My supervisor is out today, so things are a little bit more relaxed in the office. I actually have time to post! It's not that I have significantly less work to do today -- when I came in there were a number of things for me to do in my inbox -- but that in the absence of her calling me into her office every three seconds to do some other task or xerox some files or deliver some envelopes to some other department I can actually work on things and knock them off fairly quickly. Even doing a simple one-line log entry can take fifteen minutes when someone is hollering for you before you can even finish writing a letter. And I took three trips to deliver some papers to another office today, but had my supervisor been here that would've been at least eight trips. See, rather than waiting for several deliveries to pile up before sending me over -- they all go to the same place -- she'd have me running over there after every one, because it has to be done right away. It really doesn't. They'll get there. Jeez. (more...)

Scary-Crayon explores a day in the life of everyone's (least) favorite singing Tyrannosaur with this review and commentary on A Day With Barney -- which was actually my final purchase at the bookstore. Oh, the horror...

In other news, work continues to be hectic and exhausting. I actually got a little pissed at a staff meeting today. In discussing all of the programs and activities they want to plan at the community college, it was noted with great interest and praise that in another department a presentation was being held in which several students are supposed to "educate" the staff and faculty about the HipHop culture. This, supposedly, would help to bridge the gap between the students and the faculty. And the whole time I was sitting there rolling my eyes and thinking, "What the FUCK," because it just struck me as ridiculous that someone thought this would be a good idea. Yes, the campus is predominately peopled with walking yo-yo-yo-wassup baggy-FUBU-clothes-wearing thug-wannabe stereotypes, but is that the kind of thing that should be encouraged to the point that the staff should be "educated" about it? I wanted to slam something down and then walk out just to show my contempt for that project and whoever thought it was worth a green light. Fuck that. (more...)

Man, that new job is hectic as hell -- I hardly had time to even check my e-mail, let alone write any blog entries. If I'd known it was going to be this bad, I would've asked for more than my old salary! It's crazy.

Speaking of crazy:

The 26-year-old elephant Ibala went into labor. But her contractions lessened. A veterinarian induced labor. But an ultrasound determined the calf had died. It could take up to a year for the elephant to deliver the dead calf.

A year to deliver a corpse? That's just nasty. I think I will write a story about it. Anyway, you can read the entire news report here.

And now I've got to get to bed so I can be up in three hours. Ja!

Yep -- the final run of bookstore Hot Flashes begins with Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #38. If the tone of this one's a little too friendly for you, don't worry... you'll get your share of assholes and freaks before we're done here.

And now I'm off to bed... gotta be up at 5AM. I'll probably be back with POSTS FROM WORK tomorrow -- got my remote access account set up and everything. And don't forget to read my anthropological observations and analysis of nerd behavior, mmmkay? Ja!

So yesterday I worked my first shift at one of my two new jobs -- in addition to resuming my Mon-Fri position back at the local community college, I took a job clerking on Saturdays at the local comic shop. Interesting experience so far. I've worked two other retail positions in the past -- at the bookstore for the past 10 months or so and at KB Toys in the summer of 2000 -- but those were both major chains and, as such, everything was pretty technologically up to date. If someone paid with a credit card, you swiped it and that was it. At the bookstore, if someone paid with a check, you scanned it through the register and the check was processed electronically, such that we actually gave the now void check back to the customer because it wasn't necessary to keep it.

This comic shop, however, is still pretty much in the dark ages of retail, which means calling the credit card companies and punching in merchant ID numbers and waiting for approval codes and the like. And I'm really kind of surprised that not even the inventory is done via a database -- the computer we had in '88 could've handled that sort of thing -- but it's very much a paper and pen and highlighter kind of place. Weird. (more...)