Caterwauling

Ooh, the Big Three — Clay, Ruben and Kimberely — are together onstage as contestants for the last time tonight.

I agree with Simon — let’s vote off Ryan Seacrest in favor of keeping the stars together one more week. 🙂

Justin Guarini is singing “Unchained Melody.” Didn’t Clay just sing that last night? Clay sang the shit out of it, and Justin sounds like a whiny flea in comparison. Lucky for him that he’s no longer competing!

Tamyra Gray looks like a mixed-race Tori Spelling. But she blew me away with her performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” How did she not win last year’s competition?

Fascinating how pop tarts like Britney and Christina and Destiny’s Child make it to the top of the charts, yet when it’s America deciding with text messages who should be our heroes, take a good look at the Top 3 — different colors, shapes, sizes and images.

Oooh, we’re about to find out who stays. …

*tension*

How many breaks can a show take? Sheesh, I know the advertising money is damn good, but shouldn’t the show have more than 50 percent of its time taken up by the actual program?!?!

*More Diet Vanilla Coke commercials*

*bursts into tears at Kimberley montage*

I love them all. I might have thrown a dozen votes Clay’s way, but I’ve fallen in love with these characters — they have been my dates every Tuesday and Wednesday night for the past eight weeks. Fare thee well, Kimberley. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around somewhere soon!

Hi, I’m Dawn, and I work for Dipshits.

*hi Dawn!*

Okay, I told you the story that I assigned an article to Scott, only for us to later learn that it was being written by someone else (um, why wouldn’t anyone tell me, the editor who would be receiving it?). Frustrating, but it gets worse.

I called said outside writer today to remind her that tomorrow at close of business is my editorial deadline. Nervous Norman had not told her that it was tomorrow, but it should be no problem for me to receive it then. She proudly said, “It’s under 900 words, as promised.” I said huh? and said that it would be acceptable up to 1,500 words. It was her turn to say, huh? and wonder aloud why she had been instructed to write such a tight article when she could have used double the words. I said that’s the way around here — the chain of communication is like a maypole, so in the future, please stick to 1,500 words and call first if she needs to exceed that.

There. Done. Problem solved for a future issue. Why don’t these dildos just let me do my job in the first place?!?!

The word was out of my mouth before I realized my habit of creating my own vocabulary to fit situations. Look out, Merriam-Webster! I anticipate this will make it into the dictionary before “shock and awe” does. Or should it be “stuporvisor”?

My stupervisor is mad at me for missing our regulary scheduled stupervisory meeting. I had an exhaustive conference call at 10, and my stupervisory meeting is a standing date for 11 a.m. But we never meet at 11. I have to wait till she’s ready, which usually entails me running down the hall about 10 times till I get good and pissed, checking with her never-busy secretary to see when our meeting is supposed to start. Eventually, Demure hunts me down and tells me to come to her office — usually around 11:40.

I’m always busy, but today I’m swamped. Hella swamped. So today, I left my door open and didn’t bother wandering down there. Around 11:45, I sent an update e-mail, telling her essentially in what position my underwear was lodged, it was so detailed. She zipped back a snarky response, and I quote, “I would have appreciated an e-mail or a phone call or a quick drop in to say — May I send you an update, I need to use this meeting time to work on the paper.”

Fuck you. Fuck you, you crotchety woman who has nothing better to do than to chastise me for getting caught up in doing my job instead of cowtowing to her for a useless meeting. Honestly, my e-mail said all I needed to say, and it didn’t require more than 90 seconds of my time. Meetings with her run the gamut from 60 to 90 minutes, at which time I am more glazed than a Krispy Kreme fresh out of the oven. And I always end the meetings. Always. She could just keep me in there forever, if she could. Damn, am I that lovable? At any rate, I refrained from saying all of this, in favor for saying that I just realized what time it was, so sorry that it wasn’t in person, but here’s the status quo. So, in effect, I did not hide or run away — I just chose not to be locked into her den of inequity for an hour when I could have been working (and blogging!).

You’ll thank me for this.

Just a sample:

jon bon jovi: It’s always been my ultimate fantasy to see your spiky hair…

dawn: You’re going to see more than my spiky hair jon bon jovi…

jon bon jovi: E-I-E-I-O! Oh, “Bring Me to Life”!

dawn: What the?

dawn keeps up the work on jon bon jovi, then sees a dildo next to gwen stefani’s chest. dawn grabs it with both hands and grins at jon bon jovi.

jon bon jovi: Holy shit! That’s the biggest dildo I’ve seen in my life!

dawn: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

dawn uses the dildo on jon bon jovi.

jon bon jovi: Allah! Allah! E-I-E-I-O!

dawn: Oh my god, I can’t believe that.

jon bon jovi: Ohhhhhhhhhh dawn!

dawn: Oh for fucks sake jon bon jovi.

jon bon jovi: Sorry dawn, but it’s just you remind me so much of a peach, I could just eat you.

dawn: Oh and I’d let you eat me. I love it when you call me a peach.

jon bon jovi: Oh dawn, you’re the juiciest peach I’ve ever seen.

Ah, to dream. …

Today’s rant is brought to you by the letters S, H, I and T.

Shan and I each came up with why our days were like shit. She said she takes so much shit, it’s as though they have an I.V. tube feeding into her arm, and the bag is full of shit. The shit keeps on dripping, in a continuum, and they are always changing her bag of shit to ensure that she does not know what a day would feel like without a neverending stream of shit.

I likened my own shit to a Ferris wheel ride. The ride stops for a minute, some shit slides off the ride, and a whole new hunk of shit gets into my ride cycle. That shit goes around for a few turns until more shit has to get on the ride, so we stop the ride and let some old shit off before some fresh shit gets to take a spin on the Shit Express.

Jesus fucking christ.

Okay, so I was asked by our current (and sweet and fabulous) outgoing president to do an article on something he felt would greatly impact my readers. It was reiterated to me from the publisher that yes, we need to do something, but be careful because there’s a political hot potato waiting to explode. I spoke with my main source from the story last week, only for him to say that he’d clear it with the publisher (i.e., King Kumquat) WHAT he could say so that I can run it. So I chatted with the interviewee today. Charming, sweet man. And he told me to not touch the politics with a 10-foot-pole.

So I turned to another inside source, whom I’ll just call Nervous Norman. I e-mailed him four questions to answer for the article, each of which pertaining to the four subject areas that the other guy and I discussed. Two hours go by. Norman came into my office finally and said that he’d just had a meeting with Kumquat, and that he’d taken my list of questions in to him. (Instead of just answering them, of course — everyone’s got to run to Kumquat because they need permission to wipe their asses from front to back.) He had a fit and said that, no, I had taken the wrong course with the article and that, in fact, Kumquat insisted that I take the political route.

After having typed in about 1,000 words of the story at said point, I closed my notebook and threw it across my desk. I said, “Great. Just great. Deadline’s Thursday, and now I have to start yet another story over again.” Note that this is the second story this week that Kumquat said to someone, “What was Dawn thinking when she decided to do that?” Not to mention that Nervous Norman had asked me to get an article done on an outside entity, which Scott tried valiantly to achieve, only for us both to later learn that Nervous Norman knew all along that the outside entity was, in fact, writing the article themselves. Not to mention the article I tried to assign to an in-house columnist, only for Kumquat to insist that, no, actually, I should take the article back and do it myself.

That’s four strikes, for those who weren’t counting, against my deadline in 48 hours.

I gave Scott an assignment for next month — no sense in driving him as nuts as I am this week. Unfortunately, though, I am stuck with doing (and re-doing) shit for this issue. At least, though, most of my columnists came in early with their work, although we all know Kumquat will come in at the 11th hour, as is typical, with his article. But I digress.

Nervous Norman panicked when I showed my outburst of emotion. Nearly ran out the door, shaking. Told me that maybe I didn’t have to start over, but that I should just ask Kumquat directly what the fuck he might want me to do. So I dropped Kumquat a note to inquire about the conflicting messages and to seek his guidance (dear god, don’t let it be the political route).

I’ve referenced the chain of command here before — sometimes, you get the instruction to only deal with your idiotic … er, immediate … supervisor, which in my case happens to be someone who has no bloody clue what I do or how I do it. Other times, you are told to sit on your hands and wait for someone, anyone to approach you, at which time they will copy half the Mid-Atlantic region on the correspondence. And still other times, you have six different people telling you what Kumquat wants, but then when you or your middlemen deliver said product, Kumquat has a bitch fit and insists that everyone’s nuts but him.

Which is why I now e-mail him with my questions. I love a paper trail. Shan is smart enough to save his VMs, because when he wigs out and says, “I told you to do X!” she can play the message that clearly says, “Do not do X. Do Y, Z and A but I will do X myself.” It’s a shame because that’s when you get alphabet soup, a.k.a. C-Y-A. And I’ve got a lot of ass to cover, so it always seems like that’s what I’m doing.

In my 10 months here, I have written about 45 stories and have edited five times as many. Never once has anyone told me that I was a fuckup or that I was taking the wrong approach. I usually worked at my own pace, turned in my shit, and it was automatically approved. Not now. Now that I have to fucking have weekly supervision meetings (like tomorrow — Jesus Christ), I have to report every time I lose an eyelash, and I have to tell them how many people I called and how many times I told them that my eyelash had fallen out, as well as if it was from my upper lid on my left eye and whether it had mascara on it or not.

But noooo, it should have come from my lower lid on my right eye now. So I have to go find a sharp object and extract it from my head and show it to them so they can approve it and see how pretty it is.

Oh, god, save me.

On that note …. my mom and I always find that our conversations go downhill in the last five minutes. Likewise, this entry just went to shit.

After last night’s lesson, I am almost sorry to know that, after two more lessons, this adventure will be over.

We’re learning a combination of both difficult and simple steps, and maybe it’s because we’ve all gained a bit of self-confidence during the past four weeks, but it seems easier. We seem to flow, to meld, to glide way better than we did at the beginning. Granted, I have a long way to go before I can fluidly move from one set of steps into another set, but it will happen. Eventually. 🙂

Although Mike is easy on the eyes and is really starting to get comfortable with the steps, I say, hands-down, my best dancing partner is Dave. After class, we had pizza with Debonair Gary, Deirdre and Bonnie (who missed class but showed up for a glass of chardonnay and some good food), and even they admitted that while it’s cool and a neat way to meet people when we change partners, we really do find that we work best with just one person. Amen to that — let’s face it, assuming I never get Mike’s number, the only person I will dance with after this class ends is Dave, so it’s more important that we learn the steps with someone with whom we will actually use them.

I truly enjoyed meeting the others over dinner. Granted, I was a little perturbed at having to actually get up out of my chair and move across the room to a bigger table, but I was meant to meet that crew. It’s weird — professionally, we all have some sort of connection or similar interest. And everyone’s laid-back and funny when they’re off the dance floor. For most of us, our personalities really shine through on the floor — Dave and I laugh and keep trying or celebrate when we do well. It’s like I’ve finally left the nerves at the door. And wasn’t there an old country song, “I Just Came Here to Dance”? (Yes, my family made me listen to David Frizzell and Shelly West and all the other country artists in the ’70s and ’80s.)

Something about Bonnie intrigued me. Her job, of course, made me salivate. In fact, over dinner, she received a call from someone, telling her about the bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and I was enthralled. She has that kind of piercing gaze, too, like she’s really trying to see inside you when you’re speaking. It was unnerving at first — because I’m so flippant and so all-over-the-place when I talk, but she really concentrates on you, as if you were divulging the secret of life. I will definitely have to talk to her and Deirdre again — it was great to meet them, as we women typically don’t meet each other and the men don’t meet each other either, because we’re so busy dancing and switching partners of the opposite sex.

At any rate, I was reduced to a fit of giggles during the class, so much so that I blurted out, “I am SO going to blog about this!” But as I couldn’t load Blogger to save my life when I got home from class last night, I forget what inspired me to say that, so I guess I’m not blogging about it. (Dave is breathing a sigh of relief as he’s reading this — I can feel it!). 😉

We did some twirly stuff, which was fun, but then there was that horrid part where we had to dance 180-degree turns on one foot. Gaaah! Luckily, the anticipated casualties didn’t occur. In fact, the easiest way to obtain wounds in that class is when the couples are all doing different things and we end up crashing into each other, demolition derby-style.

Dave is rooting for me with Mike — while I was searching for my keys (which someone was sitting on), he invited Mike and Stephanie to join us for pizza. They politely declined, saying that they had eaten before class. Dave rocks! And I’m okay if nothing happens with Mike — but I would be sorely disappointed if I never ran into him and Stephanie again, because we were all laughing and having a really good time in class, and I’ll bet they’d be fun to hang out with. Not as fun as us, by any means (lol), but I think they’d be a nice addition to the mix of friends. I mean, really, something drew all of us to that class, and I believe that combination of people converged for a reason.

At any rate, as much as I whine and complain about the class, I do like it. And like Gary pointed out, it’s our first class, so it’s difficult but possible to learn rhythm on your feet, even if it doesn’t happen right away. They recommended that we take ballroom dancing, the fox trot and something else (can-can? cha-cha?). I think I might actually be up for that someday. Just not today! 😉

Insufferable training session today. Shan, though, made it so very memorable. Town Crier asked a stupid question, which was reiterating whatever the monotone trainer had said, and the trainer responded, “You get the gold star!” Shan wrote a note to me about TC that said, “You get the gold finger!”

OMG — I was snarfing and snorting and gagging and crying for the next 20 minutes. Otherwise, the hour-plus training was simply painful.

I am trying to reschedule today’s nail appointment — it seems there is a mandatory training that I was drafted to attend, only the thing is, King Kumquat is only now having Shan notify us about this ridiculous training in a few hours.

Granted, I’ve known about it for a week, and so has my supervisor, but Kumquat insisted that he be the one to send out the e-mail to announce it. Demure (my boss) has been flipping out and frothing at the mouth at Shan about this, panicking because staff haven’t been notified by Kumquat, but she’s an asshole. What Demure should have done was notified her staff about the training as soon as she heard about it (we have an outside consultant coming in; it’s not like the date was flexible). I just don’t see why people insist on upholding a chain of communication around here some times (i.e., you can only correspond with your direct supervisor), and other times, your direct supervisor withholds information until somebody else wants to tell you about it. And when we’re talking about Kumquat, he’s a nice guy but he isn’t exactly in a rush to disseminate information — instead, he’s got a very pregnant Shan running around the building, begging people to attend this ridiculous training.

I won’t even go into detail about how Kumquat ripped into Shan for 20 minutes, insisting that this is all her fault. She has the voicemails from him to prove otherwise — that he didn’t want her to have any part of this process — so how she kept from popping him in the puss is beyond me. After a great Mother’s Day (yes, you heard it here first — she’s going to be a Mommy!), she had to come back to this shit. This place has such a way of raising her blood pressure and ire (same goes for me, but at least I’m not living for two) — we need to get her out of here first, then me.

I just left a bitter VM for Demure, stating that I will do my level best to attend the training, but that I have to either delay or cancel my appointment (I alluded to it being a medical one), and she called back to tell me I don’t have to attend. LOL. Damn, I’m good! But I know that the more people Shan can round up to attend this useless hour of training, the less Kumquat will get on her back — again, it will be her fault, per him. Although, as always, any victory she does manage to have, he will take credit for. I did ask Demure why, if she knew about this training for a week, she didn’t at least warn her staff to pencil it in until it was confirmed by Kumquat. She avoided the question.

Mailroom Dipshit left me a VM this morning, after I called him on Friday with a request to fix my name in the company phone directory. The only reason he fixed it is because I dropped the names of our current and incoming presidents, both of whom brought the error to my attention. Just to show how little he has to do, he just called me a few seconds ago and said, “Did you get my message?” I said yes. Then there was silence. I wasn’t going to make it easy on him … what did he want, a “Congratulations for flipping a switch” banner or a victory parade thrown in his honor? So finally, he said okay, and I did say thank you, and we hung up. Ergh. Always something around here … and it’s always something rotten.

Decided to split the only hour of TV worth watching tonight between 30 minutes of the “90210” reunion and “Six Feet Under.” Then I watched the final reunion montage and got all weepy and stupid. “Six Feet Under” absolutely rocks, although it’s eerie how often it parallels my world. I’ve most often identified with Claire, although I was fearing recently that I’d end up just like Lisa, but now that Lisa is missing and presumed dead, I’m back to feeling Claire’s pain.

Talked with Gail, Susan and Mom today … didn’t chat with my mom-to-be friend, but we’ll catch up tomorrow. Gail filled me in on her job horrors (we met on the job five years ago) and the boss from hell who hasn’t changed a bit.

Shan and I talk often of the “trail of tears” — that is, leaving one wretched job for another. Trading bad for bad, exchanging intolerable actions at one place to different intolerable actions at another.

I chose not to work this weekend. Didn’t feel like leaving the house today — I was enjoying spending Mother’s Day alone with my furry little daughter. I usually clean during my weekends by myself, but other than hauling a garbage avalanche to the curb, I didn’t do much else worth a mention. Used my foot sauna and enjoyed it immensely. If I know me, now that I’ve used it two times, I’ll return it to its box and forget I ever bought it. 🙂 Now I’m drying out from applying tan-in-a-can. I am just tired of being pasty, and I found a good brand at the dollar store, so I had to use it. I’m kinda up-and-down lately moodwise; I usually dye my hair when I’m feeling this bland and annoyed in general, but I couldn’t find a good brand on sale, nor could I decide whether to go dark or play up the red a little bit more (and I look hideous as a blonde — and the carpet would definitely not match those drapes!

Good Saturday in the neighborhood. Traipsed around the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden with Shawn and enjoyed some nifty modern art. Saw some stuff from The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where we’re both from, so that was a nice touch of home, only in a more fabulous city. 🙂 Shawn took me to dinner at this great Thai place in Dupont, and all in all, ’twas a good day. …

… Except that my shoes — albeit stylish — essentially raped and massacred my feet. Damn studded denim platform thongs. Damn them to hell!

So I went to Springfield Mall and picked up a fantastic foot massaging unit. Aaah. Also picked up some ridiculously expensive socks (that have heated pads in them) and all kinds of bath stuff. Got catty litter and food for the furry princess and went grocery shopping (to replace all the shit that went bad that I never ate from my last shopping extravaganza). Have already used the foot massaging bath killed a pint of apple pie ice cream while I soaked. Decided to save the socks until after my fourth dance class on Monday … believe me, I’ll need it then!

Definitely enjoying my weekend. Have to do some work tomorrow, but I tend to kick ass when I work on holidays. Mom got her flowers and a package of goodies from Maddie and me, and everyone else important to me received their cards and/or gifts that I sent, so life is good. I had to laugh at everyone cramming into Hallmark stores and grabbing floral arrangements from the supermarket at 10 p.m. — usually, that’s me, but I did manage to plan ahead a little bit for this holiday.

Ah, sweet cigarette. I’m gonna go watch the rest of “Trading Spaces” and get my tired ass to bed! I just wish I could find an ass-soaking machine — ’cause I encounter enough (human) pains in my ass to justify the expense!