Quodlibets

2008 and I are OVER!

I hate 2008.  I mean, hate.  PURE HATRED, people.  I'd like to boycott this year, though I'm not entirely sure how that's possible (I do seem to be trying hard, though.  I've been writing 07 on every due date slip today.  On accident, I assure you.), but if you can figure out a way, will you please let me know?  Good, thanks.  Here are some reasons (and I don't care if they don't seem that big of reasons.  They're enough, ok?)

• We will have to move.  There's no way around it.  We can't afford our centrally located, spacious apartment on our salaries.  It's freaking me out.  No one likes to move.  Moving itself is expensive.  But it must be done.  We MUST find a cheaper place.
• My tax return was sad and pathetic.  You know how they're always talking about the lower end being squeezed by taxes?  And the people that benefited from Bush and Co's tax cuts weren't the little people?  IT'S TRUE.  My tax return was almost 100% better last year.  The economic stimulus might help, except that oh snap! I won't get it until July because I have to mail in my taxes because oh snap! the IRS is fucking with my employer.  Believe you me, I could have used the money from a bigger tax return.  I had plans for that money, and now I have no plans.  No plans.
• Work.  I don't want to say too much, but that whole thing that I was dealing with back when I stopped blogging is an ongoing thing, and it's making. my. life. a. living. hell.  You might think I'm a drama queen, and I might be, except NOT IN THIS CASE.
• Money.  This is part of the moving thing and the tax thing, but this whole tanking economy will esp. hit Sam and I hard.  Especially if he loses his job, which to my understanding, could very well happen.  The retail sector is gonna be one of the first things to take a massive hit as gas prices keep going up, and food prices keep rising.  (Am I the only one who's noticed this at the grocery store?  Our grocery bill is way higher lately, and I don't think it's because we're buying more stuff.)
• I seem to be getting sick.  While this in fact might be just a symptom of this week sucking (and oh my stars, how it has sucked.  In fact, today has been bad enough for one week's worth of badness.  However, I've had 3 other days of suckness this week.), I am going to chalk this miserable week up to the miseries of 2008.  2008 is out to get me.  I know it.  These continual bad days and weeks are just proving it.
• Small things:  We can't afford for both of us to fly to CA in April to visit Sam's friend's new baby; I suspect I won't be able to afford a trip to New York to see Yalie ordained; my car insurance payments went up; the commute is starting to kill me; my vision plan only pays for contacts every OTHER year, and 2008 ain't it; my skin is getting increasingly tetchy; and you know, etc

I know I've been bitching a LOT lately, but I'm going through a pretty bad run of luck here (except in Scrabulous!), and every time I think, you know, I can handle this, something else happens and I'm left reeling again.  Don't worry; things aren't exactly dire yet.  I do, however, stand by my statement that I hate 2008.  2008 can't go fast enough.  At least get me to August and November, when the vacations are.  That might change the trajectory of the line on the graph.

The Wake will be next week

In sad news, my iPod appears to be dying slowly.  I don't mean dying as in charge running out; I mean dying as in forever gone away.  In the last two weeks, I'd say that I have had to reset my iPod an average of once a day.  Some days, I don't have to reset it at all, and other days three times or more.  The problems seem to be legion--not playing when I press play (no movement of the times), not turning off when I pause and lock it, thus running down the battery, no sound at all (coupled with movement of the times, so it appears to be playing), not lighting up or charging when I plug it into a dock--and vary from day to day.  Some days it's one problem, some days it's multiple problems.  The last week has been especially bad, requiring a reset any time I want to take it out and listen to it. 

If you have an iPod, you understand that this is NOT normal behavior for one of them.  Resets shouldn't be necessary except for every once in a while.  Sam thinks re-installing the software might help, but I'm pretty fatalistic.  This is, after all, a machine that's two years old.  It gets heavy, heavy use.  Some days it plays for 10 hours (2 commuting hours, 8 hours at my desk).  It bangs around my purse all the time, and even though I've got it in a hard-shell plastic case, it's still getting banged around. 

Obviously, I would rather not have to replace it.  I will if I have to (there is no earthly way I could survive commuting and desk time without an iPod), and there is a little bit of excitement at the idea of having a fresh, new iPod Classic.  At the same time, I think if you've got one, you can understand the dread that comes from the thought of having to rebuild your iPod.  All my playlists are saved in iTunes, of course.  Except they're from the last time I had to rebuild this iPod, which was....ages ago.  At least a year and a half ago.  Anything that was added to the iPod since that time isn't saved anywhere, which means I somehow have to remember it, and add it.  It's not the worst thing in the world, because this time I'll add those things to the playlists and those will be updated again, but it's not the best, either.  It's tedious, and it's kind of sad.  There will also be some issues with figuring out if I have to deauthorize the last iPod so the bought music will play on the new one (Goddamn your DRM, Apple!).  It's all rather icky to think about, so I'm trying not to right now.  Writing the blog entry?  Not helping, clearly.

Annnnywaaay, it's kind of sobering to realize how attached I am to that little sucker, because the thought of losing it does fill me with some sort of loss.  Not just the loss of the make-up of the thing, but actual loss of that actual iPod, as it's served me so well, and bears an inscription that I'll never best.  I think I might actually get the same inscription on the new one, though that feels kind of weird.  We'll see.  Maybe I won't need a new one (though Sam doesn't appear to be too hopeful about the survival of the current one, even with his software fix theory), and maybe this'll all be pushed back 6 months or 9 months or a year (because let's face it, it will eventually need to be replaced.).  I'm still going to have to rebuild the thing, because when you wipe it off and restore the software, all the music goes too.  Thank god I'm sort of in between audiobooks, because losing my place in one of those would be really bad.  Anyway, I'll post an obit if it's really dead.

Be Skinny! Men LOOOOVE It!

Have ya seen these:

The tag line for these ads:  "Forget about it.  Men's preference will never change.  Fit Light Yogurt."

These ads are possibly some of the most revolting I've ever seen.  Not because of the pictures, which I actually think are quite beautiful, especially the gorgeous, gorgeous (and probably, sadly, airbrushed) girl laying in the roses, but because of the tag line, which makes me want to hurl and scream and throw things at whoever approved this ad.  It's not an American ad, so you're not going to see it here, thank god. 

It's just that old thing rearing its ugly head: fat girls can't be pretty and they can't look good and they only eat decadent full fat yogurt.  (Of course, full fat yogurt is SOOOO bad for you, and will immediately pork you up.  Ha.)  It's just so galling that someone thought these images would be revolting to men....or did they?  Possibly they're just trying to make girls find them revolting, which isn't hard to believe at all, because I think women actually fear and hate fat more than men do.  Sam's never, ever made a peep about me that way, and in fact goes out of his way to adore me and compliment me and it's me who hates my body, not him.  This ad, actually, is extraordinarily effective, because it skews how women think, making them believe that men find these images revolting.  Which come to think of it, I'm not at all sure they would.

It's pretty sad the head job that's being done on women, making them feel fat when they're not, making them feel ugly when they're not, and in general putting an artificial pressure on them to look like an anorectic.  I fight it every single damn day, and I'm fighting against society and myself, but you know, I'm not fighting against Sam, or most men even.  I don't have any reason to believe, astonishingly enough, that men wouldn't find me attractive just as I am now.  Only I think I'm an ugly piggy.  These ads?  Feeding that.  And it makes me sad.

More (and more intelligence) on this at Feministe and Pound.

Too Little Credit

I just finished a book that's scared the everloving shit out of me.  It's called Maxed Out, and it's essentially about how BAD credit cards, banks, the government, credit bureaus, etc are.  It's a complex thing, and I can't really wrap my head around how it all fits together, but I think the basic point is that slowly, over a period of years, Congress has stopped making laws that protect people, because they like the money from corporations too much to stop them from preying on people.  It's hard to know where to even start with a topic like this, because a) there's so much to say and b) I know so little about it to begin with.

We're in debt, as a nation, and as individuals, and far from encouraging us to NOT be in debt, the country and the corporations want us to be in debt.  Credit card companies don't want you to pay your bill off every month, and will resort to shady schemes to make sure you don't.  Credit bureaus aren't interested in truth, and the credit score is a crock of shit that has nothing to do with how much you earn.  Let me repeat:  your ability to get credit has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you can eventually pay for everything you bought on credit.  If that doesn't strike you as fucked up, perhaps you need to think about it some more.  Credit card companies (and banks) mostly make money from people who DON'T pay things off in a timely fashion.  Someone who carries a lot of debt is attractive as a client, because they'll keep accruing interest and so on.  People who suck at banking will keep incurring fees and charges, and this is good for banks.  It's really, really screwed up.

And the national debt?  Thanks, GW Bush and co. for fucking up my future.  Maybe you don't think about it all that much, but the people who are loaning us that money are going to want it back.  And guess who our biggest lendors are?  The Saudis and the Chinese.  If that doesn't worry you a bit, I'm worried about you.  The debt is scary.  It's scary because one day, things like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and all those other social problems that ARE GOOD, are not going to exist, because we're going to be sending boatloads of money over to the Saudis and the Chinese.  And whatever you want to say about it, how the debt has kick-started the economy, or something, whatever.  It's untrue, because it's a kick-start and a healthiness that's based on a deck of cards that's going to fall down at some point.  The economy is only healthy because people spend more than they earn, every year.  We don't save any money anymore.  You can say what you want, but all our government has done (every single fucking one of them, Dem or Rep.) is put more money into the hands of the filthy rich, and even more money into the pockets of greedy greedy greedy corporations. 

It's going to eventually lead to something bad.  It really will.  Of course, maybe those that got us into the predicament won't be around.  But we will, and if we have kids, our kids will.  Is this what we want?  We're leaving NOTHING to the future, nothing. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that so much of what drives people into debt are emergencies--lost jobs, medical problems, deaths--because we don't save.  People file for bankruptcy because they get sick.  People get fired (some economy, eh?), and can't afford their house or food, and have to pile those things onto their credit cards.  It'll most likely be impossible for those people to pay that money off.  Ever.  And of course, now we've started punishing people for doing what the government wants them to do by making it nearly impossible for them to discharge their debts through bankruptcy.    Let me repeat:  Is this the kind of place we want to live?  Where the rich are sitting pretty with three houses, five cars, and more money than they know what to do with, and yet where the poor can't even afford to have an illness treated with antibiotics?  That's where we're going.  I mean, hell, we're already there.  We should be ashamed that we allow our elected officials to behave this way.

Every Friday Morning at My College Library

Every single morning, someone from campus food services brings over two carafes of hot, fresh coffee to replace the stale, cold coffee from the day before.  She also brings an assortment of fresh baked goods, and sodas and chips to replace whatever has sold the day before.  This happens at approximately 8:32 every morning; the library opens at 8 a.m.  I have this conversation with the same student every Friday:

Him:  I'd like coffee and a muffin, please.
Me:  Okay, but the coffee isn't fresh yet.  It's still last night's coffee.
Him:  *stares me down, like his eyes boring into me can make the coffee suddenly fresh*
Me:  I'm sorry, but the coffee doesn't come until 8:30 or later.
Him: ..........
Me:  Do you want last night's coffee?
Him:  *snidely* I guess I'll have to go where the coffee is fresh.
Me:  Ok.  Sorry.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad if it didn't happen EVERY goddamn Friday, but it does.  I've told him the same thing EVERY Friday, and every Friday, he seems to hold it against me, as if I'm telling the food services lady to not come until later, so that he then has to go to the coffee bar in the student center (a nationally recognizable coffee chain that serves the exact same coffee we do), which is literally less than a minute's walk from here.  And the worst part?  It's not like he actually wants to be in the library, because he doesn't come back on Friday mornings.  I see this kid in the library all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  But not Fridays, because after we have our coffee discussion, he leaves, and doesn't come back all morning.  I presume he's stopping in here to pick up coffee before class, but what I don't understand is why he doesn't just stop at the student center on his way to class.  Buildings here?  All about two minutes walk from each other.  The student center is also centrally placed, as student centers usually are. 

I'm telling you, if I have this conversation next Friday, I'm going to scream.

The Flu

I think a workplace is unhealthy when unhealthy employees feel so compelled to come to work, they'll risk getting their coworkers sick.  The stomach flu is sort of making the rounds here, and today one of my co-workers said that her child was throwing up yesterday, and she wasn't feeling so hot, and yet, here she was!  At work. 

I've never worked in a place where it was okay to be sick, and I've also never worked at a place that didn't ration sick time like it were the most precious asset on Earth.  And I've read article after article about how fatigued and sick employees actually cost their employees money.  And no employer I've ever known has encouraged its sick employees to stay home.  It pisses me off, because I don't want to be sick anymore than you do, but by coming here, to the workplace, with your germs and diseases, you're putting all of us at risk.

I've seen employees being reamed out for taking sick time, or for asking to leave work early because they were sick.  It's never happened to me, but then again, I'm minus sick time (like, I have to earn my way back to 0 hours of sick time) because of my illness in December.  I'm working under the assumption that as of right now, if I get sick, I can't take sick time.  I'd either have to come to work sick, or stay home without pay.  I can tell you right now that any day of the week I'm staying home, because working only seems to make me sicker, and I have enough respect for my job and the people I work with to not bring my disease here, and spread it around.  I don't think my work is the same when I'm sick, either, and I hate doing shoddy work.

(And you know, I'm not talking about mental health days, or just plain cheating.  I think that you can generally tell when someone is sick, or has been sick.  You know, when they're coughing up a lung in their office, you can be pretty sure that something's not right.  Or when all they're eating all day is chicken broth--yeah, that makes you suspicious that something's not right.  In fact, it feels to me like the people who are actually getting sick are paying for the people who aren't, and who are using sick time as personal time, thus making employers reluctant to be generous with it, and reluctant to be nice to their sick employees when they do make it back to work.  It's another one of those blanket rules that harm the good people.)

Either way, I think I'll reach the zenith of my working life when I work at a place that doesn't treat getting sick as a personal failing, which as we all know, it's not.  Sometimes people just get sick.  It'd be nice to know it wouldn't hurt me professionally.

What I Saw

I'm un po' hungover, so I'm going to keep this short.  But I just have to write this down somewhere.  On the way home from an overnight at my mom's, I saw an INSANE car crash at the 90/94/290 junction.  I say that I saw it because S said he didn't see it.  It's very possible I watched the whole thing in my rearview mirror, but I don't remember now. 

A maroon police-looking car (it wasn't a police car, but of that make, you know what I mean) veered from almost the farthest left lane to exit onto the Dan Ryan.  I'm not sure if he hit the PT Cruiser, or if the PT Cruiser was veering to miss him, but I watched the PT Cruiser crash head first INTO THE GIANT WALL on the far right side of that five lane part of the road.  I'm not sure how fast they were going, and I'm not sure how bad it all was, because I was watching the road too, and trying to not crash because I was watching. 

But still, it was FUCKED up.  I mean, crazy.  I've never seen anything like that before. 

I hope those people in the PT Cruiser are okay.

My Job

I've generally avoided talking about my job on this blog, because I don't think it's the best policy to do so.  I'm going to try to talk about it here, but obliquely, because I'm incredibly frustrated with the way things are right now. 

I miss retail.  I miss it every day, and I miss it in almost every way possible.  I miss the speed and the constant moving.  I miss feeling challenged, because I don't feel challenged here.  I miss interacting with people who wanted to know what I thought of CDs and books, who solicited my opinion specifically for advice on what to buy.  I miss recommending things.  Mostly, though, I miss working with people whose motto could be "All for One and One for All."  I miss being part of a team.

There's no such concept at my workplace.  People are very territorial.  What's my job is my job, and what's yours is yours.  I pretty much don't care who is doing what, as long as it is getting done CORRECTLY.  But I never speak up to correct co-workers here, because I'm afraid of them.  I'm afraid that they'll interpret my desire for things to get done right as some sort of encroachment, when all it is is a desire to avoid complications later.  And I know that my fear is borne out of reality, and that it actually is this way, because in the beginning, I did say something, but it's just bitten me in the ass far too many times to be worth it now.  I honestly cannot EVER remember feeling that way when I worked in a bookstore. 

And if I needed help with something, it didn't feel weird to ask someone for it, as it does here, and if I wasn't busy, it didn't feel weird to do someone else's work, if they had too much of it.  Those kinds of things NEVER happen here.  Every man for himself.  And it's little things, too.  If the doorbell rang at the bookstore, and you were the closest one to the door, you answered it.  Here, it's one person's job, and when I answered the loading dock buzzer this morning, my co-worker got huffy about it.  I mean, I was standing RIGHT NEXT TO IT.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Beyond that, though, I'm one of a few people in this building who has her hands in all the pies.  I do a little bit of everything, and it doesn't bother me to do so.  I like it.  I like knowing that in a pinch, I can cover either desk--reference or circulation--and that if I really had to, I could copy catalog.  I like knowing all the circ functions, and all the cataloguing ones.  I like having my hands dirty.  But NO other person in this building (save perhaps a couple of department heads) feels the same way.  Most people look at circ with disdain; one person even said proudly that she didn't know how to check out books, and she didn't want to know.  I mean, shit.  Really? 

It's such a bad attitude.  It completely negates the idea of team, and furthermore, makes it very hard to enjoy your co-workers at all.  Maybe I expect unrealistic things from this place, because I came from a place where everyone pretty much how to do nearly everything, with some small specialties here and there.  Most people could help out in a pinch.  I liked that.  I came to depend on it.  I came to depend on my co-workers, and I liked that they could depend on me. 

The thing is, it sucks when it's one-sided.  That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned in the 11 months I've been here.

Maximum Xmas enjoyment

Did anyone see the footage (on the news, I would guess) of the incredible back-up on 88 last night?  All because the outlet malls at 88 and Farnsworth opened at midnight to offer deals.  Sam and I had wondered who in the hell would shop at midnight on Thanksgiving, and I guess the answer is, all of Chicagoland.

I don't shop on Black Friday.  I did go to the grocery store to get a roll so that I could make a turkey salad sandwich (delicious, by the way; not quite as tasty as chicken salad, but an able stand-in) and drink some D to the C, but that was the extent of my venture into the shopping world.  S works retail, and I talked to him around one.  He said the store was very, very slow; his workplace isn't in any sort of shopping district, so I can't imagine many people are flocking there.  For the three years I worked retail on Black Friday, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I almost liked it.  Retail is a pain in the ass when people are assholes and you're busy, but there is an adrenaline rush to working that kind of rush.  It is what it is.

In fact, my nod to the Xmas season is the growing pile of ornaments at my house, and the Xmas music happily playing on my car stereo.  The tree is going up this weekend (and here is where we get Maximum enjoyment--I like to have it up as LONG as possible.), and out my window I can see wonderful Christmas lights every night already. 

I shop online more and more, because I'm looking for unique things, and I find a LOT of cool stuff online.  I don't know that I would venture out to stores anymore at all if it weren't for the fact that one of the things I want to buy S is very much a tactile purchase.  I'm hoping to get that done by Tuesday morning.  In fact, I'm hoping to have all my shopping done within the next week or so.  Not sure if that's a reality, but it's a goal, anyway.  I probably won't meet it, only because of the stocking filling.  That shit is a pain in the ass.  But a fun one, I guess.

So yeah.  Turkey eaten, Xmas here.

Willfull ignorance?

Is Bill O'Reilly fucking insane?  I think so.

South Dakota, as you know, has voted to outlaw abortions unless the mother's life is in danger, which is never the case, because you can always have a C-section and do those kinds of things.

Forty-five percent of Americans, according to a new CNN poll -- 45 percent say all abortions should be outlawed unless the mother's going to die -- or catastrophic health consequences, which again, is never the case -- never.

Because clearly, these statements are patently lies.  Look up pre-eclampsia or eclampsia, or ectopic pregnancies.  These are things that kill pregnant women, or mess up her organs, or put her into a coma.  If those aren't catastrophic health consquences, I'd like to know what Mr. O'Reilly thinks is a catastrophic health consequence.

I just can't believe the man would say something like this.  I want to say that it's some sort of crazy disregard for women, or a willful ignorance of science, but I really think it's delusion, the kind of delusion that warrants locking up.