An extremely brief post from an extremely lazy writer.

Me: I started wearing brown eyeliner rather than the navy. Did you notice? I think I like it better.

Mark: Yeah it looks nice. The navy was cheesy.

I've had 25 jobs and only got fired from 1.

That's right, 25 jobs in the last 15 years. A few friends and I were talking about crappy jobs we've had recently, and I figured it was high time I got this down and really examined my employment history. Gladly the job I have now I like very much. Crissy used to be amazed at the range and variety of positions I've held, and looking over the list, it is pretty impressive--I am proud to say I am self-made and hard-working. So, join me on a jaunt down Employment Memory Lane, won't you...hope you have hiking boots.

1. Corn Detassler--what? Yes. I'm from Illinois. Here's a good description, a la Bob Wallace's blog: "Corn has to be detassled so it doesn't pollinate itself. If it does, you get weaker corn that isn't so sweet. The detassling itself consists of walking up and down rows of corn for eight hours a day, doing nothing but popping the tassels out of the corn and dropping them on the ground. If you've ever seen a row of corn, you'll find some of them are half a mile long and five to eight feet tall. Imagine eight hours a day, pop, pop, pop, in the heat and humidity of a Midwestern summer, sweating and sneezing and twitching and getting "corn rash" from brushing against the leaves, for about three weeks." We'd pile on the school bus at the ass-crack of dawn in long sleeve shirts and jeans to sweat buckets all day in the 100 degree summer sun, braving gigantic grasshoppers and an occasional corn smut attack. Sidenote--corn has a fungus on it called corn smut. It looks like green playdough. It is gross when thrown at you. Hey, $6 an hour is a lot when you're in 8th grade.
1. Marina--I worked at a marina on the Mississippi in my hometown when I was 14 with my older sister. This is like a floating gas station attached to a dock. We sold gas and snacks and bait, which meant digging night-crawlers out of a tub of dirt. I learned how to tie good knots to hold boats to the dock.
2. Red Apple--this was around 16 years old, a mom and pop diner run by a dirty Albanian who sexually harrassed his waittresses. Not a fun job, not a good time in my life.
3. Blockbuster--slightly more fun, I got 5 free movies a week. Unfortunately the store was in a horrible part of town and I worked til 11. I shrink-wrapped random objects like staplers and phones when I was bored and worked with an aspiring "actor" named Brandon. I wonder what happened to that guy...
4. Gas station 1 and 2--when I went to Northwestern for college I got a job at 2 of the 4 gas stations in the tiny town. Not at the same time. 1 was when I was a sophomore, the other when I was a senior, and after I returned from a year's stint in Texas. They were across the street from each other, and the radio station that played every night I closed always played NKOTB. I was working at the 2nd one the day the screwed up election results of 2000 came in. I also remember a sunny Sunday afternoon when I spotted about 7 of my male friends flying kites in their underwear in the soccer field across the highway.
5. The Hatchery--1 of the very few restaurants in Orange City run by a guy who was a dead-ringer for Archie Bunker and his wife. It was a tiny joint, and I usually walked with $60 most nights. I walked about 12 blocks from campus to it. Archie was the kind of guy who had no problem asking people to move to another table if he needed to push some together. There was a bartender who would smoke at the bar and I swear, she'd not exhale any smoke. It's like it just stayed in her wrinkly little body.
6. VIP Steakhouse--a "sports bar"/restaurant about 9 miles away in Sioux Center, Iowa, run by an angry Vietnamese man I could never understand who yelled a lot. Also about $60 a night. There would be a regular crowd of Nascar fans who'd show up with their gear on and pretend they were watching a real sport with athletes.
7. Product spokesperson--yeah. When I got sick of Iowa and moved to Arlington, Texas, one of the jobs I held simultaneously while also going to school was being one of those sample people you see in supermarkets. You get paid $10 an hour but it's the most mind-numbingly boring and demeaning jobs available. I hawked hair products and Swiffer. Quite often I'd smile my prettiest smile to the manager on duty and give a convincing excuse, and leave early.
8. Caravan of Dreams--a sweet job. In the heart of downtown Ft. Worth, this place had 500+ seating for live music where I spent the majority of my time cocktail waitressing for the likes of Rev. Horton Heat, Pantera, Mingo Fishtrap and other local sensations. The middle level had a theater for a regular improv troop as well as a reception/party venue with a terrace and a music room. The top level was a double level rooftop bar with a cactus garden and a waterfall. I met Harrison Ford there. He's quiet. After a tornado in 2001 or so, the Banktower building across the street shed 2 inches of glass all over the rooftop and blew out most of our windows, and the Riata people bought it from the Bass brothers and turned it into a fancy restaurant.
11. Refrigerator factory--one of many summer jobs. Probably the most intense. I was the hottest chick in the plant, simply because I still had all my teeth. I learned early on that it got so damn hot in there that underwear was a deterrent--too much sweat. I moved to graveyard shift after a few weeks of nearly dying of heat exhaustion from 8-3. I slept in my parents' dark, cool basement and they tried to be quiet during the day. There was a hole about the size of a walnut in the wall that I'd watch--when there appeared to be some light coming through that hole, I knew it was nearly time to go home. Sad. Everyone there encouraged me to stay in college, speaking from personal experience.
12. Nuclear power plant--another bullshit summer job. Another girl and I cleaned up in various areas of the plant. One time we entered the male shower area after dutifully knocking and thinking we had the all-cllear, only to come upon a naked man obliviously drying his chest hair under the hand dryer. We made a hasty retreat. It's an image I'm still trying to erase from my mind.
13. Hotel maid--you want pee-low? You want towel? Yeah, that. Lasted 2 weeks at 6.50 an hour, maybe 2 hours a day. Total waste of time. Leah and I did this together while at Northwestern. This was the one job I just never showed up again and never called in. The owner finally called me and asked if I was still working for her....uh...nah.
14. Rastrelli's--another mom and pop place. They're mostly the same. I always thought it was pretty decent Italian food. Free pizza. Not that bad, for waitressing.
15. Substitute teacher--if you can do this, you can do anything. Trust me. All grades, all subjects.
16. Cheesecake Factory--Cripes. Nazi Germany. This require completely white shoes, a white long-sleeved shirt (which sucked when you have to walk a half hour to work in the Texas heat), white pants and a white apron, which, if it wasn't properly ironed, management would make you clock out and go to the back to iron said apron to get the proper crease. I didn't really try at this job because I was so miserable, so I was lucky to get 100% rating on a secret shopping one Sunday morning. Lots of snobby N. Austin folk.
17. Real teacher--2 years in East Austin. Webb Middle School, 7th and 8th grade English. Made a lot of good friends here, but couldn't see eye to eye with administration in the light of NCLB and the heavy emphasis on TAKS testing. Honestly I probably might've been fired if I hadn't left, it upset me that much.
18. Alamo Drafthouse--possibly my favorite job, at least in the service industry. Some of the sweetest cash and best shows I've ever seen, and it was fairly easy work. I can't even go into all the good times here, it'd make the post too long.
19. Summer school teacher at a juvenile detention facility--contrary to logic, this was one of the best teaching experiences I've ever had. About a dozen high school boys, doing time from anything to robbery to rape, sat in my room and talked about literature and poetry for a few hours every day. They wrote some of the most painful and raw texts I've ever read, and were hungry for knowledge. I ate lunch in their cafeteria with them once, and offered a kid my pudding--he refused, citing possible manipulation. I ended up doing a lot of research about juvenile facility education--it's an overlooked and vital area of research. Damn my ADD--I should've done more.
20. Long term sub for a juvenile offender--Shauna spent a month in jail after beating the living shit out of a classmate. I was hired to be her bodyguard/teacher/friend for about 2 months at the end of the school year. Half the time she didn't show up, and about a quarter of the time she'd leave campus, so belligerantly crazy and angry. We did have some good conversations, and I like to think I did help her...
21. Facilitator for UT--this consisted of supervising 25 college student doing their student teacher for 2 semesters. I got the call while teaching for IRD, minus an interview--just a new instructor at UT looking for help, within the same week of being let go from the Alamo (I was out of town the opening weekend of Pirates of the Carribean, thinking I had wrote the thing on the schedule--turns out I hadn't. Boo hoo. So I guess technically I've been fired from 2 jobs.) I got to observe student teachers in kindergarten and elementary classrooms and conference with them and their teachers, trying to make them better teachers. Great job.
22. Institute of Reading Development--yet another summer job, and a good one, starting with almost 2 weeks of training in Chicago. For 10 weeks in the summer of 2007, I drove to Killeen, Waco, and Corpus Christi to teach reading courses for kids from 4 to older than me. Good fun. I especially liked the nice hotel on the beach they set me up with . Lots of work, but fun.
23. Summer Institute for the Gifted. Att UT. I taught 4 classes--Pirates Past and Present (seriously!!), Biology, Self-Defense (where my Krav Maga came in handy), and Zoology. More good fun. On the demo night, I used the UTPD dummies to show what my kids in Self-Defense had learned when it comes to kneeing an attacker in the groin, etc, and put a picture of Bush on the head area. FUN.
24. Sylvan--I'm currently at Sylvan as a director of education, so this set me up to know the job in . Tutored math and reading.
25. Director of education at Sylvan. I'm a progress manager for 77 kids currently, have regular progress conferences with their parents and sometimes classroom teachers to best help them, and handle inquiry calls, initial testing, and daily stuff. I love it.

So that's it. What have you done?

where have all the real women gone?

Query--from whence does this bevy of "reality" shows featuring ignorant, uncouthe brats come? Oxygen Channel, you're on my list. At last count, there was Bad Girls Club (which is apparently going to be a new game, sort of like Sims), various Real Housewives of Wherever Rich Bitches Live, Rock of Love Charm School (aka Who Wants to be the Next Carrier of Bret Michael's STDs), Pretty Wicked, The Bachelor, Top Model, Girls of Hedsley Hall, uhhh...I know there's more but those are off the top of my head, and I don't watch any of these shows. I revile them. I miss the way women were portrayed and the example they set with the shows I grew up with: Carol Burnett, Jennifer from WKRP, Wonder Woman, Charlies' Angels, Mary Poppins, Claire Huxtable, etc. These women had class, sex appeal, and intelligence. They were independent and put their men in their place as needed, and didn't waste time doing and saying stupid things. To watch tv today, you'd think the most obnoxious, shrill idiot in the room with the least flattering outfit was something to aspire to. I don't like it. Not at all.

Runners up on my shit list:

The creditreport.com guy

I don't want these jerkfaces thinking they're a real band just because they sing in about 5 annoying commercials.









- This guy, from operacion repo.
I understand why you'd hire a big huge dude to take cars away from people who don't pay their bills, what I don't get is why you'd hire a juiced up antagonistic jerkoff with a trigger temper to interact with people who are more than pissed that they're losing their cars. Seems like a recipe for disaster and lawsuits.








Come back soon for more on Mary Poppins and why it's the perfect movie for everyone to watch right now.

A little Easter haiku for you:
Post church, on Easter
Honey needs cold medicine
I hear Heart playing.

I love Heart, by the way. I've posted it before and I'll post it again--I dare you to watch for 1 minute and not sing along. This is what I mean about real women...

Moxie gets made into an honest woman, or, I'M ENGAGED!!

As I write this I'm very aware of an additional piece of hardware on my left ring finger, and I'm so deliciously thrilled it's hard to wrap my head around it. When Gonzo moved away from Austin my heart broke more than a little, and when Flaming Lips sang at ACL 6 months later and we stood together and breathed it in, the little spark that had never quite extinguished started getting stronger. Two years passed and I tried to keep busy with grad school and not miss him, tried to shake off the longing and the loneliness of a long distance relationship. When I moved from Austin to Lubbock for Mr. W post-graduation, things were obviously starting to get serious. When we spent hours stripping wallpaper, scrapping paint, slapping primer, slinging paint, and wanting to kill everyone in proximity, I knew I was in it for the long haul. When Marky and I drove from Texas to Illinois in one day and he spent time with my entire family, that was another whole level of love.

A few days ago, I called him as I drove home from work, knowing we had stuff to do before leaving for Austin this weekend. He told me he had a list of things and wanted me to look it over, and kept asking me what street I was on, which was kind of strange as it only takes me 10 minuutes from work to home. When I got there, he handed me the list: "pack, change oil, blah blah, ask Jen to marry me..." I half-giggled, half-shrieked, "What's this here?!" and he got down on one knee and asked me. I said yes, or might have just frantically nodded. The dogs began barking happily, and we got a little choked up as they had just had cookies and were clearly approving of this transaction, that we would now be a family for real.

I want to have Golden Years by David Bowie for our first dance. We're thinking Vegas? Maybe?

Mawwage:

horrible bad no-good tv

I feel disappointed in myself that writing didn't return my call after we got back together and went out on a few dates. I wondered if I did something wrong. Then I realize writing isn't a guy I'm trying to get to fall for me, and it's not something that's only possible when the mood and the moon is right (maybe). I didn't fart in bed. I didn't insult his mother. Writing, it's a thing I do when I'm not too lazy or busy and have some things on my mind. Sometimes they're important things, sometimes not. Today, not.

Today I want to vent about the utter stupidity of television. I will attempt to balance the brainless and transparent campaigns to take my money, self-esteem, or patience with the shows that actually make us think or teach something. I will try not to get distracted by the neighbor kid whose eyes are way too far apart trying to ride his bike while holding his dog (which looks like the Grinch's dog, sadly) as his fatter-than-believably-possible toddler brother totters about on his fat little feet.

My most loathed commercials are those that incorporate an unnecessary amount of sexuality.
Exhibit A (this commercial makes me uncomfortable)


What is the message here, that if you drink this shit you can bang your slutty secretary all the way through your lunch break as your wife's picture falls off your desk? I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, I'm just insulted. This is way worse than the Arby's commercial where the wife dresses up like the Arby's girl and serves her hubby in bed as the phallic Arby's hat pops up over his head. That's giggle-worthy, but the 6 Hr one is just in poor taste.

This is way better:


Kenyans.

If you start feeling sucked in my media subterfuge, may I suggest visiting listverse.com. Read about inventors killed by their inventions, coolest transformers, evil children, and the like.

Live and let die

can you see the frog and the horsie?

An actual conversation I had the other night with someone who will remain anonymous:
"what? *long pause* what?!"
"I said what I wanted to say, why are you saying what?!"
"Because I didn't hear you! That's what people say when they didn't hear you!!"
"Shut up!!!!"

Idiocracy is on, I don't know if you've seen it. It's to me almost on the sci-fi edge of comedy, meaning it features scenarios that may be possible in the future--20,000 Leagues under the Sea was considered crazy sci-fi when it first came out in 1954, yet monstrous squid are now ubiquitous. There are more such movies here , as compiled by Popular Mechanics. But what I'm saying is, 10 minutes into Idiocracy when the rapidly-growing and twisted family tree of losers is explained, I wasn't laughing even though it was funny.

The future of health care:


I don't think it's that far outside the realm of possibility that a Bush-driven country could soon be putting Gatorade on crops and letting garbage mountains assemble. And I'm not going to expound on the politics of the situation--living in Lubbock has taught me it's a breath-wasting, migraine-gathering endeavor to argue Democracy in West Texas. The Republican vibe seems to have tinged the TV tonight--the roast of Larry the Cable Guy with big ol' Toby Keith is on next week. And again, I'm not trying to ruffle conservative feathers--you're allowed to think whatever you want. I'm just sayin, your head dog Rush Limbaugh doesn't know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence--literally.

It's interesting as a person with a specific background and knowledge set replete with beliefs, attitudes, and whathaveyou watching the world try to reconcile differences and make plans for the greater good while remaining civil. One is bound to overtly or covertly impose their own attitudes as to right and wrong, sensible and idiotic. It seems like those most uninformed are most comfortable in crucifying those those don't share their views. In a loosely related example--I was in the 7th circle of hell (walmart) and saw an Obama shirt with a picture of him being sworn in with the quote "So Help Me God." It made me look at it carefully, my head cocked like the RCA dog. If I'm reading this right, this is a hater shirt saying he's in such deep shit that God better help him, heh heh. Nice attitude, people. For the rest of you haters who can't really make it clear to the rest of us why you think the end of an era of errors and downright criminality is a bad thing, I direct you to this site, which will allow you to pick a reason to not support Obama.

Anyway.
Some things too many people don't know enough about:
- NPR
- The Bronte's
- cobble-stone downtown roads
- Principato Rosato
- Eastbound and Down
- kickball
- Zero 7
- my carrot cake

hiatus hiatus

Hello? Oh, hey!! Uh...how are you? This is my 125th post, but not really because the last one was a repost.

Steven Johnson wrote this book about media culture called Everything Bad is Good for You, and it was pretty okay, and now he has out The Invention of Air--the study of what's all around us and makes us and how it used to be considered empty space until some chemists and scientist started drinking coffee all day and figuring out that plants poop air and we evolved from non-oxygen breathing forms become us, breathing deeply. Man. It'd be nice to have a job where you could wax psuedo-psycho-philosophological all day and get paid.

There's a Chinese lady who lives near the school who is constantly walking her three all goofy-looking dogs. She has horrible posture, probably in her late 50s, rail thin with a kind of curvature that comes with dragging her feet incecessantly for most of her life. The dogs' leashes are always dangled up. It's like driving past the trailing end of a weird circus or state fair.


Ain't it funky now?


Coming back to writing is not quite like seeing a friend you kinda forgot about for a while but assumed was doing fine, nor is it like calling an ex-lover whom you always wanted to impress. Something in the middle. You have to pace yourself. There will be awkward silences. I'm taking a hiatus from my hiatus.

Jen's Patronage of a Local Business for March: Freedom Fitness on 19th steet. No contract, $5 enrollment with current special, $20 a month with free guest passes, massage chairs, tanning, and half price co'oler drinks. And they have a room that blacklit with crazy 90's neon "graffiti. And most importantly, TVs. They're so low key they don't even have a website, unlike this place , which is $199 enrollment and $85 month "investment" for a couple. Although, they do have ridiculously large lions and a fountain and a big elephant and those bikes that are like video games of the Tour de France.

Conversely, I must give a big thumbs down to Big Happy Hair. You must click. I'll wait. Yep, it's like padding your bra but it's your hair. Checkitout. BHH isn't technically a local business, but it may as well be considering I live in West Texas.

Ok, so...yeah. Um. I'll see you around? Yeah, I'll tell you about my aversion to overtly and unnecessarily sexual commercials to sell energy drinks, fast food, and body wash. They make me feel uncomfortable.