-It's purely Botanic-

For now, I have found your small, agriculture college campus to be as bucolic as your brochure promised. This wooden bench on which I sit may have been donated by the same class of 2002 whose rowdy underclassmen still wander these footpaths in their pajama bottoms, but I take heart when it is arranged by a crack team of landscaping artists who have chosen to buttress each arm rest with a six-foot topiary.

This bench is my temporary office, my pine yoga mat where I sit in a modified lotus position and reach down within myself, serenely attempting to care about the administrative position I will be applying for in a matter of minutes. It's not enough to say that I need the position, or that my trip out here was long enough or inconvenient enough to justify the energy to appear excited about more paper pushing.

Survival and convenience fail to ignite the synapses. In a flash, the catalog gives me reason to interview:

After six months, employees may take classes free of charge.

Introduction to Legumbres, here I come!

-Brunch Money-

One of the fattest cats I've ever seen has very pretty coloring. Black and orange and every amber-brown cusp in between, He's a tortoiseshell tom who puffs in alarm when someone new tries a head-to-tail stroke.

The investment banker (who now has my e-mail address) does not have pretty coloring. He's got a pherenology theory-crushing head, angry red with lumps. He wears a cotton golf shirt, business logo over the heart in a manner that suggests: "I am sixty-years old and so comfortable that I won't even make an effort for you, my potential clients."

Cookies, bagels, and coffee adorn the otherwise sparse island, but I forced myself to pour a glass of orange juice from the sidebar, first. I don't stick my neck out and get twitchy for nobody, at least among this crew. These are friends from childhood, and I like everyone of them. But I don't always like myself from back then, and through no fault of their own, their presence sometimes makes me sad the same way the collective works of Fiona Apple do. Indeed, I could fill an i-pod with songs that flash debilitating images into my mindseye.

The banker cut me off just when I was getting on a roll, my vitamin C buzz spoiled by cold economics. The Childhood friends take their seat in the borrowed room. There was no sign of the fat cat.

His powerpoint presentation wasn't very profound, but I'd seen worse in my last semester of school. At least the banker knew better than to put every talking point on a slide, or to read the slides aloud, which we always found maddening in 2 hour and 50 minute seminars.

His major points? Invest now, not later. Pay yourself first. Had he told us to diversify, I would have said he had covered all of the usual advice given on NPR's Marketplace.

Much later, powerpoint has shifted into standby mode. I had behaved myself, I know I had, but the investment banker felt the need to slam me.

"I know you all have only begun to think about these things." he said, in summation. "You all have lives -- except maybe this guy."

My witty retort never came out, because a large part of me agreed with him.

-The same restaurant twice. With a two-hour play in between.-

Tomorrow, brunch with my childhood friends and an investment banker. But tonight was the night of my former professor's play, and two visits to the same restaurant.

We were asking for trouble when we made reservations for 6:30 in the one major restaurant open late in this town, a town not dissimilar to the hidden mainstreet-USA block in 'Big Fish.'

Like that sorry place, this town had its boom and bust years. Now the city fathers - but more often investors from beyond - are hard at work cutting down vines and righting houses. Since the majority of the gentrifications are far from complete, and those original businesses still in operation function at lowest ebb during the day, and not at all after dark, 'Roman's' is the only available eatery.

We're overdressed, but so are the waiters. The manager is breaking in a new one tonight, a tall and skinny kid mangling drink orders and growing paler with each bill. He fills three glasses the size of D batteries to the brim with red wine, closes his eyes to slits, and crosses the room like a tight-rope walker.

As a result, we catch the manager's eye just in time. The theatre is two blocks away, but the seating is first come, first serve. Surprisingly, the lead actor (my professor) is in the doorway serving members of the audience from a plateful of cheese and knishes. I love it when they break down the third wall - or fourth wall, depending on how your stagebuilder assigns the numbers. Audience participation is crucial to the success of this production, and my professor is never so funny as he is when things go awry. Props tumbling, costumes slipping; the accidents are never major enough to bring the production to a halt, and the two leads deliver every zinger flawlessly, and on cue.

By the time the last applause faded, our party had swelled to eleven; we return to the one restaurant open late. Roman's hostess doesn't recognize us in the same way the rabbits from Watership Down didn't count past four. She knows she wants to go home on time, though, and makes us promise to only order coffee and desert.

As we sit I can only think of two previous days in which I visited the same eatery twice in the same day. Both prior establishments were 24-hour diners with Sarah Lee pastries on turntables. This is an upscale Italian restaurant with a wine cellar and humidor on site. I'm getting repetitive and upwardly mobile in my old age.

-Danger!-

I've got a job interview in the city, but that's not the dangerous part.

The Science of Mind has exploded my alias - I may have to go underground again, and I hate that. Don't try to corner me there, you Barry Zito zombies. I rejected your religion because your spiritual leader tried to recruit my wallet. I don't write blanks checks for anyone.

Not even Jesus.

-A house divided against itself-

Memo-gate is the headline our benevolent Fox affiliate chooses as the backdrop for the continuing journalistic muddle over the forged national guard records haunting CBS and Dan Rather.

"Again!" I snapped, spearing a green bean on each of the fork's three tines. "Why must they append "-gate" at the end of every scandal? 'Watergate' was the full name of the hotel, not an eternal dispensation allowing the use of 'gate' as a suffix!"

My parents and I had been discussing the issue, as our forefathers demanded half-assed displays of patriotism for as long as the commercial break shall last. A conversational detour led us to investigative journalism in general, generally not practiced in an age when the deep-pocketed can bankrupt you, no matter how much proof, or how many whistleblowers you happen to have.

Am I right, tobacco industry?

Yeah, Target Market and their ilk are silly, insinuating that we the people can't control ourselves, that our bad decisions aren't our responsibility. But you've done more than your fair share of obstruction; lungs, subsistance farming, and primetime news.

"Russell Crowe was a fake." My father tells me. It takes me a moment before I realize he's talking about the tobacco industry whistleblower Crowe played in 'The Insider.'

Later, I walked upstairs to find he had placed an internet-garnered two-page report on my bed, a Townhall column about that particular whistleblower. This is how it must have felt for Hercule Poirot, when he returned to his room on the Orient Express and found.. the scarlet kimono.

"A challenge," said he. "Very well then, I take it up."

-You can afford it-

Never expect to see that line in a salesman handbook, and yet, that is exactly what a man at the auto dealership said to my brother, one of the many below the mason-dixon line who has lost a car to the erratic late-summer weather.

It is “the many” part of the equation that prompted the dealer’s lazy faux pas; with so many desperate commuters equipped with insurance claim money and the need to replace their rides – and fast – this season is a bonanza for the men on the lots.

In this particular situation, the sloppy dealer erred. My brother did not buy a car from them, because the revelation of their cavalier attitude toward his money – even if that’s what all salesmen are thinking, it’s still not nice to come out and say it! – irked him to the point where he is willing to inconvenience himself a little while longer.

Maybe “You can afford it” is what they always thought and are still thinking, and maybe honesty, even that candor derived from ignorance, is preferable to promises and flatteries from the insincere car shark.

Maybe the courteous and the crass should advertise which style of salesmanship they intend to employ, perhaps in the form of a large inflatable animal in front of the dealership.

As long as the product is sound, wouldn’t we all prefer the courteous, if insincere approach? These dealers have moved enough volume this month to get high on success, losing the ability to finesse reluctant buyers and supposedly reluctant buyers up from the factory price, up to the point where the salesman, dealer, and factory all receive a healthy profit, and the buyer leaves the lot feeling good about the purchase.

But they.. they are sloppy for more reasons than stormy weather. These days, the bureaucracy of the car class has robbed the process of sales techniques and showroom moxie. How can we expect the young auto merchant to develop a discerning eye and an ability to talk to people if the computer in their office spits out the buyer’s specs before they have a chance to discuss a single car?

I yearn for the days when a salesman was a scoundrel, reviled in the privacy of our homes and over neighbor’s fences, but respected for their intuition in sizing up clients and seducing their money with the sun-blasted sexiness of chrome, displayed at just the right time, setting the ball-bearing in motion, a steel marble tracing down that silhouette, the proper pauses for respect, the affectionately antiquated expressions for conveying trust, craftsmanship and mechanized power. They could make you want the car, but forget the business behind it. They could make you spend more than you intended, but never more than you could afford.

They would never say “you can afford it,” because the car was no longer a commodity to be bought and sold, but a bond, a trust to be transferred between the only two people who respected it.

That's how we feel when we drive off the lot, and what we say to our friends and family, and even if a cynical part of ourselves doesn't accept it, couldn't that feeling take on a believable reality of its own?

-New Day Job-

Two weeks ago I interviewed for a low-paying but full time position at a community newsroom, a job that would have posited me at town meetings and other boring events of municipal governance. The managing editor and I talked amicably, I felt no real pressure, and she seemed to like the clips in my portfolio - even though the most recent one I could come up with was dated November 2002.

(Why the newsroom? I saw the ad and applied without expecting much, figuring I could add some more recent clips and earn money while continuing to search for the job that would knock my socks off. There would be no real loyalty to a job like this; I could leave at a moments notice if need be.)

Anyway, the editor told me the next step would be an audition - she would send me to a meeting another reporter was covering, we would both take notes, and then I would submit a story. If I failed to come up with anything constructive, the other writer would get the byline, and I would fail to get the job.

So I attended a school board meeting last Thursday. I took furious notes, and even recorded what I could with the minicassette recorder I haven't touched since the beginning of the war on terror. After the meeting let out, I went home, ate, did a number of other things so I wouldn't even have to think about the school system, the council, or the teachers' union. All part of my "process."

At approximately midnight I turned on the computer and poured forth everything I could remember, followed by everything I had written down, and finally, listened to trickier segments on the tape to insure the accuracy of the quotes.

Occasionally, my brain and eyes became too tired to focus. I would go lay down on a small couch that only allows 30 minute durations of comfort before the legs cramp. Couch to desk. Back and forth.

At just shy of 750 words, (and just shy of 4:45) I decided it was passable, saved it, and went to sleep on the larger couch. At ten I awoke and looked at the article with fresh eyes. With some minor grammatical errors wrought by sleepiness, it still seemed okay. Once those had been fixed, and a few paragraphs had been shuffled to make an alternate version, I mailed it to the editor. It wasn't noon yet.

Technically, my part was finished, but I checked my mail and messages throughout the day. If she had any major problems, I was willing to rewrite it.

Nothing. Just as the sun was setting, my cousins called and demanded that I join them for a weekend of mayhem. Mayhem happened, but I still had no messages, which, rather than put me at ease, made me nervous. By Wednesday, I was calling the paper and leaving messages. She didn't get back to me until Thursday, and assured me that the article looked solid (I had to remind her what the article was about) but that they weren't going to fill the position at all. She promised to sent my resume to some of their other offices, but her tone tells me they aren't hiring either. So it feels as if the entire newsroom job was a tease.

False Hope, my old nemesis. I try these things because of my "leave-no-stone-left-unturned" spirit.

The institutions are nice environments, most of the time, recently refurbished with lots of space devoted to the modern computers/faxes/printers/etc, but the human resources all appear to be the crusty, old-timer cast of characters you see everywhere. And most of them are half-time/part-time/sub/temp as well, working other jobs, most of them - get this - other publishing houses, to make ends meet.

So I guess it really is the same cast of characters everywhere, forced to work more hours in different places so they can be screwed out of benefits. Never mind the fact that this pluralism ultimately causes more waste. It's all about short term gains with number-crunching assholes, but being there the day their number is finally crunched wouldn't make me feel better.

-What do I remember? They shoot horses, don't they?-

I learned a great many things this past weekend, and forgot nearly all of them.

What do I remember?

At some point, I learned that cardgames can be fun even if you never learn the rules; you can still win, if you're lucky.
I feel the same way about blindfolded strip poker.

Smoked turkey doesn't need 14 hour supervision.

Beware small drinks of a peculiar pink hue.

The number of songs I associate with sad memories outweighs the number of songs I associate with happy memories. I prefer the sad songs when I'm driving alone at one AM.