Pie and Cake

Garishly colored dream in two parts (and I don't usually dream this garishly):

Part One: Walking around New Orleans during Mardi Gras, but a futuristic Mardi Gras, where New Orleans has skyscraper-tall fantastical buildings, with golden twirls and swirls, et al. Walking with S. and her friend, and S. won't talk to me, despite the fantastic views that I want to talk about. We three return to an indoor spot, where there's a group of friends gathered, and by now I'm not talking to S., because she wouldn't talk to me. At some point, I have gone into a Chinese academic's workspace and greedily eaten a slice out of an apple pie that was sitting there. After I've returned to the common area, still being mad at S., the Chinese scholar descends upon us, demanding to know who's eaten part of the pie. I don't say anything but wonder if there were cameras that caught me eating the pie---if so, I can't get out of this. The group of friends looks on semi-sympathetically while this man is ranting about his pie; S. disappears up a staircase.

Part Two: S., accompanied by our former poetry professor in an uncharacteristically red embroidered outfit, confronts me. She shows me a mark upon her forehead that she claims I've given her. The professor then starts aggressively berating me about what I've done to S. This man, in real life, was constantly calm, but here, he's snarling at me, in my face (wearing his stupid red embroidered outfit). I'm trying to defend myself for being unfairly attacked and about to go off on this guy. S. is standing back, checking us both out with a smug, sexy look on her face that I see from several angles as she's looking/not looking at the confrontation. I realize it would be very interesting to everyone else watching, also, if I just let loose on him. I feel like letting go, but then the dream ends.

First time I've thought so heavily about S. in a very long time.

George Jones - Honey Hush (2001)

From George Jones's last solo country album "The Rock" (2001).

 

So many things are on your mind
You look troubled and scared to death
And the chores you missed on your very long list
That won't let you catch your breath
I know we've had some hard times
But I won't let that get in the way
Before you cry tonight and get uptight
There's one thing that I'd like to say
Honey hush, turn the lights down low
Don't think so hard
Leave our cares and woes
And dance with me
Let me lead you across the floor

Honey hush, it'll be alright
Something we should discuss
Oh, but not tonight
We can worry in the mornin'
But right now, Honey hush...

George Jones - Around Here (2001)

My favorite song from Jones's last country album "The Rock" (2001). 

(After 2001, he only released a gospel album and various duets and compilations. He died in 2013.)

New drive time to work: 30 minutes!

I tried two highways a couple of times: 30 minutes, but very stressful! Wall-to-wall 10-mph traffic for miles, combined with cut-throat speeders in the few spots where traffic opened up; and at the end, an inability to merge to/from exits without gesturing wildly toward a kindly driver in the right lane to please let me in.

For the past 2 days, decided to try to get to/from work via some "back roads" that I remembered (and that didn't show up on either Google or MapQuest). They worked! The drive times were the same, 30 minutes, but were much more calm and pleasant. More lights, but at least the travel flows at around 30 mph, whereas the speed on the Interstate Highway is either 10 mph or people weaving crazily in and out.

All of this is giving me much greater confidence as a driver, that's for sure! I haven't been truly highway-savvy since I sold my car when I moved to NYC in 2007. And once I moved back to Austin in 2010, I bussed it until I had money to buy a car in 2016. And then from 2016 until 2019, I was basically only driving my 2 miles to work and my 2 miles to the grocery store, with only occasional jaunts on weekends to family members or Pier One or someplace. So for the past 13 years, I had a very small, cloistered driving world, if I was driving at all.

No more! I'm OUT THERE now! :)

Pronouns: a how-to guide!

The below is actually a handout in a university Student Affairs office:


This pronoun list is not all inclusive. It is good practice to ask which pronouns a person uses & to share the pronouns that you use, as well.

e/ey            em            eir              eirs            eirself
he               him           his             his             himself
[name]       [name]      [name]'s    [name]'s    [name]'s self
per              per            pers           pers           perself
she              her            her            hers           herself
ze                hir            hir             hirs            hirself
they             them        their          theirs         themself [ha!]
zie               zim          zir             zirs             zirself
 

• Instead of asking what pronouns someone "prefers" just ask them what pronouns they use.
• Just say the pronouns you use (e.g. he, him, his or ze, hir, hir) instead of saying that you use "masculine" pronouns or "feminine" pronouns, because that means different things to different people.
• Don't challenge people's pronouns, or ask them why they use them. [For god's sake, no "Emperor has no clothes" moment!]
• If this is unfamiliar to you, practice, practice, practice! [Until you, too, are well-versed in attempted idiotic group-think from Academia.]

[Political candidate note: Pete Buttigieg actually puts "he/him" on his Twitter page description, as does AOC, et al., in deference to the above stupidity. I actually liked him prior to seeing that. As for me, this bisexual feminist is planning on coming out as straight---I want nothing to do with the above Orwellian mangling of the English language.]

George Jones - The Selfishness In Man (1965)

I saw a little beam of sunlight
Steal across a purple sky
And bend down to kiss a rose bud
Oh, it made me wanna cry

To think that I have been permitted
To see a part of nature's plan
Oh, there's nothing that stands out more
Than the selfishness in man

Little children painting pictures
Of the birds and apple trees
Oh, why can't the grown up people
Have the faith in one of these?

And to think those tiny fingers
Might become a killer's hand
Oh, there's nothing that stands out more
Than the selfishness in man

Why can't we see the folly?
And the uselessness of hate
Love could lead to understanding
Maybe it's not too late

Then perhaps through His great wisdom
We might learn to understand
Then there'd be no shame or sorrow
And no selfishness in man

Sorry/Not Sorry

Last Thursday night--yes, while drunk--I visited the website of my old employer, specifically to see if their 2019 Annual Report (AR) had yet been published.

Background: When I first started the job as a temp, in February 2014, my first task was to do an editing read of the 2013 AR, which was still in very haphazard shape. That year, the 2013 AR wasn't published until April 2014.

Once I was hired officially, later in 2014, I made it a point as editor that the AR for the previous year should come out by the end of January of the next year, early February at the latest! Which it did.

This year, 2020, I was especially interested in seeing how they'd done without me. When I left in October 2019, I'd made sure that I'd completely edited all of the text available at that time--about two-thirds of the final material. They got it out by February 20.

But when I checked the editing credits, I saw that I wasn't listed. Credits went to the editor with one year on the job, then a freelancer (former longtime editor for the company, who'd retired 6 years ago), then the brand-new hire.

Not trusting my old boss at all, I sent an e-mail to the Director, explaining the majority of the editing work that I'd done before I left and politely asking for a credit... He was very nice---and when I again checked the PDF of the Annual Report online, I'd been given a credit (albeit at the very end of the above motley crew of editors).

I was happy to be given the proper credit, but it was also weird delving back in to the politics of that place. It kind of opened the old can of worms again, and I felt psychologically down for a few days. The Director himself ultimately made it OK, but I again had to think about how squirrelly my old immediate boss was, and how she screwed me over, salary-wise, while pretending to be so "kindly" on the surface (and being so incompetent all the way around). Yuck. Glad I got the credit, and glad that I got a dig in at the old boss with the Director. But...yuck. Like getting digs in at the old lover just because you haven't found anyone new yet. Looking forward to moving on.

One bit of continuity...

Just got a letter from my apartment complex: As of May, when my lease is up, my rent will be going up only $50 per month if I choose to renew. Thank god! Even working temp at lower wages, I can somehow come up with this rent. (I was nervous that the rent would be hiked up by $100 or more.)

Sans job, and with FIVE CATS (the last, Cinco, still feral and uncatchable), I was IN NO WAY prepared to move. No money for new deposits (apartment and pet), no money for movers. Absolutely dreading the thought of how to wrangle my five cats into one room with a shut door while the movers worked. (I'd thought: Well, pack up all of the books in my study, move all of the shelves and chair and desk out into another room by myself, keep the cats in the study, buy 3 more carrying cases, what the hell to do with Cinco...)

But with only a $50 increase per month, I'm definitely staying put. It's an overall quiet complex; I have 1200 sq ft for $1300 (then $1350) per month (way below the current Austin market price), which is a perfect size for both me and the cats; the laundry room is only about 20 feet from my apartment (an easy walk carrying my laundry bag); there's a pool also about 20 feet from my apartment (but with a block of apartments between me and the pool, so I don't have to hear most of the festivities in summer months)---and I love swimming/sunning.

Wherever I end up working permanently may not be within a 10-minute drive from my apartment, like my old job, but my apartment is very close to 183 and MoPac; if I have to end up driving for an hour, at least I can quickly get on the pipelines.

Organizing My Crappy Stuff

After a week-and-a-half of working at the temp job (which should run through May), I've felt rather plain and sloppy. One reason was the long bus ride/near-1-mile walk to the office. It's been rainy in Austin the past couple of weeks, and every time I arrived at work, both my hair and I looked frazzled and like shit. Another reason is my tired-looking clothes. Although I had plenty o' money for 5 years at my old job, I still hardly ever went out shopping for new things. I would buy new jeans/colored pants and some new cheap sweaters from Old Navy online, and I would buy new Chico's shirts on sale and used shirts/sweaters from eBay online. (The Chico's shirts are great, but the used shirts... there's a reason people were getting rid of them! Most of 'em turned out to be shaped kind of funny, etc.)

Anyway, I'm currently working right next to several 30-something women who all have nice clothes. Their body shapes aren't fantastic, but their clothes/shoes are fashionable and new, and they look a hell of a lot fresher than I do. While I can't go out and buy a new wardrobe right now, what I could, and did, do this weekend was at least go through all of my winter sweaters and pants and try them all on, and sort them out by (1) OK for work, and (2) OK for home/weekend only, and (3) get rid of. For the past week or so, I'd been throwing something on, thinking it would look OK, only to discover in the work mirror that it looked like crap. Weeding out made me feel like I had some control over the situation. I currently may not have a varied wardrobe, but at least I have a small section that I know is presentable! (NOTE: At my old job, we could wear jeans every day, and everyone pretty much threw on whatever. I was actually one of the better-dressed!)

As for shoes: I actually have a good collection of shoes! But because I was walking so much in bad weather for the past week or so, I had about 4 comfortable and/or weather-proof pairs that I was alternating wearing all the time to work, never wearing the good ones for fear of ruining them. Finally, though, last Friday, I got brave and took my car to work for the first time---turns out the parking permit from the job I left in October is still good. Terrible (and tense) Austin traffic, but the travel time was cut in half, and I looked a lot better upon arriving, sans being weather-beaten! I plan on taking my car from now on. Which means I can wear the shoes I want to wear, without fear of ruining them! (I can also set my alarm a half-hour later: Getting up at 6am was godawful.)

Another crappy thing about my appearance over the past week or so: My reading glasses. I have no prescription glasses (though I need them), so I wear readers. I had a big pile of them, with various-colored rims, in a small box, but was only alternating between two pair, one with black rims and one with black/clear rims---just because I didn't feel like digging through the box every morning and finding the pair that actually matched what I had on. There were also a lot of random, ugly readers that I wouldn't want to wear, except maybe at home by myself, mixed in with the cuter ones. Overall, a pile of about 20, which I today whittled down to 11 and organized by color, then put the others in storage for emergency or home use only.

And finally, I went through all of my makeup, lipsticks in particular, and threw out the stuff that's been sitting around for 10 years! And, as with the glasses, I'd been using only about 2 pairs of lipstick because I knew they were good shades. Because the rest were all just jumbled together, I never took the time to pick THE right shade for what I was wearing that day. And I didn't even know which, exactly, were dried out. As I did with the sweaters, I tested them all out, dumped the ones that had gone bad, and organized the rest by color: Dark purples, reds, mauves, plums, raisins, browns, naturals. With the appropriate liners at the head of each column.

Again, I don't have money to buy new stuff right now, but organizing/weeding out all of my crappy stuff made me feel a lot better!

Get Back

Well, to my 10-years-ago "roots"! Of temping and bussing it. Ugh.

Lemme tell ya, my current temp job is only 9 miles from my apartment, but it takes an hour each way to and from, via walking and bussing (no parking available). I leave my home at 7am and get home at 6pm. It's godawful.

One: After my near-mile walk from the bus-stop downtown to my workplace, I'm slightly sweaty and my hair looks terrible from the always-humid Austin weather. The sweat condenses, but the bad hair remains throughout the rest of the day. I don't feel at all attractive.

Two: The bus TO work is usually full, but not crazy-full. It's OK. But the bus home: I've tried leaving work at 4:30/4:45/5:00 and 5:15pm. Regardless of the time, each bus is standing-room-only for at least a half-hour. And on Guadalupe, the street that borders the UT campus, the bus slows to a crawl; it takes 20 minutes just to get off this 1/2-mile stretch of road. It's NOTHING like Austin traffic even 10 years ago, which I experienced after returning to Austin from NYC. And the bus-crowding in Austin is decidedly WORSE than the crowding on the buses and subways in NYC. (At least when you're smushed up against people in NYC, you're IN NYC, which is a grand, beautiful place, worthy of being occasionally smushed. Austin, though? A once-quirky and interesting town is now generic and ugly, post-techie and ugly-new-building influx. There's no charm left.)

But, hey, this new life is something new, which is what I wanted, right?? :)

Let's just kindly call this period a "sorbet," a palate-cleanser.

I liked the actual editing work at my old job a lot, but I also despised the mediocrity/lack of work ethic of about half of those in my group (including my boss). I still do not regret leaving. My editing was too good for them! :)  But, damn, that 10-minute drive to work sure was nice! And that salary was sure a lot better than the $18 per hour temp pay I'm making now! (The great benefits, which I didn't used to care about THAT much, were, nonetheless, also a good bonus.)  And, aside from some of the lazies among the support staff, I also enjoyed being around academics---who didn't have to employ saccharine-sweet "Can I help you?" voices and who had actual things to talk about other than the sweets they brought to the break-room or what their kid is doing for their class Valentine's party. (I seriously hate having to listen to 30-something-year-old secretaries' conversations.)

So, yeah, a sorbet. Cleanse the palate of the old job. Then prepare for something MEATY again. Four or five months of being poor is enough. An 11-hour-day because of the ridiculous public transportation is enough. Doing mindless work is enough.

First thing I'll do when I get a real job again: Buy a bunch of new furniture! My cats have destroyed my desk chair and my living-room chair, and the couch isn't looking so good, either. Yeah... New furniture and some scratch-guards for the furniture! And some new clothes. I'm tired of feeling plain and decrepit and tired. I want to feel smart and good-looking and energetic again.

Hillary (2007) and Joe (2020) pretend to be black: "No Ways Tired"

Hillary Clinton, 2007, campaigning in Selma, Alabama.

But wait, there's more! Candidate Joe Biden just released an ad for the 2020 South Carolina primary:

"We don’t feel no ways tired. We’ve come too far from where we started. Nobody told me the road would be easy, and I don’t believe he brought me this far to stop now.”



https://nypost.com/2020/02/12/joe-biden-says-hes-only-getting-started-despite-iowa-new-hampshire-primary-losses/

If I were black, I'd be insulted by (1) this verbal equivalent of blackface; and (2) ongoing Democrat claims that blacks, as a group, are too dumb to figure out how to register to vote, earn a living, stop shooting each other, etc.

Court-packing

Court-packing: Years ago (long past my college years), I learned for the first time that FDR tried to expand the number of Supreme Court Justices in order to get his programs passed. I was intellectually horrified (and glad that that insanity was allegedly long gone). Here's the report from the Washington Post of the current Democratic candidates who are also open to "court-packing":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/voting-changes/supreme-court-packing/

George Jones: The Grand Tour (1975)

George Jones & Tammy Wynette: Golden Ring

George Jones - "The Corvette Song" (1985)

Apartment #9 (Tammy Wynette, 1967)

Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad (Tammy Wynette, 1967)

Apologies?

On September 9, 2009, President Obama was giving a joint address to Congress re his proposed health-care act. As he said, "...the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," Republican Representative Joe Wilson (SC) shouted out, "You lie!"

The Washington Post later wrote: "It was a stunning breach of etiquette, and a week later the House passed a resolution, largely on party lines, admonishing him for the remark."

Wilson subsequently apologized: "This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President's remarks regarding the coverage of undocumented immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the President's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility."

During President Trump's State of the Union address earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a show of ripping up President Trump's speech for the benefit of the cameras.

Will the Post note Pelosi's "stunning breach of etiquette"? Will the House pass a resolution admonishing her? Will Pelosi apologize for letting her emotions get the better of her?

A real poem (5/20/09)

A couple of weeks ago, someone sent me poems (with no soul) that I was supposed to compliment. I would rather be alone forever than to compliment bad art in the hope of companionship.

Here's a poem of mine from 2009. I had been worried about the above woman coming to visit me in New York in April 2009, the week that my cat Gracie was dying. The woman never showed up. My cat went ahead and died.

It's perhaps a mediocre poem, but at least it's a real poem (unlike what was just sent to me). I still love my cat Gracie and think about her. (The woman was mediocre.)


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd imagined me trapped
in your game-world forever.
My real-life dying cat
dragging herself from corner to
corner while your glass-enclosed "No"
echoed over phone and 'Net
pinballing off my walls.

I could not flip it back.
Still it bounced
off my girl's silent writhing.

Now through my screen
the smells of the sun and grass and asphalt

On my door
the light and leaves shy lashes
butterfly kisses
leaving, alighting again
teasing my cat's ashes.

In her place I soak up the shimmering sun.
I stroke my hair, arch my back
let my eyes go green.
In shadows glancing off you, off me,
and everything.

George Jones - Burn Another Honky Tonk Down (1968)