It's not that I don't love you.
I'm mean, truly, you're a great public.
The best public I've ever known.
It's just that I have been spending a lot of time with the PS2 lately, playing old PS1 games*.
You know how it is. You think you're just going to spend a couple of hours on mindless entertainment, but then you look at the clock and it's really late, so late that the public is probably already sleeping.
So you creep in silently and go to bed yourself.
That and I have a new work-friend who works at Another Store Like Unto Mine, but her's is a nicer, newer version.
She's super energetic and chirpy, but she's also as weird and messed up as I am... just in new and different ways. She burns off her frustrations walking the dog or taking hip-hop dance classes, and I kill monsters and solve quests from the comfort of my own sofa.
She went to beauty school as a way to pay for college, and worked in and ran her mom's salon all throughout her collegiate experience. Now she has a degree in Spanish literature, and runs a salon in another store Like Unto Mine But Nicer.
In the car today, because we're driving back and forth everyday this week to a far away destination to get training on how to be a "More Effective Salon Manager," (alternate class title: "How to Grin and Bear It When Someone Foists Another Job That Isn't Really Your Responsibility Upon Your Already Ridiculous Workload & Still Do It All Effectively, Just Because Corporate's Initiative To Do This Thing You Now Do Failed Miserably At the Corporate Level .") Sparky told me that she wasn't sure what she wanted to do careerwise in the future. While she likes doing hair, this position for her is just a way to make money and have benefits until she figures out what she wants to do for real.
Merely a stepping stone to better things, if you will.
And it made me think for a minute about how this is a 23 year-old essentially starting off her lot in life, fresh out of college. Sparky's filled to the brim with fantastic business skills, and has it all planned out for now. If she needs help with a difficult issue, she googles it to find out how to delicately handle it the best way, without making it worse, and probably make it all better instead.
And I'm a 33 year-old that considers this position a career. I make okay money, I have security and benefits, a matched 401K, paid vacations, and I'm a salaried position. If I could think of something else I'd like to do better that I'd make more money doing and still have that security, I'd probably be all over that, to be honest. And I've been thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, back when I was a 23 year-old starting off my lot in life, fresh out of school.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't what I am right now.
I'm realizing again that quirks and foibles that are cute in a twenty-something are considered childish and pathetic in someone over 30.
I'm almost out of the 19-34 demographic, which means that I guess I'll have to grow up and figure it out before July 9, 2007. That gives me 21 months to find the meaning of me.
But for now I'd still rather play video games and watch television.
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*A lot of them are ones that I've played before a long time ago, either on the SNES or PS1, but many of them are also sequels to those particular games. Or, believe it or not, director's cuts of older games.
My smoothie maker died. I think the frozen banana chunks were just too much for it. And replacing it will cost 3x what I paid for it on clearance. I never even made blended margaritas with it. Poor, beloved unmixed margaritas.
And I got a letter from the Post Office admonishing me for not using the correct format for my address. When I mail things out, I use a pre-printed address label that says the right thing, and that's the address I give to people. However, people will write whatever version of your address that they want to use as your address when they send you things, and you really can't make them do otherwise. Sorry, I don't control space and time, USPS.
And I gave someone a bad haircut yesterday. She had baby fine, thin hair with weird internal layers that I didn't see until I got into them, and then it was too late. So, I had to blend and blend and blend and then change the shape of the cut, all while pretending that whatever I did was on purpose. The haircut looks fine, and she didn't say anything, but technical skill-wise, it sucked major ass. I don't do bad hair. I just don't. So fucking up a haircut is so foreign to me that it makes me feel the same way in the pit of my stomach that I feel whenever someone decides to hit my car in such a manner that it will cost money to repair. Or 2x the feeling when I have to terminate the employment of someone that is sweet and nice and someone that I like.
And now that I actually own a bottle of Escada Rockin' Rio, I don't think I like it as much as I did when I was just trying it on at work. At least the D'lish (Clean) Sweet Layer is d'licious.
And most pettily, I constantly get complimented on my eyes and eye makeup, being that I have pretty eyes and I have mad phat eyeshading skillz, but when we voted today at work, I didn't even get a nomination for Best Eyes. I got one nomination for Best Skin (?), but not one for Best Eyes. And the woman that won Best Eyes only got it because her eyeliner was glittery and bright.
It's absolutely amazing to me that one horrible natural disaster has plunged part of our nation into Third World conditions.
And even more amazing to me is that the government seems unable or unwilling to help.
Tens of thousands of people in New Orleans are starving to death and dying of thirst in the streets, assaulted by extremely heat and humidity. Anarchy reigns -- with no authorities, refugees (I never thought I'd ever have to call Americans in America that name) are robbing and raping each other.
It is mostly because of private and corporate support that anything is being done at all, and that's truly little enough.
This is a disgrace.
I am sorry for the people outside of New Orleans, that have lost their homes, returning to find cement slabs where their houses used to be.
But at least they aren't trapped in a watery hell.
The ill lack basic medical treatment. The lucky ones in hospitals are being airlifted out and triaged. The ones on the street don't have insulin, chemo, drug cocktails, etc.
Outside the convention center, among the refuse piles, the dead are left outside the doors, covered in sheets or blankets.
I'm terrified that with the standing water, the general health of the public, and insanely unsanitary conditions that cholera and typhoid and hepatitis will break out among the crowds.
Buses and other forms of transport for the victims have been promised, days ago. And very few have arrived. Many of the drivers are frankly terrified of being killed in a stampede of people trying to escape the city, and refuse to go anywhere near the place.
Ironically, now that the people at the gathering sites are too weak to leave the places where they've been told to go for safety, and to walk somewhere else for rescuing, that's precisely what they're being told to do.
National Guard troops have been deployed en masse, solely to keep the peace. Not to help, but to prevent looting, rioting, and killing.
Where are the concerned celebrities now, drumming up a huge relief effort to aid our tsunami victims? They were swift enough to help other countries, but haven't leapt to attention for their fellow nationals.
The President will be touring tomorrow, and I'm sure he'll be watered and fed.
And the people are still standing and sitting in the streets, weakly chanting, "WE NEED HELP!"
