fupafighter

30 Years Ago...

...And um, no, I'm not talking about the last time I posted.  It does feel like that long though. Today (a lil' over two months shy of my year-long hiatus), my boss handed me a book she thought would be helpful to me as an aspiring copy editor. It's entitled the Dos, Dont's & Maybes of English Usage, written by Theodore Bernstein. Frenchie informs me that Mr. Bernstein was a well-known editor at the NY Times for I don't know how many years, blah blah blah. The books looks a little weathered, and rightly so, since it was published in 1977.

It's nothing special at first glance. Perusing the pages of alphabetized words, a basic catalog of commonly misused phrases, contractions, and colloquialisms. I can see how three decades ago a respected editor would certainly benefit from having this linguistic resource handy.

G

GYNARCHY: If some of the extreme feminists have their way, we may one day have a gynarchy. That word comes from the Greek gyn- or gyno-, meaning woman, and the Greek -archy, meaning rule. Gynarchy, pronounced JIN-ar-key, means government by women. Anyway, it's better than anarchy.

Whoa, Mr. Bernstein, don't jump the gun just yet. It'll be a while before those extreme feminists get their hands on that ovum office. And I'm guessing it would be better than anarchy as well. Come to think of it, I think a few bushels are better than a prick any day.

GAY: Homosexuals have recently been taking over the adjective gay. Two things about the adoption of that word are to be condemned: first, that its meaning of merry, lighthearted or joyous is not specifically descriptive of homosexuals and may be completely nondescriptive of some of them, and second and much more important, that if the word is applied in this way very much more, it is going to be lost to the language in its true meaning. Why homosexuals want to use it at all is not very understandable; it is an adjective and only and adjective, which leaves its users without a much-needed noun. How about inventing a word that would serve both sexes--but especially males--as both a noun and an adjective? For openers, how about homex (plural homexes)? There's no patent on that invention; help yourselves, folks.

God forbid that the word "gay" be lost forever in its meaning of merry, lighthearted, and joyous. And he's right--it certainly doesn't apply to all homosexuals. I mean, on the days that I'm in a bad mood, I couldn't rightly call myself "gay." Angry dyke, maybe? Unfortunately this concept of homex didn't take off, though I do think I ate something called that at a Super Bowl party. With nut clusters. Maybe that's why Mr. Bernstein was thinking it could be exclusively applied to men, hmmm.

I guess the above entry should make me grateful for how far along we've come in 30 years. Here were are fighting for marriage and equal rights across the board--in 1977, we were fighting for a word. Well by GOBBLEDYGOOD (sticky muck...issuing from the mouth), I think we got it!   

Dragged Kicking and Screaming...

...back into the blog world. No thanks to BQ Broiler's (ahem, and that is a reminder of the "dossier" my dear) latest post about my very own learning experiences in the corporate--excuse me, publishing--world. It's difficult to describe the shock the system experiences when one has to cast off the Jansport and exchange those pastoral daydreams of wearing a tunic while composing verse in an orchard, with a shield of stubbornness and indifference--tools both necessary when engaged in the daily shit face-off in the communal office pot. The breast-pump room (aka dairy farm) that is now situated behind my desk might have been a little disturbing to me at first, but I'm already slipping into the routine: Yesterday, a woman approached me and politely asked, "I'm so sorry to disturb you, but is this the new pump room?" Fabricating a smile with effort that compelled my butt cheeks to tauten, I replied, "Why yes, yes it is."

Employee of the Month

No, this is not a reference to the J. Crew fiasco.  Though I was singled out for my performance there as well.

Last night I learned upon arriving at my bar for work that my boss would be otherwise engaged for the evening and not joining us for his regular shift.  I think I actually experienced liftoff on a cloud of giddiness hearkening to the days when I would have a substitute teacher in class.  Normally, I would have a drink at the beginning of my shift (around 7 pm) then make sure that by the time he walked into the bar I would be sober enough to zip around the stools with a serving tray perched gingerly atop the palm of my hand.  That first hour of his shift is always the worst, but after a few pints of diet coke and a high ball glass full of goldfish, I'm miss perky just doing my duty to get the gays drunk.

I did have my drink around 7 last night.  That same drink oddly refilled itself until I was navigating the bar like an obstacle course.  It was basically empty last night so the number of objects I could tumble over was minimal.  I told the bartender that this reminded me of the days I worked at a little dump that we affectionately remember as Saints.  I would work until 4 a.m. on Sunday night and have to stay open, even though for hours I wouldn't even see a soul.  Those times I would hop over next door to Sip where my friend was working, and just hang having cocktails there.  The bartender was like, "Wait, you just left the bar??"  And I'm like, "totally."   

I then realized, you really want someone like me working for you.  I'm a team player.  I'm a go getter.  I'm loyal to the brand.

I'm a total fuck up.

I had two more drinks after my shift, and by the time CR showed up I was in the beginning stages of word slurring.  When our bar closed, I noticed that even our bar-back had gotten drunk in our manager's absence.  And instead of going home at that point, I was rallying to go to another bar to eradicate what's left of my cognitive abilities. By the time that bar kicked all of us out, I had difficulty maneuvering into the space presented by an open cab door.  It's the price one pays, I suppose, after nine hours of steady consumption.  The prize itself, however, was even greater this morning when I awoke, on my couch, fully clothed. 

The truth is--I can do this right now.  I can lose the ability to speak and walk.  I can not worry about who will be smelling my breath when I get home or the next morning. While I'm unemployed and freelancing (so wait, is freelance the new code for alcoholic?), I'm able to abuse the substance of my choice.  The question is, when this time comes to an end, will I be able to stop? 

FOUR

Ahhhh.  Crack, crack.  Pop.  Stretch.  Ooooh, gotta get these 'ol bloggin' joints back into motion.  And what better way than a simple survey.  This is my take (of course) on this little thing that's being passed around like herpes, this completely arbitrary FOUR. 

FOUR JOBS I WILL NEVER HAVE (or at least really hope not to)

1. Banker or accountant
2. Delivery guy
3. Pedicurist (plus my ethnicity works against me here)
4. Laundromat anything (see above parenthetical note)

FOUR MOVIES THAT MAKE ME FEEL EMBARRASSED FOR THE ACTORS

1. Encino Man (anything Pauly Shore, really)
2. My Blue Heaven
3. Sliver
4. Second Sight

FOUR PLACES I DON'T WANT TO LIVE

1. Delaware
2. Detroit or Flint, MI
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. South Florida (though it might just be in the tarot for me)

FOUR PLACES I WANT TO VACATION

1. Alaska
2. Great Wall of China
3. Serengeti
4. Kauai

FOUR DISHES THAT MAKE ME CRINGE

1. Goose liver (though considered a delicacy to my people)
2. Pasta in black, eel ink sauce
3. Tripe (yup, that's cow intestine)
4. Anything in aspic

FOUR SITES I SHOULD VISIT DAILY

1. NY Times job section
2. Salon
3. Mediabistro
4. CNN

FOUR PLACES I'M AT RIGHT NOW

1. Unemployed
2. Fat
3. Lazy
4. Alcohol dependent

FOUR PEOPLE I'M TAGGING

1. Ellen
2. Law & Order
3. L Word
4. Will & Grace

...Oh wait, tagging doesn't mean DVR?  What is this strange cyberspace place?

1. Dooced.  Period
2. Launderers Heaven
3. Mixed Comp
4. All you have to say is the word POUR and I'm there.

We'll see if this keeps up.  Until then, thanks to Lynn and my hairstylist extraordinaire for giving me some sort of platform to re-enter this peculiar world of blogging.  I think now I'll finish my thesis.  Really.

Part Deux: Busted, Merry Douchemas!

I walk into the Crew Jan. 5th, ten minutes late, per usual, and with a touch of a hang over.  My manager, K, is there along with another co-worker and some butchy woman wearing a billowing tent of a collared shirt tucked into her version of Jersey Mom jeans.  My manager and I hug, we exclaim, we laugh about how lame we were on New Years; she shows me new pictures of her baby and I show her the holiday growth of my fupa.  Basically, I did all but rim her in our five minute banter.

My other co-worker leaves the office and this strange woman lurking on the perimeter of our pleasantries now walks in and shuts the door behind her.  K introduces her and in the fog of my recollection I think her name was Nicole, Nicole from loss prevention.  However, for reasons of sheer accuracy in my recount, for her I'll use the initials CP--Cunt Prevention.

She tells me that she's sitting down with some employees to talk to them about loss prevention.  What do I understand is loss prevention?  Did I know we were the highest yield shortage store? What have I heard about theft in the store?  Did I know her queef sounded like a foghorn? 

We sit back and she tells me old tales of lore--safe thefts, register shortages--by the way, did I know that 80% of loss prevention comes from within?  Hoarding clothes, brown-bagging clothing, how funny is tea bagging--God, in that shirt I can't even tell if her tits are sagging.  I'm officially getting nervous.  K, my manager and friend, won't look at me.  I ask her if this is a test, what's going on?  She fumbles with a little giggle and says, "Kind of."  Was this a test of how quickly I could come up with a lie on the spot to save my own ass?  Does she think I stole from a safe? I honestly had no idea where this interrogation was going.  Then again, this is also coming from the girl who came out of the closet at 24.  Genius.

Cunt Prevention tells me that I'm under investigation, asks me why do I think I'm here.  Here meaning deep shit, or here in the office facing-off with her feathered-do? She says it's going to be up to me, how honest I am, to make these proceedings go as painlessly as possible.  She says she's going to ask me some questions, some questions harder than the other questions, and that she probably already knows the answer to the questions she's going to ask me.  Did I have any questions? Yeah, can we play with Lincoln logs afterwards?

Me: I FedExed some packages to friends.
CP: (With yellow legal pad in lap, crossing legs, suddenly it's no longer rank in the office) What items were these and to what friends?
Me: Uhhh, there were some shirts to C. Ryan...
CP: (Writing) Uh huh.  Who else?
Me: There was a tank top and cardigan to Cassie Convert and to R. Bops...
CP: Who is this...Cassie Convert?
Me: Of course. My friend.
CP: The tank top and cardigan weren't paid for.
Me: (Confused) The tank-top was paid for.
CP: Well, unless you can produce a receipt for that, they weren't paid for.  Now how do you think this came about?

Cunt Prevention flips over a label that had been lying face down on the counter.  It's Cassie's shipping label.  I'm a little relieved--at least they didn't think I embezzled thousands from the safe or robbed the bank transport guy.  Now I'm just looking at this frumpy woman and thinking:

Hey, hey, I can get down on my knees and munch your muff...
...and maybe we can just forget about all of this stuff?  Yeah yeah, yeah.

She asks briefly about R's sweater.  God only knows where that's at now.  Cunt Prevention probably used it to sop up her bog-gina.

Did I mention I included little gift messages in each of the boxes?  Basically I all but drew a map to my apartment and provide numbers for my bank account for the "investigation."

CP: Now what was that on the card you wrote?  It wasn't Merry Christmas...it was something, something with a "D"?
Me: (Pausing)  Um yeah.  It was...Merry DOUCHEMAS.
CP:  (My manager stifles a laugh) Now what is that?  I don't even understand that, is that like a different language?
Me: It's a JOKE.  Like your time spent with me here.  It's creeping up on 40 minutes now.
CP:  Well, I just have to make a few calls to see how the company is going to handle this.  If you can just step outside or go to the breakroom for a few minutes and we'll call you back in.
Me: Whatever.

In the breakroom I went into bi-polar-denial mode where I had two different conversations, one with a manger and the other with a cashier, about how wonderful and lovely Aruba is, and my favorite parts of the island.  I said see ya later and walked to the office when Cunt Prevention called me.

CP: Well, I've made some calls.  Now, how do you think the company is going to handle this?
Me: How do I hope, or how do I think?
CP:  How do you think?
Me: Well...I think I'm going to be fired.
CP: The company has decided to terminate your employment, but the good news is they are not pressing charges.

YIPPEE!

CP: And, this won't be on any employment record, and in the future if you want to use J. Crew as a reference, they will give you a neutral one.

People, if I EVER need to use J. Crew as a reference, I have officially hit rock-bottom and I give my friends (or anyone for that matter) permission to push me in front of any moving vehicle of mass transit. 

And that was that.  I gave Cunt Prevention my allotment card.  I punched out for the last time.  K walked me out to the front of the store.  I told her I was sorry and I never intended for this.  She said she knew and put her hand on my back.  There was no public humiliation, clearing out of desks and lockers.  The store was near empty and no one even looked twice. And I walked out of J.Crew, Columbus Circle, with trouser legs, cardigan sleeves, a pair of gloves and magic wallet trailing from my pants...

Naaah.  But that would've been pretty funny.  I left my jacket there in the office so at some point I'll have to have the security escort back in the store to get my shit.  Maybe I'll just 'pick up' some things while I'm there.

Hey, they don't call me Snatchalie for nothing, right? 

Anyway, Merry Douchemas to all my friends!  I can't wait for ya'll to see the gifts I steal for everyone next year!

Part I: Busted, Merry Douchemas!

I was fired.

I was fired from J. Crew.

I was fired from J. Crew for stealing.

Those are the facts and I can’t deny them.  That’s the rumor that is circling store #700 right now, and the people I once joked with, drank with, and complained about the mess in Shipping & Receiving with can only now speculate about the levels of my moral bankruptcy.

Just to clarify: I didn’t walk in and collapse shelves of pristinely folded cardigans into my bag, nor was I prancing out of the store a virtual layer cake of outfits.  I decided to pick up (and pay for, imagine that!) a few gifts for friends and co-workers, have my manager ring me up for the items upstairs, and then (gasp) I was going to FedEx these little tokens on the company’s bill.  Up to that point, that was my greatest criminal endeavor.

Synopsis from there: brought piles of stuff upstairs, manager was busy and kept jumping away from the register, fucked up ringing me up on the different credit cards/debit card that I specifically outlined, bullet-pointed, and diagrammed for him.  I gift wrapped while he was ringing, brought stuff downstairs—in short, I noticed after the fact, while I was clandestinely boxing and wrapping my friends’ gifts, that a cardigan for CC had not been rung up.  I literally exclaimed out loud, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” and being frustrated, annoyed at my manager’s flakiness and incompetence, I just said, “Fuck it.”  We’ve all said “Fuck it,” and I really meant it—fuck it.  It being the company, the Man, the idiocy, the wait, the unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy of it all.  Fuck it, she’ll love the cardigan.

On December 19^th I sealed a box that I thought contained a tank top and cardigan when in actuality it held January 5^th inside.

Day Two

I promise to quit the countdown after today. This is the second day of my three-day New Year’s body cleanse.  This isn’t the crazy Cajun lemonade diet that I tried over the summer.  The one where I couldn’t peel myself off of my couch after the 36^th hour, therefore sealing the certainty of my lifelong dependence and addiction to caffeine.  Oh well, some things I’ll never give up.

Yesterday I drank protein shakes at two-hour intervals.  Today and tomorrow it’s all about the fruit.  So if I don’t die of a diabetic sugar shock, then I might end up at the oncologist after my colon blows.  I don’t feel too cleansed, in fact, I feel like an oompa loompa with a severe gastrointestinal disorder.

On an empowering note, a friend of a friend who is kind enough to indulge my cyber meanderings, wrote me a rousing email regarding facing his fears for the New Year.  He was one of the hundreds of crazies—oops, I mean ‘the inspired’ ;)—who sprinted bare-bottomed into the frigid waters on New Years day, entering the ranks of the well-known group collectively called the Polar Bear Club.  He mentioned that a girl had made laminated cards with the message:

“She said a spacecraft has to travel at 7 miles per second in order to escape the Earth's atmosphere when heading to outer space.  We're revving up, getting some serious momentum going, and using that as our theme for January, and beyond.”

Though I think I’ll refrain from giving my labia frostbite, I think it’s a nice thought to keep in mind, especially when powering through the rough patches.  Bravo to you, though, for facing the fear of contracting pneumonia!

I also promise to stop with the lame New Year empowerment paragraphs.  I think it’s just some bad Tony Robbins that I ate.  It’ll pass.  With the fruit.

Happy New Year!

So here were are again.  Another year.  Another set of resolutions.  I heard a few days ago some self-help guru propose that people call them New Years Goals and not New Years Resolutions.  I think I agree with this, b/c a goal implies something one can slowly work towards, it allows for ups and downs, for positives and negatives, for the possibility of failure and the probability of picking up the pieces.  Resolution comes from resolve and it's too much of an absolute, at least for me.  It sets up situations in black and white: either you succeed or you fail, there's no in-between.  I need to know that I can fail and not give up.  Isn't this a nice thing for you to think about too?

I started a list of goals and realize that I really have one:  This year...

I Will Face My Fears

This is obviously an over-arching, all-encompassing, undoubtedly cheezy but nonetheless truthful goal that will take Herculean strength on my part to apply in my daily life, even to the smallest degree.

Last year THIS WAS MY LIST of resolutions for 2005.  Since I was actually too afraid to set some real goals, I did the purely "un-Natalie" thing and decided to make a joke.  Wow, shocking isn't it?

To launch this trend of owning up, I'm going to be bold enough to say that I'm counting days.  I have started to count days before, but always in my head.  Therefore when I failed, only I knew.  And that's fine, b/c I didn't count.

I count.  I count to a lot of people.  Above all, I count to myself.

Here's to 2006.  I spent the Eve with my parents at a restaurant.  I was in bed by 2:30 am.  It's the first New Year's day in about a decade that I'm not hung over.  I exercised.  I went to mass with my Mom.  I've contacted people that I've fallen out of touch with and answered emails that have been sitting in my box for weeks and opened bills that I've been toting around with me all month.  Face it baby.

Happy New Year to all my friends and strangers and cyber lurkers.  I'm owning this year muthafucka. I hope you do too.

Was I Alive Right Then?

The one redeeming thing about working at the Crew has been the staff.  For the most part the people are young, smart, funny, but more important, they are cynical, jaded, and wonder too on a daily basis why they are folding argyle,v-neck, merino sweaters.  It's basically a where-did-things-go-awry-fest.  My favorite subject.

Though I do like my co-workers, there are only a handful to whom I've all but completely dropped my proverbial 'filter' (and it is arguable that I even possess the  shadow of one in the first place).  So during break-time conversations I've tried to keep the nasty factor in the yellow zone, every now and then coming dangerously close to elevating it into the red, but to pat myself on the back, I've been as 'reserved' as I can be. 

A few days ago a group of us were chatting in the window-less, stale, shoebox in the back of the store that has been relegated as the employee break room merely b/c it has four stools, a water cooler, and a small microwave breeding paleostine amoeba on it's rotating tray.  There was me, a big, ghetto stock guy named Pablo, a cute, petite New-Yorican named Eileen, and a few fawny cashiers.

Pablo: Damn!  The water in that cooler is fuckin' warm yo!  The water in the toilet bowl is cooler then that!

Me: Yeah?  You have a habit of lapping it up from the bowl?

Pablo:  Nawww, not really, heh heh.

Me: Well what makes you an expert on the temperature of the bowl water?

Eileen (looking up casually from her empanada): It's b/c when Pablo takes a big shit in the morning, the shit plops into the bowl and all of this water splashes up on his ass.  Dat's how he know it cold!

Me:  Ewww, that's disgusting!

Eileen:  But you know it's true. Don't tell me that ain't true.  You know it's true.

Me:  Umm, yeah.  It's true.

Mind you, we were all eating lunch then as well.  Rare are the moments when I'm the one that's flabbergasted and not standing on the other side of 'the line.'  In a room full of half-strangers half-heartedly enjoying their fast food, I think visions of plopping shits took the cake for most inappropriate.  Or maybe I'm just becoming a prude.  It's a fine like folks.

The Perfect Job

I keep calling my absence from cyberspace a hiatus or a lapse, but I think I should just face up to the fact that I'm kind of over the whole 'blogging' thing, if that is to say, I was ever into it in the first place.  Half of my entries are apologies for not writing whereas the other half are merely the written transcripts of the drunken mishaps of the night before.  Solid literature.

Not to mention the whole me-me-me factor of blogging, which only doesn't annoy me when I'm reading about, not surprisingly, me.

Therefore, I'm just popping my head in to say hello (hello typepad, hello fupafighter, hello 21st- century-version of calligraphized fountain pen tirades) and highlight a job posting I saw online today that I think might just be my destined career.  Unfortunately I'm three years underqualified, have no true prior 'work' experience regarding the subject matter aside from living it on a daily basis, and I'm not a thirty-some fraternity alumni.  Still, if you saw this posting, wouldn't you be a little curious too?

Liquor & Auto Manager Details Magazine

12/6/2005

New York, NY USA

Full Time

Please, they had me at liquor and auto.  Enough said.