The Bostonian Abroad

In this state, the secretary holds all the power. She may be poor, may be low on the totem pole in terms of professional respect, but, nonetheless, she is the locus of power in any organization. Please her, and doors open, piss her off and you are so much more than fucked. I had previously spoken with an underling secretary in my department, let's call it "the Department of Something Nondescript", and she had informed me that I could not take the "prelim" because I had not filled out "the form". (-Even though she said I didn't have to sign up!) I called again, for another reason, and found the master of the Nondescript universe! We got to chatting, which meant that I bowed and scraped verbally while she grunted and groaned of disapproval. In the end, she allowed me the unattainable sacred access to the vaunted and feared exam, despite the "rule" that requires all supplicants to "fill out the form". (Perhaps in triplicate,...

Went to the local version of Dn'D today, one owned by a sushi restaurant chain. Hey, at least they have one. "You get a free ball of SPAM with every third purchase!" So anyway, I am in this place and I order a medium coffee with room for cream and sugar. (You see, I learned early on not to use the standard order accepted back in Boston, "Gimme a medium regulah," since they look at you totally dumbfounded.) The lady says, "What kine you want, decaf, vanilla or hazelnut?" I say, "Do you have any coffee flavored coffee?" And she replies like its a ridiculous question, "No!" No coffee flavored coffee. At a Dunkin' Donuts. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????? My wife, terrified and confused, said, "isn't this one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?" I agreed. Get ready folks, the end is nigh! I'll watch it as I sip my vanilla hazelnut coffee.

It just keeps getting better! This weekend was another example of what it is like to be in this place. We decided to go to a party on the other side of the island. I didn't want to go because the crowd was not, shall we say, my kind of people. This place is overpopulated with the poseur-hippy, the quasi-intellectual, the politically correct issue-mongerer. "It's the turtle's ocean, man." "Native cultures must be preserved!" "Women's rights!" "Out and proud!" - These are just of a few of the types of token slogans I have heard recently and repeatedly. What is neglected is the utter hypocracy demonstrated by these following cows. Political activism is the new religion; its followers flock to meetings like so many fools before them - dumb, repetitive, shallow, ruled by the weak-minded and the tyrant alike. This place is just like everywhere else - corrupt to the core, yet everyone says this place is different, unique! UN...

GRNSTRGLITTFSSTTDDD! Hit by a plethora of whammies, I reel like a boxer knocked upside the head. Wife struggling, sister in unbelievable pain, brother on the verge of homelessness! And in this atmosphere of utter uncertainty and despair, I suffer through the following exchange: "hello, I am calling to find out how to sign up for the prelim. Do you have to sign up to take the exam?" -"No, you don't need to sign up." "Oh, really?" -"No." "Ok, so I just come in and take it?" -"Oh, no, you can't take it until next year." "Really, why is that?" -"Well, you have to fill out a form - but the deadline is passed, so you can't take the exam." 'o' 'o' 'o' 'o' Now, forgive me for sounding elitist or condescending, but isn't signing up for a thing, the same as filling out a form before a deadline? Am I retarded or is she? What the fuck planet d...

What's the point, I mean, really? Fighting, worrying, struggling, for a tenth of an acre, an hour-long commute each way, a dangling hope for a ticket to a better job - with more frustrations. The reasons for doing all of the above escape me right now. The economy is in shambles, but "economists" say to ignore it, and that it is just the data fooling us. "No, the island is not sinking, it is just the humidity!" Inflation is low? To whom? Gas is on Pluto, housing is so damned expensive, you have to move 150 miles out and into a cave just to pay a rent that takes only 33.5 percent of your piddly income. Every moment, we are bombarded by urges to buy, to eat, to CONSUME! Debts mount, tensions increase, and we continue in it like lemmings to the cliff. Personally and professionally, I feel bereft of hope, disdainful of it really. Too many people, too much stuff, not enough intelligence - we humans are a species unworthy of pity.

Enough is enough! Living where I do is getting to be enfuriating - again! This place hates me and my wife. Not enough, the car accident, the months of pain, the total lack of justice, the fight with our own insurer, the no work for L, the finding work at the most evil place ever, the getting fired from same for absolutely no other reason than she was not a heartless see-you-next-Tuesday like they were, the ensuing months of unemployment, the total lack of intelligence in the VAST majority of people with whom we have the misfortune to interact, the getting a job - finally - with another evil place at a SLASH in pay, the months of agonizing stress at bad management, and now, being all but fired again - and for absolutely no good reason!! This place defies logic! Nothing will please me more than talking about this place in the past tense! I hate what it has done to L, I hate what it is doing to her now, again, and I hate the fact that there is not one damned thing I can do about...