Glossolaliac

Feet the size of watermelons would make anyone cranky

I'm a little slow sometimes, but one of the things I should have learned from the Dead concert is that when you are one week from your due date and nine and three-quarters months pregnant (see, they don't tell you it's really 10 months) it's probably not a good idea to go out and do something with a bunch of people, no mater how much you want to and no matter how much you would normally think such a thing is fun.

Because when you're standing up at a soccer game for 90 minutes and all of your extra blood (50% more than a non-pregnant person) pools up and your feet swell to the size and color (inner color, that is) of those little round watermelons that you get from Hermiston, Oregon, and they are just one big throbbing ball of hurt, well, you will find yourself full of hate for every skinny bitch in the stadium and watching the clock hoping it's over soon and picking a fight with the squeaky bitch next to you who won't shut the fuck up which then leads you to get up way too early the next day and wax sociologic on manners, all of which is more of a pain in the everything than it would have been if you had just stayed your ass home.

It's possible that this may have contributed to my general crankiness.

This is the lesson. Stay home. Put your feet up. Don't talk to anyone.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

That question may have been relevant ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, though it was never all that revealing. Fact is, at the rate technology is changing now, nobody knows where they'll be in five years and anybody that pretends to is lying.

What were you doing five years ago? Did you think you'd be here?

An interviewer asking such a standard, unimaginative, pro forma question reveals far more about the job than about the applicant. The question, couched next to, no doubt, "what are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?" shows only that some HR person once read some HR manual that began with an example of questions that ought to be asked on an interview. And that's as far as they got.

These are useless, because they are neither related to the job at hand, nor to the applicants' ability to perform, and their very asking shows disrespect for both by distracting from any information that might actually be helpful. Better questions would relate to specific job situations, examples and actual experiences.

This, by the way, from the job interview at which I was in less than peak form, and from which I have not yet heard, but about which I'm privately stewing, and regarding which I think the interview was bullocks.

I have no idea where I'll be in five years. Neither do you.

I rather like it that way.

Manners

Shame used to be the strongest form of social control. Now neither shame no social norms have much value because nobody ever says anything when people are stupid and annoying in public.

Except me of course.

Hubs thinks I'm being rude. I think I'm preventing the (pandemic) spread of rudeness by calling it what it is.

So few people have any manners these days, let alone customer service or the consideration to be considerate. Morons run their mouths off, let their kids run wild, throw their trash out the window and laugh when old ladies have to stand up on the bus. This is a social disease, and it requires a social solution. People need to know when their behavior is inappropriate, otherwise they'll just keep doing it.

Who appointed me head of the polite police? Fuck it, I did. Now stop acting like an asshole and show some manners.

Opposing inertia

A wise man once told me:

When you're great, meditate. When you're down, move around.

Good advice.

Me do communications good and stuff

Crap.

If you have a choice, probably scheduling a job interview for the week before your due date when you're brain is completely not working and you've forgotten how to speak in full sentences and hormones are wreaking havoc on your everything is maybe not such a good idea.

It's the brain not working things that kills me. Yep, great job, wonderful people, I had notes and a plan and ideas of what to say and then I'd try to start talking and the words just wouldn't come. This is not a problem I have ever had before. Usually I can talk my way into or out of anything. Which makes sense when you're in communications. What doesn't make sense, and really rather makes you look bad, is being flummoxed by ums and unable to find the right word. I managed to pivot into some decent answers and end well, but the starts were all stuttery and this was definitely not me at the top of my game. Oops.

I hope (oh please oh please) this is some kind of universal star alignment letting me know that perhaps this is not the right job for me. Or, alternately, if they decide to hire me despite my inability to talk like a grown-up, that it is totally the right job. I guess we'll find out. Thanks, universe, for making me feel like a blithering idiot.

At least my hair looks nice.

UPDATE 6/1/09 3:30pm: I did get called back for a second interview, so I'll go ahead and take that as a sign that I was not a total moron. For my next trick, I'll do my best to maintain that air of "not a moron" for at least a couple days.

Feel like making love

You start with the horny sexy love that gets you pregnant in the first place. Then there's the horny hormone love that makes you an orgasmic machine for some time in the second trimester. Then, eventually, you reach full term.

And you're fat and frustrated and sick of being pregnant, and you read Ina May and fall victim to web research and see that orgasms release oxytocin and semen is chock full of prostaglandin and isn't it neat and symmetrical that both of those things can speed labor and maybe what got the baby in will get the baby out.

So perhaps one day at full term you wake up a little horny, and think, well, perfect, we'll just hit all kinds of birds with this boner, c'mon baby let's make love.

This seems like a good idea at the time.

It doesn't take much time to prove that it's not.

Pretty much immediately your circumference gets in the way, and you can barely reach your hoo-ha, and you can't look at your partner let alone your parts because of that wide circumference, and the few positions you can manage to finagle your expanded ass and abdomen and loosed ligaments into either pushes or pulls or just feels funny, and god forbid you overextend something or pull a muscle, and you are actually knocking on the front door of a small child and that just seems psychologically awkward if not overtly Freudian and, well, the whole thing is just kinda weird.

At that point, it's probably best to give up, take a shower and agree to never speak of this experience again.

Ok. Who wants breakfast?

Morning playlist

I'm sure this is the fault of that awful Prius commercial, but it's still a great song. Bellamy Brothers, "Let Your Love Flow."

Why is it always 70's and 80's songs that I wake up with?

Business section: Big brains for sale

I read the Sunday NYT Business section. And then I read our most recent Wired magazine. And I realized that the latter is far more effective at describing, debating and predicting business practices and trends than the former.

More directly, a recent conversation with friends turned on the economy and business and bureaucracy and the fact that about a quarter of the people I know are unemployed. These unemployed friends of mine are also very smart, with big, expensive, educated brains and 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever version we're on now sensibilities. I believe there's lots of 'em out there in this particular demographic. Which might just lead to more innovation, an involuntary (but effective) entrepreneurship, helped along by the fact that old-fashioned top-down vertically-integrated bureaucracies are, well, old-fashioned and not likely to survive in the era of crowdsourcing. (Er, beyond not likely to survive, they are already failed or failing.)

This article from Wired on revamping the auto industry agrees, as do, I'm sure, countless start-ups and unemployed smart people.

There are lots of big brains out there (plenty of them in the heads of moms, by the way, who would love to work/stay at home for some time) just looking for a place to plug in that will give them the flexibility to do it on their own terms. Whatever companies can allow that openness and flexibility and tap into those brains will gain access to a remarkable competitive advantage, in better products/services/outcomes and more (quantity) happier, more loyal workers, who are then more likely to push buzz and promote the company.

It seems obvious. I think it's happening now. (BTW, my big brain is also still available.)

American Idol sucks

The world does not need another pseudo pop star.

It blows my mind how many people watch and love this show. How many more people think it's important to vote for their fave contestant versus voting for, oh, a politician or ballot measure or anything that actually matters.

Yeah, I get the American dream thing. It's like sports for glee club dorks, look, kids, work hard and play your cards right and you can be a superstar!! Rising from nothingness in nowheresville, we'll put you under the lights, make you attractive, give you an auto-tuner and a record contract and all of a sudden you are living the dream and sucker kids everywhere want to be just like you. Because this is America and you can do anything! Yeah, part of the purpose of shitty TV is to impose such hegemonic crap on the masses, keep them dumb and contented, and boy is American Idol good at that.

And yet it still sucks.

It sucks because it so obviously plays the dream for all it's worth, and it so doing it cheapens and commercializes real hard work and really playing by the rules. It sucks because of the fake drama and the exaggerated storylines, of the contestants and the judges. It sucks because all reality shows suck, because entertainment ought to involve people who are prettier, smarter and better than you instead of the same shit you see at the supermarket. It sucks because the singers suck, technically, musically and in pretty much every way, they're not that talented, and you just have to look at their longevity to prove it.

So yes, American Idol sucks. Depite it all, people still watch. And so it will probably keep on sucking for many years to come.

I'll just keep on being disgusted by it.

Morning playlist

Because some days are like this. And not in an ironic trying to be cool and make fun of the 80's way, because fuck it you're a child of the 80's and you know damn well that Steve Perry has some serious pipes and you know you know all the words and will sing it loud when no one is looking. So sing along.