Why, hello 2009!

It has been awhile since I’ve written for this blog. I’ve been too busy with Facebook [insert cutesy emoticon]. Not much has changed since the last posting. However, due to a few minor updates, I feel compelled to enlighten my readership (all five of you) of the latest haps. Let’s proceed.

• If you subscribe to Vedic astrology then you can appreciate that Jupiter – a benefic planet of good luck and fortune – is now on my side. Suck it, Saturn.

• I chucked my 11 a.m. wake up time for 8:30 a.m. I figure if I am to be receptive to golden job opportunities – even in the grim climate that is our economy on this February 5, 2009 – I need to be awake for more hours to maximize the time in which I can breathe my receptivity in and out. Thoughts are things and vibes travel. My vibes can travel further if I am *awake* longer to generate energy for them. I realize this sounds batshit crazy. But, if this works, I will only confirm that I’m not crazy, and I’ll have a job that doesn’t involve sweatshop editing (see below) or constantly granting permission to kids who want to sharpen their pencils (see below). [What is it with kids and sharpening their pencils?]

• I am now a part-time editor. Let’s not discuss the specifics, as they are not exciting and I almost quit today. I will offer up that it is tedious work. My friend Stephen, upon hearing the description of what I do, remarked: “Gabi, it’s a sweatshop!”. My description of what I do – in my head – includes some F-bombs, but “sweatshop”, in a word, is really the proper term. Anyhow, so I work for an editing sweatshop that employs MBAs and other highly educated people looking to make a few bones in this shitatious economy and [willing to take it up the ass] willing to put up with – and I’m going to use the most erudite word possible here – “sketchy” expectations, and a "sketchy" pay rate. At least I can work from home and mutter without stares.

I’m a meticulous editor; there are parts of the sweatshop experience I like. (Maybe this is like finding out that Pepsi ONE is available in the soda machine in the cockroach-infested employee kitchen.) The major drawback: I am slow. The company expects its editors to turn around error-free transcripts in three hours or less. It once took me almost nine hours to edit a shitatious raw transcript, in which the main speaker was a CEO from Taiwan. Her ability to speak English well on a scale of one to ten was a resounding three (and I’m being generous).

An editor who is capable of turning around an error-free product in three hours or less is one of three things:

a) A superhero worthy of a celebrated graphic novel.
b) A talented, quick-as-lightening master of editing who is a fucking dumbass for allowing such skillz to be exploited by a low-paying, spirit-sucking, sweatshop-promoting transcript company.

OR,
c) The very definition of a masochist – with a fetish for editing quarterly earnings call transcripts.

Moving on…

• I became a substitute teacher. I prefer only to speak on this subject when I’m either holding a drink, or drunk. That is not the case at this time, but I will say that there is no way that teachers get paid what they deserve.

I bow down to Kindergarten teachers. I’m not wired to deal with people that little. I find them challenging, but cute. Sometimes. I wonder if this is similar to training baby elephants for a circus show?

I have found that Kindergarten and 7th grade are equally challenging. 7th graders are a pain in the ass. BUT, they are at a point in their formation as human beings where they haven’t totally left childhood in the dust, and they also haven’t yet taken on a wearying cynicism that high school sometimes engenders in full-blown teenagers. It is a fact that 7th graders are slaves to the nuclear explosion of hormones in their bodies. They can’t help it. They are frighteningly awkward, but can also be very, very funny (some have been very curious about me, and have asked if I have kids; I kept a poker face, but on the inside laughed uproariously). It is also weird to be on a campus with both kids who look like they just passed 4th grade, and almost full-grown-looking dudes who *must be* shaving every day.

The times I’ve subbed for junior high I’ve had flashbacks to the war zone of my own hell-on-Earth adolescence. I am guessing this is much like how war vets fall prey to their damaged psyches and involuntarily flashback to those blood-letting battalion days (for me the catty fights at recess), the smell of napalm (for me the smell of Aqua Net), the images of mangled body parts (for me the confusion and betrayal of a body I didn’t want to be in, and which seemed to operate without my consent), and the brutality of an innocence lost and scared shitless (for me the emerging consciousness of the end of childhood…and the tantalizing and appalling beginning of adulthood).

Where was I? Right. I’m a certified substitute teacher. Not my idea of a good time, but in a bad economy it's a gig that is easy to get and pays decently for the psychological torture involved. This is my update.

Coming soon…an open letter to Kanye West, my top 10 on Rod [Crazy] Blagojevich, and a personalized analysis of the Madonna/Whore paradigm.