You reek of sex. Married men, old men, and young men…
You don’t discriminate – as long as they get you off.
You’ll seduce anyone, from gay guys to your friends’ boyfriends.
You are Lust.
Every part of you screams "Do me now!"
You exude sexuality and while others sometimes
view you as a slut, you see yourself as only
giving into your base desires.
What Emotion Are You?
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Somebody’s in for a rotten day:
“You may find yourself in intense arguments that explode into verbal wars that you are not happy about, dawn. Your nature is expansive and generous, but you find that if this good nature is taken advantage of, your mood quickly turns to anger and detachment.”
I just essentially threw Demure out of my office. I swear, she sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and I wanted to kill her at that moment.
It was the second time I had lost my patience with her. And this time, it wasn’t really her fault, but she came to me with a command from King Kumquat that annoyed me. I had assigned one of my editors to do a brief story on something that Kumquat had wanted to see covered, only for him to today insist that I must be the one to cover not only that story, but about four accompanying stories. Damn him. Deadline is next week, for Christ’s sake. I farmed out the story because I have enough to do, but it’s back with a vengeance. Fuck it.
I realized that I have officially succumbed to the utter laziness of my workplace with that. Honestly, I never back down from more work, because hey, what else do I have to do? But I was just pissed that my functional, effective solution was thrown out the window and back onto my plate.
Mouth Almighty and I are on the outs. She keeps trying to talk to me (just saying hello, nothing major) and I keep pretending I didn’t even see or hear her. It just escalated in the hallway a few minutes ago, when we almost ran into each other. She said “Hello Dawn” very poinedly, and I just put on a tight-lipped smile and kept going. She said again, “HELL-O DAWN” and I snapped back, “How are you?” in a tone that showed that I did not want a response. She kept walking her way, and I kept walking mine.
She and Shan have had similar interactions. Bitch needs to stay the fuck out of our way, because she will be run over and she will be destroyed.
Town Crier is no better. She has been monitoring conversations between Shan and Deb and reporting every last detail back to Mouth Almighty. It’s so comical, that our lives concern the two of them so damn much. Just goes to show that they obviously don’t have enough work to do.
When I left work yesterday around 6:40 p.m., I passed no fewer than 10 police cars. Having been pulled over one block from here, I was glad that my car’s stickers and taxes are up-to-date. But I wasn’t pulled over. In fact, other than a cop on foot looking in my window at an intersection, none of them batted an eye at me.
Turns out that an escaped prisoner had invaded my area. Shan notified me when I got home that, through the special connections her fiancee has, he learned that the convict was in one of two apartment/condo complex buildings in our area — either hers or G3’s. I was dumbstruck that the cops had narrowed it down to two buildings where I actually knew people. I was just hoping that nobody would get hurt (even though G3 would be one less prick to disappoint women with!).
In the end, the guy was found in a tree on my street last night. Heh. It’s comical, that he escaped prison and got chased up a tree like a scared little pussy. But now, the entertainment is over, and alas, I guess I must actually start doing some work! (But why?) LOL
Tiff brought this “A Flight Risk” blog to my attention yesterday. It’s supposedly a true tale of a young woman who has fled from her oppressive family and is writing from undisclosed locations about her childhood.
Tiff and I think it reads too much like a novel for it to possibly be true. It’s a good story, don’t get us wrong, but it seems more like it was written by a verbose screenwriter than a girl named “Isabella” who is finding her freedom and giving us up-to-the-minute details of her time on the run. I figure, if she’s so technically inclined, wouldn’t someone in her family know how to rev up the Internet and find her, especially with the buzz this blog is creating? At any rate, our problem with it is that people from all over the world are really caring and praying for this girl, and all we can say is that they will be really pissed if/when they find out that they’ve been falling for yet another Internet hoax so that some asshole can write a book about the emotions s/he manipulated in his or her readers.
1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
Not in the traditional manager’s sense. I don’t have everything in logical places, at any given time, but I do know that my hairbrush is under the bed right now and that my favorite spiral notebook for work is under my home computer’s keyboard. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have all kinds of little storage units where everything (screws, nails, sewing materials, batteries, jewelry) are organized by compartment, so I am in fact anal about some things!
2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
I have a Day Runner. I look at it twice a year. I’m very good at memorizing dates, so it’s usually an extra, wasted step for me to write stuff down.
3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
According to my definition of organized, yes. It’s a huge desk, and everything is within arm’s reach, even if half of my paperwork is leaning against my G4 tower or sitting under my coffee cup.
4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
I alphabetize CDs, for the most part — I have so many that it’s helpful to scan for the general area of the alphabet I want. Books are arranged by size, type, color and author.
5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?
My thoughts, especially when I need to confront somebody about something. I have no problem with confrontation, but I oftentimes bite my tongue to keep the peace, but all the while, I’m boiling over, imagining the nasty things I want to say and tempering them with the nice things I know I have to say. But sometimes, I bite my tongue till it bleeds, and that’s when it’s time to open my mouth and let it all hang out.
Imagine a workday in which, if you decided to take a three-hour lunch, nobody but you would care. Imagine not wanting to take an extended break because you are so motivated to get back to your projects in progress.
Imagine really giving 100 percent effort to your job — imagine what you could and would accomplish if you were rewarded, in whatever way, for always being and giving your personal best.
Imagine how motivated you would be to perform if you could just see how your good works impact your target audience. Imagine the whole world working solely to please their customers and not just their bosses.
Imagine not praying, every time your boss comes near your office, that he or she keeps on walking by and leaves you alone. Imagine being your own boss and being responsible for meeting your own expectations, which are usually better prioritized and much, much higher than the average manager’s, anyway.
Imagine being so inspired every day that you dream and brainstorm and produce until you are so exhausted that you are forced to sleep. Imagine looking forward to awakening every morning and not dragging yourself out of bed with a heart full of dread — imagine loving, truly loving, your work so much that you realize you love your entire life.
Imagine your income increasing every time you work harder or longer hours. Imagine your pay being commesurate with your efforts. Imagine having enough money in the bank to take a day, week, month or a season to yourself as a reward for how beautifully your earlier efforts had paid off.
Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of dreaming today, but as I’ve always believed — dream it and it will be so. Envision it, live it, breathe it, want it, need it … and it will come. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled bitchfest to bring you some of the more popular phrases that bring guests to my site. Sit down, take your shoes off, and I’ll pour you a cup of coffee for this one.
Wash the coochie
Bitch
Benefits of oral sex
Crap myself
Clay Aiken
Celine Dion sneezing
Dawn the goddess
Eat my pussy
Other than the weird Celine Dion reference, I am glad to have provided y’all with Dawn the Goddess’s oral sex entertainment. (Just a word on the “benefits of oral sex” — I doubt I can name a downside to it!)
At any rate, I am increasingly puzzled and pleased that the No. 1 reader of my own website isn’t me. Which is strange, given that Tiff and I share an IP address, and between the two of us, our ranking on my site is No. 5, and my work IP is No. 6. It still shocks the shit out of me that anybody reads this page, but to have people who visit me more often than I do, well, knocks off my frog socks. 🙂 Thanks for coming — hope you’re enjoying the ride!
Received an annoying, four-page, single-spaced letter to the editor today, ripping me to shreds personally. It was ironically about the article I wrote featuring my old employer, which was a child welfare agency. The writer told me in no uncertain terms that I obviously have no clue how the child welfare system works. Heh. Bitch.
So this is my response to her and to everyone who wants to write to me. Thanks to Barbara J. Winter for encouraging me to write an article about this!
How to write print-worthy letters to the editor:
Tips from a trade association newspaper editor-in-chief
Everyone’s written a letter to the editor at one point or another. While many of us simply wanted to write to the publication as an FYI, let’s face it, a great deal of others want their words to be published.
Many editors are swimming in responses to their content, and that’s a good thing. We love letters, because that means we know we are reaching our target audience and that our subscribers are truly reading the content we so carefully selected to publish. And if nobody is commenting on what we’re doing, we assume we’re doing a terrific job and that our readers want to see more of the same. Or, we take risks until we incite some response. We want to get you thinking and talking. Our job is to provide you with the information — your job is to process it and do something with it. And oftentimes, what you do is want to give us your feedback … and while we welcome it, that doesn’t mean that we have to publish it.
The mistake many readers make is to only write when they are enraged, which results in a nasty letter to the editor that often never gets farther than the File 13 where the insulted editor deposits it. The following is a list of tips and tricks to ensure your letter is not only read but also shared through publication in the newspaper, magazine or newsletter that is part of your regular reading list:
1. Like a “Dear John” letter, if you are writing to express extreme anger or displeasure, go ahead and write it. Then tear it up and start over, now that you’re rational and ready for a discussion. The “delete” key is easier to reach than the “send” button for a reason!
2. Begin your letter by introducing yourself and why you are qualified to speak to the topic at hand (i.e., “As a licensed professional counselor, I was pleased to see an article about safety precautions home-based counselors should take …”).
3. Always include your full name, city and state and your contact e-mail address. If you do not want your e-mail address printed, please make that request clear to the editor. The editor may, in fact, keep your information on file to contact you as a source for a future story.
4. Keep it short. One or two paragraphs are preferred, with short, easy-to-read sentences. Keep in mind that general-circulation publications are aimed at people with an eighth-grade reading level.
5. When you start off by insisting that the editor and/or the writer do not know what they are talking about, or that you can’t imagine what they were thinking, the brilliant points you go on to make about the topic will be lost. Just because you write to us does not mean that we have to read, let alone publish, personal assaults.
6. You’re not my mom, so please don’t use my name in every paragraph or sentence. What right do have to be condescending to me?
7. When writing to a trade journal or newspaper, note that the editors and writers are professional journalists who may or may not have experience in the trade itself (i.e., medicine, psychology, consumer protection, etc.). Their job is to communicate what their members are doing in the field or information that may impact their members.
8. Don’t disguise professional inquiries as letters to the editor. Letters to the editor should never, ever require a personalized response.
9. Please organize your thoughts and run the spell/grammar check. Just as you want the facts to be clear and straight in any article you read, keep in mind that you are writing to someone who loves and enforces the English language for a living. If the editor doesn’t want to read your letter, nobody else will, either.
10. Letters to the editor are not job performance evaluations. If the topic of an article disgusts you or if you truly believe that a point of view was missing from a story, this is not your place to tell the editor that he or she is “irresponsible” or “a bad journalist” or any name you feel like typing into your letter. Remember the aforementioned delete key — because your editor sure will.
11. Journalism is about balance. Accordingly, praise the publication before raising your concern. The editor is much more likely to run your letter as well consider your point of view the next time that particular topic is written about.
12. Editors prefer letters to arrive via e-mail, without attachments. When you send a letter (especially a long one), someone must re-type your words, thus increasing the chance for error. Attachments are acceptable in Word or Rich Text Formats, but with the extra time it takes to run a virus scan on attachments, your chances of getting your letter read immediately increase when the editor can scroll through the original message without launching additional applications.
13. If you are so impassioned that you want to write an article instead of a letter, go for it! Pick up a recent copy of Writer’s Market and find out submission guidelines. Publications with tight budgets and deadlines may be receptive to a well-crafted story that presents a different viewpoint. Send your draft to the editor, who will likely ask you to add or re-write it, but at least that shows you are working together, not against, each other’s goals.
14. No SPAMming. Yes, the editor received your letter the first time — please don’t send multiple copies to him or her or to others on staff. A follow-up hard copy to an e-mail is annoying as well. When your editor is deleting the extra copies of your message, the original message might just go out the window after the others. A note about spamming: do not use your letter as a forum to promote your product or business, particularly if the readers will not benefit from it — this is not advertising space.
15. Try try again. Providing ongoing constructive feedback is not mandatory, but it certainly stands out in the editor’s overflowing inbox! Even if your first letter doesn’t make it into print, your second or third might. Editors are only human — we want what’s best for our publication, and we want the people reading the publication to contribute their perspective and support.
Whether it’s bearing good or bad news, editors enjoy receiving mail just as much as you do. And in the midst of deadlines, difficult writers, money-conscious publishers and printing crises, a letter offering a kind word has a funny way of brightening our days. Sometimes we wonder what we’re doing it for, but when one of our readers takes the time to say hello, share a thought and thank us for our work, believe it or not, that makes it all worth it. In the end, we are here to help each other.
For the morning, anyway.
I awoke at 8:20 a.m., only to stay in bed listening to a live Jewel performance/interview on 104.1 FM. I liked that. I liked the feeling that all of my days could be like this — that if I didn’t feel like dragging my butt to the office by 9, that the world wouldn’t end. That I don’t have to pull on pantyhose and restrictive dress clothes that get wrinkled while I sit on my ass at a desk all day. That if I knew from Moment One that it was going to be an off day, that I might as well sleep in and save my work for a day when I am feeling better.
No, I’m not sick. Not physically, anyway. But my psyche can use some TLC. Everyone’s down in the dumps about their jobs these days. And for many of us, we like the work and maybe even a colleague or two, but we can’t stand the management and/or the people down the hall.
Shan and I strategized for hours last night about how to take down Mouth Almighty. It wasn’t the fact that Mouth opened her mouth last night, but this is for all the times she’s deliberately hurt or screwed us — it’s for all the rumors she’s spread in her career; it’s for all the people who kept her secrets and were loyal to her even though she sold their heart’s secrets — with her own embellishments — for a few minutes in the Rumor Mill spotlight.
This shit ends HERE. Not just Mouth and Town Crier, but the whole kit and kaboodle. I have to go in at 11 only to get bitched out by Demure for things I just don’t have the time or inclination to do. Unfortunately, one of those things is the newspaper itself — What these dipshits will never understand is how easy I make their lives … how many crises are never brought to their attention because of my quick thinking and even swifter actions.
Shan pointed out early yesterday that the only teamwork ever exhibited at the Veggie Patch is between the two of us, and we aren’t even in the same department. You’ve got assholes like Mailroom Dipshit who goes to great lengths to show you the effort behind his few actions, but he doesn’t show you outcomes. Fuck that. I have been trained in outcomes-based performance, and damn it, I intend to retain that. I don’t want Demure doing my review and deciding my raise upon the fact that I don’t report every time a mouse farts in the hallway. I don’t want a bad review about my poor time management skills when she’s the one draining my time on insipid matters.
And I am sick of her compliments when I pull my hair back in a tight ponytail and don’t let it hang loose and wild like I like it. I’m sick of her praise when I wear clothes that are two sizes too big because she doesn’t like seeing womanly curves. I’m sick of her disdainful looks when I wear a sheer blouse that lets you see whatever tank top I am wearing beneath it. I’m sick, sick, sick of working in an office among enemies who talk behind our backs and spread their editorial commentary as though it were the gospel.
I had to fight long and hard to prove to those dipshits that I wasn’t going to walk out the door after Shawn when he quit in January, and now Mouth is speculating that when Shan takes a leave this fall, that 1. she won’t come back from the leave, and 2. that I will be lost without her and probably will leave myself. How DARE she attack our credibility in that way! Granted, we do want to leave this fall. No question about that. But that was said and plotted in a private conversation between Shan and me. And like I said, I worked hard to convince those assholes that I am a leader, not a follower, and not that Mouth holds a lot of credibility in the organization, but when her words reach the wrong people, well, those people do have the power to make my workday even more like hell than it already is.
I was proud to have pulled off a beautiful, full-color, 64-page issue of the magazine last month. That is not going to happen again anytime soon. I will barely pull together 40 pages of content this month, and the editorial deadline is in 8 days and I haven’t written a fucking word yet. Why? Because I’m spent. I orgasmed repeatedly last month, and I am officially drained and am sensitive to the least bit of stimulation right now.
It’s 10:15, and my strike is about to end. Hair is in ponytail; clothes are loose and flowing; burning attitude has seeped out of my system and onto my blog. I am going to finish my coffee, smoke another cigarette, and begin this lovely motherfucking day in a place I despise with people I abhor (sans Shan, natch!). And the sad thing is, there are millions of people just like me who are dragging themselves through the day in a similar fashion.
Must. Stop. This. Madness. NOW!!!