Me: How are you?
Caller: Actually I�m just recovering.
Me: Oh, have you been sick, did you have that flu?
Caller: No, I had a party last night.

Mmm. I opted out of the diary thing for a while and for a few different reasons. I didn�t even log in to Diaryland and now the red type on my buddy-list page looks like the credit crawl at the end of a bad slasher movie, cool: stuff to read, and I will. Also today I have to send a package to Alan, fax to my sister a diagram of the teevee-TiVo-VCR-receiver-cd player wiring because something is screwed up and if she can�t fix it no one can, and read some stuff about a software program so I don�t sound like a moron about it during a phone screen this afternoon which regrettably must take place on the coffee-girl phone because Steve needed the cell to call the phone company this morning because our phone line and therefore internet access mysteriously expired last night. I mean, if the phone screen takes place at all. I can�t decide whether I should risk trying to come off as a competent and respected professional when there is zero chance I will be able to talk on the phone for fifteen minutes without someone bugging me for lunch or a file or a phone number, without me constantly having to put screener-dude on hold and be the warm and unctuous first point of contact for random riffraff who think that the government needs to know about their preposterous dissatisfactions. Maybe he�ll call and I�ll say, I am so sorry but I can�t possibly do this today � I�ll understand if not, but is there any way we can reschedule for tomorrow? The job�s on the product-marketing end of the spectrum, anyway, it�s no way something that in itself is flaming-hoops-jumpthrough-worthy. (Though here is another conversational excerpt, this one from Friday night at Ted Leo in the context of discussing jobs that will be coming available here at the cheese factory. Stephen: "But would you really want a job like that?" Me: "At this point I�d take a job sucking snot out of someone else�s nose if it paid well and had health insurance" � and after I said it, I realized that I�d done so to be funny but that it was also truer than I cared to admit.) In my opinion, the phone screen is the apex of modern self-debasement, especially when of necessity it is conducted on a cell phone, bonus points for a bad connection and for traffic/construction noises in the background because there is no conference room available to you and even the requisite fifteen minutes is pushing it and you had to dash as the cell phone was ringing to the smokers� porch outside, the denizens of which would stay post-puffing and serve as the amused audience for the whole spectacle. Double bonus points if you know you�re going to get yelled at the minute you get back to your desk for having stepped away from it thus dread is percolating. Triple bonus points if shortly before the scheduled call, you got e-mail from Mr. Man or Ms. Lady suggesting strongly that breakup was imminent and during the call you are therefore alternately distracted by Oh shit, what am I going to do? and the catch-and-quaver in your voice, ensuring by your obviously poor performance as the phone-screenee that your rapt audience sure as hell has something to be amused about, and they are. (Thursday. I�d love to be able to burn all memory of that day out my own brain, perhaps with a cauterizing iron. Oy.)

So, reasons for not writing: (1) TOO DAMN MUCH GOING ON and it wears a body out to be a slave to the regular recap (because I have made myself so), to regurgitate and diagnose while sometimes I would rather digest (2) but that sounds so lofty and self-congratulatory (Later: Kind of like the way I practiced accepting the party girl's apology? Uh, yeah, kind of like that � I am large, I contain turpitudes); sometimes, too, I would rather be reading newspapers online and writing e-mail to Vanessa or my sister, so there. (3) Out of diary diligence, I tend to record every miniscule hope-inducing maybe of Jobquest, and then I end up feeling self conscious when nothing comes of them and having to retract the reasoning that had seemed to give them credence, and that makes me feel pathetic. (4) There�s no "feel" about it, I *am* pathetic most of the time. (5) Fighty fighty fight fight fight and how most aspects of discussing it would violate someone else�s privacy, which you know is the No. 1 No around here and what do I have if I do not have my principles. (6) A few things happened, like some drama around one of my classes, that I didn�t want to write about until the narratives had endings and then when they did the endings were so sour that I preferred not to relive in-the-telling the experiences. (7) As previously noted, additional self-consciousness about inability tonally to maintain an even keel, to seem � maybe I�m exaggerating or being too hard on myself � a coherent author-construct. Blah blah blah. (8) Increasing discomfort with how the world of Doing Shit Online of which diary-writing is a subcategory often seems to be one big circle jerk, I mean how porous is the boundary between incidental and sincere handjobbery and the kind that becomes its own raison d�etre, once you start you can�t stop because that is partly what you *do*, and also one big noisy classroom of popular smartasses each clamoring for their beleaguered substitute teacher to acknowledge them as the most noisome of all so they can earn the reverse cachet of being king or queen of the assholes. (9) Hey, teacher, call on me, notice me! I am moody and bilious, I will jerk off anybody in the house and then kiss my hand, I have no shame at all � when will the circle jerk open up and make a place for little old shitheaded me? (10) Bitterness when I see a phrase like "New York bloggers" and realize the conceptual hell-freezes-overishness of substituting "Seattle." (11) Shut the fuck up, what entitlement do I have to anything like bitterness?

Things like that. And in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a whore. By the way, I am strongly leaning towards trying to get out of the phone screen this afternoon. Just for starters, I cannot leave my desk, and I am within earshot of about twelve people. Argh. Along these lines, secretly I have a certain hope in my heart, but I can�t let it out yet.

Note please: I do have to give the PG credit for referring to my current non-job situation as "contracting" rather than "temping," thereby letting me get away with that too. See, I�m fair, I give credit where it is due.

OK, this is all for now and I will try to get back on the wagon. Hello, hope you are well too.