A headline-of-the-day, from the Culver City Observer, to compete with Guterman's recent nominees:

Booty Impressive at USC

Oh, behave.

(Okay, John David Booty has been an impressive USC quarterback. But still.)

So I'm signed up with two temp catering agencies. Neither of them has any work for me. Ever. (Exaggeration: I got one job from one of them, once). I didn't even call them this week. When I call there's no work and when I don't call there's no work, so why bother?

One of them just called me. Whoa.

I spoke with someone who was staying late at the office and, in her frustration at being the only one left in Cubicleland, was a little more forthcoming than the drones I usually talk to. I asked her about the recent slowness. I got an earful about how the economy was "for shit" and this will be the first year in the company's history that it "won't have any growth." (Translation: they're tanking). In fact, she had just gotten off the phone with the head of the company who begged for some good news, but there was none.

Of course a new employee can't expect much in that sort of environment. I guess I'm finally reassured that my lack of work isn't due to my lack of plastic surgery.

Anyway, in just in case the job I "got" back in July never lets me show up for work -- and this is possible, as the economy is even more for shit in software than it is in hospitality -- I'm interviewing next week for a half-time cashier position at an uppity private school. Yes! I want to ring up Steven Spielberg's kid's fries!

Are you wondering why the New Girl got chosen to be part of the pool of candidates for this job when gigs are so scarce? It's because I have cashier experience. Yes, the fast food job I had when I was 18 seems more likely to get me a job than my impressive (if I do say so myself) two-page professional resume. I'm scared. Aren't you?

I just applied to be on Wheel of Fortune.

Elke has five questions for me.

What's the one thing I should know about the recall?
Ay yi yi. I'm new to California and have a lot to learn about the recall myself. To say California politics has some baggage is an understatement.

One basic thing is that, as I understand it, this is an abuse of the recall process, much like impeaching Clinton over his no-pants dance with Monica was an abuse of the impeachment process. Gubernatorial recall was supposed to be an emergency button in case the governor did something really atrocious or illegal . So Davis horked the budget -- that's not treason or larceny. He even got re-elected just last year. His blunders are only being punished like a high crime because of a partisan power play from that schmo Darrell Issa, who decided not to run for governor himself as soon as he saw the futility of competing against a movie star with no political experience.

It's also ironic that the special election, brought about by a screwed-up budget, will cost a lot. Estimates range from $30 million to $55 million. Duh.

You've had quite a few upheavals in your life recently - a move from one coast to the other, a series of jobs in different fields - what, if anything, is keeping you balanced?
a) Taking walks (yes, even in LA...the highways and sprawl don't visually differ *that* much from my previous neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston). There's something about a walk that clears the head.
b) Cathartic music. Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, that sort of thing. I also have a smaller collection of music that's actually relaxing.
c) I've been in the same relationship for the last 9 years, and though he's caused a small amount of the upheaval (uh, hi honey, how are you? :) the good infinitely outweighs the ungood. I've made a lot of mistakes, but it's comforting that I did one thing right.

Writing used to help much more than it does lately. This concerns me.

What's your favorite comfort food?
I try not to comfort-eat, as there's a 20-pound difference between a Jen that stuffs her face when upset and a Jen who goes for a walk or listens to Rammstein (see above). But...Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Most any flavor. When I was in Germany and this wasn't readily available, it was Ritter Sport bars, rum raisin nut.

If you could pick a publication to write for, which one would it be? (You can even invent one, if you like.)
"Publication" probably implies "periodical," but it would be really excellent to write or update a Lonely Planet book.

Thanks for your recent link to The Word Spy! Endless entertainment! I especially enjoyed the Favorite Words. Do you also have favorite words that just melt in your mouth?
I do love slang, idioms, and specialized lingo, so Word Spy is great. I used to enjoy "Jargon Watch" in Wired, too. Douglas Coupland has some neologisms that have crept into my vocabulary (McJob, anti-sabbatical) and some that really should (poorochondria, terminal wanderlust).

I really like saying "Gesundheit" instead of "Bless you" when people sneeze: it's secular, it's a nice souvenir of Germany, and my late grandfather said it (though for him it was Yiddish).

If you must be crude -- and I must -- swear well. "Craptacular" is better than "crappy," "wanker" is better than "jerk-off," "no-pants dance" is better than all sorts of things I could have said about Bill and Monica.

Yes, but what about regular English words found in the dictionary? I'm so verbal that I have to think, in words, about words I like and it gets confusing. But I came up with a few others:
I like -ous words. Gratuitous. Pretentious. Presumptuous. Concpicuous.
Disgruntled.
Cheese.
Ogallala (a town in Nebraska)
Certain -y words. Snarky. Wacky. Tasty. Tipsy. I guess most of those aren't in the dictionary, either. So it goes.

Official Rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Yet another thing about modern American culture that makes me very, very sad.

I'm so bored I'm doing the Friday Five. (Sung to the tune of "Neutron Dance" by the Pointer Sisters).

1. How much time do you spend online each day?
More than I will ever admit in public. Until I'm working again, at which point the number will become much more respectable.

2. What is your browser homepage set to?
about:blank

3. Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?
I've used a bunch, but currently just AIM.

4. Where was your first webpage located?
On the Wesleyan Student Net, a unix box on the fifth floor of a building that looked a great deal like a waffle. My net-geezer pride compels me to mention that this was February 1994.

5. How long have you had your current website?
Since 1998 sometime.

Well. That was, um. Something.

There are nine Starbucks within two miles of my apartment. Fifty-four within five miles.

Jesus.

I'm not doing much lately, so here are some things other people have done:

* Dubya sings "United States of Whatever." Funnier if you've heard the original. Via mbites.
* What swimsuit models really look like. I wondered at first if this was feminist propaganda, but this guy has a whole gallery of other touch-ups, very few of them involving women, so this seems legit. Via Lying Media Bastards.
* Take This Jobless Recovery and Shove It. Via my faithful correspondent Judy W.
* The word for what Arnold is. Learn it, love it.

I keep forgetting to mention a hilarious item I recently discovered: Two-Buck Chuck. It wasn't nearly as funny when it was just "Charles Shaw Chardonnay" or "that $1.99 wine from Trader Joe's that tastes less like piss than you'd think," but then a guy at the homebrew club enlightened me as to its proper title.

Two-Buck Chuck.

*giggle*

Funny even when you're sober, which, believe it or not, I am.

The more I see of new-style West coast suburbs, and the more I read about urban planning, the more I think I grew up in a pretty decent suburb.

1) It has sidewalks.
2) It is small, dense, and mixed-use enough that one could actually walk to things. (Most people don't because it's America, but you *can*). The high school is in the middle of town within decent walking distance of the library, a movie rental place (this may be gone now, though, I can't remember), a pizza place (possibly ditto, but Friendly's is still there), most of my friends' houses, etc. From my parents' house, one can easily walk to the train station, the post office, and a variety of stores including, until recently, a full-service grocery store.
3) There is actual public transit, in the form of buses and trains to New York City and a little local bus so old people could live car-free. (I also discovered about a decade too late that you can take the regional bus to the mall.)
4) None of those surreal country club-ish apartment complexes with gatehouses and restricted access.
5) It housed the entire spectrum of the middle class, so you knew some people whose parents had ample resources and some for whom money was a real struggle. Thus, you went to college with a lot more of a clue than the rich kids from [wealthy suburb names omitted to protect the clueless].
6) No unfriendly, land-wasting McMansions.

On the downside, my high school was pretty pathologically f*cked up, which, in retrospect, was my real problem with the place. Can't win 'em all, but you can skip the reunion.

I use my car for groceries (sometimes, when buying large quantities and/or heavy things) and weekend jaunts. If I ever get to start my damn job, I'll probably walk or bike most days, as it's two miles away. As far as the insurance company knows, I work at home (currently true). Rick takes the bus to and from school every single day.

The fictional but common JoeBob Orangecounty drives 60 miles a day to work, each way, and lives in a subdivision and must drive his car pretty damn much everywhere: the post office, Blockbuster, Applebees, Sprawl-mart, Crap-You-Don't-Need Emporium...

Who has to pay more for car insurance? The people who rarely drive (and who, as a rule, have a lot less money than their suburban counterparts). Why? Because they live in the Big Bad City and Bad Things Might Happen. JoeBob OC, however, parks his high-use car in a gated community full of white people every night, so he gets a cheap rate. Never mind that he drives, like, thousands more miles per week and thus is that much more likely to get into an accident the insurance company would have to pay for.

AAARRRGGGHHHH! Urban rage! City girl SMASH!

I have no answer when people ask me, "How's the new job?" Three weeks later, not only have I not started it, I have no start date. At least my current angst is more Dr. Seuss than John Steinbeck. Let's hope it becomes Scott Adams very, very soon, or I'm in deep trouble.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for a Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

--Oh, the Places You'll Go

The seriously phlegm-addled neighbor with a cough/hack to wake the dead (mentioned earlier) is still at it, leading me to believe that s/he doesn't have a temporary cough but something long-term, if not toxic. It's really awful to listen to.

Serious public service announcement: if you're a smoker, quit. You'd understand if you heard this cough.

Flash mobs may be the most overrated meme of the 21st century. Or maybe I'm getting old and square. Discuss.

To elaborate, I just don't see the point of gathering a bunch of people together to do something random for a few minutes, then disperse. And that's not because I think a "point" must be some lofty goal like a protest or a philosophical discussion. Fun is its own point. It's just that none of the flash mobs I've read about sound like fun to me. It kind of reminds me of when I was in high school, and would get together with my friends and do flamboyantly weird things just to trip out the "normals" who weren't in on the joke. This was loads of laughs when I was 16 and bored, but no longer appealing.

When the embryonic flash mob scene in LA uses the organizing power of the Internet to throw a good party, where you meet strangers for longer than it takes to pull a prank, I'm all over it.

I am absolutely laughing my butt off reading The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. It's his first book, and this is not the jolly guy who went to Australia in In a Sunburned Country. He's 30-something, driving around a country he's got mixed feelings about (the US), he curses more, he's not having that great a time, he's mean. I love it. He starts the book bashing his hometown of Des Moines, confirming my own so-boring-it-was-eerie experience with the place on the road trip. I love his later, kinder bestsellers, too, but this take-no-prisoners approach to hick American towns is refreshing in its bluntness, a love-it-or-hate-it first book with nothing to prove and no established audience to offend.

When this book isn't funny, and sometimes even when it is, it's sad. A disappointed Bryson points out all the ways this great country was, even in 1989, becoming a not-as-great country in ways few Americans were, or are, ready to hear. The Amazon reviewers who hated this book (one wondered if Bryson is, indeed, "from here") probably loved Angela's Ashes. It's endearing and heartstring-tugging to read a naive child's-eye view of the faults of a foreign country, but an informed adult's-eye view of your own homeland's shortcomings is too close to the bone.

___

Okay, the boring parts of the country get...boring after a while in this book. But Bryson also gets more generous. By the end, he's even saying nice things about Iowa. Who knew?