� Krusty the Klown

I found out why Liz never opens IE. It�s because, I am not making this up, year-end merit raises are given based on the nebulous quality of "focus," and someone decided that a good way to measure this would be in terms of how much time an employee averages online every day. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. Today it�s dead like Telma around here � I am enjoying the Zen-like exercise of listening to the phone ring first at a manager�s desk, then at a supervisor�s, then at Liz�s (starting about nine she was on an hour-and-a-half smoke break), then, hello! mine. Jacques Vandelay never returned my message, back in August of 2001, about what would have been on my part a self-destructo booty call I frankly didn�t even want, but I will always think fondly of him if for no other reason than that when I ran into him at the Tractor that time and told him where I was temping, right away he asked me what I had to say when I picked up the phone. Me: "Uh, 'Fire Investigation Unit.' That�s all, just 'Fire Investigation Unit.'" Him, eager: "And I bet you say it in kind of a sexy voice, don�t you?" I started to protest, Jacques you lousy bastard what are you accusing me of � and then I realized he was exactly right. I would draw out the "fire," purr the "r," and attempt to invigorate the phrase's tastily enunciatable middle syllables with a wannabe-Nabokovian tipping and tripping and tapping, extra half beat between the second and third words for subliminal suspense, then emphasizing the "u" in "unit" and finishing with a slightly raised and ironic inflection and an emphasized terminal dental sound so that these two elements together made a point as they posed a question. I hadn�t even known I was doing that. Sadly, no such luck here, the words I have to say when I pick up as myself or anyone are so depressing that no amount of behind-the-phonics would make them appealing. Also on the dream list of Not At My Job is being forced to listen to someone else�s music while I�m working. A guy in the cube tube behind and to my right is listening to godawful "traditionally" arranged and acedia-inducing Christmas carols, and the holidays have not swayed the data enterer, to his left, from her eight-to-five love affair with the urban R&B station.

I somehow wonder whether I come off, writing about things like this, as more bitter and crabby than I actually feel about them. Like, do people read this and picture a muttering crotchety old lady � or, to continue the Simpsons theme, Selma or Patty? I hope not, but I�m afraid that here is another instance of something like my alleged media jones as escapism, I mean the way I perceive myself � I used to know a philosophy major who would often employ the phrase "my experience of myself"; last I heard he was based in Amsterdam and working as a model, but still, that�s closer � vs. the way I seem to other people who are not, like me, fogged in by subjectivity and so used to that kind of weather that I believe I can see clear to the horizon.

Or maybe even wondering equals navel-gazing.

I don�t know.

Christmas. Christmas Christmas. Sorry, but I�ve never been able to work myself up. The God aspect did not resonate for a dyed-in-the-wool atheist like me. The family aspect? Please, don�t make me laugh. I admired and very much liked the Zadie Smith essay in the NYT today (note to self: give her a second chance?), I read it and then a bit later was still thinking about it so I decided to send the link to some pals, and while I was back on the page and while I was needing to kill as much time as possible, I read the piece again, and I realized that in the interim my mind had conflated Smith�s last paragraph with the one in which she speculates on what the soundtrack for the photograph might have been, so that what I had in my mind, I thought it was an echo, was "War! What Is It Good For?" That�s no echo, though. That�s my own voice, singing between the lines. Christmas always seemed so irrelevant � this one�s for you, Ken, and Happy Hannukah wherever you are � to my experience of myself, I felt that there was something in it that mocked me, was challenging me to ask that I be considered worthy of it and allowed to participate. Which I knew was a trick, because of course I wasn�t, and I was smart enough not to pick a fight I knew I�d lose. I never believed in Santa Claus, either � one of my childhood memories is of my mother, in the 1030 house so it must have been before my parents were divorced which makes me four, asking me if I was excited thinking about Santa�s visit and what he would leave us, and me being aware that it was important to her that I play along and act as excited as she wanted me to be. I knew she�d be hurt if I told her what I had concluded (though I don�t remember why or the eureka moment): that there was no such thing as Santa. Receiving presents makes me uncomfortable, and buying them makes me utterly neurotic, I�m always afraid that what I�m selecting is either all wrong or not good enough, and then my attempt at self-reassurance mutates into fixation on Christmas as postindustrial potlatch � my god, who needs all this *stuff* anyway? � and I grow resentful of (a) this competitive, performative aspect of the holiday (yes, while simultaneously suffering from performance anxiety) and (b) myself, for not being able to just shut up and deal. It�s a barrel of laughs, I tell you. Growing up, I was aware of this � and, lest you think me a cyborg, sad about them � and I figured that things would be different when I was older. I imagined a Christmas dinner with my sister and our respective families and a friend or several� but there, my mistake was to believe this (a) the remedy and (b) one I could, myself, effect. It�s a miserable pain in the ass to travel across the country at Christmastime, especially when one has so few vacation days and must be stingy with them and spread them across the year. There is no time to relax. I don�t have an extra-sister, non-parental family and neither does she, and what I�ve since realized functions as a wrench in my pipe dream is the fact that I feel out of place and little-match-girlish among someone else�s family and friends. My Christmas, if it exists, needs to have a "my" in it. Like, going to Steve�s sister�s is going to be difficult for me. For many years I threw what I called the orphans� Christmas, where I�d invite everyone else who wasn�t leaving town and we�d eat tons of food and drink gallons of wine. A toast not to family but to friendship and camaraderie, and another to our hostess! On the one hand, it was always a marvelous time, and I do love cooking and having dinner parties, and it made me feel good to be providing for friends who without my efforts might not have had as festive a day. When you�re confident in your offerings, it feels virtuous to be the giver. I thought, All right, maybe here what I do at Christmas, here lies the first-person-singular possessive. On the other hand, one wishes to be christian but after a few years one grows restive of mere gratitude, one gets pretty fucking pissed off about her presumptive status as a meal ticket by, in some cases, those who would never think of buying her a drink from time to time or of finding a way to do something nice for her in return. (One struggles horribly with that, one feels like Scrooge � but when am I going to stop letting the more vulturous of my friends take me for granted? If I let my self-worth slide for a while because after all it is Christmas and they�re clamoring for an elaborate dinner and Knob Creek Manhattans, what kind of a present is that?) This year is the first in a long time that I am neither the confident giver nor will I be among however cheap and greedy friends. And although I know that opting out of the bloodletting is the right thing to do and will ultimately make me a better tougher person (hi Steve), realizing how many of my friends treat me not so friend-like, what is left to me without them, gives me a headache in my heart. Honestly, I�d just as soon work tomorrow � or, no, that�s not true, I�d just as soon say Whee, I have a day off in the middle of the week and maybe sleep in, then wake up and eat bacon and make Bolognese sauce while watching "The Singing Detective."

I guess I�m still young enough that this could change. I bet I�d like feeling included � in on the joke that would no longer be a joke. As it is, my experience of myself in what is other people�s Christmas feels a lot like temping. Overall, I feel immune.

(Mary, am I right or am I right?)