Not Cool

Phaye was sitting in the office this morning in front of the bank of blank, powerless monitors, reading and dutifully glancing up at them from time to time. I love the seriousness of youth.

I sat at my desk to look at the paperwork that accountant Bethann had left for me. I swiveled from side to side as I read, then further to each side until I was what is called, “Twirling in your chair looking into space.” I stopped before I got too dizzy and I started to think about how I was acting like a brat, resenting doing actual work. I looked at the ceiling and walls, wondering about some improvements and saw a really big spider egg sac on the ceiling in the dim corner of the room. It was a weird place and time for an egg sac. We don’t bother the spiders because if we kill them more just move in. I got a chair and towel to pull the egg sac down and as I reached to get it I saw that the object wasn’t organic, but a tiny black box with a red light shining against the wall where it was mounted. There was a second one catty-corner to it. Security cameras. Someone—one of the electricians or even Dirk-- had mounted these cameras within the last two weeks.

Oh, crap. There was one camera in the break room but nothing in the store room or bathroom. This was messed up. It was so... airport security, hotel elevator, mall parking lot, condo complex. Our little dim office is just any old stupid place? The criteria of the Being & Nothingness Cam Project requires us to be open to what comes along--not to anticipate something, necessarily, but to be ready and flexible. But this was so depressingly common and not in a good way.

I asked Phaye if she’d seen the cameras before and she hadn’t, but she wasn't alarmed. She said that she lived assuming everyone was taped at all times, but it wasn't a problem, or Dick Cheney would be in jail. She said it was a sorrowful and dark heart of society. I hate the philosophy of youth.

I sat at my desk until noon, reviewing how many times I had might have pulled my underwear out of my crack, picked my nose, or dropped something on the floor and then scooped it up and ate it anyway. I wondered if the camera angle could see how much I drool when I fall asleep at my desk.

Tom and Sia came in at 12:30, despicably cheerful, surprising us with sandwiches. April Fool’s! Fake toy cameras! Life at our little wooden-house-turned-office-with-black-lawn-furniture is okay!

The English language has a paltry selection of insulting words for women. Bitch and hag are boring and other stuff is yucky and not funny. You can insult men with a glorious kaleidoscope of funny, vicious, and creative words. Another example of women having to take a back seat to men.

Sadly, I had to leave it at telling them a simple "Piss off" and I went home.

The Letter from the SAALI Computer Guys

This handwritten note arrived yesterday from the “gentlemen in Irvine” who are the designers of the SAALI unit/computer that used to sit in the corner of the Being & Nothingness Cam Project office:

“Dear Ms. Holmes,

We have safely received the SAaLI via FedEx. Your interference in the functioning of this unit is completely unacceptable and outside of your tasks as administrator of the Being & Nothingness Cam Project. We will be reporting your actions to the Project grantors.

We need further information regarding your actions and their effect on the unit in order to explore how it shall be repaired. What did you do to make your office power fail on March 11? What did you do before that time that changed the routine functions of the unit? How did you seal closed the seams and ports on the unit? Where has the unit been since the power failure?

Please refrain from stating that the units' acronym stands for “Self-Aware and Lovin’ It.” This is incorrect and insulting. Within our agreement with the grantors we may tell you only that “Sentient” and “Locator” are two of the words within the acronym.

Sincerely,

Multiple Initials

Blah Address”

Wow. They didn’t even have the huevos rancheros to give me their last names. I hashed out a response (in longhand, of course), but it may need some editing and a re-write:

“Dear Pompous Buttheads,

In response to your letter dated March 27, I’ll admit that, naturally, even though you are the conceptual artists, designers and technicians of the SAaLI unit everything that has happened is my fault. I am sorry that I made it get squirrely two weeks after it was set up and that I blew out the office power for entertainment.

If you have further questions please feel free to contact me in hell.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. If you work at that little private college east of Irvine, your campus is charming.”

Camera Updates

I've heard some grumbling out there that I'm holding out on the Being & Nothingness Cam images and that the cameras are, in fact, functioning. I understand your impatience, but to show you that they really are down I've posted all five camera feeds below. We've got our power back and Dirk has done all necessary upgrades (notice the nice new monitors), but as far as being back on line: when I know, you'll know.


Top to bottom: Nothingness Cam 1 (North), Nothingness Cam 2 (South), Being Cam 1, Being Cam 2, Being Cam 3*

Tomorrow I'll have a snippy letter I received today from the gentlemen who designed the SAALI unit. This will be good.

* This is the camera we are most anxious to see working again, since Phaye reported that she saw something "bright" right before she blew out the power.

The Weakness Question

There is the person you are when you interview for a job and the person you are when you get the job. If your new employers have been canny or lucky there isn’t much of a difference between the two. When they ask you, “What would you say are your weaknesses?” you can be a politician and wrestle the question to the ground and render it inert and harmless. Or you can rub your magic frontal lobe, lull your questioner into interview hypnosis, and slyly insert a strength where a weakness should appear.

For my last job I said: “I have trouble staying after work to help my coworker’s when they haven’t been able to complete their assignments.”

My answer should have been: “I tend to embarrass my employers by crying on the job, often in public.”

During their interviews I asked the members of the Being & Nothingness Cam Team the Weakness Question even knowing how fruitless and pathetic it was. I had never interviewed someone for a job before, so I panicked and pulled out that sad old weenie question. Here are their (paraphrased) answers to the question and the answers they should have given me:

Tom’s answer: “I am very dedicated to my family, but frankly, now that my daughter’s nearly grown, I’m looking forward to the intellectual challenges I know this job will bring.”

Tom should have said: “My daughter is a wild teenager and my wife and I spend every waking moment worrying about her and hating each other. I will both fall asleep on the job and leave suddenly without telling you.”

Sia’s answer: “Sometimes I’ll spend a little extra time at work writing down the intelligent and original thoughts of my coworker’s, so that on the weekends I can research the unique perspectives that they share with me.”

Sia’s answer should have been: “I can be unstable, get crazed, come to very strange conclusions based on no information whatsoever, and then insist unto my dying breath that I am right.”

Phaye’s answer: “I am young and have a lot to learn, but sometimes people are nonplused by my sharp insights and strong and concise debates.”

Phaye’s answer should have been: “Confusion, incidents, and injury cling to me like cologne, and I tend to embarrass my employers by crying on the job, often in public.”