the e-mail I got this afternoon, from the one friend I've managed to hang on to since high school. An ex-boyfriend of mine pulled a Hunter Thompson on Wednesday night, blowing his brains all over his kitchen walls, leaving his very own viscera arranged ala Jackson Pollack for his wife and toddler to find when they came home. He'd been "depressed", she said. Ya think?
I hate suicide. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It pisses me off, it appalls me, it sickens me to think of the waste of a life when there are people like this out there, holding on despite physical torments, who just won't fucking give up even though they hurt all the time and they know the end is coming, because they want to care for the ones they love. What about my ex-boyfriend's wife and daughter? Wasn't he supposed to love and care for them? Didn't he give a shit about the damage he would do to them? How could he just give up like that? His baby girl needs him - and he, no better than the asshole who deserts his own progeny, effectively walks out of her life forever. Because he's sad. Because he doesn't want to go on. Well, boo fucking hoo. You should have thought about that before you took on the responsibility for a child, dickhead.
Suicide is, frankly, for pussies.
I'm not talking about assisted suicide for terminal patients, here - I got no beef with someone in constant pain or with zero quality of life seeking to end it all. But - for depression? Go see a shrink. Get pills. Fix your life - move, quit that job that's bringing you down, quit drinking, whatever you have to do. Just, for God's sakes, get off your ass and do something about it. Depression is curable. Don't make like fellating a thirty-aught is all manly and shit, like you're doing something heroic. Tell you what - be really manly -defy convention and make an appointment with a fucking psychiatrist already. Suicide isn't an act of bravery, it's the ultimate cop-out. The ultimate proof that you suck.
I'm upset about this. Can you tell?
Anyway. The funeral is tomorrow. I'll be there, to pay my respects to his family. I won't be paying any to him. He lost all my respect when he put his wants ahead of the needs of his wife and child. Asshole.
Okay, so I didn't make it to the public library today. Why? I slept late. My father-in-law is one of these old guys who doesn't need much sleep anymore. He also has a fair-to-middling case of asthma, as well as a prostate problem, the poor man. All these factors, however, make his a hard home to sleep in. The combined throat-clearing, toilet-flushing, constant noisy movement, and more-than-occasional merry laughter (at a book, I presume) make a sort of disjointed music during the night (every night) and serves to keep me awake until my father-in-law "gets up" for the day at five-forty-five and heads off to his workshop. At which point I finally collapse into sleep. I don't know how my mother-in-law copes. I suspect Valium.
I'll be home tomorrow, thank God. And I'll be back here at the Kinko's later this evening on a "legitimate" errand - checking up on the job-search, you know - so I should find myself with ample opportunity to blog.
I wonder if there are any bars in Spartanburg? You know, ones that serve actual liquor? I haven't seen one, and my in-laws are going through a strange teetotal phase; real strange considering their usual aptitude for total lushiness, and there's not so much as a bottle of wine to be found at their house. I could use a drink. I've been nonalcoholic for days now. I mean, more power to 'em, if they're quitting drinking...but I'm not quitting. Not this week, anyway. Sheesh.
Now that I have found the Kinko's, the lure of fast access is more that I can bear. I cannot ride by and not stop - seeing the machines through the luridly neon-lit panes of floor-to-ceiling glass, all hooked up to the regular internet, is like holding a crusty horse-spoon up to a junkie's face. A slobber-coated, urine-stained, detoxifying junkie. Resistance is fucking futile; we are Borg. Of course, I have to pretend to be running out for a pack of smokes just to get over here - my mother-in-law doesn't understand in the slightest what's "wrong with" the Inlaw Computer, and blanches visibly at the thought that I might be willing to pay actual money to use a computer at Kinko's "when there's a perfectly good com-pu-ter right there in the living room". As a consequence, she now thinks I smoke like a chimney. Which is fine. Three packs a day keeps the Red-Hatters at bay.
It's funny how little things on the internet, things you never notice, bug the shit out of you when you're paying by the minute. I caught up with my blogroll - you guys are the bomb, honestly, awesome, thank you for entertaining me in my hour of need - and then clicked over to MSN to play a little game or two before heading back to the late eighties, where my inlaws insist on living.
So, I pull up MSN. Then, I click "Games" to get to the main games page. Then I select "Puzzle Games" and wait for that page to load. Once I am on "Puzzle Games", I scroll to find the name of the game I want, and click it. I get an ad, with a click-here-to-continue button, so I click it. Money is now leaking out of my pocketbook. My ATM card gets up and walks out on its own. Anyway, clicking the "continue" button brings me to the main page for the game itself, where I have to select from Play Game? Download Game? and Play for REAL Cash? I opt to play the fucking game - what a shocker! - and am rewarded with a pop-up and a short wait, while MSN determines the state of my Active X controls. Once this is done, I get a black screen with the words Play Game? on it. I click...and finally, the game begins, as I die on the floor of a financial hemorrhage.
But...anyway. I found a Kinko's. Tomorrow I may invent a friend I have to go see in Greenville and hit the public library, which I have just discovered also has fast access. I might just hang for the day. Get some coffee...yeah. That sounds good.
Spartan. Burg. They ain't lyin'.
Why have I not blogged lately? Twin curses: sucked into the inlaw vortex, dialup house. I've gone back in time, and there's nothing I want to say bad enough to get on the information superhighway in a flat-bed cart drawn by two hoof-rotted oxen. Also, I'm out of the lashings of reindeer-hide necessary to make their late-80's-model modem work properly...hell, I'm at a Kinko's now, avoiding a coffee-klatch peopled exclusively by Red-Hatters. Even as I type, someone is removing a crumb-cake from my mother-in-law's avocado fridge...just kill me now, okay?
I'll be back soon. A few days. Yawn. Spartanburg is living up to its name.
Mister MacFarland and I found our dog's mode of egress from our property. A hinge on the garden gate was broken, so all the Georgia Farthound - that's my dog - had to do to escape was nose real hard on the gate itself - et voilà! - liberté.
Valentine's Spirit: what lovin' Queenie lacks, the Georgia Farthound is now attempting to bestow upon me in unwanted spades. That dog is seriously squirrelly today; I think it not unlikely that there is a bitch in heat somewhere in the near vicinity, and that's why the Farthound got the ol' wanderlust in the first place. At any rate, the animal is hard-core hunchy now. Big Red hanging out, and every time you stick out an appendage for any reason, he's all over it like a cheap suit. This afternoon, I was sitting quietly at my desk, on the computer reading the news, when all of a sudden the Georgia Farthound leapt into my lap in a single bound. He proceeded to lick my forehead with all his might and then, seeing his advance at canine foreplay repelled (I was trying to muzzle him with my hands so I could get him off me) abruptly stood up on my lap, put his paws over on my back, and tried his damnedest to hump my head.
Needless to say, I shot him.
No, just kidding, just kidding, put down the phone, no need to call PETA, for fuck's sake. I didn't shoot him, but I did toss him over my shoulders like a black-belt, and whack him repeatedly with a rolled-up newspaper. No, that damned dog is alive and well, although, at present, incarcerated in his little doggy-house, licking his own parts for all he's worth. But I wanted to shoot him. The nerve!
Harumph. If that animal thinks he can hump my leg, he's got another think coming. He can stay in the damn dog-house until he simmers down a touch. After all, I didn't get any chocolate from him, either.
Cupid seems to be missing in action at the MacFarland house today. While I sent my three lovely children off to their various schools with little pouches brimming over with dimestore Valentines for their friends, I, the materfamilias, have yet to receive dick.
Hon? Mister MacFarland? Hey, buddy? You need to bust out with a card this year, okay? Last year's Valentine Festival of Nada does not need a repeat. That is, unless you weren't planning on having sex in the foreseeable future? In which case, that's fine, because we're on the same page. It would be nice if you lined up the rug-rats, too, with at least a kiss for the woman who gave them life through blood and pain and lifelong body-ruin, and, I'll remind you, that sexual process you'll be foregoing in less than nine hours if my fat ass doesn't get some chocolate up in here??? Work with me, darling.
I'm not feelin' the love, people.
Laughter truly is the best medicine around. If you're in the proper frame of mind, you can find funny shit almost anywhere. Why, I just read through the headlines at CNN.com and found knee-slappers by the bushel-basket. Where, you ask? I'll elaborate:
Haw! I just love it when intended victims kill the shit out of their attackers! Dead criminals make me smile. Hell, you want to really crack me up? Show me an article about a child molester gunned down in cold blood.
Bwahahahahaha! While I strive like sixty to keep all politics off this blog - hell, y'all don't know if I'm a liberal or a conservative or what, yet, do ya? - I just have to remark upon the Keystone-Kops-style antics going on in the Democratic Party these days. Way to go, guys. No, really. You lose an election that ought to have been a cake-walk because you're so out of touch with the mainstream as to seat Jabba the Hut in a place of honor at your convention, and then what do you go and do, to fix the problem? Why, swing further left, of course! Just hilarious. And just wait till next week. Watching the party turn on its own ought to be a real hoot.
Snort! This explains a lot about Georgia drivers...especially the Metro area ones...
This only merits a muffled snicker. Has this guy ever heard the phrase 'a day late and a dollar short?' He should.
See? I could go on. I'll spare you, though.
I'm in a good mood today. Guffaw.
We MacFarlands are the dubiously proud owners of one mutt, a terrier-shaped thing of indistinct origin which, when prodded, we will cheerfully inform you is a Georgia Farthound. The Georgia Farthound is a fine specimen; he's like a smooth-coated fox terrier, but larger than the Dog Law will allow, with markings more like a Parson Russell and ears like a Rat. Rat terrier, that is. At any rate, he's muscular and well-knit, with a beautiful chest and head-set on him. He's affectionate, occasionally obedient; a lovely animal...and mind you stay upwind of him.
The Georgia Farthound, however, is the bane of my existence as a housekeeper. He sheds, short, wiry bristles that impale themselves into your clothing and your upholstery and your duvet-covers. He knocks bits of food literally all over my kitchen floor - quite a space - when he eats, and the lazy beast doesn't even have the decency to snuffle up his own orts when he's done. His all-time favorite pastime is rolling in the mud and madly racing, as if in a game of chase, past the towel that awaits him on his reentry to the house, streaking carpets and tile and everything in sight with the reddish-brown muck he's covered in. No, I take that back. His all-time favorite pastime is stinking up the place with his unseelie nether emissions. His second favorite pastime is rolling in the mud, &ctra.
Recently, the Georgia Farthound has gotten a wild hair. He's succumbed to the call of the open road; we have a generously-sized fenced-in backyard that the dog has the full run of - but nooo, it wasn't good enough for him. So, like something out of a WWII movie, he has tunneled his way to freedom...and I'm damned if I can find the hole. Mister MacFarland and I have been all over that backyard, and we can't find so much as a loose fence-board. No low places where he might squeeze under. No little tunnels that we can see...yet every time the little whelp is let out, foosh!. He's gone. He shows up at the front door some time later. No big deal - until he chases a car and actually catches one.
Today, the Georgia Farthound went missing for too long a time. He'd been out for hours, so when Mister MacFarland got home from work, I spent half an hour riding around the neighborhood in my car, calling and whistling to that dog out the window and looking for terrier-shaped grease-spots on the road. I found him deep in a neighboring subdivision, almost a mile away, happy as a clam and wagging his fucking tail at me. Needless to say, I'll be leash-walking him for a few days, until we can get this business straightened out via a two-step process of close observation and repair. If I didn't know better I'd swear the little shit had learned to climb trees.
The Georgia Farthound is on the floor next to me, looking up at me with adoring eyes on one end, and trying to poison me with methane gas from the other. That damned dog is such a heap of trouble. If I didn't love the little fucker so much, I'd suggest Mister MacFarland take him out on the old "one-way huntin' trip".
I've gone soft. What can I say? He farted his way into my heart.
You must accept my apologies for leaving that last horrible post up for days and days. I've been offline, against my will. Why? Well, I'll tell you:
Bellsouth has been my internet service provider since the Dawn of Time. When I lived in California and home internet was a new thing, I briefly used AOL, but as soon as I was back in God's Country and Bellsouth began offering the service, I signed up. Since 1997, I have had the same account, with all the charges paid monthly, on my phone bill. In 2001, I changed the account over to Bellsouth's DSL service, altering my username and password only because the DSL folks told me I had to - my e-mail address, my main one, has been the same for eight years. I've never been disconnected, other than in power outages, and I've never had a problem with the service. Until two days ago, that is.
Two days ago, Bellsouth Billing decided that I had not paid my bill and that I needed to be disconnected. Bear in mind that my bill was paid, in full, on the twenty-fifth of January, my regular billing date. There was no outstanding balance. There was no problem with the payment - my bank cleared it the day I posted it. My bill - both online and of the dead-tree variety - shows a zero balance. Yet Bellsouth saw fit to disconnect me.
Somewhere in their fucked-up thought process, they realized that I had, indeed, paid my bill, so they reinstated my service...with a different username and password. Without bothering to tell me, the Billing people reverted my username and password to the one I used four or five years ago, for dial-up. My e-mail address, the one with my right name on it? Obliterated. Which wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't have, oh, fifty or so resumes out with that e-mail address on it.
It took me three hours on the phone last night to work through all this with these assholes, to figure out why I couldn't connect using Bellsouth DSL and why I had no e-mail at all, even when I used another company's dialup account to connect to the internet. Yes, I have a work-order in to reinstate my old e-mail address, username, and password, but that could take up to four business days to process. After all the time on hold, after the six department-transfers, talking to the two "supervisors", and after having my account examined with a fine-tooth comb, they still can't tell me what the fuck happened or why they did this. And you want to hear something even funnier? They aren't prepared to do anything for me. No account credit, no perks, no "we're sorry we totally screwed your job search, Mrs. MacFarland," no kiss my ass, no nothing. They are still claiming, despite my uninterrupted dialtone and the evidence of their own systems ("yes ma'am, I can see where it say you paid your bill, and I can see right after that where they put the work order in to disconnect you fo' non payment - it don't make no sense") that I was disconnected for non-payment.
I am livid. Spitting nails, people. I am ready to yank every Bellsouth product I have out of this house and throw it on the midden heap. We don't need their frickin' phone service, anyway...we all have cell phones, and we already have a cable line in here, just waiting for me to hook a broadband router up to it. There is no reason, not one, for me to tolerate this kind of bullshit.
I have one more phone call to make to these people, to give them one last chance to cut the crap and create a happy customer where there is none. If they fuck this one up, I may be offline for a few more days while I rip their shit out of the walls and call the cable company.
This post very well may get on your nerves. It's self-indulgence, pure and simple. I need to stay pretty vague, non-specific - but I need to write something because I need to vent, to get this anvil off my chest. Skip it if you like; I won't be offended.
I just got some bad news, some really bad news that I don't feel that I can share with you because it involves another person whose privacy is paramount. This person isn't a blogger, doesn't even know this site exists, but still - I was asked for confidence and confidence I will deliver. Suffice it to say that this news directly impacts on me, and makes me feel like a big old pile of steaming shit, for something I didn't even do.
All the details aside, I'm viewing this news as a watershed event. If you knew me personally, if I could sit down with you and narrate the screwball black-comedy that has been the last two years of my life, you'd understand when I say that this phone call was the capstone on a very large pile of unfortunate occurrences. I think I must be going through one of those major life-change cycles (no, not menopause) in which one generally finds one's self ripped away from the comfort zone of the past. I'm moving (painfully and slowly, like a birth) into a new phase, in which I find myself in sudden and unexpected financial trouble, with no friends in the area, no job, an immediate family member with a recently-diagnosed chronic debilitating illness, two children that are preparing to fly the coop and one barely in britches, and now this vague thing that I can't talk about but is really, really awful - everything about this one-two punch of irritating bullshit depresses me, which tends to make me push the people I do care about just that much further away. Or irritate the fuck out of them, by being Bad-News Betty all the time.
In my experience, change is usually for the better. It never seems like it when you're in the curve, though, when you're in the process of changing your life. It can be scary and weird and just downright unpleasant, no matter how well-adjusted you are, because forging into the unknown, while cool at twenty-three, is a nightmare on wheels when you have children to feed.
Anyway. I'm doing my damndest to pull myself out of it and get back to regularly scheduled Queenie programming. I'm generally a fairly happy-go-lucky person in real-life, despite my penchant for swearing like a naval seaman. It's happy cussing, usually. Unlike my daddy, I'm not a fatalist. The glass is almost always half full, even if the stemware is tacky as hell.
Give me a few more years like the last two, though, and ask me again...
Understatement: Queenie is not a morning person. Ever. While I get up fairly early on a regular basis, I don't enjoy it, and I'll hazard a guess that the poor sods who get up with me don't enjoy it, either. I'm mean in the a.m., grouchy and testy and invariably pissed off at the universe for dragging me out of the sack, for setting up this whole agrarian "early milking" shit that now, thousands of years later, dictates that as a professional woman I must get up and going at the got-damn crack every day. I don't hold with this "best part of the day" happy crappy, either - it's too bright, birds tend to be impertinently loud, and there's dew all over everything. No, the best part of the day is late, when the children are all asleep and Adults, like pre-catastrophic dinosaurs, rule the Earth. Mornings are a hassle, and a hurry; mornings are traffic and gobs of dried-on toothpaste and too-hot oatmeal, hastily gulped. I don't care for it. Give me cocktail hour, any time.
While being out of a job bites the big one, one major fringe benefit of my temporary unemployment is the chance, for a week or so, to sleep later in the mornings. I was abed until eight-thirty this morning - luxury beyond reckoning! I feel like the fucking Queenie of Sheba. I had time to sit and make myself a delicious latte, to glance over the paper, to take a hot bath before starting my day. Wonderful. So much more civilized than leaping out of the sack and racing through the shower and out the door like a whipped carthorse.
I look better with more sleep, too. You can laugh at the old "beauty sleep" saw all you want, but I swear it's valid. My face in the mirror this morning is unlined, the skin beneath my eyes as smooth as a creme brulee. Tell me that isn't worth something.
The first person to tell me I should go to bed earlier gets popped upside the head.
Keep your fingers crossed - I think I may have fixed my computer, if you can call what I did a repair-job. I'm almost embarassed to tell you what the problem was. Someone asked me in a comment on an earlier post if the damn thing was plugged in (because it's usually something stupid that knocks you offline) and, in that vein, I'm ashamedly admitting that the snafu was even dumber than an unplug.
See, the issue was that the machine would shut itself down with no warning. Right in the middle of an operation, and boom, black screen. Yet, the green power light remained on even though the machine itself was dead as the proverbial doornail. I could unplug the machine, wait a second or two for the power light to fade, plug it back in, turn it back on, and roll with it for a variable number of minutes before another shutdown.
As a computery kind of person, I know of several things that would make a computer act like this. There was a virus running loose a while back that would shut your machine down spontaneously. There could be power supply issues. There could be a short on the motherboard. Or, under certain circumstances, the machine will shut itself down as a matter of course - in an overheat situation, for example. To my mind, the overheat seemed the most likely; I run a tightly secured machine, so I rarely pick up bugs; if the power supply was dead, the power light should have gone out when the machine shut down...hmmm...I got to wondering...
I have not moved this machine in several years. While I am a decent housekeeper, I've never picked my computer up and out of its Holy Place (the corner of my desk, against the wall) and cleaned the back of it. I've lifted it and cleaned under it at least once a week, and I've opened it up and worked on it right there, but I've never specifically cleaned the back of the machine itself. I sat there contemplating the innards of my computer as this data sort of percolated in my brain...and all of a sudden it ocurred to me to turn the machine around and look at the fan, to see if it could get cool air...and my GAWD. There was a veritable laboratory rat of dust hanging around my fan. Ewwww! Nasty! It's a miracle the goddam thing could turn at all!
Baby, I had that thing off the desk and laid open so fast it'd make your head spin. I whipped out my beloved, beloved Dyson and vacuumed the fucker out. You could eat out of the inside of that computer case, now, fan and all. And guess what? No shutdowns as of yet, and it's been about three hours.
The fan couldn't do its job, it got too hot in there, and the CMOS is set to shut the computer down rather than let it fry itself if the inside of the case reaches a certain temperature. Cleaning the shit off the fan seems to have solved the problem.
I'm sooo glad it's fixed. I really hope it's fixed for good.
I'm so ashamed.
I saw a picture of Clint Eastwood on a magazine at the beauty shop today - I think it was on the cover of "Entertainment Weekly" or "People". That poor, poor man. He's had so much Botox and laser-resurfacing that he looks like a burn victim. Seriously - the man is smooth as a rosary bead - his ears and nose look bizarre and out of place on his skeletal head. His flesh is mottled, like an old man's, but stretched so nineteen-again tight over his bones that it looks like it's about to make a spectacular POP! and spring free completely, leaving a only a naked cranium behind. Clint looks like he's in pain. I reckon you would too, if your plastic surgeon had just run you through the physical equivalent of a belt sander.
You want to know a secret? You're going to get old, if you aren't already, and all the plastic surgery in the world isn't going to keep you from it. You are going to die, and there is no getting around it. A little plastic surgery can slow the journey into that good night, but when you start raging at the dying of the light by having yourself Michael Jacksoned, you simply look stupid. And I love Clint Eastwood. I don't want him to look stupid!
This is no blanket indictment of cosmetic enhancement, mind - I think a nip and a tuck here and there is perfectly acceptable. But these Hollywood people just go nuts with it; it's like all the money and all the fame and all the isolation from normal society that comes with such things make our stars lose all sense of proportion and reality, physically, emotionally, politically, romantically, you name it. These people can't look in a mirror and really see what they look like anymore. Their rubric for making such a judgement is broken.
Poor Clint. Baby, no matter how old you got, we'd still have loved you. You didn't have to put yourself through all that just for us. You could still get pussy, Clint - you're Dirty fucking Harry, for crying out loud! It's not like you can't get work - hell, you've been known to write, produce, direct, and star - you can make your own work. You've got gravitas. But you're still gonna die, dude, and we all know it, because we're tied to the same wheel.
Let it go. Enough with the pressure-washing, the Restylane gun. Make my day and stay who you are.
Despite the nagging financial worries, unemployment suits me. Interspersed with sleeping and fucking off have been short spasms of Busy Beaver; my resume is ready to go, I've sent copies to most of my former employers (I've manged to stay on a good footing with all of 'em), as well as a few folks who've proved to be good networking contacts before, and have submitted my CV to a headhunter, a good one. Additionally, I have secured a part-time position at a ghastly hourly rate, just to keep some cash flowing into my coffers during this hiccup in my employment history. I thought I had a thousand-dollar deal to clean Acidman's house, but I see I've been, erm, supplanted. Easy come, easy go.
I've had a lot of time on my hands in the past couple of days; I should have spent it constructively, cleaning my house, washing all my laundry, running those errands that one never has time to get to during working hours. I didn't, though. I've been hard at work on another project. I've spent my time becoming a world-class snowboarder.
Yes. My name is Kaori, I'm from Japan, I'm very perky and happy. I have an affinity for backpacks, stuff with daisies on it, and giggling as I punch the crap out of my competitors, earning coveted Knockdown points that lead to Speed Boosts and Uber Tricks. I've gotten addicted to SSX 3, a Playstation game that one of my oldest son's friends left over here last weekend.
I don't play Playstation. Until I saw this game, I viewed the whole contraption with a measure of disgust - I am a mother - and had never so much as picked up a controller in my life. I'm hooked now, though, right and proper. I spent some time watching Numbah One Son and his buddy at play last weekend, and the game was so appealling that I just had to try it. What do you know? I'm good at it. The speed! The challenge! The gut-wrenching Chevy-Show effect of the graphics! It's just like being there! Without the cold, of course. And the music on the thing is good, too.
When I was in college and Nintendo became a Big Huge Deal, my clique and I called it White Boy Crack. Honestly, I know several guys who gave up their college aspirations because they spent their days getting stoned and sitting in front of the game console. At the time, we laughed at these prematurely pot-bellied losers, but these boys, now men have gone on to find fulfilling lives as video rental store managers and telemarketing supervisory professionals, so who am I to say they took an undesirable track?
Queenie, though, needs to lay down the metaphorical crack pipe. This Playstation shit is murder on the digits. Seriously, my thumbs are swollen up. Hot to the touch. I need an icepack.
One more game, one. I need one more medal to unlock Peak Three, and then I'm through for the weekend, I promise. After all, I can't let the children see me acting like this. If those little barbarians get a whiff of Mommy actually liking the Playstation, there'll be no living with them.
I went to the office this morning, along with the rest of my co-workers, to see what news from On High. The news: clean out your desks, underlings. Old S.W. was empowered to cut individual checks for expenses, but nobody will give us a straight answer about our severance. One Kraut says "ho, not to vorry; off course ve vill honor ze agreements," while two more say that our agreements were with the American corporation, now dissolved. So, I reckon we squeaky-wheel 'em with our own lawyers, and we wait. And move the hell on.
I cleaned out my desk, took the pictures of my children off the walls. I expunged my personal files from all the computer systems, not that there were many of those, gave my cache a good scrubbing out, and ran some utilities, just to leave no oopsies. I deleted any notes with regard to the daily operation of the company that my European Overlords might find helpful, while - of course - leaving all the actual action files intact. I would never, ever, damage or delete intellectual property. However...
There are no passwords for anything written down anywhere in existence - we follow Sound Security Practices on my Information Systems team - it wouldn't be safe otherwise! - so it will be interesting to see how the folks from abroad get in to any of the company's information when and if they get here. What? Don't look at me like that. I'm just following guidelines suggested to me, as a shipper of large amounts of cargo, by the United States Department of Homeland Security and The U.S. Customs Service! It's a good citizen thing.
Nobody knows the coding for the phone system but me. Nobody has the passwords to the accounting systems but me, not even old S.W.
I guess when someone comes over here from Europe, to collect the keys to the place and do whatever they plan to do with the stuff there, they'll have to find me. I mean, they didn't give any of us a notice period, we weren't told to leave information behind us, it was just...go home. So, yeah. We went home. But, finding me, if I don't provide forwarding information, could be difficult for them. Not impossible, but labor-intensive and irritating, since a) I'll be moving to a different city soon, and b) my phone number is a company number - I don't do the home phone thing. Oh, I'll get myself a cell phone in the next day or so...with a number that isn't listed...
I reckon they'll be talking to my lawyer from now on, anyway. The severance thing, you know. They can ask him to get in touch with me. I'll be glad to type them up some documents, or go teach 'em everything I know...at my hourly contract rate. Which has been known to make an attorney blanch.
You think I'm going to make it easy for them? Nuh-uh. Does that sound like the Queenie you know? Nuh-uh. In the meantime...I'll be polishing my resume and working on my skills with the Playstation.
My fucking job, man...
The Europeans who own the company I work for e-mailed old S.W. this morning. They've decided to "revitalize their interests in the American market" - by shutting down our current operation in its entirety. I don't know what these old dinosaurs are thinking, because when they yank our offices out of play and leave the North American customers dangling in the wind for months while they pursue an as-yet-nebulous "revitalization" strategy, all the tenuous trust between the North American market and their offices in Old Europe will be irrevocably severed. The people who need Queenie's widgets on a just-in-time-delivery basis - a service the offices in Old Europe are not equipped to handle - in order to make their businesses run will view any interruption in service as unacceptable, and take their widget bidness down the road, to the Japanese, as they damn well should.
Old Europe is shooting its foot off, here. They're choking the cash cow to death. It makes not one lick of sense, from any kind of business perspective out there. My guess? The whole operation, Krauts, Limeys, Whops, Micks, Frogs and Yanks alike, is fixing to take the dirtnap, and the Powers That Be want all the money out of our place, to throw a steak to the wolves at the door, to lengthen the inevitable demise. They just won't come out and say it. Oh, no. Heaven forfend a German lawyer and a French accountant should shoot straight with you.
Old S.W. has been with the company for twenty years. Our sales manager has been with the company for eighteen years. Our tech manager has been with the company for seventeen. The list goes on and on; our newest employee was hired a year ago - the poor fucker just closed on a new house, his first ever, last month...and the pussies Over There axed us all - by e-mail. They wouldn't return our calls, all day. We don't know if our severance is going to be honored. We don't know if we're supposed to work two weeks. Hell, I don't even know if there's a paycheck coming on the fifteenth. We don't know shit.
Via e-mail. Twenty years of service, and they axe your sorry ass via e-mail. Like asking your husband for a divorce on a text-message. Just pussy shit.
So, your humble narrator is out of a job, for the first time in a looong time. Keep your fingers crossed for old Queenie, won't you? As you can see, I'm more than a little upset.
My fucking job. **poof**