-Read with Confidence-

Three books I checked out the other day, to make up for the book in processing.

1. El arte de la conversación, el arte de la composición / José Luis S. Ponce de León
2. Modern architecture : a critical history / Kenneth Frampton
3. City making : building communities without building walls / Gerald E. Frug.

Check in with me a week from now; I imagine by then that I could be the most socially-conscious architect in the Spanish speaking world.

-Happy Hour, Happy Hornbook: The Mixed Blessing-

Ah, Happy Hour at Houlihans. I knew and liked two of my coworkers; two more I was meeting for the first time.

Setting: End of the work day. A restaurant in Stripmall hell; middleaged, middle management types wander about in blue oxford shirts and dark cocktail dresses. Waitresses with black shirts and white eye-liner (white-eyeliner - who thinks that looks good?) sell half-priced food and drink.

That ought to give you a mental picture. Glorious.

Too bad these people aren't any better at communicating outside of work. They talk about - work. Or stare into their faux-asian lettuce wraps. The five-minute office birthday party earlier that week was relaxed by comparison. (Bob Powers nailed that phenomenon, by the way.)

But before you give up on office weasels, I should mention that attempts were made to talk past the "What do you do for a living?" In fact, my happy hour homies skirted right past milder topics of recipes, sports, community service activities, slipped right over moderate to difficult subjects like interior design (that's a different circle) sports teams, even that fiesty bugbear, politics. On to religion.

Jesus. You point out a major liturgical holiday's pagan origin, and the souls of the holy couple next to you stiffens as if hit by some divine viagra.

I'm not baiting anyone. I think trading a human sacrifice for a yule log is a good thing.
The only tolerant thing said couple did all night was smile and suggest we do this again sometime.

"Sure." - Translation - "Give me a lot of time to think about it."

-Happy Hour, Happy Hornbook-

Hard to believe some co-workers have invited me to Happy Hour. This is the first time I've been invited to a Happy Hour planned a day in advance, or more than an hour in advance - but I've been in academia for a while, so what do I know? By now, I imagine that shared toil has all but eliminated that "new temp" smell.

Sides have been chosen for me.

That is your table in the lunchroom if you want conversation, and that is your mug. That is your overhead lamp. He hates you because he liked to raid that desk for stationary before you got here. Yes, you had no choice in the arrangement, and yes, he still reaches over you to steal sharpies, but now he has to mumble "scuse me" as you roll back in your knockoff M505 model desk chair to avoid accidental groping, and for that he hates yourself like seppuku.

She doesn't hate me, she just doesn't get my humor.

Back to the social butterflies in my stomach - I feel I should prepare for this planned Happy Hour.

Should I dye my shoes?

-Some pronounce it "shedule."-

'Scuse me while I panic, but I've just put down the congressional record long enough to estimate how much longer this project will take. Seeing as I'm losing the majority of the day tomorrow to the Monroeville project, I'll be lucky to get through the Senate half, much less the House. The only thing to do: dream about the Korean War Era Doctor Draft, specifically the ideal ratio of military physicians and force strength-issues within yawn and the yawn perceived need yawn NEEDS of the...the yawn military and civilian commun ity.

-Solitary Tonsure-

Imagine my relief, to learn that my officemates merely wanted me to be complicit with Canon Law. I have thick hair, and it grows quickly; once this assignment is over it should return in a week's time.

That was Thursday. The workday on Friday was every bit as exciting; the staff dwindled throughout the day like the North Korean nuclear negotiation team, until the light at my desk was the only one on the floor. Other staffers of greater or lesser importance still wandered about, but infrequently.

The big man called at 4 PM, ostensibly to inquire about a proof. Off-off-Broadway music played in the background. Before hanging up, he said something odd.

"Say...You think you could cover for me?"

That's how I find myself finishing out the day; sitting in the easy chair in his office looking out over the highway and the abandoned grain elevator. Feet on the desk, barking orders into the phone like James Cagney in "One, Two, Three" Great fun, really. Waved a cigar for emphasis. I was only sorry that I had just one hour at the wheel. Clearly, I had to make good use of this time by tackling the problems the big man didn't, using some of the most innovative Monk moxie available. My talking points are below.

Topics for Discussion:

1. Employees using I-tunes - harmless musical accompanyment, coded corporate espionage, or pacification drug? 2a. Office Romances - who's having them, and who's just leaning a bit too long on someone else's cubicle wall. 2b. Does tonsure rubbing consitute harrassment? 3a. How is the runed-inscribed table in the basement used? 3b. Can we outsource these activities? 3c. Can we at least post a warning sign that over the door that deters employees from eating danishes near the angry death's head in the center? 4. Um, why is there a file in the L drive titled "cooktemp" ?

Executive Decisions:

1. Everyone working in the building must play softball at least twice a week after work. Everybody plays at least one inning, and everybody bats. 2. "Casual Friday" has lost its luster, thanks to the relaxed dress code. "Excessively Dressy Friday" was suggested, but I think we'll go with "No Show Friday" instead. 3. As a company, we must take the lead in community service activities. On Saturday, we will minister to the fallen protesters and shovel police horse poo. Romances with cute protestors will be encouraged, since it is off company property and with non-employees. Romances with police horses are against company policy on or off the grounds. 4. We will start a consulting band.

Maybe they'll be so impressed that they'll ask me to stand in more often. If they do, I may even light this cigar.

-"If you cut it off, throw it away."-

It is a lever and a wedge in one.

"If you cut it off, throw it away" - The label someone has adhered to the front panel.

Papercutters unnerve me enough already, and now I'm seeing it up close.

It started yesterday, when I'd just completed one week on the job. I'd known I was in trouble when I showed up at the 8 AM meeting to find someone other than the big man leading it. The office was in happy turmoil preparing for the trip to New York, and he had left early. Perhaps a new temp could skulk about unnoticed in the fracas, particularly one now spending as much time tracking down resources as proofreading. Perhaps, but the implication of my boss's absence has me wondering if anyone with a hidden grudge, or opportunistic sadism would try to take me down.

The moderator ignored me for a half hour. She gave everyone else light tasks to allow for packing, flight wrangling, technology concerns, and NCAA banter. Once or twice, I caught the technical writers peering at me, but they quickly turned away when I turned toward them. When the meeting was over, the moderator crooked a finger at me while studying some papers on the table.

"You may continue to look for references," she said. "But I expect we will have some edits for you, also."

Fair enough. She got up and left me at the table. I took a circuitous route to the temporary cubicle, which turned out to be a very bad idea. The last hall was empty, and silent except for the PA system static. Someone had placed a red pen on the floor, pointing toward the only well-lit doorway. Placed, not dropped; it was too perfectly aligned to be an accident.

Even then, I knew this was a cue to go back, but I kept moving forward, even stopped to pick it up. Idiocy.

Hands seized me from every angle, and pushed me inside. With a chilling efficiency they never exhibited in their work, watercooler workers teamed up with cubicle-leaning workers to lift and invert me, banging my nose on the grid surface of the papercutter. Damn! I thought. No time to think of some cool last words.

The lever and the wedge, I thought sadly. I heard the scrape of the blade rising. There's nothing quite like that sound, or the sound of it coming down. The other workers took up an incomprehensible chant, and marched out of the room to a rumba. They'd left an identification badge on a lanyard, but had thrown my extra hair out in accordance with the papercutter rules.

-Master of the Sentence-


A consulting firm now holds the Monk purse strings.

In an effort to make some extra money, and add additional IS/science library experience to my resume, I signed up with a temp agency. I'd dealt with this company before, in another city, and suspected I might still be in their records.

It was that simple; go in, take some tests, and before the day is out a friendly staffing specialist is spouting directions and details. The next day, an office secretary in the consulting firm is etching my name on an index card in permanent ink. Once it is attached to my temporary cubicle, the bottom drops out of my professional facade before I can say "Nu?"

All at once, the newest temp becomes aware of the environment: the proximity of sneering zombie coworkers. Pain-inducing aural tones, emanating from every machine. Dust motes curling unnoticed in the dimmed fluorescent lights; one rod on, one rod out.

My stomach rotates the softball-sized globe of acid on its axis. This sends an urgent message to my lungs, gag-reflex, and brain, not to mention my kidneys. You do not belong here.

The dissected office drone in the next box croaks out a crazy cellmate laugh, which triggers imaginary reverberations of vertical metal bars. Contractually 8-4:30, though I've yet to get out before quarter to six.

Turns out he's laughing at some inner-office e-mail. The neighboring cubicle folk work hard, sporadically; I work hard all the time. The big man in the office commandeered my proofreading skills on the first day, and hasn't let go yet. I suppose it is fun to be the only Grammaturge in an office of Lawyers and Scientists with atrocious writing skills, but I can't shake the feeling that I've escaped the shiv because of the big man.

Tomorrow will mark a week's time there. I dislike it immensely for the exaggerated reasons above and for the distance (30 minute drive, no reliable bus route), the time it takes away from research, and the ill health it seems to sponsor. I stay because it is lucrative, not entirely unrelated to databases, and because it is temporary.

Or is it?

Today, while sitting at the "temp" lunchroom table, I began quizzing the other temps (contracted from several different agencies) on the length of their tenure. I'm the newest, and the longest has been there over eight months, no project end in sight.

I have a good spoon, but the tunnel will take a long time, even if it is never discovered. Put me out of your minds, all, except as a cautionary tale.

-©®editors in the Theatre-

Pox. Pox on who?
Pox. on. you.

-Mort's Blog-

What happens to your blog when you're dead? Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:28:34 -0800 Somewhere, someone has started a blog, and died. Relatives and friends may sever the hyperlinks to it - it could be painful to see the link - but unless they can determine the username/password from the deceased's computer, it will remain active. Never again updated. Regular viewers of the site who don't know the author personally will forever wonder what happened. As time goes by, might this become an issue? Sincerely, Benedict

Fri, Mar 5 2004 2:09:41 PM -0800 Hi there, We occasionally get notifications from the families of deceased bloggers, asking us to remove old blogs. Also, I expect some people deliberately leave behind account information like this so that things can be taken care of after they have passed on. One way or another though, it usually works out, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Thanks for using Blogger! Sincerely, Graham Blogger Support

-New Design, again-

As you can see, the site redesign is progressing at the speed of government. A new banner here, another.. no, that's about it for now.

As soon as the University labs open, I'll begin work on the new'n improved link concept for "people I only know through this." It'll be a family tree that begins with the first blog I read (Adam Felber's Fanatical Apathy) branching off into the works of other writers, who led to others, and so on. Most are connected to this tree, but some derive from other sources.

All of the pages I read will be represented. Should be fun.

-Gravity Hoop-

I'm told that Cher's concert wraps up the evening with circus-like performers descending from the rafters in spinning hoops.

What is the job title for that?

-No more pork, I promise. And that goes for you, too, Washington.-

If you're anything like me, I urge you stop everything and get your brain checked by three or four trained professionals.

Even so:

Are you tired of reading books by authors for which writing is a day job, but still want quality literature?

You need to tap the mind of a first person journalist.

This is not to imply that our storytellers are practicing news mavens; in all likelihood they are not. What makes their stories so compelling is there deep allegiance to the subject matter. As long as they are able to look at what they love critically, and craft loving (and gramatically correct) prose about the matter, no MFA or magazine stints are required.

Like Dishwashwer Pete.
Or 'Hellish Gargoyle' Hollis Speer Gillespie, author of "Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch : Tales from a Bad Neighborhood"

Does this mean there is no place for professional wordsmiths? Of course not. A well-written piece is, as a friend once told me, a turn on.

But tread carefully, and never become so enamored of your technique that you fail to pay homage to the inspiration that is ultimately greater than you.

-Pork x Four : Bonus-

V. Pumpkinseed

Pumpkinseed Pork goes for $18 at El Vez, a restaurant so Mexican you would have to order margaritas if you believe in moderate drinking, and so Philadelphian you would have to walk 10+ blocks to get there if you believe in "Street" parking.
[review]

That was the end of Monday - dinner followed the flower show (theme: Destination Paradise) and the harrowing journey through the rain. The goal of the latter: to drop off a resume at the Free library in Philadlephia before Human Resources closed.

From the convention center at 12th and Arch to the Parking Garage at 8th and Filbert. From there, my game father and I sloshed our way downstream to Nineteenth and Vine.

Fifteen minutes to spare.

-Pork x Four-

How to stretch four pieces of pork (total value = $1.75) across four days: Give each a different flavor. In this case; honey, pepper, chili and garlic.

IV. Garlic

Before the first taste of Garlic pork, there was some conjecture that Garlic would be personified in a dirty, middle aged man figure of indeterminate race and stature, a social Archie Bunker, no?

No, garlic is a little bit of my true-to-life uncle, the doctor, father and horseman who bears no resemblance to Bunker whatsoever. Garlic is a road trip with piss-poor directions and worse signage. Garlic is that joke that makes me clap a hand to my mouth in horror at the treacle that just escaped, and then again when the joke works, so I can hide this insufferable, involuntary grin. Garlic is my four cousins, the social pair and the other two.

Too bad most of the trip was spent on the road, and that garlic pork at 2 AM is no substitute for a full meal at 10 PM, before a drinking excursion beginning at 11 PM and concluding on a New York-bound charter bus at 5:30 AM the next morning.

Morning, yes. I didn't fully write this on Friday. And I didn't write this on Saturday, Sunday, or so on until Thursday, March 11, leaving this and a plethora of other posts half finished and unpublished. You gonna forgive me if I start each new 'graph the same way the last one finished?

Finnish people like garlic on fish. Okay, that last one was a bit of a throwaway. But this is still about the garlic, and don't you forget it.

Some additional garlic sightings:

The effect of Garlic on leeches. I also like how they dipped the leeches in Guinness Stout and other ales.
Garlic Mustard makes it all better. Why do I love the word 'Eurasian?'
Bongo used to be "Garlic: the Stinky Newspaper."
Best use of Garlic.
Everything can come in pill form.
Misspelled but authoritative site for garlic recipes.

-Pork x Four-

How to stretch four pieces of pork (total value = $1.75) across four days: Give each a different flavor. In this case; honey, pepper, chili and garlic.

III. Chili

To be clear, this was chili powder; chili peppers mixed with cumin, garlic and oregano.
Yes, garlic. I am very sorry to rock the integrity of the series, but we will be brave and move on.

Chili begins with Peter Falk's Columbo, for which I am indebted to the authors of "Columbo: Just one more thing" and subsidiary 'Columbo's Chili Habit'

"Yes, we know that chili is a gourmet delight with a thousand subtleties. But more to the point, it is a sloppy mess that spills on your clothes while you eat it, emits a strong smell, gives you indigestion, wakes you up, sometimes gets you in trouble, and tends to make people around you get nervous. Chili is the "character food" of Lieutenant Columbo."

Ye gods, I think I see some of my rumpled self in Columbo. Chili Powder Pork Soup is enough to make one imagine a wife, who, for the practical purposes of the audience, does not exist. To struggle with math, swim slowly, have a fondness for a Peugeot. Before Falk and his ilk hijack the passage completely, let us remember that this Chili connoisseur stormed out of one of his favorite chili joints when he discovered that the Mexican chef had been replaced by a German one.

Chili Powder as we know it was created by a German Texan.

Local eatery 'Veracruz' refuses to spice my selections.

At this rate, I'll never find the Perfect Taco.

Some additional chili sightings:

When I think 'chili' I don't think Scandinavian.
But I suppose it is international.
Swedish Ethos Chili.
Many uses for Chili Peppers - (I have not tried this. You will have to take their word for it)
Wipe out wussie fingerfood forever, but only if you have shockwave.
Relevant Theodore Greer Photography

-Pork x Four-

How to stretch four pieces of pork (total value = $1.75) across four days: Give each a different flavor. In this case; honey, pepper, chili and garlic.

II. Pepper

In the early morning, pepper pork with rice.

Not fast enough, since I'd foolishly drank two glasses of cheap and potent boxed wine on a mostly empty stomach with the theatre people downstairs. It made me less productive, and the search for 'pepper' stalled. By 2:00 PM I had almost nothing. By 7:00, I was scrambling.

By this time, I had several ideas from which to chose, and by midnight would have several more. Consider:

In the musical 'Annie,' Pepper is the fiercest of her fellow orphans. Aggressive, and usually benevolently so; that's what we mean when we say someone has "pep."

Salt and Pepper together are used to describe condiments first, mixed hair color second, and interracial love third.

Pepper: Spice, youth, and spice again?

Pepper has an avatar, as well. Tonight's pepper personified is a library staffer with sharp words for anyone who dares opens their mouth.

Some additional pepper sightings:

Pepper Hamilton LLP does Pro Bono work.
Pepper used for self-defense.
Independent magazine of the green and radical left. - Take a close look at 'get ethical.'
The Computer

-Pork x Four-

How to stretch four pieces of pork (total value = $1.75) across four days: Give each a different flavor. In this case; honey, pepper, chili and garlic.

I. Honey

Each of the cheese vendors in the Strip district rings up customer purchases with a different signature. These signatures match the vendor's particular catch phrase, post purchase. If the vendor says "Thank you, sweetheart," than 'Thank you, sweetheart' appears on your bill.

Maybe they work on commission, I don't know for certain. There is a good chance that today's cheese bill will read "Thanks, Honey," which would be really, really, sweet; all things considered.


Another thing that is sickeningly sweet; 'Me & Mrs. Jones', a PBS presentation via Exxon-Mobil Masterpiece theatre. I enjoyed it despite myself; only PBS would play such delightful fare after hours. 'Course, I'm particularly suggestible right now - a run at 3:30 AM, a shower at 4:00, and honey pork stir fry at 4:30. So far, everything is amusing, and sweet.

Some additional honey sightings:

Today's Unshelved (Thanks, FTL)
'Sweet Honey in the Rock'
Honey-thick Liquids are slightly thicker... (pdf)
International Beekeeping Meetup Day (In Twelve Days)
The Film (2003)
The Honey Locator