I was planning to write another Scary-Crayon piece tonight -- I've been digging the every other day update thing -- but I didn't get back to the house until after 7 PM because I take two buses to get back from work and THE FUCKING FIRST BUS NEVER SHOWED UP. After waiting two hours for it -- two fucking hours! -- someone was nice enough to give me a ride to the next station, but of course by then I'd missed the bus I usually take and the next one as well, and the third bus was very late, so I ended up waiting another 30 minutes at the station for it to come. (You NYC folks don't know how lucky you are to have reliable public transportation.) When I finally walked through the door around 7:20 PM I was exhausted. Then suddenly it was 10:00 PM.

I fucking hate my life.

In other news, today I got my first piece of comment spam! Pretty funny stuff, I've gotta say. "You have done a very nice job with your website, I enjoy reading the various posts and opinions of your other visitors. I do Home finance..." HOW RELEVANT! Thanks for the entertainment, Mr. Refinance.

Last night I fired off a couple more cover letters and resumes, as well as a submission to one magazine and a few article proposals to another. And tonight, I submitted a short story to Flesh & Blood magazine. Let's hope the 24th time's a charm!

By the way, for those who thought the first paragraph of yesterday's post vaguely familiar, I was more/less channeling Illyria's words in "Underneath" ("Angel" Season 5, Episode 17). Here's the relevant excerpt:

It's too small. It's too small. I can't breathe. I can't live with these walls. I can't breathe. There's no room for anything real. ... I should gut you where you stand. You challenged me. There's not enough space to open my jaws. My face is not my face. I don't know what it will say.

Ja!

I've been pretty exhausted these last few days. Frazzled. Out of sorts. Can't take much more. I've been spending a good chunk of my time here searching the employment sections of craigslist.org and various NYC papers looking for positions in NYC. I put in for one at a local university the other day -- we'll see how that goes. But I'm suffocating in this life. I'm trapped in a box and the sides are collapsing and soon I'll be flat and there's no room for me to open my jaws. It's too much of too little and I can't bloody take much more. ANYWAY. (more...)

Nothing to report here -- this week has been really chill due to the fact that my supervisor only came in on Wed. So with so little to do, I've mostly been spending my time surfing the web and answering e-mails! This kind of thing recently landed TAB in trouble (read all about it!), but it's no problem here -- in fact, earlier today, all of the female employees (including HGWA) in our office and even a few from other offices stood crowded around a single monitor, hooting and watching a PowerPoint slideshow featuring photo after photo of buff, shirtless guys. Yet nobody gives me any attention whatsoever! Not that I particularly want it from them (with a few exceptions...), but it's still discouraging. Sigh. (more...)

I've commented before on the students and how the vast majority of them fit certain (racial) stereotypes to a tee, but as my new position requires me to interact quite a bit with the older adults on the campus as well, I'm noticing a number of similar stereotypes among them too. For example, oftentimes an employee will listen to music at his/her desk. If the employee is a work study student, or is under the age of thirty, the music will almost always be hip-hop or R&B -- the only exceptions I've heard so far being the selections of the freaknerds and the Linkin Park played by an old high school classmate of mine. But if the employee is older, the music will invariably be gospel music. Actually, a handful of the younger people -- usually women -- also play an abundance of gospel music. By the way, I hate gospel music. (more...)