Caterwauling

The recent women’s rally to protect reproductive freedom was the first one in 12 years, but now, it seems like we need to have one every week until people quit attacking the women — especially, now, the young women — who make the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy.

A recent e-mail from the ACLU tells us now that it will become a federal crime if a non-parental/-custodial adult takes a minor across state lines for an abortion.

Clearly, if the youth cannot tell her parents about her predicament, chances are she herself wasn’t reared in an optimal home environment — certainly not one where she would willingly bring her own child into that living situation. But this proposed punishment for Grandma or Aunt Whomever — someone whom the youth trusts — for supposedly aiding and abetting a fugitive is just another shining example of how the fundies are trying to dig their claws into the quicksand of so-called morality that they claim to stand upon.

From personal experience, it helps to have your mom there with you (and I say this acknowledging that even at 27, when I made the decision for myself, I needed my mommy and was glad to have her there with me). But in lieu of a mom who comes with her unconditional love (as I was so lucky to have), it’s ridiculous to punish any other adult who has a vested interest in the youth’s well-being for simply driving them to the clinic.

I remember a girl I met the day I went. I don’t recall her name, but she had come to Pittsburgh all the way from Ohio to have her procedure done. And the thing was, she had originally gone to an Ohio clinic, but her parents and her whole extended family showed up at her local clinic, with signs and blown-up pictures of her as well as her full name, calling her a baby-killer and ridiculing her for her decision. She had gotten a ride to Pittsburgh with an older friend that morning, and they would be traveling back there together after the painful odyssey. God. What if her friend had been jailed for doing her what she viewed was the hugest favor ever? I always wondered what happened to her — I hope her life turned out the way she wanted it to. I mean, there I was 10 years older than her, and even I couldn’t have chosen another route at that point in my life, but at least I had college and some work experience and independence behind me — the very same things she wanted to be able to have.

In any event, just say no to President Shrub in the next elections, and write to your representatives! I’m going to do that as soon as I hit the “publish” button. 🙂

There are maybe five women in the entire office today, but each of the three toilet stalls bore the brunt of someone’s ass droppings. Not to mention that the toilets flush automatically to accommodate everyone’s laziness, but there was crap in one toilet, piss on the seat of another, piss AND crap in the third, and in one of them, someone left a paper toilet seat cover hanging from the purse hook. Recycling, I guess?

Anyway, I had to drive home so I could pee in a clean toilet. Sad.

Shan was in Old Town tonight and just called me from the street. She was coming out of the Sugar House Day Spa and witnessed a Mercedes hit a Jeep, then a cop car smash into the Mercedes. Suddenly, two shots rang out and she saw a guy with a bloody shoulder running into an alley, with an off-duty cop (she assumes) running after him. And she heard the second guy say, “I shot him.” She jumped in her car and called me to tell me all about it. Damn. Gotta watch the news tonight! I can’t believe anything so fucked-up would happen in quaint little Old Town!

Back to work. Meaning: back to 60 hours a week of pain, agony and torture.

Speaking of pain, agony and torture, Shan and I went out to lunch to the wretched new restaurant next door. Not only did the service suck ass (although the food was passable, if not overpriced), the Upper McManagement became seated at the very next booth. I swear, 400 available seats in the house, and they stick all of us together. Perfect. We were stressed out the whole time and talked in hushed tones. So did they, although I did overhear discussions about raises, salaries and job descriptions.

I found out today that Frosty the H.R. Queen discards negative evaluations done by staff and leadership on the executive director (Cruise Director). No wonder dipshit always gets “favorable” reviews — how could he not, when the rest of our surveys hit the trash?

Wedding dress sold on E-Bay. You’ve got to see the photos and read this guy’s story!

Thanks to Leslie for the laugh!

My alter poet is …

Way to go, your alter poet is Jack Kerouac, who is
by FAR the coolest!

Who is Your Alter Poet?
brought to you by Quizilla

Some of my other favorite Jack Kerouac quotes:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!'”

“All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.”

“A kind of lyrical ecstasy possesses young Americans in the springtime — a feeling of not belonging in any one place or in any one moment, a wild restless longing to be elsewhere, everywhere, now!”

How was “American Idol”? I missed it, not like I was planning to watch it anyway.

The focus group went well. It was all about smart-chip technology being put into retail items. They wanted to know what skeeves us out about it and what benefits we would hope to see it bring. It was kind of interesting, actually — it incorporated privacy issues, inventory tracking, environmental concerns, legislation, fears of people with illegal product tracking devices being able to know what’s inside our homes and/or making us susceptible to being mugged, etc. And, the question of the night was whether this new technology would do more harm than good.

In any event, it was weird sitting in front of a mirror knowing we were being observed and videotaped. I kept making faces at the mirror, but it encouraged me to spew my opinions more — figured I should earn my little stipend that, essentially, compensated for one of the furlough days I had this month.

I’m participating in a focus group tonight on public policy issues. Hah! Like I know what the hell is going on in this world. 🙂 I’m almost scared at the ass I will inevitably make of myself. But I need the money to take care of Angry Kitty and Pudge Ball’s vet bill, so wish me luck!

I am bummed because of my working weekend that I did not have the opportunity (or energy, for that matter) to attend the women’s rally in D.C. this weekend. Scot went, though, and took some awesome photos. Go visit — it’s a lot more interesting than what’s going on on THIS page today!

Famous last words from yours truly. 🙂

I’ve been working practically nonstop for weeks. Yesterday, after some initial drama from a last-minute advertiser who couldn’t get their ad in on time, much less follow my directions to submit a PDF (fuckers sent a Quark file, so I had to haul ass into the office at the crack-o-dawn to make a PDF to send to the print shop because the Quark file was too big for them to receive via e-mail), the paper went up on press.

This, of course, would be a joyous event, but my paper went on the orange press, which I pitched fits about months ago because the paper looks like SHIT every time it’s on the orange press. The paper gets wrinkled, lines end up going through some of the paid ads because the rollers on the press are old and tired, and the colors get washed out.

So of course, when I was unimpressed with initial copies and I realized that I was on the crappy press, I got bitchy and said, “Bring me someone I can bitch-slap.” So my wonderful customer service reps brought me their supervisor, and I told her, look, we have been on the yellow press for the past two months, and those were the only copies of the paper that looked respectable, and we are running a special issue (which is our No. 1 best-read issue of the year) this month — it’s full of photos and I am not overly pleased with how it’s turning out. I said it’s a shame when I feel like I need to call ahead and say, “Hey, it’s a special issue. Can ya make sure it doesn’t look like hell?” because every issue should look great. What went unsaid is that I spend a quarter-million dollars there each year, and while I really do appreciate how accommodating everyone there is, I can’t really settle for the paper looking bad.

So, I got to decide whether to keep printing and adjusting the machines or to leave and go on the yellow press on Wednesday. I chose the latter, and so it goes that I wasted nine fucking hours of my life, staring at the walls, yesterday. Angie will oversee the press run on Wednesday — I am officially off till Thursday, although I did leave a message for my boss that it hardly seems fair that we worked three weekends and two furloughs this month, only for me to beg for and get two lousy comp days.

I saw a job opening at a political organization I support. It was posted a month ago, but I am so qualified for it, it isn’t even funny. I think I’m going to call and inquire about it — not that I am gung-ho to work for yet another employer, but I think I have given everything and then some to my (dis)organization, and what’s sad is my colleagues are angry on my behalf but I’m too tired to be angry or anything other than grateful to park my ass on the couch and not think about the crises for 48 solid hours.

I haven’t been in my e-mail in almost a week. I only wonder how many ads for “Vi@gra” are awaiting my “delete” button. …

Put the paper to bed today. This involved waking up at 3 a.m. and getting in before 6. (Yeah, it takes me hours to get moving!) A cop did an illegal U-Turn so he could follow me for two miles — there was no one else on the roads, and I was driving fine, although my music was kind of loud to keep me awake. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I got nervous anyway. I tend to believe that the American public needs protection … from the police, not always by them.

Most of our shiny new software on our shiny new computers made the production process way easier this month. And FlightCheck is the greatest — it tells you what’s problematic in your document and why. Which means that when you go to make a PDF of a screwy page, you are NOT to be surprised when your Quark crashes in flames! (LOL — firsthand experience, obviously!)

I was cranky as all hell today. Well, more so than usual. I think that the workplace poisons me so much that I take it out on the people who are there to help me and make my life easier. Life improved significantly when Shan dropped by with Miss Alex, who was all pretty in pink and sandals and bows, and they gave Angie and me early birthday gifts of half-hour massages at the Sugar House Day Spa. Shan said she felt bad that we had to work through another furlough day, so she wanted to give us a treat.

The funniest thing happened today — Shan said it was ironic, or, more appropriately, moronic.

Our dipshit marketing director sent out a blast e-mail last night to 30,000 members, advertising a free publication that could be obtained by calling the number she listed. Problem was, she listed the product number, but the way it looked, it seemed like a phone extension in our building. And what happened but Shan received more than 200 calls this morning alone, asking her for this publication she’d never heard of! This fake extension somehow got rerouted to her phone!

So she forwarded all the messages to Town Crier, because TC supposedly has jurisdiction over that topic matter (although the woman doesn’t work for a living — she is so worthless). The topic matter was public relations ideas, and I had overhead TC at a recent meeting telling people, “I don’t promote nothin’.” Direct quote!

Anywho, TC flew into Shan’s office screaming about, “What the FUCK are you sending me those calls for? I don’t know what to FUCKING do with them!” TC was also overheard coming off the elevator, screaming that, “I am having a really bad FUCKING day!” My god. That’s a fine example of her typical workplace decorum — 50 percent of the time, she’s on horse tranquilizers, and the other 50 percent she’s going apeshit because the meds wore off. Too bad she’s a cozy friend of the person in charge of that trailer-with-the-wheels-shot-off, because any of us who behaved that way would’ve been exiled.

Anyway, Shan and I brainstormed about how to get some giggles out of the calls (she tried to get Mailroom Dipshit to re-route the calls to the appropriate department, but he was probably whacking off in his office as usual and never did show his rat-like face). We decided that, when the people implement the special events we suggest in the publication in question, they should really send their photos and success stories to the Veggie Patch Gazette for me to run in our June issue. LOL. I’m sure higher-ups will be shitting their pants if people actually go ahead and do it! You KNOW how much they hate it when Shan and I have promotional ideas!

I wish I could talk candidly about work, because if I gave you the topic matter and how timely it was, oh, four weeks ago, you’d see why we’re scratching our heads at the sheer stupidity of it all. But I do want to give a lesson in timing and Journalism 101 — you should never, ever send out a press release on a Thursday night (especially on the eve of a half-day furlough!) — send it out on a Monday night or early Tuesday morning. But lesson (not) learned, don’t tell people to call an incorrect number, especially when there isn’t even going to be anybody at that number to help them!

TC annoyed me today, too (surprise). I needed a caption for a photo of an event she supposedly coordinated, only she had no idea that those people had even shown up, so she had no idea who they were. So I asked her a few days ago to get the information. I ran to 7-11 to grab lunch today, and when I came back, she had left a VM (or, in her case, a verbal BM) asking me if I had gotten that information myself, because it would be really nice to have those people identified in the rag. HUH?!?! Of course I didn’t have the information — I asked the person who was supposed to know — did she think I would figure it out by osmosis? I never did call her back, not like she stayed around past the 12:30 p.m. furlough start, anyway.

Speaking of crap-fests, I have to take the cats in for shots tomorrow. And they want a stool sample from Maddie. I should just give them a grand tour of the apartment so they can swab the rug where she loves to wipe her dingleberries on the carpet, but alas, I have to go sit by the box and wait for her to take a crap. Normal vets just stick a cotton swab up their asses and get the sample right there. Remind me why I have to pay them for me to do their job? Sounds like a Town Crier type is running the veterinary hospital! Ergh. What a joyous way to spend a Friday night — watching the litterbox. *gag*