Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The interviews improved this morning . . . the guy last night was a self-absorbed block of crap, and/but I was the bitch for insisting that matters. M said that he was ‘compelling in his desperation’, as if I were being mean to kittens. (eyeroll)


At the studio, they’re up my butt to work even more bc Mark and his wife want the entire next month off because she’s having a baby – her parents are here from Amsterdam to help, they’re renting them an apartment and a car for several months, they still can’t afford to pay me for all this work (which is okay for now, but still), and they need 4 adults to care for one crappy baby?! (armscrossy)


I’ve conducted 4 interviews in 1 ½ days, taught 2 classes, graded a mountain of papers, cared for my 2 kids myself (one of whom got another 4 teeth pulled today for another $400 out of pocket), put 200 miles on my car . . . then I do this morning interview w another guy who is nuts but interesting, and I’m trying to focus on that because his book includes interviews with Johnny Marr and Richard Thompson and others, so I’m interesting in talking about guitar playing as a form of poetics like rebuttals to the more famous vocalists and what these musicians are like to talk to actually etc. Then I need to go fetch my kid and race all the way back to a distant suburb for the ortho appointment so can I please not do the lunch(?) and M throws a hissy because, as she shrieks, she is TRYING TO WRITE AN ARTICLE. I try to be mindful that everyone’s obligations are equally valid, so a kid doesn’t trump an article, but um I can’t imagine screeching my childcare pressures as if anyone would care and if I did that I’d be dismissed as not serious enough to hold my academic job, so why do I need to accommodate everyone’s needs for space and time for all their reasons all the time!?? I bit my tongue of course and moved lunch earlier, as in right then, fine I’ll take him for an omelet whatever, eat fast Bub . . . (armssooocrossssy)


Then back home with a bloody mouthed kid finally w dinner to make and laundry to do on and on and never ever ever once does anyone offer anything useful or helpful to me whatsoever. (X doesn’t even remember his kid is in pain today, and/or that I am tending to it, for instance. Of course.)


The whole time, I’m listening to this on the radio in the car, getting more and more pissed off. It seems to sum up what my problem is today: people expect everything for free, are outraged in fact when they have to even consider anyone or anything else in their cost analyses. Remember when everyone was saying that the Wallstreet Asswipes shouldn’t “privatize profits and socialize losses”? Well why do we think we can socialize cheap gas and privatize the costs of this spill? Saying that BP is “solely responsible” for this mess is like blaming the hooker for the existence of prostitution, as if the pimp (the government) and the john (who wants sex without the hassle of even minimal interpersonal expenditure to get it, in this case all of us driving our gas guzzlers all over hell on whore gas with only our own personal immediate goals in mind ever) aren’t an issue. I include myself in this, and when I see clearly that I myself deserve no quarter then I’m not in the mood to grant blind leeway to anyone else.


In other words, in general, just assume that the most deserved response to you (and me) today is Fuck Off. Don’t even try to figure out why or what for exactly, just take it: Fuck Off.


Fave distraction story for today. (shazzam!)