Caterwauling

Inspired by the impromptu love-fest in Tepper’s comment box for Melissa Etheridge love songs, I have to post how I wasted part of my workday (which only ended an hour ago!).

Melissa is playing a four-show stretch at the 9:30 Club. I was listening to 104.1-FM all day, calling in and trying to win tickets. When that effort failed miserably, I decided fuck it, I’m buying a ticket. Even if I had to attend this wondrous event alone.

How much do you think a standing-room-only ticket in a teeny-tiny bar would cost for one lousy two-hour show? $75. With, of course, a $6.50 surcharge, and another $7 for a parking pass.

W. T. F. ?!?!

I debated long and hard about it and decided to forego it. Melissa was the one concert I wanted to see this year (although Shawn keeps trying to persuade me to see Madonna when she comes to town!). My money is scarce and I’m trying to be really careful about not blowing my funds unnecessarily (read: Rent=$900, Car=$400-plus, Student Loans=$400, etc.), but Melissa is worth skipping the $135 Nazi fucks from hell Comcast bill. But NOT for a performance at the friggin’ 9:30 Club!

Sheesh — I went to Lillith Fair — and I figure the performance room probably wouldn’t smell real good after a few hours of body-to-body-packed-ass-room sweating was goin’ on! Holy granola, Batman!

Although, I’d have a far better chance of getting laid after the Melissa concert than Madonna! 😉

So, I decided to go to Melissa Etheridge’s fan site to see about getting tickets, only that was a worse idea. For a mere $240 (!), you get a show admission and a chance to party with the lady herself. For a mere $1,200, you get to see her for four nights, party with her, get a souvenir poster and hotel accommodations for the week you’re in town to see her. For fuck’s sake! Like Shan said, for $1,200, I should get to sleep with her too!!!

Ahem.

I have a confession. Before I left Pittsburgh, I had “met” someone online who was as huge a Melissa fan as I, although maybe more so, because he followed her around the tri-state area (not to mention, he is a university professor there — where did he find the time?). Even though we had never met (and I moved to Alexandria shortly after we started talking), he invited me to go to the concert as his guest (and he had front-fucking-row seats!). I ended up backing out at the last minute (as he never really seemed interested in meeting me for the, oh, YEAR that we were talking online!). My only regret is never seeing the damn show.

In any event, I hope Melissa plays some amphitheatre or stadium shows — that’s the only way I will pay nearly $100 for a ticket!

This image at least took some of the sting out of being humiliated both yesterday and today at work (today was more public — yesterday my ideas were quietly stolen although I did get some amount of thanks for my proactiveness). I figure they could write me up for insubordination, but how do you punish a staff member for volunteering to do MORE work?

UPDATE

Alternate buttons, courtesy of Shan

Eliminate Stupid Employees

Blow Boss’ Mind

Give Boss a Clue

Get Boss to Use Creative Ideas

Enhance Meds

Find Better Job

Restore Wasted Career

Help Me Jesus!

Alternate buttons, courtesy of moi

Fumigate Bathroom

Stop Nonsense

Beat CEO with Cluestick

Extinguish Compulsion to Injure Idiots

Get Me Off the Short Bus!

This cold is whipping the shit out of me. I am actually coming home, watching TV till I get sleepy, and then going to bed. Of course, be it noted that I am leaving work at 8 p.m. because I’m in editorial hell.

I’m thinking of robbing a bank. Anyone care to join me? Either that, or I need to get a corner somewhere. This job is going to be the end of me — I keep asking my colleagues to put some padding on my walls so I can happily bounce off of them when my sanity finally snaps!

By the way, I got word from Ireland yesterday that only silly Americans dye their beer green. They don’t get it. They drink Guinness and all the dark ales that just don’t dye too easily. Of course, my new green drink of choice is the Appletini, so I don’t even have to mess with the food coloring anymore. Mmm, Appletini. …

While I may have an administration here at the Veggie Patch who say they want, but don’t really want, my input, I’ve had a strange influx of requests from the editors on the Veggie Patch Gazette who are suddenly and truly seeking guidance on the shit columns they submit. To the point of asking me repeatedly for feedback.

This astounds me — I was under the impression that, because they are bigwigs in the Veggie Patch, my job is just to make them sound as coherent as I can, given what I have to work with.

The problem is, though, how do I tell them to quit submitting crap to me and passing it off as brilliant literature? I mean, these columns are SO BAD that even, for as good an editor as I am, I don’t know where I can possibly begin to tell them where they went wrong, when the only thing in the story that makes any sense is the byline. 🙂

The performances have been fairly good tonight, if not a bit on the vanilla side. Who are you voting for? Something tells me I’ll give my vote to Jennifer for the third time.

And not in a way I enjoy.

Got my taxes done. I was so sick and stuffy and cranky that I forgot to ask about deductions for health care and moving. Apparently I will get my money back, although the way my relations are going with the student loan company, anything can happen. The student loan people, well, I told them that I can’t make their ridiculous payment (it’s an 18 percent interest rate, just like on my car, and guess which one I’d rather pay for?), so they told me to make a *full* $400 payment and fill out a form that might or might not be approved for me to get smaller payments. Um, what fucking part of “You either get a smaller payment or no payment from me?” aren’t they getting?

Also got screwed in the writing of the letter to the Oscar winner. Frosty the H.R. Queen sent a snooty note thanking me for my input into HER letter! CUNTRAG!!!

OK, so I’m sick and achy and snotty and all that fun stuff, so expect no pleasantness today (and that would be different from when? … Hah!).

I did want to bitch about the jackass who stole Pentagon building materials and used them to build his own businesses. It sickens me that he started stealing from the government on Sept. 11, 2001, of all the days, like a terrorist of his own kind. I hope they fry this fucker for taking advantage of a wretched situation. Although I do have to admit his restaurant (Tube City in McKeesport) wasn’t that bad, but now I’m ashamed I even went there.

1. You reach for your pack of gum at your office desk and accidentally light up a cigarette without realizing what you were doing.

2. You put out the cigarette, reach for your pack of gum, take out a stick and then throw not the wrapper, but the rest of the pack, away. And then, of course, you have to fish the gum package out of the trash can. And the gum is stale and tastes like crap and is way less pleasing than the cigarette you clearly wanted (and should have had!) in the first place!

One more hour in this hellhole. …

No shit, Sherlock. If you worked at my job, you’d be breathing exhaust fumes by noon just to forget where you are!!!