Caterwauling

For now, anyway.

My beloved Clay didn’t win “American Idol,” but I do wish Ruben well. If only I’d voted 1,300 more times. …

Yeah, I’m bumming. I hate it when my guy doesn’t win. I’m so damn competitive, and it wasn’t even my victory to claim. 😉 I really, really wanted him to win. I know he’ll still have a fabulous career, no matter what happens, though. But he’ll always be a winner to me. 😉

UPDATE: ‘Idol’ to recount votes. Clay for President, anyone?!?! 😉

This morning, when I went to purchase Clay and Ruben’s singles off Amazon.com, Clay’s was the No. 1 seller and Ruben’s was No. 28. I figured that Clay would win “AI,” based on that alone. But I guess with Barry White on his deathbed, people are scrambling to see to it that he’s replaced.

At any rate, Amazon will ship Ruben’s single on June 5, and Clay’s on June 10. I hope they ship them together and earlier. I will be in dire need of a Clay fix soon!!!

Some coffee to go with my bitter? 😉

The real deal

Oh, hell, I’ll say what I’m really thinking. I spent upward of $30 in votes this season, so I have a right to throw in another two cents for good measure. 🙂

I don’t think America voted Ruben as its winner. All of my friends were voting for Kimberley Locke and Clay Aiken. Not saying that Ruben isn’t talented, because he is, but I wondered, too, after the public outcry that Tamyra didn’t win last season, if this were a wee bit rigged this year.

At one point in the season, Ruben was placed in the “Bottom Three” for elimination — I think that was a move strategically done by Fox to get people outraged enough to stop voting for their real favorites and to vote to ensure that Ruben stayed on. Clay never once was in the “Bottom Three,” and not to mention, but the reason Clay even got into the Top 12 was because they had a wild card show in which the public could choose someone whom the judges didn’t choose to push through to the finals.

At any rate, based on this alone, Clay would’ve won the competition. The CD-singles sales figures support this theory. The same people who voted for Idol were buying the CDs, right?

All I can say at this point is that I hope Ruben really doesn’t become the next Biggie Smalls and do gangsta rap — people wanted him because he’s the next Barry White or Isaac Hayes or whatever. At any rate, the talent was supreme this year, and I am pleased that every shape, size and color was represented in the finals. But it still stumps me that, given how racist a lot of America still is, that a clean-cut cute little white boy like Clay didn’t win by America’s supposed vote.

If there is a finding that the competition was rigged, though, the show is over. At this point, they should just be saying that the results stand as-is; and we all know who the winner should have been. 😉

Just to show how little Demure, my supervisor, really has to do in a day:

I give her my articles to read for content only (i.e., to keep us from getting sued). Last week, I gave her one of my articles with that note in bold: Do NOT edit for anything but content.

For my running head, I nicknamed it “Licensure O’Plenty.” Everybody here knows that my running heads are always edited once they are laid out in Quark. And, see above, the article was in need of a re-work from top to bottom, including the head.

Anywho, I just found a note from her on the article. She circled the title and wrote, “Too light a headline for this subject.”

Does she honestly think I’d title a front-page article with that?!?!

That was the worst of it, other than the fact that she EDITED it for transitions and punctuation, when I WARNED her that it was a random collection of quotes and nothing more. Go away, woman, and leave the editing to me. Dipshit.

What was I saying about hoping for a light day? Sweet Jesus, I’m going to be here until Mr. American Idol is crowned tonight. Fuck around!

Breathe, Dawn. The last-minute shitpile is not worth a stroke. Not worth it at all. *sigh*

And I think all the birds had a poo-flinging convention on my car this morning. Samantha’s a mess! Isn’t it enough to simply get shat upon at work?

And are y’all still out there? I haven’t gotten any comments in more than a week!

UPDATE

Apparently I was smoking crack when I wrote my five stories this month, ’cause they are in sorry-ass shape. I’m going to be here till American Idol 2004, getting these corrections made!

Demure stopped into the office at 11, our supposed meeting time. She skulked out just as quickly and avoided me. W00t!

Shan told Finance Guy about Demure calling me a disappointment. He said I should write a letter to Frosty, but I’ll skip it. He mused how sad it is that Demure only supervises two people (Convention Queen and me), and we are both disgusted with her and are doing just fine without her meddling. He’s right — I love being here without Demure hovering over me like a news chopper full of gas and not much else. 🙂

Mac Guy sent me a PDF of the newspaper layout at 4 a.m. He also attached a note saying that, hell, we’re already at 52 pages — how about I come up with 4 more pages, because with 56, we’re freer with wherever we can place color throughout the rag. I replied back, “How about not?”

Paper goes to bed tomorrow. And I’ll be damned if I have to come up with four more pages of content and ads. I busted my boo-tay to get the editorial side together this month, as I do every month. I have no love for this paper right now. None whatsoever. I suggested that he turn my color photos into black-and-whites instead. Frankly, I saw how little reaction I received (positive or negative) on last month’s grand 64-page issue, and I guess I just don’t feel like scrambling for a 56-pager when the 52-pager is almost done. Really, though, it’s not that much more effort, but I just was looking forward to having a light day today, given the fact that I worked through the weekend and put in a 12-hour workday on Monday.

That’s the problem with having to meet my own high standards — it’s impossible to exceed them (i.e., no more 64-page papers in the forseeable future!). Besides, I’ll probably get my ass kicked for spending the extra money on papers above 40 pages, which is all that we’re budgeted for. I suppose that I have a long tradition of agency average to uphold. 🙂

Oh, what the hell. You know I’ll probably end up adding the extra pages. Like, what else do I have to do, other than edit all of them and convert them, page by page, to PDFs? 🙂