a little more me in my monitor...
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Dan Johnson" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:28 pm
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Pumpkin Latte
Reasonably speaking, it would take me about 15 minutes to clean my room to the point that it could be considered a living space instead of a corner of the basement into which a portion of my worldly belongings have been exiled. I've been here since August, and unemployed for some considerable portion of that time, and have nonetheless failed to spend that 15 minutes.
Similarly, my AIM and Gmail Chat contact lists are littered with names of people I no longer talk to. Yes, by "people" I mean "girls who turned out to be mental" and yes, I could easily delete these names instead of thinking, "Man, it's going to be awkward when I accidentally click the wrong name in that list and have to talk to her again," every time I see them.
There's been a dime on the floor in the downstairs bathroom of my parents' house for years. Literally, like, twelve years. I have clear memories of looking at it while taking a deuce-break from writing papers in high school.
I own at least two or three useful devices that I never use because the batteries are dead. There's a new pack of batteries in the kitchen.
You get the idea. I'm gonna go carpe some laundry at least.
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11:31 pm
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Sex and Parties: One Hundred Dollars
Well, I've been nudged. I'm going to try to give a succinct list of the things that have happened in recent months and gone unmentioned in my journal since I began epically falling down on the job.
These are going to seem out of order, because I'll be listing things that have happened to people who also don't blog properly.
Harris bought a house. It's pretty sweet, I guess. If nothing else, he lives closer to Minneapolis than he ever has. That, combined with the unseasonable warmth of late has made his yard an excellent choice for a dude of few funds these past weeks. That, and the fact that the run-up to him getting a house meant I had barely seen him for several months prior. Newlywed. Pssh.
Noah, likewise, has made a homecoming of sorts, now residing closer to what can properly be called The Heart of Uptown than anyone has in memory. Monique has apparently forbidden the amount of porch-loitering that would normally accompany so fine a location and so fine a porch, at least inasmuch as she has forbidden the requisite porch couch. She claims deference to to the pleasant gentlemen smoking outside the halfway house(s) across the street, but I suspect she just doesn't like scumbags lurking about her living space at all hours. We don't fault Kristina for that kind of footfall, so I suppose we'll just be happy to have them back within the Hipster's Quadrangle and call it a win for the home team.
I'm starting a new job a week from today. It requires a commute to St. Paul, somewhere near the intersection of Godforsaken and Whatthehell. The shift is from 12:30 to 9pm four days a week and every Saturday from 9am to 3pm. All of those ending times seem like auspicious hours for me to be driving back through Minneapolis. Just the same, I think I should get back to trying to download some books on tape if I'm going to have that much car time in my future.
The job itself seems like it should provide fodder for new journal entries. My first three weeks will be taken up by a training class. I can't imagine how it's going to take that long to learn the job, but it should provide me an opportunity to catalog the various douchebags, hoodrats and weirdsters that inevitable compose a corporate call center.
I've really been trying to update more, but it turns out that almost all my stories are about the middle-aged woman and the two-year-old with whom I spend most of my time. One of them already has a blog, and I'm not going to start telling cute baby stories in this once proud archive of Things Jim Has Tippped Over.
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11:13 pm
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Attention, some animals bite. Most are awesome.
I went to the zoo with an assortment of my female relatives on Monday. Schopenhauer said that the worst of all possible worlds would be one that allowed the largest number of creatures to suffer for the longest amount of time, and theorized that, since this world supports a lot of life, and none of it is without suffering, this might be that worst possible world.
I theorize that, if that's the case, the best possible world would be one small room containing a two-year-old watching two otters.
I catch a lot of flack for having no particular preference for The Good Zoo in Apple Valley over The Sad Zoo in St. Paul. I guess the good zoo is bigger and has more animals, and for sure more exotic, but honestly, I don't see orangutans any more often than I see red pandas, so when I do, they're both pretty awesome.
A brief word on awesomeness: Some animals aren't even trying. The Komodo Dragon has to know that it's severely endangered or whatever. Someone has to have told it. But it still does absolutely nothing to endear itself to the money-donating, cause-supporting public. Raccoons are goddamn everywhere, to the point that having them at the zoo at all (even on the Minnesota trail) is kind of a joke, but at least those little jerks put on a show. And they do it just down the hallway from the otters, knowing full well, no one's going to find their antics amusing after they see some damn otters, all frolicking and what not. The Komodo Dragon's adjacent competition (now that the admittedly-pretty-sweet sun bear is gone) is some fat, lazy mountain pig, and something called a binturong, which looks like it would be all cute as hell, but instead just lays there by the tapir's ass, impersonating a discarded puppet and smelling like buttered popcorn.
I'm saying, learn a lesson from raccoons. And, for that matter, squirrels. They're total jerks and they're everywhere, but they've got a schtick and they've got it down cold, which keeps us from putting a bounty on the little pop-tart-thieving sons of bitches and wiping them from the face of the earth.
The temp agency says they should have something for me if I call back around the end of the week.
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09:52 pm
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Holding the door
With both Kristina and Jessica doing their part to support Live Journal, I suppose the guy with a degree in journalism and no place to be for the foreseeable future has little to no excuse to not be laying down the odd paragraph when it's convenient, huh?
I did security for Friday's Drinking With Ian taping. One of the guests was the Villification Tennis kids from Ye Olde Renaissance Faire. I've seen them lay their thing down dozens of times, and I've always found it enjoyable, but man, they are a barely tolerable lot when they're crammed into a green room. And, under no circumstances should you, while listening to them rehearse, start a sentence with, "It's funnier if you..." I guess that room is, as often as not, full of erstwhile or occasional standup comedians, so it's probably a lateral move. I'm not sure where Kristina was spending her time between trays of thimble-sized shots, but I didn't see the alternating waves of panic and devastating eye-rolling from her spot on the couch that I've grown so used to.
Stevie, as those of you on her Facebook friends list were made aware, and those of you present already approached me to discuss, was in rare form. Apparently, after co-worker happy hour, no dinner, and a taping's worth of cocktails, she either genuinely enjoys the Drinking With Ian experience, or else decides that the most appropriate form of derision is to act like she loves the show in a mocking way that's indistinguishable from genuine through the veil of Maker's Mark. And fall down a lot.
Spending more time with Missy and Stevie is getting Matt Lodge a lot more practice at driving than he gets normally. A handful of us adjourned to his house after the taping where Stevie broke his closet door, ate two cans of Spam and ruthlessly cuddled a passed-out Noah until it was time to come back "home" to Champlin. She also ate Missy's bagel. It was unforgivable.
I spent today setting up Halloween decorations. We chose today to accommodate Monique WHO DID NOT SHOW UP TO HELP. I'm not that upset, really; I didn't actually expect her to show up last year when she did, and the plan for her to lend a hand was made before we knew that today would be spent cutting an antique Ford into bite-sized chunks. (Hail Fairlane, full of grease, blessed art though among sedans. Requiescat in pacem, domine domine, etc, etc.)
Seriously, some one get me a job.
But not tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm going to the zoo.
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11:51 pm
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See the blue, not the poo!
I mean that as a good slogan for toilet cleaner tablets, not as a rumination on the benefits of focusing on depression instead of the misfortune that caused it.
I have a whole thing I was going to say, but the point is, I would still buy them if all they did was turn the water blue, and also, I wish I had a job. But, like they say, wish in one hand and shit in the other, and you probably won't be able to get a job, because you've got poop on your hand.
Today marked one full week of unemployment. Living it, not getting it. I mean "unemployment" as in complaining about how there's nothing on TV during the day, not "unemployment" as in someone sends me a check for sitting on Craigslist for a couple hours a day. The sucky kind.
On the other hand, since I'm already living in my parents' basement, this really just means that the illiterate girl who asks me ridiculous questions all day is under three feet tall and shares my interest in stacking up leggos after lunch.
It's weird how often I'm unemployed this time of year, come to think of it. I have a folder of pictures on my hard drive labeled "Halloween/Unemployment." I guess I've got time to build more monsters out of chicken wire to put in the yard.
I actually started this update over 24 hours ago, and I was recently told that Noah's moving van is booked from 8am to 2pm tomorrow, so I should, in good conscience, get to bed.
It's nice to have a reason to wake up other than a 2-year-old yelling at me to do so.
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11:48 pm
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138 hours.
Let me start by saying that I applaud Kristina's recent efforts to hold back Facebook's ferocious siege against long form blogging. I had every intention of doing the same, but I find myself spending a lot of the extra free time gained by living half an hour from everything fun in no more productive pursuits than applying for jobs and napping.
I saw Marcy Playground on Saturday, marking the first time I'd ever A)attended a concert with my sister, B)been to the FineLine, and C)gone to a show that cost that much. I was convinced that the crowd at a Marcy Playground show in 2009 would be something of an oddity, but it turns out that Marcy Playground fans are, by and large, pretty much the same people I would have pictured as "people that go to the FineLine." It was weird to be in a room full of people who were excited to hear Secret Squirrel.
I also expected John Wozniak (the lead singer, for those of you less schooled in Marcy Playground, by which I mean everyone but me, my sister, and John Wozniak's mom) to be more of a bitter shell of a man at having been irrelevant to popular music for some 15 years, but to his credit, dude clearly knows what he is. The penultimate song before the encore was Sex and Candy, introduced as "our new single." As expected, no more people sang along to that one than to Sherry Fraser. All told, it was a lovely evening, and many thanks to my sister for buying the tickets (and what I assume was a horrifically overpriced cocktail.)
I've applied for several dozen more jobs, and gotten as far as an interview only once in the past couple of weeks. It was a customer service job with ScanTron, which I've now been made aware is a relatively small subsidiary of a large holding company and I suspect just a dummy corporation propping up the #2 pencil industry. I got a callback on Wednesday, had my interview on Thursday, and got my rejection e-mail on Friday. I didn't get the job, but I still can't help but feel that I'd enjoy the process of looking for employment a great deal more if all my efforts' dispositions were so efficient.
There's been a lot of turnover at the paper shredding appointment mines of late. They've let go two of the recent call center hires and two of the salesmen in the past few weeks. The call center reps are replaced within a week or so. Phone bank experience is desirable, but not so much that the market isn't flooded with us as much as with nearly every other imaginable skill set. The parade of trashy blandsters has been impressive, though by its nature, not really worth writing about. It's sort of like seeing a flood, I think. Once you tell people you saw the flood, there's not much else to say. I mean, there's a lot of it, but it's just water.
I'm sending a threatening letter to my former landlady tomorrow, if I don't get word about my damage deposit. Wish me luck with that.
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12:20 pm
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"You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded."
I applied for a whole mess of pretty promising jobs last night. Stevie has been spending her free time scouring the internet for work since she's newly re-employed. The timing, as it turns out, couldn't be better. I've only set one appointment at work this week, and there's no apparent reason for my underperformance.
The thing is, this has happened at almost every telemarketing job I've ever had. I do reasonably well the first few weeks, then at some point, around the time I get comfortable with the calling script, my numbers start to slide. The best theory I can come up with is that no one likes people who sound articulate and educated calling them on the phone.
The upside, like I said, is that I got a confirmation back from my application at Sister Nadeau's dog store job, and I just sent in a pretty sweet response to a Craigslist ad Stevie found looking for an "Author Coordinator" at a publishing company in the warehouse district.
APPLICATION PROCESS:
*You must write a cover letter that has some spunk, character, and humor in it (If it contains cheeesy resume buzz words, it is unlikely we will respond)
*You must attach a resume or put it in the body of the email (If your resume contains an objective, it is unlikely we will respond. We know your objective -- to get a job).
*You must be okay with the starting salary. This is an entry level job. If you get this job, the chances of you moving up in our company are high.
*Quirky, interesting, pop-culture junkies are encouraged to apply.
Accounts vary on whether my cover letter might have over-shot the mark on "quirky, interesting and humorous."
Objective: I'd like to find a woman who understands me. I mean really understands me.
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12:12 pm
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Two weeks out.
There was a meeting at work this morning in which D-Bag told us that the entire call center has been severely under-performing. He said the quality of appointments (meaning the likelihood that each appointment will result in closed sale) has been high, but that the overall number of appointments has been low. He suggested that we stop filtering our call lists looking for "good appointments" and just try to make as many calls as possible.
I've met my goal for attempted contacts already today, and I've set two appointments, one at one of those shady check-cashing places in North Minneapolis. This isn't a direct attempt to affect the new policy, just letter-of-the-law acceptance of it. I'm not going to be a jerk about this until I get another job lined up.
Someone remind me when Jill and Stu are getting in to town.
Anyone who wants to stop by this weekend and help me pack or move boxes would be more than welcome to do so. Every time I move, it becomes very clear to me that all I actually need in a living space is a huge kitchen with a bed in the corner somewhere. A bathroom would be nice, but ultimately optional, given my longstanding love of shitting in inappropriate places.
Daily optimism; more good things about living in Champlin:
- A geometrically useable, if less than delightful bathroom.
- The hallmark of middle-class suburban opulence, "ice in the door."
- A relatively reliable supply of non-spoiled vegetables.
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07:40 pm
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Bottoming out.
Today is Bastille Day. I would know that anyway, because I've read the whole Wikipedia, but I've known the date since childhood because it was my best friend's birthday. More to the point, however, it served, year after year, as the mid-point marker for summer. Actual Midsummer is around August 2nd, I think, but in terms of weather, in terms of school year, in terms of panic at wasting these last few precious weeks, this is it. It's half gone. Have you had half the number of barbecues you wanted to have this year? I didn't think so. Let's not be so lazy.
I've moved about four boxes worth of my belongings to Champlin. I'll be packing a couple more tonight. It's difficult to decide which items you can live your life without for a couple of weeks and not subsequently decide that you might as well throw those boxes away.
I've been making a mental list of the various upsides of living back in Champlin. Air conditioning, free food, a combined total of about 4 square yards of television viewing surface throughout the house... And, just in time for football season. Football has the best snacks, and it's easy to schedule.
All but one of the appointment setters at my job who worked there when I started have been fired. The third replacement was just hired today, and I haven't heard her name yet, but I assume her last name is something very common. Including my supervisor, the last names of my co-workers thus far have been Anderson, Smith, Anderson, Peterson, Brown, Johansen and Smith.
The replacements don't talk yet, but when they start saying stupid things, you'll be the first to know.
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12:09 pm
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Slow-Motion Walter, Fire Engine Guy
There's a Chinese restaurant in my once and future hometown called Yummy Buffet. I enjoy the name's non-specificity as a hallmark of suburban East Asian dining. That being the case, when my call list showed an establishment called "Sweet Carryout," I naturally assumed it was a restaurant serving some variety of Chinese or Vietnamese food, and was proven correct when I opened the contact.
Nonetheless, it seemed like an unfortunate, if not entirely unexpected name, until I read the name of the proprietor. I'd really like to believe he answers the phone hundreds of times per day, "Tsing Lo, Sweet Carryout."
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09:12 pm
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The first step is admitting that you have a blog.
Stevie turned 23 on Friday. That makes her comically young and makes you extremely old for thinking so. It also makes her the oldest of the three girls with whom I spend most of my free time. Friday, we went to the Wienery, a delightful and renowned establishment heretofore unremarked upon in my admittedly lackadaisical journaling. The Upsetter Polish (with cheese, egg, and bacon) seemed like it might be the greatest value in all of Minneapolis dining, until I flipped the menu over and found the Cadillac Polish, which is the same thing, but with a pancake in place of the bun.
We went to Palmer's after, which is always a good time, but one trip doesn't really differ sufficiently from another for me to do it justice. The rest of the weekend was the sort of early summer beach-party-good-times that can't really be adequately encapsulated without the aid of a hastily edited fast-motion video montage set to the sweet strains of Mungo Jerry.
I just wrote my last rent check for Willy Loman house. (Rest in Peace, we hardly knew ye, etc., etc.) I'm including a brief note stating my reasons for leaving, which while slightly more eloquently stated, boil down to "You're kicking me out for strange and inscrutable reasons having to do with my insistence on walking and talking in my apartment past 8pm, and using the stairs that are the only useable entryway into my apartment." I dialed the sarcasm and bitterness to professional if not necessarily polite levels, and I hope it will be enough to secure me a relatively clean rental reference.
My current job, such as it is, remains seemingly secure. They fired one of my last two remaining co-workers (the one designated Severely Stupid Co-worker, previously mentioned in Facebook for not knowing that songs rhymed.) That leaves a total of two people doing the job once done by five. If I have the top appointment setting record this week, I get a $10 gift card to Little Caesars. I'm down by one at mid-week.
That is to say, I have Friday off of work, presumably to celebrate the anniversary of that great beacon of freedom, Ben Harris.
I've got a whole month to move this time. Who's got boxes?
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01:56 pm
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I've got two tickets to parasites...
About 6:30 last night, I went to lie down in front of the fan in my bedroom, and I ended up falling asleep. I continued to sleep until about 2am, notwithstanding a couple brief and incoherent phone calls. At 2, I figured the evening was a lost cause, so I just slept straight through until work this morning.
That means I haven't really eaten anything since the can of refried beans I ate right after work yesterday. I'm quite hungry.
Luckily for me, there's a half-full container of coleslaw and some baked beans in the break room fridge left over from our office cookout two weeks ago last Friday.
...or else I could just wait until after work and let my parents buy me dinner in honor of Stevie's birthday.
...
The responsible choice has seldom been so easy to make.
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10:40 pm
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This is my résumé. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
At my current job, I make just under $1000 per month. My total bills, exceed that slightly, and with Transplant finally (mercifully, I'll admit) submitted to the publisher, my supplementary income has dried up.
I had a very promising prospect for a temp job with Wells Fargo doing second shift customer service, but, in a refreshing twist, the slight economic recovery hosed me out of the job. Seems the recent interest rate increase caused the customer service positions to evaporate.
Combine these facts with the rambling two-page letter from my downstairs neighbor that my landlady photocopied and included with last month's rent receipt, enumerating my offenses as a tenant (most notable among these, that I walk around my apartment at night and sometimes use the stairs), and the attached note from said landlady saying that if these issues were not resolved, I should consider it my 60-days notice to vacate, and I am, after a record two-year stint, moving back to my parents' basement.
Those of you who recall the epic back-pedal of 2004 will, I trust, keep your fingers crossed for a shorter stay this time. The last time I moved back I was relocated to the sewing room, but this time, it looks like the erstwhile "family room," which, while larger, lacks certain amenities, like a door.
Temporary setbacks. Minor obstacles. Better times ahead. More frequent Live Journal updates, in any case.
Oh, by the way, I rode on a plane. Last weekend, I went to a wedding with Stevie. She had a flight and hotel booked in Chicago with her dad, who was placed on injured reserve at the last moment. Second-stringer Missy was busy with some sort of "gainful employment" so Stevie set to work with a sob-story and sorrowful tones to get the non-transferable ticket transferred.
I have a noted and admittedly irrational fear of mechanical failure. There are a number of things about air travel that are remarkable and almost miraculous, but there are just as many that are unsettling as hell. All in all, I prefer a road-trip, but I guess it's gauche to look a coach seat in the mouth.
The wedding was a delight. Stevie's family are universally pleasant and charming. The bride and her sister, in particular, were "people of our caliber," though the groom's family seemed just slightly too respectable for the kind of wedding that has an open bar at the reception and the rehearsal dinner. If you ever find yourself at the Oak Park Carleton hotel, there's a bartender there who severely knows his trade. I like to think he was bringing his A-game because I was the first in a line of four people who ordered something stronger than a white wine spritzer. Don't think of it as losing a son, think of it as gaining a hangover.
I didn't get out of the hotel much or out of the suburbs at all. Overall, my impression of Chicago is that it's a lot like Minneapolis but bigger. I could be wrong. The cab took Cicero from the airport, and it pretty much looks like East Lake, but it does so for miles instead of blocks.
Keeley visited this weekend from Korea, by way of Oshkosh, WI.
She told me to post this picture to Facebook, but she also said she hates Facebook, and the last photo I posted on Live Journal was evidently unflattering. She seems to be doing well, though she's predictably stricken with preemptive home-sickness last I spoke with her today. Overall, Korea has been kind, and I say that not completely out of my preference for short hair. We went to Palmer's joined by her friend Marianne, Stevie, Matt Lodge and the Nadeaus. If Palmer's were closer and had convenient parking, I'd probably go there a lot. It was a nice night for a patio, in any case.
I spent today in Champlin celebrating all things Dad. My finances didn't allow for gift-giving, so I just cooked him steak and noodle salad. Happy Fathers Day, dude. Thanks for all the money lately. Sorry I have to live in your house again.
I'd probably cut this for length, but as many have pointed out in recent weeks, your Friends Page can probably use the word count these days.
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05:16 pm
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TB party tonight!
There is no receptionist at my job this week. This, much to the consternation of my immediate supervisor (who calls me D-Money and who, for the sake of this narrative, I will call D-Bag.)
Our receptionist called in to work early Tuesday, after the long weekend, saying that her sister had been visiting from California, and that after arriving back home, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The receptionist, therefore, would be taking the day off work to go take a Mantoux test.
D-Bag suspected this story to be mere subterfuge covering up a desire for an extra day of celebration/recovery from same, and told her that it was no problem, and that it wouldn't adversely affect her performance review, as long as she provided documentation of having taken the test. So, she went in on her hard-schemed day off, and took the screening.
She returned to work the next day to find the owner in the lobby of the office, who told her that, until she received a negative test result, she would not be welcome back at work. The screening for TB takes 48 to 72 hours.
Seriously, if you're going to fake your way into a day off, who picks a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people a year? That's what "strep" and "I ate some raw chicken at the company barbecue" are for.
D-Bag cannot be trusted to cook chicken.
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11:28 pm
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Lookin good, Big Haircut.
I went to Savers after work today, mostly because I hadn't noticed that it was on my way home from work before, but also because I feel it's important to familiarize myself with the poor-people stores in the area, and also, I need a butter dish.
It turns out that Saver's had only one butter dish, and it did not meet my needs.
I looked through all the bizarre consumer electronics and spent 15 minutes checking the tags on the suit coats, eventually finding one in my size: an off-white polyester abomination for $8. I, of course took it off the rack and carried it with me while I perused the ties.
I was on my way toward the DVDs when a gentleman roughly my size, but maybe four inches shorter approached me. "Is that suit for you?" he asked.
I told him it was and he replied, "They have suits in your size?" He explained that he had a wedding to attend this weekend, and I told him that I had checked all the suits and this was the only one larger than a 50 Regular, which a quick glance assured me would be insufficient for the man's frame.
He looked disappointed, so I told him that he could have it, and that I was only going to buy it because it was funny. He grimaced slightly, obviously having only just looked closely at the suit as I handed it to him.
To be fair, I have to assume that the combination of white and polyester would only lead to unsightly sweat stains for the duration of the summer.
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12:40 am
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Popular Demand.
A number of people, lately, have been mourning what appears to be the slow death of Live Journal. I feel that it behooves me, as one of the earliest entrants into the blagosphere, to do my part to perform what live-saving measures are within my modest power to revive the art form. Let me try to sum up the past few weeks of What's Up.
- My new job, such as it is, is beyond retarded. My co-workers are retarded in a way that lacks any precedent in my years of experience. My immediate supervisor calls me "D-Money" and told me a couple of weeks ago that Phil Collins is the greatest drummer of our generation.
- I should know, within the next week or so, whether I have a new and better job. It pays well, offers full benefits, and the possibility of telecommuting after six months. I'd be working 9:30 to 6pm, until I start working from home, at which point, I'd work 10:30 to 7pm. Sweet.
- I just cashed my last check from Book Boss for my editing of Transplant. If you'd like a copy at any point, feel free to e-mail me. Or buy it when it hits the shelves! The money should keep coming in, because she has another book to write. About a doctor, who's a skeleton. I am not shitting you.
- My parents came to see my house for the first time ever today. I mean for the first time at any of my houses. It went remarkably well, owing largely to the fact that Stevie has ferociously cleaned my house a couple of times in the past few days. I gave my dad back the toolbox from my truck, so that he could put it back in his truck, where it came from. He mentioned, as we were loading it into the bed, that it smelled like beer. Stroh's, I would imagine. Nostalgia for last summer abounds.
- My dad gave me some money to subsidize my shitty job. A gentleman and a scholar that guy. It's really reached the point at which I have no reasonable expectation of being able to thank the guy adequately, so I'm just trying to get my shit in one sock in the hopes that he'll think that's good enough.
- I met Stevie's mom today. It was pretty much the inverse experience to seeing Phantom Menace ten years ago. Nothing could have been as bad/good as I was anticipating. The fact that I wasn't dragged to the bottom of the lake of monsters was really more than I could have hoped for. I helped her set up her new grill. Stevie tells me she'll be leaving town next month, and that we should hang out at her house to grill steaks and watch "Tron" on their new TV.
I say it a lot, but I'm going to make a push to keep you better informed, Internet.
You know it's not like that, baby.
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09:17 pm
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It's like Scooby Doo, but with more Gatorade and partial nudity.
The Tax Return Barbecue has ushered in the Summer yet another year. I still have a crippling amount of meat in my refrigerator, and a daunting pile of dirty dishes in my sink. Few if any pictures this year, unfortunately, but no one ate a ham steak, but these are the sacrifices we make for a barbecue in a recession. Potluck highlights deserving recognition include Ms. Nadeau's Minnesota cookies, Jim's potato salad, and Noah's Swine Flu Burgers.
The social event of the season narrowly avoided a tragically premature death this year, and had to be abruptly moved to Noah and Monique's quaint villa in the wilds of South Minneapolis. Apparently my inscrutable landlady got a phone call from one of my neighbors complaining about the noise. At 5pm on a Saturday. She told me, in response to this, that I am evidently not allowed to "have people in the back yard." Kristina astutely pointed out that we should probably have just celebrated the start of meat season at the erstwhile Boy House. Surveillance of our former home indicates that the people squatting there are an expanded clan of the much maligned tweakers from downstairs, which means they'd be severely unlikely to involve law enforcement, which apparently Mrs. Kafka threatened to do if my crew was not disbanded promptly by 7pm.
I apologize to Noah for whatever mess we left behind, but I have to assume the blow was somewhat softened by the usually sizable amount of food and liquor left behind among that mess. Enjoy, sir.
Incidentally, I'm pretty psyched for Kristina's hot dog birthday party. Stevie is considering dressing for the occasion.
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09:14 pm
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BYOBTRBBQMMIX
Tax Return Barbecue 2009 will be a modest affair. Since my tax return this year was around negative $70, and since I'm only nominally employed for the time being, we're going potluck this year. Those of you who can make things that are delicious, make them. Those of you who can't cook can feel free to give me some cash and tell me what they want me to make.
Use the comments section to tell me and the other guests what you'll be bringing so we don't have 100 bacon-wrapped corn dogs.
I'll be bringing $50 worth of meat (probably mostly sausage) from the Osseo Meat Market. Stevie has volunteered to bring coleslaw, cheese, and I think meatballs.
What are you bringing? (I sort of need a barbecue, too.)
When: Saturday, May 9th at 2pm
Where: My back yard.
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08:31 pm
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If I had a sandwich, I'd sandwich in the morning.
As of 9 this morning, I am re-employed at a modest establishment on the cusp of Anoka County call FirstShred. It's a telemarketing position, basically. I'd like to all to take a moment to say "FirstShred" out loud a dozen times or so, and then ask yourself whether I'm still looking for a job.
My co-workers seem dumber than normal, even by call center standards. It's possible that I've just lost my ability to interact with regular folks since Durkin's closed down.
The upside is that I won't be evicted.
Also, I called a scrap salvage company today called "Metal as Faulk."
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09:13 pm
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An open letter to anyone who has money for people who put words on paper:
I wrote the letter below and sent it to every single publication I could think of. Bold moves. If anyone has any ideas on who else I could send this to, let me know.
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A week ago, if someone asked me what I do for a living, I’d take a breath, roll my eyes, and say, “I’m an associate data export analyst for a mid-sized third party benefits administration and human resources management company.” It’s a terrible thing to have to say out loud, but late last week, I was relieved of that periodic weight on my psyche.
I got fired. The alleged specifics of how and why aren’t really important, and would involve a lengthy explanation of the day-to-day of my previous employment, and the best reaction I’ve ever gotten to such a description has been a glazed look punctuated by a series of glazed, half-hearted nods and grunted phonemes like, “uh huh” and “hmm.” The briefest and most attractive story I can tell you is that the firing had a lot more to do with the economic climate than it did with my performance, and that the distinction between those two motivations is destined to be meticulously documented by the good people at the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance Office.
By no means do I mean to say that I was a model employee. I was, in my most recent position, as with nearly every job I’ve held since I was 16, slightly more than adequate, and acutely aware of the standards of behavior necessary to continue to be viewed as slightly more than adequate. In that series of unremarkable office jobs, I’ve reliably been considered noteworthy only by employees who talked to me on my breaks, not by those who reviewed my performance. I’ve reliably been some variation of “office smart guy,” “office weird guy,” or “office cool guy” for the better part of a decade, but I’ve never been promoted to management or awarded more than a median cost of living raise.
And, not coincidentally, I’ve never really cared. It’s only within the past five or six days, as I’ve been furiously sending résumés and writing cover letters enumerating my many desirable professional traits and hard-won skills invaluable to corporate life, that I realized the root of the problem. I am not in the least bit proud of any of these things.
Yeah, I type about 60 words a minute, I know Excel, and I’ve got experience with enough different proprietary database systems that I can learn yours in a third the time as any of the other candidates. All of that’s awesome, but I’d never mention any of those things to anyone if I wasn’t asking them for a job.
On the other hand, I also have a lot of really compelling things to say about just about anything you could think to bring up. I can write a successful Craigslist ad seeking or offering anything from a midcentury nightstand to a date for the weekend. I can list the locations for karaoke on any given night of the week, and I can cross-reference the list by the availability of a given classic rock artist in the song book and the pitcher specials available. I can mix an Old Fashioned that will change your mind about old-man drinks. More importantly, I can tell you what bowling alleys can mix one that won’t change your mind back. I know the top five ways a restaurant can screw up a Reuben sandwich, and I can tell you which restaurants in town are guilty of each of those transgressions.
And to my credit, I had the foresight to plan things around these skills, at least to the extent that I went to school for journalism before settling into a life of data management and customer service jobs. There’ve been at least a couple of BA’s in journalism at my last three jobs. That seems like a more damning anecdote than it probably is in reality, in terms of my employment prospects, since as far as I could tell from e-mail and break room chit-chat, not one of them could actually write. The issue apparently doesn’t come up as part of most journalism curricula.
I’ve crunched the numbers as accurately as my liberal arts education can manage to crunch them, and I’ve got a few weeks. Between my last paycheck, the cash-out of my accrued vacation, a few odd jobs and the small magnanimities of friends and family, I’ve got a little time to look for a job I really want before I’ll have to crawl back through a series of temp agencies looking for a paycheck. In the meantime, I’ll take anything I can find to earn me a few dollars to delay that day. I’d like a job writing, but I’ll take whatever freelance editing gig or similar drudgery anyone offers me to push back my return to the indignities of the cube farm.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to forward this message to anyone you think might be interested.
Résumé available upon request.
-- Dan Johnson
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