When you say, " ... "

What you really mean is that there is something that just doesn't seem quite right about this guy, like what you were doing is what everyone does, which is to get all the ink and paper information straight, to make sure there is no glaring reason to dismiss the very idea, which you don't expect to find given that the recommendation came from someone you both respect and admire, someone you love and to whom it caresses your self respect to make honor-bound promises, bound as it is to the notion of appearing favorable in her eyes, but to see if you have a good feeling about him, and to feel out a rapport. Were you to analyze what that feeling would be comprised of you might say that for starters Is this a person that 1., others will draw a favorable impression from?, and 2., Would others look more favorably on me by contextual association? But a rapport eludes you because he is taciturn and vaguely arrogant, and his attempts at friendliness feel as if they are projected through a thick shell of self loathing, though such specific characterization of a person is not among your particular arsenal of deductive faculties, and you allow yourself to become distracted following a perfunctory goodbye, assuring yourself that you will examine the scenario further when you have some time to dissect the conversation, say, or at least contemplate that one specific moment when he somehow tipped you off balance and you felt rather vulnerable, which surprised you; but the right time takes its time coming and before long the initial unanalyzed impression becomes the definitive one, and when it comes time to make a real decision you find that you have already come to the conclusion that it just wouldn't be a good fit, again without specifically articulating to yourself why but confident enough with your instincts and in the end the comfort afforded to you by at least this much power over the events that coalesce above the roiling chaos of world to formulate your life that you need not complicate it further with the elements of sincerity that would lead to any reason other than " ... " .

Rejection Slip

I got one from McSweeney's today, and how about that, it's a nice little post card, with a personal not of encouragement in sloppy handwriting from the editor. And it only took five months. I'm going to hang it up on my refrigerator.

So it goes

Vonnegut, you will always be my favorite human.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

...

"My late Uncle Alex Vonnegut, my father's kid brother, a Harvard-educated life insurance agent in Indianapolis who was well read and wise, was a humanist like all the rest of the family. What Uncle Alex found particularly objectionable about human beings in general was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.

He himself did his best to acknowledge it when
times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in
the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and
Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, "If
this isn't nice, what is?"

I myself say that out loud at times of easy, natural
bliss: "If this isn't nice, what is?" Perhaps others can
also make use of that heirloom from Uncle Alex. I find
it really cheers me up to keep score out loud that way."

Shop Local, Pt 1.

I'd never temped before, but I had a friend who told me this place was looking for someone and I'd been out of work for about three months so I figured I'd give it a shot. So I went to their website and spent like 45 minutes filling out this really serious profile, and uploading my resume, and then I gave them a call and they told me to come in and take a few tests. One of the tests was a typing test. The other two were to be like the exact same tests I had to take to test out of the one and only class in college that I really just couldn't stand, the only class I ever withdrew from, "Foundations of Computer Applications." This is also the only class I failed in highschool, resulting in a summer grounded to the neighborhood. I just can't make myself give a shit about computers.

But I have to admit that I was somewhat stoked for the typing test. I like typing and am somewhat proud of my typing ability, being that it's a skill I forced myself to learn in recent years, and the opportunity to test myself was attractive. As it turns out, though, I can type plenty fast and accurate when I'm writing whatever I want, but the tests require that you retype something already written. The difference in my resulting word count was pretty severe, so I figured I'd better practice. I pulled up the clock on my computer and waited for the second hand to hit the 12 and then typed as fast as I could until it went around full circle. I must have done fifty separate word counts. Around and around and around went the hands on the clock until I realized that three hours had passed. I had a hard time believing that I'd been doing that for three hours, but there it was- the hour hand used to be over there, and now it was all the way over there. And all in all I didn't get any better, and in fact I did way worse on the test, by something like 15 words I think.

But they hired me anyway. Ten dollars an hour, doing data entry at a place called Shop Local. You know, those junk mail ads everyone gets. Yeah, that. My job was to import information from pdf ads into a database. I was never really clear on exactly what that was doing, but I'm pretty sure it was so the information popped up when you settled your mouse over this or that particular image. Anyway, the idea was to do it FAST. They wanted some really heroic productivity, so I had to keep myself jazzed on coffee all day long. The end result was me sitting in one spot for seven hours at a time, listening to music and clicking my mouse like a maniac. After the first day I did pretty well, and so they gave me 35 hours. I picked an early shift and happily settled myself into a routine.

The main thing to be happy about, at this point, other than the fact that I got to listen to music while I was working, which was awesome, was that after 330 I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to without being preoccupied. Three months leading up to this point I'd felt stressed out or guilty if I was doing anything other than looking for a job. And four years previous to that I'd been in school, which meant that if it wasn't summertime I felt stressed out whenever I was doing anything other than homework or studying. Now that I was getting up nice and early at the same time every day I could just find a seat on the train and crack open a book and forget about everything for duration of the commute for once. And I could watch a movie or play video games or go out for a beer when I got home, and hey no problem.

So that was nice.

After a couple of days my stop, the intersection of Lake and State, proved to be the Central Nexus point for what appeared to be the entire city's white collar working population. A savvy red-line rider, for example, would be sure to board the third to last car, because the doors opened right at the base of the escalator. Unfortunates aboard other cars found themselves on the outskirts of a groggy sea of under-caffeinated commuters rocking laterally as they oozed to within visual range of the bottleneck.

Outside, people from the brown and green line trains spilled out into the street as well, and swept eastward toward Michigan Ave. I’d seen the mad rush of businesspeople’s bobbing heads dramatized on tv plenty of times, but even though I’d lived in Chicago for a decade I'd never used Lake regularly or at that hour, so this was all new to me. At the corner I waited five people deep for the light to change, in a herd that spread out eleven to fifteen people wide. A new layer formed every thirty seconds or so as people joined us, like continuous drops of oil joining a pool. When I realized that pretty much everyone was headed into the same building as I was I found myself doing little things to reinforce my individuality to myself, like swinging my arms out like a kid pretending to be an airplane, or tightroping the potting partitions in the courtyard leading up to the revolving doors, beyond which a doorman greeted everyone with a smile and a “Good morning,” which for the first couple of days I returned with a nod and a smile of my own until I noticed he never looked me in the eye, as if he’d guessed (correctly) that there was no way I was going to last longer than a week.

DJ Butthole

Do you guys do this?

I'll be thinking about whatever I happen to be thinking about, and because like most of you I'm sure I am spending most of my days within arm's reach of the internet, and in particular google, a phrase in my head will strike me interesting and I'll google that exact phrase in quotes just to see how many hits I get. Like I was thinking the other day about boats, for no other reason than just because I happen to like the word 'Boats' right now, and the phrase 'boats for shoes' came into my head, and it seemed like such a ridiculous and random thing I had to wonder if anyone else had thought to articulate exactly those words in exactly that order, and all I had to do to find out was to google it in quotes. So I did, and I got 12 hits, one of which was for a lyric in a song by a musician called David Haykan.

And speaking of muscians, or non musicians, I don't know many djs but I tend not to hold them in very high regard, unless they are spinning for a good hip hop group. But I saw (was forced to see) an ad for some dj on myspace, and was reminded of how I think dj's don't help their case by naming themselves DJ This or DJ That. I think it sounds pretty silly, like a rock band naming itself Rockband Genesis, or Rockband Survivor. Along that line of thinking I started wondering if there was a DJ Butthole on the internet somewhere. And guess what? 7 hits.

I Miss Working at the Library

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on 3 We shift on 5
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

I am the grabber, my paws are wide
I grab seven books at a time
They make me sneeze by their dusty hides
Whether fiction, reference, or true crime!

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on 2 We shift on 4
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

Me, I’m the passer, from ye t’thee
My arms spread about like a seagull
I try to keep pace peripherally
My givin’ and takin’ be equal!

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on one We shift on all
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

True, I be the placer, the last in line
I have the sharpest vision
Keep’em in order, that duty be mine
And measure with cardboard precision!

We shift We shift We shift We Shift
Between our games of chess
I’ll Grab!
And I’ll Pass!
And I’ll Place!
And I’ll Grab!
For how long? Well, it’s anyone’s guess!
The books are stacked and carts are oiled
Except for the ones with the wheels
Take yer places! Prepare to shift !
Let’s earn our extra meals!