McEvilly

One of the authors of the article I am working on right now is named M.M. McEvilly. If anyone was born to be a supervillain, M.M. McEvilly was. He or she must be just wandering through life in search of a comic book universe to threaten.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job/and heaven knows I'm miserable now."
--The Smiths

I wanted to keep my widdle blog free of the usual online journal minutia (I ate a peanut butter sandwich today, I missed the train this morning, my mom is a bitch, etc.). However, I've been reading Mimi Smartypants, and I realize that it's ok to whine if you do it in an interesting manner (whether this counts is arguable).

I slept in this morning because it was supposed to be beautiful and sunny, which means that my car is likely to start (long story). I had a leisurely shower, ate my warmed-up omelette leftovers from brunch yesterday, and strolled out the door at around 8:15. It's a maximum of 45 minutes to work when I drive, so I wasn't worried about being late. That is, until I forgot where I had parked the last time I drove my car. I wandered around the neighborhood, looking in all the usual hiding places, but with no luck. You see, I had driven home late the last time I drove it, which meant that parking pickings were slim, and I ended up parking several blocks away. When I finally found the car, it was 8:35.

It didn't start. My entire worldview was shaken. Since my car started acting up, bright and sunny = car starts. Invariably. Well not today. Was it because the bright sunshine had not yet warmed its delicate hood? Was it finally dead? Who knows. I sat there trying to start it until 9, then I had to run to the train.

I started reading Faulkner's As I Lay Dying a few nights ago. You cannot read Faulkner on the train. At least, I can't. He requires a level of concentration that I cannot give him when surrounded by the myriad distractions on the train. I rode without reading, staring out the window.

I got off the train downtown and waited for the bus. When it came, I climbed aboard at the head of a long line of people. Turns out my transit card was expired. I didn't notice when I got on the train because all of the turnstiles at my stop were broken, so they were just letting everybody walk through. I had to dig through my wallet and pockets looking for enough money to pay the fare. I had no change, and I had only a single dollar bill. The people waiting behind me started shoving, and the driver sighed and told me to "sit [my] ass down." I complied.

At work, when I finally got there, the guy who is "training" me was waiting for me. He gave me 16 articles that needed to be cleaned up (a process combining repetitive actions with utter boredom). I hate cleaning up manuscripts. I've been doing it since I started. I want training. I get clean-up. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Cubicle Hell

So it's 11:30 on Sunday night, and I was going to go to bed until I remembered that I had forgotten to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer four hours ago. I need those clothes, because it's too late to go buy new underwear, so I guess I'll stay up until they're done.

All of which is unrelated to my new cubicle at work, my new home, until god knows when. They want to hire another new editor, but they don't have any more empty cubicles. They'll have to go on the offensive, stage a late-night cubicle-grabbing raid on the computer people on the other side of the office. All I know is that the new person's cube must be in a shittier spot than mine. If it is not, I might go on a hunger strike. But is this possible? Is there a worse place than where I sit? Let's examine it geographically.

I have an attractive corner cubicle, on the corner of two busy aisles. To the southeast is the kitchenette, where people stand and chat loudly while waiting for their smelly bad-fish sandwiches to heat up in the microwave (or so it smelled last Friday). To the south is the stairwell. The stairwell is closed, with a heavy metal door doing its best to block sound (and probably flames, if they were to crop up). However, people like to run up or down stairs, and I get to hear them coming and going, hear their heavily booted feet ringing on the metal stairs: ap tap tap tap bang bang baNG bANG BANG!!! BANG!!! BANg BAng bang bang tap tap ta...

I can't concentrate on my editing when there's noise, but I also can't concentrate on my editing when I'm listening to most music. What to do? What, that is, except curse everyone who walks by with their prehistoric pounding feet and their stinky exotic food and their chatting and their laughing.

Irrational Fears

Aside from the usual fears of being humiliated in public or physically abused, while I was in high school I developed an irrational fear of those big double doors you see in public places. My fear was that I would reach out to grab the handles to pull them open, and someone would push from the other side while my hand was outstretched, smashing the door into my fingers and spraining, jamming, or breaking them. This never happened to me, of course—if it had happened, the fear would not be irrational. Nevertheless, I approached doors with caution, extending a closed fist until I was sure that I was safe. This fear is still more or less with me, which is one reason I appreciate the architects who built Chicago: all the revolving doors.

What are some of my loyal readers' irrational fears?

GI Joe PSAs

http://www.fenslerfilm.com/?sec=video

Why oh why oh why didn't I come up with this myself?

After every episode of the "GI Joe" cartoon, some stupid kids would get themselves into trouble and a Joe team member would arrive to give them helpful advice. The kids would say "Well now we know," and the Joe would respond "And knowing is half the battle." A group of geniuses called Fenslerfilm got ahold of those PSAs and modified them to suit their own nefarious and hysterical goals.

I came across them at Version Fest, a Chicago area art, music, and activism festival. The festival is going on until May 1.

Role Playing

I just returned from six hours of role playing. We're playing a game created by Travis that is set in a Buffy/X-Files/Fortean Times type of world. I'm the neurotic author, Brian is the mysterious rare book dealer, Shawn is the hardboiled detective, Dee is the kung fu chick, Blake is the weatherman (really), and Carrie is the theology professor. We were all embroiled in mysterious goings-on at a casino. It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait until we get together to play again.

My character is a sniveling know-it-all, paranoid but desperately in need of approval from someone, anyone. In short, it's who I sometimes fear that I am. At least, my character embodies the parts of myself that I hate to own up to. The petty jealousies, the constant fear that my friends merely tolerate me, the perfectionist streak... they're all there, but amplified. It's the part of me that prompts lengthy email exchanges with people I've known a long time, verifying that, in fact, one of us didn't actually mean what the other thought we meant—like that, but cranked up to 11. It's a cleansing experience, being able to act on all of it within the safety of make-believe.

It's a far cry from sitting in my mom's pop-up camper for hours into the night, playing Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of wired teenagers. Wired twenty- and thirtysomethings are more interesting.

Inside Bush's Head

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098810

Slate's William Saletan goes into exhaustive detail about how things work inside of Bush's head, using his recent press conference as evidence.

tautology:
   1. a. Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy. b. An instance of such repetition.
   2. Logic. An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.

Or, since we sat on our butts and didn't do anything until it was too late, there must not have been anything we could do.

Trickle-Down Effect

Here's an article on Slate about how Condi Rice's testimony to the 9/11 panel reveals her as an incompetent buffoon of a National Security Adviser: http://slate.msn.com/id/2098499/

I have a theory about a trickle-down effect that describes how the general public gets ideas into its collective head. It usually involves media complicity in spreading, if not lies, statements of questionable veracity. It usually works in favor of the conservative agenda, because it's supported by their media connections. Examples are the idea that Al Gore was a liar who claimed to have invented the Internet, and that Iraq was responsible for the September 11 attacks. Neither of these statements is true, but the majority of Americans believe them both.

In the case of whether Bush either knew about the impending September 11 attacks, or bungled things so badly that he allowed them to happen, or couldn't have prevented them, I pray that the trickle-down effect works. I do care about the difference: I don't have a lot of faith in the government, but my cynicism doesn't extend to thinking that our elected leaders are mass murderers (at least of Americans). However, for the purposes of getting rid of Bush in the coming election, I don't care which one is true. I want the general public to believe that Bush let it happen.

I also pray that they catch him screwing an intern in the Oval Office, on a desk covered in crack pipes and dirty needles, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

Last Day of Freedom

I got up late, at around 10. I had stayed at Rebecca's because I was in Hyde Park after volunteering for the Documentary Film Festival at Doc (the source of endless confusion as I tried to explain why tickets for the doc were more expensive than the regular tickets for Doc). Rebecca was off being busy somewhere, so I lounged around, petting Slim and Mini, reading, and scrounging for breakfast, before I finally left at 11.

I was supposed to meet my friend Scott from my old job for lunch at 12:30, and I was early. I spent a half-hour reading in the huge lobby at Union Station. I had a good lunch with him; he filled me in a little on goings-on at the old job. We talked about books and movie adaptations and real estate. To him, and to my other remaining friends at the ADA, "where I used to work," I say thank you and I miss you.

I meandered north toward my apartment, stopping at a comic book shop and a used CD store. I'm home now, and I might just take a nap. I have to volunteer again at the film festival tonight. They're showing a film about an East German detention camp, a film about where down comes from (like in down pillows), and one about America's first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, whose exploits were immortalized in the recent bestseller The Devil in the White City. Too bad it's showing so late; I'll stay to see it anyway.

It feels odd to be going back to work tomorrow. When I was unemployed with no prospects, the days were endless alternating episodes of panic and boredom. I couldn't fill my time with anything constructive, but mindless things didn't keep my attention either. Now that I have a job, I resent not being able to lounge in bed until 10 and spend the afternoon buying comic books and CDs. Oh well. I'll get reaccustomed to it soon enough.

New Job II

I have a new job. I start next Wednesday as a manuscript editor on the Journal of Infectious Diseases back at the good old University of Chicago Press. I'll be editing manuscripts about Epstein-Barr syndrome, HIV, and infant vaccinations, among other topics. This journal is pretty tame; the other one published by the same division of the press, Clinical Infectious Diseases, has gory pictures that made my stomach turn when I looked at a sample issue. They even have a popular "Guess the Disease" photo quiz. Yuck. This one has graphs and charts instead.

The funny thing about going back is how I feel about it. When I was in the office yesterday for my interview, I felt an incredible homesickness. I missed working near my friends; I missed going out to lunch with them. I'm happy to be going back.