Tag Archives: postaday2011

It’s Aliiiiive!

26 Feb

I’m only two months into this thing and I’m really starting to worry.

You know… about what I’m capable of.

By forcing myself out of my own self-made cocoon of hermit splendor, I’ve put myself in a position where I have to go have life experiences in order to have something to write about.   So to work up the gusto to go do things that I normally would not consider, I’ve begun to use this blog as a shield.

An all-encompassing, no-apologies shield.

I went pole-dancing because I “had to for the blog.”  Think about that. That’s powerful stuff.  When you consider that only a few short months ago, I was huddled in my living room eating pizza and ice cream with StumbleUpon as my only window to the outside world, it’s enormous that I’m armed with something to blame my new social nature on.

Today at work, someone who I don’t know accidently messaged me on Office Messenger, which is linked to all the contacts in the entire network of the company.   The random message appeared on my screen telling me that this person was going out for a couple beers later and did I want to come with him and some dude named James.  I knew it was a mistake and went to close the window so as to not embarrass the poor person any more than he already was.

But then I thought it might make good blog fodder so I told him okay.

I had visions of me just showing up on the town at whatever place this person mentioned because he would be too embarrassed to withdraw the invitation.  I would just go with the flow, pretending to know these people and buying them drinks.  I’d learn everything I could about them like some kind of investigative reporter. 

As it turned out, the fella nipped the situation in the bud and excused himself for having messaged the wrong person and he wished me a good weekend.

But think – I altered my actions solely because of this blog.  That means it’s taking over me.   I might actually be changing into a different kind of person simply because I have to spit out 500 or so public words a day.   I’m deliberately starting trouble to see if I can shake any adventure out of it.  And I still have 10 months to go.

I could turn into a monster in that amount of time.  ♣

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I’m a Big Ol’ Lesbian

25 Feb

Today, my blog is my confessional.

I’m not Catholic, but that’s probably best. I doubt there are any priests who read my blog anyway.  Not after the Vagina Dentata post.

The other night, Dave and I were talking about his “Special Skills”, which is a set of fun little extras at the bottom of an Acting Resume that you hope someone calls you out on in the audition room.  Specifically, we were working through his impressions  – which to date include Zapp Brannigan , Tony the Tiger, Jack Nicholson, Matthew Mcconaughey, and Roger Rabbit.  He does a fabulous Roger Rabbit.   And so of course we got talking about Jessica Rabbit, because it’s impossible to mention Roger without his ridiculously hot human counterpart.   I added to the conversation that I had just seen the sexiest digital rendering of her online the other day.

And that’s when Dave casually mentioned that part of being in love with me is accepting that I’m a bit of a lesbian for Jessica Rabbit.

At first, this claim struck a strange chord in me.    But not because I disagreed.  I totally agree.  I’ll say it loud and proud: I’m a total lesbo for Jessica Rabbit.  Who wouldn’t be?  She’s bangin’ enough to make my grandmother get down with her lady-lovin’ self.    She’s got long red hair, a stick-thin waist paired with a completely unrealistic hip and chest size, and her boobs are so enormous that they’re spilling everywhere and always running into something.

I don’t care who you are – that’s hot.

So yes, I lean a little toward the gay side when confronted by an uber fabulous cartoon sex icon.  It’s not my fault – she comes from Toon Town and her powers are not of this world.

The strange chord Dave’s comment struck in me is that this truth was something he had to accept about me.  As if it were something I wore on a t-shirt that could have been a dealbreaker had he not chosen early on to take it as his burden.

His doe-eyed, smoky-voiced, patty-cake-playing burden.

Of course now he might be able to make the t-shirt argument because I did just announce this to the world here in this moment.  But you know what? I’ve been announcing a lot of things to the world these past two months and it turns out that  a lot of you are thinking the same things.  You’re just not saying all of them because you aren’t forced into a self-made contract to post goop from your brain to a public forum every day.

So I’ve spared you all the time and effort.  You don’t have to think this up yourself – you can just chime in and support me.

Because she’s an irresistable vixen and you know it. ♣

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JACKIE SMASH!

24 Feb

For Valentine’s Day, Dave’s mom did a wonderful thing: she sent us cards and a few gifts to brighten our day.   Unfortunately, the gift Dave received was the beginning of a new peeve for me.

One thing I love about Jeanette (Dave’s mom) is that she is genuinely thoughtful and tries to lend a hand wherever she can.  That’s why Dave’s Valentine’s Day package included a small token of her affection: a key finder.

For those of you who don’t know, this lovely little contraption is intended to be clipped to your keys and emits a high pitched beeping sound when you whistle.  The idea is that you can simply whistle and find your keys wherever they may be hiding.

There are several unforseen downfalls to this brilliance.

The first is that it ruins a long-time favorite joke of mine.  Every time Dave loses something, I tell him to call it – regardless of what it is.  It’s never funny for him, but it’s always funny for me.  Unfortunately when he says he can’t find his keys and I make my staple comeback, he can simply whistle and shoot me a quick glance of superiority.

I hate quick glances of superiority.

The second is that the key finder isn’t too particular about the pitch required to initiate beeping.   So when I’m clinking dishes in the sink, it beeps.  When I hit a particular pitch in my natural voice, it beeps.

The other day, my cats chased each other down the hallway with an unusual amount of gusto and it beeped.

Dave’ s a bit concerned about taking it out places given its highly sensitive nature.   Who knows what could set it off and how inappropriate it might be for the situation at hand.   He can’t live his life in fear like that.

It’s slowly driving me insane.  You would think the solution is easy: we could just take the batteries out or get rid of it.  But it’s actually pretty handy when you need it and Dave and I are still in the process of weighing out whether or not it’s worth the constant annoyance.   And it’s impressive how long we’ll both sit on something we know needs done… not because we expect the other to do it, but just because neither of us makes an attempt to remedy it.    This is the cause of most of our collective downfalls.

There is one thing I love about the key finder.  It’s a  fun game Dave and I play that I’ve dubbed “stop talking”.    The rules are pretty simple: if Dave or I is saying something the other finds disagreeable, we simply whistle.   It’s simultaneously hilarious and maddening.

I’m still trying to determine if this keyfinder is a blessing or a curse to us.  We sure do have a good time with it, but I don’t think it has anything to do with its ability to make keyfinding any easier.   But I’ll admit that after the 5th time it goes off in the middle of casual conversation, I have considered taking a hammer to its tiny, seemingly innocent exterior.

I feel my breaking point quickly approaching. ♣

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Mass Murder in Aisle 3

23 Feb

Why do people shut off their brains when they’re in grocery stores?

I try to be considerate and get the half-cart.  I could get a full-sized one, but who needs all that space and luxury? I’m into efficiency and what’s good for the grocery store environment.  So I’m a good citizen and I get the half-cart.

I appear to be the only one.

I don’t spend a lot of time piddling around at the store.  I know what I need and if I take a moment to reflect, it’s because I’m either comparing price per unit (that little treasure of a calculation listed on the upper right tab of the price that no one else reads) or because there’s been some newfangled product line introduced and I’m trying to stare it down and see if it will buckle under the pressure of my wary consumer eye.

It usually does.

Everyone else seems to arrive at the store as if visiting the museum.  Slow trodding, frequent stopping, and long gazes into the shelves.  The most common obstacle for me is old ladies.  Yes, I’m going to make that awful sweeping statement, because I’m sorry but for me  it’s true.  They have absolutely no regard for people around them, and are always positioned exactly in front of the thing I need. Not a problem – I’m a go-getter.  I simply excuse myself.  But since I do so at a polite volume for the rest of the aisle, the offender is usually unable to hear me.    And I just feel so bad getting upset because they’re so wrinkly and adorable.   Getting to the grocery store was probably the only thing on their to-do list that day and I’m just some yuppie that can’t slow down and enjoy the beauty of the cereal aisle.

Actually, you know what? It’s not just the old ladies.  Let me be fair.

There was a ridiculous couple who took up the entire freezer section today.  The entire thing, I kid you not.  The man had the first (full-size) cart and one kid inside.    He was positioned just slightly left of the aisle’s y-axis.  His wife/girlfriend/baby momma was just to the right.  With another full-size cart and another kid.   Both were strolling along at a solid half mile per hour.  I excused myself but got no response.   The female was much more concerned with making sure the male knew she wanted an ample supply of chitlins for Easter.

There’s nothing like celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with a feast of pig intestines.

I was trying to size up my options for frozen dinners as last minute work lunches but was unable to do so because even after she noticed me, she couldn’t pull her kid away from the section.   He appeared to be stuck to the freezer door.  As she pushed the cart down the aisle and his grip tightened on the freezer door, I stopped to stare at his incredibly stretchable midsection.   He was a genuine Stretch Armstrong.   She continued forward, physical limitations set in, and with his inevitable release came a storm of screaming.

By now, my blood had worked up to a slight simmer.

When I finally arrived to the dairy section,  I was thwarted in my attempts by a middle-aged woman who was overwhelmed by the multitude of yogurt options available to her.   She picked each one up delicately, handling its packaging as if a beautiful gift and pondering the ingredients like a Shakespearean sonnet.  And since I’d already attempted to excuse myself with both the old lady and the couple, I had basically thrown my tactics list out the window.  I tried a new game and parked my cart to observe her, as if watching an animal at the zoo.   Activia….Yoplait…Gogurt…Stonyfield…LORD HELP ME SHE’S READING THE ACTIVIA AGAIN.

Unable to maintain control over my anger, I B-lined toward the checkout line.  I don’t need yogurt.  There are little microscopic creatures inside and it’s always freaked me out anyway.

By the time I made it to the car, I had encountered nearly fifteen unique tests of my patience and use of decent language.

I can’t do this daytime shopping thing anymore.  I told myself it was normal and decided to give it a go again but I just can’t have this sort of stressor in my life.  I should have known not to willingly enter such a heavily populated closed quarter.  That’s the stuff mass murders are made out of.

So it’s back to the night shift for me.  There was a time when I longed for a friendly face behind the register instead of the zombie-like night crew.   I had visions of overflowing produce and aisles clear of stock boxes.   The idea of daytime shopping was like a world of sunshine and lollipops that had to be revisited.

But that was before 5:45 yesterday, when for a moment I entertained acts of violence toward total strangers.

You see?  This is why I stay inside. ♣

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Vagina Dentata!

22 Feb

Ladies and Gents, Happy Lollipop Tuesday.

This Tuesday, I took a reader suggestion.  If you mosey on over to “What’s Lollipop Tuesday” under the comment from “Caitlin”, you’ll find this gem: “Read a book or watch a movie you swore you’d never read/watch”.

This will be great!, I told Dave.  It’s an excuse to kick back and watch a movie!

Unfortunately, I had to be honest with myself and seriously do the challenge.  I had to face something I swore I would never watch.  Something I would have otherwise had to have been held down by brute force with my eyelids taped open a la A Clockwork Orange.  At first I thought it might be a flick I saw at West Coast Video years ago (back when you had to go to the store to rent a movie) called Killer Condom.

But after some hard, honest thinking with myself, I couldn’t ignore that there was a movie I feared far more than Killer Condom: a cinematic wonderland of abuse, pornography, and horror called Teeth.

Teeth is the story of a high school girl named Dawn who gives speeches and organizes rallies for purity.  She wears a red ring to symbolize her commitment to chastity.

It isn’t really necessary because her unicorn shirts are a dead giveaway.

Unfortunately for her, everyone in Dawn’s school really wants to bang a pure girl in a unicorn shirt and so she finds herself faced time and time again with rape scenarios.   But by a stroke of luck, it turns out that Dawn is the proud owner of a case of “Vagina Dentata”.   With its roots in ancient Greek myth, Vagina Dentata is a rare affliction where one finds herself full of teeth on the inside.   Sharp, penis-gobbling teeth.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth, and I’m using anatomically correct terms.  I don’t know how to make this any better. 

I have to admit that when the movie started, I giggled from time to time with the awkward pauses and the poorly timed beats throughout the film.  But as soon as I realized the movie was actually going to show the effects of Dawn’s affliction – complete with chocolate syrup blood and dismembered…members… my smirk reverted into an expression of horror and disgust.

Perhaps my favorite part of the movie was a scene from Anatomy class, where the anatomy of the penis was discussed with pictures and in full detail and directly thereafter the male teacher tries to move on to the female anatomy, but cannot bring himself to say “vagina” in front of the class.  When the students turn the page to examine the female anatomy in their textbooks, they find that it is covered with a large gold sticker, which, when removed, tears the page to pieces.

But that’s not my favorite part. 

My favorite part is when Dawn takes the book home and soaks the page in water, slowly removing the gold sticker and revealing to herself what a perfectly normal vagina should look like.   There is a look on her face of wonder and amusement – as if an entire world lay before her that she didn’t know existed until exactly that moment in time.

Of course, Dawn’s world of wonder and amusement turns out to be more like a world of murder and dismemberment.  

You see, Dawn has a terrible home life.  Her half brother lies in bed smoking pot and cursing his father for marrying his stepmother, thereby making Dawn (the woman of his dreams) his sister.   He lives in hope that she will someday mosey over to his pot den and have sex with him.  

No one can resist a chick in a unicorn shirt.

As Dawn slowly comes to realize that her curse is actually a superpower and that she can slowly rid the world of disgusting, rapemongers, she seeks out scenarios where she can have sex with sex offenders in order to bite off their… offenders. And each and every time, I got to see the after effects of the dismemberment.

I’m traumatized.

I ate a thin mint girl scout cookie directly afterward, hoping that its innate wholesomeness would help restore my mind to a state of purity, but it didn’t.   I now fear that nothing can wipe these visions of lacerated male genitalia or the absolutely awful acting from my mind. 

It was supposed to be a nice, relaxing Lollipop Tuesday.  A reward, even, for my adventurous spirit in last week’s challenge – but unfortunately that was not the case. 

 I’m not sure how many thin mints it will take to cleanse me, but I’m determined to find out.  ♣

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That Good Ol’ Central PA Charm

21 Feb

A poster from the restaurant bathroom. How "charming".

This past weekend I ventured into the rural, Amish armpit of Pennsylvania (a place so dear to my heart) in order to take my Grandmother and Great Uncle out for their birthdays, which happen to be a mere week apart.   Apparently my great grandparents preferred to get down and dirty in the month of June.  Hot, sweaty, old-people-sex June.  Mmm.

This dirty deed actually came up naturally in conversation, as my uncle regaled us with stories of his and my grandmother’s childhood.  He tried to work through how his parents could have possibly had sex given that they shared beds with their children and were never alone in the same room.

But he had a theory.

Apparently, all the kids were locked out of the living room and told that their parents needed to “count the change in the piggy banks.”  My uncle proposed that this was the only time they were alone, and now in his maturity couldn’t figure a reason that such an activity warranted privacy.  Which means it’s likely my uncle was conceived in his very own living room.   Mmm.  Old-people- living- room-sex in June.

It’s conversations like these that put the charm in my Central PA roots.   There’s just one problem with good ol’ Amish country: it’s so friggin’ hard to get my family to come see me.   I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are a number of challenges to maintaining a relationship with a central Pennsylvanian.   Namely, hunting season and Nascar.

My brother was married in October of last year.    Our family was outnumbered by his wife’s family something like 3 to 1.  The reason?  It fell on October 23rd, which happened to be the last statewide anterless deer hunting day for junior and senior license holders.  I know this to be the reason because my family is known for its painful honesty, and when I called the missing RSVPs they confirmed my hunch.

My brother soon had to face a harsh reality that his extended family would rather take their youngins to bag their first deer than celebrate his nuptials.    As his best man (yes, his best man), I spent a great deal of my time before the wedding emphasizing that this wasn’t a testament to how unimportant his wedding was, but rather how important deer hunting was.

It’s a specific and necessary distinction.

NASCAR’s a toughie too.  My uncle said that yesterday was the first time he’d been invited out for his birthday.  But he quickly noted thereafter that it was a sacrifice for him to attend given that he was missing the Daytona 500.  Specifically, the Daytona 500 on the 10th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Without sacrifices such as this, I would never be able to see my family.

And to think – I would have never known what “counting the change in the piggy banks” really means. ♣

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The Mystical Properties of the Shamrock Shake

20 Feb

It’s Shamrock Shake season.

I passed a McDonald’s today that had some generic nonsense on their sign about a new burger.  This is unacceptable.  The only thing that McDonald’s signs should advertise during Shamrock Shake season is the fact that it’s Shamrock Shake season.  I don’t care if Justin Bieber has offered to do a live concert inside the PlayPlace ball pit – Shamrock Shakes trump all.

Even the Bieber.

Perhaps they don’t advertise them too much because they’re already so popular.    I mean let’s face it – a milkshake made out of leprechauns practically sells itself.    And leprechauns are magical so there’s a good chance that imbibing as many Shamrock Shakes as humanly possible during each season will yield some sort of magical effect on your body.  Which is why I think we’re all buying so many.

At least that’s what I’m holding out for.  Is it just me?

Unfortunately, my body is getting older, slower, and fatter.   And as I make my graceful transition from Princess Leia to Jabba the Hut, I have to start paying attention to things like cholesterol and fat calories and stop eating foods that are only one molecule away from plastic.   And since it has recently come to my attention that a leprechaun milkshake clocks in at about 500 calories for a small, I have been forced to face a harsh reality:  I must either drink far fewer than would allow me to glean their magical properties, or I must only drink Shamrock Shakes and nothing else throughout the Shamrock Shake season.

I think I’m gonna go for the latter.

If I get a little exercise, I can rock 4 Shamrock Shakes a day, which I think might be enough to at least get a slight supernatural sensation in my fingertips and toes.  I know my body will get absolutely no nutrients from such a diet (perhaps a miniscule amount of calcium), but I think that if I start to develop magical powers, it will be a fair trade.   And I’m taking my super-awesome-take-2-a-day-horse-pill-vitamins so maybe that will give me enough nutrient goodness to keep me alive.  Because it would be a shame if I put in all this dedication only to have a slight glow emit from my casket upon my too-soon death.

So if the posts stop coming at some point between now and St. Patrick’s Day, google me.  There’s a solid chance you’ll find an article about a girl who died too young and some speculation about the supernatural state of her body upon death.   I will be suspect to a variety of investigations, but none will reveal the source of my never-before-seen powers.

Only my loyal subscribers will know the truth. ♣

My sparkling future.

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I Think My Dad Is a Drug Lord

19 Feb

My dad. Basically.

I think my parents are selling drugs.

Now I know what you’re thinking: didn’t I just do a post exploring the hunch that I might be a drug mule for Marge, the cleaning lady at work?   The answer is yes, I did.  I won’t deny that this is perhaps too  much fascination with drug running in too little time.  But I have ample evidence and I’d like to make my case.

I’m visiting home this weekend for the first time since Christmas and have found a number of interesting additions to the household.  There’s a new, fancy garbage can that lets itself down easily,  an authentic, antique sewing machine, which hides away in a desktop (complete with paperwork), and a freezer chest.

Apparently my parents have such a constant superfluity of meat that they require a freezer chest to hold it all. 

There are only two of them and they still have enough meat to warrant this purchase, so that gives you a sense of how much meat I was eating while I was growing up.   That may have something to do with why my weight hit triple digits in 6th grade.    I haven’t seen a single digit pant size since.  I can’t help it – I was raised on delicious animal carcass.

There is no way they can afford these things without my dad being a drug lord.   My family has been poor my entire life.   Don’t get me wrong – we were blessed with a number of lovely half-houses and I never went to bed hungry (though the same couldn’t be said for my parents).   Growing up, my brothers and I used to joke about how awesome it would be to have milk and cereal in the house at the same time.

I remember this ridiculous attempt my parents once made to help cut down on grocery bills.  Their plan was to allot each child a grocery allowance and we could only eat the food that we bought throughout the day.  Dinner was covered by them. 

My brothers were 3 and 7 years older than I, and at the time I think I was 8.    So naturally I bought bread, peanut butter, and jelly.   One of my brothers brought home three loaves of bread and an enormous pack of deli meat.   He ate nothing but ham sandwiches for two weeks before my parents noticed the inherent flaw and cancelled the grocery allowance strategy.  It’s one of my fondest memories of childhood.

So you can imagine my concern today as I step into my parents’ home to find all these newly acquired conveniences.    My mind cannot compute how they can possibly afford this unless they’re involved in dirty, grimy drug money.

I imagine my father would be the brains of the operation; my mother is far from intimidating.   Suddenly it’s all starting to make sense that my dad is so antisocial and refuses to use ample lighting in the house when he’s home.  He’s a hulk of a man and has fists that could pound a tunnel through a mountain.   These are all clear marks of a drug lord.  Then again, as I sit here writing this I notice that he has also spent this alleged drug money on a new stack of Wii games and is currently playing Epic Mickey.

I’m not so sure that being into a Nintendo game featuring a Disney mouse setting things right in the world with a magical paintbrush quite fits the profile. ♣

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Please Stop Talking With Your Mouth Open

18 Feb

I yelled at my car radio today.  I yelled right in its face.  I even went to honk my horn until logic kicked in and I realized that doing so was even less effective than screaming at it.

Nothing in this world makes me want to tear off my skin, pick up a shovel, and beat the tar out of someone quite like blatant displays of ignorance.   Far worse is the crime when it’s done in mass media.

Local radio  is the worst.

If someone wants to post some undeveloped, overly confident thought through a media outlet online, that post is subject to a great deal of public criticism.  I have the ability to repost it with mockery attached, comment on it, or to even contact the writer and give them a piece of my mind.

If someone wants to state something similarly moronic on television, it’s heard around the world and not only will it damage the network’s ratings and credibility (Fox News, anyone?), but it will also be fodder for late night television hosts for weeks to come.

However.  If a local radio show gets some hot shot in the seat who thinks they understand the way the world and people work and wants to use the microphone as a soapbox for his personal (and might I say infantile) opinion, it is just not as easy as I would prefer to hold that moron accountable for the uneducated poo he spews all over society.

My peeve of the moment is with a local radio station, which featured a talk show host who was discussing the concept of the right to life.  His argument was essentially that those who dwell in the world solely with the purpose of extinguishing others should not be awarded the right to life.  And though I think there are a few misguided principles imbedded within that perspective, I respect where he was coming from.

Until he kept talking and I realized the context in which he was speaking: The Christian / Muslim debate.

Ugh I hate the Christian / Muslim debate.  I shouldn’t say hate.  Hate is a strong word.  I strongly dislike the Christian / Muslim debate because it’s usually being had by some extremist Christian who doesn’t actually have any concept of Islam.

This was the case inside the intangible world of my car radio.

Unfortunately, this gentleman was questioning the basic right of life in the case of Muslims based on the fact that all Muslims want to kill us.  They want to kill us all until we’re dead and eat our babies and bomb our playgrounds and things.

And try as I might, all the screaming I could do was not enough to make him stop spewing his uneducated poo all over the radio.  People could actually hear what he was saying. People heard him!  Heaven forbid he actually might have swayed someone to his perspective.  The idea of that really keeps me up at night.   Somewhere out there is someone who isn’t very bright and is very easily swayed by entities that are seemingly well-informed and reputable.  And somewhere out there, that person might have just turned his ignorant little heart against any practicing Muslim he meets in the future.

Muslims who set out in their lives solely to kill Christians are a lot like, I don’t know – “Christians” who try to sell magical vials of holy water in infomercials.   Just because a portion of a population with a labeled identity do a certain thing does not mean it informs the identity of the group as a whole.   To make a sweeping statement as violent as the concept of not having a right to life and apply it to the entire population within that belief system is a sort of ignorance that really just gets up my butt, makes nest, and keeps me in a downright foul mood.

So I screamed at my car radio.  Because there was no dislike button, no comment section, no reposting, and no ability to publicly mock  him.    And since I was unable to call in and give him a piece of my mind (because after all, I’m driving), I felt helpless to save easily-swayed minds from his moronic grasp.

So here’s to you, idiotic radio shot host: may you be blessed to have an experience with a peaceful, practicing Muslim (shouldn’t be hard since they make up 1/5 of the world population) who makes you feel like a complete imbecile for your poo spewing.

And when you do, please air a narrative of your enlightenment. ♣

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A Series of Unfortunate Events: An Interview Tale

17 Feb

Job interview

I almost walked out on an interview yesterday.

Believe me that when I say “almost,”  I’m referring to the necessity for me to calm my nerves and firey rage and remind myself that I am a child of God and that He loves me and doesn’t want me to morph into a tornado of fury.

Allow me to gently caress your brain up to speed.

A few days ago, I received a phone call from a friend/colleague of mine from the other universe in which I dwell : theater and film.   Let’s call him Fink.  He works for a production company and mentioned to me that they were hiring producers and were specifically looking for females or homosexuals.

I happen to be the former, but after a bit more prodding, he revealed that it was most likely temporary and during the day, so I told him I wasn’t interested, had a day job, and was thankful for the call.    5 minutes later, he sent me an email telling me that he was going to put in my name anyway.

This is how it began.

By the time I got home from work, I got a phone call asking me if I was interested in coming in to interview with Fink’s company.   I can’t help but take a moment to note that this receptionist did not give me an address, the position they were hiring for, parking or arrival instructions, or any other pertinent details.   I blame my failure to notice this on a) the fact that I already knew where Fink worked and didn’t think to ask, b) It was something like 5:17 and my brain had already turned off and c) because I take for granted that people are competent in the roles assigned to them.

Isn’t this just one big mistake parade?  This is fun.  We should do this more often.

Over the next few days, I was a big blob of confusion and panic.  I was out of my element and had no experience whatsoever in the field.  I wanted to cancel the interview, but didn’t want to make Fink look bad, and didn’t want to burn a bridge with the company.  In addition, every single person I talked to told me to go and just use it as an opportunity to just meet them.  Tell the truth they said.  Interview THEM! they said. At least it’ll be good blog fodder they said.

Actually, that last one was me, and it’s becoming quite a hindrance to my decision-making skills.

So I went.  The front of the building had a key pad and a locked door, which was not discussed in my call with the receptionist.  Luckily, I was let in by an employee who was also stuck outside.

After being led to a conference room with 3 interviewers, I am given absolutely no new information.  I am simply asked what I’m looking for there today.

I explained that neither Fink nor the receptionist gave much detail so I just know I’m here on a referral and that they’re looking to hire for a position.

After I opened the floor for explanation, there was silence.  Absolute, stone-cold silence.

So I decided to hand them the resumes I prepared for such an occasion – the first my work resume and the second my “production” resume, which was really just a resume with 1 film, and a ton of theater credits.   (Read: absolutely unrelated).

I told them my story, and explained in what I would like to think was a genuine, friendly, and lighthearted manner the situation in which I found myself at their office, noting again that I still wasn’t sure what they were looking for but that I thought it would be silly to not come in just to meet them and see why they called.

My implied question was again unanswered.  Instead, I was asked where I saw myself in 3-5 years.

After realizing that I had absolutely nothing to do with anything, all three got up and left, two of which left my resume on the table.

Which is no small gesture.

On their way out, they mentioned something about someone else potentially stopping in.   I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I sat and stared at the resumes returned to me, and decided to gather my things.

And then Smee came in.   I made a comment that I was abandoned.  Smee said it was 5pm and what did I expect.   I wanted to tell Smee to go put something somewhere uncomfortable or get a receptionist that’s competent enough to not schedule me if I can’t be seen, but I didn’t.  That’s when Smee asked me to tell him why I was there.  I told him he missed that speech already.

He was not amused.

That’s when I thought hey.. whatever.  Let’s do this.  A few short days ago i was trying to sexily hang by my ankles from a pole – I can handle this. So I did the shpeal again, gave him one of the returned resumes, and ended it with jazz hands.    That’s when he asked what I thought they did there.  I said that Fink mentioned commercials.

Smee went out of his way to assure me that commercials were only 10% of what they did.  And that they actually did marketing and recruitment videos and that I could have gotten online and checked out their stuff.  Smee made sure to let me know that I didn’t do my research (using those exact words, actually) and that maybe after I did, I could come back and let them know I did and maybe if they’re hiring interns sometime, I could work my way up to something after slinging coffee for a few years.

This is when the tornado of fury started gathering momentum.

I’m not sure why these people were all not under the understanding that they called me. I’m not sure why every single one of them failed to mention what the position they were hiring was.

Smee said some off-handed comment about how he didn’t really know what they were looking for, but probably something more like production and squeezed in that note about doing my research on the company again.  And then said he guessed he was the last to see me and have a good evening.

So I went to the elevator, absolutely enraged.    Every little BOOP!! that it spit at me on the way down tapped on the too-thin layer separating my body from completely being consumed by angry hellfire.

I skipped lunch to make it to this interview.  I decided to be fearless and turn it  into a meeting opportunity.   I thought that maybe I should just stop being a cynic and just show up and see what happens.   That for once in my life, I should just relax and not prep for 5 hours, especially when I did not seek this opportunity on my own.    I went out against my own cynical nature and thought that maybe there was a hidden prize in all this nonsense.

I’ll tell you what: there is a prize.  It’s a big fat whack in themetaphorical testicles and a good healthy dose of degradation.

Turns out cynicism has its perks. ♣

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