In Which Nicholson Baker Can Suck It

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I am sucking down Mad Men like it is 2007 and I am Britney Spears with a Big Gulp of Purple Monster before me.

Likes:

1. Child “abuse”
a. Children with plastic bags on their heads
b. Children mixing drinks
c. Children being told to sack up and go to bed

2. Constant Smoking and Drinking*
a. At work
b. After work
c. Before work
d. During the commute
e. With your spouse
f. In a house
g. With a mouse
h. In a box
i. With a fox

* Makes me regret not smoking constantly, or at all**
** Makes me remember old relatives who died horribly of Cancer of the Cirrhosis in the ’90s.

3. Stylistic Stuffs
a. Clothes
b. Music
c. Women being exploited at “nudie bar” somehow mitigated by the fact that I cannot see each individual rib.

Dislikes:

1. Egregious Littering/Resource Hogging
a. But I know that people are running after and picking up the beer cans chucked in the woods.
b. Also, three-mile long Cadillac, lol.

2. “Sweetheart, Make Yourself Useful and Get Me a Glass of Water.”
a. I can’t help it, it makes me cringe every time. I keep expecting women to say “bite me,” but they never do. And if they speak up they spend more time apologizing after.

In Other News: UGH

I have to go downtown today and buy black pants for my job, which starts tomorrow. Yes, there is a dress code. What is the opposite of a dream coming true? I am going to be working in a MALL. I have avoided working in a MALL for 31 years. If Satan chooses to smite me on my way downtown, that is okay at this point. What the hell happened to me?

I have two phone screens in the can at the moment and I am waiting to hear something, anything back about them. They both pay about the same but are different types of writing jobs. I would be happy with either. I guess at this point I feel lucky I am still getting interviews? In the meantime I will be wearing a nametag and making $9.25 an hour, which won’t even cover rent. WOW. Living in Seattle is stupid.

I have been feeling kind of anxious and frustrated lately, because I feel like I am exactly where I was during the last election: tense, not enough money, looking for temporary work. Life Same as Four Years Ago, except now I am probably wiser (read: moar bitter). In a way that situation was scarier because I was pregnant then, but it was also giving me something to look forward to, at least until I lost Strudel’s twin, which I thought was all of Strudel. Now the child is here, and I love her, but her feet keep growing and she keeps termiting my cabinet bare. When I was pregnant the first time, I was like JFC this is hard, but then the baby came out and had to eat and be clothed and put somewhere besides a sack on a nail in the barn, and I was like OH SNAP LIFE JUST KEEPS LEVELING UP. I think I would rather be carrying my children around inside me at a time like this. Maybe I can put them in stasis for a while. I’m sure that wouldn’t mess with them psychologically at all.

35 thoughts on “In Which Nicholson Baker Can Suck It”

  1. OH SNAP LIFE JUST KEEPS LEVELING UP may be my new favorite thing to say. Because goddamn that’s funny and so, so true. I belly-laughed right here in the silence of my living room. Which, I startled myself with the abrupt laughing, thus silencing myself once again. NICE. You make me an abrupt-solo-laughing abrupt-stop-laughing maniac.
    Also, I have those same feelings. It never stops, either. Younger kid is acting somewhat hormone-y and showing certain signs, which is DEEPLY upsetting older kid, who has been dancing around ‘womanhood’ for about two years but nothing yet, so yeah. I’d like to put mine in stasis so they’d STFU, but still. Same thing, right?

  2. WAIT what’s not to love about Nicholson Baker? Make yourself useful and explain it to me. bwaha. No, I love the man, but not without reservations (because of his love of Updike, who I DO hate). I generally dislike my friends’ partners, and suspect this is more of the same, but it could be a real Fatal Flaw in Mr. Baker, so I do not give him ALL my love.

  4. Ooooh. So glad you’re watching Mad Men. So sad about mall work.

    I know you are Librarianzor. I am a ParalEagle and sometimes law firms have libraries that pay more than $9.25/hr and legal peoples are usually pretty cool about health insuarance that does not come out of ur paychex.

    You know, just something to do before we all buy a hacienda in Mexico and run a cooking school there….(for freegans.)

  5. Ah ha ha, I just wanted to say that I can use footnotes and lists, too. I don’t know why that popped into my head. I read Mezzanine like five years ago.

    A: Library work is really out of the question at this point. I don’t want to go down that road, for one. For two, I probably would pursue it out of desperation, but they are pretty hard core about cold Master’s degree plus no experience.

    Better a ParalEagle than a Pair of Beagles?

  6. As someone working part time in menial office work, I can safely say I don’t know What I Want To Be When I Grow Up. At least you have a final goal of B&B. When my youngest is out of the house (in 5 years meep) I plan on going full time somewhere but who knows doing what. Oh, sorry, was this about you or me? Sorry about having to get black pants. At least they’re slimming. It’s not for forever, so chin up, asshole!

  7. I have yet to watch mad men, but Christina Hendricks makes me happy.

    Things get complicated now that we’re the grown-ups.
    Here’s hoping the Jay oh bee fairy sends some love your way.

  8. Mad Men probably represents the last *Golden Era* for men in this country. I haven’t seen it, but the pics I see pretty much remind me of my parent’s cocktail parties, etc.

    As far as the work well, it’s work – yanno?

  9. For Mezzanine, Baker wins. For yelling at librarians for throwing out old newspapers, he can suck it for realz.

  10. Is this the guy who wrote Vox and Fermata?

    They both came so highly recommended, and were mostly not that great. (Can *I* haz big check from publisher nao, too?)

  11. P.S. Plz recommend NB books that deserve the hype. There was enough good in even the books I wasn’t wild about to keep them around for re-reading.

  12. If it’s any consolation (and frankly, I’m sure it ain’t much–it isn’t for me, really) I truly think that being a “professional” is gonna mean less and less in the next decade. It’s gonna be about who can raise food in their backyard. There’s urban chickens 2 blocks away from me…I need to make friends with that family. Maybe I can exchange knitted goods for eggs.

  13. In the Dirty Souf, we call it Purple Drank.

    The job thing, MEH. I quit my shitty temp job and was ambivalent about it until all of a sudden I paid bills and realized my checking account was damn near empty. So back out I go. Hello, retail my old friend. I’ve come to schlep with you again.

    Also, “OH SNAP LIFE JUST KEEPS LEVELING UP” needs to be on a t-shirt, for realz.

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