The sun came out.

I write this lovely little I-love-a-rainy-night missive and two hours later it's Blue Sky and Sunbeams. Ruin my day, why don't you.

It's been a wasteful little afternoon. Which is good because I have the time to waste. Both Miller Greenhouses and BDSI websites are complete, and the proposal for the Felician school isn't due for a week. Time is, for a change, at the moment, on my side.

The weekend was well and good enough. thursday was Thanksgiving, which is one of those "eh" holidays for me. It's a nice four-day-weekend, but that's about it. Dinner with friends of the family, all well and good, but I never felt any strong identification with a jinogistic holiday. I don't even like the parade. Seriously, I don't get the parade. Floats and balloons and marching bands; I don't get the appeal. maybe if there were sword fights. And orgies. Wild carnivorous animals loosed upon the crowd (Just imagine: rabid tigers tearing through a crowd of unsuspecting toddlers, their dying screams a welcoem respite after endless hours of their whinning about the Spongebob Square Pants balloon). Now that's entertainment.

Yesterday was Contempt.

I think it's time to put away the Goth Card. I mean, I was never more than a poser when it came to the Goth scene. The little music I own from that style is no less than two years old. Really, the only appeal is seeing all the women in their dark eyeliner and lipstick wearing bodices and corsets. I was at Contempt, surverying the dance floor--not even on the egdes this time, instead watching from the level above--and it occured to me that despite the attraction to the fashion and a minor interest in the music, it doesn't do anything for me. I have more fun going to Breakfast Club.

But we'll see. Philadelphia beckons and who knows who I will meet and where I will go. I may find a good crowd and a good club and become a regular. I was talking with Mia about one last QXT's trip before leaving, and I still enjoy The Loop, and one doesn't need to be hardcore Goth to enjoy the scene. Perhaps, geography notwithstanding, I think it's merely Contempt that I'm done with.

Friday was the big day, though. Friday was Vist The New Apartment Day. And guess what, gentle readers (all five of you)? I've got pictures. Complete with audio commentary--er, verbal--er, written--commentary, that is:

	Firstly we have my lovely apartment from the outside. Look to the lower right, that's mine. You really can't see anything from here, and that's OK. The view is utterly unrevealing, although I think the building itself is nice and nifty and modern and beats the pants out of Brookdale. So bask in it's modern niftiness.
	This is the view, more or less, from the entrance. You are looking at, mostly, the living room. Yes, that's a sliding door which leads to the patio. I am, as you may or may not know, a semi-basement apartment; half the apartment is below ground, this is why the winodws look a tad odd. The winodw on the right is weird; it's like half a window, I can't say I'm crazy about it. But there's enough space just right of it for some sort of decoration. The pink blinds are not staying.
	My dining room. The chandelier is not staying, which I am happy about because only one bulb works on it. These pictures are deceptive in one way: they don't adequately show just how much light comes into the apartment. I was there from 12:30 until 2:00 and the place was bright. Being half-submerged I had visions of the "inside" dorms in Blanton Hall where it was akin to living in a cave. Happily my new apartment will have no such connotations.
	The view from inside the dining room looking back into the living room. I'm pretty sure my entertainment center will end up directly opposite the half-partition, with the couch up against the partition. I've hated having my TV directly across from a winodw--during the day I can barely see the TV. Granted that's because the blinds aren't thick enough and we never bothered puttign in curtains, but that's not the point. the point is I don't think the entertainment center will be going on the wall to right. On the other side of that wall, by the by, is the kitchen.
	The Bedroom. The door you're looking at leads to the walk-in closet. My one worry is, after throwing my comicbook boxes into said walk-in, whether I'll have access to the closet to get anything else I'll be storing there. If you were taking this photo you'd be right in front of the window, which explains the shadow on the floor. The computer will be in the bedroom again. There has been the possibility of keeping it out in the apartment proper, but spacially I don't think it will work. But as I will have a smaller desk this time 'round, and as the comics will be away and as the room is perhaps a foot smaller than my current room, I don't forsee this being a problem.
	Ah, the kitchen. Look at those cabinets! There's more off to the left though you can't see it. And though it's hard to tell from the picture, that stove is pretty brand-spakin' new. Digital, no less. Decent size refrigerator. Plenty of counter space. And yes, that black box to the far right is The Dishwaser. Awwwwww, yeah.
	And this is the dishwasher. It is a God, and must be--and will be--worshipped appropriately. Bask in its self-cleaning glory. there is a God, and its name is Whirlpool.

I spent an hour and a half measuring the place. On graph paper. To scale. Dear God does this place have room to spare. And the outlets! I have four outlets in my bedroom alone! Central air, wishwasher, a modern electrical system ,carpeting--holy shit; have I been living in the wrong place or what??

Of course, the work is just beginning I still have to play around with where my existing furniture will go, then worry about where I'll put all the stuff that I have to buy. I'm making a concerted effort to get this place decorated. As I am lacking the necessary five pairs of gay eyes, I am enlisting the hetero-girl brigade--namely Kate, Aline, and now Mia; and any other woman with discerning decorative acuity. I figure between the three of them I should be able to have an apartment with a modicum of style; have them do all the work and then I'll take all the credit as I show off the results. And I get to do the bulk of it during Christmas Shopping Season. Moo hoo ha ha ha.

But, still, all is in the readiness. I revisit my lovely little Shangri La on Wednesday to officially take posession; I'll probably do a little shopping while I'm down there (I did take the whole day off; no sense in wasting it.)

Now all I need is a job so I can afford to keep the damn place.

Did I miss the memo that Monsoon season has started? It's positively Bibilical out there. I haven't seen a deluge like this in a while. It was so bad the damn weather woke me up ten minutes before my alamr--and seeing how I'm only on about four and a half hours sleep, I'd say the wind and rain would have to be pretty severe to pull me out of my dreamstate.

There's flooding everywhere. Everyone piled their leaves close to the drains so naturally everything's clogged, ontop of the obscene amount of rainfall. The road into Brookdale Gardens sin't so bad, but the corner leading to the paringlot in the back is mostly submerged.

I took a second shower just putting my clothes into my car. My trenchcoat is now a drenchcoat, I think there's five pounds of water soeaked intop it; I'm hanging it to dry in my shower.

It's a throughly miserable day and I'm practically elated. I love the rain, I love torrential downpours, the way your entire field of vision is obscured by vertial lines. I love the sound of drops pounding the road, the roof, the cars on the street. I love making a break from building to car, thinking if you run fast enough you can avoid getting soaked; but that's really part of the fun. If it was ten degrees warmer I'd put on some short sleeves and go for a walk; it's relatively warm for this tiem of year--temps are firmly in the 50s--so it's almost worth taking a stroll as is.

It'll be a great day for staying indoors, a marvelous end to the extended weekend. Make some breakfast, have some hot chocolate to pamper myself and take the slight chill the aparment always has once the end of the year sets in. Watch a DVD or three (our cable's out so normal Boob Tube watching is, alas, postponned. Hope we can get it fixed in time to watch Gilmorew Girls on Tuesday), catch up on some cleaning and updating.

Yay rain.

Well, it's official: I can't wrap presents worth a damn. Not that this is breaking news of any sort, but I'm wrapping up this gift for some poor kid (part of a thing my office is doing) and I just can't get it right. Bad enough the child is poor; once she sees my wrapping job she's going to need even more therapy.

I'm wrapping up two sets of Strawberry Shortcake pajamas. This is a sentence I never thought I would ever write. It was utterly curreal; there I am, in my black pants, black trenchcoat, eyeing the clothing in the childrens sleepwear department, looking for Strawberry Shortcake. I felt like a pedophile on a training mission. How do people do this? What's with this whole "kid" thing anyway? Life would be much easier without them. Granted, life would be non-existant but any objective look at the world today would show that the idea is not without merit.

Regardless, the clothes were relatively neatly folded and then no-so-neatly wrapped. I have bought Strawberry Shortcake pajamas and I alone have lived to tell thee.

So I'm looking for a job now. Only four weeks or so behind schedule. But what the hell--I thrive on the urgency. My motto is: If there's eneough time to get it done then there's enough time to wait before getting it done. I dunno, I like the panic, the urgency, the fact that it HAS to get done NOW. Take work for example: I've got time to do the report? Eh, it can wait. I have to get the report done in an hour? I'M ON IT, BABY! Some people like drama in their lives, I like having a 24/7 adreneline rush.

So the apartment is mine. Stoney Run got the signed lease this morning. I'll be driving down on Friday to check out the actual apartment I'm living in, at which point I'll undoubtedly think I've made some horrible mistake, which will only verify that I'm on the right track. Then I'll drive back down on Wednesday to sign the lease and officially take posession.

I've spoken to a few moving companies. A bit more expensive that I was hoping, mainly due to the extra time to travel between apartments, but feasable. I'll be running numbers tonight and tomorrow to make sure it's doable.

I learned today that my severence pay will come as one lump sum. This blows because having a weekly paycheck makes budgeting so much easier. Plus there's a mental relief knowing that, even unemployed, I still have money coming in on a regular basis. Having one lump sum means it's all in the bank, and that bank account will only decrease. And I think it screws me on taxes, but I have to check that; I believe the percentages are the same regardless and the difference is largely negliable.

It's very interesting. Today marks one calendar month before I leave. It was sort of an afterthought; work is still busy and as long as I can get the OT, I'm working late to make as much money as possible. But even so, the iudea that there's just "one month to go" isn't sinking in until now.

The mood at the office has stabilized, which isn't saying much as the mood at the office sucks. But people have had the weekend to digest their employment-end-dates and they've made their peace with it--even if "peaceful" is the absolute opposite of what they're feeling. (I could call them "termination-dates" but as one's getting blown away by Austrian bodybuilders quipping "hasta la vista, Emerson" I just can't bring myself to call it that.)

Ugh, it really is depressing to think about. On to other topics:

I'm closing out Bright-Matrix's fiscal year. How surreal to think that not only do I co-run a business, but I'm the bookkeeper. Mike may soon regret having me take over these responsibilities. I'm learning Quickbooks the utterly ass-backwards way; right now our checkbook is, like the writer of this blog, severely unblanaced. (So happy together.....) Though this is due more to the fact that I haven't reconsiled the payments our company has made. Of course, had I inputed the information properly to begin with, I wouldn't have to twist the system into kinda/sorta doing what I need to do to correct the problem.

Eh, it's only for government taxation purposes; it's not that important.

My December is already booked. I have inventory Dec 4; the following weekend I have to start finding furniture for my new apartment (shopping during Christmas Season; frabjous); the 18th is myt Bye-Bye-Boolfield Party. Ironically, I finally get to crash on Christmas, though with it being on a weekend I'm sure I can find a dinner to crash. And that Sunday is my Official Move Day.

Ugh, I gotta run; more to write later....

. . . .er, OK, OK, I'm a bit late. I'm sorry. Sean bought Halo 2 on Sunday and tonight I started playing the game . . . and could not stop. It's worse than Friday when Fortner brought the game over and Sean, Fortner, and I stayed up 'till three thirty in the morning playing deathmatch (admittedly, we did have a three hour break from 11 - 2 when we hung with Kate and Traxx, but that's just inicdental). And granted I didn't expect Ryan and Dave to become so possessed with killing each other (in true brotherly-love fashion) when I showed them the original Halo on Saturday. these things just sort of happened.

So, um, this whole job search thing isn't going. At all. I'm trying. (Sort of.) The resume's ready and everything. But sitting down and looking for jobs? Mmmm--not so much.

I am not freaking out as much like I was yesterday, though. For one thing, I talked with Stoney Run about the lease and I'm starting to hatch a schedule, working around the impening friggin' physical inventory. And I confirmed with Matt that I could take the last three days off in December, making my actual end-date Dec 23.So this gives me more room the breathe.

Oddly, this comes in contrast with my company officially announcing the closing of its Totowa branch in March on next year. The president of the company came down to mmet everyone and have a big speech at 2:00. His big speech essentially boiled down to: "High, it's nice to meet you, you've all done a wonderful job; you're all being let go." Rather put a downer on the afternoon.

Not so much for me, of course. I was in the loop when the original plans called for an October closing. And I have my lovely severance-pay-parachute waiting for me come 2005 so I'm in far better a position than most in my office. But as I sat and talked with and listened to my co-workers, it was impossible not to feel devastated. For one thing, this has been my job for two and a half years, and for all the bitching and snipping, overall it was a good place to be with a good group of people. And most of my co-workers have families--or have just begun them--so my heart goes out to all of them as they try to figure out what to do next.

But, as I said, I have my contingency plans in place. I have a feeling the next month isn't going to get prettier in the office--that surreal state of working and doing your best even though you know, at the end of the day, you're going to get kicked to the curb, regardless. But that's not 100% true. Matt offered me the ability to move elsewhere in the company. i know I'm not the only one who was given that offer. People that worked the hardest were recognized and given an out--perhaps not the best out, but still a way to keep their job. Those that just punched the clock day in and day out . . . well, they just go out.

Eh. Enough dwelling on inevitabilities. I want to go to bed. Tomorrow I have some things to show you--including the floor plan of my lovely new apartment. Which Kate had agreed to help dfecorate as she has style and I do not. Aline is game as well. Let this be a lesson to you all: when it doubt, leech of your friends.

Ugh. I'm tired. And ut's almost midnight (another twenty-minute-or-less-post, thank you very much) and my thoughts are kinda drifting. Better to come back tomorrow refocused. Provided the Call Of The Halo doesn't pull me away.

Really, I will be looking for a job. Trust me. Waiting 'till the last second is what I do best.

The apartment is mine. This would be wonderfully good news save for the fact that today my boss informed me that we have to have a complete physical inventory in December. You know, the kind that blew my mind out of the water back in August. And the one day that's most viable is Dec 4. You know, the day I was planning on starting to move into my new apartment. Which gives me, really, only two weeks in December to move in. Only the 18th is my Bye Bye Bloomfield Party, so I really can't be down in Maple Shade setting up my new apartment because, oh, look! I have a party to prepare for. Meanwhile it's November 16 and, wouldn't'cha know it, I still haven't finished my resume. I've worked 'till 6:30 for the last two nights in a row and I see a very strong possibility of a threepeat. I come home from work to spend an hour or two working on my web design clients.

This is the part where I Officially Start to Freak the Fuck Out.

I didn't plan on writing this. I had planned a lovely little sem-rambling entry about how Halo 2 has addicted Sean and myself, and how I addicted Ryan and Dave to Halo 1. But noooooooo, I have to Start Freaking the Fuck Out instead. Because I have very little time to get everything in order, because it's mid-November and in two weeks I'm doing another God Damn Physical Inventory, which means I have to spend another week of late nights putting the results of said inventory into spreadsheet format so I can get this all done Just in Time to Leave My Job and Never Have To Do This Again.

And my phone is ringing.

That was my Grandma. Aw.

Anyway, I have to go now. I had dinner and took an hour to watch Gilmore Girls. Now I have to do web work and polish my resume so I can somehow find time to do other web work and then look for a job. After working overtime to get all my responsibilities at my office accomplished. And I just learned that since Hannukah starts on the 8th--or 9th--or something--that I have to be at my folks on Sat the 11th. the same night as my office Holiday Party. Which I was joking thinking of skipping in protest of haning to do this fucking physical inventory.

Believe me when I say: "GGAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Ouroboros doesn’t really mean what I take it to mean. But I saw the symbol long before I learned what it symbolized; to me, the thing that struck me was the idea of repetition, of cyclic fashion and, ultimately, self-defeat. After all, the snake that devours itself ultimately kills itself, or cannot, as in order to complete its digestion it would turn itself inside out, rendering complete digestion impossible. To me, there’s the connotation of only being able to go so far before being stuck; a paradox of attempting what can never be completed; the ultimate symbol of repetition. To an extent, that is what Ouroboros means. It’s actually the symbol of the cyclic nature of Life, a Western version of the yin-yang. My view’s just a tad more pessimistic. (quelle surprise.)

This Blog is becoming dangerous to my health. My Silent Friend Who Witnesses All is the smart one. She made the conscious decision never to use names. Names have power, and she is more aware of the consequences of that truism than I--or at least more worried about the repercussions. All her subjects are carefully code-named, ensuring that no one who casually comes across her blog can decipher who she’s talking about. I may name-check Setec Astronomy, but she takes its sentiment to heart, and she’s all the safer for it.

I, on the other hand, blithely use full names, or at least first ones, and provide enough context to allow almost anyone to connect the dots. Thus my boss, Matt, was able to learn about my Blog, reading it the day after I made a lengthy post about how I was excited to be moving ahead with plans to leave the company. A year or so ago, a guy named Anthony P. Ciravola wrote me wondering if my friend Tara Ciravolo was related to him because I accidentally misspelled her last name as “Ciravola”. And I got a huge scare a few months back when I wrote a lengthy description about a dream involving my co-worker, Brenda, and (of all things) the movie The Godfather; the next day, during the course of an e-mail conversation with her, she asked me if I “figured out the connection to The Godfather yet”. Fortunately she was referring to something else, but the coincidence was unsettling, to say the least.

Thus, four paragraphs in, I come to the point of this entry: Shara Litowitz, and my accidental haunting of her.

Last Friday I received a very odd e-mail. It was from Troy Lokitz, who I apparently went to High School with. I didn’t remember him. When I looked him up in my yearbook, the face didn’t jog any memories . . . although, really, I don’t even recognize my own High School Senior Picture. (I had a mullet for Chissakes! A mullet! OK, granted, I didn’t even know what a mullet was at the time, but I still had one, and, dammit, that’s fucking embarrassing.) And let's pause to note the irony in my not remembering a person talking to/about me in a familial manner; turnabout isn't just fair play, it's mandatory.

Anyway, Troy wrote to me and he asked me five questions. This was in reference to the ”Personal” section of My Unemployed Life where people could ask me any five questions and I would answer them. How did Troy find my site, how did he know that the man behind that site was a guy he went to high school with?

Well. Troy is friends with Josh Bernstien. Josh told Troy to check out Reunions.com. When Troy did this, he saw that Shara Litowitz was listed, and he decided to google her. (He googled her through Yahoo, though, not Google. Which odd, especially as I am using the word “google” when talking about Yahoo, but I digress again.) If you go to Yahoo and type in the name Shara Litowitz, you will find that the search engine returns six links.

Two of them are mine. One of mine is the number one link.

The first link is not my fault. It’s Ryan Pearlman’s. When he submitted his five questions to me--and please keep in mind we’re talking about something that happened in 2002, and I feel it is important to realize that time, as always, is a factor--he asked me who I preferred; Shara Litowitz or Liz Loennecker. You can read the whole thing here; it’s question #2. If it wasn’t for him, I never would’ve written the thing, which incontrovertibly confirms who I’m talking about, and thus I wouldn’t be in this mess.

Anyway, I knew that, even when I wrote that answer and posted it online, theoretically, the site would be indexed by spiders and that, possibly, if someone did a search on either woman’s name, it would bring up that link. (High note of irony: since the HTML page in question has no META tags, the page is titled under the first words listed on that page, which are “Ryan Pearlman”. Which means, with a little luck, people will think he’s the one to blame for this mess. And, of course, he is.) But what were the odds? I mean, you do a search for “Craig Klein” and Google gives you thirty pages of returned links. Surely there’d be at least a dozen or two for someone named “Shara Litowitz”.

Now, the second link is my own fault. When I wrote a blog entry in September regarding Rosh Hashannah, during my reminiscing of childhood traumas regarding the holiday, I made passing reference to seeing Shara at one of the services looking all dressed up (as Jews are wont to do during the Holiday’s) and looking very good as a result.

(Actually, the memory is a bit more detailed: at the time, the Temple my family belonged to--Temple Beth Shalom--held High Holiday services at Manalapan High School, due to the size of amount of people attending. I was hanging outside the school, bored silly. At one point, this woman came out literally dragging a small child with her. She must have been the child's mother and she was livid that the kid was crying up a storm. She yelled at him to stop crying (always a helpful solution), let him drop to the ground, and she walked back into the school, letting him whimper on his own. Somewhere between me being outside and the kid being left, Shara had come outside as well. Seeing the child crying, she went over to him, sat down next to him, and began doing her best to cheer him up. At that point I left to go back inside; probably feeling too self-conscious of the fact that I was watching this all unfold without saying or doing anything. That’s the whole story. That, in my original blog entry, I focused merely on the fact that I found Shara attractive is simply a matter of expedience. What can I say; I don’t like kids.)

My point is: I was talking about Rosh Hashannah 2004 and whilst talking about the holiday in general, I mentioned a snippet of memory involving Shara, and then moved on to the actual point. She was a footnote, a parenthetical reference, nothing more.

But Yahoo is an Evil Thing. Exhibit B, your Honors: after searching The Entire Fucking Internet for mention of Shara Litowitz, when Yahoo presents it findings to you, you will find our very own Electric Wire, and the phrase “and I still hold the memory of seeing Shara Litowitz dressed up and looking oh-so-fine . . . but that was zen ...” listed as the fourth of six links. (Google, by the by, is worse; with Google, I’m the top two. Why couldn't I be that when you do a search for "web design"?)

Are you beginning to get the damned and incredible picture? (Thank you, Ray Bradbury.)

(Hmm, that link’s probably going to come back and haunt me, isn’t it? I digress, I digress, I digress....)

So. Three Microsoft Word pages later, we come to this point of my entry, where I mention the inescapable irony that by posting this entry I am doomed, doomed, doomed to add a third entry to those despicable search engines. Three entries about a woman I haven’t seen in almost twelve years, who I never knew, who has no bearing whatsoever in my present world, who enters the picture by default, who is probably married and changed her name and therefore negates this whole damn thing.

But time has no meaning for Search Engines. A site indexed ten years ago is as good as a site indexed last night. And to the viewer of those pages, despite the protestations of any date stamp these pages may contain, the viewer is, inevitably, incontrovertibly, reading them now. Their permanence creates the perception of immediacy, however out-of-date the actual content may be. For the words of the prophets are written on the web browsers walls, and they will bite you on the ass.

It doesn’t matter that one entry was done for a lark in 2002, and that the second entry, two months past, was forgotten about as soon as it was written. Sometime in the future, someone will find these pages, and no matter how long its been since they were written, they will read them as Present. The snake devours its own tail; life doubles-back on you when you least expect it; everything ripples.

I spoke to Mike Zavarello and his fiancé, Erin Smith, about this. I told them that this situation was begging to be blogged. They cautioned me against it, or at least making the entry without using Shara’s name. After all, if two entries look bad, surely a third would be grounds for a restraining order. Can you imagine what Shara's reaction would be if/when she finds this out? Reading Troy’s e-mail threw me for a loop--and I’m the guy who wrote this stuff! How would she react, seeing that the only online references to her are made by the same guy, thanks to the last vestiges of a crush he had a decade prior? That alone is reason enough to make with the mea cupla, and solid argument to delete everything completely.

But I hate being beaten at my own game. (Yes, Virginia, there is a game.) This is my Blog, dammit, my website; nobody gets to cast their own perception over what I try to do, least of all some lifeless bit of programming that categories names irregardless of meaning. You’re damned right I want a third entry. My self-referencing, meta-textual, tongue-in-cheek, bravado-filled, fuck-you explanation/rebuttal to theoretical--imagined--perceptions.

And I know full well none of it matters. Once you go public, sole proprietorship vanishes. It doesn't matter what you want to happen. People will make up their own minds; they’ll factor in your intent only if you’re lucky.

So. Shara Litowitz. Typed, in full, eight times. First a memory, now a mantra. I owe her an apology. Names have power. This blog is a false shield. Taking a person's identity and fashioning it to suit my purpose is a variation over exactly what I’m decrying. Is it wrong to use a person in such a way? (Goodbye, Norma Jean. Bernie Taupin and Elton John meant no disrespect, but they still get all the royalties.) This entry is about the struggle between wanting to write what I feel and how others will perceive those feelings; do I need to drag someone else into the mess?

But Setec Astronomy is an anagram that means “too many secrets”. If I used a code-name, called Shara “Suzy” or “Cheryl” or “Jennifer”, it wouldn’t mean the same thing. It’d be a lie, covering up what I’m afraid could happen, hiding behind another false shield.

(Oh who am I kidding? The phrase says too many, not all. By implication, some secrets are necessary. How can you tell the difference between secrets that are necessary and those that are superflouous? Answer in 1,500 words or less, using previous entries from The Electric Wire to support your answer. Counts for 10% of your final grade.)

I'm using her name because I want this indexed, that's the only reason. After all, I've already done it twice; what's eight more? Sometimes I'm Sisyphus, sometimes I'm the rock. (Albert Camus, where are you?) If I’m going to talk about this--and I do want to talk about it; to get it out of my system, to make fun of it while at the same time giving it its due--then let me be completely open about it and accept the consequences as they come. The snake devours its own tail, but it can only devour so far.

Lauren joined bookcrossing.com, which is an online book-sharing organization. She was originally going to leave the book Fast Food nation, by Eric Schlosser, in the Park West Diner, only I took it instead, and finally started reading it about two weeks ago.

It's a captivating read, and it certainly gives you all the reasons you could ever want to avoid going to McDonalds, but the laest chapter really grabbed my interest. Here's some relevant (extended) quotes:

The New Jersey Turnpike runs through the heart of the flavor industry, an industrial corridor dotted with refineries and chemical plants. International Flavors & Fragrences(IFF), the worlds largest flavor company, has a manufacturing facility off Exit 8A in Dayton, New Jersey; Givaudan, the world's second-largest flavor company, has a plant in East Hanover. Haarman & Reimer, the largest German flavor company, has a plant in Teterboro, as does Takasago, Japan's largest flavor company.Flavor Dyanmica as a plant in South Plainfield; Frutarom is in North Bergen; Elan Chemicals is in Newark. Dozensof companies manufacture flavors in New Jersey industrial parks between Teaneck and South Brunswick. Indeed, the area produces almost two-thirds of the flavor additives sold in the United States.

Imagine that. You'd think with all these flavor companies along the Turnpike, the highway would smell a little better.

This chapter about flavor additives is incredibly eye-opening. We've all seen the ubiquitous "natural and artificial flavors" listing in the foods we buy, but how many of us know what it means? Fast Food nation devotes a whole chapter on it, and it's a fascinating read. For one thing, both are actually man-made additives. Which i simply must tell my mother, considering all the years she refused to by us many foods with "artificial" flavors.

See, the problem arises, with the technology to keep foods "fresh" for prolonged periods of time, the real natural flavor is lost. These additives do nothing to alter the nutritional content of food. They are nothing but chemicals that mimic the original taste--or, in the case of processed food (like fast food) create a taste the product never even had. In fact, the line between "natural" and "artifical" is quite misleading, a matter more of where the flavors come from rather than the composition of the the flavor itself:

When almond flavor (benzaldehyde) is derived from natural sources, such as peach or apricot pits, it contains traces of hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison.Benzaldehyde dervied through a different process--by mixing oil of clove and the banana flavor, amylacetate--does not contain cyanide. Nevertheless, it is legally considered an artifical flavor and sells at a much lower price. Natural and artifical flavors are now manufactured at the same chemical plants . . . Calling any of these flavors "natural" requires a flexible attitude toward the English language and a fair amount of irony.


I love irony.

It's been a movie weekend; last night Mia and I saw Ray. That's two movies in three days. I don't think I've seen that many movies in so close a proximity since college.

Anyway, it was dissapointing. It was a horribly slow movie. While I do like the idea of the movie giving you a nearly-complete performance of Ray Charles' Greatest Hits, I think you had a solid forty minutes of, essentially, music videos. Great news if you love the music, but not so great if you're there for a movie. Likewise, the constant touring vignettes are nice, but after four or five of them you rather get the point.

Another problem was the characterization of Ray. They make ample notice of Ray's flaws--his drug addicition, his infidelities, his cold-hearted business decisions--but for the most part, this is given very little exploration. The drugs and womanizing take up a lot of screen time, but when it comes time for the audience to examine how these traits match up again Ray's other traits, the movie invaribly ducks the question. This is really a shame because obviously Ray Charles was a person of complexities. But the movie spends so much time hero-worshipping that the faults are glossed over rather than explored in detail.

Take, for example, Bea, Ray's wife. In typical fashion, Bea loves Ray so much she's willing to endure years of drug abuse and infidelities. And yet even when Bea tries to confront Ray and hold him accountable, Ray gets to just shrug her off, dodging the issue, and Bea stands there with a look of "well, I'm hurt but he's a musical genius and I love him so what can you do?" Which made me unable to believe their relationship at all. Women like that are terribly tricky to make convincingly, because you have to give a credible reason why they'd be willing to stick around. Rather than give Bea any characterization of her own, the movie wusses out by playing the "true love overcomes all faults" card.

But what truly ruined the movie for me was the ending. Now, the crux of Ray's character seems to deal with unresolved guilt over his brother's accidental drowning when Ray was just a small child, and its blatantly implied that this is why Ray became a drug addict. By the end of the flick, Ray is in rehab, about eleven steps out of twelve. He's kicked the drug habit, apparently, but still not dealing with his guilt. So what happens? He hallucinates that he is back in his childhood home; that his deceased mother and brother are there waiting for him; and that he can see again.

Now, understand, the movie spends two and a half hours beating you over the head with the notion that Ray is exceptional because he doesn't let his blindness limit him. That he became great despite his handicap; even, in part, because of it. So why, oh, why, at this seemingly climactic moment, does the story choose to have Ray see? Why undermine the very point the movie had been trying to make?

Worse, it totally destroys the believeability of Jamie Foxx as Ray. Because for all the movie's faults, Foxx is trully amazing in the role. He really does Ray Charles justice--his speech patterns, mannerisms, presence--it's all perfectly mimiced by Foxx. But in the dream sequence, where Ray can see, he takes off his glasses. And the illusion falls. Because, with the glasses on, Foxx is a dead ringer for Charles. But without the glasses--because how often did you see Ray Charles without glasses--Foxx only looks like . . . Jamie Foxx.

But the true horror of this scene is when the brother runs to Ray, hugs him, and says "it's not your fault". Imagine that: you spend two and a half hours investing yourself in a character and his struggles, only to have everything be resolved by a deus ex machina so blatant that the only way the movie could make it happen is by making it part of a hallucination!

It's really a shame because the movie does have it's moments. Taken by themselves, all the musical numbers are fantastic and Jamie Foxx deserves all the kudos he's gotten for his acting. But the movie fails as a character study. It's the ultimate irony: for a movie about a blind man, they never let you see enough of the man himself.

I saw The Incredibles on Friday, the latest Pixar movie. It was all right. Liked it better than Monsters Inc., but it didn't blow me away. Likeable characters, simple enough plot. There was a sneak preview for the next Pixar movie, Cars and from the preview it looks like Pixar may finally have their first "miss". Well, either that or they just made one incredibly boring teaser. (Look! A movie about cars! Betcha didn't know that from a movie titled Cars!)

When you think about it, Pixar's had an incredible run. The Toy Story movies, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and, from all reports, The Incredibles is following the line. What other studio put out that many consecutive blockbusters? (Although, when you concentrate on one movie at a time it does tend to allow you to make sure the movie is the best you can make it, as opposed to spreading the wealth on dozens of simultaneous productions).

One thing about Pixar's movies, and why they're so successful, seems to be that every movie has the same center: it's all about family. Be they genetic or surrogate, every movie deals with a family unit, a group of people who live each other and succeed through that familial bond, and usually zeroes in on one specific parent/child dynamic. The relationship between Woody and his owner is very much a father-son dynamic; Woody/son looking not to be abandoned by his owner/father; Toy Story 2's parent/child dynmaic was even more overt, with Buzz Lightyear's parantage (though played for laughs) and also had a mother/daughter theme with the character of Jessie. Monsters Inc. has the monsters as surrogate parents, and Finding Nemo was likewise blatant about it's family themes. The Incredibles trumps all previous Pixar movies by not just hanving a single parent/child relationship at it's core, but it throws in an entire family to boot. And, even more blatant: the villian of the piece became a villian because (wait for it) the father-figure/superhero rejected the son/sidekick! I mean, how obvious is this stuff when even I can pick up on it?

This notion of family, referenced the wayPixar does it, is a very American one, and it helps explain why the Pixar movies are such successes despite often being very generic and uninspiring movies. (Although I hear Finding Nemo was excellent and I purposely skipped that movie after seeing how unoriginal Monsters Inc was, so I can't comment on that movie per se; though I think a few educated guesses wouldn't be unreasonable.) And let's note that the one Pixar movie that doesn't get much mileage--A Bug's Life--was seriously lacking in a strong family dynamic. (It did have a theme of "community = family", but it's a poor surrogate.) America has always had an issue with parents and siblings. This very nation was a child of another nation; it revelled against its parent to claim independance, and yet, as it grew into adulthood, forged strong ties to the mother country. So the Pixar films hammer away at a very tender nerve in our culture's psyche.

(The preceeding paragraph lacked cohesion. Ideas are forming here, please bear with me.)

The problem is, while it's a can't-fail way to hook the audience, you still need to build a movie around it. The Incredibles, for all its fun, fails to strike any new ground. It's got some clever moments and some great jokes, and as usual with Pixar it has plenty of "wow, this was done on a computer" scenes. But all the characters are stock personalities and their arcs are utterly predictable. But then again, you don't see a Pixar film--espeically while it's still tied to Disney--because you want to see "something different". The Incredibles succeeds in what it wants to accomplish: being a fun, funny, slightly-too-long generic comedy. With a chewy family center.

Really, I think the V Forum says it best:





le sigh.

Four more years. It's only going to get worse.

I'm actually a bit ambivalent on Kerry conceeding the election--although, really, that's more because I can't stand Bush than wanting to see Kerry in the Oval office. When I woke up this morning and heard Ohio was still in dispute and Kerry wasn't conceeding, I was rather pissed: yet another election that's going to come down to technicality. As much as I can't stand Bush I just wanted it to be over. And when I read that he was conceeding, even though he had options, part of me is fairly impressed with him for doing so. I mean, on the one hand, it's nice to know he can conceede he lost (unlike 2000, Bush won the popular vote) but, having spent so much time and energy into compaigning for the highest political office in the country--and one of the most important jobs in the world--I can understand why someone wouldn't want to conceede when he wouldn't have to. I'm glad he did and he's sparing the country another prolonged dick-waving contest.

But now that means we're stuck with Bush. And a Republican controlled Senate and House. What the fuck is going on here?

Some fascinating realizations as I watched the election last night (New Medievalism was having a chat but I didn't feel like logging into a chat room just to lurk. Interestingly enough, the site is unavailable at the moment. I can imagine nobody on that board is particularly happy right now. I was really curious to log in tonight and read their reactions; so many of them were convinced Kerry would win.)

Anyway . . . curious observations:

1) Kerry didn't win any of the southern states. Nor did he win much of Middle/rural America. His strength was in the cosmopolitan areas, which suggests a very erie split in American Society. Much-touted triva: no Presidential candiate from the North has won an election in the last forty-plus years. The last was Kennedy.

2) For a campaign that focused so much on the September 11th terrorist attacks and the Iraq War, Bush lost the states most affected by those attacks by a signifigant margin. Kerry won New Jersey, New York, and the District of Columbia by significant margins. Of course, the Northeast is a nortoriously liberal area and that can be a a factor as well.

(As an aside, a co-worker of mine expressed her bewilderment at the fact that this happened, and couldn't understand how the states most impacted by the attacks could not overwhelmingly support Bush. It never entered her mind that, gee, maybe Bush hasn't done a good job of dealing with the aftermath of those attacks.)

3) Maybe we should trust the polls after all. Never mind the wild and zanny polls that should outside-the-margin results. One thing reading NM showed me was that the science of polling requires a lot of factors but when handled correctly produces accurate results. Rasmussen was showing the candidates to be no more than four points apart, on average, since the summer. Their final election predictions were off by about two percentage points of what looks like the actual tally. Polls may be within the margins or error, but that doesn't necessairly mean they are wrong.

4) There was no youth vote. Exit polls showed the percentage of young voters (under thirty) was not significantly higher this year than in 2000. At one point CNN showed the percentages to be even--17% in 2000 and 17% in 2004. To steal from P Diddy: I guess the youngun's would rather die than vote.

Bah. This is depressing. Four more years of Bush. I know there was talk from the pundits last night about Bush being more willing, in his second term, to work towards the middle in order to create his "legacy" as President. But, really, hasn't he already done that? He was the President during the September 11th attacks. He invaded Iraq. That was what he cared about, and he just got the OK from the masses that he did it right. Does anyone really think he's going to pull back now? He's got a free ride for four more years, why on earth would he be willing to compromise now when he hasn't shown the slightest desire to do so?

I dunno. I hate the slippery slope. Gay Marriages, another Patriot Act. Getting another extreme Right on the Supreme Court. The complete raping of our government's budget. It's still far off, still no guarantee that these things would come to pass. But I sure as hell didn't think in 2000 there'd be serious talk of banning Gay marriage, and here we are.

Blech, this is depressing. I'm going to eat dinner and come back later with a happier post.

Hello, good evening and welcome to Election Night Special. There's tremendous excitement here at the moment and we should be getting the first results through any moment now. We're not sure where it will be from, it might be Leicester or from West Byfleet, the polling's been quite heavy in both areas. Ah, I'm just getting... I'm just getting... a buzzing noise in my left ear. Urgh, argh!

Thus begins Monty Python's "Election Night Special" sketch, always a personal favorite and certainly timely.

So, I've been blowing off my resume lately. I met with Tracy last Monday to go over my resume. It's pretty much the same one I used in 2002 with a slightly different heading and more bullets for my current job, but it's always passed the mustard so I figured she'd note a typo or tweo, suggest one or two different phrases, and that would be that. Instead she gutted the whole bloody thing. I don't think a single section was left un-noted with her red pen . . . or a coupla stains of ketchup, water . . . and I forget what else she had for dinner. The point is, the resume needed a total re-work, and I'm almost there. The problem is I have to do this "how-by-what" phrasing, where I don't jsut say what I did at the company, but how I accomplished it. And I hate braging about myself without self-deprication. I know resume's are supposed to be about bragging, I realize it's all about selling yourself to a potential employer. But it's always been something I never felt comfortable doing. It's probably a self-esteem thing, refusing to give myself credit or some such. Either way, it's been eight days since Tracy told me what to do and while format-wise the resume is ready to rock, I still have to revise the bullet-points.

Mind you, it's November 2. (Duh.) I'm already a week behind--I was to have been looking for jobs last week. Now it'll be at least tomorrow before I get this revamped./ Mind you, there's no reason why I can't look for jobs using my old resume--it was serviceable if not particularly stand-out-ish--but, well, I'm not. So that should tell you a thing or three. Place bets folks. Still good odds I get it done before the end of this week.

Last week was rather busy. Multiple sites being done for Bright-Matrix, and that took up much of my time last week. Now I'm more waiting on the client's feedback so I have room to cbreathe (and hence, work on my resume).

I gave notice to Brookedale Gardens last Thursday. It was rather surreal. I have to be out by December 31. I was hoping to have some time into January, hopig to make it to Jan 15, but it's not the case. It's rather sobering to think that in less than two month's time I'll be out of this apartment. Sooner, really, given that I need to have the majority of the move done before New Year's. Chirstmas is Saturday this year; my office is closed the following Monday so I'm betting that Sunday and Monday will be the big moving days. technically I'm working Tuesday the 28 through Thursday the 30th; and our office has offically closed the window on holiday vacation requests. But I'm still going to talk to Matt about it--with all the vacation time I have, and given that those three days will probably be very slow, I'm hoping to use my vacation days and actually end work Thursday the 23rd. But he may not go for it, which would be annoying but not earth-shatteringly horrendous.

We'll see. I had approached the topic of my leaving about two weeks ago and Matt said it was too soon to discuss, but I may bring it up again soon--next week I'll be training two buyers from Reynosa--essentially my (and all of Totowa's Purchasind Dept's) replacements. Once that training wraps up, it'll be as good a time as any to bring up my depature.

But one way or another as of January 1st I won't have an apartment in Bloomfield, so I'll have to find somewhere to live. I have this really annoying habit of procrastinating. You may have noticed. I suppose it's not too terribly soon to look for an apartment--in fact, I know it isn't. But even so, there's such an immediacy to things now. Daylight Savings ended on Sunday. It's dark by 5:00 now. My brain keeps hearing Hugo Weaving talk about "inevitability" over and over.

It was odd. I was talking to Linda, our HR manager, and Laura, our Customer Service rep about the incomming trainees, and Laura seemed bummed about the fact that we are training our replacements. And I don't get it. Granted, I have an out, but Laura's got enough seniority that she'll get a cozy severance package that's at least twice as good as mine; and we've all known this was coming since the Spring so I don't see why having to train our replacements should be a downer. If anything I welcome it as a sign that the end is indeed near. (You know me; can't stand the inbetweens.)

I'll be taking off Friday to head down to South Jersey to check out towns and possible apartments. Maybe that's why 'm not bummed about training replacements: I have a plan. I'm not just waiting for the axe to fall. I've got a definite date and I've got a strategy to get me through the time it takes to find another job--I'm already working towards getting another job (even if I'm procrastinating on the resume)--and by the time my office offically closes, I'll be at a new job and settling into my new life. Whereas Laura has to deal with the job she;'s had for twelve-plus years is gone and she probably isn't sure what she'll to do next.

Anyway, the game plan is, with Friday's recon session, I should be able to find a place to move into by Dec 1. Patti, Miller, and I moved into Clifton after two days of searching (though, granted, Patti spent more time looking on her own), and it only took a few weeks to find Bloomfield--I think I started looking around mid-november and had settled on the place by early or mid December). So the bottom-line is time is on my side with this. Sadly, even when time is on your side, it never bothers to slow down enough for you.

But at any rate, today may or may not be productive. I have dinner to cook, bills to pay, a new episode of Gilmore Girls to watch, a resume to revamp (yeah right) and somewhere in all of this a Presidential Election to keep tabs on. (Not sure how much TV coverage I'll watch; there won't be anything too interesting until later tonight anyway; I'll probably keep tabs on things via The New Medievalism.

I think there's something I should be mentioning, but can't remember. Ah well.

...we have to pick up a few results you may have missed. A little pink pussy-cat has taken Barrow-in-Furness -- that's a gain from the Liberals there. Rastus Odinga Odinga has taken Wolverhampton Southwest, that's Enoch Powell's old constituency -- an important gain there for Darkie Power. Arthur Negus has held Bristols -- that's not a result, that's just a piece of gossip. Sir Alec Douglas Home has taken Oldham for the Stone Dead party. A small piece of putty about that big, a cheese mechanic from Dunbar and two frogs -- one called Kipper the other not -- have all gone "Ni ni ni ni ni ni!" in Blackpool Central. And so it's beginning to look like a Silly landslide, and with the prospect of five more years' Silly government facing us we... Oh I don't want to do this any more, I'm bored!